Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

No Child Left With Crayons: The Imperative of Arts-Based Education and Research With Language “Minority” and Other Minoritized Communities

Since the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, public discourse on “failing schools” as measured by high-stakes standardized tests has disproportionately affected students from minoritized communities (such as language, race, class, dis/ability), emphasizing climates of assessment at the expense of broader, more democratic, and creative visions of education (e.g., Jordan, 2010; Krashen, 2008). As advocates of the arts in education and multicultural–multilingual learning for all, we join a chorus of concern about the ways in which the “crayons” (synecdoche for all the “arts”) have started to disappear from public school learning and/ or are solely included as handmaidens to improved academic achievement. Likewise, we are concerned about the ways diversity education has been strictly targeted at those “Other” students who “lack” the cultural capital expected for academic success in schools (O. Garcia & Kleifgen, 2010; Garda, 2011; Howard, 2006; Nurenberg, 2011). In this review, we examine the literature on arts education with minoritized youth within landscapes of structural inequity, scientific rationalization, and a resurgence of the racialization of non-White communities and curricula in schools. We identify strong practices in arts education that aim to achieve social justice with both minoritized and majoritized populations. By minoritized youth, we refer to any and all who identify in contextually situated, nondominant communities such as race, class, sexual orientation, language, dis/ability, religion, and gender. As we identify such contexts, we are aware that minority/majority status is unstable and contingent. Despite variations and flexibility, we use this term to identify youth who turn to the arts to navigate their status as “outside” the norm in a variety of ways.

Bilingual teachers’ performances of power and conflict

This paper describes and analyzes the use of Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed (TO) as a form of academic and social support used in a recruitment and retention program for bilingual teachers in the Southeastern United States. We use critical discourse analysis to understand how TO works to disrupt monologic relationships and reestablish dialogue between teachers and others in their professional lives. Focused on power dynamics and communication between a bilingual paraprofessional and an adversarial parent, our analysis examines actors’ changing stances as they role‐play different possible approaches to the conflict. Findings suggest awareness of both the language tools that structure individual relationships and the larger forces shaping what different individuals can and cannot say, providing teacher‐participants with options for approaching interactional conflict in new ways – to take up confident, expansive roles and to project new futures for themselves and others.

Black, White, and Rainbow [of Desire]: the colour of race-talk of pre-service world language educators in Boalian theatre workshops

This article examines how Boalian Theatre of the Oppressed exercises helped instructors and pre-service teachers navigate the consequences of ventriloquized, racialized discourses in a pre-service world language teacher education classroom. Applying a critical and performative approach, we analyse the mostly White student–actors’ varying representations of a “White teacher’s” use of the term “hoodlum” for classroom management and the resulting communication breakdown that occurred between the teacher and a “Black parent.” Findings indicate that rehearsing pre-service teachers’ classroom struggles helped to move the group away from monochromatic perceptions of White/Black, Teacher/Parent interactions to a polychromatic view of interlocutors’ multiple histories and investments. This study has implications for revitalizing the place of world language education in K-12 education, extending the acquisition of second language verbs and nouns to incorporate connections between language, culture, history, and power.

What bilingual poets can do: Re-visioning English education for biliteracy

Abstract This paper describes a bilingual‐bidialectal poetry writing programme set up in a community library in the southeastern United States for multi‐age learners. The authors explore the use of poetry as a vehicle for biliteracy development. The analysis draws on observations of the students’ engagement with poetry both in terms of their writing and the teachers’ responses. The paper discusses how poetry can inform a critical, multicultural approach to developing biliteracy in students of all ages and degrees of competence in written English. The authors theorise the role that poetry can play in creating positive learning environments for such students.

The Power and Possibilities of Performative Critical Early Childhood Teacher Education

While early childhood education programs seek to provide the tools to work with children and explore content, many fail to address the social and emotional contexts in which early childhood education occurs. This is evident in the seldom addressed topic of collaboration between lead teachers and assistant teachers in the early childhood classroom. In this study, we found that as new early childhood teachers enter schools, they interact with teacher aides and parents daily, yet do not feel prepared for negotiating these professional adult relationships. These underlying tensions then affect childrens development and learning. To address such situations, we propose the use of Boals forum theatre (Boal, 1979) as a performative critical model for early childhood teacher education and support the advantages it offers for exploring issues facing early childhood teachers that may not be commonly addressed in teacher education classrooms. To illustrate the process, we present a case study of an early childhood teacher who participated in such a model of in-service teacher education and show how the process of reflection central to this performative process helped her address areas of conflict in her classroom and in her problem-solving strategies, especially those concerning lead teacher-assistant teacher relations.

Troubling normal in world language education

ABSTRACT Queer theory problematizes societal norms related to sex, gender, and sexuality, while resisting normalcy. The authors utilize a queer theoretical approach in analysis of participant observation in adult Spanish and Mandarin classes as well as interviews with world language teachers. Analysis of interview data reveals how educators and adult language learners experience gender/sexuality norms in conventional classroom and school contexts. Classroom observations and analysis of classroom discourse identify moments when these norms may be “troubled” or upheld in contexts using a progressive new approach called Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS). Findings suggest that the improvisational nature of TPRS raises complex questions about heteronormativity in language learning and the creative work in which educators and students can engage in dialogic classrooms.

Coaching Ourselves to Perform Multiplicity and Advocacy: A Response to Stephens and Mills.

Cahnmann-Taylor draws on Boalian Theatre of the Oppressed to offer a practice for literacy teachers and coaches that can open up multiple perspectives and multiple levels of intentions and motivations for a teachers decision making. She challenges coaches and teachers to engage in artistic examinations of multiplicity to move toward performing complexity and advocacy.