Lessons in Reciprocity and Hybridity for Urban Adolescents and Preservice Teachers Through the Use of Digital Poetry

• In Event: Designing Hybrid Field-Based Experiences: Insights From Faculty in One Urban Teacher Education Program

Abstract

Objectives
The purpose of this presentation is to provide a model for successful collaboration between pre-service teachers and urban high school students. We will provide an overview of the digital poetry project and our subsequent analysis of the reciprocal impact this project had on both the pre-service teachers and adolescents.

Theoretical Framework
Educational reform theorists argue that schools of education and their neighboring public schools must enhance collaborative efforts so as to attain “simultaneous renewal,” where elementary and secondary students and pre-service teachers are served in authentic ways that deepen all students’ learning (Goodlad, 1993). One way to accomplish this is through use of sustainable, innovative projects that connect pre-service teachers’ early learning experiences directly to public classrooms. Additionally, we explore the use of technology as the protean nature of this classroom integration pushes teachers and students to locally problem-solve larger goals (Koehler & Mishra, 2008).

Data Sources and Methodology
This project occurred over one semester. Jody who teaches 10th grade English partnered with Jason who teaches a pre-service Rhetoric and Composition graduate course. The 10th graders wrote poems for two months and received feedback from Jason’s students on content, style, and word choice. The adolescents then revised these poems and prepared for the digital poetry project by collecting videos, images, and music that enhanced their poems’ messages. For one full day, 20 of the high school students worked with six of the graduate students to create and revise digital poems alongside the expertise and guidance of Jody, Christine and Jason.
Data includes 20 digital poems collected from the project and transcriptions from two focus groups with the 10th grade students and one focus group with the graduate students. Analysis was initially conducted with the digital poems using three lenses to determine levels of the adolescents’ understanding and skills: technological knowledge/skill (i.e. use of film-making techniques, bending tools for authorial intent), critical literacy (i.e., use of poetry to explore immigration and multiple forms of discrimination), and writing skills (i.e. revision, use of literary devices). Analysis was also conducted of the three focus groups to determine the kinds of impact the project had on all students’ learning and ways in which the collaboration was reciprocal.

Significance of the Findings
Initial findings demonstrate that innovative programs partnering universities and secondary schools result in “simultaneous renewal” as both adolescents and pre-service educators experienced reciprocal gains including:
Increased engagement with instructional objectives
Authentic audiences for both groups increased motivation to engage with instruction.

Increased literacy practices and technological competencies
Adolescents’ writing skills developed while crafting poems and integrating feedback from the graduates; simultaneously, graduate students developed instructional literacy practices through reading poems and constructing feedback. Both groups created digital poems for the first time, thus increasing their technological competencies.

Fostering of intellectual transitions
Adolescents were exposed to college institutions, helping to facilitate the intellectual transition from high school to college, while pre-service teachers gained increased understanding of how adolescent students think, work, write, and interact with their peers and mentors.

Authors

• Jody Nicole Polleck, Hunter College - CUNY

• Christine Rosalia, Hunter College - CUNY

• Jason Wirtz, Hunter College - CUNY