Abstract
This chapter explores a creative writing poem that places community-based poet-mentor educators into low-income middle and high school classrooms to devise curricula that excavates student experiences as a basis for learning. Building upon research on multiple literacies, my findings demonstrate that learning is a social practice, situated in the lives of students. To unearth young people’s capabilities, homegrown experts from the neighborhood shifted the classroom culture and opened the space up for courageous vulnerability and soul-stirring spoken word performance poetry. Throughout this process, young people and the teachers in this study came to use writing as an educational and emancipatory tool for reading the word, the world, and themselves anew. This form of social justice instruction turned nouns, like hope, into verbs for marginalized youth in the inner-city.
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Notes
- 1.
The SAYS Guidelines are provided in section “Appendix A: SAYS Guidelines.”
- 2.
Subjective Disabilities include intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities, speech/language impairments, and emotional/behavioral disorders. There is a disproportionate identification of disabilities among particular ethnic/racial groups. For instance, Native Americans are 24 % more likely than their peers to receive a learning disability label and African Americans are 59 % more likely than their counterparts to be identified with emotional/behavioral disorders (Artiles, 2011).
- 3.
See section “Appendix B: Says Lesson: Taught to be Caught” for the full workshop.
- 4.
This particular continuation school is for students who have either been expelled from the main high school, are teen parents, and/or are returning to the district from juvenile hall.
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Appendices
Appendix 1: SAYS Guidelines
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1 Mic
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Loud-N-Proud
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Step Up … Step Back
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Freedom of Speech … With Propriety
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Create Community … No Snitchin
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Standard is Yourself: Be You and Do You
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Respect … Self, Others, and the Space
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Patience, Perseverance, and Full Participation
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Above All: Love
In the classroom, the SAYS pedagogy has three key components:
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1.
Learning how to authentically reach students is a precursor to successful teaching.
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2.
Knowing who students are and where they come from allows us to create meaningful and thought-provoking curricula.
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3.
Reading, writing, and speaking are the foundations of academic achievement, critical thinking, and social justice within and beyond the walls of school.
Appendix 2: Says Lesson: Taught to Be Caught
Step 1: Place chairs in a circle with one desk in the center of the circle.
Step 2: Students sit in the circle. Hand out paper/pen. Explain to the students the SAYS Guidelines and the goals of doing a free-write. Ask one of the students to serve as a scribe on the whiteboard for the subsequent brainstorm.
“I am going to put something in the center of the room on this desk right here. When you see it, I want you to call out anything and everything that you think of. Understand?”
Step 3: Place a dollar bill on the table.
Step 4: Students call out words they associate with money (e.g., “cheddar,” “hustle,” “$ menu”).
Step 5: “What would you do to get money?” Again, allow students to provide answers and write them on the board. “What would you do for a million dollars?” Continue to prod the group to thinking critically about money as both a symbol and force in their lives.
Step 6: Review what is written on the board. In our class, a student stated: “I would slit someone’s throat for a million dollars. It’s just business.” Building on this statement I wrote on the top of the board, “IT’S JUST BUSINESS.” I then asked students, “On average, how much does California spend each year to educate you?” After taking their guesstimates, write the following facts on the board:
Step 7: Write on the Board:
It’s Just Business:
→ In 2010, California spent $9375 per student per year (roughly 12 % below the national average).
→ The average cost of group home placement in California is about $62,400 per child per year.
→ California Youth Authority/Division of Juvenile Justice spends $175,000 per child per year.
→ California County Juvenile Hall costs approximately $88,000 per child per year.
→ To attend Harvard University, it is $53,000 for tuition, room, board and fees combined.
From Taught to be caught.
Step 8: Have students take out their journal and write their definition of money. Ask students why some people are rich and others are poor. Ask students, what is the function of capitalism and how does school relate to inequality?
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Watson, V.M. (2016). Literacy Is a Civil Write: The Art, Science, and Soul of Transformative Classrooms. In: Papa, R., Eadens, D., Eadens, D. (eds) Social Justice Instruction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12349-3_27
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