911 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2019
    1. White people have been damaged in becoming white, and this damage informs the ways white people move through the world. White people must be ready to work with that wreckage as we seek out better, more human ways to be in relationship to white supremacy.

      One on hand, this is a pretty bold assertion -- all white people is assumed in this sentence. Painting large brush strokes like that is always precarious. On the other, the second line is very poetic and attuned to the nature of change.

    2. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you are using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    3. Still, I worry none of these actions listed above actually help me figure out my problem

      DiAngelo argues that white people should try to "be less white." I wonder how Tanner feels about that idea, which seems markedly different than understanding whiteness as a racial identity rife with challenges.

    4. Yes, it seemed fair to evoke Joan’s reaction to my proposal. Still, my principal turned to Joan almost compulsively. My principal placed the burden of approving or rejecting my project about whiteness on a Black person, even though it was my principal’s job to sign off on the work.

      This is such a powerful example. Has anyone else been in a position where they automatically asked for a person of color's opinion before stating their own?

    5. thought he was being racially conscious by deferring to people of color—Black students in this case—when issues of race came up.

      This is part of that exhausting burden of shouldering mentioned earlier.

    6. he reacted with aversion to the idea that I might use Black Boy to provoke an exploration of white supremacy with my white students in 11th-grade English.

      Reading the work of black authors is not just about making black students feel included.

    7. Why did I act white?

      Black people hear this consistently from other black people. But it's rare for me to hear a white person ask himself this, and it's very interesting.

    8. that actually impedes the efforts of antiracism work with white people.

      People are more than lists of privileges and we are not done with the work once we've checked all of the boxes.

    9. White people are haunted by race, too, whether it is recognized or not.

      The self-doubt of not deserving advantages and privileges, imposter syndrome, guilt, shame...

    10. I worry that white folks, with eagerness to reconcile race, ignore or look past the internal conflict at the core of white racial identity.

      I think this eagerness to reconcile race refers to the strong urge to separate the individual from the atrocities of one's race, ie. not all white people. Even if logically it goes without saying that an individual isn't responsible for an entire group, the tendency is to take this very personally.

    11. The Whiteness Project

      Is this the project?

    12. You talk so white

      And if he talked "black"? What would have the reaction been then, I wonder? I appreciate the storytelling here, of bringing us into an important moment, and being confronted by a student (in a way that clearly has resonated over time).

    13. Storytelling is, perhaps, an acutely useful tool for disrupting those logics.
    14. we don’t work to better understand ourselves.

      I tried to highlight this entire sentence but the page break broke my highlighter -- this insight seems important to me in this context of race and identity (and ultimately, how teachers in the classroom can become more attuned to race and equity and access). So, this is a note to myself (and you, if it is helpful) to come back to this sentence as an anchor point.

    15. This behavior places the burden (and promise) of disrupting white supremacy solely on people of color

      Hmmm. I'm not sure this is true, actually. There are many others who push against white supremacy who are white, who are organized and active, who confront it. Maybe not enough. We all need to do more. But to claim that the force of disruption is only people of color seems to overgeneralize the real world.

    16. creates dev-astation and death for people of color

      This is a pretty strong and powerful, and provocative, way to frame this piece. I had to pause here. To think about this. For it is true, but is it true for everyone who is white? Everyone who is not? This is a signal that this piece will push to us examine our own identities.

    17. Why did I act white?

      Powerful question; I appreciate this reflective stance in response to student comments and questions.

    18. use theater

      I love this use of theater and the physical nature of it (referring back to my notes about physicality above). In my own experience, I do think physical theater helps with really hard ideas and conversations. Sam talked about this a bit - at 48:13 he talks the way that "race is an embodied thing, it is an emotional thing and the one thing I love about theater ... you don't have to talk about race in these overaly rational ways that almost sometimes take us away from the deeply felt experience of it."

      He then describes more about the ways that he and colleague have recently been engages in an inquiry project using improv theater with elementary students.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJT1pZCMddA#action=share

    19. choosing and teaching texts that do celebrate multiculturalism, but leave white supremacy undisturbed

      I have been thinking about this on a personal level as I read children's books to my niece and nephew who are African American. It's not enough to just show black people doing great things - for example Jackie Robinson - without unpacking what it means to be "first" and what was in the way in the first place. I am still trying to figure out the right language to shift the narrative in a way that makes sense at 3 and 6 yo.

    20. has led to a confessional framework

      Yes, I have seen this happen; helpful to unpack this here. Wondering how my colleagues at local sites approach these conversations in the context of their work and institutes? What could we rethink and rework?

    21. haunting

      haunting/haunted

    22. hesitation

      hesitation/hesitating

    23. shoulder

      shoulder/shouldering

    24. xhausting

      exhausting

    25. grapple

      A lot of words in this essay are very physical, like grapple. I will note a few below that I highlighted as I was reading this.

    26. Dr. April Baker-Bel

      Dr. Baker-Bell was a Marginal Syllabus partner author during the 2017-18 "Writing Our Civic Futures" syllabus. Read "The Stories They Tell: Mainstream Media, Pedagogies of Healing and Critical Media Literacy" by April Baker-Bell, Raven Jones Stanbrough, and Sakeena Everett published in the January 2017 edition of English Education. Dr. Baker-Bell also recommended to the Marginal Syllabus team that we include this article in our current syllabus.

    27. Dr. Lamar Johnso

      Dr. Johnson is a partner author with this 2019-2020 LEARN Marginal Syllabus. We'll be reading and discussing Dr. Johnson's article “Where Do We Go From Here? Toward a Critical Race English Education” in June of 2020 as the concluding conversation of this syllabus.

    28. I’m white

      "When did you become white?" As a teacher educator, Sam asks some version of this question to his white pre-service English teachers during their coursework. The question serves as a prompt for a writing exercise and subsequent discussion. If you self-identity as white, you may want to consider, and perhaps also respond to, Sam's questions:

      • When did you become white?
      • And what and how have you learned from this?
  2. Oct 2019
    1. dominating logics of white supremacy.

      I'm curious to dig into this notion of the logics of white supremacy. One such logic is to confine the definitions of "racism" and "white supremacy" to overt actions of violence and gross forms of discrimination, while dismissing more subtle but pervasive forms.

    2. Their emotional lives are warped, and they don’t even know why.

      I visited my daughter's class last year- she's in fourth grade- and students were presenting poster sessions about famous Coloradans. Several of the students studied Chief Little Raven, including my daughter. In each poster session about the Southern Arapahoe Chief, white children would speak about the duplicitous actions of the whites and I was glad to hear the students talk plainly about violence and theft. I went home that day wondering how those white students were making sense of the profound messages their studies held for them about their own race.

    3. Overt white supremacist violence is an obvious expression of the problem of the white race. This explicit violence is easy to denounce. But, I wonder if something more subtle is already happening with those of us who have been made white in a white suprema-cist society.

      I grew up understanding acts of racial hatred and intimidation as "white supremacy." White tolerance for inequitable conditions, and the failure to investigate the ways white privilege perpetuates inequity are at issue here.

    4. separatefrom the issues of people of color is not encountered

      A key point in this piece and, to me, an important distinction in equity work.

    5. Mediate feels like the right word to use here.

      The author is explicit about trying to get a feel for a constructive way forward.

    6. White people need to be honest now, and honest in a way that doesn’t erase the work of scholars of color who have led in this area. I fear the silence of white people represses the real, complex weight of whiteness.

      This connects back to the comment I added earlier: this is an incredibly fine line to walk and we must be careful of decentering whiteness while also making room for the honesty of white people.

    7. I’m complicit and will never be absolved. So what else can we white people do?

      Yes. I am also complicit and I will never be absolved. This is the work of a lifetime.

    8. Here I was in a predominantly white school district, being assured that it was committed to antiracism. Still, nobody seemed to actu-ally want to talk about whiteness.

      While I never have taught in a predominantly white context, this echoes my own experiences in educational spaces, especially with my fellow white teachers and educators.

    9. 187Tanner > Whiteness Is a White Problemnary) stereotypes of people of color mediate white people’s understanding of race is helpful here. It might be easier for white people to see race in people of color because doing so—that is, mediating whiteness through people of color—gives white people a way out of confronting race and racism. To explore some of the ways that white people mediate race through people of color, I now turn to moments of my own racial story. These mo-ments, or stories, focus on experiences from my time as a high school English teacher and now as an English education scholar.A Story about Our White ProblemMy first teaching job forced me to grapple with my whiteness.I was hired to teach English and drama at a large, urban high school in a major city in the Midwest. It was 2003, and I was 23 years old. Cardinal’s3students were predominantly Black—Black students made up 65 percent of the overall school’s population.My experience as a teacher at Cardinal forced me to account for my whiteness. In my first year of teaching, students constantly reminded me that I was, in fact, white.

      My early teaching career also forced me to grapple with my whiteness. For the first time in my life, I had sustained, daily experiences of being the only white person in the room. I had already explored my whiteness through a mentor who encouraged me to name and grapple with my own internalized racism. I believe this allowed me to approach my students with a humility and awareness of my own racism.

    10. My intention is that this article be a signal to our field that white folks ought to more deliberately wrestle with whiteness, without making race always and only about people of color. In this way, white people might begin to better shoulder some of the work of disrupting white supremacy.

      I agree that this important work for white people to take up in educational spaces. However, I feel the danger of taking up all the air in the room as white people grapple with their own biases, behavior, and supremacy. In conversations about diversity, justice, equity, inclusion white people can eat up all the time with our feelings of white guilt. How do we allow for space for white educators to take on this work without taking up all the space for discussion? How do we do this work without silencing our peers of color who aren't as privileged as we are?

    11. sociocultural privileges

      I have found Robin DiAngelo's work to be helpful in my own racial identity work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwIx3KQer54

    12. I’m white and it feels like my responsibility to grapple with the prob-lem of my race

      I'm also white and will be annotating from this white identity.

    1. Choose books that are tribally specific.

      Teachers can connect the books to their own specific state or residence. This would allow for strong connections to be made amongst students, and even amongst the community.

    2. When teachers use Thanksgiving as the vehicle for their instruction about Native peoples, they are inadvertently locat-ing Native lives in the past

      Although not commonly thought, this statement is true. Rather than living in the past, teachers should be using activities that surround Thanksgiving as a way to reteach about Native peoples.

    3. The idea is that the quality of a story is improved when the person creating that story is an insider who knows what to share and how to share it with outsiders

      This is important.

    4. Teachers can make choices that do justice to Native stories by choosing books written by Native writers.

      Identifies a solution to the issue at hand.

    5. privileges

      Privellege v.s. Oppression

      Sterotypes such as this are harmful when reinforced in the context of literature.

    6. critical literacies perspective gives voice to how sto-ries are presented

      Allows for those who are directly impacted to have voice, and speak upon their own experiences from a first person perspective.

    7. Whose story is this? Who benefits from this story? Whose voices are not being heard?

      Crtical questions that aid in overall students understanding of Indigenous People.

      I found the question "whose voices are not being heard" to be the most impactful. It allows students to read beyond the text and realy assess where the root of the issue lies.

    8. rethink literature used to teach children about Indigenous peoples

      Issue being addressed throughout the article. Importance placed upon teaching students/children about Indigenous people.

    9. Teachers are critical in categorizing, selecting, and (re)presenting Indigenous communities through children’s literature

      Teacher's are given the opportunity to select literature for their students. It is expected for the literarture to be well-versed and fairly represent Indigenous communities. Societies greatest downfall is in the fact that we are not knowledgable on communities that differ from our own.

    10. unlearning

      I think the act of "unlearning" is an important takeaway. Although sterotypes are common in today's society, that does not justify them being used.

    11. being specific helps non- Native people learn that we are far more diverse

      Helps bridge the gap in societies current misunderstanding regarding Native people and tribal nations.

  3. Jul 2019
    1. We will explore concepts of trust-play-annotate-imagine-curate through reading, writing, moving, improvising, creating, noticing, reflecting, and being.

      Michelle's work connects with #marginalsyllabus

  4. Jun 2019
  5. educatorinnovator.org educatorinnovator.org
    1. We

      I'm interested to learn more about this "we" and how the group functions on an individual and collective level. I also read the title as a way for the members of the "we" to distinguish themselves and "how [they] do it" from other groups and how those groups do "it," which I'm assuming is teaching English with technology. Last note: I now have Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It" in my head as I begin the article, which is a plus.

    1. We unapol-ogetically state that schools not only are prison for Black girls but that schools are actively reproduc-ing slavery in its afterlife in English language arts. When Black girls’ identities, ways of learning, and leadership capacities are symbolically bonded by chains through a White-only curriculum, cultur-ally biased literary texts, and pedagogical standards, Black female students are in fact experiencing nor-malized racial violence.

      As a White educator, I am constantly reflecting on the ways I am complicit in normalizing racial violence. By naming it, I hope to dismantle it. I have to assume that my Whiteness will make me blind and I have to actively move myself into uncomfortable questions about my complicity and stay there so that I don't continue this cycle of violence.

    2. To minimize the lived experiences of Black girls demonstrates what Nigerian writer Chima-manda Ngozi Adichie called the danger of a single story: the complexity of Black girls’ lives reduced to a single, often stereotypical narrative weakens their humanity

      Here is another way this harms Black girls: there are very few children's books that focus on the relationship with Nature that feature children of color. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/05/the-lack-of-diversity-in-childrens-books-about-nature/590152/

    3. Many of these stories include or suggest that the protagonist is both White and female. This practice often prevents many Black female learners from en-visioning themselves as queens or princesses.

      As a white person teaching in a classroom with predominantly Black students, I was struck early in my career with the way my own racial identity and my students' racial identities were part of the readers experience--reading To Kill A Mockingbird together we had a collective moment of confusion when I realized that they were reading Scout, Jem, and Atticus as Black characters while I understood them to be White. It was my first realization that so many white authors describe white characters without mention of race and every other ethnicity is named. My White privilege had blinded me to this fact for my whole life.

    4. Black women writ-ers and poets, including Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Toni Morrison’s Be-loved,provide Black female students a purview into the narratives of pain, restoration, and Black suffer-ing from the voices of Black women.

      This is reminding me how I had a history of Education class in graduate school that included Song of Solomon as required reading and how powerful that was in my experience in that course. Makes me think more about the ways I might bring in literature by Black women into my current graduate teaching.

    5. freedom dreams
    6. As with Huckleberry Finn, Cinderella, and Snow White, English educators often regard liter-ary texts with predominately white characters as “credible” and “classic” examples of “appropriate” English literature.

      My African-American nephew recently worked on a hands-on STEM project at school that asked him to figure out how to get Rapunzel out of her tower. While maybe a great problem-solving project in many ways, these stories with white characters (not to mention the gender dynamics here too) continue to get replicated through the disciplines. This article has me wondering how a counter process could be used.

    7. chools are actively reproduc-ing slavery in its afterlife in English language arts

      A powerful statement for us as writing project educators to reflect upon and engage.

    8. In 1965, Nancy Larrick wrote the article “The All-White World of Children’s Books” in response to a five-year-old Black girl’s question regarding the invisibility of Black characters in children’s books

      That work is available online here (first 3 pages), and here (last 2 pages).

    9. Ngozi Adichie called the danger of a single story:

      This talk is a must-watch for educators today. https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg

    10. 12-year-old Black girl Marley Dias’s #1000BlackGirlBooks have worked to decriminalize lit-eracy for Black girls.

      This is a powerful example of youth activism that has helped shed a light on the scarcity of Black girl characters in classroom libraries and in the books English classrooms foreground. https://youtu.be/U2nN01Pwv_E

    11. Black girls who are in English education classrooms that deject them to learn from majority White literary texts and de-value works by Black women authors are facing modern-day forms of educational enslavement.

      The curriculum subtly teaches them they belong in a lower station while reinforcing for white students that their stories have primacy.

  6. May 2019
    1. 102English Journal 107.6 (2018): 102–108Jemimah L. Young, Marquita D. Foster, and Dorothy Hines

      Our thanks to partner authors Jemimah Young, Marquita Foster, and Dorothy Hines for contributing to the 2018-19 LEARN Marginal Syllabus! Bios for each partner author are included at the end of this article.

    2. Welcome to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus and our Month conversation! This is the second article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN." LEARN has been co-developed in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial edtech. Read the full 2018-19 syllabus here.

    3. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

  7. educatorinnovator.org educatorinnovator.org
    1. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education

      And thank you CITE! CITE is an open-access and peer-reviewed journal whose support for the 2019 Marginal Syllabus is most appreciated.

    2. Baker-Doyle, K. J.

      Thank you Kira Baker-Doyle! The Marginal Syllabus is most appreciative of partner authors who agree to have their scholarship publicly annotated to support openly-networked and interest-driven professional learning. Read more about Marginal Syllabus author partnerships.

    3. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    4. Welcome to the summer 2019 Marginal Syllabus and our fourth conversation! This is the fourth article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Connected Learning in Teacher Education." This Marginal Syllabus has been co-developed in partnership with the Connected Learning in Teacher Education (CLinTE) network, the journal Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open and collaborative web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education.

      What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial educational technology. Thanks for joining us this summer!

  8. educatorinnovator.org educatorinnovator.org
    1. Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education

      And thank you CITE! CITE is an open-access and peer-reviewed journal whose support for the 2019 Marginal Syllabus is most appreciated.

    2. West-Puckett, S., Smith, A., Cantrill, C., &Zamora, M.

      Thank you partner authors! The Marginal Syllabus is most appreciative of partner authors who agree to have their scholarship publicly annotated to support openly-networked and interest-driven professional learning. Read more about Marginal Syllabus author partnerships.

    3. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    4. Welcome to the summer 2019 Marginal Syllabus and our third conversation! This is the third article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Connected Learning in Teacher Education." This Marginal Syllabus has been co-developed in partnership with the Connected Learning in Teacher Education (CLinTE) network, the journal Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open and collaborative web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education.

      What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial educational technology. Thanks for joining us this summer!

  9. educatorinnovator.org educatorinnovator.org
    1. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education

      And thank you CITE! CITE is an open-access and peer-reviewed journal whose support for the 2019 Marginal Syllabus is most appreciated.

    2. Hsieh, B.

      Thank you Betina Hsieh! The Marginal Syllabus is most appreciative of partner authors who agree to have their scholarship publicly annotated to support openly-networked and interest-driven professional learning. Read more about Marginal Syllabus author partnerships.

    3. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    4. Welcome to the summer 2019 Marginal Syllabus and our second conversation! This is the second article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Connected Learning in Teacher Education." This Marginal Syllabus has been co-developed in partnership with the Connected Learning in Teacher Education (CLinTE) network, the journal Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open and collaborative web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education.

      What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial educational technology. Thanks for joining us this summer!

  10. educatorinnovator.org educatorinnovator.org
    1. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education

      And thank you CITE! CITE is an open-access and peer-reviewed journal whose support for the 2019 Marginal Syllabus is most appreciated.

    2. Watulak, S. L., Woodard, R., Smith, A., Johnson, L., Phillips, N., & Wargo, K.

      Thank you partner authors! The Marginal Syllabus is most appreciative of partner authors who agree to have their scholarship publicly annotated to support openly-networked and interest-driven professional learning. Read more about Marginal Syllabus author partnerships.

    3. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    4. Welcome to the summer 2019 Marginal Syllabus and our first conversation! This is the first article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Connected Learning in Teacher Education." This Marginal Syllabus has been co-developed in partnership with the Connected Learning in Teacher Education (CLinTE) network, the journal Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open and collaborative web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education.

      What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial educational technology. Thanks for joining us this summer!

    1. bit.ly/2cyzCfq

      I didn't notice this in my first read. It is a link to a lesson plan on Read Write Think. It strikes me that the kind of social annotation we're engaged in here could help groups of teachers share their reactions to these plans and results from teaching them.

    2. Similarly, the counter-narrative allows the researcher and participants to study and name a reality inconsistent with what might be consid-ered the norm or pervasive otherwise. A recurrent theme of this body of work is that the narrative and counter-narrative should be captured by the researcher, experienced by the research partici-pants, and told by people of color. (542)

      A great lens for teachers and school leaders.

    3. Since then, Michelle Alexan-der and others have shown in their research that the prison incarceration rates increased full-blown to 600 percent from the mid-1960s until the 2000s to now reflect a “racial caste system” (Alexander 2).

      It is so important that Alexander's work foregrounds this piece. The problem of mass incarceration must guide the decisions teachers make in the classroom. Her writing should change syllabi, revise rubrics and rearrange the furniture in classrooms.

    4. For Step 2, I shared two kinds of research: (1)the knowledge that we already possess and know from our own experience, and (2) the knowledge that is gained from formal research in the exterior world by seeking articles, books, news-papers, magazines, and peer-reviewed online sites.

      Highlighting the importance of the knowledge we already possess revalues the voices of the students and the stories they can gather from family and community members.

    5. P]eople need to read, write, and speak in certain sorts of socially sanctioned ways if they have any hopes of confronting problematic texts or producing informative and empowering ones.

      The hope with new technologies is that we can continually press forward in negotiating what is socially sanctioned. As norms for political discourse change with the advent of new media, how can we put our fingers on the scales of justice to advance equity? I hope we can advance this type of writing.

    6. The students’ persistence in the quest for change

      Everardo shares more about this persistence and the long labor of this work in the discussion with the authors (start around 4:00 as he starts to describe more about the context): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpJZo8uKKbg

    7. to tell a counternarrative

      This notion of counternarratives is a strong core theme throughout the LEARN Marginal Syllabus readings this year, https://educatorinnovator.org/campaigns/literacy-equity-remarkable-notes-learn-marginal-syllabus-2018-19/

    8. Everardo Pedraza and R. Joseph Rodríguez

      Our thanks to partner authors Everardo Pedraza and Joseph Rodriguez for contributing to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus! A short bio of each author is included at the end of this article. And a Connected Learning TV webinar with both partner authors, and regular Marginal Syllabus participants, will go live on Tuesday, May 7th (and will be included in this annotation, too).

    9. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    10. Welcome to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus and our Month conversation! This is the second article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN." LEARN has been co-developed in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial edtech. Read the full 2018-19 syllabus here.

  11. Apr 2019
    1. These examples demonstrate Kara’s efforts to help her students critically examine place and see themselves as actors in creating a “consequential geography” (Soja, 2010, p. 1), particularly of the spaces they call home.

      This seems most important ....

    2. Kara also required her students to explore food options available in a one-mile radius around their school to determine whether they were part of a food desert

      Maybe she did this but it would be neat to see this as a map ... maybe even a layered map, with student narratives overlayed on top (like with ThingLink or something)

    3. Urban spaces, for example, are dense ecologies with complex networks of materials (both “natural” and human-made) and histories of race, class, and power dynamics (e.g., changing neighborhood demographics, systemic housing discrimination).

      and maybe history is another layer in this dense geography -- what has happened before echoing (for good or for not) into what is happening now in any given space ...

    4. teacher inquiry group focused on cultivating culturally sustaining ELA pedagogy

      Noting that these educators have been working with each other in an inquiry context.

    5. Kara cultivated her students’ urban literacies by encouraging them to draw from their local knowledge of self, culture, and place; to critically situate their local knowledge in broader sociopolitical contexts; and to craft counter narratives

      She does this masterfully too -- listen to her describe the way she supports youth in following shared inquiries and discovering for themselves the interconnected elements -- start around 15:45 with Chris's question and go to 29:45

      https://youtu.be/Gq9AQvjh_PY

    6. A pedagogy of spatial justice, then, supports the development of urban literacies

      I find this really interesting; how inquiring into (spatial) justice itself supports literacy development. A powerful notion that speaks to the ways we develop literacy socially and communally and based on shared purpose.

    7. Soja describes spatial justice in urban contexts as “fighting for the right to the city” (p. 6).

      The Right to the City Alliance has turned this work from lefebvre, and turned it into a movement. I have cited their work in a previous class I taught. Find out more about them: https://righttothecity.org/,

      and here's a video from them: https://vimeo.com/87908751

    8. Kara also required her students to explore food options available in a one-mile radius around their school to determine whether they were part of a food desert. In the five blocks around the school, Kara’s students found one grocery store whose selection was “not great,” three gas stations, a drugstore, a corner store, and a bulk candy store. Through an explicit examination of these places in the community, Kara foregrounded her students’ local knowledge alongside other mentor texts and asked her students to “read” and interpret these places in their neighborhood in the same way.

      This is a kind of reading assignment that can help students see the transferability of the thinking strategies we bring to both our neighborhoods and the texts we use to study them.

    9. As teachers like Kara cultivate urban literacies through a pedagogy of spatial justice

      One of my big takeaways from this reading, which for me includes the conversation we had about the text in the webinar (embedded below), is the importance of Tara's inquiry stance. When she was asked to teach using Engage New York's Common Core-aligned curriculum, she asserted both her agency and her curiosity by inviting her class to research and address an issue that resonated with them. To me, her process as a teacher is instructive. https://youtu.be/Gq9AQvjh_PY

    10. These responses allowed students to position themselves as agentive actors in the complex network of local and global dynamics contributing to food quality, obesity, and equity in their neighborhoods.

      Literacy here fosters agency for youth as they understand their place in complex systems.

    11. In one of the first activities of the unit, students wrote and performed spoken word poems about their neighborhoods (e.g., important/noteworthy intersections). However, they also complicated negative stereotypes of the South Side; for example, one student, Malcolm, wrote

      This seems like a replicable way to ask youth to develop counter narratives at the same time they develop their voice as writers.

    12. It is situated in a community encompassing multiple neighborhoods where there has been little construction or infrastructure updates since the 1930s beyond a large public housing project constructed in the 1950s. At that time, the population shifted from 6 percent to 86 percent African American. It is now 99 percent African American, and over half the population lives at or below poverty level.

      This specific explanation reminds me how important it is for us to unpack the word "urban" when we talk about urban schools. Understanding the power of Kara's teaching moves requires us to understand how those moves are responsive and community-specific.

    13. Explorations of urban literacy have attempted to extend “the focus on literacy from school-sponsored practices and events . . . to situate and resituate literacy across political and educative conditions and situations that involve children, youth, and/or adults of color” (Kinloch, 2011, p. 2)

      Extending the focus on literacy to non-traditional texts, events and places is vital equity work. We have to understand how biased the traditional framing of literacy is.

    14. greater control over how the spaces in which we live are socially produced

      An excellent example of this, also in Chicago, is the Mexican-American area known as Pilsen. One way the community has taken control is through the development of street murals, described here: https://interactive.wttw.com/my-neighborhood/pilsen/art-as-activism.

  12. Mar 2019
    1. Cultivating

      This open access version of "Cultivating urban literacies on Chicago's South Side through a pedagogy of spatial justice" is being publicly read, annotated, and discussed as a part of the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus. To learn more about this project and discussion, click Page Notes (above) to access additional information and linked resources.

    2. AndreAVaughan■rebeccA woodard■nAthAn c. phillips■kArAtaylor

      Our thanks to partner authors Andrea Vaughan, Rebecca Woodard, Nathan Phillips, and Kara Taylor for contributing to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus! Additional biographical information about the authors is included at the end of this article. And a Connected Learning TV webinar featuring all the authors will be broadcast on Tuesday, April 2nd and also embedded in our annotation conversation, too.

    3. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    4. Welcome to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus and our April conversation! This is the sixth article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN." LEARN has been co-developed in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial edtech. Read the full 2018-19 syllabus here.

    1. the experience of Native peoples across time

      Through the companion interview of Debbie on CLTV, I also noticed I was reflecting more on the experience of Native peoples across space as well. In the interview she discusses the fact that all native/indigenous people do not look alike and you very likely have indigenous students in your class without even knowing it. This definitely got me thinking about the indigenous populations here in the Philadelphia and mid-Atlantic region.

    2. President lincoln

      In the CTLV discussion with Debbie Reese, she talked about the mass hanging/execution of 38 Dakota men in 1862 signed off by President Lincoln was in office. She says she looks for it's mention in any book about Lincoln created for youth and has yet to see it. I had to look it up to understand more myself having no knowledge of it. Here are Wikipedia I found it under Dakota War 1862: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_War_of_1862

    3. 500 federally recognized tribal nations in the United States today

      I think it's so important for us to be aware of and to teach about these intricacies. It's important that we recognize whose land we're on. One resource I like to use is the map at Native Land.

    4. Indigenous Peoples Day

      In the neighboring town, middle school students pushed and argued for this change, which has had some ripple effect in our communities. read more

    5. Native nationhood. Without this recognition, our status as sovereign nations whose people were—and are—Indigenous to this continent are erased

      I so appreciate having this formulation made explicit. Failure to recognize native nationhood is erasure. Thank you.

    6. Native nationhood

      This reminds me of an NPR article I read a few years back about more historically accurate maps of the Native American Nations. The type of research and composition that lead to the development of these maps could guide the development of research and composition efforts in schools. I like the article because it points to a more accurate historical reference as well as activist work of a young person.

    7. When teachers use Thanksgiving as the vehicle for their instruction about Native peoples, they are inadvertently locat-ing Native lives in the past.

      This is something that feels both subtle and horribly pervasive in the way we think about Native people, always presenting them in historical contexts rather than as part of the modern world.

    8. Another problem is the “myths, legends, and folktales” books that are marketed as Native. They are ubiquitous and mostly written by people who are not, themselves, Native.

      While there is much we need to unlearn in schools about Native people, the challenge of unlearning is compounded by a supply and demand issue with publishers and teachers who expect their literature about Indigenous cultures to match the general stereotypes we've been raised on.

    9. Language Arts Lessons

      This open access version of "Critical Indigenous Literacies: Selecting and Using Children's Books about Indigenous Peoples" is being publicly read, annotated, and discussed as a part of the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus. To learn more about this project and discussion, click Page Notes (above) to access additional information and linked resources.

    10. #OwnVoices

      Click here to read the latest tweets tagged #OwnVoices.

    11. American Indians in Children’s Liter-ature (https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com)

      "Established in 2006, American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) provides critical perspectives and analysis of indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books, the school curriculum, popular culture, and society." Visit the site to read book reviews, Native media, and more.

    12. Debbie Reese

      Our thanks to partner author Debbie Reese for contributing to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus! A short biography of Debbie Reese is included at the end of this article, and you can also learn more about her here.

    13. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    14. Welcome to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus and our March conversation! This is the fifth article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN." LEARN has been co-developed in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial edtech. Read the full 2018-19 syllabus here.

    1. The Chicago Learning Exchange (CLX) is developing this guide to help practitioners put the theory of connected learning into practice. We are sharing this draft to:

      • Apply the guide by enabling you to share your own insights and reflections. Use annotations to share thoughts and questions inspired by the guide.
      • Encourage interaction and peer professional learning by enabling you to reply to the comments of others. Reply to other people's annotations.
      • Invite feedback to help improve the guide. Use annotations to share resources and suggestions.

      Thank you for engaging with the guide, your own practice, and with each other. On the last page of this draft, please add your name and organization so that we can add you to the list of contributors.

    1. I started seeing myself as a strong Black male, and smart. My mind started thinkin’ I’m someone makin’ a difference.

      This is powerful insight.

    2. counter images that falsely portray their intellec-tual abilities, academic acuity, cultural competencies, and sociohistorical realities.

      I am thinking of how the recent trend in adolescent literature is finally doing some of this -- showing us the lives and thoughts of people from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and how valuable that is for understanding each other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-huIZghog8o

    3. Out here, I don’t worry ’bout that

      Such a stark contrast between sense of identity inside the school vs outside in the community/world. How do we as teachers find a way to bring those worlds together in meaningful ways? This is what we need to be considering ... (as we are, here, and elsewhere). His voice here is a powerful reminder of that.

  13. Feb 2019
    1. Thank you for contributing to the development of CLX's Connected Learning Guide. We'd love your help with three things:

      1. Share your reactions to any part of the document. We welcome praise and constructive critiques.
      2. Share recommendations of resources that you think should be added.
      3. Be interactive. Use this as a platform for peer professional learning.

      Lastly, if you came to this document online, be sure to tell us who you are by adding an annotation on the last page so we can list you (name and org) in the contributors section.

      Thank you!

    1. We focus on how their engagements in nonschool, community-based, social justice initiatives represent strategic attempts to resist and counter deficit narratives or ideologies

      Connected Learning connections?

    2. rown v. Board of Education dec

    3. We agree with Mann’s and Gonzalez’s beliefs about public education and the need to provide opportunities for people to actively participate in a democratic, multiracial, and multiethnic society.

      I agree, too. I wonder how the Charter School debate plays out in this, though. Charter Schools are public schools, but they exist off to the side. Do they also contribute to the greater good? The ethics of what happens to existing public schools as Charter Schools siphon off resources is a real debate.

    4. Tanja BurkhardUniversity of PittsburghCarlotta PennThe Ohio State University

      Here's our Connected Learning TV webinar with partner authors Valerie Kinloch, Tanja Burkhard, and Carlotta Penn, also featuring regular Marginal Syllabus participants Michelle King and Cherise McBride - enjoy! https://youtu.be/XzK4jD3QaaY

    5. Our narrative process of listening to, documenting, and analyzing their stories allowed us to access rich layers of data about how they voiced and storied their experiences in the world.

      I wonder again how we might bring in these methods of data collection into teacher/school data analysis practices...rather than allowing the standardized testing data reign supreme.

    6. “understanding of the purpose of school, particularly the personal, social, and work preparation benefits”

      One thing that occurs to me is the way school can sometimes be more interested in other purposes of school: socialization (follow these rules or else) rather than on the purposes listed here.

    7. mphasizing physical space, we believe space plays a crucial role in understanding adolescent literacies.

      Is it emphasizing space as much as networks? Social network analysis conceptualizes schools as a "network in a box." It is by nature a closed network. This matters in terms of conceptualizing what is happening in the learning of our students.

    8. street, B. V. (1984). Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture: Vol. 9.Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press
    9. We rely on Street (1984), who distinguishes between two dominant, competing models of literacy—the autonomous and ideological. The autonomous model, which views literacy as a set of discrete skills, “disguises the cultural and ideological assumptions that underpin it so that it can then be presented as though they are neutral and universal and that literacy as such will have ... benign effects” (Street, 2003, p. 77). On the other hand, the ideological model understands literacy not as neutral, but as “always embedded in socially constructed epistemological principles. It is about knowledge: the ways in which people address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, and being” (Street, 2003, pp. 77–78).

      I really appreciate this framing of the definitions of literacy: wondering how I can personally make this more visible in my work with teachers around literacy.

    10. They used literacy to: (1) interrogate their racial-ized experiences inside and outside school, and (2) produce counternarratives to popular assumptions about Black youth from low-income urban communities.

      I wonder about how adoption of CCSS support and/or undermine the need for this type of soul-affirming literacy work.

    11. bombarded with standardized tests

      It is not only this bombardment but the attendant stress and depersonalization that comes with these standardized tests.

    12. dealing with Souls and not with Dollars”

      One way Michigan has been addressing this idea is by trying to get at equity in school funding. Hopeful our new legislators in all our branches will help make this happen: https://www.fundmischools.org/

    13. Valerie KinlochUniversity of Pittsburgh

      Our thanks to partner authors Valerie Kinloch, Tanja Burkhard, and Carlotta Penn for contributing to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus! A Connected Learning TV webinar featuring all three partner authors will be broadcast on Tuesday, Feb 5th, with the video also embedded here in our annotation conversation. Brief bios for all three partner authors are also included at the end of this article.

    14. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    15. Welcome to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus and our February conversation! This is the fourth article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN." LEARN has been co-developed in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial edtech. Read the full 2018-19 syllabus here.

  14. Jan 2019
    1. Kalir (in press)

      It's an honor to be cited by Maha and Autumm in their paper! This particular article was published at the end of 2018 as "Equity-oriented design in open education." Here's the journal's version as well as an open access preprint.

    1. Wenger’s (1998) useful concept of constellations of communities of practice is important for understanding the significance of belonging, shared identity, and learning about matters of practice that teachers self-identify as necessary to their ongoing development.

      Important concepts. Also, in online places, we often refer to the idea of Affinity Spaces, which has similar resonance. From Gee's work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_space

    2. ocial justice teaching

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B29PLiltESs Social Justice is at the heart of our mission statement for the Western Massachusetts Writing Project -- all programs designed through WMWP must reflect our mission statement. This all comes out of work done years ago with NWP's Project Outreach, whose resonance continues at our site today.

    3. National Writing Project (NWP)

      As I'm thinking jotting notes about what "urban" connotes in this text and what it means to me, I'm reminded of my one and only experience attending the NWP's Urban Sites conference. Unlike other conferences I'd attended hosted by various organizations, this literacy conference foregrounded equity. I remember Black educators remarking during the close of the conference that they felt heard at the urban sites conference in ways they never did at other kinds of convenings. Since urban is so often used interchangeably with negative terms, I want to think more about how it could mean equity-focused, or be related to a predisposition to listening for understanding amidst diverse perspectives.

    4. urban schools given the pressures of high-stakes accountability systems and endemic deficit perspectives on students and their communities that frequently permeate urban schools

      Here "urban" seems to be synonymous with troubled.

    5. teaching in urban schools

      In our conversation about this piece the authors discussed how the word "urban" has come to mean all kinds of things when we discuss the contexts for teaching and learning. Reader respondents also asked what the article meant by "urban." On my second read through this piece, I want to pay attention to what the term signifies here at the same time I pay closer attention to what the word means for me. I've described the schools I work in as urban for so long, I can become more intentional about what I hope to communicate about the place, the students and the teachers' experiences.

    6. Allison Skerrett, Amber Warrington, and Thea Williamson

      Our thanks to partner authors Allison Skerrett, Amber Warrington, and Thea Williamson for contributing to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus! A short bio for each scholar is included at the end of this article. Also, all partner authors joined Marginal Syllabus readers and facilitators in a Connected Learning TV webinar about this article that will be available to view via Educator Innovator on Tuesday, January 8th - please watch as a complement to reading and annotating this important article!

    7. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    8. Welcome to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus and our January conversation! This is the third article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN." LEARN has been co-developed in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial edtech. Read the full 2018-19 syllabus here.

  15. Dec 2018
    1. We are allwriters
    2. spoken word poetry
    3. The youth will lead the revolution.

    4. multiple genres

    5. ee themselves as writers

    6. The work that we do in Writing Our Lives can serve as a site of healing and for resisting and working against violence.

    7. Parents and community members understood writing to be the timed writing tasks for standardized exams or the demonstration of the conventions of writing on school assignments,

    8. here was, however, deep frustration with the current state of education for African American children by several community members and parents, including me

    9. mentors

    10. I define radical youth literacies as ways of knowing, doing, writing, and speaking by youth who are ready to change the world

    11. From his bedroom to his neighborhood streets, he wrote and composed music lyrics, uploaded audio files, and directed music videos.

    12. Writing Our Lives

    13. Seeingand Honoring Youth Writers

      A recorded discussion with the author about this work and article can now be found now at CLTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU9U9qEfKhk

  16. Nov 2018
    1. arcelle M. Haddix

      Our thanks to Dr. Marcelle Haddix for contributing to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus! To learn more about Dr. Haddix, please read her bio at the end of this article.

    2. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    3. Welcome to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus and our December conversation! This is the second article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN." LEARN has been co-developed in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial edtech. Read the full 2018-19 syllabus here.

    1. In our remaining space, our goal is to open expansive conversations among English educators and researchers about supporting students’ well-being and positioning in classrooms.

      I believe the introduction of texts like Christopher Bell's TED Talk, "Bring on the female superheroes!" and reading activities like the Twitter think aloud in the video below shift students' positioning to an agentive position, where they can choose to shape public discourse. https://youtu.be/bwbkhqlD2XE

    2. Testimony, Witness, and Trauma as a Lens on Healing

      I'm reminded of Bronwyn LaMay's work Personal Narrative, Revised: Writing Love and Agency in the High School Classroom

      We annotated a chapter from that book a few years back: https://educatorinnovator.org/writing-love-and-ourselves-in-the-classroom-and-beyond/

    3. our classrooms

      I appreciate Antero and Elizabeth's use of "our classrooms" throughout this piece; we are in this together.

    4. In classrooms, testimony to experience is always present, whether explicitly invited or authorized, as the bodies of teachers and students tell stories of connection, disconnection, care, dismissal, belonging, and exclusion.

      This seems like a real anchor point of the piece for me ... how to ensure our classrooms are spaces where this kind of sharing and understanding, and compassion and empathy, might happen.

    5. Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster felt by a nation through the images and stories in the media.

      And later, through deeper narratives

  17. Oct 2018
    1. The days and weeks that followed the historic night only furthered the flood of teachers expressing concern and uncertainty.

      https://youtu.be/oAVO9H264aw

      Antero Garcia provides background on the writing of this piece in this clip from the full Educator Innovator webinar.

    2. t is the oppressive and symbolically violent use of the essentials of our discipline—words, rhetoric, and modes of communica-tion—that sticks to us most in the ongoing aftermath of the election

      Words matter.

    3. we also recognize that some readers did

      Good to acknowledge this. The votes didn't come out of nowhere. They came from within various communities, and communities of practice.

    4. I am struggling with how to teach today and the next few days.

      This sounds like something I said to my wife. And she said to me. And we all said to each other.

    5. not prepared to address the intersections of healing, politics, and emotion in classrooms.

      This seems like an overseen dimension of teacher prep, right? As if teaching can occur in a vacuum and emotions need not be addressed or recognized in the classroom, let alone be brought in explicitly and handled with sensitivity.

    6. If you are joining a Marginal Syllabus conversation for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to annotate for the first time, here are a few useful notes and resources:

    7. Welcome to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus and the October/November conversation! This is the first article we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Literacy, Equity + Remarkable Notes = LEARN." LEARN has been co-developed in partnership with the National Writing Project (NWP), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Hypothesis. The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation via open web annotation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. What's "marginal" about the Marginal Syllabus? We partner with authors whose writing is contrary to dominant education norms, we read and annotate in the margins of online texts, and we discuss educational equity using open-source technology that’s marginal to commercial edtech. Read the full 2018-19 syllabus here.

    8. Antero Garcia and Elizabeth Dutro

      Our thanks to partner authors Antero Garcia and Elizabeth Dutro for contributing to the 2018-19 Marginal Syllabus! Learn more about Drs. Garcia and Dutro by reading their bios at the end of this article.

    1. But if you are in the US, your career will survive completely even if you never read a single article by someone not from your culture, not in your language.

      What an important issue to point out. I wonder how the #marginalsyllabus could help with non-dominant scholarship? We should certainly interrogate why other cultures' scholarship is seen as less when we so publicly struggle with our public ed systems.

    1. There must be a better system, and I would have hoped that bright minds in Washington, D.C., could sit down and work out a solution that takes into account all of the concerns that have been raised.

      All the more reason that voting is important -- they are our elected officials.

    2. Will you ask them the hard questions, and tell them that you will hold them to their words, or that they should seek a different sort of employment? Will the new freshmen class of Congress learn to just yes us continually until the roar fades to a whimper, which is apparently rule #2 in the Congressional handbook? We all know rule #1, and look where that has gotten us to. Our school students deserve better. Immigrant families deserve better. We deserve better.

      The transition to asking people how they will vote in response to the dizzying 24 hour news cycle is a key strategy that I appreciate here.

      Will you remember that children in cages were a thing on the news, and a policy initiated by our government?

      Will you remember that violence against women in the workplace was minimized, as has been our tradition?

      Will you accept "thoughts and prayers" again as a response to the shooting of unarmed people in a place of worship?

  18. Jun 2018
    1. We live in dark times. Many people want to stand up for their own rights and the rights of others, but feel unsure about how. Ms. Smalls’ experience, like that of two brave women in Montana last month, teaches us that sometimes knowing one’s rights and speaking out with confidence delivers truth to abusive power.

      Finding teachable moments in the darkest of places.

    1. Here are some issues I have as this annotatory process grows.

      1. If the annotation continues over a period of weeks, then how can we attend to it?
      2. If an annotation flashmob's mentality is "one and done", then should we not say that from the beginning?
      3. How can we keep the spirit of care and vulnerability as issues become more fractious and as weaker ties begin to crowd into the annotation space?
    2. Critical Digital Literacies

      I am more and more drawn to the work of Damon Centola on the spread of 'behaviors' through networks. I would like to substitute "behaviors' for literacy and begin to apply Centola's work in the classroom. He has a new book coming out on Monday and I have put a talk of his on Vialogues so that we can annotate that: https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/44449

      Aside: When an annotated space reaches a critical mass I think we need summary behaviors or further highlighting and notification procedures. Kevin has already done so in one post. We might call these emergent writing or emergent behaviors.

    3. Again, these experiences provided multiple opportunities for Black girls in the class to explore social issues across modalities and raise questions about audience, privilege, power, voice, and equity. The questions they raised in discussions and the work they produced drew on multiple literacies that were tied to their identities as Black girls.

      This work strikes me as important and reminds me that we can place black women writers and related equity issues at the center of our curriculum for all students. The stories and issues we deem worthy of study communicate their cultural importance.

    4. Please join me—and the other contributors to this issue—and continue the conversation

      Answering the call with this annotation activity .. thanks, Troy!

    5. http://knightlab.com/)

      Need to explore? Me, too.

      https://knightlab.northwestern.edu/

    6. create rich, ethnographic portraits of their homes, neighborhoods, schools, stores, and other spaces

      During one round of Hear My Home, I had taken my friend Anna's soundscape and refashioned it into a multimedia piece, complete with poem:

      Check out Anna's Soundscape on Zeega

    7. Rhythms of recent riots, pulses of contemporary protest marches, and the acoustics of American sit-ins serve as a starting point to explore the sonic intensities and politics of sound. In recent weeks, individuals have taken to the streets to demonstrate alliance with and affinity for making their collective voices heard.

      Found Poem from That Passage:

      starting pulse;

      the streets

      make rhythms of

      our voices, heard,

      the American acoustics

      of politics, march

      in protest, explore

      contemporary sound.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIZ-uG2UTgI

      (with apologies to Cassie and Jon)

    8. #hearmyhome” project

      Hear My Home

      f you are an educator, in what ways can you imagine incorporating and building soundscapes into your curriculum and practice as a classroom teacher? What benefits and/or constraints do you anticipate for yourself and/or your students?

    9. digital writing requires that we explore all forms of media as text worthy of analysis, especially when students are actively composing texts with numerous options such as these.

    10. Digital writing requires that we explore all forms of media as text worthy of analysis, including what could otherwise be dismissed as just ambient noise.

    11. Digital writing requires time, space, and attention, as well as an inquiry stance.

    12. et’s take a look at the future that’s happening right now

      If I may, I have a Flipboard Magazine that I try to curate pieces about writing, teaching, learning and technology -- and how digital writing is pushing the boundaries of composition.

      Along the Edges of Digital Writing

    13. What it means to teach the English language arts with websites, apps, and social media continues to evolve quickly, both in terms of the tools as well as in terms of the practices.

      And not all professional development has caught up -- this is the value of programs like EdCamp (where teachers lead the way) and the National Writing Project (my professional home as a teacher for the way ideas can bubble up from the classroom, and the 'teachers teaching teacher' is professional practice).