Multicultural Literature: Being in the Picture

Let’s begin with a scenario. Imagine you are a member of a large group that recently took a group photograph. Someone has just handed you the photograph. What do you look for? Are you wondering what the background foliage looks like? Are you looking at the clouds in the sky? Perhaps - but you are most likely looking for yourself. This is a natural response. We often desire to see ourselves in images, whether it is a photograph or literature. Readers are often searching for connections to characters, places, and experiences and many times, this is why we are most drawn into a text.

Rudine Sims Bishop, Professor Emerita of Education at the Ohio State University, is an expert in children’s multicultural literature. She is well known for describing books as windows, mirrors, or sliding glass doors (link). Bishop describes literature as having the power to transform “human experience and reflect it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the human experiences” (p. ?). In other words, we see ourselves as mattering in the world. Bishop also describes literature as windows that offer views of the world that may be “real or imagined, familiar or strange” (p. ?). Readers may be introduced to characters uniquely different from anyone they have ever met. They may be transported into a magical world where 12 year olds wave wands and speak spells and risk their lives for their friends and cherished teachers, Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall (Rowling, Harry Potter series). Perhaps they accompany Meg, Charles Wallace, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which to search for their father and understand tessaracts to discover wrinkles in space and time (L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time). Readers may immerse themselves in a poetic narrative to learn more about the power of sports and relationships to unite a family as in Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover. Whether the text serves as a mirror or window, readers are offered an opportunity to push open a sliding glass door and step into the literature and become part of the story.

So how do we ensure that children have access to literature that can serve as mirrors, windows, and/or sliding glass doors? And how might we engage our students in literature that may not speak to them immediately, such as peering into a window and not making powerful connections from the beginning? The short answer is interactive read-alouds and dialogue; however, it also requires a multicultural classroom library that features books with real and imagined, familiar and strange settings and complex characters with whom students can connect and learn from.

We believe it is important to take stock of the books in our classroom library. Are students able to find books that reflect their experiences to see themselves as part of the larger human experience? Can students select literature that challenges them to take on new perspectives, to feel empathy and a connection to characters whose lives are quite different from their own? And can students identify books that entice them and they can’t help but push open the sliding glass door and step through? Literature has the power to serve as windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors so let’s make sure our classroom libraries are full of multicultural books that speak to all of the students we are so privileged to teach.

Additional Article:

Morrell, E. & Morrell, J. (2012). Multicultural readings of multicultural literature and the promotion of social awareness in ELA classrooms. New England Reading Association Journal, 47(2), 10 - 16.

Powerful Literacy: Video Featuring Ernest Morrell

By Jodene Morrell

“What we need in the 21st century is not just literacy, but powerful literacy, and we need it equitably,” said Ernest Morrell, a professor of English and the Coyle Professor in Literacy Education at Notre Dame.

In this video, Ernest discusses powerful literacy practices in schools and communities and ways to support students' abilities to engage meaningfully with the world. 

Please click on the link below to view the entire video. Enjoy!

https://al.nd.edu/news/latest-news/video-ernest-morrell-on-powerful-literacy/

The Importance of the Work of Literacy Education

The Importance of the Work

It was as a high school English Teacher in the early 1990s that I became convinced of two things that have shaped my life over the past quarter of a century: 1) Literate trajectories shape social trajectories-without powerful literacy skills students, their families and their communities didn’t stand a chance and 2) Those who disseminate knowledge impact not only how people think, but how they act

I became obsessed with improving the literacy and learning outcomes for our most vulnerable populations and with sharing research-formed ideas about the best ways to transform lives and communities through literacy. This led me back to graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley where I pursued a doctorate in Language, Literacy, and Culture and I have spent the bulk of the last twenty years at UCLA and Columbia University making my dream a reality.

In the African-American tradition, like many other traditions, literacy has been associated with freedom. Whether it be the narratives of Harriet Jacobs or Frederick Douglass, the lyrics of Bob Marley, the novels of a Jimmy Baldwin or Toni Morrison; the power of and barriers to literacy have been well-documented. Frederick Douglass stated that “Once you learn to read you are forever free.” Whether all of our children grow up with access to basic and higher-level literacy is socially up to us.

As a scholar, I am interested in how literacy is learned in families, communities and cultures. How literacy is taught effectively in formal institutions like schools; and the work that teachers and students do together in literacy classrooms

 I have an interest in the African Diaspora as an imagined community--it’s literature, it’s popular culture; its engagement; its critique, its resistance, its plurality; its cacophonous polyvocality; its beauty, its power, its joy--it’s agency, it’s undeterred presence. I’m also interested in making the diaspora knowable, and touchable to present and future generations.

Finally, I am interested in what schools do to create powerful literate trajectories for students, families, and communities. By literacies I do not merely mean those ways of speaking and writing that lead to academic success, but also a re-reading of the self and of the world. In my work I think of these as literacies of radical self-love and social consciousness. My work primarily focuses on the schooling experiences of students attending the most vulnerable public and Catholic schools domestically and increasingly across the African Diaspora.

These interests, Global Literacy Studies and the African Diaspora are what consumes my days (and sometimes my nights). They are the issues I write and speak and teach about. They form my professional associations, the Centers and Initiatives that I direct, the dissertations that are written under my supervision. Without sounding too grandiose I believe there is something at the intersection of these interests that is essential to the future of the planet and the future of the church. The ability of all the inhabitants of the planet, all of God’s children, to equitably and with dignity live lives of freedom and of consequence.

And we have had some major wins in this work. As the world becomes more educated it becomes safer, life expectancies increase, and global poverty is reduced. According to Economists in the Institute for New Economic thinking at Oxford University as late as 1820, 85% of the world lived in extreme poverty. By 2010 that number has been reduced to about 25%. This is still unacceptable as we’re talking about nearly 2 billion people.

 In 1870 in the US the illiteracy rates for certain subgroups reached 75%. By 1970 the illiteracy rate in the country fell below 1% for every subgroup. The challenge of our generation of scholars is ensuring that all children and families have access to what we call “equitable excellence” through literacy. The changing global landscape requires advanced literacy and technological skills that are only possible through an empowering education. By 2050 I believe that we can reduce the racial achievement gap and the gender literacy gap while increasing access to college and jobs earning a livable wage and strengthening our global networks and our faith tradition. And I believe that with our collective efforts, Notre Dame will serve as a leader in this endeavor.

 We’ve already begun. In our first year the CLE has 10 major publications including 2 leading research briefs through the International Literacy Association, we’ve created two publication series through Notre Dame press, we hold leadership positions in all of our major professional organizations, we have developed a literacy institute for local teachers in the South Bend schools, we’ve directly touched over 10,000 educators through workshops and school visits this academic year, we’ve instituted the O’Shaughnessy Fellows and the Coyle Fellows programs to attract and mentor promising classroom teachers and early career professors. But, in the words of famous Miami Marlins manager Don Mattingly, “we’re just getting started!”

The Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education

The Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education

Now that the LTI is officially relocated to Notre Dame, we thought we'd give you an overview of the work of Notre Dame's Center for Literacy Education

Jodene and Ernest Morrell

 

“Once you learn to read,” wrote Frederick Douglass, “you will be forever free.”  No single gift in a child’s education is more precious or empowering than the gift of reading. Academic literacy rates are positively correlated to life expectancy, educational outcomes, and earning potential. Low literacy rates are also negatively correlated to incarceration, dropout, and unemployment.  Too predictably, academic literacy achievement in schools is stratified along lines of class, race, and geography in America. Those who have less seem to receive less with respect to their literacy education. And as a whole, students attending schools in the United States seem to be struggling with literacy achievement compared to peers internationally (PISA, 2017).

English educators have a tremendous role to play in re-envisioning the future of literacy education in America. They train future teachers, they work with practicing teachers, they conduct research in English classrooms, and they observe and document powerful literacy practices that occur in non-school settings.  English educators are often also called upon to advocate for sound policies and pedagogical practices at the local, state, and federal levels. Put simply, the work of English Education matters greatly, and it includes, but is not limited to, the ability to prepare the next generation of workers where the demands for workplace literacy are greater than they’ve ever been. English is a discipline that helps to prepare engaged citizens who use language and literacy to speak the truth to power; English educators also help future generations to appreciate the beauty of written words, be they found in essays, poems, plays, novels, websites, or blogs (Morrell and Scherff, 2015).

While English educators are essential to informing policies and pedagogical practices that will dictate the future of literacy instruction in America, they are often fragmented in their approach to the problem. English professors, teacher educators, literacy researchers, principals, and classroom teachers often work in silos and are rarely in conversation with one another about how to work collaboratively to tackle the major issues of the day. And students’ voices are seldom accounted for in the discussion of the present and future of the field.

Led by Director Ernest Morrell and Associate Director Jodene Morrell, the Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education seeks to integrate diverse voices from English studies, literacy teacher education, policy studies, urban education, multicultural education, critical cultural studies, digital media literacies, new literacy studies, and adolescent literacy to converse with university-based English faculty, English educators and K-12 leaders and classroom teachers to foster dialogue focused upon what is known about powerful literacy teaching and learning and what we will need to know in order to meet the challenges and opportunities of literacy education in the 21st century.

The Center for Literacy Education will leverage the English and Literacy Education faculty of Notre Dame’s Institute for Education Initiatives and ACE, members of the University’s English Department, as well as manifold external partners to transform literacy scholarship and practice in today’s urban and multicultural Catholic Schools worldwide.

The model through which the work of the Center advances literacy scholarship and practice is grounded in three areas Morrell and his colleagues have come to identify as “super-levers” to sustainable transformation in this area.

1)    Formation:  This work includes forming pre-service teachers and undergraduates with an interest in English and literacy teaching in Catholic schools, preparing English Educators at the Ph.D. level who will train the next generation of English teachers for Catholic Schools, working with practicing teachers in Catholic Schools through professional development, digital engagement, and summer institutes, as well as developing literacy leaders who will work in school systems, libraries, classrooms, and community centers.

2)    Outreach:  This work includes partnering with schools, parishes, and other organizations domestically and internationally to create summer camps and community literacy centers aimed at increasing critical literacies for children, adolescents, and adults as well as ensuring that our most vulnerable populations have access to digital technologies and a literacy education that will equip them to participate powerfully in the digital age.  Special emphasis will also be given to ACE’s Read to Learn project in Haiti.

3)    Research:  The Center is committed to a robust and impactful interdisciplinary research agenda that seeks to create new knowledge to advance literacy scholarship and generate ideas and practices to improve student learning.  Scholarship of the highest quality will focus on multiple areas including (but not limited to) the following: (1) connections between Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and contemporary literacy classrooms, (2) connections between literacy instruction, critical pedagogy and Catholic Social teaching, (3) the impact of state and federal policy on literacy practice and literacy achievement in urban schools.

Finally, the Center will be involved in the dissemination of information to educators, policymakers, and the general public through a variety of publications, the development of curricular materials for K-12 classrooms, the preparation of literacy policy briefs, the publication of scholarly articles and books, participation in state and national professional organizations, the development of a digital platform to engage the nation’s English teachers in Catholic and public schools, and regular lectures, conferences, and dialogues with teachers and school leaders. 

For more information on the Center please contact

Dr. Ernest Morrell: emorrel1@nd.edu

Dr. Jodene Morrell:jmorrell@nd.edu

LTI Project - Now Housed in the Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education

Introduction

If you have visited our blog, welcome back. If you are new to our blog, welcome! Jodene and Ernest Morrell are now at the University of Notre Dame. Ernest is the Director of the new Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education, the Coyle Professor in Literacy Education Endowed Chair, and professor in the English Department and Africana Studies Department. Jodene is the Associate Director of the Center for Literacy Education and a faculty fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives.

In this blog you will hear from literacy teachers around the country who are deeply committed to growing as scholars, sharing their literacy practices with a wide audience, and preparing their students to live literacy rich lives of dignity and decency.

We hope you will visit frequently. We would love to hear from you and about all the amazing work you are doing to empower students with the gift of literacy!

Creating a Space for Student Voice: Comfort versus Truth

by Lakeya Omogun 

Last month, I had the pleasure of hearing author, Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi speak at the Pen World Voices Festival here in New York City. Essentially, she spoke about silence, censorship, and obsession with comfort. She prefaced her talk with a comparison of hospitals in the United States and Nigeria, emphasizing that American hospitals offer a comforting experience for patients, lavished with medications and frequent checkups. Nigerian hospitals, on the other hand, simply offer healing for patients; providing comfort is secondary. Whereas Nigerians expect pain and discomfort to be part of the process of life, Americans prefer comfort. She then extended this idea to larger social issues, arguing that our addiction to comfort causes us to remain silent about poverty, race, and income inequality. Thus, we leave things unsaid, and as a result, a boring, comfortable, and safe environment transpires.

As she spoke, I couldn’t help but think about the idea of comfort in my own classroom. Have I neglected to engage my students in critical discussions to maintain a safe and secure environment? Have I evaded a student’s question about inequalities so as not to make anyone feel uncomfortable? Have I not undertaken controversial social justice classroom projects because I felt like my administration wouldn’t approve? If I’m completely honest, I can say ‘yes’ to each of these questions. While I’ve engaged my students in critical readings of texts during the school year, I have also been guilty of choosing comfort over truth. I’ve facilitated shallow discussions on racial, age, and gender inequalities, ensuring that they never became “classroom inappropriate”. I’ve convinced myself that the classroom isn’t the place for such discourse.  Well, if the classroom isn’t the place, then where is the ideal place?

Adichie’s speech compelled me to take a risk during my final unit of the school year, science fiction. Using Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies, I’m moving my students and I outside of our comfort zone to engage in deeper and more authentic conversations about class, perceptions of beauty, and social structures that impede or enhance social mobility. The content in this book definitely lends itself to such discussions. Why does our society have racial categories? Who do they benefit? Who’s in control of our idea of beauty? Even though the city of New York does not have visible boundaries, are people grouped together based on similarities and differences? Why?  These are just a few of the questions that have elicited transparent, and interestingly, truthful responses from my students. So, right now our classroom discussions are not safe. They definitely are not comfortable. However, we are discovering root causes of injustices and inequalities and connecting them to our everyday lives.

So, again, is the classroom the place for such discourse? Considering that my students represent a population that has been historically marginalized within the society and the educational system whether due to their racial/ethnic background, socioeconomic status, or various perceived and/or valid ability labels, I would say the classroom is definitely the place to help them see the world through a critical lens, even in the midst of discomfort.

About the Author: 
Lakeya is a 7th grade Literacy teacher at New Design Middle School in West Harlem. She has also taught 6th grade in Newark, NJ and 3rd grade in Detroit, Michigan. Lakeya was a McNair Scholar at Michigan State University and is an active member of Kappa Delta Pi International Education Honor Society through the Teachers College chapter. Currently, she is completing a year-long research project in her classroom, which is funded by the Louise M. Berman Fellows Award. She recently completed the Masters Literacy Specialist Program at Teachers College Columbia University. Lakeya is going into her second year as an LTI fellow. 

Guest Teacher: Lauren Scott

Lauren has taught middle school English Language Arts for the past seven years in Brooklyn and the Bronx. She is currently ELA Department Leader and a New-Teacher Mentor at her school and completing her Literacy Specialist Masters degree at Teachers College Columbia University. Lauren’s past research focused on the connection between motivation and writing using sketchbooks in the classroom to foster a love of writing among resistant middle-school students. Her current research examines how to help readers construct text-based, inferential ideas and draws on research by Beers and Probst (2013) and theories of transference (Keene, 2007). She has presented her research at Teachers College and the New York State Reading Association annual conference. Lauren has been an LTI Fellow since fall, 2012.