Spotting foolbirds: Literacies hiding in plain sight in an urban English language arts classroom

Ives, Denise. (2011). Spotting foolbirds: Literacies hiding in plain sight in an urban English language arts classroom. Journal of Literacy Research, 43(3), 250-274.

I’m not quite sure what to do with this fascinating, well-written account of three urban sixth graders’ covert literacy practices in their language arts classroom. Ives was a participant observer in this classroom for several months; she focuses on the stories of three students (all African-American students) there. She points out behaviors she observed in all three of these students that could be viewed as evidence of these students’ possession of sophisticated literacy practices, or could also be viewed as resistance (both passive and active) to classroom norms, depending upon your point of view. The reader must decide whether what Ives describes is “off-task behavior” or represents valid forms of literacy that should be built upon as resources and as bridges to more traditional kinds of school literacy.

In one vignette, Ives discovers that a female student is avidly, but secretively, reading what was probably “forbidden” erotica, showing engagement in what Ives calls “pleasure reading” (indeed!) when she had formerly shown little engagement with other independent reading. Ironically, this student had felt no compunction about appearing to read books far below her reading level; that kind of reading was perhaps equally (or even more) inappropriate for her than the erotica but for different reasons, but obviously it was allowed during the silent reading time in that classroom. In another vignette, a male student is seen as inattentive to the classroom game on figurative language, ironically because he is participating “undercover” with peers in a game of “snaps”, a variety of “playing the dozens” that requires a high level of proficiency with a form of figurative language. The final vignette describes a female student who is eager to display an identity as a good student and good writer, and who revises her own writing “in-flight” during a sharing time to make it more closely fit what she believes the teacher wants, based upon her own “reading” of feedback given to another student. Ives calls these three vignettes examples of strategic “covering up”, “lying low”, and “blending in”.

What struck me most about this account was just how disengaging many classrooms must be for today’s students, and how our challenge as teachers is to engage our students, but in positive, wholesome ways. It is so difficult to compete with the multiple media students are used to these days, which so often seem to glorify that which is materialistic, negative, sensational, and generally appeals to the lowest kinds of interests and motivation. I want students to connect to literature, but do I have to do it by including sexualized, violent, insulting content that glorifies what is glorified in the media? I want to honor and channel students’ cultural resources, but is there a line to be drawn beyond which we do not go? For instance, I am willing to view the hip-hop genre as a valid art form, but not when it stoops to senseless violence, misogyny, and language that is pointlessly inappropriate. I want students to feel that they can be themselves in classrooms (and sadly, it does not seem that the students described here believed that they could) and not have to resort to covering up, lying low, and blending in. Where do I draw the line, though, between “being yourself” and being inappropriate?

As I wrote at the beginning of this annotation, I’m not sure how to take what I read in this article. It is a thought-provoking account, though, and teachers who teach (or plan to teach) urban adolescents should take a look at it. Maybe some frank discussion among those of us who struggle with engaging our students would help us figure out where the lines should be drawn, and how we can most appropriately reach today’s students.