Urban Education with an Attitude

14. Workshops with an Attitude

14 Workshops with an Attitude Patrick J. Finn, Lauri Johnson, and Mary E. Finn Patrick Finn,Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Learning and Instruction, Lauri Johnson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, and Mary Finn, former Director of the Urban Education Institute of the Graduate School of Education, State University of New York at Buffalo, report on a two-year literacy project conducted in a Buffalo public school serving a poor and working-class neighborhood. Over the course of the workshops, parents came to see themselves as their children’s first teacher; participating teachers and parents developed better communication and a sense of community; and parents organized to address problems in the school. The chapter describes how the theory and practice of “powerful literacy” interacted to produce these results. ❦ Just from growing up in the same area and stuff, you think nobody really has these concerns, and then you walk in here and its like, wow, there are other people out there. It might help if we get together and maybe make some changes for our children. —Jan, Lakeview School parent THIS CHAPTER IS ABOUT A PROJECT—a series of workshops conducted by university faculty for parents and educators intended to develop “powerful literacy ”—but it’s also about the place of theory and practice in action for change. In the fall of 1999, the Mayor’s office, through the Education Fund for Greater Buffalo, put out a call for proposals for increasing literacy in the Buffalo Public Schools.Three educators from the University at Buffalo, Patrick Finn and Lauri Johnson, faculty and co-chairs of the Urban Education Committee , and Mary Finn, Director of the Urban Education Institute, wrote a proposal and were funded to conduct workshops for parents and educators in one of Buffalo’s low-performing schools that would a) familiarize parents with progressive,child-centered,collaborative methods of teaching reading and writing so they could provide effective support at home; b) encourage teachers to use more progressive, child-centered, collaborative methods in their classrooms; and c) empower parents for effective advocacy in their children’s education and 193 194 URBAN EDUCATION WITH AN ATTITUDE participation in school governance.1 Patrick and Mary Finn planned and facilitated the workshops; Lauri Johnson observed and evaluated the workshops using qualitative research methods. THE COLLABORATORS Lauri Johnson brought to this project a background in multicultural literacy, urban school reform, and parent activism. She has worked with urban schools in New York City, Seattle, and Buffalo for the past twenty-five years to make them more equitable places for students from diverse backgrounds and their families. Her main interest in participating in the workshops was to experience the process of parent empowerment in action. As the parent of two children in the Buffalo Public Schools, she attended the workshops in a dual role, as a parent and a participant observer.While this chapter reports and discusses the workshops from the facilitators’ point of view, comments by parents and Lauri’s observations appear throughout the chapter in sections titled “Observer’s Joseph Gilley’s response to “My Dreams for My Grandson” written by his grandmother, Joan McComas. 195 WORKSHOPS WITH AN ATTITUDE Notebook.” They are intended to provide a lens through which to view the workshop activities from the participants’ perspectives.2 Patrick and Mary Finn brought to the project forty years of reading, teaching , debating, and writing based on the work of such people as John Dewey, Paulo Freire,Alfred Alschuler,Saul Alinsky,JeanAnyon, John Ogbu,Basil Bernstein, Shirley Brice Heath, John Wilinsky, Gordon Wells, Robert Peterson, and Linda Christiansen.They brought experience as facilitators in the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), as teachers of conflict resolution, cooperative learning, and other small group learning techniques, and as community organizers.They also brought certain assumptions, a theoretical framework. THE FACILITATORS’ ASSUMPTIONS EFFECTIVE CHANGE CALLS FOR THEORY AND ACTION When university faculty join forces with teachers, parents, and community activists to address school problems, a conflict usually arises.Teachers, parents, and community activists tend to view themselves as actors and to view university faculty as talkers. They tend to view professors as unnecessarily theoretical , complex, idealistic, and hesitant, while they tend to see themselves as plain speakers who are pragmatic, who identify themselves with right versus wrong, and who are out to win. However, actors who disparage talk frequently do not examine...