Andrew Ratner (City College of New York)
The article reports on a six-month literature-based, computer network collaboration between 5th grade classrooms in Harlem and a suburban town in the
Florida panhandle. As the classes conducted book discussions in response to two novels they read together, conflicts arose between participants
concerning expectations for the content and use of language in the electronic messages exchanged between students. Halliday and Hasan's (1989) social
linguistic concepts of field, tenor and mode are used to analyze the email texts and explore what led to these conflicts. The findings reveal how as a
relatively new mode of discourse in classroom settings, computer-mediated communication invites misunderstandings and potentially unsettling shifts in
traditional teacher and student roles. Rather than seeking to avoid or overly regulate conflict and confusion in networked literature discussions
however, the author encourages teachers to regard these potential outcomes as opportunities for reading and writing instruction grounded in authentic
communication contexts.
Over six months, I facilitated a literature-based, computer network collaboration between 5th graders at PS 520 in Harlem and Bellson Elementary, a suburban town in the Florida panhandle. The classes read two children's novels simultaneously, one set in New York City and the other in the Everglades. We titled our collaboration, "A Sense of Place." In addition to continual email correspondence while reading the novels, the students exchanged drawings that they created in response to their readings.
Shakira, a timid, and good-hearted girl in the Harlem class, sent the following message to her Florida "keypal":
Subject: picture
To: "Limbo@PS520.edu
Dear Hannah,
I dont get your picture
Shakira's email prompted the teacher of the Florida class, Ms. Sunshine, to send me an angry message that began as follows:
Dear Andrew,
I need your help with this. I think if our children are going to critique each others' work, it should be done constructively and sensitively. This letter from Shakira is neither. This is only detrimental to Hannah, especially after the Angelika mail, and I don't see a reason for giving her this as she can learn nothing positive from it. If Shakira would like to be specific about the picture (which one is he even talking about?) and the questions he has about it, then perhaps he could write Hannah again. I am NOT going to give out anymore mail of this nature since it does NOTHING to enhance the project or the goals you have set for it.
I begin with this exchange because it highlights the peculiar sociolinguistic landscape the participants entered when we began our collaboration; it reveals how unfamiliar classroom contexts and reading and writing activities invited conflict between the participants but ultimately, I believe, opened new avenues for developing literacy practices and values.
How could Shakira's seemingly harmless email elicit such a heated reaction from a teacher? In this paper, I will employ Halliday and Hasan's (1989) social linguistic concepts of field, tenor and mode to analyze the Sense of Place email texts and explore this question. Some of the broader questions I will address include:
Public School 520 is located in the West Harlem section of Manhattan. The majority of students are drawn from housing projects in the low-income neighborhood surrounding the school. Three "mini-schools" are located within PS 520, each with a different academic focus. The participating class in the Sense of Place project is part of the "Technology School" with its stated focus on computers and technology sciences.
The twenty-four students in Ms. Bayles's fifth grade class brought to the project a wide range of skills and experiences in language, literacy and technology. Four students could only read from primary level picture books without assistance. Four students could independently read small-print "chapter books" intended for middle school students. The remaining seventeen students could read larger-print chapter books written for lower elementary students. Twelve of the children were Latino/a and lived in households where Spanish was predominately spoken. The remaining twelve students were African-American or Afro-Caribbean with the exception of a first generation Chinese-American girl.
The students at PS 520 have access to a well-equipped networked computer lab set up by a a nearby university. The lab has more than enough terminals for an entire class of students, and for unlimited access during and after school hours.
Karen Sunshine's ClassMs. Sunshine, the fifth grade teacher at Bellson Elementary described Bellson, Florida, as "semi-rural" and "surrounded by hunting and fishing country." Three of her students are African-American. The other eighteen children were non-Hispanic White, nearly all of them living in two-parent middle-income households.
The classroom includes five computers, each with networking capabilities and students use the computers for a variety of purposes. However, because there are only five computers in the classroom and no computer lab, all the students cannot use the computers at the same time. They also cannot use the computers during non-class periods such as after lunch and school.
The students at Bellson had only been using computers in the classroom for a few months when we began the Sense of Place project. Before joining the Sense of Place project, Ms. Sunshine facilitated another computer -based project, a multi-media class album that in pictures, photographs, audio-recordings and writing gave self-described profiles on such topics as sports, pets, travel, and school. The multi-media class album was sent electronically to PS 520, and served as "introductions" by which the Harlem students chose their "keypals" from the Florida class.
Data CollectionOver the five months of the project, I collected messages written by the forty-five students, and two teachers involved in the study. Although the majority of the email exchanges were made between students, students also exchanged messages directly with teachers. In addition, the teachers routinely corresponded with me over the course of the project, and directly with each other. The two hundred and forty eight messages collected over the four months serve as the focus of my analysis. In addition to the email messages and field notes that I recorded in the classroom and computer lab at PS 520, I kept a daily journal recording daily experiences, insights, questions, and connections to relevant literature I was reading over the course of the project.
Rather than simply observing the Sense of Place project, I played a major role in the organization, facilitation, instruction, and on-going assessment of the reading and computer-based writing activities described in this study. As such, I would describe my role as a participant-observer with a "high level of involvement" (Spradley, 1980). Later in the account, I provide actual email exchanges as well as refer to face-to-face conversations between the participating teachers and myself. These provide a lens on the level and nature of my involvement and also serve as data for analysis related to the stated research questions.
It is important to note that although my level of involvement with participants in the study was high, there were distinct differences in both the level and nature of my interaction with the respective classes. Whereas I never stepped foot in the Florida classroom, I was a consistent physical presence at PS 520. Everything I came to "know" about the teacher and students at Bellson Elementary was through the medium of electronic mail. By contrast, I not only had access to the emails of the teachers and students in Harlem, I had ample opportunity to observe them in various school settings including the computer lab. I was also able to routinely speak with the teacher and students in order to clarify or probe further into questions that arose from my analysis of email messages or observations of student-to-student or student-to-teacher interaction during project activities. For example, I was able to informally interview Shakira to gain more information concerning the circumstances surrounding her sending the aforementioned "I don't get you picture" message.
It must also be noted that during the research period, I served as a university-based literacy consultant to teachers in PS 520. In this position, I spent three mornings each week between 8:30 AM and noon assisting and coaching Ms. Bayles in her efforts to facilitate non-computer based reading and writing workshops in her classroom. As such, I had a more intimate knowledge of the larger teaching and learning objectives, activities, and resources in the Harlem class and how they related to the Sense of Place project.
Halliday writes that predictability is "the most important phenomena in human communication" and that we make predictions based on the particular arena and ritual that circumscribes a communication event. As speakers/listeners, readers/writers, we depend on these situation-specific discursive conventions and routines. Despite formal and stylistic differences between individuals, these conventions, developed over time and through repeated involvement in communicative events, allow us to "as a whole understand each other." From a sociolinguistic perspective then, understanding the context of a communication event is a prerequisite for understanding the meaning of the text (or texts) embedded within the event. I begin by exploring in detail the context of the Sense of Place project and how this context shaped the content of the written texts produced during computer-assisted literature discussions between the distant 5th grade classrooms. To do so, I will use a model proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1989) that educational researchers have found useful for studying classroom communication (Atweh, Bleicher, & Cooper, 1998; Fry, Phillips, & Lobaugh, 1996; McKay, 1997) and more recently for analyzing computer-assisted communication in classroom contexts (Love, 2002). The three components in Halliday and Hasan's model - field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse - will be independently applied to the Sense of Place data to gain a better sense of how the non-traditional context for literature discussion in the elementary grades impacted the content of the discussion and the social interaction of the participants.
"Field" refers to the general purpose, location, and participants of a communication event. It addresses the question, what is it that the participants are engaged in, in which the language figures as some essential component? For instance, if we observed a person approaching a counter and asking another person dressed in a uniform for a hamburger, fries and coke, we would know that we were watching a service order at a fast food restaurant. That is the field.
The following message, which I posted on a K-12 internet news group hoping to locate a cooperating teacher and class for the Sense of Place project, was significant in establishing the field of discourse:
Subject: [seeking 5th grade students]
I am a literacy coach for a 5th grade classroom at Public School 520 in Harlem where my cooperating teacher and I run a whole language/literature based curriculum. Our Social Studies inquiry, "A Sense of Place", focuses on helping the children gain a better understanding of where they are geographically and culturally situated in our country. We would like to read a piece of literature set in a particular region of the country with an upper-elementary class from this region. As we read the text and begin to formulate ideas, images and questions related to the culture, history and geography of the region, they would use the cooperating class (via email, bulletin boards, conferences) as a resource for expanding their understanding of the region and its inhabitants. We would then read together a second piece of literature set in N.Y.C. or another urban center and have a similar correspondence, this time with our students serving as "field-based" resources. There are a number of reasons to use literature as the foundation for our correspondence. It would help focus the discourse between students and serve as a reference point. It would help students develop their understanding of different modes of representation (i.e. fiction vs. "factual" presentation) and how they interrelate. Finally, it would help students recognize how culture and geographical location can influence a group's perspective on particular social issues. Anyone interested in participating in this type of collaboration email me ASAP so we can begin to work out logistical issues and plan our curriculum.
At the time I posted this initial message, I could not define my purpose or pedagogical rationale for the project with any more specificity. Given the relative novelty of grade school network collaborations, there were few designs I could use as models. Instead, I followed my intuition that a more meaningful interaction would occur if we centered our correspondence on a mutual exchange of ideas and perspectives around a shared text.
Ms. Sunshine, the teacher whose class we eventually worked with, had previously facilitated a network collaboration with another school and used computer technology for a variety of other instructional purposes. Neither she, nor I, however, had rigidly-defined visions of how we would direct the project but rather felt we would "play it by ear."
A few weeks into the project, students and teachers began sending messages that focused on clarifying the purpose of our correspondence. My loosely defined vision for the project as it was initially put forward, and the absence of a history of projects to serve as models for our interaction, anticipates the content of these messages. A number of Harlem students expressed their dissatisfaction concerning their keypal's failure to respond thoughtfully and specifically to their own questions and comments about Slake's Limbo (Holman, 1974), the first novel that the classes read together. The following email from Destiny is typical of the Harlem students in that it is rooted in the text rather than personal or interpersonal concerns:
From: Destinys@PS520.edu
Subject: hi
Dear Janie,
this book is really great. Every time Slake goes to the diner the waitres is always giving him extra food .I wonder why. This is what shocked my, It's what I really thought. Maybe she always is giving him food because she see's that he wears the same clothes and that he doesn't look healthy and also because he comes in there everyday. To make a personal connection because i live in New York and when bums go in to stores to get food they get what they pay for. Does that happen where you live. Maybe people were nicer in the old days in NewYork. Maybe people cared more. How do you feel
Sincerely,
Destiny
In response, Destiny's keypal Janie, also discusses her personal life but not in anyway connected to her reading of the novel:
Dear Destiny,
How are you? I am doing great. I hope you are, too. I got
your letter. My mom and sister live in Michigan . They moved there three or four years ago. He lives in Michigan. I see him in the summers. He is very sweet. He is very, very cute. We finished Slake's Limbo. I enjoyed the book a lot.
See you later! :-)
Your Key Pal,
Janie
Janie's message focuses on establishing a relationship with her pen pal rather than maintaining an abstracted discussion of Slake's Limbo. To the extent that the children hardly knew each other, it is understandable that Janie would want to establish a rapport. The language function highlighted in Janie's message is therefore that of involvement - an attempt to use words as a medium for defining a social relationship between participants in a speech event. Destiny, however, seemed uninterested in making small talk, especially after she had, as her teacher instructed, made thoughtful comments that related her personal experience to the book. Later, Destiny's best friend at PS 520, Angelika, also became discouraged when her keypal failed to reflect on the literature, this time in response to interpretive sketches of Slake's Limbo sent by the Florida class to Harlem.
Dear Hannah,
I don't understand your picture. I suggest that you look deeper and imagine how you see N.Y. The things you drew on this picture do not tell me anything. It seems as if it were thinking Florida instead of N.Y.
All I see is a house and that disen't have anything to do with Slake's Limbo.I'm not trying to be rude,but I'm disappointed. Now,let's talk about Gumbo Limbo.How do you think the book is?I feel it's o.k.I think that Percella shouldn't drink because she would be making her life worse.
At this point in our correspondence, a number of dialogues shifted from an interpersonal or ideational focus to a discussion of the rules of engagement itself. This phase of our collaboration reached a climax when Ms. Sunshine emailed Ms. Bayles, the PS 520 teacher, and directly called attention to the original purpose of the project:
...Another thing that has come up is that several students are telling mine to stick to the book and to quit talking about other things in their letters. Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought that the exchange of knowledge about the two different cultures was as important as the literary exchange. Granted, my kids are not used to writing about the book the way yours are. And like you, I do not dictate what they write in their email, simply that it be correctly written :) What is it that you expect of the email exchange?
It is not surprising to find the participants' conversation turning to a negotiation of the rules and conventions governing the project's discourse (in linguistic terms, the "code" of communication) when the project operated in such an unfamiliar communicative context. The ambiguity of the field results in a predictable outcome: students and teachers struggling to establish a shared code by which participants can make sense of the email messages. Their correspondence suggests that they also come to the project with different conceptions about the rules governing writing in general. When Ms. Sunshine explains that she only asks that her student's messages are "correctly written", it highlights the complexity of the Sense of Place project as both a literacy event and classroom occurrence. Does Ms. Bayles share a similar view with Ms. Sunshine on what is "correct" writing? Do the students at PS 520? Do African-American and Latino/a students in urban New York and White students in suburban Florida share this understanding? These ambiguities become magnified when email is the channel of communication because a) it allows for expedient communication between individuals from distant places (hence, disparate cultures and experiences) and, b) it is a relatively new channel of communication without established codes and predictable contexts for interpreting layers of meaning within a message.
As noted by Roman Jacobson (1961, p. 76), another important element in the employment of a shared code between members of a speech event, is the use of "metalanguage", language that calls attention to language itself, as in, "I don't follow you" or "Do you know what I mean?" In his study of secondary-school classrooms, Stubbs (1980) found that teachers make ample use of metalanguage "to monitor and control classroom communication systems" (p. 160). Since metalingual talk is common in most large-group speech events (Cazden, 1988), Stubb's major finding is not the existence of metalanguage in the classroom but rather the radical asymmetry of this type of talk. Teachers are almost always the producer of monitoring metalanguage, and when students employ it, it is seen as an atypical teaching situation. During the Sense of Place project, email messages that drew attention to emailing itself (as well as to the behavior of emailers) were commonly employed by both teachers and students. Sometimes it was even used by students to call attention to the messages of teachers, an exceptional occurrence in the traditional classroom context.
This section has offered a few possible explanations for seemingly atypical discourse patterns during the Sense of Place Project, some having been previously noted by researchers studying CMC in the classroom context: the dislocation of the teachers from the "center" of the literacy event (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2003; Bump, 1990; Lamy & Goodfellow, 1999; Leu & Kinzer, 2000; Selfe & Meyer, 1991; Stuhlman & Taylor, 1998); the absence of an established code for communicating via email, particularly in classroom contexts (Ferrara, Brunner, & Whittemore, 1991; Meij and Boersma, 2002; Roberts, 2004; Wegerif, 1998); and the ease with which electronic mail allows participants from distant places and cultures to maintain continual discourse (Leu & Kinzer, 2000; Roberts, 2004).
Halliday uses the term "tenor" to describe participant pairings in a communication event and social relations that impact the nature of their discourse. "Mode", a linguistic term linked to tenor, simply refers to the channel that carries the messages sent from addresser to addressee. In regard to the tenor and mode of the discourse we likewise find that a) the project situated students and teachers in unfamiliar and sometimes unsettling relationships for a school activity and, b) it transmitted their texts through a relatively unfamiliar channel of communication for classroom activity (email).
Over the past three decades, scholars have noted how networked learning environments challenge our traditional conceptions of teacher and student, and how they are positioned in constructs of knowledge and learning (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2003; Langston, & Batson, 1990; Slatin, 1988; Sudol, 1985). Ms. Bayles was keenly aware that the project problematized her role as teacher. Before our correspondence began, we had planning discussions where she expressed a number of concerns in anticipation of the "social shifts" in networked classrooms described in current research. As the project was initially organized, the students in our class would have had freedom to communicate directly via email with the students in Florida. A nervous Ms. Bayles described to me what she considered a worst-case scenario: a student in the Florida class, in response to an email, sends back an insensitive remark commenting on one of the Harlem students race, intelligence, or community. One of her students writes back something equally insensitive in retaliation. This all transpires before we have read their communication or taken any immediate steps to intervene on behalf of distressed students, angry parents, and teachers. She had had this experience with prior email projects involving distant communities and wanted to have students send mail directly to us before it went to Florida.
Embedded in Ms. Bayles's fear was an assumption that unless we mediate student's communication, we ran the risk of forfeiting learning opportunities. It also assumed that students only learned that which is taught to them. I argued that we could begin with a contrary position, one that is at the core of social and cognitive constructivist models of education (Liu & Matthews, 2005): learning begins with an individuals lived experience upon which he or she transposes new ways of seeing and knowing. In his discussion of networked writing environments, Sudol (1985) writes:
The community of writers provides a nearly ideal setting for collaborative learning, enabling freshman composition courses to liberate students from the idea that what they write is for teachers to evaluate. Writing for various purposes and audiences in the future will demand of them keen independent judgment-a skill that can be practiced through collaborative efforts such as group brainstorming, peer evaluation and the agony of being misunderstood even by peers...All of this reinforces the idea that writing is a social activity rather than some bizarre requirement in basic literacy. (p. 8)
I agree with Sudol that learning often grows out of the "agony of being misunderstood," or in a more general sense, out of conflict. For this reason, the scenario Ms. Bayles envisioned was for me a hopeful one because it places the lived experience at the center of learning. In other words, I felt more capable of teaching a student how to confront and manage hurtful remarks through writing when it involved an actual event. This is exactly where networked writing environments might present our students with exciting new avenues for learning. They can have direct interaction with disparate peoples and develop socially and intellectually as they experience the consequences of these interactions.
Roberts (2004) expresses a similar vision for cross-cultural networked writing environments in her account of fourth through sixth grade students engaged in a problem-based telecollaboration exchange between classrooms in Laramie, Wyoming, and Monteverde, Costa Rica: "Letter writing in a virtual forum served as a reference point for literacy learning that extended beyond a singular intent of skill development to include experiences for the exploration of globally and personally significant social issues" (p. 19).
Roberts also concludes, however, that "[f]or planning purposes the criteria for language use must be established by participants at the onset of collaboration and in respect to the international environment within which they operate" (p. 12). Here, our visions for networked literacy events diverge. In response to Ms. Bayles's concern that her students might respond with unconstructive anger to his or her partner, I suggested that we could take their email account away for a period of time or simply use the conflict as a "teachable moment" for instructing students how to use writing for constructively mediating conflict. Either approach, I argued, would offer a powerful lesson on responsible use of the network and aide in the development of "communicative competence" (Hymes, 1966), that is, knowledge of what to say to whom, and how to say it appropriately in a particular communicative context. Unlike Roberts who concluded that "criteria for language use" should be settled at the onset of a networked collaboration, I contend that the opportunity to negotiate the code of discourse for the network collaboration is precisely what makes it a powerful educational activity.
Eventually, Ms. Bayles and I agreed to have the students email directly to each other without prior teacher intervention. We also agreed, however that the students would have all email forwarded to an alias account so the teachers and I could monitor the correspondence to troubleshoot if problems arose, and also to identify opportunities for lessons.
Clearly, the shifts in authority that characterize the tenor of network classrooms would not be a total shift in our classrooms. Even if the students wrote in complete confidentiality, it is likely that we still would have a great influence on the content and style of their correspondence. The students inhabited a classroom context that would continue to impact their writing and thinking even when they were not working directly with teachers. Consequently, it was a predictable outcome that messages would exhibit language features reflecting an authentic, unmodified student voice and other features indicating direct or indirect teacher intervention. In the following message from Robbie to his PS 520 keypal Kwesi, the voice is unmistakably that of a 5th grader:
Dear Kwesi Hicks,
I like sports, too. I like football. I like drawing, too. Slake's Limbo is cool. I know he is sad. I am white. I hope you still will write me. Bye.
Robbie
This may have been the first time Robbie had a written correspondence with an African-American child. His concern that Kwesi will not write to him because he is white, although troubling, is understandable given his age and the socio-historical context impacting his thinking. The style of his letters, particularly the non-sequiturs and abrupt shifts in tone, indicates minimal intervention from an experienced writer. Had a teacher reviewed the letter before it was sent, one could imagine he or she informing the child that it was a "silly" question or directing the child to couch his concern in less direct language. Ms. Bayles's worst fears came true in this early exchange between Robbie and Kwesi. She and Kwesi were equally upset by Robbie's message and the two of them discussed and wrote the following response together:
Dear Robbie James,
Why do you think that I won't write to you because I'm black. That doesn't really matter whether your white or black just as long as we are good friends. Thats all that matters. That really hert my feelings bad because I am black. When I read your letter it really upset me because just because you are white doesn't mean I won't write to you. White and blackpeople are all equal to me and your letter made it sound like I was a racist. You shouldnt put that kind of stuff in your letters becasue it will give people a bad impression of you. When I wrote I just wanted to have conversation with you about the book. It never enterd my mind about color.
Getting to the book:
YOu said you thought the book was cool. What parts did you think were cool and why? To have better conversations we both have to write more about what we are thinking about the book. I think it was really nice for the guy to offer Slake a job at the coffee shop so Slake could have something to eat everynight. I also think that the waitress was nice to him too for giving him dinner along with lunch. I don't think that people really do that in real life
Kwesi's response contains language features that one would associate with an elementary student and other features that one associates with a more experienced writer. For instance, it is unlikely that a 5th grader would use the expression "it never entered my mind" or begin a sentence with the prepositional clause, "To make our conversations better". The Robbie/Kwesi correspondence also exhibits the expert/learner relationship inscribed in the tenor of the discourse. Directly or indirectly influenced by Ms. Bayles, Kwesi's response clearly takes on a teacherly tone as he schools Robbie on the subtleties of racial stereotyping.
In time, Robbie and Kwesi were able to work out their problems and continue as keypals for the remainder of the project. A later message from Robbie also reflects an effort on the part of the Florida students to focus more on the text after the New York City students called their attention to the lack of literature-based discussion:
Dear Kwesi,
I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I am so sorry. Do you forgive me?
So, to the book. I think he will get a new home and get a real job. Sometimes Slake gets real sad. In Florida we have poor people down here that say they will work for food. But, they don't. They just want the money. Sometimes they wont give up the streets for food. It is different here than where y'all live.
Robbie
To: Robbie
Subject: Keypals
Whats up.
I except your apology becaus i know you did not mean it like that.
I think that the book is cool to. What do you think of that dream that Slake had while he was sleeping? I think that Slae is going to meet someone and he might share the cave and he might loose that friend too. He might make his way all the way just by working at that coffee shop. Hecould go back to his aunt and his aunt might report her to get help. I think that if I were in Slakes shoes that I would keep working at th coffee shop and be able to bye my own food and take care of myself . If you were in his shoes what would you do and would you go to his aunts house or would you stay with what you are doing which is selling newspapers and working in acoffee shop.
To: Kwesi Hicks
Internet Subject: Keypals
Dear Kwesi,
I am glad you forgave me. You sound like a good friend. You made me feel bad. I cried because I did not mean that, I promise.
SO TO THE BOOK. We just started a book called The Missing Gator Of Gumbo Limbo. You will like it. We just started the first chapter.
BCNYOUL8R, ROBBIE
The most obvious contextual shift invited by the Sense of Place project is in the mode of discourse. Email correspondence has been described as a blurring of written and spoken language features (Matsuda, 2002; Murray, 1998; Wollman-Bonilla, 2003). It approximates informal spoken discourse in the sense that individuals often use email to communicate spontaneously and it allows for relatively quick responses. It appears, therefore, that email writers often concern themselves less with producing polished products and more with crafting texts that enable them to communicate maximum information in a timely fashion. Email, however, could never fully supply the same volume or type of linguistic, para-linguistic, and non-verbal signals produced in actual spoken discourse.
Given e-mail messaging's peculiar blending of speaking and writing, it is understandable that letters were exchanged and conversations occurred where students and teachers attempted to delineate a standard code for their messages. These discussions implicitly exhibit elements of the pedagogies that support the literacy practices in the respective classrooms. For instance, Ms. Bayles wanted to read students' letters before they were sent to Florida because she feared that not only the content of their letters but also the "unfinished" quality of her students writing could feed negative stereotypes about the intelligence and "illiteracy" of urban minority children. As mentioned earlier, Ms. Bayles's approach to teaching was strongly influenced by her association with a local university-sponsored reading and writing institute which supports teachers' efforts to establish "writing workshops." Tenets of the writing workshop model include viewing writing as a process where students brainstorm topics, draft, revise, and edit writing while conferring with other writers as they produce finished work in authentic genres for authentic audiences (Calkins, 1991; Atwell, 1987). Ms. Bayles worried that Ms. Sunshine and her students did not value a "process approach" to writing and would respond negatively to her children's emails if we allowed direct communication between students.
We eventually agreed, however, that we should encourage students to expand the successful independent "conversations" they were having around literature in their classroom "face-to-face" book clubs. We both believed that too much editing of our students' emails could detract from the children's focus on collaborative meaning-making.
This second concern of Ms. Bayles touches on the unique properties of digital texts. She takes issue with her students sending emails outside her classroom that have not been as thoroughly crafted as the fiction and non-fiction books the children "publish" in her writer's workshop. In a sense, she is viewing both email messages and the print genre pieces composed in her classroom as texts that proceed through a process that begins with ideas and rough drafts and ends in a polished product edited by the writer for surface level grammar, usage and spelling errors. She ultimately fears, however, that readers will make false and negative judgments about the character or intelligence of the Harlem students: "You should see some of the things they send out. They'll just type something up quickly and send it out without even checking to see if it makes sense." I explained that a lot of email correspondence taking place in the "real world" very much resembles her student's process. It might even be helpful, I suggested, for her to recognize their impromptu emailing as helpful training for the type of communication that is seemingly more common by the day; as Slatin (1988) explains, it is writing that results in a discourse where "[k]nowledge ceases to be artifact...and becomes instead a process; it is dynamic rather than static, not to be confused with mere information" (p.18).
Ms. Bayles argued that the students and teacher in Florida are not necessarily coming from the same experience base as Slatin or anyone else who has assimilated to email culture. This was a valid point. We could not be certain that the class in Florida would value the Harlem student's correspondence or read it with the same assumptions as say, two professors collaborating on research via email. Because network communication was still relatively new in elementary classrooms, we needed to be careful not to generalize how users incorporate it into their lives.
In time it became apparent that the Florida students did, in fact, not only read literature with a different focus than the Harlem students but also crafted their letters with a different focus as well. Ms. Sunshine informed me that one of the reasons her children were slow in responding to our students' letters was that it took a long time for her to "edit" each letter for spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and have them type in corrections. As she suggests in the following message, computers in her writing program primarily functioned as devices for children to practice surface level revisions of written texts using the word processor:
Dear Keypals,
I am Ms. Sunshine, your teacher key pal in Florida. I want to say how much I appreciate your patience while I was ill. This has really slowed us down, as you can imagine. However, it is not the only thing that has slowed us down. You see, we have only 5 computers in the classroom. We only have one that is hooked up to the internet. Soon, our system will be upgraded to a very fast speed, but for now, I am running in the slow lane.
In my classroom, we do not have very many formal English lessons. I use the children's writing to decide what each child needs to learn. In this way, each one gets an individual lesson on English grammar and structure. I also take their spelling words from their writings. Ever child has an individual spelling list of the words they tend to misspell. They do not have spelling books. Normally, I would sit with them one-on-one and we would correct the stories at the computers; however, since time is of an essence, I am taking their letters home on the floppies and correcting them there. THEN I upload them. Today, now that I have them printed out and the original letters that the kids wrote, they will find the corrections I made and then analyze why I made them. In this way, they can learn from the experience. THIS is why I encourage keypals and the projects. I consider it to be an important learning experience on many levels. It is a part of our curriculum. The students understand this, and trust me not to change the meanings in their letters, and to keep what is said confidential. They also prefer it to the spelling books and the English books. They are dull. One of my students suggested that I send you copies of their original letters so that you can see the changes I make in their letters. You will see that I focus mostly on spelling and punctuation. Also, I need to help with word usage. I will send them if I have time, but that will double the time I have to spend at home ON MY TIME sending the children's email.So far I have found this to be a very interesting project. I have learned a great deal about teaching from a read aloud book, and abou your writing program. You should be getting our pictures soon in the mail. I can't wait to see yours, too. I am very glad to see how much my students are enjoying Slake's Limbo and the project.
Although Ms. Sunshine cited a lack of computers and network access in the Florida classroom, in discussing the message with her 5th graders, Ms. Bayles chose to highlight the Florida teacher's editing of her student's work as the bottleneck in the project. Already bothered by the lag in response time, a few Harlem students sent emails voicing their frustration in language and tone similar to the following message from Tanya:
Dear Keypals
I,f your teachers checks your letters doesn't that take up your.On computer time my teacher does not check my work that take our time away from each other so maybe you can try the best way you can to write me and that won't take up our time away…
Now let's talk about W. Joe. I think he's going to took Slake and have a life on the farm. Can you tell me your thoughs. Well I notice that the Author has two different storys. I wonders If he's a friend, or a family member.
Sincerly
Tanya Guzman
These letters prompted a series of email exchanges where Ms. Sunshine defended her teaching practices and Ms. Bayles and I attempted to clarify the position of our students and our own beliefs about reading and writing instruction (see Appendix A). Despite the initially friendly tone of the letters, we could sense Ms. Sunshine's growing frustration with how forward the Harlem students were in voicing their opinions. In my response, I tried to sound sympathetic to her concerns, but also to speak honestly and explicitly about our communication hitches so we could move forward with the project.
In summary, an analysis of Sense of Place messages through the social linguist conceptual framework of field, tenor, and mode reveals that that communicative context shaped the content of networked literature discussions as follows:
Replete with smiley faces and exclamations, Ms. Sunshine's reply on March 31st (see appendix A) suggested that her anger had abated in response to my conciliatory message. She wrote that she appreciated my input and would "instruct the children to remain focused on the book in future email." Consequently, I was completely unprepared when two weeks later I received the aforementioned message that Ms. Sunshine wrote in response to Shakira's "I don't get your picture." Here is the continuation of that message:
...These students are eleven years old and are not used to your methods; as I have pointed out this is our first time using your style of learning. I do not feel that they should be belittled or criticized for attempting something new and trying to follow your lead. I try to teach my students to respect your children's work and feelings and to appreciate the differences without considering them as being wrong simply because they are different.
Please do whatever you need to do to help your students understand that they should treat my students with the same respect.I realize that you feel this is a cultural difference and it may well be. I have spent much time on the Internet and with email covering many cultures the past 12 months, and I can tell you that the "loud and aggressive" nature of some of the mail my students have received would not be long tolerated by people in a global society. I know that you wish to teach your children to assert themselves and that is wonderful. I also want that for my children. However, I feel that it must be done in such a way as to not deminish the other person in the relationship.
You are again hearing frustration in my letter. I really feel that we have tried hard to accomodate the cultural differences, and I know that you have, too. I do not think of this so much as a cultural difference as I do just plain rude, and I will not ask my students to accommodate rudeness. The majority of the
exchanges have been wonderful and perfect, but I need help with this type of email. Since your children have accepted the responsibility of posting their mail I am assuming that they also accept the responsibility for the response it illicits. I, however, do not feel it is my place to send a copy of this to Shakira, though I admit it was my first intent. If you would like me to email him a copy, I will. If I have made a complete misreading of this, I apologize and ask to corrected.
Sincerely,
Karen
Ms. Sunshine's letter revealed implicit tensions running through our collaboration that I have described using Halliday's concepts of field, tenor and mode. These tensions resulted from ambiguities in the communicative context of our project, in the hierarchy of authority, in student and teacher understanding of what constitutes appropriate email communication, and in the purpose and goals of our collaboration. They also resulted from the general incompatibility of the respective classrooms' literacy practices and values.
Ms. Sunshine requests that Shakira identify the source of her confusion and implies that she should be more delicate in her delivery. In a sense, she is asking Shakira to be referentially explicit and to articulate herself with a level of lexical density normally associated with formal written discourse (Chafe & Danielewicz, 1987). At the same time, she would like Shakira to use language that fulfills the "phatic" function in her communication with Hannah, that is, language purely for the purpose of establishing interpersonal relations (e.g. "Hey! Wassup?" or "Nice weather today"). As Chafe and Danielewicz explain, "Spoken language contains indicators of the speaker's involvement with the audience.... Much written communication, on the other hand, lacks involvement of any of these three kinds, and is apt to show indications of the writer's detachment from the audience, from himself, and from concrete reality" (p. 21). Even in non-networked contexts, it is common for novice writers like Shakira to blur the lines that more experienced writers establish between spoken and written language. Teachers spend considerable time instructing young writers in the grammatical, lexical, and stylistic differences between the two modes of discourse. In this instance however, the added variable of computer-assisted communication appears to present Ms. Sunshine with new and unexpected instructional challenges.
Goffman's (1981) concept of "footing" is also helpful for understanding the source of Ms. Sunshine's consternation. Footing refers to the symbolic "self" presented by a speaker that organizes social alignments in a discourse situation, which in turn influences the production and reception of any particular utterance. An example of footing given by Goffman is that of a military planning session beginning with formal acknowledgments of rank. The ritualistic salutes create a social alignment, or footing, that will determine what and when utterances will be deemed appropriate in the ensuing conversation. A speaker's footing can change many times during a speech activity and speakers may jump back and forth between footings as they address particular participants in a conversation or constituencies of an audience. Shifts in footing can be linguistically tracked by attention to changes in both linguistic and para-linguistic units such as body posture, gaze, tone, volume, and rhythm.
Shakira's statement does not signal to the reader an explicit discursive stance (or "footing") due to both the elliptical nature of the message and the absence of para-linguistic cues (e.g. facial expression, body posture) in email communication. In the absence of a clear footing, Ms. Sunshine supplies her own meaning and assumes that Shakira is expressing frustration or perhaps impatience with Hannah. As a result, she expects Shakira to be more "sensitive" and give a name to her confusion.
In speaking with Shakira about her email, we learned that she wrote the message quickly at the end of a class period and did not even remember sending it out. She did not mean it belligerently but simply wanted to keep contact with her partner before sending out a more substantial letter. Shakira's text could be seen as a form of email commonly referred to as a "quick message." Successful communication, however, depends in part on the participants having a mutual understanding of what Saville-Troike (1989) describes as "prescriptive statements of behavior, of how people 'should' act, which are tied to the shared values of the speech community" (p. 154). While Shakira may have internalized a particular set of expectations and standards regarding the formality and style of email communication, Ms Sunshine might fear that her student is not playing by the same rules. Or since it is Ms. Sunshine who has actually read the message and responded to it, perhaps she herself is not comfortable with this form of address coming from a 5th grader. In general, the relative freedom of the students to communicate when and how they wish with their keypals runs contrary to familiar classroom ritual where, as Cazden (1988) notes, "teachers talk two-thirds of the time.... [They] initiate almost all interactions, often with a set of boundary markers such as 'now' and 'well', and interrupt but are not interrupted" (p. 160).
Ms. Sunshine may be working according to a more familiar set of conventions for students addressing teachers in school settings. Would she have had the same response had Shakira ended her message with the sideways smiley face that has become the commonly accepted symbol in email dialogue for good will?
Dear Hannah,
I don't get your picture : - )
Shakira
What would have happened had Shakira spoken these words directly to Ms. Sunshine in a hushed voice with her shoulders hunched and eyes turned shyly downward? (Based on her references to Shakira as "he", we can even speculate if Ms. Sunshine would have responded differently if she had seen that Shakira is a girl rather than a boy.) In other words, for Shakira to assume a conventional role in a teacher/student communication, she would need to lexically generate the same meanings she does so successfully through intonation and body language in spoken dialogue. The only other possible way this misunderstanding could have been avoided was for Ms. Sunshine to recognize Shakira's elliptical and impersonal text as a "quick message." She would have to assume that the scarcity of information resulted from Shakira's haste, and that the very act of sending the message itself fulfilled the phatic function.
I have focused mainly on messages that illustrate the tensions and conflicts between keypals and teachers. This was just one aspect of our collaboration. There were many examples (see Appendix B) throughout the project of students corresponding without confusion and confrontation. Students often drew from their personal experience and wrote in distinct voices that were not only understood by their partners but also validated through thoughtful responses. For instance, there was Kenya articulating her sincere gratitude to Kylie for sketching a picture of New York City depicting it as "empty and peaceful" when "everyone else thinks its violent." There was Taj recognizing the sadness behind Slake's comically makeshift eyeglasses, which opened the door for his partner Jake to speak honestly and proudly about his own eyeglasses. There was Jasmin, Courtney, and Jennifer finding common ground over a "sexist" remark in our second novel, The Missing 'Gator of Gumbo Limbo. These are just a few of many positive exchanges, the kind I hoped would occur when I first designed the project.
Beyond providing a group of fifth graders from disparate cultures and locations the opportunity for meaningful literature discussion, the Sense of Place project revealed a number of instructive lessons for literacy educators. Here are some guidelines to consider when facilitating collaborative network reading and writing activities in grade school settings:
Although a high number of messages focused on the rules of interaction for our collaboration, the letters in Appendix B also represent the great diversity of responses that the students had to the literature and to each other. The range of topics and fluidity of movement from topic to topic even within single messages is consistent with the "multiple threads of discourse" reported to spontaneously emerge from on-line discussions (Schwartzman, 2006; Selwyn, 2000). These developments in the project stand in stark contrast to the traditional classroom discussion where teachers set agendas and make great efforts to keep student discourse from straying too far from the designated topic.
"Multiple threads of discourse" can also euphemistically describe the meandering and hollow chatter that characterizes some network discussions between grade school classrooms in distance locations. Researchers have noted how the quality of computer mediated exchanges - particularly those without a clear and sensible purpose for establishing network collaboration - tend to quickly diminish in quality and frequency once the novelty wears off. In designing the project, we believed that having the students read two novels set in the respective locations of the participating classes would increase the likelihood of a more substantive and sustained collaboration. In retrospect, this was a good decision. With only a few exceptions, the keypal teams carried on meaningful and focused dialogues for over four months. We attribute this to the grounding of discussion in specific responses to the novels and to the motivating influence of students serving as "field experts" for the respective novels. The fifth graders in both PS 520 and Bellson appeared genuinely motivated to help each other understand aspects of life in New York City and the Florida Everglades highlighted in Slake's Limbo and The Missing 'Gator of Gumbo Limbo.
2. Allow learning to grow from the "agony of being misunderstood"Having noted the more harmonious aspects of our collaboration, as a literacy educator I am equally excited by the misunderstandings, miscommunications, and conflicts that occurred over the course of the project. It was moments of disharmony that presented students with perhaps the most significant opportunities for learning and personal growth. Educators and scholars at various levels of schooling have expressed the need for teachers to design and facilitate on-line discussions and distance learning activities in ways that reduce the likelihood of communication problems and conflict between collaborative groups (Durington, et al., 2006; Cifuentes & Shih, 2000; Stuhlman & Taylor, 1998). Towards this end, they have argued convincingly for ensuring equitable access to technology, developing rubrics and assessment tools that "list criteria and levels of quality" for student participation (Durrington et. al, 2006), forming clear and mutually held visions for the goals and process of networked collaborations, and monitoring projects closely to eliminate "confusion" and keep them running "smoothly" (Stuhlman and Taylor, 1998). While there are clear benefits to these measures, the Sense of Place collaboration suggests that we should guard against designing teachers and students completely out of these instructive (albeit sometimes uncomfortable) discussions regarding the use of new technologies available to us. McGrail (2006) reports in his account of secondary English teachers' perspectives on a school-wide laptop initiative that, "teachers need to be given an opportunity to discuss collaboratively the 'what' of the English curriculum" and its relationship to new technology" (p. 1076). The same could be said of students who are directly using these technologies and participating in classroom activities incorporating them. Doing so not only gives students agency in their education, it introduces them to discursive processes by which individuals communicate about meaningful issues in a digital landscape. It allows students to wrestle with the "what" of writing email and communicating with peers from different geographical locations, school settings and life experiences.
Shakira, like many young writers, has only begun to fully understand how written communication requires a different use of language than spoken discourse. And while she probably understands that there are degrees of formality required for spoken language depending on the context, she has not had enough experiences with writing to make similar distinctions in regard to her writing style and content. When elementary students begin to recognize that writing and speaking require subtly different approaches to language, they often shape this division according to the rigid and decontextualized standards of traditional academic writing exercises. The power of a network writing curriculum is that it allows students to think critically about how they write within an authentic communication context. When the individual on the receiving end of a student's writing is an authentic participant in the communicative event, teacher and student together can reflect on the actual effect of a particular text and make informed writing decisions based on the responses of a writing partner. We can ask Shakira to think about how Ms. Sunshine responded to her email and why she responded as she did. We can ask Shakira to think about how she wrote her email and how she can manipulate language so her next email might elicit a different, more desirable response.
Beyond helping students become familiar with a particular mode of communication, the literacy activities in the Sense of Place project focused students on language itself. They are afforded with opportunities to employ and look closely at a wide range of language functions as they participate in meaningful reading and writing activities rather than academic exercises in writing, reading, and speaking.
The Sense of Place project expanded far beyond its original vision of children reading books together and exchanging emails around it. It became about establishing human relationships and the politics of identity. It became about what we value as students, teachers, readers, and thinkers and how an individual's values intersect with those of other individuals from disparate communities, genders, races, and classroom contexts. Nearly all this was played out through text on computer screens. The children, and the teachers as well, struggled to understand how to best use language, and specifically network writing, to best serve their respective purposes in participating in this project. As the project unfolded, it became clear that language was both a means and an end in conducting our experiment in computer-mediated communication.
All names of individuals and institutions are pseudonyms except my own.
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Date: Tue. 22 March 11:15:07 EST
Subject: keypal changes
Sender: K_sunshine@bellson.edu"
To: Limbo@PS520.edu
Good Morning Kate and Andrew,
I hope this finds you well...Angelika and Hannah seem to be having a problem relating. Hannah has decided to go with Destiny as a keypal. It seems that Angelika is not very happy with Hannah as a keypal, either.
Another thing that has come up is that several students are telling mine to stick to the book and to quit talking about other things in their letters. Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought that the exchange of knowledge about the two different cultures was as important as the literary exchange. Granted, my kids are not used to writing about the book the way yours are. And like you, I do not dictate what they write in their email, simply that it be correctly written :) What is it that you expect of the email exchange?
I hope your weekend is wonderful,
Karen
Date: Wed. 23 March 1:15:07 EST
Subject: re: keypal changes
Sender: Limbo@PS520.edu
To: K_sunshine@bellson.edu
Dear Karen,
I'm sorry I haven't written in so long. I've been incredibly busy with a number of projects. Kate has also been swamped.
We got all your letters and the postcards. The kids were so happy to recieve them. When we gave the postcards out it was like Christmas morning. After all this email stuff, there is still something special about getting a personalized message in handwriting I think it really hit home to our kids that they've made some new friends in sunny Florida.
We're on Chapter 7 of Gator Limbo and the children are starting to get into it. They struggled at the beginning with the descriptive passages of places and terrains that are foreign to them. I think they will have some questions for your kids in regard to this.
I could hear your frustration in the last letter when you asked about our "expectations" for the project. I could understand how it could be a little bothersome to have ten year olds telling you and your students what to write about and sometimes in less than friendly terms. I've read through all the letters and some of them, like Angelika's, do come across as judgmental and pushy. If I could generalize here, perhaps what we're seeing is a clash of cultures manifested in language. They don't call New Yorkers loud and aggressive for nothing!
On the other hand, many of our children grow up poor and in communities that have historically been denied a voice in public affairs. Kate makes it a priority in her classroom to empower students to voice their thoughts and feelings and express them freely through their writing and speech. I can't fault our kids for having an opinion about how they would like to their conversations to go. However, it is important that they understand how to express an opinion in a productive way and adopt their tone and style according to particular circumstances.
Kate and I fully intend to bring this to the attention of our students. We just hope not too many feelings were hurt along the way and apologize to anyone who felt attacked or singled out.
I can't speak for the kids, but when I developed this project my expectations were that the children learn about each other's cultures and identities through the process of reading literature together. I thought that conversation around a shared text would allow the children to share elements of their lives and community in ways that standard "pen-pal" correspondence could not.
As far as I can tell, the students in our class who are most dissatisfied would like their partners to respond more thoughtfully to the questions and issues they raise around the books. Some of our students feel like they put a lot of energy and time into thinking and writing about the novels and do so because they think it will provoke an interesting or insightful response. Therefore, they are disappointed when their partner doesn't linger on, or ignores, the subject they put forward. So anything you can do to push kids in this direction would be helpful. One idea we thought of was to maybe have some of your students concentrate on writing one keypal rather than multiple. This way they can put their energy into one substantial correspondence rather than two or three not so substantial ones.
I hope I haven't sounded to pushy or ungrateful myself here. I think this has still been an overwhelmingly positive experience and feel good even about the more uncomfortable moments because I've learned a lot from them. I'm also incredibly appreciative of all the hard work and time you've put in.
Take care and speak to you soon.
Andrew
Date: Thurs. 31 March 2:15:07 EST
Subject: Re: keypal changes
Sender: K_sunshine@bellson.edu"
To: Limbo@PS520.edu
Dear Kate and Andrew
I hope this finds you well. I have not been ignoring your letter to me, nor
the suggestions y'all made. They were wonderful, and I have them on file.
We did not try them, as we were giving the CAT test the whole week while you were finishing up with Slake's Limbo.
I wanted to touch base with you about the upcoming Spring Break. We
will be out of school from 4/14 to 4/23 and I am not going to be here
tomorrow. I have the last batch of email for your students to upload, so you will get them tonight, probably.
We are almost finished with The Missing Gator of Gumbo Limbo. The children love it and they are excited to serve as "field experts" for their friends in New York. : )
Speaking of Spring Break, aren't you just counting down the hours?!!
Fondly,
Karen
From: KenyaD@PS520e.edu
To: K_sunshine@bellson.edu
Cc: Limbo@PS520.edu
Subject: Re: Hey
Dear Kylie,
I think that your picture is very interesting. It reminds me of my own
city. Tress, grass, buildings and hotels. You know I really see some
thing in your picture and that is that, well you know how people say that
this is a very violent city. Well in your picture it seems that you think
that my city is a very peaceful city and Ilike that because everyone else
thinks it;s violent.
The way you drew your picture is that what you saw
though slake;s eye's? You know your opicture looks like central park a
park in New York that has lots of trees and buildings around it. Central
park is a very very big park. I really like your picture and it looks just
like New York.
Your picture reminded me ofthis part out of slake's Limbo:
"He came up onto the street in a neighborhood that he had never seen
before, walked two blocks uptown to the slpendid width of seventy-ninth
street, and started to walk westward. Here were sparklingshops, large
clean building , and neatly tended saplings along the edge of the
relatively unlittered pavement. The absenc of tin cans, garbage, and other
refuse, the scarcity of steps and stoops, and the lack of people sitting or
leaning about them interrested slake. As he crossed Park Avenue he waited
on the curb with repect as a young delivery boy drove a bicycle through
heavy traffic as if it were a fine car. He continued along seventy-ninth
and finally crossed Fifth Avenue and walked into
the fall land scape of Central Park."
This reminded me of your picture becuase your picture showed a city that
was very empty and peaceful. Sometimes New York City is like that.
From Kenya
From: TajM@PS520e.edu
To: K_sunshine@bellson.edu
Cc: Limbo@PS520.edu
Subject: Re: wassup!
To Keypals,
Remember the part of Slake's Limbo when the man and little girl saw him
down on the tracks, would you have stopped or ran away to your hole?
I liked the part about Slake's glasses.
"Say,son! said the man with turban."Whatdo you call those shades?I never
did see a pair like that."He peered at Slake closely,bending and looking
directly into his eyes.Do they really work?Slake nodded.
IT was funny because I can really see the part. I felt the man was making
fun of Slake's broken up glasses. When you look at the cover you can see
how messed up they are. It is funny but it is sad. It is sad because he
is a little boy and he is homeless. I liked the way he made his glasses.
It shows he is pretty smart and he can't see. I wouldn't wear glasses like
that because people would make fun of me and hurt my feelings. Would you
wear those kind of glasses?
Taj is my name and skating and football is my game.
From: K_sunshine@bellson.edu
To: TajM@PS520e.edu
Cc: Limbo@PS520.edu
Subject: Re: wassup!
Dear Taj
If I was Slake I probably would have ran away. I would not know if he was
going to hurt me or his was going to help me. I would not take a chance on
him. I do not think wearing glasses is too funny because I wear glasses.
They are pretty cool and some people say I look kind of good in them. Yes,
it is very sad to see that people are making fun of him because he has
glasses. I would not make fun of him because I have glasses. Some people
make fun of me, but, I ignore them those kind of people. They just aren't
my kind of friends. Yes, it was pretty sad that he was homeless. I am
just glad he found a nice little place to stay in for the next hundred
days.
NO I would not wear those glasses because everybody would make fun
of me. I just would not wear them.
What is your favorite sport? Mine are football, ice hockey, and baseball.
Do you watch a lot of sports on TV? I do, and my favorite sport to watch
is football. I like when they get hit so hard that they do not know where
in the world they are. That is cool, don't you think?
Your pal,
Jake
From: JasminJ@PS520e.edu
To: K_sunshine@bellson.edu
Cc: Limbo@PS520.edu
Subject: Re: Gumbo Limbo
Dear Courtney and Jennifer,
Courtney,I saw the picture you drew its nice. The word you sayed about him
Slake lifted him from the dark to the blue sky.It's really
powerful.Jennifer, I couldn't see the picture you drew. Did you saw mine?
What did you think happen to Slake? I think he found a new life for him.I'm
reading The Missing'Gator Of Gumbo Limbo.I feel sad for how Lisa K. get
hurt from her father. And I'm happy that she and her mom lift because they
both would get hurt so bad.It's great book to people to learn. You know
when Lisa K. was fishing Travis the hunter was being sexist. He said "that
good for a girl".When she was fishing.To me I would punch him. Do you know
what sexist is ? I think Travis should shut his mouth up and mine his
busniess. If he is dangerous then Lisa K. would not be in the story.And she
would not be here there alone or not there.Right ?
And Courtney, you ask me
who my best friend is it is Angela Fields ,the other one you write to.
Sincerly,
Jasmin
From: K_sunshine@bellson.edu
To: JasminJ@PS520e.edu
Cc: Limbo@PS520.edu
Subject: Re: wassup!
Dear Jasmin
How are you? I am fine. Thank you for typing to me. I liked your picture a
lot. It was very pretty. Thank you for the complement on my last picture.
Do you like the book, The Missing 'Gator of Gumbo Limbo? I do. I hope Dajun
is okay. Don't you?
Yes, I do know what a Sexist is. Prejudiced against a woman or a man. You
know something Diana? there is a lot of people like that in this world and
I do not like them. Do you? We can do a lot of things that men can. We can
especially fish . One time me and my daddy went fishing and I caught more
fish then he did. Have you ever gone fishing?
Have you ever lived anywhere but New York?
Oh, and some of our egg babies are doing fine. Most of them are either
cracked or dead. Oh, boy do I have the room to talk. My baby is dead. You
see, we have done this project before and my baby came out perfect. But,
this time I was standing in line and I had to carry my baby and my tray. I
was trying to hold on to everything and somebody bumped me. Well, then all
I heard was crack! Oh, did I know what happened. I opened up my box and
unwrapped globs of tissue and there laid my broken egg. Then Ms.Shows
declared it DEAD! I don't know if I'm going to get an "F" yet or not.
Talk to you later!
Courtney