Overview
What happens to children who live on the edge? Children in families that are trying to make it somehow, someway, anyway they can-children with disabilities, who speak other languages, who are told they are different and who know they don't fit? What happens to adolescents who are kicked out of regular high school, who end up under the control of the social welfare system, who belong to gangs, whose friends are killed by gunfire? How can they articulate their own positions and needs? What kinds of literacy do they require so that society will recognize them? Who is their advocate?Because literacy can be used to enable or disable, those children marginalized by society must be literate to survive, and teachers are often their only advocates. But teachers often stand alone when they advocate. For most teachers there are no guidelines available on teaching and advocacy, and we rarely talk about the role that literacy plays in providing opportunities for teachers to work as advocates.
Exploring how literacy learning is enabled and disabled offers that opportunity. The teacher-researchers in this book use written texts to uncover the hidden assumptions that shape our perceptions about people's positions in society. They focus on how language is done, what we do with it, how we define ourselves in print, how students are defined-often reinvented-in obscure documents that control their lives. Teaching and Advocacy encourages teachers to stand beside their students, to expose the hidden assumptions in official documents, to develop alternative explanations, and above all, to advocate.
Following each chapter, Denny Taylor's interview with the author reveals a rare commitment to children and to advocacy and demonstrates the involvement implicit in qualitative research.
Synopsis
What happens to children who live on the edge? Children in families that are trying to make it somehow, someway, anyway they can-children with disabilities, who speak other languages, who are told they are different and who know they don't fit? What happens to adolescents who are kicked out of regular high school, who end up under the control of the social welfare system, who belong to gangs, whose friends are killed by gunfire? How can they articulate their own positions and needs? What kinds of literacy do they require so that society will recognize them? Who is their advocate?
Because literacy can be used to enable or disable, those children marginalized by society must be literate to survive, and teachers are often their only advocates. But teachers often stand alone when they advocate. For most teachers there are no guidelines available on teaching and advocacy, and we rarely talk about the role that literacy plays in providing opportunities for teachers to work as advocates.
Exploring how literacy learning is enabled and disabled offers that opportunity. The teacher-researchers in this book use written texts to uncover the hidden assumptions that shape our perceptions about people's positions in society. They focus on how language is done, what we do with it, how we define ourselves in print, how students are defined-often reinvented-in obscure documents that control their lives. Teaching and Advocacy encourages teachers to stand beside their students, to expose the hidden assumptions in official documents, to develop alternative explanations, and above all, to advocate.
Following each chapter, Denny Taylor's interview with the author reveals a rare commitment to children and to advocacy and demonstrates the involvement implicit in qualitative research.
Rethinking Schools
This book is particularly moving since the issues are seen through the eyes of practicing teachers who are struggling with student advocacy issues as they write their diaries, analyze their students' writing, and try to figure out how far they can go in their own teaching situations. Any teacher who wants to connect literacy to action and writing to the passion with which it is generated, and who agonizes over how political she or he should be and still survive to tell the tale, should be moved by this book.
However, the stories in Teaching and Advocacy don't all have happy endings, and the paralysis and powerlessness some of the teachers feel illustrate how important it is to act with others and build a student advocacy movement, rather than just support individual acts of courage.
Editorials
Rethinking Schools
This book is particularly moving since the issues are seen through the eyes of practicing teachers who are struggling with student advocacy issues as they write their diaries, analyze their students' writing, and try to figure out how far they can go in their own teaching situations. Any teacher who wants to connect literacy to action and writing to the passion with which it is generated, and who agonizes over how political she or he should be and still survive to tell the tale, should be moved by this book.However, the stories in Teaching and Advocacy don't all have happy endings, and the paralysis and powerlessness some of the teachers feel illustrate how important it is to act with others and build a student advocacy movement, rather than just support individual acts of courage.