by Melissa Summer Wells, Gina Crosby-Quinatoa, and Julia López-Robertson, University of South Carolina
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Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen.
(Brown Girl Dreaming, How to Listen #7, p. 278)
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We have enjoyed inviting you into the journeys of Enrique and Jaqueline as they made difficult choices, remained brave despite the discomforts of the unknown, searched for their identities and “made it” despite challenging circumstances. Now, as we prepare to bid farewell to Enrique and Jacqueline, one pressing question remains: How do we critically listen to their stories?
Many people may believe that children, especially young children, are too naïve to participate in or benefit from difficult dialogues about race, equity and similar themes embodied in Enrique’s and Jacqueline’s stories. Engaging in critical literacy, with protagonist like Enrique or through children’s books like The Color of Home (Hoffman, 2012) or Migrant (Trottier, 2011) ALL of our students will have a chance for their story to be told. Children do indeed explore these issues in our classrooms and other learning spaces. We, the educators and adults, just have to know how to listen to these explorations and how to respond.
In her book White Teacher, Vivian Paley (1979/2000) tells of her experience teaching soon after desegregation took place, and her faculty decided to “bend over backward to see no color, hear no color, speak no color” (p. 7). Today, decades after desegregation, many classroom teachers continue to take this colorblind approach to race in the classroom. However, as a parent of one of Paley’s students said, “What you value, you talk about” (p. 12). If we value diversity, can we continue to ignore it? What story does that silence tell? Can we afford not to talk about race and the surrounding issues of equity?
Stories, such as Enrique’s and Jacqueline’s, are wonderful ways to start these discussions with young people in safe, constructive environments. Here are five tips for how to listen to the spaces—and silences—within these topics.
• Use books like Brown Girl Dreaming and Enrique’s Journey for instructional mini-lessons. Branch out from the “old favorites” to teach reading and writing mini-lessons to include books that give voice to stories that aren’t usually heard.
• Prepare students for global citizenship. Encourage informed discussions about equity as it relates to current events and global issues, such as human rights and immigration.
• Foster a sense of belonging. If literature is to provide mirrors into our own experiences and windows into the experiences of others, we need to make sure our young readers have access to ample books reflecting the stories of others as well as themselves.
• Encourage critical literacy. We can—and should—discuss critical social issues with children of all ages through critical literacy. Show readers how to question texts and gather information from multiple perspectives.
• Analyze book accessibility. Critically analyze the voices heard (or not heard) in the reading materials young readers can access. What do the silences and the gaps in our reading collections tell our readers?
Each of these tips can foster critical dialogue with our readers. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire (1970/99) recognizes the humanizing power of dialogue:
To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it… Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. Hence, dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not wish this naming–between those who deny others the right to speak their word and those whose right to speak has been denied them. (p. 88)
As we learn to listen to the story beneath the silence, we find ourselves. Enrique and Jacqueline both journeyed through vast expanses of silence as they found themselves and hope. All over the world, children and young adults face unimaginable events and choices daily–phenomenon over which they have no control, social-political situations that leave them as innocent victims of decisions that directly alter their lives. These children and young adults are not strangers. More often than not, they are our students. Through critical dialogue around stories that are usually sequestered in silence, we offer our young readers this same quest for self-discovery and hope.
References
Freire, P. (1970/99). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Paley, V. G. (1979/2000). White teacher. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Children’s Literature Cited
Hoffman, M. (2012). Color of Home. (K. Littlewood, Illus.). London, U.K.: Frances Lincoln Ltd
Nazario, S. (2014). Enrique’s Journey: The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite with his Mother. New York: Delacorte Press.
Trottier, M. (2011). Migrant . I. Arsenault (Illus.). Toronto, Canada: Groundwood Books
Woodson, J. (2014). Brown Girl Dreaming. New York, NY: Nancy Paulsen Books.
Please visit wowlit.org to browse or search our growing database of books, to read one of our two on-line journals, or to learn more about our mission.
- Themes: Gina Crosby-Quinatoa, Julia López-Robertson, Melissa Summer Wells
- Descriptors: Student Connections, WOW Currents