DOCUMENT RESUME CS 212 921 ED 333 472 Hansbury-Zuendt, Tricia AUTHOR Voices Making Meaning: Reading the Texts with Tony TITLE Carrera. Report Series 2.14. Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature, INSTITUTION Albany, NY. National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C.; SPONS AGENCY Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED), Washington, DC. 91 PUB DATE G008720278 CONTRACT 35p.; For other reports in this series, see CS 212 NOTE 9A-922. Literature Center, University at Albany Ed 2-9, 1400 AVAILABLE FROM Washington Ave., Albany, NY 12222. Reports - Descriptive (141) PUB TYPE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE oom Environment; Classroom Communication; *Clas DESCRIPTORS Classroom Research; English Instruction; Grade 10; High Schools; *Honors Curriculum; *Literature Appreciation; Naturalistic Observation; Rural Schools; Teacher Attitudes; *Teacher Behavior; *Teacher Student Relationship Aesthetic Reading; New York (Albany); Teacher IDENTIFIERS Researchers ABSTRACT This portrait of a high school literature classroom is one of a series of several such portraits which depict diverse classroom settings of high school literature, and which result from the second year of a teacher-research project in the greater Albany, New York area. This article portrays teacher Tony Carrera and his sophomore honors English class in a small rural school, as he experiments with a lesson to see how far students can get with little direct teacher intervention, given a fairly well-defined structure wlthin which to work. 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University at Albany State Universioef New York "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS sew ciOication U.S. DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED we Othce or Educational Research anct Improvement .4 ED C ATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION moo Washbatas Maisie -.4 ex, CENTER (ERIC) This document nes peen teCuOduCed aS Albany, New York 12222 received horn me person or organization originating it C Minor changes have been made 10 improve repro<luCt.on clualdy TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Points of WO* 0, opinions staled in this docu- INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." ment oo not necessarily represent official OEM positton or policy Voices Making Meaning: Reading the Texts with Tony Carrera Tricia Hansbury-Zuendt Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature University at Albany State University of New York 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, New York 12222 Report Series 2.14 1991 Preparation of this report was supported in part by grant number G008720278, which is cosponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (0ERVED), and by the Nntional Endowment for the Arts (NEA). However, the opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of OERI/ED or NEA, and no official endorsement of either agency should be inferred. Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature The Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature is a research and development center located at the University at Albany, State University of New York. The Center was established in 1987 with funds from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Center's mission is to improve the teaching of content knowledge and critical-thinking strategies that contribute to literary understanding, particularly at the middle and high school levels. Center-sponsored research falls into three broad areas: 1) surveys of current practice in the teaching of literature, including studies of both what is taught and how it is taught; 2) studies of alternative approaches to instruction and their effects on students' knowledge of literature and critical-thinking abilities; and 3) studies of alternative approaches to the assessment of literature achievement, including both claasroom-bued and larger-scale approaches to testing. The Center also promotes good practice in the teaching of literature through conferences and seminars, through the development of computerised bibliographies on research and practice in the teaching of literature, and through putlications that present the Center's ovn research and provide other resources for research and practice. To receive a list of current publications, please write to CLTL, School of Education, University at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222. Director: Arthur N. Applebee Center Faculty: Lil Brannon Eugene Garber Co-Directors: Judith A. Langer Peter Johnston Alan C. Purees CH. Knob !such James Marshall Assistant Director: Genevieve T. Bronk Susanne Miller Wayne Ross Sean Walmsley 4 Preface Reading Teacher's Stories The following portrait of high school literature classrooms results from the second year of a teacher-research project, sponsored by the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature, concerned with depicting diverse classroom settings of high school literature instruction. Last year's report, "Teaching Literature in High School: A Teacher-Research Project" (Report Series 2.2, April, 1989) offered extensive detail about the goals and methods of our work, along with an explanation of the philosophical assumptions associated with it. We refer interested readers to that essay, and to the teacher narratives that it introduces, all available from the Center, for a fuller understanding of what we will summarize only cursorily The narratives that have been produced this year are all new, though the activities that here. have led to their production are identical to those of the previous year. The high school teachers who have graciously, indeed we might say bravely, offered us glimpses of their classrooms are also new to the project, representing a range of urban and suburban, honors and average, literature programs from the greater Albany, New York area. These teachers are identified in the stories by pseudonyms. Several of the teacher-researchers engaged in last year's work have continued with the research group. They include Ann Connolly of Bethlehem Central High School, Carol Forman-Pemberton of Burnt Hills/Ballston Lake, Tricia Hansbury- Zuendt of Canajoharie, and Doris Quick, recently retired from Burnt Hills and now teaching at Union College. In addition, two new researchers have joined the group, Susan Burke of Guilder land Schools, and John Danaher, who teaches at Shaker High School in North Co lcmie. A growing body of theory and scholarship is devoted to legitimizing the concept and practice of teacher inquiry, so that its integrity as a mode of investigation no longer requires elaborate defense. More important, growing numbers of teachers are adding to the stock of formal knowledge about classroom life in such collections as ggclairn'ag ths Classroom: Itach_el Research la la Aeon Qv fu Qum, eds., Dixie Goswami and PPter Stillman (Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton, 1987) and &ging fat Ourselves: Case Study Research by. Teachers gf Writing, eds., Glenda Bissex and Richard Bullock (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1987). As a result, the substantiveness of teacher knowledge, whether in the form of "case study" or that of classroom "story," is no longer hypothetical but is open to view in the public record. While there are differences of opinion among its advocates about the technical means of teacher inquiry, there is broad agreement that teachers have distinctive vantage points on what happens in classrooms, quite separate from those of educational researcners, leading them to a concrete, "phenomenal" understanding of school life that deserves to be regarded as authentic "knowledge," not just subjective impression or idiosyncratic anecdote. Their knowledge is that of the insider, whose "felt sense" of the school world, expressed typically in the form of narrative reflection, stands to enrich our sense of classroom life. We have argued in general terms, as others have, for the usefulness of teacher stories, their value in enhancing teachers' reflectiveness about their instructional practices and settings, research report and elsewhere (cf. "Knowing year's last both Our in Language: A 5 Phenomenological Basis for Teacher Research," in Audits ca Meaning: g Festschrift fa tam L Berthoff, ed., Louise Z. Smith, Portsmouth, NH: Boynton; Heinemann, 1988). It remains here for readers to see for themselves the kind and quality of learning that stories make available, remembering that there are important differences between the sort of knowledge that comes from stories and that available from the discursive prose of conventional educational research. Stories depict and dramatize the life-world. They evoke; they do not assert. They are immersed in the particularity of actual experience, aiming at richness of event rather then simplicity or conciseness of statement. Stories do not, cannot, insist on their readings; instead, they bring their readers into the act of construing meaning. Themes emerge for attentive readers, and they have the effect of proposing a coherence for the text; but two readers will not always compose the same themes. Moreover, no thematic judgment will permanently reduce the complexity of the story itself: is reread for new insights, altered meanings. it Stories endlessly modify other stories; readings endlessly modify other readings. Whatever individual readers see in these stories is something to share with others who may well have learned something else or more from the same texts. The value of the stories lies finally in the fact that they offer a context for conversation among teachers. The fuller that conversation, the more stories available to sustain it, the greater the gain in a qualitatively improved awareness of the meaningfulness of classroom life. By reproducing the life-world of school teaching and learning apart from the immediacy of teachers' actual engagement in that world, classroom narratives create the tranquil, objectified conditions needed for reflection while still retaining teachers' intuitive recognition of the complexities of their experience. Stories don't tell teachers what to do; they simply portray people doing, and also thinking and feeling. Watching others in action, readers also see themselves. Discovering personally meaningful themes in the stories, readers find coherence and support for their own professional work. C.H. Knoblauch Lil Brannon The University at Albany State University of New York Voices Making Meaning: Reading the Texts with Tony Carrera Tricia Hansbury-Zuendt Canajoharie High School July 20, 1989 spent the morning viewing once again the videotapes I made when I visited Tony Carrera's classroom as a teacher-researcher last January. I'd hoped that on this trip through the tapes I'd find the story -- the one I want to tell, the one that says for me, for Tony, and for others, what it means to be a student in that classroom. But which one is that? Which one will I tell? I think back to the classroom itself. It's small, but large enough for the fourteen sopho- mores who pour in every seventh period to take honors English. I didn't see any pictures of Shakespeare; no poetry posters; none of the leftover-from-the-summer geraniums I thought were mandatory in English classrooms. One poster, a product of Sarah Lawrence college, is attached to a cabinet. On it appears a quote from Grace Paley: "A writer must be truthful. A story is a big lie. And in the middle of this big lie you're telling the truth." The room is filled with cabinets and bookcases, but what struck me most were the student-made materials: a large cardboard model of a tape player someone made for part of some project; the half-finished sign which stretches across the front of the room over the blackboard and which will eventually read, "Don't believe everything you hear;" a can of paint in the corner, left by students who are putting their own design over a painting done by some other students several years ago. And piled everywhere are small boxes with students' names on them, which hold more projects and writings in process. There is a crate overflowing with writing folders -- a section for each class. It feels busy and comfortable in this room. I think, too, about the reason I asked Tony if I could come into his classroom with my video equipment, cameraperson, notebooks, and interviews. I remember something I wrote at the beginning of the project.... January 6, 1989 I have always wanted to see some of Tony's classes. In his school, a small rural one much like my own, and in which he has taught for twenty years, he is admired by students, peers, and administrators as a good teacher; he has worked as a teacher-mentor; he has pub- lished books on writing instruction; he has helped me many times in solving some teaching dilemmas; he has, more recently, seemed more a real colleague, borrowing ideas from me almost as much as I use his. We've talked and argued so many times about reading, writing, literature, teaching; I'm curious to see how those discussions are translated into his actions in the class- room. This project will add, I know, one more complication to our already busy days. I'm glad we're able to use the money the Center provides to supply substitute teachers and free our afternoons for observations and interviews, so that for a few days, at least, there will be time, a little more than usual, for that reflection, writing, talk and just plain breath-catching that never seems to be there in any normal school day. July 20, 1989 When I look bac!k on the lessons I saw, and consider the amount of time we spent on du. interviews, and the amount of writing that Tony himself did -- to prepare for classes, during classes to record what was happening, and after classes, reacting to what he had seen and heard and then revising his plans accordingly -- I consider, through the haze of July's distance, what our days were usually like. It was, after all, a kind of luxury to be able to look so closely at a class. What a luxury for me to simply question: question everything that he did, and for a minute maybe forget about the immediacy of my own room, even though I was away for a few days, I could never really forget it; I know I saw much of Tony's class-- both his students and his method-- through the focus of my own. Still, it was useful to be able to think hard and talk lots about teaching only, not lesson plans. And when I wonder how he or anyone could consent to the presence of a researcher and cameras and microphones in his classroom, I know in a way why it was curiously appealing: my going into his class valued and validated his behavior, his activity, in a way that nothing else can, no other aspect of the school can, to have someone sit with you and talk with you about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Someone paid attention to him, in the capacity for which he is known and paid, as an English teacher. Some- one let him talk about teaching, about the things he has been working on and reading about. Someone gave him the power and space to try to design what he hoped would be an interesting and effective lesson. How could he have said no? January 8, 1989 Tell me what you will be doing in this Q: class for the study. Tony: OK. This was, started out to be a couple of different things and finally I settlea on something I really wanted to know about anyway, and I thought this was a good way to find out.... I thought, here's a chance while somebody else is going to be around in my room to give me another perspective on what's going on with trying to make compari- sons between works, not first one work, and then the other, but two works together. Q: Why? Tony: Because I think you see things a little bit differently... To look at two works, both works together on three separate occasions, is different from looking at one work on one day and the other work on the next day. Is it better? I don't know. But it provides a litt!e different perspective.... I'm really interested to see if people in tenth grade without a lot of formal training in terminology and experience with literary or critical approaches can still do the kinds of stuff that produce good interpretations of what I think are fairly sophisticated works for them. They're also good enough works, deep, rich, something 2 that seem to me to be worth spending time on. So. They will be reading two different works at the same time. How? The class will be divided into two groups, each of which will be reading one work, and working with each other to interpret it; each group will be raising questions about the work for the whole class, and each will be writing drafts of their formal interpretations of the work. Then, in a few days, they will switch pieces of literature, and do the same thing with the other work. Why? Tony's hoping for some "cross-pollination," that students will benefit from being in somewhat shared contexts. They will hear members of the other group talking about the work they are reading and those ideas may inform their reading of their own piece. When they switch pieces, their reading of the second work will be influenced by its close proximity in time to the first work. I know that Tony likes to rebel against the "usual" way of doing things. He says, "It's not necessarily better, it's just different." July 20, 1989 Many teachers would be envious of Tony's freedom in deciding what this tenth-grade honors :lass will do. He knows that in two years most of them will take Advanced Placement English and prepare for the AP exam. He knows that there is no state or departmental examina- tion at the end of this year. The curriculum in this school exists, certainly, but not hi the form of a written document outlining the activities or even the recommended literary works to be read in any particular class. Therefore, many of his lessons follow from ideas or questions that come up in other lessons. The course is constantly evolving and is therefore different every year. At the time of our study, close to the end of the first semester, students had worked through a textbook on semantics, had written a last chapter for the hook ("So What?"), and had done lots and lots of their own writing. They came to their literary analysis activities, then, as writers, just as Tony himself does. He chose the two literary works for this project ("The Book of the Grotesque" by Sher- wood Anderson and "Law Like Love" by W.H. Auden) because he was interested in them him- self. And I'm thinking now about their ironic significance to this project in general and what it means to try to tell someone's story -- your own or a colleagues'. Do I detect a sly wink? In these two literary works, the disparate voices clamoring that they know what law is, yet are only able to define it within a particular and narrow context, as well as the people who inha'oit the old man's dreams (each a grotesque because he has grabbed a truth and tried to make it I-is own) speak clearly to Tony about his own mission in the classroom. There are only contexts; i e wants students to know that; your perspective determines what you see. Auden's poem makes that message pretty clear; and Anderson's work echoes the message and adds its own twist: caught within your own perspective, it is easy and dangerous to believe it is the only one, We risk becoming grotesques ourselves when we believe too strongly and too blindly in one thing. There are, of course, other readings of both these works, but their shared contexts suggest the value of ambiguity and uncertainty, and remind me of Tony's statement that he wants students to learn to withhold an early judgment, to be comfortable with uncertainty, and not to j, m7 to 3 quick conclusions or easy answers. He structured the unit so that students wrote at least two drafts of their interpretation of each work, and some wrote as many as four drafts. Important here is the act of making connections, a stance he clearly values and encour- ages in students by setting up lessons, as he did this one, in such a way that it can't be avoided. He wants students to make connections between works, between units, between courses, between their lives and school. He Le Heves it's more effective to make those connections within a process rather than after it, in an all-at-once kind of experience instead of "first one, then the other." January 8, 1989 What do you want kids to be able to do with literature? Q: I'm not going to use the word 'appreciate' because I don't know what Tony: that means. I guess I'd like them to be able to do whatever they want to do with it, and unfortunately, whatever listmakers decide they have to be able to do with it. Like answer multiple choice questions. I know we keep talking about how those tests are going to change or disappear, but they haven't so far. They're still there. How? How are you going to do it? Q: Tony: I guess I started teaching by trying to teach 'the method' of reading poetry, whatever I guessed people in college were using when they were making me read it. And then I tried to teach my method, and if I can make a distinction between that period and what I think I'm doing now, I'm trying to get people to develop their own methods, and I'm using mine more as a model, a way to do it, rather than as le way to do it. But I can never tell exactly where I am in there, especially when I'm alone in the classroom, because if I'm cluing the lesson, then what I think is happening - another observer might say, well, you thought you were modeling that, but really you were imposing it, or you presented that as the only way. I'm moving towards their taking this method of finding issues in the text and then when talking about them using the textual references to internalize that. And do that in their own independent reading also, not just in their writing of analytical stuff, but as a reading process of keeping mental track of the kinds of things that are going on and your preliminary 'so what?' -- what's going to turn out to be important? Otherwise they're just looking at words. January 11, 1989, 1:30 p.m. From the transcript of the second class I observed: I'm going to ask the people who did the poem to contribute from their Tony: page of issues: this is important, this is important. Then we'll make a list here of things we think are important and try to identify which ones we should deal with, and I'll ask each person 4 0