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.

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’m at the International Reading Association convention in Minneapolis this week.  It’s only Monday, but I’ve already had the opportunity to hear some phenomenal presentations from literacy and language scholars.  It’s so exciting to hear about the research that has shaped the field – and to see the new directions in which it is going.

I gave my talk today, entitled “Teaching Visual Literacy Using Hypertextual Books.”  (For a PDF of the handout, click here).  I highlighted four changes in children’s literature, and talked with the audience about how we “read” multiple modes of representation.  These changes include (1) Words that express meaning through typesetting, (2) Interactive narration, (3) Images that carry and expand meaning, and (4) Multiple perspectives in a single story.  My advisor, Dawnene Hassett, has worked extensively to identify the interactive and multimodal elements of children’s literature and to situate these changes in sociocultural theory and new literacies.

The presentation today highlighted the children’s books themselves, noted the relevant learning theories that support their use in the classroom, and showcased research in K-3 classrooms to that effect.  At the end, I wondered aloud what the future directions of such interactive stories will be.  With touch-sensitive platforms like interactive whiteboards becoming a staple in many classrooms, what does that mean for such literature?  Maybe it will look like the stories on Starfall.com – or like Inanimate Alice.  Or maybe we’re still trying to figure out how the medium is the message… and what that means for interactive, multimodal stories in the classroom.

“I am afraid of this city where the lying-down people look like the dead. And the standing-up ones, like the walking dead” (p. 88). Thirteen year old Lakshmi has only known her home, deep in the mountains of Nepal. The harsh sounds of Calcutta disorient her as she tries to make sense of her new life.

She thought that she would work as a maid in the city in order to send money back to her family. Instead, she is sold into prostitution, where she is regularly beaten, drugged, and raped. Lakshmi soon realizes that “you are safe here only if you do not show how frightened you are” (p. 116).

Patricia McCormick’s Sold, a National Book Award finalist, is written in poetic vignettes. Each scene is beautifully crafted – the stark differences between Lakshmi’s quiet life of poverty in Nepal and her forced servitude in the brothel are revealed through McCormick’s rich use of imagery and metaphors.  The language is accessible (and indeed, Hyperion recommends the book for ages 12 and up), but the content is heavy.

In the author’s notes, McCormick writes that, “Each year, nearly 12,000 Nepali girls are sold by their families — intentionally or unwittingly — to a life of sexual slavery in the brothels of India. Worldwide, the U.S. State Department estimates that nearly half a million children are trafficked into the sex trade each year.” While some teachers and administrators may be hesitant to include this book in the curriculum due to the focus on child prostitution, an article in Time Magazine astutely noted that, “While the book is blunt, it is never sensational.”  Instead, Lakshmi narrates her experiences in poetic (yet forceful terms): “Men come. They crush my bones with their weight. They split me open.”

So, how could this book be integrated into the language arts curriculum?  I think that it could be readily used in 8th to 12th grade classes.  While the language is accessible for 5th to 7th graders, I do think that older adolescents could engage in more in-depth discussion and research on this (and other) human rights issues.  Patricia McCormick’s website has ideas for various content teachers, including links to articles in the New York Times and websites that deal with sex trafficking – for any teacher, I think it’s essential to have that background information.  Here are two ideas that came to me as I read through the book for how to integrate this into the classroom:

First, pair Sold with the (incredible) documentary Born into Brothels, also set in the slums of Calcutta.  I think that it would be fascinating to juxtapose McCormick’s rich imagery with the real-life images captured by children.  As a final project, students could take a section of Sold and create a digital story.  Not only would they have to match text with images, they would then read Lakshmi’s words – what better way to engage in perspective taking and multimodal thinking?

Second, use Sold in conjunction with other books (like Kaffir Boy or First They Killed My Father) as a way to talk about human rights issues, including genocide, apartheid, sex trafficking, torture, and slavery.  Most of my middle and high school students could recount details of the Civil War and the Holocaust – but far fewer could identify who Pol Pot was or why we should be concerned about Sudan.  After the second World War, we said “never again” – but human rights violations are happening again and again, around the world.  After reading Sold and other books, students could work through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – and then choose a human rights issue to focus on in a research paper.

In a couple days, I’ll discuss this book with my Young Adult Lit class – I’m really excited to hear about their ideas for how to teach Sold and how to integrate (contemporary yet potentially problematic) issues like sex trafficking into the language arts curriculum.

Spring semester begins in less than a week. Much to my delight, I will be teaching an undergraduate course at UW-Madison called Young Adult Literature for Schools. In creating the syllabus, I was eager to draw on books that I have taught and to explore more recently published works.

Throughout the course of the semester, we’ll be reading 20 young adult lit titles. Fifteen of those are required, and the other five are self-selected. In addition, we will read 30+ journal articles, book chapters, and essays that focus on genres, themes, teaching strategies, and literacy theories. Our class will visit the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, which is a phenomenal resource on our campus, and meet several of their (also phenomenal) librarians.

We will also have several guest lectures. This includes visits from Simone Schweber, a professor of education and Jewish studies, who will talk about teaching historical fiction, nonfiction, and autobiography that focuses on the Holocaust; a local middle school teacher who will share her experience dealing the censorship of Terry Trueman’s Stuck in Neutral; and other local middle school teachers who will discuss their positive experiences with literature circles.

Looking over the titles below, I can’t wait to get started!

Required Young Adult Literature (Read all 15):

Alexie, S. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown.
Anderson, M.T. (2002). Feed. Cambridge: Candlewick.
Card, O.S. (2002). Ender’s game. New York: Starscape.
Chbosky, Stephen. (1999). Perks of being a wallflower. New York: MTV.
Flinn, A. (2001). Breathing underwater. New York: Harper Collins.
Hesse, K. (1997). Out of the dust. New York: Scholastic.
Hinton, S.E. (1967). The outsiders. New York: Penguin.
Martinez, V. and Scott, S. (2004). Parrot in the oven: Mi vida. New York: Rayo.
McCormick, P. (2008). Sold. New York: Hyperion.
Peters, J.A. (2006). Luna. New York: Little, Brown.
Satrapi, M. (2004). Persepolis: The story of a childhood. New York: Pantheon.
Sis, P. (2007). The wall: Growing up behind the iron curtain. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Spiegelman, A. (1986). Maus I. New York: Pantheon.
Woodson, J. (2000). If you come softly. New York: Putnam.
Trueman, T. (2001). Stuck in neutral. New York: Harper.

Literature Circles (Choose 1):

Bitton-Jackson, L. (1999). I have lived a thousand years. New York: Simon Pulse.
Wiesel, E. (1982). Night. New York: Bantam.
Yolen, J. (2004). The devil’s arithmetic. New York: Puffin
Zusak, M. (2005). The book thief. New York: Knopf.

Optional Young Adult Literature (Choose 3):

Chambers, A. (2007). Postcards from no man’s land. New York: Red Fox.
Cormier, R. (2004). Chocolate war. New York: Knopf.
Farmer, N. (2004). The house of the scorpion. New York: Simon Pulse.
Fleischman, P. (1999). Whirligig. New York: Laurel Leaf..
Gaiman, N. and McKean, D. (2008). The graveyard book. New York: Harper Collins.
Garden, N. (2007). Annie on my mind. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux.
Ihimaera, W. (1987). The whale rider. Auckland: Reed Publishing.
Johnson, A. (2003). First part last. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Myers, W.D. (1998). Fallen angels. New York: Scholastic.
Myers, W.D. and Myers, C. (2001). Monster. New York: Amistad.
Salinger, J.D. (2001). The catcher in the rye. New York: Bay Books.
Wakatsuki Houston, J. and Houston, J.D. (1983). Farewell to Manzanar. New York: Bantam.
Winick, J. (2000). Pedro and me. New York: Henry Holt.
Yang, G.L. (2006). American-born Chinese. New York: First Second.

Book Talk (Choose 1 from the Award Lists Below):

Michael L. Printz Award

National Book Award – Young People’s Literature

Coretta Scott King Book Award

The Alex Award

Margaret A. Edwards Award

I spoke today at the Digital Storytelling conference here on the University of Wisconsin campus.  From their site:


Storytelling is an oral tradition used to teach beliefs and values, and to transfer knowledge. Building on the traditional model of storytelling, digital storytelling facilitates development of metacognitive skills through the integration of technology and personal reflection.

While there is no doctrine defining a digital story as a distinct genre, it has become generally associated with a short film (less than 5 minutes), which is a mixture of a written and recorded voiceover with still and moving images, and often a soundtrack. Digital stories are often told in the first person voice and can be used to create connections between students, instructors and content.


The morning kicked off with a welcome from organizer Cheryl Diermyer, followed by a talk by Joe Lambert from the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley. He emphasized the five aspects of digital storytelling: personal reflection and growth, education and awareness, movement building, policy advocacy, and research and evaluation.  There are some great examples of digital stories on the CDS website, and also on the Stories for Change site.


After lunch, I took part in a panel on how educators are using digital stories with students.  I focused on my work with high school students and digital poetry, particularly on how it is situated within new literacies.  I made the argument that digital poetry is just as much about the ‘new tech stuff’ as the ‘new ethos stuff’ (Lankshear and Knobel) and that educators need to develop opportunities for multimodal learning in their classes.  One example of digital poetry that I included was a student responding to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing Poem” with a poem of his own, entitled “I, Too, Sing America.”  It shown how his experience of America, as a gay, Asian teen is situated outside the dominant cultural ideology.  Audience members did ask interesting questions about how to assess this type of work – while I used rubrics (as a teacher, I had no choice but to assign grades) and referred to the state standards (as my district required that we align our curriculum with them), I agree that we do need more.  (Or is it, less?)


David Gagnon spoke on the same panel about his work with the ARIS project to build a tool to situate stories into spaces.  Fascinating stuff.  Unfortunately, I had to leave the conference before Liv Gjestvang from OSU’s Digital Union and Roger Schank from Socratic Arts spoke.  (Good excuse:  I had to teach a class myself!)  But truly, a great event all around.