As the video camera comes into focus, James introduces himself as the anchor for the WMS News program he and his classmates are producing: "Most people live their lives based on their goals or their religion," he declares. "They don't know what life means because they haven't experienced that much." As anchor of this show on students' lives, he will introduce his classmates and provide a tour of his classroom, a 6th grade language arts classroom at Webb Middle School in Austin, Texas. The camera follows James as he describes the room. "This is where we work together," he says, pointing to the carpeted area where class meetings are held. "This is where we help each other," showing the round tables that serve as desks. He concludes, gesturing to the whole room, "This is where we conversate."
James's ad-libbed descriptions accurately depict the aims of his teacher. In this classroom, she hopes students will help construct a learning community through conversation and collaboration integrated into the curriculum, through students' investigations of their lives, and through individual and shared literacy experiences.
Our classroom is part of a nationwide project called "Write for Your Life" that resulted in a partnership between University of Texas faculty members and classroom teachers. Through this project, students construct life narratives, generate questions from these narratives, and conduct investigations to learn about their experiences.
Beginning with personal narratives, Webb students identified important themes and issues, using a variety of research tools to answer the questions they raised about their experiences. The language arts curriculum immersed students in this community-building process. Our aims were grounded in Dewey's (1916) belief that "it is imperative that every energy should be bent on making the present experience as rich and significant as possible. Then as present merges insensibly into the future, the future is taken care of" (p. 56).
The student profiles at Webb Middle School mirror those of countless inner-city schools across the southwest United States. Over 61 percent of the students are Hispanic, mostly of Mexican origin; 24 percent are African American, and about 13 percent are European American. Over 83 percent of the students come from low-income backgrounds, and the school suffers one of the highest mobility rates in the district (38 percent). Students usually fail to master the state competency test. At Webb, however, the school community attempts to replace alienation from school and the destructive lure of gangs with constructive opportunities to participate in many enrichment activities (Juarez 1996).
Exploring Personal Experience
In early October, the teacher and her students gathered on the carpeted area to read Sandra Cisneros's story "Eleven." In discussions, students related to Cisneros's character, Rachel; and they understood the voicelessness she felt in Mrs. Price's classroom. They expressed relief that someone else felt "that when you're 11, you're also 10 and 9 and 8 and 7 and 6 and 5 and 4 and 3 and 2 and 1" (Cisneros 1993, p. 156).
The students, like Rachel in "Eleven," needed time to talk about the experiences that shaped their present selves. Through many language arts activities, including life graphs, identity boxes, and personal narratives, as well as class meetings, they learned that they had a voice in the community and that their experiences had value, no matter how ordinary they might seem.
Class meetings. To foster a democratic environment, we held weekly meetings based on Thomas Lickona's (1991) Educating for Character, in which students participate in shared decision making. At one meeting, for example, Eduardo said he was concerned about hallway safety. He said the halls were so chaotic between classes he was afraid that "someone could really get hurt." His classmates shared stories of dangerous incidents they had witnessed in the halls. Wistfully, they wondered what they could do. Eduardo then recalled a hall monitor program in his previous school. Immediately, students embraced the idea and began to develop a similar student-run program for Webb—and became stakeholders in the classroom community.
Life graphs. Students made life graphs—visual representations of life's ups and downs (Reif 1992). Students relished reading one another's graphs, comparing and contrasting their experiences, and interpreting and commenting on specific events. Students gained the sense that many kinds of life events are worth noting—Eric's trip to Fiesta Texas (a theme park), the birth of Jaime's little sister, Adeliza's car accident, and the death of Sam's father.
Personal narratives. We invited students to choose an event from their life graphs to expand an opportunity for them—"to tell the whole story." Students wrote long personal narratives on important events and read them aloud. Classmates listened intently to a wide range of titles—"How I Learned to Play Basketball," by Marisela; "Being Made Fun Of," by Jane; and "A Trip to Mexico," by Sally—and reflected on the value of hearing everyone's stories. The community tightened by sharing these life experiences.
Identity boxes. At the same time, students worked on identity boxes—shoeboxes decorated with photos and captions and illustrations and holding personal relics, poems, and other items. We videotaped the oral presentations as students proudly and seriously described their boxes. Rick gently held up his first-communion cross, Roseanne displayed her first journal, and Ben told the tale of his good luck Buddha. Tanika carefully pointed out each family member in the photos that covered her box.
Slowly a community was building; the classroom was becoming a safe place to raise questions. Moreover, this process helped students "articulate their stories . . . not only to help them pursue the meaning of their lives . . . [but] to keep posing questions about the why" (Greene 1993, p. 17).
From “Kids' Business” to Inquiry
Early in January, the third-period students came bustling into the room. The lesson was supposed to begin with silent reading, but a commotion in the hallway interfered. "What's going on?" Audrey asked. "What happened out in the hall?"
Shrugging and unwilling to make eye contact, the students tried to evade the question. Finally, Eric piped up, "Miss, that's kids' business."
"What do you mean 'kids' business'?" the teacher asked. With this question, she and the students began to generate a list of topics that ranged from running away to fighting to gang violence. It was a list of topics that are not often a part of school discussions and, as Jaime said, that "adults are afraid to talk about."
Naming the events or issues that constituted kids' business became the focus of subsequent class discussions, in which students shared stories about community and family life. Many were painful tales of drug abuse, family deaths, and street violence. Listening to the stories was not always easy for teachers or students, but underscored students' deeply held concerns. They began to see that the themes of their stories could be worthy of continued study.
We then encouraged the students to use these themes to define research questions. Students' questions revealed their roots in personal experience: Why do friends treat you wrong? Why does my brother use drugs? Why did my parents get divorced? Why do kids join gangs?
With the students, we next constructed a process for conducting research. Students brainstormed many ways to find answers to their questions. They were deeply interested in their questions and willingly guided their own learning. For example, Maria, who studied fears and anxieties, interviewed doctors and patients at various mental health facilities. John read recent Newsweek articles on gang violence, and Marcus wrote to a local tutoring center for study tips to help him find out how to get better grades in school. Students thus extended their frames of reference beyond the four walls of the classroom.
The students made important connections between their research and their relationships with others. Classmates whose parents were divorced shared their struggle to understand why divorce happens. During a group interview with a hospice nurse, students talked about the loss of family members. The nurse told her own story of death and grief, showing students that everyone must come to grips with loss. Sharing such experiences helped the students build bridges between their lives and the lives of others. It also expanded their knowledge of the issues they investigated.
To document their research efforts, the students kept daily records, plans, and interpretations of the information they were gathering. From these records, they composed "I-Search" papers that told of the origin of their questions, their search for answers, and the ways their inquiry affected them (Macrorie 1980).
These papers were clearly the most complex texts the students had ever generated, and they eagerly shared them with classmates and teachers alike. They kept revising the papers; they read one another's drafts with a critical eye, making suggestions and noting them on the page. Rather than drudgery, the students treated revision as meaningful work aimed at clearly capturing their research journey and their learning.
Such perseverance toward a polished written product and an intellectual task might seem surprising from students often cast as underachieving or unable. It seemed to emerge, however, as a function of their commitment to their topics and their sense that they had something important to say.
The Power of Inquiry
Students gained growing confidence in their voices as they completed their I-Search papers. They appeared to be writing with a mission, often ending their essays with bold-faced, capitalized messages to their readers. Adeliza ended her I-Search with the following: "Don't use drugs!" Tanika offered this conclusion: "Why do people get divorced? It's because they don't love each other like they used to."
Reaching such understanding, the students illustrated the power of inquiry into their own lives. The students had reorganized, reconstructed, and transformed their own narratives as they conducted their research. Students became engaged in a process that not only enhanced their intellectual development but also constructed an ever-widening community that included families and other adults.
Students were not always aware of the depth of their learning, especially early in the research process. In one class meeting, for example, Roseanne blurted out, "This isn't schoolwork. We get to tell what we know about." What Roseanne might not realize is how much school learning she and her classmates acquired along the way. They have begun, as Maxine Greene (1978) writes, to practice a kind of literacy that "enables each person . . . to interpret from his or her experiences by learning to look through the multiple perspectives available in the culture" (p. 80). Through such literacy practices, the students also built a community in which they could open themselves to each other, trusting that each individual's inquiry had meaning for them all.
