Just days now, and many of us will meet in Milwaukee, WI, for this year's Conference on College Composition and Communication. This volume of the Community Literacy Network Newsletter anticipates that reunion. First, Susan Popkin, Joy Ritchie, and Amy Goodburn share pencil portraits of innovative university-school-community literacy partnerships. Joy and Amy articulate a commitment many of us share when they conclude their portrait: "We remain convinced that the value of fostering collaborative community-university-school partnerships lies precisely in the on-going opportunities they provide to move outside one's own institutional perspectives in order to dream other possibilities."
Next, the newsletter lists the titles of 4Cs papers that we have received from CLNN members. Please note that the Community Literacy Network will be hosting a Special Interest Group Session again this year. The session will give us a chance to discuss the Deweyan question of what it means to collaborate with non-academic groups or institutions: What are the consequences of such collaborative acts--both intended and unintended? The SIG (Session SG1.10) will be held on Thursday, March 28, from 6:45 to 7:45 p.m. We look forward to seeing you there.
For the newsletter, we continue to welcome pencil portraits of readers' areas of interests, either an initial sketch or an update.
Elenore Long and Linda Flower, editors
Because I teach English Education courses for UCLA undergrads entering credential programs in elementary and secondary education, my focus on community literacies has been through the experiential learning assignments and activities of these students.
On the one hand, the California Department of Education mandates that students visit classrooms as early as their senior year: some become assistants, tutors, aides in the classrooms as a result of these observations; other students have been working in learning environments--day care centers, tutorials in schools or churches, and community centers. These involvements are required for course work, but are also rich experiences for our students to learn about the connections between classroom and community literacies.
I also work with K-12 teachers in curricular transformation, primarily in children's and adolescent literature, and in instructional theories and strategies to reach all students and to engage all ranges of literacies and intelligences.
One important element of my interest in community literacy is considering "literacy" as "literacies". I believe that developing/creating the talents and subject-matter-knowledge of our teachers is an avenue toward community literacy that is overlooked. That is to say, an educated teacher affects literacy and language development of not only students in the classroom, but members of the community.
Looking out from our offices in the middle of the University of Nebraska campus in Lincoln, the boundaries between university and community had seemed fairly indistinguishable. As we've begun initiating our university-school-community literacy partnership, we're finding those boundaries are much more tangible than we imagined and require us to engage in serious negotiation between the discourses and structures of university and community institutions.
We are working on two projects to move outside those boundaries or at least to make them more permeable. The first, designed to help our students experience first-hand the implications of literacy theory beyond the confines of the classroom, is a community-workplace literacy theory and practicum course for undergraduate English majors and arts and sciences students. The practicum would allow students to work in and study a specific community literacy site--tutoring in an after-school program or working with new immigrant parents, for example. The development of the course was supported by a grant from the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, which allowed us to visit the CLC in Pittsburgh in October.
Our other project, funded by a grant from the Woods Charitable Fund, is a summer institute for teachers and community literacy workers. The goal of the institute is to bring teachers and community literacy workers together in order to expand our definitions of literacy and our understanding of literacy practices. We also want to enable teachers and literacy workers to form partnerships and develop specific projects for further work. As a follow-up to the summer institute and to support the partnerships that emerge as a result, we'll sponsor a one-day literacy conference the following spring.
As we've begun laying the groundwork for these two initiatives, we've had to move out of the university to discover what is already occurring in the community. We find many areas of shared concern and also barriers to working together. Although many different literacy initiatives exist in the community there is no central "clearinghouse" or forum in which to consider and address the issues the community faces. Lincoln is a major immigrant resettlement site, and since l989 Lincoln's immigrant population has doubled. As a result the Lincoln Public Schools have put in place family literacy programs to extend literacy opportunities to children and parents. At the same time, several community organizations also sponsor literacy efforts. But often individual teachers in classrooms know little about the opportunities they might help their students and their families gain access to, and community literacy workers do not often see teachers as a resource in their work. In addition, conflict between groups of immigrant students and other students has increased in several high schools, but teachers feel they have insufficient resources to help students address these issues through reading and writing.
Our summer institute is designed to help teachers and community literacy workers begin to address some of the issues they identify as most pressing. But the serious obstacle we face now is not funding, but untangling the bureaucratic barriers between university and community workers/advocates. For example, university scheduling and requirements for graduate classes, while designed to accommodate teachers, do not fit community workers' schedules or educational needs. These and other circumstances require us to question and revise our institutional structures and how they may limit collaboration with community members.
As we continue to work on these issues we value our association with other groups like the Pittsburgh Community Literacy Center where we can see how others have worked to surmount similar barriers. We remain convinced that the value of fostering collaborative community-university-school partnerships lies precisely in the on-going opportunities they provide to move outside one's own institutional perspectives in order to dream other possibilities.
W. 14: All-Day Wednesday Workshop: Community-University Partnerships for Literate Social Action. / MECCA Auditorium / Juneau Room North, 1st Floor. The workshop will feature partnerships that educators at Bentley College, Carnegie Mellon University, and Stanford University have forged with people in their communities. It will focus on educational practices within urban settings that support literacy learning. Presenters will include Bruce Herzberg and Edward Zlotkowski, Bentley College; Linda Flower, Julie Deems, and Amanda Young, Carnegie Mellon University; Joyce Baskins and Wayne Peck, Community Literacy Center; and Elenore Long, Robert Morris College; Marjorie Ford, Stanford University; and Lorraine Higgins, University of Pittsburgh.
D. 29: Panel: Intercultural Collaboration, Conflict, and Computers:
Roads to Social Justice through Community Literacy / Thursday,
12:15-1:30 / MECCA Convention Center / Grand Ballroom, 2nd Floor
-----Julia G. Deems, "Hypermediated: Bringing More Students into an
Intercultural Dialogue about Rival Perspective."
-----Linda Flower, "Intercultural Collaboration and the Social Power of
Hybrid Discourse."
-----Elenore Long, "Mentoring for Mutual Learning."
F. 20: Gwen Gorzelsky, "Assignments: Producing Knowledge, Producing Selves." Thursday, 3:40-4:55 p.m. / Hyatt Regency, Executive Room B, 2nd Floor.
G. 16: Jennifer D. Flach, "Constructing Meaning for Key Terms and Constructs through the Activities of a Literacy Center." Thursday, 5:15-6:30 p.m. / Hyatt Regency, Executive Room C, 2nd Floor.
SG1.10: The Community Literacy Network Special Interest Group Session: Thursday, 6:45-7:45 p.m. / MECCA Convention Center /East Meeting Room 4, 2nd Floor
J. 13: Panel: Community and University Literacies in Contact:
Breakthroughs to Better Practice / Friday, 1:00-2:15 / Hyatt Regency /
Lakeshore Room C, 1st Floor.
-----Joyce A. Baskins, "Forgotten Partners: Disaffected Teenagers and
Parents Writing Together at an Urban Community Literacy Center."
-----Wayne C. Peck, "Widening Intersections of Interest between Urban
Teenagers and Their Parents Through Writing, Reflection, and Action."
* * * * *
ABOUT THE COMMUNITY LITERACY NETWORK NEWSLETTER: Across colleges and
universities, many of us are developing university courses and lines of
inquiry to address issues of community literacy. And it seems that we
are asking many of the same questions: how might literacy, social
institutions, and education work together to define and support social
action? Our university courses that address community literacy
typically share a commitment to innovative, hands-on learning through
socially relevant experiences. Yet each of us teaching such a course
must shape these commitments according to specific constraints and
opportunities. Because of this shared dynamic, we educators have much
to learn from one another; conversely, we stand to lose if working in
isolation. The aim of the Community Literacy Network Newsletter is to
put educators interested in issues of community literacy in touch with
one another. The network is sponsored by the Community Literacy Center,
a collaborative between the Community House and Carnegie Mellon
University, both in Pittsburgh, PA.
Editors are Dr. Linda Flower and Dr. Elenore Long.
For information or to send us your contributions to the next volume, please contact Kathy Meinzer [km39+@andrew.cmu.edu]. Postal address: Carnegie Mellon / Center for the Study of Writing & Literacy / Dept. of English / 259 Baker Hall / Pittsburgh, PA 15213.