"A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades." <[email protected]> on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 8:49 AM -0500 wrote: >1. What role do you think diversity of voice should be playing in middle >school classrooms? >2. How do you go about incorporating those voices into your own >classrooms?
Hi! Answering my own questions (!)... 1. I think the minimum is that every student voice physically in the classroom needs to feel safe enough to be heard as who they really are, and then to actually speak up. I think developmentally, some of them are ready to explore more deeply, while others are more at the "building awareness to get ready for future chances to explore identities" stage. That's one of my current struggles - how do you differentiate, for lack of a better word, for developmental readiness to explore issues of diversity and identity?! 2. My students design their own units, for the most part, so in terms of choosing novels, I'm in reactive mode a lot of times since the novels I choose have to relate to the unit themes. However, there are a few things I do try to do: - read "If You Come Softly" to accompany our theatre unit. It's a book about interracial romance, with one of the minor characters a lesbian, and opens the door for a good many discussions about behaviors both poorly-intentioned and well-intentioned and what they can communicate to the people on the other end. - require at least one unit in World Cultures, to guarantee at least one unit with international voice - look for chances to teach books like "So B. It" and "A Mango-Shaped Space" which deal with minds that work differently from the norm. - have kind of lucked into books which include socio-economic diversity, but probably need to work more on this area. Also, we do a lot of small group work, Think-Pair-Share, going around the room kinds of activities which both naturally and through a sort of gentle coercion get all the students' voices involved. Democratic classrooms should always be about incorporating all voices, so if I keep an honest eye on what is happening, things usually work out okay. Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
