Group+Contributions

=Contributions of the Group= (also see "Discussions" tab above.)

Cherilyn Carkhuff:
My contribution to this project ranged from the technical aspect, creating/designing the actual wiki to working with a Kindergarten Student and creating an "audit trail." My work with this child is described in greater detail under the "discussions" tab or by visiting the "Kindergarten Classroom" page. Another role I played in this project was to meet, talk, and read over my group members projects and provide comments and feedback throughout their work process. Our group decided to both meet in person and use the discussion tabs to allow us to have ongoing dialog about the book and our investigations.

Elisha Ann:
I mainly contributed to the group process by trying out Vasquez's ideas in my classroom. I thought and implemented ways critical literacy could be played out in the curriculum (fairy tales, mostly), and more importantly, how critical issues stem from students' and our classroom lives. I documented some conversations, summarized what I was finding on the blog, and asked for critique to my group members. I also engaged in discussions about everyone's contribution whether it was updating the blog, or puzzling over critical literacy in the classroom. I met twice with available group members outside of class to discuss our progress and presentation.

Catie Brownback:
Unfortunately I do not have access to a classroom. I contributed to the project by meeting with group members and discussing and responding to their classroom work on the wiki. I also brought a non-teacher perspective to what they were doing (which I was very impressed by!).

Kara Fischer:
I contributed to this project by writing up a lot of the book analysis on the wiki, including the summary on the home page and the quotes from Vasquez page, where I pulled important quotes from the book and arranged them by theme. I also wrote out answers to the questions from the assignment sheet in the Deconstructing the Text page. Although I couldn't do Vasquez work with students in my own internship within the timeframe of this project (although I did do some critical literacy work with them later that was influenced by what I read in Vasquez), I met with group members and discussed with them their own classroom work and its connections to the text, and I helped them brainstorm future directions and implications of what they were seeing so far.

Katie Robinson:
For this project I presented my class with two emails that I happened to receive in the span of two days. Usually I wouldn’t have thought twice about these emails, but after reading Vasquez’s book, I realized that this might be a great opportunity to teach my students that they have a voice in our school and community and that even though they are only in third grade they can make “change.” The two emails were invitations to a student teacher basketball game for 4th and 5th graders and a K-2 pizza lunch with the principal. I printed out the two emails and showed them to my class. Immediately my students noticed that they had been excluded. At first the children kept saying that it was not fair and they were trying to figure out why they had been left out. Some students concluded that it was a mistake, while others thought it could be because of their behavior. I then posed the question, “Instead of saying that this is not fair, what can we do to change this?” The students hands started to shoot up and some of their suggestions were to make posters, write letters to the student council and the principal, make a power point explaining why they should be able to go to these events, write a realistic fiction story, write a poem, write and perform a song for our principal, and get the other third grade classes involved. As the students made these suggestions, I listed them on the board. The students then decided which group they wanted to work on and off they went. In the course of a week my students banded together, got excited and made wonderful projects. At lunch and recess time, I would overhear my students talking about ways they could make these two groups change their minds. They really took it into their own hands and I let them go with it. On the day that we presented our projects to the school principal the children were excited and couldn’t wait to see if they had accomplished their goal of making “change” in our school. The principal came into our classroom and listen to what the children had to say. He left and told them that he was going to think about what was presented to him and then would let them know his answer. One day later the students received a letter from our principal telling the class they had in fact persuaded him into making a pizza lunch with the principal for the third grade. In his letter he wrote about how proud he was of our class and that he was amazed that third graders could do such amazing things. After the children stopped cheering and clapping about their accomplishment I had the students come to the rug because I wanted to reinforce that third graders can make “change” in our school and in our town by being proactive. One student even raised his hand and said, “I really never knew that we can have so much power if we work together. This is so cool! What should we change next?” I knew at this point that my third grade students had just learned that they have a voice in society and that they can be heard. In addition to working with my third grade class, I met and discussed with my group members Vasquez’s book both in and out of class. I also posted on our Wiki page ideas and questions that I thought would lead to in depth thinking for myself and my group members.

Ashley Prather:
Working at the Penny Harvest, I have had the opportunity to see a wide range of students from preK-12 debate and discuss issues in their communities, but I see less of what goes on at the classroom level. This project provided me with the opportunity to learn about some of the struggles colleagues had to implement critical literacy within the confines of standardized curriculum within the formal classroom space. I feel my strongest contribution to the group was the contrast that my project brought to the classroom and curriculum based projects. One of the areas of critical literacy I am most interested in exploring further is the potential for projects to be "superficial," or not leave the classroom space. Sharing the work we had done in our classrooms with colleagues in a group setting allowed us the opportunity to brainstorm strategies to overcome these obstacles. I contributed to the project by sharing my thoughts on the wiki and discussing the book with my colleagues and in various settings with other educators. I even carried the book with me on a school visit in Staten Island, where I opened it up to show a preschool teacher the "audit wall" idea as a possibility for her Penny Harvest program.

I found it challenging to meet as a group of 7 people, but communicating virtually on the blog helped us overcome some of these hurdles.

Lee Webb:
I was an intern in a fifth grade classroom during our work on this project, and I tried to use Vasquez's lens in a classroom that already has a lot of critical literacy practices in place. I conducted several lessons for this project around critical literacy in book clubs, and using issues to represent and analyze class conversations. I found it most challenging to have this work stem from the ideas of the students, something that Vasquez did so well. I added artifacts and thoughts about this process to the wiki, solicited feedback from my peers, and shared in this wiki conversation about the text and the actions. I met with the group members to discuss the work and plan our presentation and sharing with others.