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Informationen zum Autor Richard J. Meyer is Professor in the Department of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies at the College of Education, University of New Mexico. Klappentext This book chronicles 5th and 6th grade writers - children of gang members, drug users, poor people, and non-documented and documented immigrants - in a rural school in the southwest US coming into their voices, cultivating those voices, and using those voices in a variety of venues, beginning with the classroom community and spreading outward. At the heart of this book is the cultivation of tension between official and unofficial portraits of these students. Official portraits are composed of demographic data, socioeconomic data, and test results. Unofficial counterportraits offer different views of children, schools, and communities. The big ideas of official and unofficial portraits are presented, then each chapter offers data (the children's and teachers' processes and products) and facets of the theoretical construct of counterportraits, as a response to official portraits. The counterportraits are built slowly in order to base them in evidence and to articulate their complexity.Many teachers and soon-to-be teachers facing the dilemmas and complexities of teaching in diverse classrooms have serious questions about how to honor students' lives outside of school, making school more relevant. This book offers evidence to present to the public, legislators, and the press as a way of talking back to official portraits, demonstrating that officially failing schools are not really failing - evidence that is crucial for the survival of public schools. Zusammenfassung Chronicles 5th and 6th grade writers in a poor, culturally diverse, rural school in the southwest US coming into their voices, cultivating those voices, and using those voices in a variety of venues, beginning with the classroom community and spreading outward. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface Acknowledgements Prologue: Writing Spaces and Hard Times Chapter 1: An Introduction to Searching for Our Truths Before the Work Began Portraits and Counterportraits Mesa Vista Elementary School (MVE): The Official Portrait Finding the School Homelessness Chapter 2: Writers Reveal Themselves Becoming More than an Observer First Pieces of Writing Initiating Data Analysis Teacher as Screamer Strictness, Power, and Microaggressions Strict Schools and the Search for Joy The Counterportrait Up to This Point Chapter 3: Claiming Spaces to Write The Sixth Graders’ Space Finding the Space to Write The Fifth Graders’ Space The Biography Assignment Begins to Evolve Writing Spaces and the View of the Child Counterportraits So Far Chapter 4: Rewriting Self and Writing About Others Sixth Graders’ Non-Biography Biography Work Moving Towards Increased Sharing Fifth Graders Begin Biography Writing Composing Classmates’ Biographies Counterportraits (so far), Context, and the Presentation of Self Chapter 5: Expanding Writing Spaces as Communities of Practice Fifth Graders Interview, Transcribe, & Write Some Fifth Graders’ Transcriptions (Excerpts) And in the sixth grade… Communities, Boundaries, and Counterportraits Legitimizing a Context for Counterportraiture Chapter 6: Writing Changes Writers: The Impact of Inertia Good News Sixth Graders Consider Expository Biography Featured Fifth Grade Writer Working for Hours Counterportraiture, Working in the Plural Form, & Inertia Chapter 7: Heroes, Dark Secrets, Otter Pops, & Struggles In the Fifth Grade Featured Fifth Grade Authors Chuck, the Humorist Estevan’s Hero Sixth Grade Poets’ Dark Poetry Sixth Graders’ Brief B...
