Official Portraits and Unofficial Counterportraits of At Risk Students

<p>This book chronicles 5th and 6th grade writers - children of gang members, drug users, poor people, and non-documented and documented immigrants - in a rural school in the southwest US coming into their voices, cultivating those voices, and using those voices in a variety of venues, beginning with the classroom community and spreading outward. </p><p>At the heart of this book is the cultivation of tension between official and unofficial portraits of these students. Official portraits are composed of demographic data, socioeconomic data, and test results. Unofficial counterportraits offer different views of children, schools, and communities. The big ideas of official and unofficial portraits are presented, then each chapter offers data (the children’s and teachers’ processes and products) and facets of the theoretical construct of counterportraits, as a response to official portraits. The counterportraits are built slowly in order to base them in evidence and to articulate their complexity.</p><p>Many teachers and soon-to-be teachers facing the dilemmas and complexities of teaching in diverse classrooms have serious questions about how to honor students’ lives outside of school, making school more relevant. This book offers evidence to present to the public, legislators, and the press as a way of talking back to official portraits, demonstrating that officially failing schools are not really failing - evidence that is crucial for the survival of public schools.</p> <p>Preface</p><p>Acknowledgements </p><p>Prologue: Writing Spaces and Hard Times</p><p>Chapter 1: An Introduction to Searching for Our Truths</p><p>Before the Work Began</p><p>Portraits and Counterportraits</p><p>Mesa Vista Elementary School (MVE): The Official Portrait</p><p>Finding the School</p><p>Homelessness</p><p>Chapter 2: Writers Reveal Themselves</p><p>Becoming More than an Observer</p><p>First Pieces of Writing</p><p>Initiating Data Analysis</p><p>Teacher as Screamer</p><p>Strictness, Power, and Microaggressions</p><p>Strict Schools and the Search for Joy</p><p>The Counterportrait Up to This Point</p><p>Chapter 3: Claiming Spaces to Write</p><p>The Sixth Graders’ Space</p><p>Finding the Space to Write</p><p>The Fifth Graders’ Space</p><p>The Biography Assignment Begins to Evolve</p><p>Writing Spaces and the View of the Child</p><p>Counterportraits So Far</p><p>Chapter 4: Rewriting Self and Writing About Others</p><p>Sixth Graders’ Non-Biography Biography Work</p><p>Moving Towards Increased Sharing</p><p>Fifth Graders Begin Biography Writing</p><p>Composing Classmates’ Biographies</p><p>Counterportraits (so far), Context, and the Presentation of Self</p><p>Chapter 5: Expanding Writing Spaces as Communities of Practice</p><p>Fifth Graders Interview, Transcribe, & Write</p><p>Some Fifth Graders’ Transcriptions (Excerpts)</p><p>And in the sixth grade…</p><p>Communities, Boundaries, and Counterportraits</p><p>Legitimizing a Context for Counterportraiture</p><p>Chapter 6: Writing Changes Writers: The Impact of Inertia</p><p>Good News</p><p>Sixth Graders Consider Expository Biography</p><p>Featured Fifth Grade Writer</p><p>Working for Hours</p><p>Counterportraiture, Working in the Plural Form, & Inertia</p><p>Chapter 7: Heroes, Dark Secrets, Otter Pops, & Struggles</p><p>In the Fifth Grade</p><p>Featured Fifth Grade Authors</p><p>Chuck, the Humorist</p><p>Estevan’s Hero</p><p>Sixth Grade Poets’ Dark Poetry</p><p>Sixth Graders’ Brief Biographies</p><p>Things Fall Apart</p><p>The Classroom as a "Site of Struggle"</p><p>Struggle and the Use of Time</p><p>Writing as Carnival</p><p>Carnivals Breed Struggle</p><p>Counterportraits, Struggles, Legitimacy, and Possibilities</p><p>Chapter 8: Writing Places as Hybrid Spaces</p><p>Sixth Graders Get Serious</p><p>Poetry in the Biography Genre</p><p>Hybridized Texts and Contexts</p><p>Hybridized Spaces and Counterportraits</p><p>Chapter 9: Products, Presentations, and Power </p><p>Our First Public Venue</p><p>Reading Their Work in Small Groups</p><p>Slam Poetry</p><p>For Families</p><p>Counterportraits and Spheres of Influence</p><p>When Small Spheres Align…</p><p>Chapter 10: Suffering, Struggles, and the Community</p><p>Home Visits</p><p>Bringing the Community to the Sixth Grade</p><p>Writers’ Reflections on the Year</p><p>Reflections on self-as-writer and Counterportraits</p><p>Reflections on Writing and Counterportraits</p><p>What else, what next, and Counterportraits</p><p>Thank You Notes, Relationships, and Counterportraits</p><p>Critical Literacy, Hope and Counterportraits</p><p>Chapter 11: Writing Spaces for Better Times</p><p>The Purposes of School, the Search for Joy, & the Spirit of the Child</p><p>Inner Struggles</p><p>Language & Identity Struggles</p><p>School as a Site of Struggle</p><p>Knowledge/Power Struggle</p><p>Agency: Responding to Struggles</p><p>Agency and Responsibilities in Composing Counterportraits</p><p>Agency and Responsibility, the Bigger Picture</p><p>Agency and Responsibility in Schools</p><p>Agency and Responsibility in Partnerships</p><p>Changing the Course of History</p><p>Epilogue: Microeducational Economies</p><p>Appendix 1: Counterportraiture as Method/Method as Political Work</p><p>Appendix 2: Full Text of Some Biographies </p><p>Appendix 3: Storyboard </p><p>Appendix 4: Editorial Checklist</p><p>References</p><p>Index of Children’s Work</p><p>Subject Index</p>