vivian maria vasquez_negotiating critical literacies with children

NegotiatingCritical LiteraciesWithYoung Children

Language, Culture, and TeachingSonia Nieto, Series Editor

Collins • Community Writing: Researching Social Issues ThroughComposition

Nieto • Language, Culture, and Teaching: Critical Perspectivesfor a New Century

Goldstein • Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural School:Choices, Risks, and Dilemmas

Vasquez • Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children

NegotiatingCritical LiteraciesWithYoung Children

VIVIAN MARIA VASQUEZAmerican University

LEALAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS2004 Mahwah, New Jersey London

The drawing on the cover of the book was created for an award-winning book-mark a group of 4-year-old girls submitted to a contest on International Women'sDay. It includes the girls' interpretation of "women and girls being strong."

Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced inany form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or anyother means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers10 Industrial AvenueMahwah, NJ 07430

Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataVasquez, Vivian Maria.

Negotiating critical literacies with young children / VivianMaria Vasquez.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8058-4053-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)1. Language arts (Early childhood)—Social aspects—United

States. 2. Language arts (Early childhood)—United States—Curricula. 3. Critical pedagogy—United States. I. Title.

LB1139.5.L35V37 2003372.6—dc21 2003040766

CIP

Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.

Printed in the United States of America1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover illustration from BABY BELUGA by Raffi, illustrated by Ashley Wolff. Illustra-tions copyright © 1990 by Ashley Wolff. Used by permission of Crown Publishers, animprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Shownon pages 22, 81, 88, 114, 120.

Book cover from Bad Egg: The True Story ofHumpty Dumpty by S. Hayes (1992). Copy-right © 1992 by Little, Brown and Company. Reprinted with permission. Shown onpages 13, 75.

Inside book cover from Crafty Chameleon by M. Hadithi (1989). Copyright © 1989 byHodder and Stoughton Publishers. Shown on pages 24, 82.

Credits continue on page 159, which is considered a continuation of thiscopyright page.

Contents

Series Foreword ixSonia Nieto

Preface xiii

Introduction 1Inquiries Into Critical Literacy 2Audit Trail as a Tool for Generating and Circulating

Meaning 3

1 Finding Space for Critical Literacy 27Negotiating Spaces and the Mandated

Curriculum 27What Complexities Are Involved With Engaging

in Critical Literacy Practice? 32Support Within the School Community 33Out-of-School Support Groups 33

How Our Classroom Was Organized 34How Our School Day Was Organized 34Common Elements of Our School Day 36

Class Meeting 36Setting a Meeting Agenda 37Using Two Day Plans 40Reflections 41Read-Aloud 42

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vi Contents

Whole Group Wrap-Up 42The Role of Parents 42

2 Getting Started 45Constructing a Curricular Audit Trail 45Choosing Artifacts 47The Audit Trail Grows 47

Creating a Rain Forest Play 50Raising Issues of Gender 55

Audit Trail as a Tool for ConstructingCurriculum 58

Deciding on What Incidents to Representon Our Audit Trail 85

Visibly Connecting Issues on Our Audit Trail 85

3 The French Cafe 91Setting the Scene 91What Is a French Cafe? 92Analyzing the French Cafe 96Learning About Powerful Forms of Language 99

Offering Children Alternate Ways ofActing 100

4 Our Friend Is a Vegetarian 103Setting the Scene 103We Have Vegetarians at Our School? 103Problematizing Social Text 104Extending Our Literacies 107Further Extensions of the Vegetarian Issue 108Reflective Summary 111

5 Save the Beluga 113Setting the Scene 113Save the Beluga 113Baby Beluga Take Two: Our Version 118Grounding Our Work in Social Intent With Real

World Effects 118

Contents vii

Further Opportunities for Analyzing theBook 121

Analyzing the Beluga Incident 121

6 We Know How McDonald's Thinks 123Setting the Scene 123The McDonald's Happy Meal as Text 123We Know How McDonald's Thinks: The Discussion

Continues 124Reflecting on How McDonald's Thinks 126

Who Can Have Collectibles? 127Reflecting on the Conversation 128

Further Analysis of the Happy Meal 128Reflecting on the Conversation 129

Final Thoughts on the Happy Meal Discussionsin the Classroom 131

Social Action Outside the Classroom 132Designing a Toy Container 133

7 A Look Back Over the Year 137Organizing a Junior Kindergarten Conference:

A Culminating Experience for Our NegotiatedCritical Literacy Curriculum 137

Using Social Critique, Social Analysis, and SocialAction to Construct Literacy 139

Asking Questions That Matter: A FinalReflection 140

What Next Year's Junior Kindergartens ShouldKnow 142

Endnotes 143References 147Suggested Readings 151Author Index 153Subject Index 155

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Series forewordSonia NietoUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst

What does it take to be an effective educator today? It is becomingever more clear that the answer to this question lies not only in know-ing subject matter content or specific strategies. Teachers today alsoneed to know more about the students who currently occupy theirclassrooms and, even more important, they need to challenge the con-ventional wisdom concerning the abilities and skills of these students.The goal of the textbooks in the Language, Culture, and Teaching seriesis to help teachers do these things, and Vivian Vasquez's book, Negoti-ating Critical Literacies With Young Children, is a prime example.

Vasquez's work with young children took place in Canada, but herclassroom of students of diverse backgrounds is fairly typical of the sit-uation in the United States as well. At the dawn of the 21st century, theUnited States is more ethnically, racially, and linguistically diversethan it has ever been. The 2000 Census, for instance, found that whileWhites decreased from 80% to 75% of the total population in the10-year period from 1990-2000, the African American population in-creased slightly (from 12.1% to 12.3%), as did the American Indianpopulation (0.8% to 0.9%). Even more dramatic, the Asian populationincreased from 2.8% to 3.6% and the Latino population grew by morethan a quarter, from 9% to 12.5% of the total (U.S. Bureau of the Cen-sus, 2002).

A striking indication of this growing diversity can be found in thesituation concerning immigrants to North America. For instance, inthe United States, the current number of foreign-born or first-genera-

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tion residents reached 56 million in 2000, the highest level in U.S. his-tory, or triple the number from 1970 (Schmidley, 2002). Unlikeprevious immigrants who were principally from Europe, over half ofthe new immigrants are from Latin America and one quarter fromAsia (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). The growing immigration hasbeen accompanied by an increasing linguistic diversity: Nearly 18%of the total U.S. population now speak a language other than Englishat home, with over half of these speaking Spanish (U.S. Bureau of theCensus, 2000).

Along with the changing complexion of schools, notions of howbest to educate students of different backgrounds have also changedover the years. A time-honored function of the public schools inNorth America has been to assimilate young people to be more likethe "mainstream." Spring (1997) has made a compelling case thatrather than a noble effort to provide all students with an equal edu-cation, the common school movement of the mid-19th century wasprimarily "an attempt to halt the drift towards a multicultural soci-ety" (p. 4). United States educational history is replete with exam-ples of racist and exclusionary policies that served to segregate orremove from school Native American, African American, Asian, andLatino students, and that discriminated against children of South-ern and Eastern European backgrounds (Kaestle, 1983; Spring,1997; Takaki, 1993; Weinberg, 1977).

Given this context, it is hardly surprising that long-held notionsabout cultural and racial superiority and inferiority have often foundtheir way into teacher education texts. For much of our educationalhistory, the conventional wisdom was that students whose culturesand languages differed from the majority were functioning with a de-ficiency rooted in their very identities. Consequently, the thinkingwas that the sooner students assimilated to become more like the ma-jority—in culture, language, appearance, experience, and val-ues—the easier would be their transition to the mainstream andmiddle class. In the latter part of the 20th century, these ideas beganto be repudiated, largely by people from the very backgrounds whoseidentities were being disparaged. It is no accident that educationalmovements in favor of ethnic studies, bilingual and multicultural ed-ucation, and affirmative action all emerged at around the same time.These movements represented a denouncement of ideologies thathad heretofore excluded large segments of the population fromachieving educational success.

Continuing in that tradition, the books in the Language, Culture,and Teaching series challenge traditional biases about cultural, lin-

Series Foreword XI

guistic, racial, social class, and other kinds of diversity, and aboutstudents who embody those differences. Written by a range of edu-cators and researchers from a variety of cultural backgrounds anddisciplines, these books attempt to fill the gap that currently exists inpreparing teachers for the schools and classrooms of the 21st cen-tury. Aimed primarily at teachers and prospective teachers, thebooks focus on the intersections of language, culture, and teach-ing—specifically, on how language and culture inform classroompractice. At the same time, the series reframes the conventional ideaof the textbook by envisioning classroom practice as critical, cre-ative, and liberatory. Rather than viewing the textbook as unques-tioned authority, the Language, Culture, and Teaching series asksreaders to reflect, question, critique, and respond to what they readthrough their thinking and practice. Using the "problem-posing" ap-proach proposed by Freire (1970), the books in this series ask pro-spective and practicing teachers to think imaginatively andcritically about teaching and learning, especially in terms of cul-tural and linguistic diversity.

The books in this series also support the Freirian idea that edu-cation is neither neutral nor completely objective. The role of teach-ers is likewise never neutral, but a political project on behalf of, oragainst, the interests of those they teach. The books in this series donot claim to have all the answers, but they engage readers to ques-tion their beliefs and attitudes about their students, and to considerwhy and how they teach. By taking the intelligence of teachers seri-ously, these books remind teachers, in the words of Freire (1985),that "To study is not to consume ideas, but to create and re-createthem" (p. 4).

Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children by VivianVasquez embodies the objectives of the Language, Culture, andTeaching series. In it, you will read of the extraordinary work of ateacher engaged with her young students in enacting a liberatoryeducation based on the principles of democracy and fair play. Youwill see how Vasquez uses language critically to help her studentsunderstand that they have an active role to play in the world, andyou will see how even the very youngest children take this role seri-ously. After reading this book, no one can say again that critical liter-acy is suitable only for high school students but "not for little kids."In this provocative book, Vivian Vasquez asks educators to give evenvery young children credit for their intelligence, and she gives usmany examples of how to use their intelligence in the service of cre-ating a better world for us all.

xii Series Foreword

ReferencesFreire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press.Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation.

South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.Kaestle, C. F. (1983). Pillars of the republic: Common schools and American

society, 1780-1860. New York: Hill and Wang.Schmidley, D. (2002). Profile of the foreign-born population in the United

States: 2000. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, U.S. Departmentof Commerce.

Spring, J. (1997). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: A brief his-tory of the education of dominated cultures in the United States (2nd ed.).New York: McGraw-Hill.

Takaki, R. (1993). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America.Boston: Little, Brown.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2000). USA statistics in brief: Population and vital sta-tistics. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/statab/www/poppart.html

U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2002). USA statistics in brief: Population and vital sta-tistics. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/statab/www/poppart.html

Weinberg, M. (1977). A chance to learn: A history of race and education in theU.S. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Preface

As a public school teacher, I was introduced to critical literacy inthe mid-1990s. At the time I was taking a course through Mount SaintVincent University that was being held at the University of South Aus-tralia. Until that time, the whole-language movement (e.g., Good-man, Watson & Burke, 1987; Harste, Short, & Burke, 1996; Harste,Woodward, & Burke, 1984) seemed to be the most generative theoret-ical position from which to support the needs of learners. Whole lan-guage gave me a way of envisioning and supporting learning as asocial experience, of creating spaces in classrooms for placing chil-dren at the center of pedagogy, and, through inquiry into literacyteaching and learning, for ensuring that student interests are takeninto consideration.

Whole language, however, is not a static position. As my under-standing grew and I encountered new experiences and new discoursecommunities, I moved toward a critical position. The journey towardcritical literacy was rooted in my early experience as a literacy learner.

I remember being a kindergarten student. It was Friday morn-ing, the last day of the week, the day when all our efforts as kindergar-ten students were rewarded. I was 5 years old. One day, I walked intomy classroom at the sound of the school bell and found one blacksheet of construction paper, one green piece of construction paper,one square piece of yellow paper, one red circle, scissors, and a bottleof glue, neatly organized across the desk I shared with another5-year-old. I took the red circle, traced it onto the black sheet of paperand proceeded to cut along the line. "Stop! Is that what I told you to

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xiv Preface

do? You are doing it all wrong. It took me a long time to get all this or-ganized and now look at what you've done!" My teacher's voice bel-lowed in my head.

I remember having to struggle to see the circles I held tightly inmy hand. The tears that welled in my eyes streamed down my cheeksand blurred my vision. I remember watching the teacher hang myclassmates' stoplights on the classroom bulletin board while my ef-forts lay crumpled in the garbage can. I remember.

At the end of the day, each child in the class was given a smallcard with an angel printed on it. There was a yellow angel, a purpleangel, a green angel, and a blue angel. There was also a gold angelthat everyone wanted because it symbolized excellent work and effortthroughout the week. Then there was the black angel, on a white card.It was most undesirable because the black angel represented the an-gel who fell from God's grace. On this day, only two kinds of cardswere handed out, 30 gold angels and one black angel. I had fallenfrom grace. Humility became my punishment as my teacher used meas an example of what would happen to those children who do not lis-ten to instructions carefully, those children who choose not to con-form, or those children who make decisions on their own withoutfirst asking for the teacher's approval. Anyone who strayed from theteacher's direct instruction, whether deliberate or not, would face thesame fate.

As a young immigrant child, female, and a member of an under-represented minority, I frequently found my identity was constructedand maintained as voiceless, as incapable of action, of making a dif-ference in the lives of others, or indeed, in my own life. I was born inthe Philippines, the oldest of four children, and was in elementaryschool when my family left the islands in search of a better life inNorth America. Before I set foot in an American school, my parentsand other relatives had told me about the rules of school. Basicallythese were the same rules regarding always respecting your eldersthat I had learned from Catholic Church. Catholicism is widespreadin the Philippine Islands and my family were devoted Catholics. As achild growing up in a religious household, I was taught to do as I wastold and to accept the consequences if I did otherwise. When I inad-vertently disobeyed my teacher as a result of misunderstanding whatshe had expected of me, the only response I knew was to accept mypunishment.

At first glance, my black angel story may not seem awesome inscope, but the discourse of controlling what, how, and when childrenlearn, as well as who gets to learn what, continues to exist even

Preface XV

though there have been many gains at constructing more equitableschooling. Unfortunately, the scale continues to be tilted in favor ofdominant cultural ways of being, leaving children such as the immi-grant children described by Igoa (1995) at a disadvantage. Accordingto Igoa, "When immigrant children leave the country that was theirhome—a familiar language, culture, and social system—they experi-ence a variety of emotional and cognitive adjustments to the reality oflife in a new country" (p. xi). I feel as though Igoa was writing aboutme as her words certainly describe my experience.

A discourse of control, which I lived as a young child at school,can be found through artifacts of schooling such as mandated curric-ulum, standardization, and high-stakes testing. The stoplight craftthat I did incorrectly, for example, was part of a prepackaged curricu-lum. But this is not only a personal experience; much of what takesplace in schools and in communities where I grew up, in North Amer-ica, is inaccessible to certain marginalized groups, including immi-grant children, especially those who are people of color, because ofthe way in which curriculum is often developed from the top down,from administrators in distant school district offices who are not intouch with the children or the day-to-day living in schools they aremeant to support.

A critical perspective suggests that deliberate attempts to exposeinequity in the classroom and society need to become part of our ev-eryday classroom life. For me, this meant that I needed to construct acritical curriculum that was socially just and equitable, where issuesof diversity including culture, class, gender, fairness, and ability wereconstantly on the agenda and where diverse children's questionswere given importance.

I once watched a television interview with the author FrankMcCourt. The interviewer asked him how he knew what incidents inhis life to make important for inclusion in his book Angela's Ashes(McCourt, 1999). McCourt replied by saying that nothing is signifi-cant until you make it significant. The kind of curriculum I have inmind is one that cannot be prepackaged or preplanned. It is the kindof curriculum that deliberately "makes significant" diverse children'scultural and social questions about everyday life. It arises as teachersand children tune in to issues of social justice and equity that unfoldthrough classroom discussion and begin to pose critical questions.Discussions like these lead to questions such as:

• In what ways are we already readers, writers, and analysts ofthe world?

xvi Preface

• In what ways can we equitably and democratically reread andrewrite the world in order to become the literate people wewant to be in the new millennium?

This is central to my work and to this book. What I offer is not aspecific way of doing critical literacy. Jenny O'Brien (2001, p. 37) saidit best when she stated:

This is how the particular critical positions which I introduced in[the classroom] worked for my students and for me; these are thecircumstances in which I introduced critically framed activitiesand talk; these are the personal and institutional histories thatwere associated with their introduction; and, several years later,this is how I now reread what happened.

In this book I show and tell you what happened as my 3- to 5-year-old students and I seized opportunities to use everyday issues and ev-eryday texts drawn from our school and community to negotiate a crit-ical literacy curriculum over the course of a school year. To this end,throughout the book I describe how my students and I negotiated acritical literacy curriculum; show how we dealt with particular socialand cultural issues and themes; and share the insights I gained as I at-tempted to understand what it means to frame my teaching from a crit-ical literacy perspective. My hope is that you will be able to createspaces in your setting for the stories in this book to intersect with yourteaching and inform the work you do in the classroom.

Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children is writtenfrom the perspective of an early childhood teacher-researcher. How-ever, it is intended for all interested readers concerned with issues ofsocial justice and equity in school settings and the political nature ofeducation, along with those interested in finding ways to make theircurriculum critical.

AcknowledgmentsI sincerely thank Naomi Silverman, my editor, and Sonia Nieto,

my series editor. Their enthusiasm for my work, encouragement, andvision gave me the confidence to keep writing. Thank you to CaroleEdelsky and Mitzi Lewison for their thorough and thoughtful re-sponses and insightful comments on earlier drafts. Jerry Harste,Barbara Comber, and Andy Manning have pushed my thinking formore than 10 years. I am indebted to them for their ongoing support,belief, and trust in my work and in me as a person. I have learned so

Preface xvii

much from them. Judith Newman, June Gravel, and Marilyn Cerarwere voices from my past who first told me that my stories were im-portant. Thank you for encouraging me to write them down.

I thank other members of my Indiana University family, DorothyMenosky, Carolyn Burke, Ginny Woodward, and Jan Harste. Theywelcomed me from the start, making Bloomington, Indiana, feel likehome while I pursued doctoral studies. I am grateful to my newfoundcolleagues and friends at American University and my former col-leagues in Mississauga, Ontario, especially David Nakai, HeatherSheehy, and Julie Johnson.

I would also like to acknowledge the children and their families forbeing so engaged and supportive of critical literacies during our time to-gether. My sincere appreciation goes to Diane Marlatt and Jim Clohessy,who continue to be very enthusiastic about my projects, and to Curtis,Patrick, and Julia; watching them grow has inspired my work.

Finally, I thank my parents, Reggie, Sr., and Lily; my sister andbrothers, Vickie, Reggie, Jr., and Victor; my Godmother, Nanay; andmy aunt, Chit Mayoral, for always believing I could do what I set mymind to and for reading my writing even when it didn't always makesense. I'm glad I was born into our family.

My life partner and best friend, Andy Bilodeau, has supportedmy efforts and the decisions I have made for over 15 years even whenit meant moving away from his family and friends; for this and forkeeping the home fires burning as I moved from one project to thenext, I am eternally grateful.

—Vivian Maria Vasquez

Introduction

A critical literacy curriculum needs to be lived. It arises from thesocial and political conditions that unfold in communities in whichwe live. As such it cannot be traditionally taught. In other words, asteachers we need to incorporate a critical perspective into our every-day lives in order to find ways to help children understand the socialand political issues around them.

Working from a critical perspective, my desire is to constructspaces where social justice issues can be raised and a critical curricu-lum can be negotiated with children. Critical literacy makes it possi-ble for me to reconsider my thinking by providing a framework fromwhich to address issues of social justice and equity. I imagine negotia-tion and contestation at the center of these discussions rather than amore familiar process of discovering "the" best way. I envision learn-ing as a process of adjusting and reconstructing what we know ratherthan of accumulating information.

Shortly, I propose to show and tell what happened when my 3- to5-year-old students and I seized opportunities to use everyday issuesand everyday texts from our school and community to negotiate acritical literacy curriculum over the course of a school year. To dothis, I describe1 in detail and analyze a series of critical literacy inci-dents that took place in our classroom. First, I want to provide somecontext for talking about our experiences by outlining briefly how Icame about putting a critical literacy curriculum in place, and ex-plaining my use of an audit trail to document and analyze this curric-ulum as well as to initiate critical conversation with young children.

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Introduction

Inquiries Into Critical LiteracyBetween 1993 and 1996 as a member of a teacher-research

group, I carried out two interrelated inquiries into critical literacyin practice. I worked first with children between the ages of 6 and 8in a Grade 1/2 classroom and later with 3- to 5-year-olds (seeVasquez, 1994, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c). Both groups were representa-tive of the very diverse, multiethnic, middle-class community in sub-urban Toronto in which the school was situated. With the aim ofunderstanding how to construct a critical literacy curriculum, I pro-duced observational narratives and gathered artifacts such as chil-dren's drawings and writing that I felt dealt with social justice andequity issues around the political and social questions asked by mystudents. While analyzing these artifacts of learning, I found that is-sues raised by the children led to conversations that moved well be-yond the traditional topics of study often associated with primaryschool curriculum. For example, my students asked questions like,why are there no females in this poster of the Royal CanadianMounted Police? Or, why do we have to have French class2 when noone in our class is French but we have lots of kids that speak Chi-nese? And, why can't we learn Chinese so we can talk to our friends?Our critical literacy curriculum resulted in rich experiences anddeep understandings of social justice and equity issues, along withways of creating curriculum focusing on these issues. However, Iwas concerned that I had not always been able to generate furtherinquiry into social issues or make connections between such issues.I concluded that I had not gone far enough with critical literacy. Al-though I felt that my students and I engaged in powerful literacywork, I also felt that I had dealt with each critical literacy incident asisolated instances of learning. From reviewing the literature on crit-ical literacy and preschool children, it became clear to me that verylittle had been done with critical literacy, and what had been donealso took the form of isolated incidents.

It was this combination of concerns and discoveries that led meto do another teacher-researcher study from 1996 to 1997. My thirdinquiry into critical literacy took place in a half-day junior kinder-garten3 classroom where I worked with sixteen 3- to 5-year-old chil-dren, again representative of the diverse multiethnic community inwhat was known to be a middle-class neighborhood.4 In our class,there were nine ethnicities represented. There were 6 boys and 10girls. Four of the boys were third-generation Canadian; one of theboys was Hispanic and the other Filipino. Of the nine girls, two were

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Introduction 3

third-generation Canadian, two were second-generation Canadian,one was English-West Indian, one was Italian-Canadian, another wasMaltese-Canadian, one was Portuguese, one was Polish, and one wasChinese. Five of the students in the class were from single-childhomes or were the oldest of their siblings. The other 11 children hadone or two older siblings. Eight of the children were 3 years old whenthe school year began and the other eight were 4 years old. By the endof the year, half of the class had turned 4 and the other half had turned5. Our class was a half-day morning junior kindergarten and ourschool day was 8:45-11:15.

Building on my previous two studies, I focused on using the issuesfrom the social lives of children to construct and sustain a critical cur-riculum. This time, my inquiry stretched over the course of a schoolyear. Once again I produced and gathered data. This time the data tookthe form of an audit trail, a public display of artifacts gathered by re-searchers that represents their thinking. An audit trail is meant to bevisible not only to the people in a classroom community but others inthe school community as well (Harste & Vasquez, 1998). The childrenand I researched our world together and produced data together in theform of an audit trail that was displayed on a bulletin board coveredwith artifacts of learning such as photographs, letters, book covers,and transcripts of conversations (Fig. I.I).

Audit Trail as a Tool for Generatingand Circulating MeaningRetracing thinking involves theorizing. As my students and I be-

gan constructing the audit trail, I thought about using it as a tool forcritical conversation with them. It seemed to me that making theoret-ical connections visible using artifacts might enable my students torevisit, reread, analyze, and re-imagine possibilities for living a criti-cally literate life. I also imagined that the audit trail could be a tool forbuilding curriculum.

The children referred to the audit trail as The Learning Wall be-cause they said the wall was all about their learning. Throughout thisbook I use the terms audit trail and learning wall interchangeably. Ar-tifacts included photographs, book covers, posters, newspaper clip-pings, magazine ads, transcripts of conversations, a stuffed toy, andInternet printouts representing our theories of the world about thingsthat mattered to us. Each of the artifacts became a way for us to makevisible the incidents that caused us to want to learn, the issues we hadcritical conversations about, and the actions we took to resist being

FIG. I.1. Our classroom audit trail, or learning wall. The audit trail,or learning wall, covered a 40-foot by 6-foot length of wall space inour classroom and consisted of over 130 artifacts representing ourcritical literacy curriculum.

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Introduction 5

dominated and to reposition ourselves within our community. Theaudit trail became our demonstration of and our site for building acritical curriculum for ourselves.

Over the course of the school year, the children regularly re-ferred to various artifacts on the audit trail, often pointing to the arti-facts that were posted. Issues recorded on the audit trail generatedcurriculum topics including rainforests, the environment, gender,fairness, the media, and a range of questions concerned with powerand control. Over a period of 10 months, various issues were sus-tained and continuously revisited. The audit trail in its entirety is in-cluded at the end of this introduction (Fig. I.2).

In the next chapter I talk about how I negotiated spaces for criticalliteracies within the mandated curriculum, along with the complexi-ties involved with engaging in critical literacy practice. I also talkabout various elements that were part of our school day and the roleplayed by parents. I use the term parent to refer to a child's primarycaregiver. Following this, in chapter 2,I describe how we negotiated acritical literacy curriculum and share how we began to construct ourcurricular audit trail.

In chapter 3 through chapter 6 I reconstruct a series of criticalincidents represented on our audit trail as a way of making visible ourcritical work over the course of the school year. The incidents I choseto include were selected because I felt they were thought provoking,interesting, and most clearly demonstrated the negotiation of a criti-cal literacy curriculum using the children's questions about inequity.In a sense, these are demonstration chapters that I hope will build acase for negotiating critical literacies with young children.

In the last chapter I share some final thoughts regarding negoti-ating a year-long critical literacy curriculum with young children anddiscuss a special culminating experience that my students and Ishared to bring closure to our year together.

The audit trail, or learning wall, covered a 40-foot by 6-footlength of wall space in our classroom and consisted of over 130 arti-facts representing our critical literacy curriculum.

The diagram illustrates where each of the 20 sections that madeup our audit trail were located on our bulletin board.

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9 11 12

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14 15 16 17 18 19 20

FIG. I.2. The sections of our audit trail. The diagram illustrateswhere each of the sections that made up our audit trail were lo-cated on our bulletin board.

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FIG. I.2. Section 1.

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"What does a poorperson look like?"


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1Finding Spacefor Critical Literacy

Negotiating Spacesana the Mandated CurriculumWhile my students and I negotiated a critical literacy curriculum,

we were not free from curricular mandates and the threat of standard-ized testing. Our school board dictated specific programs to follow(Fig. 1.1). As the classroom teacher, I made sure that I understood whatwas expected of me through the mandated curriculum in order to dem-onstrate to parents, colleagues, and administrators that our negotiatedcurriculum surpassed the required curriculum (Fig. 1.2). I did this as away of creating as much space as I could to engage in the literacy workthat I felt would offer my students more opportunities for contributingto social change and that would give them access to more powerfulliteracies—that is, literacies that could make a difference in their lives,for example, as young people, females, or underrepresented minori-ties. Critical literacy, however, is not new and there are growing ac-counts of teachers engaging in this practice. In 1995, for example, LisaMaras and Bill Brummet initiated what they thought would be a gener-ative unit of study on life cycles. However, it was a presidential electionyear, and so the presidential elections lay foremost in the children's

27

Personal and Social StudiesMeaningful Participation: The Individual in Society• Identify some of their interests and values and some important

relationships in their lives.• Identify and describe their preferred learning activities.• Contribute to school activities connected with an issue of concern.• Demonstrate respect for the rights of others.• Describe changes experienced.Understanding Diversity and Valuing Equity• Describe ways in which celebrations are observed by various

cultures.• Describe ways in which people make use of the world.Understanding Natural and Human-Made Systems• Describe personal experience of nature that inspires wonder.• Identify local institutions and the work they do.• Identify patterns that affect daily life.• Participate in activities that help protect the environment.Functioning in the Age of Information• Talk about their work in their own words.• Use a variety of forms to communicate ideas.• Identify ways in which business gets consumers to notice their

products.LanguageListening and Speaking• Retell stories told and/or read aloud.• Use gestures, tone of voice and oral language structures to

communicate.Reading• Use a variety of materials for information and pleasure.• Use different strategies to respond to text.Writing• Write simple messages (e.g., labels, lists).• Demonstrate some awareness of audience.Viewing and Representing• Use a variety of media text for entertainment and information.• Explore stereotypes in the media.Language for Learning• Share ideas, experiences and information.• Identify some forms of expression that are unfamiliar to particular

individuals or cultures.

FIG. 1.1. Sample mandated curriculum.

28

Mandated CurriculumEngagements in our Negotiated

Curriculum

Reading

Use a variety of materials forinformation and pleasure

Use different strategies torespond to text

Writing

Write simple messages(e.g., labels, lists)

Demonstrate some awarenessof audience

Read picture books, magazines,newspapers, newspaper flyers,resource books, Web sites, variouscultural texts, songs ...

Code breaking practices, textanalysis, text meaning practices,pragmatic practices, representingunderstanding using multiple signsystems, conversations,dramatizations, music, creatingposters, writing stories, writingsongs, writing poems, creatingpetitions, constructing surveys ...

Letters, surveys, posters, petitions,creating lists, newsletters, songs,stories, poems, booklets,pamphlets, instruction sheets,warnings,day plans, meeting agendas,Speaker's Corner tapes

Survey sent to other schools.Petition sent to kindergartenclasses. Petition sent toadministrator. Poster created forwood shops. Letter written toparents. Letter sent to children inother countries. Letter sent tolocal builder. Proposal submittedto McDonald's.

FIG. 1.2. A chart representing one part of the mandated curricu-lum and a sampling of what was covered through our negotiatedcurriculum.

29

30 Chapter 1

minds. As a result, the class engaged in a conversation through which avote was organized regarding whether to return to the life-cycleagenda or to take on the presidential elections as an inquiry project.The vote was apparently one short of unanimous in favor of droppingthe life-cycle study.

As part of their inquiry into the elections, the children engaged inresearch both at home and at school. After dividing themselves intothree campaign committees, for each of the presidential candidates—George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot—the children read anddiscussed the newspaper and the news with their families at home. Inschool, they also discussed magazine articles and newspaper articlesregarding the elections. This inquiry became the springboard forMaras and Brummet to build a critical literacy unit of study. Thisnewfound curriculum was no longer based on predetermined, pre-packaged units of study but on the things that mattered to the chil-dren. Maras and Brummet contributed to writings on critical literacyby offering a demonstration of how to draw from the issues central tothe children's lives. They wrote about their experience with the presi-dential election project in Cordeiro's (1995) Endless Possibilities.

Jenny O'Brien (1994) developed a critical literacy unit of studyaround Mother's Day cards and flyers. Some of the things she had herstudents do included drawing and labeling six presents for mothersyou expect to see in Mother's Day catalogs, drawing and labeling somepresents you wouldn't expect to see in Mother's Day catalogs, or dis-cussing what groups of people get the most out of Mother's Day.O'Brien's work offered the children an opportunity to consider agendered cultural event, that is, an event that portrays mothers as be-ing a certain way. The children then explored how these portrayals areconnected to marketing and advertising, that is, how these portrayalslead to the selling of certain products associated with Mother's Day.

My experience working with teachers attempting to engage incritical literacy shows me that, in many cases, social issues aretreated as variables to be added to the existing curriculum. This isdone rather than using the issues to build curriculum because theseissues are associated with cynicism and unpleasurable work. How-ever, critical literacy does not necessarily involve taking a negativestance; rather, it means looking at an issue or topic in different ways,analyzing it, and hopefully being able to suggest possibilities forchange or improvement. Often issues of social justice and equityseem to be looked upon as heavy-handed issues. The conversationsthat we had and the actions we took, although often serious, werevery pleasurable. We enjoyed our work because the topics that we

Finding Space for Critical Literacy 3 1

dealt with were socially significant to us. As you read on, I believe thiswill become more and more evident, especially when you meet thechildren, hear their voices, and become familiar with some of the lifework they accomplished.

In my experience, the extent to which I was able to negotiatespaces to engage in critical literacy practices was related to the extentto which I had understood possibilities for engaging in critical liter-acies. The understanding or conceptualization that I am referring to isnot about beliefs held in my head. The conceptualization I am referringto has to do with the extent to which I was able to act on my beliefs—inessence, to "do critical literacy theory." As my conceptualization of crit-ical literacies changed, I was able to create different spaces for it in thecurriculum, which led to further opportunities to deepen my under-standing that, in turn, led to the creation of even more curricularspaces. The relationship between conceptualization and negotiatingspaces is therefore a recursive process (Fig. 1.3).

Deepening my conceptual understanding happened in a num-ber of ways—engaging with critical literacy texts, hearing aboutothers' attempts to engage in critical literacy practice, and workingon critical literacy practices in my classroom or other local sites. Al-though this is true for me, your experiences may look very different.What I intend to do here is simply to give you an overview of the pro-cess through which my conceptualization of critical literacy devel-

FIG. 1.3. The recursive process of conceptualization and negoti-ating curricular spaces. Adapted from Manning's, 1999, RecursiveCycle of Learning. From A. Manning (1999), Foundations of Liter-acy Course Book. Adapted with permission.

32 Chapter 1

oped. As reader, you will need to find strategies and supports thatwork best for you.

What Complexities Are Involved WithEngaging in Critical Literacy Practice?

There are several questions that come to mind as I think aboutthe complexities involved with engaging in critical literacies. Follow-ing are some of these questions:

1. What does it mean to become critically literate?For me, becoming critically literate had to do with fram-

ing my teaching from a critical literacy perspective and prac-ticing critical literacies in my life outside of school. This doesnot mean that contestation and controversy have driven mylife. In fact, having engaged in critical literacies has added adifferent layer of pleasure and productiveness to my life that isinvigorating. I have had to come to an understanding of how Iam both privileged and disadvantaged within different con-texts and in so doing have found ways to actively participate ininterrogating inequities and injustices that arise in my life out-side of as well as inside of school.

2. How do I go about negotiating spaces to engage in criticalliteracies?

Comber and Cormack (1997) stated that literacy is con-structed differently in different classrooms and across differentcontexts and school sites. Agreeing with this claim, I would sug-gest that the "where" of negotiating space and the "how" of ne-gotiating space might differ also. The chapters that followdemonstrate that critical literacies can be negotiated "as" cur-riculum or "into" the existing curriculum. The "as" and the"into" are important here. For me, it delineates engaging in asustained and generative critical literacy curriculum or a cur-riculum based on isolated critical incidents.

My students and I created a year-long integrated criticalliteracy curriculum for social justice and equity. We did not in-tegrate the issues raised into a curriculum; that is, we did notadd critical literacy as an extracurricular item. Nor did wetreat social issues as unofficial classroom agenda. Instead, theissues became central to our curriculum; they became thestuff that our curriculum was made of.

Finding Space for Critical Literacy 33

3. Where do I find people to support the work I am doing?In my attempts at negotiating critical literacies in my

classroom, I have found support both within my school com-munity and in the larger professional community.

Support Within the School Community

In some instances, engaging in critical literacies is seen as a sub-versive act that happens behind closed doors. In my school, peoplewho were not directly involved in our day-to-day curriculum weremore supportive because they were able to watch our curriculumtake shape and to see the learning that took place through viewingour audit trail and through reading our class newsletters. They couldsee the connections we were making not only to what is often thoughtof as unofficial curricular topics (e.g., gender, the corporate agenda,marginalization), but to what is often considered the official curricu-lum (e.g., skills associated with reading and writing).

Constructing an audit trail made our curriculum available forpublic conversation. Now and again interested colleagues and visi-tors to our school stopped by and asked us questions about the vari-ous artifacts on our wall. The visibility of our curriculum createdspace for others to enter into our class discourse. The audit trail be-came a visual articulation of how my students and I negotiated an in-tegrated critical literacy curriculum while dealing specifically withissues of social justice and equity that stemmed from my students' ev-eryday lives while using books and everyday texts.

Out-of-School Support Groups

Due to the fact that critical literacy is just recently taking root inearly childhood classrooms, those of us who are attempting to en-gage in critical literacies have found it necessary to connect withothers of like mind. I would recommend either forming a studygroup or joining an existing one. You could start by contacting yourprofessional organization such as The National Council of Teachersof English and the International Reading Association. There arealso courses now being offered at a number of universities. Anotheropportunity to find others interested in critical literacy would bethrough joining list serves such as the one hosted by RethinkingSchools. You could also engage in teacher renewal by writing forpublication.

34 Chapter 1

How Our Classroom Was OrganizedI organized the classroom into different areas such as a class li-

brary and an area filled with art supplies (Fig. 1.4). Basically, I wantedto create an environment that would offer my students as varied a se-lection of resources and materials as possible. I also wanted these re-sources and materials accessible to them at all times. I didn't wantthem to have to wait around for me to bring them the tools they neededfor the work they were doing. Organizing the classroom into differentareas made this possible. The children were quick to learn wherethings were stored and where things needed to be returned. This freedme to spend more time discussing and researching with them.

I also wanted to provide different kinds of workspaces and areaswhere my students could comfortably work on their own, in smallgroups and also as a large group.

How Our School Day Was OrganizedFor me, the school day started as the children arrived at the

schoolyard. Issues and topics that were taken up in class often began asinformal conversation in the yard. Each morning as the children en-tered the classroom, they signed in for attendance. After signing in,they looked over our job list to remind them of their responsibilities forthe day. This was often done in pairs or small groups because somechildren were more familiar with decoding print than others. Early inthe year, we created various jobs such as class botanist (the person incharge of looking after our plants), or class veterinarian (the person incharge of looking after our pet fish), as we needed them. While creatingjobs in our classroom, we read about and discussed what a particularjob entailed. Jobs were reassigned on a biweekly basis depending onwho was interested in the various positions. Children who were leav-ing their jobs would train other people to take over. The children alsochecked to see if they were responsible for chairing our class meetingor for assisting the meeting chair. Once having signed in and havingchecked the job list, everyone except the person with the responsibilityof chairing the class meeting spent time with books or worked on writ-ing or drawing. At this time, the meeting chair circulated among thechildren asking if anyone had any items to add to the class meetingagenda, after which we began our class meeting.

After our class meeting, the children chose different areas of theclassroom to work on invitations5 or activities I had either created ornegotiated with them, or they would work on their own topics (e.g.,

FIG. 1.4. How our classroom was organized.

35

36 Chapter 1

what it means to be a vegetarian), or issues (e.g., ways of collectingclothes for the flood victims in Manitoba).

As the children explored their own questions, they engaged in in-dependent or small-group research and then shared their thinkingwith others in the form of projects and presentations. Children ofteninformed me of topics they were pursuing so that I could gather re-sources to support them. Other times they would go to the school li-brary, which, lucky for us, was two doors away. Many children alsobrought resources from home, particularly information gathered fromthe Internet. As the children engaged in various learning experiences, Icirculated among them and supported them in various ways from lis-tening to their ideas to offering suggestions and resources as well as be-ing their audience when they needed to try out a presentation.

I think it is important to note that children were not rigidly sit-ting at their desks working on invitations or their inquiries. Activitieswere spread out in different areas of the classroom. As children en-gaged in their questions, they did so using different sign systems (e.g.,art, music, writing, math) and knowledge systems (e.g., science, so-cial studies). They also moved about the room using various materialsand resources, as needed and where needed.

In this section of the book I have given you an idea of how theclassroom and school day were organized and talked a little aboutcomponents of our classroom day. In the next section, I talk brieflyabout a few other common elements of our school day that had thebiggest impact on negotiating a critical literacy curriculum and therole of parents within that curriculum.

Common Elements of Our School Day

Class Meeting

Class meetings were whole-group gatherings whereby individu-als and small groups of children presented and discussed particularissues and topics with the whole class. These meetings began as infor-mal conversations. My intent was to be a participant in the meeting asopposed to being the person in charge or the chair of the meeting,without implying that I was an innocent or neutral participant. One ofthe concerns I had regarding child-centered pedagogies is the atti-tude embedded in commonly heard statements such as "I had noth-ing to do with it" (curriculum), or "It was all their idea," as though theteacher's ideologies or beliefs never played a part in what came to becurriculum. The bottom line is children participate based on the dis-

Finding Space for Critical Literacy 3 7

courses, the ways of being, that have been made available for them,many of these having been introduced at school.

The position of chairperson was offered to those children whowanted the job. As a group, we talked about what the chairperson's re-sponsibilities would include, after which time those who were interestedin the position were slotted on a calendar. A majority of the children vol-unteered to take a turn as chair. The role of chair became one of the ma-jor components of our class meetings as it gave the children a differentstatus, allowing them more space to make decisions about how meet-ings might play out. Generally, a student would take on the role of chairor co-chair (depending on their comfort level) for one week.

Setting a Meeting Agenda

Each class meeting was based on a meeting agenda that was de-veloped at the start of every morning by the meeting chairperson. Theagenda was created after signing in for attendance and checking tosee what their job responsibilities were for the day. The individualwhose job it was to be chair for the meeting moved about the roomasking for items to be included in the meeting agenda. Items weretopics, issues, questions, discoveries, and inquiries that children had.These items were then listed on poster board and propped up on achart stand. Sometimes the children dictated their agenda items.Other times, the children took on this job for themselves, either writ-ing using conventional or approximated spelling or drawing. Once allagenda items had been recorded in some way, the meeting began.Mostly this happened during the first 15 minutes of class. Often, chil-dren met me in the schoolyard sharing the issues they were interestedin raising during class meeting. Even some of the parents showed in-terest and spoke with me of having had conversations with their chil-dren, while getting ready for school, regarding the issues/topics thattheir children were thinking about proposing for the meeting agenda.

Our meeting agenda became our shared day plan, our plan forworking through the day. An example of these day plans can be foundin Fig. 1.5. In Fig. 1.6 I outline the different components of the dayplan. Because of the format we used, I had to keep a detailed accountof the day in a separate binder. I did this for the purpose of substituteteachers in case I had to be away. Simply, this was made up ofloose-leaf sheets of paper. These notes were done in narrative formand were written in a way that I hoped would be useful for substituteteachers and that would give them a sense of how we functioned as aclassroom community.

Tuesday, May 27, 1997Chair-Melissa

:45 Sign in for attendanceCheck JobsTime with

Books/JournalsClass Meeting Agenda

Items

Class Meeting Agenda:1. May 26 Reflections

2. Melanie - J.K.Conference

3. Gregory, Anthony andStefanie - letter tofamilies

4. PJ. - Playing Fair

Reflections

Melissa and some otherkids are going to write aletter today asking peoplefor used clothes to send tothe flood victims.

5. Lily-Skirts In some countries boyswear dresses and skirts too.

6. Ali and LeePower RangersChange Again

In the olden days boys andmen wore nightdresses forsleeping.

The show changed again.They do this so kids don'tget bored. They change theshows so kids will keepwatching.

That's like McDonald'sHappy Meals.

38

7. Michael - Cookie Day8. Alyssa- Art

TechniquesShowing something

moving fast.

10:10 Work Areas/SnackPlay PracticeMath Club

11:00 Campfire SongsStory - Nine O'clock

Lullaby

11:15 Home

See Andrew if you want tolearn how to make things inyour drawing look likethey're moving.

FIG. 1.5. An example of our day plan.

Chair Person

Sign In

Check Jobs

Class MeetingAgenda

Reflections

Work Areas

Campfire Songs

Refers to the student who is in charge of running theclass meeting.

Children signed in for attendance.

Different class members took on variousresponsibilities in the classroom.

A time to negotiate our curriculum and raise issuesof social justice and equity.

A place to jot down thoughts, comments, questionsand connections.

Different areas in the classroom to store andorganize materials, resources and equipment.

Sharing songs and stories based on our current areasof interest.

FIG. 1.6. Components of the day plan.

39

40 Chapter 1

Using Two Day Plans

As the year progressed, we began using two chart stands, oneholding the current day's meeting agenda and day plan and the otherholding the meeting agenda and day plan from the previous day. Bothof these were put in a place where they were visible to the childrengathered during meeting time (Fig. 1.7). The decision to do this wasmade when I noticed the children often talked about items from previ-ous discussions. On several occasions they tried to turn the posterboard in order to have a look at previous day plans while also referringto our current day plan. In conjunction with continually revisiting pre-vious day plans, the children often got up from our meeting space andwalked over to our audit trail, pointing at various artifacts that hadbeen posted as a way of referring to past events and incidents and as away of showing connections between events. I found this to be a veryexciting demonstration of how the children were connecting the differ-ent projects and other work we did over the course of the year. If you re-call from the introduction, I talked about doing the third inquiry due tofrustration that in the past I felt unsuccessful at connecting the variouscritical literacy incidents. The use of the learning wall and the twoshared day plans obviously helped to alleviate that concern.

FIG. 1.7. Using two day plans.


ReflectionsA reflection section was added to our daily agenda after one of

the children asked me, "What are those things you are writing onthe side of the agenda?" They were referring to my jottings and no-tations along the margins of our day plan. I responded by sayingthat I was jotting down thoughts, my reflections, regarding thingswe were discussing as we talked about each agenda item. Subse-quently, in conversation with the class about the use of reflections,the children asked me if we could always have reflections along theside of our day plan so that they could do some reflecting also.

I created a reflection section (Fig. 1.8) by drawing a line down theright side of the poster board. It was added as a place to jot downthoughts about issues raised and connections made to previous con-versations. The reflections eventually became the first items discussedat all meetings. Using reflections was a way for us to revisit what wehad discussed during the preceding meeting. This became yet another

Some kids are going to write aletter today to send home askingpeople for clothes to send to the(Manitoba) flood victims.

In some countries, boys weardresses and skirts too.

In the olden days some boys andmen wore night dresses forsleeping.

The show (Power Rangers) changedagain. They change the show so kidswill keep watching.

FIG. 1.8. Reflections.

42 Chapter 1

way for us to make connections between the various issues. Commentsor questions were then raised regarding the reflections. Now andagain, the children would refer to these reflections in order to make de-cisions about what items to put on future meeting agendas.

Read-AloudRead-aloud was a time when I shared books with the children or

when children shared books with one another based on what we werecurrently studying. It took place at different times, before, during, orafter class meetings. Time was flexible depending on what books wewere sharing and for what reasons. For example, I would start the daywith a read-aloud if I had a book I wanted to share based on an issue ortopic that came up the previous day. Most often the books chosen forread-aloud were part of a text set of children's literature (combinationof books and everyday texts that are based on the same topic or that of-fer different perspectives on the same topic) and everyday texts.

Whole Group Wrap-UpEach day ended with a brief whole-group gathering to reflect on

what we had done throughout the day and to consider possibilities forthe following school day. This was also a time to share connectionsand questions as well as a time to share songs, poetry, or stories.

The Role of ParentsEight out of the 16 children in the classroom were placed in my

room as a result of requests made by parents. These parents wereaware of the ways in which I had negotiated curriculum with chil-dren the previous year and my critical literacy take on negotiatingcurriculum with children. Some of them had older children who hadbeen in my class in the past. They appreciated my belief that childrenare capable of more than what the traditional junior kindergarten orpreschool curriculum offered. In a sense, I was in a position of privi-lege, having parents who supported my theoretical and pedagogicalstance from the start. These relationships, however, did not happeninstantly but rather developed over time through ongoing discussionand conversation about learning and literacy.

Prior to the first day of school, I held an open house and meet-ing with the parents to share my thinking regarding negotiating acritical literacy curriculum with the new parents and to renew con-nections with those with whom I had previously worked. I had con-


versations over the phone with those who were unable to attend orvisited with them in their homes. These first meetings were my at-tempt to begin a dialogue about learning as well as to let the par-ents know how important maintaining ongoing communicationwould be for their children's learning, and in helping to inform thecurricular decisions I would have to make. This ongoing dialoguetook different forms depending on the parents' schedules and timerestraints. Some of them spoke with me on a daily basis as theywere dropping off or picking up their child. Others sent notes toschool with their child; still others maintained written communi-cation with me using a written conversation notebook. Other par-ents called to talk over the phone on a regular basis. It took a lot ofextra time, effort, and coordination to keep lines of communicationopen, but I felt that the support I received as a result of these effortsfar exceeded the energy I had expended. I also held three open dia-logue nights at school where parents who were unable to visit dur-ing the day could come in to talk about issues, questions, andcomments regarding their child's learning in an informal groupsetting. This was a social gathering time as well as a time to look atartifacts that had been posted on our audit trail.

Being able to spend time together to talk about the artifacts onour audit trail was important to the work that the children and I did. Irealized that the audit trail could be read in many different ways. Thechildren and I read it from a critical literacy perspective because thatwas the history we had shared. I knew that if the parents were privy tothat history that they, too, could impact the issues we were dealingwith in the classroom and hopefully create spaces for our classroomconversations to overflow into the home. I didn't want the colorful-ness and aesthetic appeal of the audit trail to be seen as uncritical ordismissed as a "cute bulletin board idea."

Also prior to the first day of school, children and their familieshad a chance to visit our classroom and/or I had a chance to visitwith them in their homes. Those who were able to make the visit sawthe empty bulletin board space and heard about my intention of ne-gotiating a critical literacy curriculum with the children. Those whowere not able to visit heard about my intentions through a classnewsletter. These visits were opportunities for me to learn as muchas I could about my students. Cristina Igoa (1995) emphasized theimportance of the home-school interaction, stating that it gave herthe opportunity to assist the child in finding a connection betweenhome and school. If I wanted the critical literacies learned by mystudents to have an impact beyond the walls of our classroom, I

44 Chapter 1

knew that maintaining lines of communication with the homewould be crucial.

In the next chapter, I begin to tell the story of negotiating a criti-cal literacy curriculum with my students by describing an incidentthat took place during our first read-aloud session.

2Getting Started

Constructing a Curricular Audit TrailIt was the first day of school with my sixteen 3- and 4-year-old

students. I decided to start the day with a read-aloud of a picture bookI thought the children would find interesting and that had a patternedpredictable text so they could read with me. The book I chose wasDon and Audrey Wood's (1993) Quick as a Cricket. I read:

I'm as quick as a cricket,I'm as slow as a snail,I'm as small as an ant,I'm as large as a whale.

I'm as sad as a basset,I'm as happy as a lark,I'm as nice as a bunny,I'm as mean as a shark.

I'm as cold as a ...

45

46 Chapter 2

"Is that a frog or a toad?" asked 4-year-old Gregory. (Please notethat the names appearing throughout the book are pseudonyms.) Hewas referring to an illustration of an amphibian sitting on a rock (Fig.2.1). "How can we find out?" I responded. I had a number of differentresource books in the classroom on a broad range of topics. As welooked through the books, one of the things I suggested was to com-pare the environment in the Quick as a Cricket illustration to the envi-ronment that the frogs and toads lived in as depicted in a variety ofbooks. Together we hypothesized that one way to tell whether the am-phibian is a frog or toad is through its environment.

This initial exchange regarding whether or not the illustration inthe book was that of a frog or toad generated a series of issues and top-ics such as rain forests, the environment, and gender. Capitalizing onthese issues, I began to develop a curriculum based on our class con-versations and my observations6 of the children (see Fig. 2.2).

FIG. 2.1.Frog or toadillustration.

Getting Started 47

FIG. 2.2. Observation chart.

Choosing ArtifactsTo represent our initial conversation regarding Gregory's ques-

tion, "Is that a frog or toad?", I decided to post the book cover (Fig.2.3), a copy of the illustration (Fig. 2.1), and Gregory's question. Thecombination of artifacts initially posted on our empty bulletin boardis shown in Fig. 2.4. Once I posted these first few artifacts, I talked tothe children about why I felt each one best represented our conversa-tion about frogs and toads and then asked them to think about differ-ent things we could use to remind us of incidents and questions thatcame up in our classroom. We brainstormed various possibilities,creating a list that included drawings, pictures, cutouts from maga-zines, book covers, and writing. Examples of artifacts that wereposted on our audit trail are included throughout the book.

The Audit Trail GrowsOur initial question, "Is this a frog or a toad?", led to inquiry into

amphibian environments. One of the environments that most inter-

48 Chapter 2

Quick as a Cricket

FIG. 2.3. Quick as a Cricket book cover.

ested the children was the rain forest. As a result, an inquiry into rainforests began. I created various engagements and curricular activi-ties that included opportunities for my students to think about and an-alyze various books and everyday texts related to this topic. Forexample, as part of our study of rain forests, I asked the children tocollect newspaper reports, magazine articles, songs, and other texts

FIG. 2.4. The first artifactsposted on our audit trail.

49

50 Chapter 2

about rain forests. We then looked at these various items and talkedabout similar and different ways that particular environmental issuesare reported or represented. While doing this, a group of childrenfound a song in a children's book. They liked the song because theysaid it was about saving the animals that live in rain forests, whichwas an issue that had become important to them.

Creating a Rain Forest Play

After learning the song, some of the children began acting outparts of it. I suggested to them that acting out parts of the song was agood way of representing what we were learning about saving therain forests and that drama was a good way of sharing with otherswhat we had learned. Some of the children immediately wanted tosing and dramatize the song for the children in our school. I told themif this was their intent, they needed to develop the drama and re-hearse it before performing it for others. The result was the creationof the rain forest play. A script was written for the play (Fig. 2.5) and aset (Fig. 2.6) in which to perform the play was created. The play wasour way of helping other children in our school to learn about theneed to preserve rain forests and to send a message regarding whathappens when rain forests are harvested for profit.

The particular action was highlighted on our audit trail by post-ing the list of characters in the play (Fig. 2.7). Developing the playfrom conceptualizing what the main message would be, scripting,planning costumes, creating the set, and then organizing a scheduleto perform the play for various audiences (other classes, parents)took around 3 weeks and involved everyone in the class in varyingcapacities.

Other types of action that resulted from our initial inquiry in-cluded writing a letter to the parents in our class asking them not tobuy wood that has been harvested from rain forests (Fig. 2.8). We alsosent a poster to all "wood shops" (places that sell wood) asking themnot to sell wood that has been harvested from rain forests (Fig. 2.9).The letter to the parents was included with an explanation in our classnewsletter, and the letter to the wood shops was mailed to different

The Rain Forest PlayCast of CharactersP person cutting down rain forest treesS Saver of the rain forestF frogSn snakeB butterfly

P (walks into the rain forest with an axe and starts cutting trees)I'm going to the rain forest to chop all the trees.

S Stop!

P Why?

S Because we won't have any animals left in the rain forest!

P Why?

S Because we won't have air to breathe.Here comes my friend frog.

P I don't see anybody.

F Ribbit, ribbit ... if you chop down those trees, I won't have aplace to live or to eat.

Sn If you do that I won't have a place to live.

B Even me I won't have a place to eat too!

S See there are animals here.

All The End.

FIG. 2.5. List of characters in our Rain Forest Play and script forthe play.

51

FIG. 2.6. Rain Forest Play backdrop.

52

Getting Started 53

FIG. 2.7. Characters from the play as posted on our audit trail.

lumberyards in the city where our school is located. Creating theposter and letter resulted from conversations regarding the econom-ics involved in producing goods made using wood from rain forests;that is, conversations about buyers, sellers, and producers. For exam-ple, we talked about what the benefits were for people who sell, buy,or produce wood.

FIG. 2.8. Letter to the parents and guardians.

54

Getting Started 55

September 23.1996

let's send it to all the wood shops. It's aboutwood shops not getting wood cut down fromthe rain forest so frogs can live,"

FIG. 2.9. Letter to the wood shops.

Raising Issues of GenderGender equity was another issue that arose from our study of

rain forests. While reading Where the Forest Meets the Sea (Baker,1998), the issue of gender came up when one of the children asked,"Why is it a man and not a woman cooking?" regarding a particular il-lustration (Fig. 2.10). This marked the beginning of our study aboutgender equity. The question led to the analysis of various texts. I madeuse of O'Brien's (1994) interrogation of Mother's Day cards as aframework for considering ways to interrupt dominant ways of talk-ing about gender in various texts, specifically everyday texts such astelevision commercials and magazine ads as well as picture books.We began to look at these texts asking questions like:

What roles are given to males?What roles are given to females?

FIG. 2.10. Where the Forest Meets the Sea illustration of a mancooking over an open fire.

56

Getting Started 57

• Who are the powerful characters?• Who are the weak characters?• Do you know people in your life who are like the characters in

the book?• What are things you know people can do that the characters in

the book can't do?• What can we do to change the story?

These questions became discussion starters that helped me to de-velop other learning experiences.

To represent the incident regarding gender on our audit trail, thechildren patterned the artifacts they chose after those that I used torepresent the "frog or toad" and "rain forest" issues. They chose acopy of the book cover, the illustration, and the question "Are thereonly boys that cut down trees in the rain forest?" (Fig. 2.11).

FIG. 2.11. Gender issue artifacts posted on our audit trail.

58 Chapter 2

Gender was taken up several more times over the course of theyear as we worked with various everyday texts such as newspaper fly-ers and magazine ads. Through our discussions, we explored how so-ciety constructs what males and females can and cannot do and waysin which this happens. For example, on our audit trail we posted anad flyer that was brought to class by one of the children. This particu-lar flyer was used as a springboard to talk about how newspaper adsare constructed, the language used in the ads, why they are producedin the first place, how they represent life options, and how we, as con-sumers and buyers, use them to make particular decisions about whowe want to be and how we want to be in the world. By doing this kindof work, we engaged in text analysis (Freebody & Luke, 1990). For ex-ample, one instance of text analysis involved problematizing or ask-ing questions about Halloween costume ads as well as analyzing thead contents. We looked at who was represented wearing certain cos-tumes. What costumes were boys wearing? What costumes were girlswearing? Which costumes cost more? Which cost less? In what waysdo these costumes tell you what you can and cannot be? As a result,some of the children designed their own costumes to counter those inthe ad. We also looked at the language used to describe the costumesand how the describing words associate certain characteristics withboys and other characteristics with girls.

Audit Trail as a Tool for ConstructingCurriculumWhat you have read so far represents only the beginning of the

work we did over the course of the school year, along with some ofthe ways that different inquiries were born and ways that inquirieswere connected. Issues continued to be generated and connectedthroughout the year. Our audit trail became an important tool, animportant technological site for constructing and negotiating cur-riculum and for building a shared curricular history. Other issuesthat were generated and how they connect to one another can befound in Table 2.1. These figures outline the various questions andtopics that we negotiated, the context in which the issue unfolded,the curricular engagements used, the actions taken, and other is-sues that were generated.

A second chart (Fig. 2.12A through Fig. 2.12O) lists the variousartifacts we used. The charts are divided into three columns. The firstcolumn contains the artifact, the second column names the artifact,and the third column outlines the issue(s) represented by the artifact.

TABLE 2.1Chart Representing Issues on Our Audit Trail

Issue (s)

1 . Rain forests arein danger.What can wedo to help savethe rain forest?

Context

While sharing the bookQuick as a Cricket duringthe first few days ofschool the childrenpaused at one of theillustrations asking thequestion, "Is that a frogor a toad?"

This initial question ledto conversations aboutwhere frogs and toadslive. One of the habitatswe talked about was therain forest.

CurricularEngagements

• Letter writing.

• Research into therain forest.

• Poster design.

• Locating places tosend travel trunkson the globe.

• Organizing traveltrunks.

• Writing a scriptfor a play aboutthe rain forest.

• Creating a scheduleto perform the playfor other classes.

Action(s)

• Letter to parents/guardians askingthem not to buy woodfrom shops who sellproducts taken fromrain forests.

• Created a poster thatwas sent to lumberyards reminding themnot to buy wood fromcompanies whoviolate rain forests.

• Created rain foresttravel trunks to helpinform children inother classroomsaround the worldregarding theviolation of rain

Other IssuesGenerated

• Interconnected-ness of life.

• The need to helpothers.

• The need for foodand shelter.

• Gender issues.

• Perspectives:Thinking like anArtistScientistMathematicianGeographer

(continued on next page)

TABLE 2.1 (continued)

Issue (s) ContextCurricular

Engagements Action(s)Other IssuesGenerated

1. (continued) Designing a back-drop for the play.

Creating invitationsand informationsheets for peoplecoming to see theplay that containsfacts and resourcelists on books andorganizations thatsupport saving therain forests of theworld.

Wrote a play to teachother kindergartens inthe school about rainforests.

2. What hashappened tothe trees thatwere once inour neighbor-hoods?

As part of our rain forestconversations, childrenbegan to compare thetrees they saw in booksabout the rain forest tothose in our neighbor-hood. They wonderedabout why the trees inthe school neighborhoodare so small. Theytheorized that they mustbe newly planted treeswhich led them towonder whether thereonce were older treesand if there were whathappened to them.

This resulted in aconversation about howland is cleared bybuilders to build houses.

Researching whatMississauga usedto look like beforebuilders beganbuying off land.

Walking aroundthe community toobserve the kindsof trees thatcurrently exist.

Letters to a localbuilder.

Animal Rights:What happens tothe animals wholive in areas wheretrees are cut downand the land iscleared?


62 TABLE 2.1 (continued)

Issue (s)

3. Gender andhow societydecides whatmales andfemales canand cannot doand who theycould andshould be.

Context

While reading Where theForest Meets the Sea aspart of our inquiry intorain forests, the childrenbegan interrogating aparticular illustration ofa man cooking over anopen fire. One of thechildren asked why it isa man cooking and not awoman. This questioncreated space for aconversation on gender.

CurricularEngagements

• Created a picturegraph of thingsgirls, boys, girlsand boys can do.

• Analyzing thegraph.

• Interrogatingchildren'sliterature to look athow boys and girlsare positioned andhow males andfemales arepositioned.

Action(s)

• Deliberate attemptswere made by thechildren in theclassroom not to letgender decide(e.g., who can playwhat games, who canplay with what toys).

Other IssuesGenerated

• How do newspaperflyers position girlsand boys, malesand females?

4. It is unfair forvegetarians atour school andother schoolsnot to havefood that theycan eat.

The day after our schoolbarbecue the childreninitiated a conversationregarding how thebarbecue had gone, whatpeople had eaten, andwhat people had done.

As part of this conver-sation, one of thechildren shared that hewas not able to eat at thebarbecue because he isvegetarian.

Linking this incidentwith the issue of needingfood and shelter asgenerated through ourrain forest inquiry led toproblematizing thechoices for food at theschool barbecue.

Research onvegetarians.

Letter writing.

Designing andmailing out asurvey.

• Wrote two letters tothe organizer of theschool barbecue.

• Sent a survey and noteto other schoolsregarding the need tofind out whether thereare vegetarians atdifferent sites who arenot considered whenmaking meal plans atdifferent schoolfunctions and events.

Difference anddiversity.

How are somepeoplemarginalized atour school, in ourcommunity, and inother places?

63 (continued on next page)




5. Who is left outof the books wehave in ourlibrary?

While researching aboutvegetarians (issue #4),a group of childrendiscovered that we didnot have any books onvegetarians in thelibrary.

This led to a conversa-tion regarding who elsemay not be representedby the books andresources in our schoollibrary.

• Memo writing.

• Chart of things thatrepresent us.

[The chart createdrepresents who weare, either throughsomething that weare interested in orour culturalheritage.]

Wrote a memo to thelibrarian regardingwhat books should bepurchased for thelibrary.

Books asrepresentingspecific versionsof the world.

6. UnequalDistribution ofPower: Howarekindergartenstudentspositioned inour school, bythe largereducationalcommunity?

One day a flyer was sentto our classroomregarding a contest forInternational Women'sDay. The contestinvolved creating abookmark for this dayand including a slogan insupport of women.

The interest in women'srights and gender hadbeen sustained from anearlier conversationdescribed in issue #3that took place earlier inthe year.

The children wanted toknow more about thecontest so I called theorganizers to find outmore about it.

• Designing andmeasuring [thebook mark had tobe a specific size].

• Creating slogans.

• Researching otherbookmarks todecide on what toinclude.

Entered a bookmarkcontest.

What other events,competitions,activities are there inwhich kindergartenstudents are notconsidered?

65 (continued on next page)



Engagements Action(s) Other Issues Generated

6. (continued) I discovered and sharedwith the children thatthe contest is predom-inantly entered by olderstudents.

This started a discussionof the ways in whichkindergarten studentsare marginalized in ourschool as well as in thebroader educationalcommunity.

7. What otherthings can wedo to changethings that arenot equitableor unfair in ourschool, in ourcommunity, inthe world?

Involvement in thebookmark competitionresulted in an awarenessthat not all age groups ofchildren are treatedequitably and that someage groups, the kinder-gartens in particular, areoften seen as not beingcapable of certainactions.

As the school announce-ments were being madeover the publicannouncement system, agroup of children becameaware of an event calledthe French Cafe whichwas being held at ourschool. One of thechildren theorized thatfrom the sounds of theannouncement everyonebut the kindergartenstudents were beinginvited to the cafe.

• Survey research:Who is going tothe cafe?

• Letter writing.

• Creating aSpeaker's Cornertape.

• Creating a petitionand collectingsignatures.

Petition.

• Speaker's Corner tape.


00 TABLE 2.1 (continued)



Save thebelugas andanimal rights.

Since having engaged ininquiry regarding rainforests, other environ-mental issues became ofinterest to the children.One day during classmeeting one of thechildren reported a storyshe heard on the eveningnews regarding theplight of the belugawhales in the St.Lawrence River. Shelearned that pollutionwas causing the whalesto die off.

Problematizing thetext "Baby Beluga"and thinking abouthow it could beotherwise.

Recreating/rewriting storiesthat offer anotherperspective.

Rewrote the "BabyBeluga" Song byRaffi.

Save the belugas store:Money made was sentto World WildlifeFund of Canada.

• Animal rights.

• Endangered species.

• Responsibility andcitizenry.

9. McDonald's:The CorporateAgenda

As a result of theconversation regardingthe beluga whales, thechildren started to talkabout how powerless thewhales are and howhumans control theirdestiny. This led tofurther discussionsregarding power andcontrol, including howcorporations and themedia control thedecisions we make asconsumers. To context-ualize the conversation,one of the children madethe comment that "it isjust like McDonald's."This then led into aconversation about thecorporate agenda as amoney-making institutionthat uses and manip-ulates consumers fortheir own profit.

• Research flyersand ads.

• Created a chart toshow howMcDonald's,Burger King andother fast foodcompanies enticeconsumers,particularlychildren, to buytheir food andvarious toyproducts.

• Letter writing.

McDonald's boycott. What other actionscan we take toexpose andinterrogate thecorporate agenda?

How do clothingmanufacturers dothe same thing thatthe fast foodcompanies do?

How do clothingmanufacturers andplaces likeMcDonald's tell youwhat it means to bemale and female?





10. Manitobaflood victims.

Previous conversationsabout gender issues andmedia control led us totalk about how mothersare portrayed by themedia. This led to aconversation about whosemothers are representedand how families arerepresented as having amother and father.

One of the children thenmade a connection to theManitoba flood victims,saying that some of thepeople who lost theirhomes won't be able tocelebrate Mother's Day.This led to a brain-storming regarding whatwe could do to help theflood victims.

Research usingMother's Dayflyers.

(Re)creatingMother's Dayflyers.

Brainstorming.

Organizing for theclothing drive.

Letter writing.

Clothing drive. How do peoplebecomedisadvantaged?

Who are thedisadvantaged?

• Book cover from • environmentalQuick as a Cricket. issues

• saving the rainforest

• Question - "Is this a • environmentalfrog or a toad?" issues

• Illustration from • saving the rainthe book forestQuick as a Cricket

• Question - "Where do • environmentalthese frogs live?" issues

• Photo of toy frogs in • saving the rainour classroom. forest

• Book cover from Rain • environmentalForests. issues

• Quote - "People • saving the rainshouldn't cut down foresttrees in the rain forestor frogs like this willdie."

• Cast of characters from • environmentalthe play. issues

• Partial script from the • saving the rainplay. forest

FIG. 2.12A. Chart of artifacts posted on our audit trail.

71

• Letter to parents • environmentalissues

• Quote - "Never getwood from the rain • saving the rainforest that they sell at forestthe store."

• Transcript of • vegetarian issueconversation

• Photo of our classroom • environmentalrain forest. issues

• saving the rainforest

• vegetarian issue

• Quote - "Let's send it to • environmentalall the wood shops. It's issuesabout wood shops not • saving the raingetting wood cut down forestfrom the rain forest."

• Poster for wood shops

• Photo of child at work

• Photo of creating travel • environmentaltrunks. issues

• Page from a phone • saving the rainbook. forest

FIG. 2.12B.

72

FIG. 2.12C.

73

• Front page • genderSomething fromNothing . different

perspectives

• Quote - "What does the • genderauthor say about whatgirls and boys can do?" . perspectives

• Illustration fromSomething fromNothing

• Illustration from Where • genderthe Forest Meets theSea

• Quote - "Are there onlyboys that cut downtrees in the rainforest?"

• Paper airplane flyer • media andadvertising

• Quote - "This is a kindof flyer to sendmessages. We can sendmessages differentways."

FIG. 2.12D.

74

FIG. 2.12E.75

• Drawing of Superman • differentperspectives

• Math graph • differentperspectives

• gender

• Quote - "Do • environmentalcaterpillars really eat issuessausage and cake?"

• different• Book cover The Very perspectives/

Hungry Caterpillar thinking like

• Question - "Whathappens when the foodchain is broken? Howdo we prevent thisfrom happening?"

• Quote - "Superman • rain forest issuescan help save the rainforest because he's . environmentalstrong issues

• Drawing of Superman . gendersaving the rain forest.

• perspectives

FIG. 2.12F.

76

• Question - "What does • genderbeing strong mean? Isit only about having . power andmuscles? Who gets to controldecide what it means?"

• Drawings of whatbeing strong means.

• Poster of • genderInternationalchildren • perspectives

• thinking like

• racism

• Illustrations from • perspectivesAsaka's Animals.

• thinking like

• Drawing of Spiderman • perspectivesfrom a Christmasperspective.

FIG. 2.12G.

77

Drawings

Photos of kids at work

Quote –"If you work atit, you can be strong inyour head, to writethings down you neverdid before. That's whatstrong is too!"

gender

perspectives

strength andpower

Quote - "I learnedsomething that Icouldn't do. I can docartwheels now."

Photos

• gender

• perspectives

• strength andpower

Illustrations fromWhy the Willow Weeps

• perspectives

Quote • strength andpower

• race and culture

Second letter to thechair of the schoolbarbecue committee

Response from thechair of the committee

• vegetarian issue

• age equity

FIG. 2.12H.

78

• Letter to principals at • vegetarian issueother schools

• Quote • vegetarian issue

• Book cover from • rain forest issuesPanther Dream

• environmentalissues

• strength andpower

• Quote • rain forest issue

FIG. 2.121.

79

• Text printed from a • rain forest issueWeb site.


• Graphic printed from • rain forest issuea Web site.


• Letter to parents • age equityregarding makingboxes.

• Quote • strength andpower

• gender

• television

FIG. 2.12J.

80

• Flyer for International • genderWomen's Day contest

• strength and• Bookmark Contest power

entry• age

• Quote - "Women and discriminationgirls are strong too!"

• Survey • environmentalissues

• Questionnaire

• Survey summary

• Beluga art pieces

• Petition cover letter • agediscrimination

• Copy of petition (French Cafesignatures issue)

• Slogan • environmentalissues

• Book cover forBaby Beluga. . perspectives

• Quote - "This book only • power andmakes whales look controlhappy. You have to readother books to see howsad some Belugas are."

• Drawings about • televisionPolkaroo (TVcharacter). . perspectives

• Drawings • gender

• perspectives

FIG. 2.12K.

81

• Quote - "McDonald's • power andsell toys so more kids controlwill go there. It'spretty complicated. It's . classismlike tricking kids.

„ • fairness• Quote - Not everyonecan go to McDonald's.That's not fair." * corporate agenda

• Quote - "What does a ' media literacypoor person look like?"

• perspectives

• Quote - "Violence is • powerlike fighting ... but youcan be violent in your . perspectivesbrain too.

• Book cover from • strength andCrafty Chameleon. power

• Quote from the book. • perspectives

FIG. 2.12L.

82

• Quote • gender

• Drawings • perspectivesit

• Question - "What • fairnessabout Mother's Day?"

• culture• Quotes

• perspectives

• Manitoba flood

• Invitations for speakers • age equity

• J.K. conference booklet • vegetarian issue

• animal rights

• gender

FIG. 2.12M.

83

• Poster • helping others inneed (Manitoba

Donation Letter

• Poster for next • generalyear's JuniorKindergartens(what they shouldknow)

• Draft of petition cover • ageletter regarding discriminationattending play daywith the rest of the . power andschool. control

• Drawing • power andcontrol

• Quote regardingPower Rangers. • gender

• media

• corporate agenda

FIG. 2.12N.

84

flood victims)

FIG.2.120.

Deciding on What Incidents to Representon Our Audit TrailThere are many incidents that are represented on our audit trail.

At the same time, there were several other incidents that were not in-cluded. However, this is not to say that some incidents were signifi-cant and others were not. As we worked through various criticalincidents and issues, the children and I made decisions about what topost. The impact an issue had in the social worlds of the children orthe kind of contribution to change in our social spaces determinedwhat was posted. Often, children wanted to post artifacts of incidentsthat they took the most pleasure in pursuing.

Deciding on what incidents to include on our audit trail and theartifacts to represent those incidents happened during class meeting.

Visibly Connecting Issues on Our Audit Trail

Connecting issues on our audit trail happened in two ways. First,as artifacts were posted on the wall, we began to talk about how dif-

Getting Started 85

86 Chapter 2

ferent incidents could be part of a broader underlying issue. Based onthese connections, we identified six overarching themes:

1. Environmental Issues. Environmental issues were issues thatdealt in some way with the environment, such as harvestingrain forests or what happens when forested areas are clearedto make room for building houses.

2. Different People and Different Places. Issues connected to thistheme were issues of diversity or difference, whether this wasbased on, for example, ethnicity or income.

3. Girls and Boys. The girls and boys theme had to do with any in-cidents that dealt with issues of gender equity.

4. TV and Newspapers. This particular theme looked at the rolethat media played in socializing children and influencing whothey could and could not be in the world.

5. Strength and Power. Strength and power dealt with issues of controland marginalization, disadvantage, privilege, and oppression.

6. Thinking Like. This theme dealt with incidents where we lookedat issues or topics from different perspectives.

These themes were highlighted and posted on our audit trail in con-secutive order. For example, the environmental issues theme was thefirst theme to be highlighted. I cut out large round pieces of constructionpaper on which to print the various themes. The children called thesecircles "hot spots" because "they look like the sun" (Fig. 2.13).

FIG. 2.13. Hot spots.

Getting Started 87

In order to represent the connections between the various issuesand to highlight the themes identified, I cut out arrows from differentcolors of construction paper. I used a particular color to represent aparticular theme. For example, orange arrows represented gender is-sues and yellow arrows represented environmental issues. These ar-rows were then stapled between artifacts on our audit trail to showhow issues were connected (Fig. 2.14). Different colored arrows thatconverged on an artifact visually represented how different themeswere connected. For example, Fig. 2.15 illustrates how a conversa-tion about the near extinction of beluga whales in the St. LawrenceRiver in Canada concerned issues dealing with the environment, ageequity, media, and different perspectives. This particular issue wasoriginally taken up as an environmental issue and animal rights issue.One of the children had seen a television documentary about the pol-lution in the St. Lawrence River that resulted in the poisoning of be-luga whales. The issue of age equity came into play as the childrentalked about how, in spite of their young age, they could find ways tosupport the plight of the beluga whales. A conversation about mediacame up as we talked about how the media could be used to help in-form the public about the issue and how the issue has been repre-

FIG. 2.14. Arrows connecting issues on our audit trail.

0000

FIG. 2.15. Converging arrows on our audit trail to indicate an integration of themes.

Getting Started 89

sented in the media. For example, how were the activists portrayed?Were they portrayed as people attempting to do some good or radicalpeople who like to cause trouble? We also talked about how this issuewas an important one and yet none of us had noticed anything writtenabout it in newspapers or television news reports. In terms of differ-ent perspectives, we talked about how a person's stance on life issueswould dictate the kind of action or inaction that one might take re-garding problems such as the near extinction of the beluga whales(see chap. 5).

From chapter 3 to chapter 6,1 take you on a closer look at a seriesof incidents that led to particular critical studies and social action.Each of these chapters begins with a section to contextualize the inci-dent and is followed by a series of subsections that describe what hap-pened. It is in this part of each chapter that I offer my analysis. Finally,at the end of each chapter, I include a summary section in which I dis-cuss what I feel I have learned and what the particular incidentteaches us about negotiating critical literacies.

3The French Cafe

Setting the SceneAt the time of my teacher research study, French was a manda-

tory second language subject taught to students between the ages of 6and 13 in Ontario, Canada. This mandate stems from the Official Lan-guages Act of 1985. The purposes for the Act include ensuring respectfor English and French as the official languages of Canada, support-ing the development of English and French linguistic minority com-munities, and generally advancing the equality of status and use ofthe English and French languages within Canadian society. His-torically, during the 1600s and 1700s, Canada was fought over by theBritish and French and was therefore occupied by the British and theFrench at different points in time.

As a result of the Official Languages Act, the government of On-tario mandated French to be taught to children starting in first grade.Some schools in Ontario also offer French Immersion programswhere French is the primary language of instruction.

At our school, the French Cafe was an offshoot of the mandatedFrench curriculum. Those who attend the cafe are served fruit juiceand croissants. The rationale for hosting a cafe was to give the stu-dents in seventh and eighth grade an opportunity to practice theirFrench while running the cafe. Because French is not a mandatory

91

92 Chapter 3

subject for Junior Kindergarten and Senior Kindergarten students,7they are not allowed to participate in the French Cafe. There is muchto be addressed regarding French as an imposed curriculum, in lightof the growing number of ethnic groups and thus second and thirdlanguages spoken by different ethnic communities in Ontario, Can-ada. In our class, for example, nine ethnicities are represented, noneof which is French. However, at the time of this inquiry, a different is-sue took center stage: the equitable participation of young children inschool events.

What Is a French Cafe?It is 9 a.m., time for morning announcements. Although the chil-

dren and I somewhat quiet down, just in case something of perti-nence to us is shared over the public announcement system, thechildren continue with a buzz of learning. Any observer might notethat they do not seem at all interested in what is being shared overwhat the children have dubbed "the school radio station." This morn-ing, however, was a little different as the principal welcomed guests tothe day's special event, the annual French Cafe.

"What's a French Cafe?" some of the children asked. "Well, it'slike a restaurant set up by some of the older children in our school, forone day," I answered. "Why did he say welcome guests?" the childrenasked. Curtis spoke up from the doorway of our classroom, "Look,where are they all going? To the cafe? Those are the guests that he'ssaying welcome to!" He was referring to the trickling of parents andguardians who had come to our school to attend the cafe. "Who else isgoing to this?" he continued. Intent on finding an answer to his ques-tion, he stood at the door and kept track of who was making their wayto the gymnasium where the cafe was being staged. When he thoughthe had observed enough, he came to class meeting with the hypothe-sis that he thought most everyone, but some younger kids, wouldmake their way to the cafe at some point during the day. "I think thatbecause I already saw older kids and younger kids, and mummiesand daddies and babysitters going to the cafe," he concluded. "Youthink all the kids are going, Curtis?" one of the other children asked.Suddenly, he remembered that his brother, who is in first grade, hadmentioned something about going to the cafe. With this, Curtis re-turned to what became his observation post for the day, our class-room doorway, to wait for evidence of the Grade 1 classes attendingthe cafe. He had made an observation sheet (see Fig. 3.1), which heused to track who was going to the cafe. The observation sheet con-sisted of a row of numbers representing each grade level.

The French Cafe 93

As each group of students walked past our door toward the cafe,he placed a check mark beside their corresponding grade level on hisobservation sheet (see Fig. 3.2). "The grade ones are coming, thegrade ones are coming!" he excitedly announced. "So that means thegrade ones are going, the grade twos are going, the grade threes aregoing ... everyone is going. Why can't we go? Who else can't go?" heasked, and then said, "If we had grade 13 they would probably gotoo!" "Can I ask if the other Kindergartens and the other Junior Kin-dergarten class is going?" he continued. Seeing me nod my head inagreement, he quickly asked a couple of the other children to go withhim. Upon their return, the three children called an emergency classmeeting to share the information they had gathered. It was at thistime that the following discussion took place.

FIG. 3.1. French Cafesurvey form.

FIG. 3.2. Curtis' FrenchCafe observation sheet.

94 Chapter 3

1 Curtis:

2 Melanie:3 Teacher:

4 Curtis:

5 Stefanie:6 Lee:

7 Curtis:8 Teacher:9 Melanie:

10 Tiffany:11 Curtis:12 Teacher:13 Curtis:

14 Melanie:15 P.J.:16 Curtis:17 Tiffany:18 Melanie:

19 Teacher:20 Melanie

& Curtis:21 Teacher:

Okay, the two kindergarten classes are NOTgoing and the other Junior Kindergarten class isNOT going and we are NOT going!This is impossible.Then what is possible? How can we changewhat's possible?Maybe we can make a survey to see how much ofeach kids want to go.Yes, let's find out from the other kindergartens.If more people want to go then next year maybethey'll let us go.Can we tape that it's not fair?At our Speaker's Corner?8

That's a good idea. Then, we can send the tape ofus talking so they'll know that we want to go.Yea, we think it's not fair.Who wants to do a survey?Tell me about your survey.We'll ask all the kindergartens and junior kinder-gartens yes or no, do you want to go to theFrench Cafe?You did that already.We didn't answer yes or no.We just didn't do a writing one.We just said SAY, SAY if you want to.Right. Not sign yes or no, just SAY, but we couldstill do a writed out one.What reason could you give for doing that?So we'll know.

What information do you think the written infor-mation will give you that you don't already have?

22 Tiffany: Like a different answer?23 P.J.: Everyone will still say yes. I will ...24 Curtis: So we won't find out new stuff. We already know

what we'll find out?25 Melanie: Yup, we know what we want to find out about al-

ready.

The French Cafe 95

26 Teacher: Who were you planning giving the survey to?27 Curtis: Just for us to find out how many people want to

and so we can tell the people who is the chair ofthe French Cafe.

28 Teacher: I have a suggestion for another way to pass oninformation to the French Cafe organizers. Ithink that maybe a petition might be a way toshow that many of us, maybe most of the JKsand SKs might feel the same way.

29 Curtis: Do we get everyone to write letters to them?30 Teacher: Sort of but that would take a long time. What I'm

thinking about is called a petition. Instead of ask-ing a question for people to answer, you writeout what you are thinking and then have peoplesign their name after it.

31 Melanie: Then what happens?32 Tiffany: Then we bring it to the chair?33 P.J.: Why lots of names and one letter?34 Teacher: Well you don't really need a lot of letters in this

case, especially because they would all be say-ing pretty well the same thing. What you woulddo is to ask people who agree with you to signit. The more names you have, the stronger yourpetition is!

35 Curtis: Oh, that's like one brain is strong but lots ofbrains is stronger!

After our class meeting, different groups of children began work-ing on their various tasks. Curtis and a group of three other children,soon to be known as the French Cafe Petition Committee, wrote acover letter for the petition (see Fig. 3.3). A copy of the letter was at-tached to a blank sheet of paper and delivered to each of the other Ju-nior Kindergarten (JK) and Kindergarten (SK) classrooms. Thechildren explained the reason for the petition to the other classes andarranged to collect it the following school day.

The next day, the children eagerly entered the classroom, excitedabout going to the other JK and SK classes to gather the signed peti-tions. During class meeting, the committee shared the results of thepetition, showing the class a list of names that had been produced andreporting on the total number of signatures that had been gathered.

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FIG. 3.3. French Cafe petition letter.

At the same time, another group of children began working on aSpeaker's Corner tape to be delivered with the petition to strengthentheir case (see Fig. 3.4 and Fig. 3.5).

Analyzing the French CafeKnowledge is never neutral or said differently; everything we

know is socially constructed. According to Fiske (1989), "knowledgeis power and its circulation is part of the social distribution of power(p. 149)." So children need opportunities to learn the relationship be-tween the circulation of knowledge through language use and thepower associated with certain forms of language (Comber, 1999).

The action taken by my students toward being included in schoolfunctions such as the French Cafe is one way to raise concern aboutthe existing power structure where young children are not treated asequal participants in the school community. The work toward the ac-tion the children took offered a space in which to change how theywere positioned in the social hierarchy of school; in whole languageterms, to give them a voice.

FIG. 3.4. Our class Speaker's Corner.

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Today there's something going on in the gym and we want to know whyaren't we invited? Because only the grade ones and twos can go sothat's not fair to us or to anyone.

And maybe (on the next on the, maybe on the next party, maybe) on thenext party we can have it at our class.

But we figured out something. If we have dances here then they won'thave dances there and if they have dances there we won't have danceshere. And that's not fair to us or to the whole world because we don'tget to go.

Maybe they don't understand.

Or maybe they think that we're bored or that we're not old enough butwe are not going to be bored if we were even invited.

So, this is a French Cafe and we hope that we can go next year.

Thank you.

FIG. 3.5. Transcript of French Cafe Speaker's Corner tape.

When Curtis asked his initial question, "Why can't we go?" Icould have responded in one of three ways:

1. Explaining that the French Cafe is only for those children whoare taking French, or that the French Cafe is only for the olderstudents.

2. Reposing the question, asking, "Why do you think we aren't in-vited?"

3. Offering a critical challenge, asking, "What can we do tochange the situation?"

In relation to Curtis' question, "Why can't we go?", the first re-sponse possibility, explaining that the French Cafe is only for the olderchildren, treats his question as a fact with a potentially uncritical butvalid answer. The second response possibility, reposing the question,positions Curtis a little differently but can easily lead toward respond-ing to his question with an activity. For example, I could have sent himoff to come up with some ideas as to why things are the way they are

The French Cafe 99

and then talked to him about his findings without necessarily takingsocial action. The third response possibility, offering a critical chal-lenge, treats Curtis' question as an opportunity for taking social ac-tion and disrupting inequity. What results are critical literacies asCurtis became a researcher of his world asking why things are theway they are.

Coming to the hypothesis that inexplicably, the Junior Kinder-gartens and Kindergartens were the only groups not invited to theFrench Cafe was arrived at systematically as Curtis engaged in obser-vational research (Fig. 3.2) and through class discussion (lines 1-35).

In her account of the social worlds of children learning to write,Dyson (1993) talked about how children nudge the bounds of the offi-cial imaginative universe that prevails in schools. In doing so, theychallenge current theoretical and pedagogical thinking. She saidthey do this while participating in the complicated world of school. Inthe same way, Curtis and the French Cafe Petition Committee nudgedthe bounds as they repositioned the Junior and Senior Kindergartenchildren as equal participants in life at our school. In doing so, theymoved toward an alternate possibility, not only considering a differ-ent school world but also creating an opportunity for change.

As a result of the children's action, the Junior and Senior Kinder-garten students will be included in future Cafes. The petition andSpeaker's Corner tape met with little resistance from other teachers. Ithink this response stemmed in part from surprise at the children's ac-tion and in part from seeing these young children differently. Throughtaking social action, the children learned not only a different way to re-sist and exercise their democratic abilities, but also the possibilitiesavailable through collectively working through a problem.

Learning About Powerful Forms of LanguageThe conversation on finding out what the other kindergartens

thought led to a discussion regarding the difference between a surveyand a petition.

4 Curtis: Maybe we can make a survey to see how much ofeach kids want to go.

5 Stefanie: Yes, let's find out from the other kindergartens.

As a result, we began to talk about different ways of using lan-guage and the forms these could take. Once we decided that a petition

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was what was needed, the creation of the petition began. The childrenfelt that having the support of the other kindergarten classes mighthelp their attempts at being included in future French Cafes (line 35).This would also be a demonstration of solidarity. They demonstratedtheir understanding of the power associated with written language asthey made a case for representing what they hoped would be consen-sus on paper (lines 13 through 27). In their words, just "saying" (line17) does not get the job done, but doing a "writed out" one just mightwork (line 18).

In order to represent the French Cafe action on our audit trail, wedecided to post a copy of the signed petitions and cover letter (Fig. 3.6).

Offering Children Alternate Ways of Acting

Bourdieu (1993) talked about certain forms of language use ascarrying more or less cultural capital. That is the value given to cer-tain ways of doing things in particular settings based on what is seenas most appropriate in that setting. For example, my students were

FIG. 3.6. Artifacts representing the French Cafe incident on ouraudit trail.

The French Cafe 101

certainly aware of the cultural capital that print carried in our school,which kinds of texts and uses of language are more conducive to get-ting done those things that matter. By naming the form of writing un-der discussion as being a petition, I was simultaneously affirming thata petition was a strategy sufficiently known to the community beingaddressed, in this case the School French Cafe Committee. The strat-egy (petition) was therefore seen as one that has more cultural capitalfor the particular context in which it was used than the original sur-vey that the children had initially suggested.

My role was not to tell the children what to think or how to act,but based on their inquiries, to offer alternate ways of taking actionand a way of naming their world within the stance they chose to take.In the words of the editors of Rethinking Schools (Bigelow,Christensen, Karp, Miner, & Peterson, 1994):

We want students to come to see themselves as change makers. Ifwe ask the children to critique the world but then fail to encouragethem to act, our classrooms can degenerate into factories of cyni-cism. While it's not a teacher's role to direct students to particularorganizations, it is a teacher's role to suggest that ideas need to beacted upon and to offer students opportunities to do just that. (p. 5)

Being able to engage with critical literacies calls for questioningthe existing school definition of community. The action taken by theseJunior Kindergarten children raises concern with the existing powerstructure that treats kindergarten students as innocent neutral beingsto be readied for the real world of school, that is, for first grade andthe grades that follow.

According to Comber and Kamler (1997), a critical perspectiveoffers teachers a way to think about what students are learning toread and write, what they do with that reading and writing, and whatthat reading and writing does to them and their world. Through en-gagement in a critical curriculum, my students and I raised varioussocial justice and equity issues, using them to interrogate, obstruct,contest, and /or change inequitable situations.

In the next chapter, I describe what came to be known as the"Vegetarian Issue" where I capitalized on my students' concerns witha particular social practice at our school to work on critical languageawareness.

4Our Friend Is a Vegetarian

Setting the SceneThe school barbecue is an annual event for parents, children,

and teachers to get together and "build school spirit." The incidentthat I am about to describe took place the day after the school barbe-cue when 4-year-old Anthony told the class, during class meeting,that he was a vegetarian and that he was not able to eat the all-beefhamburgers and hot dogs at the barbecue.

We Have Vegetarians at Our School?As the children came into the classroom, the air was filled with

excitement about the school barbecue that took place the night be-fore. They talked about whom they saw and what they ate. They talkedabout bringing their leftover potato chips and soda to school and ar-gued over whether this was a healthy snack. Wanting to talk moreabout the school barbecue, Stefanie added the topic to the agenda forour class meeting. When her name was called out, she started by say-ing that she was interested to know whether there were more peoplewho ate hamburgers or more people who ate hot dogs. To do this, shestated that she was "going to do a hand-count survey." A quiet whispercould be heard from the back of the group followed by what seemed to

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be agitated conversation. Anthony, one of the boys in the class, hadsaid to some of the children sitting beside him that he didn't eat at thebarbecue because he is vegetarian and therefore he could not partici-pate in Stefanie's survey.

We had been engaged in an inquiry about rain forests at the timeof the barbecue and had talked about the need to preserve the rainforests so that animals and people that live there would have food andshelter. We had also talked about whose interests are served and whoprofits and benefits from materials harvested from rain forests. Forexample, we discussed how multinational companies like McDon-ald's, in the past, contributed to destroying rain forests by hiring sup-pliers who rear beef cattle on ex-rain forest land in South and CentralAmerica, thereby preventing its regeneration.

Problematizing Social TextThe children were upset that no one had thought about having

food for vegetarians at the barbecue and that no one had asked ifthere were vegetarians in our school community. The issue became atopic of concern at a number of class meetings. During one conversa-tion, Stefanie asked, "Who decided that we would only have beefhamburgers and hot dogs at the barbecue?" I explained that therewas a committee, a group of parents and teachers that organized thebarbecue, and the chair of the committee was the assistant to theprincipal. Apparently, Stefanie had talked about the vegetarian issuewith her family and her mom had encouraged her to investigate fur-ther. In conversation with some of the other children, it was revealedthat many of them had also talked about this issue with their families.

Led by Stefanie, the group decided to act on their concern andproblematize the marginalization of vegetarians at our annual schoolbarbecue. We started by reading the announcement flyer that the chil-dren took home advertising the school barbecue.

"Join us for our Annual School Barbecue" was the first line oftext. "The invitation says our but doesn't really mean Anthony so it'syours and mine (pointing to other children who are not vegetarianand herself) but not his (pointing to Anthony) and that's not fair,"Melanie commented. We had done some analysis of the words used inmagazine ads and how pronouns work to position readers in particu-lar ways. Here, Melanie was applying the same discursive analyticstrategy using a piece of everyday text, the annual barbecue flyer.

The children agreed to have Stefanie write a letter to the chair ofthe school barbecue committee expressing our concern. While draft-

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ing this letter, Stefanie had a number of discussions with a group offour other children to decide what words to use. "Why don't you saythat people need food to live," Melanie suggested. "And, ummm, if youdon't eat, you'll die," P.J. added. "Should I say 'have to' like it's veryimportant?" Stefanie asked. After this discussion, Stefanie asked meif I would scribe the letter. She said that we needed to send it rightaway and that if she had to do drafts then it might take too long.

The letter was written as follows:

If we don't eat food we'll die.We have to get new hot dogsand hamburgers.You can ask Anthony's daddywhat you can buy becauseAnthony is a vegetarian.

Stefanie began her letter by declaring, "If we don't eat foodwe'll die." The use of "we" as opposed to "If Anthony doesn't eat he'lldie" was a deliberate choice based on a previous conversation aboutwhy a petition is a better tool for making a case for yourself than asurvey (see The French Cafe, chap. 3). Curtis, one of the boys in theclass, had concluded our discussion about petitions by saying, "Onebrain is strong but lots of brains is stronger." When I asked Stefaniewhy she chose "we" over "Anthony" she referred directly to Curtis'statement, saying, "Remember Ms. Vasquez ... about lots of brains?"The use of "we," therefore, is used to symbolize strength in numbers,solidarity, and inclusiveness, while in essence evaluating the orga-nizer of the school barbecue and suggesting that the organizer dosomething with regard to having vegetarian food at the next barbe-cue. In her opening sentence, Stefanie claims an implicit authorityby speaking on behalf of both the reader and the speakers (the chil-dren in our class).

In her letter, Stefanie is adamant, using the phrase "have to" withregard to making available vegetarian hot dogs and hamburgers.Earlier in the day, P.J. and Melanie also talked to Stefanie about using"have to" as a way of telling someone you are serious. They said thatsaying "please" would be polite, but that it probably would not workin this situation. The word please, they said, would imply that we areasking if we can have vegetarian food at the next barbecue rather thantaking a stand on the issue. According to Stefanie, "Mostly please isgood to use but not this time."

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Anthony had contributed to the letter writing by saying, "Mydaddy knows where to buy vegetarian food." Stefanie felt that lettingthe chair know where to buy the food was a good idea because it was away of helping solve the problem and further demonstrating how se-rious we really were about dealing with this issue and that we doknow what we are talking about. Also, there is a sense of immediacyand an expectation for action associated with having written, "Youcan ask Anthony's daddy where to buy vegetarian food" rather than"Anthony's daddy knows where to buy vegetarian food."

Once the letter was written, Stefanie and a friend deposited it inthe interschool mailbox. Then it was time to wait for a response. Mystudents became increasingly frustrated with waiting. I used thiswaiting time as an opportunity to talk to the group about follow-upletters and sending multiple letters as two ways of showing the seri-ousness of your intent. I also talked to them about rereading our origi-nal letter to find better ways with words to get our message across. Ina sense I wanted my students to "ache with caring" (Fox, 1993, p. 3)over their writing in order for their letter to do the work they hadwanted: to send a clear message regarding the need to have vegetar-ian food at our school barbecue. Stefanie decided that a follow-up let-ter was in order. Two weeks after sending the original letter, she had adiscussion about follow-up letters with P.J., Melanie, and Anthonyand then shared, with the whole group during meeting time, her in-tent to write a second letter. In this letter she wrote:

Dear Mr. Andrews,Vegetarians need food too. Theydon't eat meat so they can't eat atthe barbecue. Because they don'teat hamburgers because they arevegetarian.Please have food for vegetariansat the next barbecue.Stefanie

P.S. Please write me back. What happenedto the letter I gave you from before?

In the second letter, Stefanie took an explicative approach by ex-plaining what vegetarians can't eat by stating they don't eat meat,


they can't eat hamburgers, and they can't eat at the barbecue. In asense, she used this approach as a rationale for the position she wastaking in support of vegetarians. This time she opted to return to theuse of "please" to see if "Maybe the chair might understand better andwant to listen to us more." She had set up "a sense of certainty and au-thority, a polite but insistent tone"(Comber & Kamler, 1997, p. 47).Stefanie again made clear the seriousness of her issue and clarifiedthe intent of her original letter by asking the chair to write back. Shealso made clear that this was not the first time that she had attemptedto bring this issue to administrative attention. This time, however, shedid receive a response. The chair of the school barbecue committeeinvited Stefanie to the office to talk about her concerns. She wrote:

MMM Veggie Food,Next BBQ we'll have foodfor vegetarians for sure.Do you have any helpfulsuggestions?! Come to myoffice soon to discuss.

Thank you

Extending Our Literacies

Encouraged, the children decided to find out more about vege-tarians in order to prepare for the meeting. They turned for help toour school librarian. To their surprise, they were told that there wereno books about vegetarians in our library.

Another letter was written, this time to the school librarian.Stefanie and her friends were learning how to make use of the criticalliteracies they were learning, extending these to another situation.9 Inthis letter she wrote:

Dear Mr. Librarian,Libraries are for kids and all people.Vegetarians are people but there's no booksabout them in the library. There should bebooks about all people in the library.

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She began her letter by stating what she knew about libraries:"Libraries are for kids and all people." She then used the word "peo-ple" to link each of her sentences; libraries are for people, vegetariansare people, there should be books for all people. When I spoke withher about this, she referred to the strategy as a "pattern" like in Quickas a Cricket and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, two picture books that makeuse of patterned text.

As the children had expected, the librarian was very supportiveof their concern and even asked Anthony if he knew of any good booksthat we should have in the library, as well as telling the children thathe would make sure to order some books on being a vegetarian.

Further Extensions of the Vegetarian IssueDuring class meeting one day, Melissa made the comment that if

at our school we "forgot about people like vegetarians, maybe otherschools did too." Considering what she could do to find out if her hy-pothesis was true, and encouraged by the response Stefanie receivedfor her letters, Melissa decided to compose her own letter to send toother elementary schools in our district. She wrote:

Dear Principal,We want to check that thevegetarians have food at the nextbarbecue in your school, if you have one.Our friend couldn't eat at our barbecue becausehe is a vegetarian and that wasn't fair. Now wewant to take care that all the kids can eat at thebarbecue even the vegetarians.

In her opening sentence, she was explicit about the aim of the let-ter, which was to find out whether there were vegetarians at theschool, whether the school had an annual barbecue, and if so, wasvegetarian food made available? She put herself in a position of au-thority when stating, "Our friend couldn't eat at our barbecue be-cause he is a vegetarian and that wasn't fair." In adding this sentence,she made it clear that she was speaking from a position of experience.She closed her letter by restating her concern as an issue of equity.

Melissa wanted to make sure she received a response so I dis-cussed various options with her and looked at notes and letters thathad previously been sent home where parents were asked to respond


in some way. She predicted the notes with the tear-away sectionswould be most effective. She also suspected that if whomever an-swers the survey has to do too much work, that they might not re-spond. She told me that she knew that might happen because hermom says, "I don't have time for all this writing" when filling out vari-ous forms for school. Mainly wanting to find out where other schoolswere in terms of having food available for vegetarians at their schoolevents, Melissa decided she wanted her survey "to be just yes and noquestions to check off." I asked her what information would be mostuseful to her, at which time we worked on the questions included inher survey (see Fig. 4.1).

We sent out over two dozen surveys and received three re-sponses. Of the three responses, there was consensus that none of thethree schools had thought about vegetarians being left out of schoolevents, when vegetarian food was not made available. Each alsoticked off the box saying that they would make sure that they wouldhave vegetarian food at future events.

The low response did not discourage the children. Their take wasthat they tried something new that probably was unexpected comingfrom such young children and in spite of this, some people re-sponded. They said that maybe next time they'd get a better response.They were excited to have received the responses they did and to seethat the survey had worked even if only for a limited extent. Together,we talked about the possible reasons behind the low response. Ishared my thoughts with them and they shared theirs with me. I thinkMelanie's comment was most enlightening. She said, "Caring aboutvegetarians is not important to some people because they don't know

Melissa's Vegetarian SurveyABOUT VEGETARIANS SURVEY

What is the name of your school?

Do you have a school barbecue? YESQ NOQ

Do you know if you have vegetarians at your school? YESQ NOQ

Do you think it is Mr not to have food for vegetarians? YESQ NOQ

Are you going to have vegetarian food if you have vegetarians? YESQ NOQ

VASQUEZ AUDIT. VEGETARIAN.DOC

FIG. 4.1. Melissa's vegetarian survey.

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any vegetarians. We have to just keep on helping people to get to careabout people even if they don't know them." In a way, they were learn-ing a different way of being and acting in the world.

In order to represent the vegetarian issue on our audit trail, wedecided to post a copy of the first letter that had been written, as wellas the book cover (Fig. 4.2) for Where the Forest Meets the Sea. The let-ter reminds us of the action we took and the book cover reminds us ofthe connection between earlier studies regarding environmental is-sues and the vegetarian issue.

FIG. 4.2. Artifact representing the vegetarian issue on our audit trail.


Reflective SummaryThe letter-writing campaign in support of vegetarians certainly

brought to the fore questions regarding who else may be marginal-ized in some way at school. How might others be marginalized orothered because space is not provided for them? In our case, it wasnot until 4-year-old Anthony made his comment regarding not eatingat the school barbecue and his peers took social action that themarginalization of vegetarians was brought to our awareness. Thereis a high probability that if the children and I had not had previousconversations regarding equity in the classroom, Anthony's issue,which turned out to be a whole-class issue and then a school issue,would not have been noticed. To me, this is a clear indication that inorder to be critical, one must lead a critically literate life. I believethat it was framing our living, as a class, through critical literacy thatallowed us to recognize the unfair treatment of vegetarians at ourschool. Taking this up as a topic for study in our curriculum led tochanging the status of vegetarians in our school.

Close to the end of the school year, there were three social eventsheld at our school for various reasons and different groups of people.One was the Junior Kindergarten and Senior Kindergarten FamilyPicnic, another the Staff End-of-Year Party, and the third a birthdayparty for a staff member. In all three cases, vegetarian options weremade available. In 12 years as a teacher with this particular schoolboard, the option for vegetarian food was never before made avail-able at the schools where I taught.

The letter writing engaged in by Stefanie and Melissa representsinstances of what happens when action begins locally and then israised on a broader scale. It also demonstrates what happens whenyoung children begin to unpack the relationship between languageand power by engaging in some form of discourse analysis. Throughtheir letter writing, they were able to position themselves differentlyas child writers and on behalf of their peers as well as for the vegetari-ans at our school and community.

So far I have shared instances of questioning and analyzing so-cial texts with my students that led to taking social action. In the nextchapter, I outline how my students and I used a social text to reread amore traditional school text.

5Save the Beluga

Setting the SceneLily arrived at school one day excited to talk about a news report

she had seen on television the night before. The report was about thebeluga in the St. Lawrence River in southeastern Canada, and the pol-lution that was endangering their lives. The pollution was caused bychemical waste dumped into the water by a manufacturing companyon the shore of the river. Lily learned that the beluga in the St. Law-rence were absorbing toxic chemical waste into their bodies and thatas a result, they were in danger of becoming extinct from that area.

In this chapter I describe the learning and social action that un-folded as my students and I used this media text to reread a picture book.

Save the BelugaBaby Beluga, performed by the children's entertainer Raffi (1992),

was a song that the children loved to sing. It was about a beluga calf.Given our new knowledge about what was happening to the whales inthe St. Lawrence River, I decided to revisit, with my students, the pic-ture book version of the song (Fig. 5.1) to see whether they would readthe book differently given what they had just learned about the belugain the St. Lawrence. In doing so, we compared how the texts, the news

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FIG. 5.1. Baby Beluga picture book.

report, and the song/picture book represent the beluga. (For the re-mainder of this chapter, I refer to the song/picture book as "the book"or "the song" when referring to the text.)

In order to explore how texts build up particular portrayals ofsubject matter, we engaged in text analysis by creating word lists todescribe how the beluga were portrayed in the book and the news re-port. First, we generated a list of words that described the whales inthe news report and came up with the following list:

• In danger• Not safe• Needs help• Sick• Dying• No power• Hurt

Save the Beluga 115

HungryScared

I then read the book out loud, after which time we created a sec-ond list of words to describe how the whales were portrayed in thebook. Our list included the following words:

• Free• Happy• Snug• Safe• Fun life• On the go• Comfortable• Splashing around for fun

We studied both sets of words to consider how the whales werepresented in each text. In essence, what I was trying to do here wasto get at the dominant themes and discourses of each text. This activ-ity was a good way to help my students understand how texts areconstructed.

One of the children asked, "So what is real? Which one is real?"Another child noticed, "The words in one is like the opposite of theother words." We discovered that the texts offered binaryoppositions or opposite portrayals of life for the beluga; humane andhappy versus inhumane and in danger of extinction. For me, thisbrought the realization that "for at least some of the children theboundaries between life in books and life as they understand it areblurred" (O'Brien, 1998, p. 10). In response, I talked to them abouthow different texts offer different perspectives of the world and theway the world works. We also talked about how important it is tothink about other ways that a text could be written or presented andhow the words chosen by the authors of the text shape the way wethink about an issue or topic. The children talked about how theyliked singing the song but that the song "doesn't give us a good ideaof what is happening with the whales in the [St. Lawrence] river.""Raffi didn't say anything about the whales being in danger," theycontinued. In response, we wrote our own version of the song (Fig.5.2) to see if we could come up with a more accurate representationof the whales.

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Save the Belugas SongBy the J.K.s

Baby Beluga in the deep blue seaPlease help us so we can beThe garbage in the waterDoesn't let us be freePlease save us from this pollution.

Baby Beluga, Baby BelugaIs the water safe?Is the water clean?For us to live in?

Baby Beluga in the deep blue seaPlease help us so we can beThe garbage in the waterDoesn't let us be freePlease save us from this pollution.

Please save us from this pollution.FIG. 5.2. Revised Baby Beluga song retitled "Save Us From thePollution."

First, I wrote the song lyrics from the picture book on a largesheet of poster paper and propped it up on our easel. We read the texttogether and then I asked the children to think about who was doingthe talking in the song. "Raffi is talking," was their immediate reply.The discussion continued.

Teacher: What I want you to do now is to think about the wordscarefully and think about who Raffi was talking to.

Tiffany: He's talking to us right? About Baby Beluga?Gregory: That's the audience, like think about the audience!Ali: Ya, remember our letters. Who are you writing for?

Remember that question? Mrs. Vasquez asked usthat.

Save the Beluga 117

Teacher: We did talk about that a while ago; that writers writefor an audience. One audience is our class.

We had talked about purposes and functions of writing as we en-gaged in learning about vegetarians and about taking social action tobe included in the French Cafe (see chap. 3). We had also talked aboutwriting as a powerful form of language use in society. In the last ex-change, the children demonstrate extending what they learned in onecontext to another. Our discussion continued.

Teacher: Let's look at the words more carefully and then thinkabout who Raffi is talking to within the song. We al-ready know that we are one audience.

Lee: I think he might be talking to Baby Beluga.Teacher: How do you know? What are some clues?Melissa: (singing) Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea (hum-

ming without words) (in a loud voice) YOU swim sofree!

P.J.: Or "Is your mama home with you?"Teacher: Well let's see if we can pick out all the phrases that

are like the ones Melissa and P.J. noticed.

As the children identified similar phrases, I underlined them onthe chart paper that had the song lyrics. We found the word "you" or"your" was used 11 times in the song. We then talked about the effectthat using phrases such as "you swim so free" or "you dive and splashall day" have on the reader, specifically on us as readers. To do this, Iasked the children to read the text with me once more, this time re-placing "you" with "I" (e.g., "I swim so free" or "I dive and splash allday"). We experimented further by replacing "you" with "we." Thechildren decided that they liked the effect of using "we" because it re-fers to "more than just one" beluga "like in the St. Lawrence." Theyalso said that kids like animals talking and that "young kids would re-ally like the song if the beluga or the beluga family was doing the talk-ing instead of Raffi talking to Baby Beluga." We kept all of this in mindas we began crafting our version of the beluga song.

We also talked about how two different texts presented the sametopic (the life of the beluga) and discussed what each text tried to do tous as readers. For example, we discussed how the book tried to drawus in by using patterned and predictable words and phrases about thebeluga, while the news report worked to bring some awareness re-

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garding the endangerment of the whales, causing us to want to get in-volved with saving them by taking some form of action.

Doing this kind of analysis led to talking about other ways ofwriting about the beluga that helped us to craft our revised version ofthe song. Our version took into account our new knowledge about thewhales in the St. Lawrence. Reconstructing the beluga song was oneway to interrupt the dominant reading of the book and in doing so,construct different meanings. Working on revising the song lyrics in-cluded not only becoming more aware of the current state of the belu-gas in the St. Lawrence but considering the role that language playsto shape our thinking.

I believe the work we did with analyzing the different texts is agood demonstration of what happens when readers engage in multi-ple readings of varied text such as news articles, graphics in cover de-signs, and song lyrics.

Baby Beluga Take Two: Our VersionTo begin crafting our version of the song, I asked the children

what they thought the theme of the song should be and what messagewe wanted to convey. We decided that the most important was tobring awareness to the plight of the beluga. Following this, we re-ferred to our lists and further brainstormed words including "safe"and "clean," and phrases such as "save us from pollution" and "helpus live" for possible inclusion. As we chose the words and phrases toinclude in our song, we engaged in various discussions. For example,there was a discussion over whether "please save us from this pollu-tion" more effectively conveys the plight of the beluga than "you willbe saved from this pollution" or "we will save you from this pollution."We talked about how the second and third choices seemed to focusmore on who is helping to save the beluga instead of the endanger-ment of the beluga. We finished our song after several of these discus-sions. After this, a group of children began rehearsing singing thesong, which they performed for other classes as a way of bringingawareness to the plight of the beluga.10

Grounding Our Work in Social Intentts

Grounding Our Work inWith Real World EffectsProducing an alternative rewriting or reconstruction (Luke,

Comber, & O'Brien, 1996) of the beluga song was one way that wetook an active citizenry role. Another way was by raising money for

Save the Beluga 119

an animal activist fund (Fig. 5.3). Therefore, our analysis was not lim-ited to deconstructing text but led to the reconstruction of a new textwhere the reconstruction of text was grounded in social intent andreal world effects. For example, while searching the World Wide Webfor information on beluga whales with her mom at home, one of thegirls found the World Wildlife Fund of Canada (WWF Canada) site.11

She learned that WWF Canada had been doing research to find waysof sustaining the beluga population in the St. Lawrence. She alsolearned that this organization accepts donations to support their ef-forts. In fact, the web page includes a number of tips for taking action,from holding bake sales to writing letters. At one of our class meet-ings, some of the children suggested that we send the money from ourclassroom store12 to WWF Canada.

The artifacts in Fig. 5.4 represent the work that we did to analyzedifferent portrayals of beluga whales in various texts. We decided topost a book cover and a drawing. The book cover was posted to re-mind us of "Baby Beluga," one of the texts we unpacked. The drawingwas included to remind us of the action that we took to raise moneyfor the World Wildlife Fund.

FIG. 5.3. Our Save the Belugas Store.

20

FIG. 5.4. Artifacts representing the beluga issue on our audit trail.

Save the Beluga 121

Further Opportunities for Analyzingthe "BookFurther analysis that we could have done includes looking for

other books and news articles about belugas to analyze what thedominant themes, patterns, and discourses were and whether thesewere ideologically slanted. In other words, we could have exploredwhose interests are served by different portrayals of subject matter.Doing this would have further built my students' analytic skills forexamining how language works to refract, distort, and position(Luke, Comber, & O'Brien, 1996).

Analyzing the Beluga IncidentThe beluga text is a common kind of text read in preschool and

early primary classrooms. It is the kind of book deemed to supportearly readers through the repetition and patterning of words andphrases. However, even a seemingly innocent text can be used alterna-tively in the classroom when paired with other texts that allow thereader to reinterpret it by asking different questions, such as how it hasbeen constructed and how it might be written in a different way. Theexperiences we engaged in created space for my students to examinethe narrowness of representations in certain texts. If we had not con-sidered the media segment regarding the beluga in the St. LawrenceRiver, the book Baby Beluga might have remained unopposed as thekey shaper of the children's perceptions of beluga whales.

The action to support the cause of the beluga whales was not justabout accumulating knowledge to discover more about a particulartopic or to become better educated about environmental issues. Theexperience involved what Comber (2001) referred to as mobilizingstudent knowledge with social intent and real world effects. That is,using what children know, the experiences they bring as "culturalcapital" (Bourdieu, 1991) to do life work. Deconstructing the booktext and the everyday media text provided a space to explore the so-cial construction of truth and reality.

In the next chapter, I show how my students and I worked withother kinds of everyday texts to take up issues such as consumerismand gender.

6We Know HowMcDonald's Thinks

Setting the SceneThe instances of learning that I describe in this chapter focus on

interrogating and analyzing discourses that are associated with Mc-Donald's Happy Meals™. The work that we did with the Happy Mealwas initiated when Ali, one of the girls in the class, started a conversa-tion with a small group of children about Happy Meal toys. By thistime in the school year (spring 1997), my students already had manyopportunities to analyze different school and everyday texts. There-fore, they had built up quite a repertoire of critical literacies and werecomfortable interrogating McDonald's Happy Meals as text.

The McDonald's Happy Meal as TextIn the following conversation, Ali introduced the Happy Meal toy

for discussion because this was a topic that interested her. What re-sulted was a series of activities, engagements, and discussions explor-ing how Happy Meals work, including how McDonald's uses toys as away of maintaining child consumers and the gendered way they wentabout doing this.

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1 Ali: At McDonald's they have different toys.2 Stefanie: Yah. Like now there's Beanie Babies™. It's a

goldfish I think.3 Ali: Well, before it was different. Like there were lit-

tle Barbie™ and Hot Wheels™.4 Michael: Yah, but the person actually said you're a boy so

I'll put a Hot Wheel in your Happy Meal. ExceptI already had that car so I wanted a Barbie formy sister.

5 Alyssa: Well I'm a girl but I got a Hot Wheel.6 Michael: I guess so. Sometimes stuff that's girls', boys like

and stuff that's boys' girls like and ...7 Alyssa: And if you tell the McDonald's people what you

want then you can have the toy you want.

In this opening discussion, the children began to raise questionsabout McDonald's take on what toys girls like and what toys boys like.In doing so, they were interpreting their experiences within the Mc-Donald's gendered discourse. This is seen when Michael stated, "Yah,but the person actually said you're a boy so I'll put a Hot Wheel inyour Happy Meal. Except I already had that car so I wanted a Barbiefor my sister" (line 4), and when he later added that, "Sometimes stuffthat's girls', boys like and stuff that's boys' girls like" (line 6).

As the children interpreted their experiences, they also sharedways they had acted differently within McDonald's gender bias dis-course, as demonstrated when Alyssa said "Well, I'm a girl and I got aHot Wheel"(line 5) and then explained how she did this by saying, "Ifyou tell the McDonald's people what you want then you can havewhat you want "(line 7). By making this statement, she implicitlyshared with the other children how she had disrupted the gendereddiscourse by stating what she wanted. In a subsequent conversation,she explained that "If you don't tell people what you want then boyswill get Hot Wheels and girls will get Barbies."

We Know How McDonald's Thinks:The Discussion Continues

As the discussion continued, the children began to unpack "howMcDonald's thinks"; what their agenda was for changing the HappyMeal toys on an ongoing basis.

We Know How McDonald's Thinks 125

8 Curtis: They always change the toys.9 Teacher: Why do you think they do that?

10 Ali: Well, maybe it's because they know we like toys.11 Teacher: Do you mean children like toys or adults or

both?12 Ali: I think both but mostly kids that's why there's

toys in Happy Meals.13 Tiffany: Yah that's why.14 Andrew: Well, if they didn't change the toys I wouldn't go.15 Michael: Me either.16 Andrew: Actually that tells me McDonald's knows how we

think! But now. Now, we know how they think.Aha!

Curtis' statement "They always change the toys "(line 8) pushedthe discussion in a different direction that focused on how McDon-ald's maintained child consumers. They hypothesized that McDon-ald's included toys in the Happy Meals because they knew thatchildren like toys. In other words, pairing a toy with a meal makes thewhole eating experience more pleasurable, which translates to be-coming hooked as a satisfied customer. Further, they hypothesizedthat changing the toys is the strategy used to maintain this feeling ofsatisfaction. According to Andrew, "If they didn't change the toys Iwouldn't go"(line 14). With this he surmised, "McDonald's knowshow we [children] think"(line 16). In other words, McDonald's knowsthat if they do not use strategies such as including new toys in theHappy Meals, children like Andrew would not keep returning.Making this strategy visible led Andrew to conclude that McDonald'smay know how we think but "Now, we know how they think.Aha!"(line 16). Recognizing this statement as an opportunity to ex-plore what it means to be an informed consumer led me to dig deeperat what the children thought McDonald's knew about kids.

17 Teacher: What do you think it is that they know about kidsand how kids think?

18 Andrew: One thing they know is ...19 Melanie: Well, one thing is that no new toys, no kids!20 Curtis: Yah. 'Cause lots of kids go for the collectibles.

There's always collectibles.21 Teacher: Tell us more about that.

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22 Curtis: Collectibles, you collect. Like, this week you geta Goldfish Beanie and next week you get a plat... a plat ...

23 Ali: A platypus.24 Alyssa: A platypus. So if you keep going back you can

have the whole collection.

Reflecting on How McDonald's Thinks

As the children engaged in talk about collections and being a col-lector, they simultaneously uncovered the ideological construction ofthe Happy Meal, which is why Happy Meals come with toys. The con-clusions they came up with, that kids "go for the collectibles"(line 20),was consistent with those described in a USA Today article about a re-cent McDonald's marketing campaign, the "McFurby"™. This was apromotional campaign that explicitly advertised the desirability ofcollecting dozens of different McFurbys: small plastic versions of thetalking Furby™ produced by Hasbro. The article described McDon-ald's development of the McFurby promotion and the role that chil-dren play in the success of food sales as a direct result of suchpromotions (Horovitz, 1999).

The report stated that McDonald's knows it has a delicate salesjob to convince its most vital customers—kids. The report claimedthat children influence almost two thirds of the $ 110 billion thatAmericans spend annually on fast food. According to the report, "Asuper-hot toy promotion can rocket overall food sales 6% to 9% dur-ing its run" and "Kids will drag their parents to McDonald's kickingand screaming to get their mitts on Furby Happy Meals." One of thereport's conclusions was that "McDonald's kids promotions have be-come habit forming." This is also consistent with my students' analy-sis as exemplified when Alyssa commented, "If you keep going backyou can have the whole collection"(line 24) and when Andrew statedthat if McDonald's didn't keep changing the toys kids wouldn't keepcoming (line 14).

The children also talked about having to go back to gather each ofthe collectible items in a series. An example of this took place whenCurtis explained that collectibles mean that you collect, "like, this weekyou get a Goldfish [Beanie Baby] and next week you get a platypus[Beanie Baby]" (line 22). According to Alyssa, the point is to keep goingback until you have the whole collection (line 24). One of the goals forgoing to McDonald's, then, is to complete each of the collections. These


collections vary in size from eight Barbies in the year 2000 promotionto over two dozen McFurbys in the 1997 Furby promotion. Remember,each Happy Meal comes with one toy only, although extra toys could bepurchased at an extra cost. However, with most promotions, the differ-ent toys in a collection are released at different times, which meansmultiple trips back to the restaurant. According to the USA Today arti-cle (1999), "Collectibility is what Happy Meals is about." In a columnwritten by columnist Bruce Horovitz (1999) in the same edition of USAToday, he wrote, "The world changed in 1979 when McDonald's intro-duced its first national Happy Meal with plastic figurines from StarTrek." Further, he stated, "Licensing (of rights to toys representing filmssuch as Star Trek) is the fast food industry's mantra.... Entire staffs ofmarketing gurus are constantly on the lookout for the next hot kids toy,tune flick or TV shows." In their own way, the children were able to rec-ognize what is obviously a complex corporate strategy. One thing thatwe could have looked into more carefully was exploring McDonald'spartnerships with other corporations to consider how the Happy Mealfrenzy is not only about selling McDonald's food but advertising andmerchandising for other film and toy companies with whom they haveformed equally profitable relationships.

Who Can Have Collectibles?In the following exchange, the children engage in a discussion

about fairness and access to collectible items, addressing the ques-tion of who can and cannot be a collector.

25 Andrew: When you have the whole collection, except noteveryone can get the whole collection. You knowmy neighbor, well, they have seven kids in theirfamily. That's a lot of kids.

26 Lily: That's a lot of Happy Meals.27 Andrew: And a lot of Big Macs™ if the mom or the dad

eats.28 Ali: Yah or the nanas [grandmothers].29 Andrew: Yah so what I wanted to say is they don't get to

go all the time so they can't collect ALL of them.30 Gregory: It's really not fair.31 Michael: See, there's something else we can know about

McDonald's. It's not fair that everybody can'thave the collectibles.

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Reflecting on the Conversation

In that exchange (lines 25-31), the children raised issues of fair-ness regarding who has and does not have access to Happy Meal col-lectibles. Andrew set the issue in context by talking about what heknew of his neighbors who have "seven kids in their family" (line 25).Further into the conversation, he returned to this issue, clarifyingwhat it was he meant by bringing forward his neighbors' situation,saying, "They don't get to go all the time so they can't collect ALL ofthem" (line 29). He clarified the issue as being one of collectibility andthe subsequent unfair or inequitable access that children have to col-lectibles. In our school, children in the schoolyard, as opportunitiesto show their latest collectible acquisitions, constantly formed clubs.So on any given recess period, children could be seen gathered ingroups based on these informal clubs. Andrew worried about whatthis meant for his neighbors when they were in the schoolyard. Wouldthey be marginalized if left out of such activities?

In rare cases a child could become a member of a club withouthaving to display his or her wares as long as the child was able to pres-ent a good deal of knowledge about the item being collected. Beingable to talk knowingly about collectibles, therefore, was a discoursethat brought children a good deal of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991)in the schoolyard. The downside of this is that it is, of course, difficultto gain a good deal of knowledge about the collectible items withouthaving access to them.

Further Analysis of the Happy Meal

As the conversation continued, the children began to name theways in which McDonald's constructed them as consumers throughthe use of clever promotional strategies.

32 Andrew: Yea and then they change them all the time. (Re-ferring to the Happy Meal toys)

33 Teacher: Why do you think they do that?34 Alyssa: Well, kids won't go if they don't.35 Gregory: We said that before. Remember. We know how

McDonald's thinks. They think if they don't puttoys in the food pack that kids won't want to eattheir food.

We Know How McDonald's Thinks 12 9

36 Curtis: That's like tricking kids because they trick themto buy food by pretending they give them toys.

37 Andrew: My dad said, "The price of the toy is in the bag."38 Michael: What?39 Teacher: Did your dad mean that the price of the toy is

included as part of the whole Happy Mealpackage?

40 Andrew: That's what I said. Yea that's what I mean. Yougot it.

Reflecting on the Conversation

In this particular portion of our conversation, the childrenmade it clear that they were not naive to why McDonald's uses dif-ferent sets of toys in their promotions. Further, they talked about Mc-Donald's manipulation of child consumers in the way they presentthe promotional toys as included "free" in Happy Meals. The chil-dren talked about how McDonald's "pretends to give" the toys away(line 36). A conversation regarding this issue had obviously come upin Andrew's home as indicated by his statement, "My dad said, it's inthe bag" (line 37). Making this statement made it clear that to someextent, Andrew had an understanding of how consumers arecharged with hidden costs. So the apparently free toys were not freeafter all.

In response to Andrew's comment and to consider McDon-ald's notion of "free" toys and what "free" really costs we created aweb of what makes up a Happy Meal (Fig. 6.1). The original web(Fig. 6.2) consists of the parts of the Happy Meal that are immedi-ately visible to the consumer, such as a hamburger, toy, and frenchfries. After this initial webbing, I asked the children to think abouteach item in the Happy Meal and then brainstorm all of the thingsthat are part of each of those items (Fig. 6.3). We then went back toour web a third time and talked about all the things they couldthink of that are part of each of the items listed during our secondwebbing activity (see Fig. 6.1). To differentiate each of the lists, Iused a different color marker.

Andrew summarized what this webbing activity made visible forus when he said, "For something that's free there's lots of people whosell things and get money." Through our analysis of the Happy Meal,

FIG. 6.1. Happy Meal web.

FIG. 6.2. The first round of webbing: What is in a Happy Meal?

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FIG. 6.3. A second round of webbing.

the children realized that many people have investments in childrenas consumers.

Final Thoughts on the Happy MealDiscussions in the ClassroomThe McDonald's issue is somewhat more complicated to talk

about than the issues dealt with in previous chapters because of thevarious subtexts that were generated, such as the susceptibility ofchild consumers and gender construction through the distribution ofHappy Meal toys. What the subtexts have in common, however, is thateach questions the taken-for-granted normality to consider howthings could be different (Comber, 1999). This happens through usingwhat children know, their experience with McDonald's as a starting

132 Chapter 6

point for analysis, and then unpacking texts such as the Happy Meal.Informed by practices demonstrated in the literature on critical liter-acy (Kamler, 1994; O'Brien, 1998) disrupting taken-for-granted nor-mality (Comber, 1999) happened as we engaged with questions like,What kinds of things do you learn from analyzing what makes up aHappy Meal? Or, What do the toys in the Happy Meals tell you aboutbeing a girl or being a boy? In this way, the children are able to beginto make visible new ways of being and acting that involve resistingdominant practices such as giving girls Barbies and giving boys HotWheels.

Social Action Outside the Classroom"Although children are not direct income earners, they are in

charge of more (pocket) money than in the past, and they also exert sig-nificant power over parental purchase choices" (C. Luke, 1997, p. 21).

Shortly after we engaged in our McDonald's conversation, be-fore we could send home a newsletter about it, the mother of one ofmy students came up to me and asked if we had talked about McDon-ald's in our classroom. Apparently, since Melanie was about 2 yearsold, she and her parents had had a routine whereby every Sundaythey would go to McDonald's after church.

As our work with the Happy Meal as text was wrapping up, Mc-Donald's was receiving a lot of publicity from the famous McLibeltrial whereby McDonald's sued a couple of activists for libel regard-ing a pamphlet they had distributed revealing the ways in which thefood giant engaged in such practices as animal cruelty, waste produc-tion, and rain forest depletion (Klein, 2001). As a direct result of thework we had done regarding McDonald's in our classroom and whatshe had heard on the news about the McLibel trial, Melanie decidedthat she no longer wanted to support McDonald's as a consumer. Inessence, she decided to boycott McDonald's. In response, her motherhad suggested going to another local fast-food burger restaurant. Ac-cording to her mother, Melanie quickly pointed out that the other res-taurant was no better because she felt that they manipulated childconsumers by changing or adding equipment to their Playland on anongoing basis as well as by giving out toys as a way to keep young cus-tomers buying their products in the same way McDonald's did.

The reason I like this story is because it demonstrates the kinds ofliteracies that are constructed through the critical literacy practicesin our classroom and, most importantly, how these literacies extendinto the lives of the children outside of school. As Melanie grew as a


literate learner in our classroom, she also learned to read the worldand versions of the possible roles she could take in the world(O'Brien, 1998). She has begun to understand how the world as textworks on her and what she can do to respond to that text. She was ca-pable of sharing her ideas and influencing others.

While engaged with McDonald's as text, multilayered conversa-tions were constructed; different children involved themselves withdifferent activities and actions in response to the text.

As you can see, the issues we dealt with were very generative. Wewere never short of ideas for projects or issues and topics to research.There was always more for yet another day. The following sectiondemonstrates ways that we used what we discovered through ourprevious conversations and analysis to reimagine ways of repackag-ing McDonald's toys.

Designing a Toy Container

While we were analyzing the McDonald's Happy Meal, a smallgroup of children began looking closely at the plastic bag used topackage some of the toys. They started by asking me to read out loudthe text on the bag. They were particularly interested in the warninglabel, which read:

WARNING: TO AVOID DANGER OF SUFFOCATION,KEEP BAG AWAY FROM BABIES AND CHILDREN.DISPOSE OF THIS BAG IMMEDIATELY.(© 1999 McDonald's Corporation)

My students argued that if the bag was so hazardous, then whyare they used to package the toys inasmuch as children purchase thetoys. Gregory suggested that the packaging really should be changed.In response, a group of four students designed their own toy contain-ers, which they felt were safer for children.

One of the designs was of small boxes to hold the promotionaltoys. Another suggestion involved recycling McDonald's wrappers.Someone else came up with a bag similar to party favor bags. Gregorywas one of the people who designed a box. Once having thought abouthow to design his box, he hand-delivered his proposal (Fig. 6.4) to theMcDonald's branch close to his home. At the end of the school year,we had not heard back from McDonald's. However, Gregory did saythat if he didn't hear back soon that he would see if he could "do it onthe Internet." Looking closely at his letter, it is interesting to note that,

134 Chapter 6

April 1997

Dear McDonald's Toy Packagers,

There are two ways you can make boxes for the toys inthe Happy Meals so you don't have to have a warninganymore.

The first way is to get a Kleenex box. Then cut out apiece of cardboard from another Kleenex box. Put itover the hole of the first Kleenex box and glue it on.Wrap it up in some paper so it will look nice.

For the second way, you get a shoebox. Then you putpaper on it. Cut out one end to put the toy in. Thentape it all up again.

We want kids to be safe and the warning means thebags aren't safe enough. The kids in my class who buyHappy Meals think you should change the bags also.

Gregory

FIG. 6.4. Gregory's proposal.

similar to the letters written by his classmates to deal with the vege-tarian issue, Gregory's letter also demonstrated the assertion of iden-tity through the use of "you" and "we." When he said, "There are twoways you can make boxes ...," he made it clear that he was aware thatother options exist for packaging the toys. He then took on the posi-tion of a knowledgeable informer by offering two versions of how al-ternate packaging might be constructed. He did not just name hisideas but outlined how to turn his ideas into reality.

In the final paragraph of his proposal, he evaluated what was cur-rently used as packaging for the toys when he said,"... warning meansthe bags aren't safe enough...." What he was saying to McDonald's wasthat a warning is not enough; you need to do something that is safe forchildren so that these warning labels are no longer necessary. Finally,

We Know How McDonald's Thinks 13 5

Gregory made use of what he knew regarding the role that consumersplay in the business market by making it clear that the people involvedwith submitting the proposal were McDonald's customers.

What Gregory and his "Design a Toy Container" group did was totake the McDonald's toy bags, treat them seriously as classroom textby analyzing them and then construct new versions. Writing the pro-posal letter moved them beyond mere interrogation or finding fault(O'Brien, 1998) toward taking action to change, in this case, a spe-cific danger to young consumers.

To represent the McDonald's issues on our audit trail (Fig. 6.5) thechildren decided to post a Happy Meal bag and a Beanie Baby as arti-facts. We also included a receipt and three quotes of topics that cameup during our conversations to remind us of those conversations.

13o^

FIG. 6.5. Some of the artifacts representing the McDonald's issues on our audit trail.

7A Look Back Over the Year

Organizing a Junior Kindergarten Conference:A Culminating Experience for Our NegotiatedCritical Literacy CurriculumAs the end of the school year approached, Melanie arrived in

class talking about a conference that her mother had attended. Herenthusiasm was infectious. Other children began asking her ques-tions about the conference. She shared that her mother had listenedto different speakers and that she had to sign up to hear them. Shealso talked about how her mother wore a badge and that there was abook (program) about what was happening at the conference. Oneof the children asked, "Why did she want to go?" Melanie replied,"To learn."

After several more minutes of conversation about conferences,the children started to talk about how we could have speakers, too!Why not, I thought to myself. Igoa (1995) wrote about the importanceof the "end of the year good-bye" for giving closure together on theyear that has passed. I thought the conference idea would be a terrificway to do this.

Later that evening, I began to list the issues that we had dealtwith over the course of the year as well as people we could invite to

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speak on those topics. From here, plans for a "Junior KindergartenConference" began. I brought the idea to the children the nextmorning. They could not wait to get started. First, we decided onseveral speakers including a practicing vegetarian and an animalrights activist.

The next thing we did was come up with a theme, a name for ourconference. The children came up with suggestions throughout theday and then went home and asked their parents for suggestions also.One suggestion made by a parent was "Celebrating Our Questions."She said that she had been thinking about what was so different be-tween her daughter's experience in Junior Kindergarten in compari-son to the experiences that her older children had and decided thatthe difference had to do with the kinds of "questions about the world"that my students were asking and that they were asking differentquestions that were important to them. What a powerful insight! Ishared what she had said with my students. We agreed ... CelebratingOur Questions was a good name for our conference.

Once we had decided on presenters, we created invitations toformally invite them. We also made posters and badges. We then in-vited some parents to volunteer as organizers and secured rooms inour school for each of the speakers. While the children createddrawings for the letters and posters, I took on the responsibility ofcreating the program booklet. Figures 7.1,7.2, and 7.3 show some ofthe things we made for our conference. The graphic we chose wasone we found in a graphics program on our computer. The childrenliked it because they said the person could be "anybody asking im-portant questions."

When we felt confident that everything we needed to run a con-ference was in place, we sent out invitations to the children's familiesand to the other Junior Kindergarten students. We also created a reg-istration sign-up chart where people attending the conference couldsign up to participate in two sessions. The conference lasted half a dayand was a very powerful and pleasurable (Comber, 1999) experiencefor everyone.

When curriculum is negotiated using the social worlds of chil-dren, learning is sustained and generative. Never had I imagined or-ganizing a conference with 3- to 5-year-old children, but thegenerative nature of our critical literacy curriculum created a spacefor this kind of complex project to happen. The generativeness co-mes from providing children opportunities to connect their currentunderstandings with issues that arise in their everyday lives or thatof their peers.

A Look Back Over the Year 139

FIG. 7.1. Conference registration chart.

Using Social Critique, Social Analysis,and Social Action to Construct LiteracyThroughout the year social critique, social analysis, and social

action were tools that we used to imagine that the social world couldbe otherwise. We also used these tools to reimagine our world andchange the way things were. Through social critique, we began toquestion why things are the way they are. Through social analysis, webegan to look at broad relations and issues of power and control inour community and in society. Through social action, we acted on ourcritique and analysis reflexively in order to position ourselves differ-ently. For example, issues like the vegetarian issue or the French Cafeissue contributed to change in particular school conditions. As such,

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FIG. 7.2. Letters inviting presenters and conference booklet.

some of our actions resulted in a more socially just and equitablecommunity for us to work in. These kinds of actions, if taken on bymore teachers in classrooms across the nation, could "quite produc-tively lead to strategies for ... rebuilding institutions" (Luke et al.,1996, p. 15).

Asking Questions That Matter:A Final ReflectionAs a classroom community, we used and constructed our audit

trail as a visual representation of our critical literacy curriculum. Ourtrail became a mediating site through which we began to questiontraditional social systems in place at our school. In so doing, we be-gan to question the way things were done in our school that did nottreat members of our school community in an equitable way.

A Look Back Over the Year 141

Colored circles on the badges indicate the sessions that a child decidedto attend. The colors match the signage outside each of the roomswhere speakers were presenting. It was a quick way to help childrenand our volunteers make sure of where they were going.

FIG. 7.3. Conference booklet and name badges.

At the close of our Junior Kindergarten Conference, Lina, a par-ent of one of the children in my class, approached me and said"Vivian, the difference between what happened this year, in yourclassroom, and what happens in some other places is that these chil-dren ask questions that matter."

Children who learn using curriculum that is based on what mat-ters to them are more likely to feel that what they are learning is im-portant to their lives. This was certainly true in the classroom I shared

142 Chapter 7

with my sixteen 3- to 5-year-old students. How might you use the sto-ries of critical literacy learning in our classroom to inform yourteaching and to help you make significant the issues and questionsthat matter to your students? As for me, I have begun to ask myselfsimilar questions with regard to my work with preservice and in-ser-vice teachers and in my work with young children exploring the use oftechnology and popular culture texts. What might be your first stepsfor negotiating the critical issues and questions that matter to yourstudents? How might you create spaces for them to be able to rereadand rewrite the world toward becoming the literate people they wantand need to be in the new millennium?

During our last class meeting, we sat in a circle so we could seeeach other. One by one we reminisced about different instances of liv-ing and learning in our classroom. It was hard to believe this was ourlast class meeting. We had come so far, but we could see how muchmore we could do and so, as one final experience together, we createda list—"What next year's Junior Kindergartens should know." Tobring closure to your experience with this book, I now leave you withour list.

What Next Year's Junior Kindergartens Should Know

• Listen to other kids.• Remember other people's feelings.• If there's something happening in the school and you want to

go, you can make something like petitions.• Boys and girls should share their feelings and not fight.• You have to share with other kids.• Put things away after you use them.• You can be strong from your brain.

Endnotes

1. The names that are used in these descriptive accounts are pseudonyms.2. See chapter 5 for an explanation of why French is taught in Ontario

schools.3. In Ontario, some school boards offer elementary schooling beginning

with what is called Junior Kindergarten. Junior Kindergarten students,often referred to as preschool-aged children in the United States, are re-quired to be 4 years old by December 31 of the academic year for whichthey are registering. School attendance is not mandatory until age 6 orfirst grade. Junior Kindergarten is considered an elective year.

4. The school is publicly funded and located in what is considered a mid-dle-class neighborhood in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Most ofthe homes in the vicinity of the school are single-home dwellings. Thisdescription is deceiving because there are a number of dual-familyhomes or homes where extended family members live together. Also, atthe time of this research, Ontario was experiencing severe job cutbacks,which affected many families in the school.

5. Invitations (Burke, 1998) are curricular experiences and engagementsthat provide learners opportunities to explore a topic, issue, or construct.For example, after analyzing a Halloween flyer based on how males andfemales are constructed by the language used in describing costumes(e.g., mighty superhero vs. graceful ballerina) I created an invitationwhereby students looked through a number of different advertisementflyers in order to think about how these public texts construct their un-derstanding of the world. These invitations varied in number throughoutthe year. They represented one of the learning opportunities available tothe children.

6. Observations of the children predominantly took the form of written an-ecdotes and gathering work they had produced, such as writing or art

143

144 Endnotes

pieces that represented their learning. To record anecdotes, I made useof a chart based on Diane Stephens' (2000) hypothesis test form. Theform was divided into four columns: observations/interpretations, hy-pothesis, curricular decisions, and reflections (Fig. 2.2). In the observa-tions/interpretations column, I noted my thoughts on what I sawchildren doing and saying. I did this at different points during the day. Atthe end of the day, I would look across my observations and interpreta-tions looking for patterns and anomalies. Patterns and anomalies madeup my jottings in the hypothesis column. Once having considered a num-ber of hypotheses from different perspectives, I used the curricular deci-sions column as a planning-to-plan site for considering possibleexperiences and strategies to use with my students. The reflections col-umn was filled out after my attempts to engage the curricular strategies Ihad previously outlined.

7. Children who turn 4 years of age by December 31 of the current schoolyear are eligible to enroll for Junior Kindergarten. Those children whoturn 5 years old by December 31 of the current school year are eligible toenroll for Senior Kindergarten.

8. In Ontario, the "Speaker's Corner" is a well-known segment in a televi-sion program carried by the local station. Segments aired on the TV showare taken from video recordings created by the general public at theSpeaker's Corner booth located outside the station. Anyone who wouldlike to air his or her views or talk on a particular issue or topic can do sofor $2. The setup is similar to the photo booths that can be found in vari-ous shopping malls. A number of these recordings are then selected andplayed on national television at various times during evening program-ming. The idea for a speaker's corner was therefore well known to manyof my students.

Constructing a Speaker's Corner in our classroom came up as a result ofsome children having viewed these segments on television. Audiotapingour thinking or conversations was one way that we thought we could rep-resent and later revisit various things that had come up as issues in theclassroom. Our Speaker's Corner consisted of a tape recorder, audio cas-settes, and a place to display or hold our recordings.

The children were able to record at our Speaker's Corner at any timeduring the day. Often, topics shared at Speaker's Corner originate fromdiscussion that takes place during our class meetings or while children areengaged in small group work. On occasion, children came to school hav-ing thought about what they wanted to record at our Speaker's Corner.

9. I had shared a story with the children about an inquiry on what culturesand ethnicities are represented in the books at our school library, done byanother kindergarten class that I previously taught. Through their in-quiry, that group of children discovered that in our school library, therewere no books on the Philippines; the books on Peru were outdated andhad been published in the 1970s; and there were no books on Malta.

I shared with Stefanie and her classmates that the librarian had beenvery receptive to a letter that the children had written to the librarian

Endnotes 145

stating their concerns. I told Stefanie that when presented with our find-ings, the librarian appeared genuinely disturbed. Like many people, hehad not thought about the possibility of marginalizing certain individu-als and groups of students when they are unable to "see themselves" inbooks at our library. He immediately worked on ordering books to ad-dress our concerns. He also began rethinking the decisions he made re-garding which books to display in terms of who is represented and notrepresented by those books.

10. In our school children often went from classroom to classroom to readstories they had written. Singing our version of the beluga song to otherclasses was an extension of this reading practice.

11. The WWF Canada web site is located at http://www.wwfcanada.org/en/default, asp

12. The children ran our classroom store. Basically, they would repackage ce-real into small bags. These were made available for children who eitherforgot their snack or wanted to have cereal for snack. Children could takea bag of cereal and contribute at least 100 to our store fund. It was themoney that had been accumulating in this fund that we decided to contrib-ute to the World Wildlife Fund of Canada. As a reminder of this action, wedecided to rename our store the "Save the Beluga Store" (Fig. 5.3).

References

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son, Trans.). Cambridge, England: Polity Press.Bourdieu, P. (1993). The fields of cultural production. Cambridge, England:

Polity Press.Burke, C. (1998, February). Invitations. Seminar presented at Indiana Uni-

versity, Bloomington.Carle, E. (1986). The very hungry caterpillar. East Rutherford, NJ: Putnam Books.Cherry, L. (1990). The great kapok tree. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.Comber, B. (1999, November). Critical literacies: Negotiating powerful and

pleasurable curricula—How do we foster critical literacy through Eng-lish language arts? Paper presented at National Council of Teachers ofEnglish Annual Convention, Denver.

Comber, B. (2001). Critical literacies and local action: Teacher knowledgeand a "new" research agenda. In B. Comber & A. Simpson (Eds.), Nego-tiating critical literacies in classrooms (pp. 271-282). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Comber, B., & Cormack, P. (1997, November). Looking beyond skills and pro-cesses: Literacy as social and cultural practices in classrooms. UKRAReading.

Comber, B., & Kamler, B. (1997). Critical literacies: Politicizing the languageclassroom. Interpretations, 30(1), 30-53.

Cordeiro, P. (Ed.). (1995). Endless possibilities. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Dyson, A. H. (1993). Social worlds of children learning to write. New York:

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Canada.Goodman, Y. M., Watson, D. J., & Burke, C. L. (1987). Reading miscue inven-

tory. New York: Richard Owens.Hadithi, M. (1989). The crafty chameleon. Toronto, Canada: Hodder and Staugh-

ton Press.Harste, J., & Vasquez, V. (1998). The work we do: Journal as audit trail. Lan-

guage Arts, 75(4), 266-276.Harste, J. C., Short, K., & Burke, C. L. (1996). Creating classrooms for authors

and inquirers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Harste, J. C., Woodward, V. A., & Burke, C. L. (1984). Language stones and lit-

eracy lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Hayes, S. (1992). Bad egg: The true story of Humpty Dumpty. New York: Warner

Books.Horovitz, B. (1999, February 8). McDonald's Furby: Will it flourish or flop?

USA Today, p. O3.B.Igoa, C. (1995). The inner world of the immigrant child. Mahwah, NJ: Law-

rence Erlbaum Associates.Kamler, B. (1994). Resisting oppositions in writing pedagogy or What pro-

cess genre debate? Idiom, 29(2), 14-19.Klein, N. (2001). No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies. Toronto, ON, Can-

ada: Vintage Canada Press.Luke, A., Comber, B., & O'Brien, J. (1996). Critical literacies and cultural

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Luke, C. (1997). Media literacy and cultural studies. In S. Muspratt, A. Luke,& P. Freebody (Eds.), Constructing critical literacies: Teaching and learn-ing textual practice (pp. 19-49). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Manning, A. (1999). Foundations of literacy course book. Halifax, NS: MountSaint Vincent University.

Maras, L., & Brummett, W. (1995). Time for change: Presidential elections ina grade 3-4 multi-age classroom. In P. Cordeiro (Ed.), Endless possibil-ities (pp. 89-104). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

McCourt, F. (1999). Angela's ashes: A memoir. Carmichael, CA: TouchstoneBooks.

O'Brien, J. (1994). Show Mum you love her: Taking a new look at junk mail.Reading, 28(1), 43-46.

O'Brien, J. (1998). Experts in Smurfland. In M. Knobel & A. Healy (Eds.),Literacies in the primary classroom. Newton, New South Wales: PrimaryEnglish Teaching Association.

O'Brien, J. (2001). Children reading critically: A local Perspective. In B.Comber & A. Simpson (Eds.), Negotiating critical literacies in class-rooms (pp. 37-54). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Raffi. (1992). Baby Beluga. Toronto, Canada: Crown Publishers.Stephens, D. (2000). Overview of the HT process. In D. Stephens & J. Story

(Eds.), Assessment as inquiry: Learning the hypothesis-test process (pp.8-20). Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Vasquez, V. (1994). A step in the dance of critical literacy. UKRA Reading,28(1), 39-43.

Vasquez, V. (2000a). Language stories and critical literacy lessons. TalkingPoints, 11(2), 5-7.

Vasquez, V. (2000b). Our way: Using the everyday to create a critical literacycurriculum. Primary Voices, 9(2), 8-13.

Vasquez, V. (2000c). Building community through social action. School Talk,5(4), 2-3.

Vasquez, V. (2001a). Creating a critical literacy curriculum with young chil-dren. Phi Delta Kappa International Research Bulletin (pp. 1-4).Bloomington, IN: PDK.

Vasquez, V. (Ed.). (2001b). Critical literacy: What is it, and what does it looklike in elementary classrooms. School Talk, 6(3), 1-8.

Warren, J. (Ed.). (1990). Animal piggyback songs. Columbus OH:McGraw-Hill Children's Publishing.

Weir, B. (1993) Panther dream. New York: Hyperion Books.West, J., & Izen, M. (1989). Why the willow weeps. New York: Random House.Wood, D., & Wood, A. (1993). Quick as a cricket. Toronto, ON: Child's Play.Wood, J. (1993). Rainforests. Hauppauge, NY: Barren's Educational Series,

Inc.

Suggested Readings

Ayers, W., Hunt, J. A., & Quinn, T. (Eds.)- (1998). Teaching for social justice.New York: The New Press & Teachers College Press.

Boran, S., & Comber, B. (Eds.). (2001). Critiquing whole language and class-room inquiry. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language & symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Comber, B., & Simpson, A. (Eds.). (2001). Negotiating critical literacies inclassrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Davies, B. (1993). Shards of glass: Children reading & writing beyond genderedidentities. NSW Australia: Allen & Unwin.

Dyson, A. H. (1997). Writing superheroes: Contemporary childhood, popularculture, and classroom literacy. New York: Teachers College Press.

Edelsky, C. (Ed.). (1999). Making justice our project. Urbana, IL: NCTE.Fehring, H., & Green, P. (Eds.). (2001). Critical literacy: A collection of arti-

cles from the Australian Literacy Educators' Association. Newark, DE:International Reading Association.

Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourse. Phila-delphia, PA: The Palmer Press.

Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis. New York: RoutledgePress.

Holquist, M. (Ed.). (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M.Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Tanks, H. (Ed.). (1993). Critical language awareness series. Johannesburg,South Africa: University of Witwatersrand University Press.

Klein, N. (2001). No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies. Toronto, ON, Can-ada: Vintage Canada Press.

Lankshear, C., & McLaren, P. L. (Eds.). (1993). Critical literacy: Politics,praxis, and the postmodern. Albany: State University of New York Press.

151

1 52 Suggested Readings

Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1999). Further notes on The Four Resources Model.Reading Online, readingonline.org/research/lukefrebody.html

Morgan, W. (1997). Critical literacy in the classroom. London, England:Routledge Press.

Muspratt, S., Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (Eds.). (1997). Constructing criticalliteracies: Teaching and learning textual practice. Cresskill, NJ:Hampton Press.

O'Brien, J. (1994). Show Mum you love her: Taking a new look at junk mail.UKRA Reading, 28(1), 43-46.

Shor, I., & Pari, C. (Eds.). (1999). Critical literacy in action. Portsmouth, NH:Boynton/Cook Heinemann.

Steinberg, S. R., & Kincheloe, J. L. (Eds.). (1997). Kinder-culture: The corpo-rate construction of childhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Vasquez, V. (1994). A step in the dance of critical literacy. UKRA Reading,28(1), 39-43.

Vasquez, V. (2000). Our way: Using the everyday to create a critical literacycurriculum. Primary Voices, 9(2), 8-13, Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Vasquez, V. (Ed.). (2001). Critical literacy: What is it and what does it look likein elementary classrooms. School Talk, 6(3), Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Vasquez, V, & Egawa, K. (Eds.). (2002). Everyday texts, everyday literacies.School Talk, 8(1), Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Author Index,

BBaker, J., 55Bigelow, W., 101Bourdieu, P., 121, 128Brummett, W, 27Burke, C. L., xiii

Comber, B., 32, 96, 101, 107, 118, 121,131, 132, 138, 140

Cordeiro, P., 30Cormack, P., 32

H

Harste, J. C. , xiii, 3Horovitz, B., 127

I

Igoa.C., xv, 43, 137

K

Kamler, B., 101, 107, 132Klein, N., 132

Dyson, A. H., 99

F

Fiske, J., 96Fox, M., 106Freebody, P., 58

Luke, A. ,58, 118, 121, 140Luke, C., 132

M

Manning, A., 31Maras, L., 27McCourt, F., xv

Goodman, Y. M., xiiiO'Brien, J., xvi, 30, 55, 115, 118, 121,

132, 133, 135, 140

153

154 Author Index

R V

Raffi, 113 Vasquez, V, 2, 3

s wShort, K.,x iii Wood, A., 45

Wood, D., 45

Watson, D.J., xiii

Subject Index

Action, 121Advertising, 127Alternate ways, 100Alternative, 118Analysis, 117-118Analytic skills, 121Analytic strategies, 104Animal rights, 87, 138, see also Rain

forestactivists, 89, 119, 138cruelty, 132

Artifacts of learning, 2-3, 43, 100, 119Audience, 116-117Audit trail, 1, 3-4,6-26, 43

connecting issues, 85-88constructing an audit trail, 4, 47-50

artifacts, 58-85choosing artifacts to post, 47,

57-58, 110, 135deciding on issues to represent, 85

Awareness, 111, 118

B

Barbies, 124, 127Beanie Babies, 135Beluga, 113Binary oppositions, 115Boycott, 132

Brainstorm, 118, 129Buyers and sellers, 53

Celebrating, 138Circulating meaning, 3, 96Citizenry, 118Classroom, 34

common elements, 36class meetings, 34, 36, 93-95,

103, 119agenda, 103chairperson, 37, 106

read-aloud, 42reflections, 41setting an agenda, 37-39using two day plans, 40whole group work, 42

newsletter, 50organization, 34-35

Collectibles, 125-128Community, 37, 101, 104Conceptualization, 31Construction, 118Consumerism, 121, 128

child consumer, 123, 125, 129,131-132

informed consumer, 125Creating space, 121Critical language awareness, 101

155

A

C

156 Subject Index

Critical literacybeing critically literate, xiii, xvi,

1-2, 32complexities of practice, 32critical conversations, 1, 3critical perspective, 101

Critically literate life, 111Cultural capital, 101, 121, 128

units of study, 30Curriculum, 5, 27, 32, 101

child-centered, 36constructing curriculum, 58curricular history, 58engagements, 58-70issues, 71-85negotiating curriculum, xvi, 1, 27,

36, 44, 137social action, 59-70, 89unofficial curriculum, 33

Data, 3Deconstruction, 119, 121Democratic ability, 99Design, 133Desirability, 126Different people and different places, 86Different portrayals, 119Disadvantaged, 32Discourse, 115, 121, 123

analysis, 111control, xivgendered, 124

Dominant practices, 132Dominant reading, 118Dominant themes, 115, 121

Early readers, 121Endangerment, 118Environmental issues, 46-55, 86, 110,

121Equitable schooling, xvEquity, xv, 30, 55, 101, 108, 111Ethnicity, 2, 92Everyday issues, xvi, 1Everyday texts, xvi, 1, 48, 55, 104, 121,

123Explicative approach, 106Extinction, 115

Fairness, 127Fast food, 126French cafe, 91-92, 117

Gender, 30, 46, 55-58, 121, 123bias, 124social construction of, 58, 131

Girls and boys, 86

H

Habit formation, 126Happy Meals, 123, 129, 133Home-school interaction, 43Hot Wheels, 124Hypothesis, 92, 99

I

Ideology, 121ideological construction, 126

Immigrant, xiv-xvImplicit authority, 105Inclusiveness, 105Inequity, xv, 99Innocent text, 121Inquiry, 2, 30Instances of learning, 123Internet, 133Interrogation, 123Interrupting dominance, 55Invitations, 34Isolated incidents, 2

J

Junior kindergarten, 42, 101, 137-138,142

conference, 137-138

K

Knowledge systems, 36

F

G

D

E

Subject Index 157

Language, 99official, 91powerful forms, 96, 99, 117

Learning wall, 3-4, 40Lesson plan, see Using two day plans, 40Letter writing, 50, 53-55, 96, 100,

105-106, 108, 111, 120, 134Library, 107-108Licensing, 127Life work, 31Literacy, 107

M

Mandated curriculum, 27-29, 91Marginalization, xv, 104, 111, 128McDonald's, 38, 104, 123

collectibles, 127Happy Meal, 123, 128, 131

McFurby, 126-127Media, 122Merchandising, 127Mother's Day, 30Multinational companies, 104Multiple readings, 119

N

Negotiating spaces, 27-32, 42News

articles, 120newsletter, 132report, 115

Newspaper, 86Normality, 131-132

Observationchart, 47sheet, 93

Open house, 42Opposites, see Binary opposition

Pedagogical thinking, 99Pedagogy, 36Perception, 121Perspectives, 115Petition, 95, 99, 101, 105Picture book, 45, 108, 113-114, 116

patterned and predictable, 117Pocket money, 132Pollution, 116, 118Positioning, 111Power, 100-101Power Rangers, 38Predictable text, 45Privilege, 32Problematizing text, 104Professional community, 33Profitability, 127Promotional strategies, 128Promotional toys, 129, 133Proposal, 134Purchase choices, 132

Q

Questioning, 101, 111

R

Rain forest, 46-55, 87, 104depletion, 132rain forest play, 50-53

Read aloud, 42, 44Readers, xvReading, 101Real world effects, 118-119, 121Reality, 121Reconstruction, 118-119Recycling, 133Reflections, 39, 41Reimagining, 133Representation, 115, 121Resistance, 132Roles, 133

Parents, 42-43, 92, 108, 132, 138Patterned text, 108Patterning, 122Patterns, 122

School community, 33Social

action, 96, 99, 101, 111, 113, 117,135,139

analysis, 139construction, 121

L

O

PS

158 Subject Index

critique, 139events, 111intent, 121issues, 1-2, 30justice, xv, 30, 101practice, 101text, 104, 111world, 138

Solidarity, 105Speakers, 138Speaker's corner, 97-98Standardization, xvStar Trek, 127Subject matter, 114Substitute teacher, 37Subtext, 131Subversive acts, 33Survey, 94, 99, 104, 109Susceptibility, 131

Teacher research, xvi, 2Teacher's role, 101Television, 86, 112Text

analysis, 114construction, 115

Themes, 86Theorizing, 3Thinking like, 86

Traditional school text, 111Toy promotion, 126

uUnfair treatment, 111USA Today, 126

V

Vegetarians, 101, 103-111, 117

wWaste production, 132Web, 129Whole group, 42, 111Whole language, xiiiWork areas, 39World as text, 133World lists, 114World Wide Web, 119World Wildlife Fund, 119Writers, xvWriting, 101, 118

functions, 117re-writing, 118

T

Credits continued from copyright page (p. iv).

Book cover from The Great Kapok Tree by L. Cherry (1990). Copyright © 1990 by Har-court Inc. Reprinted with permission. Shown on pages 13, 75.

Inside cover from Panther Dream by B. Weir (1993). Copyright © 1993 by Hyperion.Shown on pages 20, 79.

Book cover from QUICK AS A CRICKET by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood(1993). Copyright © M. Twinn 1982. Reproduced by kind permission of Child's Play(International) Ltd. Shown on pages 7, 48, 49, 71.

Image from QUICK AS A CRICKET by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood (1993).Copyright © M. Twinn 1982. Reproduced by kind permission of Child's Play (Interna-tional) Ltd. Shown on pages 7, 46, 49, 71.

Text extract from QUICK AS A CRICKET by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood(1993). Copyright © M. Twinn 1982. Reproduced by kind permission of Child's Play(International) Ltd. Shown on page 45.

Cover from Rain Forests by J. Wood (1993). Copyright © 1993 by Barrons. Shown onpages 7, 71.

Cover, and illustration from page 1, from Something from Nothing by Phoebe Gilman.Copyright © 1992 by Phoebe Gilman. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Scho-lastic Canada Ltd. Shown on pages 11, 74.

Book cover from Where the Forest Meets the Sea by J. Baker (1988). Copyright © 1988by HarperCollins. Shown on pages 10, 73, 110.

Illustration from Where the Forest Meets the Sea by J. Baker (1988). Copyright © 1988by HarperCollins. Shown on pages 12, 56, 57, 74.

Two illustrations from WHY THE WILLOW WEEPS by Marshall Izen, copyright ©1992 by Marshall Izen & Jim West. Used by permission of Dell Publishing, a division ofRandom House, Inc. Shown on pages 18, 78.

Cover from Window by Jeannie Baker (1991). Copyright © 1991 by Penguin BooksCanada. Shown on pages 13, 75.

All efforts have been made to obtain permission for copyrighted materials, includingno less than two written requests to the copyright holder.

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