31st Annual Student Research Conference
Confronting the Single Story: Counter-Storytelling and Teaching Against the Grain in a Small Urban High School
Connor Maguire♦
Dr. Summer Pennell, Faculty Mentor
This study, situated in an all-Black high school, examines a first-year teacher’s attempts at implementing a counter-storytelling project into his 10th grade English class. Also considered is the effectiveness of counter-storytelling as a way to teach students the writing process and critical literacy. As a self-study, this paper addresses the author’s own practice as a teacher in connection with students’ ability to succeed. Whiteness as difference and barrier to critical literacy work being done in the classroom is investigated and addressed. The pressure of standardized testing as well as the author’s own position as a first year teacher and place in the field of power of the school and district, as it relates to the ability to resist required testing regimes, is also critically examined, with a focus on how this effected students and their ability to complete a counter-storytelling project over the course of the 2018 Spring semester.
Keywords: counter-storytelling, high school, education, writing, critical race theory, standardized testing
Topic(s):English, Secondary MAE Research
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 401-3
Location: MG 1000
Time: 3:00