Teaching with Compassion, Competence, Commitment
Vol 4. No. 2
Table of Contents
Articles
Reading as Reconciling
Kristine Gritter
Seeing the “Me” in ASD through Children’s Picture Books
Christina Belcher and Kimberly Maich
“Telling, Sharing, Doing”: Origins and Iterations of the Council for Christian Colleges and
Universities Russia Initiative
Richard Scheuerman
Facilitating Student-Teacher Relationships: Kinder Training
June Hyun
Film and Book Reviews
Freedom’s Teacher The Life of Septima Clark. By Katherine Mellen Charron.
Reviewed by Max Hunter
The Hurt Locker [Motion Picture]. Bigelow, K., Boal, M., Chartier, N, Shapiro, G. (Producers) &
Bigelow, K. (Director) (2008)
Reviewed by Sara Hendrickson
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Reviewed by Suzanna Calvery
Crash [Motion Picture]. Cheadle, D. (Producer), & Higgins, P. (Director). (2004).
Reviewed by Elizabeth Marmino
Flight. by Alexie, Sherman. (2007).
Reviewed by Christie Johnston
Middlesex. by Eugenides, Jeffrey. (2002).
Reviewed by Elizabeth Tacke
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
Haddon, Mark. (2003)
READING AS RECONCILING
Kristine Gritter, Seattle Pacific University
Abstract:
Can secondary teachers create instructional opportunities for struggling, young, adolescent
readers that enable students to make deeply personal connections with text? How might they
do this? How might reading instruction be viewed as reconciliation? This article describes a
reading event for two readers, one reading at grade level and one reading below grade level.
This event afforded two young adolescents chances to voice their reading of their worlds,
deliver a message to peers, and develop sophisticated stances of “envisionment” with the text.
This article also unpacks the curricular choices of their urban middle school teacher working
with and against No Child Left Behind frameworks. Reconciliation can be understood in these
instances as working through language.
Introduction: Teaching as a Reconciling Act
In the spring of 2006, several middle school teachers from a midsized Midwestern urban school
district (pseudonyms used throughout for places and people) met at a seminar sponsored by a
large, Midwestern school of education to discuss the reading ability of their students. They
observed that many of their students, a mix of ethnic minorities and immigrant students, were
grades behind in reading development and were unable to unpack the print of their textbooks,
let alone experience the joy of reading. They also observed that high school dropout rates were
increasing to over 50 percent and that significant grade retention rates were occurring at the
middle school level seemingly because students were not comprehending text and/or turning in
homework assignments. Many teachers present agreed that these factors seemed like
symptoms of two larger problems: 1) many students were not fluent, comprehending readers,
and 2) many students were not personally connecting with content area texts. At this seminar,
a literal “meeting of the minds,” the stage was set for teaching as reconciliation.
Over a span of one year, I conducted an ethnographic study in the classroom of Ms.
Jones, a sixth grade teacher at Pinkerton Middle School, one of the middle schools in the
district. I wanted to understand how reading ability, particularly oral reading fluency and
comprehension abilities, affect relationships, or stances, with aesthetic texts that, in turn, can
affect classroom relationships. In so doing, I came to see that creating meaningful access to
language is teaching as a reconciling act.
Rhetorical Frameworks for Reconciliation
Teaching as a reconciling act occurs when both classroom language and deeds are transformed
into new and vital learning that allows disenfranchised students to take on new identities. Erik
Doxtader (2003) defines reconciliation as a character of understanding, an ethos developed
toward others. Doxtader develops theories of reconciliation from close study of Paul the
Apostle’s theological insight in 2 Corinthians in which “the (vertical) relationship between
humanity and God” transforms “the (horizontal) union between human beings” (p. 272).
Doxtader notes that reconciliation provides sharp contrast to past action as opposition to the
past and is typified in Christ’s death to save humans from sin, “the promise of past sacrifice to
create a relationship and a call to memorialize this sacrifice in a relationship of identification”
(p. 272). In reconciliation, restoring relationships allows for healthy identity exploration and
construction, so vital to adolescent development.
Doxtader further observes that reconciliation “open[s] a time for expression, [to] invent
the grounds for speech-action, and abide[s] in the risks that attend the power to name. To
make new in relation, reconciliation’s promise demands significant faith in the works of words”
(p. 267). Doxtader continues to conceptualize reconciliation as working toward a central
question: “[H]ow [can] human beings invent and express the potential to be(come) by standing
between what they are and what they are not?” (p. 267). Doxtader’s view of reconciliation is
highly rhetorical; reconciliation happens through language and in language.
Doxtader raises the following points about reconciliation:
•
It is manifest in the advocacy, performance, and critical examination of speech (p.
268).
•
It is transformative in that it changes “state of mind, event, or relationship into
something that it is not” (pp. 269, 271).
•
It depends on speech and is therefore best understood as a “rhetorical concept”
(p. 269).
•
It occurs in “those moments when we stand at a loss for words and speaking to
thought in which thinking is confronted with the character of its (non) identity”
(p. 270).
•
It turns violence into dialogue (p. 271).
•
It is the present of the future, the promise of the future (p. 272).
•
It appears at “the intersection of violence, identity, and identification” (p. 272).
•
It is a mediated exchange (p. 276).
•
It follows “from the decision to release the power of creation, the asserted capacity
to define and know the nature of others” (p. 276).
•
It exchanges presupposed labels of identity with experiences that allow the
formation of new identities “through expressions of opposition to the announced
precedence’s, causes, and necessities of history” (p. 276).
•
It occurs in violence in which speech has been suppressed (p. 278).
•
It transforms language and causes innovation with language, especially the
storytelling of new stories (p. 280).
In so many ways the seminar of teachers convening to better meet the needs of
struggling readers signifies reconciliation. Teachers engage in reconciling speech-action when
they advocate for disengaged students by inviting them into meaningful language events that
afford them the opportunity to explore the value of language and social relations when reading,
writing, and classroom talk. Below is a classroom case study that investigates how “Ms. Jones,”
a White teacher in an urban middle school, created reconciliatory opportunities for two
students, Derrick and Vance (both names are pseudonyms) to wrestle with personal identity
while wrestling with text. Both young men self-selected pseudonyms that is revelatory of
identity. Initially, Derrick selected the pseudonym of “Darth Vader,” a representation of his
outsider status at his school. Vance selected the pseudonym of “Bookreader,” a representation
of his high efficacy with print, although he was the below-grade-level reader in this case study.
Because both self-selected names are distracting from the content and conclusions of this
article, I decided to give both participants less distracting pseudonyms.
Merging Separate Constructs: Reading Skills and Reading Stances
In conducting my classroom ethnography, I wanted to know whether a struggling sixth grade
reader demonstrated the same dynamic relationships with text as a more fluent and
comprehending counterpart, and if both readers, given opportunities for choice in text
selection and adequate time to reflect on text, would allow the text to shape their thoughts and
ideas about the world. I also wanted to illuminate how teaching can be construed as a
reconciling act.
Research on reading fluency and older readers are scant as it is assumed that
comprehension is the primary variable for adolescent reading success. Reading fluency is
expected by sixth grade, the grade level of Derrick and Vance. Because of this, middle school
reading instruction focuses on “higher-order” comprehension goals. Chall (1996) hypothesizes
that fluency occurs early on in reading development, around second grade. But, as Rasinski et.
al. (2005) observes, it may not be reasonable for teachers to assume that older readers are
fluent readers of text. Although Rasinksi found that ninth grade students could read words
accurately when they read orally, they could not read at a speed that was considered grade
appropriate. Rasinski et. al. concludes, “Although the high school students in this study read
with a degree of accuracy, they had to invest so much of their limited cognitive energy in
accomplishing this task that they drained cognitive capacity away from where it could and
should have been used more profitably—to comprehend text” (p. 25). Teachers observed
several times during the course of this research that this indeed seemed to describe much
student reading in their classrooms.
Defining reading fluency is problematic because it has been operationalized in many
ways. Archer, Gleason, & Vachon (2003) limit fluency to “rate [words read per minute] plus
accuracy” (p. 96). Dowhower (1991) adds one more characteristic to fluency, prosody, or
expressiveness of an oral reading. Although the contribution of prosody has been included in
fluency research (Dowhower, 1991), it is comparatively difficult to assess because it includes
pitch (intonation), stress (loudness), and duration (timing) of reading words aloud. Zutell and
Rasinski (1991) suggest that fluent oral reading occurs when “(a) the reading appears fairly
effortless or automatic, (b) readers group or “chunk” words into meaningful phrases and
clauses, and (c) readers use pitch, stress, and intonation appropriately to convey the meanings
and feelings they believe the author intended” (p. 212). Such a definition of fluency involves
critical reading of a text and inferencing of authorial intent, indeed fairly high-level
comprehension of text.
The relationship between fluent oral reading and text comprehension has been hotly
debated. Nathan and Stanovich (1991) believe that “fluent word recognition may be almost a
necessary condition for good comprehension and enjoyable reading experiences” (p. 176).
Leong (1995) observes, “Individual differences in text comprehension can be traced to the
efficiency with which children remember words just read, activate their name codes, analyze
their morphological units (words, phrases, clauses) in synchrony for propositional forms for
interpretation” (pp. 101-102). So, although reading fluency does not cause reading
comprehension, it has been correlated with reading comprehension.
Existing reading fluency research is largely quantitative and rarely includes affective
components of reading such as the reading stance toward a text. By “reading stance,” I mean
the relationship that readers have with text. Langer (1990) identifies four recursive stances that
readers take toward a text that can occur over time if readers invest time and self into the text.
These relationships take on the metaphor of moving through a text, although this movement
can entail retracing steps by returning to previous stances or blazing new trails by forging new
stances.
Langer describes one stance toward reading as “Being Out and Stepping Into an
Envisionment.” This happens when readers “use prior knowledge, experience, and surface
features of the text to identify essential elements . . . in order to begin to construct an
envisionment” (p. 238). In this stance, a reader walks into a text trying to make sense of it.
When readers can come to an understanding of the text through asking appropriate questions
and applying existing knowledge to it, they have successfully developed this stance. Langer
describes a second stance as “Being In and Moving Through an Envisionment.” In this stance,
readers walk with comparative ease through a text by making text-to-self connections and
making inferences. In this stance, Langer observes that “readers use their personal experiences
and knowledge as well as the text to push their envisionments along—where meanings beget
meanings” (Langer, p. 241). In this stance, readers use their lived experiences to connect to the
text. In a third stance, which Langer defines as “Stepping Back and Rethinking What One
Knows,” a reader walks through a text, contemplates the meaning of a text, and allows the
lessons learned from the text to shape or further the knowledge of self and world. Langer
observes, “Rather than prior knowledge informing their envisionments as in the other stances,
in this case readers use their envisionments of the text to rethink their prior knowledge” (p.
238). Langer describes a fourth stance as “Stepping Out and Objectifying the Experience.” In
this stance, “readers distance themselves from the envisionments they had developed . . . to
reflect on the reading activity, their understandings, and their reactions” (pp. 245-246). Readers
of this stance become critical and consciously metacognitive readers, evaluating the worth of a
text.
Using Langer’s framework, Purcell-Gates (1991) observes many remedial readers never
develop any of the four stances: “ . . . these readers consistently failed to construct evolving
wholes and struggled with the language of literacy discourse. The overall stance of remedial
readers gained from this study is one of being on the outside looking in” (p. 235). When
students demonstrate the stance of being “On the Outside Looking In,” struggling readers are
unable to make meaning from the text.
Before analyzing how oral reading ability affected reading stance, I would first like to describe
the context of Pinkerton Middle School, the two students in Ms. Jones’s sixth grade language
arts classroom that contribute to my understandings, and the curricular choices Ms. Jones
made that mitigated reconciliation speech-action as two of her students successfully moved
through texts.
Forces and Voices: The Context of Pinkerton
Pinkerton Middle School is located in a midsized Midwestern city that was once reliant
financially on the automotive industry. In recent years many factories have shut their doors,
sending unemployment to some of the highest rates in the nation, affecting the entire
community. The disrepair of the large, often several-storied houses surrounding the school
reflects this decline as do the often floundering (or abandoned) mom-and-pop businesses that
harken back to a simpler time. The entire school district is suffering financially and this affects
the day-to-day operations of the classrooms of this research as does a revolving door of
educational leadership. For example, two times during a two-year university partnership with
Pinkerton, the school budget forced teacher layoffs that led to language arts class reassignment
for many students. Furthermore, during the last four years, Pinkerton has had four different
principals.
In 2007, 669 students were enrolled at Pinkerton. About 39.5 percent were Black, nonHispanic; 37.4 percent were White, non-Hispanic; about 19.4 percent were Hispanic; and the
remaining 3.8 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaskan Native. About 72
percent are considered economically disadvantaged with 62.1 percent of the total population
eligible for free lunch and 10.4 percent eligible for reduced-price lunch.
For several years my university had supplied literacy tutors for Pinkerton students as
part of content area reading training for secondary teachers. During the course of this research,
university courses met on Pinkerton grounds to increase preservice teacher and student literacy
interactions. In addition, I was responsible for supplying Pinkerton teachers, including Ms.
Jones, with thousands of dollars in grants to buy high-interest texts for classroom libraries and
support in-services to discuss literacy instruction. As part of this research, I acted as a
participant observer in four of Ms. Jones’s classrooms on a nearly daily basis. As a result, I
forged close relationships with Ms. Jones and her students.
The two young adolescents selected for this article represent the diversity of ethnicity,
social class, and reading ability level of the students who take language arts classes from Ms.
Jones, their White, middle class, 30-year-old teacher (Table I). In Table 1, we see that Derrick is
a European-American student above the 50th percentile in reading and language portions of the
Iowa Test of Basic Skills and is not considered to be of low socioeconomic status. In contrast,
Vance, an African-American student is both below the 50th percentile on both tests, and is
considered to be a student living in poverty.
Table I
Pseudonym
Gender
Ethnic
Free or
ITBS*
ITBS*
Background
Reduced
Reading
Language
Lunch
%
%
(2005)
(2005)
Derrick
Male
White
No
72
69
Vance
Male
African-
Yes
44
49
American
* Iowa Test of Basic Skills
Students were further selected based on individual differences of performances during
read-aloud events, contributions during interviews regarding reading events, and reading
scores on high-stakes state reading tests and reading fluency assessments (Table II). According
to state assessments, Derrick is a grade level reader, but Vance requires remediation to read at
grade level and is about one grade level behind in his reading development. Developmental
Reading Assessment (DRA) scores, an oral reading fluency measuring a combination of factors,
reading engagement, oral reading fluency based on words per minute, number of miscues,
percentage of accuracy, correctness of comprehension questions before, during, and after
reading, and metacognitive awareness, indicate that both have achieved approximately the
same level of reading fluency. According to DRA scores, both readers can read at an
independent level with high accuracy, meaning they can read without teacher assistance but do
not read at an advanced level in which they can interpret text at a complex level without
teacher assistance.
Table II
Pseudonym
Read SS *
Meets State
DRA **
DRA Composite
(Fall 2005)
Standard (Fall
Accuracy
***
State
2005) for
(2004-2005)
(2004-2005)
Assessment
Reading
%
Derrick
636
Yes
100
19
Vance
573
No
97
18
* Grade level according to the high-stakes state assessment. A score of 573 for “Read
SS” would indicate fifth grade, seventh month, third week.
** Assessment combining reading engagement, oral reading fluency based on words per
minute, number of miscues, percent of accuracy, comprehension questions before,
during, and after reading, and metacognitive awareness.
*** Scores in the 17-22 range indicate student can read at an independent level. Scores
of 23-24 indicate student can read at an advanced level.
But these high-stakes reports do not tell the story of these readers, the role that reading
plays in their lives, and the extent that reading shapes their lives. Below are simplified
snapshots of the lives of the participants, compiled throughout a year of interviews and
conversations with the research subjects.
Derrick, age 11, comes from a family of three, composed of his mom and 4-year-old
brother. His younger brother has cancer and still wets the bed, a cause for ridicule on the part
of Derrick. Ms. Jones has been informed that Derrick has Asperger’s syndrome, a social disorder
in which he demonstrated difficulty understanding social situations and social norms. He does
not seem to know about this diagnosis when Ms. Jones mentions it to him. Derrick wants to
travel to Russia “to see all the great ethnic things about it.” This urge to run away is seen
throughout the year. He has physical education following his language arts class and often begs,
eyes red from crying, that Ms. Jones grant him permission to skip the class. Someday he hopes
“to make billions of dollars or millions in a business or factory . . . or just be powerful.”
Eventually Derrick wants to “rule this country with an iron fist” by “killing all those who stand in
his way.” This statement may be said in jest, but the forcefulness behind it indicates that
Derrick may feel powerless in his present state. He does not like his school “because the kids
are bad.” He is generally the last student to find a partner when Ms. Jones wants students to
think, pair and share. Derrick describes himself as a “partially good kid.” He knows that going to
college means “getting good grades in high school and not having a criminal record.” Derrick
reads accurately and prosaically aloud but tends to read fast, making it difficult for his
classmates to follow along at the same rate. They express annoyance when his oral reading
allows him to show off his reading speed but does not help them understand text.
Vance, age 11, lives with his mother, “a very nice person . . . who always
does the right thing . . . sometimes,” and three siblings. His mother works in a local fast food
restaurant. He is the second oldest; the oldest son. Vance, who shows expertise in verbal
characterization, is quick to label the personalities of his brother and sisters, spinning tales of
personality and familial roles (the bossy sister, the trickster sister, etc.) His contributions to
class discussion often weave in narrative or intellectual factoids gleaned from other classes, for
example mentioning continental drift theory in language arts. Vance wants to be a video game
developer when he grows up. To do this, he says he needs to go to college and know how to
play video games. To get into college, he declares, takes “knowledge” . . . and “amazing acts . . .
and getting good grades.” He feels most comfortable in band, where he plays the drums “and
can modify songs.” For example, he figured out his own derivation to “Another One Bites the
Dust,” a song he learned in band. He demonstrated his new variation with a pencil to the
disturbance of others in the language arts class. Vance is a devout Christian, writing about Jesus
Christ when asked to write about a hero. One morning he interrupts class with a performance
of the gospel song “Oh Happy Day.” He appeared to enjoy the resulting laughter. Vance’s need
to modify performance extends to oral readings. He reads expressively in a deep voice that
belies his small stature and speech impediment, taking on voices as he reads dialogue, but
inserts his own words while omitting textual words, and often reading rapidly without selfcorrecting his mistakes but generally getting the gist of the reading.
In describing the stances that the participants walk through during a selected literacy
event, it seems necessary to situate the circumstances surrounding the event. The literacy
event was an oral reading activity that was the culmination of a poetry unit where oral reading
skills had been foregrounded—Ms. Jones believes that most poetry is meant to be read aloud.
Throughout the unit, Ms. Jones had explicitly taught the three aspects of reading fluency:
accuracy of pronunciation, appropriate reading pace, and vocal expression to match the mood
of text.
Ms. Jones wanted to understand the social anxiety of her students when reading aloud,
so she told her students they could perform the poetry individually, in pairs, or in groups of
three. She brought in several traditional and young adolescent anthologies of poetry based on
different themes—sports, teenage angst, love, etc., paid for by the grant the author had
secured for her and other teachers at her school. Students were to choose a poetic text that
they felt was interesting and perform it in front of the class. On the day of the performances,
she also brought in a karaoke machine with an attached microphone. Vance selected a
Langston Hughes poem with love and suicide themes. Derrick chose a poem about two
teenagers who were deeply in love but were unnoticed in life until after they died. In contrast
to the first two months of school in which Ms. Jones’s instructional practices were devoted to
preparing students to do well on high-stakes test assessments, this literacy event encouraged
student choice and social interaction.
Most students took this activity seriously. Ms. Jones was impressed one day when four
boys were huddled around an anthology of poetry written by inner city boys. They seemed
most attracted to the urban themes and the controversial language contained therein, not
typical fare for school texts and clearly intriguing. It was a highlight of Ms. Jones’s school year.
She had never witnessed such an obvious interest in poetry before—especially by reluctant,
male readers.
Because assessment was on reading performance, Ms. Jones planned two days for
students to practice their self-selected poetry, including listening to and critiquing tape
recordings of their practices. Student behavior was exceptionally poor during the first practice
day, so she cancelled the second practice day. However, both Vance and Derrick took the
practice sessions seriously. As they told me afterward, they had a message worth delivering to
their peers.
The quality of performances varied a great deal. However, both Vance and Derrick
excelled in this event. Their readings were expressive, accurate, at an appropriate pace for their
audience to understand, and unusually compelling. The class particularly enjoyed Vance’s
performance, erupting into spontaneous applause which he accepted with grace and dignity.
Stances and Chances with Text
Two weeks following the poetry reading, I interviewed the two participants in order to
match reader with the reading stances developed by Langer and Purcell-Gates. I asked the
participants to evaluate their reading of their selected poem and the poem itself.
Derrick: I understand the true meaning of it mostly. My poem was about just how to
love people when they’re dead, to show emotions, and to always remember them….It’s
the only poem that really got to me . . . I wanted to send a message, and, you know . . .
that people should be nice and love and not hate and not think they’re better than
others . . . I see that every day, hatred, being mean, punching, lots of swears . . . Kids
here are mean and brutal . . . except my friends.
Here Derrick’s reflections describe traveling through his poem and taking on three
stances: Being In and Moving Through an Environment, Stepping Back and Rethinking What
One Knows, and Stepping Out and Objectifying the Experience. Derrick describes his
interpretation of the theme of his poem, and describes how the poem acted as an agent of
change, a vehicle that allowed him to rethink his knowledge of the world and send a message
to his classmates about love. Finally he admits that the poem spoke to him at a personal level.
Vance, a struggling reader, describes a similar walk through his poetry selection as he
talks about the words of Langston Hughes.
Vance: I understanded [sic] [the poem] very fine. This poem was about when a boy had broke
up with his girlfriend and then he wanted to die. But he said, “What am I doing? I don’t have to
die for love. For living I was born.” So he made that poem “Life is Fine” . . . I was very interested
[in the poem]. It showed me that you don’t need love to live. . . . You need Jesus. Without Jesus
we’d be dead because He had to suffer for our sins. I read this poem so much I memorized it. I
read it to my mother. She cried.
Here Vance describes three stances as well: Being In and Moving Through an
Environment, Stepping Back and Rethinking What One Knows, and Stepping Out and
Objectifying the Experience. Vance is able to apply his personal experience to his poem to the
extent that he feels he can interpret the message of the poem and share it with a loved one. He
also uses the text to reinforce his religious leanings, ruminating on the message of the poem
well past school hours and allowing his understanding to grow. He also expresses a deep
interest in the poem itself.
Although assessments show that Derrick and Vance are unequal readers according to No
Child Left Behind indicators, with Derrick being the superior reader in every assessment, both
use texts to voice their views of the world. In so doing, they form deep relationships with the
text and send messages to their classmates about their views on life and make statements of
personal philosophy and identity through text. They use the text as reconciliation agents.
Conclusion: From Forces to Chances through Teaching as Reconciling
As Vance’s experiences with his poem indicate, struggling sixth grade readers can demonstrate
the same dynamic relationships with a text as their grade level counterparts. And both students
can read with deep comprehension when given mediation, i.e., text selection that allows them
to both find and add to their own voice, and motivating instructional practices where
collaboration and celebration in language are the impetus for instruction. Ms. Jones’s
instructional practice is reconciliation in speech-action.
But research indicates rhetorical reconciliation is rarely the case in classrooms and that
the existing reading skills of fluency and comprehension are powerful forces in classrooms. A
growing body of research indicates struggling readers also struggle socially in classrooms.
Tarver, Ellsworth, and Rounds (1980) found that reading-disabled students were more likely to
experience rejection by peers and teacher during reading instruction. McCray, Vaughn, and
Neal (2001) found that middle school students with reading disabilities want to learn how to
become better readers, but they do not want their friends to know they struggle with reading.
Wollman-Bonilla (1994) observed that, in two sixth-grade classrooms with good and less able
readers, only the more able readers participated in class discussions and valued other students’
contributions. She observed, “In contrast, the group composed of less able readers constructed
a more teacher-dominated activity in which students seemed reluctant to participate
voluntarily, display their knowledge, or construct meaning collaboratively” (p. 231). Such
research contextualizes classroom speech violence for struggling readers and the need for
teacher mediation for both explicit instruction and opportunities for aesthetic transaction with
text in which students can affectively embrace texts.
If existing reading ability labels students as classroom outsiders or belongers, struggling
readers must make choices to create new identities as readers (Gee, 1996; Rex, 2001). Kong
and Pearson (2003) outline five features of teachers who act as conduits to this remaking:
“First, the teacher created a classroom learning community in which students felt respected
and their experiences and knowledge were valued. Second, the teacher allowed time to build
opportunities to engage students in reading, writing, and talking about age-appropriate and
quality literature. Third, the teacher challenged students to think critically and reflectively
about what they read by asking open-ended but pointed questions. Fourth, the teacher
employed multiple modes of teaching-telling, modeling, scaffolding, facilitating, and
participating. Finally, the teacher persisted in maintaining high expectations for all of her
students” (Kong & Pearson, 2003, p. 85). Making visible the stances that expert readers walk
through in order to have deep relationships with text can also be part of the remaking of
remedial readers. And so can repeated reading that fosters ever deeper fluency and
comprehension of text.
Rosenblatt’s transactional view of reading posits that identity shapes reading, that the
act of reading is so individualistic that no two people read the same work in the same manner
(Rosenblatt, 1938/1983). Skill instruction, including fluency interventions, for struggling readers
must be embedded in personally relevant texts to be humane and developmentally
appropriate. If Vance is to be labeled a good reader, he must increase his reading speed and
comprehension skills largely done through rereading texts (Greenleaf, Jiminez, and Roller,
2002) in increasingly metacognitive and self-aware ways. If Derrick is to become a better reader
who can regularly send messages to his peers, he too must learn to read at a deeper level,
including learning to read the social environment of his classrooms. Explicit explanation of and
frequent opportunities to move across reading stances have the potential to expedite skill
instruction. A balanced view of literacy that incorporates reading skill remediation in a
classroom setting that does not feel remedial to struggling readers, and also embraces grade
level readers, encompasses both concerns of the teachers in this midsized Midwestern urban
school district mentioned earlier.
Vance’s success in moving across stances demonstrates the importance that good
textual matches play in forming relationships with text. Because Langston Hughes employs
poetic language taken from the very dialect that Vance speaks, Vance is empowered to move
into complex textual stances. Poetry seems like a natural fit for enhancing reading fluency and
comprehension skills. It is meant to be read aloud. It contains lines that visually are a better fit
for duplicating oral language. It is meant to be reread. Applying stances to each reading and
rereading gives teachers and students a rationale for going deeper into text with each reading,
and, in so doing, participates in opportunities to construct and manifest new individual
identities as well.
In both Derrick and Vance’s movement across the reading stances, Ms. Jones is teaching
as a reconciling act so both young adolescents participate in reconciliation. In both cases,
disenfranchised students grapple with new identities and with horizontal relationships, a
reaction to past violence of disrespect in classrooms. This happens as both adolescents “attend
the power to name,” describing how textual themes apply to their own lives. Both boys use text
to advocate for themselves and critically examine the speech of text, turning violence into
dialogue, defining and considering the nature of others, and hopefully starting a journey of
telling new stories. This could not have happened without the mediation of Ms. Jones who
deliberately set aside the learning targets of No Child Left Behind, whose assessment-driven
practices dominated much of her teaching practices and often suppressed the voices of
students. In teaching as reconciliation, two students found their voice.
References:
Archer, Anita L., Gleason, Mary, M., Vachon, Vicky L. (2003). Decoding and fluency:
Foundation skills for struggling older readers. Learning Disability Quarterly,
26(2), 89-101.
Bear, Donald R. (1991). Learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around:
The synchrony of literacy development. Theory into Practice, 30(3),
149-157.
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of
learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.
Chall, J. S. (1996). Stages of reading development. (2nd ed). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt-Brace.
Dowhower, S.L. (1991). Speaking of prosody: Fluency’s unattended bedfellow. Theory in
Practice, 30, 158-164.
Doxtader, E. (2003). Reconciliation: A rhetorical concept/ion. Quarterly Journal of
Speech, 89(4), 267-292.
Greenleaf, C.L., Jimenez, R.T., Roller, C.M.. (2002). Reclaiming
secondary reading interventions: From limited to rich conceptions, from narrow to broad
conversations. Reading Research Quarterly, 37(4), 484-496.
Langer, J.A. (1990). The process of understanding: Reading for Literary and Informative
Purposes. Research in the Teaching of English, 24(3), 229-260.
Leong, C.K. (1995). Effects of on-line reading and simultaneous DECtalk
aiding in helping below average and poor readers comprehend and summarize text. Learning
Disability Quarterly, 18(2), 101-116.
Moje, E. (2004). Powerful spaces; Tracing the out-of-school literacy spaces of Latino youth. In K.
Leander & M. Sheehy (Eds.), Spatializing literacy research and practice. NY: Peter Lang.
Purcell-Gates, V. (1991). On the outside looking in: A study of remedial readers’ meaning
making while reading literature. Journal of Reading Behavior, 23(2), 235-253.
Nathan, R.G.,Stanovich, K.A.. (1991). The causes and consequences of differences in reading
fluency. Theory into Practice, 30(3), 176-184.
Rasinski, T., Padak, N., Mc Keon, C., Krug-Wilfong, L., Friedauer, J., Heim, P. (2005). Is reading
fluency a key for successful high school reading? Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy,
49, 22-27.
Rosenblatt, L.M. (1938/1983). Literature as Exploration. (4th ed.) NY: Modern Language Press.
Wolf, M., Katzir-Cohen, T. (2001). Reading fluency and its intervention. Scientific Studies of
Reading, 5, 211-238.
Zutell, Jerry, Rasinski, Timothy V. (1991). Training teachers to attend to their
students’ oral reading fluency. Theory into Practice, 30(3), 211-217.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Kristine Gritter is an assistant professor at Seattle Pacific University. Her research interests
include adolescent literacy. She can be reached at grittk@spu.edu.
Reviewed by Sara Gray
Water. Mehta, D, & Hamilton, D. 2006 (US).
Reviewed by Keith Huntzinger
SEEING THE “ME” IN ASD THROUGH CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOKS
Christina Belcher and Kimberly Maich, Redeemer University College
Abstract:
Within the last decade, interest has arisen in two key educational areas: Autism Spectrum Disorders
(ASD) and literacy acquisition. This article presents an interdisciplinary view of both of these areas. It
proposes that examination of literary-based features—(for example, literary quality, character
representation, social context, and worldview)—as well as ASD-related considerations (i.e., language of
ASD, direct or indirect reference to ASD, representation of the characteristics of ASD,) is important in
critiquing and selecting ASD-related picture books for educational use. In examining a selection of 23
picture books specifically targeted toward ASD—especially Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome—the
purpose of this article is three-fold: 1) to examine how the child with ASD is re/presented in story within
a specific life context; 2) to identify the literary value and literary features of the quality of each story;
and 3) to explore how the child and others in community may consider new knowledge, attitudes and
skills related to ASD. It is suggested that these considerations can be best explored when examining
picture books and worldview perspectives. The article concludes with suggestions for selecting and using
ASD-specific picture books that further goals of literacy and life skill acquisition.
Key words: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), child, picture book, literacy, worldview, and life skills.
Seeing the “Me” in ASD through Children’s Picture Books
Introduction:
This article represents the interdisciplinary work of two authors. One is passionate about her work in
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD); the other for her work in children’s literature. The purpose of this
paper is three-fold: 1) to examine how the child with ASD is re/presented in story within a specific life
context; 2) to identify the literary value and literary features of the quality of each story; and 3) to
explore how the child and others in their community may consider new knowledge, attitudes and skills
related to ASD. It is suggested that these considerations can be best brought to the fore and discussed
when one considers literacy learning from the use of story.
The data for this article are drawn from exploration of a comprehensive selection of contemporary
picture books specifically centered on children with ASD or ASD-related characteristics. An examination
of literary-based features—for example, literary quality, character representation, social/cultural
context, and worldview—as well as ASD-related considerations (i.e., the language of ASD, direct or
indirect reference to ASD, representation of the specific characteristics of ASD and/or outcomes of ASD)
is important in critiquing and infusing ASD-related literature into the educational environment. This
analysis provides data from 23 picture books and then moves on to establish a suggested choice-making
design for the selection of ASD-related literature in the classroom.
In examining the criteria presented above, this article will add valuable information to work
formerly done on the impact of literature upon children, be it postmodern literature (Aiken, 2009);
exploring the social significance of worldview as this is noted in literature from other perspectives
(Belcher, 2005; 2006); examining diversity in children’s literature (Brenna, 2009; Prater, 2003); exploring
the topic of inclusion (Kalke-Klita, 2005); utilizing bibliotherapy as an accessible tool for social, emotional
and behavioral instruction (Cook, Earles-Vollrath & Ganz, 2006; Maich & Kean, 2004); and finally, in
critiquing the value of using books for literary development (Doecke & Parr, 2009). This study will add
further data to the research exploring how picture books can be used in both reflecting and impacting
children with ASD, as well as being of benefit to those in the communities which surround and support
them.
By linking literary features with worldview philosophies found in picture books to current
cultural dispositions and understandings regarding ASD, this study adds a deeper dimension to current
data. Such scrutiny may assist in supporting students with ASD in ways that foster both academic and
socioemotional development.
It is hoped that this research conversation emerging from an interdisciplinary view of ASD will
encourage more collaboration and less diagnostic-specific overemphasis in the areas linking schooling
and life for the child with ASD.
Tell me a story
Although stories focusing on ASD or its related characteristics are not prolific, a growing body of
research is emerging in the overarching context of this diagnostic-specific work. Returning to the roots
of the context for this work, consider that Shirley Brice-Heath’s seminal work on the importance of no
bedtime story (1982) provoked academic and lay readers to see that narratives at home and school do
indeed matter. Narratives presented early in life, then, form an indelible imprint on the mind of the
child. Bedtime stories have both efferent and aesthetic implications for postures children take in
relation to life and living as they mature. It is from such serious considerations of the role of story
(especially as this role relates to picture books) that this article emerges.
The role of the story can be extended beyond its narrative value to engage meaningful dialogue
(Doecke & Parr, 2009). Story can become a venue for social, emotional and behavioral growth. Formally
named bibliotherapy (a term with clinical overtones which may disenchant some educators by its title
and semantics alone), this process utilizes story as a tool for empathy, information, and problem-solving.
In doing so, it hopes to facilitate insight, alternatives, and affective development and simultaneously
reduce feelings of isolation in the midst of struggle (Cook, Earles-Vollrath, & Ganz, J., 2006). Utilized as
early as the early nineteenth century (Maich & Kean, 2004), bibliotherapy “provides a channel for
learning how to solve one’s problems by reflecting on how characters in a book solve theirs” (Herbert &
Ken, 2000, cited in Cook, Earles-Vollrath, & Ganz, J., 2006, p. 93). Although it is by no means a universally
accepted approach, varied iterations of its use follow a pattern of identification, insight and release
(Maich & Kean, 2004) with an identifiable outcome: “[I]f one child in a classroom is able to face a social
emotional problem with new strength and greater skills, the very use of bibliotherapy will have been its
own reward” (Maich & Kean, 2004, p. 11). Perhaps the authors of picture books related to ASD were
performing a similar process to the consumers of such stories, albeit with a self-directed focus—utilizing
the very writing itself as a therapeutic instrument.
As a framework for the study, the books selected are representative of two decades and divided
by these time periods into cohorts. The first cohort involves books written between 1990 and 1999. The
second cohort contains books written between 2000 and 2009. These cohorts are examined to show key
themes within and across the decades, such as similarities in approach and differences in cultural
context and worldview. Finally, the cohorts are further reviewed to consider worldview and cultural
change regarding the topic of ASD, and the benefit of picture books as a vehicle for knowledge, attitudes
and skills—even future independence.
Overall, this paper outlines a preliminary pilot study of 23 picture books for children written
between 1990 and 2009. These stories span reading levels from emergent readers—typically a
kindergarten level to junior and intermediate grades. The selection contains recurrent themes
distinctive of fictional writing related to ASD, as well as specific distinctions within author groups. Charts
for book analysis provide considerations of key authors, language and issues pertinent to ASD in order to
do two things: first, to provide a context or “home” which gives purpose to the writing of the story; and
second, to provide ample data for discerning similarities and differences in the literature over time
which may be helpful to both parent and teacher in future book selection.
Each of the 23 books was investigated with regard to eight criteria:
1. What the book values
2. Literary features and writing style
3. Social setting
4. Central issues
5. How the child is re/presented
6. Cultural context
7. Labels used
8. Author information
It is significant to note that educators are affected by their philosophical worldview and
understanding of the purpose of story. In the institution in which the authors of this paper dwell,
professors who hold a Christian worldview—and others who may not—have reason to see story as
having potential to be transformative, liberating, and culturally relevant. N.T. Wright grasps this well
when he states:
In our modern culture, we sometimes imagine that stories are kids’ stuff: little illustrations,
while abstract ideas are the real thing. So Jesus’ stories, people say, were just “earthly stories
with a heavenly meaning,” but that’s rubbish! Stories are far more powerful than that. Stories
create worlds. Tell the story differently and you change the world. And that’s what Jesus aimed
to do. People in Jesus’ world knew that stories meant business; that stories were a way of
getting to grips with reality (Wright, 1996, p. 36).
At the heart of Christian teaching and learning lies the belief that story is transformative. It portrays
a reality of sorts, and acts as a compass or a mirror to the navigation through life that being human
entails.
Of course, it is also possible from a worldview perspective to see story as being conformative,
oppressive and culturally irrelevant to certain settings and purposes. It is important to keep this in mind
as the data acquired in cohort one is reviewed, for two reasons. First, not all stories represent reality
well in a context that recognizes means and ends. Second, stories can act as either mirrors of life, that
conform readers to the cultural portrayal of reality presented, or as compasses to life helping readers
travel through life with hope, expanding reality from what is to what should be; seeing the possibility of
change.
Thomas Buford (1995, p. 96) reminds his readers that “we are not only influenced by the ‘ways’
of our people [culture] but are a people narratively created.” Kenneth Gergen (1991, p. 106) echoes this
sentiment in his claim that “language is not an instrument or tool in man’s hands, a submissive means of
thinking . . . language rather thinks man and his world.” Story is powerful. The question is, Do children
with ASD who read this selection of picture books see themselves, and their peers, or their siblings the
way stories about ASD portray them? If they do, how do these picture books equip them to find their
place in society?
What can be learned from story in cohort one?
Cohort one does not include many picture books. This is probably due to many variables such as the fact
that ASD was just becoming a topic of interest for the general public following the movie Rain Man
(1988). The general public within Canadian culture was only becoming aware of varied subtypes of ASD,
such as autism and Asperger’s Disorder (also called Asperger’s Syndrome in some text) by the early
1990s. Formal associations and groups were just beginning to organize themselves in a public manner
for social support, while schooling still emphasized segregated classes for students with special needs.
In the first cohort of six picture books, it is clear that media-based awareness and social
responses have affected the writing of picture books. Authors write out of the philosophies they are
steeped in to some extent, and mediated by the culture in which they live. The books studied in the first
cohort (1990-1999) are listed below by year of publication, and are followed by suggested reading level
(P stands for primary grades kindergarten to 3, J refers to junior grades 4 to 6, and I represents
intermediate or grade 6 and higher):
1. Katz, I., Ritvo, E. (1993). Joey and Sam. Northridge, CA: Real Life Storybooks. P
2. Messner, A. (1996). Captain Tommy. Tratham, NH: Potential Unlimited Publishing. P
3. Simmons, K. (1996). Little rainman. Arlington, Texas: Future Horizons. P/J
4. Thompson, M. (1996). Andy and his yellow frisbee. Bethesda, MD: Woodbine House. P
5. Lears, L. (1998). Ian’s walk: A story about autism. Morton Grove, Ill: Albert Witman & Co. P
6. Gagnon, E., Smith Myles, B. (1999). This is Asperger Syndrome Shawnee Mission, Kansas:
Autism Asperger Publishing Co. P/J
All books in this cohort were written by parents or practitioners who were personally involved
with the care of a child with an ASD. This is significant to note, as it mirrors the reality that parents
advocated change for their children before culture engaged the required support. Parents and
practitioners wrote these books for children to read in order to be able to identify with self, peer or
sibling through the venue of story. However, there are some weak links in this regard. For example,
since the majority of books regarding ASD are self-published, few are edited with great rigor. Many of
the examples used in this study either contain mechanical errors or are of poorer illustrative quality than
they may have been with professional editing assistance. Hence, the literary quality in general is not as
high and teachers may be reticent to use them in direct classroom instruction.
The general tone of the stories tends to reflect the struggle that parents and siblings had in the
diagnostic process. Hence, the child is often seen as the label, reflecting media of the time (Simmons,
1996), and the story revolves around many negative emotions of coping with the assumed or
experienced outcomes of these labels. This theme of struggle is at the forefront or in the shadows in
these six books.
From a parental and therapeutic medical environment, clinical diagnosis was a key part of life in
this decade. Diagnosis was done through a variety of tests, terms and criteria that followed a “scientific
mindset.” Scientific analysis tends to “thing-ify” the child in the story. The writing style is read more as a
manual (Gagnon & Smith, 1999) that focuses on the problem and victimization of the child than on the
child with the problem. Hence, often the story aspect in such writing is scant or not the focal point of
the writing itself. Where there is at minimum an obvious story line, often the story is unbalanced in
showing the full picture of life, using a context out of the home to denote a special emphasis (Katz &
Ritvo, 1993). Picture books that use the school setting rather than that of the home tend to be more
relaxed and more hopeful in their portrayal (Katz & Ritvo, 1993; Thompson, 1996). Stories that involve
siblings and/or care givers (Lears, 1998; Messner, 1996) focus more on social behaviors and the need for
intervention. However, all of the stories in this decade tend to favor a focus on the struggle and the
label given to the child rather than the development of the child.
This is as much a worldview problem as a literary one. This decade was one in which science and
technology was seen to be the hope of the future. Through such expertise, man had walked on the
moon and computers were revolutionizing the workplace. However, as Neil Postman (1993) recognizes
in the key theme of his book Technopoly, “technology giveth, and technology taketh away.” In focusing
on diagnosis, the scientific way to solve the problem, the child becomes the problem. From a scientific
worldview perspective, the focus centered on the problem in the child—that which would need to
analyzed and diagnosed—rather than the being of the child. The books in this first cohort pattern this
perception. Another aspect clearly evident in the books was the lack for the most part of story, which is
seen to be secondary to diagnosis. The problem cannot be fully solved by “heartless” science, as any
parent knows.
By the end of the disease” at the forefront was mounting. A paradigm shift in perception was
looming and necessary. This recognition may account for some changes of heart in the picture books in
the following decade.
What can be learned from story in cohort two?
In the second cohort of seventeen picture books, first, embracing of difference and coping with it
appears to be more prevalent, and, second, more contemporary themes become evident. The books in
this cohort are as follows:
1. Bishop, B., Bishop, C. (2002). My friend with autism. Arlington, Texas: Future Horizons inc. P
2. Peralta, S. (2002). All about my brother: An eight-year-old sister’s introduction to her brother
who has autism. Shawnee Missions, KS: AAPC. P/J
3. Ely, L., Dunbar, P. (2004). Looking after Louis. Morton Grove, Ill: Albert Whitman & Co. P/J
4. Day, A. (2004). The flight of a dove. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. P/J
5. Welton, J. (2004). Can I tell you about Asperger Syndrome? Philadelphia: Jessica kingsley
publishers P/J
6. Larson, E. (2006). I am utterly unique Mission, KS: Asperger publishing company. P
7. Elder, J. (2006). Different like me: My book of autism heroes. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley
Publishers. J/I
8. Van Niekerk, C., Venter, L. (2006). Understanding Sam and Asperger Syndrome. Erie, PA: Skeezel
Press. P/J
9. Luchsinger, D.F. (2007). Playing by the rules. Bethesda MD: Woodbine house. P/J
10. Shally, C., Harrington, D. (2007). Since we’re friends: An autism picture book. Centerton,
Arkansas: Awaken Specialty Press. P/J
11. Altman, A.J. (2008). Waiting for Benjamin: A story about autism. Morton Grove, Ill: Alan
Whitman &Company. P
12. Moore-Mallinos, J. (2008). My brother is autistic. Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational Series,
Inc P/J
13. Rustad, M.E.H. (2008). Some kids have autism. Mankato, MN: Captsto E Press. K- 1
14. Grass, G. (2009). I can fix it. Perth, Ontario: Iris The dragon publishing. P/J
15. Shapiro, O. (2009). Autism and me: Sibling stories. Morton Grove, Ill: Albert Whitman &
Company. P/J
16. Veenendall, J. (2008). Arnie and his school tools: Simple sensory solutions that build success.
Shawnee Mission, KS: Autism Asperger Publishing Co. P/J
17. Veendenhall, J. (2009). Why does Izzy cover her ears? Dealing with sensory overload. Shawnee
Mission, KS: Autism Asperger’s Publishing Co. P/J
This selection of books in cohort two is of interest not only for content, but also for size.
Exponentially, there are three times as many books readily available in this second cohort. Either culture
or the book market is seeing a need for this genre of literature . . . but why?
Changes in perspective toward any theme often occur in tandem with changes in culture and
worldview perspective. Some of the rise in interest in ASD picture books may be due to the current
educational placement policy of children with special needs into inclusive classroom environments.
Beyond the classroom, multiculturalism and a postmodern era favoring difference is also factoring into
how Canadian society views itself as part of a global educational community. Media and popular adult
fiction is also becoming representative of ASD in other contexts, such as the sciences and humanities,
popular fiction (for example, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, written by Mark Haddon
in 2003; House Rules, written by Jodi Picoult in 2010). “Difference” is currently a key commodity in the
media, as noted Mozart and the Whale (2005) on autism; I am Sam, (2001) on cognitive delay; The
Soloist (2009) on schizophrenia, and Reign Over Me (2007) on post-traumatic stress disorder (PST). A
movement toward self-advocacy and ASD as a “different style of learning,” emerging primarily from
adults with ASD, has been adding insight and recognition of interdisciplinary accomplishments to certain
areas of study, such as the self-disclosing work of Temple Grandin.
As in the previous cohort of picture books, all picture books in the second cohort (2000-2009)
are written by family members, but more members of the larger family community are included (i.e.,
parents, siblings, grandparents, interventionists and practitioners personally involved with the care of a
child with ASD). Parents and practitioners wrote these books for children with the idea of moving the
“differently-abled-ness” issues of their children from the home closet to the public forum. The majority
of books in the second cohort are still self-published, but there are literary differences, perhaps in part
to technical intervention and the many self-publishing venues now available that provide support to
new authors beyond what was available to the previous cohort.
The general tone of the picture books in the second cohort reflects the need for dependence on
networks of support and the necessity for understanding and acceptance. Children and families require
larger networks in order to live both with and beyond the diagnostic label of ASD. These networks act as
subcultures that will enable children within the ASD spectrum to be recognized as part of a social world.
Social communication is also stressed, and the need for others to act as intermediaries for the soreferenced “different” student is central in some of the stories. More of the stories are centered in
school settings and reference school-based human resource supports than in the picture books in the
first cohort (Altman, 2008; Welton, 2004; Ely & Dunbar, 2004; Day, 2004; Rustad, 2008).
In school settings, the focus is often on assisting classroom students to accommodate students
with ASD within inclusive classrooms. Specific characteristics, such as lack of language, attention span,
sensitivities pertinent to ASD and targeted behaviors in students with ASD are the focus. Some of the
books blend both home and school settings, and include a variety of caregivers (Van Niekirk, 2006;
Luchsinger, 2007; Shally & Herrington, 2007; Veendenhal, 2008, 2009). These stories tend to show
snapshots of the multiple levels of assistance required at home and school in order to allow the child to
acquire life skills despite difficulty.
Newer stories also focus on siblings and their love, anger and feelings of responsibility regarding
their brothers and sisters with ASD (Altman, 2008; Shapiro, 2009; Peralta, 2002; Moore-Mallinos, 2008).
Other books are deemed to be informative, relating to mental health and difference but not as directly
related to the home or school life of the child with ASD (Larson, 2006; Grass, 2009). This is interesting, as
the child is not central at all in these latter two texts. In place of reference directly to the child, the
“label” (or total avoidance of it) is used to refer to the “problem” hidden between the covers.
All of the stories in this cohort tend to favor a focus on the need for a social network in raising a
child. They also imply that such involvement is in some way, either directly or indirectly, therapeutic for
family members.
Once again, worldview perspectives emerge. This decade (2000-2009) is one in which
postmodernity makes the idea of difference and resistance to the traditional norm the “new good,” so
to speak. This opens the door for voices to be heard, and educational views assist in this with provision
for ASD students in the “inclusive” classroom. However, these books raise another thought: Is inclusion
really a new form of exclusion if students are not fully equipped for life after formal schooling and
parenting ends?
The negative aspect in tandem with the embrace of what we will term in this paper as a new
inclusion-ism, is that students are still not seen within the secular school system world from a
nonscientific worldview perspective. This may stem possibly from a politically correct mode of balancing
the budget in school districts in some cases, and parental lobbying in the other. In a current year of
budget cuts, one wonders if such good will also be reversed, teacher assistance cut, or parental
assistance grants diminished. What could happen if “difference” goes out of vogue for another “new
good,” such as segregated classrooms where students with exceptionalities feel more accepted by
similar peers? Would this be more meaningful to the child? In education, what goes around often comes
around. With no clear reason, long-term goals or substantial argument evident to make lasting and
larger vision for provision for those who struggle; parents are often insecure about the future of the
child beyond the years of formal schooling. Thus, books showing the need for having a “village of
support” may be helpful. It is interesting that there does not appear to be any deliberate focus in these
stories regarding what the main character, the child with ASD, actually thinks or feels about such
concerns. Perhaps that will be the next paradigm shift.
Seeing the “Me” is ASD?
Perhaps in the books referenced throughout this study, seeing the “ME” in ASD is still a work in
progress. Few of the books allow the student labeled with ASD to find his/herself in “the larger life”
beyond the home and classroom. These books are an outcome of what Thomas Sergiovanni (2000)
describes as the tension between the system world and life world of educational practice. In part, this is
reflective of the scientific mindset and culturally acceptable worldview that influenced, even
subconsciously, the writing of the times. This analytical fragmentation of dichotomies between
school/home, subjects/sciences, work/faith was very logical, but in some ways, less heart-oriented.
Teachers were supposed to care—but not too much! There was emphasis on education of the “head”
about and within the educational system world (information-oriented), but not as much of the “heart”
that was foundational to the life world (servant-leadership oriented) (Belcher, 2006). However, this
research suggests that great opportunity to write such picture books exists.
In considering this literature, classroom teachers have additional questions to pose. If they were
to use these books in the classroom with the hope of assisting an ASD student, what would be the
benefit? The answer is, of course, that teachers should equip students in understanding the past,
present and future benefits of their education. But how does the student with ASD respond to the
book? Are these books actually written more for the parent and sibling than the child with ASD? I
suggest we need further research into that question as a supplementary study to this foundational
research.
Considerations for using ASD picture books in the classroom
If the main reason for using ASD-specific books is to inform other classroom members of the
“differently-abled” challenges evident for a student with ASD, then some suggestions can be made. It is
not suggested that everyone will embrace these perceptions; nevertheless, some may find them to be
helpful. As literacy advocates, as authors, and as educators in a Christian university, this section can be
approached only from our own core philosophies as educators. In doing so, it is acknowledged that
these may differ from some of the readers of this paper.
As with the use of any picture book, it is important to have a reason for using it that will
enhance meaning-making, and from our perspectives, offer a sense of wonder, truth, justice and
reconciliation to the act of learning for life. The book, if well written and illustrated, should be able to
accomplish four key goals:
First, the book should be able to be used to put language skills in the student’s toolbox. In order
to do that, it needs to be well written.
Second, the book should provoke discussion about both worldview and character formation
where appropriate. Students do not read to learn how to read; they read to learn how to live.
Third, the book should lend itself to multiple readings to integrate the story to life in and out of
the classroom, across many subject areas. As T.S. Eliot once quipped, “Only an idiot reads a book
once.” The book needs to be worthy of more than one reading in order to dig deeper into the
information it may unfold.
Fourth, a theme of how the child develops into a future adult citizen should be predominant—
not how he/she does not! Stories should be harbingers of hope, even in a postmodern setting
and culture, because children are well worthy of hope.
The goal of education is to make a difference. But not any kind of difference will do. In using
story as a venue for teaching, Neil Postman says it well:
Of course, there are many learnings that are little else but a mechanical skill. . . . But to become
a different person because of something you have learned—to appropriate an insight, a concept, a
vision, so that your world is altered—that is a different matter. For that to happen you need a reason . . .
a reason is different from a motivation . . . For school to make sense, the young, their parents, and their
teachers must have a god to serve . . . if they have none, school is pointless. Nietzche’s famous aphorism
is relevant here: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” This applies as much to
learning as to living (Postman, 1995, pp. 3-4).
References:
Aiken, A.G. (2007). Post modernism and children's literature. ICCTE Journal, 2(2), 5-9.
Belcher, E.C. (2006). Is the heart of education the education of the heart? ICCTE journal, Vol. 2(No. 1),
15.
Belcher, E.C. (2005). The place of worldview in Christian approaches to education. Journal of Christian
Education (Australian Christian Forum on Education Incorporated), 48(3), 9-24.
Brenna, B. (2009). Creating characters with diversity in mind: Two Canadian authors discuss social
constructs of disability in literature for children. Language and Literacy, 11(1), 11 pages.
Cook, K., Earles-Vollrath, T., Ganz, J. (2006). Bibliotherapy. Intervention in School and Clinic, 42(2), 91100.
Doecke, B., Parr, G. (2009). “Crude thinking” or reclaiming our “story-telling rights”: Harold Rosen’s
essays on narrative. Changing English: An International Journal of English Teaching, 16(1), 63-76.
Haddon, M. (2003). The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. Toronto: Random House Canada.
Heath, S.B. (1982). What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school. Language in
Society, 11(49-76).
Kalke-Klita, T. (2005). Moving forward: The inclusion of characters with Down syndrome in children’s
picture books. Language and Literacy, 7(2), 18 pages.
Maich, K., Kean, S. (2004). Read Two Books and Write Me in the Morning!
Bibliotherapy for social emotional intervention in the inclusive classroom. Teaching Exceptional Children
Plus, 1(2).
Picoult, J. (2010). House rules. New York: Atria books.
Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books.
Postman, N. (1995). The end of education: Redefining the value of school. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Prater, M.A. (2003). Learning disabilities in children’s and adolescent literature: How are characters
portrayed? Learning Disability Quarterly, 26(1), 47-62.
Sergiovanni, T.J. (2000). The lifeworld of leadership: Creating culture, community and personal meaning
in our schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
AUTHORS’ NOTES
Christina Belcher is an Associate Professor of Education at Redeemer University College, Ancaster,
Ontario, Canada, and an adjunct professor of education at Trinity Western University, Langley B.C. She
has formerly worked in New Zealand and Australia in Teacher Education. She is Editor for the ICCTE
journal, and is active on many committees involving educational issues. Her interests are in worldview,
higher education, culture and literacy where she strives is to bring wonder, truth, justice and
reconciliation to academic study.
Dr. Kimberly Maich is an Assistant Professor (Sessional) at Redeemer University College, a part-time
instructor at Nipissing University, and ASD specialist at McMaster Children’s Hospital. She can be
reached by email at kmaich@redeemer.ca. Her research interests lie in special education in Ontario, in
Newfoundland and Labrador, and across Canada, as well as in ASD and Christian Education in the area of
exceptionalities. She has a passion for study and professional practice in the area of ASD, and enjoys
examining picture books for qualities beyond their literary value.
“Telling, Sharing, Doing”: Origins and Iterations of
The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities Russia Initiative
Richard Scheuerman, Seattle Pacific University
Recent tensions between the United States and Russia have led many international observers to
fear a worsening in East-West relations. Benefits from the “peace dividend” resulting from the end of
the Cold War have provided domestic improvements and expanded mission opportunities that might
now be jeopardized. The situation brings to mind experiences and lessons from the 1989-1994 period
when a small group of citizen-scholars in the US and USSR/CIS reached out to each other in largely
unheralded ways for reconciliation that bore unexpected benefits for the participants and affiliated
schools and wider public.
Introduction
“Tell what you know. Share what you have. Do what you can.” With these words, Rev. Peter
Deyneka, Jr. expressed to an audience of college students, professors, and mission workers in the spring
of 1991 the three abiding principles that had long framed his ministry to the peoples of Eastern Europe,
Russia, and Central Asia. The phrase was drawn from familiar biblical accounts of individuals who
perceived needs of others and endeavored to make a positive difference in their lives. Deyneka
reminded his listeners of the “telling” by Naaman’s captive servant girl about Elisha’s healing ministry in
Samaria (II Kings 5), and of the “sharing” of five loaves and two fishes by the lad in John’s retelling of the
feeding of the five thousand (John 6). Finally, he recounted how Jesus’ story of the compassionate Good
Samaritan involved “doing” in multiple ways—tending wounds, seeking others’ assistance, and paying
expenses (Luke 10). Deyneka then observed the profound shared aspects of these selfless acts: God’s
miraculous intervention in personal affairs, consideration of physical as well as spiritual needs, service to
those of other cultural traditions, and the anonymity of effective witness. In a word, Peter Deyneka, Jr.
was advocating a vision for holistic ministry in a new era of mission opportunity to the East. His views
reflected the “whole Gospel” mandate expressed by the authors of the 1974 Lausanne Covenant to
integrate witness and service, evangelism with social action.
Opportunities to freely undertake such ministry in the Soviet Union had long been severely
restricted under the policies of communist leaders. Ministry to the East in the 20th century had been
undertaken by organizations like the Slavic Gospel Association (SGA), founded in Chicago in 1934 by
Deyneka’s father, Byelorussian immigrant Peter Deyneka, Sr. Missions like SGA established an
international radio ministry to listeners in the USSR and to Slavic populations throughout the world. By
1975 over 140 SGA missionaries were working in 20 countries and 600 evangelistic broadcasts directed
monthly at the USSR. Upon his father’s retirement from the mission in 1975, Wheaton College and
Northern Baptist Seminary graduate Peter Deyneka, Jr. was named president. Under his leadership,
SGA’s radio and publishing ministry continued to flourish (Lowman, 2000).
In 1978 the mission established the Institute for Soviet and East European Studies (ISEES) as a
research and educational division affiliated with the Wheaton College Graduate School. The institute’s
founding director was Deyneka’s wife, Seattle Pacific College graduate Anita Marson Deyneka, who
shared a missionary family heritage. Her grandparents, Elverage and Veta McIntosh, had served as
Episcopalian missionaries to Athabascan Indians in Alaska in the 1920s. The Deynekas worked closely
together as mission partners from the time they were married in 1968. Peter’s international contacts
and public presence, combined with his wife’s scholarly endeavors and writing skills, were mutually
reinforcing. Their combined contributions and subsequent prominence in international ministry circles
sometimes overshadowed the capacities each possessed as scholar and mission strategist.
ISEES emerged under Anita Deyneka’s leadership in the late 1980s as a leading US evangelical
setting for the study of religious history and contemporary life in the Soviet Union. The institute
represented an academic forum to consider these and related matters of burgeoning mission relevance.
Such issues included contextualizing ministry in the East and establishing relationships with Russian
Christians and Soviet educators seeking to learn from their counterparts in the West. Anita Deyneka also
served in the 1980s as an adjunct professor in Wheaton’s Missions/Intercultural Department teaching
an occasional course, “Missiological Implications of Church-State Relations in the Soviet Union.”
The Deynekas established a committee of mission scholars and Russian studies experts to guide
ISSEES’ work, including Dr. Michael Bourdeaux of London’s Institute for the Study of Religion and
Communism (Keston College), Thomas Kay and Mark Elliot of Wheaton College, and historian Kent Hill at
Seattle Pacific University. Both Wheaton and Seattle Pacific were members of the Washington, DC-based
Christian College Coalition (later the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities [CCCU]) that was led
in the 1980s by individuals with special interests in Russia. CCCU President and Mennonite theologian
Dr. Myron Augsburger was a scholar of the Anabaptist experience in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, while
Dr. John Bernbaum, a former State Department Russian affairs specialist, served as executive director of
the 80-member organization.
Seattle Pacific offered one of the CCCU’s strongest programs in Russian studies with specialists
in language, history, and geography. The school had risen to prominence in the field in part through
efforts in the 1970s by historian Kent Hill to draw international attention to the cause of the “Siberian
Seven,” a group of Christian dissidents who had taken refuge in the US Embassy in Moscow. Christians
from Barnaul, Siberia, who had taken refuge in the American Embassy, were the subject of Anita
Deyneka’s 1977 book, A Song in Siberia. Comparative education was a focus of interest by SPU’s Arthur
Ellis, professor of doctoral studies in the school’s curriculum and instruction program (Hill, 1989;
Deyneka, 1977).
New study and ministry opportunities in the USSR significantly opened with Mikhail Gorbachev’s
selection as USSR Communist Party General Secretary in 1985. His rise to power ushered in an era of
unprecedented domestic political change in global rivalries between the United States and Soviet Union.
Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika found expression during his initial year in office in an
effort to confront a serious national issue with moral implications—the nation’s widespread problem of
alcohol abuse. Although laws were enacted to limit the sale of alcohol and prohibit public drunkenness,
they resulted in severe economic dislocations. Many provisions of the new legislation were repealed or
not enforced.
The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident further revealed deplorable working and environmental
conditions, but Gorbachev’s ire was especially aroused by conservative bureaucrats’ campaign of
misinformation following the disaster. In the wake of these events, Gorbachev asserted increasing
authority to implement a progressive domestic agenda, and by 1989, had enacted reforms in most
government ministries that substantially separated civil operations from party control. The Ministry of
Higher Education, however—long the bastion of doctrinaire communist ideology—remained the most
resistant to the new thinking. Leaders in other ministries and the Soviet Academy of Sciences, however,
actively sought international contacts in order to study comparative approaches to solve problems and
effect progressive change in a nation long burdened by economic stagnation and ideological control
(Medvedev & Giuletto, 1989; Nove, 1989).
“The Religious Foundation of Morality”
In November 1989 Anita Deyneka participated in a seminar at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Chicago and offered an analysis of factors
promoting stability in the USSR in light of the dramatic collapse that year of the Eastern Bloc. Speakers
throughout the week had offered commentary on a range of political and economic factors influencing
the breakup and implications for Soviet stability. Deyneka spoke on the role of Christian literature in the
new climate of Gorbachev’s glasnost, emphasizing that the thirst for such literature was evidence that
the root cause of the dramatic changes evident throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR was a spiritual
crisis. Marxist ideology ruthlessly imposed by Lenin and his successors could not be sustained
indefinitely and glasnost had publicly exposed to Soviet citizens the moral bankruptcy of their system
and leaders (Deyneka, 1989).
Immediately following Deyneka’s presentation, a visiting scholar from the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, sociologist Mikhail Matskovsky, politely approached her. He informed Deyneka that research
conducted by his institute based on a comprehensive series of interviews with Soviet youth and adults
had led him to the same conclusion. Matskovsky explained in excellent English that while he was not a
believer, he was “in great sympathy to the religious foundation of morality” and that without it, social
cohesion unravels. His special interest was in the role of the Ten Commandments as a moral foundation
for Western culture, and expressed interest in establishing a cooperative project on the Ten
Commandments between ISEES and the Academy’s Institute on Social Research on the Decalogue’s
relevance in contemporary society and especially among Russian and American youth.
Deyneka was intrigued by Matskovsky’s proposal and impressed with the sincerity of his
request. She pledged to fully consider the possibility and arranged to introduce the determined
academician to her husband the following day. Peter shared his wife’s enthusiasm over the prospect of
ministry through an academic relationship with the USSR’s most prestigious academic institution. Since
Matskovsky specifically sought expertise in Western approaches to vospitaniye (literally “upbringing,” or
moral education), the Deynekas introduced Matskovsky to sociologists Ivan Fahs and Paul DeVries from
Wheaton College who agreed to help direct in the project.
During this time of openness, the Deynekas were invited to participate in a roundtable of CCCU
schools in Washington, DC, to consider the possibility of student exchanges with institutions of higher
learning in the Soviet Union. At this meeting, Anita Deyneka met John Bernbaum, and International
Programs Director Karen Longman who was appointed to serve as the group’s liaison for this project.
The Deynekas offered to contact the Russian Ministry of Higher Education (RMHE) on an upcoming visit
to Russia, and subsequently met in Moscow with Deputy RMHE Minister Yevgeni Kazantsev. He
responded to their query about this seemingly unlikely prospect with the assertion that the ministry
would be highly interested because of the moral values embraced by Christian schools. Bernbaum and
Longman had been instrumental in establishing Coalition foreign study programs in Europe and Latin
America and were interested in exploring the possibility of such an arrangement in Russia (Deyneka,
1989; Longman, 1990).
Longman’s visit to Moscow in March 1990 coincided with the Kremlin’s announcement of
Gorbachev’s election by the Congress of People’s Deputies as the first (and only) president of the Soviet
Union. Gorbachev continued to serve as General Secretary of the Communist Party, but despite his
professed and demonstrated intentions to reform government bureaucracies, many reformers
expressed concern at his new efforts to consolidate executive power. Among his most outspoken critics
was Moscow political leader Boris Yelstin, who had been elected the previous year to the Supreme
Soviet of the Russian Federation. Gorbachev responded that dealing with the scope of nationality and
economic problems warranted his widening power.
The second week of March, Longman participated in the first informal meetings in Moscow with
Minister Kinelev and Kazantsev’s RMHE liaison, Oleg Marusev, to establish a reciprocal relationship
between the CCCU and Russian institutions of higher learning. An atmosphere of suspicion was still
apparent, and after a brief session to establish trust and ascertain each other’s true intentions, Marusev
returned to report his favorable impressions to the Ministry while Longman then traveled to Moscow
State University on the city’s south side for a similar meeting in the school’s imposing main building with
Dr. Svelana Ter-Minasova, Foreign Languages Department Chair. Longman was introduced at this
meeting to the complexities of the Soviet system of higher education and learned that the university and
RMHE functioned separately from the Ministry of Public Education and its system of public elementary
and secondary schools and the teacher training institutes, which remained a focus of CCCU interest.
In a subsequent meeting with Russian secondary teacher Ivan Obukov, Longman inquired about
the extent of religious influence on education in Gorbachev’s Russia. Obukov, who had recently toured
high schools in America, characterized Gorbachev as “a clever and able man of the time but . . . faced
with overwhelming challenges.” The country’s economic plight and resistance from conservative
apparatchiks prevented Gorbachev from addressing the country’s central problem: “The Russian
Christian tradition was effectively extinguished as a national force for renewal and strength by the
terrorist policies of the early Communist leaders. They then sought to replace this worldview with a
Marxist-Leninist ideology, which has utterly failed now to give meaning to our lives. So our nation is now
adrift and is in despair.” Obukov encouraged Longman to press ahead with the Coalition initiative and
that with persistence she would find leaders in the Academy and Ministry willing to risk their careers by
reaching out to their Western counterparts (Longman, 1990).
Matskovsky arranged for Longman to meet officials of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences for
the remainder of her March visit. To facilitate discussions, he had procured the services of Alla
Tikhanova, an able translator from the Institute for American-Canadian Studies. A formal conference
proposal emerged in meetings later that day with officials from a secondary school who offered to host
such a gathering—Moscow School 345. The anticipated gathering, named the Soviet-American
Conference on Moral Education, would be co-sponsored by the Ministry of Higher Education and take
place during the regular school year to facilitate maximum attendance by professional educators
(Longman, 1990).
Two days later Longman learned details from Matskovsky and Tikhanova regarding an official
protocol of agreement—protocol required in order to obtain permission directly from Soviet Minister of
Education Gennady Yagodin for an official visitation to the US in order to formalize an agreement on
exchanges and the conference series. In accordance with these instructions and in partnership with the
Academy of Education (Pedagogical Science), ISEES and CCCU staff submitted the proposal through
formal channels later in the month (Longman, 1990). During a mission trip to Moscow by the Deynekas
several weeks later, Matskovsky informed the couple that the Ministry had authorized the project. His
announcement was soon followed by a report to the Deynekas by Marusev that RMHE Deputy Minister
Kazantsev had accepted the CCCU invitation to lead a delegation of Soviet university and technical
college presidents to Washington, DC, in September.
Protocol of Intentions
The Kazantsev delegation’s 10-day visit to United States in September 1990 represented a
turning point in relations between Russian educational officials and leaders of Christian higher education
in the United States. The Soviet delegation consisted of 16 officials representing the Ministry and seven
institutions of higher learning in Moscow, Gorky, Tula, Yaroslavl, Ivanova, and Lvov. Augsburger and
Bernbaum hosted the gathering at the Council’s spacious headquarters on K Street near the Capitol
Building.1 In opening remarks to the assembled Council representatives, Kazantsev directly addressed
his intentions for the trip: “We understand that [religion] has made great contributions to our nation
and to the world . . . We are finding enormous interest in the study of religion among our youth and
seek your partnership in helping us rediscover our spiritual heritage.” Dr. Alexander Khokhlov, Rector of
Gorky (Nizhni Novgorod) State University and Supreme Soviet Deputy added, “The values which are
affirmed by the Christian colleges are valuable to the Soviet Union, although they were lost over the
years” (Hoeks, 1990).
Delegates were then taken on a three-day excursion to area CCCU schools, including trips to
Virginia’s Eastern Mennonite College, Messiah College, Eastern College in Pennsylvania. At Eastern in St.
David’s, the Soviets met sociologist Dr. Tony Campolo who escorted the group to Philadelphia to witness
firsthand a range of Christian outreach ministries to inner-city single mothers and at-risk youth. At
Messiah, Minister Kazantsev, a nuclear physicist by profession, made an unscheduled visit to the science
building where he encountered 91-year-old Raymond Crist, professor of environmental science and
former director of the Manhattan Project’s Columbia University Group from 1945-46. Upon learning
each other’s backgrounds, the two men warmly embraced and while Kazantsev had used a Russian
translator throughout his journey, the two men began communicating in scientific terms largely
unintelligible to speakers of both languages. After several minutes, Dr. Crist poignantly observed, “When
I think of the untold billions our nations have invested in weapons of mutual destruction, I rejoice that
by the grace of God we should now devote our efforts to peace and the renewal of spiritual values”
(Stahl, 1991).
The Kazantsev RMHE delegation returned to Washington, DC, and began work to formulate
concrete plans for possible cooperative endeavors. Washington press reports carried news that week
that the Supreme Soviet had voted overwhelmingly to “end the Bolshevik policy of atheistic education
and state controls of religious institutions and permit organized religious instruction” (Washington Post,
September 27, 1991). After two long days of convivial discussions, including attendance at an evening
performance of the National Symphony under the direction of renown émigré composer-conductor
Mstislav Rostropovich, the parties unanimously agreed to five core objectives: student exchanges and
foreign study opportunities, faculty exchanges and visits, instructional materials development and
distribution, promoting Russian and English language programs, and joint humanitarian, scientific, and
“other programs in areas of mutual interest” (Y. Kazantsev, 1990).
Bernbaum credited the Deynekas for their vision of outreach to Russian educators that led to
confirmation of the ambitious agreement. Asked to summarize the significance of the negotiations, he
responded, “This is truly one of those rare ‘moments of truth’ in a nation’s history when basic decisions
are being made that will set the future course for millions of people. Our desire is to be witnesses of
Jesus Christ to our Soviet friends and to help them restructure their educational system so that moral
and spiritual values are integrated into their academic programs. The roots of Russian spirituality lie
deep in their collective history and must be rediscovered. We also hope to challenge our own students
to gain a vision for their lives that might include building bridges between our two cultures” (Hoeks,
1990). Kazantsev echoed Bernbaum’s remarks when asked about overtures to the Ministry by other
organizations. “Few have approached our government about work in this area. Many in the West seem
more interested in joint-ventures to make money than working for humanitarian reasons to spend
money helping our nation and its youth at this critical time. . . . We look forward to working with the
American Christian colleges in this new effort to help our young people rediscover their spiritual
heritage. Such teaching is the true source of friendship among peoples and personal fulfillment” (Stahl,
1991).
The CCCU reciprocal visit to the Soviet Union led by Bernbaum and assisted by Deyneka
associate Elaine Stahl took place in October 1990. The Deynekas traveled separately to Moscow at the
same time to confer with Evangelical Christian-Baptist leaders as well as with Matskovsky and education
officials. The American delegation representing 11 Council colleges was greeted in person at Moscow’s
Sheremetyevo Airport by Minister Kazantsev, then taken downtown to the University Hotel. Kazantsev
briefed his guests on the “war of laws” between the Russian parliament and the All-Union Supreme
Soviet that was escalating into open political battle. Kazantsev, an ally of Yeltsin but with sympathy for
Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika, feared that the movement to republic secession might lead to
bloodshed. He reported that the Supreme Soviet had just announced its refusal to recognize the
sovereignty of the Russian Republic. An aide to Kazantsev also reported on the “great tragedy” of Father
Menn’s murder just days earlier by an axe-wielding assassin. Both men expressed hope that the
country’s present chaotic situation would not cast a pallor over their shared agenda. The following day,
the American delegation of members who had gathered in Washington, DC, divided into two groups
that departed on three-day tours of six technical institutes and universities in Tula, Yaroslavl, Stavropol,
Ivanova, Nizhni Novgorod, and Leningrad (Stahl, 1990).
The Americans met with an especially warm reception in Nizhni Novgorod, a recently closed city
of 1.4 million at the confluence of the Volga and Oka rivers in Russia’s heartland. Rector Alexander
Khokhlov headed one of the nation’s preeminent universities and pledged personal and institutional
support to establish exchanges with CCCU members and to host American professors of religious studies
and business administration. Hundreds of students packed an auditorium to overflowing to hear the
delegates speak briefly on the purpose of their visit. In a brief question-and-answer time, the group was
bombarded with questions about life values, belief in God, and future relations between the US and
USSR; the questions made news on national television and were widely publicized in the Russian press.
Anita Deyneka appeared later in the week with Wheaton sociologist Ivan Fahs on one of the
country’s most popular evening television programs, “Good Evening Moscow.” The broadcast was
preceded by the story of a joint housing construction project for Chernobyl evacuees featuring Jimmy
Carter with Habitat for Humanity and Russian Orthodox Church volunteers. Following the group’s return
to the US, Bernbaum reflected on the trip’s significance: “Both Soviets and Americans have a great deal
to learn from each other, and the newly signed protocols open the way for exciting programs for both
students and faculty. Building bridges across cultures, especially cultures that were ‘at war’ with other
for decades, is a great step forward in building world peace. We’re grateful that we can play a small role
in these unique times in world history.” Bernbaum moved to form an executive committee of CCCU
Russian Initiative participants to explore possibilities for establishing a CCCU foreign study center in
Russia (Hoeks, 1990; Bernbaum, 1992).
A detailed article on the ISEES-Matskovsky moral education “Ten Commandments Project”
appeared in the October 1990 issue of the influential Teachers Gazette with a favorable editorial
commentary by Academy of Pedagogical Sciences President Vasily Davydov (Uchitel’skaia Gazeta,
October 22, 1990). Matskovsky also made arrangements to introduce members of the October CCCU
delegation to Russia’s preeminent educational futurist, Dr. Boris Guershunsky, director of the Academy’s
Theoretical Pedagogics Institute and author of nine books on teacher training and school reform.
Guershunsky had carefully studied the recent journal article about cooperative East-West projects on
educational renewal and informed his guests that “this kind of moral and spiritual perspective would
contribute significantly” to progressive change in Russia. Following a lengthy meeting during which
Guershunsky learned of the Council’s “Through the Eyes of Faith” college text series, he requested
copies of the volumes on literature, history, psychology, and business for consideration in a cooperative
publishing or distribution project. As the noted pedagogue rose to escort the group from his office, they
turned to notice Guershunsky standing in front of a large color poster of Christ on the Cross suspended
over the planet Earth. In a subsequent luncheon, opened by one of the delegates with an invited prayer,
tears welled up in the noted academician’s eyes and he whispered that it was the first time anyone had
ever shared a prayer in his presence (Stahl, 1990).2
Representatives of the American team met on October 25 with Vladimir Belyaev, Gorbachev’s
appointed Chairman of the Soviet State Committee on Education, and Moscow Regional Education
Committee Chair Luybov Keyzina in order to explain their intentions in person and request financial
support on behalf of their Russian counterparts. Both officials knew of the initiative through the
Teachers Gazette article and pledged their support. Belyaev informed the group of his meeting two days
before with President Gorbachev at which they discussed the need to consider “new paradigms” for
promoting the moral education of the nation’s youth. Belyaev was especially encouraged to learn of the
group’s favorable meeting with Boris Guershunsky whose criticism of the Soviet education system he
believed to be among the most insightful of the day. He supported participation in the project by both
Guershunsky and Matskovsky and noted it was among the few Soviet-American ventures that facilitated
a domestic partnership between the sometimes fractious academies of sciences and education. Keyzina,
a tenacious administrator who oversaw operations of 1,200 schools for Moscow’s 1.5 million students,
expressed particular interest in sharing perspectives on special education and orphan transition
programs to better meet the needs of the city’s growing numbers of dispossessed youth.
The Americans’ visit concluded on October 27 with a gala dinner hosted by Minister Kazantsev
at the Rossiya Hotel adjacent to Red Square. Kazantsev asked John Bernbaum to open the gathering in
prayer; the meal concluded with both men offering remarks. Peter and Anita Deyneka with whom
Kazantsev had developed a close personal friendship also attended the dinner. He informed the
missionary couple and Bernbaum of Yagodin’s decision permitting the distribution of the proposed
Christian Education Library to schools of higher learning in the Russian Federation, including those most
resilient to change—the teacher training institutes. Kazantsev further informed the Deynekas that the
Russian Ministry of Education pledged to organize a national distribution campaign as an initial response
to the recently signed “Protocol of Intentions” if funds could be procured in the West to purchase the
books. The Deynekas and Bernbaum expressed confidence that the necessary support could be raised
soon after their return to the US (Deyneka, 1990).
A Crust of Bread
In the spring of 1991, Christian educators and longtime Deyneka associates Ray and Cindy
LeClair relocated from Wheaton to Moscow to serve as missionary liaisons between ISEES and the CCCU,
and leaders in nascent Christian education in Russia. They also formed close relationships with
Komendant and other Protestant leaders of the Evangelical Christian-Baptist Union, Association of
Pentecostal Churches, and the US-based Association for Christian Schools International (ACSI). The
LeClairs’ first task was to facilitate arrangements for the Soviet-American conference on moral
education and to work out logistical details with RMHE officials for delivery and distribution of 3,000
Christian Literature Libraries they had requested (LeClair, 1991). The LeClairs found that dramatic
political changes in the Baltic States had recently empowered officials throughout the USSR to decide
matters without interference from bureaucrats in the Communist Party or at the All-Union level.
Minister Kazantsev supplied them with a letter to be enclosed with each library parcel explaining their
purpose and origin and introduced them to Fydor Steplikov, the ministry’s supervisor for the project.
The LeClairs and other Deyneka associates also met prominent Russian scholar and Russian Democratic
Party founder Yuri Afanasyev whose USSR State Historical Archive Institute would serve as the
clearinghouse for the nationwide distribution of the libraries.
In meetings at the Ministry of Higher Education the following afternoon, ministers Kinelev and
Kazantsev received the Americans with special courtesies. They expressed similar resolve to establish a
university guided by Christian values with Western assistance to renovate a former Orthodox monastery
located along the Moscow River and to shape the academic program. “We are in special need of
Reformation thinking and history,” Kinelev explained. “Our people do not know Luther, Calvin, or these
other great thinkers of that time. When our Marxists taught . . . we heard only about the Peasants
Revolt and how these uprisings were the first stirrings of the proletarian masses. Now we understand
that such events were important but, in some ways, peripheral to the real significance of that time—the
change in people’s thinking because of reformist religious teaching” (LeClair, 1991). The Americans
returned to the Historical Archive Institute on March 19 to deliver lectures on Christianity and to present
Afanasyev and his faculty with the first of the libraries of Christian literature that had recently arrived via
Pauls’s Bible Mission in Gummersbach, Germany. Bernbaum also solicited CCCU institution libraries and
faculty members to contribute remaindered and duplicate copies of academic books and journals on
history, literature, and political science that resulted in the donation of thousands of works sought by
the Archive Institute and RMHE affiliates.
The LeClairs established offices for Christian education initiatives at Matskovsky’s newly
organized Center for Humanitarian Values, located near a primary school in the Sevastopol district of
south central Moscow. Over the next several years, the two-story brick structure became a halfway
house for innumerable groups of Western visitors representing a wide range of mission interests who
sought the LeClairs for services ranging from organizational registration and translations—both were
fluent in Russian—to citywide transit and medical treatment. Through introductions by Matskovsky and
Kazantsev, the indefatigable couple became acquainted with dozens of Moscow schoolteachers,
administrators, and internat (orphanage boarding school) staff in preparation for the inaugural RussianAmerican Conference on Moral Education held May 5-8, 1991, in the Sevastopol district. As the US
colleges signatory to the Washington, DC, protocol were heavily involved in organizing faculty and
student exchanges with their Soviet counterparts, Bernbaum invited other coalition members with
exemplary education departments to participate in sending delegates to the conference. Anita Deyneka
contacted former associates at her alma mater (Seattle Pacific University, and at Wenatchee Public
Schools in central Washington, where she had once taught high school English) and encouraged them to
organize the delegation (Baskina, 1991; Deyneka, 1991).
For these reason the American team consisted of SPU professors of education Arthur Ellis and
Jeff Fouts, Tony Bryant, and three other public school officials. The group was courteously welcomed in
Moscow by an audience of some 300 Soviet educators representing elementary, secondary, and higher
education who listened intently to presentations on the literature of C.S. Lewis and Nicholai Berdyaev,
effective schooling practices in the US, and intervention programs for at-risk adolescents. The USCanada Institute and other agencies provided Russian translators.
Minister Kazantsev and other officials from the ministries of Education and Academy of Sciences
participated in the proceedings, and on May 8 the American and Russian team met separately with
Vladimir Yegorev, President Gorbachev’s Chief Advisor on Cultural and Educational Affairs. Yegorev
expressed the administration’s support for the conference and exchange initiatives and also expressed
hope that groups of American teachers of English might come to work in Soviet colleges and schools. He
also spoke about the present “difficult period” President Gorbachev was experiencing due to the
prospect of withdrawal from the USSR by the Baltic States.
The final day of the May conference featured a presentation by Academician Guershunsky on
the need for moral renewal in Soviet society in which he called on conference leaders to take concrete
steps to perpetuate cooperative endeavors. “There is a need to radically revise the attitude . . . to
international contacts, to establish and drastically extend multilateral and bilateral ties with foreign
scholars, and to take part in joint research projects. The narrow critical analysis of foreign pedagogics
should give way to a constructive examination of channels of international cooperation in education.”
Guershunsky also challenged his listeners to join together with academicians in unprecedented
collaborative efforts to establish new educational settings long forbidden or restricted under the Soviet
period. In place of schools that until 1990 had promoted a rigorous atheism, he called for the creation of
private colleges, international pilot schools, lyceums, and even Sunday schools (Guershunsky, 1991).3
Textbook publishing
Dr. Alexander Abramov, an individual who would come to play a key role in educational reform
efforts under Dneprov, gave summary remarks closing the historic gathering. Abramov offered sober
analysis of deteriorating political and economic conditions throughout the country and the impact these
events were having on the education system. His thesis was that only the prospect of a spiritual and
moral transformation could reverse the destructive conditions caused by decades of communist
oppression. The audience, which had grown restive hearing the platitudes offered by two previous
Soviet academicians, listened raptly to the Abramov quiet eloquence. “Here we are like Moses in the
wilderness,” he said, “but we do not have forty years to find deliverance.” A moment after receiving an
ovation, Abramov approached the Americans and shared that he was an Orthodox believer who had
been following the conference proceedings with special interest. He reiterated Yegorev’s remarks about
threats to progressive change in Russia from “dark forces” within the Communist Party and a state
security apparatus that strongly opposed Gorbachev and Yelstin and threatened to overthrow them.
Abramov then told of his decision regarding the most significant step he could take in these days
of openness to promote the spiritual transformation of the country through its youth: provide as many
secondary students and teachers as possible with the Gospel of Mark as a “literature textbook,” a
biblical “Proverbs and Parables” reader, and other works by Christian authors like Alexander Menn, with
whom he had met only four days before the celebrated priest’s brutal murder (Abramov, 1991).
Abramov’s immediate goal was to print and distribute 500,000 copies of each title and was prepared to
begin as soon as possible if at least $100,000 in initial funding from the West could be procured.
Abramov’s plea was communicated that week to Peter Deyneka, who was in Moscow at that time for
meetings with Protestant church leaders. Deyneka arranged to meet with Abramov shortly before his
return to the States and pledged his support to the ambitious undertaking.
Days later Deyneka was aboard a return flight to the US and found himself seated next to
Vancouver, BC, businessman Garth Hunt, and president of the International Bible Society of Canada.
Deyneka shared Abramov’s ideas with Hunt who told Deyneka his organization had been seeking
opportunities to publish Bibles and other Christian literature in Russia rather than continuing the usual
practice of printing books in North America and Europe for shipment abroad. Following subsequent
meetings with Hunt’s board of directors and communication between Deyneka and Abramov, the
Canadian group pledged the entire amount. Within weeks of Abramov’s initial proposal for the venture,
the funds were transferred to the Institute for the Development of Educational Systems. A half-million
copies of the complete Gospel of Mark, which appeared with short stories by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in
The Gospel and Sacred Russian Literature, were printed in March 1992. Other titles in the multi-volume
series appeared later in the year including Proverbs and Parables and Father Menn’s Son of Man (Ivanov,
Zyablov & LeClair, 1991; R. Frame, 1992; Abramov, 1991).
Peter Deyneka presented his “Tell, Sharing, Doing” address to mission board members,
students, and staff in the spring of 1991 in order to express the biblical basis, dire need, and
unprecedented opportunity across the Soviet Union for holistic ministry. After recounting both the Old
and New Testament examples of anonymous witnessing and care giving for Russia’s “new day,” he also
spoke of continued constraints to ministry experienced by the national church. After decades of hostile
suppression in which believers had been denied opportunities for higher education and public service,
participation of church leaders in these realms remained limited in spite of newfound freedoms
emerging across the country. Deyneka shared that for this reason he had sought the counsel of
Evangelical Christian-Baptist Union President Komendant only to be challenged by him to “walk
through” the “open doors we cannot enter.” While inspiring to many of his co-workers, Deyneka found a
mixed response from some staff and board members to the prospect of new ministry initiatives to
Soviet political and educational officials and to other Christian denominations and confessions. Rather
than limit the scope of service, therefore, Deyneka decided in September 1991 to organize a separate
mission, Peter Deyneka Russian Ministries, in cooperation with several longtime missionary associates.
The new organization’s Eastern Europe affiliate, headquartered in Moscow, was named the Assosiatsiya
Dukhovnoye Vozrozhdeneya (Association for Spiritual Renewal).
The Deynekas encouraged plans to expand exchanges and the moral education conferences that
the Coalition school representatives presented during September in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They
also facilitated a November meeting in Moscow between ACSI International Programs Director Phil
Renicks and the LeClairs. Their discussion would lead to the LeClairs’ affiliation with ACSI one year later
and subsequent organization by the end of the decade of over 100 elementary and secondary Christian
schools in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus. John Bernbaum also journeyed to Russia in late 1991
on sabbatical from CCCU as a Visiting Scholar at Nizhni Novgorod State University to teach a 10-week
course on “Democracy and Moral Values.” Readings for the class included such works as The Federalist
Papers, de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and contemporary documents. At the same time,
Bernbaum’s wife, Marge, served as visiting professor and taught “The Life of Jesus” for the Department
of History and Religion (LeClair, 2008).
The Bernbaums’ time on the Volga also coincided with a visit to NNSU by Professor Kent Hill,
now executive director of the US Institute for Democracy and Religion, who had recently moved to
Russia with his family. All three participated in a weeklong seminar on “Education, Christianity, and
Social Change” held at the university in May that was attended by overwhelming numbers of students
and professors. The Bernbaums then returned to the US and organized a meeting of the “CCCU Russia
Initiative Strategy Council” the following September to facilitate an expansion of the Council’s exchange
programs with member schools. The group also considered establishment of a CCCU foreign study
center in Russia based on the 1990 joint “Protocol of Intentions” and the organization’s successful
models operating in other countries. The Council’s perseverance laid a foundation for the Russian-
American Christian University—Russia’s first state accredited interdenominational institution of higher
learning—which opened in Moscow five years later.4
Conclusion
When asked to characterize the significance of the various aspects of the CCCU Russia Initiative
since its inception in 1990, Dr. Anita Deyneka spoke in terms of the distinct challenges and opportunities
of service in the former USSR. “Contributions to long-term progressive change through Western
contacts can be developed only by fostering personal relationships of trust and consequence that
endure through the changing winds of international politics. The efforts of persons like John Bernbaum,
Arthur Ellis, Kent Hill, and other participants in CCCU endeavors bore fruit because they sought to forge
friendships and understand the Russian culture.” She cited their familiarity with Russia’s classical writers
and poets, Orthodoxy, and regard for the complexities of the Russian personality” and profound
appreciation for its peoples’ historical and cultural contributions to Western and especially American
society. Given these perspectives, “. . . the Russia Initiative has been experienced on both sides of the
globe as a full partnership of substantial mutual benefit.” In this way, the next generation of Russian
educators has been introduced to the Christian faith and new ideas about citizenship, while Americans
have learned the relevance of Vygotsky’s reflective practice and about Tolstoy’s Peasant School
pedagogy (Deyneka, 2007).
Russian Christian scholar Alexander Melnichuk characterizes a distinctive aspect of the CCCU
Russia Initiative and the Deynekas’ diverse ministries as examples of “biblical dialogue.” He notes that
Russia and other former republics of the Soviet Union were inundated in the 1990s with Western
missionaries, teachers, and businessmen who generally came with good intentions. “Too often,
however,” he observes, “they came with confidence in their message but indifference to our society and
its context. And someone’s monologue is not biblical dialogue.” Melnichuk cites the New Testament
example of respectful exchange in the relationships between Peter and Cornelius, Philip and the
Ethiopian eunuch, and Paul with the Athenians. Believers in each case “first listened to others’ needs”
and, in the case of Paul, sought “to understand prevailing philosophies and the national culture” in order
to be more effective and considerate servants. Moreover, they often pledged themselves to long-term,
sustaining associations with their hosts (Melnichuk, 2008).
Evidence of such associations has also been evident in more tangible ways. In the wake of the
9/11 terrorist disaster, not only was Vladimir Putin’s call offering assistance to President Bush the first
one from a foreign power, but also numerous Russian scholars and teachers immediately contacted
their American counterparts with words of solidarity and encouragement. Three years later when
Chechen terrorists killed over 300 children and other hostages in the Beslan School Massacre, SPU’s
Arthur Ellis was just days away from convening the school’s annual Conference on Citizenship Education,
successor to the series he had helped launch a decade earlier in Russia. The crisis precluded attendance
by delegates from Russia, but others from China, Nigeria, England, and the US participated. The
disturbing photograph of a bullet-riddled classroom in Beslan circulated at the conference prompted a
proposal by participants to raise funds to provide a backpack of school supplies for each of some 900
hostage survivors. To facilitate reliable distribution, Ellis and his colleagues contacted Anita Deyneka and
ASR president Sergey Rakhuba regarding the idea and learned of efforts under way to establish a trauma
crisis-counseling center in Beslan.
Leaders of both organizations helped facilitate the educators’ “Backpacks of Blessings”
campaign and, within weeks, the initial appeal was oversubscribed. The project ultimately provided
5,000 backpacks to children in areas of North Ossetia most affected by the tragedy (Triggs, 2005). In the
wake of these events, Deyneka also convened a Russian Ministries Youth Advisory Council, April 28-29,
2006, to facilitate bridge building between young American and Eastern European and new ministry
initiatives related to the needs of at-risk youth. Council members included students from Seattle Pacific
University and other CCCU schools who went on to form an affiliated ministry, Doorways to Hope, to
promote Christian foster care and adoption through seven pilot projects in Russian and Ukraine.5
Missionary author Paul Semenchuk laments Westerners who “triumphantly invade Russia
without any preparation, not having read one Russian book, not even one book about Russia.” Cultural
relevance takes time and dedication, acquired by individual and societal “caring, curiosity, observation,
scrutiny, questioning, [and] association” (Semenchuk, 2002). Qualities such as these evident in the life of
CCCU Russia Initiative participants spawned a range of mutually beneficial humanitarian and educational
endeavors since the inception of the project in spite of recurrent political, religious, and economic
challenges. “Work like this demonstrates the possibilities that can emerge from risking new friendships,”
observes Michael Beralauva, president of the University of the Russian Academy of Education, “and
holds the promise of still greater things to come” (Beralauva, 2009).
Endnotes
1
Coalition representatives who responded to Bernbaum’s invitation to participate included Allen Carden,
Spring Arbor College; Mary Dueck, Fresno Pacific College, Orval Gingerich, Eastern Mennonite College;
William Harper, Gordon College; Clarence Hebert, Tabor College; Harold Heie, Messiah College; Stephen
Hoffman, Taylor College; Rex Rogers, King’s College; and David Wollman, Geneva College. Consistent
with Soviet practice at the time, one of the delegates who traveled in the guise of an education ministry
“public information officer” was found to be a KGB agent assigned to monitor activities of individuals in
the group.
2
Titles in the Coalition’s HarperCollins college text series distributed in Russia included Ronald A. Wells,
History Through the Eyes of Faith (1989); Susan Gallagher, Literature Through the Eyes of Faith (1989);
and Daryl G. Myers and Malcolm A. Jeeves, Psychology Through the Eyes of Faith (1990). A fourth
volume in the series, Business Through the Eyes of Faith by Richard Chewning, was published in 1990
and translated into Russia for use in RACU’s business and economics classes.
3
The success of the conference in Moscow prompted Minister Kazantzev to travel to the US in late May
1991 to confer with teacher training faculty at the National College of Education in Evanston, Illinois;
Seattle Pacific University, and at Michigan’s Spring Arbor College where he delivered the school’s
commencement address. Annual sessions of the Russian-American Conference on Moral Education have
continued under Professor Arthur Ellis’s leadership at Seattle Pacific University’s Center for Global
Education Studies. Since 1994, meetings have been held in Moscow, Shuya, and Sochi; and in Kyiv,
Ukraine.
4
Kent Hill subsequently served as president of Eastern Nazarene College and as USAID Assistant
Administrator for Global Health under President George W. Bush. RACU’s first classes were held at
Moscow’s People’s Friendship University in June 1995 through the support of PFU rector Nikolai
Trofimov and Yevgeny Kunitsyn, international programs director, who had been members of the original
1990 RMHE-CCCU delegation. RACU operations later relocated to Moscow’s Christian Ministry Center
where its first students graduated in May 2000 with Rev. Peter Deyneka delivering the commencement
address. The missionary statesman died of lymphoma the following December. In 2009 the name of the
school was changed to the Russian-American Institute and remains partnered with seven Consortium
members (Taylor, Geneva, Gordon, Calvin, Malone, Wheaton, and Dordt) that have supplied over 100
visiting faculty since its founding. The CCCU Nizhni Novgorod program has been administered by Richard
Gathro and Harley Wagler and offers an annual “Russia in Transition” seminar on post-Soviet national
developments. Establishment of the Nizhni MBA program was facilitated by James Coe and based on a
values and ethics-based curriculum used at Spring Arbor College. Dr. Anita Deyneka was named
president of Deyneka Russian Ministries in 2002.
5
The genesis of the Deyneka Russian Ministries Youth Advisory Council and subsequent Doorways to
Hope ministry was Seattle Pacific University’s December 2005 Acting on AIDS Day at which two students
who had worked with Russian orphans, Melinda Miller and Alicia Hoffer, shared information with
participants about the AIDS crisis among Eastern Europe youth. Doorways presently support five pilot
projects in Russia and two in Ukraine which have placed approximately 1,000 orphans in Christian
homes in those countries.
References
Abramov, A. (1991, June 4). Letter to Peter Deyneka, Jr. Delo Gosudarstvennogo Protocola, Associatsiya
Dukhovnoye Vozrozhdeniye, Moscow, Russia.
Baskina, A. (1991). Moral values in a changing society. Soviet Life, 6, 417.
Beralauva, M. (2009, September). Global educational partnerships for the challenges of our day. Paper
presented at the International Conference on Economic and Environmental Education, Sochi, Russia.
Bernbaum, J. (1992, May). Report on sabbatical in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia. Russian Conference Series
File, Center for Global Curriculum Studies, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA.
Deyneka, A. (1991, May). Notes on moral education conference proceedings. Box 6, File 12, Deyneka
Collection (SC/048), Wheaton College Archives, Wheaton, IL.
Deyneka, A. (1989, November). Partnerships for mutual benefit: opportunities for US-USSR educational
collaboration. Paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.
Deyneka, A. (1990, October). USSR trip report. Box 6, File C2, Deyneka Collection, Wheaton College
Archives, Wheaton, IL.
Frame, R. (1992). Christian values open doors to classrooms. Christianity Today (35)4:22-24.
Guershunsky, B. (1991). The humanization of education in the school of the future. International Center
for Curriculum Studies, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA.
Hoeks, S. (1990). Building educational bridges between the US and USSR. Christian College Coalition
Bulletin (December), 1-3.
Hoeks, S. (1990). Soviet officials explore spiritual values in higher education. Christian College Coalition
Bulletin (November), 1-4.
Kazantsev, Y. & others (1990). Protocol of intentions between the Russian Ministry of Higher Education
and the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities. Delo Gosudarstvennogo Protocola,
Associatsiya Dukhovnoye Vozrozhdeniye, Moscow, Russia.
LeClair, C. (1991, March 25). Letter to Peter Deyneka, Jr. Box 5, File A3, Deyneka Collection, Wheaton
College Archives, Wheaton, IL.
Longman, K. (1990, March) USSR trip report. Educational Ministries File, Deyneka Russian Ministries,
Wheaton, IL.
Lowman, P. (2000). Perceptions of a great country: Hunches and pointers in understanding Russia, EastWest Church & Ministry Report, 3:3-6.
Melnichuk, A. (2008, October). Experience and perspectives on missions in the CIS. Paper presented at
the Missions Today Forum: History, Analysis, and Perspectives for International Partnerships, Irpen,
Ukraine.
Medvedev, R. & Giuletto, C. (1989). Time of change: An insider’s view of Russia. New York, NY: Random
House.
Nove, A. (1989). Glasnost in action: Cultural renaissance in Russia. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman.
Scheuerman, R. (1991, March). USSR trip report. Russian Conference Series File, Center for Global
Curriculum Studies, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA.
Semenchuk, P. (2002). Western Christians working in the CIS: Are they in tune with Russian evangelical
nationals? Paper for Trans World Radio International Missions Conference, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Stahl, E. (1991, October). Washington, DC trip report. Educational Ministries File, Deyneka Russian
Ministries, Wheaton, IL.
Triggs, W. (2005). From sorrow to joy in Beslan. Russian Ministries Newsletter. 12, 2.
AUTHORS NOTE
Dr. Richard Scheuerman chairs the Master of Arts in Teaching program at Seattle Pacific University
where he also serves as assistant director of the Center for Global Curriculum Studies. He served for 25
years as a teacher and administrator in Washington public schools and received the 2000 Governor's
Award for Excellence in Education. His research interests include models of experiential interdisciplinary
learning, comparative education, and educational needs of orphans and vulnerable children. Email:
scheur@spu.edu.
FACILITATING STUDENT-TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS: KINDER TRAINING
June Hyun, Seattle Pacific University
Abstract
A meaningful student-teacher relationship has been considered an important factor in students’
success in school. When classrooms become more ethnically diverse and have more at-risk populations,
support for teachers as they strive to build and foster meaningful relationships with students is
necessary. Kinder training is a consultation model for teachers to facilitate their relationships with
students in the classroom. Based on Adlerian tenets and the structure of filial therapy that have proved
to improve child-parent relationships, Kinder training is recommended as an intervention tool for
broadening teachers’ perspectives on students in class, increasing teachers’ self-confidence in classroom
management skills, and fostering positive student-teacher relationships.
Keywords: Kinder, student-teacher relationships
Facilitating student-teacher relationships: Kinder training
Research has proved that the student-teacher relationship plays a significant role in students’
success both in academics and social/emotional development. Ray, Henson, Schotterlkorbm, Brown, and
Muro (2008) emphasized in their article the importance of student-teacher relationship by listing many
studies that indicate the influence of a positive relationship between a teacher and students on the
students’ academic achievement. In addition, difficulties in student-teacher relationships seemed to
affect both the students’ academic success and social/emotional development negatively.
According to Survey Reports done by National Center for Educational Statistics (NCER) (2007) through
many years, K-12 classes have become more ethnically diverse. The percentage of ethnic minority has
increased from 35.5 percent in 1995 (NCER, 1999) to approximately 43 percent in 2005. With the
increase of ethnic minorities in primary and secondary classes, the concern is that the dropout rate in
the ethnic minority remains still high, especially with the Hispanic population. While dropout rate
decreased from 14.1 percent in 1980 to 8.7 percent in 2007, the dropout percentage in Hispanic
population stayed at 21.4 percent from 35.2 percent. (U.S. Department of Education, 2009).
While classes are ethnically more diverse and have more students at risk, and while
underrepresented students are more likely to struggle academically, teachers’ perceptions on students
do not seem to be positive. In the survey on pupil behavior in England (Department of Children, Schools,
and Families, 2008), 42 percent of primary school teachers and 54 percent of secondary school teachers
reported that they felt the general standard of students’ behaviors worsened both marginally and
substantially. There were some variances according to the length of teaching experiences and ages, but
this thought was prevalent for all age groups of participating teachers. In the same study, more than 90
percent of teachers reported that they agreed they were well prepared for classroom management.
However, only 36 percent of primary school teachers and 34 percent of secondary school teachers
agreed that “appropriate training is available for teachers in their school who are struggling to manage
pupil behavior.” Another interesting result of this study is that 68 percent of teachers agreed with the
statement that “negative pupil behavior is driving teachers out of the profession.” It seems that a lack of
training support and the results of inefficient management of negative pupil behaviors influenced
teachers’ professional commitment negatively. The correlations between classroom management and
teachers’ stress seemed to be internationally similar. There must be many other reasons for teachers to
leave their profession, but it is important to note that challenges by students in the classroom play a
significant role for teachers’ work stress. A study in Australia (Clunies-Ross, Little, & Kienhuis, 2008)
showed that teachers spent a large amount of time on classroom management dealing with students’
misbehaviors, and teachers’ reactive classroom management strategies were correlated to increased
stress. In the United States, a significant correlation between teacher stress and teachers’ negative
relationship with students was found (Yoon, 2002).
It must be dangerous to correlate between the increasing number of ethnically diverse students
and at-risk children in class and teachers’ frustration in class. However, it is important to note that
students from ethnically diverse groups and teachers are struggling in the classroom. Challenges that
ethnic minority students face negatively affect their level of attainment, coupled with teachers’
somewhat negative perceptions in a challenging classroom environment; in this regard, much effort has
been done in England to narrow the gap and provide more meaningful education. One of the factors
that might contribute to higher achievement by ethnic minority students is positive attitude. Research
(Wrench & Qureshi, 1996; Fitzgerald & Finch, 2000) indicated that, in England, a positive attitude toward
education among both black Caribbean and Bangladeshi young men and their parents could play a
significant role in their academic performance. In addition to providing a positive environment for
students, so-called successful multiethnic schools’ strategies as responses to underachievement have
included reviewing and strengthening the schools’ relationships with students, parents and the
community, encouraging them to set high expectations for both teachers and students, and enriching a
curriculum that is more culturally sensitive to their pupils (Blair & Bourne, 1998). In providing a positive
environment and strengthening the relationship with the students, meaningful and positive student-
teacher relationships have proved to be a significant impact on students’ success both academically and
interpersonally (Birch & Ladd, 1997; Burchinal, Peisner-Feinberg, Pianta, & Howes, 2002; Pianta &
Stuhlman, 2004). Other researchers (Batcher, 1981; Goodenow, 1991; Harter, 1989) suggested that a
positive student-teacher relationship can help students, especially ethnic minorities, engage in the
classroom, feel supported, and achieve better success in academics and social/emotional development.
As teachers expressed that there was not enough support for teacher skill improvement, it is
important that teachers continue to receive training for improving relationships with students and
feedback on their skills. One of the ways of helping teachers obtain support is Kinder therapy/training.
Coming from the word “kindergarten,” Kinder training is a teacher consultation model aligned with
Adlerian concepts in the structure of filial therapy (White, Flynt, & Draper, 1997). It’s an ongoing
consultation process led by school counselors to help facilitate a student-teacher relationship in-class for
students’ success in school. Viewing teachers as therapeutic agents, Kinder training draws teachers into
the center of the process of intervention in the classroom (White, Flynt, & Draper).
Adler (1930) believed that children’s behaviors play a critical role in achieving a level of satisfaction
regarding their inherent sense of belonging to the society. To find their unique place for belonging in
society, children shape their individual lifestyles and understanding from their interaction with the
world; this is crucial to help them succeed. Play is children’s universal language. In play therapy, a child’s
nonverbal and verbal behaviors help the counselor understand the child’s purposes and interactions
with the world. Based on these Adlerian tenets, school counselors and teachers are able to observe
children’s lifestyles and help them become who they truly are with a clear understanding of what each
child strives for (White, Flynt, & Draper, 1997).
Counselors trained in Adlerian play therapy use four basic skills: tracking, empathy,
encouragement, and limit setting (Kottman & Johnson, 1993). The counselor’s tracking of the child’s
behavior and restating the content let the child know that the counselor is paying attention to him/her.
The counselor’s techniques let the child know that their nonverbal and verbal behaviors are important
to the counselor, which leads the child to trust the counselor and helps build a therapeutic relationship
between them. The counselor’s encouragement also helps build a relationship with the child.
Emphasizing the efforts and the process rather than the results, encouragement in play therapy consists
of “respecting the child’s assets, having faith in the child’s abilities, and recognizing efforts and
improvement.” (Kottman & Johnson, 1993). In being recognized and encouraged by the counselor, the
child’s self-esteem and confidence are expected to increase.
The last skill of Adlerian play therapy is the counselor’s attempt to teach limit-setting in a
nonjudgmental manner for the purpose of helping the child learn boundaries. Mistaken goals are
considered to be roadblocks for building positive relationships—goals such as the desire for attention,
the struggle for power, the need to retaliate through revenge, and the decision to withdraw (Dreikurs &
Soltz, 1964). From the counselor’s verbal language consisting of three steps: (a) reflecting the child’s
feelings, (b) acknowledging the purpose of the behaviors, and (c) helping the child generate alternative
behaviors (Kottman, 1995), the child can feel that his/her feelings are validated and that their behavior
is understood. In generating alternative behaviors and choosing one of them, the child ultimately can
feel empowered. In addition, children are able to learn “logical consequence” of behavior through the
counselor’s limit-setting in play (Kottman).
Basic Adlerian tenets—understanding the purposes of behaviors and emphasizing
encouragement and strengths—are taught in filial therapy, developed by Guerney (1964) to help
parents as therapeutic agents in the family. Structured in a 10-week program (Landreth, 2002), filial
therapy utilizes a group format for parents to encourage one another and learn from other parents as
well (Landreth). In the first two sessions, parents are introduced to the goals and objectives of the
program. Parents learn the importance of play, reflective listening, and skills of communicating in an
attempt to understand. They also get a chance to visit a playroom and learn tracking and empathy skills.
In the third day, parents learn more skills through role-playing and video demonstration. After the third
day, parents begin their sessions with one child at home. In the fourth session, parents are encouraged
to share their experiences and learn a limit-setting skill through role-play, practice, and homework. In
sessions five to nine, parents share their experiences with their child and receive feedback from others.
In the last session, parents report their experiences and are encouraged to continue their special time
with their child.
Following filial therapy structures based on the fundamental tenets of individual psychology, Kinder
training consists of the following steps (White, Flynt, & Draper, 1997):
(a) the school counselor trains the teacher in basic principles of nondirective play therapy and
Adlerian concepts
(b) the school counselor models a play session with the identified child, while the teacher
observes either in the playroom or from another location
(c) with the school counselor present, the teacher interacts with the student utilizing play
therapy techniques in the playroom
(d) the school counselor provides feedback to the teacher in the form of education and
retraining which could serve to improve the teacher-child relationship in the classroom as
well as prepare for the next play session
(e) the school counselor connects Adlerian principles to the nondirective play techniques now
mastered by the teacher
(f) the school counselor provides follow-up sessions to maintain the continued successful
application of this model (p. 39-40).
In spite of its short presence in school, Kinder training/therapy has emerged especially in
elementary schools, and research on its effectiveness burgeoning in the past 10 years. In a pilot study
(White, Flynt, & Jones, 1999), six teachers received one-day training that included an overview of Kinder
therapy, the importance of play in the healthy development of children, the basics of child-centered play
therapy, the individual psychology concepts, and practice sessions. Then, those teachers practiced play
sessions with a selected student for six weeks. Researchers conducted observation with four
instruments in the teachers’ classrooms before and after training. The observation results indicated that
teachers showed changes in their comments filled with more encouraging statements and goal
disclosure statements to the students. And regarding the students, it seems that appropriate social skill
behaviors tended to increase.
Based on the similar structure of the pilot study done by White, Flynt, and Jones (1999), Draper,
White, O’Shaughnessy, Flynt, and Jones (2001), an expanded study was conducted to examine the
impact on students as well as teachers. In an experimental design, the study examined the effects of
Kinder training on students’ behavior, social skills, and early literacy skills in kindergarten and first grade
students, in addition to teacher behavior in the classroom, using seven assessments, observations, and
interviewsn. The participants were seven kindergarten teachers, four kindergarten paraprofessionals,
three first grade teachers, and fourteen selected students in Georgia. The results showed that children’s
problem behaviors tended to decrease, adaptive behaviors were more likely to increase, and early
literacy skills seemed to improve, based on teacher perceptions before and after the intervention.
Moreover, teachers’ verbal encouragement that focuses on the process rather than the results
increased, and their perceptions of children have broadened through the relationship built in the
playroom during the training.
Post, McAllister, Sheely, Hess, & Flowers (2004) explored the effects of child-centered Kinder
training on at-risk preschool children. Child-centered Kinder training is based on child-centered play
therapy rather than individual psychology. This study used 10-week filial training with nine teachers
from 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old classrooms to examine the effects of child-centered Kinder training on
selected at-risk children’s behavior and teachers’ play therapy applied skills such as following the child’s
lead, responding to feeling, returning responsibility to the child, responding to the child’s efforts, and
limit-setting. Using a quasi-experimental nonequivalence group design, the study indicated that children
whose teachers participated in the training tended to increase positive behavior in class and show less
anxiety and depression. In addition to showing increased empathy and appropriate classroom
management skills, teachers reported that they felt their views on children had changed positively. A
year after this study, a follow-up study (Hess, Post, & Flowers, 2005) was conducted to examine the
differences between participating teachers and nonparticipating teachers on play therapy skills and
empathy. There were no differences between participating and nonparticipating teachers on play
therapy skills and empathy in the classroom. However, Kinder training was effective on teachers’
perceptions on self-confidence even in the long-term.
While teachers’ play therapy applications in class tend to diminish in the long run without
continuous consultation, teachers’ perceptions are more likely to become positive and holistic by Kinder
training. The results of Solis (2006)’ study on African-American preschool teacher perceptions were
consistent. Solis studied teachers’ perceptions of the process, effectiveness, and acceptability of Kinder
training using a qualitative method with six African-American preschool teachers in the southeastern
United States. The participants reported that they felt children’s self-esteem improved and their on-task
behaviors increased. The participating teachers also indicated that Kinder training is acceptable as a
preventive intervention for preschool students. While a necessity of additional training and deeper
understanding of Kinder training was considered to enable better service for students, the impact of
Kinder training on a student-teacher relationship and improvement of child competencies seemed to be
very promising (Draper, Siegel, White, Solis, & Mishna, 2009).
Ray (2007) found that teacher-student relationship stress significantly decreased in three groups
that received child-centered play therapy only, teacher consultation only, and both child-centered play
therapy and teacher consultation. The study was conducted with 93 students and 59 teachers from
three elementary schools in southwestern United States. Teachers selected students who they felt have
emotional and behavioral difficulties in the classroom. Doctoral-level counselors did teacher
consultation for ten minutes every week, completing eight sessions.
In the last 10 years, approximately 10 empirical studies were published on the effects of Kinder
training on teacher, students, and the student-teacher relationship. It is evident that Kinder training (a)
helped teachers look at students from more positive and holistic perspectives and improve their
classroom management skills, (b) tended to facilitate a positive student-teacher relationship, and (c)
played a significant role in decreasing students’ inappropriate behaviors and increasing positive
appropriate social skills. Crane and Brown’s study (2003) examining the effectiveness of an
undergraduate human services course based on Kinder training consisting of Landreth’s 10-week filial
therapy model and Adlerian principles on the undergraduate students’ attitudes and empathetic
behavior toward children indicated that Kinder training could be implemented in the pre-service teacher
programs. The result of the study (Crane & Brown) showed that the training based on filial therapy and
Kinder training significantly improved the undergraduate’s knowledge of play therapy. In addition, the
undergraduates in the study demonstrated empathy and increased a positive attitude toward children.
As continuous efforts to support teachers as they seek to be more effective therapeutic agents
in classroom, Helker, Schottelkorb, & Ray (2007) developed a CONNECT Model, an intervention model of
applying child-centered play therapy to classrooms to facilitate a positive student-teacher relationship.
CONNECT Model consists of the followings:
Convey acceptance through words and actions
Offer understanding by reflecting feelings and wishes
Notice child’s behaviors and actions
Negotiate choices
Encourage self-esteem
Communicate limits by ACTing (Acknowledge the feeling, Communicate limits, and Target the
alternatives)
Trust yourself to be genuine (p. 37)
Teachers can learn skills through in-service training with administrators and other school staff, teacher
consultations, and school counselors’ classroom guidance. In this model, school counselors play an
active role as a change agent by providing consultation with teachers and administrative staff. Teachers
can be more active therapeutic agents with assistance of school counselor.
Conclusion
In past 10 years, characteristics of classrooms have changed. Not only have students in primary
and secondary schools been more ethnically diverse and challenges students have faced have had more
layers in them, but teachers’ frustration has grown with classroom management challenges and a lack of
support. Kinder training based on the filial therapy structure and individual psychology has emerged in
the U.S. as support for teachers in getting connected with students and has promoted a meaningful
classroom relationship. Research over 10 years has shown that Kinder training had influence in
increasing students’ positive behaviors, changing teachers’ perspectives more positively, improving
teachers’ classroom management skills, and reducing teacher-students relationship stress. Kinder
training is a hopeful tool for fostering student-teacher relationships for students’ success in class.
While filial therapy’s, whose structure and basic skills are foundations for Kinder training, has proved to
be significantly effective with ethnically diverse populations in improving child-parent relationships and
increasing positive behaviors of children (Glover & Landreth, 2000; Grskovic & Goetze, 2008; Solis,
Meyers, & Varjas, 2004; Guo, 2005; Chau, Landreth, 1997; Yuen, Landreth, & Baggerly, 2002; Lee &
Landreth, 2003; Jang, 2000; Edwards, Ladner, & White, 2007; Kidron, 2004), research on Kinder training
with ethnically diverse populations is scarce. Research to examine Kinder training’s effectiveness with
ethnically diverse populations would be beneficial as a support for teachers in school. Moreover, a longterm effectiveness of Kinder training on teachers’ classroom management skills would help implement
Kinder training in a school setting. Further, an evaluation on Kinder training implementation in preservice teacher programs might be wisely recommended as future research.
References
Adler, A. (1930). The education of children. Southbend, IN: Gateway Edition.
Batcher, E. (1981). Emotions in the classroom: A study of children’s experience. NY: Praeger.
Birch, S. H., Ladd, G. W. (1997). The teacher-child relationship and children’s early school adjustment.
Journal of School Psychology, 35, 61-79.
Blair, M., Nourne, J. (1998). Making the difference: Teaching and learning strategies in successful multiethnic schools (DfEE Research Brief No. 59). Retrieved from
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RB59.pdf.
Burchinal, M. R., Peisner-Feinberg, E., Pianta, R. C., Howes, C. (2002). Development of academic skills
from preschool through second grade: Family and classroom predictors of developmental
trajectories. Journal of School Psychology, 40, 415-436.
Business In the Community. Facts and Stats. Retrieved from
http://www.bitc.org.uk/workplace/diversity_and_inclusion/race/facts_and_stats.html#primary_and
_secondary_school_education.
Crane, J. M., Brown, C. J. (2003). Effectiveness of teaching play therapy attitudes and skills to
undergraduate human services majors. International Journal of Play Therapy, 12(2), 49-65.
Chau, I. Y., Landreth, G. L. (1997). Filial therapy with Chinese parents: Effects on parental empathic
interactions, parental acceptance of child and parental stress. International Journal of Play Therapy,
6(2), 75-92.
Clunies-Ross, P. Little, E., Kienhuis, M. (2008). Self-reported and actual use of proactive and reactive
classroom management strategies and their relationship with their teacher stress and student
behaviour. Educational Psychology, 28(6), 693-710.
Department for Children, Schools, and Families. (2008). Pupil characteristics and class sizes in
maintained schools in England, January 2008 (Provisional) (SFR Publication No. 09). Retrieved from
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000786/SFR_09_2008.pdf.
Department for Children School and Families, and National Foundation for Educational Research.
Teacher Voice Omnibus June 2008 Survey: Pupil Behaviour. (RW Publication No. 069). Retrieved
from http://www.nfer.ac.uk/what-we-offer/teacher-voice/PDFs/DCSF-RW069.pdf.
Department for Children, Schools, and Families. (2009). Schools, pupils, and their characteristics (SFR
Publication No. 08). Retrieved from
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000843/SFR08_2009.pdf.
Department for Education and Employment. (2000). Race research for the future, ethnicity in education,
training, and the labour market. (RTP Publication No. 01). Retrieved from
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/programmeofresearch/projectinformation.cfm?projectid=13788&
resultspage=1.
Draper, K., Siegel, C., White, J., Solis, C. M., Mishna, F. (2009). Preschoolers, parents, and teachers (PPT):
A preventive intervention with an at-risk population. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy,
59(2), 221-242.
Draper, J., White, J., O’Shaughnessy, T. E., Flynt, M., Jones, N. (2001). Kinder training: Play-based
consultation to improve the school adjustment of discouraged kindergarten and first grade students.
International Journal of Play Therapy, 10(1), 1-29.
Dreikurs, R., Soltz, V. (1964). Children: The challenge. NY: Hawthorne.
Edwards, N. A., Ladner, J., White, J. (2007). Perceived effectiveness of filial therapy for a Jamaican
mother: A qualitative case study. International Journal of Play Therapy, 16(1), 36-53.
Ferguson, E. D. (1984). Adlerian theory: An introduction. Chicago, IL: Adler School of Professional
Psychology.
Fitzgerald, R., Finch, S. (2000). Black Caribbean young men’s experiences of education and employment
(DfEE Research brief No. 186). Retrieved from
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RB186.pdf.
Glover, G. J., Landreth, G. L. (2000). Filial therapy with Native Americans on the Flathead reservation.
International Journal of Play Therapy, 9(2), 57-80.
Goodenow, C. (1991, February). Classroom belonging among early adolescent students: Relationships to
motivation and achievement. Paper presented at the meeting of the Eastern Educational Research
Association, Boston.
Grskovic, J. A., Goetze, H. (2008). Short-term filial therapy with German mothers: Findings from a
controlled study. International Journal of Play Therapy, 17(1), 39-51.
Guo, Y. (2005). Filial therapy for children’s behavioral emotional problems in mainland China. Journal of
Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 18(4), 171-180.
Guerney, B. (1964). Filial therapy: Description and rationale. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 28(4),
304-310.
Harter, S. (1989). Causes, correlates, and the functional role of global self-worth: A life-span perspective.
In J. Kolligian & R. Sternberg (Ed.), Perceptions of competence and incompetence across the lifespan (pp. 67-97). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Helker, W. P., Schottelkorb, A. A., Ray, D. (2007). Helping students and teachers CONNECT: An
intervention model for school counselors. Journal of Professional Counseling: Practice, Theory, &
Research, 35(2), 31-45.
Hess, B. A., Post, P., Flowers, C. (2005). A follow-up study of Kinder training for preschool teachers of
children deemed at-risk. International Journal of Play Therapy, 14(1), 103-115.
Jang, M. (2000). Effectiveness of filial therapy for Korean parents. International Journal of Play Therapy,
9(2), 39-56.
Kidron, M. (2004). Filial therapy with Israeli parents. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section A.
Humanities and Social Sciences, 64(12-A), 4372.
Kottman, T., Johnson, V. (1993). Adlerian play therapy: A tool for school counselors. Elementary School
Guidance & Counseling, 28(1), 42-51.
Kottman, T. (1995). Partners in play: An Adlerian approach to play therapy. Alexandria, VA: ACA.
Landreth, G. L. (2002). Play therapy: The art of the relationship. NY, NY: Brunner-Routledge.
Lee, M. K., Landreth, G. L. (2003). Filial therapy with immigrant Korean parents in the United States.
International Journal of Play Therapy, 12(2), 67-85.
National Center for Educational Statistics. (1999). Key statistics on public elementary and secondary
schools and agencies: School year 1995-96. (NCES 1999-324).
National Center for Educational Statistics. (2007). Public elementary and secondary school student
enrollment, high school completions, and staff from the common core of data: School year 2005-06.
(NCES 2007-352).
Post, P., McAllister, M., Sheely, A., Hess, B., & Flowers, C. (2004). Child-centered Kinder training for
teachers of pre-school children deemed at-risk. International Journal of Play Therapy, 13(2), 53-74.
Pianta, R., Stuhlman, M. W. (2004). Teacher-child relationship and children’s success in the first years of
school. School Psychology Review, 33, 444-459.
Ray, D. C., Henson, R. K., Schottelkorb, A. A., Brown, A. G., Muro, J. (2008). Effect of short- and long-term
play therapy services on teacher-child relationship stress. Psychology in Schools, 45(10), 994-1009.
Solis, C. M., Meyers, J., Varjas, K. M. (2004). A qualitative case study of the process and impact of filial
therapy with an African-American parent. International Journal of Play Therapy, 13(2), 99-118.
Solis, C. M. (2006). Implementing Kinder training as a preventive intervention: African-American
preschool teacher perceptions of the process, effectiveness, and acceptability. Dissertation Abstract
International: Section A. Humanities and Social Sciences, 66(7-A), 2488.
Ray, D. (2007). Two counseling interventions to reduce teacher-child relationship stress. Professional
School Counseling, 10(4), 428-440.
U.S. Department of Education (2009). National Center for Education Statistics. The Condition of
Education 2009 (NCES 2009-081), Indicator 20.
Yoon, J. S. (2002). Teacher characteristics as predictors of teacher-student relationships: Stress, negative
affect, and self-efficacy. Social Behavior and Personality, 30(5), 485-494.
Yuen, T., Landreth, G., Baggerly, J. (2002). Filial therapy with immigrant Chinese families. International
Journal of Play Therapy, 11(2), 63-90.
White, J., Flynt, M., Draper, K. (1997). Kinder therapy: Teachers as therapeutic agents. International
Journal of Play Therapy, 6(2), 33-49.
White, J., Flynt, M., Jones, N. P. (1999). Kinder therapy: An Adlerian approach for training teachers to be
therapeutic agents through play. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 55(3), 365-382.
Wrench, J., Qureshi, T. (1996). Higher horizons: A qualitative study of young men of Bangladeshi origin
(DfEE Research serious No. 30). Retrieved from http://www.archive.officialdocuments.co.uk/document/dfee/resbrief/brief30.htm.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Jung H. Hyun, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in Counselor Education at Seattle Pacific University. Her
research interests are multicultural issues in school counseling, the integration of play therapy
techniques in the school setting, school counselor supervision, and multiethnic identity development.
She can be reached at jhyun@spu.edu.
BOOK AND FILM REVIEWS
FREEDOM’S TEACHER: The Life of Septima Clark. By Katherine Mellen Charron. University of North
Carolina Press, 2009. 480 pages. $35.
Katherine M. Charron, assistant professor of history at North Carolina State University, invested more
than a decade into conducting research for and writing Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark.
This well-researched book chronicles Clark’s evolution from a naive young teacher to a daring advocate
for integration. After a couple of decades teaching in public schools, Clark became radicalized by
participating in NAACP desegregation efforts, which ultimately cost her teaching position. This led to her
joining the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, where she developed her citizenship
pedagogy, a practical educational approach defined by reciprocity, indigenous leadership, contextdependent strategies, and tactics borrowed from the missions of earlier black women’s movements.
Clark sought to link “practical literacy with political and economic literacy” (p. 5). Afterward she would
move into mainstream political activism with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, working
with civil rights advocates such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young,
and Stokely Carmichael. Charron’s narrative provides the reader with new ideas about education and
activism, the chronological trajectory of the Civil Rights Movement, and the contribution of black
women to that movement.
In 1898, Septima Poinsette was born to a semi-respectable family in genealogy-conscious
Charleston, South Carolina. In this era, the city remained ruled by a white paternalistic aristocracy
dependent on black maids, servants, cooks and menial. Within the city’s racial caste system, genealogy
played a critical role in shaping both opportunities and activism for black women. As an independentminded educator, Clark learned firsthand how class stratification coupled with strict ideas of
respectability—along with the outright snobbery—could serve to create professional barriers and
personal discomfort. Charron begins by explaining how “slavery’s vicious pruning disfigured Septima
Earthaline Pointsette’s family tree” (p. 19). When Clark married a “stranger and a sailor,” she was
further marginalized by “respectable black Charleston” (p. 83). Early on, Charron demonstrates how the
ambivalent relationship between Clark and community stakeholders both hampered her career and
pursuit of domestic felicity while informing her educational activism.
In 1916, Clark began her career teaching the poor, black, Gullah-speaking residents of Johns
Island. During this era, policy-makers and philanthropists began to abandon the former egalitarian vision
that both black and white missionaries held to when educating black southerners. Educators gave up
their dreams of creating enlightened and cultured black citizens. As a consequence, black teachers were
forced to prepare their students for vocational education. This new social conservatism created the
challenges around resources and a curriculum that Clark faced in trying to teach over 100 impoverished
students in a district with minimal resources. While Charron does not develop a detailed image of these
inhabitants or their lives, she helps the reader appreciate how working on Johns Island enabled Clark to
cultivate empathy and the communication skills needed to relate to the local population as well as the
tenacity and resourcefulness that informed her can-do attitude. These formative experiences were
central to her pedagogical approach. She taught other literacy educators to appreciate the strength
within each community and to help communities develop autonomy through putting aside their agenda.
After leaving Johns Island, Clark developed professional relationships and furthered her
education to improve her social status as an African-American educator. In 1918, she was invited to join
the faculty at Charleston’s Avery Institute in response to increased student enrollment. Around the
same time, she joined the NAACP’s campaign to promote the hiring of black teachers. In 1920, the state
legislature passed a resolution that resulted in the hiring of 55 black teachers and several black heads
and assistant heads of school. Charron argues that “[Clark’s] involvement in [this] fight . . . exposes the
deeper roots of the Southern black political insurgency during the New Reconstruction” (p. 95). Though
Clark experienced a certain level of professional failure due to her inability to negotiate faculty rivalries
and successfully accommodate families, this only contributed to her development as a community
leader. She continued to learn that presumption, on her part, created barriers between her and the
people that she wanted to help.
Making progress in her teaching career and educational activism outside of St. Johns Island
coincided with trauma and personal failure as well. Following the end of the Great War in May 1919, the
waves of the “red summer” washed over the country. Charleston was not spared the trauma. Clark
witnessed a local riot that left 27 people injured and 2 black men murdered, and eventually led to 50
arrests. During this period, the handsome, young Nerie David Clark sailed into Charleston Harbor. The
young sailor caught Septima Pointsette’s eye. Although he was a stranger to Charleston’s black
community, she decided to marry him following a brief courtship. Their socially erroneous marriage was
marred by a string of traumatic events, including the loss of their first child, feuds with family members,
and Clark’s discovering Nerie’s bigamy and infidelity, which was soon followed by Nerie’s early death
due to illness. Marital inequalities, deception and betrayal led Clark to decide against remarrying.
According to Charron, singleness provided Clark with enough personal autonomy to lead in the struggle
for black enfranchisement and equality. She returned to teach on Johns Island, a site she would revisit
time and again.
In 1929, Clark relocated to Columbia, the state capital, to participate in a program for black
educators and prepare for citizenship training on a new level. Charron explains, “Clark’s interwar
activism expressed itself in female-centered professional and civic organizations whose collective impact
provided potent fertilizer for some of the most important germinations of the period” (p. 119). In this
section of the book, one clearly begins to see Charron’s argument about the relationship between
African-American women’s grassroots educational efforts and activism. In Columbia, Clark lived and
worked among the black professionals of the Waverly neighborhood. Unlike Charlestonians, black
Columbians were not obsessed with ancestral heritage: “Everyone mixed, and the school teacher was
considered rather high up on the social ladder . . . the doctor’s wife and the school teacher and the
woman working as a domestic sat down together at the bridge table” (p. 121). Clark’s job at Booker T.
Washington High School allowed her to grow as both a professional and community activist.
At Booker T. Washington, all the teachers were affiliated with the Palmetto State Teacher’s
Association (PSTA), whose mission was “retaining black control of black education” (p. 129). The PSTA’s
leaders sought to engage white political power brokers to obtain “curricular improvements and
[strengthen] faculty credentials” in order to “equalize educational opportunity” for African-Americans
(pp. 130-131). In this section, Freedom’s Teacher dovetails with other literature that seeks to change the
chronology of the Civil Rights Movement. Charron does so by revealing how black women’s formative
activism in the educational arena served to clear the path for critical campaign to desegregate the South
following Brown v. the Board of Education.
In the 1930s, Clark would learn from a white progressive reformer, Wil Lou Gray, who taught
adult literacy as a means to develop agency. Gray believed that literacy had psychosocial and political
implications. Although adult literacy had been a part of the black experience since slavery, during this
period in Clark’s work, pedagogical approach moved from an emphasis on “vocational education” to
stress on building esteem, a vision of inclusion, and “political competence” (p. 147). While Clark was not
a leader in Gray’s adult school movement, Charron astutely argues that “her experience allows us to
more fully understand the political training received by thousands of black women educators and civic
activists in the segregated South and the organizing tradition that they fashioned from it” (p. 148).
Clark’s work led her to synthesize the relationship between “political, economic, social, and educational
problems” (p. 148).
A significant turning point in Clark’s development as a civil rights activist and integrationist
occurred when she developed a relationship with Judge Waties and Elizabeth Waring. Judge Waring’s
friendship and political views pushed Clark toward political activism, focusing on voter registration. Most
black Charlestonians resisted developing relationships with whites. Clark, however, continued to have
an ambivalent relationship to local black women and their social organizations. The Warings’ friendship
provided impetus for her to go “safely across the doorway of freedom and democracy” (p. 180). It had
taken a while for their friendship to evolve, but when Elizabeth Waring shared that she was leaving the
South, Clark’s “‘tongue became loosened . . . a new creature had welled up within’” (p. 289). This rebirth
coincided with courage and a determination to confront fear. Charron underscores this point because as
student activism increased in the sixties, Clark was accused of gradualism.
Part of Clark’s relationship with the Warings involved their mutual frustration with the
irresolution of local blacks and incremental change within the political structure. The aggravating
disunity among black Charlestonians and the fearfulness of the teachers involved in political
organization gave Clark the courage to fully embrace radical activism by developing a deeper
relationship with the Warings. Charron explains, “Crossing Broad Street, Septima Clark had stepped over
a line. And there would be no turning back” (p. 215). At the time, Clark began to pay attention to the
NAACP’s juridical and political activity. Finding that few blacks had the educational background to clearly
assess political issues, she gained a greater commitment to voter education. Increased radicalization
would lead to Clark’s involvement with the Highlander Folk School (HFS) the executive director of the
African-American YWCA, where Clark was active, returned from a conference there. White Southerners’
suspicions about socialism and communism would not stop Clark from getting involved with the school
before relocating.
In 1932, Myles Horton and Don West established the HFS to run residential workshops
empowering ordinary people to expand democracy. At Highlander, Clark discovered an egalitarian
approach to activism that forced her to confront her own hierarchal understanding of leadership.
Horton argued, “‘We must have leadership rooted in community. By teaching people to train others, we
are spreading leadership and in so doing are reaching out in a manner that would be otherwise
impossible’” (p. 221). In 1953, an increasing concern with Jim Crow education moved Horton to begin
workshops on desegregation. The following year, the nation would witness the U.S. Supreme Court’s
decision to integrate schools in Brown v. Board of Education. Clark’s earlier work had implications for
HFS. “[Clark], not Horton, recognized practical literacy as a key to political liberation for the black
grassroots,” writes Charron (p. 217). During this era, Clark began developing an “Education for
Citizenship” program in response to disparities in citizenship training in the state schools (pp. 246-247).
As a holistic teacher, she had a vision of citizenship that transcended enfranchisement.
Clark was primarily interested in helping her students transform into autonomous, selfdetermining agents. Her work on the Sea Islands involved dealing with basic literacy that affected the
locals’ ability to deal with basic political and economic issues. Charron demonstrates that Clark sought to
reproduce herself within the community so that she was no longer needed. Even as her relationship
with the Warings had provided a bridge for Clark, Charron argues, “Citizenship School graduates crossed
over: they went from silently accepting things as they were to raising their voices to influence how
things should be” (p. 263). By teaching adult literacy classes in the Sea Islands, Clark succeeded in
“helping people help themselves” and began to develop her own political efficacy (pp. 262-263).
Nonetheless, Clark struggled with Horton over his top-down leadership style and strategy. She fretted
over the lack of integration in workshops as well. While Clark was deeply concerned about the lack of
integration, local white supremacist officials were equally as concerned about her success.
Fearing integration, white supremacists labeled HFS a “Communist” organization in order to
discredit their work. The situation became worse when Abner Berry, a journalist for a communist
newspaper, showed up at the school’s 25th anniversary celebration and was photographed with Martin
Luther King Jr., Horton, and Clark. Local law enforcement raided HFS and arrested Clark on a trumped-up
charge of having sold alcohol. In the end, the school was forced to close for mismanagement of assets.
This blow did not stop Clark’s work, however; the citizenship schools had spread beyond the South.
Charron reports, “By late 1961, Highland claimed that 1,500 adults studied in Citizenship Schools in forty
Southern communities” (p. 274). Clark continued to impact rural and urban black communities by
developing indigenous leadership.
HFS leadership, however, was another issue. Clark and Horton’s volatile relationship further
deteriorated when Horton described her as a tool that needed his guidance due to her inability to see
the big picture. Charron explains, “Contrasting perceptions of the most effective way to propagate the
CSP lay at the root of Horton’s misrepresentations of Clark’s competence” (p. 286). The root problem
involved Clark’s commitment to indigenous leadership and context-dependent strategies. The changes
in the movement were heralded when two weeks prior to the inception of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, Ella Baker and Clark brought an interracial group of students to HFS. As
students began to predominate, the organization would promote a white student over Clark. Charron’s
description of Clark’s transition from the HFS to greater involvement with the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) reveals the challenges that women faced in male-dominated movements.
Even as Clark became more influential, Horton and other leaders made decisions about her salary and
role in the movement without her input. Charron explains, “One of the greatest . . . hurdles involved
making her voice heard and garnering respect for her lived experience, expertise, and her opinions. The
crux of the matter was not that she was African-American but that she was a woman operating within
organizations where men dominated the decision making” (p. 299). Unfortunately, Charron chooses not
to excavate the intersection between race and gender. According to Clark, men’s objectification of
women seemed the most monumental hurdle to overcome. This perspective blinded Clark to the role of
racial paternalism in the movement.
In the end, however, it came back to strategy. Clark stuck to her guns, maintaining that “the
place where things really count and where people really grow is the local community level” (p. 302). This
strategy, under the auspices of the SCLC, allowed the Citizenship Education Program to spread across
the South, impacting activism and political engagement in its wake. Charron explains, “As on the quiet
Sea Islands, the program’s success depended on its ability to move quietly into a community and begin
to attack the psychological ramparts created by a lifetime of living in a segregated society.” This
newfound freedom moved individuals and communities “to risk their lives and livelihoods” (p. 303). The
program allowed citizenship schoolteachers to train hundreds of their colleagues and tens of thousands
of students.
Over time, Clark’s system would gain momentum and strategies would change, but activism and
education created a power strategy for sustaining the SCLC’s inertia. Many of these individuals were the
black women who worked in both the HFS and CEP, so much so that the movement’s agenda coincided
with the broader women’s movement and dealt with “education, job opportunities and wage
differentials, health care, child care, reproductive freedom, protection from sexual violence, and respect
for womanhood” (p. 304). Disparities between men’s and women’s salaries even appeared within the
CEP, with Clark making substantially less than her new SCLC boss even though she would have to train
the middle-class young man how to deal with the poor. The trajectory of Septima Clark’s life and career
reveals how black women have promoted change in our society.
The final chapter of Freedom’s Teacher uses Mississippi as a case study. Charron explains that
she chose to do this for two reasons. There is an abundance of material on the state that exists in two
great books: Charles Payne’s exceptional I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (Berkeley: University of
California, 1995) as well as John Dittmer’s Local People (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1994). Charron
retells what is known about the civil rights agitation putting Citizenship School folks and women at the
center. The Freedom Democratic Party emerges in part because of Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) organizing but also because people learned how to organize from the precinct level
up in the Citizen Education Program. Community-level involvement called for dealing with internalized
racism. Charron argues, “People do not decide to risk their lives and livelihoods because an organization
talks them into it. They choose to do so because something inside of them changes. For thousands of
black southerners, the CEP fostered that transformation” (p. 304). Citizen Education Program veteran,
Victoria Gray Adams explained, “Until you free a person mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, you can’t
accomplish very much, but as those things happen, oh my Lord, it just gets better.” After SCLC took over
the HFS program—changing the name to Citizenship Education Program—the new schools spread
throughout the South. In 1961, Clark, Dorothy Cotton, and Andrew Young taught almost 300 classes that
led to the registration of 13,266 voters in one year.
Finally, Charron seeks to help us track black women’s transition into federally funded projects as
the CEP’s efforts came to an end. In this way, Charron demonstrates the connection between grassroots
activism and educational efforts to deal with poverty and inequalities on the federal level. Lyndon
Johnson’s “War on Poverty” created new programs like Head Start and the Office of Economic
Opportunity. Charron views these new areas as sites where black women expanded the goals and sites
of civil rights activism. As issues of sterilization emerged, reproductive freedom became a civil rights
issue as well. In the end, Charron would argue that we need to consider all of these goals of the Civil
Rights Movement. Doing so places women at the center of the story and intersects with standard
narratives of women’s liberation. At the same time, Freedom’s Teacher presents a vision of solidarity
and reconciliation across class and gender lines in the CEP. Despite being denied a voice in issues that
may have led to the ending of the movement (e.g., financial decisions and permanent site location),
black women, unlike their white counterparts, did not create separate organizations.
Freedom’s Teacher provides a refreshing new image of the Civil Rights Movement that helps the
reader understand the centrality of black women’s educational efforts in the struggle. Charron’s
narrative implies a new chronology, beginning with black women’s mission efforts in the South and
continuing through the struggles of their successors throughout the New Reconstruction, the Nadir
Period, the Great Depression, and two world wars. Charron deploys incredible sources when uncovering
statistics on expenditures on students by race, juvenile incarceration, teachers’ salaries, and
certification. A testimony to 12 years of fruitful research is found in other primary sources that include
government reports as well as personal and public archival material.
The strength of Charron’s narrative is its weakness—it is a biography of a movement centered on a
powerful figure. Charron skillfully uses Clark’s long life and impressive career to convince her reader of
the impossibility of disaggregating grassroots activism from grassroots education (with the
aforementioned implications). In the end, however, Charron makes choices that impede the reader from
gaining greater insight in the lives of the masses that are involved in perpetuating the educational and
political movement. Trying to avoid a top-down approach, she deftly includes the marginalized voices of
the individuals whose lives are transformed. Yet the traditional center remains. Often the reader is
overwhelmed with the larger story about various movements and their nonfemale and nonwhite
leaders. I felt, for instance, that I could have benefitted from hearing more about Clark and the Gullah
inhabitants on St. Johns Island However, these small criticisms aside, Freedom’s Teacher is a wonderful
read, granting the reader a greater appreciation of the power of black women and incremental change.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Max Hunter is a John Perkins Center Teaching Fellow at Seattle Pacific University and also acts as
managing editor of the Perkins Perspective Newsletter and community liaison. He has an A.M., Ed.M.,
and certificate in bioethics from Harvard Medical School, and is working toward a Ph.D. at the University
of Washington. His teaching and research center around bioethics, diversity in the classroom, the history
of ideas, and the importance of education. He is currently working on writing the story of his
transformation from a major drug dealer to a highly educated professor in the hopes of revealing many
deep problems still plaguing our nation and promoting dialogue toward solutions. Professor Hunter can
be reached by e-mail at huntem1@spu.edu<mailto:huntem1@spu.edu>.
RECONCILING TEXTS: ENGLISH TEACHER REVIEWS
The word reconciliation from the Greek word all, meaning “other”. This root word is encompassed in the
Greek word allasso meaning “to make other than it is”, and “to transform.” The most common verb
form of allasso is katalasso, which means “to exchange with the other (and be transformed).” The
theological concept of reconciliation involves the salvation experience of Christ switching places with
fallen humans and transforming the fallen through this exchange. We see this exchange most powerfully
in the work of Christ who died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:6-11; Colossians 1:19-22;
Ephesians 2:11-19). When teaching is a reconciling act, we can see teachers trading places with students
in classrooms by becoming co-learners, and students trading places with others through textual
transactions.
Multicultural texts create contact zones for reconciliation. Several English teachers and graduate
students at Seattle Pacific University advocate the following texts as a basis for opening up dialogue for
reconciliation:
Bigelow, K., Boal, M., Chartier, N., Shapiro, G. (Producers) & Bigelow, K. (Director) (2008) The Hurt
Locker [Motion Picture]. USA: Summit Entertainment.
Have you ever disabled a terrorist bomb in Baghdad? Me neither. Take a wild ride through some days in
the life of a US Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team during the Iraq War. Feel your palms
sweat and your teeth clench as you tick-tock closer to death than you’ve ever known. Experience the
pain of loss, the triumph of success, and the addicting power of war.
Whether conservative or liberal, if you have not experienced war firsthand, there is no way you
can understand what U.S. soldiers have experienced in the Iraq War. Whether you support or condemn
the war efforts, you must sympathize with the personal struggles soldiers have internally, as well as with
their families and loved ones, in a foreign land. The Hurt Locker brings people together, providing a
uniquely ambivalent yet reconciliatory look into the lives of some incredibly courageous men any
American would be proud to call a countryman. While the diversity of political belief is something that
we should value as Americans, it is good to take a step back and see those who are different from us,
those whose beliefs are opposed to ours, as human-especially when they are risking their lives for our
safety. This is the definition of reconciliation, after all.
This text could be incorporated into a high school unit about the Iraq War or the conflict in the
Middle East. While I would not recommend it for an audience younger than those approaching the age
of enlistment, I think that it fosters important thoughts about the reasons why America is at war without
passing judgment or coming down conclusively on either side of the Iraq War debate. While some of its
content may be too graphic for some students, the moral and emotional gravitas The Hurt Locker
conveys makes the risk worth the benefit.
Sara Hendrickson
Hurston, Zora Neale. (1937) Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York, HarperCollins Publishers. 219
pages, $10, IBN: 0060838671.
Janie sees herself as a blossoming peach tree, reaching for the sky, opening herself to all of life’s
experiences. And life certainly sends her some trials. Hurston illustrates the constant search for self
through her serial-marrying, store-managing, shack-living, traveling, grieving and loving story. In her
search for personal voice, the reader witnesses violence, oppression, and escapism. The young black
woman is given away in marriage as a teenager, and, through several decades, her story of
reconciliation with what it means to be a person and a black woman in early 20th century America is
inspired as well as provoking.
Hurston’s text encourages reconciliation on multiple levels. Her characters use varying dialect,
encouraging mainstream readers to consider the depth of nonstandard forms of English. Rather than
using language as a barrier to determine rank and status in our culture, we can use it as a bridge into the
others’ experiences—and be reconciled to them. Eliminating objectification of the “stranger” is a theme
of Hurston’s worth investigating. Where poverty and race are constant walls between people, Their Eyes
builds a world of understanding across these themes through its vibrant imagery and accessible
narrative. While Hurston points out systemic flaws and issues of contention, she simultaneously tells a
human story that bridges the gap.
Classes studying Their Eyes Were Watching God may approach reconciliation through different
lenses. A mock trial based on Janie’s trial would illustrate issues of legal reconciliation. Racial
reconciliation themes suffuse the novel and students could compare early 1930s concerns with
contemporary issues. Language and personal voice are perhaps the most intense and prolific themes in
the text. By considering the development of personal voice, students can approach historic oral
traditions, storytelling, nonstandard dialects and notions of personal truth—all foci of reconciliation.
Hurston’s voice, and that of her characters, will resonate with readers, and the importance of forging
one’s own voice comes across loud and clear in this text.
Suzanna Calvery
Cheadle, D. (Producer), & Higgins, P. (Director). (2004). Crash [Motion Picture]. United States: Lions
Gate Entertainment.
In a world as big as the one we live in, do the actions of each individual really make a difference?
The movie Crash depicts how one prejudice, one stereotype, and one seemingly innocent judgment can
make a world of difference. Following a multitude of people from different ethnicities in the bustling city
of Los Angeles, Crash depicts the falling domino effect of stereotyping as the characters’ lives become
interwoven into one another. A white police officer becomes angry with a black HMO clerk and takes
out his frustration on a black couple that he pulls over later that night. An upper-middle-class white
woman, who has been robbed by an African-American, later has her locks replaced by a Latino male.
Within earshot of the man, she demands her husband have the locks replaced again the next day as she
is certain that the Latino locksmith will just sell the keys to a friend, who will in turn burglarize the house
later. As the movie unfolds, more people become victim to bigotry and racial stereotyping as they
“crash” into each other. The climax is reached when some near-death incidents occur that bring
together formerly estranged characters. Can their racism be pushed aside for the good of humanity or
are their roots so deep that even the threat of death causes resistance?
Crash is a reconciling text because it allows us to see the effects of stereotypes and how those
judgments can cause further prejudices in others; a backward view of “pay it forward.” The movie
requires individuals to assess their own life and actions. In my life, it forced me to see my own horrific
preconceived notions toward others. The dark- skinned man walking down the street in baggy jeans,
holding the hand of a little girl—“Probably an illegitimate child” I think. But maybe I am wrong. Could he
be a hard-working man, devoted to his little girl, and taking evening college courses to better the lives of
his family members? The white girl I see in the coffee shop with a pierced nose, blue fingernail polish,
and a tattoo that covers her entire arm; I scoff at her lack of decency. Then on Sunday I see her devoting
her time to children’s ministry and worshiping the Lord passionately during service. Crash forced me to
see the good in others that I might not have previously seen. While I still have not mastered this art, I
have attained a better understanding of what it means to be in another person’s shoes and try to see
Christ in each and every person I encounter, regardless of outward appearances.
Crash would be an excellent tool for the discussion of civil rights in the United States. Although
we have come a long way in regards to equality, prejudices still seep deeply into the cracks of our
society. After a study on the Civil Rights Era, this movie could be used as supplemental text for students
to reflect on the current status of race. Citizens today are free to enter any public place or use any
facility by law, but are they free socially? Does racism still hinder some personal freedoms? How do
prejudices affect your daily life (either on the giving or receiving side the movie depicted both)? Is it safe
to say we all suffer from both ends of the prejudice spectrum? This movie would require school, district,
and parent support as it deals with some difficult issues and depictions, but depictions that are real to
our society and that should not be overlooked.
Elizabeth Marmino
Alexie, Sherman. (2007). Flight. New York. Black Cat. 181 pages, $14.00 US. ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-70378, ISBN-10: 0-8021-7037-4.
Flight is the story of Zits, a 15-year-old biracial child of the foster system. By the time the reader comes
upon him, Zits has already been shuffled through twenty foster homes. He explains, “My entire life fits
into one small backpack” (p. 7). But this is not solely a book about the gritty reality of being a foster kid.
It is also a surreal journey through history, and across boundaries of race and bigotry.
Just like in the ’80s sci-fi TV show, Quantum Leap, Zits jumps into various other characters.
Though unlike Sam, Zits retains the knowledge, memories and emotions of the bodies he inhabits. In this
way, Alexie masterfully requires the reader to take on shifting perspectives. As we follow Zits through
time, he is broken and lonely. He is vengeful. And when he risks being loved, we the readers hold our
breath in anticipation of another hurt.
This text could be used in a joint English/Social Studies unit on Native American history, as it
references events from Custer’s last stand through the struggles of present-day indigenous peoples. It
would also be an excellent spark for multiple writing activities in which students respond to the various
identities that Zits embodies. Such activities may prompt students to see each other with a measure of
understanding and grace. Flight is a text of sorrow and healing, a deeply human story that will resonate
with adolescents and teachers alike.
Christie Johnston
Eugenides, Jeffrey. (2002). Middlesex. New York: Picador. 529 pages, $15.00. ISBN: 978-0-312-42773-3
Middlesex chronicles the life and familial history of Cal (née Calliope) Stephanides, born a
hermaphrodite in 1960s Detroit. Raised as a girl, but with the body of a boy, Calliope traces the family
genes that affected her gender through immigration, wars, depressions and political movements.
Middlesex, the town in which she was born, serves as an allusion to Calliope’s sexual duality, and the
struggles she overcomes to define herself. Spanning two continents and three generations, this oftentragicomic tale not only emphasizes Calliope’s own dramatic coming-of-age story, but also follows her
family’s immigrant tale of assimilation in their attempt to balance their Greek heritage and new
American identity. This novel serves to humanize that which we often misunderstand, and leads us to
speculate on the fluid definitions of gender, sexuality and cultural identity.
To take a step into Calliope Stephanides’ shoes is to embark on an incredible journey. Using this
text in the classroom would allow students to view the world from a minoritized view. Salient and
overarching themes in the book would allow students to legitimize the realities of those different from
themselves and humanize that which society labels as atypical. Mirrored with that perspective, the text
would also create questions about the duality of the immigrant experience, of cultural experience, the
“American Dream” and definitions of nationalism.
Furthermore, the text’s richness of voice and incredible prose could be used to discuss many
important components of literature and writing including the ancient story of the Bildungsroman,
Calliope’s tendency toward becoming an unreliable narrator, the rich use of voice, traces of Greek
mythology and historical context that defines the novel’s timeline. Middlesex is a text rich with
educational possibility. Calliope is not only an inviting heroine and narrator, but the story she weaves
will also stay with readers long beyond the novel’s final page.
Elizabeth Tacke
Haddon, Mark. (2003) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. New York, Random
House, Inc. 226 pages, $12, IBN:1-4000-3271-7.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon is the intriguing story of a fifteenyear-old boy seeking to solve the murder of a neighbor’s dog, despite the protests of those around him.
It is a coming-of-age story as the protagonist, Christopher John Francis Boone, learns that he can
succeed despite his fears. The novel also delves into the mind of someone with autism. Set up as an
autobiography as well as a mystery novel, the book shows the reader what the world looks like through
Christopher’s lens of autism.
This book is reconciliation texts for me because it enabled me to walk in Christopher’s shoes for
a little while. Autism has typically been a mystery to me—one I shied away from because I could not
understand the person behind the disorder. When reading the book, I felt like I was in Christopher’s
mind, thinking like him, doing math to clear my head. One of the things that stood out to me as I
reflected on the book was how Christopher processed emotions, or rather, did not process them. He
clearly understands what happy and sad are, but other emotions like confusion, surprise or anger are a
mystery to him, making communicating with him often frustrating. Before reading this book, I would
have probably have done what many people do and ignore or even tease someone with like
Christopher, because all I could see was his autism. Through this book, I was able to see Christopher
first, not his autism.
There are a couple of ways this text could be used in the education realm. It would be an
excellent addition to a special education course, especially one that deals with disorders such as autism.
It can help the student move beyond a textbook definition of autism by taking the reader into the mind
of a student with autism. It could also be used in an AP English classroom as a way to bridge the gap
between mainstream classrooms and the special education classroom. High school students are in the
process of learning where they and others fits into the world; this book is a powerful way to help them
see the world from another’s perspective.
Sara Gray
Mehta, D, & Hamilton, D. 2006 (US). Water. India & Canada: Deepta Mehta Films.
The film Water, by controversial director Deepta Mehta, revolves around the trials and tribulations of an
unfortunate eight-year-old widow. Hindu tradition forbids her from remarrying, forces her to shave her
hair, and relegates her to a provincial ashram. Faced with a lifetime of confinement, she must learn to
deal with a domineering headmistress and the menacing presence of prostitution. Set in Gandhi-era
India, this story of salvation is told through the lives of long-suffering widows, striking Ganges
landscapes, and, believe it or not, a meaningful love story. Intelligent, bold, beautifully crafted—
Bollywood at its best.
Water functions as a reconciling text through its portrayal of women struggling against
discriminatory cultural norms. Each has their own story to tell and their own means of coping with life’s
circumstances. However, instead of outright denouncing the custom, Mehta allows the experiences of
the women to speak for themselves. Nonetheless, the film was initially perceived as so threatening, that
local authorities denied her permits and protesters sabotaged the production, ultimately burning down
the set and throwing it into the Ganges. The project eventually relocated in secret to Sri Lanka, adopting
a fake working name and a new cast. Such a film represents art at its best in the pursuit of human truth.
In my teaching I could situate the text in a number of themes: gender issues, human rights, East
Indian history and culture, or even screenplay writing. I’m most inspired by its ability to offer social
commentary through an artistic medium. In that regard, I would have the flexibility to work the film into
the curriculum in a number of ways.
Keith Huntzinger
GUEST EDITORS’ NOTES
Teaching as a reconciling act occurs when classroom language and deeds are transformed into
new and vital learning that allows all participants in classrooms, teachers and students to take on
identities as active, deserving learners. Reconciliation is about relationships with others in which “the
other(s),” usually disenfranchised students, are conceptualized as “more like me,” the esteem
historically granted to the teacher. As Christian teachers, the authors recognize that their vertical
relationships with God affect their horizontal relationships with students.
The theme of this issue is reconciliation. Every author in this issue approaches this theme from
different angles, but the theoretical framework behind each article emphasizes vertical and horizontal
relationships. In “Reading as Reconciling,” Kristine Gritter examines how choice in text selection affords
two disenfranchised urban middle school students opportunities to grapple with horizontal relationships
with peers. This article focuses on reconciliation through the lens of adolescents.
In “Seeing the ‘Me’ in ASD through Children’s Picture Books,” Christina Belcher and Kimberly
Maich focus on texts as agents of reconciliation. By merging characteristics of quality picture books with
narratives of children with autism and Asperger’s syndrome (ASD), the authors examine how texts allow
perceptions of children with ASD to be transformed into richer, fuller constructs of image bearers of
God.
In “‘Telling, Sharing, Doing’: Origins and Iterations of the Council for Christian Colleges and
Universities Russia Initiative,” historian Richard Scheuerman describes the unusual circumstances of
1989-1994 when unprecedented and previously inconceivable reconciliation occurred in international
educational forums. Scheuerman’s account of Peter and Anita Deyneka’s leadership for reconciliation is
faith building. Despite recent tensions between the United States and Russia, the reconciling power of
God can blur political and ideological borders.
In June Hyun’s article titled ‘Facilitating Student-Teacher Relationships: Kinder Training,’ the
focus of reconciliation is at the teacher training level. Focusing on the vertical relationships of teachers
and students, school counselor/educator Hyun extends Adlerian therapeutic tenets successful in
restoring familial relations to a framework for respectful student-teacher relationships
Finally, this issue concludes with several book reviews of texts that foster insight into
reconciliation. First, Max Hunter, Teaching Fellow for the John Perkins Center for Reconciliation,
Leadership Training, and Community Development, details the life of Septima Clark in Freedom’s
Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark. As Hunter observes, this chronicle of Clark “grant[s] the reader a
greater appreciation of the power of black women and incremental change.” Septima’s life is a study in
racial reconciliation. Following this review, graduate students in Seattle Pacific University’s educational
programs complete this issue with summaries of reconciling texts that inspired them to enhance the
vertical relationships in their lives.
Debby Espinor
Debby Espinor is currently an assistant professor at George Fox University. She directs the
Undergraduate Degree Completion program. Her research interests lie in Calling and Vocation and
student teaching. She may be contacted at despinor@georgefox.edu.
Kris Gritter
Kristine Gritter is an assistant professor at Seattle Pacific University. Her research interests include
adolescent literacy. She can be reached at grittk@spu.edu.