Poetry and Place

by Samuel Horrocks

February 15, 2015

As Professor Slocum put it early in our class session this week, one of our great joys as English teachers is the reading, writing, and teaching of poetry, and we spent the rest of our time modeling various strategies for teaching poems with an Appalachian focus. To help us extend our earlier conversations regarding critical place-based pedagogies, Professor Slocum selected two poems presenting the narratives of young Appalachians leaving the mountains for supposedly brighter futures elsewhere. In Mark Defoe’s “Leaving the Hills,” the speaker lamentfully recalls the last hours of a young girl’s life in her hometown, as she “loads / her red Camaro with quilts to pawn” and “serpentines the curves . . . over the interstate.” The experienced speaker of Maggie Anderson’s “Ontological” presents a vaguer warning to a young individual “following some train whistle” in search of “what’s lost.” We also examined a short story by Lisa Koger entitled “Extended Learning,” in which a successful academic returns with his young family to visit his mother at their West Virginian homeplace. Studying these pieces together inspired both lively discussion of the tensions surrounding the issues of rural flight and “brain drain,” and strategies for teaching place-based narratives and poetry dealing with these issues in the secondary Appalachian classroom.

Paired Poetry Analysis

            To start us off, Professors Slocum and Weekley led us through a 30-45 minute lesson plan which can be used with middle and high school students. First the class was grouped into pairs, and each pair assigned one of the two poems. Each group received a large sheet of poster paper upon which a copy of our poem had been pasted in large font. We were then directed to discuss and annotate the poem, paying particular attention to any questions we had, whether they be regarding the meaning of a word, the basic narrative of the poem, or something more interpretive. Professor Slocum stressed to us that poems have no “true” answers but only “tentative” ones: our goal is, by the end of the discussion, to make a claim regarding what the poem is saying by using its text as evidence.

            We passed a pleasant ten minutes or so annotating our poems—animated discussion was heard from pairs around the room, and Professors Slocum and Weekley wandered from group to group offering words of encouragement and advice. When we had finished, all of the poems looked very different, with some featuring more textual annotations, some heavier on interpretive arrows, some asking more questions and yet others providing more explanation. We then shared out, each pair getting a chance to explain their thoughts and methods to the full class. The groups who looked at “Ontological” went first, with each group proffering a different explanation for the significance of the poem’s odd name. Audra said she thought the poem was about a young person pursuing a country music career, and Jen spoke about the significance of the recurring imagery of the fiddle, while others did not notice this aural aspect of the poem at all. The groups looking at “Leaving the Hills,” which was a more straight-forward piece, found similar interpretations, though Jon and Britney thought that the female subject of the poem may have been fleeing some traumatic event.

            We then returned to our seats to continue the discussion, this time with the goal of “imagining what the poems might say to each other.” We first took this prompt quite literally, venturing to guess what a conversation between the speakers and subjects of each poem might look like. This got us thinking about tonal and stylistic differences in the pieces: the speaker of “Ontological” presents a stern warning to his/her “honey,” while the “Hills” narrator is more wistful, lamentful even of the subject’s departure. The question of the “Hills” speaker’s potentially judgmental tone toward his female subject sparked off a lengthy debate. I, Sam, posited that the poem’s frequent use of sexual imagery suggests that the narrator views the subject’s supposed promiscuity negatively, but then Audra drew our attention to the extent to which the subject seems to be fleeing a bad reputation that may not be deserved: while “leaving is a copperhead fear,” “staying” in this “land too wide for whispers” provokes a “deadly . . . bile.” We closed our discussion with a quick writing assignment, in which we were all asked to jot down a concise interpretation of the poem, with emphasis on how the discussion had changed our initial suppositions.

            Professor Slocum then asked us to switch roles from participants to teachers who might one day lead such an activity. She quickly reviewed the outline of the lesson (reading the poetry at home and writing a response, analyzing in pairs, sharing out, full group discussion, and a short-write) and then asked us to analyze it, with special heed to these questions:

• If you were a high school student, how do you think that this process would shape your                      academic literacy?
• What’s happening in there that might help the student to become more fluent with academic                        literacy?

Carmen said, and we all agreed, that the activity is “a great way to help students get comfortable with thinking critically,” and Caleb posited that this might be because poems in particular can “help kids on the lower end of the reading spectrum [with] reading slowly and intentionally and asking questions.” Because poems have no “answers,” they can also foster what Jen called a “permissive atmosphere” in which, as Britney put it, “the floor is open for your own interpretations[, making] students feel comfortable voicing their own opinions.”

Brain Drain and Rural Flight

            We next shifted gears to Koger’s short story and the problem of “brain drain.” Professor Weekley started us off with a short lecture on the concept, drawing heavily from the book Hollowing Out the Middle. In it, Patrick Carr describes a rural school system which focuses most efforts on the “best and brightest” students, who are often thus impelled to go to college and begin a career elsewhere. We’re particularly affected by this problem here in West Virginia: we are the only state in which less than 20% of the population has a Bachelors degree, and only 48% of West Virginians who do graduate with BA/BS degrees from West Virginia Colleges and Universities stay in the state (Christiadi, et al. 2014). Professor Weekley then drew our attention to the ways that the common presentation of “brain drain” is problematic, namely that it assumes that people who stay behind are not capable, and pays insufficient attention to structural problems making it difficult for individuals to remain in their communities. For example, out of the 50 jobs projected to grow the most in the next ten years in West Virginia, only 3 require baccalaureate degrees; many students who graduate from college are simply unable to find jobs relevant to their degrees close to home.

            Professor Weekley’s presentation provoked passionate discussion from our class; I think nearly all of us have first-hand experience with this issue. Our talk veered back and forth from the political, as we discussed causes of and possible solutions to this problem, to the pedagogical, as Professor Slocum suggested ways we might have similar discussions with our students. We were all excited at the prospect of making “brain drain” the topic of a longer term, multi-genre unit, which would be a perfect way to incorporate critical, place-based pedagogies and techniques in our classrooms. 

We could explore the issue through academic writing, such as Hollowing out the Middle, poetry and narrative pieces such as the ones we worked with earlier in the day, and through primary research within our own communities. Such a project would position our students not as mere receivers of information, but active and engaged citizens within their own communities, capable of tackling problems actively, effectively, and considerately.

Works Cited

Carr, P. J., & Kefalas, M. J. (2009). Hollowing out the middle: The rural brain drain and what it       means for America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press Books.

Christiadi, Deskins, J., &. Lego, B. (2014). Population Trends in West Virginia through 2030.            Morgantown, WV: WVU Research Corporation.

Bridging the Gap

by Caleb Alvarez

Now that we’ve agreed on the merits of critical literacy and place-based education in Appalachia, how do we make it happen in the classroom? This weeks’ class marked a shift from theoretical discussion about Appalachian identity and place-based education to strategic discussion about specific academic strategies to bridge the critical literacy and academic literacy gap. To start, we explored classroom possibilities for both a mostly neutral, historical research article, Ronald Lewis’s “Beyond Isolation and Homogeneity: Diversity and the History of Appalachia,” and emotionally-charged, polarized articles, Amy Clark’s “Appalachian Hope and Heartbreak” and Kevin Williamson’s “The White Ghetto.”

Lewis’s Gallery Walk

            To begin our discussion, we did a small-group activity that Audra S. actually used with Lewis’s article in her 12^th grade English class. Each group first found the thesis, main points, and supporting evidence in the article and wrote them on color-coded post-it notes. Then, on a large sheet of paper, each group visually represented the paper’s organization of these components. When the groups were finished, we had a gallery walk around the room to view the groups’ finished products and compared them to their own.

            We shared our comparisons as a whole group. The first thing that we noticed was that, despite having common ideas, each group had identified a different sentence as the thesis of the paper. This gave us the opportunity to discuss the commonalities between our groups’ understanding of the main ideas of the paper: all of groups agreed that Lewis was trying to emphasize that the history of Appalachia is different than the popular idea of that history, and each group had tried to find a quote that emphasized that both the isolation and the homogeneity in Appalachian history are a myth. We also noted that Sam and Carmen’s group had drawn the organization of the paper differently to emphasize the causal markers in the organization. Explaining their decision to visually represent Lewis’s argument in a different way helped emphasize the importance of thinking about writing as a constructed argument that is organized to meet the writer’s goals.

            Visually emphasizing this article’s organization would also be beneficial to high school students when studying this (or similar) historical non-fiction. The structure of the activity appeals to different kinds of learners: it gives a guided purpose for reading, requires that students deconstruct the article in order to synthesize it, offers the opportunity for discussion in both small and whole groups, and provides a visual representation to make the complex ideas tangible.

 After discussing the benefits of the activity we had done, we brainstormed other strategies we would use to prepare students to summarize and evaluate Lewis’s article.

·          Read and analyze the fictional “local color” texts that Lewis had suggested were responsible for the creation of the isolation and homogeneity myths.

·         Research the author’s background and discussing his potential biases.

·         Write personal responses to establish a basis for student opinions, and provide students with sentence starters to help organize their thoughts.

·         Reform students’ outlines into narratives to help them condense the work into a summary.

·         Look at the text paragraph by paragraph, identifying the main point of that paragraph and what that main point contributes to the thesis, and highlight supporting evidence with color-coding for the main point it supports.

Many of these suggestions could occur at any point in this instructional unit. Depending on the reading development of your students, you may need to frontload instruction to help prepare them to navigate the layers of this difficult text.

Pairing Polarizing Pieces

The other two texts both assume Appalachian exceptionalism (see “Questioning the Illusive Appalachian Identity”) to make their claims. Clark’s article was a heart-wrenching account of the loss of Appalachian community culture due to the demise of local businesses, while Williamson’s article was an inflammatory description of the lives of people in the Appalachian “big white ghetto.”  Though they would not be difficult for students to comprehend, they present a challenge for students to move from having an emotional response to producing academic writing. The challenge of moving from an emotional to an academic response was one we had to overcome ourselves in order to discuss the possibilities for using the articles in the classroom.

Williamson’s article was met with unanimous scorn, yet we sought to discover what larger ideological goals Williamson had. Jen was enflamed by his “irresponsible use of a national platform” to “make loose associations by hyperbolically capitalizing on myths and stereotypes of underrepresented minorities, and not just Appalachians.” Yet, Sam suggested that his use of these stereotypes was merely “sensationalized writing with the purpose to entertain, because he was never interested in reporting actual findings.” Regardless of his intent, it was clear that he was capitalizing on the idea of Appalachian exceptionalism.

However, we could not deny that Clark also relied on this exceptionalism, even if we liked her perspective better. Brandi reminded us that “by looking at either side exclusively, you miss the whole picture,” and asked us to consider how we could use these polarizing texts in our own classrooms. Caroline suggested that these texts could easily be used to talk about arguments, appeals, and agendas. Additionally, they could be used to study connotation, because a “similar piece with a similar agenda [to Williamson] wouldn’t be so inflammatory.” Additionally, I mentioned in my quickwrite that articles such as these could provide a background for students to investigate the economy in their own town, and use their personal perspective to write a review like Williamson’s or Clark’s.

Ironically, we never really addressed how we would make the transition from an emotional to an academic response, because we were stuck on our own emotional responses for so long that we ran out of time. Does this suggest that it is necessary to have an objective discussion about how to make the mental transition from emotional to academic before reading a text like Williamson’s? Or, is it necessary to experience these strong emotional responses before seeking to make them academic? In many ways, these emotional responses are just as difficult for students to navigate as a dense historical text like Lewis’s. Yet, understanding how to do both is essential for students’ academic and critical literacy.

Questioning the Illusive Appalachian Identity

by Carmen Bowes

February 9, 2015

             I am a big fan of the “I am from the mountains so I know Appalachia” remark.  It is proving a bit difficult for me to shake that mentality as truth and what I know of this place as the only Appalachia. I know it is far more diverse than I can imagine and I also know that all different kinds of people live within Appalachia. If that is so, how do we as educators or future educators develop an identity for this region that is useful to all of its inhabitants?

            This week we read two texts. The first was “Appalachian Identity: A Roundtable Discussion” with an introduction by Barbara Ellen Smith and including: the thoughtful Stephen Fisher, insightful Phillip Obermiller, list-maker David Whisnant, the feisty Dr. Emily Satterwhite. The second text was an investigation into “the hillbilly” in Sandra L. Ballard’s “Where Did Hillbillies Come From? Tracing Sources of the Comic Hillbilly Fool in Literature.” Both texts fueled class discussion and thought on what makes Appalachia and how on earth can we try to find a regional identity when it seems to be so many things to so many people?

            We discussed ‘Appalachian Identity’ and the Roundtable Discussion first. It became clear pretty quickly that finding one Appalachian Identity was going to be impossible. Right out of the gate, Smith deals out a slew of questions in her introduction and gives a taste of each of the writers to follow. She finishes with the big question, “Defense of the embattled region slides all too easily and unconsciously into xenophobic condemnation of that which is foreign. In such a complex and perilous political context, what forms of Appalachian identity truly point toward justice?”(Appalachian Journal, 57). Too often, getting caught up in being Appalachian leads to backwards thinking and bashing of people from elsewhere or elsewhere itself. How can we be Appalachian and not let the consensus slip into this counterproductive elitist thinking?

            Fisher was a natural slot to follow the introduction. He spoke a lot about telling Appalachian stories and about what being Appalachian meant to him. He said, “Claiming Appalachia has given me a place and a people and a sense of who I am and who I want to become and has brought focus and commitment to my work and politics” (Appalachian Journal, 59). I think that claiming Appalachia has done that for a lot of people, I know it did that for me. What is it that Fisher, myself, educators, students, and so many others are identifying with?

            I think Obermiller tries to answer that question when he quotes 21^st Century Sociology: A Reference Book. He says, “Appalachian culture provides a forum for negotiating meaning, not a set of fixed and final values operating over and above mountain people…” (Appalachian Journal, 62). I love that because it seems to be the intangible thing we are working towards naming. Tim said of Obermiller that he was somewhat vague but this captures that “You can’t make one distinctive Appalachian culture.” Because Obermiller does not give an exact definition of what Appalachian Identity entails, he is “more concerned with the agency of identity, that is, how it can be used to create a better life by people in the place, or from the place, we call Appalachia” (Appalachian Journal, 63). This is the real task at hand, establishing the agency that identity imparts.  

            Whisnant’s “Eschatological Laundry List-on Appalachian Regional Identity” was full of thought-provoking one-liners and brought the question of insider/outsider politics to light. Is there value to having separate insider and outsider categories when discussing Appalachian identity and if so/not what value or lack thereof? Here are a few of Whisnant’s list items:

7. Being ‘local’ is sometimes, but not always, an aid to clarity or understanding.

8. ‘Insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are false and useless categories.

9. Too many of the arguments in favor of Appalachian regional identity have been built too uncritically around several as yet untested and unverified (mostly cultural) notions/concepts: ‘Appalachian people,’ ‘mountain people,’ ‘love for the land,’ ‘family,’ ‘sense of place,’ ‘tradition,’ ‘heritage.’

(Appalachian Journal, 67-68)

We chewed on number 8 for a while and said that maybe the insider/outsider category could be false but not useless or that perhaps the use for these categories is simply unproductive. Brandi said, “Insider/outsider categories oversimplify the complexities.”  In other words, while there is certainly a group of people that would consider themselves insiders, and the rest outsiders, it is not a productive or useful way to view Appalachian Identity itself or the study of that identity.

Dr. Emily Satterwhite expressed strong views on insider/outsider politics. Caleb gave a great overview of Satterwhite’s piece, he said, “Appalachian identity is multiple. You shouldn’t ignore those negative things that might not be so pretty about Appalachia. Insider/outsider distinctions are not useful and the difference between resistance identities versus project identities is important.” To expand a bit, Satterwhite explains,

“‘Resistance identities’ challenge negative value judgments about ridiculed groups…but also reinforce generalizations without being reflective about potentially negative characteristics of the group’s members…’project identities’ identify common goals that a group of actors may collectively pursue in the interest of transforming the overall societal structure” (Appalachian Journal, 72).

Aaron explained that “the false dichotomy created by the insider/outsider concept made us miss important lessons.” I agree with Aaron. Getting rid of the insider/outsider dichotomy could create space to discuss an Appalachian Identity that could provide the agency we are looking for.

Moving past the insider/outsider politics, Sam said of Satterwhite that “she seems devoted to the idea of disrupting the common narrative and replacing it with something more inclusive and socially fair.” Satterwhite says, “The first part is to teach students to think critically about all generalizations regarding group difference-including and even especially favorable generalizations about group difference.” In other words, let us not dumb down the problem at hand, it will lead to false solutions. Let us instead, be critical about the world around us and both things that are being presented positively and negatively. Positive generalizations can cause negative effects even if no bad intent were meant. Sam added “What is lost if we throw out those positive generalizations?” Do we as educators or future educators see another way to challenge the issues regarding group difference without losing anything of value?

Shifting to Ballard we began discussing the hillbilly as fool and specifically the television show from the 1970s The Beverly Hillbillies. Ballard says that the problem with this representation of country folk, “is that, despite their virtues, the mountain people are depicted as mere children” (Ballard, 139). She continues, “Recognizing the essential “goodness” of the Clampetts makes me more comfortable with The Beverly Hillbillies than some people from the region are” (Ballard, 139). Jonathan from class disagrees with this, saying, “just because there is a lesson behind the caricature does not make it alright.” Caroline said, “When we see this representation that is all we get, there is no counterargument. When you see a representation of Appalachia on television, that may be the only one this month.”  These two are right, the perpetuation of these negative images won’t do well for anyone in the region. 

Jennifer moved on to discussing action and said, “We have a responsibility to highlight the positives, we work to develop an identity that we project to the nation in a different capacity.” Audra S. said, “It’s not just who tells it, it is how it is experienced. What level of control do we have about media and the broader area and what they choose to play?” The concept of representation and choice here becomes very important; it is not only what is being perpetuated but also who is perpetuating it. There are many cool, nice, smart things happening in Appalachia that do not get heard about on a national level. How do we make these things more commonly representative of Appalachia? Is that important? As teachers, how can we help students to see these issues from a young age and work towards changing the status quo?

As we were wrapping up discussion it took a turn for the proud in our little class, an earnest Caroline said,

“I’m gonna be proud of it in spite of you. It feels good because there are things about this place that I love almost in a perverse way. I love the things that are dirty…the cars in people’s yards…there is a guy that turns these cars in to art. That is what you do, you recognize what needs to be changed, love it in spite of it, and find some way to make it better.”

I have to say, I agree with this girl whole-heartedly, I got cold chills as I was recording her thought process. I think that is just what this is about; seeing what needs changed, loving it anyways, and finding modern, innovative ways to make something out of it. Appalachia needs this kind of thinking. This is what all people in Appalachia should be able to identify with, no matter how ugly, no matter how worn down and beat, something can be done with it.

Book Review 1: The Unquiet Earth by Denise Giardina

By Jennifer Parrill
Published by Ballantine Books, 1992

ISBN-10   0-8041-1144-8

Historical Fiction

Synopsis

            The Unquiet Earth is the story of a mining town on the West Virginia/Kentucky border and the intertwining lives of its people.  Alternating narrators slowly unravel the decades long story of family, loss, exploitation, and change.

The story begins with cousins Dillon and Rachel as children in the 1930’s.   The children of two very different sisters, the children share an intense connection that blossoms with complication as they grow.  Dillon’s father, a union organizer, is shot shortly after his birth and the loss feeds his lifelong need to possess Rachel.  The intensity and sexual nature of Dillon’s feelings convinces Rachel to pursue nursing and make a separate life for herself.  Over the years, the two are divided by war, marriage, incarceration, and spite, though never far from the other’s thoughts.  They secretly conceive a daughter, Jackie. Trouble with the union and mining company eventually causes an irreparable rift between Rachel, who makes compromises to accommodate reality and Dillon, who sees the world in adversarial black and white. 

The story continues as Jackie grows up in the same mining town.  She remains ignorant of her parentage until adulthood, though Dillon is a constant fixture in her life.  Provided with a comfortable lifestyle far beyond that of her neighbors and friends, she nonetheless despises her corrupt stepfather Arthur Lee.  Jackie comes of age when she falls in love with a novice priest named Tom who has come to Appalachia to do service work through VISTA.  By the 1960’s, poverty in the mountains has hit the national stage and this dynamic between the insular mining communities and the rest of the country figures prominently in the plot. It is through the character of Tom and his influence on Jackie that we see the impact of the political activism of the time. Ironically, the help they are given is ineffective, and the help they ask for is denied.  Through Arthur Lee we understand the corrupt business practices and underhanded government dealings that affected the lives of miners and their families.

By the end of the book we have witnessed the passing of Rachel and Dillon’s lives, and endured the heartbreaking societal, economic, environmental, and personal tragedies that are deftly woven in the novel.

Some Personal Thoughts on Lesson Planning

            After reading this novel, I felt as though I had made a profound discovery.  As a West Virginia native, the language and story were strongly resonant and I found the characters on my mind for days afterward.  But to address the book successfully with students, I would first like to get feedback from a few adolescent readers – which aspects of the story were most accessible/appealing to today’s teenagers? Was there a particular character they identified with?  Were there parts of the setting or story that seemed utterly foreign and difficult to access?  I’m bringing my own baggage to the text, but I would like to get a sense of what their baggage is – experiences and associations different from my own that may shape how I approach the text in planning for best results.

            The novel is complex and versatile.  In retrospect, it’s hard to believe that it all fit between the covers!  This is good news, because it makes it easy to pair with writing exercises and companion texts.  For instance, each chapter is from the perspective of a different character at a different point in time over the course of sixty some years.  They function as mini-memoirs and could be incorporated into a memoir-writing unit.  Individual passages could be compared with Amy Clark’s non-fiction piece “Appalachian Hope and Heartbreak” in aid of identifying the guises memoir takes.

            Because a large part of the narrative involves the nature and practices of the coal industry, this novel is well suited to cross-curricular planning and has potential to incorporate history, civics, and science.  The debate rages over environmental safety and the actual economic benefit to local economies.  In the ELA classroom, a head to head examination of the subsequent literature from each camp could engender debate over the definition of propaganda and the use of persuasive devices.

            Although the idea of Place Based Education is new to me, I think the blanket of “insider” and “outsider” that covers this text would be fertile ground for discussion and exploration through writing.  What is it about “home” that makes it inclusive?  Why are we so ready to identify “otherness”?  This route would include an exploration of the language and dialect from the text.  The narrative touches often on the idea of charity and outside aid – from the government, and from private charities in the form of boxes of random worn out clothes and household items shipped from up north to the poor of Appalachia.  The 1965 video of Charles Kuralt in Kentucky entitled “Christmas in Appalachia” gives students an idea of the sudden awareness of Appalachia developed by the rest of the country.

            Finally, we can’t ignore the story of Denise Giardina herself.  A native of McDowell County and a professor at West Virginia State University, this ordained minister of the Episcopal Church and prolific author continues to challenge environmentally disastrous mining practices and the status quo.  Such a good example of “Appalachian” may help students who have internalized the constructed stereotype of Appalachians as poor, dirty, lazy, addicted, and ignorant.  The message isn’t that we aspire to something greater by becoming something different, but that what we are already is as unique and full of potential as any other region. Again, this returns to the goals of this class and PBE, “Engaging students – including ourselves – as producers, not just consumers or objects in media representations.” 

On a final note about the media representation of Appalachia, I found this series of articles that I thought everyone might like:

http://walkyourcamera.com/perpetuating-the-visual-myth-of-appalachia-part-one/

http://walkyourcamera.com/perpetuating-the-visual-myth-of-appalachia-part-two-2/

http://walkyourcamera.com/perpetuating-the-visual-myth-of-appalachia-part-three/