Flathead Valley, Montana—The paintings catch your eye first—a weathered saloon, purple mountains, winding road, cascading stream. But it's the words that draw you in and encourage you to linger there on the city sidewalk, reading and learning about a place and its people:
I sit and listen
As he paints the pictures
Of a time long ago
Upon the canvas of my mind
—Eric Herriges
Laser School, Kalispell, Montana
Across the Flathead Valley, poems and pictures are sprouting on the sides of theaters and restaurants, banks and title companies. The vibrant collection of murals is the work of a community-based education effort called the Mural-Poetry Project.
Founder Laura Keller, an artist and poet herself, launched the nonprofit project on a shoestring five years ago. Her early glimmer of an idea has grown into a bright vision of what education can accomplish when it connects young minds with seasoned citizens, when it integrates the telling of stories with the making of art.
The murals draw inspiration from local history, with students interviewing older residents to gather ideas for their poems and accompanying images. So far, students ranging from fourth-graders to high school seniors have completed 14 murals in the communities of Whitefish, Kalispell, and Eureka. In the process, they are creating a new face for their communities to show the world, and a new way for young people to view their hometowns, their neighbors, and even themselves.
Keller, 43, started the project in her adopted hometown of Whitefish, where her own daughter is now a senior in high school. Aware of how full teachers' days are already, Keller worked with the school district curriculum director to determine how this new project could mesh with existing learning goals. "We explored the whole question of curriculum. How could we justify this project in the classroom?" As they looked at standards, they found a natural fit in the content areas of language arts, history, and visual arts.
Before students sit down to interview longtime community residents, they talk in class about "what makes a good question. What should you not ask? How do you open a conversation and draw someone out?" Keller explains. Because many of the interviews take place at nursing homes and extended care centers, students also talk about fears or discomfort they might have about entering the environment of the elderly and infirm. The younger students are candid, Keller admits. "They want to talk about what to do if their subject doesn't hear well, or smells funny."
The goal, Keller explains to students, "is to breach barriers so you can get at the heart of the question: Who are you? What can you share with me about your life, your generation, your experiences?" Students tape record the conversations, which take place over several days. Many of the tapes are later added to oral history collections of local historical societies and museums. Listening to the tapes, Keller says, "You can hear when a student connects with an older person."
Whitefish High School language arts teacher Norma MacKenzie has been involved in producing four murals so far—three with her advanced junior and senior students and one with a class of freshmen. Some of the students go into the interviews "expecting to have nothing in common" with their subject. "But the older people grow in the kids' eyes," she observes, as students coax out the stories behind the gray hair and wrinkled brows.
Students know from the start that this is no classroom exercise. Their writing will appear in public and be read by a broad audience—not only by passing tourists, but also by their subject and his or her family members. Their work must not only be accurate, but also "honor the person they're writing about. This is the ultimate respect of a person—a tribute to someone's life," MacKenzie says.
Once they have conducted their interviews, students write an oral history that's factually accurate. They may need to do additional research in the library, sifting through old newspapers to get a better sense of a distant decade, or reading history books to learn more about an event such as World War II. Context becomes an important part of storytelling, and also reminds students of how the Flathead Valley is changing as the economy tilts toward tourism.
Using their prose as a foundation, students next move to writing poetry. "They try to capture the heart of their person in a poem," MacKenzie explains.
Moving from research to prose to poetry is a powerful lesson in how language can serve many purposes. When Keller guides students "deeper into the writing process," she might ask them, "Tell me the depth of the person in your poem. Tell me what you saw when you looked into her eyes." Brevity is important, given the limited physical space of the mural panels and the concise nature of poetry. Keller encourages young writers to hone their ideas, using action verbs to tell a story in short, punchy strokes; using metaphor to carry an image; using emotion to transcend a mere recitation of facts. Do all that, she promises, "and then you come down with poetry."
Examples abound: A fifth-grader from Edgerten School in Kalispell wrote of a woman whose smile "glows like a million-volt light bulb." A classmate described a man of advanced age as being "almost to the place the cowboys go after the last roundup."
After writing their poems—compressing life stories into a few spare lines—students expand from words into visual art.
Typically, class members read their poems aloud and listen for common themes and concrete images. Keller asks them to consider, "What do you see when you hear these words?" Students begin by sketching. Individual sketches are shared with the group, and students decide collectively how the parts should make up the whole.
The actual painting of the mural often occurs outside the school grounds, in a place chosen so that the public can observe the process and interact with the young artists. Students have painted their murals in the basement of the Hockaday Museum, in shopping malls, in hospitals. The finished product is then installed on the side of a building chosen so that pedestrians can walk right up, close enough to read the words and see the brush strokes.
At Laser School, an alternative high school in Kalispell, art teacher Linda Tutvedt has enjoyed watching her students "step up to be leaders" of the art-making part of the project. One mural involved interviews with many of the artists, musicians, and writers who thrive in Flathead Valley, a place where the scenery seems to nourish creativity. Laser students—many of them nontraditional learners—made a strong connection with these kindred creative spirits. "They came in and shared their work, told us about their lives," the teacher says. The words and images students generated in response created "a lot of pride," Tutvedt says, and reminded others in the community of the gifts these young people have to offer.
A Laser student named Tyler Stephens wrote a poem to capture the life story of a local painter named Karen Leigh. "What Is Happiness?" begins:
You can't buy it
You can't steal it
You can't swallow or smoke it
It springs from a life of passion
Happiness is doing
what you love
Passion is loving what you do
These words now hang from the side of an old movie theater in Kalispell, drawing the eye of curious newcomers and those who have spent their whole lives in this valley. When Keller sees people lingering to read the lines, she hopes they manage "to see both generations represented here. In these words, you can hear those at the beginning stages of communication connecting with the wisdom of their elders. You see both innocence and experience." When that happens, she knows that students have succeeded in their goal as writers, "to use the power of words to connect with their community."
For more information about the Mural-Poetry Project, e-mail Laura Keller at lkeller@digisys.net.
"The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow sharp as swords."
PORTLAND, Oregon—With a sleepy toddler tucked under her arm, a mother murmurs the nursery rhymes she learned from her own mother so many bedtimes ago. A grandfather delights in embellishing a ghost story for his pajama-clad grandson huddled, wide-eyed, under the covers. Beside a glowing woodstove, an ancient auntie gathers her nieces and nephews to her knee for a centuries-old story from the Old Country.
Such scenes play out each evening in every village, every city, the world around. Storytelling is as universal as bread, as human as love.
At Whitman Elementary School, a teacher is mining the rich potential of the most enduring of story forms —fairy tales—in her classroom of English language learners. Starting with such classics as Rumplestiltskin and Cinderella, ESL teacher Lilia Doni leads her diverse first-graders on a worldwide literary adventure that not only meets benchmarks in literacy (reading, writing, and public speaking), but integrates geography, social studies, drama, and foreign languages, as well.
The project's impact, however, doesn't stop there. Reaching even beyond these critical academic subjects and standards, this end-of-year culminating unit taps the familial ties by which stories are transmitted, generation to generation. Doni invites the students' parents to write and read aloud a story they've carried with them from their homeland of Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, Romania, or the Philippines. The goals of bringing family members into the classroom are to:
"I'm always looking to connect the parents to their children and give them ways to support their children's education," Doni says. "I send letters home in their language, asking them to share their favorite stories. By bringing the parents here and valuing them as experts, we cause the children to value them more and to see their importance. They feel pride in their cultural heritage."
Lam Nguyen Le sits at the front of the classroom, her daughter Amy Ngoc Le standing at her side. The first-graders listen attentively, taking notes as Mrs. Le reads a traditional Vietnamese tale from a handmade "book" she has written in her native Vietnamese. As the mother recites A Bunch of Chopsticks, about a dying father passing on a priceless lesson to his children, Amy translates each sentence, reading from the English version she has written in a handmade book of her own. From the story, the students learn that family members, like chopsticks, are stronger when they stick together in a "bunch" than when they stand alone.
As part of their presentation, mother and daughter show a two-foot-tall paper "heritage doll" that they have dressed in traditional garb, explaining the usefulness of the conical hat for warding off hot sun and the frequent tropical rains that pelt the jungles and rice paddies of the Southeast Asian nation. Pointing to Vietnam on a big world map, Mrs. Le teaches the students the words for "hello," "goodbye," and "thank you."
In preparation for the parent presentations, the Whitman first-graders have been studying the construction and conventions of stories. First, they read the whimsical tales of beloved children's author Leo Lioni to learn not only about plot, setting, and character—first-grade literacy benchmarks in Oregon's statewide standards—but also to infer themes and conflicts. Next, they read "trickster" stories from Mexico, where most of the students' roots are. Finally, the students delve into the riveting narratives of struggle and triumph that we call fairy tales. In the book Snow White, Blood Red, writer Terri Windling explains the psychological grip of this timeless genre: "The fairy tale journey may look like an outward trek across plains and mountains, through castles and forests, but the actual movement is inward, into the lands of the soul. The dark path of the fairy tale forest lies in the shadows of our imagination, the depths of our unconscious. To travel the wood, to face its dangers, is to emerge transformed by the experience."
Exploring the origins of fairy tales, Doni's students study legendary storytellers and folklorists, such as the Brothers Grimm of Germany and Charles Perrault of France. They learn the elements of the fantasy genre—a long-ago setting, a heroine or hero, a villain ("bad guy," beast, criminal), a problem and solution, and a "motif" or theme. They look at five such motifs that appear in fairy tales: magical objects, wishes, trickery, separations, and transformations. Then they compare two stories.
Certain fairy tales cross cultures, popping up in all kinds of countries. The students explore one of the best-known of these international tales, about a wolf who tricks a family of baby goats into opening the door while their mother is out, whereupon he gobbles them up. In the Grimm Brothers' version of The Seven Little Goats, the mother goat slices open the wolf's belly while he's sleeping, frees the (still living!) kids, and replaces them with big stones; when the wolf tries to drink, the stones drag him into the well where he drowns. In the Chinese version, the kids and their mother toss the wolf down the well. The Romanian version features just three goat kids, and the mother goat gets revenge by inviting the wolf to dinner and setting a booby trap that causes him to burn at the bottom of a pit.
Some key features of fairy tales—repetition and rhythm—are evident in the various versions of this tale. For example, the wolf's plea, "Open the door, my children, your mother is home," is repeated several times throughout the Chinese version. The Grimm version contains this verse: "What rumbles and tumbles / Inside of me. / I thought it was kids, / But it's stones that they be." These techniques are powerful vocabulary builders, Doni notes.
"Fairy tales are classic literature that have stood the test of time for centuries," says Doni, a native of Moldova who is conversant in Spanish and fluent in Romanian, Russian, French, and English. "It is appealing to both adults and children because it deals with love, life and death, loss, fairness. Everybody's thinking about these big values."
In overcoming extreme circumstances, the fairy tale protagonist grows and matures, Doni explains. "This 'test' makes the character triumph or rejuvenate," she says. "They change from poor to rich or from weak to strong. They change emotionally and psychologically."
Child psychologist Bruno Bettleheim, argues in The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales not only that fairy tales are expressions of our cultural heritage, but that they "represent in imaginative form what the process of healthy human development consists of... (and) make great positive psychological contributions to the child's inner growth."
Parent participation in Whitman's fairy tale project reached a phenomenal 100 percent last year, thanks, Doni says, to the phone calls she and the school's pool of translators made to each family. "Providing translation is one part of working with families," she says. "But making personal contact—that's the most important part. Having parents on our side as our support and as their children's support helps us a lot."
Little Amy Le's pride in her mom is evident in her face as she listens to Lam Le read the story from her homeland. Says Doni: "The children felt so proud of their parents, because they were the heroes."
The Web features many sites on folk and fairy tales, including the I*EARN Folk Tale Project at www.nsc.ru/folk/, Scholastic's Myths, Folktales, and Fairy Tales Internet project at http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/mff/, and Folktale, Myth, Legend, and Fable at http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/tradmays.
Royal City, Washington—His Chilean accent offers the first clue that he didn't grow up amid the farms and apple orchards of eastern Washington. Like most of his students at Royal High School, teacher Mario Godoy-Gonzalez began life in another country, speaking Spanish as his first language. But it's his message, not his accent, that gets students excited about learning.
Students saw that their teacher was no longer up in front of the class but sitting among them, shaping and revising his own writing.
In his two-year classroom for English language learners, Godoy-Gonzalez teaches students to harness words to amuse, to enlighten, to inquire, to persuade. He teaches "six subjects in two languages," using English and Spanish to teach math, physical science, biology, world history, and two levels of English. Writing cuts across all subjects. In this classroom, everybody writes—including the teacher, the teaching assistant, and even the principal if he stops to visit.
"Writing is the key when it comes to getting kids more involved in class," Godoy-Gonzalez says.
Fostering student engagement was a priority when he was asked to develop the English as a second language program nine years ago. Another teacher was already working with ESL students at the middle school level, "and trying to keep an eye out for them when they got to high school," he explains. But even though the local population of Spanish-speaking children was growing, "most of these kids were quitting school after the eighth grade. There was nothing for them at the high school."
These days, Godoy-Gonzalez's students find a world of learning opportunities awaiting in his classroom. The teacher has leveraged his many awards and grants to purchase high-powered scientific and technical equipment. He also has expanded his own knowledge base in biology, botany, and biotechnology so that he can guide students through the process of scientific inquiry—which, of course, they write about.
Godoy-Gonzalez's approach to teaching science has earned national attention, including honors from the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation and a $10,000 Toyota Tapestry grant for a curriculum on ethnobotany. The Migrant Teacher of the Year for Washington state in 2000, Godoy-Gonzalez insists he's an unlikely candidate to be guiding students through the DNA analysis of wheat or the extraction of chemicals from herbs grown on local farms.
"I'm a teacher of English. I like history, and I know a little math. But science was scary to me," he admits. "After high school, I never took another science class. And in high school, it was: read the book, answer the questions, take the test. We never did real science."
As he sought ways to engage his students in the high school classroom, he was attracted by the hands-on nature of doing "real" science. When students peer into a microscope or gaze at the stars through a telescope, they experience the thrill of discovery. That can be a springboard for developing their language skills, as they seek to communicate what they have observed.
He also appreciated the chance to show students that their 44-year-old teacher was learning alongside them. A summer institute in life science, offered at the University of Washington and sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, gave him a foundation in scientific methods. He has continued seeking opportunities to learn alongside scientists willing to serve as his mentor. The Science Education Partnership Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center offered "another great science learning experience." Science, Godoy-Gonzalez has learned, "is a never-ending story."
In his classroom, writing has been the key to unlocking students' understanding of science. Many of his students arrive from Mexico and other countries with little formal schooling to build on. "They may not have been to so many places yet," the teacher notes, or had classroom exposure to scientific concepts. So when he was launching into a unit on environmental science, he started at the beginning. "I asked them, what do you think the environment is?" He drew a planet and encouraged them to share ideas. "We talked about good and sad things about the Earth." The conversation picked up steam as these farm workers' children shared their firsthand knowledge of soil, water, air. On an impulse, he took their words and created a rhyme. "Then I thought, maybe we should all write poetry as a way to express our concerns about the environment."
That broke the ice. Writing poems "made these students realize, we can do this. We can write about science," he says. "For many of my students, writing an essay seems too hard. It takes so many words," many of which are technical. By the time they look up a scientific term in the dictionary, "they have lost the sense of where they wanted to use the word in their writing."
With poetry, however, students found their voice. "Poetry gets the brain and the heart working together," Godoy-Gonzalez says. When students asked him if they could mix English and Spanish words in the same poem, he granted them artistic license. "I tell them, it's your heart writing. Find the words to express what you feel."
And they did, as these elemental poems illustrate:
Water
Water, vital liquid
Rejuvenate us, take away our thirst
Keep us fresh and clean. Amen.
Air
Air looks pale and sick,
Leaving the city, going away.
Go! Find a better place to breathe.
Always eager to add more dimensions to his teaching, Godoy-Gonzalez shared ideas about writing poetry that he had learned through the Central Washington Writing Project, affiliated with the National Writing Project. He showed students how poetry can take many forms—haiku, acrostic, quatrain. Working in peer groups, students offered one another feedback for revision and improvement of their poems. And they were learning another lesson: "Writing never ends. You're always improving, revising, expanding."
What's more, students saw that their teacher was no longer up in front of the class but sitting among them, shaping and revising his own writing. "Kids saw that I became part of it. I was their partner. We all got into it," the teacher says.
Ever since, he's been using poetry across the curriculum. When students study ancient Egypt, they might write poems from the point of view of a pharaoh. "This makes writing not so hard. It becomes more like a game."
Once students gain confidence as poets and learn to improve their work through the process of revision and peer editing, they are ready to tackle longer pieces. By their second year in his classroom, Godoy-Gonzalez's students are busy polishing letters that they send to recipients in the "real world." He explains: "I have them present ideas, make arguments, or request information by writing letters. They state at the top of their letters: I am an ESL student, working to improve my language. I need someone to read what I've written, and would love to get a reply." Frequently students do receive feedback, and it often includes the encouragement to keep writing.
After two years in the ESL program, Godoy-Gonzalez's students enter mainstream classes. Many are thriving there, meeting graduation requirements and preparing for college. One former student is studying to be a doctor. Another has received scholarships to fund her dream of becoming a teacher. Since he launched the ESL program nine years ago, the number of Hispanic students graduating from 300-student Royal High has been on the increase: eight in 1994, 20 in 2000, nearly 30 last year.
As a member of the Latino/a Educational Achievement Project, Godoy-Gonzalez is now lobbying the state legislature to expand financial aid so that more of these students can go to college. To legislators and any others who will listen, he delivers a passionate message: "These kids are here to stay in our communities. They are working hard to earn good grades and meet the standards we have set for them. Colleges and universities are willing to admit them, but their families need help paying the cost of college. High school cannot be the end of the road for these students. We can't share just part of the American dream with them."
Being squashed flat by a large heavy object can have its advantages. Just ask any kid who's read a whimsical children's book by the name of Flat Stanley. In the story, when young Stanley Lambchop is turned into a human pancake by a falling bulletin board, he doesn't despair. Instead, he makes the best of the situation as he discovers the benefits of being a mere half-inch thick. These include slipping down a street grate to retrieve his mother's lost ring, posing as the subject of a pastoral painting to catch art thieves at the Famous Museum, and folding himself into an envelope so that his parents can afford to send him to visit friends in California.
It's the last of these feats that has captured the imaginations of hundreds of schoolchildren throughout the Northwest and around the globe who are creating Flat Stanleys (essentially, paper dolls modeled after the storybook character) and other "flat people" (similar representations created in their own images and bearing their own "flat" names) to travel as exchange students to destinations near and far. Although Jeff Brown's book was published in 1964, this practice has only become widespread in recent years due to the development of an organized Flat Stanley Project with a home on the World Wide Web.
The project (http://flatstanley.enoreo.on.ca/) is the brainchild of Dale Hubert, a Canadian schoolteacher who saw the potential for Flat Stanley to become a vehicle for classroom instruction. Hubert's idea was to have kids send their Flat Stanleys to other schools with a letter asking a host class to show the flat visitor around and record his daily adventures in a journal, then return him and his travel journal to his home classroom. Hubert hoped to inspire kids on both ends to read and write letters, improving literacy skills in the process.
Writing for an audience has given purpose to the process of learning to write.When Flat Kirsten arrived in an envelope at Bainbridge Island's Captain Charles Wilkes Elementary School, third-grade teacher Alice Mendoza was puzzled. She had never heard of Flat Stanley. Fortunately, the paper girl arrived with a letter explaining the project and requesting that Mendoza's students show her what life was like on this Northwest isle, far from her Midwestern home. Mendoza thought it seemed like a fun opportunity and introduced the visitor to her class.
One at a time, student volunteers took turns hosting Flat Kirsten for an evening or a weekend, taking her along on such routine outings as softball practices and shopping trips, as well as on sightseeing excursions around Bainbridge Island and to Mount St. Helens. A number were inspired to record Flat Kirsten's adventures not only in writing, but with a camera as well; they sent this documentation with their flat friend when it was time for her to be mailed back home. The experience was such fun for the students that Mendoza decided to integrate the project into an interdisciplinary study of Pacific Rim cultures, incorporating learning goals in both language arts and social studies.
After creating paper representations of themselves, Mendoza's students set about writing the all-important letters that would accompany their flat alter-identities on their journeys, introducing them to their hosts and asking for the kind of information that would make their study of Pacific Rim cultures come alive. For third-graders, this involved such basics as learning how to write in correct letter format and how to address an envelope. It also included learning the nuances of effective communication, including such things as how to target writing to a particular audience and how to include details to make writing more engaging. The writing process included creating multiple drafts, undergoing peer and teacher reviews, and revising and editing work until a final, polished letter was ready to be mailed.
"We discussed what constitutes a quality letter," says Mendoza, "and put the standard on a chart" for easy reference. The list included reminders to make good use of paragraphs, pay attention to spelling and punctuation, and employ descriptive language. Mendoza also provided examples and modeled writing a letter to guide her students through the process. "Make your writing matter," Mendoza told her students. "Make it something someone will want to read."
Because students could see the real-world value of the assignment (after all, a good letter would be more likely to elicit the kind of response they desired), they took the assignment seriously.
"We started with our 'sloppy copy'," explains nine-year-old Chelsea, "and then looked at punctuation and spelling and if we needed to add anything to make it make sense. I tried to make mine as good as possible—I did, like, four drafts to get it perfect."
"In my first draft," says classmate Sasha, "I wrote too much stuff and misspelled things and was missing punctuation, but now I write much better letters." For example, Sasha notes, "Instead of just saying, 'She likes something,' Mrs. Mendoza helped me put better words, like 'She loves doing this and does it all the time.' It makes the person who's reading it really understand. I think I put more details into my work now."
In addition to sharing something about themselves and where they were from, students wanted to be sure that their hosts would send back information about their own life experiences and culture. To help her students learn to ask effective questions, Mendoza showed her students a video on cultures around the world and engaged them in a discussion of what cultural elements they might be interested in learning more about—for instance, information on the food and clothing of a country or how the arts might be celebrated. Mendoza says, "I seed the conversation by asking the kinds of questions that help students learn about another culture."
Once their letters were finished and their flat people tucked safely inside, students walked their envelopes to the school office to mail them to distant lands. Flat Sasha set off for Japan. Flat Nicholas flew to the Philippines. Flat Chelsea was on her way to Alaska.
And then the students waited.
While not everyone got a response in the ensuing weeks, Mendoza reports, the majority did. And of those returning envelopes, Mendoza says, "Wow! Kids got back photos and memorabilia with wonderful letters and stories" of each flat person's adventures. The students mounted this material on display boards and made presentations to their classmates.
A year later, students are still talking about each other's presentations. Jaimie remembers Michael's presentation on Thailand, complete with photos of colorful papier-mâché dragons in red and green and gold parading down the streets. Sasha was astounded by Nicholas's Philippine Island photographs of an exotic market where vegetables were stacked beneath strings of "fish and dead pigs hanging and all sorts of strange meats."
"I was really overwhelmed," says Mendoza, regarding the quality of the work throughout the project. "High motivation equals quality products," she explains. Students were so excited about the project that they were willing to do the work.
"We learned so much from this project," Mendoza says. For starters, "the kids' writing improved because they were held to high expectations." And other learning goals were met. "If you take the time to look at a project like Flat Stanley, " Mendoza says, "you can make the project work for you and see how it can be tailored to meet EALRs [Essential Academic Learning Requirements, the Washington state standards]." In this case, she says, "there were EALRs met up and down the ladder."
Mischelle Bain, a third-grade teacher at Kasuun Elementary in Anchorage, Alaska, agrees that the Flat Stanley Project is "a great way to meet curriculum requirements." She has found ways to address learning goals in language arts and social studies, and even in math and geography. For example, in math, students calculate the distance that their flat people have traveled to reach other destinations and the distance that other children's flat people have traveled to reach their classroom in Alaska. To reinforce geography lessons, students mark these journeys on a large bulletin board map with pins and color-coded string so that they can keep track of their own traveling flat people as well as those visiting from afar.
To address language arts and social studies learning goals, Bain follows an approach similar to Mendoza's. Her students take part in a writing process, preparing multiple drafts with both peer and teacher reviews, and asking probing questions to learn about how people in different places live. Since Bain's project is not tied to a specific geographic region, her students are free to send their flat people wherever they'd like—to friends or relatives, for example, or to another classroom in the United States or another country.
Writing for an audience has given purpose to the process of learning to write, Bain says. "Students are interacting with people instead of with an English book," she explains. "They're not just formulating a sentence to write a better sentence; it's for a purpose. This really makes connections for students."
Additionally, the practice of writing for different audiences elicits a different response from students. Bain says this provides good practice in the difference between public and private writing. "If students are writing to another classroom," she says, "the letter is more formal. If they're writing to Grandma, it's more personal. Kids are more serious about it when it's going to another classroom," she says, whereas "Grandma probably wouldn't critique it."
From a social studies standpoint, Bain says the project has been enlightening for her students. Because many of these pupils come from poor economic backgrounds, they have few opportunities for travel. This project allows them to learn about places far from home, including the lower 48. Bain smiles when she shares the story of one student who wanted to send his flat person way down south to Texas, but wanted to know if they spoke English there. "The project broadens their horizons," she says.
The trip to Anchorage is also enlightening for some of its virtual visitors. They are sometimes surprised to learn that Anchorage's citizens are not living in igloos, Bain says. When a flat visitor returns home, Bain tucks in a postcard of Anchorage's skyline, lined with tall buildings like any other big city. But she also tucks in postcards of regional wildlife, including bears and moose, as well as Alaska's famous Northern Lights.
"Kids see the differences," Bain notes, "but also a lot of similarities. They're often surprised at how much we have in common." Bain calls this the "hidden curriculum" of the Flat Stanley Project. While learning academic goals, children from different places are also learning to accept and appreciate each other.
Sasha, now a fourth-grader, says that she learned a lot about Japanese culture when Flat Sasha came home last spring. "I got an idea of what Japan looked like," she says, observing that "it was different than here." Still, she notes, there were striking similarities: Her host family included a father, a mother, and kids, much like any family here, and the father worked in an office with computers like many an American dad. And she adds: "The house was different on the outside—the roof was stone shingle and there were different kinds of plants, but inside it looked similar, like it could have been here."
Mendoza says her students have gained a world view that extends far beyond their Puget Sound island. They have gained "a connection to the world," and have come to see both the similarities and differences between other world cultures and their own. "In a pluralistic society," Mendoza says, "it is critically important for children's eyes to be opened to the cultural realities beyond their own." Especially after 9/11, she says, "the project has been a wonderful way for kids to realize how much we have in common versus what is different."
Aberdeen, Washington—In the early morning hours of January 6, 2002, the oldest building on the Aberdeen High School campus went up in flames. Built in 1909, the Weatherwax building was, for many, the heart and soul of both the school and the community. Within its classic red-brick walls was a storehouse of communal memory—a copy of every annual in the school's history, decades-old trophies displayed next to the newly won, murals and photographs reflecting nearly a century of school and town history. When the fire was finally extinguished, the school's library, textbook depository, computer lab, Special Education department, English language learners department, counseling offices, and 22 classrooms were lost. One of those classrooms was that of English teacher, David McKay, the 2002 Washington State Teacher of the Year.
In the aftermath, the school scrambled to find classroom space. McKay was given a seldom-used basement room near the school's auditorium. "It smelled awful," recalls Loyal, one of McKay's students. "I think he went through the rubble and pulled out whatever he could find. He had papers spread out all over the room, trying to dry them out. It smelled like smoke for weeks." McKay's senior teaching assistant, Jason, nods his head in agreement. "He's so dedicated," he says with a smile, "he's crazy."
They buy in to the idea that they are making books—something that will last a long time, be found in homes and local libraries, be read by people they know.McKay's dedication, passion for teaching, and ability to rise to the challenge are the hallmarks of his success. He's known throughout the school for his intensity, good humor, and ability to engage his students. His style of reading out loud, for instance, complete with facial expressions, gestures, and voices for each character, is legendary. "My first couple weeks in his class—I thought he was nuts," says Loyal. "I was like, 'What is this?' But pretty soon it was my favorite class. He definitely gets you into it, because he's so into it."
With more than a decade of teaching experience behind him, McKay has never stopped looking for new ways to challenge his students and himself. During the 1999-2000 school year, he decided to take a deeper look at his writing instruction. Frustrated with his inability to get all his students motivated to do their best work, he decided to try something different: a yearlong project to research, write, publish, and sell an entire book. "I needed an assignment that would take students to a higher level," McKay says. "Being published is attractive to many students. They buy in to the idea that they are making books—something that will last a long time, be found in homes and local libraries, be read by people they know. It challenges them to raise their standards to another level."
The next step for McKay was to choose a subject that would not only engage the students, but also be a meaningful contribution to the community and a financial success. "We do a market study to determine how many books to publish for each project," he says. "It's very important to be accurate. The sales need to cover the cost of making the books. Without sales, projects in the future might not happen."
McKay wanted something that would tap into the deep community spirit and colorful history of Aberdeen, a community of about 16,000 located on Grays Harbor, about 50 miles west of Olympia. McKay quickly recognized a good subject. The tradition of a Thanksgiving Day football game between Aberdeen and neighboring Hoquiam dates back to at least 1906. "This is the most intense rivalry I have ever seen," says McKay, "and the entire community is 'in on it.'"
With the full support of the school's administration, McKay sent his students into the community to interview their parents, families, and community members who had graduated from either high school between 1906 and 1973. Students went into assisted-living centers and local restaurants to get as much firsthand information as they could about the early days of the rivalry. In the end, they had gathered more than 100 oral histories. From there, McKay sent students to the library. They looked in old newspapers and school annuals, double-checked the facts, and collected articles and photographs. Every student was required to submit a written document. McKay then chose one Junior English class to compile and edit all the materials into a professional-quality manuscript.
When the manuscript was complete, McKay sent it to a nearby book publishing company and ordered 1,000 copies. Within two months, the first run had sold out. With the help of the district office, McKay had secured $10,000 toward the publishing costs, but the book immediately paid for itself. Another 500 copies were ordered, and they, too, sold out. It was an enormous success with the community.
It was also a hit with students. "It was fun, and it was really challenging," says Leslie, now one of McKay's senior students. "You wanted it perfect because you knew people were going to be reading it. It definitely wasn't something you were just going to do in one night to get a grade." For Jason, the subject matter made it interesting. "Pretty much anything went," he says. "Some pretty colorful stuff has happened over the years, because of how strong the rivalry is, but he [McKay] let us keep it in. As long as we had a source for it, it went in." Loyal agrees, "It was interesting stuff you actually wanted to hear about. Everyone could relate to it."
For McKay, success has led to success. Sales of the book added up to twice the investment for printing. Profits were put into a general fund that has supported further projects, including The Grays Harbor County Book of Wisdom (2001) and Lutefisk for the Bobcat Soul: Personal Essays Written by Students of Aberdeen High School (done annually for the past three years). Each project has been self-sustaining and met McKay's goal of increasing student motivation and raising the level of their writing.
"It's clearly more difficult and challenging for the students than just writing a paper," he says. "They understand that the stakes are high. Because publishing is permanent, accuracy and correctness are extremely important. Almost all of them rise to the challenge, and some go farther—they discover that they are writers and have something to offer other people. They are extremely proud to be published authors, and they learn a great deal about how writing can affect people's lives."
This attention to both the big picture and the small details fits seamlessly into McKay's overall teaching strategy. "The projects are one part of a broad process," he says. "We use the six traits (of writing assessment), study grammar, build vocabulary, have writing workshops, and do a lot of other things, but I like using project-based learning. If you look at the state standards, this addresses many of the bullets, but it also mirrors how we all have to operate outside of school. It helps students understand that the beginning of a process is as important as the end. When you add the element of working with others, it really becomes applicable and beneficial in terms of lifelong learning."
Still working out of his temporary classroom, McKay continues to teach his students not only writing skills, but also the discipline needed to weather adversity and complete demanding projects. Their most recent, the Phoenix Edition of Lutefisk for the Bobcat Soul, shows students again rising to the challenge.
Nikiski, Alaska—Here on the northeastern edge of the Kenai Peninsula, blankets of evergreen drape the hillsides, frothy waves slap against the rocky shore, gulls and raptors dance overhead. Across the Cook Inlet, the mountains of the Alaska Range can be seen raising their snowcapped heads to the sun. It's easy to see the allure, to understand why early homesteaders were willing to face wild animals, arctic winters, and the absence of any creature comforts to settle here.
When Nikiski's first homesteaders came to this area in the 1950s, there was little more than a tire-track road winding through the wilderness. Early residents had to carve out their own roadways and then had to clear the land and fell spruce to build cabins. Many made do with trailers, tents, and lean-tos until they could get more permanent structures over their heads, which often meant enduring brutal winter weather with temperatures far below zero. The coldest year Sally Ernst can remember on the peninsula, the mercury dropped to 40 below.
Young and old were working together, creating something real and important.
Once you had a cabin, life still wasn't easy. There were no phones, no electricity, no indoor plumbing. And keeping food on the table through the dark days of winter was a challenge. If you were smart, says Donnis Thompson, you managed to squirrel away some potatoes and cabbage, and, if you were lucky, maybe shoot a moose or two. Early on, there weren't even stores for buying groceries in the summer, says Margaret Wirz, whose family came here to fish for the canneries when she was a child. Supplies—including 50-gallon barrels of gas and cases of canned and packaged foods—were trucked in along the beach. The same truck would then be filled with fish to head back to the canneries.
These stories would likely be lost if not for a recent eighth-grade project at Nikiski Middle School. The interdisciplinary project—bridging social studies, language arts, science, and math—focused on the local community as a subject of inquiry. The effort, aligned with state and district learning goals, involved weaving writing throughout the curriculum and including action research as part of the writing process. Students assumed roles of historians, writers, scientists, and statisticians, working on projects ranging from recording oral histories and composing poetry to preparing scientific field reports and summarizing mathematical studies. The culmination of the project was a 70-page book written by the students for and about the community: Away From Almost Anything Else: An Interdisciplinary Study of Nikiski.
The community seemed like the ideal subject for the interdisciplinary study, says Scott Christian, the English teacher who oversaw the project. For starters, students didn't know much about the history of their community. And while all took part in outdoor activities, most had never stopped to ponder the natural treasures that surrounded them. What they saw as teens, many of whom had lived in Alaska all of their life, was a small, rural town in the middle of nowhere where nothing much was happening. "The students had a real chip on their shoulders," says Christian, now the director of the Professional Development Center at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau. "Students thought that places like California and New York were cool, but where they lived was boring."
Teachers saw the community study as an opportunity for students to learn about the heritage of their unique town and gain some appreciation for the environment in which they lived. Because teachers had already been engaged in an effort to create a community of learners, they saw a prime opportunity in a project that would involve community members, young and old, in a joint effort to preserve a bit of Nikiski's heritage.
The first part of the project involved preserving the oral histories of notable residents. Many students sought out original homesteaders, often a grandparent or neighbor. Interview topics included such subjects as reasons for moving to Alaska, including jobs, love, and adventure; the challenges of early homesteading; natural events affecting the area, such as the devastating earthquake of 1964, blizzards, and drought; and shifting employment opportunities, including the shift from commercial fishing in the early days to oil drilling and production in more recent times. Additionally, as eighth-grader Mario noted while recording the oral history of an early homesteader, "Almost any sourdough in Alaska has one or two bear stories to tell...." This claim is borne out in numerous accounts of interactions with "brownies," as well as confrontations with others of the four-footed variety, including porcupines hiding in outhouses, squirrels invading cabins, and stubborn moose blocking trails. Students were as happy to hear and record these stories as their elders were to share them.
"An important byproduct of these interviews was the generational interaction that cannot be achieved by field trips to the senior citizens' center for Christmas carols. Here, the young and old were working together, creating something real and important," Christian writes in Writing To Make a Difference: Classroom Projects for Community Change, a book he co-edited with Chris Benson. "Time after time," he adds, "the interviewees expressed how delightful it was to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with a teenager." Christian asserts that, despite bad reports in the media, "teens today are capable of complex, sophisticated work of high quality." To help them achieve this, he says teachers must employ practices "such as cooperative learning, authentic assessment, integrated technology, and interdisciplinary teaching."
While writing was integral to the study of all subject areas, language arts were front and center during the second part of the project when the environment became the inspiration for poetry. Students first studied works by several poets, including Robert Frost and e. e. cummings. Then they took a field trip to nearby Bishop Creek, a salmon-rich waterway that winds through a heavily wooded area and feeds into the Cook Inlet. They spent time observing the natural wonders and scribbling ideas for their own poems. They then returned to school for a monthlong process of writing, engaging in peer and teacher reviews, and editing multiple drafts.
The idea of writing as a process was new to most of Christian's students who were well-practiced at filling in the blanks on worksheets, but intimidated by the directive to analyze a rough draft and see how it could be improved. Because they were motivated to produce a quality publication, they saw the value of honing their work to create the best piece of writing possible.
Christian helped by modeling the process of writing. He subjected his own rough drafts—mistakes and all—to his students' criticism, and revised his work to make improvements. "If it's OK for the teacher to make mistakes and do five revisions," he says, the students decide, "It's OK for me." He adds: "There's a very different environment when teachers are writing—when teachers present themselves as writers and show kids the idiosyncratic nature of writing. It makes it more real and accessible."
Poetry turned out to be a perfect medium for these teens. "Their school identity is what happens in middle school. They really decide who they're going to be," Christian observes. "Poetry is a way to process what they're thinking and feeling." He adds: "One way or another, they'll express themselves. This is a positive, directed way to do it."
At Bishop Creek, "kids picked up images and connected them to their lives," Christian says. "That was thrilling to see." Jessica, for example, saw two bald eagles perched in a tree and compared them to herself and her mother, using the metaphor as an opportunity to explore this relationship. When Jason saw trees' roots exposed and dangling over the creek bank "grasping for life, wishing to be on rich soil," he compared this natural erosion of the environment to the process of human life where, he writes, people move "closer and closer to death/ And those who grow on the edge/ Will fall early."
A number of students found a voice through the process, and some even found peer acceptance. At the outset, "Jason did not see himself as a writer," Christian says. "He was very quiet and saw himself as an outsider." When classmates expressed how impressed they were with his poem, telling him, "You're like Shakespeare," there was a real transformation. "That was his entry into the eighth-grade group."
Writing scientific field reports turned out to be more of a challenge for students. Because these reports were factual and objective—describing the step-by-step process by which they collected samples of plant life from a two-by-two-foot plot of land at Bishop Creek and then cataloging and identifying the species—students had to learn to write in what seemed another language entirely. "It was hard for kids," says Christian, after the first-person narratives of the oral histories and the emotive, imagistic language of poetry. "It's like using a different part of your brain," he says, "writing in a new voice, to a new audience." Summarizing statistical data for the math portion of the project was similarly vexing. But students rose to the challenge and created a body of work in which both teachers and students could take pride.
Clearly, the Nikiski project reinforces the value of authentic work for engaging students. "I don't think kids are used to doing sophisticated, complex, professional work in school," says Christian. Through projects like this, students are motivated to learn because they have a real purpose. He adds: "Middle school students can smell B.S. a mile away. Their mantra at this age is, 'Why are we doing this?'" They want to know what value an assignment has in the real world. The Nikiski project, which provided the community with the first written history of the area, gave them a job with real-world value. The book was not only distributed among the students and their families, but was also made available for sale to the public via the local post office and bookstore. No doubt, it will serve as a valuable resource for generations to come.
Christian reports that the publication of Away From Almost Everything Else was "a great way to celebrate student work," as well as an effective motivator that "helped them take their work to another level."
As important, the project helped these teens gain a sense of pride in their community. The process helped them to see that "there was real history right here," Christian says, "and that where they lived was pretty cool after all."
Medford, Oregon—With legs crossed and arms loosely folded, 23 seven- to nine-year-olds settle on "la alfombra mágica," ready to travel wherever teacher JoAnna Lovato might be steering them today. Their "magic carpet," bright with primary colors, is always fueled up and ready to go. From the front of their classroom, these students journey through stories to places where their family roots run deep—countries like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Colombia—and then back to this country where their lives now branch out.
The magic carpet seems the perfect imaginary transport for these children, all native Spanish speakers, who are part of Lovato's bilingual class at Wilson Elementary. One of her objectives is to teach these second- and third-graders to read and write in their native language first, and then help them transfer these skills to English. This approach better enables them to one day become bilingual adults who have retained ties to their cultural heritage, attained fluency in two languages, and learned to navigate successfully in American culture.
Each of us is like a tree,
and what we encounter in life—
our experiences and so forth—yields fruit.Instead of seeing her students' sociolinguistic background as a barrier to instruction, Lovato celebrates it and uses it to forward her students' education in not just one, but two languages. "The stronger the literacy foundation they have in their first language," says Lovato, "the more they will have to transfer over to English, as supported by research." She adds: "Building a strong literacy foundation in my students' first language helps ensure academic success and heightened self-esteem." In short, she argues, it helps them succeed in life.
To engage her students, Lovato says she tries to employ "projects that are not only authentic, but culturally appropriate," making use of students' prior experiences as a springboard for learning. "Students are not blank slates," she says. "I find it so important to tap into what the students bring to the classroom."
One such project is called the Tree of Life. Lovato got the idea at the 2002 California Association of Bilingual Education conference early last year. Educators and authors Yvonne Freeman, David Freeman, and Sandra Mercuri delivered a presentation on their book, Closing the Achievement Gap: How to Reach Limited-Formal-Schooling and Long-Term English Learners, and on the Tree of Life project discussed therein, whereby students explored their family trees, cultural traditions, and ultimately their own identities through writing. Although the project was originally intended for middle school students, Lovato decided to adapt the project for her own second- and third-graders.
Earlier in the year, Lovato had engaged her students in a project where they read published autobiographies by others with multicultural backgrounds—Just Like Me: Stories and Self-Portraits by Fourteen Artists, edited by Harriet Rohmer, and Family Pictures by Carmen Lomas Garza, for example—and watched Lovato model writing her own autobiography. They then immersed themselves in writing their own autobiographies and family stories, from rough drafts, through peer and teacher reviews, revisions, and ultimately to "publication."
Through the Tree of Life project, Lovato saw an opportunity to reinforce earlier lessons and take learning a step further. The project has each student create a colorful laminated paper "wheel" that carries the stories and images of his or her life. Lovato compares these 11-inch- diameter wheels to the fruit borne on trees. "The tree serves as a common metaphor for life," she explains. "Each of us is like a tree, and what we encounter in life— our experiences and so forth—yields fruit."
Like the complexities of life, each wheel is layered. The top layer bears an illustration of a road, symbolic of each student's path through life, and includes a clear laminate triangular "window" which, when rotated, reveals slices of the layer beneath. Featured on the top layer is a three-stanza autobiographical poem written by the student. Each stanza of this poem begins with the words "Yo soy" ("I am") and the student's first name, and then continues on to respectively reveal stories of the student's past, present, and future. Among this group of bicultural students, similar themes often appear.
For example, in "past" poems, students who have immigrated often write about their lives before and after coming to the United States. Olegario, for instance, writes about the poverty his family endured when he was a young child in Mexico. He tells how his father moved first to the U.S. to find work so that he could send money for food and clothing home to his wife and children. Sharing like histories is empowering for these kids, reports Lovato. In a mainstreamed classroom, they might not have the confidence to share these stories of struggle, but here they find their voice.
In "present" poems, many students focus on their school and teacher, as well as their wish to become bilingual. Already, it seems they grasp the value of being at home in both Hispanic and American cultures.
In "future" poems, students reflect on their dreams and ambitions. Many plan to go to college, prompted not only by their teacher, but also by parents who see that education is the key to opportunity for their children. A girl named Kimberly writes: "All of my life, I am going to make good decisions. I am going to continue being a good student in school, so that I can go to the university. I want to study to be a doctor."
The second wheel reveals stories of four significant events in the child's life. Many focus on family—important for all children, but especially in Hispanic culture. Students write about holidays spent with extended families or the day a younger sibling was born. "When my sister Marisol was born," writes Adilene, "it was a very special day for my whole family and also for me because before I didn't have anyone to play with."
Often, events center on religious holidays or celebrations. Students write about "Las Posadas," the nine-day celebration leading up to Christmas, or about a sister's "quinceanera," a celebration marking a girl's 15th birthday, when she becomes a young woman in the eyes of her community. Students often write about visiting family in their or their parents' home countries. Julie, for example, writes of a trip to see her grandmother in Mexico, who owns three dogs and sells sweets out of a little store in her home.
The final layer of the wheel, visible from the opposite side, includes written descriptions of four "artifacts" from the child's life. These can include physical objects, such as a favorite gift, or things more esoteric, including advice passed down from an elder. Anaibett writes: "My great grandfather gave me a chain [necklace] that had a picture of my great grandmother and me and my great grandfather. He gave me this chain in Mexico. I put it in the drawer where I put my clothes and there is where I left it in Guayameo, Mexico, in my favorite country." Julie, on the other hand, sees her family members as "gifts from God."
Throughout the layers of the wheel, illustrations highlight details of the student's prose, resulting in a wheel that reflects the child's life in words and pictures.
"Writing needs to be engaging, empowering, meaningful, and fun," says Lovato. That this project measures up on Lovato's scale is evident in the quality of student work. "Writing is such a powerful mode of expression," she says. It "truly empowers students and heightens their levels of learning when given opportunities to go through the entire writing process—brainstorm, pre-draft, rough draft, peer conferences, revisions, teacher-student conferences, and final draft for publication."
Lovato models each part of the project on a large easel at the front of the classroom, while her students gather on the magic carpet. "I model everything," she says, noting the importance of showing her students that "we are all writers." She also shows her students books that have been issued in second and third editions, evidence that even professional writers and editors go back to revise and improve their work.
Lovato also credits "Las características de la buena escritura" (known more commonly as the "Spanish Traits") developed by NWREL and tailored to the Spanish language by former NWREL assessment specialist Will Flores, as being useful in her approach to teaching writing. Flores "utilized rich Spanish language to describe each trait and also provided great ideas and many resources for writing in both areas of instruction and authentic assessment that I continuously use," Lovato says. She displays the traits on a classroom wall and says, "These are a great reference and guide for my students—and myself—to read and use over and over. Further, the Spanish traits are not a translation. They were developed in Spanish for Spanish writing, and take into account the differences that exist in Spanish writing."
Lovato makes a point not to correct too much in students' writing, especially early in the process. "Fixating on grammar can create roadblocks" for students, she explains. The important thing is for them to learn to express themselves—to build on strengths and then go back and address the nits in revisions. A parallel can be drawn to helping these students learn to express themselves in their native language first and then weave in English, rather than force them to communicate in English at the outset where they will likely find the new language to be a barrier to expression.
"The writing process seems long at times," Lovato says, "but it is well worth it. My students learn so much."
At the end of the Tree of Life project, Lovato hangs the student wheels from a large construction paper tree in the breezeway outside the classroom during the school's "Celebration of Learning" so that other students and visiting parents can enjoy and appreciate her students' hard work. "One of the beauties of this project," she surmises, "is that it fully embraced my students—their language, culture, and family traditions. They loved it because it was about them, and they all took great pride in their projects."
Of the year's work, Lovato says, "It was a huge success in that nearly half of my students were either not reading or writing—or were at the beginning stages—in any language at the beginning of the year." By the end of the year, she reports, all were reading and writing in their native language of Spanish, and most were reading and writing in English as well. Of course, reaching grade-level proficiency is a long process for ELL students, taking several years, Lovato notes. But she adds, "First language literacy is what opened the door, and truly makes all the difference." 
|
This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2002 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Date of Last Update: 1/30/2003  |
