Dialogue Fall 2010

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Diversity and Democracy

A Publication of the San Diego Area Writing Project Fall 2010DialogueThere are many things that make it dicult to be a teacher. Without doubt, any teachercould sit down and generate a lengthy list o challenges in minutes, both unique to themand universal to the proession.

I a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his ofce at one time, all o whom had dierent needs, and some o whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with proessional excellence

or nine months, then he might have some conception o the classroom teacher's job.Donald D. Quinn

Possibly one o the most insidious aspects o all is that with ew exceptions, most teacherswork in a airly constant state o isolation.

What does it mean to go through a work day with no sustained personal contact with an-

other adult? Being and talking with children is not psychologically the same thing as beingand talking with peersand I am not suggesting that one is necessarily more satisying thanthe other, only that they are dierent. I am suggesting that when one is almost exclusivelywith childrenresponsible or them, being vigilant in regard to them, giving to themitmust have important consequences. One o these psychological consequences is that teachersare psychologically alone, even though they are in densely populated settings.

Seymour Sarason, The Culture o the School and the Problem o Change

Not only does isolation limit proessional growth, but prolonged isolation reinorces a solitary orientation to ones work and oten breeds deensiveness and fnger pointing.

Thomas L. Good,21st Century Education A Reerence Handbook

One o the eects o this isolation is that many teachers within a district, even those whohave been in it or years, have absolutely no idea what teaching is like at sites other than

their own. We simply dont know how the other hal lives. Most teachers never mingle withthose rom other schools, perhaps only once a year at a Summer Academy workshop. Thisignorance o lie on the other side o the ence spawns the most egregious assumptionsand stereotypes, and certainly the above-mentioned deensiveness and nger pointing. Iexperienced these personally when I moved rom the least afuent school in our district tothe most afuent. The ormer, located in the inner city, is known in the lingua ranca oour district as a valley school. I will reer to it as The Hood. My current site in suburbiaknown as a rim school in the local district parlance, I will term The Burbs.

I, too was a victim o the ignorance isolationism creates. When I was in The Hood I as-sumed that my colleagues in The Burbs didnt care about disadvantaged kids, that they sain their privileged corner with perect students who came to school clean and well ed,

who were eortless to teach because they had hundreds o books, computers, cell phonesand automatic toothbrushes; because they had had thousands o hours in museums, art

HowFaris Four Miles?Laura PribylSDAWP 2009

Inside...When Personal EssaysGet Very Personal 4Ann Zivotsky

The Languageof Color 5Rob Meza-Ehlert

Moving BeyondTolerance 8Christine Kan

YoungWriters'Camp 10-12Fiama AlbarranFrank BaroneMason Brown

Ariel FoyChristiana JimenezMarissa LoveAlly DeremerMayla Stern-EllisRachel Ulrich

Finding Our Voices 13Janet Ilko

Teaching the Writer:Voices from the SpringConference 12Victoria Mossa-Mariani

Robert Gallo

Also included:

SDAWP Fellows 2010 15Muse Box 17SDAWP Notes 17DialogueCall For Manuscripts 19Calendar of Events 20


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Dialogue

Fall 2010Issue No. 24

Diversity and

Democracy

Editors: Stacey GoldblattJennifer Moore

Co-Editor: Janis JonesLayout: Janis JonesPhotography: Janis Jones

Marla WilliamsWriting Angel: Susan Minnicks

Published by theSan Diego Area Writing Project

Director:Kim Douillard

UC San DiegoSDAWP9500 Gilman DriveLa Jolla, CA 92093-0036(858) 534-2576http://sdawp.ucsd.edu/

Dialogue, Fall 2010

wrote a grade on a paper, homework,or a report card, that you would becalled to deend it with nothing lessthan your lie. That GATE testing

was taken as seriously as a cancerbiopsy. That i a child wasnt doing

well, the only possible explanation was simply your incompetence. Ididnt know the hours you needed toput in planning over-the-top sorts o

projects because the parents in yourroom who were helping were alsowatching everything you did and re-porting it to everyone who wanted to

listen. I didnt know that sometimes your principal would call you intothe oce and recite the complaintsagainst you, and that would literallybe the rst youd heard o anythingbecause many parents would neverwaste their time going to you di-rectly. I ound out that having a law-

yer on call couldnt hurt.

On the other side o the ence liesThe Hood.

Most o my peers in The Burbs as-sumed this meant a class ull opoor, dirty, unruly students virtuallyimpossible to teach because theycouldnt speak English; becausetheir parents didnt value educa-tion and never returned homeworkor permission slips or set oot onschool grounds, not even or parent-teacher conerences; because they

were plagued by poverty, substance

abuse, gangs, incarcerated or ab-sent parents, homelessness, and in-adequate parenting skills; becausethey were drug babies; because they

were unmotivated; because they hadthe kind o behavior problems thatrequired a degree in psychiatry toremedy; because they were in andout o school or a myriad o reasons,requently because they had lice intheir hair.

When I transerred to my school inThe Burbs, the stereotypes were

waiting. Many o my colleagues as-sumed I would not be able to teachhigh children, that my expecta-tions would be in the cellar, thatGATE children at my old site were asrare as unicorns and that I wouldntrecognize one i it poked me with a

horn, that I should be assigned onlythe ELD students, struggling read-ers, and behavior problems becausethats what I was used to, that I

would not be able to communicate with educated parents with the re-

galleries, zoos, and exotic vacationlocales; because they spoke English;because their parents disciplinedthem, taught them manners, helpedthem with homework, and person-ally built their Mission Projects,Leprechaun Traps, and Science Fairentries; and because they didnt missGod-knows-how-many-days a yearbecause o lice in their hair. I imag-

ined the legions o parent volunteerswho did everything or these teach-ers, short o brushing their teeth,and who treated them to lavish gitsat Christmas, including the much-rumored-about three-gure gitcard to Staples. They had it made. Ithought.

I thought I knew. But I didnt know.

I didnt know about the shrill, de-manding sorts o parents who insist-ed on seeing your resume beore the

rst day o school was over to ensurethat you were qualied to teach theiruture Ivy-League scholar. The par-ents who insisted the birthday cup-cakes had to be served NOW at 10:15in the morning, because you couldntPOSSIBLY be doing anything moreimportant than celebrating Juniorsbirthday. I didnt know that when you

quired diplomacy.

They thought they knew. But theydidnt know.

They didnt know about The HoodThe parents who never saw theschool because they were work-ing three jobs to pay the rent in thelthy, neglected apartment or be-

cause theyd never had the chanceto go to school in the country theydemigrated rom or their education

had been interrupted by war or op-pression or growing up in poverty as

well. They didnt know that the ma-

jority o students were completelycapable o learning i you just tookthe time to plug the gaps; that someo them were GATE qualied tooi you knew how to look; that they

had survival skills an Army Rangerwould value; that with most o thema lot o love, patience, humor, andabove all structure could circum-

vent the behavior problems; thathey brought amazingly interestingtidbits o their culture to share; thatin the course o a school year, you

would come to mean more to themthan you could ever know; that years

later you would wonder why you stillcant throw out the cracked candle

holder with the hal-melted candleinside that you got or Christmas.

I liken this mutual ignorance tothe Mommy Wars phenomenon

I didnt knowabout the shrill,

demanding sorts o

parents who insistedon seeing yourresume beore therst day o schoolwas over to ensure

that you werequalied to teach

their utureIvy-League scholar.


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3Dialogue, Fall 2010

where stay-at-home mothers on oneside and working mothers on theother fing the barbs back and orthin a battle that isnt real in a warthat cant be won. The same dynam-ics are in play in The Hood vs. TheBurbs. What the hell are we doingto each other? In a proession thatsas dicult as they come, why arent

we simply helping each other, and

by extension, our students? I youare truly dedicated to teaching, andare passionate about children, doesit matter WHERE you are working?Cant you make a dierence any-

where, just in dierent ways?

Why is this critical?

In 1954 Brown vs. Education waspassed to desegregate the schools.Blacks and Hispanics are more sep-arate rom white students than at anytime since the civil rights movement

and many o the schools they attendare struggling, said the report by theCivil Rights Project at the Universityo Caliornia (Matthew Biggs, Reu-ters, 2007).

The 2007/2008 data rom the STAR(School Accountability Report Card)tell the Tale o Two Schools in myparticular case.

These two schools are exactly our

miles apart.

What else happens in our miles?

When I changed sites, I remained atsecond grade, which allowed me tosee even more spectacularly the pro-ound dierence our miles made.To begin with, I had to throw outeverything Id brought with me andstart over with new materials. In TheHood, the spelling test had ten wordson it, in The Burbs, twenty-ve

(and three dictation sentences)an additional our-hundred-and-ty

words by year end. In The Hood,only hal the students exit barelyreading at grade level; in The Burbs,the lowest children read at the high-est level reached by students in TheHood; most are reading at least oneor more years above grade level. InThe Hood, several students came in

every year not even knowing theirletters or sounds; in The Burbs, thisis unheard o.

In The Hood, I had to race to com-plete the entire math curriculum by

year-end; in The Burbs, I not onlycompleted it, but had time or enrich-ment and early third-grade activi-ties. In The Burbs, my students didan animal project that consisted o a

written report, a speech, and a diora-ma o the animals habitat. For manyreasons, that project could only have

been done in class in The Hood, andcertainly never to the same extent.In The Hood, homework was a our-page packet that the students couldcomplete independently; in TheBurbs, it was an eight-page packet

with lengthy reading passages andcomprehension questions that re-quired written responses that wererequently completed with parent

support. In The Hood, we oten did

not do science or social studies astime was devoted to language arts;in The Burbs, we completed all unitso each subject.

In The Hood, I kept peanut butterand crackers on my desk all yearor students without a snack; in TheBurbs, my students brought reshruit and vegetables or recess. Forthree years in The Hood, we had noP.T.A. In The Burbs, the P.T.A. puts ona Halloween carnival complete with

a haunted house using set dcor thatwould rival anything in Hollywood; inThe Hood, the teachers put on a FallFestival that eatured ace-paintingand a ew homemade games. In TheBurbs, the P.T.A. can raise an aver-age o $23,000 in one night at a und-raising event. In The Hood, the P.T.Aund consisted o what the teacherscontributed. In The Hood, I never

had a room mother or chaperoneon eld trips; in The Burbs, I had anarmy. In The Hood, at least ten ortwelve students would leave at somepoint in the year, replaced by otherstudents in a constant, revolvingdoor; in The Burbs, only one studentmoved in the three years Ive beenthere. For seven out o my ten yearsin The Hood, the playground was adirt eld ull o red ants and the onlygrass was a small patch in ront othe oce; in The Burbs, there arethree playgrounds, and one is the

size o a ootball eld.

The terrible disparity between thesecond grade I knew at one site andthe second grade I ound our milesaway is gut wrenching. Once you seeit, you cant ignore it. But how do yousee it i you never have any mean-ingul contact with colleagues romother sites? I you remain in thatisolation that breeds the ignoranceand the stereotypes and the assump-tions? I its still Us vs. Them? Shouldteachers be rotated among schools

as principals usually are?

This country needs to address thestunning inequities in educationthat ty-ve years ater Brown areas egregious as ever. Almost twothirds o Arican-American childrenattend schools that are 'minoritymajority.' About 40 percent o them

learn in classrooms that are 90 to100 percent black. In our major cit-ies, the numbers are even starkerIn Washington, D.C., or example93 percent o public school students

are black and Latino; only about vepercent are white. In the nearby sub-urb o Bethesda, Maryland, severalminutes by car or public transporta-tion rom downtown D.C., 62 perceno public high school students are

white (Dana Goldstein, SegregatedSchools Leave Children Behind,2007, The American Prospect).

While the ght is waged, though what one teacher can do in thmeantime needs to become what all

Category My HoodSchool

My BurbsSchool

Arican 12% 1.5%

Hispanic 60% 9%

White 20% 69%

Multipleor No Response

6% 17%

Socio/Economically-Disadvantaged

83% 8%

ELD 66% 10%

Profcient in English/Language Arts

26% 82%

(Pribyl, continued on p. 17)


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My class wasnt buying it.My studentsmore than hal withamilies and histories in Mexico werent agreeing to a sentence we just read in Pam Munoz Ryans Esperanza Rising: Lighter skinmakes uller stomachs.

The story crosses racial and eco-nomic lines as Esperanza, a rich,spoiled girl in 1930s Mexico, moveswith her mother to Caliornia to ind jobs as pickers because the amilyortune is stolen. For the irst time,

Esperanza aces racism rom whiteAmericans and prejudices romother Mexicans because o her light-er skin and wealthy background.Isnt that still true? I asked. Arentthe actors and actresses in telenove-las oten lighter, sometimes withblonde hair?Darker aces looked back at my white ace, shiting uncomortablyin their seats, and swore I waswrong. Talking about race isnt easy

or the adults in this country, and itsnot any easier or 10-year-olds. Thetruth may set us ree, but it can be amessy path to reedom.

We talk a lot about racism and preju-dice in class, prompted by the bookswe read:Number the Stars, The Cay,The Sign of the Beaver, Out of the

Dust. I believe talking about ourunderstandings and misunderstand-ings o each other is essential i mymulticultural students are going tobe prepared or the world and what

Dialogue, Fall 20104

ImmigrationLaw

By Vanessa*5th Grade

Im not a U.S. citizen, and I

disagree with the Arizona immi-gration law. People have theright to live here and to be free.

The police shouldnt be able tostop people and ask them for

their papers because they lookMexican or any other race.

In my opinion, this law shouldnot be allowed. I say this because

I know how people feel whenthey are separated from their

families. My mom and baby sis-

ter were taken from our family. Ifeel sad when I think about them,

but I hope that one day we willbe together again. Every time I

talk to my mom on the phone,I remember the day that I woke

up and she was gone. I asked mydad where she was, and he toldme she was forced to go back

to Mexico. It was over a yearago that she was taken away,

but I will always remember thatmorning.

A way to improve the situation isto find better ways to help more

people to get their papers. Theimmigration patrol and Arizona

immigration laws are tearingfamilies apart and hurting peo-

ple. People are being treated likedogs. If dogs dont have a collar,they take them to the pound, and

if people dont have papers, theytake them to jail and then send

them back to Mexico away fromtheir families. Thats the most

harmful way they can take any-one out of the state. The reason

I dont like this law is because

people will get hurt. Its notworking for us. People are pro-

testing because there is too muchviolence in this law. I dont want

other families to be torn apartlike mine was.

it may throw at them. I want them tosucceed, so Im truthul with themabout how Ive worked to changemy own negative belies when Irealize I have them.

My students and I talked that morn-ing about the subtle prejudicesthat happen within racial groups.It wasnt easy or the studentsLatino, Asian, Paciic Islander andArican-Americanto verbalize the

pride they have in their culture andthen to acknowledge that the actorsand singers they watch oten havelighter-colored skin.A ew days later, Vanessa* and I talk-ed about the inal writing assign-ment or the yeara persuasiveessay. Vanessa and I were comort-able discussing serious subjects. Wehad a long talk about the pointless-ness o getting so angry at a class-mate rom the neighborhood thatshe lashed out with a ist upon arriv-

ing at school, and we also discussedthe inappropriateness o telling astudent with Aspergers, who testedeveryones patience, that he wasstupid. Vanessa and I had these talkseach time beore she had to leaveschool on a suspension.

I know that on the days Vanessa isin a bad mood, or acts out, she ismissing her mother. It must be dii-cult to be approaching puberty, andgirl cliques, and irst dates without

Darker faces looked

back at my white

face, shifting

uncomfortably in their

seats, and swore I

was wrong.

WhenPersonal

Essays Get VeryPersonal

Ann ZivotskySDAWP 2010

I want them to

succeed, so Im

truthful with them

about how Ive

worked to change my

own negative beliefs

when I realize

I have them.

*A pseudonym


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5Dialogue, Fall 2010

important parts o most peoplessense o identity that we need toind constructive ways to talk aboutthese aspects o our lives. Childpsychiatrist Neha Bahadur pointsout that, The awareness o racedoesnt come rom the inside. Youdont think o it until somebodyelse comes along and tells you that youre dierent (3). The act thaour identities are ormed largely

through what is taught to us cre-ates the exciting possibility that wemight be able to raise children ina society without racial and eth-nic divisions. However, since thisseems at best a distant possibilityat this point in human history, my

thinking on this issue is groundedmuch more in a pragmatism that hasgrown out o more than a decade inthe high school classroom. By thetime students reach my class theyhave internalized countless mes-sages about race and ethnicity, andthey possess at least a basic sense owhich groups are their groups.

By no means does this imply that apersons identity is simply inheritedand becomes set in stone by ageiteen. To the contrary, Dr. CarmenGuanipa-Ho states that, Ethnicidentity ormation is a very complexprocessinvolv(ing) an interactiono contextual and developmentalactors (1). Students (and otenadults) are actively engaged in anongoing process o relection andadaptation o cultural viewpointsas they igure out where they stand

My ninth-grade students were work-ing in pairs, trying to make sense osome airly complex data on theshits in immigrant demographicsthroughout history. I knelt downto listen in on one conversation.Karla, a quiet Latina who astidi-ously hides her GATE status romher peer group, was having a dis-cussion with DeJone, a bright andgregarious young man o Arican-

American descent.Well, said Karla, I guess the bigdierence now is that so manymore colored people are coming tothe United States.

Whoah! You cant say that!responded DeJone. Mr. M-E, canshe say colored people? Isnt thatkind o like old-school racist stu?I umbled or a response. Um, well.DeJones right that most peopleconsider it racist i you use the term

colored people. The phrase we usetoday in academic writing and dis-cussion is people o color.

Ater a brie pause, DeJones acetook on a look o exasperation as hesaid, Now thats dumb. Those twomean exactly the same thing. Whocame up with that?

Talking about race and ethnicity isa tricky business, whether insideschool or in society at large. Sinceethnicity itsel is so complex, any

concrete terminology we invent totry to describe it will naturally bean oversimpliication that is raughtwith inaccuracies. Race and ethnic-ity are oten highly charged, emo-tional concepts that go deep to theroots o sel-identity and sense ocommunity. Furthermore, the his-torical and present-day realities oracism make discussion o culturalidentity all the more problematic.

Despite the challenges involved,racial and ethnic heritage are such

The Languageof Color

Rob Meza-EhlertSDAWP 2009

Talking about race and

ethnicity is a tricky

business, whether

inside school or insociety at large.

a mom to talk to. I had a vague ideao why Vanessas mom was gone, sowhen she asked me what she shouldwrite about in her persuasive essay,I mentioned Arizonas new immigra-tion laws, and she cautiously bright-ened at the idea o writing aboutsomething she cared a lot about. Butresearching the acts to support anargument wasnt thrilling her. So we

talked it out.

Should everyone who wants tocome to the United States be allowedin? I asked.

Vanessa thought so. I asked herabout our own homes, and i we would help someone else. We bothagreed we would eed anyone whoneeded a meal, and even let themsleep on our couch or a ew nightsi they were homeless. What i moreand more hungry, homeless peoplecame to our houses, would we letthem in? No, Vanessa said, we wouldrun out o ood and room and wouldhave to shut the door.So, I continued, your mom wassent back to Mexico?

Vanessa nodded her head. Her am-ily entered the country illegallyand lived here or several years.One year ago, the INS deported hermother. Her amily cant aord topay a coyote to help mom re-crossthe border, and her mother cant

apply or legal entry to the UnitedStates because entering illegallyonce gives her mother a criminalrecord and disqualiies her. Vanessacant visit her mother in Mexicobecause Vanessa is still illegally inthe country and her amily is araidshell be stopped at the border re-entering the States.I encouraged Vanessa to tell herstory through her pesuasive essay,and my satisaction came in seeingthat some o her anger and rus-

tration lessened with the realiza-tion that writing about the situationwould give her a voice. The momentin our conversations that still makesme smile is when Vanessa handedin her essay and asked, Do I stillhave to write a persuasive essay? Ilaughed. No, this is your persuasiveessay. It may be the most persuasiveessay Ive ever read by a student.


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in our society. The language weuse to talk about race, ethnicity andculture in our classrooms shouldpromote this identity exploration inpositive ways.

I am committed to helping studentstalk about race, culture, and ethnicheritage in ways that airm whothey are without marginalizing the

backgrounds o others. This is acommitment that all teachers in ourincreasingly diverse society need

to make. We must pay attention towhat is said, how it is delivered, andeven what goes unspoken in ourclasses, because those choices cangreatly impact our students senseo identity. Perhaps because weveall had some bad classroom experi-ences, a commonly held belie isthat our education system is ailing.

Many people believe teachers areoten unable or unwilling to impactstudents lives, a viewpoint mirroredin countless jokes with teacher asthe punch line (What do you callsomeone who keeps talking longater everyone has stopped listen-ing? comes to mind). In contrastto this low status, educators actuallyhold an immense amount o power inthe lives o young people. There arethe amazing achievements o super-teachers such as Jaime Escalanteor Rae Esquith, but most o us can

point to at least one teacher whoembraced, inspired, and challengedus, even i they never made head-lines. Sadly, we can also recall thoseteachers who, through harsh words,racism, or simple neglect, stole our joy or damaged our identity. Even well-intentioned teachers can passon culturally destructive messagesby the way they design and imple-ment their curriculum. In the essayHow School Taught Me I Was Poor,Je Sapp laments an educationalsystem in which, More is caught

6 Dialogue, Fall 2010

than is taught (3).

Since we wield such power in ourclassrooms, it is vital that as educa-tors we support students o all back-grounds as they explore and discussissues o race, class, and culture.

Moving our dialogue beyond thephrase people o color is a key step

towards creating inclusive, support-ive learning environments. Its notthat the phrase is patently oensiveor destructive. It doesnt even makemy list o banned terms or myclassroom, which typically directlytarget peoples gender, race, class orsexual orientation. People o coloris a loaded term in much moresubtle ways. While DeJone pointedout that it is grammatically nearlyidentical to the pejorative coloredpeople, we need to ask what wemean by color in the irst place.

Color obviously reerences the pig-mentation in peoples skin that canbe seen when we look at one anoth-er, but the concept is altogethermore complicated than what can beascertained through a mere cursoryglance. Peter Gomes, a theologianat Harvard University, is an inlu-ential Arican-American author andpreacher. Having a Black identityhas been an important part o his liein the United States. However, herecalls that when his parents mar-ried on the island o Cape Verde, they

were considered to be a mixed racecouple despite the act that by ourmodern American standards theyboth were Black. By the standardso that time and place, his morelight-skinned ather was consideredWhite. Deinitions o whiteness andblackness, it seems, are more slip-pery than many o us think (Gates). When one o my ormer students wanted to let me know that I wascool he announced to the class,Mr. M-E is alright, hes actuallyblack. Hes just high yellow. His

reerence to the hierarchical skincolor designations within the blackcommunity was both entertainingand disturbing, hingeing as it doeson proximity to whiteness and theability to pass. My own childrenare hal-white and hal-Latino, yetthey inherited my skin and eye color(rather than my wies black hairand brown eyes) and would it intothe class photos at some Scottish pri-mary school without too many ques-tions. What color are they, then?Are they somehow less Latino than

other mixed children who end uwith darker skin or more stereotypically Mexican eatures? I they arhal people o color do we reallmean to teach them that they havanother side devoid o color? Arthere really any colorless people?

What is meant by color, then, something closer to ethnicity thanactual skin pigmentation (though thlatter can aect how others mighattempt to categorize speciic individuals). Ethnicity, like culture, is tough word to narrow down into onshort phrase. Eriksens deinition oethnic identity is a helpul startinpoint:

Ethnic identity is...marked bycommon cultural, linguistic, religiousbehavioral or biological traits, real opresumed, as indicators o contrasto other groups (261).

In this sense, every single human

being has an ethnicity. We all havcolor because each o us comerom a unique set o cultural characteristics that help make us whwe are. In this way, the air-skinneperson rom Scandinavia brings jusas much color to the table as thbrown-skinned Peruvian. Once wstart thinking o all the genetic mixture that has taken place throughcenturies o human civilizations, ibecomes a mind-boggling oversimpliication to narrow peoples wholidentity down to o color or white.

Moving beyond pigmentation, thenrequires leaving behind the antiquated language that reiies racialldivisive categories. In a culturally diverse classroom, when I askSo, how do students o color in throom eel about this quote? I amby deault telling some students inthe class that they have color, whilothers are deemed colorless, cut orom their own roots in a speciic cultural identity. This sends inaccuratand damaging messages to everyoninvolved. In its most benign orm

What color are they,

then? Are they some-

how less Latino than

other mixed children

who end up with

darker skin or morestereotypically

Mexican features?

We all have color

because each of us

comes from a unique

set of cultural

characteristics that help

make us who we are.


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Dialogue, Fall 2010 7

this may simply reinorce or stu-dents who identiy as White thatthey are just American, devoid oany unique cultural heritage. Atits worst, it might uel the type osearch or roots in White supremacygroups disturbingly described byJames Ridgeway in the book Bloodin the Face.

Some may argue that WhiteAmericans shouldnt be surprisedto see a term like people o colorsince Caucasians created (andbeneited rom) the very system oracial segregation based on skin

color. Indeed, scholars such as GailAnderson, at New York's SchomburgCenter or Research in Black Culture,trace the phrase at least as ar backas French-speaking colonies in theearly 1800s where the term gens decouleur liberes, which translates as''ree people o color, was used todescribe people o Arican ances-try who werent slaves (Saire 1).The phrase was used similarly inthe United States more than twohundred years ago, as a relativelypositive term to denote those Blackswho were not slaves. However posi-tive it may have been at the time,the terminology we use to describeourselves in the twenty-irst cen-tury shouldnt be encumbered bythe racially-biased idioms o colo-nial lie over two centuries ago. We

have slowly taken steps towards amore ully inclusive democracy, sothe very words we use should relectthese changes. Rinku Sen, racial justice advocate and publisher oColorLines magazine, sums up thispoint superbly when she argues,It seems that now we need a newterm, as this nation changes with theglobe and changes the globe (2).

Another potential problem withusing the phrase people o color

is that it assumes a relatively similarshared experience o being some-thing besides White in America.While this may be the case, peoplesexperiences can also be so vastly di-erent that it is disingenuous to cat-egorize the experience o millionso individuals with one all-encom-passing phrase. Whiteness itsel hasbeen something o an elusive target

over the centuries in America, asany student o the experience o theIrish, Italians, Eastern Europeansor other groups now viewed asWhite will show. Just as people oEuropean ancestry have had vastlydierent experiences on Americasshores, non-Europeans have cer-tainly not shared one monolithicexperience in the United States.

Spike Lee skillully illustrates thispoint in Do the Right Thing, one othe most powerul and controversialilms ever produced about race inAmerica. In the climactic scene, anangry group o mostly Black resi-dents responds to the police killingo the revered Radio Raheem bytorching area businesses, includingthe pizzeria that served as a socialhub or the neighborhood. Whenthe mob turns its attention towardsa Korean-owned ruit stand, the pro-prietor ends o his attackers with abroom, shouting all the while, Meno white. Me no white. Me Black.Me Black. Me Black. Ater a ewtense moments, one o the leaders

o the group, Sweet Dick Willie,says, Korea is OK, man. Lets leavehim alone. The mob is persuadedto move on without destroying hisstore, but shouts rom the crowdmockingly echo, Him no white.Him Black.

This extraordinary scene, complete with all o its racial stereotyping,illustrates just how complicatedgroup dynamics are when it comesto shared experiences. On the onehand, Lee writes his characters in

such a way that they recognize,even in the hazy thinking associ-ated with mob violence, that thereis some shared experience betweenthese individuals rom such dier-ent backgrounds; both groups havehad to deal at some level with Whiteracism. Despite signiicant dier-ences in language, culture, historicalroots, and even class, there is a bondbetween the Black and Korean char-acters because o the act that noneo them identiy as White. Lees bril-liant writing, however, captures the

limitations o this solidarity; whilethe mob moves on without destroying the ruit stand, their mockingairmations o the store ownersblackness make clear that he cer-tainly isnt a part o their groupsexperience on so many other levelsThe bridge that links them is jusstrong enough to walk across in themoment, but couldnt possibly hold

the shared weight o so many peopledwelling together or very long.

The implications or the classroomare proound. I want to encouragestudents to see that there are indeedmany shared experiences o discrimination and hardship or Americansbased on race; Im pleased whenthese observations lead groups ostudents to an increased sense osolidarity. However, I dont wanto gloss over a multitude o dierences and make students eeas i they should be united simply because our phrase du jour isone that lumps so many dierenbackgrounds together. More impor

tantly, I believe twenty-irst centurycitizenship means striving to buildthese bonds o solidarity across alldividing lines, including race andethnicity. Rather than strengtheningtraditional divisions, my goal is tohelp students take a good hard lookat discrimination, past and pres-ent, and then igure out how tounite to increase justice and equal-ity. Walking through my campusat lunchtime and oten observingstudents o so many dierent back-

grounds socializing together, I amencouraged that this generationseems more poised to do this type otransormative work than any previ-ously in our country.

So, what to do with the phrase peo-ple o color? There is no pressing need to abolish it outright. Iis clear that to many people it hasbecome more than just the phrasemost commonly used in our society

...I am encouraged

that this generation

seems more poised

to do this type of

transformative work

than any previously

in our country. So, what to do with the

phrase people of color?

There is no pressing

need to abolish

it outright.

(Meza-Ehlert, continued on p. 19)


8/20

Moving Beyond ToleranceThe Linguistic Difference Between Saying We Care & Showing We Care

Christine KanSDAWP 2004


reading achievement, rather than whether or not the student speaksArican American VernacularEnglish. This inding leads us to wonder whether students whodemonstrate a strong relationship with Arican American VernacularEnglish should be promoted towardmonolingual Mainstream AcademicEnglish or academic purposes,delineating their relationshipto Arican American VernacularEnglish, or i these students should

receive instruction in both languagesystems in order to promote theinherent linguistic beneits o bilin-gualism.

A study conducted by Craig & Washington (2004) revealed thatthe shit students make movingaway rom a strong relationship with Arican American Vernacular

English toward MainstreamAcademic English does not in actoccur gradually over time but ismore o a precipitous drop duringtwo distinct periods o their educa-tional experience. The irst majorshit occurs between entrance intokindergarten and the end o irstgrade, where the students spoken

discourse reveals a sharp declinein the morphological and syntacti-cal (morphosyntactic) eatures ochild Arican American VernacularEnglish. The second major shitoccurs between second to thirdgrade, where students experienceanother sharp decline in morpho-syntactic eatures o child AricanAmerican Vernacular English intheir oral reading.

We know that these dramatic shitsoccur during pivotal periods o liter-

acy acquisition or Arican Americanstudents. We know that these samestudents are exposed to daily print inMainstream Academic English text-books and instruction delivered byteachers whose primary discourse isalso Mainstream Academic English.In recent light o No Child LetBehind requirements, the majorityo these teachers have more thanlikely received some training in thestrategies best applied to EnglishLanguage Learners. However, I

would not be surprised that manyo these teachers do not purpose-ully plan or implement ELL strate-gies or instructional practices withArican American students in mind.Arican American students whospeak Arican American VernacularEnglish continue to be a linguisticminority in our educational institu-tions.

The lack o instructional support inlanguage development or AricanAmerican students was never more

explicitly stated than in the nation- wide debate sparked due to thOakland School Boards resolutionor the implementation o an edu-cational program that would ocuson the nature and history o AricanAmerican Vernacular English, atthe time reerred to as Ebonics.The assumption was that this pro-gram would address the teach-ers knowledge gap about AricanAmerican Vernacular Englishbegin the process o changing theirattitudes about the language, and

help teachers igure out how to usethe rich and varied linguistic abili-ties o Arican-American childrento help them become luent readersand writers (Perry & Delpit, 1998).Unortunately, the overwhelmingbacklash to the resolution rom boththe White and Arican Americancommunity on this issue causedits immediate cessation and thediscrepancy between the literacyachievement between White andArican American students still lin-gers in the classroom nearly three

Standard English is not the speechof exile. It is the language of con-

quest and domination; in the UnitedStates, it is the mask which hides the

loss of so many tongues, all those

sounds of diverse, native communi-ties we will never hear, the speech

of the Gullah, Yiddish, and so manyother unremembered tongues.

bell hooks

As a collective entity o educators,administrators, specialists, and

researchers we have undertaken thetask to improve the overall instruc-tional quality and services renderedor our Arican American students.Numerous research studies haveindicated that providing qualityinstruction rom qualiied teacherswill improve the educational oppor-tunities aorded to all students inthe classroom, including Arican

Americans. A strong correlation hasbeen ound between oral languagedevelopment and its impact uponreading and writing developmentor students in the emergent stage(e.g. Craig, Conner & Washington,2003; Loban, 1976; Scarborough,2001; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002).

The works o Craig & Conner (2006)reveal that an Arican Americanpreschool student who demon-strates either a very strong or a very weak relationship to AricanAmerican Vernacular English inhis/her oral reading o a wordlessstorybook has a positive correlationto overall reading achievement ver-sus a student who only moderatelyidentiied with Arican AmericanVernacular English. These indingssuggest that overall linguistic abilityis a stronger indicator o potential

...research studies have indicated that

providing quality instruction from qualified

teachers will improve the educational

opportunities afforded to all students...


9/20


decades later.

Language Learning:An Even Wider Perspective

I youve ever lucky enough to inter-act with one, much less a room ullo Arican American ive- or six-year-olds, you will experience irst-hand intelligent articulate oral and

written expressions in either AricanAmerican Vernacular English and/or Mainstream Academic English,depending upon the student(s)amiliarity with these two lan-guage systems. Arican Americanstudents are representative o anyEnglish Language Learners (ELL)or Linguistic Minority (LM), witha range o abilities in oral, read-ing and writing development inboth their home/community andacademic language abilities. Theyenter just like any other student inthe educational school system withlie experiences and measures oconidence and sel-worth that canbe positively or negatively aectedby their interactions with teachers,administrators and school person-nel.

As an educator and literacy coach onthe site o a predominantly AricanAmerican student body, over thepast eleven years I have witnessedthe transormation o a once livelycommunicative child in kindergar-ten who becomes more and moresubdued and muted by the endo the school year. I believe that we, as educators, whether implic-itly or explicitly, send a message

that Arican American Vernacular

English is considered a less thanlanguage system than MainstreamAcademic English. And that stu-dents must make the move towardsadopting monolingual MainstreamAcademic English or their own aca-demic gains without the assistanceo their teachers who are otenill-prepared to understand, muchless identiy and provide explicitinstruction in the discourse ea-tures Arican American VernacularEnglish (AAVE).

Although the move towards monolin-gual Mainstream Academic English(MAE) is laced with good inten-tions, it is detrimental to the literacydevelopment or some o our strug-gling Arican American students who receive mixed messages dur-ing guided reading practice, writingworkshop and basic communicationin the classroom. Lisa Delpit warns

educators that when students enter

into their classroom with an AricanAmerican Vernacular English dis-course pattern in oral and writtenspeech to recognize that this lin-guistic orm is intimately connected with loved ones, community, andpersonal identity. She adds that "Tosuggest that this orm is 'wrong'or, even worse, ignorant, is to sug-gest that something is wrong withthe students and his or her amily.On the other hand, it is equallyimportant to understand that stu-dents who do not have access tothe politically popular dialect ormin this country, that is Standard(American) English, are less likelyto succeed economically than theirpeers who do.Teachers need to

support the language that students

bring to school, provide them inputrom an additional code, and givethem the opportunity to use the newcode in a non-threatening real com-municative context."

Gloria Ladson-Billings cites a teach-er in her book The Dreamkeepers who considered it her job to makesure that they (Arican Americanstudents) can use both languages,that they understand that their lan-guage is valid but that the demands

placed upon them by others meanthat they will constantly have toprove their worth (p. 24). And inally, rom the PBS special Can YouSpeak American?, a clip highlightingthe work o Noma LeMoine in LosAngeles showed explicit instruc-tion in both AAVE and MAE with agroup o third graders that caughmy attention. These three literacy

events were the catalyst I needed

to begin the inquiry practice on theimpact that AAVE had upon the lit-eracy development o my own irstgrade students.Regardless o the act that the lin-guists deine AAVE as a legitimatelanguage system, to this day therestill remains a silent stigma on AAVEand very little to no ormal instruc-tion in teacher education programsin how to linguistically engage withspeakers o AAVE. When we reerto bilingual students or EnglishLanguage Learners we do not conjure up images o Arican Americanboys and girls whose entire lie hasbeen spent here, enrolled in theAmerican public school system.

As an academic institution we donot make any ormally recognizedaccommodations to support thelinguistic dierences that speak-ers o Arican American VernacularEnglish may possess and yet, wehold them accountable to the stan-dards and assessments designed ormonolingual Mainstream Academic

English speakers. And we wonder why there continues to be a discrepancy between the academicachievement o Arican Americanstudents and their White or evenbilingual non-AAVE peers. Any concept or idea that we value enoughto provide ormal instruction in wilmake an impact upon the lives oour students, including languagedevelopment.

...over the past eleven years

I have witnessed the transformation

of a once lively communicative child in

kindergarten become more and more

subdued and muted by the end

of the school year.

I believe that we, as educators, whether

implicitly or explicitly, send a message that

African American Vernacular English is

considered a less than language system...

(Kan, continued on p. 18)


10/20


The eyesof nature,

a powerful

pressure point,

startling,

but always there,

the rustling leaves

are the hands

of nature,the footprints

of dinosaurs

are lakes

Claire Jones

oung

riters

amps

S

U

M

M

E

R

2

0

1

0

Y

WC

TheImaginationBottleTakethecorkofftheimaginationbottlePouritall

overthethirstypagesDon'tstayexact,

gowildandfree

Findyourburiedtreasures

ofstories

FiamaAlbarran

The Journey

There is a journey

in every written piece.

There is a risk to be

taken, whether it is to

read or to write.

So be clever andput something in

the world that wasn't

there before.

Invent and create

a world of description.

Be an explorer, take the risk

and travel through a world of words.

Marissa Love

I Imagine

The sea

On another world

With as many colors

As a box of crayons

I envision an iced-overGlimmering expanse

of frozen dreams

I see a steel blue vastness

That spits out

White foam onto

Yellow sand

Mason Brown


11/20


ChokingonWords

Ican'tbreathe!

Can'tyouhearme,Ican'tbreathe!

Iamdrowninginaworldofendlesspo

ssibilities.

IfIturnonthelightsinth

ispitchblackbox,

Thesightwillbetoostrongformybareeyes.

ForIamsurrounded,

enclosedeven,

Byunknowntrinketsandtoys

ThatIhavenousefor.

Now.

ButIwanttolearntoturnthehandso

ftime,

Fittingthepiecesofapuzzle

AndSeeingtheAwaitedpicture.

Iwanttomastertheartoflightandda

rkness,

Rightandwrong.

Butbreathingisnotsosimple

InthisforeignlandIhopetocallhome

.

beingiseasier,

Butlivingisessential,

Andlifetakestimetond.

Butonceitisfound

Icanturnonthelights

Andinhalecompletely,

ForIwillbepreparedtowrite.

MikaylaStern-Ell

is

6-Word MemoirAlly Deremer

Inspired by the Kelly Norman Ellis poemRaised by Women during Writing For Change,

SDAWP's newest summeryoung writers' program

Raised by Samoan Women!!I was raised by Samoans

Who ate beey, slimy palosamiChicken and bee loving

go x you a plate!kind o Samoan women.

Some hard workingProblem solving, writing, producing

Stay your butt in school!yelling, screaming, shouting

i I do badly

type o sisterSome proper sitting

Hands in lap, sitting upsay your prayer beore you eat

type o aunties.

Some burnt tan,Caramel, honey, and brown skinned

Sort o women

Samoan dancingShake your big, wide hips

rom side to side!Put your back into it

kind o aunties.

Samoan talkingOute Aloa teleianntesoe!

Ol ituaiqa ane

I was raised bySamoan women

Christiana Jimenez


12/20

Frank Barone uses apurple balloon to teach

the concept of metaphor

12

The Balloon ManAriel FoyYWC Teaching Assistant, Summer 2010

Children did not fear the balloon man

like they feared the doctor or the dentist.

He kept balloons like bursting purple grapes

tied to the brim of his hat. They were filled with

analogies that smelled like mint ice cream,and the bakers dozens

of them kept his head floating,

his toes inches off the ground.

For fun hed place the hat on childrens heads

just to watch them levitate in place, wide eyes,

mouths agape. In the air they could smell blue

and taste abstracts like butterscotch.

The balloon man collected small galaxies

when he went into space. He kept all that he foundlike lost business cards and lovers throwing stones,

buried in his pockets, waiting for the chance to use them.

Usually, they were baked.

If children were smart

theyd take a balloon from him afterwards,

and if they were good theyd get a cookie loaded with

chocolate chips, which were at the same time,

the frantic beating of a hummingbirds wings.

Occasionally, for our amusementhed bend the world to a fun house reality

warped and bloated on the edges.

Hed let rocket ships become raindrops

which we could ride as easily as a carousel

into park fountains and flower petals.

He showed us absurdities that gave our teeth

a chattering giggle. Let us touch the clouds

with our fingertips and whisper to them with our finger prints

for that is the only way to speak to clouds.

He sends us around racetracks the size of pinheadschasing metaphors like stray balloons,

only these things we caught

and when he tied them with ribbon to our wrists

they did not float away.

And when we were done we left

with a balloon on our wrist and a cookie with chocolate chips,

knowing they both might have been something else entirely.

And we knew, this was the balloon mans gift.

Frank Barone (aka The Balloon Man) works with3rd graders during a YWC presentation

If I Ask You to Write a PoemFrank BaroneSDAWP 1977

Ask me to write a poem

and I will show you how a hummingbirdcan dance on the wind around a fower

then race o to catch a dream

or I can help you to see how a purple balloon

can change into a rocket ship or a raindrop.

Sometimes in one o my poems

you may hear autumn leaves scuttle

down the sidewalk

or hear the echo o songs

as they bounce among the stars.

And when you learn to listen with your eyes

you may even hear the trees

gossiping with their riends

or hear spiders whispering secrets to each other.

In a ew poems you may smell lilac blossoms

or spaghetti sauce as it bubbles on the stove.

Once in a while you may taste a poem

about cookies lled

with chocolate chip metaphors.

You must take care when you read these poems.

Some words can bruise your skin

with their honesty

or pierce your heart with the truth.

Now i I ask you to write a poem

I know you will be able to show me

pictures that will surprise my eyes

and choose words that will thrill my ears

entertain my imagination

and move my heart to shout

"Yes, I see those same pictures,"

and "Yes, I can hear your voice in those lines"

and again "Yes, your poem speaks the truth

because you write with clear and honest words.

Welcome to my wonderul world o poetry."

Dialogue, Fall 2010


13/20

FindingOur

Voices


urban middle school looked like.I have always worked in an urbanenvironment, but the schedule andclimate o a middle school was newto me. One nice thing about going toa site midyear is that you have a loto reedom to learn. No one expectedperection rom me; they were justthrilled I truly wanted to be there. Itried many things in my writing pro-gram and some worked and somefopped. My students challengedme every step o the way, and yes,there were days where I threw upmy hands and cried. Students wrotepoetry, and stories, and narrativesabout their lives. It was long, gruel-ing work and we struggled together.But by the end o the year, the writ-ing that my students created in their

memoir projects demonstrated their willingness to take risks and theirdesire to put their lives on paper.I knew that project was a turningpoint, and I also knew that was the

type o re and enthusiasm I wantedto generate in the all. This past Sep-tember, I was introduced to a text inour SDAWP study group written byLinda Christiansen, Teaching or

Joy and Justice. I knew ater our rstmeeting that this text would helpdene the lens rom which my stu-dents would view reading and writ-ing. My students elt a disconnectbetween school and their world outin the community. We dont buildcommunities instead o working onacademics. We build communities

while we work on academics(15)states Christiansen. That statement

has dened my work this year witheach o my classes. Our site acesthe same challenges that most urbanschools ace. Our campus is truly di

verse, with many languages and cul-tures. We are primarily low incomeand our surrounding neighborhoodrepresents the nancial and social

struggles aced in our society todayThere are times our students havediculties relating to adults and toeach other. We strive to bring under-standing and respect to our classeseach day. My students recognize that

we have a long way to go in learningto respect and eventually even cel-ebrate diversity on our campus.

Through many class discussions Ilearned my students were also eel-ing they didnt have a voice, or thepower to make any changes on their

own. That is when I realized thatour writing, our study o text, couldsupport the idea that young students

have the power to make change. learned early on that I had to demonstrate relevance to my studentsto make them eel that reading and

writing werent just tools or schoolbut truly tools to use to make theireveryday lives better. I we intendto create citizens o the world, asmost school districts claim in theirmission statements, then we needto teach students how to use their

knowledge to create change. Wemust construct academic ways orstudents to use the curriculum, toauthentically tie student learningto the world (8). It is important tonote that I do not have the reedomto choose my curriculum. Like mostteachers, I work under the con-straints o district-adopted text, pac-ing guides, and assessments. I alsoknow that within that rameworkcreativity still can and must thriveIt was in January o this past yearthat social justice and the standard

curriculum collided, bringing aboutsome o the best work o my studentsto date.

Civil Rights is Not about Dead People

It was January o this year when amajor change occurred in our studyo literature, history, and writingOur unit became not just a review othe stories in the chapter, but also astudy o civil rights and social justiceIn our core text we read non-ction

Beginnings

Journeys are interesting things; theroads that wind and twist take usto places that we didnt intend, yetsomehow we end up right where webelong. For me, that place is back inthe classroom, taking my experienc-es as a coach and teacher leader intothe world o middle school, and thento a new role o teacher researcher.Over the past two years I have redis-covered what is important, what in-spired me to teach in the rst place,

helping students nd their voice. Iarrived at the doorsteps o the Sum-mer Invitational 2008 searching ormy proessional soul, looking to nd

what brought me to education over20 years ago. I spent the summerreading, writing, studying, and ques-tioning all I had learned about edu-cation and my students over the past20 years. At the time, I was out othe classroom, working as a literacycoach. I had spent the past ve yearsin and out o the classroom and was

at a point o transition. I didnt knowit at the time, but that summer expe-rience was preparing me or my nextchapter, to teach in an urban middleschool with all its joys and challeng-es. In an era o budget cuts, I awokeone rainy December morning to dis-cover that the rumors were true: theunding or my coaching position

was really gone, and that I would bereturning to the classroom. It was

late on a rainy Friday aternoon,right beore winter break. I stood ina sixth grade classroom with a set o

keys and two teachers editions andmet briefy with the principal, viceprincipal, and a ew teachers as theyall came to quickly welcome me tothe site beore we went on vacation.It was surreal, scary, and exhilarat-ing all at the same time. I went homeand immediately emailed my Writ-ing Project cohort, and within min-utes received words o encourage-ment as well as internet sources andideas on how to make the transition.I spent the ollowing sixth monthsjust learning what that world o an

Journeys are

interesting things; the

roads that wind and twist

take us to places that we

didnt intend yet,

somehow we

end up right where

we belong.

Janet IlkoSDAWP 2009


14/20


articles on Brown vs. The Board oEducation, and biographies on RosaParks and Maya Angelo. We includ-ed the novella The Gold Cadillac byMildred Taylor to better understandthe struggles the characters aced

when traveling rom north to southto visit amily in 1950. We spenttime in the computer lab studyingDr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Chil-

drens March, sit-ins, and variouschallenges aced during The CivilRights Movement. We tied the past tothe present with every poem, article,and story. My students were passion-ate about this time period and thestruggles aced by those we studied.I knew this was an opportunity toshow them the power o words over

violence, peaceul protest versus ri-ots, and most importantly, to try andempower them to speak and writeabout the injustice they still eel to-day. And so it began.

Writing For Justice

Again reerring back to the work oChristiansen, I was able to have mystudents begin this unit o study in a

whole new light. I wanted so muchor them to see the struggles o thepast mirror the struggles they ace intheir own lives. I hoped that as wereviewed the text through the lenso social justice, it would highlight

how words and actions have an im-pact on a situation. Everything we

do or dont do contributes to an out-come. In other words, I was seekingto highlight those in the story who

were powerless and those who wereempowered. I wanted students torefect and question what dierenti-ates those who are powerless romthose who become empowered. Weused the chart below to create a new

Target:

The person

who is the tar-get o injustice

(could be anindividual orgroup)

Ally:

The person

who stand upor others

Bystander:

A person whoobserves the

act o injus-tice, but who

does nothingto stop it

Perpetrator:

Commits theact o

injustice

lens through which to approach ourreading. As we viewed videos andread texts, we dened the charac-ters into these categories taken romChristiansens work Writing ForJustice (85-95).

Acting for Justice

Students read an article or story

and identied who was the target,ally, bystander, or perpetrator in thepiece. The most important learningcame when students realized thatby categorizing characters or realpeople in this way, they had to takeinto account the perspective o theperson(s) doing the categorizing.Point o view took on a whole newmeaning and relevance as students

had to justiy why they believed acharacter to be the target or the per-petrator. In the case o Dr. King, itall depended on perspective. In the

eyes o many, he was a target o op-pression, but to others he was an allyin their ght or civil rights.

It was an eye-opening experienceor students to understand that aperson could be a target, ally, andperpetrator all in the same situationjust by looking at it rom a variety operspectives. This translated wellinto their own lives as we discussedclassroom or school situations in

which students elt they were vic-tims o injustice. Many times, when

looking at situations rom othersviews, they were able to realize theymay indeed have elt they were atarget, but others could easily haveseen them as a bystander or evena perpetrator. Our experience al-

lowed or greater understandings othe struggles middle school studentsexperience every day and gave us acommon language in which to dis-cuss or write about it.

Modern Expressions of Social Justice:

The Power of Images and Words

As a culminating project or this unit,I wanted students to understand thepower o words and to have an op-portunity to relate those powerul

words o the past to their own livestoday. We returned to Dr. Kings IHave a Dream speech as a commontext. Now that students realized thatthis speech represented the voiceso many civil rights leaders andthe struggle itsel, it became moremeaningul and powerul to analyze

that text. Students rst watched thespeech itsel rom a video on Discov-eryEducation.com. They then readan excerpt rom the speech and hadto highlight ve words they thought

were critical to the speech. Fromthose words they selected three topresent to their table team and theneach table selected one word thatrepresented the essence o Dr. Kings

speech and the ideas o that time pe-riod. They wrote justications ortheir choices. Students were allowedto choose their own words i theydisagreed with their tables decisionand write a rebuttal. It was a very e-ective lesson in word study and de-bate. At the end o the lesson I cre-ated a list o about twenty-ve wordsthat students could consider using

or their nal projects. The secondprewriting activity again ocusedon words, this time quotes rom hisspeech. We readMartins Big Wordsby Doreen Rappaport. From therestudents selected a quote that meant

something to them. They created anidea web and then wrote a responseanswering the ollowing questionsWhat do you think Dr. King meantwhen he said these words? What doesit mean to you today? Give an exam-

ple o how it applies to your own lie?Why did you select this quote? Whydid it stand out to you? The thirdprewriting activity addressed vocab-ulary and word study. Going back tothe key words students listed, eachstudent selected one word. Usingthesauruses, dictionaries, and online

sources, they created a word map toinclude the denition or the wordthat applied to this speech itsel, itspart o speech, and synonyms andantonyms o the word. Students then

had to write their own denition anduse it in a sentence that demonstrat-ed the meaning.

Options for Publication

Students responded to the speechand unit in a variety o ways. Some

I wanted so much for

them to see the

struggles of thepast mirror the

struggles they face in

their own lives.


15/20


students wrote diamante poems using their select-ed words and published them in the computer labusing both their words and one careully selectedimage that highlighted their message. The poetry

was so powerul that two were published in ourschool newspaper and others were displayed inour campus bulletin board or student discussion.

One period o students created a quote quilt. Stu-dents wrote an interpretation o their selected

quote rom the speech on one square. On anothersquare they created an illustration or collage thatused only images to represent their ideas. They

were then glued all together in a quilt and hung onthe wall in the classroom.

My third option or students was to create a Glog-ster page about their quote. The website http://edu.glogster.com allows students and teachers to cre-ate online media posters lled with video, music,sounds, text, and images. One period o studentscreated a poster about their word they selected, in-cluding all the word study criteria, and also includ-ed images and the quote where their word is dis-

played. These posters were printed and displayedin a case out in the hallway, and then again they

were presented at our parent night where studentsproudly displayed their work to amily and riends.For some o my students, this was the rst piecethey had completed to nal edit the entire year.Each o these culminating activities had to include

how this study o civil rights and social justice ap-plied to the world they live in today. By displayingour work publicly, students recognized the powero their words. Our poets were asked to write aneditorial on race relations on our campus and wereeatured in our school newspaper the next month.Students saw that their voices and their writing

made a dierence. Linda Christiansen writes, Stu-dents need tools to conront injustice, they needto hear our approval that intervention is not onlyappropriate and acceptable, but heroic. Acting insolidarity with others is a learned skillone I hopemore o us will teach (90). I agree with Chris-tiansen, and know that teachers themselves needto stand up and conront the curricular issues weace each day. We need to nd ways to work withinthe constraints o standardized testing and curric-ulum, and always push to include relevance and

voice within the real world in which we teach.

Works Cited

Christensen, Linda. Teaching or Joy and Justice:Re-imagining the Language Arts Classroom. Mil-waukee: Rethinking Schools, 2009. Print.

Homepage - ReadWriteThink. Web. 03 Mar. 2010..

Rappaport, Doreen, and Bryan Collier.Martin'sBig Words: The Lie o Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.New York: Hyperion or Children, 2001. Print.

Mark ManasseMiramar Community College

San Diego Community Colleges

Jennifer Jo MokiaoSycamore Ridge Elementary

Del Mar Union

Jason ParkerSan Diego State University

CSU San Diego

Casey PayteCardiff Elementary

Cardiff

Miriam SikkingPaul Ecke Central Elementary

Encinitas Union

Laura SmartSan Diego Global Vision Academy

San Diego Unified

Veronica Welch

Nubia Leadership AcademySan Diego Unified

Heather BiceCoronado High

Coronado Unified

Janet Chaloux-BaumMission Estancia Elementary

Encinitas Union

Jennifer ChanceAnza Elementary

Cajon Valley Union

Mark DubIntegrity Charter Middle

National

Jamie EspositaSan Diego Global Vision Academy

San Diego Unified

Judy GeraciAlbert Einstein Academy

San Diego Unified

Elizabeth Lonnecker

San Diego High-Science & Technology

San Diego Unified

CongratulationsSDAWP FellowsSummer 2010

Ann ZivotskyDel Rio Elementary

Oceanside Unified


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Writings KissVictoria Mossa-Mariani

Shy at first and turned away

Crayons wrote what words cant say

Scribbles from a childs mind

Graduate to Valentines

But Ns in penmanship suppress

The joy that beats in writers chest

Over time words overcome

Authors themes are not undone

And from the halls of letters come

What inspiration has begun

Go by your passions, SDAWP's Co-Director, Christine Kan, advises when

addressing attendees about the session choices available at the 3rd AnnualSpring Conerence hosted at UCSDs Cross Cultural Center. As participantsreview their choices, I join the migration down the corridor to the coner-ence rooms.

For the irst session, I attend Valentyna (Tyna) Banners presentation,Creating an Authentic Audience through Service Learning. She begins withthe block party protocol to ocus participants in a progression rom selto community and then onto the global community. Tyna recommendsthe organization Volunteer San Diego and addresses the beneits o servicelearning such as motivation, a eeling o being needed, and a nurturing ostudent voice. She then shows a video clip romPlaying for Change. Somebob their heads along to the song Stand By Me, others smile. Tyna explainsthat the charitys mission is to build music schools in war-torn countries.

Next, she debries three types o service learning: direct (ace to ace), indi-rect (raising money) and advocacy (raising awareness.) Tyna recommendsThe Complete Guide to Service Learning, a book by Katherine Kay, and thensmoothly transitions to student work. Tyna's students at Nubia LeadershipAcademy studied persuasive letters as mentor text by charting words andinormation. Next, they chose politicians and musicians and wrote lettersasking them to make a contribution to Playing for Change. Tyna explainshow teachers can weave service learning into their curriculum whereverthey desire. Tyna ends her address with the PARC model: Plan, Action,Relection and Celebration. Then, participants are asked, Where might youinuse service learning in your curriculum? I linger at the edges while thegroup breaks into little clusters, and I strain to catch snippets as the roombuzzes.

For the second session, I enjoy Aja Booker and Mindy Shackletts demon-stration, Constructing Thought through Writing. Aja tackles the irst halo the session and shares that her students analyze inormational text attheir grade level or structure, vocabulary, and content. Although Aja her-sel readily admits that it is a challenge to ind inormational texts or theprimary grades, her student samples suggest the powerul results that canbe had.

Mindy takes over and we each receive a card with a mathematical repre-sentation. We are tasked with inding our matches. As we begin to look orour equivalents, Mindy tells us to think outside the box, and I stumbleinto a group o percents. Next, we write deinitions or the symbols on ourcards and share with our group mates. We never talk about sets; thatswhy I grouped you that way, explains Mindy. This leads most groups into

interesting debates and side conversations. Then Mindy discusses how thiskind o activity helps students. She contends that lecturing and copyingdemand little o students cognitively. Students need more action whetherits through think-pair-share activities or by asking them to explain or writeabout something in their own words.

Mindys passion is evident but SDAWP time is leeting. Beore I know it, thesession ends and Im saying goodbye to colleagues and exchanging e-mailaddresses with a new riend. Its nice to know that there are more SDAWPellows in North County. And as I cruise home on Interstate 5, sunshinesmattering my path, I meditate on the power o words, the promise that ourstudents hold, and all o the inspiring possibilities alive in the San DiegoArea Writing Project.

SDAWP Spring Conference 2010

Teaching the Writer:Voices from the Summer Institute

ppppppppppppp

Victoria Mossa-MarianiSDAWP 2009

2009 Summer Institute Fellows and S Leadership Team members kicked off th

Spring Conference 2010 with Susan Minnickswho invited everyone to participate in the

institutes hallmark activity, The Daily Writing

Prompt.

Think about the time you had your first kisswith writing, encouraged Minnicks, giving

her audience a whopping six minutes to

complete their assignment. Silence filled theroom as participants took pen in hand and

began quietly writing about their first encoun-ter with their love of writing. For SDAWP

Fellows, this was old hat, but it was a new

experience for visitors, friends, and uniniti-ated colleagues.

Take one or two minutes to finish your

thoughts, Minnicks encouraged quietly,before inviting participants to share their

writing. Inspired by the prompt, VictoriaMossa-Mariana helped conclude the sessionby sharing her poem with the audience. (See

Writing's Kiss below.)

Robert GalloSDAWP 2009

Attendees of the SDAWP Spring 2010 Conferencewrite to the morning prompt presented by Susan

Minnicks, "Your First Kiss with Writing."



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teachers can do. Once teachers havethat meaningul dialogue with theircounterparts so they can see whatmy move orced me to see

Never doubt that a small group othoughtul committed citizens canchange the world; indeed, it's theonly thing that ever does.

Margaret Mead

Do not wait or leaders; do it alone,person to person.Mother Teresa

I am one teacher. I plan to see whatcan happen i I team up with a teach-er at my old site. Other teachers havestarted pen pals between schools.

What could my afuent students learn rom a pen pal in The Hood? What could the students in TheHood learn rom mine? What i we

wrote to each other all year, and gottogether a ew times? What i my stu-dents could donate the hundreds oextra books/clothing/toys they have?

What i students rom both schoolscould join together in service proj-ects, like picking up trash or visitinga nursing home? What i I could getthat army o college-educated parent

volunteers I have to consider spend-ing one or two days a week workingin a classroom in The Hood? Wouldthey too, lose their stereotypes andassumptions that isolation has im-

bued in them, and begin to see andunderstand whats really going on inour educational system? Would thatinspire them to join the larger ghton the national level to realize thepromise o Brown?

What i there was more than oneteacher?

Is our miles really so ar?

What could myafuent students

learn rom a pen palin The Hood? Whatcould the students

in The Hoodlearn rom mine?

c MUSE BOX Jenny Moore,SDAWP 1999

Sometimes chance encounters are among the most meaningful inour lives In the poem If You Knew, by Ellen Bass, she asks heraudience, What if you knew youd be the last/to touch some-one?

She writes, When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase/too slowlythrough the airport, when/the car in front of me doesn't signal,/when the clerk at the pharmacy/won't say Thank you, I don'tremember/they're going to dieReflect on the people in your life who are regulars, but aboutwhom you know very little: the familiar grocery store clerk, post-man, couple who walk their dog past your house Write about

their lives as you imagine them, and the possible significance ofthe crossing of your paths What would people look like/if wecould see them as they are,/soaked in honey, stung and swollen,/reckless, pinned against time?

SDAWP NOTES

Kudosto Becky Gemmell (SDAWP 2001). In March she was named Teachero the Year or the Escondido Union High School District. Becky, who teaches

dance, English and journalism at Escondido High, credited her success to her

school district, the school, and to the San Diego Area Writing Project. O her as-

sociation with SDAWP, she stated "...it's because o that organization, that proes-

sional support, that I am the teacher I am."

Goodbye to Shannon Falkner (SDAWP 2009). Shannon moved to New Yorkwith her husband who has begun a graduate program at Columbia University.

We will miss you, Shannon.

Happy retirementto Judy Le (SDAWP 1990). Judy may have retired romthe Encinitas Union School District in June, but she continues to work with the

SDAWP on a variety o projects. Since retiring, Judy has provided proessional

development on the topic o writers' notebooks or our Young Writers' Camp

teachers, and she co-coordinated SDAWP's frst Fall Conerence.

Well done,Divona Roy (SDAWP 1996) and PJ Jerey (SDAWP 2008). One oDivona's students had an essay published in California English, and one o PJ's

students won a writing contest sponsored by Christine Kehoe (CA State Senator

39th District).

Thank youto those who participated in the 2010 The National Day on Writ-ing, which was held on October 20. To browse or to contribute to SDAWP's gal-

lery in the National Gallery o Writing, "Fall in Love with Writing," please visit:

http://galleryowriting.org/writing/957930

(Pribyl, continued rom p. 3)


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Preparing ForAfrican AmericanVernacular EnglishLanguage Learners

To be purposeul in my litera-cy instruction in the classroom, Iirst had to become more amiliarwith the oral and written discoursepatterns associated with Arican

American Vernacular English. As ateacher o Hawaiian-Irish heritage, Imust credit the work o those schol-ars and researchers who have madea critical impact upon my instruc-tion in the classroom in regards

to Arican American VernacularEnglish such as Lisa Green, GloriaLadson-Billings, bell hooks andSamy Alim. Although I did not growup engaged in Arican American Vernacular English as my primaryorm o discourse, it did not preventmy attempts to understand the ea-tured patterns that inluenced thereading and writing development omy students.

The inquiry on Arican American Vernacular English patterns wasa challenge in the classroom. Itrequired us to analyze discoursesthat were so ingrained in everydayspeech and writing and make explic-it the subtle nuances o vocabularyand syntax choices in their emerg-ing literacy development. It meantmonitoring mysel during guidedreading practice to limit the inter-ruptions or a students luency prac-tice when they used common AAVEeatured syntax that did not interere

with their ability to comprehendthe story. It meant acknowledgingtheir ideas in print could be writtenin two language systems and ind-ing meaningul ways to highlightspelling patterns in both and askingthem to consider who their intend-ed audience would be and respect-ing their wishes in the inal editingstages. It also meant inding a bal-ance between oering mentor textsin both language systems duringread-alouds to encourage linguis-


tic diversity as well as monitoringtheir progress in both language sys-tems. The greatest limitation to thisinquiry process resided within myown lack o experience or expertise with AAVE and lack o mentorshipon the subject to coner with aboutmy own instructional practice alongthe way.

I held discussions with my studentsparents/guardians, grandparentsand loved ones on the use o AAVEin the home and in the commu-nity. From this critical dialogue Idebunked three common myths dur-

ing the inquiry process: a) AricanAmericans do not all inherentlyspeak AAVE but as with any languageit is associated with your regionalcontext o upbringing and the rolemodels in your lie, b) the use oAAVE, like any language system, isused as a means to identiy rela-tionships within the lives o AricanAmericans and use o AAVE otenimplies trust and respect betweentwo people rather than disrespector lack o intellect, and inally c)socioeconomic status had no bear-ing upon the use o AAVE as nearlyall conversations held throughoutthe year had some element o AAVEbut rather it aected the requencyin which the AAVE eatures wouldoccur in any given context. We began the year discussing withstudents the purpose o language interms o sociolinguistics and howpeople alter language in dierentcontexts or dierent purposes. I

took observation notes and recordedtheir speech patterns in the class-room and on the playground andlooked or patterns to emerge thatwere characteristic o AAVE. I oeredexplicit models o instruction on thepatterns o AAVE ound most com-monly in their own speaking, read-ing, and writing and discussed theiruse in context. We charted MAEsentence structures that utilized di-erent word choices or word place-ment but implied the same meaning

as those ound in AAVE.

We looked at print in publishechildrens books and our mandated curriculum textbooks morepurposeully than ever beore. Weused books as mentor texts to guideour own writing and talked abouthe way authors use language toexpress dierent ideas dependen

upon their intended audience. Weused multi-cultural literature thaincluded Arican Americans beyonda mere reerence point as charactersbut as identiied speakers o AAVE aswell. We held many discussions onthe wide variety o AAVE speakers inregional and national contexts, thedistinct possibility that many o ourArican American riends and amilymembers may use eatures o AAVEdierently in dierent contexts andthat being bilingual in both AAVEand MAE is more advantageous to usin communication than being mono-lingual in either one. The greateschange to my instructional practicehas been the purposeul inclusiono lessons based upon the linguisticneeds o my students that were nobeing met by the adopted languagearts curriculum or state standards.

The Giftof Paying

Attention

Whether we look out and see onor thirty Arican American students

looking back we must ask ourselveshow much o their inherent linguis-tic abilities are being nurtured topositively or negatively aect theirliteracy development. How mucho their linguistic aptitude are weengaging in during our instructiontime in the classroom? Who, i nothe teacher, is ultimately respon-sible or bridging the gap between what the student brings into thclassroom and what they need totake away with them in order to besuccessul in lie? And how are we

to communicate these concepts andideas i we continue to only speakrom what we know and not whathey understand. Consciously developing instruction with the AricanAmerican Vernacular EnglishLanguage Learner in mind may bethe link between saying we care andshowing we care that they are trulysuccessul in lie.

To be purposeful in my literacy instruction

in the classroom, I first had to become

more familiar with the oral and written

discourse patterns associated with

African American Vernacular English.

(Kan, continued rom p. 9)


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to describe people o non-Europeanancestry. For example, E. AllisonDittus o East Hartord, Connecticut,describes the phrase as, Both grace-ul and euphoniousa beautiul anddescriptive olk idiom (Saire 2).Rinku Sen expresses how she ounda home in the term and that it isextremely useul or moving multi-ethnic alliances (Sen 2). In manyways this phrase is an improvementon similar terms that have beenused in recent decades. The termminority is highly inaccurate inthat the demographics in a grow-ing number o regions in the UnitedStates are such that there are ewerWhites than other groups; this reali-ty is all the more clear when we lookat the entire globe, which has sucha relatively small White population.The term non-white is equally prob-lematic because o its negative con-notations. As William Saire writes,

Why should anybody want to deinehimsel by what he is not? (2)

With this in mind, I am not callingor the eradication o the term peo-ple o color rom our discussionsand writing, both popular and aca-demic. Ive thought hard in recent weeks and havent been able tocome up with the perect, unprob-lematic phrase or when we want todiscuss as a group those Americans who arent identiied as White.Instead, I am asking that we put

our heads together in schools andcommunities throughout the coun-try to be more creative in how wetalk about the complex issues sur-rounding race, ethnicity, culture andlanguage. Perhaps we can resist theurge to oversimpliy, eschewing neatcategories and allowing the blendedmessiness o our lived reality toshow up more oten in the phraseswe use in discussion and writing.

When I ask or students thoughts,rather than getting THE Latino view

or THE Asian-American perspec-tive, Im going to ask or Jazminasthoughts and Matts ideas and thenhelp them dig deeper to see howtheir own unique ethnic heritagemight shape that answer. It mayeven be possible that a teacher orstudent who reads this will coin abetter, more descriptive, less hin-dering phrase than people o coloror any o the others that have beenused over the years (Ill be watch-ing my email astidiously). In themeantime, as educators we bear

the responsibility o thoughtullyand inclusively helping studentswrestle through the complex issuessurrounding ethnicity in our coun-try. Our students, rom every con-ceivable background and culture,deserve nothing less.

Works Cited

Bahadur, Neha. "Ethnic IdentityDevelopment: Challenges orAdolescents o "Minority" andMixed Racial Backgrounds." Grand

Rounds. UCSD School o Medicine,San Diego. 8 June 2007. Lecture.

Do The Right Thing. By Spike Lee.Universal, 1989. DVD.

Eriksen, Thomas H. Small Places,Large Issues: An Introduction toSocial and Cultural Anthropology.2nd ed. London: Pluto, 2001. Print.

Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. "Episode3." African American Lives 2.WNET. New York, New York, 2008.Television.

Guanipa-Ho, Carmen, and GuanipaA. Jose. "Ethnic Identity andAdolescents."Ethnic Identity and

Adolescents. SDSU EdWeb, Sept.1998. Web. 13 July 2009. .

Ridgeway, James.Blood in the Face:

The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations,Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise ofa New White Culture. New York:Thunder's Mouth, 1996. Print.

Saire, William. "On Language;People o Color." The New YorkTimes Magazine 20 Nov. 1988: 18.

New York Times. Web. 6 July 2009..

Sapp, Je. "How School Taught Me IWas Poor." Teaching Tolerance 35.1(2009): n. pag. Teaching Tolerance.

Southern Poverty Law Center. Web.13 July 2009. .

Sen, Rinku. "Are Immigrantsand Reugees People o Color?"ColorLines. N.p., n.d.Web. 6 July 2009. .

DIALOGUE

Call forManuscripts

Spring 2011 IssueSubmission Deadline:

February 1, 2011

Resourcefulness

At its oundation, the National Writing Project poses core prin-ciples which serve as a modelor writing project ellows. Oneo NWPs core principles states:Knowledge about the teaching owriting comes rom many sources:theory and research, the analysiso practice, and the experienceo writing. Eective proessionaldevelopment programs provide re-quent and ongoing opportunitiesor teachers to write and to exam-ine theory, research, and practicetogether systematically.

What are the main sources that cat-alyze your own writing practice andteaching o writing in your class-room? How has your own knowl-edge about the teaching o writingbeen inluenced or challenged byresearch, analysis o practice and/or your hands-on experience with writing? Which sources have beenmost eective in creating a writ-ing community in your classroom? What resources have you culledthrough proessional development? What source, in particular, haschallenged an existing approachto writing in the classroom? Whichsources do you see as most vital orstudents as they navigate throughthe writing process?

Dialogue would like to receive yourwork or the work o your students.

Submit a story o student success,a strategy or implementation, ora personal essay on your teachingexperience.

Email all manuscript submissions,suggestions, letters to the editor

and/or Project Notes toJenny Moore at

[email protected] to Janis Jones at

[email protected]


(Meza-Ehlert, continued rom p. 7)


20/20

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PAIDSan Diego, CA

Permit No 1909

San Diego Area Writing ProjectUniversity of California, San Diego9500 Gilman Drive, Dept 0036La Jolla, CA 92093-0036

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Dialogue Fall 2010