Making Space & Mourning Place: Children’s Placemaking Literacies During an Elementary School Closure

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 4:15 pm - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Teachers and Children Responding to Policy and Political Contexts Through Multiple Literacies

Abstract

Working alongside children during the closure of their neighborhood elementary school, this postcritical ethnography utilizes placemaking literacy invitations to explore real-time experiences and impacts of a school closure policy. In this paper, I focus on how placemaking literacy invitations offer opportunities for children to individually and collectively share what matters to them about their school(s) and their experiences of living through the closure. Findings include: 1) Placemaking literacies revealed the ways children oriented to relationships as meaningful parts of what makes a school matter; and 2) Placemaking literacies made visible the ways in which children resisted the closure and their resulting displacement. This study offers possibilities for the role of literacy in exploring and responding to school closures.

Author

• Kristin Valle Geren, University of South Florida