"In the School, Not of the School": Co-Performing Critical Literacies

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2017 "In the School, Not of the School": Co-Performing Critical Literacies with English Amped Anna Catherine West Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation West, Anna Catherine, ""In the School, Not of the School": Co-Performing Critical Literacies with English Amped" (2017). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4464. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4464 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. “IN THE SCHOOL, NOT OF THE SCHOOL”: CO-PERFORMING CRITICAL LITERACIES WITH ENGLISH AMPED A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Anna Catherine West B.A., Columbia College Chicago, 2000 M.Ed., Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2011 August 2017 To the students and teachers of English Amped, and to students and teachers everywhere who dare to reimagine education together. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation belongs to a wide community of people who have from the start shaped its life, and my own life with it. Through each phase of this project, I have depended on collaborators who stood alongside me as partners, advisors, and dear friends. Destiny Cooper and Dr. Susan Weinstein have been my collaborators in the fullest sense. Destiny and I worked together day-to-day through the often-intense highs and lows of creating and teaching in Humanities Amped. I cannot imagine my own life without her friendship, teacher wisdom, MacGyver-like problem solving skills, and seemingly endless commitment to holding open the learning spaces through which so many fortunate people, myself included, become more confident and alive. I am likewise honored to stand with Sue Weinstein, who simultaneously holds the role of my major professor, long-time collaborator, and dear friend. Sue’s intellectual and ethical considerations are woven into the tapestry of my scholarship and public service at every step. I thank her for her generous feedback on this dissertation, her fierce sponsorship of Humanities Amped, and her willingness to help me navigate so many learning thresholds of my own. It is hard to know where the ideas of these two collaborators end and where mine begin, and this project simply would not eXist without their generous presence in it. I am grateful to my incredible committee members, whose stewardship of this project allowed me to take risks and feel supported every step of the way. Dr. Solimar Otero and Dr. Roland Mitchell each provided me with insights, resources, and critical encouragement that helped me to frame this work as an engaged, interdisciplinary project. Their commitments to scholarship and community engaged work have provided brilliant iii eXamples that enabled me to locate my own place in academia at moments when that felt challenging. I am grateful to have been supported by people whose lives I so fully admire. I will forever be thankful to the English Amped graduating class of 2016, whose eXperiences sit at the heart of this teXt: What you have taught me would take much more than one dissertation to explain. My life is changed because I met each of you. Kaiya, our rock and sky, is no longer on the earth with us; yet, she is forever part of our circle. Each one of us has a place in this circle that cannot be moved. We are written into each other’s’ lives, and I could not be more thankful to belong to each of you. The English Amped graduating class of 2017 deserves its own special shout out. Though you are not the central focus on this teXt, you have helped to define English Amped and much of what I write here through your bold, relentless selves. I honor each of you, as each of you forms a circle of your own and an even greater, ongoing circle of community eXtending to all the Humanities Amped students, including those to come. This work belongs to you all. I am likewise grateful to the now fourteen undergraduate pre-service English teachers who have worked with Humanities Amped over the last three years. The five who formed the first Art of Critical Literacies class, you are forever in my heart. Thank you for helping me to become alongside you. I also want to thank the teachers and administrators of what I refer to in this study as Frazier High School. The school principal deserves my deepest respect for his stewardship, support, and savvy, as do the many fine faculty who have helped give this project shape, including Sam Biddick and Malcolm Reed, our dear partners with the tenth grade class this year. iv AleX Torres, Bobby Thompson, Shamaka Schumake, and Sarah Webb are community partners who have supplied English Amped with knowledge, time, and a spirit of solidarity that has greatly energized this work. Raven Jade, Gabrielle Swindle, Amelia Hammond, Selena Johnson, and Michaela Janicki are part of the ground from which the project comes, and I am so grateful to be connected through this work to each of you. I am also thankful to my eXtended family at Forward Arts, whose wisdom is woven into the DNA of Humanities Amped. The full list of people who have contributed to this dissertation, and to Humanities Amped, is too long to include here, but please know that your contributions are not forgotten. Finally, I thank friends and family, those who have met me where I am in this life, made me remember how beautiful the path is, and given me courage. Megan, my swimming pool and writing marathon partner; Amanda, my little sister and compass; and Jenn, my ace and spiritual muse— thank you for everything. My parents, Mary and Joel West, my brothers and their families, and Mery and Victor Julian Sanchez, thank you for eXpecting me to be myself always and grounding me in your love. Lastly, I could never have survived this work without Victor, Anton, and little Koko, my loved ones who carried me through. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iii ABSTRACT. viii CHAPTER 1. IN SEARCH OF SPACE FOR BELOVED COMMUNITY. 1 Overview of English Amped . 2 “Yearnings and Desires”: Between Non-Profit, State, and Grassroots Movements . 5 Research Questions, Methods, and Positionalities . 21 Grounding Frames and Theories . 32 Overview of Chapters . 39 CHAPTER 2. SCHOOL AS IT IS: SITUATING ENGLISH AMPED . 43 Intimacy and Division . 43 Historicizing Frazier High and The South . 47 Demographics of Frazier High School and English Amped . 51 School as It Is: Narrowly-Defined Achievement . 56 School as It Is: The Need for “Relationships That Educate” . 66 School as It Is: The Need for Culturally Responsive Teacher Preparation . 75 Conclusion . 85 CHAPTER 3. SCHOOL AS IT COULD BE: PERFORMANCES OF POSSIBILITY . 87 Performing Possibility. 87 Situating Polyvocal Research as Critical Co-Performance . 97 Upsetting the Set Up: Acting as Insurgent Architects . 107 Solidarity, Healing, and Hope . 123 Conclusion . 132 CHAPTER 4. NAVIGATING LIMINALITY: TEACHERS AND STUDENTS AT THE THRESHOLDS . 137 To Appear Before One Another . 137 Decentering Teacher Control . 145 Between Madness and Method . 154 Facing Injustice and Despair . .164 Between Guard and Guardian . 172 Conclusion . 185 CHAPTER 5: THRESHOLDS OF CRITICAL TEACHER EDUCATION . 188 Going Beyond Created Structures . 188 Rose’s Journey: Transforming What Counts as Education . 193 Jennifer’s Journey: Confronting Whiteness . 209 Conclusion . 228 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? . 231 “As If Things Could Be Otherwise”: Insights from English Amped. 233 vi Three Years In: Future Directions for Humanities Amped. 242 Closing Thoughts. 248 REFERENCES . 251 APPENDICES . 264 AppendiX A. IRB Materials. 264 AppendiX B. Draft of English Amped Goals . 272 AppendiX C. Art of Critical Literacy 2014 Syllabus . 275 VITA . 282 vii ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to eXplore the possibilities and limitations of “amplifying” critical literacy practices within an urban high school English and creative writing class. This action research project defamiliarized English education and created conditions for participants to imagine and perform alternative possibilities by bringing together critical research, community involvement, creative writing and performance in an extended class with high school, university, and community-based collaborators. Participants were high school juniors, partnering teachers, university-based student teachers, and community members who collaborated to form the English Amped program in the 2014-2015 academic year. Ethnographic methods were used to collect data through field notes, semi- structured interviews, photographs, writing samples, questionnaires, and audio recordings. Findings demonstrated that the socially structured and habituated alienation of working- class students of color in urban schools delimited the ways that participants imagined and enacted critical literacy in school. Historically-based and persistent experiences of school as it is limited the legibility of school as it could be. The de-familiarization of traditional

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