{"id":6658,"date":"2010-04-16T04:43:01","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T04:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=6658"},"modified":"2010-04-16T22:49:11","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T22:49:11","slug":"the-aftermath-of-%e2%80%9cyou%e2%80%99re-only-half%e2%80%9d-multiracial-identities-in-the-literacy-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=6658","title":{"rendered":"The Aftermath of \u201cYou\u2019re Only Half\u201d: Multiracial Identities in the Literacy Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Aftermath of \u201cYou\u2019re Only Half\u201d: Multiracial Identities in the Literacy Classroom<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Language Arts
\nVolume 83 Number 2 (November 2005)
\npages 96-106<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Dutro<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant professor of Literacy
\nUniversity of Colorado<\/em><\/p>\n

Elham Kazemi<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Mathematics Education
\nUniversity of Washington<\/em><\/p>\n

Ruth Balf<\/strong>, Fourth\/Fifth-Grade Teacher
\nSeattle Public Schools<\/em><\/p>\n

Children grapple with the complexities of race and what it means to claim membership in racial categories.<\/em><\/p>\n

The children in Ruth\u2019s fourth\/fifth grade classroom had been engaged for weeks in a literacy project in which they researched and shared an aspect of their cultural background. The children interviewed their parents, consulted books and the Internet, wrote reports, gathered artifacts, created art projects, and, finally, put together a poster presentation to share with peers from other classrooms. The project seemed to be an important curricular move in this highly diverse urban classroom. Ruth wanted to demonstrate that knowledge from home cultures is valued, allow children time to share that knowledge with one another, and make visible the rich array of life experiences represented by children in this classroom.<\/p>\n

For the public presentations of their projects, the students stood beside their posters and answered questions as children visiting from other classrooms walked around the room. It seemed to have gone well\u2014an observer would have seen students speaking knowledgeably and comfortably about their work as guests wound their way through the room, pausing to ask questions of individual children. It was only after the visitors left that Ruth discovered that the afternoon had not been a positive celebration for some students. Zack lingered in the classroom after school, looking upset. He shared that two girls from another class had said, \u201cHe\u2019s only half. He\u2019s not really from South Africa<\/strong>,\u201d when they viewed his project. He said, \u201cWhy would they say that? That makes me mad. Just because I\u2019m not all African.\u201d While they were talking, Stephanie walked over and said that people had said the same thing to her. She said that sometimes people think she\u2019s Indian, but she\u2019s black and white.<\/strong> Ruth asked Zack and Stephanie what they would like to do. She offered to call a class meeting the next day if they wanted to discuss these issues with their classmates. They agreed that they would like to share their experiences. The next morning, Zack, Stephanie, and their classmate Jeff (who identified as Filipino\/white) led their peers in a discussion that engaged complex issues of race and identity.<\/p>\n

The public presentations of the project resulted in feelings of hurt and frustration for these three biracial students as other children questioned their claims to their own racial identities. However, it was also the public presentations of the projects\u2014specifically the issues of multiracial identity that the presentations raised\u2014that transformed the culture project from a rather straightforward attempt to acknowledge and celebrate diversity into a critical literacy project in which children grappled with the complexities of race and what it means to claim membership in racial categories. In this article, we share these children\u2019s experiences and reflect on what it takes to value multiracial identities and support children as they tackle important issues of race that those identities raise…<\/p>\n

…When the children met on the rug the morning after the poster presentations, the biracial children launched a discussion that raised critical and complex issues of race, racial identity, and racial categories.\u00a0 Excerpts from that debrief discussion represent how the children and Ruth grappled with these issues and illustrate the role that multiracial identities played in shaping the nature of their talk about race. These children\u2019s words and experiences provide the basis for our implications regarding the role that multiraciality might play in engaging issues of race in elementary classrooms…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aftermath of \u201cYou\u2019re Only Half\u201d: Multiracial Identities in the Literacy Classroom Language Arts Volume 83 Number 2 (November 2005) pages 96-106 Elizabeth Dutro, Assistant professor of Literacy University of Colorado Elham Kazemi, Associate Professor of Mathematics Education University of Washington Ruth Balf, Fourth\/Fifth-Grade Teacher Seattle Public Schools Children grapple with the complexities of race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,23,20],"tags":[2798,2799,2797,2800],"class_list":["post-6658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-teaching","category-usa","tag-elham-kazemi","tag-elizabeth-dutro","tag-language-arts","tag-ruth-balf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}