English Confronting Modernity: Becoming Citizens of the World: November 3rd, Students Present at the Youth Summit

Monday, October 29, 2012

November 3rd, Students Present at the Youth Summit

Yesterday, four students from my eighth grade classes presented at the UIC's Youth Development Summit at Uplift High School in Chicago. Students in the Youth Development M.Ed. program at UIC created a "platform for youth workers and allies to share ideas and practices about the growing Youth Development field," and so this conference welcomes youth workers, educators, social workers and any really anyone who "believes in the power of young people to change the world." For us, however, this was a platform for the youth voices to show why society should believe in young people. The four students who represented our classes moved their audience to see what happens when adults get out of the way and let young voices be heard.

Students applied to represent our class at this summit, and four students (and I need to get parental permission to publish their names and beautiful faces) were selected (rather this opportunity selected them). They spent a week during lunch preparing for the presentation. I was there to ask questions, but the students really organized how best to "uncover" how they came to discover what globalization was and how it is impacting people around the world, but specifically the Maya. The message of this presentation is that leaders read to know, write to learn, and speak to teach. The audience fell in love with these students and were truly inspired by what these thirteen year olds had come to know about their worlds. I think that the audience knew they were witnessing something both remarkable and ordinary. In other words, it was remarkable to hear what young people can do, but it was ordinary in the sense that I believe any four of my students could have done this presentation. It should not have been so astonishing, and the fact that people were thinking this was so extraordinary is an indication that society needs to create more space for youth voices to be heard.

I will post their powerpoint and pdfs of their writing on our new website. Teens Teach, https://sites.google.com/a/ccsd15.net/teens-teaching-global-participation-project/.

Mural on the wall of Uplift High School

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Re-imagining the English Classroom

This unit is an example of what English teachers can do to explore global issues of social justice through reading and writing. This is specifically designed using eighth grade Common Core Standards, but the units are appropriate for middle through high school students. The essential question that began this blog is this: How have the Maya responded to signs of change, and what can the Maya teach us about tradition, cooperation, and democracy? However, it expanded to other units that also seek to find the lessons of modernity -- or the belief that knowledge, the economy, technology and even our selves are capable of never-ending improvement. That said, our work is to uncover the darker side of such progress, which is also complex and shows how we are implicated in the lives of people all over the world. The format of these units is mostly inquiry-based, but we hold onto the core of our discipline, which is narrative. History is a narrative just as stories are, so we need to see any story as having gaps that prompt questions and further inquiry.

For the Maya unit, students will learn about cooperation through inquiry by beginning with a central text, developing comprehension and literary analysis skills while reading the central text, and then filling in the narrative gaps with additional inquiry researching a variety of genres. The summative assessment will enact this principle by presenting their research through multiple genres and then sharing their findings in a oral presentation and gallery walk. I try variations of this with each unit.

1. Thus, the first learning goal is to understand that knowledge is constructed by and through multiple sources. For this reason, we will do fishbowl and socratic seminars throughout the 3 weeks . The summative writing and speaking assessment is a multigenre project (see Romano’s Blending Genre, Altering Style or many websites) that synthesizes various sources to answer our essential question using multiple genres. Students are free to select from a variety of topics.

2. The second goal is to consider what different genres do to help us understand Maya experiences; thus, students will be able to examine the structure, authorial language, and authenticity of historical fiction and testimonio and to analyze what impact each has on the reader’s experience.In reading various texts, students will practice comprehension skills, identify and analyze literary devices, and trace the theme of cooperation. The summative reading assessment is a written assessment about figurative language, vocabulary in context, dialogue, and genre.

3.The third goal is to enact inclusivity, participation and critical engagement -- pillars of thick democracy. The texts in this unit captures the resilience of people and the value of cooperation. By focusing on Maya genocide of the early 1980s and exploring their culture, American students can learn the true meaning of cooperation and gain a greater sense of democratic living while also celebrating the resilience of a people. We will see how the Maya maintain their cultural foundation while making modern adaptation.

The novel, Tree Girl, is the central text, so the study guide here follows this book chapter by chapter indicating places for additional inquiry. Students will do inquiry during workshop time and keep notes in their research journals. The testimonio of I, Rigoberta Menchu, and numerous documentary and other media resources capture the social structures that created oppression in Guatemala and the mechanisms people used to resist and maintain traditions such as coops for farming and weaving and integrating Catholicism with indigenous religion. The two books are also a source of comparison as we think about how we learn about history.

As we see in Grandin's book, "Repression severed alliances between reforming elites and popular classes, disaggregated powerful collective movements into individual survival strategies, extracted leaders from their communities, and redefined the relationship between human beings and society" (196). However, individuals, especially activists like Rigoberta Menchu, while extracted did not remain isolated. Out of such manifestations grew a new way of thinking that resisted oppression –granito de arena. This metaphor for cooperation is a powerful message for any democratic society and is particularly relevant for developing classroom ethos. Guatemala advanced democracy not through autonomy or isolated freedom but rather a "collective action laid bare the social foundations of self" (181). This, I think, is what is worth knowing and teaching in our schools; this notion of democracy is worth contemplating, and so this unit attempts to explore these notions by using stories as points of access for these young thinkers.

Ganito de arena – a humble phrase that says “ I alone can’t change things. But I can HELP to change things." It’s a collective concept of change! It signifies a process that change can take many forms. It comes through struggle that unites collective rights and individual rights. What I give is only a tiny contribution (as with all the people we will meet in this unit). There are no heroes, but when the hand of destiny touches you, you have to act – you don’t have a choice.

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Monday, October 29, 2012

November 3rd, Students Present at the Youth Summit

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