BCTELA

by Krista Ediger

I've been teaching thematically for the nine years I've been in the classroom, but when I heard Jeff Wilhelm speak at the SFU Literacy Continuum Conference last August, his discussion of the importance of using essential questions to frame and focus units led me to reconsider my unit planning. I had been hearing murmurings of backwards design, and was involved in a group planning process two years ago for Humanities 8 which followed many of the principles of backwards design without my being aware of it, and I worked extensively with a partner on English 11 three years ago tackling big assessment questions, but I knew that it was time to explore the process further. The key difference between the unit planning I was used to and backwards design is the piece where, before deciding on instructional activities, teachers articulate the summative assessments they will use to determine whether or not their students have met their stated enduring understandings or learning outcomes.

Last year, I followed much the same program I taught the year before for English 12, and was feeling increasingly ineffective. In February, I decided I needed to plan the rest of my grade 12 course more purposefully, and so enlisted the help of a district consultant, Joanne Panas. In this article, I'll touch on our planning process, and then outline the unit itself, which grew into a multi-faceted, three month unit on story that touched on literary analysis of poetry and short stories, small group discussion, spoken word and personal narratives. Of course there are things I'll change next year when I teach this again, but it's a unit I will teach again, and some of the principles I practised in this unit in both the planning and implementing stages are ones that I am coming to understand as increasingly important in all my teaching: backwards design (identifying clear enduring understandings, essential questions, summative and formative assessments - all prior to the creation of daily lessons), planning with a partner or team, explicit teaching using modeling, gradual release, and differentiated instruction.

Our Planning Process

Before we began formally planning this unit, we had some conversations that focused on materials and activities. In particular, I was interested in a poetry unit Joanne had done last year with her English 10's that used text sets in a literature circle format. I also wanted to incorporate some spoken-word poetry that had been successful with my students in the past. We had a great conversation about how each of us might open a unit on short stories; from this came one of our big ideas: "Why do people tell stories?" After these informal chats, we set up a meeting to plan with a focus on backwards design. To our first meeting, I brought my copy of Understanding by Design, by Wiggins and McTighe; Joanne brought an activity from her staff meeting the day before, which was a boiled-down version of chapter 1 of Wiggins's and McTighe's book.

We began by determining the enduring understandings we wished to address, and these were based on our knowledge of the new ELA 8-12 IRP and its increased focus on oral language. At the same time, we worked out our essential questions. It's important to note that this was something of a back-and-forth process, not a linear one. We wrestled with phrasing, pared down ideas, checked the book, and moved items from one category to another. Once we had these ideas down, we looked at the skills, knowledge, and attitudes we wanted the students to acquire. Though somewhat "old-school," these last three areas are still valid organizers with their practical and concrete nature, but we realized they should come after the enduring understandings and essential questions are determined.

Our next focus was on assessment. For this part, we decided to go back to our two enduring understandings. We created a chart that helped us see how for each of the enduring understandings, we would have a formative piece and a summative piece. We found it easier to divide the enduring understandings up somewhat, as you can see in our final chart. This gave us a good idea of what we would have students do to demonstrate their acquisition of the big ideas. Again, this was not a linear process; we excitedly came up with ideas for instruction and assessment as we chatted, and wrote them down separately for the next section. At times it was hard to keep focused on just the key assessments. As we worked, we realized that we wanted to weave stories and poetry together; from that came the idea of choosing poems for the literature circles that had something to do with the idea of "story," which linked back to our essential questions.

Next, we needed to get a sense of the flow of the unit-how would we instruct and assess students so as to move them toward these final assessments? Actually, it was by then a fairly simple process. I began by sketching out a flow for the unit, incorporating instruction using modeling and gradual release, as well as formative assessment. Together we brainstormed ways to flesh this out, while continually checking back to our big ideas. Once this flow was pretty well set, we went back through it to make sure we were following a clear pattern of instruction and practice, followed by assessment. When we created the chart from our notes, the purpose of each activity was clear.

We met again about a week and a half later; by that point, I had just begun the unit with a class on "stories" - the history of story, their purpose and power, how their roles have changed. We also talked about narrators and points of view and truth and perspective before sharing some of the stories we tell often from our own lives. Then we looked at three short stories: "Man from the South" by Roald Dahl, "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov and "The Chaser" by John Collier, and did a variety of pre/during/post reading strategies, followed by discussion that linked us back to our opening questions and the essential questions of the unit. Joanne and I began our second formal planning session by brainstorming other possible stories for later in the unit. Then we worked on the shift to poetry. We decided to do a "fishbowl" with three teachers, Joanne, me and Gordon Powell, the teacher-librarian at McRoberts, using a new poem for each of my three English 12 classes; in addition, each of the administrators was invited to participate in the fishbowl sessions, and we ended up having an administrator at each one. We also worked on the poetry literature circle idea, and began to think of suitable poems as well as how to make up the text sets. Because we had done so much work last time on getting a clear idea of our focus for the unit, we were able to spend more time on the actual instruction, materials, and student activities we would use. We were also able to take our initial notes from the first planning day and make changes and additions to them to reflect what was happening in the classroom.

This has been a great process, and has solidified for us a few key points: two minds (or more) are better than one; the process of backward design is very practical, but it's not linear; and there is no "one right way" to incorporate the key concepts of understanding by design into your own planning. It doesn't matter what route you take, as long as you get to the desired destination.

 

The following is the result of our initial work with backwards design.

  

Part 1: THE BIG IDEAS
Enduring Understandings

• Students will understand how to engage with and respond to literature and ideas, and to interact with others around those ideas, orally and in writing.
• Students will understand that stories have a variety of purposes in our lives and society, and a variety of effects on us.
  

Essential Questions

• Why do we tell stories?
• What are the ways we tell stories?
• What stories do I (students) want to tell? Skills:

Students will…

• Respond personally to literature and ideas
• Participate appropriately and thoughtfully in small-group and large-group discussions
• Make appropriate choices in diction, language, rhythm, and structure when presenting
• Write analytical paragraphs and essays about short stories and poems

Knowledge: Students will…

• Review and use the elements of literature and literary devices of short stories and poems

Attitudes: Students will…

• Gain an appreciation of the purpose of stories in our lives and culture n Demonstrate willingness to engage in and explore literature and ideas
  

  

Part 2: Assessment

Enduring Understanding	Formative Assessment	Summative Assessment
Engage with and respond to literature and ideas, and interact with others around those ideas, orally…	■ class discussion of rubric for group discussion; students use rubric to evaluate teachers in fishbowl discussion ■ self-assessment and teacher feedback of small-group discussions (first - poetry lit circles and then short stories)	■ self-evaluation of small-group discussions (poetry lit circles)
…and in writing	■ teacher feedback and self/peer-assessment of analytical paragraphs on poems and essays on stories using teacher rubric	■ teacher evaluation of analytical essay on short story
Understand that stories have a variety of purposes in our lives and society…	■ peer/self-assessment of language and presentation skills for group poem written in response to a story or poem, presented to the class	See below.
… and a variety of effects on us	See above.	■ teacher assessment of spoken-word poem (your own story) written by individuals and presented to the class (Poetry Café)

 

Nicole Widdess teaches in Richmond and is the Curriculum Co-Chair for BCTELA. She is committed to teaching diverse learners and is passionate about literacy. Her current focus is teaching students in the middle years.

Click here to open a PDF version of this article.

As one of the Curriculum Coordinators, I am pleased to share that our Curriculum Pack sub-committee has developed new submission criteria that reflect current thinking, research and pedagogy. These criteria are also aligned with the ideas and research presented in the pedagogical considerations section of BC’s new K-7 and draft 8-12 English Language Arts IRPs. We hope that the new criteria will support you, our members, in writing up and submitting units of study for publication.

When you submit a curriculum pack, a member of our committee will provide descriptive feedback to assist you in revising and readying your unit for publication. Once accepted for publication, you are eligible for curriculum resource funds ($400). If you are interested in crafting a unit to be published by BCTELA please be sure to review the criteria below. Please send your unit (or proposal for a unit) to Nicole Widdess at NWiddess@richmond.sd38.bc.ca. Once your proposal or unit has been reviewed, we will be sure to get back to you as soon as possible.

 

Overview

• Identifies essential questions and enduring understandings

o These are the big ideas/inquiries that will guide the unit and the skills/strategies (including cognitive and metacognitive) that will be used/developed by students

• This overview should demonstrate links to the 2006 K-7 and/or the 2007 Draft 8-12 ELA IRPs m cuts across outcomes from the 3 organizers and 4 suborganizers of the ELA IRP

Assessment

• formative assessment/metacognitive activities

o formative assessment practices that help students learn to analyze and critique their work and to set personalized goals in relation to shared criteria

o offer students opportunities to generate criteria and strategies that are both contextual and meaningful

o a variety of assessment activities, including performance-based assessment

• summative assessment m performance-based assessment that includes detailed rubrics and links back to enduring understandings

Lesson Sequences

• a clear, detailed outline of suggested lesson sequences including m gradual release of responsibility

o assessment-to-instruction m metacognitive activities (e.g. using and/or generating criteria, self-assessment, goal-setting, and reflection)

o reading, writing, and oral language activities

o well-structured lessons that help students connect, process, and transform and personalize texts, concepts, and/or understandings

Diversity Considerations

• suggestions for adapting based on students' individual strengths and needs

• ways to differentiate based on student interests and context (e.g. text choices, variety of output options, variety of instructional modes)

Additional Documents

• performance rubrics

• handouts used in the lessons

• resources used, and suggestions for alternative resources

Reflection

• what worked especially well

• what came before this and after this in the year

• how this unit built on or was able to be built upon by other inquiries/units

Would you like support in developing a unit that integrates strategic teaching, formative and summative assessment, gradual release and the use of diverse texts using learning outcomes from the new IRP? Consider attending the Saturday Institute at our Fall Conference October 25, 2008. The 2008 Conference will be held at the Delta Hotel in Richmond this year. BCTELA Executive members Krista Ediger, Joanne Panas, Leyton Schnellert, and Nicole Widdess will be facilitating an institute on backwards design tentatively called "Designing Units with the End in Mind." A description of this institute follows:

So many best practices...how do you put them all together to create engaging, pedagogically-sound units that will help your students learn what they need to? Come and spend the day with us-learn about inquiry and backwards design, modeling and gradual release, assessment-to-instruction-and put it all together in a framework for a unit you can use. To get the most out of this session, bring a topic for a unit and sample texts you might use, and any brainstorming you might have already done.

The Curriculum Pack sub-committee members are looking forward to a year of learning together as we explore the new English Language Arts IRPs and develop new curriculum packs to support their implementation.

 

Leyton Schnellert is Co-Editor of Update and and a part-time Faculty Associate, Field Programs, Faculty of Education, SFU. leyton_schnellert@sfu.ca

Why spend the entire summer assembling an edition of Update? Good
question. Apart from the collective sigh of relief from the
contributors to this edition (who doesn’t want an extra six weeks to
rework the last draft of a piece?), it gives Krista and I a chance to
sit back and reflect on how the year has gone and what lies ahead. We
have recently done the same together with your BCTELA Executive.

 

In BCTELA’s effort to better support English Language Arts teachers we
traverse the landscape of adolescent literacy research and practice.
It’s an exciting and daunting task. In this edition of Update, Chelsea
Prince talks of how teachers in her school shared ideas and lessons and
approaches online. Similarly, at our Spring retreat the Executive
looked at the BCTELA website and realized that in this information age
we need something more interactive. How can members access past
editions of Update and get the latest news in the most intuitive way
possible? Stay tuned.

 

And then there are the new ELA IRPs. Important research-based and
classroom-tested ideas and approaches – pedagogical considerations –
BCTELA members have been exploring for years have found themselves in
the Considerations for Delivery section of the new IRPs. What can we do
as a collective body to support one another in exploring the clearer
focus on oral language, the emphasis on formative assessment, outcomes
specific to cognitive strategies, or ways to design curriculum with
enduring understandings in mind?

 

BCTELA thinks that initially we can help in two ways. First, you’ll notice
that our Fall conference (see the Check This Out department) is
organized in strands based on the pedagogical considerations section
and learning outcomes of the new K-7 and the draft 8-12 ELA IRPs (the
latter will be posted on the Ministry’s website in September). Indeed,
we have sought out leading educators from across the province to
initiate thoughtful explorations of relevant and innovative practices.
Faye Brownlie will start us off on the Thursday night with a “fireside
chat” exploring interesting and exciting ideas to pay attention to in
the new IRPs. We think that our program for Friday (the provincial
pro-d day) may be the richest we’ve ever assembled with a careful
effort to feature innovative work from around the province.

 

Secondly, we see the time is at hand to re-envision our Curriculum Packs. Using
the same current research around unit design, formative assessment and
strategies instruction, we are developing updated criteria for
curriculum packs that we hope will better support those submitting
units and, in the end, provide exemplars for BCTELA members that help
to link student learning, practice, and research. See Krista Ediger’s
piece in this edition as an example of a teacher working (with the
support of colleagues) to incorporate these ideas into her planning and
practice.

 

While BCTELA always strives first and foremost to nurture and address the
questions and needs as they pertain to the teaching of English Language
Arts, we also see how, across the province, more and more English
Language Arts specialists are collaborating with and/or supporting
generalists, special educators, content area teachers (i.e. Math,
Science, Social Studies), teacher-librarians, and applied skills
teachers (e.g. Fine and Performing Arts, Home Economics). When we start
to have conversations about the students we teach and what learning is
in this information age we cannot help but begin to look across the
arbitrary divisions in the school day and see how our goals for our
students can overlap to create more engaging and meaningful curricula.
Reading and writing, speaking and listening, viewing and representing –
the use of language and literacy practices - are crucial to learning
and are present in pedagogy across the disciplines.

 

In this edition we take some initial steps to draw together underlying
concepts that inform literacy-related practices across the curriculum.
From Sue Schleppe and her colleagues’ inquiry unit in Science, to
Carole Saundry’s work on inferring with text in Math, to Joanne Panas’s
update on “second shot” approaches to literacy instruction for
struggling adolescent readers in Richmond, there is a common underlying
message. When teachers are creative and take different avenues that
support students’ active engagement in creating understandings,
students have opportunities to build content knowledge as well as the
strategies they need to make meaning, link ideas across texts and
contexts, and apply what they know to authentic tasks. Colleagues
working together help one another to model and explain their use of
strategies, and emphasize that the more students understand strategies,
the more likely they are to use them and help students to self-regulate
their meaning-making and application of key concepts and approaches.

 

Mara Brkich’s piece highlights how dedication to improving students’
literacy skills – particularly higher-level thinking skills – has
significantly more impact at the school level and not just at the level
of the individual teacher. Students build their ability to
self-regulate when they develop and use a repertoire of strategies that
are needed to accomplish complex tasks, and when introduced to similar
thinking skills in different classes and contexts, they have the
opportunity to understand themselves as learners who can apply and
generalize strategies and approaches. When teachers work together to
implement common goals across a school, classrooms, and disciplines,
they build better learners and thinkers.

 

We do make a difference when we work together to make a difference for
kids. Hopefully, as the Executive focuses on a few key approaches that
can make the biggest difference for members of the Association, you
will feel better supported in making the changes that you feel will
best lead to authentic and meaningful learning for your students.

 

Leyton for Krista and the rest of the Exec.

 

 

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

(Click here to downlaod this article in PDF)

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.

This list was started by Susan Ma and Celia Brownrigg.  It is meant to be open-ended and we hope it will enjoy many contributers.

 

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

- a great book to have.  McCloud acknowledges and tears down so many of our prejudices when approaching the graphic novel medium: comics.  The explanation of active readership (what goes on the our head when we read a graphic text) is easy to understand and integrate in to planning and instruction.  This is an excellent book for a novice in the graphic, or comics, form to start with.  It is written in the comics medium which facilitates McCloud's descriptions of the graphic form as well as subliminally reinforces the stance that "comics" is a medium suited to many types of content; don't mistake it as simply the message (sorry Marshall). This resource is a must-read for any teacher considering using graphic novels or other comics in class.

 

Panel Discussion: Design In Sequential Art Storytelling

Interviews with Masters of the Craft!  What's talking about graphic
novels without talking to the creators and storytellers?  The
interviews are very insightful.

 

 Graphic Novels in Your Media Library Center  by Allyson and Barry Lyga

This resource is notes from a teacher-librarian int he USA who uses graphic nevels in her classroom.   The Lygas' variety of grade coverage is good, covering grades two through ten, as well as their cultural coverage of both "eastern" and "western" graphic novels.  Check out their activity ideas too!

 

In Graphic Detail by David Booth and Kathy Gould Lundy

This resouce is exclusivly available to educators through Scholastic Education.  The approach in this book is particular to using comics in classroom activities.  While some of the examples used could be better, both authors are well-known educators and have great experience working with Canadian teachers and librarians.

Theresa Rogers  

Theresa is a professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her areas of interest include youth multiple literacy practices and critical
perspectives on young adult literature. See theresarogers.ca.

Genre Play, Positioning and Critical Interpretation

For the past several years I have been work- ing with colleagues in various school and non-school settings involving youth in a range of arts and media activities.1 One aspect of this work of potential interest to English educators is the way film (video) production can be seen as a new literary form. With more emphasis on multimedia in schools, it seems timely to consider filmmaking, in particular, as a valid and endlessly imaginative form of literary interpretation among students.2

The youth whose work I will share here range in ages from 15 through 19 and have attended or are attending alternative secondary schools and/or are participating in a community anti-violence program. In various ways they have all been alienated from structures and contexts of traditional secondary schools. These alternative school and community sites provide environments that are a better fit for the youth and more open to video work as an impor- tant multimodal or “new” literacy practice.

I like to think of video production as a new form of reading and interpreting literature that is more engaging for a wider range of youth. Video produc- tion breaks down some boundaries between in- school and out-of-school lives. Indeed, some would say multiple literacy practices “travel” across our institutional boundaries (Leander, 2003) as is evi- dent in our work. We are mindful that youth are already very often critical consumers and producers of new media—showing us over and over again that they have things to say and the tools to say it, and their films are created in the intersections of these available resources and perspectives (see also: Burn and Parker, 2003; Goodman, 2003; Sefton-Green, 1998 and 2006; Soep, 2006).

Yet most classrooms continue to privilege print literacy practices (Moje, 2000; O’Brien, 2005), which are historically entrenched in schools and are seen to carry power as a path to higher education. It may also be fair to say, and I would include myself here, that English teachers are more comfortable with print literacy. We love to hold books, to carry them, devour them, talk about them, review them, and store them safely and forever in our hearts and book- shelves. Not all of our students are so enamored.

 

Four Films: “The Blue Bouquet,” “The Making of Othello,” “Hills like White Elephants,” and “Billie Holiday”

Four films described below illustrate the ways youth used film to interpret literature. As part of this process, they played with genre and positioned themselves in new ways in relation to their work, their peers and teachers, while critically interpret- ing literature.

The Blue Bouquet

The first film is a very short version of the story “The Blue Bouquet” by Octavio Paz (1976). In this haunting and dreamlike short story, Henry wakes from a nightmare and hastily dresses to face the reality of remote Mexico. A lost soul from the American middle-class, a stranger to a wife he left at home, and now alone in a squalid hotel, Henry is warned to stay put for his own safety. However, on a brief walk through the area he is threatened by a peasant bearing a knife, which (he tells the incred- ulous American) he will use to cut the eyes from Henry’s head in order to present this macabre offer- ing of “a bouquet of blue eyes” to his bewitching girlfriend Consuela.

The student, Jake, who directed this film re-interpreted it as a kind of morality play by identifying the hotel owner as the bystander, Henry as the victim, and the “peasant” as persecutor (actually labeling them that way in the credits). The film is initially set at the school (borrowing the principal as the hotel owner/bystander) and moves to a nearby abandoned and graffiti-saturated parking lot where Henry is accosted by the peasant in a reenacted mugging scene. “Henry” pleads for mercy, saying “I have brown eyes.” Jake used hip hop music as a soundtrack (“Multiply” by Xzibit), and exaggerated the fighting by employing quickly repetitive views of the interaction during editing.

In this interpretation, the story becomes less a stylized and lyrical short story and more an action-oriented and messaged film. By incorporating the school principal into the action as a character, Jake repositioned himself and his cast members as having at least momentarily reversed the power structures of schools. They also embodied the story with their own contemporary understanding of violence by recreating the mugging scene and using contemporary rap music. And finally, by placing the film in a space that represented their identities (street-oriented, tough, masculinist) they created a contemporary re-interpretation that traveled across traditional, institutional and spatial boundaries, providing a rich opportunity for talking about literary interpretation. That is, they effectively re-interpreted the story by shifting to a contemporary setting that reflects aspects of their own experience, and providing a kind of moral commentary on engaging in and witnessing violence.

 The Making of Othello

This film by a student named Scotty is introduced with a filmed discussion between himself and a friend in which he explains that he ran into a “casting problem” while filming the play “Othello” by Shakespeare. He decided to do a documentary about the problems of casting in filmmaking, noting that it would be “a different kind of film.” Clips from the documentary itself can be viewed at this website: web.mac.com/theresa.rogers/iWeb/Site/Othello.html

The documentary focuses on issues related to using a cat to portray Desdemona and a dog to portray Othello, resulting in a very humorous transformation of the story. Bits of a script rewritten from a contemporary perspective are overlaid with a serious discussion of lighting, voiceovers, and quality of the technology available:

Actress speaking to Desdemona (a cat): You two make a very good couple and Othello is very hot… but rumour in the dog pound is that he’s been sneaking out late at night.

Narrative voiceover: Here the cat would have an overlapping voice, which is a voice-over.

Actress to cat: Oh, and where is the marriage chew toy you gave him and how long has it been since he’s chewed it?

Narrative voice-over: In this part of the film I would put a voice-over to make it sound like she [Desdemona] is talking.

In this film, Scott has fully positioned himself as a filmmaker who quite seriously comments on the familiar problems a director might face even in the absurd case of using animals as the main characters. At the same time he has rewritten the script for the animals, so the result is a quite sophisticated and layered parody.

Hills Like White Elephants

“Hills Like White Elephants”by Ernest Hemingway (1927) is mainly a dialogue between a young woman and a man waiting for a train in Spain. As they talk, it becomes clear that the young woman is pregnant and that the man wants her to have an abortion. Through their tight, brittle conversation, much is revealed about their personalities. At the same time, much about their relationship remains hidden. At the end of the story it is still unclear as to what decision has or has not been made, or what will happen to these two characters waiting for a train on a platform in Spain.

Two students, Nikki and Scott, decided to film this story with Nikki as the director and the two of them as the main characters. They realized it would be difficult to film in a train station so their setting is more pastoral, shifting the mood. The film employs fairly sophisticated filming techniques; for instance, the film begins with a shot from above that slowly moves down toward the couple speaking “to bring the audience right into the set with you.” The rest of the film includes some of the dialogue and some voice-overs of shots of the couple in a field.

What is most striking about this film is that in the middle of the film a sonogram image of a fetus dissolves in and off the screen, and at the end are pregnancy help lines. According to Nikki she didn’t realize when she first read the story that it was about abortion, but after she storyboarded the voice-over line, “Once they take it way, we can never get it back,” she realized she needed to put in help lines at the end.

In this way the film becomes a hybrid genre combining storytelling and public service announcement (PSA) ele- ments. The choice of music—Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”—contributes to what they referred to as the “seri- ous” and “sorrowful” tone of the film. Hip hop, they felt, would be “too youth” for their purposes. Nikki and Scott updated the story and its themes and repositioned themselves to speak about serious issues with peers (unwanted pregnancy) through their re-interpretation of the film.

Billie Holiday

This film was made by a young woman (“Kim”) who par- ticipates in an after school anti-violence program. This was one of the first films she made and while it is quite simple in its approach, the result is powerful. Billie Holiday’s performance of “Strange Fruit” is well known and available for viewing on the web. The song is based on a poem by the same name written in by Abel Meeropol (pen name Lewis Allen)in 1937. He wrote it after seeing a photograph of the lynch- ing of two African American men in Indiana. The lyrics begin: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, / Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”

In Kim’s film, the song begins and the images shift between stock photographs of Billie Holiday at work and thvideo of her singing, using a "grainy" editing effect. As the film progresses, Holiday appears to become older and more despairing, both in the photos and the video. At one point the screen goes dark, and in the last scene there is no sound, creating an eerie and foreboding feeling.

While the film is made entirely from Internet images, the overall effect of the short film is quite a moving statement about Billie Holiday and her embodiment of the poem's sorrow, as well as the tragedy of its content. As Kim says, she wanted to capture the melancholy and show how Holiday was interpreting the words and her reaction to them-"to tell the story of her essence," which she thought people might not otherwise see. For her, the important element was how Billie Holiday interpreted the poem and how she (Kim) could impose another layer of interpretation to shed light on Bilie Holiday, who is a compelling figure to Kim. Here again, there is evidence of sophisticated re-interpretation across genres and media (poem to song to film) in order to create a unique critical reading.

Conclusion 

These four examples are just a few of the many films youth have made in these classroom and community centers. I believe these more literary films illustrate the playfulness and creativity the youth bring to their work and the ways they use filmmaking as a mode of literary (re)interpretation. In these films, they use image, sound, and text in sophisticated ways to express their understanding. They juxtapose genres, reposition themselves in relation to literary works and to others, and create new sites of interpretation. For these youth in particular, filmmaking provided a way to engage in the reading of literature in unique ways and afforded alternative modes of expressing critical interpretations.

What is also apparent in their work is that they have a sense of the literary elements of voice, perspective, tone, symbolism and mood that can be exploited as they move across written text and multimedia. That is, filmmaking helps students, especially those who are less engaged in the curriculum, to become more sophisticated "readers" of literary works.

Notes

1 A three-year (2001-2004) youth literacy project with teacher (Andrew Schofield) and university colleagues (Kari Winters, Anne-Marie LaMonde) that integrated arts and media into all areas of the curriculum, and a current project that includes a community anti-violence program in which students created videos. In these settings, I have been most interested in the way youth engage in genre play, identity positioning, and critical expression through arts and media production (e.g. Rogers and Schofield, 2005).

2 While there appear to be more opportunities for students to engage in filmmaking in special courses and after school programs, it is less often that film is integrated directly into course work. Meanwhile the technology is becoming more accessible and, indeed, many students already have access to digital video cameras and computer software. For our projects we used iMovie software and Apple computers. With as few as one or two digital cameras and two editing stations (Mac computers) we found we could fully integrate media production into the classroom curriculum. 

Resources

Inpoint at Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver (www.inpoint.org) offers workshops and downloadable worksheets on studying and producing films (e.g. the language of film, storyboarding, filming, editing, permissions, etc).

References 

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin, Texas: University of Texas.

Burn, A. and Parker, D. (2003). Analysing media texts. London: Continuum.

Goodman, S. (2003). Teaching Youth Media: A critical guide to literacy, video production and social change. New York: Teachers College Press.

Hemingway, E. (1927)"Hills Like White Elephants." In Men Without Women. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons.

Holland, D., et al. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press.

Leander, K. M. (2003). Writing travelers' tales on New Literacyscapes. Reading Research Quarterly, 38(3), 392-397.

Moje, E. (2000). "To be part of the story": The literacy practices of gangsta adolescents. Teachers College Record, 102(3), 651-691.

O'Brien, D. (2005). "At-risk" adolescents: Redefining competence through the multiliteracies of intermediality, visual arts, and representation. Reading online www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/obrien/ (Retrieved 3/20/05).

Paz, Octavio. (1976). "The Blue Bouquet" from Eagle or Sun? New York: New Directions Publishing.

Rogers, T. & Schofield, A. (2005). "Things thicker than words: Portraits of youth multiple literacies an alternative secondary program". In Anderson, J., Kendrick, M., Rogers, T. and Smythe, S (Eds). Portraits of Literacy across families, schools and communities. Lawrence Erlbaum Pubishers, pp 205-220.

Sefton-Green, J. (1998). Digital diversions. Youth culture in the age of multimedia. London: UCL Press.

Sefton-Green, J. (2006). "Youth, technology and media cultures". In Green, J. and Luke, A. (Eds) Rethinking learning: What counts as learning and what learning counts. Review of Research in Education. Washington, D.C. American Educational Research Association.

Soep, E. (2006). Beyond literacy and voice in youth media production. McGill Journal ofEducation, 41(3).

 

 

 

After publishing the annual Wordscapes: British Columbia Youth Writing Anthology for the past six years, Ripple Effect Arts and Literature Society (REAL) will be relaunching the publication as the new Wordscapes Youth Arts Journal in March 2008. In addition to publishing nearly 50 talented high school writers and visual artists each year, the journal will also have a Contemporary Writing section with writing samples by established authors from Canada’s literary community. REAL is excited to have lined up a number of excellent writers to appear in the first three issues in 2008, including: Douglas Coupland, Christian Bök, Wade Compton, Rachel Zolf, Janina Hornosty and Billeh Nickerson.

The journal will be published three times a school year, and each issue will focus on one writing genre – fiction, poetry, and personal essay. The always topical and engaging youth writing and cover art in the journal is by the winners of REAL’s annual BC Youth Writing and Design Contest, now in its seventh year. All students who enter the contest receive a one year subscription to Wordscapes and a chance to win $100-$500 and publication in the journal. (The next deadline for student and school entries is May 31, 2008. See www.rippleeffect.ca in the new year for details.)

REAL believes the new Wordscapes Youth Arts Journal will give students a unique opportunity to read and be inspired by current writing practices as exemplified by their student peers and Canada’s diverse community of authors. For teachers, the journal will provide an enhanced classroom resource that sets a benchmark for provincial writing and motivates students with contemporary literature they are not normally exposed to through standard curriculum resources. Students whose teachers introduce them to Wordscapes in class generally demonstrate higher literacy and write more mature and accomplished pieces.

In order to give teachers an opportunity to see firsthand the quality and teaching potential of the new Wordscapes Youth Arts Journal, REAL is planning to donate 1000 copies of the first two issues to be published in February (Fiction) and March (Poetry) to BC school libraries and teachers. I’ve arranged it so that all BCTELA members who are interested in receiving a free copy just have to email REAL Society at info@rippleeffect.ca and write “BCTELA Wordscapes copy” in the subject line, and your Name, School, Position, and Mailing Address in the email.

I highly recommend all members take a few seconds to take advantage of this offer and check out this high quality publication. It will be a good read for both students and teachers!