Jeanne Gilliam Fain

Decorative WOW Currents Banner

Expand Our Use of Global Books for the Elementary Classroom

By Jeanne Gilliam Fain, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN

A young girl sits in the backseat of a blue car and looks behind her. Butterflies fill the pink sky behind the car.One line of inquiry I grapple with daily is how to think about inserting global books into elementary classrooms with scripted curriculum. When I started this work, I immediately assumed the books from the scripted curriculum were low quality books. I then took the opportunity to really study the books and discovered that these books are award-winning global titles many of us know and love deeply such as Grandfather’s Journey (Say, 1994), Coming to America: The Story of Immigration (Maestro, 1996), Tea with Milk (Say, 2009), Keeping Quilt (Polacco, 1988) and Family Picture (Carmen Lomas Garza, 2005). I have the personal bias of embracing current books with enthusiasm and often letting go of books that age well. One of the real problems that we (I work with many wonderful teachers in Nashville) encounter is that many of the books in the curriculum are around 30 years old. Today, although there is still work to do with inclusivity in children’s literature publishing, there are so many new voices and perspectives that were missing thirty years ago. Continue reading →

Decorative WOW Currents Banner

Critical Literacy: Literature and the Reader’s Imagination

By Jeanne Gilliam Fain & Christina Davidson

We waited anxiously for a response on Facebook and promptly learned that Julia Alvarez requested a letter sent in the mail. Julia Alvarez graciously answered many of the students’ questions. As educators, it was our goal for the students to step outside of their local world and think globally about their presence within the world. We hope that students learn to understand, question, and improve the world. For us, literature helped the students to see disruption of their views, multiple viewpoints, the sociopolitical, and how their actions can make a difference in their world. Continue reading →

Decorative WOW Currents Banner

Taking Social Action: Social Media’s Relevance to Students’ Lives

By Jeanne Gilliam Fain & Christina Davidson

Following the discussion of Julia Alvarez’ s Return to Sender (2009), the fourth grade students jointly decided that the novel would be powerful as a movie. Vasquez, Tate, and Harste (2013) argue that social action includes a strategic move of school curriculum to the community in order to create relevance for students. For whatever reason, students created relevance in trying to advocate for Julia Alvarez to create a movie version of the book that they came to deeply care about. Continue reading →

Decorative WOW Currents Banner

Tackling the Socio-political: Exploring social structures inside and out

By Jeanne Gilliam Fain & Christina Davidson

As the fourth grade students move toward the end of the book, they begin to discover that the definitions of citizen, American, Mexican, immigrant, and illegal have multiple interpretations. The discussions include a look into Mari’s life, her status as an immigrant, and the lack of power that she has over her life. Fourth graders thoughtfully tackle the issue of immigration as they moved to think about the consequences of breaking the law within the United States. They begin to question the depiction of the border and implications of following and breaking the law. Continue reading →

Decorative WOW Currents Banner

Gaining A Critical Perspective: Multiple Perspectives & Unpacking Notions of Immigration

By Jeanne Gilliam Fain & Christina Davidson

We experienced a temporary sense of accomplishment in our attempts to grapple with literature critically in the classroom. After an in-depth discussion of the term, immigrant, many fourth graders wholeheartedly agreed that immigrants are terrorists. For this group of students, this was the dominant idea as troubling as it was for us, we reflected upon the reasoning for such views. Continue reading →

Decorative WOW Currents Banner

Gaining A Critical Perspective of Literature: Starting Points — Disrupting the Commonplace

By Jeanne Gilliam Fain & Christina Davidson

At the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year, Christina Davidson (fourth grade teacher) and I (teacher educator) decided to collaboratively examine how fourth graders in the reading/language arts block develop critical perspectives of literature. Critical literacy research informed our understanding of building intentional space in an already jam-packed literacy curriculum that explored and wrestled with issues of power (Vasquez, Tate, & Harste; 2013). Christina teaches in a rural school located two hours outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Fourth grade students understand the complexity of living in a small town and many often arrive with in-depth knowledge about the economy, government, farm animals, football, hunting, and religion. Their worldview is heavily influenced by the fact that several of the students rarely travel outside of their town. Continue reading →