The Invisible Pedagogy in a School Wide Read

Jennifer WilsonUniversity of South Carolina, Columbia

jlwilson@mailbox.sc.edu

Inspiration: City-Wide Reads

Chicago, IL: In the Time of the Butterflies (Alvarez, 1995)

Columbia, MO: Enders Game (Card, 1985)

Seattle, WA: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Satrapi, 2004)

Vermont: Seedfolks (Fleischman, 1999)

Inspiration: Whole-School Reads

Syracuse University: The Kite Runner (Hosseini, 2004)

University of South Carolina: When the Emperor Was Divine (Otsuka, 2004)

Stephenson High School in Stone Mountain, Georgia: The Giver (Lowry, 1993)

Waterloo Middle School in Waterloo, Wisconsin: Hidden Talents (Lubar, 2003).

Summerland Middle School in British Columbia: Run (Walters, 2005).

“It would be nice to have something to pull us

together at the beginning of the year. Something that would be common

ground.”-Maura Wilson

“A Common Ground”

• Library Media Connection

• Book Selection

• Teacher created guide

• University Research Role

What happens when the students, teachers, and families at Hand Middle School engage in a whole-school read of a text designed to foster dialogue about social issues?

Theoretical Frameworks that Guided Us

• Adolescent Literacy(Rosenblatt, 1977; Luke & Freebody, 1997; Langer 2001,2002; Guitierrez, 2009)– Dynamic interaction between the reader and the

text– No text is neutral– Texts can bridge in and out of school lives

• Invisible Pedagogy (Berstein, 1974; 1977)– Fluid boundaries– Leave open possibilities for bringing in

community knowledge, students’ interests/concerns, and overlapping disciplinary areas.

– “Things must be put together”

Methodology • Context

– 6th-8th grade school in the southeast USA– Approximately 850 students– 57% Black, 38% White, 3% Hispanic,

1%Asian, and less than 1% American Indian

• Data collection – Teacher and student focus group interviews– Classroom observations– Student/teacher artifacts

• Data analysis– Open coding – Bernstein’s heuristic

Findings

• Stance of the teachers

• Bringing together learning spaces

Stance of the Teachers

• Teachers entertained uncertainty toward learning outcomes.

“Even though we finished with Seedfolks, we can see that different characters bring to the novel… and I haven’t done this yet so I don’t know what patterns we’re going to see…. I am not sure what that’s going to yield.”

Stance of the Teachers

• Teachers valued texts that connected to students’ lives.

“You could relate it to what they were already feeling, some of the emotions they already have, some misconceptions they already have, some of the doubts they have…”

Stance of the Teachers

• Teachers opened doors for discussions of critical issues.

“Kids say, well, people are separating. It’s not prejudice that’s causing it….and, you know, we’ve sort of deconstructed that term, prejudice, to see what it is they’re doing out there.”

Bringing Together Learning Spaces

• Readers came to deeper understandings of text and each other through dialogue.

• Teachers and students collaborated across grade levels.

• Previously segregated subject areas were blurred.

Readers came to deeper understandings of text and each

other through dialogue.James: …like, it was done with everyday things. And

so it means in essence about how you should respect other people. And how, like, there’s [sic] very different kinds of people in the world

and everything.

Maurice: And how one person can start a good thing.

Mark: How it shows no matter what your race or nationality is, you can still work together and live in a

peaceful community.

“I got a lot of information, in terms of getting to know my students as thinkers and just learn more about their history, which is something so critical…. I do appreciate how much I learned about them because I’m going to be able to now recall stories about their past and bring it into future discussions in the classroom.”

-7th grade ELA teacher

Teachers and students collaborated across grade

levels.

“We’re kind of separated when it comes to grade levels and schedules and teachers don’t get to meet. And it’s just kind of nice that we started the year [with Seedfolks] and I didn’t get to talk to a whole lot of people unless I saw them in the hallway. But, at least, when I did, we had something that we could commonly talk about. And I appreciate the fact, you know.”

-8th grade ELA teacher

Shavawn: I think it’s cool that everybody in the whole-school is going to read it and, like, that everybody’s doing projects on it and they are analyzing the story.

Keisha: Because when everybody talks about it, each other can, like, relate to it.

Marisa: And understand.

Shavawn: And it doesn’t have like a grade level. It’s just like everybody, just like, yah.

Previously segregated subject areas were blurred.

English Teacher: It’s not just the literature, the reading literature part. We’re also supposed to bring out the cultural differences and the differences like that, and Carol also teaches social studies….

Math Teacher: I want as the year progresses and everything as we study different cultures is to talk about and bring up the book how they work together and stuff like that. And then, we have the 6th grade level plan with Carol, and then we’ll be able to collaborate and together and talk about how we can bring up certain issues and certain instances that stand out to the students….

“Producing Something Beautiful and Worthwhile”

• The Golden Rule (Cooper, 2007)

• Implications for further research