The Power of Discourse

The first thought that struck me after reading the three chapters from Gerry August's "Making Room for One Another" was the importance of perception as both a student and teacher and how we must never assume anything, for we can never truly know something until it's explicitly said or done.  We, as teachers, can make observations and read between the lines to clue us into something, but we must be direct in order to find out information.  Only after we uncover the truth can we make the necessary adjustments that will help facilitate learning and/or understanding with our students.

In August's book, she observes a student, Cody, who is an adopted Cambodian boy with two mothers.  August specifically picks Cody's family to research because she would like to know about the behavior of a kindergarten student who has two lesbian mothers when faced with a classroom filled with mostly heterosexual families.  His teacher is using a teaching technique that introduces dialogical practices in the classroom.  When the teacher uses dialogical practices, August argues, the students are receiving education which "resides the foundation of democratic association (8).  August writes that "dialogicality pushes voices out from the normative socio-political center, promoting diversity among utterances.  This struggle is worthy of our attention, for it is the site of socio-political change" (8).

August attempts to prove the importance of dialogicality by watching the teacher, Zeke, using it throughout a school year.  I would argue does that Cody's situation does in fact prove August's hypothesis to be correct, that dialogicality teaching is important.  The interesting part is that the scenario doesn't work out exactly as she had predicted.  When this happens, it teaches us all a lesson, August included.

August predicts Cody has been anxious about discussing his parents because he has two moms.  In the end, Zeke and August discover he was more uncomfortable with his status as an adopted child, revealed after the reading of "Tango Makes Three," a story about an adopted penguin.  Cody had trouble understanding why his birth parents didn't want him, had abandoned him, and the story helped him understand that there may have been more to the story than them simply not wanting him.

As August showed in this discussion about Cody's interaction with the book "Tango Makes Three," the book had more meaning to him than the book "What's in a Family," a book about different ways families can be set up:

"Gerri: And um he asked a question during the discussion of it, why couldn't the orig- why couldn't the original parents keep the eggs.  And I that was like a light bulb.  It was a light bulb for me."
"Tamara: That's a big, big, big big thing for Cody.  Right.  Right."

The original perception was that Cody was nervous and shy about talking about his parents because they were both moms.  The story "What's in a Family" was introduced to Cody's class with hopes he would interact with it, which he doesn't do.  "Tango Makes Three" is when he finally speaks up about his questions on his own adoption.  He is able to connect to the text and learn, a major theme we've  had throughout various texts in class (Shapiro, Bartolome, Finn).

Cody wasn't outgoing about his 'moms' yet this shyness was part of a bigger picture - his lack of confidence with his adoptive status.  Although this wasn't the original idea that August had in observing the execution of the dialogical teaching technique, it actually worked out in a more interesting way, and speaks volumes for the importance of this technique.

Cody may have had a stigma growing up as an adopted child if he hadn't make the connection as early as he did in life.  He may have been labelled as a weirdo if he had never dealt with the anxiety he held over the issue and never had the power to express these concerns.  I think it's brilliant that these techniques were being used at such a formative age.  The story allowed Cody to connect his own issues with adoption to himself, something he had to do for himself, something he may have never been able to formulate without this seemingly simple tale.  I thought it important he had the power to do it.

Clearly, August was surprised by this turn of events, but it still was a fascinating turn in her research.  The reading taught me that, as teachers, we make mistakes like that, too.  We may only see a piece of a bigger puzzle, not the big picture with our students.  The teacher, Zeke, was able to find out this information because he was successfully able to "stretch" Cody's notions of his life and his power in it.

As teachers, we have to challenge ourselves to stretch our students' perceptions of their own lives.  Zeke and August weren't afraid to go all the way with their dialogical techniques - when the "What's in a Family" text didn't illicit a response they continued with their curriculum and found unlikely results with "Tango Makes Three."  We can't go half-way when trying to teach our students the power rules in our society.  As challenging as it seems, the results could effect a child for his/her entire life.  This is a truly democratic practice, as Shapiro pointed out last week.

Perhaps teachers should learn the discourse, the language, that pushes these ideas, through workshops and personal days.  It seems like it would be well-worth our time.

From the reading, I interpreted that carefully using language when trying to tackle these subjects if of the upmost importance.  August portrays this throughout the chapters by showing the dialogues of different days in the classroom.  I was impressed by how good he was at diffusing difficult situations the children were throwing at him.

The idea of discourse was an idea we touched upon throughout last week with Shapiro and I thought more about how politicians use discourse to try to change the public's mind about issues.  During class discussion last week, there was a vague memory I couldn't place about Newt Gingrich and a list he sent to other Republicans to help get their message out.

I finally figured out what I was trying to think of today while reading the August piece.  In 1996, Gingrich had sent a memo with two lists of words.  The first list he called "optimistic governing words" and the second list was called "contrasting words."  I thought it was particularly fascinating - he was trying to change the discourse of the Republican agenda by using powerful words, like "prosperity, success", and contrasting them with other loaded language, like "radical and bizarre."

I may not agree with many of his views, but Gingrich certainly is an interesting political character, a person who understands the power of discourse in our society.