Literacy

Literature as identity-affirming, teaching as liberatory

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:42:08 Comments Off

Dr. Chantal Francois and Dr. Jen McLaughlin Cahill, co-authors of Identity-Affirming Literacies in Schools, discuss their time at the school they call Pearl Street Collaborative, a progressive secondary school on Manhattan’s Lower East Side that prioritizes teacher inquiry and collaboration. Schedules include time for teachers to meet frequently with grade and content colleagues. Drawing on the work of Freire and Lilia Bartolomé, Drs. Francois and McLaughlin Cahill used literature to support students’ identities, including by integrating an LGBTQ+ focus into English classes.

Pop culture literacies: Engaging students in critical analysis

Jon Moscow 00:36:41 Comments Off

We speak with Dr. Mia Hood, author of Pop Culture Literacies: Teaching Interpretation, Response, and Composition in a Digital World, about analyzing popular music and films along with more traditional literature. Dr. Hood talks about helping students to think about their ethical perspectives while engaging with “entertainment,” and the importance of educators’ resisting the temptation to impose their own “expert” interpretations in favor of modeling the process. We also discuss how teachers can resist imposing their views while teaching for democracy and social justice.

Going deep: Student-directed learning in Performance Standards Consortium schools

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:39:31 Comments Off

We speak with Adam Grumbach, social studies program coordinator of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, and Naseem Haamid, a law student who attended Fannie Lou Hamer High School. We discuss inquiry based learning, Performance Based Assessment Tests, Habits of Mind, and self-directed, interdisciplinary portfolios, as alternatives to standardized-test driven curricula.

Critiquing the “science of reading” movement: Teaching reading is “both/and”

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:34:45 Comments Off

Lynne Einbender and Susie Rolander, reading and literacy faculty at Bank Street College, talk about supporting children’s learning to read and the components of a full-fledged language arts program. One size does not fit all: children with different strengths and experiences have a spectrum of needs.

“Parents’ rights” campaigns: Targeting school books and curricula

Jon Moscow 00:31:15 Comments Off

Dr. Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI, Public Religion Research Institute, analyzes current “parents’ rights” campaigns and their precedents. At a time of demographic change, conservative Christians seek to ban books and curricula that conflict with their educational agenda. Dr. Deckman discusses the use of social media and the importance of where people get their news in shaping these battles. PRRI’s polling data show what parents and the public think about school issues.

Norman Fruchter on the pioneering alternative high school he and colleagues built in Newark in the 1970s (Encore)

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:38:37 Comments Off

We speak with Norm Fruchter, long-time educational activist and thought leader, about Independence School, an experimental high school where the ideal was that someone walking into a classroom couldn’t tell the teacher from the students. We discuss lessons learned – and perhaps forgotten – about supporting students whose original schools failed them. Among the school’s strengths were authentic, enduring relationships among teachers and students, teaching strategies that enabled illiterate students to learn to read without embarrassment, month-long internship breaks, and curriculum that referenced students’ life experiences.

Holistic education: Joy, wellness, and rigor (Encore)

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:50:11 Comments Off

We speak with Dr. Linda Nathan of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship and the Perrone-Sizer Institute for Creative Leadership about her experience in creating progressive schools. Dr. Nathan says all teachers, no matter their subject areas, should have expertise in teaching reading and students with moderate disabilities. The arts are central to her educational vision. Dr. Nathan talks about how to achieve predictable and collaborative authentic assessment of student work and how to deal with standardized test requirements when necessary. She also describes why “grit” is not enough for student success when students are caught in the insidious web of a racist system.

Students doing original research: Project-based learning in Ohio (Encore)

Jon Moscow 00:56:23 Comments Off

We speak with middle school teachers, Debbie Holecko and Claudia Bestor, and their former student, Rafel Alshakergi, about a student-led research project that led to ethical civic engagement. Rafel explains how the experience emboldened her to ask questions and “speak [her] mind.” The project, which got national attention, cut against Ohio’s high-stakes test orientation; many teachers are afraid to do project-based learning because Ohio doesn’t have tenure and bases 40% of teacher evaluation on student test scores. The teachers discuss how to meet standards through project-based learning. This interview is just a joy to listen to! (Encore)

Math literacy: Every student’s right (Part 2)

Jon Moscow 00:28:44 Comments Off

We continue our conversation with Dr. Terri Bucci of the Mathematics Literacy Initiative at OSU’s Mansfield campus. Dr. Bucci observes that we rarely ask children how they learn best. MLI’s implementation of the Algebra Project changes the classroom culture, giving agency to even the youngest students. “We have to get rid of ‘sharecropper education.'” Dr. Bucci talks about the constitutional amendment that Bob Moses envisioned, guaranteeing a quality education to every child.

Math literacy: Every student’s right

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:41:48 Comments Off

We speak with Dr. Terri Bucci of the Mathematics Literacy Initiative at Ohio State University, Mansfield. Beginning in kindergarten, the MLI builds on Bob Moses’s Algebra Project. Like reading and writing literacies, students need to understand the language of math to succeed in today’s world. Through shared experiences and reflections, the MLI makes math accessible and fun. This is Part One of a two-part interview.

The Algebra Project: Bob Moses on math literacy as a Civil Right (Encore)

Jon Moscow 01:18:20 Comments Off

Bob Moses died this week. In memoriam, we repost our interview with him from February 2020. The Algebra Project founder and president–and lead organizer of the famous 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer voting rights campaign–talked about math literacy as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public school education for all children. He described the Algebra Project’s strategies to connect math to students’ life experiences and everyday language.

Student stories: SEL through writing and sharing lived experiences

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:40:30 Comments Off

Keith Hefner and Betsy Cohen of Youth Communication discuss their 40-year-old organization. Professional editors help students develop personal stories, which are shared with their peers. Writers experience self-reflection, readers develop empathy and gain strength from knowing others’ experiences, and teachers acquire better understanding of their students. Youth Communication also offers curricula and materials for teachers to implement.

Engaging young black men in school: What we can learn from art class

Jon Moscow 00:56:50 Comments Off

Dr. Don Siler, a researcher and inservice teacher educator, himself a former high school dropout, discusses how art classrooms invite students to be themselves, to explore their lived experiences, and to work on projects that mean something to them. Student engagement in the art classroom can be leveraged across subject areas by incorporating both the arts and art-based pedagogy throughout the curriculum. Student outcomes improve when we broaden the ways in which students get information, process the information, and demonstrate their understanding of the information.

Text guided literacy: Literature as experience in English class

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:34:30 Comments Off

Dr. Anthony Johnston, associate professor of education at University of St. Joseph, explains text guided literacy as a framework for teaching literature. A former English teacher, Dr. Johnston resists the current emphasis on close reading. Text guided literacy encourages readers to extrapolate from the text, to take the perspective of a fictional or historical character, and to make connections between the text and their own lives. As well, empathy is a catalyst for ethical actions.

Teaching as research: Auto-ethnography of a pioneering bilingual teacher educator

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:40:30 Comments Off

Dr. Carmen Mercado, CUNY professor emeritus, talks with us about the importance of self-study, sharing diverse perspectives in class, and reflective writing in her own development and that of her students. She shares her experiences as one of the first bilingual classroom teachers and teacher educators in NYC. Carmen’s book, “Navigating teacher education in complex and uncertain times: connecting communities of practice in a borderless world,” was published in 2019.

The Algebra Project: Bob Moses on math literacy as a civil right – Part 1

Jon Moscow 00:51:00 Comments Off

The Algebra Project founder and president–and lead organizer of the famous 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer voting rights campaign–talks about math literacy as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public school education for all children. Bob Moses describes the Algebra Project’s strategies to connect math to students’ life experiences and everyday language. The interview is divided into two episodes.

The Algebra Project: Math Literacy and Empowerment

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:37:00 Comments Off

Kate Belin teaches math at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, a progressive public school in the Bronx, where she implements the Algebra Project, an initiative that connects math to students’ lived experiences. We talk about the synergy between the Algebra Project and Fannie Lou, both of which have their roots in the history of the civil rights movement.

Kiersten Greene on technology in schools: “Are we doing our homework?”

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:36:02 Comments Off

We speak with Dr. Kiersten Greene, Associate Professor of Literacy Education at SUNY New Paltz, about classroom internet use. Electronic tech’s transformational possibilities can go unfulfilled as schools buy and use tools and materials without evaluating whether they are effective or meet teachers’ needs. Huge funding sources like New York’s Smart Schools bond issue fund…

Norman Fruchter on the pioneering alternative high school he and colleagues built in Newark in the 1970s

Amy Halpern-Laff 00:37:45 Comments Off

Literacy

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