Developing Knowledge Communities through Partnerships for Literacy: Volume 37

Cover of Developing Knowledge Communities through Partnerships for Literacy
Subject:

Table of contents

(22 chapters)
Abstract

Craig and Auzenne-Curl reflect on how their individual experiences and personal practical knowledge developed in context over time contribute to a collective review of the backdrop of the stories of experience shared in this volume. The chapter provides context for the study that inspired the collection and a preview of the chapters yet to come.

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe our experiences creating and providing job-embedded professional development to teachers with an emphasis on creative writing. Our focus is on the intersectionality of communities. We share narratives and scenarios from each of the communities – the participating teachers/administrators and the writing coaches collaborating with them. The program's objective is to empower teachers to see themselves as writers to become more effective teachers of writing. We discovered the unique nature of each campus community of teachers/writers and also found the need to provide a space and intentional structures to enable writing coaches to support each other. To measure our impact on teachers, we describe a qualitative evaluation process. Using the lens of two disruptive forces – a hurricane and a pandemic – we explore the implications for the future of the work. Each disruption brought inequities in education to the forefront of our thinking.

Abstract

As part of a larger study into the influence of a Writers in the Schools (WITS) professional development consultancy, this narrative inquiry began just as Hurricane Harvey, the second most costly hurricane to hit the United States, devastated the Texas Gulf Coast in August 2017 and drew to a close in late 2020 during the COVID-19 global pandemic. This chapter explores the 2017–2018 school-year interactions between WITS Collaborative writer, Mary Austin (pseudonym), and six writing teachers with whom she worked at McKay High School (pseudonym) in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. With record flooding and widespread damage causing school-opening delays, teachers, students, and WITS consultants navigated a rip tide of emotions as they strived to balance educational/professional needs and duties with personal loss and unexpected financial burdens. This inquiry examines how WITS teacher professional development was carried out in the midst of these trying circumstances.

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss how an outside writing program was able to assist the stakeholders at a local middle school and the story behind the leaders involved in the process. This program was part of a larger system of “interventions” geared toward improving student success and teacher efficacy. Traditional interventions (after-school tutorials, grouping by state assessment scores, test-taking strategies) were viewed as lacking when it came to their impact on the campus's mostly students of color. Knowing the potential impact of a solid reading and writing program on urban youth, the faculty on the campus teamed with a Writers in the Schools (WITS) writer who proposed several promising practices. The contributions of a professional writer, real-world examples, and ongoing teacher professional development with support contributed to creating a knowledge community of writers that, in addition to creating more scholarship for students and staff, manifested itself in more minority students performing at the highest levels on the state accountability assessments.

Abstract

This chapter provides a look at the experiences of two Teacher Educators in the Field (TEFs) as they work to shift writing instruction in suburban districts across the Houston metroplex. A review of the literature on most promising practices for literacy educators is provided along with narrative interspersion of restoried enactments of TEFs in public education systems serving students in grades 6–12. Our planned and lived experiences were often dissonant due to the complexity of increasingly diverse demographic populations in fast-growing districts who struggled to shift the focus of instruction in correlation to audience. Our stories present focused reflection on the need for additional supports geared toward teacher development, TEF retention, and consistent engagement from campus and district-level administrators.

Abstract

This chapter is a personal account of the development of the Writers in the Schools program by immediate past-Executive Director, Dr. Robin Reagler. She notes the roots of the organization and the challenges of internal and external growth from 1998 to 2020.

Abstract

This chapter explores the complexities of leading the improvement of literacy instruction at a secondary school populated by a majority of culturally diverse, at-risk, and low-income students. The principal's narrative charts the journey to evaluate the campus' comprehensive needs and human capital. In an effort to build teacher capacity and foster authentic learning experiences, the school leader partners with an instructional specialist and a nonprofit organization, WITS Houston (WITS), Houston. The unique professional development program designed by WITS allows teachers to connect directly with writers in order to cultivate their own voices as authors and create more culturally relevant writing instruction for students. After navigating the challenges of program implementation and the COVID-19 pandemic, the campus successfully launches the WITS Collaborative as a multitiered approach to school improvement and literacy intervention. To catalog the experience, the principal details the objectives of the partnership, preparatory considerations, tensions regarding enactment, and the implications for the field.

Abstract

This chapter is guided by Abdulkader Mokhtari's reflections on participation in the Writers in the Schools Collaborative. As a member of the professional development program on two campuses in the Houston Area, Mokhtari recalls the program model as part of a structured enactment of DuFour and Eaker's (1998) Professional Learning Community concept and an organically nurtured, portfolio-based knowledge community (Craig, 2007). During what he recalls to be a difficult time on campuses seeking to engage learners in a fresh approach to literacy, Mokhtari recounts pivotal moments of success and struggle to Chestin T. Auzenne-Curl and KaLeah Hicks, both former high school teachers and contributors to research on teacher development programs.

Abstract

To be a writer, one must write. Research shows when teachers write and identify as writers, they transfer their writing practice into their classroom, positively impacting their students' writing development. Shifting instructional practices or identities requires educators to self-determine a gap in order to take on transformative learning experiences, such as mentoring, professional development, or modeled learning. Often professional development is chosen by administrators for educators to shift their instructional practice, ignoring a teacher's curriculum-maker role, and best-loved self identity. This narrative inquiry analysis details one teacher-writer in a creative writing professional development residency as she supports educators with a goal to transform educators into teacher-writers. This chapter includes the small step successes and systematic struggles the author faced as she modeled the writer's craft and writer's workshop strategies with her teachers. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the important role teachers have to decide, navigate, and discover their own best-loved self-teaching identity.

Abstract

This chapter revolves around a Zoom conversation between Tim Martindell and Cheryl Craig to which Chestin T. Auzenne-Curl added field-based evidence and reflective comments. The exchange between Martindell and Craig had to do with how Tim facilitated the Writers in the Schools (WITS) writers in conjunction with Tina and Maryann who led the WITS Collaborative. The embedded snapshots and excerpts stemmed from the field notes we accumulated during the life of the project. The conversation discusses some of the fine points of facilitation as well as the boundary areas where what unfolds fringes on the unknown. Near the end, hope for the future is discussed.

Abstract

Written as a parallel story, this article explores two teachers' perceptions of their peers' responses or attitudes toward students at various points during the defined period of demographic shift from the perspective of two Black female employees at the largest high school in Hope City District, Hope High School. As the community became more ethnically, socioeconomically, and linguistically diverse, the school climate began to change. So did teachers' attitudes. The purpose of this second article is to explore how shifting racial, socioeconomic, and linguistic demographics impact teachers' perceptions of students' achievement and students’ ability in a suburban context. This narrative inquiry examines the narrative resonances across the parallel stories of two teachers of color who worked through a demographic shift on a suburban campus. Their perceptions of White teachers' attitudes toward non-White students, as well as the echoes of their own stories of experience, are presented to promote discourse on future narrative inquiries concerning stories to live and leave by (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Craig, 2015).

Abstract

This study explores the experiences of five high school–aged youth involved in creative writing and poetry slam performances operated by a nonprofit organization in the city of Houston, Texas. Seeking to understand how poetry may have helped the youth in this study, Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) (Masny & Cole, 2007) is used as an interpretive tool in this paper. In addition, the literary writing style of bildungsroman, or writing that reflects on one's worldview and personhood through lived experiences, is discussed as part and parcel to the poet's process because of the personal narratives used in their poetry. Narrative inquiry methodology was used in this longitudinal study because it allowed fluid ways of analyzing emergent sociocultural issues faced by the participants, who identified as Black, LGBTIQ, Asian American and also indicated intersectional, marginalized life experiences. It is hoped that this study will outline some of the benefits of art-based education and bildungsroman for marginalized learners, as well as inspire further research into art-based pedagogies and assessments, which may better reflect multiple literacies.

Abstract

In this chapter, I trace instances of meaning-making through fragments of two interviews. Using restorying and the construction of parallel stories to interpret resonances across the participants' stories and my own stories of experience, I draw strong personal connections with elements of each semi-structured interview. In a revisitation of the narrative threads of identity, community, and change, the image of Black women as literacy educators who co-construct meaning in and out of the classroom is rendered.

Abstract

Following the mass closing of US schools during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the authors noted an increase in discourse among literacy teachers and literacy coaches on social media platforms. Over a period of 9 months, the authors followed the interactions and work of social media scholars on the Twitter platform. In reflecting on Craig's (1995; Craig, Curtis, Kelly, Martindell, & Perez, 2020) illustrative pillars of knowledge communities and Brock's work on black cyberculture, we use narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) to: (1) explore the elements of social media scholarship and (2) reflect on how active engagement in social media scholarship aids in the development of online knowledge communities that amplify and sustain the work of black womxn scholars.

Abstract

This concluding chapter discusses how the unfurling of the Writers in the Schools (WITS) Collaborative took place against a backdrop of four pandemics: COVID-19, the movement against racial injustice, climate change, and the inevitable economic despair that spills over into the field of education. The work looks backwards on the chapters in this book and their findings. It also looks forward to the lessons that the WITS Collaborative has taught – and will teach – as it moves toward a future unknown, yet much anticipated.

Cover of Developing Knowledge Communities through Partnerships for Literacy
DOI
10.1108/S1479-3687202137
Publication date
2021-09-20
Book series
Advances in Research on Teaching
Editors
Series copyright holder
Emerald Publishing Limited
ISBN
978-1-83982-267-4
eISBN
978-1-83982-266-7
Book series ISSN
1479-3687