I haven't been posting on sabbatical related issues for a while. This semester, I'm taking a course called Practical Research in order to dig into why visual art has been working so well in my literacy curriculum for the past few years. (Read more about my curriculum here.) After reading and reading and reading, I've hit upon a newish theory of reading and text. Of course, Gunther Kress and his ideas about visual grammar aren't new to anyone on a university campus, but he and his developing academic partnership with Eve Bearne and their joint analysis of modal affordances are a breakthrough to me.
The gist of this theoretical framework for reading text (and I'm wildly oversimplifying here) is that visual and verbal texts offer different "affordances" or possibilities for meaning-making. Some studies even suggest that reading visual text is a different cognitive process that allows for more immediate retrieval of prior knowledge or experiences than when reading verbal text. Kress' original work suggests that may be because visual text, images or art, are spatially coherent, meaning that all elements of the text are spontaneously apparent. Verbal text is chronologically or sequentially coherent, and thus not simultaneously accessible.
So what? My students, our students, have grown up in a multimodal environment, learning to "read" spatially, according to the "logic of display." I (and many other teachers) grew up with the sequential "logic of narrative" learning to read left to right, top to bottom, beginning to end. The disconnect should be obvious.
I'm hoping to show with my research that a practical approach to teaching verbal text in the contemporary language arts classroom is to create multimodal environments for such texts by pairing them with visual texts, in my experience preferribly visual art.
This morning, Josh and Sophie insisted that I read the brutally long Disney picture book version of The Lion King to them, so I apologize that every thought I have today will be colored by this notion of the "Circle of Life" and Disney's cutsified adaptation of King Lear. (If by chance, you are the only human being unfamiliar with this film, you can view the "Circle of Life" music video on YouTube.)
Anyway, after I packed the kids off to daycare and school, I settled down to the first hour and a half of my grown up reading for my sabbatical work today. And wouldn't you know, it was all about the Circle of Life. Bob Fecho wants me to take my place among great generations of teachers, sort of.
I'm sorry. I'll stop entertaining myself with cheesy allusions now.
Fecho argues, "If my classroom is one of inquiry, dialogue, and transaction, then I must inquire, dialogue, and transact as well; I must be shaped by the experience just as I expect my students to be shaped" (50). To do my job as a teacher, I'm obligated to seek to understand the whole context of what I'm teaching and to find a way to share that understanding with my students. This is a teach by trust proposition. If I trust in the inquiry process and live it in my classroom as I teach it, then my students will learn along with me.
To be an author of my own teaching doesn't mean merely that I write my own lesson plans--although that could be part of it. Authorship suggests that I research and adapt best practices, reflect on what's working and what isn't, resist the implementation of undigested fads, become comfortable with both the "word and the world" of teaching as we practice it (Fecho likes to cite Paulo Freire). I do what I expect my student writers to do: hypothesize, study, document, reflect, revise.
This didn't seem possible to me as a beginning teacher. However, I was implementing theories even before I had read about them. Many of us tend to teach by instinct or intuition and claim that we don't have time for theory, or that it isn't relevant to what we're doing. But Fecho says, "In the end, it's not a question of whether we theorize and philosophize--I know of no humans who don't--but to what extent we consciously involve ourselves in the process" (43). Part of the job is to let questions of theory surface, to investigate them, document them--because they are present in our practice whether we "take time" to recognize them or not.
None of this is new information. People (my student teaching supervisors, my mentors, my administrators, my professional growth leaders, my department colleagues, my in-building veteran teachers...) have been trying to communicate this message to me in a variety of ways for quite some time. I'm just ready to hear and understand it now.
You have to pardon one last cheesy allusion. Really, you do.
Wise old Rafiki stood at the edge of Pride Rock and help up the cub for all to see. The elephants trumpeted and the zebras whinnied for joy as the future lion king joined the great Circle of Life.
Today, Josh and his classmates from RDLS performed a poem and their school song at an immersion school celebration sponsored by MAIN, a language immersion advocacy network. I can't really post images of other people's children on the Internet, but here's a captured image of Josh and an audio recording of their performance. Josh's is the first voice you will hear.
Like most democratic-leaning people I know, making a decision this election cycle has been really difficult. Now with our field of choices narrowed to two really good ones, in a way, it seems even harder. Truly, I'll be overjoyed to vote in the general election for either Clinton or Obama.
But today, Super Tuesday, I want Hillary Clinton to win Minnesota.
Yes, I was disgusted by media coverage of whatever it was that happened in South Carolina. But it was, after all, media coverage, and I was equally disgusted by the platitudinous coverage of the Kennedy endorsement of Obama. Just because one story is warm and fuzzy doesn't make it less discouraging as for-profit media shapes our democracy.
Those two media "events" spurred me to articulate why Hillary is the right person for the job. I sent the following letter to the editor of my local paper, but they didn't print it. I know why. I tend to overwrite when I'm worked up. But my reasons, I believe, are sound. And since I have a blog, why not publish it myself? What was I thinking?
Caroline Kennedy is “inspired” by Barack Obama. I want to be inspired by Barack Obama, but I need to be insured. Ms. Kennedy can afford to prioritize rhetorical inspiration over health insurance. Yes, I mean to suggest that such inspiration is a luxury in 2008.
I’ve been a high school teacher for 13 years married to another high school teacher for 9 of those years, fortunately both working in resource rich suburban school districts. We’ve had excellent, almost affordable health insurance.
But now, in 2008, my son has a new, profound hearing loss and an emerging chronic illness--just in time for our state legislature to send most school districts into budget failure and for Medica to reconsider its contract with my husband’s district in particular. We are careful savers and responsible spenders, but loss of quality coverage given my son’s condition could be financially difficult.
Now, in 2008, I have a mother in her sixties who struggles so much with her health that it’s been difficult for her to work continuously, to maintain health care coverage (and therefore treat her illnesses).
My husband and I are privileged and educated members of the middle class. We’re relatively fortunate, but still in a precarious position. It’s not hard to imagine the situations of those, like my sister’s family, so affected by their children’s health emergencies that they have lived on credit cards between paychecks.
Here’s what I’m choosing to be inspired by:
Hillary Clinton has the intelligence, skills, and experience to repair the policy damage inflicted by the present administration.
The most qualified candidate for President of the United States is a woman.
Hillary Clinton’s every mistake has been exposed before the public, and she’s still willing to serve us.
The tired apology for the glass ceiling “behind every hardworking man is a good woman” is undergoing a completely satisfying denouement.
The next leader of the free world will be somebody’s mother.
I like Barack Obama, but I’m not voting for him. I want him to continue to speak, organize, and garner experience. Someday, I want to see a person of color in the Oval Office. For reasons beyond his race, I want Obama to be a leader, maybe even run in 2016. (By then, we might know what his real flaws are and whether or not we can afford them.) But if Obama wants to inspire citizens to come together and get involved in 2008, he doesn’t need to be President to do it.
And he isn’t the only reason to be inspired this political cycle.
See you at the caucuses, friends. I have a Hillary sticker for you.
