Description
Book SynopsisThis book chronicles 5th and 6th grade writers - children of gang members, drug users, poor people, and non-documented and documented immigrants - in a rural school in the southwest US coming into their voices, cultivating those voices, and using those voices in a variety of venues, beginning with the classroom community and spreading outward.
At the heart of this book is the cultivation of tension between official and unofficial portraits of these students. Official portraits are composed of demographic data, socioeconomic data, and test results. Unofficial counterportraits offer different views of children, schools, and communities. The big ideas of official and unofficial portraits are presented, then each chapter offers data (the childrenâs and teachersâ processes and products) and facets of the theoretical construct of counterportraits, as a response to official portraits. The counterportraits are built slowly in order to base them in evidence and to articulate their com
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Prologue: Writing Spaces and Hard Times
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Searching for Our Truths
Before the Work Began
Portraits and Counterportraits
Mesa Vista Elementary School (MVE): The Official Portrait
Finding the School
Homelessness
Chapter 2: Writers Reveal Themselves
Becoming More than an Observer
First Pieces of Writing
Initiating Data Analysis
Teacher as Screamer
Strictness, Power, and Microaggressions
Strict Schools and the Search for Joy
The Counterportrait Up to This Point
Chapter 3: Claiming Spaces to Write
The Sixth Graders’ Space
Finding the Space to Write
The Fifth Graders’ Space
The Biography Assignment Begins to Evolve
Writing Spaces and the View of the Child
Counterportraits So Far
Chapter 4: Rewriting Self and Writing About Others
Sixth Graders’ Non-Biography Biography Work
Moving Towards Increased Sharing
Fifth Graders Begin Biography Writing
Composing Classmates’ Biographies
Counterportraits (so far), Context, and the Presentation of Self
Chapter 5: Expanding Writing Spaces as Communities of Practice
Fifth Graders Interview, Transcribe, & Write
Some Fifth Graders’ Transcriptions (Excerpts)
And in the sixth grade…
Communities, Boundaries, and Counterportraits
Legitimizing a Context for Counterportraiture
Chapter 6: Writing Changes Writers: The Impact of Inertia
Good News
Sixth Graders Consider Expository Biography
Featured Fifth Grade Writer
Working for Hours
Counterportraiture, Working in the Plural Form, & Inertia
Chapter 7: Heroes, Dark Secrets, Otter Pops, & Struggles
In the Fifth Grade
Featured Fifth Grade Authors
Chuck, the Humorist
Estevan’s Hero
Sixth Grade Poets’ Dark Poetry
Sixth Graders’ Brief Biographies
Things Fall Apart
The Classroom as a "Site of Struggle"
Struggle and the Use of Time
Writing as Carnival
Carnivals Breed Struggle
Counterportraits, Struggles, Legitimacy, and Possibilities
Chapter 8: Writing Places as Hybrid Spaces
Sixth Graders Get Serious
Poetry in the Biography Genre
Hybridized Texts and Contexts
Hybridized Spaces and Counterportraits
Chapter 9: Products, Presentations, and Power
Our First Public Venue
Reading Their Work in Small Groups
Slam Poetry
For Families
Counterportraits and Spheres of Influence
When Small Spheres Align…
Chapter 10: Suffering, Struggles, and the Community
Home Visits
Bringing the Community to the Sixth Grade
Writers’ Reflections on the Year
Reflections on self-as-writer and Counterportraits
Reflections on Writing and Counterportraits
What else, what next, and Counterportraits
Thank You Notes, Relationships, and Counterportraits
Critical Literacy, Hope and Counterportraits
Chapter 11: Writing Spaces for Better Times
The Purposes of School, the Search for Joy, & the Spirit of the Child
Inner Struggles
Language & Identity Struggles
School as a Site of Struggle
Knowledge/Power Struggle
Agency: Responding to Struggles
Agency and Responsibilities in Composing Counterportraits
Agency and Responsibility, the Bigger Picture
Agency and Responsibility in Schools
Agency and Responsibility in Partnerships
Changing the Course of History
Epilogue: Microeducational Economies
Appendix 1: Counterportraiture as Method/Method as Political Work
Appendix 2: Full Text of Some Biographies
Appendix 3: Storyboard
Appendix 4: Editorial Checklist
References
Index of Children’s Work
Subject Index
