As both book excerpts, Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children by Vivian Maria Vasquez and Castle in the Classroom by Ranu Bhattacharyya, children can become competent citizens with some teacher interventions. Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children focuses on how to offer teachers “a way to think about what students are learning to read and write, what they do with that reading and writing, and what that reading and writing does to them in their world” (101). This excerpt uses the interactions and confrontations kindergarteners from a Canadian school have with the even of French Café. In the excerpt from The Castle in the Classroom, the author essentially teaches the reader how to expand the writing workshop.
The students from Canada, at a school where French is no longer the second-most popular language, took action toward being included in school functions such as the French Café and “raised concern about the existing power structure where young children are not treated as equal participants in the school community”(96). Because of how the teacher chose to intervene to a student asking why they were not included in this 1st-8th grade event, she inherently “offered a space in which to change how they were positioned in the social hierarchy of their school.” This taught a fine lesson:
When a child asks a teacher a question, the teacher has choice in their response. Most often, the question will allow for 3 possible responses:
1. Treat the question with a potentially uncritical but valid answer.
2. Repose the question that positions the inquirer a little differently but can easily lead towards responding to the question with an activity.
3. Offer a critical challenge; treat the question as an opportunity for taking social action and disrupting inequity.
Curtis and his classmates ultimately created a petition and went through the process of creating social change as they strived to become equal participants within their school. “Through taking social action, the children learned not only a different way to resist and exercise their democratic abilities, but also the possibilities available through collectively working through a problem” (99).
From Canada to India, Georgia Heard, notices that Ranu’s classroom has the same learning needs as American children. At the American Embassy School located in Delhi, India, Ranu’s students are engaged in “setting the scene” for their classroom. In Castle in the Classroom, Ranu guides the reader with a beautiful description on how to really expand the child’s literacy experience. Ranu Bhattacharyya gives specific guidelines on how to engage the children in reading workshops, writing workshops, and word-study activity centers. The book beautifully illustrates the various purposes of each focused lesson. For example, in the lesson ‘Writing Descriptions of Settings,’ the purpose is “to recognize that giving voice to imagination paves the way for adding details to descriptions and makes a setting come alive for a reader.
