At my website, American Indians in Children’s Liter-ature (https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com
I loved this article and am SO GRATEFUL to Dr. Reese for her contributions to broadening the literary canon and making the world more aware of the story of Native nations.
While reading Jingle Dancer, which is set in the present day,show the Muscogee Nation website as a complementary source. Jenna’s house is in an everyday neighborhood and she is wearing clothes similar to kids in the classroom. She is a person of the present day.
I love this. Connecting past and present, using text sets that provides windows for outsiders to build more knowledge about the Muscogee Creek Nation.
choose books that are tribally specific (that name a specific tribal nation and accurately present that nation), written by Native writers, set in the present day, and rele-vant all year round, keeping Native peoples visible throughout the school year.
This article is motivating me not just as an academic, but as the mother of a pre-schooler to come in and do some reading or donate some own voices book to my daughter's preschool that presences the voice of Native peoples. We do that at home, but I'm thinking about broadening access.
I have been adding a “curtain” to Bishop’s (1990) “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors” metaphor when I talk or write about Native stories.
This is such an important addition. I had never thought about this, but it's so true. I think about my own cultural histories, and family histories and what can be told to the outside and what stays within our homes.
#OwnVoices stories—a hashtag created by Corinne Duyvis to describe a book that is written by someone who is of the particular culture being depicted
Love the #OwnVoices movement. So, so important.
They are ubiquitous and mostly written by people who are not, themselves, Native.
This is a huge problem -- who is telling the story
Whose voice is not heard in the way that stories are categorized? Whose ideologies are implicitly valued by categorical labels?
This is a second structural consideration (an extra-textual, important way of reading the world)
all three are creation stories, but the Christian story is treated differently
Yes. Ideologies & structures reflecting the dominant culture.
a critical literacies perspective gives voice to how sto-ries are presented and told about people and their history
Yes, not just what stories and whose stories, but how are stories being told.
even in early childhood, children are capable of asking these critical questions when approaching texts. Adding “Indigenous” to critical literacy asks readers to think of those questions when they read stories that have Indigenous characters in them.
This is really important. And, we need to present multiple perspectives rather than a single dominant discourse to children.
depictions of Native peoples as primitive or uncivilized are one of the reasons our nationhood is difficult to accept or understand.
Yes -- the dehumanization and idea of "primitive" non-European peoples is so pervasive -- against African indigenous people, native peoples in Latin America, etc. Such an important point.
We were not the first Americans, since Native nations pre-date the United States of America by hundreds of years.
This is a really great point. I wonder how Dr. Reese feels about the "First Nations" label of Canada for tribal nations.
our single most important attribute: Native nationhood. Without this recognition, our status as sovereign nations whose people were—and are—Indigenous to this continent are erased
YES. The recognition of native sovereignty is critical and when we deny and/or actively erase indigenous sovereignty (this was done with native Hawaiians as well), we are erasing their importance as nations and to the history of America
Most Native people prefer to name their specific tribal nation because being specific helps non-Native people learn that we are far more diverse than what the terms “American Indian” or “Native American” evoke
Yes. This really resonates with me, as Taiwanese-American -- there's such a collapsing of people of color into broad categories that don't honor the diversity within these broad racial/ ethnic categorizations, and even as Taiwanese-American, I struggle with that because I am of Chinese heritage and not indigenous Taiwanese. These distinctions matter.
unlearning stereotypical representations of Indigenous peoples and replacing harmful narratives with accurate information and understandings.
Yes! This is so key. There's so much unlearning to do and counter-narratives to offer, from a very early age.
student achievement in their communities
Yes, this is powerful -- that learning goes beyond classrooms to communities. When impact is felt in communities, this can help us to reclaim the ties between education and community empowerment. Maybe this is the way, we reclaim community-based, community-grounded education.
Because Black adolescents demonstrate excellence in schools, educators must af-firm Black life by encouraging students to produce counternarratives that reject deficit discourses about Blackness. And, yet, we are also aware that to encourage students to produce counternarratives is to also design learning spaces and culti-vate educational opportunities that are critical, engaging, sustaining, and loving.
Yes. Such a hard thing to do in the face of the commodification and dehumanization present in many public school systems. How do we actualize this vision in our schools? How do we systematize it?
I didn’t know I should see myself in it. Nobody told me.
Representation matters. When we don't see ourselves, we internalize that we don't matter. We may matter to us, but our stories don't matter enough to be taught.
Still I ask myself why was I not taught this in my early educational career.
Yes. As an Asian American, I wonder this as well. The invisibility of people of color, historically and in America feels like betrayal.
The garden represented the collaborative efforts of adolescents and community partners to enhance the spatial design of an empty lot, to provide access to fresh fruits and vegetables to residents in the area, and to create a positive space for ra-cially, ethnically, linguistically, and ably diverse people across the life span to work toward a shared purpose.
Purposeful work is powerful practice, literate practice & life practice.
They never even ask how they can help you succeed. Even askin’ what you wanna do in life. Those words never came outta their mouth. Now, there were a couple [who cared], but the majority were like “That poor Black kid, he ain’t got no chance” or “He just a statistic” or “Anybody love him?” They don’t think about how that make you feel.
Right. It's like they assume and except Black underperformance.
As Solórzano and Yosso (2002) remind us, historically disenfran-chised people must tell their stories to “shatter complacency [and] challenge the dominant discourse on race” (p. 32). Khaleeq is powerfully engaging in this work.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Really this article is giving me life right now.
“Our maps are stories. Signs of writing, literacy. That’s literacy. How we making sense of our world by writing ... mapping the community, getting in a room with strangers, listening, presenting stories.”
The most powerful literacy. Reading & writing their world.
Tellin’ our stories about who we are, our com-munity
Yes, reclaiming power and voice through counter stories.
Because of who they think we are. It’s easy for them to think we ah threat. ... That way they don’t have to admit we built the world. They know the truth.”
Yes. Yes. Such wisdom. All of this conversation is such gold.
“Our struggle to live never matters to other people,” is poi-gnant for a number of reasons. First, it points to his belief that Black lives and, by extension, Black history, struggle, and liberation, do not matter to others, or to say it more explicitly, to many White people
How do we build coalition community to show that our struggles matter to one another?
In school, like I don’t be feelin’ free.
Powerful.
Khaleeq talked openly about the presence of new buildings in the area (e.g., high-rise condominiums, office towers, corner stores, and supermarkets) and his belief that he and his family would be pushed out because of increasing housing costs.
The very real costs of gentrification
agency in negotiating structural forms of racism and inequity.
Yes, and this counter narrative is SO important. We have to do better recognizing youth agency, particularly Black youth agency and resistance, through an asset based lens.
this contestation is important because it demonstrates the valuable role of Black adolescents producing counternarratives to negative perceptions about who they are and what they allegedly can or cannot do.
Yes, the production of counter narratives is the telling of one's own story, in the face of that which is imposed upon us by the dominant master narrative!
where adolescents engage in literacy (space and place) is intricately linked to how they construct specific literate identities
Yes, I think that context often influences construction of content
literacies—as connected to multiple modalities and forms of communication.
The notions of literacies (rather than a single prescriptive literacy) & multi-modal forms of communication (the ideological model) are so critical for teachers to embrace. I'm always a little surprised when this notion occurs as completely groundbreaking for my new classes of preservice teachers every semester.
During their participation in community projects, they each interrogated narratives of failure that too readily get associated with Black males and often go unexamined in schools.
Unexamined and thereby internalized, often.
Urban public schools that serve a large demographic of low-income students of color are often on the chopping block when it comes to receiving adequate funding to renovate facilities, modernize technology, replace outdated books, hire teachers early, and ensure that all students have access to a full-time staff of nurses, therapists, and counselors.
Yes, this seems especially relevant as educators in Los Angeles, Oakland & Denver -- large urban public school districts have been forced to strike to ensure better working conditions for their students
it is dealing with Souls and not with Dollars” (p. 81). Indeed, the well-being of the souls ofstudents—where their innermost yearnings and potential for greatness lie
Yes, we need to move away from the commodification of education and towards a dehumanization in education
Long-term studies of this kind are important for un-derstanding how teachers’ learning needs remain steady, shift, and become more complex as they grow into their identities as English teachers.
Yes. As someone who does teacher identity research, I agree that this type of work is critical
Novice teachers like the participants in our study must be able to articulate and effuse professional confidence in the educational practices they know to be sound for students’ literacy development.
This is key. Being able to have, articulate and exude professional confidence is so critical, but I wonder how much of this confidence comes through feeling that you are well prepared and having a strong research (theory & praxis), knowledge & experiential grounding then I wonder how much is individual or expressed or understood culturally.
a major component of preservice teachers’ English methods courses center on collaborative inquiry into the tensions that often arise when preservice teachers request to enact instructional approaches learned in teacher education that conflict with the practices of their host cooperating teachers (CTs) and English departments
This explicit way of addressing the micro politics of student teaching is key! I want to integrate this more into our own teacher education program since I'm often asked about this when my former students are student teaching.
Preparing English teachers to teach in urban schools is a thoroughly sociopo-litical endeavor
Yes! And a failure to acknowledge the sociopolitical nature of teacher preparation is inherently a political stance
“counter-communities” of teachers “popped up” who had become conscious (Freire, 1970/2003) of the limited professional knowledge offered by their schools and demanded greater educa-tional justice for themselves and their students.
I so appreciate this "counter-community" and the agency and commitment Andrew showed in creating this at his site.
dehumanizing forms of professional development, including teachers’ mimicry of student behaviors, to com-municate their frustration to the deans
The deprofessionalization and dehumanization of this type of PD makes me so angry for these teachers. And I'm sure the frustration of the deans made them perceive the teachers as needing more help or "fixing"
Andrew, whose teacher education program grounded him in the importance of high-quality educational research and the practice of experts, found little legitimacy in the educational knowledge and expertise of the deans and thus had difficulty embracing the knowledge they offered
This seems like such an important contrast between Andrew and Octavia, whereas professional learning was a bridge between preservice & inservice for Octavia, the "professional development" that Andrew was forced to engage in was in stark contrast to the research-focused teacher preparation program background Andrew had and did not acknowledge who he was and the knowledge he brought to the setting.
fix’ the deficiencies they were seeing across the building.”
:( When teachers, students, schools are positioned as needing to be fixed instead of acknowledged for bringing assets, it's so discouraging. Yet, I know this is the norm rather than the exception.
“their . . . collective mission”
Yes, this idea of "their sort of collective mission" is telling and indicates a lack of buy-in, almost akin to a brainwashing?
“How do we build this democratically?” At the next meeting, she wondered aloud, “How do you teach self-assessment . . . in a way that is empowering to students?
What a telling shift from the how of implementation & logistics to the how of doing a practice in alignment with one's beliefs.
ringing the teachers’ experiences and professional learning to a wider audience
I so appreciate this-- it shows value of the knowledge and community created. This is an important inspiration to my own work.
The resultant framework was one that represented the group’s shared appreciative perspective on student writing but was permeable enough to enter the different teachers’ classrooms to be further negotiated and transformed to meet the uniqueness of teaching and learning preferences, needs, and constraints in each space
Yes, I love this common framework but flexibility within the framework to allow for individualization.
full and legitimate members of the community of practice (
Yes! Like, you aren't necessarily on the periphery because you're new. We bring different forms of knowledge to the community of practice.
fluid roles of expert-learner, serving primarily as a guide and provider of professional resources, such as readings, for the group to jointly consider
This idea of "fluid expertise" or expert-learner is such an important intentional stance for facilitators and educational researchers to take in working with teachers. This shows that we value their knowledge and expertise.
Octavia joined the inquiry group in her last semester in the urban teacher education program to bridge her transition from preservice to inservice teaching.
I love that this was a space of transition from preservice to inservice teaching
e teachers valued and built on what students were doing well in their writing, rather than focusing on errors or deficits within the writing.
I love this idea of an "appreciative" approach to writing feedback
Even with the legitimacy the district/NWP partnership gave to writing workshop practices
Yes, this seems like the district is working at cross-purposes (which happens often, particularly in larger districts). When accountability pressures are so high, I can see the tension based on these conflicting goals.
this institu-tional support did not secure the school-level curricular changes Jasmine had hoped would occur as a result of the partnership. Jasmine voiced her disappointment, saying, “Last summer, [the district] required that we go to at least like a few sessions of the NWP, and I had the idea that we would be doing writing workshop in the classroom, you know. They had us go to the NWP sessions, but we really didn’t do that” (Interview, 10/1/16)
This is so disappointing :(
With the district legitimizing writing workshop, as exemplified by its partnership with the NWP site, Jasmine felt greater agency at her school to offer alternatives to core ideas
Yes, district legitimization provides a structural support to embrace and enact professional learning
the teachers spent two hours inform-ing their self-study by reading self-selected texts
I love how this professional learning experience was drive by teacher choice
Rather than delivering content to the teachers, the NWP consultant provided teachers with time and material resources so that teachers could investigate issues and challenges related to writing workshop they had experienced in their teaching and had chosen to pursue as lines of inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999)
I am a huge fan of the NWP model that empowers teachers to investigate their own challenges and provides resources, time and support within community to address these challenges. That reflective space is so powerful
the malleable and vague nature of core ideas render them a powerful political tool that marginalized members of a community can use to work toward greater justice
This is really interesting, that the vague nature of the core ideas allow for more space to work towards justice...I never would have thought about it this way.
institutionally recognized learning opportunities can provide equity-oriented teachers with opportunities to pursue learning
This is an encouraging finding
they reflect the social and political inequalities under which they are created, circulate as “ambiguous, contradictory, and messy” constructs that can be variously employed to support different political objectives
This is key to me as communities aren't created equally and have to be negotiated
The literature also indicates that urban teachers most frequently receive a disempowering form of professional development from their school districts and schools.
This is really true in my experiences and I think it goes back to the idea of positioning. Given how urban schools and students are positioned, urban teachers are often positioned as needing to "get with the program" instead of as competent professionals who should have access to powerful learning spaces and opportunities to pursue their own questions and draw from their own professional knowledge.
moving beyond their schools to explore formal learning communi-ties to grow their thinking and practice with other like-minded colleagues
Yes, finding community among like-minded educators is KEY to staying in the field at every level.
. Thus, teachers concerned with being and becoming social justiceoriented teachers have had to negotiate with required professional development that was absent of these perspec-tives, or create their own pathways to the forms of professional growth they desired.
Yes! So agree with this -- I think that this can lead to feelings of isolation for social justice oriented teachers which push out justice oriented teachers from classrooms, and sometimes from education spaces altogether.
core values about the purpose of education, specifically literacy education as a tool for social change.
Before even getting into the article, I wonder how, as a teacher educator, I can support teaching candidates to develop these core values. Is this something that they share because of responses to individual prior experiences (or that are personal dispositions) or are these core values something that we can help develop, as a foundation for professional learning related to equity?
a continual process that is never “done.”
Yes, and one that should not be done alone, but one that benefits from community and coalition. These are tiring times and we need connections, breaks, and support to keep going.
the country and our field are faced with a moment of civic reckoning. A mandate, to recognize and guide youth’s politicized identities within classrooms, must be taken up by teacher educators.
Yes, and we've seen amazing examples of educators empowering youth's political activism and advocacy. We need to now take this and make this a movement rather than a moment
Teachers must extend such invitations as “critical witnesses” (Dutro, 2013) who not only listen deeply and compassionately but also analyze how students are posi-tioned in relation to power and oppression in schools and society, particularly when teachers are living the privileges of whiteness, economic stability, heterosexuality, citizenship, and other advantaged identities not shared by students.
Yes, and this is complex and vulnerable work which, in the context of increasing restrictions on Teacher Education programs is complicated and hard to teach (I mean it would be even without these restrictions, but is harder with them). Still, this is so important. I try to model this in my teacher education classroom and the election provided a rare opportunity for this, but it is also so emotionally exhausting
Trauma studies draws useful distinctions and relationships between shared, large-scale events and more personally experienced hardships (e.g., Caruth, 2010).
Yes, having personal connections to larger shared traumas, I resonate with the complexities of individual v. collective trauma myself as an educator and how to negotiate how different people experience trauma. One thing that emerged in my post-election conversations had to do with dismissal of (or lack of understanding perhaps) of certain individuals' (e.g. immigrant students & LGBT students) experiences of trauma from the election by other individuals who felt they had been through "real trauma" (e.g. Veteran students). Not sure if that makes sense to mention here, but it reflected the diversity of definitions of trauma in my post-election context.
perhaps because of their sometimes different disciplinary and theoretical roots, these areas may exist in parallel with one another, rather than in conversation.
Yes! Like a theory practice divide (or a practice-practice divide by discipline), yet essential knowledge for our teachers (and teacher educators)
teachers are generally not prepared to address the intersections of healing, politics, and emotion in today’s classrooms
Not only are teachers underprepared, often teacher educators are underprepared to do so, and we are woefully fearful that our words and and actions may be taken out of context and used against us. The fear climate created in these last 2 years is real.
we had our sup-portive networks
Supportive networks have been critical for me in negotiating tensions in teaching and teacher education, particularly those that have to deal with traditionally marginalized subgroups
not to bemoan the partisan differences that fracture U.S. civic discourse but to recognize the increased stakes for students and families who were already marginalized in the United States and to address the needs of all students in our English classrooms today
I don't know that we want to bemoan these partisan differences, but I think it's critical to acknowledge that the partisan differences that have fractured US civic discourses are part of those that put marginalized groups at greater risk. I would argue that the inability to engage in civic discourse actually has contributed to greater violence against these students and families & while perhaps it does us no good to bemoan it, acknowledging it and its after effects as more than discourse seems critical