Archives Neighbourhood Bridges - Emma Parfitt Proofreading Editing Services

The Fantastic Binomial

Emma Parfitt — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 13:53:00 +0000

During June and July I was travelling. My last trip was to the US to work with Dr Ingram at the University of Minnesota, advising her on possible methodology changes in the implementation and assessment of the Neighborhood Bridges Program used to analyse critical literacy in storytelling and drama. Here is a bit of fan fiction to illustrate the fantastic binomial at work in one classroom I visited during the trip.

Fantastic Binomial

Tegan was called up for the fantastic binomial. ‘Yes!’ she said, jumping out of her seat and seizing the white board marker. She usually never got picked for anything.

Maria, the Bridges storyteller, bent towards her. Tegan was instantly aware of being the smallest in the class. ‘Choose a place where you could get lost,’ said Maria, ‘and write it on the board.’

There was already a list of prepositions that the class had generated on the white board. Tegan thought of a word and began to write it carefully in capital letters to the left of the prepositions list. Dalen had the other marker. He was writing down an object that could be found in a classroom. He was hiding his word from the class with both hands. Once the words were written Maria would make up a story on the spot linking Tegan’s word to Dalen’s via the magic of a preposition word like above, behind, between or under.

Tegan thought that it was fun. You never knew what the story was going to be. Last week the words were ‘Clay inside mum.’ Maria had repeated the title carefully, then said, ‘My mum is a trickster. A trickster who is always playing tricks on me. You might think she looks a little odd, because my mum is green from head to toe with large eyes so she sort of looks like a….’

‘Troll!’ the classroom called out, ‘Ogre!’

‘Yes,’ Maria said, ‘we’re both ogres. I’ve lived under dark smelly bridges my whole life. Life under a bridge is kind of boring so mum would play a lot of tricks on me. This one morning, while I was sleeping, she had a great idea for a trick. She got some clay and pulled, and pulled, and moulded, and pulled it, until it was a giant circle full of holes. And then chuckling she painted this big holey ball of clay. Can you guess what colour?’

‘Green!’ a group of boys decided.

‘Yes, green. How did you know? Because my favourite thing to eat for breakfast in the whole world is green cheese. How I love green cheese!’ Maria rubbed her hands together. ‘So she painted the clay green and arranged it nicely on the breakfast table, on a plate, on a checked table cloth. While this was going on I was peacefully sleeping, unaware of what was going on. Breakfast! My mum called. I got out of bed and went into the kitchen and there was the largest green cheese I had ever seen. Boy was I excited!’ Maria did a little dance of joy. ‘Oh man, this was going to be a delicious breakfast. I took a big bite! Urgh! It’s clay! I spat out the green painted clay and it flew across the room into my mum’s mouth. Her mouth was open wide, she was laughing so hard, and gulp!, she swallowed it whole. And that’s how the clay got inside my mum. And it hasn’t been seen since.’

After last week’s story Tegan was excited to see what would happen as she added the final letter onto her word.

FOREST

She was still smiling as she fell through the whiteboard and found herself in a forest.

This wasn’t a dream. Often in stories like this it’s all made up but Tegan had a class room of witnesses. One moment she was writing on the board in Mrs Hennepin’s class, the next moment she had vanished. Obviously she found a way back if I can tell you this story. At the time she didn’t know this. Tegan was all alone in a dark forest, behind her in the air was the word FOREST in large red capitals. The trees were taller than any Tegan had ever seen before. They clustered together hiding the sky, and the sun, so that little vegetation grew on the ground. A dark shape in the dark made her jump, and the back of her sweater rubbed out part of the T in FOREST. Tegan blinked as part of the forest became transparent. Was that part of someone’s foot and a desk? She quickly turned around and wiped all the letters away and found herself in Mrs Hennepin’s classroom once more where Maria was telling the story about how Tegan wrote a word on the board and vanished and then returned to the class room.

Tegan didn’t imagine it though. Did she?

[For more information about The Fantastic Binomial check out the book Speaking Out by Jack Zipes]

L’article The Fantastic Binomial est apparu en premier sur Emma Parfitt Proofreading Editing Services.

Minneapolis Research Trip Sept 2014

Emma Parfitt — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 13:56:00 +0000

In September I was invited to Minneapolis by Professor Jack Zipes to participate in the work of Neighborhood Bridges. This involved presenting my research to staff, teachers and teaching artists of Neighborhood Bridges, meeting with academics, and going into a number of different schools to see the project in action.

A brief overview of Bridges

Walker Sculpture Garden (Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburgh)

Bridges is recognised by the US Department for Education as a national model for arts education. Highly trained teaching artists take storytelling and drama into schools and work with the teacher and their classroom from autumn to spring. The breadth of the work is impressive as Bridges works with almost forty teaching artists and teachers in schools across Minneapolis. I assisted four teaching artists in the class room during their first sessions. The teaching artist works with the teacher and a classroom of approximately twenty to thirty young people within primary and secondary schools. Throughout the year the classroom works on encouraging the students’ individual and group storytelling and drama skills, including creativity and the ability to question story from their own experiences. The year cumulates with storytelling performances created by the students at the Children’s Theatre Company which is an opportunity to see performances from other schools and meet other classrooms on the program. Dr Deborah Ingram at the University of Minnesota, and others, assess the program to ensure critical literacy targets are met.

Presenting storytelling research at Warwick

After introducing myself to roughtly forty teachers and teaching artists on September tenth Maria Asp at Bridges kindly arranged a two hour slot on the fifteenth. This was an opportunity to hear the perspectives of various teaching artists, teachers and Bridges staff. My research aims to investigate if oral storytelling, within a school context, can be used to understand and/or assist the transitions of young people of 12-14 years into adult roles. To answer this question a total of thirty focus groups were conducted across three schools over five weeks using an innovative storytelling method called the storytelling space because it creates an area within a school separate from conventional goal-focused education.

After presenting an outline of this work I asked how storytelling research might support the work currently done in education. A number of themes arose during this discussion.

The social aspects of storytelling

Bridges Program Director and Teaching Artist Maria Asp reflected, ‘To me it just seems right on that the social trigger is where the learning happens. That’s because everything that we know about true critical pedagogy is that learning is relational, that when they’re in a space where they’re knowledge is valued, and their experiences, if it’s family or whatever, is seen as valuable sources, as opposed to another author or something, that’s where kids, that’s where they show their greatest compassion and understanding for each other.’

Education

The group discussed how current assessed education stifles potential and creative thinking. Maria Asp said ‘Making space for non-scripted teaching is an argument that I think storytelling could support’ for example in terms of information retention. Storytelling in education over text-based work led has in the group’s opinion led to an astounding recollection of details from Bridges’ storytelling games from the start of the year. Narratives are remembered, they see this in action working with the classrooms. Sandy Agustin, Teaching Artist, points out education is ‘about asking questions it’s not about right or wrong. It’s what do you think?’

Bridges teaching artists described the way in which storytelling breaks barriers so teachers see pupils differently and vice versa. They have seen how the program improves class relationships, and how the teachers learn and enhance their own skills over the year and beyond. Engaging the teachers engages the students.

The role of the storyteller

The group I presented to were surprised, and shocked!, when the storyteller was asked to leave the room during the research focus groups (the storyteller’s role being to deliver the story then leave the group to their discussion). The purpose of this, due to lack of time to train the storytellers in the research method, was to avoid adult-led discussion. This technique avoided leading the storyteller to perform in a particular way to enhance the research goals which I felt would be interference. Although by being present and conducting the research this has an effect. Tessa Flynn, Community Engagement Manager and Teaching Artist, said ‘It’s interesting too, that it’s just the kids. Just taping what they are talking about’.

Professor Jack Zipes said, ‘you’ve got to talk to the storyteller. They’re going to emphasise certain things. All teaching artists in bridges go in with the intention to animate students, to think about particular problems. The way they tell their stories will emphasise certain things.’

This I saw in action whilst assisting Bridges in different schools across Minneapolis. The teaching artists told the same introductory story of Minnie and St Paul; a folk tale about the founding of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St Paul). However the relationship between the two characters, Minnie and Paul was retold in many different ways. Jay Scoggin for example emphasised Minnie’s gratefulness to Paul for building a bridge to return her cows to her that had wandered onto his land. In Katy McEwen’s version Paul gave Minnie back her cows, which allowed Katy to ask the classroom what else Paul could do to say sorry. A student suggested that Paul could offer Minnie another cow and Katy wove the idea into the story. Aaron Radatz’s version of Paul captured his love of pranks so that Paul purposefully hid the cows in his barn as a joke as he cleverly drew the students into the story. And Tess Flynn had her classroom feeling comfortable enough to be acting out the character of Minnie, copying her actions of Minnie’s cranky personality whilst telling the story.

Storytelling is relational, and in education research the relationships between storyteller and teacher has time to evolve into a richer learning experience. In the Bridges program the storyteller facilitates discussion of the story by placing questions in the students like ‘who has the power in this story?’.

Differences between US and UK research

I was able to obtain school approval to record the audio of student’s conversations. Shannon McManimon who did her PhD on Bridges wasn’t allowed to record and had to take notes by hand. This creates an obstacle to research. Though she noted, as I did, most of the time the students forgot that they were being recorded. And that a researcher by being present is an interfering presence. Shannon’s PhD was based about a story she narrated: ‘who told the story was no longer important because they had taken ownership of that story’.

I was stuck with how to end this blog because there is much more that came out of the discussions. However it is most fitting to end with a question from a Bridges member of staff.

Rachel Austin Bernstein, East Metro/Early Bridges Manager

‘These students were doing this means nothing against all the standardised test scores. Yet this is serious educational research. That’s a different research language than analysing test scores. How can we compare the two different kinds of research?‘

With many thanks to Professor Jack Zipes, to everyone involved with Neighborhood Bridges Project for being so welcoming, and the Sociology Department at Warwick for their support

L’article Minneapolis Research Trip Sept 2014 est apparu en premier sur Emma Parfitt Proofreading Editing Services.