As if I needed another reason to love Sydney.

Not only is it one of my favorite cities in the world and where I met my wonderful husband, the Opera House is hosting GRAPHIC next month.

Comic books, illustration, animation, music, multimedia and other new ways of telling stories have not only changed the face of our popular culture, they now define it. Graphic novels and comic art are now a leading source of inspiration for films, television, clothing, designers, musicians and artists the world over. GRAPHIC celebrates this brave new world in a weekend of specially commissioned productions – with musical responses to graphic art and stories, workshops, panels, a film program, a games exhibition and an animation competition.

I’ll be in Australia then with my husband Michael and our eleven year old son, Cole. As part of GRAPHIC, we’re excited to see Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, set to a live score.  According to the Opera House website, percussionist Ben Walsh randomly discovered The Arrival in a book store. He fell in love with the story and thought about how he could create music to accompany it.  Three years later, his musical vision will come to life at the Opera House.

I’ve used The Arrival in undergraduate courses on children’s literature and young adult literature.  As a wordless picture book, it serves as a fabulous way to show pre-service teachers how to “read” images.  We begin by discussing how the size of images correlates to reading speed.  A series of small images, for instance, means that they should be read quickly.  With images that take up the full page, however, they should be read with more attention to how lines, colors, and shapes work together to shape the reader’s meaning making processes.

Shaun Tan will be doing a signing after the show, so of course I’m planning on packing my copy of The Arrival in my suitcase.  I’m trying to figure out how to attend some of the other GRAPHIC events, including talks by Kevin Smith and Neil Gaiman, but I’ve already signed up for the 14K City2Surf run that weekend too.  (It goes through Kings Cross, Rushcutters Bay, Double Bay, Rose Bay, Vaucluse, Dover Heights and Bondi Beach, with the 2K long Heartbreak Hill in the middle.  Doesn’t that sound like a lovely way to see the city?  Over 76,000 runners think so!  Michael, a cyclist, begs to differ).

I also teach The Graveyard Book, but Gaiman will be reading from a previously unreleased story called The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains. His read alouds are incredible, and at each stop of his nine city tour in 2008, he read a chapter aloud.  I’ve used these read alouds in class, since they’re a great way to introduce readers to Nobody Owens.  Alas, Tan and Gaiman are scheduled at the same time, and The Arrival wins out for now.  But I’ll end with the trailer for The Graveyard Book anyway.

Image Credit: Shaun Tan, The Arrival

“You’re facing ten years in prison and $200,000 in fines.”

I never imagined that I’d hear those words, let alone from an immigration official.  I was born and raised in Wisconsin, a U.S. citizen by birth.  My crime?  I married an Australian.

To the immigration official, my related crimes included not adding my new husband to my house deed or bank accounts, having a pre-nup, and not taking his last name.  (In an effort to keep Michael in the States and out of jail, I went to court to legally add Curwood to my name a year after we got married).

Taken together, the immigration official thought that we had a sham marriage, so he separated us, threatened us with prison and fines, and individually administered the immigration fraud interview.  You’ll be happy to know that I remembered how we met (in Sydney), what Michael had for dinner the night before (fish) and what side of the bed he sleeps on (right).

Luckily, we made it through the immigration process and my husband now holds a U.S. Permanent Resident card in addition to his Australia and New Zealand citizenship and right of abode in the United Kingdom.  (For more details on our experience, here is an 2006 editorial that appeared in my hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette).

I can say that this experience has given me much more insight into the immigration process and empathy for those who attempt to immigrate to a new country, whether legally or illegally, voluntarily or seeking asylum.  When I teach classes on young adult literature, I make sure to address these issues.  Here are three fabulous books that I’ve used recently in undergraduate and graduate classes at the University of Wisconsin – Madison on the topic of immigration: La Línea, Red Glass, and Home of the Brave.

Here, I’ll focus on La Línea and immigration from Mexico.  But definitely check out the other two books, too.  Laura Resau’s Red Glass is a wonderful story, narrated by an American teenager, about the immigration experiences of her friends and family from Central America and Eastern Europe.  And K.A. Applegate’s Home of the Brave, written in free verse, is the story of Kek, a refugee from Sudan who arrives in Minnesota.  Not only must Kek adapt to a new country, language, and culture, he must deal with the past (and the memories) that are rooted in war-torn Sudan.

La Línea, by Ann Jaramillo, focuses on the story of Miguel.  Six years, eleven months, and twelve days ago, his parents left him and his younger sister Elena behind in Mexico in order to seek work in California.  On the day of his fifteenth birthday, Miguel’s father sends for him.  Immediately, Miguel thinks, “I’d been waiting for this moment ever since I was eight.  Could it be true this time, finally?  For once, I didn’t care about a birthday present.  If Papá’s note was true, my real life was finally beginning.  This was day number one.”

At his father’s direction, Miguel enlists the help of a local man, Don Clemente, who arranges for a coyote to take him across the border.  But Elena doesn’t want to be left behind on their abuelita’s rancho, and she follows Miguel on his journey, derailing his plans to cross the border with a coyote.  Soon, they find themselves being questioned and detailed by Mexican immigration officials – and then running for their lives across the desert.  They don’t know who they can trust or what will happen to them.  All they know is that they need to get across la línea at any cost.

Jaramillo, a first-time author, is an English as a Second Language teacher in a middle school in Salinas, California. She says, “More than 95 percent of my students are Mexican in origin.  Their parents work in the fields or packing sheds of the Salinas Valley.  Some of my students were born in the United States; other immigrated in elementary or middle school.”  By drawing from her own experiences and that of her students – and by integrating Spanish words and phrases throughout the book – Jaramillo reinforces the cultural authenticity of La Línea .  The School Library Journal recommends this book for grades five and up, and I can see this book easily used in a middle school or freshman classroom.

In the news recently, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer asserted that most illegal immigrants entering her state are being used to transport drugs across the border.  Following on the heels of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, her remarks were quickly denounced by experts as incorrect and downright racist.  In an Associated Press article published on MSNBC, Sen. Jesus Ramon Valdes, a member of the Mexican Senate’s northern border affairs commission, countered that, “Traditionally, migrants have always been needy, humble people who in good faith go looking for a way to better the lives of their families.”  While politicians may try to depict all Mexican immigrants as drug mules and criminals, La Línea offers readers a more realistic and nuanced perspective on the immigrant experience.

Image Credit: Square Fish Books, cover of La Línea.

Five years ago, I began teaching a digital poetry unit in my 10th grade English classes, in collaboration with my school’s library media specialist, Lora Cowell.  With iPoetry, students engaged in a process of multimodal composition where they integrated still images or video with music, voiceovers, text, and transitions.

In the recent issue of the International Journal of Learning and Media, Damiana Gibbons and I worked together to analyze one student’s digital poem.  Drawing on the work of Glynda Hull, Andrew Burn, and others, Damiana explains (and shows) the process of multimodal microanalysis.  As a graduate student, I’ve come to appreciate when authors explicitly present their methodology and walk the reader through their analytical process.  (In the field of literacy education, Karen Wohlwend’s work is an excellent example!)  In this paper, we tried to do the same.

I’m really grateful that my former student, Tommy Nouansacksy, gave us permission to analyze his work and to use his real name.  Tommy is in college now and an avid consumer and producer of social media.  Intentionally or not, he’s a comedian, an activist, and a role model.  (Case in point: a recent YouTube video where Tommy’s promoting the Trevor Project).

I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who gave us critical, formative, and insightful feedback.  Their comments led to an substantial revision of the theoretical framework and prompted us to draw on more work related to race and sexuality.  I know that reviewing journal articles can be a time-consuming process, but I think that it is an invaluable one.

Tommy’s digital poem is available on the IJLM website, but it skips sometimes.  I’ll share it here too.  In this poem, Tommy is responding to the work of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes to describe his America.

I, Too, Sing America by Tommy Nouansacksy from Jen Scott Curwood on Vimeo.

Check out the new online version of the Wisconsin English Journal!  For over 50 years, the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English has published this fabulous resource.  Last year, when the University of Wisconsin – Madison editorial team took over, we sought to update and expand the journal.  As part of our task, we’re also working to digitize and upload past journal issues, so they’re all housed in one location.

The journal will continue to be published twice a year, in spring and in fall.  We’ve added some regular columns, including Views from the Field by Assistant Professor Catherine Compton-Lilly, The New Adventures of Old Literature by Assistant Professor Dawnene Hassett, and Making Research Relevant by me and my fellow assistant editor Jessica Gallo.  In each issue, we will profile an outstanding secondary English teacher and we will feature a guest column on digital literacy.  If you’re interested in submitting an article for peer review, the deadline for the Fall 2010 issue is August 1.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to attend the annual conference of United Kingdom Literacy Association. I met some wonderful people, and it was so exciting to hear about the research happening in the UK and Australia. Mary Louise Gomez, Melissa Schieble, Dawnene Hassett, and I also have an article out in the most recent issue of Literacy, published by UKLA. We drew on Melissa’s research with pre-service teachers’ and adolescents’ use of Moodle, an open-source, web-based software, to theorize how their meaning making processes embody distributed cognition. Entitled Technology, Learning, and Instruction: Distributed Cognition in the Secondary English Classroom, the article examines how three key elements function as distributed tools to facilitate literacy learning and critical thinking around the graphic novel American Born Chinese.

I’m happy to share that Dawnene Hassett and I have an article in the December 2009 issue of The Reading Teacher entitled “Theories and Practices of Multimodal Education: Instructional Dynamics of Picture Books and Primary Classrooms.”  I’m lucky enough to have Dawnene as my advisor, and this paper draws from our research in K-3 classrooms over the past several years.  Next week, we will give a talk on this research at the National Reading Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Check out the Wisconsin English Journal, now housed at the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center.  A publication of the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English, it was founded in 1959.  On the UW-River Falls website, some of the article titles from a half-century ago still sound relevant today: “How to Help Students Write Better,” “Teaching Critical Thinking,” and “A New Method of Teacher Certification.”

The Wisconsin English Journal publishes reports of language and literacy research, critical reflections on teaching, descriptions of effective teaching methods and instructional tools, profiles of English programs and outstanding English teachers, book reviews, policy statements, conference proceedings, and columns related to young adult literature, student diversity, and current literacy scholarship.

Interested in contributing as an author or serving as a reviewer?  See the  guidelines on our website, and contact me or Jess Gallo with any questions.  Look for our next issue in spring 2010!

From June 2009 to June 2010, I am collecting qualitative data for my dissertation research.  I have been fortunate to find two incredible research sites, and every week, I am excited to visit them and work with the secondary English teachers, library media specialists, and technology coordinators.  Here is a current dissertation abstract.  As I work to analyze the data, the focus may shift a bit.  But it gives you a good idea of where I’m at right now.

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The Nexus of Continuity and Change: Designing Professional Development to Foster New Literacy Practices in the Secondary Classroom

This dissertation seeks to understand how secondary English teachers express, acquire, and challenge their cultural models about literacy and technology. Drawing on sociocultural theory, the goal of this year-long multiple-case embedded research study is to investigate how teachers’ participation in professional learning communities may afford or constrain the process of implementing new literacy practices in the classroom. To that end, I take a microethnographic perspective and closely analyze teachers’ discourses within the learning community. This work is guided by two key questions: 1) What kinds of professional development contexts facilitate changes in teachers’ cultural models about literacy and technology? 2) How are teachers’ opportunities to integrate technology in their classroom enhanced or constrained by power relations? In order to address these questions, the data analysis focuses on language at a micro level to understand how school-based discourse is shaped by macro-concepts, social institutions, and power relations. By using field notes, observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifacts to augment microethnographic discourse analysis, I trace how participation within learning communities influences teachers’ cultural models about literacy and technology. Furthermore, I suggest that this qualitative analysis sheds light on how teachers’ professional learning operates within social, cultural, and ideological contexts.

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(Image credit: MaxCarnage, Printed Circuit)

In a few short days, the fall semester will begin.  I’m really excited to teach a graduate course, Curriculum and Instruction 632: Literature and Literacy.  It’s a required course for the Wisconsin K-12 reading license, and we’ll focus on how to foster adolescent literacy development and critical engagement through the use of young adult literature.

Everyone in class will read the follow YA lit:
Alexie, S. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown.
Collins, S. (2008). The hunger games. New York: Scholastic.
Jaramillo, A. (2008). La linea. New York: Square Fish.
McCormick, P. (2008). Sold. New York: Hyperion.
Peters, J.A. (2006). Luna. New York: Little, Brown.
Selznick, B. (2007). The invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic.
Trueman, T. (2001). Stuck in neutral. New York: Harper.
Yang, G.L. (2006). American-born Chinese. New York: First Second.

I taught many of these books this spring in C&I 431: Young Adult Literature for Schools, but I added in three new books: La Linea, Hunger Games, and Hugo Cabret.  I had a really hard time choosing between the fabulous book Red Glass by Lisa Resau and La Linea; in the end, I went with La Linea but I think that it would be fascinating to teach both to a middle or high school class.

I’ve already blogged about my love for the Hunger Games, but I’m equally enamored with The Invention of Hugo Cabret (which is where the image above is taken from). It alternates between being only-images or only-print, and it’s fascinating to think about how to teach such a text. I’ve asked Danielle Kleijwegt, a UW graduate student and artist who is creating her own graphic novel, to talk to our class about deconstructing images, teaching visual literacy, and strategies for using picture books and graphic novels in the classroom.

Throughout the semester, we’ll have a couple other guest speakers, too. Loren Glasbrenner is a teacher at a middle school in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and he will share his experiences with using literature circles. Also, Kim Stieber-White, a teacher at Evansville Middle School, will talk about her first-hand experience with book challenges and (attempted) censorship with Terry Trueman’s Stuck in Neutral. She also visited C&I 431 class this spring, and my students felt her visit was invaluable. Not only did she share key resources in justifying a book choice – including through the National Council of Teachers of English and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center – she also talked about how the challenge impacted her students and her pedagogy.

In addition to the eight books listed above, students will also participate in literature circles about the Holocaust by reading either the autobiography I Have Lived a Thousand Years or the historical fiction The Book Thief.  We’ll read part of Simone Schweber’s book Making Sense of the Holocaust, and talk about how to approach the Holocaust and other genocides though literature.  Finally, students will give a book talk on a recently published, award-winning book of their choice.

Each week’s young adult literature and required chapters or articles will either focus on a literary theme (such as immigration, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and so on) or a topic (including multiliteracies, new literacies, cultural authenticity, and more).  I really believe that undergraduate and graduate students need hands-on experience in engaging with these texts in innovative ways – and I’ve built in time to participate in literature circles, engage in small group activities, use web 2.0 tools, and much more into the class time.

I used to teach a science fiction course for high school students, and I’m always looking for great young adult science fiction.  My son Cole is now 10, and sci fi and fantasy are genres that really appeal to him too.  He’s worked his way through Orson Scott Card’s Ender series, Rick Riordan’s Lightning Thief series, the Chronicles of Narnia, and many more.

Over the winter, I read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.  It’s the first in a trilogy, and the second book, Catching Fire is due out in September.  I couldn’t put it down, and finished it in a couple days – I then handed it off to Cole and he did the same.  (We also managed to get our hands on Catching Fire before its release, but we promised not to reveal anything!)  The book is narrated by 16 year old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apopcalytic United States.  Following a series of uprisings and disasters, the Capitol seized control.  Originally, there were 13 districts, but when the thirteenth district rebelled and was obliterated, the Capitol designed the Hunger Games as punishment for the remaining 12 districts.

Each year, one boy and one girl from each district is selected for the Hunger Games, a televised event that is set in an outdoor arena.  The winner of the Hunger Games is the only one left alive at the end – it’s a fight to the death where speed and strength are as important as cunning and intelligence.  When Kat’s younger sister, Primrose, is called to be a tribute, Kat immediately volunteers in her place.  Along with the other tribute from her district, Peeta Mellark, Kat then journeys to the Capitol.  Each district is known for its produce or industry, and District 12, located in Appalachia, is known for its coal mining.  Given that background, their Capitol attendants outfit Kat and Peeta in gorgeous flaming costumes.

Soon, Kat and Peeta have caught the attention of the audience – and of the Gamemakers, who manipulate the arena to put them in harm’s way.  The plot is complicated by Peeta’s on-air confession of love for Kat, which leaves the reader (and Kat) wondering if it’s a strategic move or a desperate confession on his part.  But if the Hunger Games leaves only one winner, then either Kat or Peeta must die.  Or can these “star-crossed lovers” outsmart the Gamekeepers and defy the Capitol?  Read it and find out.

When I asked Cole what appealed to him about this book, he noted the alternate reality setting and the action.  For my part, I loved that the book featured a strong female protagonist and that it brought up issues of government control, media bias, and human rights.  But I also find it fascinating how reading a book no longer involves a simple exchange between text and reader.

For instance, he publisher, Scholastic, has created an interactive site that features message boards, videos, and games, and Lionsgate has already acquired the rights to the film.  But what I think is really interesting is how fans themselves have found ways to interact with the characters and plot lines – as well as other fans.  They’ve created unofficial fan forums with discussions, fan art, and much more.  They’ve used YouTube to create cast lists and seek others’ input.  They’ve written hundreds of stories on FanFiction.net, offered feedback on each other’s work, and extended the story in ways the author never imagined.

As an English teacher, I spent years trying to get students to interact with books in this way.  But I learned that books that are too difficult or irrelevant to students’ lives won’t work… worksheets, vocabulary drills, and multiple choice tests won’t work either.  Literacy doesn’t just involve rote memorization or the recall of minute details – it involves truly interacting with the text, the characters, and the themes.  It involves critical thinking, hands-on engagement, and collaboration.  As teachers, we need to create environments in the classroom which allow for this.  Not only does it involve adopting new texts – and The Hunger Games is a great example – it involves cultivating new literacies and designing new affinity spaces.