21st Century Literacies Pedagogyto Change the WorldLocke High School, Los Angeles

Jerica Coffey, Kathleen Hicks

• Discuss lingering questions and teaching implications

from our two-year inquiry into critical multi-literacies

pedagogy

• Give you time to network with each other and share your

projects and how you plan to share your learning with

others at your schools

Session Goals

Addressing ALL student needsAssets

Bilingual

Bicultural

Resilient

Belief in potential of

education

Desire to connect with

others

Needs Academic

• Below grade level

Social-Political

• Poverty level three times below state average (US Census)

• Police Brutality

• Deportation Threats

• Lack of access to basic health needs

• Crime average in Watts 300% higher than County (LA Crime Index)

Social, Emotional, Psychological

• Clinical Services at Locke Cluster, 2010-2011: 645 referrals, 518 serviced.

• An approach to literacy that engages 21st century tools and empowers students to transform their community by developing the capacity to critically analyze the world.

Addressing ALL student needsAssets

Bilingual

Bicultural

Resilient

Belief in potential of

education

Desire to connect with

others

Needs Academic

• Below grade level

Social-Political

• Poverty level three times below state average (US Census)

• Police Brutality

• Deportation Threats

• Lack of access to basic health needs

• Crime average in Watts 300% higher than County (LA Crime Index)

Social, Emotional, Psychological

• Clinical Services at Locke Cluster, 2010-2011: 645 referrals, 518 serviced.

Rigorous + Humanizing + Transformative Literacy Practices?

• An approach to literacy that engages 21st century tools and empowers students to transform their community by developing the capacity to critically analyze the world.

Inquiry Process for Collaboration

Bi-weekly

meetings

Non-evaluative

space

Our work mirrors

type of inquiry

asked of our

students

Inquiry Questions

How dowedevelop multi-literacy pedagogy where youth

can…

examine their own struggles with oppression?

confront the injustices that plague their communities?

cultivate spaces that provide internal/external healing?

Community Cultural Wealth ProjectDeveloping Counterstories of Resilience and Resistance

Critical Reading With and Against the Grain:Random Family by Nicole leBlanc

Model of 10-year research

project written in narrative form

Problematizes “outsider”

perspective of

communities of color

Purpose of Counterstories

"Counterstories can build

community among those at

the margins of society...they

bring a human and familiar

face to empirical

research...can open new

realities...and address

society's margins as places of

possibility and resistance."

Tara Yosso: Community Cultural Wealth

Final Project

Engaging community through technology

Digital Presentation of

Research

• Storyboard

• Layering of media:

audio

narrative, images, musi

c

Presentation of Learning at

Community Exhibition

Learnings

Research and counter-

storytelling create a sense of

agency while learning rigorous

literacy skills

Counterstorytelling is a tool to

transform collective and

individual identities from deficit to empowered

Rigor increases with authentic

purpose and audience for

student work and when students’ learning is guided by

their own questions

Networking

Discussion Questions:

Briefly, describe the key features of your project (purpose,

innovative/creative aspects, format etc…) and your school.

What impact do you hope to have on student learning?

What resources will you be accessing?

How will you share your learning with others at your school?

SAT

Benchmark 1

Benchmark 2

Benchmark 3

Benchmark 4

CAHSEE

ACT

AP

AWPE

EPT

Community College

Placement Exams

CELDT

Benchmark 1

Benchmark 2

Benchmark 3

Benchmark 4

CAHSEE

PSAT

CST

SAT

ACT

AP

EAP

CELDT

Benchmark 1

Benchmark 2

Benchmark 3

Benchmark 4

Mock CAHSEE 1

PSAT

CST

Mock CAHSEE 2

CAHSEE ELA

CELDT

Benchmark 1

Benchmark 2

Benchmark 3

Benchmark 4

Mock CAHSEE

PSAT

CST

CELDT

SRI

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse:

Wake Up and Teach Already

Literature The 41 Tests We Take

ME

Our goal? Access

to new worlds.

Some we will break

into, others we will

create ourselves.

Survival Tip 1: Space

“...if we acknowledge the

centrality of language to

our development as

raced, gendered, and

classed, beings, then we

must also consider the

possibilities for English

education to create

spaces for the

development of resistant

and empowered

identities”

-Critical Race and Urban

Youth

Where are

you?

What spaces

are you

creating?

Anyon’s Research on Class and

SchoolingSurvival Tip 2: Zombies are made, not born.

Tip 3: Zombies Hide Where

You Least Expect Them

An excerpt from Kozol’sSavage Inequalties

A wealthy student says, “someone else can’t want a good life for you, you have to want it yourself

…Then she adds, however, “I agree that everyone should have a chance at taking the same courses…” I ask her if she think it fair to pay more taxes so that this was possible. “I don’t see how that benefits me” she says.

Critical literacy

“can help students

discuss the

relationship

between literature

texts and the ideals

and values of the

dominant

society…”

Morrell’s Critical

Literacy and

Urban Youth

Tip 4: There are only skinny

survivors—you’d better hurry.

Tip 5: Be willing to

learn new things to

survive.

•The transition to common core demands that we offer richer, more complex literacy opportunities to our students.

• Our local writing projects encourage our students to address real world issues and are offering incentives their efforts.

•Canonical and new literature itself screams for a critical eye—why would we train our students to be mini-psychologists or historians or use other lenses before they know themselves and their own histories?

Results

Having language to describe what I need from my students makes me feel sane

Being surrounded by like-minded teachers helps me continue teaching

84% of my students maintained or improved over the last 3 years

Significant increase in AP pass rates

Healing Self, Healing CommunityUsing Inquiry and Dialogue to Foster Critical Thought and Social Change

Lingering questions AND challenges

___

School and district support

Teacher turn-over

How do we assess transformative curriculum?

How do we make this sustainable?

How can we get support from our schools and districts?

Developing more humanizing pedagogy

Duncan-Andrade’s “Note to

Educators: Hope Required when

Growing Roses in Concrete”

“Socratic hope requires both

teachers and students to painfully

examine our lives and actions

within an unjust society and to

share the sensibility that pain may pave the path to justice.”

“The solidarity to share in others’

suffering, to sacrifice self so that

other roses may bloom, to

collectively struggle to replace the

concrete completely with a rose garden is what I call audacious

hope.”

“Too many of us try to create

classroom spaces that are safe from

righteous rage, or, worse, we design

plans to weed out children who display

it. The question we should be grappling

with is not how to manage students

with these emotions, but how to help

students channel them.”

Designing Transformative Curriculum

Timeline Academic Transformative

Week 1: Models of Persuasive

Writing as Healing Dialogue

and Social Change

• Annotate three real letters

about injustice

• Explore Writing and

Research process

Week 2-3: Plan and

implement research

• Develop inquiry focus:

topic, target audience

• Research credible sources:

interviews, articles, personal

experience

• Source write-ups

Week 3-4: Write Persuasive

Letter

• Multiple drafts

• Revise based on peer

editing, individual

conference feedback

Week 5-6: Plan and

perform/facilitate Multimedia

presentation at Community

Showcase

• Plan, develop and practice

engaging presentations

•How can we create

more dialogue

around injustice in

our community?

• How can dialogue

lead to healing –

personally and

collectively?

•How can we use

inquiry to affect

change in our

community?

Authentic Models of Writing as

Healing Dialogue

Persuasive Letter Models

• Presente.Org letter from Widow of AnastasioHernandez-Rojas

• Open letter to UC Davis Chancellor Katehi

• My letter to Kaiser Permanente Doctors after pregnancy loss

Skills

• Persuasive writing elements

• Citing research

• Vulnerability of sharing pain

• Power of risk-taking and honesty

• Validating experience and need for healing and accountability

Developing Authentic Assessments

Choice as Agency and

Ownership

• Variety of topics

• Audience:

perpetrator, fellow

victims, or general community

• Presentation format as

vehicle for creativity

Developing Authentic Assessments

Community Showcase as Collective Dialogue

• Students engaged in

dialogue with

community members

• Validating experiences and ideas

• Immediate feedback

and reflection

Response to Alienation

•Writing is the process of becoming yourself in a

world that alienates you

Authentic Audience

•“It is through writing for others…that we come

to know and love ourselves, that we

come to be empowered over our

own texts, and ultimately, our own

lives.”

Self-Healing

•“Critical writing … plays an explicit and self-referential role in self-healing and self-definition for urban

youth.”

Implications for Teaching:

Writing/Speaking as Healing Dialogue

“… how to communicate better and stand up for what I believe!”

“… we have a voice and we need to speak up before it’s too LATE!”

“…when we give students a place/chance to speak they have really important things to say!”

“The youth have an amazing potential to empower”

“ … to listen to my children, give them a voice, and to be an advocate for them.”

“…about police brutality and domestic violence. I learned how it effects my community, and how we need to step up and take action with dialogue.”

Implications for Teaching: Creating

Opportunities for Dialogue and Empowerment

Inquiry Reflection:

Expanding notions of literacy

•Use of technology

•Collaboration

•Navigate complex literacy environments

•Agency/empowerment

•Critical Inquiry

•Knowledge of Cultural/Community History

•Critical Synthesis

Questions / Feedback?