How to use this Page

I haven’t seen these yet. Thanks for pointing to them. I’ll share the site with students in my class.

The script that goes with the deer begs for analysis. Another read of what it says is “get this deer so your kid can practice killing it just like mom and dad do.” You might say this in your podcast (haven’t listened yet). Being a plush toy, it asks the child to cuddle with something the child will kill later. Creepy.

Congratulations Vivian & Andy!!

After one year and 50 episodes, I’m like Pavlov’s dog: just hearing your theme, stings, and Vivian’s dependably cheery and confident voice puts a smile on my face no matter what.

Thanks for all your thought provoking shows and your consistent example of respectful exploration. Keep CLIP coming,
Andrea

Thank YOU Andrea. I really value your ongoing support and openness to my explorations. Of course some of these were generated from your comments and our ongoing conversation Here’s to the next 50 together!!!

Congratualtions Vivian!
Fifty shows in one year is impressive. Hearing the segment you reissued is a useful way for me (and likely most listeners) to reflect and consider my purpose for listening and engaging with ciritcal literacy practices in classrooms and in life. As I think that we all continue to change along the way to formulating a working understanding of what critical literacy means to each of us in different settings at different times, the real life aspect of your podcasts and the stories you and others share help to keep perspectives open to so much more than a set of “tasks” to do w/students and that resonates with me. I just keep thinking about your student’s voice who says, “Maybe they just don’t understand” (in reference to the French Cafe and their exclusion) and hope that educators and families continue to open lines of dialogue toward understanding, with Clip as an instigator if need be!

Sarah

What a grrreat quote! Did you have a page #?

Hi vivian. this the first time i’ve listened to a ‘podcast’. it’s really exciting to be involved in this form of information sharing. i’ve been taking a courses that focus in on critical literacy and “new literacies” so — there have been many ‘firsts’ for me in the last few months. I mean ‘firsts’ in the way of collaborating on line, viewing sites on the www (that i never even knew existed) and more importantly; learning how to use them as teaching and learning tools. wow!
so thank you for this exciting experience.
teresa

Hi Teresa.
I’m so glad you stopped in! I’d love to hear where you take your new experiences! Wonderful.

vivian

The girl in front of me at church on Sunday was dressed in a cute mini skirt with a coordinating top. She had on pink dangling earrings and a pink ankle bracelet above her pink painted toenails. She wore flipflops, heavy eye liner, eye shadow and blush. She sat there - all “tarted” up -during the entire church service coloring a picture. The incongruence between her appearance and her activity was remarkable and I wanted to shake the mother and say, “DON’T YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO YOUR LITTLE GIRL?” but, of course, I didn’t. Parents need to pay close attention to what their children are reading - in books, magazines, online. And they need to stop trying to live their lives through their beautiful daughters.

I absolutely agree with Nathan’s observations and his proposed solutions. I must add to this discourse the boys who are seeing the same messages. The myriad of mental health issues that Nathan describes are some of the effects on girls. Boys see these messages, and interact with girls to whom they are intended, and they react as well. Many of my tenth grade boys are aggressive towards girls but the girls are just as aggressive and often instigate these interactions. I think boys are the byproduct of the marketing campaign to sexualze young girls. Regardless of gender, parents should be involved in the lives of their children. Teachers should be aware of the images their students are exposed to and be open to dialogue.

Thanks for your comments Marilyn and Andrew. You both raise the importance of being attentive, as teachers and parents, to the way in which media positions children. I think once you create a space to engage in these important conversations with children, the easier it gets.

Andrew…sounds like you have a great topic for a clip episode!

Have a good one
vivian

This recording did not play well. It sounded very distorted. Please update it so that I can utilize it in my online courses. What is more, try not to use excessive music. It serves as only a distracter. Check out Clark (2003), Building Expertise. She clearly states that too much music distracts learning.
Food for thought,
Anitra

Thanks for your thoughts Anitra and I’m glad you have been able to use CLIP in your courses. This episode was actually a listener/student submission where the author used synthesized his voice as part of his MFEdoomcator persona.

I do have a transcript of his entire audio which is accessible by clicking on the word ‘more’ in the show notes. It’s a very good text so I would recommend having a read.

Thanks

As a student in Vivian’s EDU 619 Critical Literacy Class, I always felt very unsure of myself. I always felt that I really did not understand what critical literacy was. Often timid, I never could muster up the courage to actually say what I was thinking or feeling about a number of issues that we talked about. Yesterday during our last class, my group decided to use one of the strategies that we talked about throughout the course entitled “Graffiti”. Our group had a hard time deciding what we wanted to put on the white paper. We all had very different ideas of what we thought the class was about (or so we thought we did!) I realized then that there was no “right” answer to critical literacy. In fact, we were all saying the same things, we just internalized them and talked about them differently. I was very interested in listening to this podcast because again, I wanted to know if the same things that I was thinking were being said through someone who may be a bit more articulate than I am. So thank you again for this podcast. It reaffirmed my own beliefs ( reading between the lines of spoken word, creating relationships with the world, etc) yet it was said in such a way that I don’t think that I could have done critical literacy justice.

Critical literacy means enlightening adults and children about the world around them. This is helpful because it educates about how others are different and how some of us who think no one is like us that there are others like us. Without critical literacy the world is seen as black or white as opposed to sometimes grey. I believe it is great for adults and children to read books and be a part of book talks to discuss what they thought and how they feel about the topic that they read about. I agree that having critical knowledge is diffinately needed for adults and children to be successful in the world.

Hi Vivian,

A student of yours for about 5 or 6 years now, I still find myself re-defining and exploring my definition of Critical Literacy. Our initial Bailey’s study group continually said how CL is not something you “do” but something you “live”. I notice the gradual changes in my classroom practices along with my pedgogical changes because of how the CL theory is now embedded in my work. In other words, my teaching and “my being” cannot escape the heightened awareness that comes with a having a more critical lens on life and the world.

I appreciate how Tamara said that there is not “right” answer to what CL is and it took me a long time to be comfortable with that –and I still have days where I “don’t get it” and find myself re-negotiating my personal definition. I also agree with what you and Steph say about how having a critical lens on what we do as citizens of the world leads to a more heightened awareness of the injustices and reasons for success in the world.

Thank you for this show, Vivian. I think I will print it out

Hi all,

As the author of the mentioned podcast… I just wanted to state that there definitely can’t be one true definition for critical literacy. I see it more as a philosophy, a perspective, and a most enlightening opportunity for our students if we consider it into our everyday teaching. Critical literacy is what you make it in your classroom and it should enpower our students to see things beyond the obvious.

The most profound idea that I took away from Vivian’s class is the idea that each of my classes should invoke a common theme for students to leave with. I don’t like the idea of my students thinking that my Algebra class was just about graphing lines and solving equations. I hope that my students can walk away from my Algebra class knowing ways to use their newly aquired math skills to model the world around them… there are just too many people with math phobias and shut it out because they can’t simply see the value in it.

-Will

Hi Will,

I am so sorry for my mistake. I only read the show this week and didn’t follow exactly what I needed to. I truly appreciate your thoughts and now that I have a better understanding of your background and work, I have to say I appreciate your words even more. Math never looked this appetizing to me and yes, I have math phobias especially when the material goes into Algebra that I was not shown as relevant to the world around me. Many thanks for your efforts and teaching and I look forward to hearing more about your work.

Carol

Thanks for the very informative and engaging exchange of thoughts and ideas everyone!!! Your comments are much appreciated. Let’s keep this CL conversation going!

vivian

Hi Vivian,

First, congratulations and good luck with your upcoming talks on podcasting. Through listening and talking with you about your shows, these exciting events will be fascinating for you and surely in result will give all of your listeners more to think about. Your inquisitive and informative shows always leave me wanting more!

Also, I am so glad to hear Hilary’s voice and words again. Thank you for bringing her ideas and awareness to the larger world community to get even more people thinking. Those of us who heard her that day have already been trying to reflect further on our personal practices and also apply ideas to our school.

Thanks for everything!
Carol

Thanks Carol! A big part of my work connects with thinking with awesome teachers like you! I always appreciate the support and enjoy the work that we’re doing with your second grade podcasters!

Hilary is such a thoughtful and inspirational colleague and friend. She always leaves us with new wonderings. I can’t wait for her next visit.

hugs
vivian

Hi, Vivian (and Carol!)…
I was so sad to have to miss Hilary’s visit, so it was great to be able to hear her here. If you have any more recordings of her visit, I would love to hear. It is always so inspiring to hear her and talk with her, and with you as well! You are an incredible support to so many of us! I miss working more closely together.
Shannon

Hi Shannon,
Thank you for the kind words. They are most appreciated. Keeps me going! It has been too long. We need a get together!

I’m glad you enjoyed Hilary’s audio!

Hugs
v

Thanks Vivian and Hilary for posting this talk. We met at school to debrief after the conversation at AU and had a laugh looking over our notes–half sentences, phrases, words like bidurian. At one point I wrote “ask Vivian what she said.” You must’ve said something smart.

I’ve been thinking about identity–Hilary talked about how it goes somewhere within this model. I know we have more than one identity. We design and redesign text–how does that impact our identity or identities?

Thanks for the link to the paper because I should reread it. Also Choice Words.

Happy day.
Kath

Vivian,

Listening to Professor Janks talk really helped bring her Interrelated Model to life, especially the interplay between power and access. Her recounting of the interview project she did really displayed “access” as a two-way street. My research for other classes on marginalization in the formal education system also leads me to consider this point. Members of non-dominant or marginalized groups do not only need to have access to the culture of power, but their culture, values, perspectives and experiences must have access to (or have a place in) the learning space. This is the issue I’ve seen with the multicultural models used in different countries, especially in Western Europe. They make a valiant effort to provide mother tongue and cultural instruction for recent immigrant groups and ethnic and linguistic minorities, but they do not bring these cultures, perspective, experiences etc into the mainstream classroom with majority group students. Then of course Thinking about bringing different and minority group experience, etc into the classroom, leads to design consideration….. It really is an interraleted model, and an enlightening and practical way to think about creating critical literacy into education programming, wherever it may be.

[…] Original post by Vivian […]

Thanks for your comments Kathleen and Erin. How interesting that from different perspectives you both are getting at, and raising issue regarding issues of identity and identity construction. And with this of course, as indicated in Janks’ interrelated model ,are issues of access and re-design.

The instance you share is very powerful in demonstrating why and in a sense how Janks’ interrelated model could make a difference for often marginalized individuals and people.

Thanks
vivian

Dr. Vivian,

Thank you for posting Dr. Janks’s talk. It really left me thinking about what we possibly could do here in the states in creating dialogue about the harsh realities of slavery and the renaments that it left. Dr. Janks mentions that when we talk about giving kids access, we talk about giving kids access to priviledge knoweledges. We have to think about how to extend the range of what knoweledge is priviledged in the classroom. The TRC pedagogy did this with having children to find out real facts from both ends of the spectrum. I think that is a wonderful and excellent way to more beyond the stigma of apartheid. It this method was applied to teaching children about slavery/African-American history, their experience and knoweledge would be richer.

Another very enjoyable crossover experience in spite of tech glitches at my end :-) Thank you Andrea and Mark!

I think this is definitely the most enthusiastic review you have done ,and you are always enthusiastic, so Tudley clearly has a special place in your home and hearts!

I think there’s probably a little Tudley in all of us but some of us have access to more opportunities to ‘fly’ than others.

Until our next crossover…
Your faithful JOMB listener…
vivian
www.clippodcast.com

Vivian,

Hmmm…I think everyone’s definition of ‘fly’ differs.

Naive or not, I like to think that the Tudley allegory can apply in all lives and that believing in positive possibilities will always lead to a better life than one led by limitations.

Thanks for a thought-provoking crossover experience. Looking forward to the next one…
Andrea

I think that is a very important message that we can have different definitions and probably that our definitions change and shift over time based on what transpires in our lives.

I think we all have a lot to learn from Tudley… most definitely. It’a book that will remain on my bookshelf for a long time to come.

I look forward to many more cross-overs!

vivian
www.clippodcast.com

I definitely agree with you re: the shifting, evolving definitions.

I wanted to mention another aspect of the book that has stayed with our family as an adopted Tudleyism. The happy, surprised, way that Tudley always says “I didn’t know that!”

I think this is valuable because even (or especially) adults have such a tough time admitting when they don’t know something. And, almost as often, such a tough time dealing with people who are willing to admit when they don’t know something.

I love it that when they stumble and then learn something new, rather than cower or feel embarrased or badly about having been wrong, L&B often grin a wide grin and do a big Tudley “I didn’t know that!!!” — and crack us all up.

Andrea

You know what would be awesome is to have your family do a short talk about Tudley and we’ll do the same. I’d love to air a show on that. I think it would be a wonderful demonstration of how the ‘meaning’ in books really resides in the experience of engaging with it.

I think we’ve just come up with a new expression … anytime we have one of those ‘I didn’t know that’ moments we can simply say “Tudley”.

:-)
v

[…] Have you checked out the CLIP/JOMB Crossover Shows? […]

[…] Mark speaks with author, illustrator and naturalist John Himmelman about the turtle that inspired Tudley Didn’t Know, how penpalling a favourite aunt grew into a love of writing, the challenges of being married to your editor and about breaking his own rules. […]