This is an excerpt from by听Kathryn F. Whitmore, James S. Chisholm, and Lauren Fletcher, which appeared in Language Arts (September 2020).听
In the article the authors describe readers鈥� emotional and embodied transactions with the cordel鈥攁n arts-based strategy that supports readers鈥� approach to reading challenging texts about social justice issues.
As microcosms of society, classrooms today can reflect the post-truth, polarizing ideologies of the times. Daily news stories report about refugees, violence, and unrest, with varying, sometimes contradictory perspectives on each issue. Learners of all ages need space to unpack the world in which they live, and teachers need ways to support readers鈥� questions and agency to act in transforming that world.
Complex topics like immigration, terrorism, and mass incarceration are easily omitted in planned curriculum or addressed only peripherally in relation to content standards. Meaningful ideas for teachers who engage with these topics in their classrooms can be found in the arts, particularly within literature that we refer to as 鈥渃hallenging texts鈥� (Chisholm & Whitmore, 2018). Challenging texts are books with topics that are commonly unsanctioned in schools; they include topics that teachers feel unprepared or underprepared to teach; and they are emotionally troubling.
Exploring challenging texts helps readers imagine how to participate in a pluralistic world and expand their perspectives on what it takes to create a just society (Greene, 1985; Ritchie, 2017). Although such texts can be fraught with uncertainty for teachers, when thoughtfully integrated with the arts, they can be transformative (Albers, 1999; Chisholm & Whitmore, 2018; Landay & Wootton, 2012). Arts-integrated reading enables readers to envision the perspectives of others by feeling, seeing, and thinking through their lived experiences.
The term 鈥渃ordel鈥� is derived from the Portuguese term literatura de cordel, which literally means 鈥渟tring literature.鈥� The concept of string literature has been traced to Brazil, where vendors often hung excerpts from folhetos鈥攊nexpensive chapter books鈥攐n a string in a market to entice those passing by to purchase the entire book. This simple practice of hanging a cord and attaching a narrative to it has since been reinvented for the classroom and retains its original purpose: to entice passersby to read more (see Landay & Wootton, 2012; Slater, 1982).
Cordels can be curated by teachers to provide students with multiple ways to approach an upcoming text. We have found that when readers are invited to get up, move around, and examine multimodal artifacts on a cordel at their own pace, the museum-like experience deepens respect for difficult topics, elevates anticipation about reading a challenging text, and prompts engagement.
In alignment with NCTE鈥檚 2018 policy statement 鈥淭he Students鈥� Right to Read,鈥� we encourage teachers and teacher educators to embrace challenging texts as a means of humanizing classroom experiences.
We teach with texts that reflect the lived experiences of a diverse range of people because we want our students to appreciate, as Adichie (2013) notes, the 鈥渄angers of a single story鈥� and the value of multiple diverse perspectives.
Ultimately, we want learners to be able to empathize with characters and historical figures they encounter in these texts so that they can act with agency and empathize with people in their current and future lives, including other students, who share such experiences or aspects of those experiences.
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Kathryn F. Whitmore is a professor and department chair of the Department of Special Education, Early Childhood Education, and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver in Colorado. She can be reached at whitmor@msudenver.edu.
James S. Chisholm is an associate professor in the Elementary, Middle and Secondary Teacher Education Department at the University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. He can be reached at james.chisholm@louisville.edu.
Lauren Fletcher is a doctoral student in the Elementary, Middle and Secondary Teacher Education Department at the University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. She can be reached at lauren.fletcher@louisville.edu.
Interested in this topic? Check out Kathryn F. Whitmore and James S. Chisholm’s book听 as well as their interview in this blog post:听A Tip for Teaching Challenging Texts: Position Yourself as a Learner.
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