1st Edition

Official Portraits and Unofficial Counterportraits of At Risk Students Writing Spaces in Hard Times

By Richard J. Meyer Copyright 2010
    312 Pages
    by Routledge

    312 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    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 Biographies

    Things Fall Apart

    The Classroom as a "Site of Struggle"

    Struggle and the Use of Time

    Writing as Carnival

    Carnivals Breed Struggle

    Counterportraits, Struggles, Legitimacy, and Possibilities

    Chapter 8: Writing Places as Hybrid Spaces

    Sixth Graders Get Serious

    Poetry in the Biography Genre

    Hybridized Texts and Contexts

    Hybridized Spaces and Counterportraits

    Chapter 9: Products, Presentations, and Power

    Our First Public Venue

    Reading Their Work in Small Groups

    Slam Poetry

    For Families

    Counterportraits and Spheres of Influence

    When Small Spheres Align…

    Chapter 10: Suffering, Struggles, and the Community

    Home Visits

    Bringing the Community to the Sixth Grade

    Writers’ Reflections on the Year

    Reflections on self-as-writer and Counterportraits

    Reflections on Writing and Counterportraits

    What else, what next, and Counterportraits

    Thank You Notes, Relationships, and Counterportraits

    Critical Literacy, Hope and Counterportraits

    Chapter 11: Writing Spaces for Better Times

    The Purposes of School, the Search for Joy, & the Spirit of the Child

    Inner Struggles

    Language & Identity Struggles

    School as a Site of Struggle

    Knowledge/Power Struggle

    Agency: Responding to Struggles

    Agency and Responsibilities in Composing Counterportraits

    Agency and Responsibility, the Bigger Picture

    Agency and Responsibility in Schools

    Agency and Responsibility in Partnerships

    Changing the Course of History

    Epilogue: Microeducational Economies

    Appendix 1: Counterportraiture as Method/Method as Political Work

    Appendix 2: Full Text of Some Biographies

    Appendix 3: Storyboard

    Appendix 4: Editorial Checklist

    References

    Index of Children’s Work

    Subject Index

     

     

    Biography

    Richard J. Meyer is Professor in the Department of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies at the College of Education, University of New Mexico.