ATEQ - The Association of Teachers of English of Quebec

Workshops

Where I'm from: Inviting student lives into the classroom - Linda Christensen workshop

Ms Christensen, Director, Oregon Writing Project at Lewis & Clark College, shared a variety of poetry prompts that help move students to listen and care about each other while they build literacy skills.

Donna Lahache, President of ATEQ introduces Linda Christensen (left)

I am very honoured and pleased to be able to introduce tonight's guest speaker. Linda Christensen is the author of Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word and co-editor of Rethinking School Reform: Views from the Classroom and Rethinking Our Classrooms. She has given keynote addresses at local, national, and international conferences about her work on literacy and social justice.

Her articles about literacy and social justice have appeared in numerous journals. For the last thirty years, she has taught high school Language Arts and worked as a Language Arts Curriculum Specialist in Portland, Oregon.

In addition, Linda is the Director of the Oregon Writing Project located in the Graduate School of Education at Lewis & Clark College . The Oregon Writing Project is part of the National Writing Project network, the oldest and largest professional development project in the United States . National Writing Project sites use a teacher-teaching-teachers model that draws on the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of successful classroom teachers.

In an article, Linda states, “During my seven years as a curriculum specialist designing professional development in Portland Public Schools, I wanted teachers to see themselves as curriculum producers, as creative intellectuals rather than technicians serving out daily portions of someone else's packaged or downloaded materials. I attempted to create spaces where teachers could work together to develop their own curriculum and discuss education issues.” After reading her words, I shouted out “YES,” finally someone who respects educators and I was personally struck by Linda's passion and conviction in having teachers teach teachers, sharing between educators, taking the time to hear what teachers already know and what they need to enrich their teaching. I was determined to find a way for Linda to share her experiences and knowledge as an educator with us. I was thrilled to learn that she had agreed to speak at our conference.

On behalf of the Association of Teachers of English in Quebec and the Springboards planning committee, I am honored to welcome Linda Christensen to Montreal.

Linda Christensen handout:

I remember holding my father's hand as he read my story hanging on the display wall outside Mrs. Martin's third-grade classroom on the night of Open House. I remember the sound of change jingling in Dad's pocket, his laughter as he called my mom over and read out loud the part where I'd named the cow “ Lena ” after my mother and the chicken “Walt” after my father. It was a moment of sweet joy for me when my two worlds of home and school bumped together in a harmony of reading, writing, and laughter.

…events from my schooling capture part of what the editors of Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice (1994) meant when we encouraged teachers to make students feel ‘significant' in our classrooms:

The ways we organize classroom life should seek to make children feel significant and cared about–by the teacher and by each other. Unless students feel emotionally and physically sage, they won't share real thoughts and feelings. Discussions will be tinny and dishonest. We need to design activities where students learn to trust and care for each other. Classroom life should, to the greatest extent possible, pre-figure the kind of democratic and just society we envision, and thus contribute to building that society. Together students and teachers can create a ‘community of conscience', as educators Asa Hilliard and George Pine call it.

…In my classrooms at Jefferson High School , I've attempted to find ways to make students feel significant and cared about as well, to find space for their lives to become part of the curriculum. I do this by inviting them to write about their lives, abut the worlds from which they come. Our sharing is one of the many ways we begin to build community together.

…Sometimes grounding lessons in students' lives can take a more critical role, by asking them to examine how they have been shaped or manipulated by the media, for example. But as critical teacher, we shouldn't overlook the necessity of connecting students around moments of joy as well.

I found a poem by George Ella Lyon in The United States of Poetry , that I use to invite my students' families, homes, and neighborhoods into the classroom.

Teaching Strategy :

1. After students read the poem out loud together, I note that Lyon begins many of her lines with the phrase, “I am from”. I remind the class of William Stafford's advice to find a hook to “link the poem forward” through some kind of device like a repeating line, so the poem can develop a momentum. I suggest they might want to use the line “I am from” or create another phrase that will move the poem.
2. We go line by line through the poem. I ask students to notice the details Lyon remembers about her past. After we read, I ask students to write lists that match the ones in Lyon 's poem and to share them out loud. This verbal sharing sparks memories and also gives us memories to share as we make our way through the lesson:
   • Items found around their home: bobby pins or stacks of newspapers, grandma's teeth, discount coupons for a Mercedes. (They don't have to tell the truth.)
   • Items found in their yard: broken rakes, dog bones, hoses coiled like green snakes. (I encourage them to think of metaphors as they create their lists.)
   • Items found in their neighborhood: the corner grocery, Mr. Tate's beat up Ford Fairlane, the “home base” plum tree.
   • Names of relatives, especially ones that link them to the past: Uncle Einar and Aunt Eva, Claude, the Christensen branch.
   • Sayings: “If I've told you once…” (The students have a great time with this one. They usually have a ready supply that either brings me back to childhood or makes me want to steal their families' lines.)
   • Names of foods and dishes that recall family gatherings: lutefisk, tamales, black-eyed peas.
   • Names of places they keep their childhood memories: Diaries, boxes, underwear drawers, inside the family Bible.
3. We share their lists out loud as we brainstorm. I encourage them to make their piece “sound like home,” using the names and language of their home, their family, their neighborhood. The students who write vague nouns like “shoes” or “magazines” get more specific when they hear their classmates shout out, “Jet,” “ Latina ,” “pink tights crusted with rosin.” Out of the chaos, the sounds, smells, and languages of my students' homes emerge in poetry.
4. Once they have their lists of specific words, phrases, and names, I ask them to write. I encourage them to find some kind of link or phrase like “I am from” to weave the poem together, and to end the poem with a line or two that ties their present to the past, their family history. For example, in Lyon 's poem, she ends with “Under my bed was a dress box / spilling old pictures…I am from those moments…”
5. After students have written a draft, we “read around”. This is an opportunity for students to feel “significant and cared about,” in the words of Rethinking Our Classrooms , as they share their poems.
6. Seated in our circle, students read their poems. After each student reads, classmates raise their hands to comment on what they like abut the piece. The writer calls on his/her classmates and receives feedback about what is good in the poem. I do stop from time to time to point out that the use of a list is a technique they might “borrow” from their peer's poem and include in their next poem or in a revision. I might note that the use of Spanish or home language adds authenticity to a piece and ask them to see if they could add some to their poem. After a few read-around sessions I can spot writing techniques that students have “borrowed“ from each other and included in their revisions or in their next piece: dialogue, church sayings, lists, exaggeration.

“Where I'm From” is an opening lesson in a year of critical teaching. As we create schools and classrooms that are “laboratories for a more just society than the one we now live in,” we need to remember to make our students feel significant and cared about. These kinds of lessons keep me going, too. When the gray days of budget cuts, standardized tests, school restructuring plans gone awry, and kid-bashing talk in the teacher room pile up one after another like layers of old newspapers on your back porch, pull out George Ella Lyon's poem and invite the stories and voices of your students into the classroom.

References:

Bigelow, Bill, et al. Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice . Milwaukee , WI: Rethinking Schools, 1994.

Blum, Joshua, Holman, Bob, and Pellington, Mark (Eds.). The United States of Poetry . New York: Harry N. Adams, 1996.

Stafford, William. Writing the Australian Crawl . Ann Arbor , MI: University of Michigan Press, 1978.

Stafford, William. You Must Revise Your Life . Ann Arbor , MI: University of Michigan Press, 1986.

The following are poems inspired by Linda Christensen's workshop:

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