Storytelling as Resistance

By Jerica Coffey

Representation and Reality

Coffey describes how he begins his writing unit with Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc as a representation that retelling the stories of people is important when you are considering who us telling the story. This text which discusses several generations of Puerto Rican women living in the Bronx and their encounters with crime and navigating raising their families. The political aspect of this book is that it "perpuates a pervasive myth that people living in poverty have conflict with the law due to bad personal choices" (Coffey, 300). 

Coffey's reasons for teaching nonfiction narrative writing:

1. It requires meshing different writing styles to produce a theme or argument. 

2. It helps students understand that nonfiction writing is storytelling. 

"The stories we hear and tell shape and define the say we relate to one another" (Coffey, 301).

With this in mind he then explains to his students how he wants to honor the voices of those who do not have control of their own story and to consider how it changes when you take the responsibility to give voices to these silenced and marginalized communities.

 

Pulling Apart Random Family

Coffey equips his students with the tools to analyze text as they dissect the voices represented and silenced from the mentor text he uses. 

Conventions he wants them to notice are:

1. Descriptive detail

2. Framing dialogue

3. Careful word choice

4. Imagery

5. Showing vs. Telling

Community Cultural Wealth

Text by Tara Yosso writer of Critical Race Counterstories Along the Chicana/Chicano Educatiobak Pipeline is utilized to help student navigate how to find wealth and positive representation in the experiences we have. 

"The range of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed, passed down, and used by communities of color to survive and resist oppression" (Coffey, 304). 

Definitions to help students comprehension of what community cultural wealth looks like realistically:

This in turn helps the students create carefully crafted interview questions that they will ask someone from their chosen community. Scaffolding the questions helps the student craft strong questions and follow-up questions to document the community stories. These interviews were then transcribed and further analyzed by the students to discover what the theme of the interviews were. The students looked for places where ideas were repeated and then asked to go back to the Community Cultural Wealth to identify examples of resilience and resistance in the person's life and where the Community Cultural Wealth was at play (Coffey, 308). After this process, the students were able to write narratives that authentically captures the stories of the communities at hand and they are shared with the community.

Through this lesson, students are able to explore and practice defining for ourselves what stories matter and how these stories get told (Coffey, 310).

This work in the classroom is very important in helping students feel seen and heard in the curriculum. While there is effort in diversifying the texts used in the classroom, equipping students with the critical thinking skills of identifying who's voice is being heard and who's voice is silences or misrepresented can be very powerful in increasing their cognitive thinking of various texts. It also allows for them to engage with analyzing stories they're being told to discover the impact of voices in a story. This form of amplifying voices, especially of those in marginalized groups can help students with their own representation and understanding of why it matters.  

Mentimeter

 

Mentimeter is one of my favorite formative tools to use in the classroom.

It is a quick way to collect student polls, survey the class, or even create a word cloud. 

How to use:

Step 1: Visit https://www.mentimeter.com

Step 2: Log in. I logged in with Google to create an account. 

Step 3: You will be brought to your dash that looks like this:

This is your dashboard and homepage. Any past mentimeters you created will be found in your recently viewed. 

Step 4: To create a new menti: Click "New Menti" in the black app button.

Step 5: You will be brought to a new page. Here you can choose the type of menti you want to create. You can make one from scratch, pick a template, and import from slides already made. 

I often click start from scratch, and then depending on the information I want from my students is the format of the mentimeter that I will use. 

You have many options such as: 

My favorites are the word cloud, Q&A, ranking, and quick forms. On the website, hovering your cursor over each option will give you an example of what the information will look like when created. 

Some examples are

Word cloud:

Pin on a picture:

Ranking:

Q&A:

When you have created your mentimeter to your choosing, you can share it with your participants.

You can share it as a link or QR code. You can also set limits to have them expire.

This is a great way to switch up paper Do Now's and make them more engaging with technology use! 

Final note: Mentimeter voting is anonymous for users, so be mindful to use it for formatives in which you are not looking for individual student progress but rather general collaborative participation. 

To Do.....

1. Finish writing narrative in an organized format
2. Edit and Revise
3. Make slides with imagery for speaking parts.
4. Record self!

Some motivational quotes for inspiration!

Virtual Notebook for Independent Reading

 

I value independent reading as a literacy tool within the classroom. I believe since we have entered a digital world, it is rare to see a student enjoying a good book. I want to encourage my students to be more independent readers. I believe that reading increases curiosity, literacy, and critical thinking. However, I have come to learn that encouraging my students to read have become a challenge. They will do it for the grade but through their reflections, I can see there is not much though being put into the reflections. Also, once they write a reflect and get the grade there is no building on the information, adding to the issue of critical thought being a lacking factor. I have noticed however, they will prefer low stake google form reflections over paper reflections. They spend more time thinking and clicking through. It also helps them with the idea that these metacognitive reflections are only intended to capture a quick snap of their thinking. It is only meant to be a recording of your thoughts, which can then expand further into critical thinking. So, I began to wonder, how can I turn these metacognitive records and make them more esstential, so eventually they can increase the level of critical thought. I discovered this Google Extension that allows for Google forms to become a list of organized responses in a Google document. I believe this could be a wonderful tool that can be introduced in phases to my students. They can begin with independent reflections to practice metacognitve thinking and since it is a Google doc, eventually this virtual notebook can become much more collaborative through activities. My goal is that if I can help my students become critical thinkers with their reading, they will want to read more. Creating this to be functional is now the challenge.

More information on meta-cognitive thinking. my students are able to highlight a quote in the text and then use their thinking stems "I think... I wonder.... I notice... and This connects to..." to make a record of their mental conversation with the text. I use this strategy with my MLL students as well. They can use their stems in Spanish as the primary focus is for them to learn critical thinking and literacy not the language. It requires a lot of modeling and repetition in practice, but eventually they learn to record very interesting and powerful annotations as they go through various texts. 

Let's have a conversation about Barbie....

I remember walking into Target or Walmart with my dad, trailing behind him to the media aisle. I happily followed him and waited for him to pick out a new movie to watch or a video game to play. I always knew by the end of his search I was going to convince him to take my favorite detour in the store, where everything was pink and I could scope out the new Barbies. I loved them all, at least looking at them all. I knew that my dad would not always buy me a new Barbie every time we went to the store. Due to this, I realized that I had to check them out and see what they did and who they were before the lucky moment in my childhood when my parents would say I could pick out a new toy. When I think back to these moments, I can pinpoint two observations I have now as I get older and think about the conversation of Barbie.

First, hardly any IF any of those Barbies ever looked like me.

Second, by my childhood, yes, there were more diverse Barbie friends. However, none of them was ever the main character. They were just Barbie’s friends. Something about my consciousness in my youth knew that just being Barbie’s friend meant just being a side character. I wanted to be the main character and the main character is Barbie.

As a child, it never resonated with me that most of my dolls were white, blue-eyed, and blond. I just thought Barbie was pretty, and she gave me an outlet to play out the creative scenes my mind would make up. I would replay TV show episodes or something I heard or something said that left me curious. Here's the thing about Barbie; She gave kids like me an ability to talk about what was happening around us as if we were the main characters. It was creative child play where I reenacted society, and what was expected of others as if it were me, and how I would expect to react in those moments. Being a bilingual Hispanic female growing up in America in the early 90’s and 2000’s, not only was navigating life in itself difficult but finding a representation in the media of my personal experience was difficult. Still, it never occurred to me at the moment how this sort of socialization has perpetuated a bigger identity in my journey in life. 

Linda Christensen brings up conversations had by Ariel Dorfman, about the “secret education” that is being “delivered by children’s books and movies” on sort of understanding of how this world is represented by “one sex, one race, one class or one country over a weaker counterpart” (Christensen, 175). This notion is that our understanding of society begins at a very young age, and this type of schooling then defines our identity and what society expects of us. This critical thinking being placed on Disney now is unraveling experiences we may have had in our own situations that could be traced back to a type of socialization that was taught to us at a young age during our childhood. This conversation has caused Disney to step back and reflect on how they have added to this narrative of socialization and explicitly address it with a Racism Warning prior to the beginning of some worst-case movies. While this self-reflection is necessary, there needs to be more of an impact to create social change. Christensen teaches this critical thinking of the impact this has on our lives. She also emphasizes that “if the race of the character is the only thing changing, injustices may still remain” (Christensen, 180), emphasizing that there is a bigger agenda at hand and as members of society, we need to continue to be critical thinkers of what is being presented to us and its future impact.

Digital Divide

 

A Digital Divide and Developing Media Literacy 

Native [ ney-tiv ] belonging to a person by birth or to a thing by nature; inherent

Immigrant [ im-i-gruhnt ] a person who migrates to another country, usually for permanent residence.

Prensky discusses digital media and how youth have embodied a new digital language in which they are fluent. This includes an inherent understanding of computers, video games, and the internet. As "Digital Natives," youth have increased parallel processing time, with many thought processes occurring at random points, similar to having multiple tabs open, sifting through them, and finding connections in them all. This emphasizes a youth skill set for rapid information processing and multi-tasking. However, Prensky does not address how there are connotations involved in the language being used that can create an implication of these members being addressed.

Boyd questions this notion through a discussion of the implications of the terminology of digital natives and immigrants. The term native implies that digital fluency is given to children at birth. In essence, "by describing the youth as natives, both Barlow and Rushkoff frame young people as powerful actors positioned to challenge the status quo. Yet many who use the rhetoric of digital natives position young people either as passive recipients of technological knowledge or as learners who easily pick up the language of technology the way they pick up a linguistic tongue"(Boyd, 2014,178). In turn, the term immigrants carries negative connotations that dismiss the skillsets of those in the category and completely disregard the space in which Millennials and older Gen Z members have childhoods that were interrupted by the introduction of digital media and a technology boom.

Boyd then challenges this notion further through an argument that growing up with technology does not equal being able to navigate and understand the content of the media. There needs to be an emphasis on the value of critical thinking and digital literacy because while youth can develop digital schemas quickly due to exposure since birth, it cannot be assumed that they inherently understand the meaning of the digital artifacts that they encounter. The mindset of "digital natives" can cause a notion that digital literacy does not need to be taught since it is already known. This encourages a digital divide where privilege and socioeconomic factors can greatly impact how digital media is being perceived and how it is impacting our youth. All of these factors cause "educators and the public to end up reproducing digital inequality because more privileged youth often have more opportunities to develop these skills outside the classroom (Boyd, 2014, 190-180).

The privileged youth in the discussion have increased variables impacting their exposure to media and its impact. It is important to address that it is no longer a discussion of just access to the actual digital products but how can we give access to digital literacy to everyone? Especially those who spend more time on media than others. To address this further, "scholars and governmental agencies began to argue that access alone mattered little if people didn’t know how to use the tools in front of them. As more youth gained access through schools and public institutions, and as a result of the decline in costs of technology, scholars increasingly raised concern about the unevenness of skills, literacy, and 'socially meaningful' access" (Boyd, 2014, 198). Pew Research Center has collected data that shows 56% of Black teens and a close tie of 55% of Hispanic teens are online almost constantly on either a computer or a cellphone. This opens a conversation not about accessibility but about what role intersectionality plays in the realm of digital media and how that impacts the learning of our children of color. 

Using media is now a daily routine of our kids, and instead of trying to analyze all the ways we can stop internet use, we must embrace the notion that this is a space that exists and greatly impacts our everyday lives. To put this into perspective, the Pew Research Center addresses how Black and Hispanic teens have higher percentages of understanding the power the media can have in highlighting important issues and holding others accountable. Especially with the consideration that we as humans are developing spaces in the media where we can build communities, discover interests, become informed about political activities, and hear the voices of underrepresented voices. Instead of working to remove this continuously growing community in the digital world, we need to give our kids the tools to navigate the divide in the digital world and equip our youth with the cognitive critical thinking of analyzing information and deciphering truth from fiction. 

With his foundational work, Prensky has allowed for a greater conversation to be had about how we can move forward on the digital spectrum so we can all become digital citizens who can navigate the spaces forming in the virtual realities in our pockets and backpacks. Also, there needs to be a conversation about how we can empower our Black and Hispanic teens who have a strong digital presence to become responsible critical thinkers of the media they are exposed to and how this can impact the learning in the classroom. 

Boyd, Danah, (2014).  It’s Complicated: The social lives of networked teens. Yale University Press, New Haven and London. 

¡Hola y bienvenidos! Hello and Welcome!

 

My name is Nicole Madera, and I am a high school English Language Arts and English Language Development teacher. I have a degree in sociology and art therapy. In addition, I have a degree as a Secondary English Language Arts Teacher. I am currently working on a Master's in Teaching English as a Second language. I spent un año maravilloso as a 10th-grade teacher for multilingual learners. It was an incredible experience to watch learning and growing in action through language and communication.

With summer underway, I am excited to put my Maestra hat on the shelf and enjoy a summer of learning outside the classroom. For me, learning is continuous and growing. The summer invites exploration and seeing el mundo como un nuevo lugar para aprender. As a bilingual individual, navigating two worlds and merging two cultures has been a balancing act to find where I belong. In the same way, I watch my students blend and merge their identities to fill a space in this world. 

So, with that said, let’s explore the world and make it our new classroom.