I've looked through my notes and here are a few of my thoughts on the sessions I've attended:
Session A - Teachers as First Responders: 911! Students Need Their Voices Heard
I was worried this session would be super depressing and, in some ways it was. When I saw "first responders" in the title, I wondered if the session would focus on school shootings and how teachers can better be prepared to deal with a shooting shoulder happen in their school. Because that's the world we've made. (If you want to be upset about how we respond to shootings, read this article about a school safety convention in Florida and the hucksters who are looking to make a buck off taxpayer dollars.)
Thankfully, that was not the point of the session. Instead, teachers from the North Star of Texas Writing Project Their website is undergoing renovation so be aware that it's tough to find recent information. This is a common issue with teachers seeking to be resources for other teachers. There's only so much time in the day and after school often means continuing to work on other aspects of your teaching - these writers run PD and writing camps for kids several times a year so I'd imagine hosting a website is low on a list of priorities. There's something to be learned here about what it takes for teachers to truly be a solid resource for each other and co-develop ways of education without relying on less-than-helpful universities, non-profits, and foundations. One of the presenters mentioned she keeps a blog so I will leave a link right here.
Anyway, (can you tell I've not slept!) these teachers wanted attendees to think on the idea of teachers as first responders. What do first responders do that is similar to the work educators do? From audience responses, I recoded a few answers. Teachers and first responders respond to many kinds of crisis. Teachers and first responders allay the fear of not knowing what to do in a crisis - this came with a personal story of being rescued during Hurricane Harvey, which flooded Houston. Teachers and first responders have specific skills for specific kinds of crises. Teachers and first responders make sacrifices of time, money, emotional capacity, family involvement, and safety to help during a crisis. Listening to the responses really drove home the power of this metaphor.
As the panel discussed how they came to this conclusion, we were told other stories. One teacher had knowledge that a student was being beaten by his father. Their family were undocumented. If she reported the abuse, the family and child would all be deported, likely together. She knew this because it had already happened twice to students at her school when well meaning teachers complied with laws meant to protect children. Another teacher confronted the fallout of sexual abuse in a student's life as the student body gradually came to know about it and responded in ways both virtuous and vicious. They had been sharing stories like this with each other for months when they came to the conclusion that self-care was now a necessary component of their PD. Beyond teaching teachers about writing, they needed teachers to be able to care for themselves so that they could care for their students in crisis. You put the oxygen mask on yourself first. First responders do not always respond during active and dangerous events but only once the situation is safe enough that they can do their work effectively. After all, first responders would not benefit anyone if they also needed rescuing.
The focus of the second half of the session turned to writing. The skillset which supports writing also supports working through difficult and personal issues. It supports sharing and seeking help. It supports teachers' ability to know their students deeply so they can give help. It also supports the teachers' own self reliance and growth. Crises can be deeply generative and a source of creativity so long as an environment exists to support that kind of expression. When they teach PD now, these teachers often look at the social and emotional support systems for both teachers and students before they ever think about instruction and methods.
In the end, the session wasn't asking for a particular practice or action so much as the realization that teachers face tremendous difficulties because of the nature of their work. Nationwide, teachers are moving closer and closer into the role of social worker and therapist and first responder despite the fact that none of the responsibilities are considered in frameworks of accountability and achievement. It's up to teachers to be aware of their changing roles in society and to take care of themselves so they can take care of others. Not a bad way to begin a conference.
Session B - Sharing Student Stories through the Arts
Originally, I was not going to attend this session but I caught one of the presenter's name: Michelle Zoss! My old professor from my teacher training MAT at Georgia State University was leading a series of roundtables which sought connections between the arts and work in language and literacy. The general theme was that incorporating "the arts" enhances learning because content is more multimodal, engaging, and it creates space for inquiry and conversation. I attended a pair of roundtables.
The first was about writing songs. There are obvious connections between music and poetry which probably every ELA teacher can grasp. The point was more about how to make the class more musical by using melodies and beats throughout the writing process. The presenter played the same chords over and over with only slight variation while we discussed the mood of the piece which might accompany it. We each wrote some lyrics which we tried to fit into the melody and then workshopped the each other's writing a bit to develop a single song. The final product was rough but I could see how the work laid out the process of writing in a different way. If I made that process explicit for some students, I might really stick with them. The presentation closed out with some possibilities for incorporating music if you can't play an instrument. He recommended garage band which is free on any apple phones or iPads and can act as a variety of musical instruments. Depending on the age group, students might play an instrument. One teacher recommended asking the school's music teacher to either come by for those lessons or record a few minutes of play for use in the lesson.
Second, I joined Dr. Zoss's table for crafting mosaics. Now, I'd done this about 8-9 years earlier with her in one of our classes but it's interesting how it meant a lot more now. At the time, I felt like it was a bit gimmicky and served little purpose. Now, and perhaps because I am attuned to questions of student talk, I found myself interested in the conversation as much as in the artwork itself. Zoss was asking a combination of simple personal questions about the conference attendees and deeper questions about the meaning of teaching, our ethical responsibilities to our students, and how we might make classrooms spaces where low-stakes activity can occur. As I ripped up a sheet of orange paper, I realized that the mosaic itself was really a vehicle for talk and that talk became a way for the teacher to confer with her students, a way for the students to co-construct knowledge (I learned about the geometric foundations of Moroccan murals, how ASL's use of movement makes using stationary images of sign language problematic, and why teachers felt there was still hope for the future). If the mosaic was connected to a classroom activity, Zoss argued we should just sit in the mess with our kids and participate ourselves. Chat away and guide the conversation but don't keep it too locked on a single activity. Often times kids make connections by straying off into another domain before returning to the task at hand. And sometimes kids just need to tear up some paper - that's okay too.
After the session I had a chance to catch up. She did not remember me but I did no expect her to since I have not done anything to keep in touch with GSU since graduating and getting a job. I still have a lot of harsh feelings toward the program but recognize that a 1 year accelerated course aimed at getting recent college grads certified and into a classroom entails making tough choices. In part, I just had to go teach for a while before the lessons from GSU really sank in. Sometimes those weren't the lessons Dr. Zoss or others were actually trying to teach but were, instead, the hidden curriculum at work. However, I plan to send an email her way in a little while with some info about my life since she las saw me and see if I can't be a better networker. This was a good chance to start!
General Session - Chimmanda Ngozi Adichie (look her up, especially this TedTalk)
Chimamanda Negozi Adichie is kind of a big deal. I'm probably the wrong person to express that sentiment because I have not read any of her fiction and only an occasional piece of her nonfiction work. Leading up to the conference and throughout the first day, everyone was talking about her keynote address with anticipation and excitement. I would describe it as the sort of feeling you get when you go to a concert with someone who is a superfan while you yourself haven't really heard their music. It's just not going to mean the same thing to you as it does to everyone else. That said, her address was fantastic. I think I'm still unpacking the layers of wit and insight in her words. Indeed, I probably should read her fiction because, if she writes like she talks, I'm going to enjoy it very much.
Adichie began with her privileged upbringing in Nigeria. Her father was a statistics professor and her mother the first woman to work as the registrar at a university. As such, they pushed her to read and do well in school from an early age. She claims her father kept files on his children and that she recently snooped through her file to find a report card her kindergarten teacher had written about her. In the comments he'd written, "She is a brilliant child but refuses to do work when annoyed." Reflecting on this, Adichie said she initially felt surprised her teacher knew her so well. The speech turned toward other teachers she'd had, good and bad, who shaped her desire to write and be a writer. At each spot, she paused for a moment and mused on what each teacher knew about her and how they really saw her.
Moving back to the present day, Adichie argued against the prevailing notion of schools as teaching "STEM or" - she pronounced this quickly the first few times to make the audience wonder what this stemor thing was. She called out statistics about how learning the arts, and especially reading and writing, was a clear way to teach critical and complex thinking, communication, and conflict resolution. She also said it was the best way to fight against being misrepresented. Telling your own story, developing your own voice, meant nobody could tell you who you were.
She drove this point home with a few examples from her life of people refusing to be curious. A bookstore clerk assumed she wanted children's books for her daughter with black characters but seemed to think it odd that she'd also want white and brown and yellow ones too. An academic friend of a friend who said he doesn't read the kind of writing she writes - implying she writes about black things and woman things and he, as a while male, will have nothing to learn from it. None of these people were allowing themselves to face what Adichie called the "true purpose of books" which is to make you uncomfortable. We should seek out ideas and experiences other than our own because without that comparative knowledge, we can't legitimately evaluate the world around us. Without knowing things about others, we can't know ourselves. That, she argued, is what contributes to conceptions of identity as something only subordinated people have and something only oppressed people care about. White Americans, she pointed out, like to ignore that they are actively engaging in ideas of identity all the time and it is a disservice to them because they can't know themselves. This went beyond a philosophical self knowledge and into some very practical considerations like our politics, teaching, consumerism, and worship.
Closing on a high note, she returned to her teachers arguing that none of them were free from stereotypes or bigotry but that they'd pressed themselves hard to see her as an individual with her own needs and desires. Adichie feel like the best work teachers could do today is to build that knowledge of their students into everything they did. "Let your students know you see them," she ended. The audience rushed out of the hall, even though there were more speeches to hear, because the first 200 people in line would get an autographed copy of Adichie's latest book.
Elementary Session - Luis C Moll
I'm not much for elementary, even with my experience last year working in elementary environments, it's just not a model of schooling that fits me well temperamentally. I went to this session for only one reason and that was to see Luis Moll. His work in Funds of Knowledge is in the DNA of the way teaching is being changed for the better. Culturally responsive practices, home-school connections, building and sustaining student identities, disciplinary literacy, and discourse theory all originated with Moll's work on Funds of Knowledge in the 80s and 90s. In short, a Fund of Knowledge is a family or community's knowledge about a specific task passed formally and informally from generation to generation and across families. His work traced examples of agriculture, automotive repair, engineering, construction, business management, and numerous other areas where immigrant and Native American families in the American Southwest held deep pools of knowledge which allowed for their success and survival in an environment which was, at best, indifferent to them. One strand of his work brought him into the classroom and called for building meaningful connections between students' families, their Funds of Knowledge, and school curriculum. Since that time, Funds of Knowledge work has been done in communities throughout the world.
Moll walked the session attendees through his way of viewing and identifying the funds of knowledge on display in several videos recoded during some of his research. His point to us was that we needed to know more about our students than their academic performance. This means teachers ought to know about the occupational history and recreational history of a family. What do children's parents do for work? For fun? Their grandparents? How is that knowledge passed down? What can we develop from knowing about their Funds of Knowledge that might make school more relevant, meaningful, and representative of students' cultures?
While there, I lucked out and won a copy of one of his books. When it came time to meet the guy, I totally chickened out and bailed without getting him to sign it. His work is so influential to my thinking about the practice and ethics of teaching that I got a bit starstruck. What can I say?
Session E - The Power and Efficacy of Reading: What Reading Can Do for Homeless and Socially Challenged Students
Here are a pair of slides she shared about strategies for teachers who work with "highly mobile" students. I apologize about the angle and the quality, it's the best I could do given the circumstances.
Afterward, Dulce and I caught up and went to Session F together.
Session F - #DisruptText: Dismantling and Rebuilding (Reimagining?) the Literary Canon
It's difficult to capture the fervor of the both the room and the presenters in the #DisruptText session but everyone was quite excited and motivated. I hear you can use hashtags on Twitter to locate these people so feel free to give that a try. There are a number of links I will be including, as well, like this one to their website. Disrupttext.org. One way I felt this presentation had a lot of credibility is because the three presenters were current high school English teachers and taught with a justice orientation in vastly different schools. One taught in the "typical" inner city school in Denver. Another taught at a diverse charter school in Philadelphia (iirc), and the third teaches in an elite suburban public school in Texas. Despite different contexts, they had all found a way to incorporate diverse voices and critical pedagogy in their classrooms.
So, it's not a stretch to say that some English teachers have been trying to move away from the idea of a literary "canon" for many years. Reading old dead white guys is a sure-fire way to kill engagement, push your students to dis-identify with school, and basically encourage a pedagogy of exclusion. The presenters made this case well but, more importantly, they modeled some quick ways in which teaching in a CRP/CSP way is possible even when you're working within a fixed curriculum.
I felt one of the most interesting points they made was simply paring a required text like The Tempest with other texts to create a conversation around issues of social justice. Adichie is known for her speech about the danger of a single story, so why not teach multiple stories which inform each other? Perhaps a text from the Caribbean which makes Caliban's status as a colonized native more apparent? Maybe look at historical documents or maps which show where ships in Shakespearean times were sailing so student could see that Prospero's island isn't just any imaginary place but a location informed by the real world. These recommendations create space for deeply critical (and cognitively demanding) analysis. Here is a Disrupt Shakespeare Twitter "moment" (these are held regularly and compiled on their website and are a great resource, also you can see Dulce-Marie is an active participant - respect!).
Another resource shared with us was a"living document" of Diverse, Multicultural (Biopic) Voices in American Literature. It's definitely worth a look given that there are also some methodological tabs in there. Yet another interesting resource was a list of types of curricular bias. I envision this a working in two ways: first as a sort of self evaluation tool; second as an inquiry tool for the kids. Why not incorporate this kind of thinking into the fabric of each unit? For example: Why are we reading about the Harlem Renaissance in February? Why is that the only example of black culture we address throughout the year? etc.
Finally several links for discovering new literature, most offer curated or user-curated lists which can be organized around decolonizing your curriculum:
Epic Reads
Riveted
OurStory
Overdrive - Rent Electronic Texts (eBooks, audiobooks, etc). A note about Overdrive: it is not free but many school districts, school libraries, and local libraries have access through a variety of subscription services.
Session G - James and Carl's presentation
I don't have a lot to say about our presentation on supporting student talk. It went well and was attended by about 30 people, such that we ran out of copies and our participants had to share some of the materials - which was fine. The basic premise was to begin with a reflection on how talk was going in each of their classrooms, then move into two exemplar activities. First was an interactive read aloud from a picture book in which Carl modeled when and why to pause and pursue talk. Second was a group activity where the "students" read a paired text and discussed the text in groups with instruction to compare and contrast with the read aloud text. Carl and I circulated to the groups and basically coached in about different activities. I coached them in setting conversation goals based on a hierarchy of talk. Carl coached them in digging deeply into a particular theme or idea with conversation aids. This went long and we ran out of time for the final activity, which was a discussion about the talk hierarchy and giving them an If,Then chart based on the hierarchy with some prompts included which they could incorporate into their own lessons. Afterward several teachers staid behind and thanked us, so I will choose to believe the presentation was a success. Later we had some rye and hung out with a few of the people from TC.
Self Reflection Checklist (not that great but if you don't do talk at all, maybe helpful).
If, Then chart (seemed like everybody liked this)
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