The Conclusion

I feel written out. Drained. Wordless. And still I keep writing. How do you tell when you’re done with something that doesn’t end? While I hit many of the resources from class that I wanted to, I didn’t get to all of them or as deeply as I wanted to but I do think that I need to wrap this up, however, temporarily as this state may be. There are still many discussions to be had and thoughts to think. In a few words, I am impressed with the depth of the book’s issues but felt that the ending somehow cheapened it, made it less satisfying somehow. I think that it is an excellent choice for teaching, both in my class and in the classes of my students because of the issues that can be explored through this text. There are almost too many so that I would hope that they wouldn’t lose the very important aspect of race in favour of something “easier” like poetry or mothers that could be separated out in order to safe-ify teaching. Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson from this book and for my proposed teaching- Blackness is central to this book- don’t overlook it as we often overlook our own privilege and the inequities of our social system. When you don’t look at race, you deny something that is very important to many people, including those we meet in this book.
How has my experience as a reader changed? I’ve questioned more, I’ve thought more about it, I’ve realized the importance of not discounting race and experiences of Blackness, I know some words to talk about these things and some theories theories to relate issues of multiculturalities to. But I think have a lot of thinking to do and, even better, talking about this book to share my experiences and the gain from listening to theirs. I think my perspective is starting to shift to better ways of thinking that can help me work toward an equitable, multicultural reality in my classroom and maybe in the world.
How would I teach this book differently? And I could really write an essay on each one except that I feel like I’m repeating myself instead of travelling someplace new. Regardless, I do look at the issues differently, talk about them differently, and consider my words differently. But there is always more to learn and more to think and to be able to grow I have to admit that and work toward it.
And on a truly final(ish) note, I think this format really works to wildly explore ideas without having to structure them- alternative format seem better for exploration rather than recitation of knowledge. This is all Maxine Greene stuff, which works really well both for the book and discussing how the Dialectic of Freedom plays out through the major issues it addresses and how this project has gone. Releasing the Imagination is definitely on my to read list- maybe this summer. In any case, putting thoughts into words is still structuring, journaling like this is just maybe a less artificial structure?

p204-215 Be Eleven & Afua

This chapter/ending was better than the wrap up before. Believable and not fully resolved. I think this would be a difficult book for a child to understand why Cecile would not want her children, maybe more difficult than the racial issues because it connects to them personally. Maybe that’s why race is so difficult to deal with. Unless you have a non-dominant ethnicity, you don’t learn about your ethnicity so you don’t see that you have it and so can something that you don’t have be valuable? Colour blindness also seems to suggest that if we just get rid of ethnicity everything will be fine but that doesn’t say anything about privilege and power and the little racisms encountered every day.
On a side note, the acknowledgments are insufficient as an author’s note to give more information about the story. This book really needs a teacher and a good teacher to get at all the meaty stuff about power and race and color and freedom.

p185-199 Glorious Hill & The Third Thing

Well that was unexpected. Not completely unexpected, but I didn’t expect that to be how a major tension point got resolved. Fern’s public declaimation of Crazy Kelvin for telling the police about the Black Panthers was well, I suppose narratively appropriate, I just think that at this point the story hasn’t really set up his motivations for doing that. He seemed to not only be not very nice but also very pro-Black. Why should the character who challenges the characters about what they call themselves and the color of a babydoll be a bad guy? It’s good to see these characters challenged and challenge is uncomfortable but doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I guess this little turn of events is just rubbing me a little the wrong way because it seems to undercut the story.

p200-203 So

I have loved the story so far, but I’m not I’m not feeling the wrap up- it’s going too quickly and too neatly and maybe too optimistically? I felt that Vonetta’s insertions into Cecile’s poem, I Birthed a Nation really messed with the poem as a poem- not so cool. Almost like defacing someone else’s artwork, or appropriating someone else’s words. And it’s not all that optimistic as Delphine didn’t get her compliment from Cecile, who just happens to show up at the rally. Things do have to get tied up but I’m not overly impressed at the moment.

p179-184 Stores of the No Sayers

I find it interesting that Delphine thinks it’s okay to call the lady selling Chinese food Mean Lady Ming, especially when Fern calls her that to her face. Part of the Black Power Movement seems to be the right to be choose what you are called, hence the colored girl/black girl debate at the beginning. While Delphine might be making the “wrong” choice according to her readers, I appreciate its presence for the ability to talk about these issues. A character in a good book doesn’t always have to make the right choices, although frequently they are punished for these choices, which seems not to be the case here, but who knows, I’m not actually at the end yet.

A last idea

Dr. Kinloch,
I was just thinking that this project would have been much better as an online journal/blog type thing. It really is a chronological record of a journey. In any case, I'm thinking of posting it online and was wondering if you mind if I share your initial comments and suggestions about the project publicly. To me, the set up is very much part of the project but I am fine if you would like your comments withheld or a non-specific/psuedonym used. Both my comments and yours were originally meant to be private but I think that one way to make discussion and change is by taking risks and putting things out there. Also, if I did put this online, would you be willing to make comments online rather than on the paper copy I turn in? I definitely want feedback, especially as this is an ongoing project but I think having different voices commenting would make it even more powerful. Just some last minute thoughts...
-Erin

Workshop on Diversity in the Classroom

I went to a short workshop today on Diversity in the Classroom by Dr. Dalia Rodriguez in hopes that it would instigate new thoughts about issues with teaching from a multicultural perspective. While I don’t have time to do many of the exercises she suggested investigating personal identity and discussion practices and I don’t want to run in to some of the issues she encountered from the participants regarding asking students to identify themselves publicly, I thought the biggest problem that most participants seemed to encounter, resistance, especially from White students, is a definite concern. In my classroom, I have not had anyone actively resist what I have to share but there seems to be a social consensus that you are obligated to at least appear ambivalent regarding the teacher’s teachings and authority to make those remarks, which is interesting because as I’m still exploring myself I often teach from a place of questioning.
One of the things that my group members in a little activity said was that he found it easier/safer to talk about racism in the past as it’s already disconnected from the individual student. I think that One Crazy Summer is a safe book to teach but hopefully I can extend the issues within into today through this class session on historical fiction and the previous session on multicultural and other ideological issues.
While I don’t want to inquiry too deeply into students’ identifications I think that using one of the activities suggested to think about the positionality of characters they read about in comparison to their own privilege through a privilege walk for the character they read about. I think that the problem with doing a privilege walk for yourself is that part of our cultural teaching is that modesty, even fake modesty, is important and we consequently downplay our own privilege. Additionally, we underestimate the power of our privilege. We don’t have a lot of income in college so we feel poor but we are not poor at all, not only regarding our cultural capital but the luxuries that afford ourselves even in our state of “poverty.”

p173-178 I Birthed a Nation

I think this book is a good way to make open spaces for talking about issues, as it is an open space in itself. A book is a non-threatening public forum- it can’t be hurt by you, your words or your thoughts- it’s just a place to be temporarily, a different world with souvenirs you can take back to your everyday life experience.
I was also thinking about my experiences at the diversity workshop (details below) and my conversation with Lisa about the book- one of the issues that came up at the workshop was that students, especially White students aren’t taught a framework for dealing with racial issues, often because they’re taught to ignore them. Gary Howard’s book gives an adult perspective but I think something that focused on how to teach such a framework and what a framework looks like would be helpful for me as a teacher and a teacher of teachers and even as a supplementary resource for my students, although I don’t know how often they ever use all the extra resources I provide. Unfortunately Howard’s REACH program sounds like it has the right materials at the right levels but there’s no online or downloadable information for free. In any case, the lack of structure is something that Lisa thought maybe her daughter hadn’t gotten from Upper Arlington schools. In this case, access to a book with authentic voice and sensitivity toward multicultural issues was not enough to create change/prompt ideas/instigate thinking. Books like these have to be taught and how they are taught matters. Simply reading it and saying what a nice story it was and how awful it was that these people were treated and shouldn’t we treat all people the same etc. isn’t going to do anything especially in conjunction with the idea that we’ve “fixed” things and now everyone has an equal chance. Actually, thinking more, I wish I had thought this at the beginning, but this would be so much better as a blog. Lisa would like to read it too and I’d love to have it as a public record of my journey with everyone’s comments and everything.

p168-172 The Clark Sisters

Even just by having three sisters featured in this story, we still get a small variety of different perspectives and multiple stories. Delphine’s understanding of Cecile’s rejection of of her daughters is contrasted with her sister’s questioning. I also like the set up of Delphine being thoughtful of having not gotten Cecile a souvenir and her sisters denying their mother in the previous chapter with their mother’s denial of them in this chapter. This book has nicely thoughtful, resonate moments.

p152-167 San Francisco Treat & Wish We Had a Camera

Well, good plot arc- just as the sisters go off on a grand adventure to San Francisco, they come home to find Cecile getting arrested. Interesting, as they move out of their neighborhood and are exposed with more direct racism I am confronted with my own racist assumptions that some of the characters at the Community Center were White because they weren’t described as Black or had a stringy afro. This chapter does end on a bit of a cliff hanger- I’m much more interested in reading more rather than poking around exploring thoughts about stuff...

p140-151 Itsy Bitsy Spider & Movable Type

One of the critiques of this book that I’ve heard is that Cecile’s separation from her daughters too harsh and her lack of interest in them too unlikely. However, I’ve found it necessary for parents to be removed in some ways from stories in order for the main characters to appear to have control and thus be able to partake in adventures. Unfortunately, I think that maybe many mothers are less interested in their kids than we’d like to believe, not that any child should have to know this, but that there is a social expectation of mother’s loving their children that there is a lot of pressure to fulfill, even if not the case. In the setting of this book, a time of revolution, maybe Cecile is able to rebel against this in favour of the selfish individual wish for time and space to write and think. But if these aren’t ideas for children, or at least ideas that we think are inappropriate for children, how do you deal with this part of the book? I think on a more superficial level Cecile’s character could just be read as a bad guy that eventually becomes reformed over the course of the story, but I’ll have to wait to the ending to find out more as far as how that works. As it’s been progressing so far, I’ve been enjoying the small movements Delphine and Cecile have been making towards reconciliation.
I also think that “Cecile’s” poem is rather enjoyable, although not necessarily a children’s poem. I had the opportunity to briefly discuss this book a little with a colleague who’s daughter had read the book and didn’t really like it. I think this poem is one example of how adult guidance could be really important, especially when exploring unfamiliar times, places, and cultures which is not to say that the adult should know all of the answers to possible questions but they should be able to help find the answers. The idea of a printing press is maybe more familiar than a type-writing and I think it’s decently described in the story with the many little letters that there’s enough context within the story but then outside information can supplement areas where children are curious.

p134-139 Eating Crow

To me this chapter symbolizes the way that many readers can connect with the book through the experience of having siblings just like Delphine can connect with Eunice. I think that part of forming connections, as Camangian did with and within his students through the use of autoethnographies is recognizing similarities as well as the respect of listening to someone’s story and the vulnerability of baring your own. Reading a book like this completes part of that process but without the response of our own story, the ritual has not been finished, leaving the experience superficial. I think as teachers we can encourage the competition of this process by sharing ourselves responding to the text with other people or even like this, in journal entries, a symbolic sharing of ourselves and our stories with ourself. Sharing requires an acknowledgment and a step forward with hands outstretched.

p121- 133 Civic Pride & Rally for Bobby

These two chapters make an excellent connection with Maxine Greene’s Dialectic of Freedom as Delphine declines to participate in the rally in order to protect her sisters. It’s sort of amazing how many pieces of literature not only did Greene use to support her points but how many other pieces could be used. The pull between individual and community is one that many of us constantly deal with. Do we attend that rally to step up for something we believe in or do we spend that time at home with the people we love? Or do we do our schoolwork, something which we hope will eventually enable us to help many people as we become the teachers of teachers and cutting edge researchers with meaningful work that we choose instead of labour? Since you can’t stand up for everything, how do you choose what to stand up for? Despite the concern over the Kelly Williams-Bolar article, did anyone go to the rally?

p116-120 Expert Colored Counting

I like how here we start getting some of the ideas from the girls’ enculturation from the programs at the community center without actually having to sit through the lessons that in some way seem like Sunday school with a different purpose that tries to be fun enough to be different than regular school but still has the main goal of teaching rather than entertaining.
I seem to be moving along pretty now, though I find it interesting that sometimes my thoughts are small and sufficient to move on and other times they bloom into twenty other ideas that ramble all over the place.
On another though, my thoughts earlier reminded me of an article I have my students read about how student and teacher responses to Newbery award winners varies (by Marshall Geroge)- they don’t always agree- and in conversations as equals they can take turns being the “knower” when appropriate. I guess I would like to discuss the book with someone who can take the role of knower in order to increase my understanding. While my students don’t often have the knowledge of children’s literature to be knowers in that field, their personal experiences often relate to the books we read and, as they are shared, expand upon the reader experience. But what happens when you don’t have a knower for entire realms of experience?

p111-115 China Who

Well, I discovered that I’m bad at reading the chapter names. Perhaps I am so focused on the narrative as way of organizing thought that the chapter titles which interrupt it are deemed inconsequential. I think I’m going to go back and write them all in. There were no chapter numbers so I had been going just by page numbers but I think the chapter names bring an interesting focus to the following text as well as foreshadow. Maybe I actually prefer to read ahead blindly without having a preconceived idea in my head.
As far as me as a reader,I feel like I’ve been a little bit less critical with this book than usual for me. I think it is an excellent book which makes it easier to rave over rather than critique and critiquing is also usually something I do at the end in retrospect rather than as I go. Also, I think that I wold be less critical of books that are critical of dominant culture than books that are critical and portray negative attributes of minority cultures due to my position as a White person trying to disintegrate my “Whiteness” while trying to move on to establishing a “non-racist White identity” without falling into patterns of reintegration. It really is hard to see people who you respected indicate feelings at odds with what you’re learning. It’s never anything blatant, because that would be easy to deal with. It seems like it’s the little things...
How interesting that while text is colour blind, stories and books are not. This book seems to be written in standard English, with some exceptions for dialog, following the standard conventions of children’s literature. Since it’s written in acquiescence to the dominant paradigm, does that mean it can not truly express multicultural feelings and differences?
Thinking more about the skin color of characters in books, how important is the cover at setting up expectations of ethnicity? Delphine wasn’t described in colour until maybe page 17 when she’s describing her mom. We seem to be missing some of the obligatory physical description of the main character, although this comes out much more gracefully throughout a little more of the story. But now I’m questioning if White people read all stories as if they were about White people unless the character is specifically described otherwise, do people of other skin colors see the main character as them selves or have they been enculturated to see them as White as well? Last week we were talking about gender in my class and one of my students who appears caucasian noted that when she read about a male character she often forgot that the main character was male and started to referring to him as “she” while another of my students, this young woman from Korea around middle school time period, shared that she had the opposite experience. She felt herself consumed by the main character so that she thought of herself as male when reading about a boy rather than projecting her gender on the main character, not that she used those specific words to describe her experience. Is this indicative of a different way or reading as a minority rather than of the dominant culture or just a personal experience that differs based on personality? Or is personality that affected by ethnicity? It certainly seems to be a major, if not the major, force at play in minority experiences, especially as it is tied to economics in a way that can’t be separated.
Do I use the right words? Without practice at using the correct words and phrases, how can anyone know what to say? I am enjoying exploring, thinking of things differently, but that also means that I’m using other language to try to talk about things. I will need to create openings for people to tell me if my words and phrases are offensive.

p102-110 Big Red S

Ooo, new ideas! This book certainly reflects modern day interests because here we have Delphine putting a stop to the greasy food and cooking dinner. Coincidentally it also draws her into her mother’s realm, the forbidden kitchen. Despite having so much in it, this book is working pretty well for a middle grade book- everything ties together neatly. We also get introduced to the idea of selfishness at the end of this chapter which I think will come back to reflect on some of the other themes as well.
Also, I don’t know that my MESE studies have changed me much as a reader. These are generally the types of things I find in books, although I usually read with less introspection as I go. I think it definitely added to the ways I have of discussing this book in a multicultural context. I think MESE, as all learning experiences, has also made me clearer, more definitive rather than necessarily different or improved.

p86-101 Coloring and La-La

I think this book also does a good job of not idealizing as well. The fight between Vonetta and Fern seems realistic, especially as it’s prompted by Vonetta’s desire to move up in in the social circle of the African American children at the Community Center. this demonstrates the weakness in solidarity that will likely be rectified by the end of the book for a satisfying conclusion although that doesn’t always happen in real life.
On second thought, the title of this chapter seems to have a double meaning, playing with both the idea of their actual physical activity, their understanding of their skin color and the idea of skin color assignment. This actually gets tied in in a more concrete way when Vonetta literally colors Miss Patty Cake. Again, great areas for discussion!

p80-85 Everyone Knows the King of the Seas

All the same, while the book has these big ideas and big topics in it, I think the main character mulls them over in a childish way, often relating them to herself and her stories which then helps connect the ideas to the reader as we use story as a means of making connections, especially with those unlike ourselves (Rudine Sims-Bishop’s windows and mirrors).

p75-79 Crazy Mother Mountain

Another good chapter that hits on lots of great issues- Americanization, African roots, communism, names- lots of stuff that kids won’t get right away while introducing fear and the enemy- the FBI and COINTELPRO, which I will have to learn about too. However, having ideas there, even if left unexplained still sets up an opportunity for connections at a later date. No teacher would probably want to unpack all of the ideas in this book but to me that is one of the things that makes a great book- it can be read at different levels at different times and still prove to be an enjoyable, stimulating experience.
Also, just glimpsing at the back cover for a second, I even overlooked Disneyland- the fakest Whitest place on earth....

p68-74 Even the Earth is a Revolutionary

This chapter starts to talk about words and meanings in a deep way- Sister, Brother, “brutha,” “sistah,” names, revolve, revolution, change... I think that this presentation is an example of good multicultural literature because it raises questions rather than proposing answers. In some ways, this is all that Historical Fiction can do, as it’s not about “fixing” the present for anywhere from a single character to an entire nation. Showing the past in a way that questions our black and white assumptions (pun unintended but present) about it can help us toward understanding then, and today. But like the methods fetish, there is no one solution.
I’m also starting to wonder if I will be able to determine whether or not this is a good example of African American history or not by the time I get to the end of the book. I think not. However, I can take the author’s background and the accolades too numerous to make out the picture on the cover as valid certifications. All the same, this book is raising questions that I want to talk about and for that reason alone I would like to teach it.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I wonder if it’s actually bad to teach bad books? Of course, it is bad to teach bad books as if they were good books, without questions, but in my experience the bad examples of Native Americans (Ten Little Rabbits, Ann Rinaldi’s books) come up in Children’s Literature classrooms more often than good. It’s as if we can identify the things that are done wrong, but as outsiders, not the things that are done correctly. Perhaps even insiders can’t identify things done correctly as each book is just one story that may or may not match any of their own experiences regardless of having ethnicity in common with the protagonist (Adichie’s “story”). All the same, I think that we can learn from bad examples- they give us something to talk about and capitalize on our instinctive abilities to denote difference better than similarity. They’ve often been condemned by cultural insiders who become our experts. In this case, reading reviews of multicultural books written by people who are likely to be qualified as insiders can be very helpful.
Another thought running through my head, is that what this project is missing is reading the book with a diverse group of people that can share and promote readings from outside my cultural perspective. Most of my colleagues in children’s literature are very similar to me- middle class White women, although they do span across a wider age range than one would typically expect. I always talk with my students about how important the social aspects of reading are and just as I’m getting a lot out of this period of reflection, I could get even more out of social conversation. Unfortunately, as Darling-Hammond laments in her article, our prospective teachers do not come from as wide of an array of cultural backgrounds as we would like to see. All of the students with “other-skin,” non-dominant skin, repressed skin colors have been almost completely weeded out by the time I have 28 out of 30 pink students in front of me. Since we talk about things differently in homogeneous groups than diverse groups, how can we talk about this book in the best, most thorough, most exploratory, most expansive way? Not that any introduction class can really thoroughly explore a subject, thoroughness an exponential curve that possibly never closes in on complete exploration. Regardless, I feel the obligation to prepare my students for their teaching careers with a solid grounding that addresses the most pertinent subjects in as meaningful a way as possible. I think that awareness of multicultural issues within literature is one of these subjects, although I am not alone in this- my other two colleagues also believe in this importance and spend time with these issues.

p62-67 Breakfast Program

I really love the incident of Fern’s doll. I have to say that I never once considered the color of her doll’s skin, thank you “colorblind” education. I should have known that most dolls in this time period only came in pink. Did I picture her with a caucasian doll? Was Miss Patty Cake brown? Or did I strip away the color from my imagination even though I can see and hear these “lanky,” “Hershey” skinned girls? In any case, I think this incident provides a great opening for discussion. What is the right thing to do? Delphine and Vonetta have to stand up for their sister (“No one could call Fern White Baby Lover even though Miss Patty Cake was a White baby and Fern loved her” p67) but Kelvin needs to question her affection for the discontinuity of skin color. Set in the past, there’s a sort of area of safety from which to confront the issues of color here, as well as the fact that story presents a hypothetical version of reality to begin with. Does that make literature too safe of an area to explore? Or should we start in comfortable areas before challenging our discomfort? As a parent, would I buy my child a brown baby doll? Does that exoticize skin color? Encourage racist play by providing play things with difference? Children are much better at picking out difference than similarity (more Vygotsky I think). I think I need to think more on this area, but regardless, I think this is a good scene to investigate because it has no right answer- it shows children the messiness of life (think Apple and conflict).

p49-61 Glass of Water & Inseparable

Not that this is something that I wouldn’t have noticed before MESE, but this book is subtle. It’s not purposefully about the Black Panther Movement, at least in an obvious didactic way. The history and culture is blended in to the background- it’s the little touches, like grace notes, Miyazaki’s slipping of a shoe, give little bits of insight into the book. Today when I was teaching about efferent aesthetic reader response one of the things we talked about that it can often ruin fiction and poetry to force kids to read from an efferent stance when they are accustomed and the material suggests reading from an aesthetic stance. While I’m paying attention to all these details like Delphine’s responsibilities as the oldest of three little Black girls- “I’m used to doing what is hard” (p53)- I’m not sure I would want a child to attempt to do so as they read. It’s hard to keep in mind that kids are often still struggling with basic decoding and comprehension (Vygotsky’s tools becoming signs ideas) while I am able to read as a pretty advanced reader. This book is suggested for grades 4 through 7 (ages 9 through 13) with an 11 year old main character. I think it would be a good read aloud in fourth grade but probably wouldn’t try having kids read it until 5th or 6th grade on their own. It’s not that it’s long, but the cultural references present in the text could be confusing and probably require some assistance from the teacher answering questions. On the other hand, I think that it’s okay for students to just be swept up in the story in an aesthetic response, if they are capable of this type of reading, and then have the teacher return them to the book at the end to unpack some of the issues hidden behind the text.

p43-48 For the People

These first few glimpses of the Black Panther Party are muddled, an overhead conversation with just bits and pieces coming through tempered by the fun inquisitiveness of children as they play with the grown-up words they hear. I think this marks a good point to examine the bits and pieces we, as reader, know about the Black Panther Party. Because we don’t hear the whole conversation, this isn’t a definitive definition but an almost poetic beginning place. It does bring up the question of when is the best time to incorporate non-fiction resources about the time period to supplement the story which requires bias in order for us to identify with the main characters, although many techniques mitigate this.

p38-42 Collect Call

I think that so far this book has been good at demonstrating different customs of people that you would assume to be all of the same culture. The secretiveness of Cecile’s visitors is thrown in comparison to Big Ma’s generous openness while Cecile surprises the girls by eating with chopsticks. Even the lady in the airport at is noted not to fulfill Big Ma’s expectations of Black people working together and perhaps even is a class divder due to her dress. Children wouldn’t necessarily note these things but they add to the story by reexamining stereotypes. Also, in children’s literature we expect good characters to be “more” than the children reading about them. To make a good story, they need more agency than the average child and end up having more adventures and growing more than the typical person over a usually short period. They also portray characteristic of kids older than the child who is reading the story, as kids like to read “up” or ahead to stages of life they are about to experience rather than things they have already mastered. On a strange side note, in this way books are function in Vygotsky’s ZPD. In any case, these multiple stories presented could be seen as illustrating Apple’s ideas of conflict as well as providing “counter-memories” from Gay within this book that is a “counter-memory” in itself.

p30-37 Mean Lady Ming

I like to inter-cultural encounter in this section where the girls have to go get Chinese takeout food from a woman who’s language sounds angry to them and also breaks an alternative form of english. Mrs. Ming’s first reaction to the girls that they are looking for “free egg rolls” is also interesting. I’m curious if their relationship with this woman will progress to have more cultural understanding or if this is just one opening to talk about culture and interactions between culture and the assumptions we make of those from other cultures.

p23-29 Green Stucco House

I’m really enjoying the characters and the feel of the culture and time period. I think it’s very easy, at least for me, to identify with a book like this, even one that’s incredibly outside my personal experience. However, one thing to keep in mind is that this is just a single story. Not all Black girls in the 60’s have mothers who don’t want them. What the shame is is that kids who don’t enjoy reading the way I do now and I did as a child, even though I don’t recall stories like this being readily accessible to me aside from Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry which I read the whole series of, those kid don’t get to read and experience multiple stories. A couple classroom techniques I could mention to my students could be having different students read different books and then sharing their stories in order to increase the multiplicity of available stories. Unfortunately, I don’t think there are other fictional stories that address this particular time period. Another option could be to use short non-fiction pieces such as news paper articles or excerpts from books to add in these alternative viewpoints in a time-period/cultural/event specific way. Another question that I usually address as part of contemporary realistic fiction is the idea also of how common the story is. I think I could tie in to that while teaching historical fiction to as a way of testing if the particular story is a wide experience or narrow or what elements of it go each direction.

p8-22 Golden Gate Bridge & Secret Agent Mother

The story is really well written and easy to get absorbed into, although as a good reader accustomed to reading fiction, slipping into new characters is a skill that I posses. I’ve always known that not everyone is as good at this as I am, which really speeds up how long it takes me to get through a book but also in how I am able to get enjoyment from a book. I think MESE has made me think more about other people having different “reading ability capital” especially in the Souto-Manning article that talks about adapting read alouds to better match cultural capital learned through literacies at home. One of the exercises that I do with my students uses the metaphor of going on a journey and considering what supplies you had to take with you, what you were missing, and how you were able to survive the journey given what you did and didn’t have. A lot of them don’t seem to get this at first but I usually use it particularly in response to reading a novel in verse (a challenging format) and a multicultural book (possibly challenging content). Perhaps I need to stress looking out for this type of thing with the understanding that each of their students will have different supplies given their cultural capital and that they are responsible for coming up with the adaptive techniques to help their students read and ideally enjoy these pieces of fiction while gathering some pieces of information from them. In my poetry class, Dr. Soter talks a lot about the importance of re-reading things and I have to admit that I never do this. I think that I’ve trained my brain to pick up on many things that other readers might not get at the first pass but I also need to consider the alternative perspective.

p1-7 Cassius Clay Clouds

“The last thing Pa and Big Ma wanted to hear was how we made a grand Negro spectacle out of ourselves thirty thousand feet up in the air around all these white people” p2 - awareness of social tensions, time appropriate and insider language (Negro) more on p5
“can’t no one knock down a mountain” p3- vernacular speech?
A friend pointed out that White children in books aren’t described as White but children of other colours are described. Delphine, Fern, and Vonetta aren’t physically described but cultural references are speckled throughout this opening scene. While I would have been aware of the tiny historical pre-MESE, I think I would have let a lot of the racial things “sit in the story” rather than focusing on them and thinking about the wider importance of these feelings and the difference between my experience and the characters’. The voice feels very fresh and open and the scene opening has a good amount tension as an attention grabber. The first person voice also makes it very easy to identify with the main character in a very active way.

My preparation before taking the big leap

Things to keep in mind while reading:

* The main goals of the project: consider how I read the book differently and how I would teach it differently given my explorations of multicultural and equity issues through this course


Theories to Review at the End:

1. Chimamanda Adichie: the idea of the single story
2. Michael Apple: hidden curriculum and ideas of conflict, especially within social studies/history, replication of social class structure
3. Sonia Nieto: socio-political context of learning, “everyone can learn,” accommodation, go beyond recognizing everyone to make learning better for everyone
4. Maxine Greene: dialectic of freedom, community, open spaces, understand shared humanity, classical literature examples
5. Gary Howard: culturally responsive learning, stages of White identity development
6. Bourdieu: cultural capital

* “Economic capital: command over economic resources (cash, assets).
* Social capital: resources based on group membership, relationships, networks of influence and support. Bourdieu defines social capital as "the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition."
* Cultural capital: forms of knowledge, skills, education, and advantages that a person has, which give them a higher status in society. Parents provide their children with cultural capital by transmitting the attitudes and knowledge needed to succeed in the current educational system.
* Later he adds symbolic capital (resources available to an individual on the basis of honor, prestige or recognition) to this list.” -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital

7. Geneva Gay: Voice and Visibilitiy p167, “counter memories” p 170
8. Patrick Camangian: autoethnographies, caring, connections
9. Mariana Souto-Manning: Literary practices in the home such as church, ideas of reality

African American churches were an important part of many children’s lives. Thus, during reading aloud and shared reading, JW and Marilyn chose books which brought words and illustrations to enhance (or to be associated with) texts that were already familiar to many children. Not only did the texts enter the classroom, so did culturally situated ways of acting. Marilyn and JW also created spaces for children to express themselves and let their bodies feel the text and the beat as opposed to quietly sitting during read aloud circle time. Marilyn and JW designed different kinds of read alouds—some of which were done standing up and with more active participation. In the beginning, the children felt a bit weary about such a structure as indicated by their looks and debriefing “interview” events, but soon the two kinds of read alouds became more of a hybrid form in which children were not necessarily dancing, but were using their hands to express the rhythm of the text. Children re-designed the activity with lots of fist movements. Yet, such redesigning represented just the beginning. The activities identified by the children as occurring in out-of-school settings were those that were redesigned by them based on the initial (re)designs presented by the teachers.
Another literacy practice observed in Latino and African American households was storytelling from a very personal perspective linked to culturally located moral messages—e.g., kinship, the importance of extended family, etc. JW and Marilyn observed that many of the ethical and moral teachings happened through oral stories based on personal experiences (26/37 households). When asking families later if the stories were true, the teachers found out that many of them were based on real occasions, yet constructed as realistic fiction with added details. Others were completely improvised. The “real” was a very ethnocentric concept—the central tenet of such stories was to pass on consejos (advice) by bringing them to life.



TO DO:
Watch http://www.learner.org/workshops/tml/workshop1/index.html# if time permits

* more TEACHING MULTICULTURAL LITERATURE: A Workshop for the Middle Grades available at http://www.learner.org/workshops/tml/index.html
* series with high school focus at http://www.learner.org/resources/series178.html for future reference

Ongoing List of Major Ideas:

Names and identity
“grand Negro spectacle”- proper behaviour in the mixed race public
Fear (FBI, COINTELPRO, understanding, affection, being needed, the mystery of their mother’s disdain)
Cultural conflicts- Chinese, even within the Black community, based on geography as well as skin colour
Cooperation and community- even how the three sisters work together, social conflicts even within African American communities, “We know the same things. We have to stick together” p178
Perception- esp. of the Black Panthers
Selfishness, freedom
Protection of those you love, those you are linked to by skin colour and other cultural affiliations
Power, bossiness, responsibility