Reading the World

Have you ever thought about reading the world?  You may even ask: what does reading the world even mean?  In my Literacy class, one of the first questions we were asked at the beginning of the semester was: what is a text?  Most people would immediately think of a book, newspaper...the written word.  But what about musical notes on a score?  Don't we say that people can "read" music?  But does a text have to be read?  What about the strokes of a brush on a canvas?  Is that a text?  While my view may be really broad, I characterize literacy as learning how to read the world.  This may be knowing how to read a book or newspaper, notes on a score, brush strokes on a canvas, the motives or objectives of a character on stage or a person in history, or being able to understand or at least question the events of the day.  Everyday we read the world, most of the time without realizing it.  We interpret what we see and make decisions or judgments based off of it. We question what we see, hear and read and try to come to conclusions.  So is my definition of literacy too broad or even fathomable?  It is to me. 

I hope to be able to teach my future history, ESL and theatre students how to read the world.  In history I want students to explore the past with questioning and searching eyes.  Not only will they read sections of the textbook, but more importantly they will read the actual words of the people who lived long ago and not so long ago.  This includes varying levels of writings from the Declaration of Independence to letters written home from soldiers at Pearl Harbor.  I will prepare them for the different types of documents they read and help them understand what they read by engaging them in the text.  They will have the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another and put themselves in the shoes of the people of old.  They themselves will write letters as if they were these people.  They will ask questions about them: how old were they, how many brothers and sisters did they have, what was life like for them when they were a kid or teenager, why did they decide to go to war, was it a hard decision, who supported them, who were their friends during the war, was it hard for them to kill another person, what do you think that was like...Through these questions students will identify with the people of the past and be able to write about them and their decisions.  They will be able to argue for or against a decision, take a complicated event in history and write it for a 3rd grade class, and think about what they would have done if they were in their place.  They will see that there are people in the past who have been forgotten, who have been written out of the books or pushed to the side.  They will find these people and learn about them.  They will see that there are people today who feel as though they have been forgotten and pushed to the side.  They will learn how one simple act can change the course of history.  They hopefully will take what they learn and use it in their own lives to read the world around them.
With any ESL student I want them to see that their way of reading the world is just as important as this new culture's way of reading the world.  For ELLs, not only are they learning a new language, but they are learning a new culture which may be profoundly different from their own.  We cannot push one culture aside for another.  Both ways of reading the world are important.  Also with all students, but especially with ELLs, it is important to find connections between them and what we are learning.  You have to build on their background knowledge and make it applicable to them, otherwise I think many students get lost.
In theatre, students learn to read the world as they learn how to portray characters on stage, how to work with others as a team and explore the people around them, the person within them and the people on stage.  Preparing students to read a script is essential, whether it is an Ancient Greek text, Shakespeare, Beckett or Les Mis.  Not only will there be words that they do not understand, but actions of the past that may not make sense to them.  Discussing what we read and how we can make sense of it, is important in helping the students connect with the individual characters, especially when they begin to portray them.  But theatre is not only about acting and reading plays.  It is about learning to read and explore the world.  Theatre of the O
ppressed is a perfect example of exploring territory that a lot of people choose to push away.  It is about exploring feelings, problems, solutions... Theatre is a place where students learn who they are.  They learn to read themselves. 
Whether students are playing a piece from Mozart,  painting a figure on a canvas, portraying Macbeth, passing a basketball to a teammate, reading a letter from a Civil War soldier, exploring the world of the internet through research, creating a glog or public service announcement...they are all engaging in some form of literacy that will help them learn to read the world around them. 

Young Adult Literature

"It all seemed so silly.  Why couldn't she and Max and the Zwirns and the German children all play together?  Why did they have to have all this business of decisions and taking sides?" (Kerr, Judith. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. pg. 73) 

Cami, Hayley and I decided that for our self-selected project we would read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and Fever by Mary Beth Keane. 
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - At first this story was not at all what I expected it to be.  I expected a story that was full of historical facts surrounded by a fictional story.  I have read a lot of historical fiction and really enjoy them because, though they are not true stories, I can begin to see what life may have been like for a person.  It took me a while to begin thinking this way as I read Pink Rabbit.  It is a story of a young Jewish girl and her family who move from Germany to Switzerland to France and by the end have just arrived in England during the 1930s.  It is based on the author's life.
As a group, we did not like a few things about the book.  Firstly, the book is written at a 5th or 6th grade level, which is a little young for us.  We were hoping for a more realistic story.  Secondly, we agreed that the story was very simplistic.  It was written with a lot of happy endings that we did not feel really fit the time period.  The author could have gone into a lot of depth on many issues facing the people during that time period, but stuck with very simplistic stories, we assume, of what she remembered.  This is where, I think, knowing who your audience is, is very key.  If Kerr had wanted to write a story to high school students, I think that we would have a story told in a very different way, perhaps with a lot more detail and discussion on those very deep issues (suicide, isolation, identity, racism).
Though we had a hard time with it at first and were not pleased with it's simplicity, we found numerous ways to apply this to one of our classrooms.  The first thing that I came up with was using this story in a ESL classroom or to benefit ELLs in a mainstream classroom.  This story follows the main character throughout three different countries where different languages are spoken.  ELLs could especially relate to her experience in France where no one spoke German at all.  She explains how frustrated she becomes, how she had to learn to speak with others through gestures, how tired she was because of the effort she was putting into the language and many other issues and problems.  ELLs are most likely going through very similar experiences with learning English.  Not only could they relate to learning a new language, but also getting used to a new culture, new people and trying to maintain their own culture at home.  I think that this story could greatly benefit them.  I also think that it could benefit non-ELLs because they could see how hard it would be to be in the main character's shoes, and in the shoes of the ELLs in their classroom.  Hopefully, this would open a great discussion between ELLs and non-ELLs.  We also liked the different perspectives that were represented in the book.  Not only did we learn about the main character, but we learned about relatives that stayed behind in Germany, Nazi supporters that they ran into, writers, actors and other artists that fled Germany...There was a wide range of people that we met, all with a different view on the situation.
We also came up with some teaching strategies that could be used while reading this book.   Some pre-reading activities that we thought of were: researching the author and her life to give us some context, discussing the use of propaganda and the role that it played during that time, as well as having a discussion on why artists/writers were a big target of Hitler's (the main character's father is a writer).  These activities would give the students context before they went into reading.  There are many during reading activities that could be used with this book.  Each chapter begins with a picture.  We would have students make predictions of what they thought would happen in the chapter based off of the picture.  We could follow the movement of the family on a map to help the students see where they were.  We also thought of the students writing postcards from the main character to her Onkel Julius back in Germany.  This will help us be able to assess the student's comprehension and analysis of the story.  There were two post-reading activities that I would consider using in my classroom.  The first would be to have the students predict what happened to the main character after the story ends, since it ends when she is still a little girl and before the outbreak of World War II.  Secondly, as we continued to learn about World War II, I would have them write her story again, but as if she had not moved out of Germany.  Both of these activities would be great assessments and would allow the students to decide how they think her story would be different.
Overall, after reading the whole story and reflecting on it, I would use it in an ESL history class, especially if I could work out a cross-curricular unit with an English teacher.  But if I teach older grades I would definitely keep this in my classroom library.
Fever - Fever was also not quite what we expected.  This story is a fictional representation of the woman who became known as Typhoid Mary.  We follow her from Ireland to America, through the different households in which she worked and the people with whom she associated, to her capture and through her trial.  It became a very interesting story.
We felt that this book was written for a more mature audience, such as 11th and 12th graders (as it has some suggested material and profanity).  The biggest criticism that I had while reading the book, was the way that it was organized.  Instead of following Mary from when she lived in Ireland straight through to her trial, it basically begins with her capture and takes us through her trial while she remembers her life before.  It is a memory piece.  I can see how this would be confusing for students and hard for them to follow because I had a hard time following the story. 
Though it was difficult at times to follow and not our favorite story, we also found ways that we could incorporate it into our classes or at least use material from the story.  One very interesting thing that I liked was that it mentioned real events that were happening around this time.  For example, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is mentioned.  Students would have the chance to go and research these events for assignments and then compare their findings with the story.  This story is also based on fact and real person, so we thought that it would be interesting to have them read primary documents about this particular story.  We would help them find journal entries and newspaper clippings on the typhoid outbreak and have them relate it to what they are reading.  But what we thought of doing mostly was discussing the issues that are mentioned in the story: gender roles, trial proceedings then and now, the use of evidence, immigration, city life in the early 1900's, social status, economics, and civil rights.  Having discussions on these topics would be great during-reading activities to help the students expound and flesh out the life of Mary, the main character.  They could join her in the streets of New York and the hospital where she was held for two years just by studying the ways of life during that time.
Like Pink Rabbit, we felt like Fever could also be used for a cross-curricular unit between English, Science and History.  Though I probably would not use the entire book in my history class I can see using excerpts from the story to bring up discussions. 
For me, reading these two books was a pleasure.  I really like reading historical fiction books for fun, when I can just enjoy them.  Though neither one was what I expected them to be, they both could be used in my classroom, even if they were only found in my classroom library.  I think that students enjoy reading books like this for school because it is a break from reading a text that is so full of heavy information.  Young adult literature is also a lot easier to relate to one's life, especially young students.  After taking this class and reading these books I found myself looking for things that I can teach students which is pretty amazing!

An Adventure

History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity. ~Dexter Perkins

Dear You,

 Yep, that's right!  I am talking to you!  I am writing from my present, your past, to your present, which is my future!  Now I know that history gets a bad rap...and that makes sense when all that you think you have to learn is names, dates and places.  But history is so much more than that!  Yes, you are going to learn people's names, some dates and where things happened, but most importantly you are going to learn there stories...

   I will take you across oceans and lands to years past!  You will enter a world of hunting and gathering, where fire was at it's beginning.  We will climb pyramids together, discover tombs of the ancient pharoahs of Egypt.  We will explore the ancient lands of Greece, perform great feats like Hercules in the first Olympics and receive praise from the Almighty Zeus.  We will ride with Alexander the Great as he creeps over the Mediterranean, taking over place by place.  You will become a citizen called to serve your city-state in the Peloponessian War.  You will become a master builder in the construction of the Colleseum in Ancient Rome. 
You will attend plays that the gods themselves watched.  You will be in the crowd cheering for Julius Cesaer or find yourself in the crowd plotting his murder.  You will sculpt, paint and write works of art that future generations will look upon in awe!  You will fly over the land to Ancient China, where you will learn the amazing art of papermaking.  You will be one of the first to test the new invention of gunpowder.  You will see magnificent cities with bridges tall enough for Jack Sparrow's ship to sail under.  In Ancient India you will grow many arms like Lord Vishnu!  You will participate in festivals celebrated long, long ago. You will move through the caste system, from the bottom to the top, experiencing life in ways that you may never really know!  You won't be confused as we learn from Confuscius because you will learn of the people to whom he spoke.  You will pull silk behind you as you run along the silk road connecting people and cultures together.  You will walk the roads and paths that both Jesus and Mohammad walked, following them and reading to their words, watching as each religion spread...  
Wow!  It looks like you are going to have a pretty adventurous year in History...and that only covers Ancient History!  You have more adventures ahead of you as you find yourself...Oh, I better stop myself before I reveal too much! 

Now, you are probably thinking "Why should I learn about things that happened thousands of years ago?"  Well that is a great questions!  You know every story has to start somewhere!  Have you ever sat down to a movie with 5 minutes left to it and it was so exciting...but you were lost.  You missed most of the movie, so you had no idea what was going on!  I hate that!  It's horrible!  Have you ever wondered why an event occurred in the world or where something came from?  Well, you happened to be in the latter part of the movie, but history class will fill you in so you can understand what is happening around you!  For example, have you ever been to a baseball game, football game, soccer game, concert or parade in a stadium in the middle of summer when it was blazing hot?  Do you ever wish there was air conditioning?  Well, the Ancient Romans had air conditioning in the Colleseum!  They even had indoor bathrooms and could evacuate the entire Colleseum in minutes!  Oh and they could flood the Colleseum so that they could have actual sized ship battles!  Can you believe that?  Have you ever looked up in the sky and saw all of the stars that are part of constellations?  Those all have a story to tell!  It's amazing!
Don't take my word for it, but go look for yourself:  http://www.ballgame.org/, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/tools/civilisations/civlaunch.shtml, http://scorescience.humboldt.k12.ca.us/fast/teachers/Plague/Pindex.html, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/launch_gms_battle_waterloo.shtml
If you haven't noticed I love history!  I hope that you will love going on adventures too!
See on the carpet ride to those Arabian Nights!

Miss Hansen

Living History

If one could make alive again for other people some cobwebbed skein of old dead intrigues and breathe breath and character into dead names and stiff portraits. That is history to me! ~George Macaulay Trevelyan
Whenever I tell someone that I want to teach history they always say something to the effect of "I have a horrible memory...I could never remember all of those dates, names and places..."  Well, neither can I.  My love of history comes from the stories that have been told and the people who told them. 
There is a story of a Christian priest and his assistant who lived in Vichy France during World War II.  Vichy France, at this time, was under Germany, those who hunted the Jews.  During this time those who helped any Jews were gathered up along with Jews and sent to the camps.  Many people refused to associate with Jews because of this fear.  Who could blame them?  They were scared for their families and their lives.  Andre Trocme and Edouard Theis decided that they had a moral obligation to help anyone who needed it, no matter their beliefs or heritage.  Along with those of their small communitee they harbored Jews on the run, hid them from the imposing Gestapo, and helped them escape on their own "Underground Railroad," all at the risk of loosing their lives.  While Trocme and Theis were never caught by the Gestapo, others were, including Daniel Trocme, Andre's cousin and the school teacher.  He refused to let the Jewish youth who had been caught go to the camps alone.  He was gassed with them.  When interviewed years later about their actions, the people of the communitee answered the question "Where did you find such courage?" with a shrug, soft smile and "Oh, you know.  After a while we got used to it."  What made these people choose to risk everything for people they did not know? 
There are so many stories of bravery, courage, sadness, happiness, action...in history that are beautiful.  When I read these stories I want to meet these people and ask them questions to understand them.  I want to be on the battle ground with them as they are fighting for their families back home.  I want to be on the buses with the Freedom Riders singing and riding for equality.  People miss all of these stories because they equate history with only learning dates, places and people.  But I want my students to see history.  I am lucky to have a theatre background so I can get my students up out of their chairs and onto the stage of history.  They will become Antigone, King Tut, Seneca, Aristotle, Julius Cesaer, Kublai Khan, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Aztec kings, Mayan scribes, explorers, slaves and slave owners, kings and queens, sultans, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Galileo, Nurse Goody, Powahatan, Benjamin Franklin, Marie Antoinette, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Theodore Roosevelt, an air force pilot, Henry Ford, a flapper, an immigrant from Poland, a Pearl Harbor Navy officer, FDR, Winston Churchill, a Japanese child in 1945 living in Japan, a Japanese child in 1945 living in the American West...They will learn to study people because that is what both history and theatre are all about: the study of people and why they do what they do.  Hopefully my classroom will become a place of exploration of and empathy for people past, present and perhaps even future.  They won't be able to escape!

"To have LANGUAGE is to be in the PROCESS of BECOMING and BEING.  It is not a final end point, but rather a VEHICLE for MAKING SENSE of the WORLD around us." - Cinthya Saavedra
Have you ever been placed or IMAGINEd being placed in a world where NO ONE spoke the same LANGUAGE as you?  Or, how about this, where NO ONE spoke?  If you haven't, give it a go!  You will learn pretty quickly that it is SCARY and LONELY!  WHO DO YOU TALK TO when you have really EXCITING news?  Who do you talk to when your WORLD SEEMS TO BE FALLING APART?  Can you even YELL at someone you are MAD at and have them UNDERSTAND WHY you are mad?  Then do you get even MORE UPSET because they do not understand?  What about them yelling at you and you don't understand?  FRUSTRATING, right?  This happened to me...TWICE.  The first time was learning SPANISH.  My companion, though she knew English, REFUSED TO SPEAK to me in ENGLISH so that I would learn Spanish.  Needless to say, I DID NOT TALK much, but I eventually learned Spanish.  The second time, I was thrown into a WORLD OF SILENCE known as the Sign Language Program.  My companion was deaf and my sign was really bad.  I could sign what I needed to teach, but other than that not much.  I WITHDREW into myself because I COULD NOT EXPRESS myself through my hands.  I kept it all in because I did not know how to bring it out.  IMAGINE again that you are a student coming to America and everyone tells you that you MUST SPEAK ENGLISH and not your home language; the language that gives you VOICE, that allows you EXPRESS yourself, the language that is a PART OF YOU.  In schools, we tell students this all of the time.  ENGLISH ONLY.  Essentially we are telling them to FORGET a part of who they are.  But, DON'T WORRY!  There is HOPE.  I have had the chance to work with some of these students who are SILENCED because they don't speak English and I am not the only one.  Teachers are finding ways to CONNECT with ESL students by allowing them to express themselves in their home language and then find ways to say the same in English so that we can connect with them.  One of the greatest things that I have seen in the classroom is when I sit next to a student whose home language is Spanish.  They have been silenced and are lost.  When they hear me speak Spanish to them, SOMETHING CHANGES.  Now I don't only speak to them in Spanish, but I teach them in English.  But just knowing that I can UNDERSTAND them when they really need to be HEARD makes them LIGHT UP!  They get EXCITED!  They LISTEN!  THEY LEARN!

Don't you just want to LISTEN to this Pep Talk every morning!  It is completely TRUE: BORING IS EASY!  Sitting down and doing nothing is the easiest thing to do.  But we are NOT HERE TO SIT!  Like the Kid President says we are here to DANCE and do something AWESOME!  While that is definitely easier said than done we have to DANCE and do something AWESOME to be HAPPY.  Even if it does not work out the way we had planned (which for me it usually doesn't) at least we TRIED!  And trust me, that path less traveled will be full of thorns and glass, but we should take it anyway!  So what are you going to do today that is AWESOME?

Welcome to Holland - Emily Perl Kingsley
"It's like this...when you're goiing to have a child, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip--to Italy.  You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans.  The Colosseum.  The Michelangelo David.  The gondolas in Venice.  You may learn some handy phrases in Italian.  Its' all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.  You pack your bags and off you go.  Several hours later, the plane lands.  The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say.  "What do you mean Holland?  I signed up for Italy!  I'm supposed to be in Italy.  All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan.  You've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important this is...they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine, and disease.  It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guidebooks.  And you must learn a whole new language.  And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place.  But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and begin to notice that Holland has windmills.  Holland has tulips.  Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.  And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that 's where I was supposed to go.  That's what I had planned."
But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland."

I make plans and they never work!  Ask my mom!  She will tell you that when I say "I had a plan" it is usually followed by "and it failed me!"  I was never supposed to be where I am right now.  I was supposed to be married with 2 kids and maybe one one the way.  We would live somewhere where the sun shined all of the time and my house was full of light.  I was supposed to be somewhere else.  I go on facebook and everyone else seems to be where I was supposed to be: Italy.  But I am in Holland.  I have been here for a while looking at those people who went to Italy.  It's time I start enjoying Holland and seeing what is has to offer me.  As far as I can see, this is where I am supposed to be.  I am supposed to meet these people and do whatever I am meant to do here.  Not in Italy, but Holland.  So, wake up Holland!  Because Marti is coming to visit!

My Manifesto: Who Am I You Ask...

I believe...
In feeling the warmth of the sunshine on my face
In laughing with my family at the dinner table until my sides hurt
That true friends are ones that, after you havn't seen them in a long time, you can pick right back up as if you had never been away
That history is not about memorizing facts, but learning stories that can change your life
That theatre is a window into another world
In calling someone up just to say HI!
In smiling as often as I can to whom I can, even if I don't receive one back
In being creative...and letting that creativity take you wherever it wants to
That some rootbeer and two scoops of ice cream make for a great late night snack
That blowing bubbles just makes you smile...You can't help it
That music raises me above the clouds
In everyday heroes
In loving with all of your might and heart
That with a little bit of pixie dust and some imagination you really can fly
That there is only One who knows me better than me
In inching closer and closer to someone until you bump into them
In picturing everything, especially if that is how your brain works
In friends who stick by you no matter what happens or what you do
In life changing events, mind boggling ideas, joy in simple things
That you should never hold a sneeze in because it hurts
That all people matter no matter how small
In music that is created from the soul, that changes people, that creates stories
In the grandeur of God
In giving a voice to the voiceless
That we can accomplish more than we think just by waking up in the morning
In staying a kid forever

In more to come...

Who We Are

"In life we do things. Some we wish we had never done. Some we wish we could replay a million times in our heads. But they all makes us who we are. And in the end they shape every detail about us. If we were to reverse any of them we wouldn't be the person we are. So just live. Make mistakes. Have wonderful memories. But never ever second guess who you are, where you have been, and most importantly where it is you're going." Have you ever thought about going back in time and making a different decision at a certain point in your life? How that one thing would not be present in your life anymore or things would be slightly different? Have you actually thought it all of the way through? If I have learned anything from studying history no matter how much we would like to change something from the past, we cannot just change that one thing. Everything has a cause and affect. That is just the way it is. We are who we are right now because of all of the small or big things that happened in the past. If I had married that one guy way back when I would never have come to Utah, studied theater or history, met all of the amazing people that I have met, made the contacts that I have in theater, experienced all of the spiritual experiences that I experienced, gotten to know a part of my family like I do now...I would have missed all of that. Granted I know that I would not know about all of that, just like I do not know how my life would be now if I had married that guy! Your life is what it is now. All you have experienced and all of the people you have met have happened because of where you are right now! We are who we are because of our past. I do not know if I would give up the things that matter most to me now to change one mistake that I made in the past. What about you?