Anne Haas Dyson

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The assumption that “diverse” children come to school without literacy ignores the resources they bring from popular media texts. “I’m mad and I followed the drinking god.” —Denise (age 6, first grade) Six-year-old Denise is potentially one of those “all” children. Often written with a graphic wink, “all” is sometimes knowingly underlined or righteously capitalized, and it is almost always syntactically linked or semantically associated with that other category, the “different” children—not middle class and not white. In literacy education, these concerns about the “all” children are often undergirded by what might be called the “nothing” assumption— the decision to make no assumption Anne Haas Dyson Language Arts, Vol. 81 No. 2, November 2003 100 Popular Literacies and the “All” Children Popular Literacies and the “All” Children: Rethinking Literacy Development for Contemporary Childhoods

Transcript of Anne Haas Dyson

Page 1: Anne Haas Dyson

The assumption that

“diverse” children come

to school without literacy

ignores the resources

they bring from popular

media texts.

“I’m mad and I followed the drinking god.”

—Denise (age 6, first grade)

Six-year-old Denise is potentiallyone of those “all” children. Oftenwritten with a graphic wink, “all” issometimes knowingly underlined orrighteously capitalized, and it isalmost always syntactically linkedor semantically associated with that other category, the “different”children—not middle class and notwhite. In literacy education, theseconcerns about the “all” children areoften undergirded by what might becalled the “nothing” assumption—the decision to make no assumption

Anne Haas Dyson

Language Arts, Vol. 81 No. 2, November 2003

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selson
Text Box
Copyright © 2003 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
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that children have any relevantknowledge. The “all” children are inurgent need, so the argument goes,of a tightly scripted, linear, andstep-by-step monitored marchthrough proper language awareness,mastery of letters, control of sound/ symbol connections, and on up theliteracy ladder.

In response, I offer an account ofschool literacy development for allchildren. This account does notdepend on the assumption of “noth-ing,” nor on an idealized, print-centered childhood. Rather, it

depends on the assumption thatchildren will always bring relevantresources to school literacy. That is,there will always be local manifesta-tions of true childhood universals—an openness to appealing symbols(sounds, images, ways of talking),and a playfulness with this every-day symbolic stuff.

This account of literacy developmentis based on an ethnographic study ofDenise and her close school friends,all first graders in an urban publicschool (Dyson, 2003). I studied theirchildhood culture, documenting theircultural practices—their talk, singing,collaborative play—and the symbolicstuff with which they played. Thechildren had a wealth of textual toys,of free symbolic stuff to play with.They found those toys in the wordsand images of parents, teachers,teenagers, and other kids, as well ason radios, TVs, videos, and othereveryday forms of communication.The children not only manipulated orplayed with their everyday symbolicstuff in the unofficial or peer world,they stretched, reorganized, and

remixed this material as they enteredinto official school literacy.

In this article, I use a metaphoricdrinking god to capture the influencethat children’s nonacademic textualexperiences have on their entry intoschool literacy. That influence mayleave us as educators without theproper frame of reference for build-ing on children’s efforts. Moreover,any desires we may have for peda-gogical uniformity cannot withstandthe power of the drinking god. That“god of all learning children” messesup any unitary pathway, renders

visible the multiple communicativeexperiences that may intersect withliteracy learning, and bequeaths toeach child, in the company of others,the right to enter school literacygrounded in the familiar practices of their own childhoods.

Before explaining this approach forall children, I need to do somestage-setting by discussing the “alland nothing” assumption in earlyliteracy pedagogy and its relation-ship to the desire for uniformity andorder. I formally introduce themetaphoric drinking god and brieflydescribe my study methods. Then Iallow the children—and the drinkinggod—center stage. To clarify myview, I link it to that of Marie Clay,an important scholar who took anearly stand against uniformity.

ALL AND NOTHING: PUTTING CHILDHOODSIN PEDAGOGICAL ORDER

In my former California locale, dis-tricts have been turning to state-approved reading programs designed

with the “all” children in mind. Thedesign rests on the assumption thatthe “all” children bring nothing, assuggested by the following quotes,the first from the program’s Grade 1Teachers Guide (Adams, Bereiter, Hir-shberg, Anderson, & Bernier, 2000):

As society becomes more and more di-verse and classrooms become accessi-ble to more and more children withspecial needs, instruction must be de-signed to ensure that all [sic] studentshave access to the best instruction andthe highest quality materials and aresubject to the same high expecta-tions. . . . Diverse and individualneeds are met by varying the time andintensity [but not the means] of in-struction. (p. 12F)

The second quote comes from theprogram’s Web site (SRA, 2000, p. 1):

[The program] is designed such thatno assumptions are made about stu-dents’ prior knowledge; each skill issystematically and explicitly taughtin a logical progression, to enableunderstanding and mastery.

These quotes suggest that the noth-ing assumption for the “all” childrenis not about sociocultural variationin children’s experiences with liter-acy, in their ways of communicatingwith adults and peers, or in thenature of their everyday worlds and,thus, their everyday knowledge(Genishi, 2002; McNaughton, 2003;Nieto, 1999). The nothing assump-tion rests on a concern that “di-verse” children are more apt to cometo school without literacy skills.

The nothing assumption recalls theconcern in the sixties for the “cul-turally disadvantaged.” In theirprofessional text on “teaching dis-advantaged children,” Bereiter andEnglemann (1966) portray teachingreading skills as a means of over-coming the assumed linguisticbarrenness (the nothingness) ofchildren’s everyday lives. The

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In literacy education, these concerns about the “all”children are often undergirded by what might be called

the “nothing” assumption—the decision to make noassumption that children have any relevant knowledge.

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potentially unruly disadvantagedchildren are contrasted with the“culturally privileged” ones. Thelatter children’s assumed language-rich life allows them to come toschool, if not with everything, atleast with some awareness of wordsand the alphabetic principle.

This contrast between the ideal chil-dren developing literacy and theracialized and classed other childrenlacking resources has assumed newprominence. Government-backedliteracy “science” has made teachingthe “all” children a matter of equity(Schemo, 2002). Organize manage-able bits of literacy knowledge intoa sequenced curriculum and teach itdirectly to orderly children—and doso as early as possible. No time towaste. Ah, but the rub is the chil-dren themselves, whose sociality isamong the “worst enemies to whatwe call teaching” (Ashton-Warner,1963, p. 103).

School brings many children togetherin one space. And those children de-velop social bonds and playful prac-tices linked to, but not controlled by,adults. In other words, children haveminds and social agendas of theirown. And, as I illustrate below, it isthe metaphoric drinking god thatwields power over the children andleads them to play “the very devilwith orthodox method” (Ashton-Warner, 1963, p. 103).

THE DRINKING GOD: THE UNRULY SPIRITOF CHILDHOOD LEARNINGI first met the drinking god whenhe was invoked by Denise as sheworked on a task in her first-grade classroom:

Denise has just participated in aclass lesson blending a study of theartist Jacob Lawrence with a study ofthe underground railroad—that net-work of pathways and dwellingsthrough which slaves escaped from

the southern U.S. to freedom inCanada. The lesson centered on slidesof Lawrence’s paintings of HarrietTubman, an escaped slave who ledmany others to freedom. During thelesson, Rita, the teacher, discussedwith the children Lawrence’s use ofthe North Star, which guided thepeople, and, also the star’s locationin the constellation called the Drink-ing Gourd or, alternatively, the BigDipper. Over many days to come,Rita and the children would sing andstudy the words to Pete Seeger’s ver-sion of “Follow the Drinking Gourd.”

Now that the lesson is over,Denise and her peers are to showwhat they’ve learned. And so, sittingside-by-side, Denise and her goodfriend and “fake sister” Vanessa,both African American, draw theirversions of a muscular HarrietTubman chopping wood, tearsstreaming down her face. As shedraws, Denise becomes HarrietTubman, writing “Denise That’s me”on her drawn image and, then,adding the statement, “I’m mad and Ifollowed the drinking god.”

The drinking god. Mmmm. Usuallya quiet observer, I intervene and askDenise if she means the “drinkinggourd.” “It’s drinking god,” she saysdefinitively.

Vanessa agrees. Some people say“god,” some say “gourd. Duh!” Un-daunted, I persist:

Dyson: What does this god do? [very politely]

Denise: He makes the star for themto follow . . .

Dyson: Why did Harriet Tubmanfollow the drinking god?

Denise: She was a slave.

Vanessa: If she sung a song, herfriends would love her.What’s that song? [recollecting a tune]

And soon an R & B song learnedfrom the radio arises from Deniseand Vanessa’s table.

With this vignette, I formally intro-duce the drinking god factor—thefactor that becomes evident whenone assumes that children bring, notnothing, but frames of reference(i.e., familiar practices and old sym-bolic stuff ) to make sense of newcontent, discursive forms, and sym-bolic tools. As they participate inthe official school task of compos-ing “what I learned,” Denise andVanessa blend resources from varied

experiences, including those theyshared as collaborative child play-ers, churchgoers, participants inpopular culture, and attentiveyoung students. They know, for ex-ample, that music is a symbol of af-filiation, not only for them (“What’sthat song [we both know]?”), butalso for Harriet Tubman and otherconductors on the UndergroundRailroad (“Let my people go”). Andthey know that people speak differ-ent varieties of English—people’svoices have different rhythms andrhymes, different ways of drawingout or cutting short sounds; suchlanguage variation is an officialtopic in sound/symbol lessons andin literary ones in their room, butnot a topic in the first-grade pro-grams for the “all” children, who areto speak in uniform ways.

Given the power of the drinkinggod, it is a serious error to assumethat any child brings nothing tonew experiences. Indeed, all rep-

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It is a serious error toassume that any childbrings nothing to newexperiences. Indeed,

all reputabledevelopmental accounts

assume that nothingcomes from nothing.

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utable developmental accountsassume that nothing comes fromnothing. Any learning must comefrom something, from some experi-ential base that supports participa-tion and sense-making in thedesignated learning tasks (Piaget &Inhelder, 1969; Vygotsky, 1962).

For Denise and her friends, thatbase comes from their everydaylives in a complex social landscapelike that theorized by Bakhtin (1981,1986). Their landscape is filled withinterrelated communication prac-tices, involving different kinds ofsymbol systems (e.g., written lan-guage, drawing, music), differenttechnologies (e.g., video, radio, ani-mation), and different ideologies orideas about how the world works.The children experience these prac-tices as kinds of voices (Hanks,1996)—the voices, say, of radio dee-jays and stars, sitcom characters,and oft-heard poets, of sports an-nouncers, preachers, teachers, andteenagers, and on and on.

So, in my research project, I studiedhow children used their experiencesparticipating in all these practicesfor their own childhood pleasuresand for school learning. That is, Istudied the recontextualization pro-cesses (Bauman & Briggs, 1990;Miller & Goodnow, 1995) throughwhich they borrowed material fromthese practices, translated it acrossand reorganized it within childhoodplay practices, and, also, officialschool literacy ones.

STUDYING A CHILDHOODCULTURE: THE PROJECTDATA SET

The children’s school was an urbanelementary school in the East SanFrancisco Bay. Denise’s teacher,Rita, was highly experienced,having begun teaching in theLondon primary schools of the 60s.Rita’s curriculum included both

open-ended activities, such as writ-ing workshop, where the childrenwrote and drew relatively freely,followed by class sharing, and moreteacher-directed ones, such as as-signed tasks in study units, in whichchildren wrote and drew as part ofsocial studies and science learning.

I spent an academic year in Rita’sroom studying the childhood cul-ture enacted by a small group offirst graders, all African American,who called themselves “the broth-ers and the sisters”—and theymeant that quite literally; they pre-tended to have a common Mama.The children were Denise, Vanessa,Marcel, Wenona, Noah, andLakeisha. I observed and audio-taped them on the playground andin the classroom, particularlyduring composing activities, and Ialso interviewed their parents.

As the work progressed, I realizedhow much the popular media in-formed the children’s world. Fromtheir experiences with the media,children formed interpretiveframes—or understandings of typi-cal voice types or genres. Andwithin those varied kinds of voices,they found much play material, in-cluding conceptual content; modelsof textual structures and elements;and a pool of potential characters,plots, and themes.

Studying how the children used thismaterial in official (or school-governed) as well as unofficial (orchild-governed) worlds resulted in

this account of literacy develop-ment. Because of space constraints,I focus on a key event from Marcel’scase, although I allow Denise sometime in the spotlight as well.

Literacy Development as Remix

Fittingly enough, as I tried to articu-late an account of literacy develop-ment grounded in the project’sparticulars, I turned to a majorsource of the children’s textualtoys—hip hop. Hip hop, in fact, isabout “making something out ofnothing.” I heard that explanationmore than once from hip hop practi-tioners, whom I consulted in thecourse of this project. As they ex-plained, rap was born during a timewhen public funds for education andfor youth programs were slashedand public distrust of youth washeightened. So, informed by culturaltraditions that stretch back throughtime, urban youth took their usedcultural stuff and old technologiesand transformed them into flexiblemodes of expression (Yerba BuenaCenter for the Arts, 2001; Smither-man, 2000). They made a drum outof a turntable, a style of dancing outof karate kicks, a storyteller out of achanter. They created something, ifnot out of nothing, at least out ofsome things that might not origi-nally have been seen as innovative,creative, and generative.

This notion of material that might beseen as “nothing” becoming “some-thing” seemed to capture the essenceof my project. I observed the childrensampling symbolic material from thecommunicative practices—the variedkinds of voices—that filled the landscape of their everyday lives.Analogous to rap artists, the children

appropriated and adapted this mate-rial as they constructed their unoffi-cial and playful practices. Moreover,like producers who remix musicalcompositions, they adapted that old

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I observed the children sampling symbolic materialfrom the communicative practices—the varied kinds ofvoices—that filled the landscape of their everyday lives.

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textual stuff to the new beats re-quired in official literacy spaces.

The children’s sampling and remixing—their recontextualizationprocesses—opened up literacy pathways to their resources fromdiverse communicative practices. I do my own textual sampling to illustrate these processes as en-acted in children’s unofficial andofficial worlds.

Sampling Unofficial Textual Play

Like her fake siblings, Denise foundmany of her textual toys on the BayArea’s leading hip hop radio station.In her recess radio play, she and herfake siblings deconstructed that sta-tion into a set of diverse and interre-lated kinds of practices, of voices.

For example, in radio play, Denisedid not simply sing. She became akind of singer—a rapper, a soulsinger. Moreover, she could situatesingers in relationship to others (e.g.,deejays, audience members) and tovaried interrelated radio practices(song announcing, radio interviews).She had a sense of the landscape ofpractices—of voices—upon which shewas playing; and she could flexiblymanipulate words, phrasing, intona-tion, even speaking turns as the situ-ation required. Listen to a bit ofplayground radio play, as Denise in-terviews herself:

Denise: (assuming a polite, interestedtone) Denise. Tell us, why

do you like to sing—and your friends?

Denise: (rapping) We want to be a star / In the store

We want to be on stage / For our cage.

For Marcel, sports media was a fa-vored source of textual play mate-rials. He and Wenona and Noahenacted a relational world ofcoaches, teammates, and rivals. Thechildren had a demanding schedule:their coach was based both in Min-nesota (where he had a coed hockeyteam, the Mighty Ducks, based on amovie of the same name) and inTexas (Dallas, Texas, to be exact,where he coached the Cowboys, aprofessional football team).

The children’s sports play, likeradio play, involved a range of in-terrelated practices that included,first, planning agendas that al-lowed time for practice sessions,travel to varied destinations (oftenacross state lines), babysitting forrelatives, and homework; second,narrating highlights of previousgames, featuring themselves; and,third, evaluating the relative meritsof teams. And, like professionalsports broadcasters, Marcel and his friends made much use of ad-verbs of time and place. Listen asMarcel and Wenona discuss up-coming events:

Wenona and Marcel are sitting to-gether during a morning workperiod. They are doing their work in the official world, but they arealso doing their “work” in the unofficial world (i.e., planning theirupcoming schedule):

Wenona: You know I’m thinkingabout going over to [a rela-tive’s] house today but wegotta play games. I forgot.We playing hockey. Todaywe playing hockey.

Marcel: Cause we gotta play hockey.[agreeing]

Wenona: In Los Angeles—no—

Marcel: It’s in Los Angeles. [affirming]

Wenona: It’s in Pittsburgh andLos Angeles.

Marcel: I forgot. We gotta play Pittsburgh.

Wenona: In Pittsburgh.

Marcel: Pittsburgh is real weak.

“In Pittsburgh,” said Wenona, em-phasizing the preposition in and,thereby, the distinction between acity location and a city team. In asimilar way, the children sometimesplayed “Minnesota (pause) in Min-nesota” or “Dallas (pause) in Dallas.”

In the children’s play, Dallas alwayswon, but that was not the case whenMarcel engaged in sports chat withother boys. He, Samuel, and Zephe-nia often repeated football scores toeach other after an opening “Did yousee the game?” And, in that practice,Dallas could lose. Like Denise, then,Marcel’s playful practices evidencedhis borrowing and revoicing of sym-bolic material from a landscape ofpossibilities. He flexibly manipulatedtextual material (including scores) indifferent ways, depending on thesocial situation he was in.

Official Textual Play

In official school activities, too,children borrowed from their land-scape of possibilities. Their remixingprocesses displayed the drinkinggod’s power—the power of these un-expected frames of reference—tocreate both order and havoc. On the one hand, these frames guidedchildren’s agency, their decision-making about how to manipulatethe elements of the written system—its letters, words, syntax—to accom-plish some end. On the other hand,they posed very useful symbolic,social, and ideological challenges asthey moved across symbol systems

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The children’s samplingand remixing—theirrecontextualization

processes—opened upliteracy pathways

to their resources fromdiverse communicative

practices.

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and social worlds with different ex-pectations and conventions.

Before I illustrate this officialremixing with an example fromMarcel, I engage in a little textualplay of my own. I link this “remix”approach to an earlier nonlinearview of literacy development, thatof Marie Clay. In this way, I hope toclarify what the remix view mayadd to the repertoire of ways of un-derstanding child literacy.

My textual play: Situating Clay’s“kaleidoscopic reshuffle.” Beginningmost notably with What Did I Write?in 1975, Clay has detailed a con-structivist view of written languagedevelopment. In this view, childrenmust take control over the writtenmedium, learning to direct and mon-itor its use in producing and receiv-ing messages. Unlike many otherdevelopmental views emerging in theseventies, Clay did not reduce earlycomposing to spelling nor did sheposit “stages” of learning. Based onclose observation of the ways ofwriting for children entering NewZealand schools, Clay analyzed howchildren engage with written lan-guage as a complex system, at first“in approximate, specific, and whatseem to be primitive ways and laterwith considerable skill” (p. 19).

Children’s first efforts may suggestthe idiosyncratic and varied bits ofknowledge that they have accumu-lated from diverse experiences withprint in families and communities;among such knowledge may be letterforms, written names, perhaps asense of how certain kinds of printsound when read. When they re-spond to school literacy tasks, chil-

dren orchestrate their knowledge and know-how to construct basic

concepts about print—the nature ofsigns, page arrangement, directional-ity, voice/print match. Flexibility inchild response is important becauserigid early learning may keep chil-dren from adapting their understand-ings as new literacy tasks are faced.Clay (1975) notes, “Chance experi-ences may produce new insights atany time” (p. 7). Hence, her “kaleido-scopic reshuffle”—the reworking ofchildren’s understandings of a com-plex, multilayered system (1998).

I entered the child literacy conver-sation at a different time and withdifferent conceptual tools—moresociolinguistic, sociocultural, andfolkloric than psychological, likeClay’s. Given those tools, I aim tosituate Clay’s cognitive reshufflewithin a social notion of commu-nicative practices. That is, I aim todescribe how, energized and guidedby the desire for social participa-tion, children use old resources fromfamiliar practices and adapt them toenter into new ones. Thus, theirpathways into school literacy arefound in the converging and diverg-ing trajectories of practices. Theideal developmental outcome ofthese processes is not only flexibil-ity and adaptability with writtenconventions but also with symbolsystems and with social conven-tions. To illustrate, I turn to a keyevent from Marcel’s case.

Marcel re-mapping his words and worlds. Marcel is sitting byLakeisha on one side and a parentvolunteer, Cindy, on the other.Lakeisha is his fake sister and un-

derstands that he plays for a win-ning team—Dallas. Indeed, Marceltells her that he is planning to writeabout Dallas. Through his text,Marcel will enact a familiar practice—reporting his team’striumphs. His planned text is thus sit-uated at least partially in the child-hood world he shares with Lakeisha.

Marcel: (to Lakeisha) I know what Iwant to write about. “The Dallas Cowboys [beat] Carolina.”

Cindy: They [Dallas] lost. Did youwatch the game?

The adult Cindy corrects the childMarcel. She is not, after all, a rela-tive; she views Marcel as a little boywho has the facts about Dallas’s fatein the football playoffs wrong. Sheinitiates a different practice—a “Did-you-watch-the-game?” practice.Marcel can participate in this prac-tice as well:

Marcel: They’re out! Out of the playoffs?

Cindy: They’re like the 49ers now.

Marcel changes his plans. He stillstarts with The Dallas, then stops,gets the classroom states map forspelling help, and begins to copyMinnesota, whom Dallas had beatenthe previous week (see Figure 1).

Marcel: (to the table, generally, as helooks at the map) It’s got allthe states right here.

(to himself as he writes Min-nesota) Minnesota, Min-nesota, Minnesota, Minnesota. . . to the city of dreams.Minnesota, Minnesota, Min-nesota, to the city of dreams.(pause) Dallas, Texas. Dallas,Texas. Dallas, Texas.

(to the table) This has all thestates, right here. I have allthe states, right over here . . .

I’m writing “Dallas againstMinnesota.”

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I aim to describe how, energized and guided by the desire for social participation, children use old resources from familiar practices and adapt

them to enter into new ones.

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Marcel then recites “Dallas, Texas”several more times before writing“in Texas.”

Marcel: It [the score]—it was, 15—no15 to 48.

Marcel: (to Cindy) This says, “Dallasagainst Minnesota. In Texas.15 to 48.”

Marcel has recalled the exact score.He does come to school, after all,quite prepared to participate in the“Did-you-watch-the-game?” prac-tice. He simply had not been plan-ning to participate in that one. And,in fact, he now slips back into thefictionalized world of team playersand fake siblings that he shareswith Lakeisha.

Marcel: (to Lakeisha) I be home tomorrow, only me andWenona will be home late.’Cause me and Wenona gotpractice . . . I still got to goto football practice . . .Wenona got cheerleading.

Marcel and Wenona will both behome with Mama and Lakeishatomorrow—but they’ll be late. TheCowboys may be out of the play-offs, but Marcel’s “still got to go tofootball practice,” and Wenona’sstill got to go to cheerleading.

In this complexly situated event,you can hear Marcel sample from a

score-reporting practice of televisedsports. And that practice is itself sit-uated within the frame of the chil-dren’s unofficial sports play. (Dallaswon!) That unofficial frame con-verges with the official one of writ-ing workshop. This converging ofdifferent social practices, with theirdifferent uses of symbolic media,yields challenges—potential learn-ing and teaching opportunities—including all those discussed byClay and more.

To begin, you can hear and see theconverging of practices when Marceltranslates (or remixes) the audiovi-sual display of sports scores to apaper and pencil display. As Claymight anticipate, Marcel’s event re-veals how children have to sort outthe nature, and allowable flexibility,of different kinds of signs, amongthem letters, numbers, and images.But Marcel is not grappling with“the” set of written conventions—theconventions of these convergingpractices differ. In school, Marcel isexpected to write using letter graph-ics, but, as a sports announcer,Marcel should place team emblemsby their names (the Vikings’ horn,the Cowboys’ star).

Marcel’s event also highlights Clay’sconcepts of directionality and pagearrangement. But Marcel’s effortshere are not the result of a child en-

gaging solely with print but, again,of a child recontextualizing writtenlanguage across practices. Marceldoes not follow the left-to-rightconventions of a prose report; hearranges team names and scoresvertically, as on a TV screen.

The converging of different prac-tices is notable too in the complexinterplay of what is written andwhat is read (i.e., voice/print match).To hear that interplay, you have toknow that, in the official writingworkshop, Rita emphasized that thechildren should monitor how theirspoken and written words match.And you must know too that thesports announcers’ practice is toread a more elaborate text than theone visually displayed.

With those practice details as back-ground information, you can hearMarcel as he shifts voices, precari-ously positioned between practices.He initially writes The before hewrites Dallas, a prose reporting stylesince he has a sentence planned,“The Dallas Cowboys beat Carolina.”After the parent, Cindy, corrects him,Marcel writes a screen-like displayof team names and scores to accu-rately report the previous week’splay in which Dallas did beat Min-nesota. Between his columns of teamnames are the words “in Texas,”which would not be written on sucha display, but which an announcermight read. Marcel himself adoptsan announcer voice as he rereads histext to the adult, “Dallas againstMinnesota. In Texas. 15 to 48.” In sodoing, he reads the unwritten“against,” but not the written the.

Beyond these symbolic and discur-sive challenges, there are conceptualones. Marcel grapples with the dis-tinction between cities and states, adistinction not made in team names(e.g., the Minnesota Vikings, theDallas Cowboys). “This [map] has all the states, right here,” he an-

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Figure 1. Marcel’s sports report.

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nounces. Entering into the map-reading practice, Marcel’s articu-lated knowledge emerges as thegeographic knowledge embedded infootball team names is disruptedand reorganized. In a previousevent, Marcel had tried unsuccess-fully to find “Oakland” [for the Oak-land Raiders] on the states map,which led to a discussion about themap with Rita.

Then, as if all those challenges werenot enough, Marcel confronts thesituated reality of “truth.” What istrue in the brothers’ and sisters’world (that Dallas always wins) isnot necessarily true in the real BayArea world. And, finally, there are

the gender ideologies embedded inall football-related events, ideologiesthat could become salient when theyentered the official world throughwhole-class sharing, as they didwhen Rita led a class discussionabout the truth of a child’s assertionthat only boys like football.

In sum, when Marcel translated cul-tural material (e.g., names, informa-tional displays, kinds of texts, textsequencing conventions) across theboundaries of different practices,the symbolic, social, and ideologi-cal knowledge embedded in thosepractices could be disrupted andbrought into reflective awareness.Certainly a childhood practice builtwith the textual toys of mediasports shows is not on anyone’s listof critical early literacy experi-ences. But there it was anyway, evidence of the drinking god factorand of Marcel’s, and children’s,

agency in deciding what’s relevantto literacy tasks.

Similar analyses were done for allthe brothers and sisters (Dyson,2003) whose cases are filled withconverging and diverging practices.The practices—the typified voices—of hip hop radio, cartoon shows,and popular films all figured—in unexpected but ultimately pro-ductive ways—into the writtenlanguage trajectories of individ-ual children, brothers and sisters, growing up in these voice-filled times.

TOWARD DEVELOPMENTALACCOUNTS FOR ALL(UNMARKED) CHILDREN

Institutions serving the “all” childrenare being urged to reduce literacy tothe “basics”—and to reduce earlychildhoods themselves to a time forreading readiness. And yet, asAnderson-Levitt (1996) comments,

the premise that learning takes placein stages along a narrow linear path[assumes that . . . ] one could learnmore only by progressing furtheralong that path instead of by wan-dering off the track. This is the sameflawed idea that Stephen Jay Gouldfound at the core of intelligence mea-sures. . . . He called it the “fallacy ofranking . . . our propensity for order-ing complex variation as a gradualascending scale” (p. 24).

Learning to read, or learning any-thing, for that matter, is actually aprocess of complex variation. “Wan-dering off the track” was somethingthe brothers and sisters often didwithout any intention to do so. Theysimply did what all learners do—theycalled upon the drinking god, thatis, upon familiar frames of refer-ence and well-known materials, tohelp them enter into new possibili-ties. The very diversity of orga-nized social spaces within which

they lived (e.g., families, schools,media events, not to mention thebrothers and sisters’ world) miti-gated against unilateral control ofchildren’s learning by any one in-stitution. And this was good, as itled to their productive grapplingwith the symbolic, social, and ideo-logical complexities of writtentexts and social worlds.

This developmental point of view,with its openness to children’s sam-pling and remixing, should renderanemic those views that attempt tofragment written language into astring of skills or to narrowly definethe home and community experi-ences that can contribute to schoollearning (Reyes & Halcon, 2001).The message for teaching inherentin this view is deceptively straight-forward—teachers must be able torecognize children’s resources, tosee where they are coming from, sothat they can establish the commonground necessary to help childrendifferentiate and gain control over awealth of symbolic tools and com-municative practices.

To develop such common ground,teachers like Rita work toward aproductive interplay of unofficialand official worlds. For example,through open-ended composing pe-riods, educators can learn aboutchildren’s textual toys and thethemes that appeal to them. And inclassroom forums in which childrenpresent their work, teachers canhelp children name and comparehow varied kinds of texts look andsound and, moreover, how and whyand even if they appeal to all ofthem as classroom participants(Dyson, 1993, 1997; Marsh & Millard, 2000). As children bringunexpected practices, symbolic ma-terials, and technological tools intothe official school world, the cur-riculum itself should broaden and

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Learning to read, orlearning anything, for that matter, isactually a process

of complex variation.

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become more responsive to chil-dren’s worlds.

But teachers themselves need work-ing conditions that support respon-sive, interactive teaching, notscripted encounters for the “all”children (Weiner, 2000). Given myconstraints and possibilities as anobserver of children, I have tried torespond to the current political pushfor such encounters by bringingword of the drinking god. It is faith

in that metaphoric god—in thenotion that actions are guided byintentions grounded in experience—that keeps me, and others, from as-suming nothing but, rather, stayingalert to the resources of all children(no winking intended). In otherwords: Follow the drinking god.

Author’s Note

This article is a variant of the full essayentitled “The Drinking God Factor: A

Writing Development Remix for ‘All’Children” (Dyson, 2002). The researchreport on which it is based is available inThe Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write:Popular Literacies in Childhood andSchool Cultures (Dyson, 2003). The re-search itself was supported through thegenerosity of the Spencer Foundation,although the findings and opinions ex-pressed herein are not necessarilyshared by that organization. This articlewas first presented as a talk at The OhioState University and at the United King-dom Reading Association International

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Language Arts, Vol. 81 No. 2, November 2003

Teachers can gain insights about their students’ in-volvement with popular culture by exploring onlineresources. The following list of resources is presentedin two sections. Section one includes Web sites thatprovide teachers with articles, commentaries, andlesson plans on popular culture trends and issues.These sites target middle school and secondaryissues, but are relevant to elementary teachers. Sec-tion two, which includes examples of popular culturesites that kids use on their own, may allow teachers tobetter understand the content, forms, and activitiesthat students find appealing.

Do you want to learn more about media literacy and popular culture?

• Media Literacy Clearinghouse <http://www.med.sc.edu/medialit>A site designed for K–12 educators to learn aboutmedia literacy and its integration into the classroomas well as how to make students more aware of therole of media in their lives.

• Center for Media Education <http://www.cme.org/>This site offers timely information on children and themedia through publications and reports that areavailable online. Two sections on this site are theTeachers’ Field Guide to the New Digital Landscapeand Teen Digital Culture.

Do you want to visit popular culture sites that kids use on their own?

• Barbie.com <http://www.barbie.com/>Visitors to this site are greeted by an interactive, ani-mated, audio-enabled screen that shows Barbie sit-ting on a couch, a ringing phone, and a computer ona desk. Each of the icons connects to games, activi-ties, and resources, such as making a painting, deco-rating a Barbie birthday cake, going shopping, andlearning about babysitting.

• Dragon Ball Z <http://www.dragonballz.com/>Entering this site is like entering a different universe.An index provides information on characters (includ-ing heroes and villains), feature movies, videos, mer-chandizing, fan clubs, DVD/Video, Fan talent, TVschedule, Live Action Movie, Sagas, news, and anonline poll—all related to the anime phenomenon.

Other pop culture sites of interest to children

• http://www.scholastic.com/captainunderpants/home.htm

• http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/home.as• http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/game/index.

html?fromtout=games_static• http://www.nintendo.com/index.jsp• http://www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/spidey/• http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/games/home.jsp• http://www.mtv.com

—Linda D. Labbo

Web Sightings: Pop Culture Sites for Teachers and Kids

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Convention in Chester, UK, July 2002. Ithank my hard-working research assis-tant, Soyoung Lee.

References

Adams, M., Bereiter, C., Hirshberg, J., An-derson, V., & Bernier, S. A. (2000). Frame-work for effective teaching: Grade 1teacher’s guide, part A, for Open CourtReading 2000 basal series. DeSoto, TX:SRA/McGraw-Hill.

Anderson-Levitt, K. M. (1996). Behindschedule: Batch-produced children inFrench and U.S. classrooms. In B. A. Levin-son, D. E. Foley, & D. C. Holland (Eds.), Thecultural production of the educatedperson: Critical ethnographies of school-ing and local practice (pp. 57–78). Albany:State University of New York Press.

Ashton-Warner, S. (1963). Teacher. NewYork: Simon & Schuster.

Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. InC. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.), The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M.Bakhtin (pp. 254–422). Austin: Universityof Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and otherlate essays. Austin: University of TexasPress.

Bauman, R., & Briggs, C. (1990). Poetics andperformance as critical perspectives onlanguage and social life. AnthropologicalReview, 19, 59–88.

Bereiter, C., & Engelmann, S. (1966). Teach-ing disadvantaged children in the pre-school. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Clay, M. (1975). What did I write? Auckland:Heinemann.

Clay, M. (1998). By different paths tocommon outcomes. York, ME: Stenhouse.

Dyson, A. Haas. (1993). Social worlds of chil-dren learning to write in an urban primaryschool. New York: Teachers College Press.

Dyson, A. Haas. (1997). Writing superheroes:Contemporary childhood, popular culture,and classroom literacy. New York: Teach-ers College Press.

Dyson, A. Haas. (2002). The drinking godfactor: A writing development remix for“all” children. Written Communication,19, 454–577.

Dyson, A. Haas. (2003). The brothers and sis-ters learn to write: Popular literacies inchildhood and school cultures. New York:Teachers College Press.

Genishi, C. (2002). Young English languagelearners: Resourceful in the classroom.Young Children, 57 (4), 66–72.

Hanks, W. F. (1996). Language and commu-nicative practices. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Marsh, J., & Millard, E. (2000). Literacy andpopular culture. London: Sage.

McNaughton, S. (2003). Meeting of minds.Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.

Miller, P., & Goodnow, J. J. (1995). Culturalpractices: Toward an integration of cul-ture and development. In J. J. Goodnow,P. J. Miller, & F. Kessel (Eds.), Cultural prac-tices as contexts for development, No. 67:New directions in child development(pp. 5–16). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes: Cre-ating multicultural learning communities.New York: Teachers College Press.

Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychol-ogy of the child. New York: Basic Books.

Reyes, M. de la Luz, & Halcon, J. J. (Eds.).(2001). The best for our children: Criticalperspectives on literacy for Latino stu-dents. New York: Teachers College Press.

Schemo, D. J. (2002, January 9). Educationbill urges new emphasis on phonics asmethod for teaching reading. The NewYork Times, p. A-16.

Smitherman, G. (2000). “The chain remainthe same”: Communicative practices inthe hip hop nation. In G. Smitherman,Talkin’ that talk (pp. 268–286). London:Routledge.

SRA/McGraw Hill. (2000). Open Court read-ing: Grade levels K–6 [Online]. RetrievedAugust 11, 2003, from http://www.sra-4kids.com/product_info/ocr

Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and lan-guage. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Weiner, L. (2000). Research in the 90s: Impli-cations for urban teacher preparation.Review of Educational Research, 70,369–406.

Yerba Buena Center. (2001). Hip hop nation:A teacher’s guide. San Francisco: YerbaBuena Center for the Performing Arts.

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Anne Haas Dyson is professor of educa-tion at Michigan State University and astudent of the social lives and literacylearning of school children.

Author Biography

Established in 1995 by the Elementary Section SteeringCommittee, this prestigious award is given annually to adistinguished national or international educator who hasmade major contributions to the field of language arts inelementary education.The recipient of this award must have:• dramatically influenced literacy classroom practice• made ongoing contributions to the field of literacy• obtained national and/or international influence

in literacy teaching and learning

• contributed a body of work that is compatible with themission of NCTE

You may obtain a Nomination Form by calling NCTE Head-quarters at 1-800-369-6283, ext. 3612 or visiting theNCTE Web site at www.ncte.org/elem/awards/educator/.Nomination Forms must be postmarked by November 1,2003. Results will be announced in Spring 2004, and theaward winner will be honored during the Elementary Sec-tion Get-Together at the 2004 Annual Convention in Indi-anapolis, Indiana.

CALL FOR 2004 OUTSTANDING EDUCATOR IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS AWARD

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