May 14, 2024 • 47 mins
Christina Dobbs talks to us about beliefs about education, disciplinary literacies from a critical stance, and literacies that matter for learners. Christina is known for her work in the areas of language development, the argumentative writing of students, disciplinary literacy, and professional development for secondary content teachers. She is the author of several books, including Investigating Disciplinary Literacy and Disciplinary Literacy Inquiry & Instruction, in addition to numerous publications in researcher and practitioner journals. Dr. Christina Dobbs is an assistant professor and director of the English Education for Equity and Justice program at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.
To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2024, May 14). A conversation with Christina L. Dobbs (Season 4, No. 11) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/E0E0-E9A5-C5FA-D08B-6DF4-K
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Education research has a problem the work of
brilliant education researchersoften doesn't reach the practice
of brilliant teachers.
Classroom Caffeine is here tohelp.
In each episode, I talk with atop education researcher or
expert educator about what theyhave learned from their research
(00:31):
and experiences.
In this episode, christinaDobbs talks to us about beliefs
about education, disciplinaryliteracies from a critical
stance and literacies thatmatter for learners.
Christina is known for her workin the areas of language
(00:52):
development, the argumentativewriting of students,
disciplinary literacy andprofessional development for
secondary content teachers.
She is the author of severalbooks, including Investigating
Disciplinary Literacy andDisciplinary Literacy, inquiry
and Instruction, in addition tonumerous publications in
researcher and practitionerjournals.
(01:14):
Dr Christina Dobbs is anassistant professor and director
of the English Education forEquity and Justice program at
Boston University WheelockCollege of Education and Human
Development.
For more information about ourguest, stay tuned to the end of
this episode.
So pour a cup of your favoritedrink and join me, your host,
(01:36):
lindsay Persaud, for ClassroomCaffeine Research to Energize
your Teaching Practice.
Christina, thank you forjoining me.
Welcome to the show, hi.
How's it going?
So, from your own experiencesin education, will you share
with us one or two moments thatinform your thinking now?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh, I had a very hard time thinking about.
There are so many moments thatinform my thinking.
I'll start with one that justrecently happened.
My niece is in the first grade.
She's my youngest niece.
She's six years old.
She's got a strong personalityand is not super great with
authority, and she had gotten introuble because her teacher had
(02:18):
said they had to read booksthat were at a particular level,
and so she had removed thelabel on one book and put it
onto another and I think she wassupposed to be reading, like an
H maybe or an I, and she hadtaken the I label and put it on
(02:40):
a D and she said, well, I madeit an I.
And I laughed because part of meis like I think I might support
this sort of disobedientbehavior because she had sort of
said she wanted to read thisbook that she loved about
kittens and had just sort oftaken it upon herself to like
work the system such thathopefully no one would notice
(03:02):
and she could be reading thisbook that she had wanted to read
.
And it just sent me a lot ofinteresting ideas to think about
her and she's just so sure ofwhat she wants to do, and so I
just was sort of thinking, likeshe's getting this message that
like why we read at school isalways to be getting better and
(03:28):
maybe that's one reason she weread.
But she has other reasons andshe's sort of happy to to play
those reasons out in a way thatmight get her into a bit of
trouble.
But I've been thinking aboutthat a lot because during the
pandemic a sort of researchproject that I had planned fell
all to pieces, like everyone'sdid, and I ended up just doing
(03:51):
interviews on Zoom with 80undergrads.
80 undergrads is a lot ofundergrads to talk to.
And they were sort of from alldifferent backgrounds, all
different majors, colleges,different countries, all sorts
of things, all different majors,colleges, different countries,
all sorts of things, and I sortof spent all that time talking
(04:12):
with them about how they madethe transition from writing in
high school to writing incollege and what that was like,
because we have tons of studiesin which people are happy to
sort of say that kids are badwriters, undergrads are terrible
, all of these things, and asfar as I could find, there was
just not a lot about what theythink about that.
And one of my questions forthem was about I had several.
(04:32):
I asked them what theirteachers told them to expect
from college writing and ifthose things have been borne out
to be true.
I asked them if they think ofthemselves as good writers in
this moment in time.
You know they're undergrads,they're successfully making
their way through theirundergrad diplomas, it's going
fine, fully half of them werelike no, I'm terrible at writing
(04:55):
, it's awful.
But I ask each one of them totell me if there was ever a
moment when they felt proud of apiece of writing they had done
and I didn't know what they'dsay, if they would say anything.
When we first sort of made thatquestion as part of the
protocol, I thought who knowswhat's going to happen with this
one?
What happened was that everysingle one of them whether they
(05:18):
said they were a bad writer or agood one told me about a moment
that they felt really proud ofthat.
They remembered mostly quitevividly.
Some of them were from a reallylong time ago and some of them
were quite recent.
But they all had these reasonsfor feeling proud, and some of
it was feeling proud because Igot a good grade and that had
(05:39):
never happened to me before.
But more often than not it wassort of like my niece with that
book.
It was like I have my ownreasons for thinking that I did
well on this, for thinking thatit did something that mattered
to me, that it was important tome, that I wrote an essay about
the show Tiger King to myEnglish professor and in his
(06:10):
comments he wrote back that hewas going to watch it, that I
had convinced him to watch itand that made me proud, in which
people had this sort of broadrange of reasons why the
literacies that they had used tocommunicate really mattered to
them.
And so I've been thinking a lotabout that, about how school
(06:33):
can sometimes reallyinadvertently narrow the
purposes into these like veryachievement oriented ideas.
But then largely what I heardfrom the undergrads and what I
saw from my niece you know, sortof hacking the system in her
way was something besides.
That was a more complex sort ofrelationship with a set of
(06:53):
literacies and how they connectto like who we want to be in the
world and what we love andenjoy and all that sort of stuff
.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
I love both of those stories, christina, and I love
how you brought them together,as you know, being sort of
learner-centered andlearner-driven kinds of moments,
and, as you were describingboth of those scenarios, it
really made me think more aboutkind of the arbitrary nature of
what schools expect in relationto literacy and even sometimes
(07:21):
the kind of arbitrary nature ofhow we do things like leveled
text.
Well, yes, of course it'srelated to text complexity and
all of that, but we know everysystem uses a different system,
right, and so by placing thesestickers on things and saying
you must stick to this oneparticular way of reading, or
you know, we're going to limityour topics because you can only
(07:42):
have books that have a stickerwith the letter D on them, it
does just sort of remind me ofhow far removed that is from
what learners value and the kindof growth and achievement that
they want to see in their ownlearning, versus what sort of
the systems of schooling expectfrom them.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I mean, I spend a ton of time thinking about
disciplinary communities andwhat it means to be part of them
and what it means to changethem.
I tell I guess listeners don'tknow this I am a woman of color,
I'm multi-ethnic and Latina,and I have all kinds of
experiences in my life wherepeople are sort of like we want
you, we want more diversity,come sit, do this work with us,
(08:22):
sit at our table.
And what they mean when theysay that is come here, sit at
our table, look how you look,but behave like we behave.
And I find that reallycomplicated to navigate because
sort of learning andunderstanding the norms of
behavior can be a little bitmore elusive for a person like
(08:44):
me.
And also, you know, I don'tknow that I want to sort of
behave like everyone else.
Just to say that I did that.
I'm doing this project rightnow for a new book which is
going to be about criticaldisciplinary literacy.
It's time to think about what acritical version of those ideas
could be, even though I thinkthey make for quite an easy
(09:08):
neighbors to sort of think abouthow marginalized peoples made
their way into variousdisciplines.
So I was sitting with a physicsteacher recently talking about
this, who is also a person ofcolor and who was sort of the
only one in college studyingphysics like has been sort of
(09:29):
isolated in lots of waysthroughout his career and now as
a physics teacher and he talksa lot about feeling like, well,
it was the sort of publicintellectuals Like he talks a
lot about Neil deGrasse Tyson onsocial media or people like
that sort of making an effort tocommunicate outside the
disciplinary community thatreally made him feel like he had
(09:51):
a chance at joining thatcommunity and also communicating
in the way that he communicatesand not, you know, mimicking
all the old white guy physicistswho sort of came before him,
all the old white guy physicistswho sort of came before him.
And I think a lot about thatbecause about what it means to
sort of use literacy to your ownends and still join these
(10:14):
communities that have sort ofvery specific norms about you
know how literacy gets used.
I've been writing a paper withmy colleague in the English
department.
We co-teach a class together.
It says English on his door.
It says English education on mydoor.
You would think that how we dothings is essentially similar
(10:37):
and in our partnership togetherwe have discovered that's not
the case, that like, actuallythere are a thousand differences
and so we have been writing alittle bit like ethnography
style about like, why is that?
What does it say about thedisciplinary communities, if
they are sort of quite differentbut purport to do the same
subject?
I just have all these questionsabout how communities use
(11:01):
language to sort of signal whobelongs and who doesn't, and a
lot of students, when they weretalking to me about their proud
writing moments, they were sortof saying this was a moment in
which I used language in a waythat felt like me, like I was
being myself, and I stillsometimes got feedback that I
belonged and that that mattered.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I think the point that you're making about like
working within a disciplinewhile also sort of subtly kind
of pushing on the barriers ofwhat it is that actually defines
that discipline or, as you said, the way that people
communicate who work within thatdiscipline.
I think that is so veryimportant because I often think
about how much time and energywe devote to educating for the
(11:49):
past and I don't mean about thepast, I mean for past skills,
past careers rather than reallythinking forward to you know,
what does it mean to useliteracy for your own means and
for your own goals, for your ownways of communicating?
And how do you break into acommunity that has its own way
(12:12):
of thinking and speaking whenmaybe you don't either know all
of the conventions or perhapsare looking to intentionally
work to change and shift some ofthose conventions or at least
broaden them to include othervoices?
I think that's hard to do in ahigher education setting.
I think it's sometimes evenharder to do in a K-12 setting.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Well, our silos are so set.
You know, if you look at whatthe Committee of 10 said we
should be doing in like 1900 inAmerican high schools.
You know the sciences areslightly different, the
languages are slightly different.
80 of 10 said we should bedoing in like 1900 in American
high schools.
You know, the sciences areslightly different, the
languages are slightly different, but for the most part it's
exactly the same as it has beenfor, you know, 125 years.
And that feels sort ofintractable in some ways.
(13:00):
You know, students are tellingme like I wish I could study
more computer science or more ofthis or more of that.
And in a lot of the smallBoston high schools around where
I am, you know, we have justthe just enough teachers to have
the basics and that's all wehave.
And I think, you know, smallschools have lots of advantages
but they don't have sort of lotsof flexibility to experiment
(13:24):
with new spaces and new subjects.
And so then I think, well, whatdoes it mean to tinker within
the subjects?
What does it mean to ask hardquestions about what it means to
be critical within the subjects?
And most teachers don't gothrough teacher training in a
way that teaches them to thinkabout it in that way.
Most people don't decide.
(13:44):
I hated calculus with a passionin high school.
I think I'll spend my lifeteaching that to kids.
People just don't think aboutit quite in that way, typically.
Occasionally people do.
I find them to be more outliersthan sort of the average, but
usually there was somethingabout a discipline Like English
(14:04):
always made sense to me.
It made sense to read the books.
It was okay to read the bookseven if they didn't seem like
they were about me.
That was part of what I likedabout them.
And so then to be within thediscipline and feel constrained
by it was sort of a complicatedfeeling to have because I was
like, well, I don't, I didn'twant to join the other
communities necessarily, but itfeels like we have to teach all
(14:29):
of the disciplines, not justEnglish, although I've been
doing English the longest incritical ways that push our
students to be critical aboutthem, to not replicate norms
that just exist becausetraditionally that's the way
it's been like, you know,whiteness and maleness and
(14:49):
cisgenderness andheteronormativity and all of
these things are just sort ofembedded because the people who
have participated in thesecommunities tend to be members
of those groups.
And so what does it mean to doscience without all of that?
What does it mean to do sciencein ways that are new and
different, or math or art or anyof those things?
I think we have to do that workif we want students to have
(15:13):
access to the possible selvesthat they want to have.
They want lots of things fromtheir literate lives as adults
and some things are going tohave to change in some cases for
them to get to those places.
I don't want to leave all thatchange for them to have to do on
their own.
I want us to sort of thinkabout it together, what it could
(15:33):
look like.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And I know in my mind , and certainly in the state
where I live and teach, it seemsas though policies increasingly
are getting in the way ofmaking those changes.
So I think that teachers arefeeling very challenged to
continue to do good work and Ithink they're even for school
administrators, as well asdistrict administrators.
It's becoming increasinglydifficult to make space for
(16:00):
other ways of thinking.
You know that aren't withinthat sort of stereotyped, as you
said, white cisgender kind ofways of thinking.
You know that aren't withinthat sort of stereotyped, as you
said, white cisgender kind ofways of thinking, because it is
so baked into the structuresright, and particularly, I think
, whenever we have folks who arein power who are trying to bake
in those same ideas or tryingto bring them in with even more
(16:24):
force right, in order to eraseother voices and perspectives.
I think that can be really hardto do that work.
I think it at times.
In fact, talking with a teacherrecently, she talked about how
lonely that work is and how youcan really feel very isolated in
just trying to honor everystudent who is in your classroom
(16:45):
.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I do a lot of work I guess not technically literacy,
but sort of with the NationalCouncil of Teachers of English.
I'm on the standing committeeagainst censorship I'm told was
once a very quiet committeeassignment, and is not that
today?
It is a busy, lot of work.
But one of the things that hasbeen really powerful about that
(17:06):
work and my experience in it isthat we have this project, that
this story matters project,where we write these rationales
for books that have beenchallenged and we just write
about like why people use them,what they use them to teach,
what in the standards we feellike are supported by reading
the book.
All of these things we makethese documents.
The very first one I ever madewith a colleague was for the
(17:29):
book Gender Queer, which isincredibly complex and
incredibly challenged all overthe place, including in
Massachusetts.
You, too, can yell at me in myTwitter DMs about having done
that, but one interesting thingabout that is like now we have
met all of these teachers acrossthe country who are facing a
(17:51):
narrowing of how they haveapproached their work in the
past, and I think it probably ishappening in a lot of
disciplines and it just sohappens that this work deals
primarily with English teachers,but you know we I hear stories
from teachers all the time.
A teacher said to me atconference we were at conference
the week before Thanksgiving.
Recently we were in Columbus,ohio.
It was my first ever visit toColumbus, which is lovely and a
(18:14):
teacher said I don't, I don'tthink you can do anything about
what happened to me, which wasreally, really painful.
Will you just listen to me tellyou what happened?
And she had just been sort ofaccused of all manner of things
for reading a book that sort ofdealt with racial justice with a
group of students.
And I really keep thinkingabout that.
(18:37):
Will you just listen to me tellyou what happened, what it
means to just not feel so alone,in that we have an article
coming out or maybe it's out now, I don't know it's coming out
in English journal about what todo before, during and after a
book challenge so that you won'tactually feel alone if it's
(18:58):
happening to you because the notfeeling alone is actually one
of the hardest things toovercome and to have sort of
proactive conversations aboutcensorship in your community and
make policies that don't happensort of after someone is
already incensed about a book,but have sort of been
thoughtfully put in place beforethat happens and all these
sorts of things.
And even though I find itheartbreaking to hear all of
(19:21):
these stories, I'm glad that wesort of have this space now
where people can talk to eachother about it and can sort of
honor one another's experience.
It doesn't feel like an oldlady in my hometown when things
were hard she used to say itfeels like moving a beach with a
teaspoon and I I feel like I'mmoving a beach with a teaspoon
(19:43):
some days in thinking aboutdoing this work.
It's going to take a lot moreteaspoons to do it, but it does
feel like doing something.
And having a community ofpeople thinking about those
issues to do something has beena really meaningful experience
for me about what it means tocome together.
What it means for teachers tofeel supported in this era in
(20:05):
which the deprofessionalizationof teachers is really common.
What it might mean to cometogether, have discussions about
the fact that all education ispolitical and to pretend
otherwise is disingenuous, andthen to think about what we
think school is for and whatkind of values we want to
transmit to kids.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I think so often about that question what is
school for?
And in my mind, school is notfor what we are currently using
it for, or at least not in manyinstances of public education,
and I mentioned, of course,particularly where I live and
work.
But then again, how do weactually change that?
And I think this idea of movinga beach with a teaspoon is it
(20:49):
really speaks to me.
You can see this happeningright, and I think that there
are a lot of people who feelthis work just that we don't
necessarily have, whether it is,you know, the magnitude of
force that we need to actuallymake changes, or whether it is
the time and energy to do thework that needs to be done right
, especially whenever we havesort of the day-to-day pressures
(21:12):
and demands of what must happenin order just to keep things
going, much less to changethings.
I think that that's reallychallenging, but it also I get
this image in my mind of all ofus who are like-minded, grabbing
our teaspoons and pitching in,maybe on the same beach.
But I also think that we have alot of beaches to move, and
(21:34):
that's part of the challenge too.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
The thing I like about the beach metaphor is like
the tide is still going to come, it's coming back, it's going
to set us back.
That is part of, you know, thesort of process, of sort of
cultural progression and thenmoving backward and all those
things.
And so, you know, maybe wecould build tools that are
(21:57):
slightly more effective thanteaspoon, like.
There's a lot of things aboutthat metaphor that really worked
for me, but it does often feellike there is just a lot of work
to be done and I often think tomyself well, if I don't have
any better idea today aboutbigger tools or doing this
differently or getting peopletogether, any of that, at least
I'm getting a teaspoon.
(22:17):
I'm going to do one littlething and every little thing
matters, and or or maybe itdoesn't, but it matters to me.
And then invariably that leadsme to other people who are doing
similar work and and there issort of solidarity and empathy
and all sorts of things in thatexperience that I think are good
(22:40):
for us to sort of share witheach other.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Right, they, they are meaningful.
I guess, like you said, even ifwe're moving a couple grains of
sand at a time, that work isstill meaningful.
And I just realized I don'tthink I've even asked you the
second question yet, Christina.
What do you want listeners toknow about your work?
Or maybe more appropriately,what else do you want listeners
to know about your work?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
about your work.
I want people to know that whenI do work I'm sort of
interested in sitting withpeople and sort of carefully
observing.
Like it could be studentswriting, it could be teachers
beliefs, it could be lots ofdifferent things, but I used to
tell my professors in graduateschool that I was not going to
do any studies that say thatstudents who we know have been
perennially structured to bestruggling in schools are
(23:33):
struggling in schools.
Like I can see the system withmy eyes, it's doing what it's
supposed to do.
I'm not going to do work thatsort of shows that and I've
tried really hard to make thathappen.
I want people like when I doprofessional learning with
teachers, I just want to sitwith happen.
I want people like when I doprofessional learning with
teachers, I just want to sitwith them.
I know some stuff, they knowtons of stuff.
I want us to put that stufftogether and see what we come up
(23:54):
with.
So a lot of my work is sort ofcentered on working with
teachers and then seeing whatkinds of changes to
instructional practice that theyenact.
Based on what we've heard andwhat we learn, I want people to
think about what they reallybelieve.
I spend a lot of time askingteachers what they really what
they believe and how they thinkthey came to have those beliefs.
(24:17):
Like just one example thatteachers always tell me in my
classes.
They always tell me that theythink the English language is
really exceptionally hard tolearn.
Multilingual kids who come totheir classrooms and are
learning English at school andthings like that.
They always tell me English issuper hard.
Now I'm always asking them,like what makes you say so?
Where do you think that beliefcomes from?
(24:40):
And then they're like I don'tknow.
I guess I've just always.
You know, in elementary schoolpeople told me English was
really hard to spell, and Ithink that it is.
I've always seen lots ofstories about kids who are
multilingual, you know, havingan opportunity gap and all of
these things, and I guess I justreally think English is hard.
(25:02):
And then we start unpackinglike well, what narratives does
it serve if we behave as thoughthat's true?
If English is the hardestlanguage, then it makes sense
that entire groups of studentsmight be labeled as struggling
in schools, when actually wejust potentially have not done
enough to be teaching them allthese sorts of complicated
beliefs that people have, theycome from somewhere and sort of
(25:27):
maintaining those narrativesabout how American schooling
works serves the system in someway, or we could change those
and we don't have to serve thesystem in some way.
We could have something muchmore challenging.
There are lots of languagesthat are incredibly complex to
learn for lots of differentreasons.
There is something about sortof thinking that English is the
(25:50):
hardest.
That maintains a hierarchy thatis connected to all sorts of
ideas about colonialism and allsorts of stuff.
I spend a lot of time sittingwith people and unpacking that,
and then I spend a lot of timethinking about my own stuff,
about that and what I need tounlearn in order to make that
happen.
You know I teach inMassachusetts.
(26:11):
I have to teach every contentteacher that comes through our
programs in math, science,social studies and English how
to support their multilingualstudents using a sheltered
English approach which, by theway, not totally for that, not
for it at all, but I have toteach that.
By the way, not totally for that, not for it at all, but I have
to teach that.
We did a self-study ofourselves recently and
(26:33):
discovered that, like, despitethe fact that I tell myself, I
have to teach this shelteredclass because the state says I
have to teach it and I'm doingall these things that students
sometimes still take away, that,like English only is the right
thing to do and that bilingualeducation is too hard to enact
and all of these challenges.
And that bilingual education istoo hard to enact and all of
these challenges.
And so that kind of workinterests me, where we look at
how our beliefs mine and otherpeople's get turned into sort of
(26:56):
thoughts about how the worldworks and then how those
thoughts get turned into ourideas about what instruction and
assessment ought to look like.
I find myself being in thatspace, thinking about those
questions especially aboutlanguage.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Over and over again.
You are certainly giving me awhole lot to think about and
some new questions to think with, and I wanted to ask you you
mentioned this idea of shelteredEnglish and, for any listeners
who might not be familiar withthat, what exactly is that?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, so in Massachusetts, which, until 2017
, had one of the mostrestrictive language policies
for multilingual kids in theUnited States.
English was the mandatedlanguage of instruction, so
there was no transitionalbilingual classrooms.
You couldn't go to class andlearn in Spanish while you were
learning English or anythinglike that.
(27:46):
All the classrooms, it was sortof immediate immersion in
English in all subject areas.
And you know, I'm from Texas.
People are like well, texasmust be more conservative.
I'm like no, texas hasbilingual education.
Thank you very much.
Massachusetts did not, and thatmeant that when the law was
(28:06):
passed originally in the early2000s, bilingual education in
Massachusetts was mostlydismantled.
So there was some dual languagespaces that managed to survive,
which are sort of ongoingeducation in two languages for
kids across their years ofschooling.
But all the transitionalprograms like where, as you're
learning, you keep learning mathand the language that you are
(28:28):
most familiar with from home,you learn to develop some
literacy in your first language,and things like that, even for
very young children all of thatwas dismantled and then later on
, the Department of Justice cameto Massachusetts and said
you're violating the civilrights of kids by not training
teachers to work withmultilingual students, and so
then this course came to be.
I think I designed it andtaught it for the first time.
(28:50):
We did design it very quicklybecause the state was like we do
not want the Department ofJustice to come back.
Please.
We're doing all these things sothat they never come back and
say we're violating civil rightsagain.
So that was 11 years ago, Ithink, when we first started
doing that work.
Well then, in 2017, the lookbill was passed.
Transitional bilingual educationis a sort of governmentally
(29:13):
sanctioned approach, except forwe dismantled all of it.
Rebuilding it doesn't just, youknow, snap happen overnight,
because teachers don't haveup-to-date materials and
languages other than English.
They haven't made any in somelanguages that are quite common
in Massachusetts now, and so oneartifact of that is still,
teachers have to take a classabout supporting multilingual
(29:34):
learners that is primarilygrounded in structured English
immersion approaches, in orderto get their teaching
certification at the secondarylevel.
I don't know about all thelevels exactly, but I think
everyone has to do it.
So we have this weird world inwhich, like, you could
technically teach bilingual ifyou were in a place where they
had it, and all of that, but youalso have to take this class
(29:54):
that is grounded in English only, and so we talk a lot about,
like our beliefs, about you know, all sorts of things.
Most students come into my class.
They're mostly white teachers.
Of course they're more genderbalanced at the secondary level
than I think they probably wouldbe at elementary.
But they almost always come inthinking that the vast majority
of students who are multilingualin schools will have recently
(30:18):
emigrated, for example, and nothave lived here their whole
lives.
Or there are a lot of thingslike why might you get the
impression that all thesestudents are sort of new
immigrants to the United Stateswhen most of them have lived
here and their parents havelived here for a long time?
Like those sorts of narratives.
Where do they come from?
Falling short of what my goalsare and having to do it again
(30:48):
and try to do it better the nexttime, to sort of think through
a system that has really sort ofput all its chips on on English
and now is sort of trying tosort of shift in a different
direction.
But how to be within that Ifind very complicated, at least
in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Well, it sounds very complicated to be again.
It's sort of that like it soundsas though the curriculum is
sort of within a more equitableframework, but it's also working
within established structuresthat didn't honor that equity
for quite some time.
And so I think you also havelike, as you were talking about
(31:25):
this, christina, some time.
And so I think you also havelike, as you were talking about
this, christina, I'm envisioningsort of this gap in teacher
preparedness.
You know where that was allgoing on in English only was the
approach.
So you likely have a largeportion of the teacher workforce
that doesn't really have anypreparation or exposure to a
different way of thinking aboutinstructing, or even I think
(31:48):
that you know even teachers whomay not speak a child's home
language.
There are other sorts of leversthat we can use right in order
to communicate and to draw outunderstanding in a way that
meets the goals of the studentbut is also kind of
comprehensible to all parties,and I think that if you're in a
(32:08):
state where it's an English onlyapproach, all of that is sort
of missing too, I would guess,which makes it even more
complicated.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah, I mean there's so many things that are missing.
I mean it's a funny, you know,set of questions because I
straddle a lot of world'sprofessional learning and
multilingual learners andEnglish education and all these
sorts of things but there are somany complexities about.
You know, when the English onlylaw was getting passed in
Massachusetts in the early 2000s, ron Unns, who ran campaigns in
(32:39):
lots of states to try to getEnglish only passed, you know he
ran around Massachusetts with awhole bunch of signs that said
English for the children.
If you've never beenmultilingual, if you don't know
anyone or didn't go to schoolwith anyone who's multilingual,
you know you hear English forthe children.
These kids have a right toEnglish as quickly as possible
(33:01):
and you think, okay, that mightmake sense.
And it's such a funny.
You know I used to do this unitat a local school with a
teacher partner friend of mine,where we would talk about the
language of school and how itworks and like why do people not
use personal pronouns in theirquote, unquote, academic writing
and stuff like that, and one ofthe activities I used to do was
(33:22):
to bring in a whole bunch ofacademic articles that were
written in languages other thanEnglish and kids would be like I
didn't know.
People go to college inlanguages other than English.
People do research in languagesother than English.
What do you mean?
No-transcript in it?
(33:44):
Like I think a lot ofindividual teachers are
inadvertently teaching studentsand that the system is teaching
on purpose.
Is that, like, English is thelanguage of the academy, english
is the language that counts themost.
All of these things that are notactually true and for some
students they were like wait, Ididn't even know.
Like there's articles inMandarin that are like research
(34:09):
articles, there's articles inthese different languages, and I
think that's what the hegemonyof English does.
It sort of promotes itself in away.
That sort of prevents all ofthat other work and thinking
from being seen.
But the first time I did thatit was just sort of an accident.
But now I now every time Iteach that lesson with students,
(34:35):
because a lot of them don'tknow anybody that is like a
professor who is writingresearch articles in a language
other than English.
A lot of them have never, youknow, I didn't know professors
until I went to college.
A lot of students just don'thave that experience and so you
know, there's a lot sort ofbound up in sort of saying to
kids the language that we shouldbe learning in is English.
(34:55):
That's the one that's mostimportant, that I think we have
to unpack and unlearn and workthrough what it might really
mean to do it differently.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Well, and it reminds me of a question that you posed
earlier you know, what do youreally believe and how did you
come to believe that?
And I think that asking thosekinds of critical questions, I
mean that is one of thoseteaspoons we can use to move the
beach, right, if we think aboutwhat is it and what is it that
we think and why do we thinkthat?
Because I think you're right, somany of our beliefs are, yes,
(35:31):
they may be informed by ourexperiences, but I also think
that they're informed by, kindof the narratives that have
surrounded us throughout ourentire lives, right, whether it
is what we hear from our family,or from our school, or from,
maybe, the media we listen to,or the people we spend our time
with.
You know, they all sort ofcreate that frame with which we
(35:52):
see the world.
And I think that, like, thequestions that you're asking
really make me think and I tendto think very visually quite
often, but I think, you knowwhat if we were just to move
that frame, what if we were tofocus on something else or to
see the world from a differentperspective?
It really does, then, I think,change or at least make us
question what we think we knowabout the world.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
And you know one thing about the beach and the
teaspoon like I've been doingthose interviews with
minoritized folks who are indifferent fields, a lot of them
tell me that it only took oneteacher to teach them that they
belonged.
Like it didn't take their wholecollege.
Like it would be nice ifcolleges would make like more
(36:36):
inclusive policies and thingslike like I have that as a goal.
But a lot of them tell me likeit was one professor who was
like you can.
It was a different physicistthat told me this story, but it
was just one professor that waslike you can do this, you can be
a physicist.
A physicist could be you whosat with that student and was
(36:57):
like I'm going to make sure youunderstand everything you want
to understand.
So it didn't take a massiveoverhaul.
I would love to see oneeventually and hopefully someday
there will be enough of us inenough of those spaces to have
some overhauling in a biggerscale way.
But sometimes when I feel likeI'm moving that beach, I remind
(37:18):
myself like it just took oneteacher to teach those students
to do things differently, thatthey could be something that
maybe was not so obvious atfirst glance, that they really
belonged.
And so every time we sort ofunlearn and relearn some of
these narratives and try tothink differently about them, I
(37:40):
try to remind myself theteachers that I work with are
going out there and they'rebeing that one teacher in some
cases for students that reallyneed it, and then it feels like
the teaspoon it's not so bad,I'll take it, it's better than
nothing.
That, I think, is how Icontinue to feel hopeful, even
when times are rough, like Isort of feel like they are today
(38:01):
.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
It's such an important reminder, I think,
whenever you know when you arefeeling alone or isolated or
like you know what you're doingisn't working, so to speak, that
you know sometimes it is justit's one point of contact with
one student it might be a phrasethat you said, or you know a
story you shared with them thatyou really don't know how.
(38:23):
That leaves them thinking aboutpossibilities in their own lives
.
And I think it does infuse alot of hope back into the role
of teacher.
You know that you can, as anindividual, make significant
impacts on the lives of thepeople you work with, and I
think that there are politicalmoments that make it really easy
to lose sight of that.
(38:43):
But those sorts of stories, Ithink, like you shared from your
interview with the physicist,it brings us back to that idea
that it might just be oneconversation, one moment, one
story that you share withanother person that helps them
to believe something differentlythan maybe what they've been
told or what they've been led tobelieve is possible in their
(39:06):
own lives or is possible intheir own worlds is possible in
their own worlds.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I hope so.
I think so some of the time and, of course, I want better
systems and I don't, you know.
I want all sorts of things forteachers, for them to to be
treated differently, both bysociety and in their individual
spaces, like I don't want anyoneto like work themselves to
death or anything like that, butI definitely learn over and
over again that that it is somesmall moments that really make a
difference.
One of the things I spend timewriting about my own work is
(39:35):
what it's like to be a woman ofcolor and be a professor.
I am.
It's not sort of literacyrelated, but I spend a lot of
time thinking and writing aboutthat and I have to unlearn a lot
of things about.
You know, it's like DavidFoster Wallace says this is
water.
Do you know this story?
David Foster Wallace gave aspeech at Kenyon college and I
(39:57):
know he had issues, but it's agood speech and it starts with
this old joke about two goldfishers swimming along and an
old goldfish swims by and hesays, hey, fellas, how's the
water?
And then one of the younggoldfish just looks at the says
hey, fellas, how's the water?
And then one of the younggoldfish just looks at the other
and says what the hell is water?
Because, like the stuff aroundus, the stories around us, the
ideas that sort of permeate howwe think about the world.
(40:17):
I'm not immune to them justbecause I don't look like
everyone else, like I have tounlearn things all the time
about whether I belong, thatpeople are going to have
sometimes different expectationsof me than I might prefer, that
there's just so much work to doin that, and I always think,
okay, I'm going to write thisstory about this horrible,
embarrassing thing that happenedto me and my colleague and I do
(40:40):
this work together and I'm sograteful to her for it.
But then we write an article andwe send it out into the world,
and then I'm invariablysurprised by how many other
women and people of color andwomen of color who write to me
and say this happened to me too.
Thank you so much for writingit down, thank you so much for
talking about how you dealt withit and sort of using the
(41:03):
research tools that you know tothink it through.
And then I'm sort of like now Ihave this whole community of
people that do this work, likewe're working on a collection of
these kinds of pieces frompairs of other women and I
didn't sort of have that as aplan.
I'm not one to plan.
I didn't have that as a plangoing through, but I I get
(41:23):
reminded constantly that thatthat sort of telling the truth,
talking about the hard stuff,really matters and that before I
know it there's more peopledoing that than I sort of
envisioned going in.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
It's like opening a door or starting, you know,
starting a new chapter to astory that maybe hasn't been
told yet.
So that's really great work.
Which leads us, actually verynicely to our last question.
Given the challenges of today'seducational climate, what
message do you want teachers tohear?
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I want teachers to hear that in so, so many cases,
I think they deserve better andI'm really trying to work on it,
I promise.
And also I want teachers toknow that it takes space and
time and resources and beingtreated like a professional to
(42:18):
make a better system.
And so every time, you know,somebody buys a new curriculum
that's shiny and pretty out of abox and says this is going to
solve everything, and teachersare like I just don't have it in
me to do this dance again.
That I understand that and thatI do think we have lots of
change to make, and that I'mconstantly talking with our
(42:39):
administrators about beingrealistic, about what that
change could be and how we wouldhave to structure it in order
for people to actually have thetime, energy, resources to make
change that is meaningful, butthat every time I've ever
convinced school or a schooldistrict or any of that to give
(43:00):
people that space and time, I'mconstantly blown away with what
teachers do and come up with.
I want teachers to know aboutprojects like this Story Matters
, that there are coalitions ofpeople if they feel alone, to
reach out to, and maybe it wouldjust be a virtual community and
maybe not someone next door,but that it is a way to connect
(43:20):
with other people who have thosesame challenges and are making
those same hard choices.
And I hope teachers know thatthere are some researchers who
are not my favorite who arehappy to talk about.
You know, teachers have to bebetter and we got to get rid of
the bad ones and all that dumbstuff, but that there are some
of us who really want to worktogether and think about what
(43:42):
could work, that everything isdependent on a time and place
and a context and a particulargroup of kids, and that there
are people who really want todig into that sort of
specificity and think about thekinds of changes we could make
that would matter today withthis particular group of
students and for our system morebroadly, and so I hope they
(44:06):
continue to feel hopeful.
I'm a little I worry about thata lot, as I see people leaving
teaching and fewer peoplewanting to go into it about what
it will mean for us if thatcontinues to happen, and so I'm
hoping for brighter days soonerrather than later.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
I think teachers really are thepeople who make the world go
round, and it is sad to seegreat teachers leave the
profession and growing teachersleaving the profession also, you
know, kind of as they're justgetting started.
So I do hope that collectivelywe can kind of stay the course
and keep doing the good work sothat kids are able to imagine,
(44:48):
you know, the kind of futurethat they want to see.
Thank you so much for sharingyour ideas today, thank you for
spending some time with me andthank you for your contributions
to the field of education.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Dr Christina Dobbs is known for her work in the areas
of language development, theargumentative writing of
students, disciplinary literacyand professional development for
secondary content teachers.
Her work has been published inthe Journal of Adolescent and
Adult Literacy Reading ResearchQuarterly, professional
Development in Education EnglishJournal, the Reading Teacher
(45:26):
Journal of Language Identity andEducation, reading and Writing,
an interdisciplinary journalJournal of Multilingual Theories
and Practices, linguistics andEducation, and the Journal of
School Leadership.
She's the author of severalbooks, including Investigating
Disciplinary Literacy andDisciplinary Literacy, inquiry
(45:49):
and Instruction, a secondedition of which will be
released in spring of 2024.
Christine also frequentlyreviews literature for the Horn
Book and provides professionaldevelopment talks and workshops
for practitioners.
She is currently a co-editor ofthe Journal of Literacy
Research.
(46:09):
She is a former high schoolteacher in Houston, texas, as
well as a literacy coach andreading specialist.
Dr Christina Dobbs is anassistant professor and director
of the English Education forEquity and Justice program at
Boston University WheelockCollege of Education and Human
Development.
(46:32):
For the good of all students,classroom Caffeine aims to
energize education, research andpractice.
If this show gives you thingsto think about, help us spread
the word.
Talk to your colleagues andeducator friends about what you
hear.
You can support the show bysubscribing, liking and
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(46:53):
Visit classroomcaffeinecom,where you can subscribe to
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On our website, you can alsolearn more about each guest,
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(47:13):
Support our research throughour listener survey or learn
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We would love to hear from you.
Special thanks to the ClassroomCaffeine team Leah Berger,
abaya Velourou, stephanieBranson and Shaba Oshfath.
(47:34):
As always, I raise my mug toyou teachers.
Thanks for joining me.
Education research has a problem the work of
brilliant education researchersoften doesn't reach the practice
of brilliant teachers.
Classroom Caffeine is here tohelp.
In each episode, I talk with atop education researcher or
expert educator about what theyhave learned from their research
(00:31):
and experiences.
In this episode, christinaDobbs talks to us about beliefs
about education, disciplinaryliteracies from a critical
stance and literacies thatmatter for learners.
Christina is known for her workin the areas of language
(00:52):
development, the argumentativewriting of students,
disciplinary literacy andprofessional development for
secondary content teachers.
She is the author of severalbooks, including Investigating
Disciplinary Literacy andDisciplinary Literacy, inquiry
and Instruction, in addition tonumerous publications in
researcher and practitionerjournals.
(01:14):
Dr Christina Dobbs is anassistant professor and director
of the English Education forEquity and Justice program at
Boston University WheelockCollege of Education and Human
Development.
For more information about ourguest, stay tuned to the end of
this episode.
So pour a cup of your favoritedrink and join me, your host,
(01:36):
lindsay Persaud, for ClassroomCaffeine Research to Energize
your Teaching Practice.
Christina, thank you forjoining me.
Welcome to the show, hi.
How's it going?
So, from your own experiencesin education, will you share
with us one or two moments thatinform your thinking now?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh, I had a very hard time thinking about.
There are so many moments thatinform my thinking.
I'll start with one that justrecently happened.
My niece is in the first grade.
She's my youngest niece.
She's six years old.
She's got a strong personalityand is not super great with
authority, and she had gotten introuble because her teacher had
(02:18):
said they had to read booksthat were at a particular level,
and so she had removed thelabel on one book and put it
onto another and I think she wassupposed to be reading, like an
H maybe or an I, and she hadtaken the I label and put it on
(02:40):
a D and she said, well, I madeit an I.
And I laughed because part of meis like I think I might support
this sort of disobedientbehavior because she had sort of
said she wanted to read thisbook that she loved about
kittens and had just sort oftaken it upon herself to like
work the system such thathopefully no one would notice
(03:02):
and she could be reading thisbook that she had wanted to read
.
And it just sent me a lot ofinteresting ideas to think about
her and she's just so sure ofwhat she wants to do, and so I
just was sort of thinking, likeshe's getting this message that
like why we read at school isalways to be getting better and
(03:28):
maybe that's one reason she weread.
But she has other reasons andshe's sort of happy to to play
those reasons out in a way thatmight get her into a bit of
trouble.
But I've been thinking aboutthat a lot because during the
pandemic a sort of researchproject that I had planned fell
all to pieces, like everyone'sdid, and I ended up just doing
(03:51):
interviews on Zoom with 80undergrads.
80 undergrads is a lot ofundergrads to talk to.
And they were sort of from alldifferent backgrounds, all
different majors, colleges,different countries, all sorts
of things, all different majors,colleges, different countries,
all sorts of things, and I sortof spent all that time talking
(04:12):
with them about how they madethe transition from writing in
high school to writing incollege and what that was like,
because we have tons of studiesin which people are happy to
sort of say that kids are badwriters, undergrads are terrible
, all of these things, and asfar as I could find, there was
just not a lot about what theythink about that.
And one of my questions forthem was about I had several.
(04:32):
I asked them what theirteachers told them to expect
from college writing and ifthose things have been borne out
to be true.
I asked them if they think ofthemselves as good writers in
this moment in time.
You know they're undergrads,they're successfully making
their way through theirundergrad diplomas, it's going
fine, fully half of them werelike no, I'm terrible at writing
(04:55):
, it's awful.
But I ask each one of them totell me if there was ever a
moment when they felt proud of apiece of writing they had done
and I didn't know what they'dsay, if they would say anything.
When we first sort of made thatquestion as part of the
protocol, I thought who knowswhat's going to happen with this
one?
What happened was that everysingle one of them whether they
(05:18):
said they were a bad writer or agood one told me about a moment
that they felt really proud ofthat.
They remembered mostly quitevividly.
Some of them were from a reallylong time ago and some of them
were quite recent.
But they all had these reasonsfor feeling proud, and some of
it was feeling proud because Igot a good grade and that had
(05:39):
never happened to me before.
But more often than not it wassort of like my niece with that
book.
It was like I have my ownreasons for thinking that I did
well on this, for thinking thatit did something that mattered
to me, that it was important tome, that I wrote an essay about
the show Tiger King to myEnglish professor and in his
(06:10):
comments he wrote back that hewas going to watch it, that I
had convinced him to watch itand that made me proud, in which
people had this sort of broadrange of reasons why the
literacies that they had used tocommunicate really mattered to
them.
And so I've been thinking a lotabout that, about how school
(06:33):
can sometimes reallyinadvertently narrow the
purposes into these like veryachievement oriented ideas.
But then largely what I heardfrom the undergrads and what I
saw from my niece you know, sortof hacking the system in her
way was something besides.
That was a more complex sort ofrelationship with a set of
(06:53):
literacies and how they connectto like who we want to be in the
world and what we love andenjoy and all that sort of stuff
.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
I love both of those stories, christina, and I love
how you brought them together,as you know, being sort of
learner-centered andlearner-driven kinds of moments,
and, as you were describingboth of those scenarios, it
really made me think more aboutkind of the arbitrary nature of
what schools expect in relationto literacy and even sometimes
(07:21):
the kind of arbitrary nature ofhow we do things like leveled
text.
Well, yes, of course it'srelated to text complexity and
all of that, but we know everysystem uses a different system,
right, and so by placing thesestickers on things and saying
you must stick to this oneparticular way of reading, or
you know, we're going to limityour topics because you can only
(07:42):
have books that have a stickerwith the letter D on them, it
does just sort of remind me ofhow far removed that is from
what learners value and the kindof growth and achievement that
they want to see in their ownlearning, versus what sort of
the systems of schooling expectfrom them.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I mean, I spend a ton of time thinking about
disciplinary communities andwhat it means to be part of them
and what it means to changethem.
I tell I guess listeners don'tknow this I am a woman of color,
I'm multi-ethnic and Latina,and I have all kinds of
experiences in my life wherepeople are sort of like we want
you, we want more diversity,come sit, do this work with us,
(08:22):
sit at our table.
And what they mean when theysay that is come here, sit at
our table, look how you look,but behave like we behave.
And I find that reallycomplicated to navigate because
sort of learning andunderstanding the norms of
behavior can be a little bitmore elusive for a person like
(08:44):
me.
And also, you know, I don'tknow that I want to sort of
behave like everyone else.
Just to say that I did that.
I'm doing this project rightnow for a new book which is
going to be about criticaldisciplinary literacy.
It's time to think about what acritical version of those ideas
could be, even though I thinkthey make for quite an easy
(09:08):
neighbors to sort of think abouthow marginalized peoples made
their way into variousdisciplines.
So I was sitting with a physicsteacher recently talking about
this, who is also a person ofcolor and who was sort of the
only one in college studyingphysics like has been sort of
(09:29):
isolated in lots of waysthroughout his career and now as
a physics teacher and he talksa lot about feeling like, well,
it was the sort of publicintellectuals Like he talks a
lot about Neil deGrasse Tyson onsocial media or people like
that sort of making an effort tocommunicate outside the
disciplinary community thatreally made him feel like he had
(09:51):
a chance at joining thatcommunity and also communicating
in the way that he communicatesand not, you know, mimicking
all the old white guy physicistswho sort of came before him,
all the old white guy physicistswho sort of came before him.
And I think a lot about thatbecause about what it means to
sort of use literacy to your ownends and still join these
(10:14):
communities that have sort ofvery specific norms about you
know how literacy gets used.
I've been writing a paper withmy colleague in the English
department.
We co-teach a class together.
It says English on his door.
It says English education on mydoor.
You would think that how we dothings is essentially similar
(10:37):
and in our partnership togetherwe have discovered that's not
the case, that like, actuallythere are a thousand differences
and so we have been writing alittle bit like ethnography
style about like, why is that?
What does it say about thedisciplinary communities, if
they are sort of quite differentbut purport to do the same
subject?
I just have all these questionsabout how communities use
(11:01):
language to sort of signal whobelongs and who doesn't, and a
lot of students, when they weretalking to me about their proud
writing moments, they were sortof saying this was a moment in
which I used language in a waythat felt like me, like I was
being myself, and I stillsometimes got feedback that I
belonged and that that mattered.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I think the point that you're making about like
working within a disciplinewhile also sort of subtly kind
of pushing on the barriers ofwhat it is that actually defines
that discipline or, as you said, the way that people
communicate who work within thatdiscipline.
I think that is so veryimportant because I often think
about how much time and energywe devote to educating for the
(11:49):
past and I don't mean about thepast, I mean for past skills,
past careers rather than reallythinking forward to you know,
what does it mean to useliteracy for your own means and
for your own goals, for your ownways of communicating?
And how do you break into acommunity that has its own way
(12:12):
of thinking and speaking whenmaybe you don't either know all
of the conventions or perhapsare looking to intentionally
work to change and shift some ofthose conventions or at least
broaden them to include othervoices?
I think that's hard to do in ahigher education setting.
I think it's sometimes evenharder to do in a K-12 setting.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Well, our silos are so set.
You know, if you look at whatthe Committee of 10 said we
should be doing in like 1900 inAmerican high schools.
You know the sciences areslightly different, the
languages are slightly different.
80 of 10 said we should bedoing in like 1900 in American
high schools.
You know, the sciences areslightly different, the
languages are slightly different, but for the most part it's
exactly the same as it has beenfor, you know, 125 years.
And that feels sort ofintractable in some ways.
(13:00):
You know, students are tellingme like I wish I could study
more computer science or more ofthis or more of that.
And in a lot of the smallBoston high schools around where
I am, you know, we have justthe just enough teachers to have
the basics and that's all wehave.
And I think, you know, smallschools have lots of advantages
but they don't have sort of lotsof flexibility to experiment
(13:24):
with new spaces and new subjects.
And so then I think, well, whatdoes it mean to tinker within
the subjects?
What does it mean to ask hardquestions about what it means to
be critical within the subjects?
And most teachers don't gothrough teacher training in a
way that teaches them to thinkabout it in that way.
Most people don't decide.
(13:44):
I hated calculus with a passionin high school.
I think I'll spend my lifeteaching that to kids.
People just don't think aboutit quite in that way, typically.
Occasionally people do.
I find them to be more outliersthan sort of the average, but
usually there was somethingabout a discipline Like English
(14:04):
always made sense to me.
It made sense to read the books.
It was okay to read the bookseven if they didn't seem like
they were about me.
That was part of what I likedabout them.
And so then to be within thediscipline and feel constrained
by it was sort of a complicatedfeeling to have because I was
like, well, I don't, I didn'twant to join the other
communities necessarily, but itfeels like we have to teach all
(14:29):
of the disciplines, not justEnglish, although I've been
doing English the longest incritical ways that push our
students to be critical aboutthem, to not replicate norms
that just exist becausetraditionally that's the way
it's been like, you know,whiteness and maleness and
(14:49):
cisgenderness andheteronormativity and all of
these things are just sort ofembedded because the people who
have participated in thesecommunities tend to be members
of those groups.
And so what does it mean to doscience without all of that?
What does it mean to do sciencein ways that are new and
different, or math or art or anyof those things?
I think we have to do that workif we want students to have
(15:13):
access to the possible selvesthat they want to have.
They want lots of things fromtheir literate lives as adults
and some things are going tohave to change in some cases for
them to get to those places.
I don't want to leave all thatchange for them to have to do on
their own.
I want us to sort of thinkabout it together, what it could
(15:33):
look like.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And I know in my mind , and certainly in the state
where I live and teach, it seemsas though policies increasingly
are getting in the way ofmaking those changes.
So I think that teachers arefeeling very challenged to
continue to do good work and Ithink they're even for school
administrators, as well asdistrict administrators.
It's becoming increasinglydifficult to make space for
(16:00):
other ways of thinking.
You know that aren't withinthat sort of stereotyped, as you
said, white cisgender kind ofways of thinking.
You know that aren't withinthat sort of stereotyped, as you
said, white cisgender kind ofways of thinking, because it is
so baked into the structuresright, and particularly, I think
, whenever we have folks who arein power who are trying to bake
in those same ideas or tryingto bring them in with even more
(16:24):
force right, in order to eraseother voices and perspectives.
I think that can be really hardto do that work.
I think it at times.
In fact, talking with a teacherrecently, she talked about how
lonely that work is and how youcan really feel very isolated in
just trying to honor everystudent who is in your classroom
(16:45):
.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
I do a lot of work I guess not technically literacy,
but sort of with the NationalCouncil of Teachers of English.
I'm on the standing committeeagainst censorship I'm told was
once a very quiet committeeassignment, and is not that
today?
It is a busy, lot of work.
But one of the things that hasbeen really powerful about that
(17:06):
work and my experience in it isthat we have this project, that
this story matters project,where we write these rationales
for books that have beenchallenged and we just write
about like why people use them,what they use them to teach,
what in the standards we feellike are supported by reading
the book.
All of these things we makethese documents.
The very first one I ever madewith a colleague was for the
(17:29):
book Gender Queer, which isincredibly complex and
incredibly challenged all overthe place, including in
Massachusetts.
You, too, can yell at me in myTwitter DMs about having done
that, but one interesting thingabout that is like now we have
met all of these teachers acrossthe country who are facing a
(17:51):
narrowing of how they haveapproached their work in the
past, and I think it probably ishappening in a lot of
disciplines and it just sohappens that this work deals
primarily with English teachers,but you know we I hear stories
from teachers all the time.
A teacher said to me atconference we were at conference
the week before Thanksgiving.
Recently we were in Columbus,ohio.
It was my first ever visit toColumbus, which is lovely and a
(18:14):
teacher said I don't, I don'tthink you can do anything about
what happened to me, which wasreally, really painful.
Will you just listen to me tellyou what happened?
And she had just been sort ofaccused of all manner of things
for reading a book that sort ofdealt with racial justice with a
group of students.
And I really keep thinkingabout that.
(18:37):
Will you just listen to me tellyou what happened, what it
means to just not feel so alone,in that we have an article
coming out or maybe it's out now, I don't know it's coming out
in English journal about what todo before, during and after a
book challenge so that you won'tactually feel alone if it's
(18:58):
happening to you because the notfeeling alone is actually one
of the hardest things toovercome and to have sort of
proactive conversations aboutcensorship in your community and
make policies that don't happensort of after someone is
already incensed about a book,but have sort of been
thoughtfully put in place beforethat happens and all these
sorts of things.
And even though I find itheartbreaking to hear all of
(19:21):
these stories, I'm glad that wesort of have this space now
where people can talk to eachother about it and can sort of
honor one another's experience.
It doesn't feel like an oldlady in my hometown when things
were hard she used to say itfeels like moving a beach with a
teaspoon and I I feel like I'mmoving a beach with a teaspoon
(19:43):
some days in thinking aboutdoing this work.
It's going to take a lot moreteaspoons to do it, but it does
feel like doing something.
And having a community ofpeople thinking about those
issues to do something has beena really meaningful experience
for me about what it means tocome together.
What it means for teachers tofeel supported in this era in
(20:05):
which the deprofessionalizationof teachers is really common.
What it might mean to cometogether, have discussions about
the fact that all education ispolitical and to pretend
otherwise is disingenuous, andthen to think about what we
think school is for and whatkind of values we want to
transmit to kids.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I think so often about that question what is
school for?
And in my mind, school is notfor what we are currently using
it for, or at least not in manyinstances of public education,
and I mentioned, of course,particularly where I live and
work.
But then again, how do weactually change that?
And I think this idea of movinga beach with a teaspoon is it
(20:49):
really speaks to me.
You can see this happeningright, and I think that there
are a lot of people who feelthis work just that we don't
necessarily have, whether it is,you know, the magnitude of
force that we need to actuallymake changes, or whether it is
the time and energy to do thework that needs to be done right
, especially whenever we havesort of the day-to-day pressures
(21:12):
and demands of what must happenin order just to keep things
going, much less to changethings.
I think that that's reallychallenging, but it also I get
this image in my mind of all ofus who are like-minded, grabbing
our teaspoons and pitching in,maybe on the same beach.
But I also think that we have alot of beaches to move, and
(21:34):
that's part of the challenge too.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
The thing I like about the beach metaphor is like
the tide is still going to come, it's coming back, it's going
to set us back.
That is part of, you know, thesort of process, of sort of
cultural progression and thenmoving backward and all those
things.
And so, you know, maybe wecould build tools that are
(21:57):
slightly more effective thanteaspoon, like.
There's a lot of things aboutthat metaphor that really worked
for me, but it does often feellike there is just a lot of work
to be done and I often think tomyself well, if I don't have
any better idea today aboutbigger tools or doing this
differently or getting peopletogether, any of that, at least
I'm getting a teaspoon.
(22:17):
I'm going to do one littlething and every little thing
matters, and or or maybe itdoesn't, but it matters to me.
And then invariably that leadsme to other people who are doing
similar work and and there issort of solidarity and empathy
and all sorts of things in thatexperience that I think are good
(22:40):
for us to sort of share witheach other.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Right, they, they are meaningful.
I guess, like you said, even ifwe're moving a couple grains of
sand at a time, that work isstill meaningful.
And I just realized I don'tthink I've even asked you the
second question yet, Christina.
What do you want listeners toknow about your work?
Or maybe more appropriately,what else do you want listeners
to know about your work?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
about your work.
I want people to know that whenI do work I'm sort of
interested in sitting withpeople and sort of carefully
observing.
Like it could be studentswriting, it could be teachers
beliefs, it could be lots ofdifferent things, but I used to
tell my professors in graduateschool that I was not going to
do any studies that say thatstudents who we know have been
perennially structured to bestruggling in schools are
(23:33):
struggling in schools.
Like I can see the system withmy eyes, it's doing what it's
supposed to do.
I'm not going to do work thatsort of shows that and I've
tried really hard to make thathappen.
I want people like when I doprofessional learning with
teachers, I just want to sitwith happen.
I want people like when I doprofessional learning with
teachers, I just want to sitwith them.
I know some stuff, they knowtons of stuff.
I want us to put that stufftogether and see what we come up
(23:54):
with.
So a lot of my work is sort ofcentered on working with
teachers and then seeing whatkinds of changes to
instructional practice that theyenact.
Based on what we've heard andwhat we learn, I want people to
think about what they reallybelieve.
I spend a lot of time askingteachers what they really what
they believe and how they thinkthey came to have those beliefs.
(24:17):
Like just one example thatteachers always tell me in my
classes.
They always tell me that theythink the English language is
really exceptionally hard tolearn.
Multilingual kids who come totheir classrooms and are
learning English at school andthings like that.
They always tell me English issuper hard.
Now I'm always asking them,like what makes you say so?
Where do you think that beliefcomes from?
(24:40):
And then they're like I don'tknow.
I guess I've just always.
You know, in elementary schoolpeople told me English was
really hard to spell, and Ithink that it is.
I've always seen lots ofstories about kids who are
multilingual, you know, havingan opportunity gap and all of
these things, and I guess I justreally think English is hard.
(25:02):
And then we start unpackinglike well, what narratives does
it serve if we behave as thoughthat's true?
If English is the hardestlanguage, then it makes sense
that entire groups of studentsmight be labeled as struggling
in schools, when actually wejust potentially have not done
enough to be teaching them allthese sorts of complicated
beliefs that people have, theycome from somewhere and sort of
(25:27):
maintaining those narrativesabout how American schooling
works serves the system in someway, or we could change those
and we don't have to serve thesystem in some way.
We could have something muchmore challenging.
There are lots of languagesthat are incredibly complex to
learn for lots of differentreasons.
There is something about sortof thinking that English is the
(25:50):
hardest.
That maintains a hierarchy thatis connected to all sorts of
ideas about colonialism and allsorts of stuff.
I spend a lot of time sittingwith people and unpacking that,
and then I spend a lot of timethinking about my own stuff,
about that and what I need tounlearn in order to make that
happen.
You know I teach inMassachusetts.
(26:11):
I have to teach every contentteacher that comes through our
programs in math, science,social studies and English how
to support their multilingualstudents using a sheltered
English approach which, by theway, not totally for that, not
for it at all, but I have toteach that.
By the way, not totally for that, not for it at all, but I have
to teach that.
We did a self-study ofourselves recently and
(26:33):
discovered that, like, despitethe fact that I tell myself, I
have to teach this shelteredclass because the state says I
have to teach it and I'm doingall these things that students
sometimes still take away, that,like English only is the right
thing to do and that bilingualeducation is too hard to enact
and all of these challenges.
And that bilingual education istoo hard to enact and all of
these challenges.
And so that kind of workinterests me, where we look at
how our beliefs mine and otherpeople's get turned into sort of
(26:56):
thoughts about how the worldworks and then how those
thoughts get turned into ourideas about what instruction and
assessment ought to look like.
I find myself being in thatspace, thinking about those
questions especially aboutlanguage.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Over and over again.
You are certainly giving me awhole lot to think about and
some new questions to think with, and I wanted to ask you you
mentioned this idea of shelteredEnglish and, for any listeners
who might not be familiar withthat, what exactly is that?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, so in Massachusetts, which, until 2017
, had one of the mostrestrictive language policies
for multilingual kids in theUnited States.
English was the mandatedlanguage of instruction, so
there was no transitionalbilingual classrooms.
You couldn't go to class andlearn in Spanish while you were
learning English or anythinglike that.
(27:46):
All the classrooms, it was sortof immediate immersion in
English in all subject areas.
And you know, I'm from Texas.
People are like well, texasmust be more conservative.
I'm like no, texas hasbilingual education.
Thank you very much.
Massachusetts did not, and thatmeant that when the law was
(28:06):
passed originally in the early2000s, bilingual education in
Massachusetts was mostlydismantled.
So there was some dual languagespaces that managed to survive,
which are sort of ongoingeducation in two languages for
kids across their years ofschooling.
But all the transitionalprograms like where, as you're
learning, you keep learning mathand the language that you are
(28:28):
most familiar with from home,you learn to develop some
literacy in your first language,and things like that, even for
very young children all of thatwas dismantled and then later on
, the Department of Justice cameto Massachusetts and said
you're violating the civilrights of kids by not training
teachers to work withmultilingual students, and so
then this course came to be.
I think I designed it andtaught it for the first time.
(28:50):
We did design it very quicklybecause the state was like we do
not want the Department ofJustice to come back.
Please.
We're doing all these things sothat they never come back and
say we're violating civil rightsagain.
So that was 11 years ago, Ithink, when we first started
doing that work.
Well then, in 2017, the lookbill was passed.
Transitional bilingual educationis a sort of governmentally
(29:13):
sanctioned approach, except forwe dismantled all of it.
Rebuilding it doesn't just, youknow, snap happen overnight,
because teachers don't haveup-to-date materials and
languages other than English.
They haven't made any in somelanguages that are quite common
in Massachusetts now, and so oneartifact of that is still,
teachers have to take a classabout supporting multilingual
(29:34):
learners that is primarilygrounded in structured English
immersion approaches, in orderto get their teaching
certification at the secondarylevel.
I don't know about all thelevels exactly, but I think
everyone has to do it.
So we have this weird world inwhich, like, you could
technically teach bilingual ifyou were in a place where they
had it, and all of that, but youalso have to take this class
(29:54):
that is grounded in English only, and so we talk a lot about,
like our beliefs, about you know, all sorts of things.
Most students come into my class.
They're mostly white teachers.
Of course they're more genderbalanced at the secondary level
than I think they probably wouldbe at elementary.
But they almost always come inthinking that the vast majority
of students who are multilingualin schools will have recently
(30:18):
emigrated, for example, and nothave lived here their whole
lives.
Or there are a lot of thingslike why might you get the
impression that all thesestudents are sort of new
immigrants to the United Stateswhen most of them have lived
here and their parents havelived here for a long time?
Like those sorts of narratives.
Where do they come from?
Falling short of what my goalsare and having to do it again
(30:48):
and try to do it better the nexttime, to sort of think through
a system that has really sort ofput all its chips on on English
and now is sort of trying tosort of shift in a different
direction.
But how to be within that Ifind very complicated, at least
in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Well, it sounds very complicated to be again.
It's sort of that like it soundsas though the curriculum is
sort of within a more equitableframework, but it's also working
within established structuresthat didn't honor that equity
for quite some time.
And so I think you also havelike, as you were talking about
(31:25):
this, christina, some time.
And so I think you also havelike, as you were talking about
this, christina, I'm envisioningsort of this gap in teacher
preparedness.
You know where that was allgoing on in English only was the
approach.
So you likely have a largeportion of the teacher workforce
that doesn't really have anypreparation or exposure to a
different way of thinking aboutinstructing, or even I think
(31:48):
that you know even teachers whomay not speak a child's home
language.
There are other sorts of leversthat we can use right in order
to communicate and to draw outunderstanding in a way that
meets the goals of the studentbut is also kind of
comprehensible to all parties,and I think that if you're in a
(32:08):
state where it's an English onlyapproach, all of that is sort
of missing too, I would guess,which makes it even more
complicated.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah, I mean there's so many things that are missing.
I mean it's a funny, you know,set of questions because I
straddle a lot of world'sprofessional learning and
multilingual learners andEnglish education and all these
sorts of things but there are somany complexities about.
You know, when the English onlylaw was getting passed in
Massachusetts in the early 2000s, ron Unns, who ran campaigns in
(32:39):
lots of states to try to getEnglish only passed, you know he
ran around Massachusetts with awhole bunch of signs that said
English for the children.
If you've never beenmultilingual, if you don't know
anyone or didn't go to schoolwith anyone who's multilingual,
you know you hear English forthe children.
These kids have a right toEnglish as quickly as possible
(33:01):
and you think, okay, that mightmake sense.
And it's such a funny.
You know I used to do this unitat a local school with a
teacher partner friend of mine,where we would talk about the
language of school and how itworks and like why do people not
use personal pronouns in theirquote, unquote, academic writing
and stuff like that, and one ofthe activities I used to do was
(33:22):
to bring in a whole bunch ofacademic articles that were
written in languages other thanEnglish and kids would be like I
didn't know.
People go to college inlanguages other than English.
People do research in languagesother than English.
What do you mean?
No-transcript in it?
(33:44):
Like I think a lot ofindividual teachers are
inadvertently teaching studentsand that the system is teaching
on purpose.
Is that, like, English is thelanguage of the academy, english
is the language that counts themost.
All of these things that are notactually true and for some
students they were like wait, Ididn't even know.
Like there's articles inMandarin that are like research
(34:09):
articles, there's articles inthese different languages, and I
think that's what the hegemonyof English does.
It sort of promotes itself in away.
That sort of prevents all ofthat other work and thinking
from being seen.
But the first time I did thatit was just sort of an accident.
But now I now every time Iteach that lesson with students,
(34:35):
because a lot of them don'tknow anybody that is like a
professor who is writingresearch articles in a language
other than English.
A lot of them have never, youknow, I didn't know professors
until I went to college.
A lot of students just don'thave that experience and so you
know, there's a lot sort ofbound up in sort of saying to
kids the language that we shouldbe learning in is English.
(34:55):
That's the one that's mostimportant, that I think we have
to unpack and unlearn and workthrough what it might really
mean to do it differently.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Well, and it reminds me of a question that you posed
earlier you know, what do youreally believe and how did you
come to believe that?
And I think that asking thosekinds of critical questions, I
mean that is one of thoseteaspoons we can use to move the
beach, right, if we think aboutwhat is it and what is it that
we think and why do we thinkthat?
Because I think you're right, somany of our beliefs are, yes,
(35:31):
they may be informed by ourexperiences, but I also think
that they're informed by, kindof the narratives that have
surrounded us throughout ourentire lives, right, whether it
is what we hear from our family,or from our school, or from,
maybe, the media we listen to,or the people we spend our time
with.
You know, they all sort ofcreate that frame with which we
(35:52):
see the world.
And I think that, like, thequestions that you're asking
really make me think and I tendto think very visually quite
often, but I think, you knowwhat if we were just to move
that frame, what if we were tofocus on something else or to
see the world from a differentperspective?
It really does, then, I think,change or at least make us
question what we think we knowabout the world.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
And you know one thing about the beach and the
teaspoon like I've been doingthose interviews with
minoritized folks who are indifferent fields, a lot of them
tell me that it only took oneteacher to teach them that they
belonged.
Like it didn't take their wholecollege.
Like it would be nice ifcolleges would make like more
(36:36):
inclusive policies and thingslike like I have that as a goal.
But a lot of them tell me likeit was one professor who was
like you can.
It was a different physicistthat told me this story, but it
was just one professor that waslike you can do this, you can be
a physicist.
A physicist could be you whosat with that student and was
(36:57):
like I'm going to make sure youunderstand everything you want
to understand.
So it didn't take a massiveoverhaul.
I would love to see oneeventually and hopefully someday
there will be enough of us inenough of those spaces to have
some overhauling in a biggerscale way.
But sometimes when I feel likeI'm moving that beach, I remind
(37:18):
myself like it just took oneteacher to teach those students
to do things differently, thatthey could be something that
maybe was not so obvious atfirst glance, that they really
belonged.
And so every time we sort ofunlearn and relearn some of
these narratives and try tothink differently about them, I
(37:40):
try to remind myself theteachers that I work with are
going out there and they'rebeing that one teacher in some
cases for students that reallyneed it, and then it feels like
the teaspoon it's not so bad,I'll take it, it's better than
nothing.
That, I think, is how Icontinue to feel hopeful, even
when times are rough, like Isort of feel like they are today
(38:01):
.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
It's such an important reminder, I think,
whenever you know when you arefeeling alone or isolated or
like you know what you're doingisn't working, so to speak, that
you know sometimes it is justit's one point of contact with
one student it might be a phrasethat you said, or you know a
story you shared with them thatyou really don't know how.
(38:23):
That leaves them thinking aboutpossibilities in their own lives
.
And I think it does infuse alot of hope back into the role
of teacher.
You know that you can, as anindividual, make significant
impacts on the lives of thepeople you work with, and I
think that there are politicalmoments that make it really easy
to lose sight of that.
(38:43):
But those sorts of stories, Ithink, like you shared from your
interview with the physicist,it brings us back to that idea
that it might just be oneconversation, one moment, one
story that you share withanother person that helps them
to believe something differentlythan maybe what they've been
told or what they've been led tobelieve is possible in their
(39:06):
own lives or is possible intheir own worlds is possible in
their own worlds.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I hope so.
I think so some of the time and, of course, I want better
systems and I don't, you know.
I want all sorts of things forteachers, for them to to be
treated differently, both bysociety and in their individual
spaces, like I don't want anyoneto like work themselves to
death or anything like that, butI definitely learn over and
over again that that it is somesmall moments that really make a
difference.
One of the things I spend timewriting about my own work is
(39:35):
what it's like to be a woman ofcolor and be a professor.
I am.
It's not sort of literacyrelated, but I spend a lot of
time thinking and writing aboutthat and I have to unlearn a lot
of things about.
You know, it's like DavidFoster Wallace says this is
water.
Do you know this story?
David Foster Wallace gave aspeech at Kenyon college and I
(39:57):
know he had issues, but it's agood speech and it starts with
this old joke about two goldfishers swimming along and an
old goldfish swims by and hesays, hey, fellas, how's the
water?
And then one of the younggoldfish just looks at the says
hey, fellas, how's the water?
And then one of the younggoldfish just looks at the other
and says what the hell is water?
Because, like the stuff aroundus, the stories around us, the
ideas that sort of permeate howwe think about the world.
(40:17):
I'm not immune to them justbecause I don't look like
everyone else, like I have tounlearn things all the time
about whether I belong, thatpeople are going to have
sometimes different expectationsof me than I might prefer, that
there's just so much work to doin that, and I always think,
okay, I'm going to write thisstory about this horrible,
embarrassing thing that happenedto me and my colleague and I do
(40:40):
this work together and I'm sograteful to her for it.
But then we write an article andwe send it out into the world,
and then I'm invariablysurprised by how many other
women and people of color andwomen of color who write to me
and say this happened to me too.
Thank you so much for writingit down, thank you so much for
talking about how you dealt withit and sort of using the
(41:03):
research tools that you know tothink it through.
And then I'm sort of like now Ihave this whole community of
people that do this work, likewe're working on a collection of
these kinds of pieces frompairs of other women and I
didn't sort of have that as aplan.
I'm not one to plan.
I didn't have that as a plangoing through, but I I get
(41:23):
reminded constantly that thatthat sort of telling the truth,
talking about the hard stuff,really matters and that before I
know it there's more peopledoing that than I sort of
envisioned going in.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
It's like opening a door or starting, you know,
starting a new chapter to astory that maybe hasn't been
told yet.
So that's really great work.
Which leads us, actually verynicely to our last question.
Given the challenges of today'seducational climate, what
message do you want teachers tohear?
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I want teachers to hear that in so, so many cases,
I think they deserve better andI'm really trying to work on it,
I promise.
And also I want teachers toknow that it takes space and
time and resources and beingtreated like a professional to
(42:18):
make a better system.
And so every time, you know,somebody buys a new curriculum
that's shiny and pretty out of abox and says this is going to
solve everything, and teachersare like I just don't have it in
me to do this dance again.
That I understand that and thatI do think we have lots of
change to make, and that I'mconstantly talking with our
(42:39):
administrators about beingrealistic, about what that
change could be and how we wouldhave to structure it in order
for people to actually have thetime, energy, resources to make
change that is meaningful, butthat every time I've ever
convinced school or a schooldistrict or any of that to give
(43:00):
people that space and time, I'mconstantly blown away with what
teachers do and come up with.
I want teachers to know aboutprojects like this Story Matters
, that there are coalitions ofpeople if they feel alone, to
reach out to, and maybe it wouldjust be a virtual community and
maybe not someone next door,but that it is a way to connect
(43:20):
with other people who have thosesame challenges and are making
those same hard choices.
And I hope teachers know thatthere are some researchers who
are not my favorite who arehappy to talk about.
You know, teachers have to bebetter and we got to get rid of
the bad ones and all that dumbstuff, but that there are some
of us who really want to worktogether and think about what
(43:42):
could work, that everything isdependent on a time and place
and a context and a particulargroup of kids, and that there
are people who really want todig into that sort of
specificity and think about thekinds of changes we could make
that would matter today withthis particular group of
students and for our system morebroadly, and so I hope they
(44:06):
continue to feel hopeful.
I'm a little I worry about thata lot, as I see people leaving
teaching and fewer peoplewanting to go into it about what
it will mean for us if thatcontinues to happen, and so I'm
hoping for brighter days soonerrather than later.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
I think teachers really are thepeople who make the world go
round, and it is sad to seegreat teachers leave the
profession and growing teachersleaving the profession also, you
know, kind of as they're justgetting started.
So I do hope that collectivelywe can kind of stay the course
and keep doing the good work sothat kids are able to imagine,
(44:48):
you know, the kind of futurethat they want to see.
Thank you so much for sharingyour ideas today, thank you for
spending some time with me andthank you for your contributions
to the field of education.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Dr Christina Dobbs is known for her work in the areas
of language development, theargumentative writing of
students, disciplinary literacyand professional development for
secondary content teachers.
Her work has been published inthe Journal of Adolescent and
Adult Literacy Reading ResearchQuarterly, professional
Development in Education EnglishJournal, the Reading Teacher
(45:26):
Journal of Language Identity andEducation, reading and Writing,
an interdisciplinary journalJournal of Multilingual Theories
and Practices, linguistics andEducation, and the Journal of
School Leadership.
She's the author of severalbooks, including Investigating
Disciplinary Literacy andDisciplinary Literacy, inquiry
(45:49):
and Instruction, a secondedition of which will be
released in spring of 2024.
Christine also frequentlyreviews literature for the Horn
Book and provides professionaldevelopment talks and workshops
for practitioners.
She is currently a co-editor ofthe Journal of Literacy
Research.
(46:09):
She is a former high schoolteacher in Houston, texas, as
well as a literacy coach andreading specialist.
Dr Christina Dobbs is anassistant professor and director
of the English Education forEquity and Justice program at
Boston University WheelockCollege of Education and Human
Development.
(46:32):
For the good of all students,classroom Caffeine aims to
energize education, research andpractice.
If this show gives you thingsto think about, help us spread
the word.
Talk to your colleagues andeducator friends about what you
hear.
You can support the show bysubscribing, liking and
reviewing this podcast throughyour podcast provider.
(46:53):
Visit classroomcaffeinecom,where you can subscribe to
receive our short monthlynewsletter, the Espresso Shot.
On our website, you can alsolearn more about each guest,
find transcripts for ourepisodes, explore topics using
our drop-down menu of tags,request an episode topic or
potential guest.
(47:13):
Support our research throughour listener survey or learn
more about the research we'redoing on our publications page.
Connect with us on social mediathrough Instagram, facebook and
Twitter.
We would love to hear from you.
Special thanks to the ClassroomCaffeine team Leah Berger,
abaya Velourou, stephanieBranson and Shaba Oshfath.
(47:34):
As always, I raise my mug toyou teachers.
Thanks for joining me.
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