Place-Based Writing in Action: Opportunities for Authentic Writing in the World Beyond the Classroom 1032529067, 9781032529066

Citation preview

Place-Based Writing in Action

This text presents a variety of ways for students to meet traditional instructional goals in writing while also learning how writing can help them become stewards of the natural world and advocates for their own com­ munities. Built on a foundation of emerging research and theory and grounded in the lived reality of teachers, this book explores the material and virtual worlds as places that can be equally productive as sources for authentic writing. Readers will find place-based writing activities, lesson ideas, and samples of student work in every chapter. With practical and classroom-tested ideas, Place-Based Writing in Action is a useful text for preservice and in-service English teachers, as well as any educator who wants to move the act of writing beyond the four walls of the classroom. Rob Montgomery is Professor of English and English Education at Kennesaw State University. He has worked with the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project and the Georgia Film Academy. Rob is also the co-author of A Place to Write: Getting Your Students Out of the Classroom and Into the World (2021). Amanda Montgomery is a teacher at Park Street Elementary School in Marietta, Georgia. She works with the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project and is also the co-author of A Place to Write: Getting Your Students Out of the Classroom and Into the World (2021).

Place-Based Writing in Action

Opportunities for Authentic Writing in the World Beyond the Classroom

Edited by Rob Montgomery and Amanda Montgomery

Cover image: © Getty Images First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Rob Montgomery and Amanda Montgomery; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Rob Montgomery and Amanda Montgomery to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-52906-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-51852-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-40907-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076 Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements

viii x xi xiii

PART I

Meaningful Encounters with the Great Outdoors 1 An Introduction to Place-Based Writing: Getting Authentic by Getting Out of the Classroom

1 3

ROB MONTGOMERY AND AMANDA MONTGOMERY

2 Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks

16

CATHIE ENGLISH

3 Exploring Interconnections with the Living World through Nature Journaling

29

TINA CHEUK

4 Mapping through Justice, through Padlet, and through the World

40

RICH NOVACK

5 Observing Nature, Observing Language: Using Nature to Teach Rhetorical Grammar MERRILYNE LUNDAHL, KATIE ZANTO AND MELISSA HOFFMAN

54

vi Contents PART II

Finding the Intersection between Community, History, and Self 6 Teaching the Tulsa Race Massacre (and Other Hidden Histories) Using Poetry, Photography, and Place

65 67

SHELLEY MARTIN YOUNG

7 The Sustainable Resource Project: Writing Toward Agency

80

JEFFREY HUDSON AND DONALD HUDSON

8 Where Do Mountain Goats Sleep?: Bringing Place-Based Collaborative Journaling out of the Woods and into (and beyond) the Classroom

96

JASON J. GRIFFITH

9 Making Connections to the Past: Using Place-Based Writing to Bring History to Life

109

AMANDA MONTGOMERY

PART III

Writing about Art and Writing as Art

123

10 Finding Your Truth: Reimagining School Spaces for Student Writing and Publication Through Interactive Public Art

125

GLENN RHOADES AND STEPHEN GOSS

11 Using Memory as an Activator for Exploration and Creation

140

JENEVIEVE GOSS

12 Combining Voices: Merging Art and Writing through Place-Based Principles

150

REBECCA G. HARPER

PART IV

Using Digital Tools to Bring the Outside World into the Classroom

163

13 Into the Metaverse: Using Virtual Reality as a Site for Place-Based Writing

165

CLARICE M. MORAN

Contents vii

14 Stories of Our Community: Podcasting for Place-Based Inquiry

177

MARGARET A. DELGADO-CHERNICK

15 Touring the Place You Know Best: Virtual Tours as a Way to Teach Narrative, Argument, and Research Writing

194

ROB MONTGOMERY

Index

210

Figures

2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 6.1

6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 10.1

Writing marathon instruction sheet. Example of a journal entry with leaves taped inside. Example of a digital nature journal with images added. Example detailed student assignment sheet. Example of a story mapping assignment sheet. Paul’s story map. Maryam’s story map. Example of a story mapping rubric. Example observation assignment sheet (first page). Example observation assignment sheet (second page). Mount Zion Baptist Church in Tulsa currently and in 1921.

Mount Zion Baptist Church burning as heavy smoke is

visible. The church located at Easton and Elgin Avenue was

dedicated on April 17, 1921, and destroyed in the Tulsa Race

Massacre, 1921. Excerpts of student work. Rhetoric of place lens/graphic organizer. Fierce Green Fire assignment sheet. Phase 1, geographical analysis. Vanessa’s geographical analysis. Raul’s analysis of Rachel Carson text (page 1). Raul’s analysis of Rachel Carson text (page 2). Sustainable Resource Phase 2 presentation requirements. A group-curated list of recommended YouTube videos. A group-curated list of recommended movies. Collaborative journaling activity sheet (page 1). Collaborative journaling activity sheet (page 2). Example guiding question research sheet for students. Example of a student narrative. Student work display. The door to our classroom welcoming visitors. Crowdsourced list of literary themes.

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List of figures ix

10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 11.1 11.2 11.3 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 13.1 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 15.1 15.2

Crowdsourced responses for project ideas. Example of truism. Collaborative instructions for truism scavenger hunt. Updated collaborative instructions for truism scavenger hunt. Example detailed assignment sheet. Watercolor of seafood gumbo. Digital underlay of cookbook

images. Clay fortune cookies, printed family photos, and paper

fortunes. Assignment sheet. Jury Box by Chad Poovey. Steffen Thomas, The Art Critic, 1966. Welded copper. Gift of

Conway D. Thomas. “Texting Couplets” template. Wayman Adams, Old New Orleans Mammy, circa 1920. Oil

on canvas. Henry Ossawa Tanner, Georgia Landscape, 1887–1890. Oil

on canvas. Example metaverse assignment sheet. Example student direction sheet for how to evaluate a

podcast. Student research proposal activity sheet. Student direction sheet for how to conduct an interview. Example self-evaluation rubric. Blank map of Atlanta, GA. Map of Atlanta, GA with student-generated pins.

131

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Tables

7.1 9.1 13.1

Weekly framework for ENGL 2450. K-W-L chart. Virtual reality and text pairings.

85

113

172

Contributors

Tina Cheuk is an assistant professor of elementary science education at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. She earned her B.S. in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Chicago and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Education Policy from Stanford University. Margaret A. Delgado-Chernick is an English teacher at Twinsburg High School in Twinsburg, Ohio. She is also a member of the National Writing Project at Kent State University. Cathie English is a professor of English and English education at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. She teaches undergraduate and graduate English education courses after a twenty-two-year career as a secondary English educator. Jenevieve Goss is an adjunct professor at Kennesaw State University and is a full-time high school art teacher in the Cobb County School district in Georgia. She has a B.S. in art education, master’s in education, and a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction and the science of learning. Stephen Goss is an associate professor of English Education at Kennesaw State University. Jason J. Griffith is an assistant professor of literacies and English language arts at Penn State University. Before earning his doctorate in English education from Arizona State University in 2018, Jason taught middle school and high school English for 12 years in Carlisle, PA. Rebecca G. Harper is an associate professor of language and literacy in the College of Education and Human Development at Augusta University where she teaches courses in literacy, qualitative research, and curriculum, and serves as the EdD program director. Melissa Hoffman is the program director at Adventure Risk Challenge and is an instructor for NOLS Wilderness Medicine.

xii List of contributors

Donald Hudson taught middle and high school English for nearly thirty years before retiring from New Glarus High School in southern Wiscon­ sin. He earned a master’s degree from Breadloaf School of English in 1989. He also co-directed the Wisconsin Writing Project at Madison. Jeffrey Hudson is a former high school English teacher. Jeff became a fellow of the Mississippi Valley Writing Project and co-founded the Piasa Bluffs Writing Project. Jeff now works in support of teachers and students with the South Coast Writing Project where he helps facilitate summer institutes. Merrilyne Lundahl is an associate professor of English and co-director of the Oregon Writing Project at Southern Oregon University, where she teaches pedagogy, professional writing, literature, and rhetoric courses. Her research site is Adventure Risk Challenge. Shelley Martin Young is an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She teaches several literacy courses, introduc­ tion to teaching, and senior seminar. She was an elementary teacher for 30 years before earning her Ph.D. in 2021. Amanda Montgomery is a teacher at Park Street Elementary School in Marietta, Georgia. She works with the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project and is also the co-author of A Place to Write: Getting Your Students Out of the Classroom and Into the World (2021). Rob Montgomery is professor of English and English education at Kennesaw State University. He has worked with the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project and the Georgia Film Academy. Rob is also the co-author of A Place to Write: Getting Your Students Out of the Classroom and Into the World (2021). Clarice M. Moran is an associate professor of English education at Appa­ lachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She received her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from North Carolina State University in 2014. Rich Novack is a high school English teacher in Connecticut. He also teaches at Fairfield University as an adjunct professor in the English Department. He earned his Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, and continues to collaborate with the National Writing Project and the National Parks Service on place-based workshops. Glenn Rhoades is a high school classroom teacher and Ed.D. student at Georgia State University. Katie Zanto is the founder of Adventure Risk Challenge and serves on its Board of Directors and Curriculum Committee. She served as chair of interdisciplinary studies at Sierra Nevada University, and currently is a senior lecturer at the University of Nevada, Reno, at Lake Tahoe.

Acknowledgements

In addition to the thoughtful, passionate group of authors we’ve been lucky enough to work with in compiling this collection, we would like to thank our students – past, present, and future – for being a constant source of inspiration.

Part I

Meaningful Encounters with the Great Outdoors

In reading the following chapters that deal with place-based writing in the natural world, you might use the following questions to guide or focus your reading: a b c

What is the value in encouraging students to immerse themselves in the natural world? How might activities such as those described in this section be approximated in urban settings? In what ways does writing in the natural world help students develop abilities in observing and reflecting, and what is the value of situating student writing at the intersection of those two habits of mind?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-1

Chapter 1

An Introduction to Place-Based Writing Getting Authentic by Getting Out of the Classroom Rob Montgomery and Amanda Montgomery Hi. Wait, hold on. Sorry. We know you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and dive into this collection, and the last thing we want is to be an impediment to your scholarly activity. But before we go any further, we’d like you to pause for a moment. Put this book out of your mind, the lesson plans you need to write, the papers you need to grade, the emails you need to respond to. You need to deal with those things, sure. But not right now. Pause. And think of some places that are important to you, from any point in your own history. No hurry. We’ll wait. Okay. Got a few? What makes these places important to you? What makes them resonate, especially those memories of places long in the past? What associations do they carry for you, whether positive or negative? Is it mere sense memory, the sights, sounds, and smells that have allowed certain places to burrow themselves into your psyche? Or is place inextricably tangled with experi­ ence? Does place matter because of what we experienced there and with whom we experienced it? Or is it all of the above, an intersection of people and experiences and sensory details that cause places to linger in our memory, even when the narrative fiber of those memories may have been reduced to the slimmest of threads? For Rob, who grew up in rural Ohio, he still retains powerful memories of waking up on summer mornings, dewdrops iridescent on the emerald lawn, the prickly scent of the neighboring pig farm wafting over the gently rustling tassels of corn stalks in the field next to the house. And all these details – sight, sound, smell – are unavoidably wrapped up in memories of his family: his younger brother, his father, his mother. And those memories are tinged by the way that family has changed. His brother has a family of his own. His mother passed away over a decade ago. His father has remarried. So those memories of a DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-2

4 Rob Montgomery & Amanda Montgomery

simple place, his childhood home, are a collision of details and stories and regrets and fond recollections of times past. Amanda, a native of southern California, still remembers climbing up into the olive tree in her grandparents’ backyard, the chorus of katydids echoing against the heat of a midsummer day as she climbed higher and higher in search of shade and solitude. These memories intertwined with the mem­ ories of her love of discovery and knowledge: her 5th grade teacher and his collection of bugs hidden behind the chalkboard, her adventures exploring the desert in her high school field ecology class, her grandfather presenting her with the California kingsnake he found wandering around the house at night. Those memories built to her passion for showing her students the wonder of nature in her own classroom. Duncan (1995) uses the term “river teeth” to describe memories that defy easy retelling. In this metaphor, he describes fallen trees that have decom­ posed in water except for “a series of cross-grained, pitch-hardened masses” that look “like enormous fangs, often with a connected, cross-grained root” (p. 2). Just as these wooden river teeth have hardened and calcified, out­ lasting the rest of the tree that was their origin, so too do we possess shards and fragments of memory, many of them connected to specific places, that “remain inexplicably lodged in us after the straight-grained narrative mate­ rial that housed them has washed away” (p. 4). For both of us, memories of our childhood may have eroded with time, but the pull of place, the importance of these specific environments, still have a magnetic draw for us. Now: how about you? Revisit those places you thought of a couple pages ago. Why do those places matter? Why are they the first ones that came to mind when we gave you this task? What are the “river teeth” that allow those places to snag in your memory after all this time? And, crucially, what kind of writing might emerge from exploring those places in more detail? We begin this collection in this way because, for the chapters that follow to effectively serve as a guide toward infusing place-based writing in your own classroom, we have to operate from a shared belief: place matters. Whether we’re excavating the associations we have with places in our past or engaging with places in the present for a range of audiences and pur­ poses, there’s a power, an immediacy, to place that simply can’t be found in formulaic essays. Did your hackles rise at the end of that last sentence? It’s okay. We’re not advocating for the wholesale abolition of the academic essay. We have, as we make sure to emphasize whenever we talk about place-based writing with our colleagues, a professional obligation to ensure our students have a facility with that genre of writing. But what we hope you’ll see in the ensuing chapters – each one describing an activity or assignment that the authors have actually implemented with their students – is that place-based writing can be used as an effective alternative to the essay. In its most idea­ lized form, it can be a way of helping the classroom pendulum swing in a

An Introduction to Place-Based Writing

5

more balanced way between writing that is mainly used as a tool for asses­ sing our students’ thinking and writing that has a greater degree of authen­ ticity in the world outside of and beyond the classroom.

Defining “Place” Before we preview the chapters that make up the rest of this collection, there are two key ideas we need to unpack. The most obvious is what we mean by “place.” Misconceptions of place (and, by extension, what constitutes placebased writing) have led to some of the strongest resistance we’ve faced from teachers when it comes to the idea of implementing this kind of writing in the classroom. When some teachers hear “place-based writing,” they immediately think of funding and buses and substitute coverage and bell schedules and – in the most extravagant cases – hotel accommodation and meals. That’s a natural train of thought in these penny-pinching times, and that is certainly one type of place-based writing experience. It can be extensive and involve taking your students to locations far away from the school grounds. Both of us have parti­ cipated in those kinds of experiences – Rob took high school students to Yosemite National Park and Amanda has taken her 3rd and 4th grade students to the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park and the Georgia Aqua­ rium – and they’re certainly exciting for students and teachers alike. If you can facilitate that kind of activity, we encourage you to do so. But, to say it plainly: place-based writing needn’t be extravagant, expensive, or arduous to implement. One of our intentions behind this specific volume is to demonstrate the ways practicing teachers are using a variety of forms of place-based writing in ways that are largely accessible for teachers but no less meaningful for students. So, if you (or your colleagues or administration) resist place-based writing because you sense it will be too expensive or complicated to imple­ ment, we hope the next few paragraphs will help put your mind at ease. First, we recognize that place-based education grew out of outdoor or environmental education (Buell, 1995; Woodhouse & Knapp, 2000; Armbruster & Wallace, 2001) as a way to counteract “young people’s diminished encounters with the natural world” (Smith & Sobel, 2010, p. 38). That remains vitally important work, and there absolutely can be a specific focus for place-based writing that involves environmental advocacy and stewardship (as we’ll discuss later and which you’ll see from some of this collection’s chapters). We don’t want to diminish the innovative work of the teachers who have gone before us. That said, we’ve adopted a more expan­ sive view of what counts as place (and place-based writing) in order to broaden the parameters by which teachers can get students out of the class­ room to engage with the real world. If we think of place-based writing as only involving camping excursions or lengthy field trips, we’re immediately going to limit the number of teachers who see this as a viable practice.

6 Rob Montgomery & Amanda Montgomery

This isn’t to say we’re flippantly discounting the origin of place-based writing. There’s a deep and rich research base validating the practice of taking students into nature, and it can be valuable in a range of disciplines. Perhaps its most important benefit is the way a traditional approach to place-based writing can encourage students to become active, engaged citi­ zens. Brooke (2003), in his work with students and teachers in rural places, describes place-based writing as one means by which we can help students see “the rich way local place creates and necessitates the meaning of indivi­ dual and civic life” (p.10). Similarly, Sobel (2004) believes that place-based writing, when implemented effectively, “helps students develop stronger ties to their community, enhances students’ appreciation for the natural world, and creates a heightened commitment to serving as contributing citizens” (p. 7). Shrake (2000) sees the benefit of place-based writing in even broader terms, arguing that “if we can induce in our children a sense of connected­ ness to the earth, we can almost ensure its survival” (p. 74). So yes: there is a critical need to encourage the next generation of adults to become advocates for, and stewards of, the environment. The traditional form of place-based writing is one way teachers can facilitate that. But also: that form of place-based writing isn’t possible everywhere. In these politically fraught times, the act of encouraging eco-consciousness in students will be repellent to some parents. Whether or not we find that perspective unreasonable and dangerous (and we do) is beside the point. It will be an issue in some school communities. So, too, will be administrators who are resistant to the prospect of teachers doing this work. Their reasons might be ideological in nature, but it might also be because fiscal resources simply don’t allow trips away from the school site. For these reasons, it is important to broaden our conception of what place-based writing can entail. Just because it doesn’t take place in a national park doesn’t make it any less valuable for other, just as legitimate, purposes. With all the preceding in mind, two writers have been especially influential to our own thinking about place, rendering the concept both simple and accessible for a variety of classroom uses. Cresswell (2015) defines place as “a meaningful location” (p. 12). If you think back to our earlier discussion of resonant places – and our request that you think of some of your own – you’ll likely find that Cresswell’s definition is accurate, if perhaps a little too reduc­ tive to be a useful guide for students. To unpack in more detail the concept of what counts as one of Cresswell’s meaningful locations, we rely on the work of Agnew (1987), who identifies three specific characteristics of place. The first of these traits is location. For a place to be “a place,” it needs to have a physical location, such as a street address or map coordinates (even if those coordinates move, as in the case of an airplane or a ship at sea). The second trait is locale, or all the individual features that make up a location. You can think about this in terms of your neighborhood or, if you live in a large city, all the neighborhoods that make up that metropolitan space. To

An Introduction to Place-Based Writing

7

put it in even more local terms, consider your school. Even though it’s likely a single building or campus, there are a variety of features that give your school its identity: the front office, the classrooms, the cafeteria, the gym­ nasium, and so on. Even liminal spaces, like the parking areas, doorways, and stairwells contribute to making your school the entity it is. And all these individual features accumulate to create Agnew’s third trait: sense of place. This refers to the feel of a place, the emotional attachments that make a specific location resonate with people. It is these attachments, as we hope we illustrated at the beginning of this chapter, that often make places such powerful things to write about and therefore so potentially useful for authentic classroom writing. Because we’re all currently operating in different spheres with a variety of frames of reference, it might be tricky to consider how Agnew’s three characteristics come together to define a single place. Here’s a practical (if a bit unconventional) way of illustrating how this works: take this chapter as a sort of literary or bibliographical place. It’s got a fixed location (the opening pages of this book), it’s got a locale (the subheadings; the refer­ ences to theory; a preview of the chapters to come), and we hope it has a sense of place (an engaging, accessible tone that makes you want to keep reading). The point of this example isn’t to provide you with a cutesy illustration of just how clever we are (although: fair accusation), but rather to reinforce that when we take a broad view of place, it opens all kinds of possibilities for the work we can do with our students. Agnew’s three traits give us a range of motion that can be applied to a variety of places as well as a variety of common writing tasks. As you’ll see in later chapters, there’s room for the environmental advocacy espoused by Smith and Sobel (2010); critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald, 2003), where students come to recognize power structures that oppress marginalized populations; as well as the kind of community reclamation advocated for by writers such as Owens (2001) and Kinloch (2010), where students are encouraged to see “their local environments not as separate incidental landscapes but as extensions of themselves” (Owens, 2001, p. 75). Thinking about place can allow this kind of work to happen. However, as vitally important as the preceding work is, we recognize it may not be possible in your school or district, or maybe even in your entire state, especially if local politics are particularly contentious. But that doesn’t mean place-based writing is a non-starter in your classroom, or that it can’t lead to effective writing activities for your students. By adopting a broad definition of place, you’ll be able to find a range of locations in your local community – including your own school site – where you can still engage your students in meaningful writing experiences, even if you’re unable to tackle some of the most charged political issues of our time. And soon, you’ll see chapters describing those kinds of activities, too.

8 Rob Montgomery & Amanda Montgomery

In short, thinking broadly about place can allow you to teach aspects of a traditional curriculum in nontraditional ways. It sounds silly, but places are everywhere. In the next section, we’ll briefly discuss why writing about them can be so important. That’s the second idea we need to unpack.

Authenticity and the Potential Benefits of Place-Based Writing Returning to a point we briefly made earlier, one of the affordances of getting your students out of the classroom to engage with the real world is that you immediately open up a range of possibilities for authentic writing. One of the distinct problems with how writing is traditionally taught – in our experiences as students as well as in our experience as teachers with nearly 40 years in the classroom between us – is that the commonly taught modes of writing have limited use in the world outside of and beyond school. The issues vexing traditional writing instruction have been exhaustively described elsewhere (see, among others, Applebee & Langer, 2011; Hillocks, 2002; Wiggins, 2009), but if we were try to capture one of the primary pro­ blems, it would be this: a lack of authenticity. You know how many tradi­ tional essays go. The students are given a common prompt (usually created by the teacher) and a specific number of days in which to craft a response. A formula may be required. In-class drafting and workshop time is rare. The only audience for this writing is the teacher, who assigns a grade and pro­ vides some narrative feedback. Even if you don’t subscribe to this model yourself, you’ve surely witnessed colleagues employ it, had it prescribed to you by your school or district, or you might even have experienced it your­ self as a student. The allure of this approach to teaching writing is obvious: it’s easy. And I suspect we all (including your authors) have been guilty of it at one time or another. The glaring problem with this approach is that, from start to finish, stu­ dents have little or no opportunity to engage with writing in an authentic form as it exists when it isn’t being externally assigned or mandated. We could really get into the weeds with the various nuanced definitions of authenticity, but for many of the teachers who have written on this topic, the notion of what constitutes authentic writing centers on personal agency and a real or implied audience other than the teacher as assessor (Gallagher, 2011; Kirby & Crovitz, 2013; Kixmiller, 2004; Lindblom & Christenbury, 2018; Rodesiler & Kelley, 2017; Whitney, 2011, 2017). In short, for writing to be authentic, an assignment must be structured in such a way that stu­ dents can find both personal relevance and / or purpose in what they’re being asked to write about, and that writing should be crafted for an audi­ ence other than the teacher who’s assigning a grade. Taking such an approach is, of course, easier said than done. And, when you look at writing instruction through this lens, it makes sense that the

An Introduction to Place-Based Writing

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traditional model of teaching writing has lingered as long as it has. But again, and not to belabor the point, that traditional model doesn’t really resemble how it works when people write for authentic purposes. But now for some good news. As we’ve explored place-based writing in a concerted, strategic way for nearly the last decade – with our own students as well as with teachers in the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project – we’ve seen how it can be positioned in the classroom for writing assignments that are authentic, interdisciplinary and, crucially, still assess the kinds of writing modes – narrative, expository, and argumentative – that are the mainstays of state standards documents. To be specific, we’ve identified five potential benefits of place-based writing. Place-based writing isn’t the only curricular approach to possess these benefits, but in our experience we’ve come to believe it’s the approach where these benefits can be found most easily and most naturally. We described all five of them in detail in our previous book, A Place to Write: Getting Your Students Out of the Classroom and Into the World (Montgomery & Montgomery, 2021). We won’t discuss them in as much detail here, but just to ensure you can see why place-based writing is in some ways an ideal vehicle for authentic writing, we provide a brief snapshot of each potential benefit below. One caveat: as you’ll see from the subsequent chapters, much of this work (and its intended benefits) hinges on your willingness to provide students with a degree of autonomy in the kind of writing they create. This is one of the necessary trade-offs of writing authentically: it may not always look the way you initially (or even ideally) envisioned. But again, it’s worth men­ tioning that writing is a vehicle for thinking. If the goal is to create an effective argument, does everyone have to write an essay if an alternative mode of argument might be more effective or personally engaging? This is another reason why facilitating these kinds of experiences is more challen­ ging than assigning another essay: a leap of faith is involved. But in our experience, it’s a leap well worth taking. �

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Place-based writing can be personal (and purposeful). Whether it’s asking students to explore a place that matters to them, delve into the history of their neighborhood, or tackle an environmental issue that troubles them, writing in the world beyond the classroom provides students with a rich reservoir of personally relevant topics. In this way, place-based writing is especially well positioned to honor identities and communities that have been traditionally marginalized. Students can find their own voices vali­ dated by such writing, and in the process, we help “center cultural, lin­ guistic, and literate pluralism as part of schooling for racial justice and social transformation” (Paris & Alim, 2017, p. 13). Place-based writing can be agentive. Writing is decision-making. From structure to word choice to voice, to write authentically is to make choices dealing with the style and effectiveness of the piece you’re

10 Rob Montgomery & Amanda Montgomery

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writing and the audience for whom you’re writing it. By providing students with freedom and flexibility in how they engage with an assignment situated in the world outside the classroom, we can help them break free of the formulaic approaches that have often served as intellectual shackles. Place-based writing can be engaging. We know that engaged writing is often better writing. Even if it isn’t grammatically clean or organiza­ tionally sound, we can usually see an energy when a student is engaged with their writing, and this energy gives us something with which to work. Providing students with real-world contexts in which to write gives them the freedom to find a topic (and even a genre) that can spur them to livelier, more engaged work. Place-based writing can be audience oriented. Moving the act of writing outside the classroom immediately opens up a range of authentic audiences that aren’t often present with the traditional academic essay. Letters, grant proposals, stories and poetry, scripts and screenplays, pop-up museums, poster displays – a world of genres possessing embedded audiences exists just outside the classroom door. Place-based writing can promote change. Perhaps the most transfor­ mational benefit of the five, place-based writing has real potential to help students become actively engaged with their communities and natural environment. As we mentioned earlier, we recognize this kind of work won’t be possible everywhere. We both have seen how many educators in our metro Atlanta schools have spent the last year or two teaching on eggshells in an effort not to offend the easily offendable. But place-based writing, implemented effectively, “helps students develop stronger ties to their community, enhances students’ appre­ ciation for the natural world, and creates a heightened commitment to serving as active, contributing citizens” (Sobel, 2004, p. 7). So much of traditional writing instruction is focused inward, on discreet goals and skills and standards. Place-based writing, by contrast, can ask students to turn their gaze outward and begin to reckon with their role in the larger world.

At this point, before we preview the remaining chapters, we want to emphasize again that this collection isn’t a “storm the ramparts” moment. We aren’t advocating for the wholesome elimination of the academic essay, nor do we envision some sort of post-apocalyptic landscape where deserted, weed-infested school buildings litter the countryside while stu­ dents and teachers are off camping and writing in a bucolic pedagogical utopia. Instead, what we hope this collection represents is a glimpse of what’s possible, a taste of the kind of writing students can achieve if they’re given the opportunity to engage authentically with writing in the world outside the classroom walls.

An Introduction to Place-Based Writing

11

Finally, one thing you’ll immediately notice – and which you might already expect, considering some of this introduction’s previous con­ versation – is that some of the chapters that follow might not resemble traditional place-based writing. Some chapters do indeed involve trees and journals and observations of nature. But other chapters take place on the school grounds. Or in the middle of downtown Tulsa. Or online. If we take to heart Agnew’s (1987) definition of place as involving a fixed location, a locale, and a sense of place, you’ll see that all the contexts described in the following chapters do indeed meet the definition of place. We hope you’ll see our more expansive, inclusive depiction of place-based writing as motivational. There are a multitude of places, some right around the corner, that can help your students compose thoughtful, exciting pieces of writing.

Chapter Overview This collection is divided into four sections, each of which broadly captures one particular facet of place-based writing. We have also provided guiding questions at the beginning of each section that might help focus your read­ ing or provide you with different issues to consider. Part I: Meaningful Encounters with the Great Outdoors In Chapter 2, Cathie English describes a project designed to connect her students with the ecology of the Missouri Ozarks. After conducting a writing marathon at a biology field station, her students wrote and shared original poetry that helped them develop both ecological literacy and a place-conscious sensibility. Cathie’s chapter includes her procedures for conducting a writing marathon. Next, in Chapter 3, Tina Cheuk takes on the topic of nature journaling. Using the framework “I notice,” “I wonder,” “It reminds me of,” and “Should we?” (Laws & Lygren, 2020), Cheuk describes the process by which she teaches her students to journal in nature and discusses how this metacognitive activity can translate into authentic writing. Tina’s chapter includes instructions for how to use Laws & Lygren’s framework mentioned above. In Chapter 4, Rich Novak takes us on a series of “rambles,” nature walks around the community where he teaches high school. Using these rambles as a way to teach observation and attention to detail, his students write per­ sonal narratives that they pin to a virtual map. Rich’s chapter includes a detailed assignment sheet for his story mapping assignment. Chapter 5 describes the process by which Merrilyne Lundahl, Katie Zanto, and Melissa Hoffman teach students how to “zoom in” on the nature of Yosemite National Park and then transfer that knowledge to the teaching of rhetorical grammar. Their chapter includes a detailed assignment that

12 Rob Montgomery & Amanda Montgomery

describes how to conduct observations in nature and then bring that skill set to learning grammar. Part II: Finding the Intersection between Community, History, and Self This section begins with Chapter 6 and Shelley Martin Young’s experience helping students learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre. Shelley uses photo­ graphy and poetry to explore how teachers can help students learn about local history, especially events that have been obscured through time or political agenda. Shelley’s chapter includes a variety of place-based writing activities grounded in local history. In Chapter 7, Jeffrey Hudson and Donald Hudson unpack the Sustainable Resource Project, an assignment that asks students to mount an argument defending a natural resource in their own community. This multimodal project involves authentic argument writing and eco-consciousness, and the authors have included a variety of resources to help teachers adapt this project for their own classrooms. In Chapter 8, Jason Griffith discusses the topic of collaborative journal­ ing. Grounded in place-based principles and learned during Jason’s time as a crew leader for the Student Conservation Association, the collaborative journal can provide students with the room and opportunity to write infor­ mally about the non-school places that matter to them. Jason provides a detailed guide to using these journals, including how to assess them and the ways in which they align with Common Core standards. Next, in Chapter 9, Amanda Montgomery describes the process by which she helped her 3rd grade students uncover local history in Marietta, GA. Using online resources and a local walking tour, Amanda’s students became more knowledgeable not just about local history but how to write historical narratives grounded in their research. Her chapter includes a graphic organizer and guiding questions to help students conduct authentic research. Part III: Writing about Art and Writing as Art In Chapter 10, Glenn Rhoades and Stephen Goss discuss their students’ experience displaying writing in school places to disrupt expectations of writing, art, and school culture. Based in the public art of Jenny Holzer and Banksy, Glenn and Stephen’s project involves collaborative writing, multimodal composition, and an analysis of school as place. Their chapter includes an assignment sheet for doing similar work in your own classroom. Next, in Chapter 11, Jenevieve Goss recounts her experience facilitating writing and art-making through her students’ place-based memories of food. Taught in an asynchronous online course, Jenevieve asked her students to choose a powerful memory of a food experience, visit the place where the

An Introduction to Place-Based Writing

13

memory happened, and then create a piece of writing and a piece of visual art inspired by the memory and the visit. She includes a detailed assignment description of this project using both writing and visual art. Rebecca Harper takes us to an art museum in Chapter 12. Conducted in collaboration with a National Writing Project site and her local art museum, Rebecca describes a variety of writing activities students can complete as they view paintings and other works of art, and she also unpacks the considerations teachers should explore as they choose artwork for their own classroom context. Rebecca includes a detailed description of several art-based writing activities. Part IV: Using Digital Tools to Bring the Outside World into the Classroom We begin our final section with Chapter 13. In this chapter, Clarice Moran describes the potential found in affordable virtual reality devices for generating authentic research and writing. She explores the ways these devices can allow students to “travel” to places they might not otherwise be able to visit, and then turn that journey into writing. Clarice includes a detailed assignment description for using virtual reality to write research-based narratives. In Chapter 14, Margaret Delgado-Chernick helps her students tell stories about people and places in their community through podcasting. This multimodal project leverages students’ knowledge of, and interest in, podcasting and provides them with an authentic venue to research local history, interview members of the community, write a script, and perform it. Margaret includes several detailed handouts that could be used to incorporate this project in your own classroom. The collection ends with Chapter 15 and Rob Montgomery’s discus­ sion of the virtual tour as a vehicle for teaching (and assessing) narra­ tive, argument, and explanatory writing. Students leverage their local, “insider” knowledge to identify places in their own community worth knowing, write a variety of pieces in different genres about those places, and then pin them on a map. In the process, they create a tour of their community grounded in voices that are not often consulted for projects like these. Rob includes a step-by-step assignment description as a resource. Even if some of these place-based writing experiences fall outside the bounds of what you can accomplish in your own school, we hope the dis­ cussion in each chapter helps you think about what place-based writing might look like in your specific context. It’s exciting work, and we hope you’ll reach out to us and the authors in this collection with your own stories as you and your students venture into the world.

14 Rob Montgomery & Amanda Montgomery

References Agnew, J. A. (1987). Place and politics: The geographical mediation of state and society. Allen & Unwin. Applebee, A., & Langer, J. (2011). A snapshot of writing instruction in middle schools and high schools. English Journal, 100(6), 14–27. www.jstor.org/stable/23047875. Armbruster, K., & Wallace, K. R. (Eds.). (2001). Beyond nature writing: Expanding the boundaries of ecocriticism. University Press of Virginia. Brooke, R. E. (2003). Place-conscious education, rural schools, and the Nebraska Writing Project’s Rural Voices, Country Schools Team. In R. E. Brooke (Ed.), Rural voices: Place-conscious education and the teaching of writing (pp. 1–20). Teachers College Press. Buell, L. (Ed.). (1995). The environmental imagination: Thoreau, nature writing, and the formation of American culture. Harvard University Press. Cresswell, T. (2015). Place: A short introduction (2nd ed.). Wiley Blackwell. Duncan, D. J. (1995). River teeth: Stories and writings. Doubleday. Gallagher, K. (2011). Write like this: Teaching real-world writing through modeling and mentor texts. Stenhouse. Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032004003. Hillocks, G., Jr. (2002). The testing trap: How state assessments control learning. Teachers College Press. Kinloch, V. (2010). Harlem on our minds: Place, race, and the literacies of urban youth. Teachers College Press. Kirby, D. L., & Crovitz, D. (2013). Inside out: Strategies for teaching writing (4th ed.). Heinemann. Kixmiller, L. A. S. (2004). Standards without sacrifice: The case for authentic writ­ ing. English Journal, 94(1), 29–33. www.jstor.org/stable/4128844. Laws, J. M., & Lygren, E. (2020). How to teach nature journaling: Curiosity, wonder and attention. Heyday Publishing. Lindblom, K, & Christenbury, L. (2018). Continuing the journey 2: Becoming a better teacher of authentic writing. National Council of Teachers of English. Montgomery, R., & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. National Council of Teachers of English. Owens, D. (2001). Composition and sustainability: Teaching for a threatened gen­ eration. National Council of Teachers of English. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2017). What is culturally sustaining pedagogy and why does it matter? In D. Paris & H. S. Alim (Eds.), Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world (pp. 1–21). Teachers College Press. Rodesiler, L., & Kelley, B. (2017). Toward a readership of “real” people: A case for authentic writing opportunities. English Journal, 106(6), 22–28. Shrake, K. (2000). It started with a stream. In B. Bourne (Ed.), Taking inquiry outdoors: Reading, writing, and science beyond the classroom walls (pp. 61–75). Stenhouse. Smith, G. A., & Sobel, D. (2010). Place- and community-based education in schools. Routledge. Sobel, D. (2004). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. Orion Society.

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Whitney, A. E. (2011). In search of the authentic English classroom: Facing the school­ ishness of school. English Education, 44(1), 51–62. www.jstor.org/stable/23238722. Whitney, A. E. (2017). Keeping it real: Valuing authenticity in the English classroom. English Journal, 106(6), 16–21. Wiggins, G. (2009). Real-world writing: Making purpose and audience matter. Eng­ lish Journal, 98(5), pp. 29–37. www.jstor.org/stable/40503292. Woodhouse, J. L., & Knapp, C. E. (2000). Place-based curriculum and instruction: Outdoor and environmental education approaches (ED448012). Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. Appalachia Educational Laboratory.

Chapter 2

Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks Cathie English

Introduction On the last day of a summer intersession course, student writing groups convened at our university’s biology field station classroom and then drove to Kim’s BBQ Shack in nearby Kirbyville, Missouri. Kim’s is a mom-and-pop restaurant with slick, red checkered tablecloths, and a lighted menu board above the window where you order your food. Students lined up to order ribs, chicken, fish, burnt ends, and brisket, and we were not disappointed. The portion sizes were ample, and the side dishes and cornbread were piled high on our plates. We scooched together four tables so we could accom­ modate our large group. We were loud and boisterous, and the local diners, men in denim overalls and caps with Bass Pro Shop or seed company logos, looked at us with side glances that seemed to be asking, “Who the heck are these people?” But when we started reading aloud, they listened intently. What the locals were listening to were our stories – stories derived from observations conducted during a writing marathon, a writing practice that focuses on physical presence, observation, and writing in the moment. This “read aloud read around” was the culminating activity of the writing marathon. The people were students enrolled in a course, “Place Conscious Reading and Writing: ‘Ecology of the Ozarks,’” a mixed credit course that encompassed several principles of a critical place consciousness empha­ sizing inquiry into the ecology of a geographical place. The students enrol­ led in the course included those majoring in English education, literature, creative writing, professional and technical writing, interdisciplinary studies, philosophy, biology, and political science. Over half the students were graduate students. I am an English language arts teacher educator at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri in the heart of the Ozarks. During summer intersession courses, my students and I have traveled Missouri as an integral part of online hybrid courses containing a field trip component, to better understand how dwelling in a place affects our perception of the world as well as how it influences and continues to impact local and regional authors. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-3

Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks 17

We took field trips to two outdoor spaces. This semester, I chose Hawksbill Crag in northwest Arkansas not just because Whitaker Creek and the Buffalo River possess a variety of stunning views, but because both locations were alluded to in several of our course texts. The second locale was the Missouri State Biological Field Station at Bull Shoals Lake, which provided an opportunity for students to understand how educators navigate the natural world. I also wanted the preservice English Language Arts (ELA) teachers to know the field station was a resource for their future secondary classrooms should they want to have their own students engage with writing in real-world settings. The field station was also the focus of our placebased writing experience. During our time at the field station, we partici­ pated in a writing marathon where student groups moved through several locales at the lake and field station to write and share their writing with each other.

Ecological Scholars I first understood critical place consciousness in 1997 when I was introduced to the concept of place-based education in a Nebraska Writing Project Rural Summer Institute. Toni Haas and Paul Nachtigal’s (1998) Place Value: An Educator’s Guide to Good Literature on Rural Lifeways, Environments, and Purposes of Education argues that as educators we must instill five senses into our students: a sense of place or living well ecologically; a sense of connection, or living well spiritually; a sense of worth or living well eco­ nomically; a sense of belonging or living well in community; and a sense of civic involvement or living well politically. Over a career that now spans 32 years, I have sought to develop a curriculum that includes place-based writing outside the four walls of the classroom through local inquiries and community literacy projects. In the past four years, I have specifically focused upon Haas and Nachtigal’s sense of place or living well ecologically. My place conscious mentor, Robert Brooke, informs my understanding of a sense of place or living well ecologically. He writes: Part of living well involves developing a sustainable relationship with the natural world in which one’s community is located. Understanding the biology of one’s region, how that biology connects to local industry and agriculture, and the consequent biological issues that impact one’s community is thus a fundamental aspect of the ability to live well. (Brooke, 2003, p. 10) Experiential learning is an essential component of place conscious pedagogy, but it is an absolute necessity for ecological awareness. Wattchow and Brown (2011) argue that not only can place be a source of identity, but interactions with place can also shape one’s identity:

18 Cathie English

Outdoor places, like home places, have a vital role to play in the development and sustenance of identity […] outdoor places need to be approached with a sense of humility: What happened here? Who has lived here? How have they lived? (Wattchow & Brown, 2011, p. 71) I want my students to embrace that sense of humility when considering their observations about the natural world and how to sustain it. David Orr (2005b) also guides my understanding of ecological place consciousness. He, too, inhabited the Ozarks and directed an environmental education center. His experiences here “opened the door to the different possibility that educa­ tion ought, somehow, to be more of a dialogue requiring the capacity to listen to the wind, water, animals, sky, nighttime sounds, and what [indigenous people] once described as earthsong” (p. 104). David Greenwood (2019) reminds me that all of us need to “learn more about who we are, where we came from, and why we are in this place. These are our origin stories; they are cosmic, geographical, cultural, and political; they tell us what and where home is” (p. 373). Michael Stone (2010) empha­ sizes that the creation of sustainable societies depends upon ecological literacy and its four guiding principles: “Nature is our teacher, sustainability is a community practice, the real world is the optimal learning environment, and sustainable living is rooted in a deep knowledge of place” (p. 36). Collectively, these scholars shaped the way I view place as a potential inspiration for writing and led me to create experiences for my own students that mirror the principles they stand for.

Ecological Writing Before we ventured out on our field trips in the summer of 2019, my stu­ dents read Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, a story of monarch but­ terfly migration and the effect of climate change intertwined with a young woman’s intellectual and emotional transformation. Students also read Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, an ecological literacy primer, but our pri­ mary texts were written by Ozarkian writers focused on our local ecosys­ tems.1 We read Sue Hubbell’s A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them that chronicles a year in her life as a beekeeper and the bees’ life cycle from winter through fall and how intricately the natural world’s balance affects their hive lives. Local poet Amy Wright Vollmar shared that she draws inspiration for her poetry while kayaking the creeks, lakes, and rivers of the Ozarks, her handy waterproof journal by her side. We read other poets and naturalists of the region to observe and understand how they interpret their natural surroundings here. We then went out into the outdoors to interpret these landscapes for ourselves. Students traveled in their own vehicles to the Missouri State

Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks 19

University’s field station, about an hour from campus adjacent to the Drury Mincy Conservation Area. We met with Dr. Janice Greene, the director of the field station, and she took us on a tour of it. We observed the classroom spaces as well as the lab and the bunk house where students lodge during summer courses. She pointed out netting placed all around the station where students were conducting a study of Missouri insects. Dr. Greene explained her work with bird tagging and identified several species based upon their songs, including the melodic Carolina wren. Once our tour concluded, I distributed the instructions for the writing marathon. Writing marathons have been practiced in the National Writing Project since the original version sponsored in New Orleans in 1994 by Southeastern Louisi­ ana Writing Project Director Richard Louth. The specific guidelines have been modified and adapted at Writing Project sites across the country; the guidelines I used in this activity were revised and enhanced by my colleague, Susan Martens, the director of the Prairie Lands Writing Project at Missouri Western University. I subsequently tailored them to the needs of a natural setting. For those unfamiliar with the writing marathon, the practice involves writers moving through a series of physical locations, taking time to write in each one. Importantly, there is no expectation for what “counts” as a worthwhile marathon site. Over the years, I have conducted writing mara­ thons with high school students around a high school campus and a com­ munity’s town square. I have also asked students to write around the Missouri State University campus and in several spaces in the city, such as a historic street, commercial buildings, local parks, and our conservation nature center. Writing marathons can be conducted virtually anywhere, including your own school site. Before our field trip, I posted the marathon instructions that accompany this chapter on our Blackboard site so students could peruse the document and ask questions via a discussion board. Before we embarked on the marathon, we congregated at the biology field station classroom and read aloud the instructions, so I could address anything needing further clarifica­ tion. Once the marathon began, students moved in small groups to indivi­ dual spots that appeared worthwhile as sites for writing, but once there, each person in the group was permitted to spread out and sit alone to observe and write for ten minutes in any genre that compelled them. To help facilitate this writing, I reminded them that being “writer alert” means paying attention to your surroundings and drawing upon your senses. I also made sure they understood the goal wasn’t to specifically write about their immediate surroundings. Instead, the landscape should inspire their writing, which could extend to writing about memories triggered by that location. After a designated period of time, the students gathered with the other members of their small group and shared the writing they had completed in that location only. Each writer could choose to read aloud all they wrote in that spot or just a sentence or two. The other members of the group were

20 Cathie English

Figure 2.1 Writing marathon instruction sheet.

asked not to comment on their classmates’ writing except to smile, nod, or simply say, “thank you.” This echoes what G. Lynn Nelson (1998) learned from the indigenous people of Arizona in the “feather circle”: “When it is your turn to speak, when you hold the feather in your hand you are encouraged to speak from your heart. Speak from your heart. That is all” (p. 5). Once all the members of a group have written and shared in a parti­ cular location, they then moved on to another spot of their choosing and repeated the process of observing, writing, and sharing.

Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks 21

On that early June afternoon at the field station, students milled about forming groups based upon where they’d mutually like to go—walk, sit, listen, watch—and write. I joined a group that wanted to walk down to the lake’s edge near an old barn. We sat quietly and wrote. I focused upon the dilapidated building, sketching it in my writer’s notebook and then penned the following:

The Barn Corrugated roof rusting for a hundred years, the aged barn sighs. Its bones weary, graying a little more each year, missing limbs, falling away, yet still standing marking the passage of time. Students planted themselves on rocks or grass as they wrote, lost in their own thoughts. After 15 minutes, I signaled for them to gather round. I read aloud my piece first because for most students this was their first marathon. Before I read aloud, I reminded them to just say “Thank you” or shake their head affirmatively. Once I finished, each student read their writing from their observations of that spot. I modeled the response guidelines after each student read aloud. This particular group agreed to walk up the dirt access road where we entered the station to sit at a pro­ montory clearly marked “Scenic View.” Students chose some precarious rocks to sit upon, but all were absorbed in the scene of the lake from our lofty perch. I marked the time for the following poem, 10:10 a.m.: Two boat houses interrupt the blue of the lake and its fingers. white roofs obscure the verdant view, a landscape of oaks, cedars, locusts, and elms. A grasshopper clicks and clacks, and lands on a rock, a black and blue butterfly, a red spotted purple, Limenitis arthemis, lilts by my face. A buzzard, up close, gargantuan,

22 Cathie English

soars on the thermals near our lofty spot— a spring breeze cools my sweaty neck. The second sharing of writing needed no prompting on my part as students gathered around and readily shared their writing from the scenic view, and then we walked back to the field station because we had agreed it would be our last locale before we prepared for our communal read aloud. Once again, we sat quietly, watched, listened, and wrote. A woodpecker echoes across the lake, while a Carolina wren’s loud voice reminds us that she’s here, too! Fish flop in the overflow of flood water, mucky brown standing water, a West Nile virus paradise, a tufted tit mouse sings a soft song, greeting the early morning. Vines climb the locust trees twenty feet in the air, reaching toward the cirrus clouds and vibrant blue sky. After two hours of sun and sweat, walking, and writing in various places around the biology field station and Bull Shoals Lake, students had worked up an appetite. They were enthusiastic about the choice of Kim’s BBQ Shack and air conditioning for our culminating read aloud. We were at the com­ munal table of food for the body and food for the soul. Every marathon I have participated in or facilitated reconvenes at a pre-arranged site, typically a place where food or refreshments can be purchased or served (with high school students I pre-arranged hot chocolate and cookies in the classroom) while sitting around a large table (or tables). It was now time for the whole group to read aloud. Writers consulted with their group members and selected one of their pieces from the mara­ thon to share with everyone else. As in their small groups, each student – based on their individual comfort level – could read either an entire piece or an abbreviated version. My group suggested I read aloud the piece I wrote at the scenic view. Most often, students suggested the pieces that had an emo­ tional impact when read aloud in their small groups. What my students and I were getting at is the telling of our stories, and we understood what

Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks 23

Nelson (2000) understood about the power of creating stories in commu­ nity—that we tell and have someone to listen. He wrote: Only the human heart, telling its stories brings language back to life and taps into the power of the Word “as an instrument of creation.” That changes everything—sends the blood of life pumping through our words. Personal stories change language/writing from a mere subject in school into a tool for survival and peace. But the “telling is not all”— there must be another there to listen. (Nelson, 2000, p. 44) Over several years of writing marathon experiences, I have noticed that when writers are in nature, they have a predilection to write poetry. One by one, we made our way around the table and each person read aloud their selections. Almost all students chose to read poems, or what I would con­ sider lyric prose. There were many examples of beautifully crafted poetry, but several student samples stood out: High Water on Bull Shoals Lake Shimmering ripples of blueish-green and white,

gliding in unison, carrying debris,

wind and fate acting as its guide.

The driftwood, remnants of yesterday’s land,

Cast out and repurposed,

Finding its place on the glassy surface.

On the shore, displaced limbs and brush

lay scattered in piles,

now home to happy residents.

Stephen Mathews Untitled Imagine if that was the oddly shaped shell of a giant hermit crab,

either with an occupant, or awaiting a new one, instead of a discarded

chest freezer.

Imagine if that was the high shell of a large and exotic turtle,

sitting at the surface lazily in this driftwood bank,

instead of someone’s old propane tank.

Imagine if that was the bobbing nose of some beautiful, vivid blue alligator,

floating down current and only just missing his chance at that turtle,

instead of someone’s plastic cup washed downstream.

Imagine if that was the den of some rare creature, proud and noble

and smart

24 Cathie English

and strong enough to claim the best shelter for itself,

instead of a decrepit old barn that time forgot and is left to rot and rust.

You can imagine all you want, but it’s not. It’s our garbage, tainting

what could be.

Eric Grate Turtle Tales the sun begins to warm my shell,

so, I start my day.

my sweet time being spent basking

in the brightness from above

a shadow over my shell.

is rain near?

I hear the incoming thunder

since when can rain remove me

from my place of tranqu…li…ty

higher I climb, shell to face

Disturbing is Daring and Dangerous

I let them know as much

a pointed pixelator

and down I go

I let them know I mean business,

scooting two feet back to peace

Audrey Masters

Implications The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Plateau, cover almost 50,000 square miles across Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. Although there are metro­ politan centers in the Ozarks, much of it is rural, dotted with pasture, poultry farms, and food processing plants. Ecological literacy is one aspect of a cri­ tical place conscious pedagogy. Over more than thirty years, I have studied place in the context of rural spaces. Prior to my work in the Ozarks, I taught secondary ELA for 21 years in rural central Nebraska. There, I was sur­ rounded by miles and miles of hybrid corn and grain elevators that towered into the skies. I could see these sentinels along U.S. Highway 30, driving the flat lands of the plains, from one small town to the next. No matter the region, there is a need to empower students in rural spaces through understanding literacy, and rural citizens need “particular kinds of literate skills … to achieve the goals of sustaining life in rural areas … to pursue the opportunities and create the public policies and economic opportunities needed to sustain rural communities” (Donehower, Hogg, &

Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks 25

Schell, 2007, p. 4). As a teacher educator, I must also foster an under­ standing of how to dispel the stereotypes and myths about rural commu­ nities. That includes enacting methods and practices with my preservice teachers that explore how they can go into their future rural school districts and develop curricula that addresses the particular kind of literacy rural citizens need, chief among them connecting to and advocating for their own rural places. Petrone and Wynhoff Olsen (2021) name this practice “critical rural English pedagogy,” or a curriculum that “emphasizes textual con­ sumption, production, and distribution in order to draw attention to power dynamics, representation, ideologies, social justice/equity issues, and acti­ vism … [and] offers a way to facilitate students’ reading and writing of ‘the word and the world’” (p. 7). A writing marathon is one instructional practice that offers a way for students to read and write the world. Whether it’s around a biological field station, a lake, a mountain, a high school or college campus, or a small town square, a writing marathon asks writers to pay attention to their place and consider how their place has shaped their identity. At the end of the course described in this chapter, I asked students to write a reflection of their experiences. All students wrote compelling reflections about the read­ ings, their writing, and the field trip experiences, but one student’s response provides a powerful example of why we should explore our rural places and understand how our locale shapes who we are: My experience with Place Conscious Reading and Writing was one that I will cherish not only as a means through which I learned about a particular region, but in that I have learned a new way to view and approach areas where I live and travel. This class has awakened in me a greater awareness of the spaces and places around me as well as a deeper curiosity and appreciation for landscapes and even ecosystems near and far. Learning about a region through the lens of its ecology was fascinating; it revealed a new angle to not only take in and learn about my surroundings, but also allowed me to discover more about myself in terms of my interests for readings and passions for writing. The writing marathon as I have described it is but one way of accomplishing the broad goals described in this chapter. For example, several of my sec­ ondary colleagues in Nebraska have enacted similar writing activities that take students out into their communities or region. Sharon Bishop and her biology teaching colleague took their sophomore students to a native prairie preserve, a wetland, and a river blind to watch migrating Sandhill Cranes. Prior to these field trips, Sharon shared excerpts from a book on bior­ egionalism, and her colleague taught his biology students about the ecosys­ tems of the preserve, wetland, and Platte River (Bishop, 2003).

26 Cathie English

Jeff Lacey, as another example, created an ecological unit for his sophomore English students that emphasized “the work of three writers: Nebraskan nat­ uralist and writer Loren Eiseley; Aldo Leopold, whose work Sand County Almanac is considered a major work of environmentalist literature; and the poet Mary Oliver, whose poems often focus on her relationship to the natural world” (English, 2011, pp. 106–107). His goal was to teach students about the local watershed; students went out to a park and stream about ten minutes from his suburban Omaha area school where they observed and wrote. The students created almanacs for their final project that included the following: field journals that record data on two sites: a shared site for the entire class and a “home range” site where students are to visit at least three times. Students are instructed to select a home range site of their own choice where they feel comfortable and that is full of sensory variety—plants, animals and natural features, including several habitats—trees, fields, lakes, ponds, streams or marsh. Their final portfolios include their field journals; a letter to the reader; a site analysis essay based upon their shared and home site’s qualitative and quantitative data; a literary analysis or quote response essay; and a poem or lyrical essay capturing a rich description of a chosen subject and the observer’s emotional connection to the subject. (English, 2011, p. 107) Teachers in all disciplines in P-16 education should advocate for and engage in place-based writing outside the walls of a classroom. We cannot fully grasp how to teach our students if we don’t know our communities. We can’t live well in a community if we don’t know it intimately. David Orr concurs: A place has a human history and a geologic past; it is part of an eco­ system with a variety of microsystems, it is a landscape with a parti­ cular flora and fauna… [and we must dwell] in “an intimate, organic and mutually nurturing relationship with a place.” (Orr, 2005a, p. 92) Each writer sees their place uniquely. These poems highlight the power of observation that place-based writing elicits in our students. Where Stephen saw the debris in the lake as a new habitat for local species, Eric bemoaned the garbage and the disruption of other species’ habitats and the maintenance of the local ecosystem. Audrey moves beyond observation into anthro­ pomorphism. She becomes the turtle. That would be difficult to replicate within the four walls of a classroom. Rural spaces are rich in natural resour­ ces, but often our educational systems inhibit students from exploring the very geography that makes their home, home. These poems display how exposure to nature, or our natural surroundings informs our knowledge of them and a depth of concern for sustaining or preserving a place.

Writing the Ecology of the Ozarks 27

Conclusion For over two decades I have witnessed the power of place-based writing. Stu­ dents have critically engaged in their communities in complex ways they could not have experienced in the day-to-day classroom. They learned lasting lessons about their communities, their fellow citizens, and themselves. In my summer intersession course, students were immersed in the Ozark ecosystem, learning from each other’s observations of nature but also learning about other species, whose continued existence is vital to sustaining our planet and our own lives. In Composition and Sustainability, Derek Owens (2001) writes that composition studies should include not only a study of ecology but of our total environment, “our own immediate and future environs”; it’s essential for students to “explore how their identities have been composed by such places and vice versa” (p. 6). What Owens asks us to do is look around. Watch. Observe. Write. We need to write in order to understand how our environment shapes us. If Nature is our teacher, we need to internalize how the land, the water, and other species beyond homo sapiens are a part of us – that in going out, we are really going in.

Note 1 Even though my teaching focuses on the geology and literature of the Ozarks, you could use authors specific to your own setting to explore similar issues with your students.

References Bishop, S. (2003). A sense of place. In R. Brooke (Ed.), Rural voices: Place-conscious education and the teaching of writing (pp. 65–82). Teachers College Press. Brooke, R. (Ed.). (2003). Rural voices: Place-conscious education and the teaching of writing (Vol. 25). Teachers College Press. Donehower, K., Hogg, C., & Schell, E. E. (2007). Rural literacies. SIU Press. English, C. M. C. (2011). Living well: The value of teaching place. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Greenwood, D. A. (2019). Place, land, and the decolonization of the settler soul. The Journal of Environmental Education, 50(4–6), 358–377. Haas, T., & Nachtigal, P. (1998). Place value: An educator’s guide to good literature on rural lifeways, environments, and purposes of education. ERIC Clearinghouse. Hubbell, S. (1998). A book of bees: And how to keep them. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Jackson, W. (1996). Matfield green. In W. Vitek & W. Jackson (Eds.), Rooted in the land: Essays on community and place (pp. 95–103). Yale University Press. Kingsolver, B. (2012). Flight behavior. Faber & Faber. Leopold, A. (1989). A Sand County almanac, and sketches here and there. Oxford University Press. Muir, J. (1979). John of the mountains: The unpublished journals of John Muir. University of Wisconsin Press.

28 Cathie English Nelson, G. L. (1998). Writing from the feather circle: Seeking a “language of that different yield”. Quarterly, National Writing Project and the Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy, 20, 5–9. Nelson, G. L. (2000). Warriors with words: Toward a post-Columbine writing curriculum. English Journal, 89(5), 42–46. Orr, D. W. (2005a). Place and pedagogy. In M. K. Stone & Z. Barlow (Eds.), Ecological literacy: Educating our children for a sustainable world (pp. 85–96). North Atlantic Books. Orr, D. W. (2005b). Recollection. In M. K. Stone & Z. Barlow (Eds.), Ecological literacy: Educating our children for a sustainable world (pp. 96–106). North Atlantic Books. Owens, D. (2001). Composition and sustainability: Teaching for a threatened generation. National Council of Teachers of English. Petrone, R. & Wynhoff Olsen, A. (2021). Teaching English in rural communities: Toward a Critical Rural English Pedagogy. Rowman & Littlefield. Stone, M. K. (2010). A schooling for sustainability framework. Teacher Education Quarterly, 37(4), 33–46. Vollmar, A. W. (2019, March 25). Noland hollow. Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies, 9. Wattchow, B., & Brown, M. (2011). A pedagogy of place: Outdoor education for a changing world. Monash University Publishing.

Chapter 3

Exploring Interconnections with the Living World through Nature Journaling Tina Cheuk

Introduction The practice of learning in place and nature journaling has recently received renewed attention as a result of the in-person closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The hard pivot during March 2020 towards online learning forced teacher educators like me to think crea­ tively about what we know about how and where young students learn and then leverage that knowledge to enhance student learning experiences. This chapter centers on a fundamental science inquiry skill adapted from Laws and Lygren’s (2020) book, How to Teach Nature Journaling. Using a set of four prompts – “I notice,” “I wonder,” “It reminds me of,” and “Should we?” (hereafter IN/IW/IRMO/SW) – it offers an introductory set of tools in teaching and learning spaces to support educators so that they and their students can be better stewards and caretakers of the environ­ ment. Rather than taking a deficit focus on what is lacking from a parti­ cular space and community, attention is directed at the resources that are present in order to develop and strengthen an asset-based lens for both the teacher and their students. Encouraging teachers and students to be curious, creative, joyful, and in relationship with the land and environment harkens back to indigen­ ous cultures and pedagogies around place-based learning. Doing so facil­ itates engagement with one’s senses and feelings while prioritizing storytelling. The exercise of connecting with one’s place combined with the process of nature journaling allows learners to unearth their rela­ tionships to the land, make visible ways we can better take care of nature, and begin to re-imagine how to live on our lands in ways that are generative and sustainable. Through nature journaling, learners discover how to leverage and apply their full range of linguistic resources across multiple modalities and share their thinking and explorations with their peers in both English and / or their home language(s). Through students’ engagement with nature journaling, they see themselves as writers, scientists, and naturalists, communicating their DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-4

30 Tina Cheuk

thinking through various forms of writing that include sketches, diagrams, symbols, graphs, and tables. Students also are encouraged to use all their senses – sight, hearing, smell, touch, and even taste (e.g., falling raindrops and edible plants) – in addition to employing their emotions. As seen in Figure 3.1, these feelings undergird their sensory experience with the land when gathering artifacts (e.g., leaves, branches, dirt, feathers, bark). Figure 3.1 also illustrates how for some students their pages are part of a bound “hard copy” journal. As seen in Figure 3.2, for learners with access to technology, nature journaling can be further augmented through video and audio recordings as well as photos that complement and enrich their writing. They can add their artifacts and thoughts to a Google Slide deck they can share – and to which new slides can be added each week (akin to paper pages). Even though the contour of the task is similar for everyone, each student will have a different journal entry. The goals of this activity are twofold: (1) to inspire learners to notice and deepen their care and respect for plants, ocean, mountains, animals, and non-living objects (e.g., rocks, soil, water), thereby engaging with intention how we as humans relate to our lands, and (2) to actualize learners’ language repertoires in science and move them toward a more expansive view of how one can communicate their thinking to others through writing their stories of connections and wonderings about the natural world.

Figure 3.1 Example of a journal entry with leaves taped inside.

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Figure 3.2 Example of a digital nature journal with images added.

Theoretical Foundations The nature journal strategy of IN/IW/IRMO/SW is informed by two main resources: Learning in Places (http://learninginplaces.org), a National Science Foundation-funded project that supports early elementary educators to engage students and their families in field-based learning, and curricular resources developed by John Muir Laws (https://johnmuirlaws.com) that draws on the curiosity, wonder, and attention of both the young and old through nature journaling. These complementary resources deepen students’ opportunities for authentic science writing in the natural world outside of

32 Tina Cheuk

their classroom walls through noticing, asking questions, and making con­ nections to their prior knowledge. Learning from Place The practice of learning in place and from the land is not a novel concept and has its origins in indigenous learning practices. Indigenous scholar Gregory Cajete describes native cultures as rooted in “the earth, air, fire, water, and spirit of the place from which they evolve” (Cajete, 2000, p. 284). In this model, the land itself and our relationship to it serves as a significant source of knowledge for how we understand the natural world. Environ­ mental educator David Sobel describes place-based education as “using the local community and environment as a starting point to teach concepts in language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, and other subjects across the curriculum” (Sobel, 2004, p. 6). Grounded in this view is a foundation of practicing reciprocal social and ethical relationships and engaging with the land as caretakers. In her 2022 book Fresh Banana Leaves, Indigenous environmental scholar Jessica Hernandez put the matter this way: Never forget that anywhere you go that is not your home, it’s some­ one’s home, and you must pay them respect and build relationships with the land and the people to be welcomed into their home. Other­ wise, you’re walking into their home as an unwelcome guest. (Hernandez, 2022, p. 3) By turning school “inside-out,” teachers have the potential to create outdoor learning experiences for young people who will grow up and behave in envir­ onmentally responsible ways and foster stronger stewardship behaviors of our lands, waters, and air. A vivid example of this can be found in the Hort Wort Woods Heritage Grove on the campus of Penn State University, where children who are engaged in an “earthen early-childhood curriculum” emerge as “eco­ logical citizens – caretakers of themselves and all other living beings – from their immediate experience and natural curiosities” (Hooven et al., 2021, p. 25). These placed-based learning experiences lend themselves to more intentional co-construction of students’ relationship to nature, thereby increasing the pos­ sibilities of a more just and sustainable future for all (Lees & Bang, 2022). The reflection prompt “Should we?” specifically engages the learner in the role of decision maker and begins to make a claim toward action. As described by the Learning in Places resources, “deliberating and then making decisions” is a key element of place-based learning and involves “utilizing knowledge, clarifying values and goals, and exploring potential impacts… at micro and macro scales, across multiple timescales, and from powered positions” (Learning in Places Collaborative, 2022). The “should we?” prompt also moves students toward the core practice of argumentation from

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evidence found in the Next Generation Science Standards, a sophisticated language practice that requires students to articulate their values and con­ cretely explain what is important to them and their community. This prac­ tice of wondering and asking questions as well as moving toward making a claim about what “should we” do touches on two of the eight science and engineering practices found in the Next Generation Science Standards (National Research Council, 2013) – asking questions and defining pro­ blems, and engaging in argument from evidence – both practices that extend student learning beyond simply making observations with our senses. The broadened line of questioning situates learners in an active decision-making role, weighing social, moral, and equity dilemmas as they prepare to be engaged community members beyond the confines of school walls. Writing Like a Scientist For K-12 ELA teachers, the similarities and differences among the core dis­ ciplines with respect to how disciplinary knowledge is represented, con­ structed, and shared are generally not the focus of content area instruction (Goldman et al., 2016; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2014). Supporting students in writing like a scientist through place-based journaling therefore allows them to “engage in social, semiotic, and cognitive practices compatible with those undertaken by disciplinary experts” (Fang, 2014, p. 444). But the benefits of this place-based journaling activity are not limited to developing disciplinary writing skills. Too often the trope of a scientist as imagined by young learners is that of a lone genius, equipped with a white coat and goggles and seated near a lab bench brewing mysterious chemicals. Missing from this image is the collaborative nature of the scientific enter­ prise and the highly communicative ways team members share their ideas and findings. Peering into the laboratory journals of actual scientists, writ­ ing like a scientist turns out to be an expansive genre that incorporates multiple representations and modalities such as images, symbols, written texts, sounds, videos, and photos that may be combined in the commu­ nicative process for various audiences (Kress, 2009; Stockman, 2022). As learners experience and interact with the natural world, they are able to apply their previous experiences, memories, readings, and positioning to create journal entries that embrace a plurality of genres, voices, and lan­ guages that serve to challenge the power of academic science discourse norms that sees such activities and descriptions as unimportant (Lemke, 1990; Martin, 1989). For learners who have access to and familiarity with various media tools, they might leverage photovoice techniques and voicenarrate their experiences with accompanying videos and photos as part of their journaling efforts (Low & Pandya, 2022). A key element of the process is to deconstruct problems into actionable solutions as they unpack the role of humans in their “should we?” responses (Wang & Burris, 1997).

34 Tina Cheuk

The application of these two approaches together provides a more expansive view of writing purposefully as emerging scientists and engages community members who feel empowered to share their ideas about the land and its environs. The act of writing (and reflecting on one’s writing through reading their journal and those of their peers) is akin to what Cer­ vetti and Pearson describe as becoming a “text actor” – leveraging “social and textual critique to imagine new possibilities and act on those possibi­ lities in a world outside the text” (Cervetti & Pearson, 2023, p. 1). One student made the following reflection in her nature journal in response to the “should we?” prompt as she encountered a receptacle for cigarettes in her nature walk in Morro Bay: “Should we put receptacles with toxic cigarettes in a space where animals and young children could easily consume them? Should we even be allowed to smoke in such a sensitive habitat?” Another student wrestled with the human relationships with the land in her “should we?” reflection: While I was walking the path, I thought about the impact of developing a walking path for people to use. On one hand, I think walking paths like these help encourage people to go out, connect with nature, and get some exercise. However, I also think that it can be somewhat detri­ mental to the nature surrounding these areas. Should we be building more nature walking paths? Are there better, more environmentally friendly ways to do so? In both “should we?” examples from students, we can see them developing an understanding of themselves and their relationship to community mem­ bers and the public at large who venture in these (and similar) spaces. The “should we?” prompt begins to help students develop their own thinking about their relationship to the land. The act of writing, inquiring, and reflecting elicits and centers students’ values, purpose, emotions, creativity, and imagination in how they can be potential stewards of the environment. Ultimately, the act of writing within place-based learning in the discipline of science (see Cervetti & Pearson, 2012; Moje, 2015) can serve as a tool for students to create change in their classroom and school community.

Place-Based Writing Activity: IN/IW/IRMO/SW This next section details the place-based writing activity of taking a nature walk and journaling about it as organized by the 5E framework (“engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate”) – an instructional approach com­ monly used in inquiry science learning that provides a structure for students to connect their prior knowledge and learning experiences and subsequently extend them to new contexts (Bybee, 2009).

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Figure 3.3 Example detailed student assignment sheet.

Engage The activity begins with the students venturing outside for a 30-minute walk around their neighborhood or any outdoor green space. The only tools they will need are a notebook and a writing utensil. Older learners have the option of bringing a device that can capture photos and/or videos, while

36 Tina Cheuk

parents and caretakers can accompany younger learners and initiate the learning prompts of IN/IW/IRMO/SW. This acronym can be written at the top of the page for older learners, serving as a reminder of interactions they should be aiming to engage in with nature. What’s important about this exploration phase is that students (and, if possible, their families and care­ givers) are engaged in learning about their land and their role in it. It’s important to recognize that not all students have families who can participate in journaling efforts nor have access to safe outdoor green spaces. For example, during an intense California wildfire season coupled with local and state stay-at-home measures due to COVID-19, students could not venture outside as outdoor air quality became hazardous coupled with government measures to slow down the pandemic. While in place, students journaled about their experiences from their homes, peering outside their windows, writing and reflecting on what they observed. I also sent students on “virtual field trips” where they could explore both local sites and those far away. In a similar fashion, Margaret Nell Becker, a fourth and fifth-grade classroom teacher, wrote about her pandemic teaching experience in New York City and the development of an “urban forest school” that allowed her students to forge connections and relationships with a place, fostering their sense of joy and wonder while helping them make sense of the world around them (Becker, 2022). Explore Learners are tasked with noticing and using their senses in making obser­ vations about the world around them. Students are asked to apply all of their senses and name their emotions as they engage in observation during their nature walk. They might hear the flapping wings of a hummingbird around the nectar-rich lupines that bloom in the spring or reach down to touch the velvety leaves of a Stachys olympica plant and notice that it reminds them of lamb’s ears. Raindrops might fall and dampen their note­ book, marking their paper with watermarks. As students are exploring their environs and emotions, they are constantly jotting down their initial think­ ing around the IN/IW/IRMO/SW prompts in their notebooks (and if inclined are also engaged in capturing images, videos, and audio clips with their recording devices). Explain In this phase of the learning experience, students are urged to make their thinking visible not only to themselves but to others (including their peers). As students apply the thinking prompts (IN/IW/IRMO/SW), they are making and writing their observations about the natural and built worlds around them. Using the “noticing” prompt, students gather evidence and

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observations about the natural and built worlds around them. The “won­ dering” prompt elicits questions and answers about what students are experiencing, and in turn the “it reminds me of” prompt triggers connec­ tions to their prior knowledge and memories that might allow them to deepen their explanations of what they are seeing, hearing, smelling, touch­ ing, and even tasting. The “should we” prompt moves students toward stewardship, tasking stu­ dents to express a conjecture or hope and placing the onus of responsibility and action on humans in how we treat and interact with nature and consider better choices for thriving and sustainable futures. It is important to note that this prompt is an evaluative prompt, triggering complex mental processes that (for younger learners) will require them to make personal and speculative judg­ ments based on their values. This prompt is meant to elicit emotional sensemaking by students as they have to process their experiences and situate them in relation to their value system. Students have to reason and emotionally negotiate a stance that makes the best sense of the external world they are experiencing. Giving students the opportunity to develop a critical stance on complex interdisciplinary issues around environmental justice also offers moti­ vated students the possibility of learning more. Together, these four prompts set students on a path of both exploring and explaining how the world works. Elaborate Once students complete their entries, teachers begin a dialogue with each student through their journal page. Using the comments feature in Google Slides or sticky notes in hard-bound journals, they engage with the IN/IW/ IRMO/SW prompts in these journal entries. Instructors ask questions that challenge and extend their students’ thinking and help them make connec­ tions to the eight science and engineering practices, seven crosscutting con­ cepts, and disciplinary core ideas found in the Next Generation Science Standards. Instructors should encourage students to go back to both the places that they have visited as well as prior journal entries and make annotations and reflections as part of their learning journey. Evaluate Teachers can approach the evaluation portion of the 5E framework through a gallery walk. For younger learners, the notebooks and the pages can be artifacts that learners can engage with as part of an actual gallery walk around the classroom or in a hallway. Students can be provided with sticky notes and apply the IN/IW/IRMO/SW prompts when engaging with their peers’ journal entries. A similar gallery walk process can be done for jour­ nals that are fully online, as students can access their peers’ journals through Google Slides that are shared with the learning community.

38 Tina Cheuk

What is powerful about the gallery walk process for students is that the content and knowledge generated is based solely on their work. As a class­ room community, each student gets to see where their classmates ventured each week and experience new places through these journal pages. What is particularly useful for student learning is the opportunity to see not only their growth but how their peers show their thinking and connections while journaling in place. Students recognize that learning is not simply about “getting the right answer” and that every student engages, embodies, and interprets their experiences in various ways.

Conclusion These interactions open their eyes to the limitless linguistic creativity and potential of other voices. The simple set of IN/IW/IRMO/SW prompts pro­ vide both educators and students with authentic opportunities to express how they are experiencing the natural and built worlds outside of the classroom and move toward stronger connections with the land we inhabit – an approach that is arguably “transgressive” relative to standard classroom practices (hooks, 2014). By providing an expansive view of nature journaling that allows students to make visible their thinking and their relationships with nature, educators create the opportunity for their students to make meaning and interconnections with the world around them in generative and creative ways, circling back to the indigenous belief that if we take care of the land, the land will take care of all of us.

References Becker, M. N. (2022). How urban forest school gave us the connections we needed during the pandemic. Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, 48, 48–61. Bybee, R. W. (2009). The BSCS 5E instructional model and 21st century skills. National Academy of Sciences. https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dba ssesite/documents/webpage/dbasse_073327.pdf. Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers. Cervetti, G., & Pearson, P. D. (2012). Reading, writing, and thinking like a scientist. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(7), 580–586. https://doi.org/10.1002/ JAAL.00069. Cervetti, G., & Pearson, P. D. (2023). Disciplinary reading, action, and social change. The Reading Teacher. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/ trtr.2196. Fang, Z. (2014). Preparing content area teachers for disciplinary literacy instruction: The role of literacy teacher educators. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(6), 444–448. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.269. Goldman, S. R., Britt, M. A., Brown, W., Cribb, G., George, M., Greenleaf, C., Lee, C. D., Shanahan, C., & Project READI. (2016). Disciplinary literacies and

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learning to read for understanding: A conceptual framework of core processes and constructs. Educational Psychologist, 51(2), 219–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 00461520.2016.1168741. Hernandez, J. (2022). Fresh banana leaves: Healing indigenous landscapes through indigenous science. Penguin Random House. hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge. Hooven, J., Kissling, M., & Woods, M. (2021). Teaching ecological citizenship through an earthen early-childhood curriculum. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 34(2), 19–26. Kress, G. (2009). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary com­ munication. Routledge. Laws, J. M., & Lygren, E. (2020). How to teach nature journaling: Curiosity, wonder and attention. Heyday Publishing. Learning in Places Collaborative. (2022). Socio-ecological histories of places frame­ work: Supporting sense-making and decision-making toward ethical futures. Learning in Places. Lees, A., & Bang, M. (2022). We’re not migrating yet: Engaging children’s geographies and learning with lands and waters. Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, 48, 33–47. Lemke, J. L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Ablex Publishing Corporation. Low, D. E., & Pandya, J. Z. (2022). Centering children’s voices and purposes in multimodality research. Journal of Literacy Research, 54(3), 322–345. https://doi. org/10.1177/1086296X221116862. Martin, J. R. (1989). Discourses of science: Recontextualization, genesis, inter­ textuality and hegemony. In J. R. Martin & R. Veel (Eds.), Reading science: Cri­ tical and functional perspectives on discourse of science (pp. 3–14). Routledge. Moje, E. B. (2015). Doing and teaching disciplinary literacy with adolescent learners: A social and cultural enterprise. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 254–278. https:// doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.254. National Research Council. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards: For states, by states. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18290. Next Generation Science Standards. (2023). The three dimensions of science learning. www.nextgenscience.org/. Shanahan, C., & Shanahan, T. (2014). The implications of disciplinary literacy. Jour­ nal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(8), 628–631. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.297. Sobel, D. (2004). Place-based education: Connecting classroom and community. Nature and Listening, 4(1), 1–7. Stockman, A. (2022). The writing workshop teacher’s guide to multimodal composition (K-5). Taylor & Francis. Wang, C., & Burris, M. A. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health Education & Behavior, 24(3), 369–387.

Chapter 4

Mapping through Justice, through Padlet, and through the World Rich Novack

Introduction The hum of crickets permeates the air as I write this outdoor ramble with a class of 10th-graders in the nook of woods beside our sub­ urban high school. The overnight rain has passed and I hear the pitter patter of drops falling from limbs above, splashing on the season’s last green leaves. The smell of dirt and earth conjure mem­ ories of mulch and gardens. A student shouts in exultation. I’ve instructed students to remain quiet during our field journaling activity, but for some that’s hard. I understand. I was 15 once too. The woods should be experienced as one wishes, so long as it doesn’t harm others. I cannot fault that student for calling out any more than I can fault the angry squirrel I hear snapping at his neighbor. Perhaps he’s been robbed of an acorn. It is the time of year when squirrels are preparing for winter. Much work to be done. The air is motionless, allowing a yellow leaf to flutter from the sky in a direct straight line to the ground. The humidity is dense, and the sky is overcast. At 10:17 a.m. it’s about 66 degrees. I wrote this field journal, with some edits, in the park beside the school at which I teach in an affluent town in New England. For the past eighteen years, I have taken students outside the classroom walls and across school boundaries to compose field journals (Novack, 2014). This chapter explains how and why I incorporate mapping activities in conjunction with outdoor rambles: walking, observing, and writing, to foster critical literacies in a kind of borderland (Anzaldúa, 1987) space where students’ unique perspec­ tives and backgrounds are honored and empowered. In this chapter, I will borrow collected data and passages from my dissertation (Novack, 2021) with additional work samples from recent students to illustrate critical pedagogies of place (Gruenewald, 2003).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-5

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Evolving Pedagogies of Place In 2005, when I first took seniors in our environmental literature elective outdoors to compose field journals, the course lacked elements of critical literacy. While we broached topics of environmental degradation, the course largely reflected occidental perspectives on nature (Garrard, 2012). These New England suburbs were only a generation or two removed from the agriculture that once dominated the landscape. When I first taught this environmental literature course, I overlooked the stories and perspectives of the non-white inhabitants of these landscapes centuries before. Over the years, through my studies at Teachers College, and by digging into my archaeology of self (Price-Dennis & Sealey-Ruiz, 2021), I changed my place-based teaching styles to include more literary works from indi­ genous perspectives (Piper, 2021; Welch, 1986). Outdoor activities took place in more inclusive learning environments. One student, featured in my dissertation, Mariana (all names are pseu­ donyms), found a welcoming environment in the outdoor experiences. Going outside with our 10th-grade English class, Mariana, a Hispanic American student who recently moved from a neighboring urban school district, shined in outdoor class activities. Out there, all the students started from a similar place of unfamiliarity. Like the majority of her classmates, she was unfamiliar with many of the specific species of birds encountered in a woodland, so when she researched and shared her findings with peers, she said, “I could bring something to the table to talk about in class.” After acknowledging how she felt as if some classmates have more general knowledge of the world, Mariana found in our classroom activities an opportunity for self-empowerment. Mariana found space in our classroom to participate and engage (Novack, 2021). Today, when so many of our students are disconnected from the natural world, distracted by technology and other privileges of modern life, spend­ ing time outdoors with them and asking them to record that time through field journaling or maps can offer a space for reconnection with place and academic success. In what follows, I will explain how and why I use outdoor experiences in tandem with field journaling, mapping, and storytelling to design an empowered classroom, beginning with the theories that inform my practice.

Theories that Help Defamiliarize the Familiar for Place-Making In high school, I remember a poster that a good friend hung on his bedroom wall. It was a poster of the galaxy featuring a long white arrow pointing to a specific location in it, suggesting “you are here.” My friend, always crea­ tive, connected other maps with yarn to the “you are here” text. One end of

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the yarn was tethered to a point on a globe: the United States. Another strand connected to a point on a map in New England. Another strand of this multi-dimensional, linear explosion of lines connected “you are here” to his street on the city map. In my friend’s room, I felt geolocated through his remixed multimodal artwork. While I thought I knew where I was, his representation of place offered a pleasant, if unfamiliar, way to imagine my positioning in the galaxy. By defamiliarizing and then refamiliarizing a place, students can find new connections to all the imaginative offerings a place affords, near and far, as I did in staring at my friend’s poster. Maps in classrooms enrich students’ sense of dwelling because “mapping forms part of the techne for geographic rhetorics, those that focus on moving through the world, encountering the rub of differences, the fissures and gaps in dis­ course, the borders and fault lines” (Reynolds, 2004, p. 109). The act of constructing and deconstructing maps that represent familiar locations and stories fosters dwelling with new perspectives. Storytelling through place-based activities utilizes all the affordances of place, including its metaphors. Metaphors of space linger in the subconscious of students, teachers and scholars (Reynolds, 2004). For example, if we con­ tinue to think about maps and globes, consider for a moment how we use metaphors to define who is inside and what is outside. Anzaldúa (1987) described how “borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them” (p. 25). With outdoor rambles, “while only ‘insi­ ders’ are welcome, outsiders are not completely excluded” (Reynolds, 2004, p. 37). Marianna, the student mentioned above, understood insider/outsider positionings at school. Our outdoor rambles offered a place where Mariana found an inside “seat at the table” among her peers, sharing a common status as novice nature writers. Meandering with students across school grounds, offschool grounds, and down nearby streets is one small way I interrupt the tacit metaphors of segregation and alienation, connecting students to each other through shared literacy experiences in common outdoor locations. English education scholars are familiar with spatial metaphors, notably in discussions of critical pedagogies. When I took Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz’s grad­ uate course, students dug into “deep self-excavation where racism, stereo­ types, and bias live” (Price-Dennis & Sealey-Ruiz, 2021, p. 26). Sealey-Ruiz incorporated “movement metaphors” (Reynolds, 2004, p. 4) involving dig­ ging in her theories of the archaeologies of the self. Another metaphor of a wobbling gate thoughtfully captures the process for many who encounter critical perspectives in the classroom. When I brought critical perspectives to our walking rambles, I witnessed (Novack, 2021) students shifting their stance, or what Fecho et al. (2010) described as a wobble. The metaphors that entwine movement, space, and learning, like digging into biases and wobbling positionalities, illustrate the usefulness of place-based knowledge that we subconsciously know in our everyday practices but rarely utilize with purpose in classrooms.

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In my friend’s room, I felt and appreciated my existence in connection with a larger universe. I wobbled into a new sense of the motion of my life, spinning across the galaxy’s disk. We are creatures who find diverse, fluid ways of representing who and where we are. Some representations may be jarring to certain audiences, but these are the moments playing out on the landscapes of our students’ lives, and they deserve to be heard. In sharing our connections and ties through outdoor meandering, through metaphors of theory, through maps, and through words, outdoor classrooms can afford students spaces where they connect who they are with the rest of the world. Such place-based outdoor classrooms can inform students’ identities through a process of reinhabitation, which “aims to identify, recover, and create material spaces and places that teach us how to live well in our total environments” (Gruenewald, 2003, p. 9). Finding connection with others in common spaces, like outdoor classrooms, means connecting one’s own offerings to a myriad of others, fostering a place of appreciation and empathy. To reconnect severed ties across communities, classrooms could strive to interrupt the domination of colonizer perspectives. A process of decoloni­ zation hopes to “identify and change ways of thinking that injure and exploit other people and places” (Gruenewald, 2003, p. 9). Teachers should not hide the damages that colonization has wrecked upon the planet. In the United States we should confront our history of genocide and celebrate Native American communities. Clan Mother Shoran Wau­ patukuay Piper (2021), leader of Connecticut’s Golden Hill Paugussett Tribe, has shared her community’s value for nature with my students. She wrote, “nature isn’t for us; it’s a part of us. It’s a part of your worldly family” (p. 32). In a world ravaged by the destructive powers of our quo­ tidian environmental degradation, we would all do well to honor, learn from, and celebrate such indigenous knowledge. When students not only hear stories of place from other people but begin to tell their own, they engage in participatory place-making, empowering their ties and belonging to a place. Kinloch studied how multimodal litera­ cies amplified a student’s voice and allowed for critical inspections of familiar streets in Harlem, NY. In her case study of a high school student, Kinloch (2009) empowered a too often marginalized perspective on the topic of gentrification. When educators “seriously consider the literate lives of youth during out of school time,” Kinloch suggested, this “can reveal their multiple and highly complex community engagements (i.e., place-making) while simultaneously challenging popular notions that youth, particularly urban youth of color, are disengaged from and disinterested in learning in the space of school” (Kinloch, 2009, p. 321). Multimodal composition, like map-making, photography, and videography, enriches classrooms that seek to empower marginalized voices in the act of place-making. A classroom environment should invite students to wonder about where they are in the universe with a sense of liberatory (Freire, 1970; hooks, 1994)

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agency. My friend’s poster of the galaxy invited me to wonder about my position in the universe, as he sought to identify his own position. When we create spaces where students can show where they’re coming from and where they’re going, we design classrooms capable of youth empowerment.

Justice Maps and Reading the World for Equity In order to connect students to the places we share as a class, I start with field journaling. When field journaling, students write in observance of their immediate surroundings, capturing what they perceive, as I did in this chapter’s opening paragraphs. Over the years, I broadened the activities to look more like writing marathons (Louth, 2002), involving walks across school property, stopping at several locations, and writing in observance of what we find cur­ ious. With these outdoor rambles, in connection with indoor activities, students participate in literacy contextualized by stories tied to landscapes. By adding critical pedagogies, my field journaling exercises morphed into experiences that have challenged some students to reconsider their position­ alities. For example, coupling outdoor experiences with an indoor analysis of Justice Maps (Kreider, 2023) made some students wobble (Fecho et al., 2010) into new stances. Justice Maps are digital maps that visually layer demographic information over landscapes. They allow students to reimagine the racial imbalance in their communities. Students in my classroom have used Justice Maps to analyze local places through the layer of data colorcoded to convey demographic meaning, showing clearly that neighborhoods in our district are predominantly white. After engaging with these maps, students wrote about and shared their observations. These observations illustrated how students connected their lived experiences to their local landscapes through the literacy activities involved in critically reading maps. One student acknowledged a kind of outsider status after viewing his town through the Justice Map. As an Asian American in a predominantly white district, he wrote in his notebook: “These maps show that I, in fact, do not ‘fit in’ in this place because of the fact that the neighborhood [of my field journal] is in fact more than 90% white.” He was “caught between stabilizing and destabilizing tensions,” and so he “[entered] a state of wobble, one that asks that he pay attention to the issues at hand and to author a response” (Fecho et al., 2010 p. 446). Michael used the metaphors of insider and outsider (Anzal­ dúa, 1987) to explain his positioning. For another student, Derek, the Justice Map offered a glimpse of the legacy of redlining. Redlining was a legal practice of racial segregation in the mid-twentieth century, sanctioned by the government, to disenfranchise Black American homeownership. In an interview for my study he said: So, like housing, like suburbia happened. That really is weird to me. How, because … It’s just interesting how white people ended up going

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to the suburbs and then the minorities would generally stay in the cities. And, I can’t even explain really how it happened right now, but I’m just thinking about that and how it happened over centuries. (Novack, 2021) Here, Derek wobbled in his understanding of his socio-historical and socio­ cultural context. By engaging with such newfound knowledge, there is hope that students will take action to interrupt these unjust legacies. For Derek and Michael, Justice Maps helped defamiliarize the once familiar suburban landscapes with new perspectives. In critical outdoor classrooms, students connect the maps that they read to their everyday, lived experiences. Such ties to landscapes and places offer students a source of knowledge from which to draw in academic settings. There are students who appreciate and deserve such critical opportunities. While I see Justice Maps as a critical complement to our more celebratory field journaling activities, it’s important to recognize that there are many places where teachers struggle teaching critical content (Ennes et al., 2021; Strauss, 2022), often for reasons outside their control. For those teachers in tenuous teaching situations in this era of book banning (Hixenbaugh, 2021) and community push-back against nontraditional pedagogies, it can be helpful to consider the types of alternate maps students can utilize to com­ pare foreign perspectives of place with their own. Beyond critical approa­ ches, there are also interdisciplinary ways of weaving maps into class activities. For example, an interactive map of Pangea (Dinosaur Database, n. d.) shows how plate tectonics have changed specific locations, allowing for interdisciplinary connections between local places and natural history. There are many types of maps worthy of rhetorical analysis, critical inspection, and / or generic recreation in English classrooms.

Mapping as Writing In the 2021–2022 school year, my students used Padlet maps with great success to create story maps. Padlet maps allowed students to pin multimodal elements to a digital map. I first heard of story maps in 2020 when Dr. Kelly Sassi shared her story maps with the National Writing Project’s Write Out, a two-week social media event that introduces teachers to placebased pedagogies. With Justice Maps, we read the stories in landscapes, but story mapping involves participatory creation within locations, pinning narrative texts to multiple places across a map. I was inspired by how a story unfolds right on top of a map with a few clicks. Story mapping as an assignment unfurled over a series of lessons, and you can see its most recent iteration in the accompanying assignment sheet. First, I invited students to consider place as a resource by writing field journals. For me, field journaling involves 10 minutes of observation in an outdoor

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setting, followed by 10 minutes of unstructured writing in response to these prompts: What do you find curious? What do your senses perceive? When students compose field journals, they create a reservoir of ideas that inspire future, more polished writing. As part of the story mapping project, field journals allow students to practice place-based writing, wherein they write with imagery and personification in response to the immediacy of their outdoor context. Before moving further into this process and a discussion of how I use local history to facilitate the experience, it is worth mentioning that while you almost certainly won’t have local history that exactly mirrors my own, you will have local history that is specific to your own context and that of your students. Many communities have local history museums or state or national parks that could provide similar experiences to those I describe below. To continue, on a second outing, we conducted a writing marathon that took us off campus. Writing marathons originated in New Orleans nearly two decades ago when Richard Louth (2002), a National Writing Project leader, invited teachers to tour the city with frequent stops to write in response to their surroundings during a teacher workshop. This moving place-based activity serves the story mapping project as a second opportu­ nity for students to be inspired by the possibilities of place. During my writing marathons, after my students stopped and wrote on school grounds, we crossed the street, and walked for about a half-mile, down a hill, on a sidewalk beside a private golf course. A stone wall separated the sidewalk from the fairway. Students stopped beside the stone wall and wrote. They noted what they saw, heard, smelled, felt, and wondered. We continued down to the hill’s nadir. We approached a bridge over a stream. On maps it’s named the Rooster River. Some students know this river’s name because they live next to it, and it’s prone to flooding. On the bridge over the river, they stopped and wrote. This river is important to the exercise because a local Native American tribe once had a different name for the river. On the tribe’s website (Golden Hill Paugussett Nation, 1999), the Rooster River is called the Uncoway, meaning “beyond the fishing place.” In a later lesson, students will learn about the river’s indigenous name, and thereby see how different people and cultures create different connections to the land. In the third class, students read and responded to their classmates’ out­ door rambles using a Padlet stream. For those unfamiliar with this virtual tool, each student would post the writing that resulted from their outdoor ramble in a shared virtual space. Other students could then respond to these rambles in real time from their own electronic devices, using digital “sticky notes” to record their reactions. In this authentic writing experience, stu­ dents were able to see how their classmates blended imagery, metaphor, and personification with philosophical wonderings. The authors, too, were able to receive authentic, immediate feedback on the writing they completed, further developing the classroom space as a community of writers.

Mapping through Justice, through Padlet, and through the World

Figure 4.1 Example of a story mapping assignment sheet.

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On the fourth day, students viewed a pre-recorded video of me inter­ viewing Shoran Waupatukuay Piper, a leader of the local Native American tribe on whose ancestral lands our school sits. Shoran and I talked about the history and stories of the tribe and the land. When I invited her to share a story tied to a landscape, in addition to our discussion of the Rooster River, Shoran also told an historical Romeo and Juliet story about a tribal woman who committed suicide jumping into a waterfall. Shoran’s stories offered students a model for their own stories tied to the place. Students were now ready to construct their story maps. On the fifth day, students wrote about places that were special to them in response to this prompt: describe a place in which a meaningful story happened, one that might inspire this story mapping project? What do you see, hear, smell, feel, or taste in this place? Students wrote about places that are part of who they are and enriched the community with their placebased observations. Unfortunately, there are some students who arrive at our classrooms from places where they’ve experienced trauma, pain, and suffering. For them, our field journals and writing marathon rambles served as reservoirs of ideas that are useful when composing a story map. All students’ everyday experi­ ences, both in school and out of school, are valued as a resource in these outdoor place-based literacy activities. There is no expectation that students grapple with past trauma in these writings, and as teachers we should be prepared to work with students to ensure they can tell stories that leave them feeling empowered and validated. By the end of this entire process, students have created engaging accounts of their own life experiences. In his story map, one student, Paul, blended appreciation for his mother’s photography with his own creative remixing of her photos taken during a laborious family photoshoot. The narrative pinned to his map featured a humorous tone. While he appreciated his mother, the tedium of those photoshoots is captured in his short staccato sentence, “It was a long morning,” surrounded by sentences more varied in length. He told the story of how coping his boredom eventually turned fruitful. He wrote, I decided to make a joke, and try to make myself, and my family laugh. I found this huge tree and I hid behind it. I then peered out to the side, put on a huge smile, and gave a thumbs up, as if I was saying, sarcastically, “this is super fun.” My mom had her camera in her hand and she took a picture. I then went to the other side of the tree and peered out, making the same pose. My mom took another picture, of course. I then had an idea, that I could take a bunch of these photos, put them in Photoshop, and make an image that looked like I was peering out of the tree in a bunch of different positions. Paul’s mapping empowered his creativity with inventive photo editing (Figure 4.2) and wordsmithing. These cartographic compositions allowed students to

Figure 4.2 Paul’s story map.

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50 Rich Novack

capture and share poignant memories with family. As a community, we learned about each other through these intimate place-based family portraits. Maryam’s story map (Figure 4.3) transported our classroom to the homes of her family in Iran. She shared her family’s ties to Persian food, to family ghost stories, and to their place in the world. Her grandmother “grew up in a village called Morood and it’s tradition for [her] family, when [they] travel to Iran in the summer, to go and stay there for a week or two.” In another post, she described the “beautiful greenery and nature” around her aunt’s villa near the sea. Maryam’s stories allowed her peers to witness a familial love shared around the world. In predominantly white U.S. schools, students arriving from other countries too often feel marginalized because their culture often goes unnoticed. In sharing stor­ ies about their families, students get to invest their funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) in class sponsored activities that expand their multimodal literacies and broaden their peers’ horizons. In a conversation with Maryam, she affirmed that our outdoor rambles inspired her to write about the natural setting in Iran. Like reading (Freire, 1983; Novack, 2023; Rosenblatt, 1995), outdoor rambles spur us to connect to memories, texts, places, and situations outside of the immediate experi­ ence before us. Our outdoor sessions were valuable in the writing process because they spurred students to think of place as an asset to their writing. Outdoor rambles also showed students how to include rich descriptions of sensory observations in their narrative writing.

Moving Ahead Maps tell us where we are in the world. My friend’s high school bedroom poster represented my place in the universe in an interesting way that I’d never thought of. Multimodal mapping and outdoor activities offer English class­ rooms a chance to connect students, and who they are, with their place in the world. Through our story mapping activities, students connect their lives, their stories, and their backgrounds to a multimodal representation of their world, a map, in a creative way that blends words, images, and spatial reality. When students are afforded opportunities to apply new cartographic perspectives on these everyday places, they are engaging in a practice of reading the word and the world (Freire, 1983). Educators should want students to feel empowered in our classrooms. Students should understand the world they inhabit, and have the means to negotiate, engage, and shape their world with confidence and competence. In the classrooms described above, students found ways of finding themselves in their world, through processes of reading, map-making, and placemaking. They found stories tied to the land. They connected their formal education to their lived experiences and then went further. As educators, we need to take students to these borderland (Anzaldúa, 1987) perspectives, on

Figure 4.3 Maryam’s story map.

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Figure 4.4 Example of a story mapping rubric.

the precipice of the familiar and the uncomfortable, because this is the place students inhabit and will inhabit in an ever-changing world.

References Anzaldúa, A. (1987). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza (4th ed.). Aunt Lute. Dinosaur Database. (n.d.) What did Earth look like 0 years ago?https://dinosaurp ictures.org/ancient-earth#0.

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Ennes, M., Lawson, D. F., Stevenson, K. T., Peterson, M. N., & Jones, M. G. (2021). It’s about time: perceived barriers to in-service teacher climate change professional development. Environmental Education Research, 27(5), 762–778. Fecho, B., Collier, N. D., Friese, E. E. G., & Wilson, A. A. (2010). Critical conversations: Tensions and opportunities of the dialogical classroom. English Education, 42 (4), 427–447. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). Continuum. Freire, P. (1983). The importance of the act of reading. Journal of Education, 165(1), 5–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/002205748316500103. Garrard, G. (2012). Ecocriticism (2nd ed.). Routledge. Golden Hill Paugussett Nation. (1999). History and hopes. https://web.archive.org/ web/20040513010950/http://goldenhill-landclaims.itgo.com/history_hopes.htm. Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032004003. Hixenbaugh, M. (2021, February 1). Banned: books on race and sexuality are dis­ appearing from Texas schools in record numbers. www.nbcnews.com/news/ us-news/texas-books-race-sexuality-schools-rcna13886?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. Kinloch, V. (2009). Literacy, community, and youth acts of place-making. English Education, 41(4), 316–336. Kreider, A. (2023, April 1). Justice map. www.justicemap.org/index.php. Louth, R. (2002). The New Orleans writing marathon. The Quarterly, 24(1), 3–9. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849209543534. Novack, R. (2014). Reading in and through nature: An outdoor pedagogy for reading literature. Language Arts Journal of Michigan, 29(2), 11. https://doi.org/10.9707/ 2168-149X.2015. Novack, R. H. (2021). Rambling and wobbling in English: Ecocriticism in outdoor classrooms. (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University.) Novack, R. (2023). Seeing the unseen. In P. Sullivan, H. Tinberg, & S. Blau (Eds.), Deep reading, deep learning: Deep reading volume 2 (pp. 391–402). Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b19104. Piper, S. W. (2021). Read road. Conjure South Publications. Price-Dennis, D., & Sealey-Ruiz, Y. (2021). Advancing racial literacies in teacher education: Activism for equity in digital spaces. Teachers College Press. Reynolds, N. (2004). Geographies of writing: Inhabiting places and encountering difference. SIU Press. Rosenblatt, L. (1995). Literature as exploration. The Modern Language Association of America. (Original work published 1938). Strauss, V. (2022, April 8). ‘Educators are afraid,’ says teacher attacked for ‘Romeo and Juliet’ unit. Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/04/ 08/teachers-afraid-attacked-for-romeojuliet/. Welch, J. (1986). Fools crow. Penguin Books.

Chapter 5

Observing Nature, Observing Language Using Nature to Teach Rhetorical Grammar Merrilyne Lundahl, Katie Zanto and Melissa Hoffman Introduction When I (Merrilyne) arrived at base camp – Wawona Elementary School in Yosemite National Park – the students were more exhausted than exhila­ rated from completing their first week-long expedition. Along the way, they encountered stunning vistas and made new friends, but they also struggled with homesickness and the physical demands of backpacking. That evening, we shared a meal and engaged in some friendly, if occasionally awkward, conversations before retreating to our tents for the night. In the morning, I would be leading them in the English Language Arts (ELA) components of the literacy and outdoor adventure leadership curriculum they encounter as participants at Adventure Risk Challenge (ARC). Adventure Risk Challenge is a nonprofit, youth development and community literacy program that aims to provide out-of-school learning opportunities to historically marginalized students (see https://adventureriskchallenge.org). Most participants live below the poverty line, speak languages other than English at home, and attend minoritized-majority and rural Title I schools in Central and Northern California. ARC youth are typically the first generation in their families to graduate from high school and attend college. As it delib­ erately combines outdoor adventure education with an English Language Arts curriculum for adolescents, ARC is both innovative and rare (Moje & Tysvaer, 2010). While ARC has year-round academic and adventure programming with partner schools and supports alumni in their postsecondary pursuits, the “lan­ guage power” lesson described later in this chapter occurs during the summer course for students entering grades 9–12. During this immersive, month-long summer course, students receive academic instruction in writing, language, reading, and public speaking alongside adventure elements such as back­ packing, whitewater rafting, and rock climbing. Students reflect about their experiences, communicate effectively with others, identify and build on their strengths, and take on a variety of formal and informal challenges. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-6

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Place, especially the “great outdoors,” is integral at ARC. Students alter­ nate between embarking on backcountry expeditions in national parks and forests and spending time at less remote basecamps (such as University of California Natural Reserve Field stations), where they have access to com­ puters (and showers!). In the backcountry, setting functions as a pedagogical aid that helps students form a strong sense of community and improves their experience with writing. In the past, ARC students reported that writing in the program’s nature-based settings helped them to both generate ideas and allow them to concentrate (Lundahl, 2022). Instructors often draw from the environment to teach lessons in figurative language and description, and much of the curriculum is built around crafting metaphor poems. By the end of the month-long course, students use their backcountry expeditions and field science lessons to write and perform a poem that makes comparisons between their self-identity and a subject in nature. The Wawona Base Camp in Yosemite National Park is a more traditional school space. The classroom is a square. There are too few windows. The lights buzz. The desks are cramped. Although students do authentic writing projects, like metaphor poems comparing themselves to a subject in nature and reflective essays foregrounding personal change, I (Merrilyne) am tasked with teaching the most “school-like” part of the curriculum: language power. The label is aspirational. When ARC was founded, students in California had to pass an exit exam to earn high school diplomas, and traditional school grammar was tested. In response, ARC had a “grammar blast” component of its curriculum that provided direct instruction on topics like subject-verb agreement, capitalization, comma use, common spelling errors, misplaced modifiers, and so on. In recent years, ARC has reevaluated its grammar instruction and committed to pedagogies more aligned with teaching in context by integrating it more directly with writing workshops, reading, and public speaking. The focus is on supporting student writing and developing their confidence as writers. The authors come at this chapter, and this work, from different, intersecting vocational places. Katie founded ARC in 2004 based on her experiences as an Outward Bound instructor and a high school English and English Language Development teacher. She is an interdisciplinary scholar and practitioner, invested in integrating composition studies and outdoor adventure leadership, and she has directed an Interdisciplinary Studies Program at a small college for the last 15 years. Mel, a wilderness educator who has taught multiple ARC cohorts, now primarily trains staff and develops curriculum as ARC’s Program Director. Merrilyne studies and sometimes teaches at ARC to ground herself in adolescent literacies and pedagogies, and to see how we might apply “what works” in this nature-based setting to more typical school settings. This past summer, we wanted to continue teaching grammar in context and to help strengthen students’ writing and confidence, and we also wanted to teach about language in empowering, interesting, and integrated ways.

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We still have much work to do in finessing the language power curriculum and assessing its impacts, but we started in 2022 with what can best be conceptualized as a rhetorical grammar approach: teaching students they have a range of choices and supporting them to see grammar as a set of enabling tools rather than intimidating rules. Drawing primarily from Noden’s Image Grammar (2011) and the deductive approach to determining patterns outlined by Anderson (2005), we designed a curriculum that guides students to observe their own and others’ sentences, and to speculate about the effects of different choices. We used the natural environment around the school to practice, and to help us get metacognitive about observation. That lesson is the focus of this chapter.

Theoretical Foundations: Rhetorical Grammar, Place-based Education, and Habits of Mind English Language Arts teachers know from lived experience and from established research that teaching grammar out of context does little to improve student writing (Hancock & Kolln, 2010; Hillocks, 1987). In response, English educators have developed many pedagogies to teach grammar in context, as part of the writing process, and in ways that are engaging (Anderson, 2005; Atwell, 2017; Noden, 2011; Weaver, 1996, 2008). We are also striving to be responsive to issues of language diversity and linguistic justice (Baker-Bell, 2020; Inoue, 2015; Watson & Shapiro 2018). The characteristics of place-based writing (PBW) described by Montgomery and Montgomery (2021) are both rhetorical, focusing on audience and pur­ pose, and student-centered, emphasizing agency and engagement. We con­ ceptualize our theoretical framework from three areas that support students as agents and writers: rhetorical grammar, place-based education, and habits of mind described in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. Because ARC emphasizes positive identity and a sense of empowerment, we prioritize teaching grammar to support rhetorical agency, which “[empowers students] to use language for a variety of academic, profes­ sional, civic, and personal purposes” (Shapiro, 2022, p. 3). Rhetorical grammar foregrounds how language constructs meaning and how audience and purpose inform stylistic, grammatical choices, and it situates grammar knowledge as already existent within students (Kolln & Gray, 2016). Wri­ ters have many choices, from the topics they choose to write about to the grammar they use to express their ideas. Our language power curriculum helps students consider the possibilities and decisions available to them. We work at the local scale of the sentence to make rhetorical grammar man­ ageable, and we use the outdoors and nature study both to build interest and to help us talk more concretely about language. Place-based educators foreground project-based, student-centered learning while paying special attention to the contexts where learning happens (e.g.

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Gruenewald & Smith, 2008; McClennen, 2016). Much of ARC’s writing curriculum is place-based; it uses the natural world and the outdoors where its programming occurs to teach lessons about description and figurative language, and student writing draws from the literal and metaphorical places where students are. A culminating writing project for our students is an extended metaphor poem comparing aspects of identity to objects or phenomena within the landscape. Place-based writing assignments invite courageous, relevant writing and encourage student voice (Jacobs, 2011; Rebhein et al., 2020); such assignments can also encourage exploration and discovery about the natural world (Tallmadge, 1999). While the “process of using the local community and environment as a starting point to teach concepts in language arts” (Sobel, 2005, p. 7) is foundational at ARC, we had not attempted to use place to teach grammar prior to introducing the new language power curriculum. As we found commonalities between rhetorical grammar and place-based education in the shared emphasis on locality and agency, ways to use place with this part of the curriculum became clearer. Place-based education’s focus on local environments and communities is similar to our focus on the sentence as our unit of study – we are looking at what are considered, in the language of writing centers and compositionists, “local” areas of concern: words, punctuation, and sentence patterns. Agency, described by Vander Ark et al. (2020) as “an applied disposition” of acting in an environment, matters to place-based educators. At ARC, we see agentive actions operating both in the physical world and on the page, and we believe that using nature study to help teach grammar is one way of offering students an “[encounter] with novelty and complexity that [builds] the disposition and skills of agency” (Vander Ark et al., 2020, p. 10). We use rhetorical grammar and focus on the local unit of the sentence as one way to support students in making “authentic, agentive decisions about … what form will be most effective for [their] audience and purpose” (Montgomery & Montgomery, 2021, p. 39). Finally, we situate Language Power at ARC within what the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing calls habits of mind: “ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical and that will support students’ success in a variety of fields and disciplines” (Council of Writing Program Administrators et al., 2011, p. 1). The Framework articu­ lates eight habits of mind, all of which are relevant to ARC’s programming, and several that are relevant to language power, including curiosity, open­ ness, flexibility, and metacognition. We want students to approach language with curiosity, to ask about other ways a sentence might be written, to experiment with language, and to think about their choices and their effects. The Framework also helped us feel empowered to identify and con­ ceptualize observation as a core habit of mind for our curriculum. Bensusen (2020) explains that observation is “a concentrated study requiring attention

58 Merrilyne Lundahl et al.

to the characteristics of an object, a scene, or a situation: light, shape, tex­ ture, pattern, color, detail, and changes of these over time and under varying conditions” (p. 60). ARC’s integrated curriculum deliberately invites stu­ dents to practice observation across the curriculum: by paying close atten­ tion to the natural world in science, stylistic choices in English, and their own inner experience and group dynamics in adventure and leadership. Observation is a habit of mind we want to cultivate as we believe it provides a foundation for learning; while it may be implicit in the habits of mind described by the Framework, we make it explicit. Drawing from rhetorical grammar, place-based education, and habits of mind, the foundational lesson of the language power unit introduced two key ideas: (1) observation is a tool for learning across subjects, and (2) language is something we can approach with a stance of curiosity and wonder. The lesson fits well within the simplest definitions of place-based education as it uses the local environment as inspiration for teaching. For us, the unifying concept is observation. As the starting point to the kind of reflection and analysis necessary for critical, creative, and compassionate thinking, observation is a habit of mind used by scientists, writers, and engaged community members. The activities described in this chapter make the practice of observation explicit and encourage students to get metacog­ nitive about it – what observation is, how to do it, and why it matters. We were fortunate to have access to green space and plants in the school yard (which itself is nestled within Yosemite National Park), but students can be guided to observe any aspect of a school site: its architecture, art, or athletic facilities would all provide rich opportunities to zoom in for close observation while also getting students out of the classroom on a smaller, but no less valuable, scale.

Practicing Observation: From Plants to Sentences The 60-minute lesson started with a quick write about language. The goal was to get students thinking about the idea of language, and their responses served as useful material for observation later in the lesson. Students were given ten minutes to write on any of the following prompts: � � � � � �

Have you ever learned a second (or third) language? What was that like? Have you ever struggled to communicate with someone? Why do you think it was a struggle? How did you work through it? Is your language related to your identity? How so? How do you feel about your language? This can be your home lan­ guage, your heritage language or an acquired language. How do you “language” differently when speaking or writing? How do you “language” differently when writing a poem, an essay, in your journal, etc.? How do you speak differently in different places – at church, on the field/court, at school, at work, on the trail?

Observing Nature, Observing Language

Figure 5.1 Example observation assignment sheet (first page).

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60 Merrilyne Lundahl et al.

Figure 5.2 Example observation assignment sheet (second page).

Based on the time available, students can share their ideas and teachers can plant the seed that language does amazing work; that with just some letters, punctuation marks, and sentences we are able to think and express ideas about who we are as humans. The concept of language can inspire a sense of wonder and awe. After the students warmed up by thinking about the complex and intuitive topic of language and identity, we headed outdoors for observation.

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Students took 5� magnification jeweler’s loupes, writing journals, and writing utensils outside. I (Merrilyne) directed them to find some object that they would spend the next 15–20 minutes observing, and they scattered around the schoolyard, mostly focusing on different plants: dandelion, lupine, and ponderosa pine. Initially, they were instructed to narrow their focus and observe very closely – to use the loupes and just observe a tiny portion of their subject. While loupes bring novelty to the process and might not be as powerful as a microscope, so long as students zoom in and limit their scale, they’ll see plenty of differences between their observations (see Ruef, 1992). Viewfinders also provide an excellent tool for helping students look closely and experiment with perspective. I found myself tempted to speed up the pace, but nurturing curiosity and wonder takes time. Students needed a chance to settle in and to genuinely observe for a few minutes without any other tasks. I wandered around and sought out initial observations, using open-ended questions, “What do you notice? What else?” and prompting students to use senses besides vision (but not taste!). After students had spent approximately ten minutes observing their subject, they recorded their observations. We talked as a group about what they noticed before moving to the next round. Students took five steps back and repeated the process of observing and recording. The final round involved either changing their angle by sitting, laying, or moving to a different side of their subject, or by zooming out even further by backing up more. One student focused on the flower lupine. Her closest, “zoomed in” observation revealed insects, colors of purple, white, and blue, and a fuzzy texture. As she slowly backed away from the lupine, she was surprised to see the color become purple and the texture reveal itself to be smooth. She also took in the plant as a whole, noting a stalk of multiple flowers growing from green leaves and a gray background. Another student became absorbed in noticing the seeds of a dandelion: how delicately they clung to the center of the flower and how much more could be observed individually and up close instead of the “whole head” of seeds observed from farther away. After this hands-on, outdoor activity, we went back indoors to observe some more, turning our attention to a variety of M&Ms. Students used their senses to keep observing and describing colors, shapes, size, textures, smells, and – this time it was okay! – taste. We discussed observation: What is it? How do we do it? Why does it matter? How is it relevant? Students articu­ lated ideas about paying close attention, taking their time, making compar­ isons between other things, coming to a familiar object from a fresh stance, and describing the object under observation without evaluation. At this point, we moved from discussing something concrete to discussing something more abstract: language itself. This is also a good moment to introduce the rationale for working at the sentence level and to model a stance of curiosity. There are stages throughout our drafting and revising processes where we zoom in and zoom out, but the focus of this component

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of the curriculum is zoomed in because working at the sentence level is so rich with possibility to see and express our ideas. We invited students to develop the analogy between the activity observing nature and how we might observe writing at different “magnifications”: from words to sentences to paragraphs to whole writing projects. Zooming in to observe a single flower is like closely observing the parts of a single sentence; looking at particular words or punctuation reveals interesting little bugs in the lupine and the delicate, airy, individual seeds of a dandelion. Broadening our perspective to the whole plant is similar to looking at a paragraph, and taking in the whole frame is like seeing our entire writing project. For students who are learning about ecology, we can also think about sentences, paragraphs, and compositions through that lens, where sentences are niches, paragraphs are habitats, and compositions are ecosys­ tems. The goal of analogical thinking, in our context, is to help students think about language from a new angle. After helping students make connections between the observations they conducted and the writing they regularly do in academic settings, we returned to the value of zooming in. Limiting our focus to observe a single sentence can be less overwhelming than looking at the entire landscape. There is a lot to observe in a sentence, and experimenting with word choice, punc­ tuation, and syntax can influence meaning and impact. This is also a moment to talk with students about evaluation and judgment; starting with nonjudg­ mental description of what is happening in a sentence is important to break out of the rigidity of “right/wrong,” but opinions about sentences are wel­ comed. How we react to a sentence, how we feel about it, has something to do with word choice, punctuation, and syntax. Noticing and describing these elements helps us make choices as we craft our own sentences and helps us understand why others may have made their own stylistic choices. We next brainstormed about what in a sentence was worth “observing” and practiced with students’ sentences from the earlier quick write. Volunteers wrote sentences on the board. We noticed we could observe how a sentence starts and ends, the words within it, its punctuation. As a group, we spent a lot of time looking at Anaisa’s sentence: “Language connects us; it allows us to be vulnerable, it allows us to love and hate; language shows us how to be human.” I started by inviting students to say the word that stood out to them the most. We talked about the repetition of the word “language” – two times in one sentence! We looked at the verbs: connects, allows, shows. We speculated about the semicolons and experimented with writing it as two sentences. How would we divide them? We thought about using dashes or a colon, and we considered what would happen if we changed the order: “Language shows us how to be human; it allows us to be vulnerable, it allows us to love and hate; language connects us.” Students were engaged; we were taking ser­ iously the writer’s work and her choices, unpacking her sentence as if per­ forming a close reading of a literary text, and we kept thinking about

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options and impacts. We wrapped up the lesson by going over the accom­ panying handout. By asking the question, “What can we observe in a sen­ tence?,” we are cueing students to ask themselves what they notice in a piece of writing and what would happen if they tried something different. Our operating assumption with this lesson is that increasing students’ powers of observation and attending to something concrete can transfer to observing something as abstract as language. This observation subsequently enables students to be more metacognitive about their writing processes and choices. What we have described here is a first step; we are eager to keep refining our curriculum so students have multiple experiences toggling between observation, description, and reflection, and evaluating whether and how our assumptions hold.

Conclusion: Observing Is Learning Observation can ground students in place, in being present, and in paying attention to their external and inner worlds. While this lesson foregrounds observation to support students’ awareness and curiosity about the choices available to them within their sentences, observation is a habit of mind that transcends disciplines and is a foundation for learning. Within an ELA curriculum, interpretations, inquiries, and arguments start with observa­ tions. When we ask students to perform a close reading, to “notice and note” (Beers & Probst, 2012) features of a piece of writing, we are asking them to observe language and how meaning is constructed. Nonjudgmental observation and description is akin to listening and can enable us to respond as empathic critical thinkers to a range of rhetorical and life situations. Models of the scientific method start with making observations and asking questions. The natural world provides concrete, wondrous subjects for observation and curiosity. Language does, too. Teaching and valuing observation as a key component of learning is rich with possibility for place-based writing.

References Anderson, J. (2005). Mechanically inclined: Building grammar, usage, and style into writer’s workshop. Stenhouse Publishers. Atwell, N. (2017). Lessons that change writers. Heinemann. Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. Routledge. Beers, K., & Probst, R.E. (2012). Notice & note: Strategies for close reading. Heinemann. Bensusen, S.J. (2020). The power of observation: Practical art-based exercises to improve how we learn science. Science & Children, 57(5), 60–65. https://doi.org/ 10.2505/4/sc20_057_05_60.

64 Merrilyne Lundahl et al. Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, & National Writing Project. (2011). Framework for success in postsecondary writ­ ing. https://wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/asset_manager/get_file/350201?ver=7548. Gruenewald, D. A. & Smith, G. (Eds.). (2008). Place-based education in the global age: Local diversity. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hancock, C., & Kolln, M. (2010). Blowin’ in the wind: English grammar in United States schools. In T. Locke (Ed.), Beyond the grammar wars: A resource for teachers and students on developing language knowledge in the English/literacy classroom (pp. 21–37). Routledge. Hillocks, G. (1987). Synthesis of research on teaching writing. Educational Leadership, 44(8), 71–82. Inoue, A.B. (2015). Antiracist writing assessment ecologies: Teaching and assessing writing for a socially just future. Parlor Press. Jacobs, E. (2011). Re(place) your typical writing assignment: An argument for place-based writing. English Journal, 100(3), 49–54. Kolln, M. & Gray, M. (2016). Rhetorical grammar: Grammatical choices, rhetorical effects. Pearson. Lundahl, M. (2022). Writing in nature-based settings: participant experiences in a literacy and leadership development program. The Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 45(1), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44020-022-00003-5. McClennen, N. (2016, May 9). Place-based education: Communities as learning environments. www.gettingsmart.com/2016/05/09/place-based-education-communi ties-as-learning-environments/. Moje, E. B., & Tysvaer, N. (2010). Adolescent literacy development in out-of-school time: A practitioner’s guide. Carnegie Corporation of New York. Montgomery, R. & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. National Council of Teachers of English. Noden, H. R. (2011). Image grammar: Teaching grammar as part of the writing process. Heinemann. Rehbein, T.L., Wheeler, C.B., & Lenhart, L. (2020). The intersections of nature and student voice. English Journal, 109(5), 20–26. Ruef, K. (1992). The private eye: (5�) looking/thinking by analogy. The Private Eye Project. Shapiro, S. (2022). Cultivating critical language awareness in the writing classroom. Routledge. Sobel, D. (2005). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities (2nd ed.). Orion Society. Tallmadge, J. (1999). Writing as a window into nature. In Into the field: A guide to locally focused teaching (pp. 2–33). The Orion Society. Vander Ark, T., Liebtag, E., & McClennen, N. (2020). The power of place: Authentic learning through place-based education. ASCD. Watson, M., & Shapiro, R. (2018). Clarifying the multiple dimensions of monolingualism: Keeping our sights on language politics. Composition Forum, 38. Weaver, C. (1996). Teaching grammar in context. Heinemann. Weaver, C. (2008). Grammar to enrich & enhance writing. Heinemann.

Part II

Finding the Intersection between Community, History, and Self

In reading the following chapters that deal with place-based writing in stu­ dents’ local communities, you might use the following questions to guide or focus your reading: a b c

How does situating writing in local communities center student voice and encourage student activism? In what ways can place-based writing center or otherwise honor his­ torically marginalized (or erased) communities? In what ways does place-based writing allow for the possibility of multimodal products, and how might that be especially useful when asking students to engage with their local communities?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-7

Chapter 6

Teaching the Tulsa Race Massacre (and Other Hidden Histories) Using Poetry, Photography, and Place Shelley Martin Young Introduction On a hot summer day in 2016, I was taking a field trip as part of my Oklahoma State University Writing Project Summer Institute. We were vis­ iting the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park to learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre. I was 50 years old, had been an educator for almost 30 years, was born in Tulsa, and had never lived outside of Tulsa County, but I had never heard about the Massacre. As I read the plaque at the entrance of Reconciliation Park, my world was turned upside down. For those who are, like me, unfamiliar with this story, the Tulsa Race Massacre occurred in 1921, when a white lynch mob numbering in the thousands invaded the African-American community of Greenwood, Oklahoma. Fueled by the inflammatory newspaper coverage of a white woman’s assault by a Black elevator operator, the mob looted and burned hundreds of homes, despite the best efforts of Greenwood’s residents to protect their property. While exact losses have been difficult to calculate, it is estimated that more than 1,200 homes and over 300 lives were lost in this two-day-long act of racism (Parshina-Kottas et al., 2021). I was from this area, within a ten-minute drive. I taught Oklahoma history to my students, yet this was an event that was not in any textbooks I learned from, nor did it appear in the textbooks I used to teach social studies. In typical K-12 classrooms, students learn about dramatic historical events affecting the nation and the world. Teachers teach about wars, depressions, and industrialization. They teach states and capitals and the names of the presidents. The three branches of government are taught, but when I was in school in Tulsa, I was not taught about the Tulsa Race Massacre, the historical landscape of Tulsa, or how these events continue to impact the lives of Tulsans today. In turn, my ignorance of this event was passed on to hundreds of students that passed through my classroom doors. I posit that if generations of Tulsans knew about the events of 1921, the landscape of Tulsa might be different. If this event had not been covered up, would the climate in Tulsa not be so polarized? By revisiting history, we can DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-8

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better understand and acknowledge differing perspectives, in covering it up we silence the stories of those that were silenced in the past. One way of uncovering the history of your place is through photography. Photographs give us a glimpse into the past. Sometimes all we have left of the past is what we can glean from photographs. Using photographs with students makes people, places, and events more real to them. Students will feel a deeper connection to things they can see. Since every picture tells a story, using photographs is a way to make history come alive (McCor­ mick & Hubbard, 2011; Moulton & Tevis, 1991). In the following strategies, students will be able to examine photographs of the past, take some of the present, and incorporate poetry into their culminating experiences learning about their place.

Sense of Community/Sense of Place Place matters. It matters to who you are as a person as well as who you are as a member of your community. Place plays an important role in the way we understand the world around us. Our lives and the lives of our students are shaped by the places in which we live and the communities in which those places exist – homes, parks, coffee shops, barber shops, schools, churches, museums, and more. Knowing the history of your place is also vital. Social and Cultural psychologists Plaut et al. (2012) discussed the importance of knowing your local history. Knowing this history is essential for constructing self. Knowing local history is vital. Local history teaches you about your community and a city cannot be a community without understanding and acknowledging its past. For example, knowing the his­ tory of Tate Brady (one of the founders of Tulsa) and his ties to the Ku Klux Klan could have explained why some Tulsans wanted his name removed from Brady Street. The city renamed the Street MB Brady Street in 2013 to honor a Civil War photographer with the same last name but no ties to Tulsa. Brasher et al. (2020), however, called this a faux renaming and claimed that this “weakens cities’ ability to engage in the restorative memory-work of recovering from past racial violence” (p. 1224). Not knowing Tulsa’s racist past destroys memories and place identity while at the same time further alienating the historically marginalized people of Greenwood. By keeping Brady in the name of the street, Brasher et al. claimed that this compromise between activists and White business owners just did more damage to this “wounded place” (p. 1226). Brady Street had its own history with the Tulsa Race Massacre. Convention Hall, also known as Brady Theatre, located on Brady Street, was one of three internment camps created to hold Black Tulsans after the Race Massacre. Not knowing this history keeps White Tulsans complicit in the Massacre. Healing the wounds of pain­ ful racialized historical events is tough, but healing begins by knowing the history in our own backyard. Basso (1996) stressed the importance of

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knowing your place when he stated that our relationship with places is expressed in different dimensions of human life – in the emotions, bio­ graphies, imagination, stories, and personal experiences. We don’t know who we are until we know where we are. Do you know the story of your place?

Why Photography? The old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” has arguably never been truer than it is today. Students are bombarded daily with visual images– TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, television, video games, books, billboards, murals, graffiti and more. Visual images are becoming a popular way to express emotions and tell stories. According to Lilly and Fields (2014), images spark memories and evoke emotions. Students’ level of interest in classroom lessons increased when they were engaged with photographs (Lilly & Fields, 2014). Contrary to using textbooks full of dates or dense narratives that are often time consuming to read, photographs offer instant engagement and immediate responses from students despite their age or ability (Foster, et al., 1999). Using historical photographs with students “invites them to give meaning to the image, to explain its content, to understand its significance, and to reflect on the motives of its creator” (Foster et al., 1999, p. 180). Using photographs requires students to activate prior knowledge and use clues that they see in the photograph to make meaning. Photographs serve as powerful invitations to writing since we know that photography and writing are complementary composition processes (Laman & Henderson, 2019).

Why Place-Based Writing? According to Ginott (1972), reading and writing are important if they make our students more humane. Giving our students voice to share their thoughts, ideas, and feelings, then engaging them in dialogue with their peers is empowering. There is power in writing your story. There is power in telling your story. Place-based writing gives students the chance to con­ nect with each other and their communities. Writing about the places that matter to them exposes students to relevant and real-world issues that affect them and their communities (Esposito, 2012). Because place matters, tying writing to that place can be powerful. It is our job to “help students identify those places and communities that are personally significant and engage them in meaningful work that deals with real issues and real audiences” (Esposito, 2012, p. 71). Encouraging our stu­ dents to write about place encourages critical thinking and critical exam­ ination of their community. Place-based writing connects students to stories – stories of people from the past and stories of people in the present, stories of the known, and stories of the unknown. “A pedagogy that

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embraces writing about place also embraces all places as worthy of writing about” (Jacobs, 2011, p. 53). All places – urban, suburban, rural, beautiful, ugly, rich, or poor – are worthy of having their story told. A writing peda­ gogy that involves “community writing, outside audiences, and a critical exploration of place engages students in real writing tasks to reach com­ munal goals” (Esposito, 2012, p. 74). Real world issues make learning more authentic and meaningful. According to Jacobs (2011), place-based writing is grounded in personal histories along with observations and reflections. Writing about who and what they know “honors their voice, encourages their efforts, and, ultimately, follows Freire’s idea of praxis from reflection to action to make better citizens” (Jacobs, 2011, p. 51). Writing mean­ ingfully about the people and places students know can be transformative.

We Make the Road by Walking In his article “Engaging Geography at Every Street Corner,” Bryan Smith (2018) discussed the importance of linking history, geography, and politics with place. Maoz Azaryahu (1990) names place as a city-text. Using place as a city-text, there are literally histories on every street corner. In Tulsa, you can now read plaques that honor businesses that were burned. You can read about lynchings in America on a sign posted outside of one of the only churches that survived the Massacre. You can “read” a mural about the history of Black Wallstreet, and you can “read” the burned bricks that are still in the area. We can read this city-text now, but we couldn’t read it until recently. What histories can you read in your city? Sometimes histories are told, but sometimes, like the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre, the histories are hidden. How many stories of your community do you walk by every day? Do you know the origins or histories of the names of streets in your community, statues of local heroes, buildings old and new, an old bridge no longer in use, a crumbling building or steps to nowhere (which we have in Tulsa)? Horton and Freire (1990) coauthored a book titled We Make the Road by Walking. As acknowledged in the book, “we make the road by walking” is an adaptation of a phrase in a Spanish poem written by Antonio Machado. Translated into English, part of the poem simply says, “Wan­ derer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking” (Machado, n.d.). I invite you to take your students on a walk to discover the history of your community.

(Re)photography and Poetry An effective way to begin this unit is with a photo analysis activity. Students can “read” their city and begin to make meaning of their community by engaging in photo analysis. There are several image analysis worksheets available online for different levels of learners including the National Park

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and the National Archives. I like to use the OPTIC method of visual ana­ lysis (described below) to analyze historical photographs or other visual art. Visual analysis can also be done with paintings, political cartoons, propaganda posters, and even video clips. The strategies listed below are based on fourth through sixth grade students; however, each step can easily be adapted to younger or older students. Step 1: Finding Photographs Photographs from your community can be found in a variety of places, but teachers need to make sure to have the appropriate permissions to be able to use the photographs. Places to find photographs for use in your classroom could include a local museum, historical society, university, Library of Congress, the National Archives, or even students’ families. There are also useful places to find photographs that are available in the public domain on the internet. Places such as Wikimedia, Openverse, and Artstor are credible resources for photographs that can be freely used for projects in your class­ room. You can use Creative Commons (CC)-licensed materials if you follow the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Make sure you attribute all the photographs you use. Step 2: Analyzing the Photographs Once you have identified the photographs you will analyze, teach your stu­ dents the OPTIC Strategy for Visual Analysis. Each letter in OPTIC stands for one phase of the visual analysis: (A) Overview. What is happening in the picture? Summarize the “action” of the visual without analyzing its meaning yet. This is equivalent to the “paraphrase” part of written text-based analysis. Your statement should be a complete sentence that describes the visual with enough detail so that someone not looking at the visual would have a general idea of what is contained in the visual. (B) Parts of the Picture. Break the picture down into four sections. Describe the placement of objects on the canvas. Name everything that you see. Describe color, lighting, and placement, attitude, sizes, orientations, and movement in the image. Students can look for facial expressions, body language, gestures, the setting, colors, textures, etc. (C) Title and Text. Titles and texts are like clues. Write down the title of the work as well as the full name of the artist (if it has one). If this is an historical photograph, write down all the words you see in the photograph. How much do these words add to what you understand – or do not understand – about the picture? Explain.

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(D) Images and Interrelationships. Analyze the relationships in the picture. How do objects or people or colors relate to each other in the picture? What clues to the message or argument or action are these relation­ ships giving you? What seems to be the most important relationship in the picture? (E) Conclusion. Draw a conclusion to the meaning or message of the pic­ ture based on what you have viewed and discussed as a group. What is being conveyed in the photograph/image? Extension Activities Many other uses for historical photographs are included in the extension activities below: � � � � � � �

Use photographs to practice descriptive writing – include sights, sounds, smells that surround the scene. Students can write a story that would continue the picture – what happens one hour later in this scene? Or what happened one hour before? Have students use disposable or polaroid cameras to create a photo essay of their lives. Have groups of students work together to create a newspaper based on the events in the photographs. Have students “interview” the people in the photographs. Students can create plays or skits based on their analysis of the photo­ graphs (or stories or poems). Have students create scrapbooks for the people in the photographs.

Rephotography Rephotography, also known as repeat photography, involves taking photos at a specific site over time to show evidence of change. Originally designed in the 1850s for scientific study, this process examined topics such as erosion, the effect of climate change, changes in natural resources, and deforestation. More recently, people have used rephotography to record family history or the history of a place. The process of rephotography can be as simple as comparing two photographs taken of the same place. Have you tried to recapture a photograph with your siblings? This is rephotography at its easi­ est. It can also be as technical as using computer software to merge two photos to record how places, people, and objects have changed over time. For this classroom strategy, we are going to get students outside and into the community. Students will stand in the footprints of people that came before them. Anthropologist Trudi Smith (2007) stated that the act of returning to particular vantage points, “shaped by a physical presence, and reoccupying locations by standing in the spot from which a historic image

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was photographed, becomes a ground to construct knowledge about a place” (p. 180). I recently led a group of teachers on a tour of Green­ wood in Tulsa. They touched the bricks that melted in the fires from the Tulsa Race Massacre, they read the plaques of the businesses that were destroyed, and they walked in the footsteps of those who were murdered in 1921. In subsequent interviews, many of the participants commented on what they felt just being in this space. One teacher commented, “There is a weight and certain indescribable feeling I got while learning events in the same location they originally occurred.” Another said, “I am literally walking the same streets they walked and experienced it at the same places that they were at and getting to see things that are still there, whether that be a colonial home or the bricks that were scorched in downtown Tulsa.” Step 1: Finding Photographs and Locations Much like in the earlier activity, you will need historical photographs of the location you are going to visit. You will want to choose photographs that are taken in an area that will be easy to access with your students. Along with gathering the pictures (keep copyright laws in mind) you will need to do a little research. See what information you can find about the photograph itself – who was the photographer? When was the photograph taken? Why was the photograph taken? What time of day was the photograph taken? You could also do a deep dive into primary and secondary sources to find out as much as you can about the historical significance of the picture. You could reach out to the community to see if you could partner with a local museum or historical society to discover your cities’ history. Once you have the photographs and the historical context, you will need to deduce the exact locations of the photographs. This can be done by using your local knowledge, by enlisting the help of local anthropologists or his­ torians, or by using Google image search. Once this step is complete, arm your students with cameras and take them into the community. Step 2: Taking Photographs Once you have decided on the historical photographs and the locations you will visit with students, take them on a field trip. The goal for the students is to try and take a photograph from the exact same location as the histor­ ical photograph. This will probably take time and practice. The helpful thing about using an iPhone or iPad for this project is the ability to delete and retake the photo. Unfortunately, if you use a Polaroid or a disposable camera you do not have his option. Have the students also take field notes. Field notes are notes taken by a researcher and an easy strategy to teach students. This strategy is useful for

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enhancing their eye for detail. Some suggestions to include in the field notes are listed below: � � � � � �

What is the same in the photograph? What is different? Note the time of day, weather, season etc. Take notes on people, buildings, transportation Are there signs around that give information of what they are photographing? Details, details, details.

Step 3: Compare and Contrast You will need copies of both the historical photograph and the photographs that your students took. A relatively easy way to start this activity is simply to place the two photos side by side and complete a compare and contrast activity: � � �

Look at the two photos (old and current) side by side (e.g. Figure 6.1). It’s always fun to let the students use hand magnifiers to note details. What do you see? What do you think? What do you notice? What do you know? How are these two pictures alike? How are they different? What has changed? What has stayed the same?

If you are technology savvy, you can combine the two photos. Try Juxtapose Lab to overlay the photos. You can upload your own photos to this website

Figure 6.1 Mount Zion Baptist Church in Tulsa currently and in 1921. Mount Zion Baptist Church burning as heavy smoke is visible. The church located at Easton and Elgin Avenue was dedicated on April 17, 1921, and destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921. Ruth Sigler Avery Collection - Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, Department of Special Collections and Archives, Oklahoma State University-Tulsa.

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and choose to either make an interactive photograph, which uses a slider to transition between the two photographs or you can create a GIF which auto­ matically animates the transition. Extension Activities �

� � � � � �

Historical photographs are easy to use for point of view practice. If there are people in the photograph, tell the story of what is happening from their point of view. Use first person. Tell the story of one of the people in the story using third person. Tell the story from the point of view of one of the objects in the photograph i.e., how would the building tell the story of its burning down? Have students put themselves in the picture. What would they say or do? Use photographs to teach about setting, conflict, mood. Have students write captions for the photographs or headlines for a news story using the photograph for inspiration. Use photographs as inspiration for narrative writing, descriptive writ­ ing, or writing plot twists. Use photographs for poetry (described below). Use photographs to make collages.

Poetry Place and poetry can merge seamlessly to create beautiful works of art. Places have long been inspirations for poets to create word pictures that pay tribute to important places in their lives. From John Keats’s “To Ailsa Rock” to James Lynne Alexander’s “A Day at the Falls of Niagara” to Homer’s Odyssey, poems translate “the abstract world of thought and feel­ ing into a physical language” (Sheers, 2008, p. 173). bell hooks, a writer and poet, acknowledges that her identity as a poet and writer is rooted in her place. Place is a part of who we are and knowing our place helps to foster a sense of belonging and aids in a greater understanding of community and our place in it. “Through poetry kids can give voices to people whose voices usually don’t find their ways into their classrooms or textbooks, including their own” (Christensen, 1991, p. 27). Poetry can provide a way for students to not only examine their community but to examine their lives as well. One of the courses I teach to undergraduate preservice teachers is Teach­ ing Language Arts. This course is focused mostly on teaching future teachers how to teach writing. The first genre we always start the semester with is the personal narrative. Getting at who these students are and where they come from is at the heart of writing a personal narrative. Now that your students have explored their community through pictures and an actual visit, it is time to write poetry. If the students took field notes in their writer’s notebooks, you can use those to write poetry in the community. If not, they

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can write once they return to the classroom. Below are some of the writing strategies I use to get at this sense of place. Strategy 1: Blueprinting Blueprinting is a prewriting strategy that helps students begin writing by first remembering and drawing. It is the act of writing, reading, and remembering our own homes – the smells from the kitchen, the whispers from the bedroom, the sliver of light at the bottom of a closed-door – that brings us together. It is what brings us home. (Fiffer, 1995, p. xiv) Sometimes students have a hard time getting started writing. Drawing and remembering often triggers an idea that helps the student write. I do all of the writings with my students and this particular strategy always brings up memories I thought were long forgotten. Step 1: The Blueprint Give your students large pieces of white paper. Have them think back to the first house they can remember living in. Have them draw a blueprint of this house. I ask students who finish quickly to add their front and back yard. I also give them additional paper if they have a multi-story house. Step 2: Labeling and Lists Making a list is another effective strategy to get ideas flowing. After students have drawn a blueprint of their house, have them label each room, adding what it was mainly used for and who used it the most. For example, when I think of the kitchen, I think of my grandmother cooking our Thanksgiving turkey. On a separate sheet of paper make columns and label them for each room in the house. Have students do a freewrite quickly listing objects, events, memories using words or phrases. When students have listed as much as they can, have them go back are reread their list, putting stars by words or phrases that really stand out to them. Step 3: Writing Now that students have ideas flowing, have them write. They can write a story about their house or write free verse poetry. I would also encourage you to have mentor texts of other poems about home available to share with your students.

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Strategy 2: “Where I’m From” Poetry Mentor texts play an important role in my Teaching Language Arts class. There are so many books to use as effective mentors for writing. A few that I use leading up to writing the “Where I’m From” poem include Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran (2004) to write about favorite childhood memories, Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack (2004) to write about grand­ parent memories, and Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Marti­ nez-Neal (2018) to write the story of their name. Picture books make compelling mentor texts, but so do songs. For this unit I use “Dear Old House that I Grew Up in” by Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer (Gaiman & Palmer, 2021), and I ask my students to write about their house or two. “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon (1999) is a powerful picture of where she grew up. Lyon is an author, poet, and teacher from Kentucky. Her works often reflect where she grew up in Appalachia. This poem has been used as inspiration for writers across the nation. When she was Ken­ tucky’s poet laureate in 2015, she had the goal of collecting “Where I’m From” poems written by someone in every county in Kentucky. This phe­ nomenon spread world wide and Lyon ended up with more poems that she could have imagined. Educators, psychologists, activists, and other poets have all used this poem as inspiration for their own poems about place. Lyon herself was inspired to write this poem by a book of poetry her friend wrote (that’s the power of good mentor texts). She started making lists of memories of where she is from in her writer’s notebook and eventually published this now famous poem. Lyon partnered with activist Julie Landsman to create the “I Am From” Project. This project encourages people to not only create “I Am From” poems but also drama, dance, art, and songs. Her goal is to show what unites the country instead of what divides it. I introduce the “I Am From” poem to my students by first sharing the audio of George Ella Lyon reading the poem. I have them explore her website and the “I Am From” Project. Students then start brainstorming about where they are from. I encourage them to talk to family members, gather pictures, and learn more about their hometowns. They then write the poem. I give them a template of her poem if they want to use that, but they are also free to do a free write about where they are from. Many of the poems we write throughout the semester are simply written in their writer’s notebooks. However, we take this poem through an entire publication process. Students use Book Creator to publish their poems. When I survey students at the end of the semester, this poem is always one of their favorite pieces of writing. Writing these “I Am From” poems can help validate our students’ iden­ tities and experiences, but it can also allow them the space to grapple with the difficult aspects of their communities, such as in my own experience coming to terms with the Tulsa Race Massacre.

78 Shelley Martin Young

Figure 6.2 Excerpts of student work.

Conclusion Place matters. Place is a part of our identity. Knowing our place helps us to understand who we are and the part we play in our community and the world around us. Place influences our interactions with our community and with each other. Writing about places that matter in their lives, students build confidence in their writing, learn more about who they are, and con­ struct a writing community in their classrooms. As Esposito (2012) stated, “Community writing provides inroads into the complex, real-life issues that drive authentic, meaningful learning” (p. 75). Learning about local history can shed light on stories like the Tulsa Race Massacre that have been silenced for so long. Knowing history helps build empathy and under­ standing in our students. With all of the benefits of place-based writing, take a chance and take your students outside.

References Azaryahu, M. (1990). Renaming the past: Changes in “city-text” in Germany and Austria, 1945–1947. History and Memory, 2(2), 32–53. Basso, K. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the western Apache. University of New Mexico Press.

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Brasher, J. P. (2020). Was Tulsa’s Brady Street really renamed? Racial (in)justice, memory-work and the neoliberal politics of practicality. Social and Cultural Geography, 21(9), 1223–1244. Christensen, L. M. (1991). Poetry: Reinventing the past, rehearsing the future. The English Journal, 80(4), 27–33. Esposito, L. (2012). Where to begin? Using place-based writing to connect students with their local communities. English Journal, 101(4), 70–76. Fiffer, S. S. (1995). Introduction: From the sixth stair. In S. S. Fiffer & S. Fiffer (Eds.), Home: American writers remember rooms of their own (pp. vii–xiv). Pantheon. Foster, S. J., Hodge, J.D., & Rosch, R. H. (1999). Thinking aloud about history: Children’s and adolescents’ responses to historical photographs. Theory and Research in Social Education, 27(2), 179–214. Gaiman, N., & Palmer, A. (2012). Dear old house that I grew up in. In N. Gaiman, & A. Palmer, An evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. 8Ft Records. Ginott, H.G. (1972). Teacher and child: A book for parents and teachers. Macmillan. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Temple University Press. Jacobs, E. (2011). Re(place) your typical writing assignment: An argument for place-based writing. English Journal, 100(3), 49–54. Laman, T. T., & Henderson, J.W. (2019). Using photography in a culturally responsive curriculum. The Reading Teacher, 72(5), 643–647. Laminack, L. (2004). Saturdays and Teacakes. Holiday House. Lilly, E., & Fields, C. (2014). The power of photography as a catalyst for teaching information writing. Childhood Education, 90(2), 99–106. Lyon, G.E. (1999). Where I’m from: Where poems come from. Absey & Co. Machado, A. (n.d.). Wanderer. http://jon.federated.wiki/view/we-make-the-roa d-by-walking/view/caminante-no-hay-camino. Martinez-Neal, J. (2018). Alma and how she got her name. Candlewick. McCormick, T. M., & Hubbard, J. (2011). Every picture tells a story: A study of teaching methods using historical photographs with elementary students. Journal of Social Studies Research, 35(1), 80–94. McLerran, A. (1991). Roxaboxen. Harcourt Brace. Moulton, L., & Tevis, C. (1991). Making history come alive. Using historical photo­ graphs in the classroom. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 3(4), 13–14. Parshina-Kottas, Y., Singhvi, A., Burch, A. D. S., Griggs, T., Gröndahl, M., Huang, L., Wallace, T., White, J., & Williams, J. (2021, May 24). What the Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/ 05/24/us/tulsa-race-massacre.html. Plaut, V. C., Markus, H. R., Treadway, J. R., & Fu, A.S. (2012). The cultural construction of self and well-being: A tale of two cities. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(12), 1644–1658. Sheers, O. (2008). Poetry and place: Some personal reflections. Geography, 93, 172–175. Smith, Bryan. (2018). Engaging geography at every street corner: Using place-names as critical heuristic in social studies. The Social Studies, 109(2), 112–124. Smith, Trudi. (2007). Repeat photography as a method in visual anthropology. Visual Anthropology, 20(2–3), 179–200.

Chapter 7

The Sustainable Resource Project Writing Toward Agency Jeffrey Hudson and Donald Hudson

Introduction and Project Origins The Sustainable Resource Project has roots sunk deep into the sand counties of south central Wisconsin and has followed routes meandering west all the way to the Pacific Ocean. In the chapter that follows, we will trace this project’s evolution as it travels cross-country, culminating in its current version, used with high school students on California’s Central Coast. This project began to emerge during graduate work I (Don) was doing at the Breadloaf School of English in Vermont. A graduate course taught by John Elder made visible to me a set of interconnected themes recurring in the work of writers, thinkers, artists, and scientists – profound in one decade and rediscovered in another: creativity, spirituality, and survival. This triumvirate of forces, shaping and shaped by both nature and culture, occurs in work found across academic and aesthetic disciplines. Writing of the intersection between inner and outer landscapes, analogous to the inter­ section between nature and culture, author and environmental activist Barry Lopez observes: The shape and character of these relationships in a person’s thinking are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature - the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf are known. These thoughts are arranged, further, according to the thread on one’s moral intellectual and spiritual devel­ opment. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by the land as it is by genes. (Lopez, 1988, p. 65) Lopez argues for an exploration of that seam between inner and outer landscapes, between nature and culture, and of the precipitate themes of creativity, spirituality, and survival. To facilitate such an exploration with DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-9

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my own students, I developed a lens, “Rhetoric of Place,” for making meaning with the texts my students and I explored first during a newly adopted schoolwide sustained silent reading initiative and then in a new nature reading and writing course I offered. This organizer supported readers and writers to see the forces of nature and culture interacting in any given text and to think about how those forces allowed for and shaped the universal and human themes of creativity, survival, and spirituality. Driving questions started to form, questions I would put at the heart of the Nature Reading and Writing Workshop: � � � � � �

What What What What What What

is is is is is is

the the the the the the

relationship relationship relationship relationship relationship relationship

between between between between between between

nature and creativity? nature and spirituality? nature and survival? culture and creativity? culture and spirituality? culture and survival?

Located in a dairy-farming community in southern Wisconsin, the New Glarus High School students and I co-created the first iteration of the Sus­ tainable Resource Project. The swirl of energy around the new course, the district wide silent reading initiative, and my graduate work at Breadloaf cohered into this powerful project. At this formative period in the project’s identity and existence, students were reading texts and thinking about how nature and culture interacted in these works. We began wondering and writing about the relationship between nature and culture and the emergent themes of creativity, spirituality, and survival. Among the texts we were

Figure 7.1 Rhetoric of place lens/graphic organizer.

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using was Aldo Leopold’s (1966) A Sand County Almanac. This nonfiction work, set in nearby Sauk County, WI, eventually became a landmark book in the environmental movement and, in part, encourages readers to develop a responsible relationship with the natural world. Leopold’s essay “The Land Ethic” gave our work direction and purpose, and this passage in par­ ticular inspired us to action: a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate many elements in the land community that lack commercial value [i.e., creativity, survival, and spirituality], but that are (as far as we know) essential to its healthy functioning. (Leopold, 1966, p. 251) On the momentum of work we’d done, looking at various texts through our “Rhetoric of Place” lens, students began studying various places in their com­ munity, places that held value because they provided for those human needs of creativity, spirituality, and survival. One place students began to appreciate because of their work with the Rhetoric of Place lens was a local swamp. When the Green County Planning Committee convened a public meeting to discuss the building of a road through this swamp, my students got a spot on the agenda in order to argue for the swamp’s protection against development. This swamp is an ancient relic, probably the only of its kind. In the spring the swamp is a breeding ground for a multitude of bird species, a summer and winter home of fifteen threatened or endangered species. The survival of dozens of species of birds, reptiles, insects, fish - all sorts of wildlife ­ depended on that swamp. Pollution – road salt, trash dumping, abandoned appliances or auto­ mobiles – formed an obscene initial corridor of the swamp. At the other end of the swamp, away from human intervention, students discovered a fast, deep creek running alongside and through a section of the swamp. Students discovered the stream produced wild trout. Something that only happens in pure, clean water. With all the foulness around the area, how could this be? The study team found the swamp acts as a natural water purifier and solu­ tion sponge. This was verified by a series of water tests at constant distances from the old road. The students’ compelling and persuasive presentation before the county board moved the planning committee to revisit the plan for the new county road and tabled the issue. A second presentation before the entire county board resulted in the planning commission redesigning the new road, away from the swamp. The area became known as the New Glarus School District swamp. In the years after that presentation, the swamp became an outdoor learning space for the district. Other classes visited to study, to create, to delight in this place.

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By anchoring reading and writing to place, these students’ culminating arguments carried in them a powerful ethos. Place-based writing transcends worthy but baseline goals of “[m]astery of learning to read, write and speak, to use mathematics and to have in one’s possession the cultural knowledge to become employed” (Smith & Sobel, 2010, p. 100). My students became active creators of their world, and stewards of place.

Theoretical Underpinnings After detailing this project’s origins, it’s important at this point to discuss the larger tradition of which this work is a part. We draw on three peda­ gogical traditions in thinking about the Sustainable Resource Project. Pro­ cess pedagogy informs how we engage with our writers day-to-day in the classroom and shapes our interactions and conferences with them. We also want our students to utilize literacy as the means for creating a just world worth living in. Thus, we draw on critical pedagogues, as well. Finally, place-based pedagogy gives this work relevance and authenticity in the way it encourages students to advocate for the natural world. We want the pro­ ject to move students toward agency and to help them “become more aware of their existence in a larger world” (Cortez-Riggio, 2011, p. 43) as well as encourage them to “be members of a participatory democracy” (Bishop, 2003, p. 81). We will briefly discuss each of these schools of thought in turn. The culminating writing and presentations of the Sustainable Resource Project live at the most abstract, rhetorically complex end of discourse con­ tinua described and defined by various scholars. We envision Moffet’s (1983) levels of abstraction1 as a scaffold or series of stepping stones along which students will travel (with our support and guidance) toward more rhetori­ cally complex writing practices. The Sustainable Resource Project utilizes these levels of abstraction to support writers and move them, intentionally, towards argument and activism. Britton (1982) thought of these levels of abstraction as rhetorical modes and argued that writers need to be produ­ cing texts in all three modes: expressive, poetic, and transactional. The cul­ minating writing for the Sustainable Resource Project lives in that final domain, transactional (i.e., to articulate or communicate information to others). Throughout the project, however, student writers produced texts in all modes, intentionally stretching them toward argument and activism. Our belief that writing is a process whereby skills are acquired and honed when writers are given autonomy over such rhetorical forces as audience, purpose, and mode is articulated by Elbow (1981) when he writes, “everyone can, under certain conditions, speak with clarity and power. These condi­ tions usually involve a topic of personal importance and an urgent occasion” (p. 7). Moffett (1981) echoes this student-centered notion of learning by saying, “Personal choice is at the center, not only so that the learner cares about what he is doing, but so that good judgment will develop” (p. 24).

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Moffet is quick to point out, however, that “the student-centered curriculum is never ‘permissive’ or ‘unstructured.’ It is not based on some empty fad­ dish notion of ‘doing your own thing’” (p. 24). Rather, a writers’ workshop model provides intentional scaffolding for direct instruction via mini lessons, space to explore and write to discover, and time for revisions via con­ ferences - both giving and receiving feedback (Atwell, 2015; Fletcher, 2013; Ray, 1999). Writers have a responsibility to themselves and to each other within the context of a writers workshop. What Leopold (1966) called a “Land Ethic,” Paulo Freire (2000) called conscientizacao, a raising of consciousness. Thus, our sustainable resource project has roots in critical pedagogy. Stitching together critical pedagogy and place-based pedagogy, David Gruenewald (2003) draws on Paulo Freire who “advocates ‘reading the world,’ as his central pedagogical strategy.” He goes on to note, “These two interrelated goals [reading the world, reading the word] represented by Freire’s notion of conscientizacao – becoming more fully human through transforming the oppressive elements of reality – are at the center of critical pedagogical practice. They are also significantly central to place-based education” (p. 5). Both critical and place-based pedagogies attend to power dynamics. We draw, too, on Delpit’s (1995) analysis of power to argue that a writing classroom must be a place where culture is created rather than reflected. In Delpit’s view, power dynamics often alienate and oppress those not of the “culture of power.” Therefore, in classrooms where culture is reflected, what – and whose – knowledge counts gets frightfully whittled down to what can be easily assessed on high-stakes, standardized tests. Further, the culture that is reflected is always the culture of power: The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power. This means that success in institu­ tions – schools, work places, and so on – is predicated upon acquisition of the culture of those who are in power. (Delpit, 1995, p. 25) Classrooms reflecting the culture of power alienate too many learners, too many writers. As the Sustainable Resource Project developed over time, we realized it was a way to leverage students’ interest in some aspect of the natural world and, in the process, privilege their lived experience. Further, as enacted in classrooms in Wisconsin, Illinois, and California, the project lives at the geographical center of the overlapping benefits of place-based writing as defined by Montgomery and Montgomery (2021): agency, change, engagement, audience, and purpose. Specifically, the Sus­ tainable Resource Project has writers crafting arguments for authentic audiences to raise awareness of some geographic location. As a result, this project will ideally meet many of the aims of place-based writing, namely

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that it “helps students develop stronger ties to their community, enhances students’ appreciation for the natural world, and creates a heightened commitment to serving as active, contributing citizens” (Sobel, 2004, p. 7). This project provides a relevant and meaningful context in which to weave the threads of process, critical, and place-based pedagogies. Barry Lopez (1998) teaches, “Whatever a writer sets down can harm or help the community of which he or she is a part” (p. 15). The Sustainable Resource project allows us to contribute to what Lopez calls a literature of hope.

The Project Evolves I (Jeff) took what my dad started in southern Wisconsin and floated it down the Mississippi River to Roxana, IL, a blue collar community on the banks of the river where crude is refined into diesel and other fuel. The high school, in fact, took its name from the industry: The Roxana Shells. How, we wondered, would these entwined pedagogical theories play out in a new and different context? Roxana High School established a collaborative partnership with St. Louis University, just across the river, to offer a slate of dual-enrollment literature and writing courses. One of those courses, ENGL 2450: Nature, Ecology, and Literature, became the new home of the Sustainable Resource Project. According to SLU’s online course description: This course introduces literary study within the context and theme of Nature and Ecology. Through the reading of a wide variety of genres ­ including drama, poetry, and fiction - the course engages students in literary ways of knowing. Methods include close reading, comparative textual analysis, and argument writing. (Saint Louis University, n.d.) I constructed a weekly framework (see Table 7.1) with enough flexibility for me to be responsive to the needs of learners, to support our reading of the Table 7.1 Weekly framework for ENGL 2450. Monday: Direct Instruction: Actions of Readers Read aloud/Think aloud Time to read for Wednesday’s Discussion

Tuesday: Writers Workshop Status Mini-lesson Write/ Confer Check Out

Wednesday: Literature Discussion Mini-lesson Discussion: Various protocols (Save the Last Word, Gallery Walk, One-pagers) Check-Out

Thursday: Writers Workshop Status Mini-Lesson Write/Confer Check Out

Friday: Intentional Reflection “Quiz” SSR

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varied texts that were the core of the class, and to scaffold the course’s writing experiences, which would culminate in written arguments defending some place or resource. To the reading of the course, we applied the “Rhetoric of Place” lens (dis­ cussed earlier in this chapter) which allowed us to zoom in on the intersection between nature and culture, and analyze the emergent themes of creativity, spirituality, and survival. From the reading of the course, we derived writing prompts intentionally sequenced from narrative to argument, incrementally increasing levels of abstraction and rhetorical complexity (Moffet, 1983). The first formal writing assignment, for example, was a personal narra­ tive I called “Fierce Green Fire.” We read Aldo Leopold’s “Thinking Like a Mountain,” in which the narrator shoots a wolf and watches “a fierce green fire” dying in her eyes (Leopold, 1966). As part of our discussion of the text, we created a list of synonyms for, or definitions of, that fire. What was it the narrator watched die? Their task, then, was to write about an experience they had with that fire, however they chose to define it.

Figure 7.2 Fierce Green Fire assignment sheet.

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For this version of The Sustainable Resource Project, students were asked to raise awareness of and argue for the significance of a local geographic location, emphasizing the ways in which this location provided for the very human needs of creativity, survival, and spirituality. The products students created took several forms: letters to city officials, persuasive essays and editorials, and TED-style presentations, among other forms of communica­ tion. This variety can be accounted for by the very nature of the project; because students were given the autonomy to focus on a place that resonated with them, it only naturally followed that the products they created would have to be molded to the specifics of the location as well as the students’ individual concerns. Regardless of form, these projects all attempted to advocate for their chosen location and explain how each one provided for creativity, survival, and spirituality. Exploring their communities using the Rhetoric of Place lens and then writing about these places addresses a weakness of traditional writing curricula, which is the lack of student own­ ership so often found in more traditional writing assignments.

The Project Travels West In 2019, my wife and I packed a dog, two cats, and anything else that would fit into the back of our small pickup, including The Sustainable Resource Project, and hauled it all the way to the central coast of California. My new professional home would be the Rio School District in Oxnard, California. There are nine schools in the Rio School District, all of them in the Santa Clara River watershed. Over 5,000 students attend these schools and nearly half of them are English Language Learners. Rio Del Sol, the newest of those nine schools opening in 2018, is where I taught 7th grade ELA/SS and has been the most recent home of The Sustainable Resource Project. The local indigenous Chumash community consulted on the school’s design, a design inspired by the river’s meandering shape. This meander is an expression of a physical, cultural, and historical connection to place. The Rio School District’s vision to empower all students to reach their full potential comes with seven named goals for realizing this vision. Guiding questions connected to or inspired by these goals help teachers and students develop curricular contexts and projects. The Sustainable Resource Project strives to answer two of these guiding questions: 1

How can we help the river find its way in the next 100 years? Sitting on the banks of the Santa Clara River, occupying the land of the Chumash people, the school is uniquely positioned both geographically and phi­ losophically to address this question, one with both literal and figura­ tive implications. Devastated by more than a decade of drought, concerns about water and where water goes are literal and immediate, a

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2

question of survival. Philosophically, the question operates in the realm of agency. What kind of world do we want to live in, and what are we doing to bring that world into existence? Whose knowledge counts? This is a question of respect, an acknowl­ edgement that this business of education is taking place on land that has been stolen. Further, this question leverages the lived experiences of stu­ dents, sees them as something more than mere receivers of curriculum.

Correspondingly, the first principle of the California English Learner Road map reads: The languages and cultures English learners bring to their education are assets for their own learning and are important contributions to learning communities. These assets are valued and built upon in culturally responsive curriculum and instruction and in programs that support, wherever possible, the development of proficiency in multiple languages. (California Department of Education, n.d.) We agree, and we’d go one step further, to assert that what is good for English learners is good for all learners. The inquiry-driven, place-based, culturally responsive pedagogies valued by the school position learners as knowers, as doers and creators, guiding the river into the future.

The Sustainable Resource Project in its Current Form In its most recent iteration, The Sustainable Resource Project consists of two phases and leverages the immediacy of the Santa Clara River dilemma. First, in order to help my students select a location on which to focus, I asked them to complete a geographical analysis – to select a location and to think about it through the five themes of geography: location, place, human-environmental interaction, movement, and region. Utilizing this lens of geographic themes allowed my students to discover that some of their early location selections may not meet the human needs of creativity, survival, or spirituality. The Collection, a popular retail shopping center and hangout, was a popular early choice for the Sustainable Resource Project, and it was easily eliminated when considered from this critical perspective. Sustainable Resource Project Phase 1 Select a location to explore and complete a geographic analysis. Notice the intentional scaffolding of the argument under the human/ environment interaction theme. Writers had to think about this location in

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Figure 7.3 Phase 1, geographical analysis.

terms of how people interact with this space. Does it, indeed, fulfill those needs of creativity, spirituality, and survival? How so? An argument by one student, Vanessa, began to take shape as she thought about the Channel Islands just off the coast where her school is located (Figure 7.4). She wrote, “When you are on the top of the mountain or snorkeling in the reefs off of Catalina or even just walking on the beach you admire the awe-inspiring creation …” As with the dual-credit course in Illinois, I intentionally tried to build and deepen the writers’ capacity to argue for their sustainable resource by reading varied texts and looking at them through the Rhetoric of Place lens. Consider

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Figure 7.4 Vanessa’s geographical analysis.

Raul’s analysis of a biographical piece about environmentalist Rachel Carson (Figure 7.5–7.6). When Raul writes, “The DDT also affected the Channel Island bird popu­ lation, which proves her point. Instead of the DDT owners trying to best Rachel Carson’s argument, they tried to use manipulation saying she was a

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Figure 7.5 Raul’s analysis of Rachel Carson text (page 1).

communist and she’s crazy,” he is not only making sense of the relationship between nature, culture, and survival, he is also articulating a sophisticated sense of argument which will serve him as he writes his own argument in defense of his chosen location. This is writing-to-learn made visible. Sustainable Resource Project Phase 2 A culminating presentation wherein students shared a portfolio containing artifacts that collectively argued for the significance of their chosen location. What sprouted from a passion for both learning and the outdoors grew into something more than just a course or even a unit within a course. The

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Figure 7.6 Raul’s analysis of Rachel Carson text (page 2).

Sustainable Resource Project provided an authentic context for writing, for inquiry, and for an exploration of the seam between place and identity. Each cohort of students to engage in this exploration has discovered something new about themselves or their community. Each cohort redis­ covers the generative power of language and literacy. For us, the power of place-based writing, so enacted, transcends standards or Quixotic quests for scores. The Sustainable Resource Project connects us to place, con­ structs identities and culture, and in the process develops and sharpens our collective and individual literacies.

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Figure 7.7 Sustainable Resource Phase 2 presentation requirements.

Final Thoughts From its inception in the heart of Driftless Wisconsin, the Sustainable Resource Project asked students to think about their connection to place and to see themselves as envisioners and creators of a future they want to live in. Stories of school are so often told with data, the easily quantifiable. The characters in those stories? Standards and skills. The tellers of those stories? Adults. Place-based writing doesn’t argue that these things don’t matter; rather, place-based writing can offer a setting wherein diverse student voices are empowered to tell their own stories. In so doing, they acquire those

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skills, master those standards, and, if given the opportunity, access power within the dominant culture. Reflecting on her portfolio of work and her research of the Channel Islands off the coast of Oxnard, California, seventh grader Zoe makes per­ haps the most compelling argument for place-based writing: “I felt like it was partially my responsibility to protect it. Going and learning about the Channel Islands makes you feel important and needed.”

Note 1 Broadly, a continuum that places forms of narrative writing as the “closest” and most accessible to writers, with argumentation existing at the other, more abstract and remote, end of the continuum. Argumentation is therefore often more chal­ lenging to writers in that the audience and subject matter are frequently less familiar to them.

References Atwell, N. (2015). In the middle: A lifetime of learning about writing, reading, and adolescents. (3rd ed.). Heinemann. Bishop, S. (2003). A sense of place. In R. E. Brooke (Ed.), Rural voices: Place-con­ scious education and the teaching of writing (pp. 65–82). Teachers College Press. Britton, J., & (1982). Prospect and retrospect: Selected essays of James Britton. (G. M. Pradl, Ed.). Boynton/Cook. California Department of Education. (n.d.). Principle one: Providing access to rigorous academic content and quality curriculum. California Department of Education. www.cde.ca.gov/sp/el/rm/principleone.asp. Cortez-Riggio, K.-M. (2011). The Green Footprint Project: How middle school students inspired their community and raised their self-worth. English Journal, 100(3), 39–43. Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. The New Press. Elbow, P. (1981). Writing with power: Techniques for mastering the writing process. Oxford University Press. Fletcher, R. (2013). What a writer needs (2nd ed.). Heinemann. Freire, P. (2000). The pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniv. ed.; M. B. Ramos, Trans.). Continuum. (Original work published 1970) Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32 (4), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032004003. Leopold, A. C. (1966). A sand county almanac. Oxford University Press. Lopez, B. H. (1988). Crossing open ground. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Lopez, B. H. (1998). About this life: Journeys on the threshold of memory. Knopf Doubleday. Moffett, J. (1981). Coming on center: English education in evolution. Boyton/Cook. Moffett, J. (1983). Teaching the universe of discourse. Houghton Mifflin. Montgomery, R., & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. National Council of Teachers of English.

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Ray, K. W. (1999) Wondrous words: Writers and writing in the elementary class­ room. National Council of Teachers of English. Saint Louis University. (n.d.). 1818 Advanced College Credit Program courses. www. slu.edu/1818/courses.php. Smith, G. A., & Sobel, D. (2010). Place and community-based education in schools. Routledge. Sobel, D. (2004). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. Orion Society.

Chapter 8

Where Do Mountain Goats Sleep? Bringing Place-Based Collaborative Journaling out of the Woods and into (and beyond) the Classroom Jason J. Griffith Introduction Open the worn canvas-bound notebook and flip past the illustrations; cartoons; hand-written calendars; recipes; lists of memorable quotes, movies to see and books to read, and you’ll find a rotation of individual passages in a variety of handwriting styles. One entry poignantly describes lightning striking a lonely peak, thunder reverberating around camp while rain patters on the cabin roof. Another handwritten contribution documents a debate between whether the bear we spotted running across the camp stream was a black bear or a grizzly. The next page recalls how one member of our group plunged into water up to their armpits after misjudging the depth of a stream crossing only to dry out while hiking past lichen, wildflowers, and pine trees (and spotting a moose) to arrive at a high mountain lookout with views across valleys, lakes, rivers, and snowfields. Another entry muses about trail builders who have come before to blaze paths through meticulous stone bridges and retaining walls leading to high glacial cirques. One thoughtful author ended their journal entry with some questions for the journal’s audience – our fellow crewmembers – to consider during the remaining days in the wilderness: “What are a bear’s thoughts like?” and “Where do mountain goats sleep?” All the above descriptions come from a group of high school students who contributed to a collaborative journal during a month-long summer volunteer trail crew for the Student Conservation Association (SCA) while they were living and working in the backcountry of Glacier National Park. SCA crews involve groups of 6–8 high school aged (14–19) students and 2 adult crew leaders heading into National Parks, National Forests, and other outdoor spaces throughout the United States to work on conservation projects. These include building and maintaining trails and trail structures, learning to sustainably camp in front country and backcountry settings, and contributing to the community by sharing chores and group recreation (Student Conservation Association, n.d.). Through this work and community, the crew deeply got to know the place in which we DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-10

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were working as well as their fellow crew members in the context of that specific place. While there are clearly many unique educational facets of the SCA crew experience, one which has specific potential for middle and secondary English classes, and also one which was a group tool for capturing, connecting to, and conceptualizing our notions of place, was the collaborative crew journal. I served as one of the two adult crew leaders for this SCA Glacier crew, my fourth outing of five total crews, which were summer jobs for me during my 12 years as a middle school and high school English teacher in Pennsyl­ vania. Now in my 5th year as a teacher-educator and literacy researcher, I reflect on the significance of our collaborative crew journal and suggest it could be an effective tool for taking writing outside of the classroom, building classroom community, fostering individual and group reflection, prompting dialogue and collaborative inquiry, and potentially transforming the relationship of students to one another in their classroom space as well as other spaces they move through in the context of a school year. The opening descriptions help to demonstrate that students on my SCA crew were highly engaged in and reflective of the natural space they were living and working in, but it’s a fair argument that it’s easier to be engaged and reflective in a place as beautiful as Glacier National Park, especially when unplugged from electricity, running water, and reliable cellular service. After all, engross­ ing literature written by authors moving through and reflecting on natural spaces ranges from Wendell Berry’s (2019) evocative nature essays to Cheryl Strayed’s (2013) moving account of finding herself while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to Bill Bryson’s (2006) hilarious recollections of an Appalachian Trail attempt to Edward Abbey’s (1990) thoughtful contemplations of his time as a desert park ranger to so many more. The wonder and beauty of nature are powerful motivation for all kinds of inspired writing, and, considering the perils of climate change and global environmental degradation, it could be argued that reverence of nature through writing, or what Hubbard and Wilk­ inson (2019) call “the new nature writing” which is “inherently political, com­ bining arts and environmentalism, politics, and aesthetics” (p. 253) is needed more than ever and would well-align with calls for critical ELA pedagogy conscious of climate change (see Beach, Share, & Webb, 2017). So, while it could certainly be fruitful to engage in writing in and about the natural spaces which surround our classrooms and schools – for exam­ ple, the middle school I taught in abutted a world-renowned trout run, and my former high school classroom had an unparalleled view of the fall foli­ age on a nearby mountain range – I also wonder how collaborative jour­ naling might foster a notion of community that is reflective of place both within the four walls of a classroom ripe with electronic and social distrac­ tions as well as beyond it, in the spaces students occupy in the afternoons and evenings, weekends, and extracurricular times? Montgomery and Montgomery (2021) define place-based writing as get­ ting your students “out of the classroom for the purpose of writing about

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the world beyond it” (p. xiii). In the process, this can foster student agency and ownership, and it can also bring a degree of authenticity to the class­ room in the way place-based writing emphasizes “personal relevance and a purpose beyond receiving a grade” (p. 4), as well as providing opportunities for writing for real audiences. Montgomery and Montgomery’s call for educators to engage students in more place-based writing is bolstered by the fact that “[t]eens get greater enjoyment from the writing they do outside of school than the writing they do in school, and enjoyment of personal writ­ ing does not always translate into enjoyment of school writing” (Pew Research Center, 2008, para. 14), as well as by Donovan’s (2016) recognition that “[a]dolescents must often deal with issues that are attached to the places they live” (p. 23). One way to do that is through authentic writing. I believe engaging together in a collaborative journal is one Democratic method for fostering authentic, place-based writing since students are writ­ ing informally for each other in and about all the spaces they occupy throughout their week. Additionally, the collaborative journal might help to transform students’ perceptions of the spaces within their classroom walls as places of agency, reflection, and community. In this way, the classroom becomes a hub for distribution and trading of journals, sharing and talking about entries, and negotiating boundaries and guidelines for collaborative writing. And, thanks to the increasing ubiquity of technological tools, this can take place anywhere, both beyond and within the classroom. Before we delve further into what that might look like specifically in a middle or secondary English classroom, let’s explore some related theory and scholarship.

Theoretical Foundations and Guiding Research Personal writing, such as individual journaling in the classroom (see Finley, 2010, for example), has long been known to provide clear benefits, including stress reduction and improved mental health (Pennebaker and Evans, 2014) as well as helping us make meaning out of difficult experiences through reflection (Wilson, 2015). As a result, there are important rationales for teachers to provide opportunities for students to write personally in class. When I taught high school, students who read narrative nonfiction literature and wrote personal essays in my class reported greater investment in process and product (Griffith, 2018) and even therapeutic benefits, such as using their personal writing to process trauma (Griffith, 2019); however, we should start by drawing a clear distinction between personal journaling and the types of collaborative journaling that I’m proposing. Specifically, despite clear benefits, engaging in the type of vulnerable selfreflection which goes into writing a personal essay or writing a personal journal entry, especially when it’s done in a classroom setting, requires respect for students’ privacy. Indeed, my students (Griffith, 2018) reported

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that being able to control their level of sharing (ranging from those who submitted for publication to those who elected not to engage in peer review at all) was a key factor in writing high-quality personal essays about vul­ nerable topics, and Pennebaker and Evans (2014) note that we can physically and psychologically benefit from personal writing even if we choose not to share it with anyone. Collaborative journal entries, on the other hand, are written with the assumption that they’ll be read by other members of a community, which aligns well with how a real-world audience is an essential component of authenticity within place-based writing. Not unlike an open letter or a post on a discussion board or social media forum, we hope our collaborative journal entries will be interesting, engaging, and even provocative for others who also choose to participate. While a collaborative journal entry could demonstrate some vulnerability, the difference is that students would offer up that vulnerability with the awareness that classmates would read and consider it. The purpose of the collaborative journal is primarily social, rather than what we see with individual journals and diaries, many of which are traditionally intended to be kept private. A collaborative journal is one straightforward pedagogical application of collaborative writing theories. Lingard (2021) noted that writing collabora­ tively reflects many compositional tasks of real-world team-based organiza­ tions like research groups and businesses, though they also acknowledge that writing collaboratively can be (at its best) richly rewarding and (at its worst) deeply frustrating. The frustration end of this spectrum is likely familiar to anyone who’s had to work on a group project with a challenging group member, but such frustrations can easily be overcome by the rewards of stu­ dents having another avenue to meaningfully engage with one another. Matos (2021) even found that reframing discourse as collaborative rather than oppositional in the teaching of argumentative writing helped improve argu­ mentative writing skills, particularly in the development of counter-points (since collaborative partners could help provide those in real-time discussion). Additionally, Lingard (2021) might categorize collaborative journaling as “all-in-reaction writing,” which is “[w]hen [writers] create a document toge­ ther in real time, adjusting to each other’s changes and additions without explicit preplanning and coordination” (p. 164). Furthermore, “all-in-reaction writing works best in small, non-hierarchical groups where all members feel safe to express their opinions” (Lingard, 2021, p. 164). The notion of feeling safe in a non-hierarchical group connects well to Fecho et al.’s (2010) concept of a safe space to engage with in the context of dialogic teaching. While Fecho et al. (2010) trouble any claims of a truly “safe” space by recognizing that, even with precautions and oversight, it’s nearly impossible to guarantee complete emotional safety in the social context of a classroom, they present the alternative of a safe space to engage with. Rather than dis­ couraging difficult conversations in an effort to minimize discomfort, a safe

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space to engage with recognizes a classroom is not a neutral zone. So, “safe” does not mean from specific ideas or difficult discussions, but rather safe to engage by expecting uncertainty, allowing contradiction, and working with tensions. Two important hallmarks of such a classroom space include listening to and respecting the ideas of others, and interrogating ideas themselves rather than interrogating the people who express the ideas (Fecho et al., 2010, p. 445). Successful collaborative journaling would be launched from a classroom that fosters this dynamic of being safe to engage with. Additionally, collaborative journaling can be a tool for achieving several other principles of dialogic education including the “raising of questions and the authoring of response by and among all participants,” “encouraging mul­ tiple perspectives,” and “agreeing that learning is under construction and evolving rather than being reified and static” (Fecho & Botzakis, 2007, p. 550). The nature of a rotating journal in which all students contribute entries unfolding episodically across a school calendar is a potentially powerful hall­ mark of a classroom that’s Democratic and participatory and which recog­ nizes how learning continuously builds reciprocally in various ways over time. In summary, collaborative journaling is one relatively simple writing activity to socially appreciate the benefits of individual personal writing, to engage with collaborative writing strategies and processes reflective of realworld teams beyond the classroom, and to better enact principles of a dialogic education which serve to honor the voices, contributions, and perspectives of all members of a classroom community.

Bringing Collaborative Journals into (and beyond) the Classroom As the opening descriptions of our SCA crew journal demonstrate, colla­ borative journaling was one way for crew members to share how they were connecting to and engaging with the natural place we were living in, but beyond simply reflecting the beauty and wonder of a natural place, the colla­ borative journal helped to transform our relationship to place, generally, as moderated by the specific time and context of our trail crew. This ability to redefine how a group in a social context perceives and connects to place is why I propose the activity would work well when launched from a traditional classroom setting to include entries both within and beyond class time, and there are two complementary facets of the activity to unpack further. Of course, what makes a journal a journal is regular entries over time. So, the first facet of collaborative journaling is establishing a rotation which allows all members to contribute regular entries. Because a backcountry trail crew requires a good bit of coordination and cooperation to keep everyone safe and healthy, our crew operated around a chore wheel with members alternating meal prep, cooking, clean-up, dishwashing, etc. Our group chose to include the journal as one of the chores in the rotation, which helped to regulate everyone’s

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contributions, but “Journal Day” also provided a bit of rest from physical chores and a chance to be introspective. Individual entries also helped to document memories and provide a record of important events we all could look back on. But, besides a basic diary, rotating entries allowed for extended conversa­ tions, including opportunities to thoughtfully respond to previous entries or to verbal conversations from earlier in the day. And inviting all members to parti­ cipate regularly celebrated the value of different perspectives. What was impor­ tant to that member that day? What did they remember and value and what was their unique gaze on the landscape and experience? It’s this compilation of dif­ fering perspectives that could be particularly powerful because different students have vastly different experiences of school in terms of the extra-curricular activities they participate in, the various academic programs they engage with, and the things they do outside of school altogether. Providing space through collaborative journal entries to document and honor varying school experiences and the way these experiences can also involve the non-school spaces students inhabit can collectively build a rich community mosaic of experiences. Besides taking turns documenting our collective experiences and sharing our individual perspectives through rotating entries, the second important facet of the collaborative journal is allowing for more in situ organic con­ tributions in real time. In addition to their scheduled entries, crew members could ask for the journal at any time to make impromptu additional entries when inspiration struck, or, more frequently, to contribute to unfolding shared lists. For example, Figure 8.1 shows a list of the crew’s recommen­ dations for YouTube videos to check out. Figure 8.2 shows an excerpt from the crew’s list of the movie recommendations which would get updated by various members every time a new title came up in conversation. In addition to movie and YouTube recommendations, our journal included lists for recommended books, inside jokes and memorable quotes, lists of animals we had seen or day trips we had taken, recipes and new foods we’d tried, workout sequences, chords and lyrics to songs, drawings and doodles, and more. In addition to the individual journal entries, these informal lists helped to document the social uniqueness of this group being together in this particular time and place. With the preceding in mind, the collaborative journal offers teachers (and their students) a way to engage in a low-stakes form of place-based writing,

Figure 8.1 A group-curated list of recommended YouTube videos.

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Figure 8.2 A group-curated list of recommended movies.

perhaps as a trial balloon before attempting a more extravagant activity. By allowing students to write about non-school places (and the activities that take place in them), the teacher is encouraging students to take ownership of the various spaces they inhabit when they’re not in school and demonstrating that those places are valid topics about which to write. In this way, place-based writing experiences – even when they primarily occur in a school setting – can leverage student interests in order to be more personal and engaging. In the next section, I’ll outline specifically my suggestion for engaging with collaborative journaling via these two complementary methods in (and beyond) a middle or high school English class.

Suggested Activity for Collaborative Journaling in the Classroom While methods for utilizing collaborative journaling and other collaborative writing approaches in middle and high school English classrooms can vary greatly, I’ll present my suggested activity through four elements: timing, format and materials, precautions, and assessment. �

Timing: In order for collaborative journaling to be most effective, it would be helpful first to build rapport and trust within a classroom community as well as to lay the groundwork for Democratic and participatory interaction. With this crucial component in mind, it might work best to implement

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collaborative journaling in the second academic quarter or marking period or even the second half of the year after students and the teacher have gotten to know one another and have contributed to establishing norms and expectations. Also, teachers can experiment with variations in groupings, such as by doing a single whole class journal one quarter and several small group collaborative journals the following quarter. Assign or have students select dates on a calendar to contribute regular entries in journals, and give them open access to add to shared lists and impromptu posts. Encourage and model informality in all posts. Welcome drawings, doodles, stickers, etc. Don’t insist on standard English grammar or complete sentences. Allow all formats of posts and don’t insist on a particular length or structure. Posts can be composed at any time (either during class, or in places students occupy out of class on afternoons, evenings, and weekends). �

Format and Materials: I recommend two simultaneous formats of col­ laborative journaling for classroom implementation: a

b

Hardcopy journals: For daily, rotating journal entries, I recommend utilizing hardcopy journals. Whether these are simple black and white composition notebooks that classes decorate and personalize or fan­ cier hardbound journals (depending on budget and logistics), having something shared and tactile enriches the collaborative experience. If utilizing a single collaborative journal for an entire class, the teacher (or rotating student volunteers) can digitize entries once per week utilizing a cell phone camera scanning app (like CamScanner) so that everyone can read and consider posts before their next turn (with small groups, the rotations will be faster, and they can read and respond within the journal). The classroom becomes a hub for dis­ tributing, sharing, and redistributing these hardbound journals, with the writing happening anywhere students feel inspired. Electronic Collaborative Writing Apps: For shared lists and impromptu posts that anyone can add to at any time, I encourage utilizing a colla­ borative composing technology like GoogleDocs or Google Keep, Evernote, MS Word Online, or Etherpad. With electronic on-demand access, students and teachers can both create and contribute to the kinds of lists and shared social resources that arise in class and could be of value or interest to members later on. This could include anything from listing texts read to recording funny or inspiring moments from discussion to sharing the pop culture references people make. These electronic lists can also be useful for small groups to record meaningful conversations happening outside of class: in what ways do topics from English class show up on a cross-country run, the swim team bus, or before a band concert? What conversations from those other places and times show up in English class? The possibilities here are endless and

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contribute to making the class feel more inviting, crowdsourced, and not bound to just the physical place and defined class time of the Eng­ lish class period. On that note, this is where the collaborative journal can most closely resemble traditional place-based writing. By encoura­ ging (or even requiring) students to write in their journals in non-school places, students can be asked to engage with their immediate environ­ ment in ways they often aren’t asked to do in traditional academic writing. And the collaborative nature of the journal allows their class­ mates to have insight into other places and activities to which they might not normally be privy when writing is primarily completed in the classroom for no audience other than the teacher as assessor. �

Precautions: I recognize one advantage a small trail crew has over a big classroom community is that of oversight. Because SCA crews are small and unusually intimate due to their isolated place as well as how dependent the experience is on the community functioning well, any discord among mem­ bers or leaders is going to be noticed quickly. While I believe fervently in trusting students and fostering a community built on trust and respect, I also recognize a circulating journal and unmonitored access to collaborative web applications could allow the festering of interpersonal bickering and even bullying. While it’s important for teachers not to police collaborative jour­ nals completely, it’s also important to take precautions and engage in over­ sight against linguistic violence and marginalization (either intentional and unintentional). To that end, I recommend two such precautions: a

b

Teachers should contribute regular entries to journals, too. Not only does writing alongside students foster a stronger sense of Democratic community, modeling, and engagement, but teachers can notice and disrupt any harmful patterns or interactions in the moment, and the presence of the teacher in the rotation might help to dissuade harmful and unproductive discourse. In the spirit of the teacher being seen as more of a referee in their par­ ticipation than an authority figure, it might also be fruitful to create a classroom agreement prior to engaging in collaborative journaling, where “students build a set of expectations for themselves … and hold each other accountable for those expectations as they get to know each other better” (O’Connor, 2021, para. 3). Furthermore, “[w]orking with your students to establish agreements cooperatively encourages them to consider each agreement’s purpose and gives them a greater investment in abiding by the agreements, thus accepting part of the responsibility” (Berkeley Graduate Division, n.d., para. 1). Creating a classroom agreement where students help to shape the norms and expectations of the collaborative journal can also invite students to take responsibility in socially dissuading harmful and unproductive discourse.

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Assessment: I consider contributing to a collaborative journal to be a social form of what Kittle (2008) called quick writing; “quick writing is play. This is something most students crave: to write freely, to experi­ ment with their thinking and ideas. To try on voice, or to rant about

Figure 8.3 Collaborative journaling activity sheet (page 1).

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Figure 8.4 Collaborative journaling activity sheet (page 2).

life. No grades attached. It is a time to speak” (p. 27). In this way, strategies for “un-grading,” like a labor-based grading contract (see Lince, 2021) or shifting points from correctness or evaluation to com­ pleteness (Thompson, 2021) might best inform how to assess contribu­ tions to a collaborative journal. Are students participating and are they doing so in good faith? Then, a moderate completion grade can easily co-exist alongside more formal assessments.

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Conclusion For me, the end of a trail crew experience was not unlike the last day of school. While no doubt there was some relief at a pause in hard work and accountability and a hope for getting caught up on rest, there’s also a bittersweet goodbye to folks I’ve spent significant time with every day. Having the crew journal to look back upon was a treasured addition to keep­ sakes like photographs and artifacts like souvenirs. Beyond a simple record of the work we did, the time we spent, and the places we visited, the collaborative journal captured the qualitative heart of our time and experience together from the magic of the mundane to the wisdom in everyday conversations. For teachers and their students, bringing a collaborative journal like this into the classroom would add an informal record of the class community’s development and growth to match all the formal state testing benchmarks and high-stakes grading. Additionally, this could be a powerful and unique method of formative assessment, helping teachers to understand what’s important from students’ perspectives and what’s collectively valuable and interesting from the shared experiences of the class, including those beyond class time. Most importantly, inviting students to engage in collaborative journaling can help to honor the places beyond the school walls they value, to reconsider their classrooms as a place of agency and reflection, and to build bridges between spaces inside and beyond the classroom.

References Abbey, E. (1990). Desert solitaire. Touchstone. Beach, R., Share, J., & Webb, A. (2017). Teaching climate change to adolescents: Reading, writing, making a difference. Routledge. Berkeley Graduate Division. (n.d.). Creating community agreements. Graduate stu­ dent instructor teaching & resource center. https://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-con tents/discussion-intro/discussion-guidelines/. Berry, W. (2019). The world-ending fire: The essential Wendell Berry. Counterpoint. Bryson, B. (2006). A walk in the woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian trail. Anchor. Donovan, E. (2016). Learning to embrace our stories: Using place-based education practices to inspire authentic writing. Middle School Journal, 47(4), 23–31. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00940771.2016.1202657. Fecho, B., & Botzakis, S. (2007). Feasts of becoming: Imagining a literacy classroom based on dialogic beliefs. Journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 50(7), 548–558. www.jstor.org/stable/40012339. Fecho, B., Collier, N. D., Friese, E. E. G., & Wilson, A. A. (2010). Critical conversations: Tensions and opportunities of the dialogical classroom. English Education, 42(4), 427–447. Finley, T. (2010). The importance of student journals and how to respond efficiently. www.edutopia.org/blog/student-journals-efficient-teacher-responses.

108 Jason J. Griffith Griffith, J. (2018). Penning the 3 AM thoughts: What students say about writing personally in English class. The Clearinghouse, 91(4–5), 168–173. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00098655.2018.1459445. Griffith, J. (2019). Writing through pain: How teachers can support writing as ther­ apy for students processing trauma. In S. Bickmore, G. Rumohr-Voskuil, & S. Shaffer (Eds.), Contending with gun violence in the English language classroom (pp.106–112). Routledge. Hubbard, P., & Wilkinson, E. (2019). Walking a lonely path: gender, landscape and “new nature writing”.’ Cultural Geographies, 26(2), 253–261. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1474474018811663. Kittle, P. (2008). Write beside them: Risk, voice, and clarity in high school writing. Heinemann. Lince, A. (2021, April 28). Ungrading to build equity and trust in our classrooms. https://ncte.org/blog/2021/04/ungrading-build-equity-trust-classrooms/. Lingard, L. (2021). Collaborative writing: Strategies and activities for writing productively together. Perspectives on Medical Education, 10(3), 163–166. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s40037-021-00668-7. Matos, F. (2021). Collaborative writing as a bridge from peer discourse to individual argumentative writing. Reading & Writing, 34(5), 1321–1342. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s11145-020-10117-2. Montgomery, R. & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. National Council of Teachers of English. O’Connor, C. (2021, August 24). Using community agreements to start the year strong. www.edutopia.org/article/using-community-agreements-start-year-strong. Pennebaker, J. & Evans, J. (2014). Expressive writing: Words that heal: Using expressive writing to overcome traumas and emotional upheavals, resolve issues, improve health, and build resilience. Idyll Arbor. Pew Research Center. (2008, April 24). What teens tell us encourages them to write. https:// www.pewresearch.org/internet/2008/04/24/what-teens-tell-us-encourages-them-to -write/. Strayed, C. (2013). Wild: From lost to found on the Pacific crest trail. Vintage. Student Conservation Association. (n.d.). The crew experience. www.thesca.org/ serve/crew-experience. Thompson, J. (2021, March 23). Reflections on point-less grading. https://ncte.org/ blog/2021/03/reflections-point-less-grading/. Wilson. T. D. (2015). Redirect: Changing the stories we live by. Back Bay Books.

Chapter 9

Making Connections to the Past Using Place-Based Writing to Bring History to Life Amanda Montgomery

Introduction On a sunny, pleasantly warm winter morning, I walk through bustling Mar­ ietta Square. The green of the trees won’t bloom for a few more months, but the smiling faces of the people around me confirm that we are all excited for this momentary peek at the spring soon to come. My husband and I love a good walking tour. Whether we are learning about ghosts, tasting local cui­ sine, or delving into historical architecture, we jump at the chance to see a place through the eyes of a local. On this day, we decided to finally venture into the history of a place I had worked for several years: Marietta, Georgia. After visiting the local history museum, we were handed a brochure with walking tours of the area. As we ventured through busy streets and hidden alleyways, I began to think of my students who lived mere miles from this square. I wondered if they knew the history of the cobblestones upon which they had surely trod. It was here that I began to kindle the embers of an idea. The concept of place-based writing is something I have played with for many years as an elementary educator. My first introduction to this idea was in 2014, while participating in the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project Summer Institute, a three-week long program geared toward empowering teachers to improve their literacy practices through research and mentoring. During this program, we were instructed to explore the Kennesaw State University campus while taking notes and viewing the world using paper cameras with small holes cut in them as a lens. At first, I was skeptical about how this would lead to any real learning. I felt silly as university students gave me the side eye while I looked at signs and bushes with my paper camera pushed against my eye. It wasn’t until I became enthralled with a group of ants diligently climbing a tree, clinging to their bits of seeds, leaves, and crumbs, that I began to realize the importance of exploring the world outside the classroom. I was no longer thinking about the assignment we were given or the embarrassment I pre­ viously felt. I was sucked into the curious nature of these insects. My mind whirred with observations, wonderings, and connections. I wasn’t being asked DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-11

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to develop a piece of writing but my wonder and joy inspired me to want to write a narrative about these ants. I wanted to research more about them. I wanted to bring this joy and wonder into my classroom. If I needed this in my life, I knew my students did, too. Since coming back from digital learning after the COVID-19 pandemic, daily classroom routines had been more of a struggle than in previous years, and the idea of venturing into the real world was met with fear and caution by teachers, parents, and students alike. I have always been an advocate of experiential learning, especially with my students who are English language learners. At Park Street Elementary, a Title I school in Marietta, our student population is majority English language learners, and I believe that all stu­ dents learn best when they are given the opportunity to see how their learning connects to the world around them. The engaging, real-world experiences gained in field trips were an essential tool in previous years. This year, how­ ever, we were unable to leave the school grounds. This was also a year where the integration of science and social studies standards in language arts was being emphasized due to the need to “catch students up” after the pandemic. It seemed like the time we had to teach subjects like science and social studies was quickly disappearing. I needed to find a way to bring the world to my students and I needed to connect that learning to a deeper understanding of the history of the place they lived. This was no small task but, as Sobel (2014) tells us, “If students are more motivated, more committed to learning, then it’s more likely that learning will sink in and take hold rather than evaporate” (p. 63).

Theoretical Foundations Before digging into the project I conducted with my students, I’d like to briefly discuss the place-based principles that form the core of my instructional approach. As an elementary teacher, I know all too well the pressures put on students and educators alike to pass their end of year assessments. I’ve attended many professional development sessions focused on how to prepare students for the types of reading and writing they will face in these tests. I also know the struggle of watching students’ eyes glaze over each time a traditional writing prompt is introduced in the classroom as well as the demoralizing effect of seeing test scores in reading and writing continue to decline. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2023), the “long-term trend in Reading” from 2020 to 2023 shows a 4-point decrease and 2012 to 2023 shows a 7-point decrease. These declining nationwide scores have led to an avalanche of boxed, scripted programs and professional development seminars focused on raising student test scores. When you add to these already intimidating challenges the complexity of teaching students with varying language learning backgrounds and world

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experiences, the task of engaging students in meaningful reading and writing can seem like a steep hill to climb. This is why I have made it my mission to find authenticity and engagement in the reading and writing activities I present to my students. Researcher Anne Elrod Whitney (2017) poses this question, “How can we structure authentic experiences for student writers, that they might discover writing’s power for themselves in the here and now?” (p. 16). In response to this question, she suggests activities that allow “students to have experience in navigating the real challenges that come up in any act of writing” (p. 18). The implication is that reading and writing cannot simply live in the pages of a book or the four walls of our classroom. We have to make connections to the outside world to provide students with context, meaning, and authenticity. The concept of authenticity connects nicely with research on how stu­ dents learn to read and write. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham (2006) discovered that student knowledge contributes significantly to learning outcomes. He argued that a student’s existing knowledge affects how quickly and easily they acquire new knowledge, and it allows them to remember new information more easily because they are able to relate the learning to a network of information from their memory. This network allows them to utilize previously acquired knowledge to solve problems. Hennessey (2021), another researcher in the field of reading, suggests that each student comes to us “with different abilities, experiences, and inter­ ests. The everyday demands of all the classrooms present multiple chal­ lenges, depending on the proficiency of each reader, the text, the task assigned” (p. 2). Additionally, background knowledge is one of the key components to Scarborough’s (2001) reading rope, a visual metaphor, shaped like a rope, designed to capture the cognitive processes needed to fully comprehend a text. When you combine this research with the push for cross-curricular writing, you begin to understand that traditional writing practices are failing our students. This is where place-based writing begins to shine a light toward a path forward in my classroom. I want to build my students’ background knowl­ edge and help them make connections between what we learn in the class­ room and how it prepares them for the real world. I want my students to become better readers and writers, but I also want to show them why reading and writing are important skills in their lives. Finally, I want to ensure I am not simply teaching my students how to pass a test; rather, I want to show them how to interact and solve problems in the world around them. Esposito (2012) wrote compellingly about this very issue: Place plays an indelible role in the way we perceive and come to under­ stand the world around us. Whether at home or at school, sitting in a quiet coffee shop, or on a busy street corner, our lives are shaped by the places

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we inhabit and the communities therein. Place influences our interactions by shaping the genres, texts, and languages we use as writers and readers. (Esposito, 2012, p. 70) There’s value in place-based writing in that it can help my students learn how to read and write, but, perhaps even more importantly, it can also help them understand how reading and writing allows them to interact with, and reflect on, the world around them.

Finding Inspiration At this point in my career, I had presented at both national and state con­ ferences on the use of place-based writing in the classroom. I had even co­ authored a book in 2021 about the practice. I was no stranger to the immense benefits that place-based writing could bring to a classroom. In previous years, I had taken my students on field trips to a Civil War battlefield to explore and reflect on the complexities of storytelling. Students eagerly listened to retellings of battlefield experiences read aloud by park rangers. They examined paintings and drawings made of the battle by a soldier and compared it to what they saw right outside the visitors center. I watched as students with limited English proficiency blossomed when tasked with exploring a school compost bin in order to write a book for their peers about gardening and composting. These engaging, place-based experiences in authentic learning led to deep inquiry-based explorations, peer-to-peer conversations, and, as Lindblom and Christenbury (2018) put it, “real writ­ ing, written for a real audience, for a real purpose” (p. 30). These were difficult times, however. I couldn’t take my students on a field trip anywhere due to the restrictions placed on us due to COVID-19. I struggled with how I was going to bring “place” to my students. This was when I remembered the Marietta Black Heritage Walking Tour I experienced in Marietta. This project started simply, as a way to make our school’s annual Black History Month door decorating contest more meaningful to my students. However, I wanted to move beyond the Pinterest-inspired doors of the past and find a way to bring the deep history of Marietta, Georgia, to my students. I am a deep believer in Kinloch’s (2010) work guiding students from historically marginalized groups to better understand the changes in their neighborhoods and how they can reclaim and learn from the histories that predate them. Specifically, I wanted to live up to my obligation to focus my classroom on “the lives, literacies, and languages of our youth in the out-of­ school communities that they call home” (Kinloch, 2010, p. 57). The initial inspiration for this project was a pamphlet I acquired while vis­ iting the Marietta History Museum titled, “Marietta’s Black Heritage Walking Tour” (Marietta Visitors Bureau, 2021). This pamphlet contained a map of historic Marietta Square with numbered sites and brief descriptions of

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important people and places that once existed on the square. These were figures who helped to make the city what it is today. I knew that many of my students didn’t travel much further than the city, but that the square played a huge part in their daily lives with its constant rotation of family-friendly events. Because field trips weren’t permitted this year, I had to figure out a way to get place into the classroom if I couldn’t get students to a place. Fortunately, technology can help supplement these physical constraints. I began the pro­ ject by simply asking my students to take a virtual trip around the square using Google Street View. Students were formed into small groups with one Chromebook per group. As they explored, I walked around and facilitated conversations with students about what they knew about the square and what they wondered. Then we came together as a class to fill in a K-W-L (i. e. know, want to know, learned) chart. This instructional strategy, devel­ oped by Ogle (1986), helps to guide students through the process of gauging their own background knowledge of a topic while also allowing them to develop a pathway of inquiry. Predictably, students gave answers like, “They have good food there,” “My family goes there to listen to music each summer,” and “What does that store sell?” It was after this virtual exploration that I introduced the Black Heritage Walking Tour. We once again did a tour of the square using Google Street View, but this time my students and I followed the walking tour, reading about the places we “visited” and discussing what we saw. I supplemented this tour with images taken from the Marietta History Center website of what the square looked like from the mid-1800s to now (Marietta History Center, 2023). During this exploration, students were asked to talk about what they saw using the “see, think, wonder” strategy. This is a conversa­ tion-based inquiry strategy wherein students are challenged to verbally describe what they see, think, and wonder using details of an image or video in front of them. This strategy helps to encourage peer to peer conversations while also deepening the level of inquiry around a topic. The things students wondered about were added to our K-W-L chart. In Table 9.1, you can see

Table 9.1 K-W-L chart. K

W

� There are stores and restaurants. � Sometimes there are concerts and activities. � Lots of people go there.

� What stores are there now and what stores did there used to be? � Why were some people there and some not? � What did women and Black people do? � Why did the square look different?

L

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some of the information that was added to our chart. This was a living document that stayed on our wall through the entirety of this project. I watched as students voiced their amazement at how old their city was. Of course, I think all third graders are amazed that anything could be older than them. It was during this virtual walking tour that my students began to develop deep questions about their community. One student asked, “Why aren’t there any pictures of Black people on the square?” Another noticed that most of the pictures of business owners “had only men in them” and wondered where the women were. These inquiries led us down the path to deciding which of the historical places and figures we wanted to bring to life for our Black History Month door decoration.

Preparing for the Research My students and I had a series of conversations over the next couple days about which community places we should explore and research. If it would have been totally up to them, we would have researched the entire history of Marietta, but the limitations of time and my own sanity prevented me from being able to fully allow my students the freedom to be this broad. If I were working with older students, I can see how giving them the reins to conduct this research independently would be a powerful learning tool. Unfortunately, because Marietta history is so specific and not one tackled by many elementary teachers, my resources were scarce. Most specifically, there weren’t many resources available online that could reasonably be used by third grade students. Therefore, the bulk of the research had to start with me. In having discussions with fellow teachers about the logistics of placebased writing, it’s common to be asked where (and how) to find resources that support student inquiry. There is a valid point to be raised that placebased writing can require an extra layer of preparation and planning by the teacher. In the case of this project, I spent a couple hours gathering images, narratives, historical facts, and videos that I then put together in a format that would be accessible for my students. On a personal note, this resourcegathering process was a powerful experience for me as I learned a great deal about the history of the place in which I had worked for nearly ten years, but it was work that went beyond simply pulling a book off the shelf. Placebased writing does not always require this level of planning and preparation. I have conducted many smaller but equally engaging lessons that took no more prep than ensuring all of my students had paper and pencil before we left the room. Because students weren’t able to visit these places in person, I utilized digital images, videos, and maps to recreate the town square in our own classroom. In the end, my students chose to research the following figures: Andrew and Frank Rogers, brothers who owned multiple businesses and

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who helped to finance the future success of the square; and the Blue Eagle Fire Company, an all-volunteer, African-American fire company committed to protecting the city from fires. These figures helped us answer their initial questions (represented by the “W” on our K-W-L chart) about why some people were represented in historical images and some were not and helped them to explore some of the important jobs that African American citizens had on the square. One video in particular that my students learned a great deal from explained the lack of rights that people of color had during this time period. It specifically discussed that colored fire brigades were necessary because many citizens in non-white communities were worried that white firefighters might refuse to respond to fires in their area. The forming of these volunteer fire companies was met with much controversy in many areas and thus, not many images were taken of them.

Marietta History Project I gave my students the autonomy to choose one of the above options to research. They were also given a graphic organizer with guiding questions to answer. You can see these guiding questions in Figure 9.1. Students were given a free choice as to how to group themselves. Many of my students formed small groups of two to three to help support one another through this process. At first, my students struggled through the research materials because they lacked the background knowledge to fully form a picture of what was being presented to them. For example, one of the articles presented to students introduced the concept of a dance hall. While students were somewhat familiar with dances, as our school held them each quarter, they were unfamiliar with the impor­ tance of a dance hall as a community meeting space. I held small group meet­ ings with my students where I facilitated conversations about what they were learning and where they were struggling. As a result of these small-group chats, I sought out additional images and videos to supplement what I had initially shared with them. One of the most exciting parts of this project was seeing students take charge of their own learning. I remember one specific moment where stu­ dents were struggling with the idea of what a grocery store in the 1860s would have looked like. I had given them images of time period-specific grocery stores and of the owner, Frank Rogers, but students were still filled with many questions that I struggled to answer. This inspired one group to begin researching products that might have been sold in the store and another group to find a video of a recreated grocery store. The groups came together to share their resources and even began to turn a corner of our library into a recreation of the grocery store using the images they printed out. I was unsure how students would connect to these places without visiting them in person, but without much guidance from me, they began to recreate those places in our classroom.

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Figure 9.1 Example guiding question research sheet for students.

In a normal school year, I would have taken my students two miles down the street for a field trip around the square. Because a physical trip wasn’t a possibility this year, I had to get creative with how to bring my students to this place. This was when I called on my students’ parents for support. I sent home with each of my students a request that, time and resources

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permitting, they take a family visit to the square and find the modern-day locations of the historic sites we were researching. I gave my students copies of the Marietta Black Heritage Walking Tour map, sent instructions to families about where they might want to start, and gave them a two-week window to attempt their visit. I asked that they take pictures of their tour and write down observations they made in their writing journals. I was excited to see that many of the families embraced this challenge. I received photos of my students standing in front of modern-day office buildings and museums. I was delighted to read the observations made by my students and their parents over the next few weeks. We were able to add to our K-W-L chart that the grocery store was now a colossal office building, the barber shop was now a candy store with “amazing candy,” and the fire station was now a museum. The next step in this project was to turn the students’ research into nar­ ratives describing what a day in the life of a Marietta resident, living or working on the square, would have been like in the 1860s. I chose the nar­ rative genre because, as Christensen (2015) acknowledges in using a similar project to teach her high school students about the cost of gentrification, “it was … a great way to use the research we had been swimming in” (p. 19). These narratives, along with student-created decorations meant to represent the buildings on the square, were hung outside our classroom. The students chose to recreate the look of these places in the hallway after the class dis­ cussed how we wanted to bring these people and places to life. The students felt like writing informational posters or something similar was just giving out “boring facts.” They wanted the students and teachers who walked by our room to feel like “they were living in Marietta in the 1860s.” Developing their narratives was an engaging and purposeful project for my students. After spending so much time (about two weeks at this point) researching and exploring the history of Marietta Square, my students were ready to dive into their stories. Using their guiding questions as the founda­ tional structure for their story, my students spent three days drafting, sharing, and editing their stories. Students spent about one day using their notes to develop this rough draft. The next day, students were partnered in groups of two to three to read their drafts out loud. The other group members were instructed to take notes about what they enjoyed and what they still had questions about. These notes were shared with the author. On the final day, students took the likes and suggestions from the previous day and used them to develop their final draft. I was excited to watch as students consistently returned to the images they discovered to help them create richer descriptions of life on the square. It was also a surprise to listen to students giving each other clear and insightful feedback on their narratives throughout the process. One powerful example of student writing came from Alexis (a pseudo­ nym). Alexis was an English Language Learner in my classroom who often struggled to write more than two or three sentences at a time. He eagerly asked to write about a fire in the square. As he wrote his story, he asked a

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Figure 9.2 Example of a student narrative.

fellow student for help with the details he should add. He knew he wanted the firemen to save a woman’s house, but he struggled to bring this to life. The students sat together and looked at images of the firemen and their engine and discussed how he could describe them. In Figure 9.2, you can see Alexis’s finished work. Considering where Alexis began the year, this narrative demonstrates an amazing leap in both clarity and depth of his sentences. The people he names in his story were names of actual firemen from the time period. The engine he mentions was seen by his partner in the Marietta Fire Museum. I was excited to see the growth in my students’ background knowledge and to watch as they represented this learning in their stories. The next step in this project was to plan and create the hallway display. Students from the two groups met together to sketch out a vision for the hallway. This vision was shared as a whole class, and pieces were added or subtracted as they discussed what the final display should look like. Students wanted the hallway to “make students feel like they went back in time” and were “really in the square.” The class asked for help from their art teacher to create the final display pieces. In order to help viewers better understand the layout of the square, we displayed the student narratives on the wall in the locations where the stories might have actually taken place. Addition­ ally, to add some “bonus content” to the wall, students chose videos about the time period as well as historically accurate music, and these were added to the display using QR codes viewers could scan in order to view or listen to this supplemental material.

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Figure 9.3 Student work display. Source: Photograph by author

Classes were invited to visit our “square,” and representatives from our classroom were encouraged to answer questions and explain what they learned when other students and teachers visited. I never would have gues­ sed just how excited my students would be to teach their peers about the history of Marietta Square. We had a steady stream of knocks at our door, and every student was given the opportunity to represent our classroom. The pride they took in their work was thrilling and gratifying, and their ability to describe their place showed incredible growth in both knowledge and engagement. My ultimate goal for this activity was simply to provide my students with a meaningful and engaging way to build their background knowledge about the history of a familiar place and to help engage them in a meaningful writing experience. Through the use of place-based writing, I accomplished this and so much more. I was able to open my students’ eyes to the history that sur­ rounds them, guide them through detailed inquiry and discussion about a topic of interest, and show them they have the power to become agents of knowledge in their school community. All of this was done through placebased writing during a time where visiting any place was a struggle. In just this one project, I also saw an increase in student engagement and collaboration. Throughout the entire process, students were challenged to learn, discuss, and provide feedback in small groups. Students were given sentence stems to guide their conversations, but many groups went far and above these stems as they conversed throughout the project. Students had agency to explore pathways of inquiry they were most interested in while building their background knowledge of a familiar place. They were also

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Figure 9.4 The door to our classroom welcoming visitors. Source: Photograph by author

encouraged to engage in cross-curricular writing, combining information gained from social studies resources in a narrative format. The ways in which my students combined facts and information was much more nimble than I had previously experienced. They weren’t simply regurgitating facts; they were incorporating what they learned into their narratives in meaningful ways.

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In addition, the large hallway display engaged the community outside of our classroom. The collaboration with our art teacher created a dynamic conversation about the purpose and power of art in retelling history. I had many teachers come to me interested not only in taking on the Marietta walking tour themselves, but also in looking into ways in which they can bring the rich history of Marietta into their own classrooms. Finally, I saw students purposefully consider audience in their writing and presentation. These were students who previously had struggled to write a single cohe­ sive paragraph, and now they were considering the impact of details on their readers and answering their peers’ questions with confidence. This project allowed me to see once again that place-based writing – even incorporated unconventionally when real-world restrictions get in your way – is a powerful tool for teaching authentic writing.

Conclusion I often have discussions with educators about all the ways in which they wish they could do place-based writing but feel they can’t due to restrictions at their school. As I hope I’ve demonstrated in this chapter, it can be just as valuable to bring the world into the classroom as it is to get your students into the world. Place-based principles can be applied to a variety of different writing situations, and, when done thoughtfully, can lead to rich and powerful writing that still encourages students to engage with the world around them.

References Christensen, L. (2015). Rethinking research: Reading and writing about the roots of gentrification. English Journal, 105(2), 15–21. www.jstor.org/stable/26359349. Esposito, L. (2012). Where to begin? Using place-based writing to connect students with their local communities. English Journal, 101(40), 70–76. www.jstor.org/sta ble/41415476. Hennessey, N. L. (2021). The reading comprehension blueprint: Helping students make meaning from text. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Kinloch, V. (2010). Harlem on our minds: Place, race, and the literacies of urban youth. Teachers College Press. Lindblom, K., & Christenbury, L. (2018). Continuing the journey 2: Becoming a better teacher of authentic writing. National Council of Teachers of English. Marietta Visitors Bureau. (2021). Marietta’s Black heritage walking tour. https://vis itmariettaga.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/BHT_Brochure_FINAL-R.pdf. Marietta History Center. (2023). General history gallery. www.mariettahistory.org/ galleries/general-history-gallery-2. Montgomery, R., & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. NCTE. National Center for Educational Statistics. (2023). Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics. www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2023/.

122 Amanda Montgomery Ogle, D. M. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher, 39(6), 564–570. Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook for research in early literacy (pp. 2–29). Guilford Press. Sobel, D. (2014). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. The NAMTA Journal, 39(1), 61–78. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1183171.pdf. Whitney, A. E. (2017). Keeping it real: Valuing authenticity in the writing classroom. English Journal, 106(6), 16–21. Willingham, D. T. (2006). How knowledge helps: It speeds and strengthens reading comprehension, learning – and thinking. www.aft.org/ae/spring2006/willingham.

Part III

Writing about Art and Writing as Art

In reading the following chapters that deal with place-based writing that incorporates a range of artworks, you might use the following questions to guide or focus your reading: a b c

What is the value of public art, and in what ways can it complement the more traditional texts commonly found in ELA classrooms? What role does memory play in the creation of art, and how can teachers leverage students’ memories to create both written and visual texts? What interdisciplinary or cross-curricular opportunities for place-based writing exist in your own school?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-12

Chapter 10

Finding Your Truth Reimagining School Spaces for Student Writing and Publication Through Interactive Public Art Glenn Rhoades and Stephen Goss Introduction “Greetings, Player,” the prerecorded telephone message announces. “Congratulations on completing this puzzle!” Are you scared by this ominous, disembodied voice? Don’t be. You’ve just solved the school-wide scavenger hunt by examining student truth statements and collecting clues to construct the Google Voice number you just dialed. Now you have an opportunity to leave a truism of your own. Sitting on a mixture of beanbags and traditional student desks, students write furiously in their notebooks. The classroom is decorated with brightly colored posters featuring activists such as Common from the Amplifier Art Project (2022), hundreds of books, and other student art projects. The overhead lights in this classroom are never turned on; the room is lit instead with lamps and rainbow-colored LED lights. Traditional grades are not a part of this classroom space. Instead, students work out of interest and engagement and a sense of the community that they have built together. Writer’s Workshop is never about “what the teacher wants” or “how long does it have to be?” One of the many benefits of the class is that it is a playground for experimentation. Rhoades often uses ideas in this course throughout their other classes. In this case, it can be shared with you. We, the authors, fully recognize the special context of this class, and we will include considerations throughout the chapter for this activity in classrooms where there may be more instructional oversight or less teacher autonomy.

Context For the Writer’s Workshop This project emerged from an English Language Arts (ELA) elective called “Writer’s Workshop” at an urbanized Title I high school in the southeastern United States in one of the largest school systems in the country. Anyon (2014) described “urbanized suburbs” as having “sketchy public transit and few job opportunities” and many of the systemic social issues common in cities (p. 93). Students at this high school are frequently discussed with DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-13

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deficit language, both inside and outside the building. This class and the space in which it occurs, however, are all about possibility. Writer’s Work­ shop is designed for all grades in high school and does not count as a core Language Arts credit. Students who sign up for this class have shown an interest in writing and understand that it is a creative writing class. This chapter focuses on six students. Five students identified as female and one as male. Two students identified as Hispanic, one as Asian, and three as Black. The class consisted of all grade levels: one freshman, two sophomores, one junior, and two seniors. Of the two seniors, one was the salutatorian, and the other had received a full-ride scholarship to a private university in Boston. We had built a tight-knit community in which we discussed current events, politics, psychology, dreams, fears, and deeply held beliefs throughout the year while reading and writing. We had created a safe space. Unfortunately, the dominant narrative about the historically marginalized students at this school is quite the opposite of the reality. Even the school’s name, when mentioned at county-level teacher functions, often causes well-meaning edu­ cators to gasp or elicit a string of “bless your hearts.”1 Their teacher, Glenn Rhoades, is a white, male-presenting, queer, non­ binary Language Arts teacher who has been teaching secondary ELA for eight years. This was their first year teaching this particular course. Stephen Goss is an English Education professor at a nearby university who recently taught seventh and eighth grade ELA at a public bilingual school in a large northeastern school district. He visited the classroom several times during the project, shared ideas and experiences of his students surrounding public art and disrupting spaces and assisted the teacher and students as a participant observer.

Transactional Theory Across the Arts Place based writing can be simply described as “asking students to write in the world outside the classroom about the world outside the classroom” in order to do “authentic, meaningful work in a way other writing often struggles to achieve” (Montgomery & Montgomery, 2021). Dr. Goss and Rhoades recognize that our activity (and this chapter) might not mesh with what many consider “place-based writing” as all of it takes place in the classroom and the larger school. Montgomery and Montgomery (2021) in the introduction to A Place to Write clarify how placed based writing has often been conflated with writing in or for the environment (pp. 14–15). They write, “Encouraging students to engage with, and become advocates for, the environment is desperately relevant work” but place-based writing as a theory should extend to “a variety of instructional purposes that may or may not be exclusive to environmental advocacy” (p. 16). In addition to place-based theory, our chapter also utilizes visual art and critical reading theories.

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Leading up to the projects described in this chapter, students read Young Adult Literature (YAL) and used their own lived experiences to dig deeper into the various thematic lenses that emerged from the novels. Ultimately, the students completed a multiweek project in which they used the work of Jenny Holzer’s (2022) Truisms art project to disrupt school spaces based on the themes they had drawn from their reading. Students wrote their own truisms: highly personal sentences that are short and powerful, designed to make the reader stop, think, and feel. These statements are purposefully ambiguous and are heavily inflected by the reader’s response to them (Rosenblatt, 1938; Smagorinsky, 2001). Most importantly, these truisms were representative of their authors’ identities and perceptions about reality, helping them “project themselves and their experiences, values, beliefs, aspirations, worldviews, and so on into the texts that they produce” (Zoss et al., 2007, p. 6). One powerful aspect of working with truisms is that students both produce their own statements based on their reading and their understanding of their worlds and experiences and consume those of other students, thus deepening their knowledge not only of the texts and course content but also of the perspectives and lived experiences of others. Our work with truisms did not exist in a vacuum, nor did our classroom. Student writing was not only informed by their identities but also by the place in which they were both existing and seeking to disrupt. School, as a place, mediates the relationship and interaction that students have with the texts they read and create. In our experience, writing in schools, especially high schools, is usually focused on the essay, while reading is often purposed for test preparation where students read excerpts instead of whole texts. Hallways are little more than overpoliced, barren, cinderblock structures. Posters or advertisements must be school approved and attached to cork strips strategically placed around the building, which leaves 90% of the hallways feeling sterile and anonymous. Hallways have cameras and hall monitors, especially in Title I schools, which contribute to school feeling more like an empty prison than a reflection of the students who attend classes (Martin et al., 2020). To combat the often penal impressions communicated by school buildings, we advocate for the relevant gamification of instructional activities. Gamifica­ tion offers exciting opportunities for not only disrupting classrooms, but also places and spaces inside and outside of the school. We utilized scholarship from Garcia et al. (2020) in helping students to conceptualize how their projects could transform the “place” of school. Gamification has a multitude of defini­ tions, but includes using design theory from video games for points, gameplay, digital interfaces, and activities in classroom settings (Garcia, 2020a; Garcia et al., 2020). We introduce and discuss Garcia’s (2020b) “inform, preform, and transform” three-step framework as a “critical transformative practice” that helps youth “recontextualize their physical surroundings through game-based youth participatory action research (YPAR)” (p. 18).

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For students (and their writing), it bears emphasizing that their physical surroundings matter. More than just an audience and purpose, place “places an indelible role in the way we perceive and come to understand the world around us” by “influencing our interactions” and “shaping genres, texts, and languages we use as writers and readers” (Esposito, 2012). The spaces outside the classroom in the school building carry more than just emptiness – they are how the student interacts with the rest of the building and the community of the school. Yet this community is greatly restricted under the panopticon’s gaze. Donovan (2016) argues that “place is a narrative which shapes identity and culture and provides an understanding of experience” (p. 1). While classrooms have individual classroom management plans and cultures all of their own, hallways fall under the jurisdiction of a greater authority. In our school, school resource officers patrol with firearms, hallway monitors blow their whistles, and administration monitors live video feeds. Students are only allowed in hallways between bells with a five-minute walk time to their next class, and must carry a pass to be in the hallways outside of class. In this way, as Montgomery and Montgomery (2021) argue, school spaces – even liminal ones, like hallways – “contain well-established cultures and norms” that “can be generative for writing” (p. 40). Despite these restrictions, the framework for our research is grounded in a writing community composing for the community of the school by seeking to disrupt these hallway spaces. Esposito (2012) describes commu­ nity writing as “a more dynamic engagement with audience, purpose, and context” which is “typically not found in schools where students write repeatedly for an audience of one [the teacher as assessor] …and are not asked to consider the impact of their writing” (p. 73). Our students engaged and impacted their peers by shouting in the halls with writing on the walls. Even though they did not always consider the impact of their writing, they never stopped attempting to engage with their audience across multiple genres of public writing.

Place-Based Writing Activity For the entire year, Rhoades facilitated creative writing projects with the class that involved writing almost entirely for each other – never just the teacher. Tabletop storytelling board games, an interactive cyberpunk journaling game, podcasting, and multimodal responses to YAL were all undertaken throughout the year. Most recently, students completed a zine project grounded in guerrilla publishing and subversive art. Goss suggested that Rhoades use Banksy’s Exit Through the Giftshop to support the zine project and the upcoming work they would do together with using art to disrupt spaces.

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Background for the Activity To prep students for their work with truisms, they read YAL books independently, with the knowledge that the class would be creating an arts-based response to the issues they uncovered from their reading to disrupt school spaces. After students read their books, Rhoades requested that students generate a list of themes and/or big ideas they had noticed. Students had read a mixture of books: graphic novels, manga, and tra­ ditional print-based books. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Rey­ nolds & Novgorodoff, 2020), Maus by Art Spiegelman (1997), and Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu (2017) were among the chosen texts. For a tradi­ tional ELA classroom, teachers could do book tastings to help students experience many different books, ranking them from best to worst. With book tastings, students “taste” or spend about five minutes with a book before moving on to the next one. Students could then make a first choice and second choice, and the teacher could build book groups based on these choices. Many school media centers are happy to help facilitate such activities. Our students then read their books. We spent several weeks reading and discussing them in class. We focused on making text to text, text to self, and text to world connections, examining how the stories were both similar and different to our own realities and experiences. Individually, students wrote lists of big ideas and themes from their books with which they had con­ nected. They then shared their lists, and Rhoades worked with the class to compile the list shown in Figure 10.1. First, students brainstormed their lists from their book on paper. They discussed in their small groups both the themes and the connec­ tions they made. After that discussion, students narrowed their themes down to three or four they wanted to focus on. Rhoades then made this list “live” on the board by adding to a Google Slide as students and groups shared out.

Figure 10.1 Crowdsourced list of literary themes.

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In a traditional ELA classroom, students could do this work in their book groups. In a large classroom of more than thirty students, the teacher might consider using chart paper and have students gallery walk other groups to look for common themes across book groups, or may consider using a silent discussion protocol. Enter Jenny Holzer Thanks to the Banksy documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010), students were familiar with the concept of using art to disrupt spaces. Banksy is a well-known anonymous street artist who has worked all over the world; his documentary demonstrates many forms of non-traditional art. We had discussed whether street artists like Shepherd Fairey and Mr. Brainwash were “legitimate” artists and if their work was justified. There were varying opinions, but the consensus was that street art was legitimate art, although some students still saw street art without permission to be vandalism. Dr. Goss introduced Jenny Holzer and her work with Truisms, a project she began in the 1970s (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022). Truisms are single, bold sentences that express seed ideas and are meant to prompt people who view them to think. Like aggressive advertising, these messages are placed in highly public spaces and are not attributed to anything in particular. We examined projects like Holzer’s work at the Grammys on the back of Lorde’s dress (McKenzie, 2018) and her large-scale projections on famous architecture and buildings (Holzer, 2022). Next, the class came up with ideas for how we could use art to raise awareness about the topics students had identified from their YAL books. Rhoades asked this guiding question: “What can art do?” Students discussed ideas in small groups and then shared out as a whole class. Rhoades took notes, writing on a Google Slide which was projected at the front of the class. Students could track the conversation through this slide. We discussed what was powerful about Trusims, and students mentioned time and time again how where the truisms were placed added extra emphasis because of the context of the space. For instance, Holzer used box trucks with LED screens to display messages about guns after another round of school shootings (Holzer, 2020). These box trucks were seen driving around the capitol; the context in which these truisms were displayed helped students make connections to how place layers meaning in their writing as well as how this layering is also informed by the audience and purpose for writing. We had a class conversation about what our purpose and audience would be, and we also discussed potential place(s) for displaying our own truisms. Goss told the students, “The power of truisms is that they do not tell the reader how to feel, the speaker is ambiguous. The reader has to create their own meaning.” Our students realized the connection between audience, purpose, and place by thinking through their own project ideas. Carving

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messages into benches, making art displays with bicycles, and creating side­ walk street art were all discussed as possibilities. The class eventually settled on crafting their own truisms for the hallways of the school based on the themes from their novels. Students’ responses are summarized in Figure 10.2. Students then worked at transforming the themes and big issues in their books into truisms. Personal meaning was added to the mixture of audience, purpose, and place. They wanted people to stop and think about issues that were important to them, but their truisms also reflected what students felt were important for their peers to consider. In this way, their truisms repre­ sented a new text co-constructed with the text and the student (Smagor­ insky, 2001; Smagorinsky et al., 2005). More than themes, students considered their audience, purpose, and context when crafting their truisms, hoping to create reflection on these truths. Individually they made a list of truisms, and then they workshopped them in small groups to decide on their top two choices. From Topics and Truisms to Art-Based Disruption At the start of our next class, students reviewed both their truisms and their early brainstorming of project ideas. Goss shared copious projects from his years in the high school Language Arts classroom and his work as an Eng­ lish professor. Students were able to see the connections between Holzer’s truisms and the truths that Dr. Goss’s students had breathed into various projects that colored and decorated the hallways and outdoor spaces around his school(s). Students then looked at each other’s truisms, recorded their

Figure 10.2 Crowdsourced responses for project ideas.

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favorites, and journaled about why they found power in them. They also wrote about their thoughts on Goss’s work and their project ideas. An example of a truism we created for reference is given in Figure 10.3. Our students talked about what they could do with the truisms. We agreed that a great start for this work would be posting them around the school on brightly colored paper, but they wanted to do more. At this point, this activity was truly student led. Goss and Rhoades functioned as facilitators, working at asking questions to help students think through their choices and overcome obstacles. When we heard they wanted to do a scavenger hunt incorporating technology, we worked to facilitate this shift. Dr. Goss had previously used Google Voice to have students record poetry on a voicemail and students had posted the number around the community. As a class, we looked at ways to use voicemail to interact with an audience. Inspired by the voicemail from a California elementary school (Villano, 2022) (where callers can hear voice messages of affirmation and hope from students as young as kindergar­ teners), they wanted to create a voice mailbox for students to leave their own truisms. Students from our school would have to “collect” all 10 tru­ isms, arrange them in the correct order, and then call the phone number created through the easter eggs at the bottom right corner. The students acknowledged that their approach was informed by Ready Player One (Cline, 2011) as they sought to understand the construction of truth and why such understanding is important. The students wanted to gamify their activity. Using clues for scavenger hunts is something that Garcia (2020b) utilized in their youth participatory action research (YPAR) study in Studying Gaming Literacies: Theories to Inform Classroom Prac­ tice (Garcia et al., 2020). “Inform, preform, transform” are the three phases of gamification, in which students first “gather, analyze, and collate information to produce their own, original work” (Garcia, 2020b, p. 18). Dr. Goss and Rhoades honored the specializations that resulted from the students’ lived experiences, and they also wanted to respect the personal connections their students felt with both school issues and the physical

Figure 10.3 Example of truism.

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space of the school. In the “perform” phase of this project, just like Gar­ cia’s (2020b) students, we created scavenger hunt clues for the rest of the school and attached them to their truisms. The final truisms that were hung around the school had a QR code which led students back to the directions (see Figure 10.4) and a number for the sequence order of the truisms as well as a phone number digit which, when arranged correctly, was part of the nine-digit Google Voice number. With the “transform” component, “students extend their perfor­ mance toward publicly shared knowledge and action, and focus on directly impacting and critically transforming their world” (Garcia, 2020b, p. 19). As we describe below, students did transform the school, and had a variety of impacts on both students, teachers, and administrators. Figure 10.4 presents the instructions for the truism scavenger hunt. Students colla­ boratively wrote this, sitting in a circle, reading and revising as they went. This was a highly organic process without central leadership, but the seniors in the class made suggestions and also solicited input, especially when some students were quiet. The Scavenger Hunt Begins Students decided they wanted to do some advertising before publishing their truisms. This project had always seemed to center on subverting and rejecting dominant school narratives or culture (arguably, the whole point of disruption), so students used thick double-sided tape to place flyers in major walkways throughout the school. These flyers, used to create anticipation, included phrases in large block lettering such as, “It’s Coming.” Ironically, these flyers lasted longer on the walls than the actual

Figure 10.4 Collaborative instructions for truism scavenger hunt.

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truisms would, but they still drew the attention of assistant principals, who dutifully responded to student complaints about the “threatening nature” of the advertisements. Other students in the school saw the ads as conveying a menacing tone. It is important to note that while words and spaces are often claimed to be neutral, these advertisements demonstrate how spaces inform words with their own experiences, just as people do with their culture and lived experi­ ences. School shootings and threats are very much a part of the culture of school spaces and the students who inhabit those spaces. According to stu­ dent survey data, students in Rhoades’s class often do not feel safe at school. While it is easy to blame the students for reading threatening messages into the advertisements, it is important to note that the space in which these advertisements were placed carried its own culture and conditioned expectations. Students also created the Google Voice voicemail. They collaborated on a script, standing in a semicircle around a laptop and offering sug­ gestions about word choice. This was similar to how the directions were crafted. In this fluid design process, they had the ownership and freedom to make choices with their project. Even though Dr. Goss and Rhoades both saw the potential for this group recording to create a sound that was potentially fear inducing, we felt that honoring their authentic “perform and transform” was most important (Garcia, 2020b). Fifteen minutes later, they had it ready to record. They all read the script toge­ ther in chorus and then used a voice disguiser to modify the recording. Students said that they were aiming for a “cheesy hacker” and “ominous technology person” tone. Students placed the truisms around the school on Tuesday, and by Thursday of the same week, all but one had been taken down. Rhoades (and the students) had partly anticipated this, but we wanted to see what student reactions would be. One student from the class even emailed Rhoades to let them know that they had noticed the truisms had all been taken down. Another student reported that someone had vandalized their truism before it was taken down. Their poster had been tagged with “bozo” and “emo” before the administration ultimately removed it from the hallways. In an unexpected way, this response, scrawled directly on the truism, was evidence of the transformation this project had created. The performance was strong enough to elicit this additional form of disruption to the plans the students had with their project. In discussion, students identified this as an additional success, framing this as evidence of their impact. Overcoming Challenges Instead of swooping in and working with the administration (Rhoades had let the principal know about the project but had not communicated directly

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with administrators), Rhoades let students come up with a solution to the removal of the posters. Students decided that putting the truisms in teachers’ classrooms would not only add a layer to the project that would keep the posters safe but also add a degree of credibility to the scavenger hunt. At this point, the role of place continued to expand in the project: hallways, teachers’ classrooms, and digital spaces. Moving from the hallways to teachers’ classrooms had affordances and con­ straints on the disruption the project created. Teachers’ classrooms are traditionally more sanctioned and protected areas of the school, and are not as available to all students. “Acceptability” also causes less disrup­ tion by nature. Truisms, as Holzer (2022) originally created them, had far less shock value and authentic impact once they were moved to a museum. Teachers could be asked to tell students about the scavenger hunt and continue to foster a sense of ambiguity and mystery. Students collaboratively updated the directions to reflect this change (see Figure 10.5), framing the replacement of the signs in teachers’ classrooms as an attempt to thwart those who were seeking to silence the truth (which was not far from the mark). For Rhoades, the urge to step in and direct the project arose several times. The language, as seen in Figure 10.6, is quite combative. Rhoades understood and appreciated students feeling that their project had been attacked in an attempt to silence their truisms and the scavenger hunt. Nevertheless, the conflictual language of the project – and other students’ reactions to it – helped highlight the fact that schools are not neutral spaces and carry their own messages and codes (Postman & Weingartner, 1969; Reinius et al., 2021). We argue that schools (and spaces) not only carry messages (texts) but also mediate them. Like filters on images,

Figure 10.5 Updated collaborative instructions for truism scavenger hunt.

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Figure 10.6 Example detailed assignment sheet.

everything in the school space is filtered through or mediated through the dominant messages coming from the space itself. Students are told when to leave class and when they are late by electronic bells. Hallways are meant to be clear of students for most of the day. Students are not allowed in the library without a pass. School walls are required to be

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blank, reflecting as little as possible back to the students. Non-students decide what is displayed, a “higher authority” decides what counts as art. Additionally, other messages are broadcast to students such as fire, weather, and active shooter drills. The latter have become part of how students experience school spaces and have been shown to significantly increase student fear (Huskey & Connell, 2021). These elements that fill the liminal unused school spaces are largely invisible. Using art to dis­ rupt these spaces responds to and counters these dominant messages, which otherwise remain unconscious. Students walk through hallways carrying expectations from society and the school itself on their bodies through dress codes and social norms. Our truisms created an opportu­ nity for students to examine and reflect on themselves and their realities.

Conclusion We realize that this chapter might not fit with traditional views of place-based writing. While it was not situated in a traditional, content centered classroom, it gave Rhoades and Dr. Goss an opportunity to let students play and explore their school. This project created opportunities for both our class and the rest of the school outside of the traditional experience of walking the hallways they see every day. With the student truisms, the whole school responded in different ways: by talking about them and calling the voicemail, which could be seen as their intention, but also through writing on the posters, complain­ ing about them, and even taking them down. Truisms, like art designed to disrupt spaces, makes people uncomfortable by definition; it moves the viewer beyond a place of comfort. Is the most important work with disrupting spaces actually involved in making the invisible visible? Dominant narratives are often invisible until they are named and understood (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). Only then can these narratives be torn down. Does the removal of the posters say more about the invisible dominant narratives at work in the school spaces? What can be learned from examining what this removal means? Shor and Freire (1987) described how knowledge can only be reconstructed after it has been understood as a community and then deconstructed. In educating to liberate, this process can only be achieved through com­ munity dialogue. Ultimately, through Google Voice and the collection of truisms, our Writer’s Workshop is working to liberate not only students but spaces from dominant narratives. Jenny Holzer created the idea of Truisms to challenge people to think critically about the narratives that construct our very reality. Reading leads to questioning, questioning leads to examination, and examination leads to action. In this case, that action looks like more voices and more truisms. As students work to find the truth, they are ulti­ mately working to define their own.

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Note 1 A pejorative common in the Southern states, it sounds like a compliment but is intended as an insult.

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Reinius, H., Korhonen, T., & Hakkarainen, K. (2021). The design of learning spaces matters: Perceived impact of the deskless school on learning and teaching. Learning Environments Research, 24(3), 339–354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-020-09345-8. Reynolds, J., & Novgorodoff, D. (2020). Long way down: The graphic novel. Atheneum. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1938). Literature as exploration (Progressive Education Associa­ tion (U.S.). Commission on Human Relations, Ed.). D. Appleton-Century. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1994). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Southern Illinois University Press. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). What is the “dialogical method” of teaching? The Journal of Education, 169(3), 11–31. Smagorinsky, P. (2001). If meaning is constructed, what is it made from? Toward a cultural theory of reading. Review of Educational Research, 71(1), 133–169. Smagorinsky, P., Cook, L. S., & Reed, P. M. (2005). The construction of meaning and identity in the composition and reading of an architectural text. Reading Research Quarterly, 40(1), 70–88. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.40.1.4. Spiegelman, A. (1997). Maus: A survivor’s tale (1st ed.). Pantheon. Villano, M. (2022). Goodwill project at California school goes viral. www.cnn.com/ 2022/03/04/health/peptoc-hotline-california-students-wellness/index.html. Zoss, M., Smagorinsky, P., & O’Donnell-Allen, C. (2007). Mask-making as repre­ sentational process: The situated composition of an identity project in a senior English class. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 8(10), 1–40.

Chapter 11

Using Memory as an Activator for Exploration and Creation Jenevieve Goss

Introduction It was a Saturday. I had just accepted my first job in academia, and this was my first opportunity to work in higher education as a teacher educator. Tasked with creating an online Media Arts course for a new master’s pro­ gram in Art and Design, I knew my students’ most engaged work would come if I created assignments that were challenging, thought-provoking, and enjoyable. I sat at my desk, watching sunbeams filter through the trees on the ground below, waiting for inspiration to come. I listened to my dogs barking and the pounding footsteps of my boys as they converged in the kitchen below me. As I contemplated the plans I still needed to make, the smell of grilled cheese wafted up to me. I breathed it in and was immedi­ ately transported 30 years into the past, to my elementary school nestled on the Niagara Gorge in Lewiston, New York. The aroma of that sandwich carried me back to my elementary school cafeteria and the round tables where I would perch on my knees, eating and laughing with my friends. Our principal, Sister Melburgess, oversaw lunch duty. Her diminutive height of 4 feet 10 inches felt gigantic to me, and we would all cower under her gaze. She would stand at the end of the line where we brought our garbage at the end of our meal, her black habit and glowing white collar standing in stark contrast to her bright blue eyes. If any food was left on our trays, we were sent back to finish it. There was no recess until everything was gone, so my friends and I devised a plan to cir­ cumvent eating our sandwiches’ stale, soggy crusts. We would drink our milk and pry open the top of the tiny paper cartons, push our leftovers inside, and fold the top back up. Voilá! Disappearing crusts. We thought we were geniuses. In a flash, the smell of grilled cheese still hanging in the air, I realized that some of my strongest memories are tied to food and the places in which we eat it. I could write a story and paint a picture of that memory alone. If I had been back in my hometown, I could have visited my school, walked those hallways, heard my shoes click on the marble floors, and probably DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-14

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smelled the never-changing scent of toasting bread and burning margarine. The memory of that grilled cheese pulled on the ever-present tether that exists in my subconscious, an ephemeral cord that links me to different places in my life. From that single recollection, I began to consider the power of memory and how it speaks to all of us about the places we’ve lived, the spaces we’ve inhabited, and the people we’ve been in them. Whe­ ther those memories are joyful, sad, confusing, or gratifying, many of them still have a hold on us. I wondered if there would be a way to tap into the memories my students carried with them and draw on their recollections of place and identity to create powerful art. I decided at that moment to design my course based on memory and an examination of self. Specifically, I would ask my students to explore different slices of their lives in relation to particular topics (e.g., food, music, nature, etc.), travel to these places from their past – mentally, emotionally, and / or physi­ cally – and make art about the experience. Even though I am an art teacher, I believe in asking my students to reflect on their memories and artistic process through writing. Doing so allows us to have deeper conversations about their art, explore avenues that might be fruitful for future artistic projects, and make transparent the components of their process that might not be so easy to see. I was ready. I twisted the blinds on my office windows just a bit and got to work. The result, which I will describe in the remainder of this chapter, was more rewarding for all of us than I ever imagined. I saw many of my stu­ dents physically travel back to the origin of their memories in order to create their place-based art and the writing that accompanied it. This pro­ cess propelled them into the world as they revisited restaurants they hadn’t been to in years and returned to parks, homes, and cities they had thought little about. They spoke with family members about recipes and sourced the ingredients used to make them. They got together with friends to cook. They used their past experiences as a springboard to create new experiences. Although this chapter is based on using memory to create art and write about place, it is also based on using memory to remind us of places we have been and the people we used to be, and, ultimately, to provide us with an opportunity and desire to go there again. Helping students remember parts of their lives and encouraging them to re-visit these places can serve to deepen their experience and fill your classroom community with stories. Before continuing, the process I describe below is just one way of facil­ itating this activity, especially because I implemented it in an asynchronous online format. So, even if your students are unable to travel to their grand­ parents’ kitchen or the Chinese restaurant they remember from childhood, there might be other opportunities in your school community to approx­ imate that context. You might consider exploring other avenues – for instance, visiting a local farmer’s market or bringing a variety of spices into the classroom – that can strategically focus your students’ memories and, in

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turn, help them create new ones to write about. If my process doesn’t work in your specific context, it should be broad enough for you to easily modify.

Connecting Place, Authenticity, and Memory This particular activity lives at the intersection of place, authenticity, and memory. To begin, it’s hardly revolutionary to use memories of place to inspire art and writing. More than 100 years ago, Dewey (2008) was punc­ tuating the importance and significance of getting students out of the class­ room space and into the greater world. In an essay from 1915, he wrote, “Experience [outside the school] has its geographical aspect, its artistic and its literary, its scientific and its historical sides. All studies arise from aspects of the one earth, and the one life lived upon it” (Dewey, 2008, p. 91). Place and identity are connected. What we experience shapes our beliefs, our interpretations of the world, and our interactions with each other. However, while this idea may not be new, it’s still true that writing and reflecting in a specific location can focus students’ attention and intention­ ality when given a broader purpose for writing. Students can also gain a deeper connection to their own identity framed within the writing activity and the art-making. Woodhouse and Knapp (2000) argue that place-based writing “emerges from the particular attributes of a place. The content is specific to the geography, ecology, sociology, politics, and other dynamics of that place” (p. 2). Because so many different variables are embedded in individual places, it makes them ripe for exploration, especially when we consider the opportunity for students to dig into their own conceptions of self-identity. Owens (2001) reminds us that by exploring how “their needs and desires reflect the conditions of [their] communities,” students might come to see “local environments not as separate incidental landscapes but as extensions of themselves” (p. 75). While my students began with a memory, some felt compelled to return to where it all began. They told me they were drawn to the origin of the experience to consider more fully how it affected them. When they got there, they were inspired to write. Grappling with place-based memories to learn something about self aligns with Dewey’s (2008) notions about the value of learning from experience and thinking reflectively about it. Believing we should principally look to our own lived experience for inspiration, Dewey placed an emphasis on helping students to think about what is significant for them in their own individual context. My student’s writing and art-making echoed this theory of reflective thinking. Using their memories to begin the generative processes necessary for creating art and writing, my students were given the opportu­ nity to consider which memories, which experiences, were most important to them or which demanded the most of their attention. Rather than imposing a specific prompt on them, my students were given a broad topic to explore, thereby empowering them to reflect on their lives and select

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memories with personal relevance. In doing so, I hoped to open a path of discovery such as that described by Griffin, Council III, Ogletree, Allen, and Scullin: “Writing is also a conduit for identity building, as authentic, mean­ ingful writing allows writers to contemplate their experiences and develop a keener sense of self-awareness” (Griffin et al., 2020, p. 2). This, then, speaks to the degree of authenticity I hoped to imbue in this project. But I was worried. I wanted my students to have a degree of autonomy to explore memories (and create art and writing) that were rele­ vant to them personally, but I also knew that much writing that occurs in academic settings fails to have much authenticity. As Whitney tells us: Too often, school glosses over what is most real and immediate, such as students’ day-to-day experiences and concerns, their hopes and fears, their relationships with one another and with their families and com­ munities, and the powerful relationships they have – or at least can have – with us. (Whitney, 2017, p. 16) This “glossing over” of what matters to my students is exactly what I wanted to avoid. In thinking about the project I was designing, I felt I could sidestep this problem by structuring the project’s instructions in a way that would allow my students to know how much I valued their unique ideas and experiences. By giving them a chance to select a memory of their own and create an original work of art based on it, I was providing them with broad parameters that established my goals while giving them the freedom to structure their work in a way that validated their own personal goals and experiences. In this way, I attempted to answer a question posed by Mon­ tgomery and Montgomery (2021): “Just how authentic have I allowed this particular assignment to be?” (p. 7). Even though a class assignment might not be the most authentic project my students could complete, by thinking about authenticity as a sliding scale, I came to see that what mattered were the choices I was allowing my students to make. And by giving them a great degree of autonomy over their own work, I was emphasizing authenticity and also attempting to answer a second question, this one asked by Whitney (2017): “How can we structure authentic experiences for student writers so that they might discover writing’s power for themselves in the here and now?” (p. 16). To turn my attention to the role of memory in the creation of art and writing, Egan (1992) writes about the importance of activating and utilizing our students’ imaginations in our teaching. One of Egan’s central tenets is to design lessons for students that activate their memories and imagination and stimulate their thinking. He believed it was purposeful to consider how children view and make sense of the world. Similarly, Cabillas (2014) writes about the role of narrative in personal memory construction. Her research

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focuses on using our memories to help us better define and construct meaning in our present through writing: “[Writing] opens a space where opposed values and influences can be made explicit and negotiated upon, extending the notion of remembering to include explorations as part of memory” (p. 324). By asking my students to refer to zero in on a specific memory about which they would both write and create visual art, I hoped to honor both Egan and Cabillas by activating my students’ memories and imaginations and then make sense of their present circumstances through their work. Place, authenticity, and memory greatly informed the way I considered this project. I wanted them to remember, reflect, revisit, and then – most importantly – create. Create a short story, an editorial, a poem, a song, a list, or any artistic project that spoke to their memory and identity. Create art born from contemplation and consideration. Link the two mediums together, making each one more substantial and meaningful.

The Act of Remembering As I mentioned earlier, this course was taught asynchronously online. My students were teachers working full-time and living full, busy lives. I wanted to offer an opportunity for community building within my class structure. Even though we weren’t meeting live, I wanted each student to get to know one another. I wanted these teachers to be invigorated by their art practice, ideas, thoughts, and writing. As educators, we spend so much time thinking about our students, what they need, and how we can create meaningful activities for them that our own artistic selves can feel miles away. Making our own art outside the classroom can seem like a distant memory. I was determined to push my students outside their comfort zone. My end goal was for them to come away from this course with ideas they could use in their classrooms with their students, but to also provide them with the chance to reconnect with their own artistic personas. To introduce this project, I began by sharing with my students the child­ hood memory I described at the beginning of this chapter, modeling my thought process so they could better understand what I was asking of them. Then, taking into account my desire for authenticity, I provided them with a broad prompt: “Choose a specific memory related to food and revisit that moment, writing a vignette and making an art piece about it.” I didn’t pro­ vide them with many details other than that, except to emphasize that they could share as much or as little as they liked. The goal, in short, was to focus on any memory they chose from any part of their lives concerning food. To help ignite their thinking I suggested excerpts from food memoirs. Specifically, The Apprentice by French chef Jacques Pépin (2003) and pas­ sages from Comfort Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl (2001) a New York Times food critic. I had read both books and was captivated by the beau­ tiful prose and descriptions of food and cooking, and I suspected they

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might provide inspiration to my students, as well. I also provided links to art images and a Google slideshow showcasing food art throughout history. If you’re attempting to modify this project for your own classroom, there’s a wealth of artwork available online, often through museum websites, and you could easily put together a short slideshow displaying a variety of ways food has been represented in art throughout history. Finally, my students were also asked to read “The Narratives of Adolescents and Young Adults: Foundations of a Contemporary Art Curriculum” (Manifold, 2021). This brief article about the importance of storytelling in the classroom was designed to emphasize the intersection between visual art and narrative. My goal in all these introductory activities was to provide multiple points of entry for my students. I did not want to limit their resource-building to scholarly articles. In between our other class activities, students were periodically asked to share their evolving writing on an electronic discussion board for the pur­ pose of receiving feedback from their peers and me. As the semester pro­ gressed, I quickly saw the ways in which this prompt resonated with my students. Not only were they writing energetically about their memories of food and place, some of them began to physically travel to the locations they were writing about. This had always been my hope, but due to the combi­ nation of the asynchronous online nature of the course and the lingering fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, I hesitated to require them to revisit physical places. Still, it was gratifying and exciting to see my students begin to take it upon themselves to patronize restaurants they hadn’t been to since they were children or visit relatives they hadn’t seen in years to solicit recipes and stories about food they remembered from their youth. It wasn’t long before I began receiving emails from students asking if it was okay for them to travel to the places at the heart of their writing and artwork. Of course I wasn’t going to say no! It probably goes without saying that the writing completed by students who actually visited the location from their memory was more vivid than that completed by students who didn’t (or were unable to) visit their own locations. Their descriptions of the physical environment were rich and compelling, but there was a depth of emotion present in these writings as well, creating the impression that the mere act of revisiting these places allowed them to tap into reservoirs of feeling central to their identities as artists, teachers, and humans. They recalled the red vinyl seats at the diner where they ate pie, the creaking door of the bakery they visited in their town, or the fish tanks at the Thai restaurant where they lunched with their mother. These sensations and environmental cues fueled their writing and art-making, and they had a richer experience from being there. Throughout the semester, as the students’ writing rolled in, I sat in front of my computer, laughing over anecdotes they shared and crying unabash­ edly about difficulties in their lives. Marriages, hardships with friends, births, deaths, triumphs, and other personal stories were all filtered through

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the lens of food experiences. What allowed my students’ writing to be as rich as it was? For one thing, the prompt was simple yet conceptually open. I clearly defined the products they would create, but the substance of those products was left entirely up to the students. In other words, even though they knew they would be responsible for creating a piece of writing and a visual artwork, my students were given license to choose a memory and a place that mattered to them and that would result in their most resonant and compelling work. The culmination of the activity asked students to read each other’s work, view each other’s art, and post on the class discussion board. Their com­ ments were full of empathy, encouragement, and commiseration as well as questions. about restaurants or recipes. There was an overall feeling of community and openness that added to the online experience. Asking stu­ dents to share finished work and giving space for natural conversations to take place deepens the meaning and validates the work in a way that the teacher alone cannot do. When it came time to read my students’ final products, I was surprised by how many of them used this activity to revisit moments they had not thought about or shared in years. Multiple students told me that reexamin­ ing parts of their past spurred them to be more aware of the present. One student, Julia, recounted her memory of her mother’s gumbo: My parents were the first from their family to move up to Georgia for jobs. They were able to recreate their life here in Georgia, but good Cajun food was hard to find. That is why gumbo was such a special thing. I don’t care what problems, insecurities, fears, or anxieties I had during this pivotal age. A bowl of homemade seafood gumbo melted all of this away the second it hit my lips. We all hear how much gumbo is a comfort food, but to experience it as the ultimate comfort food is difficult to describe. This is why I had to find out her recipe so that I could recreate it for my husband and share that special part of my life with him. After re-living this memory through her writing, she contacted her mother and found the recipe. She and her husband decided “to hunt down the best ingredients for the recipe from a local seafood market and took the leap to make it.” This student created artwork combining digital and handmade aspects overlaying parts of the original recipe and images of gumbo (Figure 11.1). Another student, Anna, recounted a tradition that began when she was a little girl. She and her mother would frequent the same Chinese restaurant for lunch, having deep conversations and enjoying each other’s company: “Not because of the fortune cookies or soup but because of the symbolism of my relationship with my mom and how, through being a pivotal person in my life, she was essentially showing me how to be a mom to my chil­ dren.” This student constructed fortune cookies from clay with personalized

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Figure 11.1 Watercolor of seafood gumbo. Digital underlay of cookbook images. Source: Photograph by the artist

Figure 11.2 Clay fortune cookies, printed family photos, and paper fortunes. Source: Photograph by the artist

fortunes for each family member and printed images of her travels and hopes for the future on the bags (Figure 11.2). Now she takes her daughter there to eat so they can have their own experiences. Using broad themes gave my students the freedom to approach the assignment from a variety of angles, and choice in education can make all the difference.

Conclusion “Food” is a broad theme. It may be a single word, but it is a big word, a word that can feel heavy and light at the same time. This theme was scaffolded with scholarly articles, interviews, excerpts from memoirs, videos, and art.

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Figure 11.3 Assignment sheet.

With younger students, I would use a process of feedback and revision that you are familiar with, possibly utilizing their peers. Having students share their writing with each other can be very beneficial and can remove the pressure of having something “perfect” for the teacher. One option would be to take your students to a central location that is food oriented, like a market, bakery, grocery store, restaurant, or better yet, the school cafeteria. In that case, you can help them activate a memory using their senses. Then ask them to create a mind map or a similar brainstorm focus­ ing on their food memory. If you adopt this activity, tailor it for your students, their age group, and their interests. For example, if you are teaching K through 12 students, provide access to blog posts from food writers that are closer to them in age. Even following a vein of interest on TikTok (as many of us know, there

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are some viral food trends worth discussing) and pulling examples for them to see and read about would make it relevant to their lives.

References Cabillas, M. (2014). Memories under construction: Writing, narratives, and dialogues. Culture & Psychology, 20(3), 308–329. Dewey, J. (2008). The collected works of John Dewey, vol. 13: journal articles, essays, and miscellany published in the 1921–1922 period. SIU Press. Egan, K. (1992). Romantic understanding: The development of rationality and imagination, ages 8–15. Routledge. Griffin, R.A., Council III, M. R., Ogletree, T. W., Allen, J. K., & Scullin, B. L. (2020). Building writing identities: Integrating explicit strategies with authentic writing experiences to engage at-promise writers. Teaching/Writing, 9(2), article 7. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol9/iss2/7. Manifold, M. C. (2021). The narratives of adolescents and young adults: Foundations of a contemporary art curriculum. Art Education, 74(2), 30–36. Montgomery, R., & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. National Council of Teachers of English. Owens, D. (2001). Composition and sustainability: Teaching for a threatened generation. National Council of Teachers of English. Pépin, J. (2003). The Apprentice: My life in the kitchen. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Reichl, R. (2001). Comfort me with apples: More adventures at the table. Random House. Whitney, A. E. (2017). Keeping it real: Valuing authenticity in the writing classroom. English Journal, 106(6), 16–21. Woodhouse, J. L., & Knapp, C. E. (2000). Place-based curriculum and instruction: Outdoor and environmental education approaches. Appalachia Educational Laboratory.

Chapter 12

Combining Voices Merging Art and Writing through Place-Based Principles Rebecca G. Harper

Introduction Following the pandemic, many local community organizations and nonprofits whose focus is either the arts or local and regional history (or both) found that their participation among patrons had significantly declined. While forced closures and mandates determined how these organizations could run and function during the height of the pandemic and were out of the immediate organization’s control, when restrictions lifted, many still found that participation in their events, tours, and community outreach was drastically reduced. The decline in participation was especially noticeable for organizations that offered educational outreach programs, field trip opportunities, and partnerships with local schools. In many instances, school districts halted or drastically limited outside visitors to classrooms and suspended all field trip programs. As a result, many place-based educa­ tional opportunities and programs in communities came to an abrupt halt. This was certainly the case with a local museum in our community. Prior to the pandemic, the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, was a popular community attraction, especially with local schools. One of their main educational outreach programs, the Combining Voices literary project and competition, saw a drastic reduction in participation from students in local schools. Despite the fact that museum staff pivoted during the pandemic and offered the contest and resources digitally, participation was significantly reduced. Because many schools were unable to send students on field trips, viewing, critiquing, and responding to art through literary means came to a standstill. While the digital format allowed the program to continue during the pandemic, many teachers were overwhelmed with the rapidly shifting landscape of instructional delivery, and this constant state of flux affected participation in this extracurricular program. Plus, many teachers in the community were not aware of the program due to limited marketing. When I received word from the National Writing Project (NWP) about a new grant program aimed at helping organizations like the Morris Museum of Art reboot and retool programs that had been negatively affected by the DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-15

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pandemic, our writing project site jumped at the opportunity. As a result, the Augusta University Writing Project (AUWP), a National Writing Project site, received grant funds that allowed teachers in our site to collaborate with staff at the local museum to help revive this place-based arts and writing project. Knowing that many schools were still operating with restrictions on extracurricular activities, and many still had self-imposed limits on external field trips, we set out to offer local teachers and students the ability to take part in a quality place-based writing experience that could take place either at the museum or online through digital means. Plus, because we knew that there were many local teachers who were unaware of the educational outreach available through this community resource, we explored multiple means for delivery and dissemination of the project’s work. In addition, as part of the grant funds, we were able to designate Morris Museum ambassadors at several schools in the local area using teachers from our Summer Institute. These ambassadors served as point persons for questions and inquiries about the project for teachers at their respective schools.

Place-Based Writing Background Part of the overarching appeal of place-based writing experiences is their connection to the local community. Smith (2007) asserts that place-based educational experiences help students nurture a “sense of affiliation with the places where they live,” (p. 192). Similarly, Blandy and Hoffman (1993) argued for “an art education of place” (p. 23) using the local community as a source of imagery and inspiration for the composition of art and expression. As Freire and Macedo (1987) remind us, reading the world always precedes reading the word, so it is natural for authentic writing experiences to take place in local communities and contexts that are part of our students’ worlds. By engaging the local communities with the educational contexts of schools and systems, place-based educational experiences can have a number of bene­ fits, including an improvement in academic achievement, building ties within local communities, promoting and encouraging citizenship among participants, and developing an awareness and appreciation for the natural world (Sobel, 1994). By offering students the opportunity to read and write about their local communities using artwork as a text, teachers can help encourage educational experiences that are authentic and relevant, instead of further reinforcing a segregated and siloed environment where schooling is pitted against the real world (Azano, 2011). Plus, when utilizing place-based engagements that inte­ grate the arts, opportunities to engage with different mediums can help students create writing products that serve as reflections, responses, and critiques. Writing through and about art can help students with the development of descriptive writing, make inferences by analyzing art, connect historical events and social movements, and practice observation and communication (Azano,

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2011). Since art, in many cases, does not rely on words to communicate the message or intent, students of all ages can interact and engage with pieces through discussion, collaboration, and written accounts.

Our Grant For the purposes of the grant, 19 local teachers who took part in our AUWP Summer Institute during the summer of 2022 agreed to serve as Morris Museum ambassadors by providing informational sessions and meetings about the project for faculty at their local schools. These sessions provided an overview and information on the Combining Voices project and created a space for teachers to ask questions and receive additional information about the project. As part of the grant activities, these AUWP ambassadors com­ mitted to the completion of the competition with their respective classes, and served as point people in their local schools for questions, information, and assistance when teachers in their buildings took part in the competition. These ambassadors each took part in a guided tour with museum staff during the initial implementation stages of the grant so that they were well versed in the program. In addition, each of these ambassadors received a crate of sup­ plemental resources that could be used in tandem with the artwork chosen for this year’s competition. As part of their leadership responsibility, each of these individuals was responsible for sharing the resources with any teachers in the building who took part in the competition. Most of the resources that were purchased and used were mentor texts that could be used to reinforce or extend the historical background and context in the chosen artwork. Before discussing the Combining Voices Project below, it is imperative to mention that the experience I’m about to describe could be carried out in any art museum, with or without a grant. Our NWP grant provided us with the funds to facilitate our participation in the project, but there is value in getting your students into museums to engage with art, local history, sci­ ence, or any other educational resources you might have at your disposal (Montgomery & Montgomery, 2021). The activities described below are shared here to encourage you to provide similar experiences for your own students in your own specific context.

Our Project: The Combining Voices Literary Project The Combining Voices project is a special literary project that focuses on the utilization of writing as a means to respond to and critique selected pieces of artwork in the museum’s collection. Participation in this project can take on a number of forms, with individual students submitting entries, to entire classes submitting their contest entries after taking part in a full museum field trip tour dedicated to the Combining Voices literacy project. While the preferred method of participation involves a physical field trip to

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the museum for the entire class, students who take part in the project can elect to attend an in-person or virtual tour that addresses the selected artwork for the competition with a museum guide. During this abbreviated tour, museum docents specifically focus on the artwork selected for the competition and provide students with a brief background and history of each piece of artwork. Utilizing the abbreviated tour can prove beneficial for teachers who elect not to have the entire class participate, but rather make participation optional or offered as an extra credit opportunity. And, as mentioned earlier, while the specific project I’m describing in this chapter is housed at our local museum, it can easily be recreated in your own classroom, whether in another local museum or in a classroom using art from a virtual space. For the full Combining Voices field trip, students are shown how to correlate art and literature and respond to art both verbally and in writing. While these field trips focus on the museum’s extended collection of artwork, special atten­ tion is paid to those pieces that have been selected for the Combining Voices competition. These field trips are led by experienced museum docents who lead the students through a number of activities that focus on critique, analysis, and targeted writing engagements that focus on the selected works chosen for the year’s competition. For example, students can take part in the creation of a found poem using a work of art as inspiration, or they might practice descriptive writ­ ing by focusing on a specific aspect of a painting. As they move through the tour, guides often encourage the participants to verbally describe what they see in the art, ask questions about how the piece might make them feel, or have students discuss the author’s inspiration for the piece. All of these prompts can begin to help students think through how they might talk about and/or respond to a piece of art, which in turn can aid them in the written composition. In addition, as part of the field trip, students can take part in a writing workshop and / or hands-on art activity. While the extended field trip is not a requirement for taking part in the competition, students who are able to take part in this extended tour may begin to see the connections between their local communities and the extended world presented through the arts. Plus, during these tours, students are able to engage in discourse with their classmates along with the museum staff which can assist them as they begin to draft and for­ mulate their responses to the selected artwork. When participating in the optional writing workshop, students can practice responding to the artwork they have seen in the museum’s collection. This can help prime the pump, if you will, for the competition process. These workshop engagements often included poetry examples, the creation of a similar piece of artwork inspired by one of the pieces, or a narrative story using a painting as inspiration. For example, one workshop activity includes the creation of a Six Room Image poem (Heard, 1999). For those unfamiliar with this practice, students are pro­ vided with a grid consisting of six boxes (or rooms). Each box directs them to focus on a different aspect of the painting. Although you can tailor the prompts

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that appear in each box to your own goals for the activity, one possible series of prompts might look like this: � � � � � �

Box 1: What images do you see in the painting? Box 2: What do you notice about the light in the painting? Box 3: What sounds do you imagine you’d hear if you were in the painting’s location? Box 4: What questions do you have about the painting? Box 5: How does the painting make you feel? Box 6: After reviewing what you’ve written in the other five boxes, what’s one word or phrase that best captures the painting?

You can then work with your students to turn this first-draft writing into a poem, experimenting with image, word choice, line breaks, and so on. In this way, the activity aligns with what Moynihan (2016) tells us about the value of ekphrastic1 writing, namely that it can lead your students to create works of greater sophistication than traditional academic writing by helping them tap into “the higher levels skills of applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating” (p. 68). Selection of the artwork the students will work with is typically completed by museum staff, but for the purposes of this grant, the selection was conducted in conjunction with local teacher leaders who were part of the grant program. During the initial tour with local teacher leaders, information was provided about different types of artwork, their history, artists, and background. Throughout the tour, museum staff kept note of the artwork that was sug­ gested in order to create a running list of possibilities for the final selected short list of works. Because this year’s program was expanded to include kindergar­ ten through 12th grade, special attention was paid to artwork that could be used with primary students and those in middle and secondary settings. During this selection process, there were a few pieces that elicited sig­ nificant discussion amongst the teacher leaders and museum staff. One piece in particular was a sculpture called Jury Box by Chad Poovey (Figure 12.1). Upon our 180-degree examination of the work, we realized the structure mimicked the design of an electric chair. While the middle and secondary teachers professed the value of such a powerful piece of art that spoke to some of the social injustices of the world, we acknowledged the possibility that its inclusion might affect some teachers’ willingness to participate in the project due to the polarizing nature of that particular piece of work. Although we did not ultimately select that particular work for inclusion in the Combining Voices competition, we discussed ways to utilize that work of art in other writing units such as ones that focused on argument as part of the NWP C3WP Project. This particular exchange was important as it served as an example during our workshops of how and what types of art might be selected. As we thought about replicating this project with other

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works of art in other venues, it felt important to note how conversations like the one above led to the selection of specific artwork, and I share it here so you, the reader, can see some of the different factors you might need to consider when selecting artwork for your own classroom. Additionally, it served as a reminder of how teachers might use multiple works of art for different writing demands and genres. Although this year’s selection process looked different because of the grant involvement, museum staff expressed their appreciation for the addi­ tional teacher input. Having conversations between the museum staff and local educators provided opportunities for collaboration, expansion, and extensions. In many instances, some of the artwork that made the long list had not been previously considered by museum staff for inclusion. However, after the tour with the teacher leaders, additional possibilities emerged through the collaborative tour and experience.

Chosen Works This year, five works of art were chosen for the focus of the competition. They varied in composition, medium, and historical background. We chose these five works because museum staff and teacher leaders associated with this project believed they offered students variety in their responses and could appeal to multiple learners. Plus, each had a unique history that could be closely connected to local history and culture. Thus, the choices had multiple benefits for a wide variety of learners. The first painting we selected was Jonathan Green’s (1993) Daughters of the South, a large oil painting depicting two women in brightly colored clothing looking out over a body of water. All the teacher leaders and museum staff were insistent that it be included in this year’s competition. Its selection was based on the connection to the local area and Gullah culture,

Figure 12.1 Jury Box by Chad Poovey.

156 Rebecca G. Harper

along with its bright colors and visual appeal, which we believed could connect with primary students in the contest. Plus, its large size made it a focal piece in the museum and it was difficult to leave the gallery without noticing its presence. Utilizing this piece as inspiration, partner poems were one writing composition created by students who responded to this piece. With a partner poem, students were able to create a poem in two voices based on the characters in the painting. To do this, students were provided a template with specific prompts that they completed from the perspective of one of the ladies in the painting. Once they were done, students collabora­ tively performed their poem with a partner in two voices which resulted in a final written piece that captured the possible thoughts and words from the two characters portrayed in the work. Another writing activity that students completed with this painting was a written conversation. With this strategy, students imagined a con­ versation that might take place between the two individuals in the painting. This was completed in a variety of ways, with some students writing both sides of the conversation and assuming the role of both characters, while others worked with a partner, each assuming the role of one of the figures in the painting. One of our main goals was to make certain we included art made out of a variety of materials so students could see that art could take on a number of forms. This was the impetus for the inclusion of this work by Steffen Thomas (Figure 12.2). One of the writing activities completed with this piece involved the actual creation of a piece of sculpture using aluminum foil as a medium. Students then either wrote a description of their new artwork or told a narrative story about their artwork. Another writing activity that we used with this piece of artwork was a piece called “If I Stood Where You Are.” In this writing task, students chose a figure from 1966 (since this is when this piece of artwork was created). Students

Figure 12.2. Steffen Thomas, The Art Critic, 1966. Welded copper. Gift of Conway D. Thomas.

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researched their chosen figure and then wrote about their experiences during that time period. The next artwork viewed by the students was Radcliffe Bailey’s (2001) Untitled, an abstract, mixed media creation. When museum staff came to our AUWP Summer Institute to provide an overview of the program, we showed this piece of art to create our written response. We remarked that the unique representation, and the fact that the subject in the photo was unidentified, created a sense of mystery about the piece. Plus, each time we looked at it, we noticed something new. All the subtle details led to a rich viewing experience, so we felt its inclusion would have significant potential. For this piece of art, some students wrote stories about the individual in the photograph and told her story, while others made a list of words they felt described the painting. Others used the words listed in this artwork as a springboard for poetry, or with some primary writers, as a word bank used for sentence construction. Students also completed “Texting Couplets” based on this piece of artwork (Figure 12.3). To do this, they crafted a series of text messages related to the work and collaborated with a partner to create a poem. In addition, we also utilized the OPTIC analysis tool,2 which helped the students begin an analysis and critique of the artwork. While we used this tool only with Bailey’s artwork, it could easily be utilized for any of the other pieces of art in this project. Adams’s painting was not one that museum staff had considered until the teacher leaders and I took our museum tour. Each of us stopped when we came to this painting and lingered. We discussed the writing possibilities that could emerge using this piece, from thoughts about character develop­ ment to social class to its historical relevance. This particular artwork offered a variety of options for writing. For one, it became an inspirational piece for writing from different points of view. Secondly, many students utilized the figure in the painting as a main character in narrative stories

Figure 12.3 “Texting Couplets” template.

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Figure 12.4 Wayman Adams, Old New Orleans Mammy, circa 1920. Oil on canvas.

they constructed, while others gave an informational research-based com­ position of the culture and life in New Orleans. For this piece, students created Bio Poems of the figure in the painting and created a Think, Write, Pass Narrative. For this writing task, students began by thinking about the provided prompt: “I knew that my life would never be the same when / because.” Students began by writing a few sentences in response to this prompt before they passed it to their neighbor. After multiple passes, stu­ dents then read and revised the collaborative story. Having a landscape painting was important because we believed it might serve as a student’s setting for a story that could be crafted in conjunction with the image. Since setting is a major element in narrative, including a painting that focused solely on setting could provide opportunities for stu­ dents to create their own narrative, draft a sensory poem, or simply describe the setting using imagery, all of which would serve as valuable responses to

Figure 12.5 Henry Ossawa Tanner, Georgia Landscape, 1887–1890. Oil on canvas.

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the artwork. Students used Tanner’s painting to write rich descriptions of a setting, made observational lists of qualities and objects they noticed in the painting, and wrote stories that took place in this setting. In addition, they created Blackout Poems related to this artwork. To do this, we gave students random, unrelated passages and they used a black marker to cross out any words they did not want to include in their writings. As a result, the remaining words created a new writing piece that was related to the artwork. During the whole-class museum field trip tours, and also in the truncated Combining Voices digital or face-to face tour, students were shown each of the works described above and given a brief background of the piece’s history. This background focused on the context of the work, which could include the his­ torical connections and relevance of the piece, the historical background of the artist, and / or the connection of the artwork to any larger historical themes and social issues. For example, in the Jonathan Green artwork, much of the background provided by museum docents focused on both the geography and the historical context of slavery and racism. Students discussed how both Georgia and South Carolina’s coastal geography affected the economy along with its connection to slavery and slave trade. These conversations and back­ ground led students to explore the rich Gullah history of the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, which prompted conversations that addressed language, traditions, and culture. Much like what we described with the Old New Orleans Mammy work above, conducting research that was connected to the historical and cultural inspirations of the artwork was a natural fit. Connections to the local area were also discussed, as many of the works in the museum, though not necessarily ones chosen for the competition, had connections to the immediate local area.

Supplemental Material As part of the grant project, Teacher Consultants from the AU Writing Pro­ ject worked with museum staff to locate supplemental material that could enhance the literary lessons and responses that occurred in tandem with the Combining Voices tour and project. We started by looking for supplemental texts that focused on the subjects of the artwork or were related to the his­ torical time or place depicted in the material. This was relatively easy for some of the works, but proved challenging for others. For example, we loca­ ted art collection books such as Gullah Images (Green, 1996) and children’s picture books such as Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge (Barnwell, Campbell, Grant, & Bledsoe, 2020) to accompany the work of Jonathan Green since the subject of the painting focused on the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia. We also were able to utilize multiple materi­ als that focused on the New Orleans area to complement the geographic context for the work Old New Orleans Mammy.

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It was difficult to find supplemental material for other artworks due to their subject matter. Untitled (Bailey, 2001) and The Art Critic (Thomas, 1966) proved especially challenging to supplement directly. However, in instances where we were unable to find material that complemented the content or historical context of the artwork, we managed to find texts that spoke to the media the artists used, such as The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County (Harrington & Jackson, 2009) and Over the Rooftops, Under the Moon (Lawson & Kazimi, 2019). These books had no direct connection to any of the artists, but they served as an example of mixed media com­ position, something that was used in the Untitled work. In some instances, we utilized materials that focused on other aspects of art, such as Art from Her Heart (Whitehead & Evans, 2008), when we found it difficult to locate picture books or other texts that addressed the context of the artwork. Our goal in creating these supplemental text sets to accompany the material presented in the Combining Voices project was to create a layered approach to instruction by providing students with multiple examples of material related to the artwork. Utilizing some of the supplemental material helped teachers build background for the different artworks. For example, when working with Daughters of the South (Green, 1993), we also read aloud Gullah Days (Barnwell, Campbell, Grant, & Bledsoe, 2020) in an effort to help explain Gullah culture and life in the low country. We found that by providing students with multiple opportunities to engage with and learn about the material that was the basis for the artwork, we could develop and create a depth of understanding for the material presented in the art. As a result, students had a deeper appreciation and understanding for the context and background of the material that serves as the basis for the art. Most importantly for the purpose of this project, these mentor texts served as tangible examples of some of the types of writing that students may utilize when writing about art. Through participation in the Combining Voices project, students were able to develop, create, and revise writings that responded to or connected with the chosen pieces of art for the 2022–2023 competition year. Students devel­ oped poetry, personal narratives, responses, and other forms of writing using the art as a springboard for their compositions. Because of the targeted emphasis on this program, a larger number of students participated in the competition, and more educators in the area learned about local opportunities for art exploration and literacy integration.

Tips for Successful Projects Projects like the Combining Voices competition can be developed and created in a variety of settings. Even if there is not a local museum available, you could collaborate with one of the following entities:

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Art studios Digital museums Community organizations Local music organizations such as choirs or symphonies Local historical societies Theatres or playhouses.

Yet another way to complete a similar project could involve collaboration with arts and literacy teachers at your own school site. This interdisciplinary con­ nection could allow for one class to create art inspired by the local community, with another class crafting written responses about the artwork that was cre­ ated by their peers. In addition, collaborations with community authors, civic organizations, and even government entities could provide opportunities for students to engage with their local communities to construct and respond to art that is reflective of the communities in which they live.

Conclusion Engaging students with writing can sometimes be a challenge for teachers as they look for ways in which to connect writing with students’ lives and com­ munities. Place-based writing engagements can offer unique and authentic opportunities for students at all grades and ability levels. Incorporating art as a text can provide additional spaces and places for authentic literacy engagement.

Notes 1 “A literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art” (MerriamWebster, n.d.). 2 To focus the viewer’s analysis of a visual text, OPTIC is a mnemonic device standing for Overview, Parts, Title, Interrelationships, Conclusion (Newbold, n.d.).

References Adams, W. (circa 1920). Old New Orleans Mammy. [Oil on canvas]. Morris Museum of Art. Azano, A. (2011). The possibility of place: One teacher’s use of place-based instruction for English students in a rural high school. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 26(10), 1–12. Bailey, R. (2001). Untitled. [Mixed media on paper]. Morris Museum of Art. Barnwell, T. C., Campbell, E. S., Grant, C., & Bledsoe, C. (2020). Gullah days: Hilton head islanders before the bridge: 1861–1956. Blair. Blandy, D. & Hoffman, E. (1993). Toward an art education of place. Studies in Art Education, 35(1), 22–33. Freire, P. and Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Bergin & Garvey.

162 Rebecca G. Harper Green, J. (1993). Daughters of the South. [Oil on canvas]. Morris Museum of Art. Green, J. (1996). Gullah images: The art of Jonathan Green. University of South Carolina Press. Harrington, J. N., & Jackson, S. (2009). The chicken-chasing queen of Lamar County. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Heard, G. (1999). Awakening the Heart: Exploring poetry in elementary and middle school. Heinemann. Lawson, J., & Kazimi, N. (2019). Over the rooftops, under the moon. Enchanted Lion. Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Ekphrasis. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ekphra sis (accessed July 21, 2023). Montgomery, R., & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. National Council of Teachers of English. Moynihan, K. (2016). Bringing Edward Hopper’s paintings into the English language arts classroom. English Journal, 105(5), 68–74. Newbold, C. (n.d.). Optic strategy for visual analysis. https://thevisualcommunica tionguy.com/2023/05/15/optic-strategy-for-visual-analysis/. Poovey, C. (n.d.). The Jury Box. [Mixed Media]. Morris Museum of Art. Smith, G. A. (2007). Place‐based education: Breaking through the constraining reg­ ularities of public school. Environmental Education Research, 13, 189–207. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13504620701285180 Sobel, D. (1994). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. The Orion Society. Tanner, H. O. (1887–1890). Georgia Landscape. [Oil on canvas]. Morris Museum of Art. Thomas, S. (1966). The Art Critic. [Welded copper]. Morris Museum of Art. Whitehead, K., & Evans, S. (2008). Art from her heart: Folk artist Clementine Hunter. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Part IV

Using Digital Tools to Bring the Outside World into the Classroom

In reading the following chapters that deal with place-based writing in the virtual world, you might use the following questions to guide or focus your reading: a b c

What other virtual places might be productive venues for authentic writing? How does place-based writing in virtual places allow me to leverage my students’ existing interests and literacy practices? How is place-based writing uniquely suited for providing students with authentic, unconventional modes of sharing their work?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-16

Chapter 13

Into the Metaverse Using Virtual Reality as a Site for PlaceBased Writing Clarice M. Moran

Introduction Fall has descended on the North Carolina mountains. Banana-gold poplars, fire-red maples, sunrise-orange sweetgum trees, and broad swaths of taxiyellow goldenrod have materialized across the hillsides. However, students inside a ninth-grade classroom are oblivious to this cinematic display of nature. They are immersed in a field trip to the metaverse, where they are watching a short documentary on the wonders of Hong Kong. They hold simple, card­ board virtual reality (VR) devices up to their eyes and swivel in their seats to see fireworks erupt over Victoria Harbour from the Kowloon Peninsula. For these students, colorful spectacles of nature hold little interest; many were born in the mountains and are jaded to the annual autumnal show. Hong Kong, however, is a different story. This is a place that none of them has visited, and few have plans to do so in the future. It seems like a faraway fantasy land, divorced from their rural, small-town reality. Before viewing the VR film, their teacher asks what they think Hong Kong looks like. One of the students, Hannah (not her real name) says, “I think the people ride bicycles a lot, and I think they have straw hats.” When her teacher tells her that the people actually are very modern and that the city has many skyscrapers, res­ taurants, and hotels, Hannah and her classmates are dubious. “Let’s go on a field trip,” the teacher says. “Let’s go to Hong Kong and see.” After donning cardboard VR players loaded with their own mobile phones and earbuds, the students view the VR documentary, “Restless: Hong Kong” (ImagineThis, 2019) on the Within VR app. The room is filled with audible gasps and swiveling students as they move their devices up, down, and behind them to see everything. Later, they admit their impres­ sions of the city were completely wrong. They just had to see it with their own eyes. In her journal, Hannah writes: While on our Virtual Reality trip to Hong Kong, we were immersed in their culture. Vendors were on every corner, selling and displaying foods and items that generally represent their culture. Tourists as well as natives of Hong Kong flood the streets. The hustle and bustle of the city was further DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-17

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emphasized by the heavy traffic and extensive roadways. Transportation is extremely important to get around the large city. There’s much to do from exploring on ferries, to shopping, to hiking in the vast mountains. The lights all around created a burst of energy. You could never be bored in Hong Kong. This is the transformative nature of VR, a space that offers more than just a cool place to play video games. It can be a site of meaningful exploration, full of potential for developing empathy (Thériault et al., 2021), navigating autism (Shahmoradi & Rezayi, 2022), reversing dementia (Sung et al., 2022), and providing inspiration for placed-based writing (Montgomery & Mon­ tgomery, 2021). In the Hollywood-branded world of virtual reality (VR), participants can transform themselves into sexier or stronger creatures, fight off supernatural monsters, and escape the horrific reality of everyday life. In this version of VR – seen most notably in films like Avatar (Cameron, 2009), The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999), and Ready Player One (Spielberg, 2018) – the strength of the medium lies in its ability to alter ordinary life and transform it into a glorious technicolor adventure. Life in this metaverse shifts from the known to the unknown. It is the ultimate experience of living outside the reach of our senses. VR is a manifestation of the mind, juxta­ posed against ordinary human existence – a medium that allows what we feel on the inside to reveal itself in three-dimensional visual reality on the outside (Moran, 2021). Yet, even within this artificial and seemingly inau­ thentic paradigm, there is fodder for genuine creative inspiration. Although VR seems to be in sharp contrast to authenticity – one of the hallmarks of place-based writing (Montgomery & Montgomery, 2021) – it is an experi­ ential tool that can provide an authentic writing experience. Virtual field trips, aided with simple VR devices, can deepen student learning (Bashir, 2010; Tuthill & Klemm, 2002), build empathy (Hargrove, Sommer, & Jones, 2020) and bolster student confidence (Goldsworthy et al., 2022). The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how simple, free VR applications can allow for cross-curricular exploration, promote student engagement, and offer unique opportunities for place-based writing along­ side the study of literature. This chapter will demonstrate why VR belongs in every classroom (Moran, 2019) and explore how it can serve as a pro­ mising tool for engagement and collaborative work (Cooper et al., 2019; Frontera, 2009). It can also act as a vehicle for place-based writing by pro­ viding students with the opportunity to visit new spaces that otherwise would be unavailable to them.

Theoretical Foundations Although Hollywood movies tend to portray VR worlds as dystopian or scary, the technology initially was designed as a way to augment threedimensional (3D) pictures. Jaron Lanier, who founded the company VPL

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Research, designed the first VR devices with DataGloves and AudioSpheres so that the user could “feel” a simulated environment while listening to sounds and viewing 3D images. Eventually, the technology was sold, and HTC, Sony, and Meta (formerly Facebook) all created their own versions and developed a following among gaming enthusiasts. These high-powered, Bluetooth-enabled headsets range in price from about $200 to $400 and require users to subscribe to their gaming services. However, educators with smaller budgets can utilize the benefits of VR in the classroom through the purchase of cardboard VR devices – available through a quick internet search for around $5 to $10 each. Students can insert a smartphone into the cardboard device, which will allow them to view images and films in an immersive, 360-degree sphere. Students can download an app (such as VR Within, Google Arts and Culture, or VR Theater for Cardboard) to a mobile phone and then insert the phone with the app opened into the cardboard viewer. The effect is not quite the same as when using a high-powered device, but the cardboard viewers offer an immersive experience for students that can serve as a site for place-based writing.

Digital Third Space Theory The theoretical framework that informs the idea of VR as a site of placebased writing is grounded in Bhabha’s (1994) Third Space Theory. In Bhabha’s (1994) definition, the First Space is a place in which indigenous people are free to pursue their own culture and customs. The Second Space, then, consists of imposed knowledge and culture imparted on indigenous people – often against their will. The Third Space is a neutral place in which two varying cultures can come together to forge a new identity independent of “the politics of polarity” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 56). Moje et al. (2004) expanded the idea of Third Space Theory to include the classroom environment. They argued that the classroom could be a neutral space in which all students’ physical, cultural, and social practices were blended and honored. Benson (2010) demonstrated that a Third Space could be constructed through the enactment of digital literacies practices that positioned students as experts. Potter and McDougall (2017) also argued that websites and online spaces could act as Third Spaces in which “mean­ ings are made and shared, some of which may relate to encountering new knowledge, learning or developing new skills and dispositions,” (p. 7). Lastly, Moran (2018) showed how the online platform “Slack” could act as a Third Space for collaborative work in a digital space. It is in this framework that place-based writing through VR is situated. Within this structure, students are able to use the digital worlds available in VR as a Third Space for understanding new cultural models. These virtual field trips allow students to make connections to concepts, places, and people that they are learning about in the classroom (Torres and Statti,

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2021). Just as “real world” field trips facilitate learning and afford students authentic experiences (Friess et al., 2016; Kenna & Potter, 2018), VR pro­ vides an easily accessible site for traveling to new and exciting places. This virtual travel can act as a Third Space in which students are able to realize participatory configurations of a new ethos that encourages collaboration and cultural production (Lankshear & Knobel, 2019). Working together, students can write about what they see, hear, and experience in the Third Space of the VR world.

Rationale for Using VR in Place-Based Writing Montgomery and Montgomery (2021) advocate for writing that has an authentic purpose – a purpose that goes beyond teachers and classrooms. Place-based writing can answer that call by taking students outside school walls and into environments rich with sensory experiences. Stu­ dents are encouraged to produce writing that feels “real” and has an appeal that is less prescriptive than formulaic essay writing (Rodesiler & Kelley, 2017). But what if teachers and students are unable to leave the classroom? What if budget shortfalls, safety concerns, or time constraints all shackle teachers and students to the confined space of the classroom? Virtual reality offers a way to visit new spaces without physically leaving the building. Writing with the support of VR can come alive in ways that writing at one’s desk doesn’t. Viewing a two-dimensional photograph or reading a text simply do not inspire in the same way that a virtual field trip does. VR provides an immersive reality that is not the same as actually going there, but it’s a close second. Moran and Woodall (2019) demonstrated that stu­ dents who took a virtual field trip to the Great Depression reported that they nearly forgot they were in a classroom, saying, “‘It was like you were experiencing the time period firsthand’” (p. 93). These same students wrote narrative essays that altered the ending of To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, 1960) and reported that the VR field trip was “‘better than just straight up looking at regular pictures from the time period,’” (Moran & Woodall, 2019, p. 93). Virtual reality can be used in before, during, and after reading activities to boost students’ comprehension of setting and characters. It also can be used to inspire their writing. When used before writing, it can help students to activate their prior knowledge about a place, as well as provide a context and purpose. Using VR apps and movies during reading to help them “see” the story, students can write about the setting and characters. And after reading, students can view VR content and visit virtual places to extend the curriculum and reinforce research or projects. They can rewrite a scene, imagine the characters in a different time or place, or write journal entries from a character’s point of view.

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For example, if students are reading To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, 1960), they can view VR images of the 1930s time period and then write about the clothes, the houses, or the stores. They can view VR images of the rural Alabama setting and subsequently write with greater accuracy and authen­ ticity about the culture. Or, they can view VR content on the Great Depression and the rural American South and write a story in which they imagine that they lived during that era. Ideally, students could take a field trip to a local museum to augment the reading of literature or history and see artifacts up close. However, if resources preclude you from taking a trip to a museum, students can instead view a museum exhibition through VR and get a genuine sense of it. They can view exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Little White House, or the Smithsonian Art Museum.1 For example, while reading literature about England or British royalty, stu­ dents may be curious about Buckingham Palace before writing first-person narratives or historical essays. To help with their research, they can view the 360-degree movie Buckingham Palace Tour (BBC, 2019), which offers a complete tour of the palace. If students are reading any of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, they can take a virtual field trip to London and create a travel brochure. Or, they can tour the inside of a real castle and write a story that features the Harry Potter characters. Interestingly, the Harry Potter store in New York City now offers a VR experience in which shoppers can feel like they are travel­ ing to Hogwarts or flying on a broom.

Tips and Tricks Using VR with a classroom full of students can be challenging, so the fol­ lowing tips and tricks are born from years of experience of using VR in the classroom. � �

Give all instructions before passing out VR devices. Once the devices are in students’ hands, they will likely stop listening. Allow students time to play with the technology for a while before they need to pay attention to a lesson. I encourage teachers to devote an entire class period to allowing students to view videos and images in the cardboard viewers. Students need time to understand how to insert their phones into the viewers while getting the 360 movie or image to play. Fitting different-sized phones into the cardboard viewers also takes a little experimentation. And, in my experience, students are so excited to work with VR, they just want to explore on their own for a while before applying their new skills and understanding to a lesson. Teachers might want to allow students to visit different sites or images on their

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own and talk with their peers about the experience. to playing with the devices and exploring apps and movies. Download all apps or movies in advance of the lesson. Students can be instructed to download apps onto their phones at home, or time will need to be set aside for downloading. Pair tech-savvy students with those who feel less comfortable with technology. They can support each other, and the tech-savvy student is usually happy to teach the other student. Pair students who have a smartphone with those who do not have one. If the school has a Bring Your Own Device Day, then teachers can pair stu­ dents who “forgot” their phone with another student who has one so as to minimize embarrassment for the student who does not own a phone. If very few students have their own phone, teachers may want to loan their phone to students. If the school does not have reliable internet access, consider using a mobile hotspot device. In a pinch, teachers can use their own phone as a mobile hotspot. Some phones can support up to 10 devices at a time. The transition to using VR is easy and inexpensive if you do have reli­ able internet access. For about $25, teachers (or, ideally, the school) can purchase five VR devices that will allow for a myriad of possibilities. All of the VR apps listed in this chapter are free and designed to be used by schools with no suspicious content whatsoever.

Facing Down a Gorilla: A Place-Based Writing Activity Few students have had the opportunity to visit the jungles of Africa or to go on a safari. However, many are interested in the animals that live there. From very young elementary-age students to older, secondary students, the animals on the African continent hold a special fascination, and arguably none is more interesting than the gorilla. Gorillas have such human-like characteristics that a group of Atlanta-area educators designed an entire curriculum around them, using the idea of gorilla study and mock safari as a touchpoint for lessons throughout the school year (Thomson & Chapman, 2004). Yet, even after extensive study, many students would be hard-pressed to write about gorillas beyond giving facts on habitat, behavior, or eating habits. Enter the power of VR. A short lesson with VR can enhance students’ creativity and writing flu­ ency (Gonçalves & Campos, 2018; Lin, Chang, & Li, 2020). With a quick, virtual field trip to Africa to visit the gorillas in their natural habitat, stu­ dents can be inspired to write fiction or essays that come alive with sensory language and details – details they would not be able to produce without the seemingly real encounter with the gorillas. Although this is a stand-alone lesson, it can be incorporated into any unit on sensory writing. It also can be linked to studies on African literature,

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Figure 13.1 Example metaverse assignment sheet.

African trickster tales, Isak Dinesen’s (1992) Out of Africa, or Dian Fossey’s (2000) Gorillas in the Mist. It can be used with elementary students studying animals as well as English language learners working on English words. Gorillas are found in the equatorial region of Africa near the Congo River Basin, so a bit of geography and some direct instruction on the different

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regions of Africa is in order too (see education.nationalgeographic.org/ resource/africa-physical-geography). This lesson can, of course, be adapted to any theme for which there is a VR movie or site. It takes some digging to find places and VR movies that will work, but an increasingly wide variety is available on apps and YouTube. For example, the same lesson plan could be adapted for a study of immigrants while reading Alan Gratz’s (2017) Refugee by viewing a film on the plight of refugees (see “A Syrian Refugee in Lebanon” on YouTube VR) or to enhance an understanding of the Okefenokee Swamp in Zora Neale Hurston’s (2019 [1937]) Their Eyes Were Watching God (see “Boat Ride Through the Okefenokee Swamp” on the Google Arts and Culture app). For a more extensive list of text and VR pairings, see Table 13.1. To start this particular place-based writing lesson with VR, teachers should have familiarized students with the VR devices (see “Tips and Tricks” above) and instructed students to download the YouTube app. The app should be down­ loaded and ready to go before beginning the lesson. When ready, teachers should activate students’ background knowledge first by talking about gorillas, their homeland, and what students already know. Students can be guided into a dis­ cussion on specific characteristics of gorillas. Sample discussion questions are: �

Let’s talk about gorillas. What do you know about them?

Table 13.1 Virtual reality and text pairings. VR Source

Text Pairing

YouTube: “A Syrian Refugee in

Lebanon”

YouTube: “Nepal Helicopter Flight”

YouTube: The Meg: Submissive VR

Experience

Google Arts and Culture: “Henry V”

Google Arts and Culture: “Boat Ride

through the Okefenokee Swamp”

Google Arts and Culture: “Daily Life

in Shimbwe”

Within VR app: “My Africa”

New York Times VR: “Remembering

Emmett Till”

YouTube: “A Brief History of Flight”

Refugee (Alan Gratz, 2017)

YouTube: “The Leader Dog”

Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer, 1997) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules

Verne, 2021 [1870])

Henry V (Shakespeare)

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora

Neale Hurston, 2019 [1937]) Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1994 [1958]) The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas, 2018) All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque, 2018 [1930])

The Call of the Wild (Jack London,

2021 [1903])

Note. Virtual reality sources and the title of the film or specific image are listed on the left. Cor­ responding texts are listed on the right.

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What do you think gorillas eat? Do you think gorillas are all like King Kong, or are there other characteristics? Do you have any knowledge about their family groupings or hierarchy? How large do you think a gorilla is, relative to human beings? How would you feel if you came up close to a gorilla? Would you be afraid? What do you think a gorilla feels and smells like? Do you think gorillas like to be touched by humans?

After students have discussed gorillas and what they know, they should read Nancy Adair’s short story, “Never Run from a Gorilla.” This story is appropriate for middle grades as well as advanced ELLs. I have used it with ELLs and supported their reading with a few vocabulary words. This story is great when read aloud, which can enhance students’ interest in the text and increase their desire to be a reader (Mooney, 1990). It is also short enough to be read aloud in 7–10 minutes. After reading the story, divide students into pairs and pass out the cardboard devices. As mentioned in the “Tips and Tricks” section above, pair tech-savvy students with tech-averse ones and pair students with smartphones with those who have forgotten theirs. Remind students to use earbuds. (The movie fea­ tures the sounds of Congo with bird song and insects, and it can be distracting to some students.) Tell students that they are going to go on a virtual field trip to the African Congo to see some gorillas for themselves. Show the following directions on a slide: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Open the YouTube app.

Type in “The Ellen Fund-Gorillapalooza VR”

Once loaded, click on play.

Turn your phone sideways and place into the cardboard VR device.

Put in your earbuds.

Look up, down, behind you to watch the film.

This particular VR movie features a family of gorillas in their natural habitat in the Congo. They move around the viewer and sit down to scratch, eat, and observe each other. There is a mother with a baby on her back and several male gorillas. They emerge seemingly from nowhere out of the bush and watching them after reading Adair’s (2017) experience is almost living inside her story. There is the heavy crunch-crunch-crunch as they wade through the tall grasses and the persistent, high-pitched song of birds in the background. The gorillas’ amber eyes and stiff, black fur are so close that students often reach out their hands as if they could touch the creatures.

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After viewing the film and taking this field trip to Africa, instruct students to write about the experience. On another slide, project the following directions: Imagine that you are facing a wild gorilla. Use the VR movie and the story to write your own story about encountering a gorilla. What does he look like? What does he do? How do you feel? Focus on constructing a narrative that builds suspense. You can look back at the VR movie at any time for more inspiration. Allow students time to write their stories. Students usually want to write a little, then watch a snippet of the movie again, then write some more. This iterative process affords them the same opportunity as if they were sitting on the ground with the gorillas and writing about them in real life. They can observe, write, and observe some more. It is this careful attention to details and place that is the hallmark of place-based writing. As Montgomery and Montgomery (2021) observe, “what we’re really after in our classrooms is to see our students become thoughtful, sophisticated users of language who will be likely to continue to write after they leave our classrooms” (p. 3). As stu­ dents practice observing and writing, they become adept at noticing details and the specific arrangement of features in an environment. This is a skill they will probably carry over into their lives – whether they are writing or not.

Conclusion Using VR as a site of Place-based writing is new territory for most teachers, but it is a way forward in our increasingly complex society fraught with risks and danger. From the safety of the classroom, students can visit the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramids of Giza, and the Roman Colosseum – all in the same day. Rather than being a space age toy or a new way to play video games, VR has the potential to enhance the curriculum and bring the world to our students. It offers inspiration for writing and for experiencing life.

Note 1 A list of museums with virtual experiences can be found at https://upgradedpoints. com/travel/best-virtual-museum-tours/.

References Achebe, C. (1994 [1958]). Things fall apart. Penguin.

Adair, N. (2017). Never run from a gorilla. https://shortfictionbreak.com/never-run-from

-a-gorilla/.

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Bashir, G. (2010). Technology and medicine: The evolution of virtual reality simu­ lation in laparoscopic training, Medical Teacher, 32(7), 558–561. https://doi.org/ 10.3109/01421590903447708. BBC. (2019). 360 video: Buckingham palace tour – BBC London. https://youtu.be/ FtGN2wK9g_s. Benson, S. (2010). “I don’t know if that’d be English or not”: Third space theory and literacy instruction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(7), 555–563. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge. Cameron, J. (Director). (2009). Avatar [Film]. 20th Century Fox. Cooper, G., Park, H., Nasr, Z., Thong, L. P., & Johnson, R. (2019). Using virtual reality in the classroom: Preservice teachers’ perceptions of its use as a teaching and learning tool, Educational Media International, 56(1), 1–13. Dinesen, I. (1992). Out of Africa. Modern Library. Fossey, D. (2000). Gorillas in the mist. Mariner. Friess, D. A., Oliver, G. J., Quak, M. S., & Lau, A. Y. (2016). Incorporating “virtual” and “real world” field trips into introductory geography modules. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 40(4), 546–564. Frontera, E. B. (2009). Teaching students to build historical buildings in virtual reality: A didactic strategy for learning history of art in secondary education. Themes in Science Technology Education, 1–2, 165–174. Goldsworthy, S., Ferreira, C., Shajani, Z., Snell, D., & Perez, G. (2022). Combining Virtual and High-fidelity Simulation to Foster Confidence and Competency in Postpartum Assessment Complications among Undergraduate Nursing Students. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 66, 18–24. Gonçalves, F., & Campos, P. (2018). Mild place illusion: A virtual reality factor to spark creativity in writing. In Proceedings of the 36th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, 1–8. Association for Computing Machinery. Gratz, A. (2017). Refugee. Scholastic. Hargrove, A., Sommer, J. M., & Jones, J. J. (2020). Virtual reality and embodied experience induce similar levels of empathy change: Experimental evidence. Com­ puters in Human Behavior Reports, 2, 100038. Hurston, Z. N. (2019 [1937]). Their eyes were watching God. General Press. ImagineThis. (2019). Restless: 12K Hong Kong VR timelapse. https://youtu.be/ gYxG9e8ylR4. Kenna, J. L., & Potter, S. (2018). Experiencing the world from inside the classroom: Using virtual field trips to enhance social studies instruction. The Social Studies, 109(5), 265–275. Krakauer, J. (1997). Into thin air: A personal account of the Mt. Everest disaster. Villard. Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2019). New literacies: Everyday practices and social learning (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill. Lee, H. (1960). To kill a mockingbird. J. B. Lippincott & Co. Lin, H.-C., Chang, Y., & Li, W.-H. (2020). Effects of a virtual reality teaching application on engineering design creativity of boys and girls. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100705. London, J. (2021 [1903]). The call of the wild. Reader’s Library Classics. Moje, E. B., Ciechanowski, K. M., Kramer, K., Ellis, L., Carrillo, R., & Collazo, T. (2004). Working toward third space in content area literacy: An examination of every­ day funds of knowledge and discourse. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(1), 38–70.

176 Clarice M. Moran Montgomery, R., & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. NCTE. Mooney, M.M. (1990). Reading to, with, and by children. Richard C. Owen Press. Moran, C. M. (2021). Virtual and augmented reality in English language arts educa­ tion. Rowman & Littlefield. Moran, C. M. (2018). Learners without borders: Connected learning in a digital third space. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 18(2). www. citejournal.org/volume-18/issue-2-18/english-language-arts/learners-without-bor ders-connected-learning-in-a-digital-third-space. Moran, C. M. (2019, March 1). 5 Reasons why virtual reality belongs in every class­ room. http://corwin-connect.com/2019/03/5-reasons-why-virtual-reality-belongs-in-e very-classroom/. Moran, C. M., & Woodall, M. K. (2019). ‘It was like I was there’: Inspiring engagement through virtual reality. English Journal 109(1), 90–96. Potter, J., & McDougall, J. (2017). Digital media, culture and education: Theorising Third Space literacies. London, UK: Springer. Remarque, E. M. (2018 [1930]). All quiet on the western front. Everyman’s Library. Rodesiler, L., & Kelley, B. (2017). Toward a readership of ‘real’ people: A case for authentic writing opportunities. English Journal 106(6), 22–28. Rowling, J. K. (2009). Harry Potter paperback boxed set, books 1–7. Levine. Shahmoradi, L., & Rezayi, S. (2022). Cognitive rehabilitation in people with autism spectrum disorder: a systematic review of emerging virtual reality-based approa­ ches. Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation, 19(1), 91. Spielberg, S. (Director). (2018.) Ready player one [Film]. Warner Bros. Sung, H.-C., Su, H.-F., Lee, W.-L., Yamakawa, M., & Wang, H.-M. (2022). Effects of a dementia virtual reality-based training with peer support for home care workers: A cluster randomized controlled trial. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 37(9). Thériault, R., Olson, J. A., Krol, S. A., & Raz, A. (2021). Body swapping with a Black person boosts empathy: Using virtual reality to embody another. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(12), 2057–2074. Thomas, A. (2018). The hate u give. Balzer + Bray. Thomson, N., & Chapman, S. (2004). An inquiry safari: Teachers and students investigate gorilla motion and behavior. The Science Teacher, 71(10), 20–25. Torres, K., & Statti, A. (2021). Designing engaging virtual field trips for secondary English language art students. In C. M. Moran & M. F. Rice (Eds.), Virtual and augmented reality in English language arts education. Rowman & Littlefield. Tuthill, G., & Klemm, E. B. (2002). Virtual field trips: Alternatives to actual field trips. International Journal of Instructional Media, 29(4), 453. Verne, J. (2021 [1870]). 20,000 leagues under the sea. Reader’s Library Classics. Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L. (Directors). (1999). The Matrix [Film]. Warner Bros.

Chapter 14

Stories of Our Community Podcasting for Place-Based Inquiry Margaret A. Delgado-Chernick

Introduction I’ve always firmly believed that all disciplines need storytellers and that encouraging students to impact their communities through the written word is the key to saving the world. The preservation of our history, the funding for environmental projects, the inspiration for social change, and the evolu­ tion of education in our society all depend on our ability to train students to tell stories with real purpose for societal change. The problem, of course, is that students don’t always make the connection between classroom writing assignments and writing to change the world. Projects with “real-world” applications don’t seem to truly reach students unless those projects actually get out into the real world. Providing authentic experiences and audiences for my students has been one of my goals for a long time, but over the last five years my classroom has undergone an extraordinary transformation as I’ve moved from more traditional high school English class lessons to inquiry-based and place-based projects. I’ve come to believe that place-based education is the solution to many of the challenges that teachers find in working with 21st century learners. The over-reliance on electronics has paradoxically connected and isolated stu­ dents from their peers, and teachers aren’t completely sure whether to embrace or avoid personal devices in the classroom. The instructional tech­ nology introduced during the COVID pandemic propelled the world of education into an entirely new mode of operation that teachers struggled to follow, and the advancement of technology certainly hasn’t slowed down in the last few years. AI writing generators have introduced entirely new con­ cerns about whether students will see writing as relevant in the future. Teachers have also been asked to incorporate more social and emotional lessons into the regular classroom to combat growing (and legitimate) con­ cerns about student mental health. The complexity of a teacher’s role has grown to encompass so many new elements in such a short period of time that it is arguably more important than ever to seek out activities that ask students to grapple with the real world. Designing authentic learning DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-18

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experiences for our students is one of the primary ways we can ensure the reason we’re all there in the first place – to teach and learn – isn’t lost in the commotion. In the past, school was the place that housed information, experts, and technology. Now, students have access to more information, experts, and technology than they can process on a daily basis. The kind of inquiry-led experiences that place-based learning is uniquely suited to facilitate focuses on asking students to apply the information and technology they’ve acquired through their own experiences to their academic and personal communities. Rather than trying, as teachers, to determine ways to use new technology, we must ask students to experiment and teach us what works in their classroom community. Rather than assigning writing that asks them to report on specific questions we’ve asked, we need to place the responsibility of identifying worthwhile questions on them so they have the opportunity to create new knowledge instead of merely repeating the old. Rather than tell­ ing students what they need to know for a future that we can barely ima­ gine, we need to encourage them to look around at the world they live in and decide what research needs to be done in order to move the community forward. Place-based education truly provides a framework for reinventing the role of a teacher in the 21st century. The opportunities a teacher creates by finding authentic audiences and immersive “mindful” experiences for students to showcase knowledge provides the social and emotional con­ fidence that students need to connect with their world. Beginning with a collaboration between the National Park Service and the National Writing Project, I’ve attempted to provide these kinds of placebased experiences in my own classroom using a variety of activities. This effort most recently culminated in a student podcasting project, and it is my evolution through this process – ending with a description of the podcast project itself – that will comprise the remainder of this chapter.

Inspiration and Collaboration through the Write Out Initiative Early in my career, due to my own love of our local and National Parks, I began looking for ways to incorporate environmental conversations into my ELA classroom. At various points I’d called several area park systems and organizations that offered professional development for teachers to inquire about opportunities for connecting students with nature. Almost all of the offerings I found were designed for science teachers. In several cases, there were opportunities for social studies or art teachers, but there was very little in our area to connect writing teachers with an interest in the outdoors for collaboration and professional development. However, I believed that pow­ erful writing was essential to all environmental initiatives, and I was sure that somehow I could develop writing projects that could get my students

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involved in making real change in the world. In the summer of 2017, I was able to join a year-long cohort of teachers discussing programming for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which provided wonderful insight and networking opportunities for collaboration with our local National Park. Though the discussion was still largely centered around offerings for ele­ mentary and intermediate level science lessons, there was an effort to incor­ porate more writing into the programming. After the cohort ended, I sincerely missed the discussion with other teachers that were invested in finding ways to get students involved with organizations and institutions outside the walls of their classrooms. In the fall of 2018, I came across the text Teaching Climate Change to Ado­ lescents: Reading, Writing, and Making a Difference by Richard Beach, Jeff Share, and Allen Webb. In the introduction to this text, the authors assert that: Humans have always been storytellers and it has long been known that those who tell the stories control the future. It is by critically under­ standing the messages and the stories engulfing them, and learning the skills to take action, that our students can create alternative discourses to change the present and shape the future. (Beach, Share, & Webb, 2017, p. 1) It was gratifying to discover someone else advocating for the same ideas about the role of ELA teachers in environmental education that I believed so strongly needed to be heard. My initial interest in connecting students to nature and the National Park System transitioned into a fascination with the benefits of place-based writing to connect students to their own communities as well as to encourage civic engagement. The work of Gonzalez et al. (2005) led me to think about place-based learning as an opportunity to encourage equity for all student voices. McInerney (2011) helped me to fur­ ther consider the possibilities of place-based writing by highlighting con­ cerns centered on the flaws in simply taking students outdoors for “nature writing” without asking them to delve deeper into the factors that con­ tributed to creating the specific place they were using for inspiration. In other words, I began to see the difference between “nature writing” and place-based education was the difference between simply observing the characteristics of a place and understanding the story of a specific place in the context of the community. The same can be said of our students; inquiry-based writing that integrates students’ personal experiences in a variety of places provides them with an opportunity to understand their own stories within the context of their community. Shannon and Galle (2017) subsequently provided me with a vision for the future of my classroom as a place where all student writing was grounded in relevant connections to students’ daily lives through inquiry and exploration of local-to-global con­ nections between class content and application in the local community.

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In 2018, I also discovered the Write Out initiative, which connected me to a group of dynamic educators advocating for place-based education. National Writing Project sites and National Parks and Historic Sites all over the United States have developed partnerships for writing marathons and teacher workshops with support and grants from the Write Out program. With a goal of “tap[ping] into the value of the outdoors in support of learning while also building on the importance of place-based writing” (National Writing Project, n.d.), the program allows teachers across the country to share outdoor writing prompts online for two weeks in October, and it also provides them with a platform for sharing student work pro­ duced in these outdoor settings. Additionally, the initiative supports outdoor classroom activities through grants and professional networking commu­ nities. I sent information about the program to my home National Writing Project site at Kent State University and to the Cuyahoga Valley Con­ servancy for consideration and, to my surprise, members of both groups were eager to meet and discuss a potential partnership. Over the next few months, we were able to pull together a grant proposal and a team of edu­ cators dedicated to developing authentic experiences for student writing. At first, in this initial attempt to incorporate place-based writing in my teaching, our main goals for Write Out programming centered on encoura­ ging local teachers to create partnerships with local parks for cross-curri­ cular writing lessons at all grade levels. The first workshop we held in the Cuyahoga Valley, titled Write Where You Are, was a resounding success. Our sessions focused on helping teachers find inspiration for authentic writing tasks at natural and historic sites in students’ own communities. The goal was to provide ideas for using places to inspire all types of writing. Every participant wanted to incorporate more outdoor writing in their classrooms, but they also recognized that the type of writing privileged by state standards and high-stakes tests did not mesh easily with writing in natural spaces. To help resolve this tension, we made it our mission to demonstrate strategies for using outdoor places in students’ local commu­ nities to inspire argument, informational, and narrative writing that aligned with our state standards. As a result, we were advocating for the principal use of place-based writing without realizing it. The entire workshop was very well received and staff members from the Cuyahoga Valley Con­ servancy enthusiastically encouraged us to plan future workshops and events with the Write Out initiative.

Implementing Place-Based Writing through Children’s Books The success of our prior work led me to the second stage of my journey as a place-based educator. Aided by grant money from the Write Out committee in Cuyahoga Valley, I planned my first place-based unit for my own class­ room in order to advance my district’s goal of implementing cross-curricular

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Project Based Learning across all grade levels. The children’s book project I introduced to my 10th grade American Literature students in February of 2020 completely invigorated my classroom. The project was part of our Romantic and Transcendentalist poetry unit, and it was actually inspired by a discussion I had with several previous students about the fact that nature “creeped them out.” After spending quite a bit of time thinking about the lack of connection some students have with nature, I decided to use a children’s book project to explore the lack of engagement many 21st-century teens have with the nat­ ural world. We began the project simply by taking a hike in the little patch of woods near the high school. The absolute joy that walking in a creek brought to 15- and 16-year-old students was beautiful and humbling. I’d never seen my classes so engaged, and we didn’t even leave the grounds of the school. Each time we moved, I asked them to stay within a certain area but to feel free to explore it. However, I didn’t provide any instructions on sitting to write or moving together as a group. In each class, it wasn’t long before students were turning over rocks and sharing knowledge about moss and creek creatures with one another. Whenever I noticed an individual or group that didn’t seem engaged, I would ask questions about what they noticed or whether they knew of parks that had creeks to play in or other interesting features that kids would enjoy. My primary goal for the activity, based on what I’d learned through my reading and work with Write Out, was to avoid my instinct to “teach” the kids by talking too much and telling my own stories about parks and places; I consciously sought to get them to tell stories and provide observations about our hike to educate me. In fact, in all of the place-based lessons that I’ve conducted since this first major project, I’ve generally judged the success of the products by how much I learn from my students. Our Write Where You Are committee had created a booklet with various short writing exercises for teachers at our workshop. These included writing riddles, “zooming in” on objects by writing about them from various dis­ tances, nature journaling, and personifying plants, animals, and landscape features. I provided my own students with copies of these booklets and asked them to complete any of the activities that resonated with them or to simply write their own ideas about things they observed. We then returned to the classroom to tell stories of our nature adventures as children. Many students admitted that they rarely explored the woods and parks in the area anymore, though they had loved to adventure in those places when they were younger. All four of my classes quickly identified electronic devices as the primary reason they had stopped adventuring as children. It wasn’t dif­ ficult to guide that conversation to our essential question for the unit: “How can we encourage children in the 21st century to have a relationship with nature?” I piled about 100 children’s books about animals, plants, and other nature topics around my room for a week and we examined the books to

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create success criteria for our own books. In groups, students began writing stories about local plants, animals, and parks to encourage younger children to maintain a spirit of curiosity and adventure. Unfortunately, this project began at the end of February 2020. Right as our efforts began to take off, COVID-19 threw the entire world into an upheaval. The first of our children’s books was finished in March on the very last day of school before the pandemic shutdown. None of the rest were ever completed. The project that finally seemed to perfectly combine all my district’s initiatives for 21st century learning, all the goals that the Write Out Partnership aimed to meet, and my own personal goals for pro­ viding my students with authentic opportunities inquiry and writing was impossible to finish virtually. I was devastated. As you know, the pandemic forced teachers to reimagine nearly every single aspect of education almost overnight. The end of the 2019–2020 school year brought a quick, collective sigh of relief, but the work that needed to be done that summer was almost equally overwhelming as the shift we had just experienced. Our Write Out committee’s goals needed to be reimagined as well. Suddenly field trips were no longer a possibility at all. We had originally encouraged teachers to simply use the grounds of their own school campuses as opportunities for writing outside the classroom if they were unable to take field trips, but suddenly students were shifted to virtual learning. As a result, even nature walks around the school grounds became impossible. Teachers all over the world found themselves scram­ bling to focus on the use of technology to engage student learners, and I was in the same boat. We were suddenly inundated with a series of virtual workshops focused on implementing activities as disparate as Google Suite and mindfulness exercises. After sitting through a series of these online seminars, it was difficult to find the motivation to plan presentations for a teacher workshop advocating for the implementation of writing activities outside the home that encouraged higher level thinking while also being low tech. Nevertheless, everyone on our committee believed that our mission was more important than ever. Students that were glued to their Chromebooks desperately needed reasons to engage with the world away from the computer screen. Students cut off from the places that made their commu­ nities connected needed to feel that their voices were heard outside of the classroom. This realization led me to the third crucial stage in my evolution as a place-based educator.

Reimaging Place-Based Learning During the Pandemic In the summer of 2020, I discovered The Power of Place: Authentic Learning Through Place-Based Education by Tom Vander Ark, Emily Liebtag, and Nate McClennen (2020). Even though I had been engaging my students in “place-based education,” it was in the work of Vander Ark, Liebtag, and

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McClennen that I first learned that specific term, as well as the six design principles of Place-Based Education (PBE), as defined by the Teton Science Schools (n.d.): 1 2 3 4 5 6

Embeds learning everywhere and views the community as a classroom. Is centered on individual learners. Is inquiry based to help students develop an understanding of their place in the world. Incorporates local and global thinking and investigations. Requires design thinking to find solutions to authentic problems. Is interdisciplinary.

These principles guided the change in my approach to lesson planning. Vander Ark, Liebtag, and McClennen’s book essentially presented the idea of Place-Based Education as a pedagogy, rather than a method for creating units by combining different pedagogical approaches. In addition to provid­ ing a framework for instruction, Vander Ark, Liebtag, and McClennen (2020) define three aspects of Place-Based Education as focal points for designing meaningful Place-Based Learning experiences: Agency, Equity, and Community (10–12). Equal access to lessons designed for individual action or ¨agency¨ in the community should be provided to all students. At the secondary level, many classes focus on theoretical study from books and classroom activities. Some students are able to find applications for these lessons in the community through family connections, extracurricular activ­ ities, or volunteering. Unfortunately, many other students miss these opportunities. For students to feel that they have a voice in the adult world, they must be taught strategies for agency in the community just as they are taught any other skill, and all students deserve equal access to these oppor­ tunities. Citizenship is a type of dialogue or give-and-take relationship between any individual and the community they inhabit. Just as every person is shaped and influenced by the communities that he or she is a part of, every community is uniquely shaped by every individual that inhabits that place. When students are taught to understand the different community aspects that are interwoven to create a specific place, they are better able to add their individual voices to the conversations that move the community forward. This engagement must be taught and practiced just as concretely as any math or grammar concept. That summer, I began to consider approaching all units, regardless of topic, through a PBE lens. Of course, some topics were easier than others to reimagine, but asking students to produce inquiry-based writing for authentic audiences in their own com­ munities on a regular basis was the single most transformative thing that has ever happened to my classroom (Chernick, 2021). Despite the challenges of teaching during a pandemic, the 2020–2021 school year was one of the most inspiring of my career. I began looking for

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any opportunity for my students to write authentically: to present writing to someone other than me for any purpose other than a grade. Though several of my first ideas were too ambitious and unrealistic for publication, I cer­ tainly noticed that students were highly engaged in any project that asked them to consider local places, organizations, and issues. Incorporating our local community into every aspect of class gave our work a new relevance. The highlight of that school year was the creation of student-produced podcast episodes highlighting “stories worth telling” in our town of Twinsburg, Ohio.

Conceiving the Podcast Project I love the fact that I teach in my own hometown of Twinsburg, Ohio. It is such a joy to have the opportunity to dedicate my career to the young people that are the future of my own community. I am raising my own children in Twinsburg as well, so my personal connections to the places in the town where I teach certainly run deep. The struggles of my students during the pandemic were very personal, as they were also the children of my neighbors and friends. Not only that, but businesses were closing, organizations were losing membership, and local historic sites were unable to host visitors. The organizations and businesses in the community that were suffering from loss of patronage during COVID meant that the same people in the community that had supported me as a child were struggling as well. The podcast pro­ ject was first and foremost a love letter to my town, which is why we called it “Stories of Our Community.” Shannon and Galle (2017) discuss the fact that Place-Based Education rose in response to larger concerns about the alienating effects of non-permeable classroom walls that separated students from their communities rather than embedding them within the ecologies where they are located¨ (p. 5) Unfor­ tunately, Galle and Shannon note, Place-Based Education often separates the rural and urban areas, disconnecting students from their own communities to visit farms, historical sites, or nature preserves. Though all of these places provide valuable learning opportunities for students, it is a disservice to students if all place-based experiences take place in locations separate from their own communities and daily lives. With this particular caveat in mind, I knew that I wanted to encourage students to consider the role of storytelling for real purposes in the fourth quarter of the school year and I knew that I wanted them to use the places that they lived and visited every day as “funds of knowledge” for their own work (Gonzalez et al., 2005). The third quarter of the 10th grade curriculum for our district includes the book The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017a). In a 2017 NPR interview about her inspiration for the story, Thomas (2017b) discusses the fact that she wrote the short story that became The Hate U Give in response to the killing of a young man named

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Oscar Grant by a police officer in 2009. According to Thomas, the frustra­ tion and helplessness that she felt hearing discussions about the incident at school called her to take action. In the interview, she notes that, “the only thing I knew how to do at the time was write, so I actually wrote the short story that would later become The Hate U Give.” Thomas’s powerful nar­ rative, though fiction, was the starting point for my students to consider how storytelling can be used for a variety of authentic purposes in our own community. Chavez (2021) redefines the role of a writing teacher as pri­ marily a listener and partner, rather than the traditional view of writing teacher as “judge” of merit. Pairing Thomas’s example of using personal experience to inspire writing with Chavez’s methods of questioning and validating during workshops led to a significant leap of confidence in student writing as we became partners in determining which stories they had to tell and discussed choices they might make as authors. In the fourth quarter, after finishing The Hate U Give, students had the opportunity to choose novels for independent study and the discussions for that unit were focused around analyzing elements of narrative. The appli­ cation of these narrative elements for their own purposes wasn’t a novel idea, but the task of finding local stories and producing them in a way that could be displayed for the public was certainly a challenge to me. The evergrowing presence of earbuds in class led me to consider podcasts as a pos­ sible multimodal approach, though my technological abilities are average at best and podcasting was certainly unfamiliar territory. Gagich (2020) broa­ dened my understanding of multimodal composition a great deal. In tradi­ tional English classes, students often compose writing and then present it with a visual or auditory aid. However, in the modern world, students compose visual and auditory pieces without prior writing on a daily basis. Treating podcasts, photography, video projects, posters, websites, and infographics as legitimate genres with conventions, formats, and styles that meet specific audiences and purposes allows students to find plenty of relevance in the composition process when they’re permitted to engage with these mul­ timodal products. Though I wasn’t well versed in podcasting specifically, I was excited about exploring a true multimodal composition project (as opposed to asking students to simply complete a presentation after writing), and I wanted to partner with my students to figure out what a successful podcast needed to include. I also relied heavily on Couros (2015) and his work in engaging and facilitating collaborative learning. Luckily, my district is supportive of teachers who aim to pilot new stra­ tegies for learning. Beth Mariola, our Supervisor for Innovative Program­ ming, has an unbelievable ability to make any teacher’s vision a manageable reality in the classroom. Within a week after hearing my idea, she had explored several options for free online podcasting sites that were compa­ tible with student Chromebooks and had worked out a plan for visiting my classroom to teach students how to find free audio and music clips. Without

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her help, I would have abandoned the project in the first week and simply asked students to present the stories to classmates. Her expertise led stu­ dents to create final products that were far more polished than anything I had originally imagined. This underscores the necessity of relying on resources in your own school or district to help bring these projects to life.

Implementing the Podcast Project Our first day of the podcast project began with a simple session of class brainstorming. I asked students about the places and people in town they believed had stories worth sharing. I wrote “Twinsburg Public Library,” “Liberty Park,” and “Outdoor Pool” on the board and asked students if they knew how any of those places came to exist. The first problem I encountered when introducing the project to my students was the fact that they did not seem to feel there was much inspiration for storytelling in the town of Twinsburg. We talked about the amount of people it takes for any place to be designated as a park or for any community facility to be built. I asked them to come up with additional places in the community that had “stories.” At first, they simply listed businesses and public facilities that were wellknown. After we had collected a certain number of locations, I asked whe­ ther they would argue that the places on the board had stories “worth tell­ ing.” I wasn’t exactly surprised when my question was met with silence. The first breakthrough came when one student asked whether he could tell the story of his uncle’s barbershop. Another student then mentioned that his father had attended “The Old School,” which was built in 1921 and had been recently demolished after a controversial grassroots fight to save it. That student thought preserving the story of the school for future residents of Twinsburg was worth considering. Another student mentioned that she thought a recent tornado that had demolished several houses was one of the most interesting stories about Twinsburg she knew. The discussion began to gain some steam and we quickly generated more story ideas than we could possibly produce. Our final collection included, among others, stories from a ghost hunter, memories of Geauga Lake Park, a “tour” of a local cemetery, an in-depth description of Tinker’s Creek by a local naturalist, the history of the Twinsburg High School football program, an interview with a local police officer, the story of the Mail Pouch Tobacco Barn in the middle of town, an interview with an up-and-coming local rapper, an account of a Black Lives Matter rally in town, and the story of the unique challenges faced by the 2021 graduating class. Once I defined for the class what we were trying to do, we worked toge­ ther to define how we needed to do it. The truth was, I had never produced a podcast and we certainly weren’t able to take field trips anywhere to learn how to do it. However, I wanted to ensure that my students were venturing out into the community. To encourage students to actively engage with

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Figure 14.1 Example student direction sheet for how to evaluate a podcast.

people around town, I added a personal interview as one of the podcast requirements. However, outside the fact that they needed to produce a podcast with an interview to investigate a “story worth telling” in Twinsburg, I had no distinct rubric at that point to help guide our conception of what an effective podcast should sound like. Instead, we used sample podcasts from the Science, Quickly (DelViscio, 2017–2022) episodes, published by Scientific American, excerpts from the Serial (Koenig, 2014) podcast by

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Figure 14.2 Student research proposal activity sheet.

the creators of This American Life, and episodes of the podcast Fiasco! (Glass, 2013) to build success criteria for the class. Students listened to sev­ eral podcasts in the classroom and recorded observations about things that seemed effective for the message and purpose. They also noted elements in the podcasts that were distracting or ineffective. Additionally, I asked them to listen to a few episodes of a podcast on a topic that they enjoyed inde­ pendently. After exploring these examples, we discussed the criteria for the “A” level podcasts in our classroom. Students contributed to a collective list of elements that the best podcasts included and then we looked for patterns in their observations. Eventually we polished the list into an impressive collection of criteria that the students agreed the most effective podcasts would include. Finding a program to produce quality podcasts was, of course, another challenge. Beth Mariola, the district’s Supervisor for Innovative Program­ ming, introduced us to RedcoolMedia, a free online video and audio editing tool. Though I understood the basics of the program, she also offered to

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Figure 14.3 Student direction sheet for how to conduct an interview.

train my students on it during class. During the first two days of the project, Beth trained students on RedcoolMedia and taught them to find free sound effects and music clips while I worked with them on writing the intro­ ductory segments of the podcasts and practicing mock interviews recorded on Screencastify. Unsurprisingly, several of the tech-savvy students in each class took on the task of helping others troubleshoot issues as they came up. The process of interviewing someone in the community was intimidating to students at first. Many asked if they could just interview parents or

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Figure 14.4 Example self-evaluation rubric.

whether they had to complete the interview. To prepare, we discussed the difference between an interview and a Q&A session. Students were instruc­ ted to use follow up questions based on careful listening, and we discussed what it means to responsively “follow the story” rather than simply fire questions at the interviewee. Students practiced interviewing one another while recording their conversations, which led to a lot of bonding moments

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and a lot of laughter. One of the biggest challenges we faced was, of course, connecting with people to conduct interviews. I sent quite a few emails to the historical society, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and area businesses to ask for help from anyone willing to talk with my students. Many students were able to conduct in-person interviews, but due to the pandemic, we had to get creative to accommodate those who weren’t able to meet with inter­ viewees. We conducted a few interviews via Google Meet using Screencastify to record audio. In several cases, we sent interview questions via email and then asked a classmate to pose as a voice actor, reading the written respon­ ses from the interviewee. Truthfully, problem solving with my students was one of my favorite parts of the project and the personal nature of the assignment led to far more innovation from students than I had hoped for. They became very invested in the stories and actively searched for ways to enhance the recordings. Class periods at the end of April were dedicated to editing audio content and recording scripted narration to splice together with the interview, music, and sound effects. I provided structured instructions for the intro­ duction of the podcasts, and we conducted a whole-class peer review session for feedback in the beginning to establish an expectation of quality. After the introduction, students worked at their own pace to write, record, seek feedback, re-record, troubleshoot, and celebrate the middle sections of the podcast. Because interview appointments depended largely on the avail­ ability of the interviewee, students also worked on assignments for inde­ pendent reading novels whenever they had spare time during class. Students enjoyed the self-paced nature of the project and I kept them on target to meet minor deadlines through daily conferencing. The students who finished early helped to figure out exactly how to upload the finished products to the Google Site that would feature our collection of stories. Each student inclu­ ded a picture and one-sentence description of the podcast for display on the site. As they finished, students wrote and sent thank you notes to the people in the community that had agreed to be interviewed. I was pleased to hear from parents and students that many of the interviewees were excited to hear the finished products. Students took pride in sharing their website with members of the community and parents were very impressed by the quality of the podcasts. In a year when morale for students was certainly low and teachers were encouraged to lower expectations, all of my sophomores pro­ duced authentic, engaging podcasts that were shared with audiences outside of our own classroom.

Reflections on the Podcast Project Looking back on our podcasting adventure from two years in the future, I am still impressed at what we were able to accomplish in such a challenging year. In the 2021–2022 school year we brought the podcast project back,

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though a change in our schedule and some requirements in the curriculum meant that we had to use an abbreviated version of the original plan. The podcast project opened up the world to my classroom. Because of that experience, I learned how to ask organizations and businesses in the com­ munity to participate in learning with my students. I’ve been amazed by the opportunities and resources that have come my way in these last two years. The most wonderful thing about place-based learning is the fact that my students have the ability to share their perspectives on the world in every­ thing they write. If there is one single thing I’ve learned about place-based education through the various stages of my own evolution as a teacher described in this chapter, it’s that the goal of connecting students to their own communities can’t happen unless a teacher connects to her community first. The best things that have happened in my classroom in the last five years have been entirely col­ laborative and entirely due to the involvement of other adults invested in my students’ futures. The National Writing Project at Kent State, the rangers at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, and other organizations in the Twinsburg area have been enthusiastic and sup­ portive every single time I send an email. The people in my own district that have encouraged innovation inspire me daily with their belief that, though change is hard, it is worthwhile. Providing students with opportunities to push their writing outside of the classroom for authentic audiences teaches them to engage with their community and engage in conversations with businesses and organizations. The realization that those businesses and orga­ nizations have an interest in what students have to say could empower them to use their voices in the future for the advancement and improvement of their own communities. When students believe their own unique stories and experiences have value to the world, they become invested in the storytelling that is so crucial to every discipline and career field. As educators, we have a responsibility to show every student that they matter enough to have an entire community invested in their future.

References Beach, R., Share, J., & Webb, A. (2017). Teaching climate change to adolescents: Reading, writing, and making a difference. Routledge. Chavez, F. R. (2021). The anti-racist writing workshop: How to decolonize the creative classroom. Haymarket. Chernick, M. (2021). Unpacking the complex nature of place-based education. [Unpublished paper]. English Department, Bowling Green State University. Couros, G. (2015). The innovator´s mindset: Empower learning, unleash talent, and lead a culture of creativity. Dave Burgess Consulting. DelViscio, J. (Chief Multimedia Editor). (2017–2022). Science, quickly. [Audio podcast]. Scientific American.

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Gagich, M. (2020). An introduction to and strategies for multimodal composing. In D. Driscoll, M. Stewart, & M. Vetter (Eds.), Writing spaces: Readings on writing (3rd ed.) (pp. 65–85). Parlor. Glass, I. (Host). (2013). Fiasco! [audio podcast]. This American Life. Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Routledge. Koenig, S. (Host). (2014) Serial. [Audio podcast]. This American Life. McInerney, P.et al. (2011) “Coming to a place near you?” The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2010.540894. National Writing Project. (2023) About Write Out. https://writeout.nwp.org/about/. Shannon, D. & Galle, J. (Eds.) (2017). Interdisciplinary approaches to pedagogy and place-based education. Palgrave Macmillan. Teton Science Schools. (n.d.) Place-based education. www.tetonscience.org/about/pla ce-based-education/. Thomas, A. (2017a). The hate u give. Balzer + Bray. Thomas, A. (2017b, February 26). “The hate U give” explores racism and police violence. www.npr.org/2017/02/26/517305270/the-hate-u-give-explores-racism-and-p olice-violence Vander Ark, T., Liebtag, E., & McClennen, N. (2020) The power of place: Authentic learning through place-based education. ASCD.

Chapter 15

Touring the Place You Know Best Virtual Tours as a Way to Teach Narrative, Argument, and Research Writing Rob Montgomery Introduction Growing up in a small farming community in southwestern Ohio in the early 1980s, all the kids knew we could find the best candy at Bonfiglio’s Pharmacy on Broadway. Sure, it was the place our parents filed their prescriptions, but all we had to do was hang a left just inside the glass door that faced the street to be greeted with row upon row of the kind of brightly colored packaging that separated us from a serious sugar fix. Bonfiglio’s had all the usual sus­ pects – Snickers, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, and so on – but what truly separated the pharmacy from the supermarket chains was the availability of – wait for it – movie theater snacks. Junior Mints. Sno-Caps. Goobers. Mike and Ike. Raisinettes. And Bonfiglio’s got even more esoteric from there, with racks of candy cigarettes, Big League Chew, Necco wafers, and Lemonheads as well as an assortment of the weird candy bars no one ever bought (Skor, U-No, Big Hunk, etc.). There was also a nearby refrigerator case, and if we were lucky we could buy and quickly shotgun a can of Jolt Cola before our parents realized how we were spending our allowance. Second place in our local candy sweepstakes went to Teaford’s Dairy Store, a small mom-and-pop operation run out of what looked like a family home. They had a deep bench of chocolatey treats, but it just missed the abundance of Bonfiglio’s. Quality control dropped off sharply after Tea­ ford’s. The supermarkets were certainly nothing to write home about. Kroger was pretty much limited to the big name snacks, as was Marsh’s. Our town had two IGA (Independent Grocers Alliance) stores, one at the north end of town, one at the south. You went to the newer, cleaner north store for better candy, but stuck to the older, dirtier south store for the best selection of comic books. This wasn’t written down anywhere. We just knew. Does this story feel indulgent? Maybe it is. But it seemed important to start a chapter about how to leverage our students’ knowledge of place with DOI: 10.4324/9781003409076-19

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a brief illustration of the way in which we all have unique, specialized understandings of the communities in which we live. As I considered differ­ ent ways to begin this chapter, I certainly wasn’t confined to a story about candy. The Little League fields, the city park, the local cinema, the railroad bridge on the west side of town, the fairgrounds, the country club where I held down a summer job as a busboy – I had a range of places from which to choose. And I had stories about all of them. I bet you do, too. You don’t even have to cast your memory back to childhood. Think about where you live now. You almost certainly pos­ sess insider knowledge about the shops you like to frequent, the restau­ rants at which you like to eat, the parks and other attractions you choose for relaxation. If I asked you to tell stories about some of them, you could probably do that, too. You’ve come by this information acci­ dentally, simply as a result of the experiences and interactions you have in your daily life. But it’s important knowledge in that it represents the totality of your experiences as you move through the world. It’s your own unique take on the community in which you live. No one else has exactly the same one. Now: consider your students. They have specialized knowledge of their community, as well. How often are they asked to share it? How often is their unique perspective on their community validated in most school set­ tings? What opportunity are they given to tell their own stories of the com­ munity in which they live? If honoring our students’ voices by encouraging them to share their own per­ spectives is one of our goals, it’s incumbent upon us to consider how to make this happen on a practical level. Beyond that, however, we also should think about how to make it happen in a way that feels authentic, that maps onto real-world writing genres, that incorporates a novel use of technology, that is grounded in the reality of the places our students inhabit, and that allows us to teach and assess the kinds of writing privileged by schools, standards, and tests. One method that, improbable as it might seem, ticks all the boxes I just mentioned is asking your students to create a collaborative virtual tour of their community. Using a free online mapping tool, students can write in a range of genres for an authentic audience with the express purpose of shar­ ing the insider knowledge they have accumulated about their own environ­ ment. Whether or not that includes candy.

Guiding Theory Even though the virtual tour project is relatively simple – write a series of pieces in different genres about places you know – in terms of its theoretical framework, it lies directly at the crossroads of place-based writing and educational technology.

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Place-Based Writing for the Purpose of Community Validation and Reclamation Even though the writing produced during the virtual tour project “lives” in a virtual setting, it is still very much informed by place-based principles. Place-based writing has its roots in outdoor or environmental education (Armbruster & Wallace, 2001; Buell, 1995; Woodhouse & Knapp, 2000), ostensibly for the purpose of helping students develop “a mindset of appreciating and caring for places near and far” and to “situate the benefit we leave behind” (Vander Ark, Liebtag, & McClennen, 2020, p. 131). This is certainly valuable work, and given the ever-present climate crisis, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say it’s vital work on which English teachers should embark (Beach, Share, & Webb, 2017). In recent years, however, the practice of place-based writing has been expanded by some teachers and writers to validate students’ experiences in their own communities. In some instances, this is being done in urban settings. Kinloch (2010) has written compellingly of students in a rapidly gentrifying Harlem who sud­ denly find themselves experiencing a crisis of identity. They see the benefits of the revitalized neighborhood, but they are also keenly aware of what is being lost from the “old” neighborhood in the process. Writing about this tension, in the process reclaiming the neighborhood’s stories from the forces attempting to erase them, can help students “envision their civic roles and duties within a larger, democratic society” (Kinloch, 2010, p. 54). Similarly, Christensen (2015) has had her students write narratives about their own changing neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon, in order to help them “work toward justice by combating the injustices of the past and present in the hope of a better future” (p. 21). Using place-based writing to validate the experiences of students from rural settings has also gained traction in recent years. Rigell and Banack (2019) helped students push back on stereotypes about their Appalachian community by incorporating a project wherein the students studied local authors and then wrote poems validating the worth of the community (and their places in it). In the process, their students were encouraged “to think critically about representation” and “challenge stereotypes that mis­ represent communities and cultures” (p. 43). Parton (2022) also endorses the practice of asking students to write their own stories that center rur­ ality. Doing so helps students honor “the multiplicity and diversity of rural experiences” (p. 13). In all these cases, the authors acknowledge the power of asking students to engage with their own communities. This contradicts the traditional notion of place-based writing existing solely in natural, unspoiled places, but the work it encourages is no less valuable. As rural educator Robert Brooke reminds us:

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If education in general, and writing education in particular, is to become more relevant, to become a real force for improving the socie­ ties in which we live, then it must be more closely linked to the local, to the spheres of action and influence which most of us experience. (Brooke, 2003, p. 5) Virtual Tours and Technology as Third Place Although place-based writing is predicated on the notion of getting students out of the school setting and into the world (Esposito, 2012; Gruenewald, 2003; Montgomery & Montgomery, 2021; Smith & Sobel, 2010; Sobel, 2004), there’s an argument to be made for bringing the world into the classroom. After all, for some teachers, resources for off-site travel are hard to come by. Administration can occasionally be reluctant to sign off on anything that looks unconventional (and that might cost money). The fall­ out from the COVID-19 pandemic continues to complicate things for edu­ cation. For all these reasons, it is important that teachers consider how digital tools can be used to thoughtfully infuse place-based principles in a traditional classroom setting. If this sounds far-fetched, consider the ways in which online settings possess all three of the characteristics of place identified by Agnew (1987): location, locale, and sense of place.1 The location is the URL or app you’re using to access the electronic resource. The locale would be all the compo­ nents that make that particular resource distinct from other resources. And the sense of place would pertain to the way you feel about a particular digital tool, such as its ease of use or its value to students and teachers. In the case of social media platforms, the sense of place might even extend to the way interactions on that site make you feel. For a recent example, Meta’s Twitter (now X) alternative, Threads, was positioned by founder Mark Zuckerberg as a friendly “shelter from the noisy and chaotic world of news and politics” (Allyn, 2023). As someone who has dabbled in both platforms, I can confirm that Threads (so far) is missing much of the toxi­ city I often found on Twitter, and as a result, its sense of place is much more comfortable and welcoming. Beyond those definitional concerns, though, the social nature of many online platforms has led writers to conclude that many electronic platforms align with the notion of “third places.” These places, “public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work” (Oldenburg, 1991, p. 16), have much in common with the social component of many websites or apps, and it didn’t take long for researchers to note these similarities. For exam­ ple, researchers concluded that online games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft meet the definition of a “third place” in the way they facilitate collaborative gaming (Moore, Gathman, & Ducheneaut, 2009; Steinkuehler

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& Williams, 2006). In this way, we can start to think about the ways in which the virtual world consists of places with their own distinct features that can be leveraged for authentic writing. As a practical example of that phenomenon, Lammers (2016) studied a forum where young adults wrote fan fiction about the video game The Sims. The participants would use screenshots from the game as the foundation for original narratives that expanded the world of the characters. Lammers found that if these writers wanted their work to be appreciated by the other participants, they “need[ed] to attend to the grammars, structures, and expectations valued by their particular audiences” (p. 329). In other words, the public nature of this writing – existing entirely online and based on a video game – adopted more of the traits of authentic, agentive writing than what we often see in classrooms. The virtual tour project attempts to emulate something similar: providing students with an authentic, engaging, real-world context for writing about place, and then house it in a virtual setting where it will be viewed by others for a specific purpose.

The Activity It’s spring, and the 28 English language arts student teachers in my classroom are ready to graduate and get into classrooms of their own. The teacher can­ didates in our English Education program are placed in schools for a full aca­ demic year, starting with pre-planning (which, in Georgia, begins inhumanely at the end of July) and ending right before graduation at the end of April. They’re 90% done with student teaching, which means two things: (1) Their attention is, to put it charitably, not totally on our classwork, so it would be a good idea to engage them in something relevant and exciting; and (2) as a group of thoughtful, passionate new teachers, they’re the perfect audience on which to field-test this activity. Because I like to experiment with activities and workshops with my cur­ rent students the way I would have done them (or imagine I would have done them) with my former high school students, I’ll describe the virtual tour project using the series of steps I explained to my preservice teachers, elaborate as I go, and provide some additional discussion on the other side. Because this approach can sometimes seem like I’m trying to do a magic trick – leading you by the hand until the big reveal, when you see how it all comes together – I’ll take a moment now to briefly summarize the virtual tour project. The activity itself grew out of my own experience exploring virtual tours prior to traveling internationally. As I consulted these tours – primarily of museums, historic sites, and cities – I noticed the range of writing that appeared in them. There was the standard assortment of informational pieces, sharing interesting background and trivia about the site. But there were also opinion pieces, usually in the form of “reviews”2 of

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businesses or restaurants as well as short narrative pieces that told stor­ ies about the location in question. Because I know from experience that narrative, argument, and explanatory writing are still the three academic genres privileged in schools, it seemed like a natural fit to explore ways in which students might create a virtual tour of a place they know well and incorporate the genres of writing they’re typically taught. The fact that this project would map onto a real-world skill set was just the icing on the cake. The project itself, then, goes like this. On a virtual map to which the entire class has access (I use mymaps.google.com – more explanation to come below), students drop pins on three places that resonate with them. They then complete three pieces of writing, one per pin / location: a perso­ nal story for the first place (narrative writing); a review of the second place (argument writing); and a short informative piece about the third place (explanatory writing). Because the entire class has access to the map, they get to see the pins – and the rich writing that accompanies them – populate in real time. One caveat: in your own classroom, I encourage you not to try to cram this entire activity into a single class period. In fact, I think you would find it supremely unsatisfying to do so. I conducted an abbreviated version of this entire activity with my class in roughly an hour. I imagine you would want to take longer with your own students – and maybe even much longer, in order to adequately ensure they’d be successful writing in these different genres. This is especially true of the informational piece. The purpose of sharing this project in class was more to provide my students with the experience, so they could consider using it with their own students. For that reason, they were allowed to liberally (and probably inaccurately) use Wikipedia or other potentially questionable online sources for their research. However, if you’re actually assessing your students’ ability to conduct, synthesize, and communicate research, you would certainly want to put more safeguards in place. Finally, it would likely be even more effective still if you required (or at least encouraged) your students to visit the places they chose to write about. On those visits, they could take photos to use in the final project (as you’ll see below), but visiting the actual places would allow your students to render them in even more compelling detail. With that in mind, here are the steps I used: 1 2 3 4 5

Generative freewriting. Idea share. Rough drafts. Turning stories into map points. Publication and sharing.

The following sections describe each of these steps in turn.

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Generative Freewriting Most of the workshops I conduct in class begin with 5–7 minutes of indivi­ dual, low-stakes writing designed to get students thinking about a particular topic. Largely informed by the work of Elbow (1998) and Goldberg (2016), as well as by own experience as a participant in the South Coast Writing Project, I know how this kind of informal composing can help students get some initial thoughts on paper, whether or not those thoughts eventually bear fruit as they formalize and polish their writing for various forms of publication. The virtual tour project is no different. Rather than use the university community as the locus for their tour, I decided to make nearby Atlanta the community about which we’d share our insider knowledge. Even though there has been an influx of “traditional” students in the last decade, Kenne­ saw State still boasts a large commuter population, and there’s little guar­ antee many of my students would have much knowledge of the immediate community simply because they don’t spend much time here other than when they’re in class. Atlanta, however, less than 30 minutes down I-75, would prove to be a much more productive resource. Even if they didn’t spend much time there, most of my students had visited the metropolitan area enough to have one or two stories to share. With the preceding in mind, I asked my students to write to the following prompt: “List some places in Atlanta with personal resonance. No limitations. Positive associations or negative ones. Parks, restaurants, shops, attractions, etc. It’s all fair game.” I didn’t ask them at this point to tell stories or elaborate on their lists. The goal was simple accumulation. How many places in metropolitan Atlanta came to mind? If it came to mind, it might be productive for writing … eventually. Idea Share Just as I’m an advocate for low-stakes freewriting activities, I usually try to incorporate what Smagorinsky (2008) refers to as “exploratory talk” (p. 11). This is relatively unstructured time for students to share with a partner or small group as much or as little of their freewriting as they’d like. Addi­ tionally, without telling them where we were going next, I asked them to share stories, opinions, or other thoughts about one or two of the places on their list, gently nudging them toward the writing they’d eventually be composing. However, rather than immediately submit this initial writing and thinking to the scrutiny of the entire class, I wanted to provide students with an informal opportunity to test out their emerging thinking. At the end of this time (approximately 10 minutes), I invited students to revise their lists if they heard of any places from their peers that deserved to be added to their own list.

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Rough Drafts At this point, after writing and sharing, I asked students to choose three places from their lists. I told them they’d be writing a story about one of them, a review of a second, and a short informational piece about a third. I shared with them three samples of my own writing, just to give them a sense of what they might choose to write about: a narrative set at the Masquerade (a live music venue), where I had once met the singer of a band I liked; a review of Criminal Records (Atlanta’s biggest record store); and a short informational piece about the history of “the Gold Dome” (Atlanta’s state capitol building). I didn’t provide many guidelines other than this, except to tell them what I assumed would be obvious: make sure you’ve got something to say about each place in the genre you’ve selected to accompany it. In other words, you shouldn’t review the Vortex (a well-known hamburger joint) if you don’t have particularly strong feelings about it, nor should you write a story about Piedmont Park if nothing interesting has ever happened to you there. Before giving them 30 minutes to draft their pieces, I emphasized that due to our time constraints, they shouldn’t feel obligated to polish their writing to a high gloss. The goal was to get three more or less com­ plete – if admittedly rough around the edges – pieces of writing. Turning Stories into Map Points Once everyone completed initial versions of their three pieces, I explained exactly what we were going to be doing with them by sharing with my students this scenario: You’re on the creative board for Atlanta’s Department of Tourism. The department’s newest endeavor is to launch a virtual tour of the city, capturing a range of places that tourists to the city may want to visit. Each member of the Board is responsible for selecting three specific places in the metro Atlanta area to highlight. In order to provide the richest possible experience to our city’s visitors, each member of the board will write a narrative, a review, and a research-based informa­ tional piece that will correspond with the three places you’ve selected. Remember that the goal of this virtual tour is to inform and entertain prospective tourists, so be sure to consider your audience as you write. Finally, I explained how to post to the map. The specifics of this process will obviously hinge on which platform you use in your own classroom. I used mymaps.google.com. A mapping tool that functions much like Goo­ gle’s other products (but which isn’t the same thing as Google Maps), maps can be created, shared with a group of people, and collaborated on syn­ chronously. I had dropped a link to a blank map of Atlanta in our course agenda, and students navigated to it.

Figure 15.1 Blank map of Atlanta, GA.

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After explaining the nuts and bolts of how to drop a pin for each loca­ tion, assign it to a specific genre of writing, insert the piece they had written for it, and attach a photo, I set the students loose to fill in the map. It wasn’t long before they started to see the diversity of places they and their class­ mates had chosen to write about.3 Publication and Sharing Our final step was the shortest but arguably the most fun. Once they had posted writing for their three chosen places (or at least had posted all the writing they felt comfortable sharing), I asked them to click around and see what their classmates had to say about the things worth seeing in Atlanta. I especially wanted them to focus on places they weren’t familiar with, in the process giving them a chance to learn more about the city just down the road.

Discussion A few components of the preceding activity bear unpacking in more detail. What’s Worth Writing About a City? When I initially asked my students to compose a list of places in Atlanta that resonated with them, this question immediately came up: “How far away from Atlanta can our places be?” I didn’t want to limit them too much, but I also wanted their work to be relevant to the idea of a virtual tour of Atlanta. Marietta isn’t Atlanta; nor is Macon. But, like most major cities, Atlanta is generally considered to include a variety of smaller neigh­ borhoods that are part of Atlanta while not exactly being Atlanta (e.g., Decatur, Druid Hills, Avondale, Northside, etc.). For the purposes of the initial list, I told them to use their common sense – that they know what is and what isn’t Atlanta. It was a somewhat flippant answer, but at this point I simply wanted to see what they came up with. However, in the small group sharing that followed (Step 2 above), some students took up this question with more intent as they evaluated each other’s lists (and their own). After throwing open the question to the entire class, it was ultimately decided that I-285, the interstate bypass that rings the city, would count as the dividing line between “Atlanta” and “notAtlanta.” This made sense since, colloquially, places in metro Atlanta are often referred to as being either “Inside the Perimeter” (ITP) or “Outside the Perimeter” (OTP). In this instance, my class used their existing knowledge of Atlanta’s geography to begin to consider what was worth highlighting in the city and adjusted their lists accordingly. The collection of map pins, representing the totality of the places my students felt would be interesting to visitors (on this given evening, anyway),

Figure 15.2 Map of Atlanta, GA with student-generated pins.

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is a fascinating swath of the city. Of the 50 pins that were ultimately drop­ ped, these were the three most common categories: � Attractions: 14 pins � Restaurants / cafés / bars: 13 pins � Clubs / music venues: 7 pins The places selected in these categories represented many of the usual suspects a resident of Atlanta or its nearby suburbs would expect to see. The Georgia Aquarium, Truist Park, Zoo Atlanta, the Shakespeare Tavern, the Varsity (an iconic fast-food joint), and the High Museum of Art all made an appearance. But when I dug a little deeper into the pins that represented the places my students wanted to write about, pins that fell outside those three main cate­ gories, I started to notice the kind of thing I suspected (or at least hoped) would happen: students selected places that were highly specific to their own experience and represented a truly “insider” view of the city. Some of these more idiosyncratic places (and the writing performed for each): � � � � �

A narrative about the apartment complex a student had lived in two years previously. A negative review of the Georgia Institute of Technology. An informational piece about an Atlanta hotel and its role in Dragon Con, the city’s yearly pop culture convention. A review of a historic cemetery. A narrative about a local roller skating rink.

In each of these instances, I can see my students reclaiming the places and spaces that meant something to them, even if they fell outside what is traditionally considered to be noteworthy about the city. As Kinloch (2010) reminds us, we have an obligation as teachers to honor “the lives, literacies, and languages of our youth in the out-of-school communities that they call home” (p. 57). When Do You Reveal the Scenario to Your Students? As soon as I shared the scenario with my students, I realized I should have shared it sooner, prior to them drafting their pieces. If the goal is to have students write with a real-world audience and purpose in mind, they should have that audience and purpose in mind from the jump. This is especially true in our situation, where the writing was going to go from rough draft to publication in less than an hour. In your own classroom, maybe you do lots of practice first and then reveal the scenario. However, speaking from the other side of the activity, I didn’t give my students enough of an opportunity to address the specific demands of the audience and purpose I imposed upon them. They were a savvy enough group that some of them were willing to

206 Rob Montgomery

make those revisions on the fly, prior to posting their writing on the map, but if I had been more thoughtful, I would have given them the chance to write to that specific context from the get-go. What Does the Writing Look Like? I’d be remiss if I didn’t share some of the writing my students completed. Even given the time constraint, the writing they produced was rich and compelling, and it illustrated the unique perspectives students will share about places that matter to them. Danielle (all names are pseudonyms) wrote this narrative about her experience at a local music venue and how it reflects her evolving identity: Two years in a row, in the month of October, I put on my best dancing clothes and smothered on my glitter eye shadow to go see my favorite band at the time. The first year I did this, I took someone with me that ended up being a very temporary part of my life. Though our spirits soared in the bright lights of the rustic little theatre, the aftermath was the definition of after-concert gloom. The liminal quality of temporary people in temporary spaces should’ve left me never wanting to return to this venue, but as usual, I don’t follow the norms I set up for myself. Actually, the next year I came back to see the same band in the same room. This time, with my soon to be husband. The Coca Cola Roxy is as flexible a space as my willingness to change and move forward. Hannah shared this review of the legendary Varsity diner: This place might be known for its chili dogs and world famous foot long onion rings, but it is also an amazing place for a first timer to dine and get the true Atlanta experience. The wait staff has little to no patience, and they will certainly yell at you “WHAT DO YOU HAVE,” but the novelty of it sure makes out-of-towners giggle. You can also tone down your greasy order by making sure to order a Frosted Orange or fried peach pie (hey its fruit right?). The combination of grease, milkshakes, and free entertainment (of course from the people of Atlanta popping in) make for an endless night of laughter, people watching, and potentially hurting tummys. Enjoy! Finally, Kristen shared this narrative about the intersection between television and real life, set in Piedmont Park: I remember first watching the 18th season of the ABC hit, The Bachelorette. The star of the show, Andi, was an Atlanta resident, and the promotional shots had her tour the city while contemplating her

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future love life. As I watched her stand over the pond in Piedmont Park, I could not help but remember all of the things I had done at that park. I remembered going there with my ex on her birthday, sit­ ting on the wet grass and chatting with her friends. It was the first time I had met them. I remember myself being confident and in con­ trol, like Andi. Like Andi, I too had leaned over those Gazebo rails, wondering about my future. In this, I saw an Atlanta ritual. Is it all our fates to find ourselves leaning over that chipped paint and thinking about love? What is it in the Atlanta air that brings us back to that green pasture to meet for dates or barbecues? No matter if you are the bachelorette or just some loser watching trash TV, we will all go down to that Gazebo in Piedmont, lean over the rails, and wonder what love has in store for us.

Conclusion As I hope these student samples demonstrate, asking students to write about places that matter to them can be a powerful experience. In a K-12 envir­ onment that increasingly values standardization and, except in rare circum­ stances, privileges only certain types of writing, it’s crucial for teachers to think about how we can bring engagement and energy to writing that could very easily become a chore. The virtual tour assignment is one way to teach (and assess) those common genres of writing, but do so in a way that uti­ lizes technology, a real-world writing context, and most importantly, an emphasis on the students’ lived experiences. By telling them they get to decide what’s most worth knowing about their community, we’re allowing them to become “stakeholders in and creators of the learning process” (Shor, 1996, p. 49). Shifting student empowerment in this way – de-center­ ing the curriculum so that the students, not the teacher, decide what’s most worth writing about – increases the chance students will feel they have something of value to say, now and in the future.

Notes 1 Each of these items is described in more detail in the Introduction to this collection. 2 These were largely promotional, so they weren’t true reviews. But they were enough like reviews to get my wheels turning 3 Reasonable question: What if more than one student wanted to write about the same place? I allowed it, but you might not want to, especially if you want to see a maximum level of variety in the locations your students choose.

References Agnew, J. A. (1987). Place and politics: The geographical mediation of state and society. Allen & Unwin.

208 Rob Montgomery Allyn, B. (2023, July 12). Meta’s Threads wants to become a “friendly” place by downgrading news and politics. www.npr.org/2023/07/12/1187140775/metas-threa ds-wants-to-become-a-friendly-place-by-downgrading-news-and-politics. Armbruster, K., & Wallace, K. R. (Eds.). (2001). Beyond nature writing: Expanding the boundaries of ecocriticism. University Press of Virginia. Beach, R., Share, J., & Webb, A. (2017). Teaching climate change to adolescents: Reading, writing, and making a difference. Routledge. Brooke, R. E. (2003). Place-conscious education, rural schools, and the Nebraska Writing Project’s Rural Voices, Country Schools Team. In R. E. Brooke (Ed.), Rural voices: Place-conscious education and the teaching of writing (pp. 1–20). Teachers College Press. Buell, L. (Ed.). (1995). The environmental imagination: Thoreau, nature writing, and the formation of American culture. Harvard University Press. Christensen, L. (2015). Rethinking research: Reading and writing about the roots of gentrification. English Journal, 105(2), 15–21. www.jstor.org/stable/26359349. Elbow, P. (1998). Writing without teachers (25th anniversary ed.). Oxford University Press. Esposito, L. (2012). Where to begin? Using place-based writing to connect students with their local communities. English Journal, 101(4), 70–76. www.jstor.org/sta ble/41415476. Goldberg, N. (2016). Writing down the bones: Freeing the Writer Within (30th anniversary ed.). Shambhala. Gruenewald, D.A. (2003). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032004003. Kinloch, V. (2010). Harlem on our minds: Place, race, and the literacies of urban youth. Teachers College Press. Lammers, J.C. (2016). “The Hangout was serious business”: Leveraging participation in an online space to design Sims fanfiction. Research in the Teaching of English, 50(3), 309–332. www.jstor.org/stable/24889924. Montgomery R., & Montgomery, A. (2021). A place to write: Getting your students out of the classroom and into the world. National Council of Teachers of English. Moore, R., Gathman, E. H., & Ducheneaut, N. (2009). From 3D space to third place: The social life of small virtual spaces. Human Organization, 68(2), 230–240. Oldenburg, R. (1991). The great good place: Cafés, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they got you through the day. Paragon. Parton, C. (2022). Amplifying rural voices: Defining, reading, and writing rural stories. The Montana English Journal, 43, 10–16. Rigell, A., & Banack, A. (2019). Where we’re from: Poetry, placemaking, and community identity. English Journal, 109(1), 38–44. Shor, I. (1996). When students have power: Negotiating authority in a critical pedagogy. University of Chicago Press. Smagorinsky, P. (2008). Teaching English by design: How to create and carry out instructional units (1st ed.). Heinemann. Smith, G. A., & Sobel, D. (2010). Place- and community-based education in schools. Routledge. Sobel, D. (2004). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. Orion Society.

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Steinkuehler, C. A., & Williams, D. (2006). Where everybody knows your (screen) name: Online games as “third places.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), 885–909. Vander Ark, T., Liebtag, E., & McClennen, N. (2020). The power of place: Authentic learning through place-based education. ASCD. Woodhouse, J. L., & Knapp, C. E. (2000). Place-based curriculum and instruction: Outdoor and environmental education approaches (ED448012). Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools, Appalachia Educational Laboratory.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Adair, N.: “Never Run from a Gorilla”

173–4

Adams, W.: Old New Orleans Mammy

157–8, 159

Adventure Risk Challenge (ARC) see

observing nature, observing language

advertisements 133–4

Africa and gorilla encounters (VR) 170–4

agency 9–10, 57, 83, 183

Agnew, J. A. 6–7, 11, 197

Allyn, B. 197

Anyon, J. 125

Anzaldúa, A. 40, 42, 44, 50–2

Appalachian community 196

The Art Critic sculpture (Thomas)

156–7, 160

Asian American students 44, 126

Atlanta 200, 201–7

audience oriented writing 10

Augusta University Writing Project

(AUWP) and Summer Institute 151,

152, 157

authenticity 111, 143; and potential

benefits of place-based writing 8–11

Bailey, R.: Untitled 157, 160

Banksy: Exit Through the Gift Shop 130

Beach, R. et al. 179

Becker, M. N. 36

Bensusen, S. J. 56–7

Bhabha, H. K. 167

Bio Poems 158

biology see ecology of the Ozarks

Bishop, S. 25, 83

Black/African-Americans: Gullah culture

155–6, 159, 160; housing segregation

44–5; students 126: see also connections with the past (Marietta, Georgia); Tulsa Race Massacre Blackout Poems 159

blueprinting 76

borderlands 40, 50–2; insider/outsider

positioning 42, 44

Brady Street, Tulsa 68

Brasher, J. P. et al. 68

Brooke, R. 6, 17, 196–7

Cabillas, M. 143–4

Cajete, G. 32

candy stores 194

cardboard VR devices 165, 167, 173

Carson, R. 89–91, 92

change promoting writing 10

Channel Islands, California 88–93

Chavez, F. R. 185

children’s books project 180–2

Christensen, L. 75, 117, 196

city-text 70

collaborative journaling (Student

Conservation Association (SCA)) 96–8, 107; in (and beyond) the classroom 100–2; suggested activity 102–6; teacher roles 104; theoretical foundations and guiding research 98–100; where do mountain goats sleep? 105–6 Combining Voices (Morris Museum of Art, Georgia) 150–1; chosen works 155–9; grant 152; place-based writing background 151–2; project 152–5; supplemental material 159–60; tips for successful projects 160–1

Index 211 community 183; school connection with 151–2; sense of 68–9; validation and reclamation 196–7 community stories 177–8; children’s book project 180–2; inspiration and collaboration through Write Out Initiative 178–80; reimagining place-based learning during pandemic 182–4; Twinsburg podcast project 184–92 conflictual/threatening language 134,

135–6

connections with the past (Marietta, Georgia) 109–10; finding inspiration 112–14; History Project 115–21; preparing for research 114–15; theoretical foundations 110–12 conscientizacao 84

Cortez-Riggio, K.-M. 83

COVID-19 pandemic 29, 36, 145, 150–1,

177, 182–4, 197; see also connections

with the past (Marietta, Georgia)

creativity, spirituality, and survival see “Rhetoric of Place” lens Cresswell, T. 6

critical perspectives/pedagogies 42, 43,

44, 45, 83, 84

culture and nature see “Rhetoric of Place” lens culture of power 84

Cuyahoga Valley National Park 179, 180

Daughters of the South (Green) 155–6,

159, 160

DDT pollution 90–1, 92

Delpit, L. 84

Dewey, J. 142

digging and wobbling metaphors 42

disruptive spaces see public art in school spaces Donehower, K. et al. 24–5 Donovan, E. 98, 128

Duncan, D. J. 4

ecology of the Ozarks 16–17, 27; ecological scholars 17–18; ecological writing 18–24; implications 24–6 Egan, K. 143, 144

Eiseley, L. 26

ekphrastic writing 154

Elbow, P. 83, 200

Elder, J. 80

electronic collaborative writing apps 102–3 engaging writing 10; and 5E framework 35–8

English, C. 26

English language learners (ELLs) 110,

112, 117–18, 173

environmental education 5–6, 179; see

also Sustainable Resource Project

equity 183; Justice Maps 44–5

Esposito, L. 69, 70, 78, 111–12, 128

experiential learning 17–18, 142–3

“exploratory talk” 200

families: support and involvement 116–17; see also memories

Fang, Z. 33

faux renaming 68

Fecho, B.: and Botzakis, S. 100; et al. 42,

44, 99–100

field journaling 40, 41, 44, 45–6, 48

field trips 152–3, 159; virtual 36, 113,

165–6

Fiffer, S. S. 76

5E framework 35–8

Flight Behavior (Kingsolver) 18

food: memories 140–2, 144–9;

restaurants 146–7, 206

Foster, S. J. et al. 69

Freire, P. 50, 70, 84; Horton, M. and 70

Gaiman, N. and Palmer, A. 77

games, online 197–8

gamification 127, 132–3

Garcia, A. 133, 134; et al. 127, 132–3

generative freewriting 200

geographical analysis: Sustainable

Resource Project 88–90

Georgia Landscape (Tanner) 158–9

Glacier National Park 96–7

Google Arts and Culture 172

Google Meet and Google Site 191

Google Slide 30, 37, 129, 130, 145

Google Street View 113–14

Google Voice 125, 132, 133, 134

gorilla encounters, Africa (VR) 170–4

Goss, S. 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134

Grate, E. 23–4

Green, J.: Daughters of the South 155–6,

159, 160

Greene, Dr. J. 19

Greenwood, D. 18

212 Index Griffin, R. A. et al. 143

Gruenewald, D. 43, 84

Gullah culture 155–6, 159, 160

Haas, T. and Nachtigal, P. 17

habits of mind, place-based education, and rhetorical grammar 56–8 hallways: Marietta History project

118–19, 121; truisms art project 127,

128, 135, 136–7

hardcopy journals 102

Harlem, NY: gentrification 43, 196

Harry Potter series (Rowling) 169

The Hate U Give (Thomas) 184–5 Hennessey, N. L. 111

Hernandez, J. 32

Hispanic American students 126;

Mariana 41, 42

Holzer, J. 127, 130–1 Hong Kong: VR field trip 165–6 Hooven, J. et al. 32

Horton, M. and Freire, P. 70

Hubbell, S.: A Book of Bees: And How

to Keep Them 18

identity 17–18, 78, 142, 196, 206;

metaphors 42–3

IN/IW/IRMO/SW prompts (nature journaling) 29, 34–8 indigenous peoples 20, 32, 43, 46, 48,

87–8

insider/outsider positioning 42, 44

interviews 186–7, 189–91 Iranian American student (Maryam) 50, 51

Jacobs, E. 69–70 John Hope Franklin Reconciliation

Park, Tulsa 67

Jury Box (Poovey) 154–5 Justice Maps 44–5 K-W-L chart 113–14, 117

Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project 9, 109–10 Kent State University and Cuyahoga

Valley National Park partnership 180

Kingsolver, B.: Flight Behavior 18

Kinloch, V. 43, 112, 196

Kittle, P. 105–6 labeling and lists 76

Lacy, J. 26

Laminack, L. 77

Lammers, J. C. 198

“Land Ethic” 82, 84

Landsman, J. 77

language see observing nature, observing language Lanier, J. 166–7 Laws, J. M. 31; and Lygren, E. 29

Learning in Places Collaboration 32

Lee, H.: To Kill a Mockingbird 168, 169

Leopold, A. 18, 26, 81–2, 84, 86

Lindblom, K. and Christenbury, L. 112

Lingard, L. 99

location, locale, sense of place 6–7, 11, 197

Lopez, B. 80, 85

Louth, R. 46

Lyon, G. E. 77

Machado, A. 70

McLerran, A 77

magnification/zooming in 61–2 Manifold, M. C. 145

mapping 40; assignment sheet 47; Atlanta 201–5; evolving pedagogies of place 41; Justice Maps 44–5; Padlet story 45–52; theoretical perspective: defamiliarizing the familiar 41–4 Marietta, Georgia see connections with the past Mariola, B. 185–6, 188–9 Martens, S. 19

Martinez-Neal, J. 77

Masters, A. 24

Mathews, S. 23

Mathieu, J. 129

memories 3–4, 142–4; of food 140–2, 144–9; photography 48–50; poetry 77; students’ knowledge of place 194–5 mentor texts 77

metaphors 4, 42–3 Missouri State Biological Field Station,

Bulls Shoals Lake, Ozarks 16, 17,

18–19

Montgomery, R. and Montgomery, A.

9, 56, 57, 84, 97–8, 126, 128, 143, 152,

166, 168, 174

Moran, C. M. and Woodall, M. K. 168

movies: recommendations 101, 102; VR

166, 172

Moynihan, K. 154

museums: Marietta Black Heritage Walking Tour 112–13; VR 169; see

Index 213 also Combining Voices (Morris Museum of Art, Georgia) National Assessment of Educational Progress 110 National Parks: Cuyahoga Valley 179, 180; Glacier 96–7; Yosemite see observing nature, observing language National Writing Project (NWP) 19, 150–1, 152, 178, 180 nature and culture see “Rhetoric of Place” lens nature journaling 29–30; assignment sheet 35; learning from place 32–3; place-based writing activity (5E framework and IN/IW/IRMO/SW prompts) 34–8; theoretical foundations 31–4; writing like a scientist 33–4 Nature Reading and Writing Workshop 81 Nelson, G. L. 20, 22–3 “Never Run from a Gorilla” (Adair) 173–4 Next Generation Science Standards 32–3

personal and purposeful writing 9 photography and writing 48–50, see also Tulsa Race Massacre Piper, S. W. 43, 48 “place”, defining 5–8, 11 plants to sentences, observing 58–63 Plaut, V. C. et al. 68 podcast project (Twinsburg community stories) 184–92 poetry 21–4, 75–7, 153–4; and narratives 156–9 pollution 82; DDT 90–1, 92 Poovey, C.: Jury Box 154–5 Potter, J. and McDougall, J. 167 power, culture of 84 Price-Dennis, D. and Sealey-Ruiz, Y. 42 public art in school spaces 125; assignment sheet 136; context for Writer’s Workshop 125–6; transactional theory across the Arts 126–8; truisms project 127, 128–37 QR codes 118, 133 quick writing 105–6

observing nature, observing language (Adventure Risk Challenge (ARC)) 54–6; assignment sheet 59–60; from plants to sentences 58–63; theoretical foundations 56–8 O’Connor, C. 104 Old New Orleans Mammy (Adams) 157–8, 159 Oldenburg, R. 197 Oliver, M. 26 Olsen, P. and Olsen, W. 25 online asynchronous course 141–2, 144–7 online games 197–8 online resources for photographs 71 OPTIC Strategy for Visual Analysis 71–2, 157 Orr, D. 18, 26 outdoor rambles 42, 44, 46, 50 Owens, D. 7, 27, 142 Ozarks see ecology of the Ozarks

reading: aloud 22–3; children’s books 180–2; decline of 110–11; food memoirs 144–5; and VR activities 168–9, 172, 173; Young Adult Literature (YAL) 127, 128, 129, 130 RedcoolMedia program 188–9 Reichl, R. 144–5 rephotography 72–5 restaurants 146–7, 206 Reynolds, J. 42, 129 “Rhetoric of Place” lens 80–2, 86–7, 89–91 rhetorical grammar, place-based education, and habits of mind 56–8 Rhoades, G. 126, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135 Rigell, A. and Banack, A. 196 Rio School District, California 87–8 “river teeth” metaphor 4 Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter series 169 Roxana High School and St. Louis University partnership 85–7 rural places and communities 24–5

Padlet story 45–52 partner poems 156 Parton, C. 196 Pépin, J. 144–5

safe space 99–100 Santa Clara River, California 87–8 Sassi, Dr. K. 45 scavenger hunt, truisms 133–4, 135

214 Index science see nature journaling

sentences, observing plants and 58–63

Shannon, D. and Galle, J. 179, 184

Shapiro, S. 56

sharing ideas 200

Sheers, O. 75

Shrake, K. 6

Six Room Image poem 153–4

Smagorinsky, P. 131, 200

small groups: discussion 129; reading

aloud in 22–3; virtual tour 113

smartphones 167, 173

Smith, G. A. and Sobel, D. 83

Smith, T. 72–3

Sobel, D. 6, 10, 32, 57, 84–5, 151; Smith,

G. A. and 83

social media platforms 197

Spiegelman, A. 129

spirituality, creativity, and survival see

“Rhetoric of Place” lens

Stone, M. 18

story mapping (Padlet) 45–52

street art 130

Student Conservation Association (SCA)

see collaborative journaling (Student Conservation Association (SCA)) survival, spirituality, and creativity see “Rhetoric of Place” lens Sustainable Resource Project 80–3; assignment sheet 86; course development 85–7; current form and phases 88–93; relocation 87–8; theoretical underpinnings 83–5 Tanner, H. O.: Georgia Landscape 158–9

text and VR pairings 172

“Texting Couplets” 157

Third Space/Third Place 167–8, 197–8

Thomas, A.: The Hate U Give 184–5

Thomas, S.: The Art Critic (sculpture)

156–7, 160

threatening/conflictual language 134,

135–6

Title I high school project see public art

in school spaces

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee) 168, 169

traditional instruction, limits of 8–9,

110–11

transactional theory across the Arts

126–8

traumatic life experiences 48

truisms art project 127, 129, 130–3, 135

Tulsa Race Massacre 67–8, 78;

photography, rephotography, and

poetry 70–7, 78; sense of community

and place 68–9; significance of

photography 69; significance of

place-based writing 69–70; we make

the road by walking 70

Twinsburg community stories (podcast project) 184–92 Untitled (Bailey) 157, 160

Vander Ark, T. et al. 57, 182–3 virtual field trips 36, 113, 165–6

virtual maps see mapping virtual reality (VR) 165–6; Africa and gorilla encounters 170–4; assignment sheet 171; rationale for using in place-based writing 168–9; theoretical foundations 166–7; Third Space Theory 167–8; tips and tricks 169–70 virtual tours 194–5; activity 198–203; discussion 203–7; guiding theory 195–8; Marietta’s Black Heritage Walking Tour 113–14 Vollmar, A. W. 18

Wattchow, B. and Brown, M. 17–18

“Where I’m From” (Lyon) 77

Whitney, A. E. 111, 143

Willingham, D. 111

Wisconsin, southern 80, 81–3

wobbling and digging metaphors 42

Woodhouse, J. L. and Knapp, C. E. 142

Write Out Initiative 178–80

Write Where You Are workshop 180, 181

Writer’s Workshop 125–6

writing marathons 19–24, 25, 46, 48

Yosemite National Park see observing nature, observing language Young Adult Literature (YAL) 127, 128,

129, 130

youth participatory action research (YPAR) 127, 132–3 YouTube 101, 172, 173–4

zine project 128

zooming in/magnification 61–2

Zoss, M. 127