I edited this book and am not pressuring anyone to read it. Just jotting down some thoughts about it for those who are teachers or Addams scholars.
ThiI edited this book and am not pressuring anyone to read it. Just jotting down some thoughts about it for those who are teachers or Addams scholars.
This collection of essays began when my colleague Todd DeStigter came by my office to tell me about a talk he had heard by Jean Bethke Elshtain from the University of Chicago about her biography of jane Addams. He said he bought the book and Elshtain's Jane Addams Reader (a collection of her essays) and invited me to do so as well. We decided to invite others to join us in a Jane Addams book club of sorts. jane Addams, faced with seemingly intractable social and economic problems stemming in part of industrialization and massive immigration to Chicago developed with others a settlement house project called the Hull House modeled on ones she had visited in London where educated and more privileged people might work WITH others to help them solve problems in the Halsted St. community. No charity work, giving stuff to people, but working with them to help them, across classes. And solve they often did, working on the 40 hour work week, against child labor, sanitation, various issues of child care and pubic health, unionization, all of it.
Addams was not a Marxist or anarchist but she listened to and worked with others. She was a pragmatist and may be associated with the development of social work. We have here at my University of Illinois at Chicago The jane Addams School of Social Work, modelled in part on her collaborative, essentially non-ideological approach. She was the author of many books, and was awarded The Nobel Peace Press, among other things.
This collection features a few theoretical essays by university scholars and several essays by teachers on how we can begin to see the usefulness of Addams's for today's classrooms, featuring stories about their own classrooms. The focus seems to me that Addams was a listener, was flexible in her approach, based her approach to learning on experience, on real human needs vs. some abstract notions of what students might need or preset plans based on theories of psychological or educational development. Addams was among other things a storyteller of experience in her writing and speaking, and the authors in this volume follow her example of telling their stories.
Those of us in education who were and are being prepared to teach know the progressive educational philosophy of John Dewey, and it is good to know, but Dewey could not have written what he did without his friendship with Addams and his acquaintance with Hull House work and community. Dewey and James wrote about pragmatism; Addams walked the pragmatist talk and wrote about it more engagingly in her stories. As a woman she was never respected as much by scholars as men like Dewey were, and she is the one we should be reading more. Especially now in this time of standardized testing, drilling and killing the love of learning.
Here's a conversation about the book (one hour long) on National Writing Project Online Radio. Tanya Bakers interviews me, and fellow authors Todd DeStigter, Beth Steffen and Darren Tuggle:
A kind of tribute in life and research to our teacher Jay Robinson from some of his students working on literacy projects of various kinds... and the A kind of tribute in life and research to our teacher Jay Robinson from some of his students working on literacy projects of various kinds... and the best essay is by Jay himself, his last essay, kicks all of his students's butts... I like Cathy and my intro a lot, and of my fellow student essays, I'll take a risk of insulting all of them to say I think my favorite is Todd DeStigter's... A good book that not enough people read....very carefully edited, a work of love that is useful beyond mere tribute. Jay's essay should be quoted again and again. There's a commonality in the work: mostly narrative in character, context-rich, accessible, focused on what Jay called "civil" and "civic" literacies in the context of an approach to critical literacy....more
I wrote this book with former colleague Ruth Vinz, and we invited in friend and former student Randi Dickson to write a chapter, we invited Ruth's stuI wrote this book with former colleague Ruth Vinz, and we invited in friend and former student Randi Dickson to write a chapter, we invited Ruth's students Sara Brock and Nick Sousanis. The idea is that this is a book about research methodology using the methodology we espouse...Was a great experience writing it, a real joy! I miss Ruth a lot and we will write again together....more
My dissertation, based on my work in a community-based writing project that featured some oral history. Focus: stories. Stories from community membersMy dissertation, based on my work in a community-based writing project that featured some oral history. Focus: stories. Stories from community members shared in group and individual interviews. Students write stories based on these stories. Teachers tell stories about students telling stpries about neighbor stories. I write a story about all that....more
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