My work with students has primarily been to provide the skills and the space for them to wrestle with and/or express issues that arise from the migration process. If we were to organize such a process, the containers would simply be pre-migration, migration and post-migration. The pre-migration phase captures the conditions of the child’s life in his or her home country. It questions the stability of the home environment, whether the child was exposed to war, violence and/or health issues. The migration phase is the physical movement from one place to another. The ease or difficulty of travel as well as immigration status can be considered focal points of this phase. Lastly, in post-migration, children may experience cultural and language barriers, a disrupted family structure, and changes in their socioeconomic position. These variables are different for each child and are experienced to varying degrees of psychological distress or trauma.
After last week’s discussion, I thought more deeply about what students’ visual representation of traumatic experiences communicates to teachers. As a pedagogue working with immigrant children in the public school system I often view students from a post-migration perspective with only small windows into the pre-migration and migration phases. Visual components, such as the digital stories by middle school students, offer a way for students to communicate difficult knowledge beyond the observable. Why is this so important? It is because traumatic stress can present itself in a number of ways in the classroom. A student can be withdrawn or apathetic. A student can show defiance or aggression. A student can be the class clown. It would be easy for unknowing teachers to scold and punish children for such behavior.
Then I thought about the modes of representation in Victoria’s Restler’s piece some more as well as an article Gene sent over by Britzman & Pitt (2003). Britzman & Pitt (2003) view education as an “exemplary site where the crisis of representation that is outside meets the crisis of representation that is inside.” My project took on more depth. I would like to juxtapose students’ visual stories or representation of their difficult knowledge with teacher narratives or descriptors of the students. This multimodality project would explore the synergies and tensions between the inside and the outside, the observable and the unobservable, student voice and teacher perception, in a classroom of undocumented students. I’m unsure exactly how I’m going to represent this; I am open to suggestions!
Lauren,
I thought your comment that “Visual components, such as the digital stories by middle school students, offer a way for students to communicate difficult knowledge beyond the observable” is a very powerful point to make. It speaks to the idea that Pink discussed of the Western World’s five senses being too limiting in representing the human experience. I think your multimodality project is a wonderful exploration of the three stages of migration you laid out, in a way that is meaningful for the students and respectful of their experiences. Would each student be creating art/stories for each of the three stages, or would the class be split up into creating for different stages? I’m looking forward to hearing more about the project/investigation.
Nick
Hi Lauren:
Jus a quick note before running off to a meeting.
I agree with Nick that the project is a wonderful one, and you might think of this semester’s work as the beginning of a longer range exploration which could be such a valuable contribution to both the participants and to others. The issue of representation is complex on so many grounds including outside-inside, choice of what you want to represent and want to occlude, the vulnerability of representation, representing yourself reflectively which is already representation of your self once-removed or your new (and becoming) self thinking back. Migration is also so complex because of what you leave behind and the loss you carry with you that becomes part of who you now are. There is also a part of this which may be counter-intuitive. My mom left her parents by herself when she was 13 to escape the Nazis but told me that at the time she thought of it as one big adventure and it was only after the war that she realized that she was never going to see her parents or her home again. So migration can be a very mixed experience emotionally. I love the idea of including the teacher narratives visually conveyed (or at least partially visually conveyed) and having those narratives engage with each other. It seems like a huge project, but even beginning now seems very exciting to me. You spoke about your students’ drawings in class and I wondered how these figure in to your project. Thinking about students thinking about their experiences as they draw might be different from them drawing experiences after they’ve related them. Having students draw together while talking about their experiences could also be interesting. Asking them specifically about colors, textures, sounds related to their various experiences (the stages you lay out) might be worth thinking about. Will the drawing (or whatever media you use )change the experience itself? Would the teachers draw too? How will the visuals work with the verbal narratives? Maybe like Victoria’s piece, you want to interrogate sensations rather than events. Lots to talk about.
Gene