BCTELA

Krista Ediger 

Krista is the English Department Facilitator at McRoberts Secondary School and a member of Richmond's Strengthening Student Literacy Network.

I feel disillusioned, frustrated with the lack of time, with too much bureaucracy, with data, with constraints, and yet I'm still here, teaching. Why? I think I'm here because of the creativity teaching affords me, the relative autonomy I have to shape my course. Amid the criticisms I have of our public education system and the worries I have for its future, there is still room for magic. The classroom, even one with filthy carpet and grey, institutional walls, and five more desks than there's room for, making it difficult to move around with ease, can be a place where students learn and question and struggle and fail and try again and improve and succeed and laugh and play and converse. The classroom can be a place where ideas are shared and created and debated. It can be a place where students find their voices, where they learn to use them with increased confidence and poise and ability. It can be a place where students feel comfortable and safe and able to be themselves, to take risks, to explore aspects of their personalities they wouldn't explore elsewhere. The classroom is a space often filled with 30 minds and bodies that come together two or three times a week. There can be power in this coming together. There is something magnetic about the possibilities in these assemblies. What might be achieved tomorrow? What might happen next Tuesday during H block that will impact the life of the student in the back left-hand corner?

I'm also inspired by the subject area I teach. I believe what I teach to be critical: how to write, to read more strategically, to make meaning. The more I consider how best to deliver lessons on writing, the more I learn about the art and craft of both writing and teaching. I consider myself a student of both, and my students know that they are often in some way part of my experiment for a particular lesson or idea. Writing is a strategy I use to help me to think through ideas or to make sense of something I've read. I want to equip my students with this tool. I don't get tired of looking for better ways of helping students express themselves because after all, "Learning to write is a matter of learning to shatter the silences, of making meaning, of learning to learn" (Greene, Releasing 108).

The importance of teaching students how to write and speak and read and think with more skill and confidence humbles me. I will never know how to do this in the best way possible. I will always have things to learn. This reality also draws me to the teaching of English. There is no end of challenges. And it is at this point that Barrie Barrell's argument that teaching is more art than craft brings a certain level of comfort. He suggests that "teaching conceptualised as an art form is not inherently good or bad. It does recognise, however, that teaching does not necessarily get easier with the passing of time; the work never catches up to the critical sensitivities of the thoughtful teacher" (119).

I still have not had that experience I dream of having, of arriving at the end of a year and looking back on one class, not even all seven, and saying I'm really pleased with how things went. There's not a whole lot I would change. As it is, I have trouble even looking back sometimes. But I do. I'm happiest when I find things there I want to write about, or when I can pinpoint a specific change I want to make. This edition of Update includes two articles on graphic novels, and even as I look back on the first half of this teaching year, I know that I want to try to expand each of my literature circle sets to include at least one graphic novel and more non-fiction titles.

So as some of us begin new semesters and others of us begin new terms, I hope we can all find some inspiration in the ideas printed in Update and other professional publications, as well as in discussions with colleagues, and mine from these a little bit of magic - that lesson that makes the marking and the meetings seem far away. Leyton and I would like to wish you all a happy and healthy 2007. We hope it's a year filled with ideas and debate and learning and play.

Works Cited

Barrell, Barrie R. C. Teaching as a Form of Artistic Expression. Calgary: Detselig, 2003.

Greene, Maxine. Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.

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Teachers' reactions to their students' reading of manga, the Japanese graphic novels, typically range from extreme disappointment

"There is no reading there; they are just flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures. And it is all backward too: they are going from right to left, starting at the end. You cannot possibly call that reading!"

to a rather muted and restrained enthusiasm

"Well, at least they are reading something. There is some writing there. Probably not very good quality though; nothing that we would really like them to read. And the pictures are like sugar coating: they make it easier to understand the story, whatever it is."

A very quick discourse analysis of the above statements will likely reveal the following operating assumptions. In order to be considered valid, students' reading should consist of reading primarily a print-based text, preferably a model of beautiful language (a classic?) Since there is little value in decoding images in manga - their role is mostly to repeat what the simplistic text already says - manga graphic novels can hardly be considered effective reading tools. Reading is both unimodal (dealing with one type of text at a time) and linear in nature; and finally, in a Language Arts classroom, visual literacy is not as important as print-based text literacy.

I would like to propose that if we actually agree with the above inferences, there is definitely a lot we can talk about. Let us then begin with the idea that reading really is about reading a print-based text, preferably one that introduces students to models of a superb language use. Most of us will agree that traditional texts often address universal questions and offer insights that are relevant and inspiring to today's readers. Reading such texts gives our students skills, competence and confidence to face various academic demands that await them in the post-secondary world. However, what about students whose life experiences and cultures are not reflected in traditional literature? Are they not going to feel marginalized, perhaps even dehumanized? They might resist reading such texts not because they are "struggling readers," but rather because reading them makes them feel insecure, inadequate, and inferior. In the words of Herbert Kohl (1994), the author of I Won't Learn from You, students often engage in a "struggle of wills with authority" because "what [is] at stake for them [is] nothing less than their pride and integrity." (7) Resistance to assigned reading becomes then an act of self-preservation that is far more important than any attempt of finding oneself in the context of F. S. Fitzgerald's Jazz Age, for example.

And what about reading a print-based text as the only valid text? If we embrace the new and expanded definition of the 21st century literacy as multiliteracy, or communication of ideas through a multitude of modes (channels), we also accept the idea that text is no longer confined to the written word, but includes oral, aural, performative, and visual representations of meaning. Consequently, our literacy pedagogy becomes redefined to include a variety of text forms (modes of representation) associated with the above expanded theory of meaning making. In such context, reading is no longer just about decoding print-based text and good reading is no longer just about reading lots of print-based texts. Reading is about decoding and constructing meaning with various texts such as still and animated images, symbols, signs, sounds, movement, as well as numerous digital texts. And now that we have opened our teaching door to a variety of texts, why should we welcome manga, a multimodal (written and visual) text?

Manga graphic novels can hardly be considered effective reading tools because there is little value in decoding images that illustrate what the simplistic text already says. I think there are two issues here that call for a closer examination: firstly, our difficulty in recognizing manga as a valid semiotic domain, or area worthy of study, and secondly our own knowledge of manga. Let's look at the first issue. If we accept that texts come in different forms, why not then include in our teaching texts and literacies that our students are familiar with? This way, we can show them that their knowledge has currency in our classroom and that we value what they come with. After all, students read what they can read and what they like to read. If we have a chance to build on their interests in order to maximize their growth, should we hesitate to do so? Also, do we not teach our students that there are different roads to reach a goal? Surely, we are not intimidated to take the road less traveled, are we?

Speaking about intimidation. Personally, I did not particularly like admitting to my students that I knew nothing about manga. I skillfully avoided the subject. Appearing knowledgeable and having little desire to undermine myself have always been my guiding teaching principles. And yet with all my background in language and literature, I could neither understand nor explain the manga attraction until one day when one of my students left behind his manga book. I picked it up with suspicion and tossed it quickly into the lost and found box. I came back to it, however, being consumed by sheer curiosity. I wondered what it was all about and what made it so special to my student. I decided to give it a try and read it. How much would it cost me? I surprised myself. I was immediately drawn into the story, because it gave me a sense of being a participant in it. The feeling of walking into it and becoming a part of it was so satisfying that I finished my first manga that same evening. Then, like a true reader, I moved onto another and another and another. I have known all along that one day I would cross over to the other side and become my students. And when that day arrived, I finally understood why they were secretly reading their manga while I was busy teaching them ‘real literature.' The road less traveled has turned out to be full of pleasant surprises and discoveries. I am still walking it because learning new things takes time. However, here are some knowledge gems I have found along my way.

Manga, the most popular type of graphic novel in North America, as a genre sits somewhere between film and prose, creating a bridge from one to the other. A lot of manga are smart, well written and imaginative. There is manga for every subject because everything can be expressed in manga form. The cinematic quality of manga images shown from rather unusual camera angels turns reading into a viewing experience. Manga's iconic characters with their simply rendered faces can easily be filled with any emotion the reader is experiencing. Looking at such characters is almost like stepping inside the life of Charlie Brown and discovering the hidden mysteries behind his simple existence. Manga characters live in very rich environments that have been created with a lot of attention and sensibility. Real world anchors such as school desks, clocks on the wall, or park benches emphasize the unexpected beauty of everyday things. The backgrounds are usually delivered in fragments, and we experience them much like in real life, with our eyes moving around, up and down, and finally assembling the world from fragments.

Unlike our home grown comics and graphic novels that are often filled with sound effects and characters' chatter, manga are characterized by the presence of many silent panels that provide us with contemplative moments of unmediated experience. Such experience, just like the characters' faces, can be filled with our own values and emotions. As well, the silent panels sometimes function as transitions between story episodes.

Again in contrast to our North American productions that often present motion in a somewhat bombastic way, at times showing characters literally breaking out of panels in their attempts to run, fly, or jump, manga authors have found a very different and rather subjective and visceral way of rendering motion. In manga, we, the readers, participate in the motion by becoming the moving object. And because we now are the moving object, a motorbike, for example, we can feel the bike's sudden stops, unexpected turns, and periodic vibrations. It is precisely because of such unusual representation of motion that people who read manga often compare it to watching a movie.

And finally what completes the manga attraction is the presence of a diverse genre of images. While reading manga, we are likely to come across collages, free standing, or cascading images. Such diversity of image genre does not allow us to get bored, constantly stimulating our senses. Clearly then, reading manga requires us to redefine what reading is; and while we are busy reworking our definition, let's allow our students' reading to be in service of their interests rather than to be a rehearsal for living. They are discovering something new. Let's not deprive them of the joys of discovery.

What have we, on the other hand, discovered about teaching visual literacy in a Language Arts classroom? Teaching it is not nearly as important as the teaching of print-based text literacy. Interestingly enough, writing with pictures predates writing with words. In some languages (Chinese) words began as stylized pictures. Similarly, cave paintings and hieroglyphs were the earliest forms of communication. Why have we forgotten then that there is an important calligraphic quality to pictures? Why are we reluctant to fortify the printed word with a printed image? Others do not seem that hesitant.

Both the political and the corporate worlds, for example, understand the extraordinary power of images. Just imagine looking at a picture of fallen soldiers coming home: multiple coffins draped in Canadian flags being carried by some clearly emotional pallbearers, grieving relatives, among them mothers holding little children in their arms, a solemn looking preacher whose hand is raised in a sign of a blessing. Because an image like that communicates a powerful political message to a country and its people, it is of little wonder then that our politicians may not want to expose us to too many such visions. Similarly, imagine looking at an image of a delicious and mouth-watering multilayer chocolate cake adorned with opulent coral roses and emerald leaves dribbling gracefully along its edges. Would we not want to try it? But to try it, we need to buy it; and, let us remember that most of what we actually end up buying is first introduced to us through visual ads that entice, inspire, and cajole us to do things that we normally might not have done. It is clear then that pictures are an important form of communication: they convey meaningful and profound ideas and concepts; and, if we agree with that statement, we should also agree that visual literacy should not be left off the teaching table by being undertaught.

Will we then take up manga in addition to our classics? If we are interested in exploring the challenges of a multimodal text, we probably will. If we are interested in overcoming our own habitus and developing our own and our students' visual literacy, we probably will as well. Let us then experience the joy of learning a new social practice and in the process validate the home literacies our students come to us with.

Bibliography

http://www.dnp.co.jp/museum/nmp/nmp_i/articles/manga/manga1.html : a website providing a comprehensive history of the manga genre

http://www.koyagi.com/Libguide.html: a librarians' guide to anime and manga

http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/manga/index.html: a publisher website advertising manga published by the largest manga publisher in Japan, Kodansha

http://www.tokyopop.com/: a website containing reviews of manga

Kohl, H. I Won't Learn from You. The New Press. 1994.

Jill Kedersha McClay is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta.

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When our two daughters were toddlers, my husband always said that whenever one of them yelled, "Look, Mom! Look, Dad! Look at me!" we were bound to see something we didn't want to see: a little girl dangling one foot off the edge of a cliff, or displaying a mouth full of half-chewed spaghetti and meatballs, or the little one hoisting the older one off the ground in a back-breaking effort. Something to make us cringe, afraid to yell "stop that!" for fear of disrupting the tenuous balance they held. They were testing their newfound strengths and freedoms, and if such testing made their "parental units" cringe, well, so much the better.

Similarly, I see young adolescents testing newfound strengths and freedoms in their literacy world. The difference is that they are not clambering to be noticed, and so we adults may lose opportunities to guide them well. In this article, I want to consider some ways in which young people are engaging in exhilarating, precarious feats of literacy, unsanctioned practices of strength and ingenuity (and questionable taste) that sometimes make adults queasy, powerless, and frightened for them. What opportunities and perils does our literacy world offer to children and teachers? How can teachers encourage today's young people to engage in productive literacy relationships in safety, looking both ways while crossing the literacy streets? To consider these questions, I will highlight ways in which new literacy environments blur boundaries and transform some fairly traditional practices in original ways. Then I will suggest productive ways for teachers and parents to engage in literacy relationships and practices with young people. Such work is, I believe, a moral imperative, not merely a pedagogical one.

Literacy is all about relationships-it always has been and always will be. When Frank Smith (1985) wrote about children's desire to become members of "the literacy club," he understood that people seek out relationships through literacy. The contemporary literacy world offers us new ways to make relationships, in public and in private, with friends, kindred spirits, and strangers near and far. Literacy affords both immediacy and distance in our relationships, allowing us to enter a more expansive temporal frame. We can reach out to the past and future, not only in the grand sense of authors' works lasting for generations, but in a more personal sense of ordinary people holding our moments in time. Even the most immediate and personal of literacy practices-writing a diary-places us in the flow of time. We preserve diaries to re-read on a quiet night in the future and recall, perhaps with a changed perspective and clearer eyes, our self from days past. Personal notes and letters-from surreptitious notes passed in a boring chemistry class to the final draft of a life-changing love letter-are messages sent and received, which, if preserved, enable us to reflect on tangible evidence of our past.

Our literacy practices have always relied on technology, and each generation uses the technology available. The technology introduces some degree of distance into relationships. Such distance is both an attraction and a danger. Because of the technology, we open the door to posers and masqueraders-witness Cyrano's complicit identity theft of Christian in pursuit of the unsuspecting Roxanne. Like Cyrano, we crave opportunities to hide our physical flaws and to reveal our true inner essence. Today, the Internet allows such revelation in anonymity. It allows us to be most clearly ourselves while, as one young man put it, avoiding the "essentializing" categories of gender and age (Tobin, 1998).

So the ability to make relationships with strangers through new literacy technology is not a new phenomenon; nor is relationship via digital technology entirely new. In 1879, Ella Cheever Thayer published a novel, Wired Love, certainly a very contemporary sounding title (Collins 2002). The sub-title is A romance of dots and dashes, and Thayer's protagonist develops a relationship through the dangerous new medium of the telegraph. The novel details the developing romance between two telegraph operators, Clem and Nattie, in frontier towns of the American West. The couple's romance has several turns that are as new as today's blogs: other operators listen in and "flame" them, Nattie attempts to pass as a man online (but Clem "sees" through her ruse), and a flesh-and-blood impostor poses as Clem to a disappointed Nattie-another case of identity theft. Like many contemporary people who form a digital relationship, Nattie and Clem are awkward when they finally do meet in person, tongue-tied and uncomfortable (Jackson, 2005). Clem moves to Nattie's town, but she eventually complains, "I had more of your company on the wire." Their solution is to string telegraph wire between their apartment buildings, and they wire each other late into the nights. As You've Got Mail, and other chick flicks confirm, dots-and-dashes technology has its place for would-be lovers.

Cyrano and Clem notwithstanding, new literacy environments do allow us to make relationships in some new ways, and, as always, the newness is part of the attraction. But certainly many of the old verities are still in place. Young and old meet online, in chat rooms, MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), and palaces, playing with multiple personas and switching genders at will. There are bulletin boards and chat rooms for aficionados of every possible stripe, and support groups for every known interest, malady, or condition. Now, young people are not bound by the isolation of geography or familial and cultural restrictions; they can become members in communities, with these potentially life-saving connections.

Blurred or disappearing boundaries

New literacy environments allow relationships with unclear or no delineation of conventional boundaries, and many traditional literacy boundaries do not hold in traditional ways. Here I want to consider just two such boundary transgressions: the boundary between private and public, and between child and adult.

The boundary between private and public is now porous almost to the point of disappearance. Cell phones, blogs, and web sites all have a disconcerting habit of being heard and read by other than the intended audience, or, in the turbulent adolescent years, by the audience we intend one minute but not the next. Adolescents and adults alike are caught in disgrace when posting highly personal thoughts on their web sites and blogs. There is a quality of almost magical thinking with which bloggers assume that their blogs will only be read by authorized readers. But as the distinction between private and public gets muddied, young people are also perhaps working this muddiness with a different sense of social acceptability. One young adult commented to me on the benefits of posting on her blog the details of her anger at a friend:

"Well, if she reads my blog, she'll know I'm pissed at her and know why. That way, I don't have to confront her face-to-face and have an argument, but she can stop annoying me if she wants. I think it's a way of being considerate when I'm a little mad about something a friend has done."

It had not previously occurred to me that complaining about one's friend in cyberspace could be conceived of as a considerate act-but then again, I'm not the target demographic. And that is a key point for those of us who attempt to teach children and adolescents about relationships in the new literacy world: young people make their own conventions, and adults need to inquire about their thinking before passing judgments.

A generation ago, a person's diary was sacrosanct, and reading it would be an unforgivable invasion of privacy. But blogs are not only public diaries, they are interactive as well; readers post comments in response to the authors' original entries. Emily Nussbaum (2004) notes the generational differences in expectations and attitudes about private and public writings in her discussion of bloggers:

For many in the generation that has grown up online, the solution is not to fight this technological loss of privacy, but to give in and embrace it....The teenagers who post journals have (depending on your perspective) a degraded or a relaxed sense of privacy; their experiences may be personal, but there's no shame in sharing....If teen bloggers give something up by sloughing off a self-protective layer, they get something back too-a new kind of intimacy, a sense that they are known and listened to. This is their life, for anyone to read. As long as their parents don't find out.

One oddly fascinating interplay of private and public aspects of literacy comes with a cross-over of old and new forms of communication. Frank Warren (2004-06) encourages people to write a secret-something they have never told anyone before- on a post card and mail the card to him. First intended as material for an art exhibit, the collection grows steadily and Warren posts new cards online weekly. The post cards range from the silly and embarrassing to the life-consuming and tragic. People apparently find comfort in telling something intensely private but telling in a way that preserves their anonymity. The way in which this project has grown (now including a conventional print book) is a case study in the boundaries between public and private, as well as in the overlap of old and new media.

The disappearance of the boundary between child and adult audiences and materials is perhaps the most startling and unsettling aspect of new literacy relationships for teachers and parents. Children are now able to enter, unsupervised, the best and worst of the adult world, with no filtering or gate-keeping. They travel faster than we do, often arriving at new destinations before the adults in their lives even know of their existence.

The absence of such boundaries can be dangerous, as children and adolescents are susceptible to predators. Just as in the past, when we could not be certain whom they met inside the movie theatre, now we can't be certain whom they meet inside the chat room. Adolescents have always tested and savoured their power to operate independently of parental supervision, and now this normal adolescent desire combines with their typically superior technological skill to make a chilling danger that can cross from the virtual world to the real. When the Media Awareness Network asks parents if they know what their children do online, most say that they do. When the Network asks children if their parents know what they do online, most say that they don't (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). This divide reminds us that we cannot be present-physically or digitally-everywhere our children roam. It comes down to education and trust. Moreover, when the Network asks young people how long it takes them to determine to their satisfaction whether an online contact is "safe" or not, young people generally indicate a shocking (to adult sensibility) confidence in their ability to make such determinations within a few minutes of online acquaintance.

Relationships with new audiences

While teachers and parents readily focus on the contemporary blurring of time-honoured boundaries, I want to return to some of the sustaining and encouraging aspects of such blurred boundaries with respect to making new relationships through literacy. The immense popularity of fan fiction sites, for example, attests to some of the positive potential for relationships in online venues.

Not a new development, fan fiction writing became popular among science fiction fans in the days of Star Trek's television popularity. The early trekkie conventions were places where fans could circulate, in costume if they wished, and exchange fan fiction. As these conventions were held in the real world (contrary to appearances, perhaps!), aficionados needed money, mobility, and some independence to attend (Knobel & Lankshear, 2005). In the contemporary literacy world, fans of any particular fiction need only an Internet connection, and they can access an online community to trade analyses and commentary on current episodes of favourite television shows, movies, or novels. More significantly, they can post original fan fiction: their own episodes, spin-offs, or cross-overs. The distinction between amateur and professional is now "obsolete" in online publishing (www.wikipedia.org/fanfiction)

For fans of a particular fiction-in any medium-fan fiction provides a generally supportive environment in which to read abundant offerings of variations on the fictional characters and themes, and, more importantly, to gain a sophisticated readership for one's own fiction. Recently, Raylene, a student in my graduate class, took up my challenge to write fan fiction. A middle-aged elementary school teacher who had not previously known about fan fiction, Raylene gamely wrote a CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) episode and posted it with great trepidation. Several weeks later, she reported being genuinely touched and encouraged by the feedback she had received from several readers. They praised her writing, cited specific aspects of the work that they appreciated, and encouraged her to post more episodes. The gentle critiques that accompanied the encouragement were indeed quite constructive, well taken, and given in a generous spirit; responders offered pointers on matters of forensic investigation that are germane to the world of CSI. I should acknowledge here that, as Raylene's writing teacher, I did not have the expertise to offer such in-depth pointers about forensic matters, nor did her classmates.

For young writers, this opportunity to relate to other fans of a particular fiction provides tangible evidence of belonging in this community; they can be accepted and respected for the power of their imagination and knowledge. On fan fiction sites, young writers interact on equal footing with adults who share their passions, giving and receiving detailed pointers for their development as writers of a given genre. The lack of distinction between adult and child audiences seems irrelevant when writers are focused on a shared appreciation of a particular fiction. Needless to say, it also makes such postings a risky business, as young writers are treated as equals and are not allowed much "slack" by other fan writers. Most fan fiction sites have clear rules about positive, constructive criticism, but there is no guarantee of gentle treatment.
Relationships in New Literacies Teaching

As I think about the ways in which new literacies environments offer possibilities for young people to make relationships, some clear implications for teaching arise. Adults sometimes feel inadequate in newer literacy environments and uncertain about the value of such environments; some continue to deny that there is much new or much of value. But one undeniable value is that these are the environments in which our young people are learning about literacy, and, to some degree, learning about relationships. Our place in this environment is vital-as teachers, parents, researchers, and literate citizens-and our experience gives us a role in helping young people navigate this terrain. So the first point about relationships in new literacies teaching is that we must enter into relationships as participants. To teach productively, our participation must also involve respect, attention to security, and broad perspective.

Participation: We need to be in the thick of it with our children and our students. The old traditional-vs.-contemporary debate is irrelevant, because contemporary literacy environments include both traditional and new ways of relating, ways that define literacy for the next generation. We can impose our older definitions of literacy if we choose-for the limited time that we will continue to hold power-as demonstrated by those external assessments that drive teachers' classroom practices. But soon enough the next generation's definitions will take over. It will be more productive for us all if adults have some dialogue with the next generation as they develop their ideas about literacy practices.

A great fuss was raised with the publication of the Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (2004). While charting a decline in the habits of literary reading in the US, the survey does not include engagements with online literature or other kinds of reading. John Lombardi (2005) recommends that teachers and professors should find out what young people actually do in the online world, noting the wild variety of material available online:

Then I go online. Here I find a complicated world filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Alive and constantly changing, engaged and engaging, requiring my constant decisions about what is worth reading or seeing and what is not. From the lowest pornography to tours of the treasures of the Library of Congress, from the stupidest blogs of the radical fringes, to the most sophisticated discussions of the decline of America's reading habits, everything is there.

(http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/23/lombardi)

We need to enter into new literacies practices with our students and our children, not only because it makes good pedagogical sense to do so. We are morally obligated to go there with them. The literacy world requires sophistication far surpassing the sophistication required to develop or delineate a poem's metaphor or to trace the foreshadowing in a novel. These are still valuable analyses and a source of great literary pleasure, but they are hardly sufficient. The very dangers that adults see in the relationships that are forged in new literacy environments make it imperative for adults to engage with young people in these environments. Adolescence is primarily about the making of relationships-with close friends and with the wider world, and it is a time when young people look with sharper, but still inexperienced, eyes at the adult world.

We need to consider how we enter into relationships with young people in these environments. It is imperative to go there with them as fellow explorers, not as authority figures. We certainly are not experts-adolescents and even younger children go faster than we do and are often more adventurous, more interested in exploration for its own sake, and less encumbered by our baggage. They travel lighter. But we can go there in dialogue, negotiating and sharing authority based on expertise. We can draw on their superior knowledge and experience in some aspects and contribute our superior knowledge and experience in others. We have greater perspective and experience in the real world; often, our young people have greater knowledge of the online world. Because they are making relationships in new literacies practices while young, they take these relationships as part of the given world; as the Media Awareness Network notes, for young people, "The Internet just is" (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). Furthermore, the Network notes that "Kids are ahead of their parents - and on their own - in their explorations of the Internet" (http://www.media-awareness.ca/). The disjuncture between what young people say and what their parents say in the Media Awareness Network surveys are all the evidence we need of the imperative to make relationships with our children while they make relationships online. Such relationships must be founded upon respect.

Respect: We need to take a more collegial stance in our literacy relationships with young people, negotiating authority with respect to their expertise. Respect is key, and we can earn it if we give it. In research involving a series of case studies of multiliteracies teaching and learning in classrooms, I have been struck in each of the case studies by one constant: when the teacher assumes a less authoritative stance, the students respond with respect (McClay, 2006). The multiliteracies work that the teachers established in their classrooms gave students many opportunities, as one teacher noted wryly, "to torpedo the project" (McClay & Weeks, 2004). But students did not take advantage of such opportunities; instead, they appreciated seeing their teachers as people who liked to learn new things and were eager to learn with them. Paradoxically, when the teachers assumed the less authoritative stance of "fellow learner," they actually enhanced their authority and credibility with their students.

Security and safety: We do need to help young people to attend consciously and realistically to security and safety issues. They won't see the same dangers that we do, but we can help them to be better attuned to danger in subtle forms. The inclination of too many adults who work with digital literacy environments with young people is to make the environments safe and unproblematic before we allow young people in, so as not to have untidy or inappropriate material barging into our classrooms. But some attention ought to be paid to the untidy, the inappropriate, the vulgar, even (perhaps especially) the downright fraudulent and immoral in order to teach our youth about these aspects. Our warnings and lists of safe and unsafe behaviours are not effective, as we have seen in the headlines and in the Media Awareness Network's surveys. But our discussions with young people when we enter online environments together can be more powerful, more effective, and more grounded in reality.

We also need to be clear in teaching young people about the real limits of their online power. We have had examples of hapless adolescents being arrested because of the content of their web sites and blogs. When children and adolescents enter the adult literacy world, they suffer adult consequences. They need to understand that their freedoms do not extend to posting hateful or libellous comments; the distinction between passing a note to a friend in class and posting the same comment online must be clear to them. These distinctions should become discussion topics of our classrooms.

Perspective: Adults can play a useful role by helping young people to see the old in the new literacies and the new in the old. Young people will decide what to preserve, and how to preserve it. Undoubtedly, they will do so in ways we would not, as in the case of my young friend who used the forum of her blog to complain about her friend. We old folks have the historical perspective, but they have the future. Ultimately, their decisions about standards and conventions will be upheld. Some of their conventions will seem raw or wrong to us, but many will be much cleverer and more useful than we would imagine. Marc Aronson (2003) discusses the need for adults to present young people with complex portrayals of human relationships in books. He considers various conceptions of "brotherhood" in fiction and nonfictions' books, arguing persuasively for a more complex, inclusive portrayal of the human family. He notes a distinction between children's and young adult literature, commenting that in children's books, the reader/child is part of a family. In adolescence, however, the challenge is for young people to become individuals and to leave their families. This challenge is difficult for adults:

"Inasmuch as we-authors, publishers, reviewers, parents, librarians, teachers-want our books for younger readers to pass on our ideals and values, we feel a kind of queasiness about YA books. After twelve years or so of trying to get kids to listen to us through books, we have three years of trying to help them think for themselves. We just don't know how to connect those two opposite agendas" (Aronson, 2003, p.132).

Young people do not only use television and books as references for their developing sensibilities. They also use online resources-at their fingertips they have the full wealth and poverty of the adult world, unfiltered through custodians of the public airwaves or of the publishing industry. As Aronson notes, we adults have a short period of time in which to influence young people as they develop their sensibilities and values. The very unfiltered view of the complete array of the adult world is part of the attraction of digital new literacy. In the environments of new literacy, young people are not mere viewers and readers, voyeurs of the presentations of adult life as we select and present it for their viewing, as they are when they watch television and movies. Online, young people have agency and the ability to act, to connect, to have impact.

There are no boundaries and no rehearsal period on the Internet-a web site posted is public, open to scrutiny and to comment from strangers of varying intentions. The adults who want to be influential in the lives of young people must engage with them in the literate landscapes in which they travel. We do not have many years in which to do so.

References

Aronson, M.(2003). Beyond the Pale: New Essays for a New Era. Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature, No. 9. Lanham, Maryland, & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Collins, P. (2002). NewScientist, Dec. 21/22, 2002. pp. 40-41.

Jackson, M. (2005).
http://bostonworks.boston.com/globe/balance/archives/121904.shtml Accessed Oct. 4, 2005.

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2005). "New Literacies: Research and Social Practice In B. Maloch, J. V. Hoffman, D. Schallert, C. M. Fairbanks & J. Worthy (Eds.), 54th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 22-50). Oak Creek WI: National Reading Conference, Inc.

Lombardi, J. (2005). http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/23/lombardi Accessed Aug. 15, 2005.

McClay, J. K. (2006). Collaborating with Teachers and Students in Multiliteracies Research: "Se have camino al andar". Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 52(3), 182-195.

McClay, J. K., & Weeks, P. (2004). Ensemble Improvisation: Chats, Mystery, and Narrative in a Multiliteracy Classroom. The International Journal Learning, 10.

Nussbaum, E. (2004).
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/magazine/11BLOG.html?ei=1&en=36132f7693f2b Reading at risk: A survey of literary reading in America. (2004).). Washington DC: National Endowment for the Arts.

Smith, F. (1985). Reading Without Nonsense. New York: Teacher College Press.

Tobin, J. (1998). An American Otaku: (or, a Boy's Virtual Life on the Net). In J. Sefton-Green (Ed.), Digital Diversions: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia. London: UCL Press Ltd.

Warren, F. (2004-06).
http://www.postsecret.blogspot.com/; http://www.media-awareness.ca; www.wikipedia.org/fanfiction

Joanne Panas is a Teacher Consultant (Adolescent Literacy), Richmond School District #38.

(Click here for a PDF version of this article)

There were so many choices of wonderful-sounding sessions to attend at the BCTELA conference, but one of my choices was a no-brainer. Dr. Jill McClay was my English Curriculum and Instruction professor way back when I was an Education student at the University of Alberta. We've kept in touch over the years, and of course I wanted to hear Jill's current thoughts on the issues of English and literacy. I settled into my seat with anticipation, knowing that whatever the topic, her presentation was sure to provoke lots of thinking!

Jill began by talking about the "new literacies" of technology, including blogs, instant messaging, sharing videos online, and many other kinds of literacy that go well beyond "print on paper." One of the most interesting and potentially alarming things Jill told us was the fact that eight- to ten-year-olds are the fastest-growing group of users on the internet. Two other statements struck me as related to that piece of information: "Relationship is the work of adolescents" (from Lev Vygotsky), and "Literacy is always about relationships" (Frank Smith). What we have then is a situation where young people are seeking relationships through online literacy, and as we all know, this can have positive and/or negative ramifications.

The core of Jill's presentation, however, was not to showcase cool new kinds of literacy, nor to inspire fear of the Internet, nor to invoke paranoia in parents and educators, but rather to ask a key question: "What is the ethos of this technological literacy?" In other words, a new culture is being created before our eyes, and we need to know what it's like, and what people are doing with it. What are the values of this community? What is its danger and its potential? How should we as a community of educators and parents respond to this new culture?

Jill gave us some examples of the ethos of the online literacy community. Fanfiction.net is one such community; in it, fans of many genres write their own versions of their favourite book, movie, comic, game, and so on, in the style of or in the spirit of the original. Others in the community read them and write reviews. In this way, relationships are created. In this particular online community, the ethos is that of good writing. There is no distinction between amateurs and professionals, young people and adults; all are welcome to write, read, and review. The people who run the site encourage constructive criticism and discourage bad writing, such as wish-fulfillment fantasy, and plot continuum errors.

Online literacy, Jill pointed out, tends to blur boundaries between speed and rhythm (emailmystery.com sends you a novel in installments), between public and private (read others' secrets at postsecret.blogspot.com), and between child and adult (fanfiction.net). Adults worry about these blurred boundaries, and with good reason. According to research done by media-awareness.ca, a non-profit organization that develops media literacy programs, kids can be exposed to inappropriate content and risky situations online, including bullying and sexual harassment. On the other hand, the same survey makes it clear that most young people have positive experiences online, and they use the Internet to foster existing social relationships and create new ones. How can we help keep kids' online literacy experiences positive?

Jill gave us some examples that made us realize that, regardless of the fears (and often, regardless of the rules) of parents and educators, kids are using the web and joining online communities; they are sharing their writing and secrets, reading those of others, and creating relationships. The Internet is not going away; in fact, access to the web is nearly universal in Canada, either at home, at school, or at public libraries and Internet cafes. Children are growing up with computers and they are far outpacing the adults in their lives in their use of the web, but not necessarily in their ability to assess and think critically about it. This is where we, the adults, come in. Jill's final point of the session was that we need to participate in web-based communities and literacy and respect, not dismiss, kids' online relationships. We need to learn the conventions of online literacy. Young people are not going to learn about online safety and security from us unless they see that we know what we're talking about, and that we are also part of that community.

At the end of the session, I had a lot of notes and a lot to think about. I am already part of one online community Jill mentioned, PostSecret, which I check weekly. However, I was unaware of most of the other kinds of technological/online literacies and communities she discussed. I had considered myself a competent user of the Internet; I know how to use search engines, I use email regularly, and have my favourite sites bookmarked. Jill's presentation made me realize how much more was out there, and that a lot of it could be very useful in the English classroom and beyond. But if I was so Internet savvy, and so were many other educators, what was keeping us from using the web in these ways? I realized that there are some practical barriers to that kind of knowledge base for many educators and parents. Time is a major barrier. Most of us don't have the time it takes to find these sites, figure out how to use them, and then actually join in at least semi-regularly. Access to hardware is another barrier for teachers; how can we teach Internet safety when many computer labs are too small for individual and sometimes even paired access, or have outdated computers with very slow connections, or are simply unavailable because other classes have priority? Finally, many teachers might use these sites on their own time, but when it comes to planning how to integrate Internet literacy into the curriculum, many teachers are simply at a loss. We need some guidance from those who understand both technology and curriculum.

So what can we do? One possible way to deal with the barrier of time is to connect with some interested colleagues (from anywhere-this is the Internet we're talking about!) and share your experiences with only one or two web communities in a kind of jigsaw. Teachers might get around limited access to computer labs by creating their own web-based community, so students can use the Internet on their own time, at home or in the library. For example, on-line literature circles could work; many school districts have their own intranet and can set up a conference with student access. Some districts have mobile laptop labs (and technical assistance), which can make computer-based projects a possibility for classroom teachers. Above all, teachers need training and support. Districts might consider giving workshops on the basics of Internet literacy communities. Most schools have at least one person who is Internet-savvy; that person may be able to get some release time to work with interested staff members. Regardless of our own concerns about technology, teachers are working with a generation that sees computers as part of daily life, and that includes literacy. We need to make the effort to get "with it" so we can ensure our students and children are navigating safely and effectively through this territory.

The Ministry of Education has reminded school districts that novels used in classrooms must be evaluated and selected through policies and procedures established by the district and approved by the local school board. The Ministry of Education used to carry out these evaluation but stopped running them in 1998.

Considering the huge number of novels that must be evaluated, it would be far too costly for districts to do the work independently. That’s why Educational Resource Acquisition Consortium (ERAC), after extensive consultation with school district education leaders in curriculum and resources, has established a process for creating a provincial list of recommended novels.

ERAC is an association of BC public school districts working together on software, textbook and video acquisition. It is run by an Executive Committee, comprised of senior school district administrators. Educators from throughout the province participate on various ERAC committees. Last summer, ERAC piloted a novel-evaluation process and then produced a catalogue of 141 novels (including 19 French novels) recommended for classroom use. Over the December break it ran a second evaluation session, which will be followed by another during Spring Break, adding more titles to the catalogue. ERAC arranged for training for BC teachers to evaluate the novels. The BC Teachers’ Federation coordinated the identification and selection of teacher-evaluators. Teachers read their assigned novels and then work together to evaluate them, using a rigorous ERAC evaluation process that was adapted from the existing learning resource evaluation process.

The evaluation criteria focus on: intended audience (including reading level), quality of the literature, and social considerations. Each novel is identified by descriptors, such as Canadian, BC or aboriginal content, curricular and instructional suitability and genre. Each successful evaluation includes a recommended grade range, specific reasons for recommendation and identified social consideration for teacher selection and instructional planning.

To view the novel and each title’s evaluation content, please got to ERAC’s website, www.bcerac.ca, click on Novels in the top menu bar and then click on Current Novel Catalogue in the drop-down menu.

If you have any other questions, please contact your district’s ERAC District Learning Resource Contact (listed on ERAC’s website) or ERAC’s Barb Hyde at bhyde@bcerac.ca or 604-713-5920.

Each April, the Canadian Bar Association holds events to celebrate Law Week. In past years, these have included short story, essay, photo, video and public speaking competitions.

The CBA events celebrate the signing of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This year’s theme for Law Week is “Access to Justice.”
Of particular interest to English teachers is the Barry Sullivan Law Cup public speaking contest, open to students enrolled in grades 11 and 12 throughout British Columbia. The Law Cup, named in memory of Barry Sullivan, honours his contributions to the legal and educational professions as well as his work in defense of the Charter.

Students choose one of three debate-style resolutions—each of which deals with a contemporary legal or social issue—and then construct a five-minute speech either in support or in opposition to that resolution. The upcoming issue of Update will feature the first and second place speeches from the 2006 competition.

The registration deadline for the speech contest is March 15, 2007, with the contest taking place the week of April 16-22.

For more information, either visit the CBA web site www.cba.org and follow the links to Law Week under Public & Media or contact CBA representative Alison Campbell at AZCampbell@van.fasken.com

As many of you are aware, the Ministry has been involved for some time now in a wholesale revision to the English language arts curriculum for grades 8-12.

The Ministry ignored long-established protocols whereby the BCTF was involved in the selection of curriculum writing team members, and only after a draft curriculum was available was BCTF input requested.

BCTF members participated in a two-day review of the draft curriculum, which took place in October 2006. The input from this broad cross-section of BC teachers then went back to the curriculum writing team.

Teachers who attended the fall BCTELA conference had the opportunity to attend a workshop entitled “Peek Preview of the Draft English-Language Arts Curriculum,” which was conducted by Gail Hughes-Adams of the Ministry and Cass Crest, who had been involved in the last curriculum revision (1995).

Now, the Ministry is inviting input from the public. It is crucial that teachers familiarize themselves with this draft document and have their voices heard. The “window” for feedback is from February to May 2007. Check out the Ministry web site and this link: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/drafts/

At the school and local level, teachers need to advocate for adequate time and resources to implement this new curriculum, which is slated for September 2007.

BCTELA wants to keep English language arts teachers “in the loop” during the development of this exciting new course. Keep posted for lists of recommended resources and opportunities to get involved with piloting units of study by checking out the BCTELA web site (www.bctf.ca/bctela) and the First Nations Education Steering Committee web site (www.fnesc.bc.ca).

The BC Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) and the BCTF, is currently developing a new language arts course: English 12 First Peoples. English 12 First Peoples is intended to appeal to both aboriginal and non-aboriginal students and will present authentic Aboriginal voices (i.e., historical or contemporary texts created by or with Aboriginal people) and will feature various forms of text – including oral story, speech, poetry, dramatic work, dance, song, film, and prose.

It will give students opportunities to:

• work with oral texts and develop an understanding of the significance of oral tradition

• look at connections between texts and distinctively Aboriginal worldviews and themes

• experience texts in a way that reflects pedagogical approaches prevalent within Aboriginal cultures

• examine texts grounded in varied Aboriginal cultures, including local Aboriginal perspectives

The development of English 12 First Peoples occurs within the context of the new English Language Arts curriculum, which recognizes the importance of oral language by having ORAL LANGUAGE (Speaking & Listening) as one of 3 main curriculum organizers.

English 12 First Peoples will go beyond this by requiring students to:

• study some specific oral texts

• demonstrate understanding of the role and significance of the oral tradition in Aboriginal societies, with reference to specific examples How will the English 12 First Peoples curriculum be the same as the English 12 curriculum?

• It will be equally rigorous (counts as a Required Course in English at the Grade 12 level).

• It will include opportunities to study (& create, as appropriate) texts in a wide range of genres (novels, drama, song, speech, stories, film).

• It will use similar organizers, learning outcomes, and achievement indicators for the curriculum, where appropriate (i.e., adapt, NOT adopt).

How will English 12 First Peoples be different from English 12?

• It will focus exclusively on texts that present authentic Aboriginal voices.

• Themes, images, and ideas that are common to the experience of many Aboriginal people will be highlighted (social context for texts).

• There will be even more emphasis on oral text, and students will be expected to learn about the oral tradition (social context for texts).

• The use and student awareness of pedagogical approaches prevalent within Aboriginal cultures will be encouraged.

• Close connections between the classroom and local Aboriginal communities or organizations will be promoted. When will English 12 First Peoples be introduced?

• May 2007 draft curriculum
• July 2007 pilot resource package available u
• September 2007 pilot testing
• September 2008 full implementatio