From here to there and back again...

Years ago I had a dream, a dream to travel and meet, research and record the stories of women, in history and the present, who were involved in any movement of resistance. It was a dream born during my undergraduate years at Stony Brook University. This curiosity started when, as I grew academically, I became aware of my very one-sided educational experience. I was an English major, a major I chose, not because I had dreams at the time of being a writer or a teacher, but simply because I loved to read, I loved books; I’d grown up on books. To this day it is my only addiction; I used and use books to stimulate my every desire, to satisfy my curiosities, and to relieve stress. They became my constant companions as time passed.

Primary & Secondary School

Maybe, my anger had some root back there in Guyana when I encountered the catholic school system; a system geared for full colonizing of the mind. And, I was bored! I was constantly bored from elementary to high school. Only as an adult did it become obvious to me that that boredom may have saved my life; it may have given me the room I needed, room in my mind, to become a critical thinker, to question all that was presented to me as “right,” as “normal,” and “intelligent,” It gave me the confidence to question any taken for granted notions.

I remember my time in St. Joseph's high school; I remember being bored and hating the traditional way of teaching, the sitting in chairs facing the back of some other student dressed in exactly the same uniform, being just as quiet, not knowing anything about her thoughts or her mood for the day. I barely remember my instructors, except here and there the self righteous voice of a nun reminding a student of how much the student was not living up to expectations. Too often the memories were of stern faces, faces that didn't believe in too many smiles; and I couldn't remember anyone of interest, except Mr. Raul. He excited me with his masculinity and left me with an yearning to learn foreign languages. Outside of Mr. Raul, school days were just long drawn out hours of daydreaming, of wanting to scream into the silence, of wanting to break the continuous and monotonous rows of chairs, and the rules that were rooted in control, control, control.

Mr. Raul broke that prolonged silence and monotony with his color and his tremendously rich and deep voice; he was the first black man in what seemed, to me at the time, a sea of white clad nuns. And he was a man! It was an all girls' school and there were no boys to break the strain of boredom; and I was interested in boys. Mr. Raul sat on the desk and that seemed radical; he laughed; he chatted; he made friends; and he taught French. It was a subject I took up again in college and pursued in my 30's by taking a course in Paris and following that with a stay of seven months in France.

In college...

In college, my anger took form and meaning and it grew. Having grown up around many intelligent people of color in my home country, Guyana , I found it, at first, irritating, and then, as time grew, I found that I was angry. I seemed to be presented with white male authors most of the time. I was also offended in an art class when I was presented with a painting that depicted all creatures going to “heaven” as white and all creatures on the ladder to “hell” as black. The constant bombardment of language that, in effect, relegated everything black to a position of evil, threatened my identity. I believed in the power of language and, I felt that to ask me to accept what I was being fed without question was to deny and degrade my ancestors, my dead father, my mother, and my grandparents. It became a growing need to resist such brain washing, and, more importantly, to find ways to present other realities, other truths to counteract the effects of a prejudiced education.

2001, the Ph.D. to the present

I found my way! I found beauty in the Afro-Mexican community in the Costa Chica - the state of Guererro. In the smiles of the children, the strength of the women, and the welcome of the men, I found a path to healing. They were family. I saw reflections of my father and mother. We were related; we shared the same genes. Our spoken language was different, me and my sing song Caribbean English of the Atlantic Ocean and them with their sing song melodious Spanish tinged with the rocking waves of the Pacific Ocean.

My continuous exploration of maroon societies and my thirst for the knowledge of resistance and the knowledge of women led me to the Enquentro (meeting) of the Afro-Mexican people in Cuajiniquilapa and the surrounding pueblos. I accepted an invitation from Bobby Vaughn, a Stanford University student, who was there to pursue his studies in Mexican culture. I arrived with a smattering of language, but I quickly learned to communicate with my body and over time the young people became my teachers. Beauty surrounded me and soaked into me; it lifted me up and gave me direction. My hunger and thirst grew for information. I wanted to understand and share in the lives of the people. As I observed the extraordinary lives of the women I was overwhelmed with pride and my identity as a woman was reconfirmed and buoyed.

For years I knew I wanted to tell stories of women; as a visitor in the Afro-Mexican community; as a welcomed family member of the pueblos, I found a persistent determination welling up from deep inside to acknowledge the lives of women. Historically, I realized, women’s lives, their strength, their multiple roles, have been taken for granted. Furthermore, for women of color, the roles as pillars of their communities have been long ignored and marginalized. In light of this truth, it became my goal and my responsibility to use whatever tools I had to record, to document, to make special and significant the lives of women, the beauty of the community. Beauty, I found, vibrated in the strength of the women and it was reflected in the light shining in the innocence of children’s eyes and smiles.

Padre Glynn, the priest who was instrumental in bringing awareness to the groups of this region, was a major contact for me in this area. He worked tirelessly for equality; he worked with the people and for the people. As I observed his methods of inclusion as he facilitated talks of community issues and change, I realized that I was witnessing a unique experience of Critical Pedagogy in action. He made my study of Paulo Friere’s theory come alive. In dialogue and with pictures, the people of the community use their voices to bring meaning to their experiences and make decisions on change.

From the collaborator’s notebook....

My background…

My interest in participating in this project was based on a variety of things. I’ve spent over three decades as a media producer, teacher, instructional designer, and teacher educator. In particular, I’ve studied factors that affect teachers’ use of technology in the classroom as well as pedagogical techniques that have some empirical basis in improving student learning retention and transfer.

A second particular interest of mine is the use of storytelling as a framework for teaching and learning. All individuals use stories as a way of making sense of our current existence as well as predicting the future. Researchers such as Roger Schank (1995), Etienne Wenger (1999), and John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (2000) have spent entire careers developing theories and models of teaching using stories. So when Denise first discussed oral histories as an introductory framework for narrative essays, I was intrigued with the idea of collaborating with her to engage students using more than just the typical pedagogical approach that teachers use to teach narrative essay writing. I saw my role as investigating technologies that suited her teaching goals and objectives given her interests and computer skill level. Thus, the Student Oral Histories (SOHP) project was born.

Why a website and a blog?

The student oral history project has two primary components, a website and a weblog (blog).

The website located at http://instructors.sbcc.edu/bacchus/sohp/diaspora is intended to provide information about the project but not the students’ work.

The students’ oral histories and narrative essays are posted to the blog site at http://sohp.blogspot.com

We chose a public blog tool (blogger.com) that we believed many students would be familiar with. However, this was not necessarily the case. In an impromptu session, I queried two of Denise’s English skills classes and found that less than 10 percent had ever published a comment to a blog though most had experience with email. My initial sense is that for English 70 or 80 students, posting comments is akin to writing and students at these levels are generally apprehensive about typical academic writing tasks. I’ve not interviewed the students to compare their experiences using the blog but many appear to have completed more than the minimum requirements for the oral history assignment. Once students are given some guidelines for commenting on other students’ stories, they tend to write more than just praise comments. I look forward to reading their comments about their experiences using the blog tool as an environment to share their work.

Phase One: Our first project phase which began in the spring 2005 term took a considerable amount of time. Denise was a new faculty member and was still becoming acquainted to the practices of being a full time faculty member at our institution. She needed time to think through the scope of her project and I needed time to examine technologies so that I could present her with some possible designs. After two years, we implemented the project during the spring 2007 semester in three of her English skills’ classes. Note, Denise keeps a weekly journal on the blog site as an internal and external dialogue space for interested faculty. I’ve also been keeping an informal log of logistical issues that we need to resolve before she uses the SOHP in future classes.

From a pedagogical perspective, I look at this project working in the following fashion. Students are given some generic questions as part of the interview and then allowed to follow up with other questions during the interview process. The students are then asked to retell the gist of the teller’s story adding pictures and other media in order to illustrate points being made in the story. By this point, students have spent a considerable amount of time “thinking through” what was said and how it was said. They’re also encouraged to read as many histories providing comments to other students’ stories based on comment guidelines, e.g., being constructive rather than destructive, from Denise. In this respect, we tend to find more than the one or two students reviewing and commenting on a single paper which is not what you would expect in a traditional writing activity. Suddenly, the entire class and your historical participants become the audience. Your student paper is alive!

Phase Two: Prior to this phase, I hope that we will have enough time during the summer to debrief and make changes to the SOHP prior to the fall 2007 or spring 2008 terms. In this second phase, there will be more evidence gathering and fine tuning of the pedagogy used. Students will be encouraged to add other media, e.g., select audio portions, to their blog posted histories.

Phase Three: Invite other teachers and students from other colleges to participate in the review and discussion of other students’ stories.

Phase Four: Provide a framework for other faculty/departments to replicate this activity.