Pre-Texts International

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“This matter of art is less foreign to the needs than to the tastes of our age; to arrive at a solution even in the political, the road of aesthetics must be pursued, because it is through beauty that we arrive at freedom . . . Man is truly human when he plays, and he plays when he is truly human,” (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of

“To stimulate life – leaving it then free to develop, to unfold – herein lies the first task of the educator. In such a delicate task, a great art must suggest the moment, and limit the intervention.” (The Montessori Method, 1912)

Man, 1794)

Maria Montessori

Friedrich Schiller

“We lay hold of the full import of a work of art only as we go through in our own vital processes the processes the artist went through in producing the work. It is the critic’s privilege to share in the promotion of this active process. His condemnation is that he so often arrests it.” (Last words of Art as Experience 1934).

John Dewey

Jacotot’s “was not a method for instructing the people; it was a benefit to be announced to the poor; they could do everything any man could.

It sufficed only to announce it.” (The Ignorant Schoolmaster, 1991)

Jacques Rancière

Paulo Freire

“Play is the continuous evidence of creativity, which means aliveness.”

(The Language of Winnicott, 1996)

D. Winnicott

“One of the violences perpetrated by illiteracy is the suffocation of the consciousness and the expressiveness of men and women who are forbidden from reading and writing, thus limiting their capacity to write about their reading of the world so they can rethink about their original reading of it. (Teachers As Cultural Workers: Letters To Those Who Dare Teach, 1998)

PRE-TEXTS INTERNATIONAL

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Art Experience/Experiments in Boston Public Schools

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Contents Zoom into Pre-Texts Doris Sommer

ARGENTINA

BAHAMAS

BAHAMAS

Rules for Emancipation Gonzalo Aguilar

What Did We Do? Jay Critchley

Pre-Texts in the Classroom Carla S. Campbell

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BAHAMAS

BRAZIL

CHILE

A Moral Reading of Nationality Laws Marco Abarca

Pre-Texts in the Reality of Brazilian Schools Luiz Lucena dos Santos and Mara Solange Guedes

Musicking with Literature: Shifting Paradigm in Music Education Pedro Zenteno

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P40 CHILE/ UNITED STATES

The Uses of Pre-Texts in Language Classes at Harvard University Adriana Gutiérrez

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CHILE

CHINA

COLOMBIA

COLOMBIA

Pre-Texts in Comparative Literature Classes Carolina A. Navarrete González

A Tale of Two Cities Clement Chung

Pre-Texts with the Government of Antioquia Victoria Mena and José Falconi

Pre-Texts of Habitanía Victoria Mena

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STEAM for AfroLatin America Doris Sommer and Antonio Copete

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COLOMBIA

COLOMBIA

EL SALVADOR

Meaningful Experiences Implementing Pre-Texts Marta Palacio

The Impact of Pre-Texts on the Library Network of the Bank of the Republic

Like a Kindergartener: Pre-Texts in El Salvador Maria Tenorio

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Ángela Pérez

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Art Experience/Experiments in Boston Public Schools

KENYA

Pre-Texts in Ireland Emma O’Brien

NikumbukeHealth by All Means: A Pre-Texts Experience in Rural Kenya Araceli Alonso

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MEXICO

MEXICO/ UNITED STATES

There is No Point in Asking Questions if you are Not Allowed to Provide Answers Pedro Reyes

“ miga A Cartonera” Pre-Texts Today Lilia Garelli

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MEXICO

MEXICO

MEXICO

ROMANIA

An Experience with No Pretexts Hortencia Chávez Reyna

Transforming Ourselves by Creating Verónico Dávila

The Barefoot Designer: A Workshop to Unlearn Carla Fernández

Pre-Texts in Cluj-Napoca Cristina Rogoz

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UGANDA

UGANDA

UNITED STATES

UNITED STATES

Pre-Texts in Uganda Joel Ostdiek and Javier Aranzales

The Magic Flute: An AfricanEuropean Approach Through Pre-Texts Victoria Romann

Pre-Texts in Boston Marcela Mahecha

Pre-Texts for CampusCommunity Partnerships Vialla HartfieldMéndez

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UNITED STATES

UNITED STATES

UNITED STATES

ZIMBABWE

Art Experience/ Experiments in Boston Public Schools Suzanne Paszkowski

Innovate, Facilitate, Participate Giulia Pellizzato

Pre-Texts at Harvard: What Did We Do? Thomas Wisniewski and Suzanne Smith

Make a Plan: Pre-Texts in Zimbabwe Naseemah Mohamed

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PAISDIGITAL.ORG

DIGITAL

EDITOR

Lost in the Jungle: Pre-Texts Quarantine Experiment Ricardo Mariño

Digital Pre-Texts Various Authors

Borges in Chalco and Other Threats José Falconi

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P376 Pre-Texts in United States

IRELAND

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Zoom into Pre-Texts:

Literacy, lnnovation, and Citizenship in the Digital World Doris Sommer Harvard University

1. Pre-Texts is pedagogical acupuncture, on both digital platforms and in person. By touching a creative nerve with the prompt “Make art from this text and reflect on the process,” Pre-Texts stimulates a holistic cluster of learning (cognitive, emotional, and social). Participants gladly take up the challenge to make art from a text, not necessarily because they want to read but because they love to make art and to talk about their work. Whether in a real classroom, or on a virtual meeting screen, we begin the same way.

Introduction

Someone reads a text aloud while the rest of us draw book covers for our personal editions. The scene borrows from two Latin American practices: A professional “lector” in tobacco factories reads from a literary, historical, or philosophical text while workers roll cigars; and recyclers produce artisanal “cartonera” books from used cardboard. We begin this way because facilitators assume that most students don’t like to read, so instead of assigning a text or sermonizing about the benefits of reading, we invite a volunteer to read aloud. After making the book cover, on cardboard or anything else, each of us asks a question of the text, aloud. Teachers don’t ask questions of students. Students are not objects of scrutiny but investigators who scrutinize a text. Most people will not have paid much attention to the text while we drew, so participants are relieved to find available copies they actually want to read in order to formulate a presentable question. Peer pressure is magic.

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Very soon, practically everyone is busy digging into the text in order to pull out a question. When the oral versions are written to be “published on line” (either on a clothesline or a digital screen), each of us “adopts” another person’s question to write a speculation, anonymously.

This introductory activity (listening, drawing, reading, asking, and answering) ends, as do all Pre-Texts activities, with a moment to reflect on “What did we do?” It is not enough to make art, one must also think about the process, John Dewey explained.1Then, the floor is open for new proposals to use the text for creative activities. Should we sing it, dance, act, sew, rap, interview, invent recipes, a soundtrack . . .? Practically any art form will work to unravel and reassemble a text, even one that looks difficult or boring. A sure way to get beyond the rejection of texts is to invite students to use one that they hate as the raw material for original artworks, that is, to take revenge by mastering the text.

The apparent irreverence is a familiar attitude for good writers, both creative and scientific, and for students who take ownership of their learning. They all twist challenging written material into new shapes. This struggle with reading and writing is necessary today because literacy continues to be an indicator for progress in practically all fields of human development, economic, political, emotional, health, etc.2 The digital era offers no shortcuts.

Even in countries with officially high rates of literacy, rates of comprehension are alarmingly low. Real educators know that reading and writing go beyond getting and sharing information; they extend toward interpretation and critical thinking.

Simple but rigorous, Pre-Texts adapts to a broad range of curricula and to cultural preferences. On the one hand the protocol uses texts required by existing curricula, and on the other participants determine their own creative activities. It hardly matters what form of art they choose for reworking the text because the adventure is to translate from one code to another. Translators know their target texts. After the initial prompt “make art and reflect on the process,” student-centered learning continues with a new prompt: “Go off on a tangent.” The iconoclastic instruction sends students to search for and to “publish” a text that somehow relates to the one we read in class. Typically,

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teachers warn students not go off on tangents and to stay focused. They clip the wings of curiosity and then wonder why students do not fly, why they lose interest and autonomy. Instead of prohibiting flight, it makes sense to encourage browsing and searching along personal lines of interest that develop intellectual curiosity. And displaying the tangents of other students develops a civic disposition to appreciate contributions that are interesting precisely for their differences.

Diversity enriches our sources and deepens interpretation. With Pre-Texts, cognitive learning goes hand in hand with socio-emotional development.

A protocol that asks questions, creates original interpretations, goes off on tangents, and then pauses to reflect on “What did we do?” cultivates self-efficacy and a taste for variety in perspectives and interpretations. It multiplies entry points and mitigates an intolerant insistence on one “correct” answer per question. The dynamic equalizes levels of engagement, because all enter through questions; that is, through inquisitiveness rather than through knowledge. Creative activities that follow – verbal and visual interpretations along with performing arts (theater, dance, music, and mime) – turn a possibly dull text into an unstoppable adventure. Here, Bloom’s conventional pyramid of learning turns upside down. Instead of beginning with (boring) basic elements of vocabulary, grammar, formulae, etc., to ascend through understanding and interpretation and arrive – if there is time – at a creative activity, Pre-Texts begins with a creative challenge that necessarily requires technical mastery of basic elements. No one gets bored when we start at the top. Mastery begins with an artistic ambition that drives an exploration down the layered pyramid.

Introduction

In its digital version, Pre-Texts has found unanticipated advantages for democratizing the classroom. A level playing field is now the conventional space for learning and teaching. To see everyone in equally sized squares, arranged arbitrarily, on a flat screen, is a technical effect with liberating consequences for conventional hierarchies, where a teacher stands and students sit in rows looking up, past the backs of other students. In-person, Pre-Texts begins by rearranging rows into a circle where the teacher sits among other participants. But the screen accomplishes this flat effect automatically. The jumble of equivalent windows identified by name and even by preferred pronouns opens toward individual spaces or onto fantasy backdrops. A practical

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improvement that we developed from this arbitrary arrangement is to insure universal participation through personal invitations. This is a departure from our in-person circle that encourages everyone to check with their neighbors and make sure that they speak. Speaking, including sign-language, is fundamental to personhood. (Per-sona literally means “for sound;” it is the flared mouthpiece in classical theater masks.) On Zoom, neighbors appear in different arrangements on each screen, so a wink or a nudge doesn’t arrive at a neighbor’s position. Therefore, instead of proximity we count on visible names and set off a chain reaction. A first participant speaks and then invites the next speaker, who invites the next one until everyone has spoken.

A consequence we have observed is that invitees thank their colleagues for the invitation; it is perceived as a gesture of hospitality and respect rather than scrutiny. Another civic improvement is the heightened attentiveness of all to the entire group, beyond one’s adjacent neighbors. Onscreen, everyone strains to remember the faces and names of those who have spoken in order to determine who is still available to invite.

These tweaks continue to improve on the fundamental advantages of PreTexts over conventional classrooms. One advantage – online or off – is the reduction of anxiety for teachers and for students. Instructors who train to facilitate a creative protocol don’t worry about mastering vast areas of knowledge. And students don’t worry about rebuffs to their questions. (“Go find an answer, and tell us,” is a reasonable response). The pleasures of asking and finding answers amount self-motivated learning. This dynamic stimulates literacy, innovation, and citizenship, educational goals that work together like gears in a holistic system to develop young hearts and minds. The invitation to “play” with a complex text spurs critical thinking which leads to pride in one’s own intelligence along with admiration for the intelligence and creativity of others. Admiration is the basic sentiment of citizenship, not tolerance – politely waiting for others to stop speaking – or even respect – which can be mustered in oneself as an obligation.3 Civility, based on admiration, responds to the worth of others whom we want to hear.

2. That pedagogical gains today derive from the humanities is paradoxical, if you consider the waning attention to arts and interpretation while the sciences surge in importance.4 The gains are precisely in the “soft” skills

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also known as 21st Century skills. Creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication are abilities pursued by STEM (science, technology, engineering, technology). Ironically, they are easily found in the humanities, but STEM has not looked there. Humanists enjoy difference/ creativity and critical debate, whereas technical thinking prefers to streamline irregularities. Humanists entertain doubt rather than rush to settle it; they keep options open for interpretation in order to appreciate particularities. And they notice form along with content, because communication depends on both. The interruption of rational thinking by “soft” thinking is therapy for unproductive research that STEM experts prescribe for themselves. So, if soft skills go missing for STEM it is perhaps a symptom of being stuck in rational habits of thought that dismiss imagining and dreaming beyond what already exists. The humanities engage the imagination; they speculate, project, debate, and hear various positions. The now almost relegated field can deliver vanguard results for education.

Understandably, superintendents, principals, and other decision makers identify the forefront of education in institutions that specialize in pedagogical research.

But if educators genuinely pursue development for their students, the humanities will have to be recalled from forced retirement. The field can seem, and often is, detached from civic obligations, but the humanities were pioneered by Renaissance scholars who abandoned the cloister to contribute to medicine, engineering, politics, arts, and education.5 Pre-Texts takes up humanism’s original commitment to social development by using art history and interpretation to promote more art and interpretation. This is not a tautology but a tradition.

Make art and think about the practice is a distillation of varied and complex practices. The simplification is intentionally user friendly rather than misleading. Humanism’s taste for a legacy of aesthetic experiments and for an almost relentless attention to the devices and the effects of art counts as a disposition to develop the skills for 21st century progress. The humanities have lately been misunderstood as a luxury, a pastime for people unconcerned with practical needs.

Introduction

Tellingly though, the ancient Greek word for school [skholé] means leisure and the activities that occupy leisure time, such as philosophy, poetry, music, sport. Only free young men had the opportunity to attend the Academy in

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Athens. Today, education can be universal without losing its link to freedom and pleasure. Pleasure makes learning stick. In fact, as neuroscience has been trying to teach us, without enjoyment (in the chemical forms of dopamine and serotonin), we will not generate educated and engaged citizens but only obedient and replaceable subjects of other people’s knowledge.

Here are a few advantages that the humanities bring to education:

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Appreciation for the past is one advantage.6 Otherwise we continually re-invent advances already made. Few teachers seem to know, for example, that Maria Montessori developed her hands-on, student-centered, method first with cognitively impaired children and then in Rome’s tenement projects.7 Today Montessori schools seem tailored to privileged children. Humanists are free to admire her experiments, irreverently, to appropriate, to cut and paste, recover and combine popular, traditional, and elite practices into a contemporary methodology. Traditions and popular arts have been largely overlooked by educational researchers who pursue innovation with its attendant processes of trial and error to measure impact. While measurement matters for Pre-Texts too, scientific innovation is less important. Instead, humanists appreciate work done by others, tracing their innovative techniques and productions of meaning. As a literary critic, I study useful practices of reading and writing – including those developed by popular classes, a Latin American euphemism for poor people. Part of the special charm of everyday arts is that they make do with available materials. Recyclers are model artists in this sense. From them I discovered, –for example, and so late in my development – that literature is recycled material. Words have meaning because they have been used many times. The trick in art is to combine used words in surprising and engaging ways, for example in hip hop, or in sonnets.

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Interpretation of texts is another humanistic gain for education.

Though the admittedly privileged work may seem removed – in an ivory tower – from a mission to educate broadly and democratically, humanists know that reading cannot avoid interpretation. Each person has a point of view and particular experiences that affect reading.

Zoom into Pre-Texts

Knowing this raises doubts about the validity of any one interpretation and anticipates others. Instead of resolving doubt, good reading keeps questions afloat in order to consider a variety of answers. The practice begins by identifying texts as weaves (textile is an obvious cognate) to be poked at, pulled apart and re-constructed in a variety of patterns.

In Pre-Texts, students begin by asking a question of the text, pulling at a thread of their choice. Critical thinking meets creativity here, because the readers’ questions will stimulate speculations.

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For literary criticism, readings are multiple, inevita bly. They are colored by the culture, experience and imagination of the reader at a particular moment.

At other moments, the same reader will interpret the same text differently. To imagine a “correct” reading is hardly an intellectual exercise, though conventional teachers still insist on it. One may propose a “best” reading, with preparation in competing interpretive approaches and historical context, but not a definitive one. Good teachers know this, I think, and professors of education will defend the possible multiplicity of meanings. But the foundation for this defense is often allowance for cultural or gender differences rather than the unavoidable condition of reading itself.8

Introduction

• Readers are active co-constructors of a text, not passive reci pients.9 Their readings can be irreverent without doing dama

ge to the text. The point is to play with it. Ever since D.D. Win

nicott showed that the psychoanalytic therapy of children

depends on encouraging them to play, that is to practice “symbolic aggression” also known as art, we have been lear ning that pleasure fuels development.10 Children who enjoy the world and “master” it through play are psychologically healthy.

Add a challenging text to the playing field and you get Pre- Texts. This is a humanist’s version of Winnicott’s therapy and of Paolo Freire’s exhortation to teachers: Become playmates and interlocutors, instead of treating students like empty vessels to be filled by “banking” information.11

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Form is more important than theme in the humanities. This preference is a third advantage of thinking like an artist and interpreter.

It alerts teachers to how, not only what, meaning is constructed. The formal difference, for example, between a lyric poem written entirely in the first person singular and a novel written in competing voices is a distinction of genre with attendant political effects (respectively authoritarianism and democratizing dissent, Bakhtin suggested).12 Similarly, the formal arrangement of a classroom makes a significant difference in education. How children occupy the space is as important as what they are taught, maybe more important. What do students learn in the quasi-military choreography of rows lined up to face one teacher who stands before them, wielding all the questions and exacting one correct answer per question? They learn very little content, as we know from repeated studies on the efficacy of top down education.13 But they do learn form, the personally and socially damaging form of authoritarian control.14 Along with limiting or excluding opportunities for contestation and debate, authoritarianism in the classroom generates dangerous corollary effects. One is competition for the correct answer, a practice so common it can feel natural. Students in most public and many private schools are trained to get the right answer as soon as possible, even if they generate frustration and resentment among classmates.

• This zero-sum dynamic creates an aggressive culture of mutual elimination that can, and often does, lead to bullying and school violence. While competitive behavior is quite normal in children and adults, it need not eliminate competitors. Instead, competition can fuel collaborations, as it does in Pre-Texts when participants refine, or outdo, the proposals of colleagues in order to achieve collective success.

Com-pete, after all, originally meant “strive together.”15 • As if authoritarianism and violence were not sufficiently troubling, standard classroom choreography produces yet another dangerous corollary. Corruption. Students in the back row are not paying attention to the lesson, if you ask their teachers and peers. Instead, they do what they want, hiding behind the backs of classmates who remain faceless and undemanding of attention.

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• Circles are a solution to the triple bane of authoritarianism, violence, and corruption created by rows. The difference seems laughably simple, yet it works and costs practically nothing. Circles are the preferred choreography for “alternative” schools that paying parents often prefer. They are also the shape of many pre-colonial assemblies, still formed among some indigenous communities. In circles, each person has a face, visible feelings, and equal footing. Peers and instructors are available and vulnerable to one another. Hierarchies are mitigated, responses to others encouraged, and hiding ends. The simplicity of rearranging rows into circles, or onto flat mosaic screens, should give pause to conventional educators and administrators who, if they can afford it, may be sending their own children to alternative schools.

Do poor children learn differently from rich ones? Does the rigor of discipline and punish apply to one socio-economic or racial profile and not to another? If public school classrooms have too many children for one collective circle or screen, several can be formed with student co-facilitators, as progressive educators know. Re-thinking classroom choreography is an opportunity to re-consider our general culture that confirms cumulative adversity rather than dares to adjust the design toward an equitable future.16 Thinking like an artist is a fourth advantage that follows from humanist training to discover aesthetic effects of creative decisions. Artists are not victims. They turn problems into challenges, frustration into fuel for change.

Artists make autonomous decisions that self-impose “soft constraints” of form, materials, approach, etc. onto the “hard constraints” of time, money, skill level, etc. that they cannot change. Rational choice theory identifies artists as supremely lucid in this sense.17 No matter the personal burdens that they endure, as artists people are not victims but decision makers within real material and social constraints. This observation has become a slogan for Cultural Agents. “Artists are not victims.” To flip the cause and effect of this nonequivalence is to suggest that a way out of victimhood is to make art, to know the sensation of deciding how, and how much, to communicate. Identifying as an artist achieves autonomy inside constraints. Pre-Texts makes possible, practically irresistible, this transformation from being an object for others to becoming the subject of one’s own will.

Introduction

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• Pre-Texts is an artistic protocol largely indebted to Augusto Boal’s Forum Theater, a Latin American performing art for the general public. Almost all the techniques that make up Pre-Texts are popular Latin American practices, everything from reading aloud in tobacco factories to publishing poems on clotheslines. In exile during the Brazilian dictatorship of 1969-1985, Boal designed a brief series of steps that engage non-actors to improvise performances about their collective tragedies and then to try out interventions that interrupt a fatal ending. These steps ground Paulo Freire’s erudite Pedagogy of the Oppressed into a practical and scalable activity. Artists are practical. They make things and events, and then they may talk about the process and the results. Boal was the unsuspecting mentor for PreTexts which similarly grounds high theory into practical tools. Literary hermeneutics and aesthetic philosophy turn into a simple protocol that virtually anyone can follow. Participants engage the “hard constraints” of required readings by adding the “soft constraints” of an artistic activity. Asking “What did we do?” at the end makes sure that the pleasures of thinking link onto the pleasures of making.

• Inviting students to propose and to develop the creative activities that will tackle a required text produces organic collaborations among students and teachers. It hardly matters what art form is chosen, as long as the group agrees to participate. Options include local and international, high-brow and street styles, vanguard and traditional art forms. Pre-Texts is an almost empty platform that can revive local arts and languages. For example, when “Grandmother tells a story” the activity can be her narration of a “tangent” in an indigenous language that the student will translate and display to classmates. Or, grandmother can visit the classroom and explain how to combine spices or weave patterns based on a book.

• Agreement about how to structure an activity happens through what I call a Habermasian process, because agreement is achieved rather than assumed.18 This updates the dynamic that Immanuel Kant’s described as reaching a “common sense” through disinterested aesthetic judgment.19 Aesthetics, in the Kantian tradition that

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Habermas inherits, refers to the pleasure of judging beauty, not to the visceral impact that first stimulates the judgment. Since beauty cannot be rationally proven, determining whether something is beautiful or not depends on disinterested reflection. So the surest way to train judgment is to think and talk about beauty, because judgment is the only faculty for processing the unreasonable sensation of disinterested pleasure. If aesthetics seems distant from democratic process, Habermas demonstrates how close they are. In fact they were born contemporaneously (in mid-18th century) and both rely on persuasion rather than force. So student facilitators who co-construct a Pre-Texts activity with colleagues foster democracy among people whom they may not know or like.

Collaborating in the creative activity will inevitably bring them closer.

Facilitators arrive with a proposal, not a set of instructions. Then they solicit questions and recommendations. Often, the activity changes significantly as a result of the open consultation; just as often the discussion confirms much of the original proposal. In both cases, the group participates and embraces the resulting activity as a collective creation.

• Each art form contributes a particular skill set and a related technical vocabulary that helps to build a sophisticated lexicon of abstract concepts. This variety is an incentive to multiply the arts that interpret a text. For example, from photography we learn perspective and composition, as well as lighting and graininess; music teaches us rhythm, harmony, dissonance, tone, syncopation, etc.; and theater instructs us about rhetoric, scenarios, monologue, dialogue, tragedy, farce. All these words are immediately understandable in the context of their respective art forms. They are also used metaphorically to discuss many other subjects. With a hands-on grasp of these and more artistic vocabularies we are better prepared for abstract and conceptual thinking.

Introduction

• Practicing artists can be excellent co-facilitators in Pre-Texts.

They raise the level of creativity and keep technical vocabularies agile and precise. But collaborations in a literacy project can founder with artists if, as often happens, they defend their practices against the hegemony of reading and writing. Artists often resist putting art in the service of basic education. As subjects, or survivors, of conventional

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schooling, artists have sometimes been burned by the bright and blinding line drawn between learning and creativity. Bloom’s pyramid of learning that climbs toward pre-established meanings disengages creative and curious children who become allergic to the joyless rigor of school. A remedy for the current, practically structural, divide between cognitive and creative development is a general invitation to play with challenging texts from grade-school on.

Teachers are the beneficiaries of Pre-Texts as much as are their students, because the pleasure and autonomy that fuel the program create conditions of professional satisfaction. Surveys of preferences in the range of occupations show that people tend to choose increased autonomy over increased pay.20 Teachers may have little autonomy regarding required curricula, but they are relatively free to adopt approaches that can achieve established goals even when the goals are set by others. Pre-Texts embraces curricular requirements, sometimes perversely, as the stuff of creative challenges. It resolves the possible tension between having to teach difficult (or even objectionable) texts and an ethical inclination to generate ownership and judgment among students.

Texts become objects of scrutiny and playthings. They are not sacred objects but raw material for making meaning and reflecting on the process. Pre-Texts doesn’t trap teachers in contradictions between professional demands and personal ethics; it encourages teachers to cover classroom material while also making ample room for play.

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Introduction

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Rules forfor Rules Emancipation Emancipation Gonzalo Aguilar

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Workshop year 2017 Implementation: 2019

Place Buenos Aires, Argentina

Facilitators Joana Bucca, Aldana Bucca, Estefania Ferrari, Laura Aspi, Natalia Ortiz, Soledad Pereira, Liz Isacupe, Keren Isacupe, Milagros Alizegui, Ezequiel Verta, Mixtli Cano Moreno, Noelia Capello, Flavia Helguero, Julieta Alani Castillo, Vanina Dalto, Tálata Rodríguez, Leonardo Sabatella

Supervisors + Mixtli Cano Moreno + Fundación Cultural Ayres

Institutions involved Instituto de Vivienda de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (IVC)

Impacted population 170

STUDENTS

Pre-Texts in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES

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In a literature class at a school in Buenos Aires, the nine-year-old students had just read a short story. When the teacher asked what they thought of it, Malena raised her hand and said, “Why don’t we put on a play from the text?” Dismissing the suggestion, the teacher replied, “That’s really hard to do.” From her seat, Malena raised her eyes to meet her teacher’s, saying, “No, it’s not hard, it’s easy. I’ve already done it.”

What Malena said was true: that year (2018), she had participated (along with her friends from Villa 20) in the New Opera Festival with La noche de las bestias [The Night of the Beasts]. The work was put on by Swiss music group Ums’n Jip (Ulrike Mayer-Spohn and Javier Hagen), director Pablo Maritano, actress Teresa Floriach and children from two villas, or slums: Villa 20 and Villa Ramón Carrillo. They composed the play between all of them, and they presented it at the Teatro 25 de Mayo, one of the city’s traditional theaters, built in 1920 with a capacity of 400 people. Malena played La Llorona, one of the characters who appears on stage as a ghost, in full makeup, to remind the public of a fire at an orphanage in their neighborhood.

As she had participated in rehearsals, contributed ideas, completed training in acting and improvised onstage, it seemed to Malena that putting on a play with the story would be “easy.” By saying it was easy, she was not denying that there would be challenges and even the possibility of failure, but rather that the only way to know would be to try. “Easy” meant: in the process of

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doing, I discovered my own potential. Malena had learned something, but the classroom was not ready to learn from her.

One of the greatest difficulties involved in projects carried out in under-resourced or poor neighborhoods is continuity. After the success of La noche de las bestias, after the adrenaline and the enthusiasm, what would follow? It occurred to us at the City Housing Institute (IVC), where I coordinate the area of culture, to turn to Pre-Texts and the Cultural Agents project. Professor Doris Sommer had already worked with us at the beginning of 2017, and now we had the opportunity to bring Pre-Texts to several neighborhoods in the city of Buenos Aires, thanks to funding from Mecenazgo. Now Malena would find a place where no authority would tell her not to do something because it was hard, where she would not have to ask permission to speak nor to put an idea into practice in order to see what would happen.

The arrival of Pre-Texts came about in a particular context: some of the city’s villas were being integrated and urbanized by the city government. The paradigm change that has taken place in recent years is fundamental: before, operating under the assumption that modern development would inevitably occur, the villas were eradicated. If this was done under democratic leadership, the inhabitants were relocated to housing in other parts of the city. If it was done in a dictatorship, they were returned to their countries of origin if they were immigrants, or, if not, they were simply abandoned—left to their own devices.

Pre-Texts in Argentina

With the return to democracy in 1984, eradication continued as a practice of the State, despite the problems it created, which were often more serious than those it purported to resolve. The populations of the villas lost their points of reference and had to abruptly change their ways of life, as they no longer had access to what had previously been their day-to-day reality: schools, work, neighbors, the places they shopped. This happened to the people of Albergue Warnes, who were relocated to the Ramón Carrillo neighborhood (from the city’s north to its south) and to the inhabitants of the banks of the river in Villa 21-24 when they were taken to the Mugica housing unit at the other extreme of Buenos Aires.

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For the new project, new housing was constructed within the neighborhood (three villas were urbanized: Rodrigo Bueno in Costanera Sur, Fraga in Chacarita and Barrio 20 in Villa Lugano) and half of the population moved there.

The houses remaining in what was called “el macizo” (the existing slum) were improved and updated with basic services—electricity, water, gas and sewage.

The process is slow and does not consist of merely providing housing (urbanizing), but rather of integration—accompanying the changes and the moves with extensive social and cultural work. That is to say, it’s not only about providing housing, but rather building citizenry. In this context, Pre-Texts offered a tool to build agency that was enormously helpful in making the transformation process an integral one.

In order to carry out the project, we gathered an initial group of participants made up of young writers and community agents who had already demonstrated their capacity to work with groups and to lead cultural demands.

Among the writers was Tálata Rodríguez, who had previous experience in the villas as well as with the work of performance related to poetry, which would be of great assistance. Leo Sabbatella is a writer more in the tradition of Beckett—his writing is dense and sometimes impervious—and an interesting selection for that reason (the purpose was not to transform those who lived in the villas with paternalistic logic, but rather to transform all those involved).

He had worked with us on a book about Villa 26 and had shown a great capacity to listen. Also joining the group were Noelia Capello and Flavia Helguero from the National Library, who would allow us to establish a link among community groups and a traditional institution.

We chose 12 participants from the neighborhoods. Among them were Liz Isacupe, from Rodrigo Bueno, who had completed a course in library science at one of the public libraries in La Boca, on her own initiative. Milagros Alizegui, from the Mugica housing unit, runs a library of toys used by the neighborhood children. Her uncle makes the library’s handmade toys. Soledad Pereira directs the La Esquina Hace Arte cultural center and it was the children from that center who participated in La noche de las bestias.

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Rules for Emancipation

Figures 1 and 2: La Esquina Hace Arte in Barrio 20, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2019. Photos

by Leonardo Sabbatella

Pre-Texts in Argentina

Interestingly (or, perhaps, not so much), all the participants from the local neighborhoods were women. With their husbands generally dedicated to their jobs, the women busy themselves with their children’s care and free time, which extends to coming up with recreational activities. Within patriarchal distribution, women are linked to the home (though many also have to work) and to the administration of free time. Because of this point Pre-Texts seemed to us to be a laboratory in which the effects of patriarchal practices could be deconstructed, not only because the idea was to produce a citizenry—the passage between public and private space—but also because participants would have a starring role reaching well beyond childcare. We held the workshop with this group and with Doris, and from there we began to multiply the spaces with facilitators in Mugica, Rodrigo Bueno, Carrillo and Villa 20.

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Why Pre-Texts?

With regard to cultural policies, the 20th century was marked by two antagonistic options, which Latin America has struggled to overcome. On one hand is elitism, with its actions from above and its supposed desire to elevate cultural production based on attitudes that are discriminatory if not outright contemptuous. On the other hand is populism, with its praise of all acts produced by subordinate sectors, but without a clear vision of the effects of domination and the relationship of that culture to life damaged by poor state and/or civil policies. Now that we are well into the 21st century, this dichotomy seems to have lost its meaning, but nevertheless it continues to influence the ways we think about politics, education, art and culture.

Figure 3: Comedor Felicitas in Barrio 20, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2019. Photo by Leonardo Sabbatella

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Figure 4: V. Soldati/Asociación Salas, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2019. Photo by Leonardo Sabbatella

Rules for Emancipation

Pre-Texts’s solution to this dilemma consists of displacing the focus of attention.

Both elitism and populism value the origins, processes and products of culture.

Depending on the perspective from which they are viewed, each of these elements acquires a positive or negative value. Elitism usually raises the concept of quality, which is generally charged with evaluations based on class or on historically embedded prejudices. Populism usually defends authenticity or the territorial, notions that are increasingly evanescent as digital media advance.

In contrast, at a Pre-Texts workshop what matters are the rules. Different origins, processes and products participate under a common set of rules that tend to balance different origins, open up shared processes and arrive at products removed from ideas of quality or authenticity. This series of rules tends to dismantle a series of common assumptions: the place of authority, the idea that paying attention is not the same thing as sitting still, participation as a mode of intellectual reflection, play as a substitute for learning, self-regulation rather than discipline.

The experiences from the workshops have been illuminating in this sense.

One of the groups from Mugica, which was initially chaotic and reluctant to participate, has been the best participant in activities at the National Library.

They did not do them in order to obey any authority or to receive any accolade, but because they understood that due to this, they had a better time, and they made the very most of the activities. In a workshop of women from Ramón Carrillo, the text they read with Tálata was the myth of Persephone.

The text served to inspire reflection on gender violence and also to create hairstyles and make food (two topics that appear in the text). The kind of transversality that the workshops allow questions the ways in which we divide up areas of knowledge, teaching and community practices.

Pre-Texts in Argentina

The project of Pre-Texts Buenos Aires is still a work in process. It is too early to draw definitive conclusions, and perhaps we will never arrive at them.

But what matters is precisely the process: in very little time the program has opened incalculable possibilities and, more importantly, it has made evident how powerful citizens can be when, instead of being told, “That’s very difficult,” they are told, “Let’s try.”

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What Did We Do? (This is Asked Instead of: What Did We Learn?)

Jay Critchley

Workshop year 2016

Place Nassau, Bahamas

Facilitators Carla S. Campbell, Jason P. Evans, Lawrence Bascom, Doreen Musgrove, Emma Bassett, Bolera Glinton, Anastacia S. Forbes, Monica Collie, Stacey Marshall, Lauren Thurston-Smith, Kirkwood Deal Jr., Moya Strachan

Supervisors + Dr. Prof. Doris Sommer

Institutions involved The Inter-American Development Bank

NASSAU

Impacted population 200 STUDENTS 1.500 PEOPLE

PRE-TEXTS INTERNATIONAL

Day 1 Large wrap-around verandas at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) provided the expansive setting for the workshop. An officious gallery director helped define the parameters of the space as the participants filtered onto the open-air second floor. The participants were mostly young, enthusiastic artists, teachers and community workers.

Even though Prof. Sommer had been advised about “Bahamas time,” in which things often run late, she managed to start shortly after 4:00 p.m. The circle is the modus operandi of Pre-Texts, and after forming one twenty individuals introduced themselves while holding a ball made of newspaper, throwing it from one to another. It is important that all speak once before anyone speaks twice, and it’s up to each person to be aware if someone next to him or her has not yet spoken. A gentle elbow will do.

At one point, Professor Sommer playfully made and started throwing more paper balls, and mayhem broke out as a cacophony of names was shouted out.

Then, after we heard the text we would play with, participants divided up into pairs and created “literary sculptures” that were hilarious and intimate.

The workshop moved rhythmically as Prof. Sommer strategically introduced the concepts of Pre-Texts between exercises, which primarily focused on the reading of a text from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, while participants sat at tables and made book covers that responded to the text.1 They were doing while listening.

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Figure 1: Bahamas Team

It was a surreal moment, with Prof. Sommer standing on a chair, in oratorical style, while participants tried to grasp this collision of mind and body.

This became wonderfully obvious when pairs of participants pantomimed a specific line from the text, which required everyone to scan the essay to find the right reference. This was both challenging and rewarding, with many “Ah-ha!” moments.

Student leaders would lead sessions during the rest of the week. A schedule was established for the next few days, with each individual or pair given about an hour of leadership.

Day 2 Pre-Texts in Bahamas

Upon arrival in the morning we immediately began to set up; the clothesline was still hanging between the white pillars where “tangents” (readings and articles stimulated by the Cosmos text) were published. Jason P. Evans from

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Figure2:2:Forum Bahamas TeamPhoto by Jay Critchley Figure Theater,

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¿What did we do?

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Improv/Comedy presented an idea, which at first was confusing and elicited much discussion, but once the framework was understood it flowed like honey. In fact, the confusion worked to make us all co-construct the activity we wanted to do. Each person wrote short words or phrases from the text, which were then put in a basket. Brief scenarios were introduced for improvised skits, with the prompt for a scene and a quote from Sagan. The randomness fuelled our creativity. What else could we do but invent connections? Whether the actors were selling pastries at a bakery or talking to someone in the grave, the drama revved up like ancient Greek theater. Much laughter ensued.

The second exercise was more problematic and challenging. The facilitators, Anastasia S. Forbes and Carla S. Campbell, presented the ideas of the circle and the mandala, asking participants to draw a circle and embellish it while the history of the mandala was read. Prof. Sommer had to remind them that this activity too should use our core text—where was the text? As with the acting improv, a prompt to make mandalas from Cosmos forced us to interpret and to imagine. The final display of work on the floor gallery became an intimate exchange of personal stories and challenges. The result was a surprising unity of purpose.

Figure 3: Off on Tangents, Photo by Jay Critchley

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I don’t remember who facilitated the third activity, but the activity itself is memorable. That’s one of the conclusions from Pre-Texts: pedagogues are not protagonists; they are facilitators who step back to participate along with everyone else. The exercise was to read the text as a dramatic performance, utilizing tone of voice, gesture and emotion. Prof. Sommer suggested that everyone read a section of the text in whatever dramatic expression he or she chose. A surprising reading followed, with interpretations ranging from boredom to nervousness, anger and exasperation, among others.

Day 3 Participants arrived and put up their tangents. The first session, with Prof.

Sommer and Moya Strachan, was a dance activity. Moya demonstrated traditional choreography used by many church choirs. What resulted were three vibrant, choreographed movement pieces that included music, song, voice soundings, ump-bas and more. The Cosmos text became more ingrained in everyone’s brain.

The next session, led by Yutavia George and Lawrence Bascom, made us all sculptors. Participants split up into pairs and then created clay sculptures to interpret the text. The three-dimensional pieces were made from clay and plastic straws. The heavy gray material hovered above the table, balanced magically on translucent straws, as if testing the laws of gravity.

The last exercise offered recorded everyday sounds, such as screams and waves crashing on the beach, in addition to eight other sounds. Participants were asked to select a word or line from the text that related to each sound, and then they were asked why they chose it.

Day 4 Pre-Texts in Bahamas

For the poetry session, participants once again selected clipped words/ phrases from the text and used them to write a couple of sentences. The writings were then put in a hat and everyone chose a text at random, not

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Figure 4: Collage by Laura Oliveros

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knowing who wrote it. Three people edited the writing, making corrections and suggestions. In the circle, each retrieved his or her text and reviewed the suggestions. Once each text was rewritten, the group arranged them into a single collage poem. All four texts were read with dramatic flair, to many accolades.

It was time to employ our full range of senses, making sculpture out of food with Monica Collie and Emma Bassett. The scent of bananas, apples and oranges wafted in the late afternoon breeze as participants created edible sculptures based on images inspired by the text. The descriptions and “What did we do?” reflections were enhanced by the setting of a communal feast.

The results recalled 21st century versions of the Flintstones and the Jestsons.

Another sculpture session brought the group into the exhibition of paintings by Bent Malone, a distinguished Bahamian artist whose Junkanoo carnival scenes were featured in this closed-door show at the National Gallery, where we worked in adjoining spaces. The narrative work utilizes flamboyant color and celebratory carnival imagery, and it inspired participants to link the Cosmos text with the work. In three groups, we fashioned jeweled carnival crowns from a basketful of art materials, including lots of glitter and yarn. The results were lessons from Cosmos about the colors of stars, the spiral movements, dust and space, all interpreted into crowns fit for kings and queens.

The culmination of the week was sharing action plans with the group. Written texts were taped on the wall and all gathered in the dim evening light to hear presentations.

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

The week ended jubilantly with a group photo and unending photo ops, followed by participants modeling the imperial crowns. There was a melancholy feeling as the group dispersed, despite knowing they’d be meeting weekly to further their grasp of Pre-Texts. Many seemed committed to putting in the fifteen hours of practice to receive their Pre-Texts certifications.

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Reflections From the generous veranda of the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, we experienced what Thomas Henry Huxley called “illuminable ocean of inexplicability.” The conjurer of such human liquidity was Doris Sommer herself.

Here we were, on the shores of the cosmic ocean, creating our own tiny planetary home! Everything is in motion. Would Carl Sagan be surprised to see us playfully heralding and reaffirming our right of passage on our home planet Earth? Our deep human aspirations to wonder were merely reflecting the deep tendrils of light he observed in the cosmos above.

Pre-Texts brought us solitary wanderers together to create communal clusters, huddling together, no longer drifting endlessly in the giant cosmic dark. It celebrated how firmly tethered we are to the earth and provided a powerful context for the hands-on, peer-to-peer experience so necessary for deep learning.

The foundational question posed by Pre-Texts is: What did you do? In other words, how did you navigate through the physical space you occupied today?

How did you engage? We do not ask a news reporter’s traditional questions of who, what, where, when and why. This is a grounding question that requires reflection and recollection.

As an artist, my process bounces back and forth between words and texts, objects and materials and physical space and the community. When working harmoniously, my neural network opens up and all the synapses and circuitry kick in. We have long since disproven the binary idea of separation of the mind and body. Unfortunately, our schools often focus solely on the brain as the learning center of the body, at the expense of the whole body itself.

But not Pre-Texts, which demonstrates that words and texts help us begin to access the full supply chain of our aesthetic pleasure.

For me, Pre-Texts confirmed my own creative process, in which I ignore robocalls and storm surges that are fact-indifferent to the provenance of my particular integrated human body. Creative learning can be pleasurable and

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playful if all your senses are invited into the process of breaking down useless walls that set up wasteful obstacles to integrated human expression.

What did I do?

The literature and science of global warming and the degradation of the planet have been a central issues in my artmaking, sometimes seeming burdensome. But when I was “hooked on a text” with the much-maligned words, “Global Warming,” my circuitry went into action. Meditating on the word “warming,” I flashed upon the physical act of yawning, something that releases emotional distress, as I had learned in counseling. Global Yawning for a small planet was born.

Global Yawning? No, it’s not about being bored! It’s been shown that yawning cools the brain! My project, Global Yawning, was soon giving people permission to break the taboo of yawning and join this global movement. I brought the pleasure and power of yawning to the masses with a video documentary, mentoring people to celebrate their inner yawns.

The personal is planetary—and collective! Imagine, if the global community yawns together, we can cool the planet together!

As with Pre-Texts, the creative process is infinite. Global Warming soon morphed again, implicating the perpetrator of denialist climate change, Mobil Oil. Thus, “Mobil Warming—Go with the Flow” appropriates the Mobil logo and inserts the seal of the state of Florida in the red “o”. This elicited a formal letter to me from former Governor Rick Scott, a friend of Big Oil, to “cease and desist” from using the state seal. Really? So my people are negotiating with his people.

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

I then took the Mobil Warming project to a college design class and students created mixed-media takes on climate change under the corporate seal of Mobil Warming.

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What did I do?

In pondering the recent seismic eruption in the Presidency of the United States, going from a black to a white president, I became transfixed by the name of our country’s First Home: The White House. It took on symbolic urgency when racial and ethnic bigotry, not to mention gender bashing, became a staple of its present occupant. My response, “The Whiteness House— Tarred and Feathered,” explores issues of race, ethnicity and whiteness.

Tarring and feathering is an ancient form of public torture and humiliation used to enforce unofficial justice or revenge. It begs the questions: Who is doing the tarring and feathering? Who is being tarred and feathered?

What am I doing now?

My latest project draws directly from Pre-Texts practices. It invites creative, critical interpretations of a foundational democratic document of the English Colonists: the Mayflower Compact.

Forty-one white men signed the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on November 11, 1620. To commemorate the 400th anniversary of this document signed in the ancestral lands of the Wampanoag Tribe, I’ve initiated a project called “The Mayflower Compact Untethered 2020.” It is a national call to all artists, activists and creatives to imaginatively respond to the text with spoken word, music, theater, dance, rap, fashion, etc., to recreate a Compact of the People 2020. Questions to be explored: What does it mean to be a U.S. citizen or resident in 2020? What does it mean to be a global citizen? What is the meaning of democracy?

As Pre-Texts shows, texts are infinite. Stay woke!

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¿What did we do?

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Pre-Texts in the Classroom Carla S. Campbell

Workshop year 2016

Place Nassau, Bahamas

Facilitators Carla S. Campbell, Jason P. Evans, Lawrence Bascom, Doreen Musgrove, Emma Bassett, Bolera Glinton, Anastacia S. Forbes, Monica Collie, Stacey Marshall, Lauren Thurston-Smith, Kirkwood Deal, Jr., Moya Strachan

Supervisors + Doris Sommer + Carla S. Campbell

Institutions involved

NASSAU

The IDB Afterschool Program, St. Andrewʼs International School, The Inter-American Development Bank, C.H. Reeves Junior High School.

Impacted population 67 STUDENTS

PRE-TEXTS INTERNATIONAL

I believe that the arts can be used to teach all subjects. Each brush stroke in a painting communicates references from the artist’s own life; the cadence of spoken word or song contains a rhythmic essay; every dance repertoire presents exemplars of the system of the body. I believe art should play a more integrated role in curriculum planning and could possibly be the missing link for improving literacy among at-risk youth. In 2016, when I attended Pre-Texts’ Train the Trainers workshop sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank, I felt the threads of these beliefs weave themselves together; it was the catalyst for my acceptance and implementation of Pre-Texts as a new teaching methodology.

I have been an art teacher for 18 years and counting, and I have seen how art can elevate students’ confidence and instill pride in some of the most reluctant student artists. In contrast, I have also seen amazing art students crumble at the thought of reading aloud or even writing a summary of an artistic research topic. The phenomenon of the ever-present discrepancy between what some students achieve in the arts compared with what they achieve in other subjects—such as English Literature or Mathematics—is well-known by most educators. Pre-Texts stitches together the seams of this discrepancy by reframing literature as raw material for art making.

At the Train the Trainers workshop we were given a text by Carl Sagan on the scientific study of astronomy and physics. At first glance the text seemed to be filled with subject-specific terminology, impossible to understand with-

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Pre-Texts In The Classroom

Figure 1: Junior high art class. Photo by Laura Oliveros

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

out a physics background. I felt I was drowning in a sea of adjectives and adverbs, as many of our students often feel. Then Pre-Texts threw me a life vest. The integration of the arts buoyed my sinking interest in the text through an exercise that allowed me to scan for words I could illustrate. In searching for words worthy of a drawing, I must have read the text three times.

For the duration of the workshop, we only used this text, yet each activity allowed us to dissect and repurpose it as an art form. Each time we looked at the text it was like new. I began to have fun reading an academic text about a subject of which I had little previous knowledge. At one point, the text transformed itself into space machines or sculptures made of fruit. There was also a hilarious activity in which we had to finish each other’s sentences in an overdramatized, emotional spoken word performance. By this point, the text no longer felt like a stranger, and I was no longer lost in a sea of words. The acts of understanding this scientific literature and creating works of art sewed together a quilt of experiences, insights and reflections. The interchange between participant and facilitator began to transform the way I

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thought about teaching as a whole. I began to question the traditional “sage on a stage” teaching style, wondering how much more beneficial it would be for students to see teachers following their own rules for making art. The benefit of students and teachers sharing the fun of making art seems like an obvious conclusion, but with the cornucopia of learning styles, abilities and intelligences examined under the microscope of standardized testing, how could such a seemingly carefree teaching methodology as Pre-Texts be used in a classroom where students are expected to sit national or international art examinations?

In 2016, on the tiny island of New Providence in The Bahamas, in a small church hall in a neighborhood of low socio-economic status—and somewhere in the middle of my master’s program—I got an opportunity to use Pre-Texts with a group of students. I joined the administrative team of an afterschool art and enrichment program for kids ranging from 11 to 16 years old. Sixty-seven students were given a questionnaire requesting basic information, and students who gave positive answers to questions asking whether they had been in a fight or suspended from school, as well as those who said they did not like to read, were invited to attend the program. In my informal assessment based on my years of teaching experience, I found Figure 2: The inner pages of booklets made by students from a junior high art class. Nassau, Bahamas, 2016

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that the students exhibited a mixture of various at-risk factors, with problems ranging from behavior to reading fluency and comprehension skills. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to help these students develop a relationship with a text in the same way that I had experienced Carl Sagan’s text in the Train the Trainers workshop. I organized the program to reflect Pre-Texts’ tenets and equipped facilitators with a Pre-Texts–styled lesson plan format I created, which was then used to document their lessons and experiences. The selected text was a novel commonly used in the Bahamian school’s English Literature curriculum: The Skin I’m In by Sharon G. Flake. At first, students cringed when reading the text aloud, and it was challenging to develop the rhythm of the tangent-activity-discussion format. However, in time they grew in confidence. Soon, they fearlessly flipped the text into puppets and wrote, directed and performed skits based on its chapters. Students and teachers were both engaged in the activity, and students produced craft wares, sculpture and artwork based on the selected text. By the end of the program, the same students who once claimed they did not like to read wrote summaries of a text with which they had now developed a relationship, and those with at-risk behaviors were happily occupied with the diverse activities and fresh approach to written assignments. The afterschool program concluded with an art exhibition of students’ artistic expressions.

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

After the success of this experience, I wanted to experiment with Pre-Texts in a more formal setting as a contrast to the relaxed after-school atmosphere. I introduced Pre-Texts as a lesson series to my then-7th grade public school art class of 15 students. Their ability levels were mixed, and students were not targeted based on their preferences for reading or any documented behavioral issues. Seventh grade students were selected because this is a crucial foundation year for the Bahamian art student in the public school system. At the onset, these students may or may not have had formal art classes, and their artistic skills vary widely. By the end of grade 7, students are expected to demonstrate an understanding of foundational artistic skills and to synthesize elements and principles of design in a standardized internal examination format. Furthermore, when they finish junior high at grade 9, public school art students are expected to sit national art examinations testing knowledge developed from the foundations of grade 9. Exceptional students are accel-

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erated to sit the examination in the eighth grade. The inclusion of standardized national art examinations give a somewhat rigid structure to the Bahamian art classroom experience, in stark contrast to the laid back atmosphere of an after-school art program. The purpose of this informal study was to observe and document the potential adaptability of a Pre-Texts-style teaching approach to a structured Bahamian Art curriculum. The selected text was the same one from the afterschool program; The Skin I’m In by Sharon G. Flake. The students documented their progress in a booklet they made entitled “My Pre-Texts Portrait Booklet.” The booklet included summaries of the text, portrait drawing exercises and their reflections. Similar to the after-school group, the grade 7 students were generally timid about reading the text aloud. Although it was unorthodox, I trusted my Pre-Texts workshop experience and participated in the activity along with the students. The students’ reaction was, predictably, one of surprise. However, their reactions were quickly overshadowed by their curiosity about what I would come up with. They were equally eager to share their drawings based on passages from the first chapter, which none of them had previously read. This activity became a good introduction to a longer art project on drawing facial features in correct proportion. The Pre-Texts tangent served as an effective plenary and innovative segue into a discussion on what we had done. Some students took special delight in pointing out classmates who did not have a chance to be heard during the roundtable discussion. In the end, the objectives of the Pre-Texts portrait project for 7th grade students were met. They showed marked improvement in their drawing skills and were able to summarize the chapters covered. Overall, Pre-Texts as a methodology benefited both the formal and informal groups of students who may have had at-risk indicators by encouraging deep comprehension of a complicated text while creating artwork that could be the foundation for a standardized art examination or student art exhibition.

These early-yet-informal studies in Pre-Texts in the classroom are very intriguing. Notwithstanding, more research could be conducted to better examine the long-term general effects of Pre-Texts in the classroom. As a first step towards this goal and as a foundation for potential ongoing research, I include the practicum paper I conducted to inquire: Can a Pre-Texts Arts methodology effectively contribute to alleviating educational indicators associated with at-risk youth in The Bahamas?

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ASSESSING THE PROBLEM The purpose of this text is to identify whether a Pre-Texts arts methodology would effectively contribute to alleviating educational indicators associated with at-risk youth in The Bahamas. It is hoped that this paper will lend support to more Pre-Texts-centered arts programs, teacher training workshops and funding for future research.

There is a growing concern among educators about the academic, social and personal well-being of students classified as at-risk youth. The term atrisk youth describes any student between the ages of 10-18 with behavioral, situational and/or educational indicators that affect their safety, social and educational function.1 Further, the term at-risk youth also encompasses youth of low socio-economic status.2 Historically, within The Bahamas, discipline issues have involved a number of these at-risk indicators, specifically but not limited to: drug use and selling, gang culture and bullying.3 At-risk educational indicators are identified as students who are underachieving academically, not coping in classroom situations, demonstrating poor literacy and numeracy skills, and/or students who were suspended or expelled from school.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

The methodological framework for the ongoing in-class and extracurricular art programs highlighted in this text is based on Pre-Texts. Supportive literature on the effects of arts exposure and at-risk youth are also at the core of this research.

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The Pre-Texts Methodology Pre-Texts, as a teaching methodology, stands in stark contrast to the stoic Bahamian educational methodologies adapted from archaic British customs. Pre-Texts, which uses text as the raw material for art production, was developed as a teaching methodology by the department of Cultural Initiatives at Harvard University. Leading Harvard professors involved in the study observed social patterns in which reading was organically infused into the working culture of low-wage cigar rollers in parts of Latin America where literacy rates were lowest. What they discovered was that this method of introducing text while workers were engaged in production resulted in improved retention of the text and developed a culture of reading. Based on the educational theory of Jacques Rancière, Pre-Texts challenges the traditional, impersonal, dictatorship-like approach that typically characterizes the student-teacher relationship in The Bahamas.4 The Ten Staples of Pre-Texts outline what accounts for the difference. One way it departs from the typical student-teacher relationship is its definition of the teacher as a maestro/ facilitator rather than the authoritarian source of knowledge. Pre-Texts instruction must be carefully orchestrated so as to not be overly directive and controlling. This approach opens the door for creativity to present itself. The Pre-Texts facilitator must allow for recommendations to amend the activity’s rules and must gently ensure that all students have spoken or contributed in some way. This reflective aspect of the lesson must also be orchestrated in an organic fashion. Probably the most notable difference between PreTexts facilitators and impersonal teachers is that Pre-Texts teachers are not exempt from activities. In this methodology, it is imperative that the Pre-Texts facilitator, after giving clear, detailed instruction once at the beginning of the lesson, remains an active participant, a co-learner with the other participants. This avant-garde approach to teaching seeks to personalize the teaching and learning process while simultaneously removing hierarchical roles of authority. A Pre-Texts art methodology incorporates the Ten Staples of Pre-Texts while teaching art theory and technique.

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Review of Current Research

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

Additional reports from the United States’ National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) were also examined. In one report the role of the arts was used as a rehabilitative strategy to chart the educational impact of high exposure to the arts. The label “at-risk” was limited to situational indicators, namely, the socio-economic status (SES) of the student. The NEA longitudinal study used the databases of four large national studies to “analyze the relationship between arts involvement and academic and social achievements”.5 Collectively, the databases used tracked a large number of at-risk youth from kindergarten to age 27. It then categorized the students into four sections: high and low SES students with low exposure to arts and high and low SES students with high exposure to the arts. Arts exposure was defined in the report as having initial and recurring occurrences as in-class and/or extracurricular arts activity, service in an arts leadership position and/or advanced placement coursework in the arts. Students who ranked in the top 12.5 percent of arts engagement were deemed high-arts students.6 Areas of interest in the study included, but were not limited to, academics (calculus, science and reading), community volunteer work and college enrollment.7 The NEA Longitudinal study found that high exposure to the arts positively impacted at-risk youth in all areas indicated. Further, regardless of whether the students had high or low SES, when they had high exposure to the arts they ranked higher than their counterparts. Interestingly, students with low SES (at-risk youth) but high exposure to the arts ranked significantly higher than students who also had low SES but low exposure to the arts. It is important to note, however, that this report does not support a cause-and-effect relationship between arts involvement and academic or civic achievement.8 Nevertheless, Chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts Rocco Landesman adds that regardless of the absence of a causal relationship, “...when a school delivers the complete education to which every child is entitled—an education that very much includes the arts— the whole child blossoms.”9

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Figure 4: The Pre-Texts Portrait Booklet made by students included drawing studies, chapter summaries and reflections. Junior high art class. Nassau, Bahamas, 2016. Photo by Carla Campbell

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Pre-Texts In The Classroom

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An article in The Qualitative Report Journal selected American middle school students from a rural school who had received arts exposure.10 Although the study was not limited to at-risk students, the insightful commentary gathered from the qualitative data is noteworthy for this text. Students who were part of in-class art activities spoke positively about the intrinsic motivation they developed as a result of taking an art class.

Another piece of literature key to this current research is a Bahamian national employment survey and analysis conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The central focus of the analysis was the employability of youth ages 15-24 and the high unemployment rate among that demographic. The analysis found that employers in The Bahamas most often complain that youth lack specific job skills sets (a complaint from 66% of firms surveyed), soft skills like responsibility and commitment (from 25% of firms) as well as numeracy (from 12% of firms).11 Most notable were the strong links shown between the quality of education attained—particularly for public school students—and employment outcomes. The article claimed that whereas secondary school completion rates are relatively high at 72%, there are “serious problems in terms of education quality that affect employability of high school graduates.”12 The current research on the effects of recreational activities and at-risk youth was conducted by the Park and Recreation Departments (PARDs) of America in an effort to curb societal problems associated with at-risk youth. They conducted nine separate evaluation studies, two major research instruments and developed an evaluation handbook to support practitioners conducting their own studies.

Recreation is defined by PARDs as a “hook” to attract youth into programs while providing them with a safe environment.13 It is noted that “unproductive” time typically occurs after school and is crucial for decreasing deviant behavior. Like the previous reports reviewed here, arts exposure in this recreational report also had positive results for at-risk students. The recreational report also noted contrasting views regarding the effectiveness of recreational programs. Naysayers felt that recreational programs were a “soft alternative that pampers youth and has no ameliorating effect on their behaviour,” as opposed to the effects of direct involvement with police-run programs.14 Witt and Crompton referred to this view

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as “positioning,” which touts the position that while afterschool recreational programs do keep kids off the street, they have no lasting effect. Admittedly, there may be supporters of this positioning statement within the Bahamian community.

However, as suggested by the data from multiple sources—especially the longitudinal studies—high arts exposure for at-risk youth has a positive, lasting effect from kindergarten well into the college years.15

IMPLICATIONS Research Literature

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

Despite the gap between art education in The Bahamas and in the United States, and while there are no documented studies showing links between the arts and at-risk students in The Bahamas, the literature still offers positive implications that can be adapted to Bahamian educational culture. In all of the longitudinal studies highlighted in the literature, scores of students with high exposure to art were consistently high across the board, regardless of at-risk factors. A significantly higher amount of positive educational indicators favored high exposure to the arts among at-risk students with low socioeconomic status.16 Based on this data one can assume that high exposure to a specific art methodology such as Pre-Texts, which centers on literature, may have a similar effect on at-risk youth. The Pre-Texts art methodology could also be adapted to meet the rigorous demands of the Bahamian visual art technique training for students expected to sit national art examinations while simultaneously engaging with complicated texts. However, the effect of this methodology in a rigorous artistic setting and/or with at-risk youth has yet to be properly studied. Nevertheless, it is truly an exciting venture, and future research could benefit stakeholders in The Bahamas. The ongoing Pre-Text art lesson series conducted at a Bahamian 7th grade public school art class is a step in that direction. This grade level was selected in order to set up a three-year longitudinal study to assess the adaptability of Pre-Texts in this setting in order to continue this research.

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For our Bahamian at-risk students, developing intrinsic motivation and the sense of self-efficacy could encourage the success of an arts-based program and methodology. The following excerpts from a sample of interviews in the qualitative research article shows evidence of increased student motivation and self-confidence as a direct result of art exposure: My arts classes drive me to do better in all of my classes because the people in them push me to keep going and study. We have fun in them, and that shows me that just maybe learning and succeeding could pay off in the near future.

The arts affect my confidence because if I can have fun and succeed in those classes, then that gives me the extra boost to do well in my other classes. These classes make me believe that I can do something.17

Figure 5: A student illustrates a portion of the text at the After-school Arts program.

Nassau, Bahamas, 2016

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These excerpts stand in defense of the arts’ effects on students’ motivation and self-efficacy. These two outcomes could be key ingredients in sustaining the Pre-Texts arts methodology for at-risk youth. The ability to motivate students while boosting their self-confidence could prove to be another invaluable outcome, much needed in the Bahamian educational system. The implications of the IDB employability survey indicate that quality education can play a vital role in future employment of youth in The Bahamas. It specifically noted that issues arose in spite of the high school completion rate, indicating that employers require something more than formal completion of school; rather, employers seek intangible skills that arguably come from a higher quality of education. The Pre-Texts arts methodology challenges the status quo in its approach to reading by using the arts to foster critical thinking and problem solving. This, coupled with the documented positive outcomes from high exposure to the arts, could translate into a higher quality of education and possibly more employability for the youth of The Bahamas.18 From a recreational point of view, there is a two-fold implication of an artsbased program for at-risk youth. Both the use of positive activities during after-school hours and the inclusion of the arts can promote positive behavior.19 Further, these current research articles support the on-going Pre-Texts after-school arts program timeframe and its productive and creative methods for facilitating quality education.

CLOSING REMARKS

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The problem of the alarming national grade point average of “D” has the hardest effect on at-risk students with educational indicators. In turn, these at-risk students tend to exhibit truant or deviant behaviour, which soils the landscape of our beautiful Bahamaland. Upon completion of high school, those with low socioeconomic status and poor quality of education graduate, but they are not equipped to interact with the working world. It is clear that, as stakeholders, we must address the problem at the onset. The overwhelming

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evidence presented in this paper in support of an arts-based program to help rehabilitate at-risk youth should be the catalyst for the continued support of recreational programs such as the ongoing PreTexts after-school classes. The Pre-Texts methodology balances structure with freedom and entices learners to engage with literature in novel ways. Undoubtedly, more research is needed to chart its longitudinal effects in The Bahamas, but we can rely on data from similar studies to move the country toward educational reform. The benefits of cultivating self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation in our youth through the arts and Pre-Texts is worth any risk implied by the pursuit.

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¿What did we do?

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A Moral Reading of Nationality Laws Marco Abarca

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Years Active years in human rights advocacy: 32

Place Bahamas / United Nations

Facilitators + Marco Abarca + Annette Martínez Orabona

Supervisors + Doris Sommer + Carla S. Campbell

Institutions involved Caribbean Institute of Human Rights; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; Haitian Organization for the Prevention of HIV, AIDs and STIs (HOPHAS)

Impacted population 19 STUDENTS +1.000 UNDOCUMENTED RESPONDENTS

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

BAHAMAS

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This text tells a bittersweet story. On the one hand, it addresses the cruelty rooted in nationality laws and national identities—explicitly, the cultural hostility against Haitian migrants and the alienation of their children, some of whom grow up in legal limbo at risk of becoming stateless persons. On the other hand, it is about a group of people in The Bahamas who used simple cultural practices from Pre-Texts to approach challenging texts in order to interpret nationality laws. They also learned about human rights research and the art of interviewing. Encouraged by that experience, they sought, enrolled and interviewed over 1000 persons who, like themselves, were born in The Bahamas to Haitian parents.

Ultimately, this essay will tell a story of how their collaboration brought to life a project that aimed to study the impact of Bahamian nationality laws on persons of Haitian descent, to document their status regarding nationality and to determine the presence of stateless persons or those at risk of statelessness in their communities.

Following a background presentation on the research project, four essential questions served as a framework for the analysis: 1. What were the problems and objectives of the research? 2. Why were members of the affected population asked to become co-researchers? 3. How did the Pre-Texts proposal prepare members of the affected communities as co-researchers? 4. Was Pre-Texts effective? How did it work?

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Background In early January 2015, professor Annette Martínez, Director of the Caribbean Institute of Human Rights, was contacted by Bahamian human rights advocates about new immigration policies effective since September 2014. These policies, not surprisingly, had resulted in an escalation of raids targeting Haitian migrants and persons of Haitian descent, including school-aged children who were being used as decoys to get to the parents. Professor Martinez invited me to join a fact-finding mission aimed at examining allegations of inhumane treatment endured by detainees at the immigration center in Nassau.

On arrival to The Bahamas, we met with local human rights advocates and members of affected communities before visiting the Carmichael Detention Center, where hundreds of persons were kept during deportation procedures.

We were not allowed inside the detention facilities but were able to conduct our work as regular visitors. We accessed an open field near the living halls where we stood facing two parallel lines of cyclone fence separated by a dirt corridor. Detainees, including men, children and women (some pregnant and close to term), gathered on the opposite side of the corridor, some of whom were able to give personal testimony about conditions in this overcrowded detention facility. In the following days, we contacted their families to gather details concerning their nationality status and the actions taken by immigration officers who had used cultural profiling to detain anyone who could not produce nationality papers on the spot, including persons born in The Bahamas.

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

On January 30, 2015, our findings were published on the front page of the Sunday edition of The New York Times under the title “Immigration Rules in Bahamas Sweep Up Haitians.” In their official response to this article, using the phrase “victimhood is often a practiced art,” the Bahamian government tried to brush off the allegations of human rights abuses. In response, international alarm grew, in part because of the facts portrayed in the news, in part because of the government’s dreadful reaction to media coverage,

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all of which ignited an unusual and prolonged interest in Bahamian politics.

Finally, on February 20, 2015, in a follow-up piece titled “Bahamas Told to Improve Conditions at Center Housing Haitian Immigrants,” The New York Times announced the decision of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to grant our request for precautionary measures to protect detainees in The Bahamas and initiate proceedings to hold a hearing on the question of Bahamian immigration policies.1

Research Problem and Objectives Persons of Haitian descent face unique challenges to acquire Bahamian nationality. The Constitution of The Bahamas establishes that only children born to Bahamian citizens can acquire Bahamian citizenship automatically at birth.

Clearly, this leaves out children of non-Bahamian parents. Furthermore, any other alternatives available to them to acquire Bahamian nationality at later points in their lives are riddled with administrative barriers within processes that make decisions both discretionary and final. No reason is required for refusal of any nationality application and decisions are not subject to appeal or review in court.

Our research objectives aimed to study the nationality status among persons born in The Bahamas to non-Bahamian parents and to identify stateless persons and persons at risk of statelessness amongst the population of interest.

In addition, the research aimed to provide insights regarding people affected by problems concerning nationality status, the reasons for their predicament and the extent to which it had an impact on their lives, as well as to demonstrate the need for legislative and policy changes to address problems found.

A Collaborative Research Approach Persons born in The Bahamas to Haitian parents are hard to reach and even harder to involve in research. The exact number of persons of Haitian descent residing in The Bahamas remains unknown. The Bahamian government relies on estimates drawn from studies published by international

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Figure 1: Clotheline activity. Photo courtesy of the author’s personal archive.

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organizations that roughly indicate the presence of some 30 to 80 thousand Haitian migrants. These numbers refer to both persons migrating from Haiti and persons born in The Bahamas of Haitian descent. Social issues regarding national status or statelessness are sensitive and even contentious subjects to discuss with state officials and some NGOs. Our population of interest is also sensitive to issues regarding national status, fearing that identification could cause exposure and deportation. They typically live at the margins of Bahamian society, in precarious conditions, in shantytowns that encroach on former agricultural land, out of sight.

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With no public data on the population of interest nor access to a sampling framework, a chain of referrals was needed to engage research participants.

Developing social ties between the first group of referrals and yet-unknown members of the population of interest was of great importance for conducting our study. Assisted by local NGOs, we enrolled 25 persons as the first group of referrals, all members of the affected population, who participated in a training program with the option to become co-researchers.

Engaging Local Partners as Co-Researchers A two-day program was designed to address three basic requirements of collaborative research with members of the affected population: knowledge of substantive topics of research, development of interviewing skills and practical knowledge of research ethics. The overarching objective was to afford trainees personal experience with how human rights standards were used by researchers as a basis to design the research instruments that they, as co-researchers, would use to collect data on how reality manifests itself through language, words, signs and symbols.

The translation of universal human rights standards into local socio-cultural conditions is not a simple task. A growing body of studies shows that traditional doctrinal methods don’t work. It also shows that the vernacularization of human rights documents can have profound impact on the rights, consciousness and empowerment of marginalized groups. Proponents of this approach have adopted several strategies, such as socio-drama, participatory workshops, creating learning materials collectively, theater, testimonies, deep listening activities, talking circles, personal and group reflections on specific events and collective protests.2 Pre-Texts provided us with a unique opportunity to integrate a non-traditional method into our training program. Pre-Texts’ three-pronged strategy promotes literacy, creativity and civic engagement, inviting participants to interpret challenging texts by digging into difficult words, concepts and grammar.

Its core proposal is to develop a democratic setting where teachers take the

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role of facilitators who, acting like Common Law judges in hearings, are only required to see that the rules of engagement are observed so that everyone has equal opportunities to participate. Not coincidentally, Pre-Texts is inspired by different cultural variations of norm-making, norm-enforcing and norm-interpreting procedures. To mention a few: Augusto Boal’s Legislative Theater, Antanas Mockus’ Citizenship Culture, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Jacques Rancière’s Emancipated Spectator.3 Pre-Texts’ first contribution to our training program was its simple binary structure: read, then act. Our training program included three presentations on our two topics of research (international law, local nationality laws), the former two were followed by dialogues and workshops providing time and space for participants to compare facts and laws concerning the status of the right to nationality and the problem of statelessness in their communities.

A second contribution was its rules of engagement. Much like the rules of practical discourse, Pre-Texts allowed trainees to figure out—quite quickly—that entitlements to speak had to be matched with equal responsibilities towards other participants, that is, to make sure that all had an equal chance to benefit from the training program and to become co-researchers. However, contrary to the aims of rules of discourse, Pre-Texts’ proposal is not aimed at fixing meanings to texts. This proposal helped trainees understand that the aim of interpretation was also to allow other persons—research subjects whom they would interview—to contribute to research findings, mainly through one of the research instruments we prepared consisting of semi-structured questions regarding the extent to which their nationality status had an impact in their lives.

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

Finally, Pre-Texts helped us realize our training program’s objective by equipping our local partners to conduct field research, especially since they became acquainted with the legal texts we used as a basis to design the research instruments. Toward that imaginative exploration, Pre-Texts helped us encourage trainees to own the texts by interpreting them creatively, to connect the texts to one’s own lived experience and to experience that all reading necessarily implies in dynamic negotiations.

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Diagram 1 (below) illustrates how Pre-Texts was integrated into the preparatory stages of our study. Stages 1-3 refer to the process preceding the design of research instruments. Using Pre-Texts’ core pedagogical proposals for stages 4 and 5, we developed a two-day training program “mirroring” stages 1-3.

Finally, in stage 6 we convened as a research team to start field work with the collaboration of members of affected communities as co-researchers.

Diagram 1: How did Pre-Texts aid to engage members of affected communities as co-researches?

Pre-Texts activities

Research activities

The right to a nationality and the problem of statelessness Researchers conducted legal research

Researches interviewed Haitian and Bahamian state officials

Researchers compared national and international legal frameworks

Stage 1: Sought authoritative interpretations

Stage 2: Sought authoritative interpretations

Stage 3: Provided interpretations

Prepared the international legal framework

Prepared the national legal frameworks

Designed survey instruments and interviewing guidelines

Stage 4: Sought factual interpretations

Stage 5: Sought factual interpretations

Stage 6: Sought empirical data and information

Trainees compared international norms with personal histories

Trainees wrote questions using Bahamian nationality laws

Trainees practiced interviewing skills using research instruments

Trainees and researchers completed 1015 structured questionnaires, 611 semi-structured questionnaires, 358 hand notes and 253 voice recordings. Further, researchers conducted 40 in-depht interviews and 2 focus groups.

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Effects of Pre-Texts Pre-Texts’ contributions to the training program had a positive impact on the study as a whole, explicitly with regards to trainees’ understanding of topics of research and the quality of work produced. This assessment was obtained by contrasting the work of persons who were able to participate in a full two-day training program (see stages 4-6 in Diagram 1) with those who participated only in activities relating to interviewing skills (stage 6). The twoday training program was offered only once, just before the 30 days of field research activities began. The abbreviated version of the training program was offered at least five times, after field research had begun.

Assessments were carried out daily. A typical workday started in the morning, first reviewing the work of the previous day and then distributing blank questionnaires to co-researchers. They carried out interviews and delivered results in the afternoon: finalized questionnaires, notes taken by hand and voice recordings of interviews. Samples of work were processed the same day in order to conduct tests with cross-tabulations of data and the analysis of hand-taken notes and voice recordings, allowing us to corroborate how co-researchers were using the research instruments.

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

The outcome of daily assessments showed that trainees who participated in the full training program had a better understanding of topics of research than those who could only participate in the brief version of that program.

Of 19 trainees who participated in the Pre-Texts activities, only three had some problems understanding the subject of research. In comparison, of 23 trainees who did not participate in Pre-Texts workshops, 14 had problems understanding the basic premises of research differentiating nationality from national identity. This problem led them to improper use of research instruments. In fact, of 933 interviews conducted by trainees who participated in the two-day training program, 12 interviews were discarded. Of 137 interviews conducted by trainees who did not participate in the full training program, 43 were discarded.

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How did Pre-Texts work?

Ask questions: The overall aim of our first activity was to provide trainees an opportunity to contrast the predicate of international norms with their personal history regarding nationality status. Following a presentation delivered by researchers on the right to a nationality and the problem of statelessness, trainees were asked to elaborate questions based on both legal texts and personal experience. The following are examples of texts used: - Article 15 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”4 - Article 1 of the Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws: “It is for each State to determine under its own law who are its nationals. This law shall be recognized by other States in so far as it is consistent with international conventions, customs and the principles of law generally recognized with regard to nationality”.5 - Article 1 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons: “The term ‘stateless person’ means a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law.”6

Our first volunteer was “JB,” a young woman educated in performative arts, who reached into her purse and took out a document issued by the Government of The Bahamas. The document resembled a passport, but its cover read “Certificate of Identification.” She opened the certificate to its first pages, pointing out that it established her nationality as Haitian. She challenged the meaning of “Haitian” as used in that document. First, she explained that she was born in The Bahamas to Haitian parents, and then she asked: if she never had documents issued by Haitian authorities regarding her nationality, were Bahamian authorities entitled to affirm her Haitian nationality?

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With JB’s story, the texts describing basic principles on nationality became vulnerable to questions. In open discussion, trainees and researchers returned to the object of JB’s inquiry again and again, each time with an improved understanding and a complete interpretive account on how the law applies to specific conditions. In JB’s case, without proper documentation issued by Haitian authorities, Bahamian authorities should not have assumed that she is a Haitian citizen. Haitian authorities would have required evidence of either of JB’s parents as being “native-born” Haitians, meaning being themselves born in Haiti to Haitian parents. According to the Constitution of Haiti, if these conditions were met, it would mean that JB acquired Haitian nationality automatically (at birth).7 Therefore she would be entitled to register and be recognized as a citizen in compliance with Haitian statutory provisions and State practices.8 The act of recognition, while declarative—not constitutive—of Haitian nationality, is necessary to obtain documents to prove that JB is a Haitian national. However, if her parents were not native-born Haitians or had renounced Haitian nationality before JB was born, she would be stateless.

This activity was useful for how it allowed trainees to open up to the possibility that once they found themselves in the field conducting interviews, reality might show them that neither the relationship between facts and norms, nor between questions and answers, are straightforward. Most importantly, it allowed trainees to realize that the research instruments are a product of the researchers’ decisions to include some details and exclude others, for instance, when questions regarding evidence of Haitian nationality permitted only certain answers related to documents issued by Haitian authorities and excluded any documents issued by Bahamian authorities.

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

Furthermore, all discussions about evidence of nationality were crucial for the objectives of our study. As reflected in research findings, of 1015 persons interviewed, only 524 (52%) had documents that would prove they had acquired Haitian nationality automatically or had been naturalized at some point in their life as Bahamian nationals. The nationality status of the re-

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maining 491 (48%) persons interviewed remained undetermined; although they might have acquired Haitian nationality at birth, they were unable or unwilling to fulfill requirements to be recognized as Haitian citizens. Finally, among these 491 persons, 42 were red-flagged as possible cases of statelessness. After in-depth interviews conducted by researchers, we found that of these 42 red-flagged cases, 16 would be stateless persons for whom, even if they moved forward to be registered as Haitian citizens, it would be materially impossible to prove Haitian descent according to the conditions required in Article 11 of the Haitian Constitution.

Write questions: Following our second presentation, this time on Bahamian nationality laws, trainees were asked to gather in groups to develop three questions based on the texts presented to them and to create “intertexts,” with interpolated sets of questions. Finally, in one of our favorite Pre-Texts activities called “Literature on the Clothesline,” trainees published their intertexts with clothespins on a clothesline to display their work while reading the work of peers. The objective of this activity was to continue using legal texts as “raw materials,” this time to write questions that they would ask in interview (see intertexts 1 and 2 in Table 1, below) or to write questions challenging the legal framework on Bahamian nationality (see intertext 3).

Intertexts 1 and 2 provide examples of questions addressing the exclusions made in Bahamian laws regarding age, parentage, marital status and the administrative barriers to acquiring Bahamian nationality. Discussions on administrative barriers were vital to grasp the complexity of problems intertwined in the process of acquisition of Bahamian nationality. Guided by simple questions, the discussion allowed us to foresee cases of persons who, holding no other citizenship, would be at risk of statelessness for one of the following: 1. Being under the age of 18, they are ineligible to register or be naturalized as Bahamian citizens, or 2. Being eligible (by age) to be registered or naturalized, they have not applied for, or had applied for but have not yet acquired, Bahamian nationality.

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PRE-TEXT

INTERTEXT

Constitution of the Bahamas of 1973, Chapter 2, Art. 6: “Every person born in The Bahamas after 9th July 1973 shall become a citizen of The Bahamas at the date of his birth if at that date either of his parents is a citizen of The Bahamas.”

Art. 7(1): “A person born in The Bahamas [..] neither of whose parents is a citizen of The Bahamas shall be entitled, upon making application on his attaining the age of eighteen years or within twelve months thereafter in such manner as may be prescribed, to be registered as a citizen of The Bahamas.”

Art. 8: “A person born outside The Bahamas [..] shall become a citizen of The Bahamas at the date of his birth if at that date his father is a citizen of The Bahamas…”

Art. 9 (1): “Notwithstanding anything contained in Article 8 of this Constitution, a person born legitimately outside The Bahamas [..] whose mother is a citizen of The Bahamas shall be entitled, upon making application

Intertext No. 1: “What is your nationality?”

“Did you apply for your nationality?

“What do you need to change?”

Intertext No. 2: “Is your kids’ father a Bahamian?”

“How old were you when you applied for Bahamian citizenship?”

“Are you married to a foreigner?”

Intertext No. 3: “If a foreign woman has kids with a Bahamian man, why don’t the kids have Bahamian passports?”

“Marriage is honorable in all, why do unmarried people have more rights than married people?”

“Why do Bahamians treat foreigners unfairly?”

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on his attaining the age of eighteen years and before he attains the age of twenty-one years, in such manner as may be prescribed, to be registered as a citizen of The Bahamas” Art. 14(1): “Any reference in this Chapter to the father of a person shall, in relation to any person born out of wedlock other than a person legitimated [..], be construed as a reference to the mother of that person.”

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As it was eventually found in our study, of 491 respondents whose nationalities remained undetermined, 276 (56%) had applied but have not acquired Bahamian nationality due to problems with supporting documents, problems understanding or obtaining guidance to continue the application process, inability to continue paying the costs of application, reluctance to apply for the Haitian passport as a prerequisite to continue the process to acquire Bahamian nationality, or a waiting period (sometimes spanning several years) for a final response to their application for Bahamian citizenship. The remaining 215 (44%) have never applied to be registered as Bahamian citizens because they are: unable to meet formal requirements regarding proof of Haitian nationality, unwilling to comply with the specific requirement to present a Haitian passport, unable to pay the costs of application, unable to meet the deadline to apply for registration as Bahamian nationals under Art.7 or simply unaware of possible ways to obtain citizenship.

In Intertext no. 3, trainees addressed the problem of exclusions very differently.

This Intertext was written by two women, here referred to as “EL” and “DA.” Together they argued that the only purpose of exclusions based on gender and marital status of parents is to treat foreigners unfairly. Arguing for the concept of “fairness,” trainees did not settle for a traditional doctrinal perspective on “what is the Law,” nor for an elaboration of questions to gather facts corresponding to “the Law as is.” Instead, they challenged the popular credence that the Law is unambiguously given, that interpretation is a simple mechanical application. Instead they argued that the Law should pursue higher moral objectives. During the presentation of their Intertext, DA, a Haitian woman educated in natural sciences, explained that she was a single mother of two children born out of wedlock to a Bahamian father, further she explained that their first question (“If a foreign woman has kids with a Bahamian man, why don’t the kids have Bahamian passports?”) was meant to underline the injustice promoted in Arts. 6 and 8 of the Bahamian Constitution. Read jointly with Art. 14 (1), these articles exclude children from acquiring Bahamian nationality at birth if they are born out of wedlock to a Bahamian father and a non-Bahamian mother. In their second question (“Why do unmarried people have more rights than married people?”), both trainees began by making a disclaimer

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regarding their personal views in favor of social conventions like marriage and matrilineal parentage. Then they asked: if it is true that moral conventions were a basis for the exclusion made in Arts. 6, 8 and 14 (1), why does Art. 9 exclude children born to a married Bahamian mother from acquiring Bahamian nationality at birth? The only possible answer would be that the mother could be married to a foreigner. Finally, against this backdrop in which the common link for exclusions in Bahamian laws is the existence of a foreign parent, their third question became self-explanatory: “Why do Bahamians treat foreigners unfairly?” Additionally, DA asked how is it possible that Bahamian courts do not accept a paternity test to afford her two children a legal remedy to their deprivation of Bahamian nationality?

How was the input from DA and EL valuable? Our discussions relating to the nationality status of children among affected communities underlined the increasing likelihood of their becoming stateless persons, a problem that should be of prime concern to Bahamian authorities. In fact, the findings of our study came to show that of 491 respondents classified as persons of undetermined nationality, 107 (22%) have at least one child under the age of 18, for a total of 197 dependent children. Only 19 (10%) of these 197 children had proper nationality documents. As children of respondents with an undetermined nationality, acquisition of Haitian citizenship would be contingent on the nationality of their other parent. However, children for whom both parents are of undetermined nationality or were born to an unmarried Bahamian father would be either stateless or at risk of statelessness.

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

To conclude, different types of questions asked in different intertexts turned out to be valuable tools for explaining to trainees why researchers had designed a structured questionnaire for questions on both demographic characteristics and nationality status of respondents, as well as a semi-structured questionnaire to gather qualitative information on the impact of nationality laws in their life. During the interviewing skills workshop, we asked trainees to continue working in groups to interview each other. When DA interviewed her peer EL, we observed that in their semi-structured interview they were able to strike a balance, writing a brief life story with all the information nec-

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essary to give context to the data gathered in the structured questionnaire.

Had we read EL’s response to the structured questionnaire alone, her Bahamian citizenship would have seemed like a mistake, since data showed that it was materially impossible for her either to be recognized as Haitian citizen or to acquire Bahamian nationality. After listening to the voice recording it became clear that while she grew up stateless, whoever reviewed her application for Bahamian nationality must have made an exception to grant her Bahamian nationality. Unfortunately, this kind of humane, moral reading of nationality laws was an exception. Bahamian nationality laws offer no safeguards against statelessness. In turn, the government has never developed appropriate procedures to determine nationality in order not to grant rights of nationality to children born in the territory who would otherwise be stateless.

EL’s statement on receiving Bahamian Nationality: ”I was born to Haitian parents in The Bahamas. My mother had passed away when I was seven, and I had no dad with me. I was left without a birth certificate or any type of documents. When I was 12, I went to live with a friend of my mother, and she’s the one who helped me get an affidavit to prove that I was born in the Bahamas [...]. I was detained in 1993, at six in the morning, some Immigration officers broke down our door. I was 13 at that time, and there were five of us in the house, they took all of us up to Hawkins Hill Department [...] they let me go with the school ID I had, and the affidavit which the lady had prepared for me [...].”

“At the age of 18 I applied for citizenship [...] when I received the application form, I read it and I did just as the application said [...] I provided what was needed, a month later I got a letter saying I needed my mother’s birth certificate, a letter from the hospital saying that I was born here and affidavits from two people who knew me from birth [...]. I was not able to find the documents I needed, especially my mom’s birth certificate.”

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A Moral Reading of Nationality Laws

Pre-Texts in Bahamas

“So, years passed by, and because I applied in 1998, in 2002, I received a letter saying that if they didn’t receive these documents, they were going to close the file. I didn’t have my mom’s birth certificate, but I gave them a death certificate plus the other documents that they added. But thank the Lord they took what I had, and probably about a month later they wrote to me saying that I was accepted, and then I gave them some additional stuff, some additional documents and about three weeks later I came to swear in [as a Bahamian citizen].”

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Pre-Texts Pre-Texts in the inReality theofReality Brazilian ofSchools Brazilian Schools Luiz Rogério Lucena dos Santos Lima and Mara Solange Guedes Campos

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Workshop year 2014 - 2015

Place Curitiba, Brazil

Facilitators 50 FACILITATORS

Supervisors Luiz Rogério Lucena dos Santos Lima, Mara Solange Guedes Campos, Celso Hartmann, Julio Inafuco, Durval Machado Tavares, Joseph Razouk Junior and Júlio Rocker

Institutions involved Colégio Positivo and Editora Positivo

Impacted population

Pre-Texts In Brasil

CURITIBA

2.666 STUDENTS 8.000 PEOPLE

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The Pre-Texts workshop awoke new possibilities for action among the teachers at the Positivo School.

Icebreaker The first activity led all the participants to get to know each other and move around. We began with a fun game. Jacques said one word and everyone did the opposite movement: “walk” meant we should stay in place, “stop” was the keyword for us to walk around the patio, etc. Then we made a circle and a little ball of paper flew from hand to hand so that all participants introduced themselves; later several balls entered the circle and were thrown at the same time. Everyone had fun during this disaster.

Clothesline The clothesline activity began with a nice story: in Cuban cigar factories it was common for the workers to hire a professional reader, a speaker or actor, to read to them while they worked. The workers chose important works by authors such as Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels, texts that could influence them and change their lives. Jacques was our reader and while we put together cartoneras, cardboard book covers, he started to read Carl Sagan’s 1980 text Cosmos.1 While we listened we had to think of questions to ask the text. At the end of the reading and after our questions were published on the clothesline, all the participants wanted to receive the text in hard copy and read it again to think of better questions.

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Figure 1: Prof. Doris Sommer and teachers from the Colégio Positivo at the Pre-Texts workshop.

Curitiba, Brazil, 2014. Photo courtesy of the author’s personal archive.

Cartoneras To begin our Pre-Texts workshop Professor Doris Sommer told us that in Argentina during difficult economic times publishing companies could not publish more books. It may have been the end for many publications, however, it was the start of cartoneras. This difficulty gave way to alternative publishing companies that invited great writers to publish never-before-seen works, then they produced the book covers with used cardboard. Each book was a unique work of art. During this week we also made our own cartonera—it was all hands on deck!

Teacher Caroline Meira Ribas wrote in her Life Journal:

Pre-Texts In Brasil

Before we started reading, we knew that we would produce a cover for our book. At the end of the facilitator’s reading we discovered that it would be about Cosmos. With materials like paper, pens and cardboard we put together the cover of our book, using our creativity. The majority of participants used different materials and created incredible cartoneras.

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Miming Teacher Gisele Lunardon Sprengel wrote in her Life Journal:

The class split into groups and each group had to choose a part of Cosmos

by Carl Sagan to act out in front of the others. While one group acted, the other participants had to try to guess which part they were portraying. Our group’s chosen part was this: “One of these galaxies is M31, seen from the Earth in the constellation Andromeda. Like other spiral galaxies, it is a huge pinwheel of stars, gas and dust.” It was fun to see the group’s excitement while portraying it, and the discussion to find the correct fragment.

Figure 2: Teachers from the Colégio Positivo at the Pre-Texts workshop. Curitiba, Brazil, 2014.

Photo courtesy of the author’s personal archive.

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Off On Tangents Throughout the week we had the task to bring in a text related to Cosmos.

The first activity of the day was to show our submissions on the wall and read what the other teachers had brought. Then, someone selected a text that seemed interesting to them, and whoever had brought it had to briefly explain why it was chosen, how it was related to the main theme, etc. The first day the participants brough surprising materials: poetry, music, reports, paintings...

Figure 3: Teachers from the Colégio Positivo at the Pre-Texts workshop. Curitiba, Brazil, 2014.

Photo courtesy of the author’s personal archive.

Pre-Texts In Brasil

Music

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In this activity Cosmos acquired sound. The facilitators brought in the song “Lindo globo azul” [Pretty Blue Balloon] by Guilherme Arantes and asked each team to transform a section of the text into a song. The parody was great! All had to raise their voices and at the end we sang the chorus together: “Engancharse en la cola de ese cometa / Mirar la vía láctea tan hermosa carretera / Jugar a las escondidas en una nebulosa/ Volver a casa en un hermoso globo azul.”2 Gisele Lunardon Sprengel wrote in her Life Journal: In this activity Fernanda, Adriana and I were the facilitators, and to get things going we chose the song “Un hermoso globo azul.” Everyone sang and got familiar with the rhythm. Then they split into groups and had to create a new verse using the elements of the Cosmos text. With the use of musical instruments and the rhythms imposed by the original music, each group presented their verse. Once we finished we used YouTube only to give the song rhythm. Each group repeated its verse and we ended by singing the original chorus together. The groups participated in making up the verses and they were impressive when they presented them. We finished with the question “What did we do?” The answers showed that we reached our goal! In keeping with the musical ambiance of the day, Prof. Sommer proposed the “Soundtrack” activity: the facilitators put on five different sounds and we related them to parts of the text. It was interesting, on several occasions people associated the songs with the same parts of Cosmos, which shows that the text had its own musical identity and we were understanding it.

Games We worked with the Cosmos text using games. The initial idea was to split the participants into four teams, and each team would create a predefined game for the group. However, when we asked if anyone had a question or suggestion what several people said was “Let’s change everything!” The group was

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divided into six teams and each one could freely create their own game: an athletic game, hopscotch, a board game, etc, and an “image and action” of Cosmos was made. Then we had a little time to play the games created by the others. It was so fun that no one wanted to stop playing. That day we experienced the essence of Pre-Texts: a methodology in which what is most important is to create opportunities to learn, create, listen to others’ ideas and have fun.

Figure 4: Teachers from the Colégio Positivo at the Pre-Texts workshop. Curitiba, Brazil, 2014.

Photo courtesy of the author’s personal archive.

Pre-Texts In Brasil

Legends

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In this activity what was proposed to the group was to make up a text in the style of a legend—a fantasy narrative passed down over the centuries through oral tradition. With their fantastic and/or fictitious character, legends combine real and historic events with unreal events that are simply the product of the adventurous human imagination. A legend can also be true, based on an important event. We listened to an indigenous legend about the appearance of the stars. Then we were asked to make up a text of that kind in keeping with the ideas proposed by Cosmos. After completing the legends the group collected the texts and redistributed them among the groups to be corrected. Then they were returned to their authors to be rewritten. What did we do in this activity? We listened to a text from the genre of legend, then we produced a legend based on ideas from Cosmos, then we corrected the legends and rewrote them as necessary.

Posters In the middle of the 20th century the exhibition of Hollywood films was forbidden in socialist Poland. However these films were shown there illegally and to promote them local artists created posters using a very particular language. It was necessary to think way beyond what was obvious, and the result was very interesting!

Camile Cardoso, coordinator of the course in Pedagogy at Positivo University, wrote in her Life Journal: My group and I, as the mediators of this activity, explained about the Polish film posters created by artists during communism. We brought in examples of well-known films that had been recreated from a surrealist perspective.

Each group of four participants had to build on Sagan’s text and create a poster for a film using the techniques of drawing or collage. With the purpose of encouraging the groups to go beyond common sense, participants could not use any of the following images or words: cosmos, planets, stars, Earth, comets, space, galaxies, black hole, Milky Way, sun, solar system, universe.

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A teacher named Telma wrote: The team of mediators presented the art of making film posters, talking about how in the past some countries prohibited the screening of films from the United States. These films were marketed in secret and local artists made the posters. With this proposal, the group split into teams and they had to produce a poster for a supposed film on the text we read, Cosmos.

We finished the activity by showing the works.

Lesson Plan The last day of the workshop we did not take texts “off on tangents.” Instead, Prof. Sommer asked us to create a lesson plan based on the Pre-Texts experience. We presented our plans and we could read what the other teachers had created. By chance, we chose the products that we found interesting and they were presented by those who had brought them. All we all had to think of was one single activity, but each plan contributed five, six or even more ideas, which demonstrates that this week had been inspiring for all and that we were prepared to multiply Pre-Texts in the classrooms where we work.

Camile Cardoso, coordinator, wrote in her Life Journal: Where do we come from? Where are we going?...Lesson planning. Starting from the challenge proposed by Prof. Sommer, participants were encouraged to create some classes based on the Pre-Texts methodology and on the experiences they’d had during the week. What did I do? What was interesting about this was that we left this workshop full of inspiration to make a difference in training our student readers. Starting now, work done with texts would never be the same!

OUTCOMES Pre-Texts In Brasil

A workshop that lasted four hours a day for five consecutive days in two different academic years, with educators from different areas of teaching,

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allowed teachers to appropriate the methodology step by step, gradually and in real time, turning them into actors within every challenge, making them conscious of it and developing their knowledge, all based on a text with high difficulty for comprehension.

Using the methodology in classrooms during the school year had a positive impact on classes.

Students are reading more. In addition to the reading necessary to create works derived from the base text, tangents were also explored to widen their reading and cultural repertory.

Students developed oral skills. The tale of how very quiet students developed the ability to speak in front of the class was quite emblematic, as was how this discipline became a space that guaranteed that students would express themselves, position themselves and develop relationships with knowledge. Not only did they present their own work, but they also commented, evaluated and made suggestions about the activities presented by their

Figures 5 and 6: Students from the Colégio Positivo doing a Pre-Texts activity. Curitiba, Brazil, 2014. Photo courtesy of the author’s personal archive.

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classmates. In this way the teacher stops being the central figure and often the only one to evaluate and offer opinions.

Students do more research. One of the teachers spoke of this even from her role as a mother of two students who began to carry out research at home, in a natural and focused way, in order to reach their personal goals and not with the intention to complete schoolwork.

Students related to each other better as a group. And, as a teacher summarized, this makes everything better.

Students developed greater autonomy and responsibility throughout the entire year. What at the beginning of the year was a problem (questions of a disciplinary nature, sometimes scarce participation in activities) naturally resolved itself over time.

Students learned while they had fun. Time passed quickly with the students participating in creative activities and they were happy with the arrival of Pre-Texts in their classrooms.

Students wrote better. The opinion was unanimous that there was an increase in the quality of students’ texts, which were more consistent, interesting, assertive and creative, among other adjectives mentioned. This improvement is attributed to the set of actions prior to the text.

Students’ families are happy with the project. There has not been a single complaint related to the methodology through any channel of communication available to the families.

Pre-Texts In Brasil

The trend is for classes to improve. Teachers think that classes that have had the Pre-Texts experience arrive more united and better prepared for the following year.

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The Questionnaire given to teachers of Early Basic Education classes (students 5 to 10 years old) Did students’ interpretations of texts improve?

Yes:100%

Did students’ relationship with the text change? (Were they more interested, curious or familiar?)

Did students take on the role of facilitator?

Yes: 14%

No: 86%

Did students improve their performance in front of the group?

Yes: 93%

No: 7%

Did students offer ideas or bring new proposals?

Yes: 57%

No: 43%

Did students bring in other texts or areas of knowledge?

Yes: 57%

No: 43%

Did extroverted students receive the same amount of attention as shy students?

Yes:100%

Did students develop other skills?

Yes:100%

Did students relate to each other better?

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Yes:100%

Yes: 86%

No: 14%

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Did students improve their time management?

Yes: 71%

Did students approve of the project?

No: 29%

Yes: 100%

Did Pre-Texts provide more freedom for lesson planning?

Yes: 79%

No: 21%

Was Pre-Texts accepted and noticed by parents?

Yes: 29%

No:71%

Did Pre-Texts reduce work in the classroom and planning?

Did Pre-Texts help to reach didactic goals?

No: 100%

Yes: 93%

No: 7%

Self-evaluation by teachers in classes of Early Basic Education (students 5 to 10 years old) Did I seek more information about the themes addressed in class or brought in by students?

Yes: 100%

Did I change the arrangement of seats and of the classroom?

Yes: 71%

No: 29%

Did I propose Pre-Texts activities every week?

Yes: 36%

No:74%

Did students lead the activities?

Yes: 7%

No: 93% Yes: 100%

Pre-Texts In Brasil

Did students go back to the text?

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Did we answer the question “What did we do?”

Yes: 86%

No: 14%

Did everyone speak?

Yes: 86%

No: 14%

Did I apply the basic tenets of Pre-Texts?

Yes: 100%

Observation report on Later-Year Basic Education classes (students 10 to 14 years old)

Did the teacher participate in activities?

Yes: 64%

No: 36%

Did students bring in new ideas or propose new activities?

Yes: 64%

No: 36%

Did students lead the activities?

Yes: 29%

No: 71%

Did all the students participate?

Yes: 64%

No: 36%

Did the group go back to the text?

Yes: 93%

No: 7%

Were tangential texts presented?

Yes: 50%

No: 50%

Was the methodology comprehended?

Yes: 100%

Was the physical space well used?

Yes: 100%

Was the time well used?

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Yes: 79%

No: 21%

Pre-Texts in the Reality of Brazilian Schools

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PRE-TEXTS METHODOLOGY AND THE REALITY OF BRAZILIAN EDUCATION The experience of the teachers’ and students from the Positivo School adopting the Pre-Texts protocol in the context of school turned out to be extremely positive for the development of socio-emotional and cognitive skills. By promoting participation from the school community and encouraging students to read critically different texts (verbal and nonverbal), and with inventive thinking, a radical change was made to the way work was done, which brought highly desired results rarely achieved by methodologies of traditional teaching.

As much as the Pre-Texts protocol at the Positivo School was linked with a specific curricular component (a time was reserved for classes in a reading and writing workshop, though it could also have been an art or literature workshop), additionally it had to do with the development of much wider competencies than those solely related to the Portuguese language. Preliminary texts improved integral education and offered development of all dimensions of humanity: cognitive, physical, social, emotional and cultural.

Pre-Texts is a methodology that perfectly connects with today’s challenges in education. A school must be able to develop knowledge, skills (the capacity to use knowledge) and attitudes toward 21st century life related to values that develop autonomous and collaborative subjects, citizens with the conditions to create new realities and build possibilities for a more sustainable future that adds to global thinking and at the same time values and respects diversity and local culture.

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It is important to keep in mind that the Pre-Texts protocol, which is carried out in different parts of the world, is a conjunctural movement for change in

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education. In Brazil this need was made explicit by the National Common Core Curriculum (BNCC), a document that guides the curricula adopted in Brazilian schools, published at the end of 2017. The wording of the general abilities that must be developed in basic education classes (from early childhood education through middle school) is the result of this historic moment, as demonstrated by the following infographic.

GENERAL COMPENTENCIES Base Nacional Común Curricular

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1. Knowledge: To value and utilize historically constructed knowledge about the physical, social and cultural world.

In order to: Understand and participate positively in society.

2. Scientific, critical and creative thought:

In order to: Investigate causes, form and

To exercise intellectual curiosity, scientific thought, critical faculties and creativity.

test hypotheses, formulate and solve problems and invent solutions.

3. Aesthetic sense: Develop the sense of aesthetics.

In order to: Recognize, value and enjoy different artistic and cultural manifestations and participate in diverse practices of artistic and cultural production.

4. Communication: Utilize languages that are verbal, visual-verbal, corporal, multimodal, artistic, mathematical, scientific, technological and digital.

In order to: Express oneself, share information, experiences, ideas and feelings in different contexts, produce feelings that bring about mutual understanding.

Pre-Texts in the Reality of Brazilian Schools

5. Debate:

In order to: Formulate, negotiate and

Develop an argument based on facts and reliable information.

defend ideas, points of view and common decisions that respect and promote human rights and socio-environmental conscience, with an ethical position based on self-care, care of others and of the planet.

6. Digital Culture: utilize digital communication technologies and information in a critical, meaningful, reflective and ethical way.

In order to: Communicate with others, access and share information, produce knowledge and solve problems.

7. Self Motivation: Understand the world of work and plan the projects in one’s personal, professional and social lives.

In order to: Make decisions about the future with freedom, autonomy, critical conscience and responsibility.

8. Self-awareness and Self-care: Know and appreciate oneself, recognize one’s emotions and those of others, analyze

In order to: Care for one’s physical and emotional health, face emotions and peer pressure.

oneself.

9. Empathy and Cooperation: Exercise empathy, dialogue, conflict resolution and cooperation.

In order to: Earn respect, promote respect for others, encourage and value diversity without prejudice, recognize oneself as part of a collective to which one must form a commitment.

10. Autonomy: To personally and collectively act with autonomy, responsibility, flexibility, resilience and determination.

In order to: Make decisions about ethical, democratic, inclusive, sustainable and solidary principles.

Pre-Texts In Brasil

For the purpose of: Contributing to the construction of a more ethical, democratic, responsible, inclusive, sustainable and solidary society that respects and promotes diversity and human rights, without prejudice of any kind.

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When we analyze in detail the ten general competencies laid out by the BNCC and relate them to the challenges presented by the contemporary world, we see that it intends for students to appropriate the repertory of knowledge already produced by humanity to develop scientific thinking, critical thinking (the ability to identify and explore problems) and creative thinking (the ability to think of new solutions from different angles to create different possibilities of evolution) in order to deal with this knowledge. It also wishes for them to appropriate the cultural repertory of humanity and develop the capacity to enjoy, appreciate and produce art and culture, and for their actions to result from self-knowledge and respect for others, for a better world.

CONCLUSIONS For the educators who participated in Pre-Texts the greatest challenge was (and continues to be) a cultural shift from the expository classroom to the active methodology in which students take initiative in the learning process and in carrying out activities. The results related to students themselves carrying out activities points out the urgency of this challenge.

The benefits of adopting this disruptive methodology were clear to all involved.

There was an increase in the reading of the world thanks to the creative focus on diverse texts and artistic experiences that showed themselves to be powerful pedagogical tools for personal and civic transformation in the life stages of childhood and adolescence, which is of great importance to integral human development.

The Pre-Texts methodology, originally inspired by Brazilians Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, is in dialog with the BCCN and Brazilian educational documents, and it can contribute to the building of schools that satisfy the desire for significant education in the 21st century through the development of innovative pedagogical practices.

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Pre-Texts in the Reality of Brazilian Schools

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Musicking with Literature: Shifting Paradigms in Music Education Pedro Zenteno

FRUTILLAR

Workshop year 2018, 2019, 2020

Place Frutillar, Chile

Facilitators Annual cohort of 45 CULTURAL AGENTS

Supervisors + Pedro Zenteno

Institutions involved David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, The Global Leaders Program

Impacted Population 120 RISING CHANGE-MAKERS IN MUSIC REPRESENTING 28 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.

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A

cross the world, new music initiatives are forming based on a growing understanding of the value of music as a tool in social development.

Musical training offers youth a platform to develop creative and social-emotional skills that are predictors of success in school, relationships and the workforce. Despite international demand for social music education initiatives, the diverse skills and experiences required for musicians to build and sustain innovative programs are not taught in conservatory practice rooms or in university lecture halls. The Global Leaders Program (GLP) works to prepare musical leaders to build and guide the social music initiatives of tomorrow. The GLP combines remote live learning with two intensive on-field assignments into a one-year Executive Graduate Certificate. One of the onfield assignments, the Full Cohort Residence (FCR), is led by Professor Doris Sommer in partnership with Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. As part of this experience, every annual Cohort comes together with Dr. Sommer in Frutillar, Chile, for one week, engaging in meaningful discussions about cultural agency and becoming Pre-Texts facilitators. This experience represents the centerpiece of the curriculum and is regarded as a crucial element of the value that the program brings to the lives of its participants.

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Reflections One idea stuck with me from Prof. Sommer’s book The Work of Art in the World, and it was that Antanas Mockus believes admiration is the foundation of civic life.1 When reading this, I could tell my intuition fully agreed with this idea, but I would not have been able to explain it well to other people because I had not consciously experienced it. In my view, Pre-Texts and Forum Theater created a magical space in which the diversity of looks, cultures and ways of understanding broke the inertia of the roles we had built for ourselves and others over six months, and led us to embrace the admiration we felt for each other. I remember Michael Loveland, who transformed from webinar-mute to unstoppable talker; Annick, with her inner strength to overcome whatever prevented her from sharing; Angela, with her wonderful vision of her introversion; Gabby, with her personal fire that inspired more fire… The list goes on, but the point is that Pre-Texts gave us a pretext to meet each other’s best selves and, as a result, surprise ourselves with each other’s richness. Later, in Salto Huilo-Huilo, Chile, Iris Jugo asked me what our criteria had been for selecting the participants at GLP 2018. She wanted to understand how we had identified such incredible and beautiful people. While I agree with her judgment of the group, I was impressed with something beyond its beauty. I think that Pre-Texts was a creative outlet, an excuse of protocol that helped materialize the beauty of the group and left us admiring each other—something that could happen again with an entirely new group due to the atmosphere that Pre-Texts enables.

Comments from Participants Professor Doris Sommer:

Pre-Texts in Chile

One of my favorite moments during a magical week in Frutillar with GLP was when a participant in the Pre-Texts workshop said, as we reflected on “What did we do?”: “Yesterday we got a text by Carl Sagan that was a piece of s–t, and today it’s fun to play with.” It is clear from a number of the reflections here that Pre-Texts will be useful for instructors who hope to introduce difficult and even “boring” material to students. A note from another participant also highlighted the opportunity that music instructors will have to advance their students’ opportunities by adding literacy to art.

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Another favorite moment was when, during a planning session with a particularly commanding leader of a local arts collective, a GLP participant offered as an antidote the Pre-Texts protocol in which each person speaks once before anyone speaks for a second time. I marveled at her aplomb, which relaxed tensions and allowed a conversation to develop.

After the week in Chile, I traveled to San Jose, Costa Rica, for Conectados al Sur [Connected to the South], a conference on digital development in Latin America.

When I wondered why I, a humanist dedicated to Pre-Texts training, had been invited, they explained that what was missing in much of developing technology were the skills of critical and creative thinking. This is the same reason I was fortunate enough to work with GLP, with doctors in Partners in Health, with the Harvard School of Engineering, Museum Studies, violence prevention, etc. There is a growing awareness that technical solutions, even in arts education, depend on skills of interpretation and collaboration.

It is interesting for me to read the candid reflections on the burden that Pre-Texts puts on all participants to exercise their individual voices in reflecting on “What did we do?”. Allow me to share an observation made by Olga Ovares, who headed the National Commission on Human Rights for Costa Rica. She trained in Pre-Texts along with a group of school teachers in a semi-rural grade school in San Jose, just after the digital conference. During the second session of “What did we do?”, she marveled: “Throughout my career, I have been advocating for applied ethics. Until now, it was a concept, and I have just seen how it works on the ground, as a simple practice.” Her colleague, Marco Abarca, a human rights lawyer, reminded us that the simple formula for democratic politics is “whoever can speak, speaks.”

Therefore, I find it significant that our practice as teachers and leaders can still hold out for variations. Of course, we should maintain flexibility, and improvisation is at the heart of a bare protocol like Pre-Texts, but the principle of participation is worth considering. Perhaps teachers of music are our best vanguard, since—as Gustavo Dudamel said during a rehearsal at Harvard—to make music is to play while you are listening, too.

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Figura 1: Off on Tangents, Photo by Natalia Jiménez

Stacey Chou, Participant:

Pre-Texts in Chile

I like how Pre-Texts uses a different subject as the entry point to grow creativity while also changing social issues. I learned that catharsis is the pathway for solutions and change. Pre-Texts reminded me that art fosters critical thinking and reasoning because it is inherently provocative. I was able to think about my language and communication more carefully, saying things like, “We want to work together,” instead of, “We want to help you.” A sentence such as, “What did we do?” is really inclusive. It helped re-inspire me to take creative risks and be experimental with my art and my ideas, since art (and specifically for me, music) is meant to be shared, not imposed upon. For me, music is exciting, and I want to help my audiences—whether they are my concert listeners, my students, or others—discover new ideas about music and how it is relevant in their lives. It does not have to involve a lot of steps; sometimes, it is more meaningful to gravitate toward a piece or concept and just have fun around it.

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Figure 2: 2019 Global Leaders Program, Chile Residence, Photo by Natalia Jiménez

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Daniel Smith, Participant: Pre-Texts can not only be a great way to make unapproachable literature easier to digest, but also a way to make unapproachable music—like classical music— easier to digest. I foresee myself using a number of the exercises we did in our Pre-Texts training to create more immediate connections between this music and my audiences.

I really enjoyed the exercise in which we designed book covers while a cohort member read the first chapter of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Doris mentioned that it’s a great activity for kids with ADHD, as most kids with this disorder want to be doing something with their hands. I do not have ADHD, but I often find myself squirming in my seat when attending a classical music concert. I have already experimented with an activity akin to this Pre-Text activity: at a recent concert I produced, more than twenty different performers played music by J.S. Bach at a local brewery. The audience members got the chance to color in portraits of Bach while listening to the music, and we even made it a competition. We received some really creative renditions of Bach’s portrait! This was exciting, not only because the audience seemed to digest the music much more easily, but because it was clear how seriously all the audience members took their coloring.

We seemed to be tapping into their individual artistic personas, which are not often accessed in their daily lives. It was very inspiring, and I certainly plan to examine ways to use the other Pre-Text exercises in the future.

Hannah Darroch, Participant: The Pre-Texts sessions were really energizing. I took away a renewed belief in the power of using arts in mainstream education. It is exciting to think that we can use Pre-Texts to create fun scenarios for tackling what students might deem to be “difficult” or “boring.” I have already used various methods inspired by Pre-Texts to approach musical technique (scales and etudes, for example) with my flute students. The concept of students “owning” something challenging is a really powerful one. I plan on creating ways of taking difficult passages of music, and instead of telling a student how difficult it is, I will give them the chance to

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create other musical ideas from it: to improvise, create a story that illustrates the music’s mood or any number of other activities. I love the idea that a student’s self-esteem can thrive when they are given the opportunity to be creative, rather than simply being told how to play a difficult passage of music.

I teach woodwind classes to elementary and high school groups, and I will definitely give every student the opportunity to contribute during the final ten minutes with a “What did we do?” exercise. I think this will create a positive, energetic and fun atmosphere in the classroom that allows everyone to participate. The use of tangents will allow students an increased freedom to be creative and to own what they are doing, and it will in turn give me the opportunity to get to know them better, outside of learning the flute. My students in Montreal have so much potential to be innovators, to create new things and to have fun—even to be silly. I very rarely see that shining through with their classroom teachers, and I look forward to introducing elements of Pre-Texts to really let the students take control of their artistry, independence and general citizenship—using the meaning Dr. Sommer gave for the word citizenship.

Maggie Lauer, Participant:

Pre-Texts in Chile

There’s a literal meaning to Dr. Sommer’s Pre-Texts that’s easy to delve into after experiencing it. As a teaching artist, it is imperative to always have the “context” or “pre-text” of the community you are teaching towards. Making sure you’ve done any reading you can on a community, or that you’ve had exposure to the community that you’re going to work towards, is extremely important in order to gain the most from your experience as a teaching artist and maximize the results of the community’s experience with you. The greatest thing that I gathered from Pre-Texts was actually the mundane question of “What did we do?”. I’ve started implementing variations of the question as “exit cards” near the end of every lesson. This also gives the students an opportunity to share the way they saw the lessons (rather than giving feedback on the actual content of the material covered) and gives the teacher or teaching artist the ability to see how he or she was perceived, as well as how the students perceive their interactions with each other.

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Safira Antzus, Participant: Pre-Texts changed the relationship I used to have with any text. It made me connect to it on a different level and interact with it as if it were alive, as if it were someone who could answer all my questions and wanted to have a conversation with me. This happened during the first session, when we had to ask something to the text, rather than something about the text. After all the activities we did with the text, I felt I not only wanted to learn everything about it, but I also felt that it was something very malleable—nothing to be scared of. I think this could easily be translated into music using a score instead of a written text.

Angela Kratchmer, Participant: After experiencing Pre-Texts in Frutillar, I can readily identify several practical applications as a teaching artist and performer. I think one of the most significant accomplishments of Pre-Texts as a protocol is that it encourages student ownership of the material, resulting in a more meaningful and effective learning experience. I think this is achieved effectively because the protocol leaves space in the learning process for each student to approach the material on their own terms, limiting the barriers that frequently interfere in more traditional educational settings. The concept of facilitation is key, in which learning becomes a natural byproduct of a creative process, instead of the primary agenda often forced upon students.

While I am excited to spend some time developing specific activities inspired by Pre-Texts in my own teaching, I think an immediate takeaway I look forward to incorporating right away is the practice of facilitation. I think this is something I have already been implementing for some time in private teaching, as I always attempt to meet students where they are and address their specific needs, interests and goals accordingly. I feel I am not as successful at this in group settings and cannot help feeling that in the quest to manage a classroom, some students are being left behind. I am excited to apply facilitation in this context because it highlights the communal nature of the classroom in a way that implies a certain social contract, while also creating a space in which students want to participate and contribute in their unique ways. I think this will help with classroom management, in general, as well as increase the efficacy of education for each student in the room.

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Figure 4: Forum Theater

Pre-Texts in Chile

Figure 3: What did we do? Photo by Natalia Jiménez

Photo by Natalia Jiménez

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Fraser Russell, Participant: Following the three days of Pre-Texts training in Chile, reflecting on the role of a facilitator has been very interesting to me. As the week progressed, it became an opportunity to explore and discuss the role and purpose of a facilitator while guiding a group through a task, whether it involves literature or music. A question that arose during my reflections has to do with variable understandings of the word “participation,” particularly between the different cultures present.

My personal view of the roles of Facilitator and Participant has become more clear as a result of the workshop. The next time I “lead” my chamber ensemble rehearsal, I will try to approach it more as a facilitator. This should result in a more relaxed and open rehearsal, giving each member of the group an opportunity to be as involved as they feel comfortable with, with the possibility that they increase their confidence to speak as the rehearsal progresses.

I do not think I would feel comfortable using the Pre-Texts system just now, for no other reason than that I still feel underqualified to do so, in addition to the fact that I would not be in a situation in which I would have a class of children to work with in a non-musical context. However, I would definitely use several adaptations of some of the exercises. For example, I may have an opera aria performed, instead of reading a text, with the possibility of designing an album cover instead of a book cover. I could then explore the opera’s plot and musical themes and more through some of the creative tasks demonstrated during the module.

I would like to use the facilitating tools and ideas we explored and develop them into an effective and equal way of rehearsing chamber music. I would then work to deliver a course for undergraduate chamber groups on implementing these Pre-Texts-based rehearsal techniques in the everyday rehearsal process. I have previously written up a proposal for such a workshop, and the additional skills obtained from taking part in the Pre-Texts workshop will be a positive addition to my tool kit.

I would also like to develop my rehearsal technique to be less dictatorial and more collaborative. The facilitator is not there to say much, but as a booster who

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can encourage the group to open up and discuss ideas, musical and otherwise.

The goal of taking as little time as possible and delivering clear and concise ideas and information in smaller “chunks” is also something I have taken from the Pre-Texts workshop.

Aaron Frank, Participant: After experiencing Pre-Texts, I believe it will enable me to use playful methods to reimagine complex texts or music. When encountering a particular task that is challenging for the students I teach, I believe Pre-Texts will enable them to actively engage one another in a way that is beneficial to comprehending the task at hand. Just as we “acted out” our psychological problems and created a visual representation of Carl Sagan’s essay, Pre-Texts will offer previously unseen answers to complex questions.

I also believe Pre-Texts is a powerful tool for taking a step back and understanding the bigger issues at the heart of a problem. Dr. Sommer’s strategy for bringing an “intervention” into an unfolding tragedy had a remarkable effect upon me. In particular, I noticed that our tendency to feel like victims of our life circumstances is often the result of a recurring thought pattern that we can actively challenge. When we intervene and question these patterns through PreTexts, we reimage the validity of these thoughts. Thus, I intend to use Pre-Texts in educational settings as well as for my own personal growth.

Mira Abu El Assal, Participant: Being exposed to Pre-Texts, a pedagogical protocol involving innovative ideas for group activities, proves most crucial for the creativity of each individual, inspiring more active teamwork and creating a safe environment for participants in the group, as well as creating equal debate in all possible aspects.

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As an aspiring teaching artist, professional musician and social entrepreneur, I look to apply the Pre-Text protocol in my future social enterprise in order to create a program that:

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1. Enables teachers to be facilitators in student-centered learning by applying the Pre-Text protocol to teachers first, explaining the concept of facilitation and then applying it with students as well.

2. Shifts the Pre-Text concept to the musical realm. The reading of a text can be very easily facilitated in a group setting. Practicing reading skills can go along with tuning our ears to a range of musical pieces, so instead of using texts in Pre-Texts activities, we can use musical pieces— ones that are not necessarily appealing to children, but that become fun again and enjoyed in a fresh, innovative way through Pre-Texts.

3. Provides health and exercise classes for students and teachers using the Pre-Texts activity “Staging the Text: Music and warm-ups for more efficient and fun practice.”

After the workshop, we received numerous comments from students who shared their ideas on how to forge a better understanding of possible intersections of Pre-Texts with social-musical spaces. Let’s take the following as an example: The preparatory activity of this module was incredibly significant for me; reading The Work of Art in the World inspired me deeply. I cannot explain how exciting it was for me to hear Dr. Sommer give her introductory speech in Chile. I really enjoyed the Pre-Texts work, but I would have liked to also have a little more time to learn about the concepts presented in the book.

Instead of adding more introductory time into the residence, we came up with an idea of how we could meet the needs of our students more efficiently. We invited a professor who works closely with Dr. Sommer and can introduce particular ideas, artists, philosophers, helping us to build a complementary understanding about cultural agency and engaged aesthetics we’ve learned with Pre-Texts.

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Pre-Texts in Chile

Figure 5: Musicalizing excerpts of C. Sagan’s Cosmos, Photo by Natalia Jiménez

Figure 6: Creating books covers and reading aloud; Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Photo by Natalia Jiménez

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Figure 7: Musicalizing excerpts of C. Sagan’s Cosmos, Photo by Natalia Jiménez

Outcomes In her book The Work of Art in the World, Dr. Sommer borrows from basic principles of acupuncture to paint a picture of the process by which Pre-Texts affects the lives of those who come in contact with it. To take this image further, we believe that the objective results of the Chilean residence with Dr. Sommer could be illustrated by the principles of purposeful activation and ripples that acupuncture uses to heal the body. The first point of activation happens in Frutillar, Chile, when participants explore the potential of Pre-Texts firsthand and become certified facilitators. Then, organically, the ripples of this intensive activation start appearing on our radar, coming from different regions of the world, from using Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto of W.A. Mozart’s The Magic Flute to propitiate a cultural exchange between Ugandan and German youth, to using Forum Theater in Kingston, Jamaica, to identify pressing social problems in a given community, then to create an operetta based on them and finally to have this work performed by youths of the communities affected by these problems. Graduates of the Global Leaders Program are expanding the iconoclastic nature of Pre-Texts into the space of social impact-motivated music organizations.

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Pre-Texts in Chile

Another set of benefits that followed our residences with Dr. Sommer in Frutillar connects with the role of educators played by many participants of our program in their respective countries. We believe that the idea of adding music teachers to the crusade for literacy makes a lot of sense, but we are not surprised that this line of thought has only resonated with some members of the cohort. On one hand, the protocol enabled a very intense and pleasurable social experience, something that perhaps made the invitation to join the ProLiteracy movement more dazzling. On the other hand, the idea of inserting PreTexts reading activities into the arena of music education is one that must come with a change in paradigm, a change that pushes the educator’s role beyond their area of expertise. The radical change that Pre-Texts calls for is based on a reconsideration of both the importance of reading in the lives of their students and the role of arts teachers in allocating recurring spaces—more recurrent than the handful of times when we perform programmatic or text-based music—for the inclusion of reading.

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The Uses of Pre-Texts in The Uses Language Classes ofat Harvard Pre-Texts University

in Language Classes at Harvard University Adriana Gutiérrez

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CAMBRIDGE

Workshop year 2018 - 2019

Place Cambridge, USA /Santiago, Chile

Facilitators Rodrigo del Río, Pilo Mella (Santiago, Chile); Nicolás Moreno Martín, Jorge Arteta, Xiomara Feliberty-Casiano, Marta Díaz-Luján, Lana Neufeld (Cambridge, USA)

Supervisorts Adriana Gutiérrez

Institutions involved Harvard University, Regional Office in Santiago, Chile

Impacted population 27 STUDENTS

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SANTIAGO DE CHILE

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One problem we university-level language teachers have faced for many years is the disconnect between lower-level language classes and upper-division literature courses. This disconnect has been highlighted as an endemic curricular problem in foreign language departments at universities across the country.1 Professorial-rank faculty who teach upper level “content-based” courses in literature, history and cultural studies usually complain that their students do not have the necessary linguistic skills to take full advantage of the subject matter. They point to their students’ difficulties in completing reading assignments (usually sophisticated texts in the target language), to linguistic errors in their essays and response papers and to their inability to express sophisticated ideas orally in the target language. The frustration cuts down on class participation, which compounds difficulties in learning.

Some professors resist coming to the conclusion that they, too (along with language instructors), need to teach general language arts in addition to particular content. This means that even advanced students of a foreign language, those who have mastered sophisticated reading skills, may lack the oral skills necessary for interpretive explorations in advanced classrooms.

The reverse situation plagues heritage speakers. They may express themselves almost flawlessly in the language associated with home, but they often lack the writing skills that upper-division courses require and are sometimes unfamiliar with the uses of different registers in the target language.

In both cases, Pre-Texts comes to the rescue. Its pedagogy of practical inclass activities is an excellent “bridge” between language acquisition classes

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and upper-division literature classes. The benefits of using a challenging text to teach language are evident, especially in light of the 2007 MLA Report, which observes that teaching foreign languages in higher education needs to include culturally appropriate materials for every level of instruction.2 This follows from the Report’s position that the goal of foreign language instruction is not to “…replicate the competence of an educated native speaker, a goal that post-adolescent learners rarely reach. The idea of translingual and transcultural competence, in contrast, places value on the ability to operate between languages.” This in-between area requires development of multi-disciplinary structures in foreign language departments. To cultivate “educated speakers who have deep translingual and transcultural competence,” training cannot be isolated to a technical skill set.3 Understandably, the Report has increased language teachers’ dedication to creating courses that attract and retain students who specialize in fields beyond literary studies, those who have cross-disciplinary interests and obligations.

With the goal to diversify intermediate Spanish language courses and in order to encourage students working primarily in the Sciences (or in disciplines outside the Humanities) who nonetheless want to continue advancing their studies of Spanish in upper division courses in literature and cultural studies, I developed two courses, “The Ethics of Business in Latin America” and “Illness and Healing in Latin America: Spanish for Public Health,” both of which may be described by the category Languages for Specific Purposes. Although I use the activities developed in the Pre-Texts protocol in all levels of the language classes under my supervision (intermediate to advanced), here I specifically address the uses of Pre-Texts in the course “Spanish for Public Health,” with some references to “The Ethics of Business in Latin America.”

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According to Barbara Lafford, because Languages for Specific Purposes classes integrate “language-related competencies through connections to other disciplines, comparison of native and target languages and culture and communication with target culture communities,” these courses focused on specific fields constitute the perfect examples of multidisciplinary interaction while fulfilling the need for language and culture to work jointly towards a specific goal.4 At the same time, because the courses may tend to empha-

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size the pragmatic uses of the language or the discipline, Mary Long reports that Foreign Language Departments are wary that this type of course “will undermine the humanities mission to which language and literature departments are committed and […] turn language departments exclusively into service departments within the power structures of higher education.”5 This is an important concern. The way to resist it, she adds, along with resisting the pressure of incorporative utility, is precisely to uphold the importance of arts and interpretation by stimulating dialogue about creative solutions to “real-life problems” in other disciplines.6 In response to this challenge and to the goal of promoting cultural and linguistic skills through critical and textual exercises, the protocol of Pre-Texts allows me to integrate high-order literacy as a pathway to explore problems of Public Health. Following the insights of Paulo Freire, reading and writing are tools for self-determination and civic engagement, and additionally, “[a] challenge to make something new of a text drives even reluctant students to develop an interpretation, which requires understanding, and therefore leads to learning the vocabulary and grammar that had seemed bothersome or out of reach.” 7 As a methodology, Pre-Texts frames the course on Public Health within the “multi-literacies” approach developed by Cope and Kalantzis in Second Language Acquisition. As described by Kate Paesani, a multi-literacy approach: engages students in four types of learning activities: 1. experiencing a text through the expression of thoughts, opinions, and feelings; 2. conceptualizing form-meaning relationships expressed in a text; 3. analyzing the sociocultural importance and consequences of textual meaning; and 4. applying knowledge learned from a text to produce language in new and creative ways. Because this framework includes a range of cognitive learning processes (e.g., understanding, evaluating, creating) and by encouraging both language development and textual thinking, it is neutral regarding level and content specific. Instead, it can serve as a transversal instructional approach applied across the FL curriculum to any textual genre.8,9

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In the multidisciplinary approach of the “Spanish for Public Health” course, there is a patent appropriateness of classic literary texts exploring human relationships, especially given the current emphasis on teaching humanities in medicine to increase compassion and ethics.10 We can address the challenges at the juncture of the medical discipline with the specific goal of learning Spanish only if we identify high-order literacy as the core source of imagination, caring and resourcefulness.

In the course students research and present findings on the history of four diseases (tuberculosis, substance abuse disorder, AIDS and diabetes) along with recommendations for sound relevant public health policies in Latin America.

To accompany their research and presentations, students read literary classics (texts by Roberto Arlt, Julio Cortázar, Néstor Perlongher and Pedro Lemebel, among others) that establish a connection with the diseases.

The class’s activities were inspired by the Pre-Texts protocol, crafted with the recognition that close readings and interpretations of major canonical texts require a combination of open discussion and creative tasks aimed at the practice and acquisition of new linguistic skills that allow students to make better connections between cultures and languages. Through some fixed activities—such as writing questions in a journal, bringing “tangent” texts to the class and collecting their own, personal, newly-learned vocabulary—students enhance their meta-linguistic awareness and bring their own multidisciplinary interests to the discussions of the readings.

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The Pre-Texts-inspired activities used in class (asking questions of the texts; giving alternative endings to the stories or telling tales from the points of view of different characters; following the use of grammatical tenses in a short story to explain their symbolic purpose; bringing “tangents” to the texts) helps create enthusiasm for the foreign language, builds confidence while trying out new grammatical structures, and helps with discussion of the classics as something relevant to students’ interests and lives. In other words, literature is a “pre-text” to create new language and new meaning while integrating new grammatical structures with aspects of cultural interpretation.

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For the Teaching Assistants and Teaching Fellows just beginning to teach language and who have been trained in Pre-Texts, these tools are crucial for understanding the pedagogy behind the process of teaching and learning—and not only a foreign language, as well as for questioning their own pre-established assumptions about traditional or inherited teaching methodologies. By following the Pre-Texts protocol, new teachers learn to regulate and control their own voices in order to facilitate and promote the participation of all students in the classroom. In my experience, when using activities inspired by Pre-Texts as models to imitate, new teachers in our language classes comprehend that allowing students to be at the center of their learning experience turns the process of acquiring a second language into a real conversation with multiple interventions, in which all class participants follow the rules to negotiate meaning in a culturally and linguistically appropriate way. For students and instructors alike, the joint exercise of interpreting and discussing a text in a new language becomes an opportunity to make connections between languages (their own and the new one) and traditions that are sampled in creative interventions.

In summary, by incorporating Pre-Texts activities I have been able to combine the practice of reading a canonical text with creative exercises that generate alternative, art-related solutions to problems in medicine and public health through multidisciplinary actions (designing posters for AIDS campaigns, using popular music to enhance empathy for substance abusers, coming up with potential solutions to public health challenges). The pedagogy calls for reading literature in ways that make these activities cognitive tools to stimulate creativity and develop critical thinking skills. Together, creativity and critical thinking help instructors and students explore different cultural, historical and linguistic realities through connections between languages, disciplines, texts and cultures.

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ACTIVITIES Teresita Fernández’s installation Autumn (...Nothing Personal) at Harvard Yard (during the fall of 2018) was the site where we read James Baldwin’s text from his 1964 monograph in collaboration with Richard Avedon entitled Nothing Personal. After reading it aloud, we did Forum Theater inspired by Augusto Boal. We split into groups that each took on the creation of small performances that reflected distinct problems that had arisen from Baldwin’s text.

One group portrayed social indifference to people without resources or a roof over their heads; another group acted out the lack of social support for marginalized youth (and the indifference of politicians who represent them— or perhaps more accurately, who don’t represent them); yet another group created an installation (within the art installation) that showed police violence against young African Americans. Finally, another group focused on a young artist’s struggles to break free from the conventional expectations of their immigrant parents.

Each portrayal included a reading, an interpretation and a commentary on one of the multiple threads that came from Baldwin’s text, and each creative intervention by the spectators was a way to respond to the concerns established in the text: a way to update it, to return its political relevance almost 50 years after it was written. The apprentice teachers reacted with enthusiasm and in an interactive way to the complex text, reading it under new circumstances.

Pre-Texts in Chile/United States

REFLECTIONS The answers to the question of the Pre-Texts protocol “What did we do?” furthered reflection on the text’s themes. Given that everyone must contribute to the group discussion, it is necessary for comments to be brief and original. The experience of having to control one’s own voice (and authority)

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for the good of the group becomes an especially valuable lesson for beginning teachers; to listen to the contributions of others, as they will do in their classrooms, models esteem for our classmates while at the same time inviting us to be creative. The exercise is at once a practice and a reflection on the process of dialog in the classroom, when divergent opinions are appreciated and a model for creating together is proposed.

OUTCOMES Participation in the Pre-Texts workshop yielded substantial results in the form of seminal experience for classroom practices. I continued working with this group of teachers throughout the academic year, guiding them and supervising them in the intermediate Spanish course. The Pre-Texts protocol and its invitation to creativity have served so that each instructor promotes reading and every student’s individual appropriation of the texts read in class. The basics of Pre-Texts have shown them a practice and an example of multiliteracies in which each text must be first experienced so it can later be creatively expressed in critical reflection, opinions and discussion. Teachers have been able to see that analysis of concepts and of the sociocultural context of the texts is deeper when the students possess a creative reading process that stimulates them to develop new linguistic structures while they also think textually and critically; they have seen in their students how the process of thinking critically and creatively is the same, and that activities inspired in the Pre-Texts protocol can be integrated as a pedagogical approach to any level of language teaching and to any classic text (“classic” according to Professor Doris Sommer’s understanding of the term, as “works that can withstand many readings without flattening the experience into predictable responses”).

For its part this practice generated ideas for creating new possible courses with themes and texts in accordance with the professional development and interests of each teacher, in which they would implement activities inspired

by Pre-Texts.

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Pre-Texts in Comparative Literature Classes Carolina A. Navarrete González

TEMUCO

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Workshop Años del year taller 2018 2018, - 2019 2019, 2020

Place Lugar Temuco, Frutillar, Chile Chile

Facilitators Facilitadores Carolina A. Navarrete González Cohorte anual de 45 AGENTES CULTURALES

Supervisors Supervisores

Carolina A. Navarrete González + Pedro Zenteno

Institutions Instituciones involved involucradas Universidad dede LaEstudios Frontera Rockefeller Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Harvard y el Global Leaders Impacted Program (Programa de líderes population globales)

47 STUDENTS Estudiantes 400 PEOPLE

Pre-Texts in Chile: impactados 120 How Do We Teach 28 Literature at Website La Frontera University?

GENERADORES DE CAMBIOS EN LA MÚSICA

QUE REPRESENTAN

PAÍSES DIFERENTES.

https://drclas.harvard.edu/

Pre-Texts in Chile

https://bit.ly/2O8KT76

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I will present Pre-Texts as it was implemented in Chile, specifically at La Frontera University in Temuco, Chile, to students in the field of Communication and Pedagogy in Spanish. In their Comparative Literature courses during 2018-2019 they lead activities based on this simple protocol that yields profound results.1 The Pre-Texts methodology was created as an educational initiative at Harvard University by Professor Doris Sommer, founder of Cultural Agents, who has developed this protocol to teach complex texts and has achieved surprising results in the teaching of literature as well as values related to citizenship, democracy, critical thinking and innovation.

What do Pre-Texts consist of? Pre-Texts is a protocol composed of a series of didactic strategies, of interventions though the arts, whose objective is to promote learning through creativity. It uses a complex text, often a classic text, as a starting point to make a work of art. From the perspective of neuroscience, when you turn work into pleasure, that pleasure has been confirmed as the condition and the result of effective learning.

Thanks to the implementation of Pre-Texts, any material can serve as a starting point for original interventions on the part of students, who have the chance to explore and use academic material to create new works, expressing their concerns and interests in them. By applying this protocol, texts become the stimulus and starting point for the development of critical thinking, innovation and citizenship.

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With regards to innovation, what stands out is Pre-Texts’s interest in bringing out the potential local capabilities without necessarily seeking correct answers, but rather for teachers and students to be co-creators. Support among partners is very important, as is the formation of learning communities.

Regarding citizenship, Pre-Texts proposes that it is built on admiration, not tolerance. It promotes students’ confidence and ingenuity instead of competition, and in this way they become active citizens who admire and respect each other.

However, the need to apply the pedagogical activities Pre-Texts proposes with literature students in the courses mentioned, has to do with the need to effect a change in the way reading and writing are taught in Chile, as well as the importance of effectively incorporating the arts so that young people learn to approach a text from a place of pleasure, creativity and collective collaboration.

Context and Problem While it is true that Chile has made significant advances in developing literacy, these advances do not correspond with what happens in terms of the development of greater and more complex reading competencies. What is currently needed is for people to develop not only the ability to decode meanings but also to develop multiple skills, such as management of information of different complexities, comprehensive reading, effective communication, development of critical thought, etc. With regards to readers’ competencies among students in Chile, it is worthwhile to mention two revealing studies of the current situation. One relates to the PISA test, which focuses on measuring young people’s skills in the realm of reading. The results of the 2016 test, while demonstrating improvement over previous years, still place Chile under the average of other countries with better performance in reading, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Canada, Finland and Ireland.

Pre-Texts in Chile

The second noteworthy test is the Simce, which belongs to the National Evaluation System and indicates that the majority of students in Chile show

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insufficient or elementary levels related to the learning expectations for current curricula in the subject of reading. The written Simce evaluates writing abilities in the production of texts and is focused on students in elementary school, and according to the Quality Education Agency, the 2016 Simce results indicate that this group of students demonstrate difficulty with their ability to maintain coherence in their writing and in developing their ideas.

Effectively, more than half of the students show difficulties in the development of their texts or write texts that are difficult to comprehend. With respect to narrative texts, the study indicates that 12% of students do not understand their meaning while 44% have difficulty comprehending them.

Facing this scenario of education in Chile, what is needed is to widen the motivation, interest and commitment of those being educated in literature and writing, as well as improve their oral skills, all of which are factors for education today. While these competencies or skills seem to be a priority for the training of professionals linked to the realm of pedagogy, it would seem that Chile has been in a different dynamic, one of permanent trial and error, trying to improve these aspects but without entirely satisfactory results. Currently, professors and students of pedagogy find themselves in an ongoing challenge that implies improving pedagogical aspects, or of “teaching to teach,” which at the same time implies the need to reverse and overcome a national legacy trapped in the obligatory reading of scholastic texts, the barely updated books chosen for secondary education and the precarity of a school system that still lags behind in terms of innovation, leadership and solidarity.

Looking at this less-than-encouraging scenario, a demand arises to find innovative and effective methodologies for the development of literacy and oral expression, a task that we as educators must approach promptly and effectively. Within this framework, the pedagogical method proposed by Pre-Texts and promoted by its founder Prof. Sommer shines a light on ways to change traditional forms, not only of “teaching to teach” but also how teachers and students relate to each other.

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SUI GENERIS ACTIVITIES Pre-Texts Application in Literature Courses In the following text we will review some examples of the application of PreTexts in a class of 47 first-year students majoring in Communication and Pedagogy in Spanish at La Frontera University, in Temuco, Chile. The methodology was applied in a Comparative Literature course taught by Dr. Carolina Navarrete González from October 2018 to January 2019. Diverse didactic strategies from Pre-Texts were incorporated into this course in order to prove their effectiveness in the development of three particular areas: reading, innovation and citizenship.

Without a doubt, valuing play in the educational realm is essential. In the application of Pre-Texts, what is emphasized is that students are the ones using texts to desacralize them and treat them as raw material for the creation of new literary works—all in a safe educational environment that invites participants to explore. Within this premise, one of the activities with the most impact was the event “Frankenstein from the Borders,” which reflected work done with Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, an activity that served to bring out participants’ creative capacities and their enjoyment of literature through play. Far from understanding the reading of the work as a boring or dense activity, this novel was utilized as the basis for a performance or literary representation, for which the students themselves created the script complete with a monologue by the protagonist, and additionally they recreated the age of Romanticism.

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What was interesting about this exercise is that the class participated in its totality; the students offered to make a choreography related to the emotions of the work, with dancing and singing, a musical and instrumental interpretation. They even drew, designed and painted the Gothic set pieces, putting forth their visions and their sentiments about the stories. Desacralizing the book with an attitude of enjoyment and commitment to their work awoke

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abilities in the students that led them to organize a colloquium, an event in which they could show their work to the university community, which was very well-received for its quality, emotion and original interpretation of the work.

Important results in literacy development were achieved from this activity. The students’ interpretation of texts and their collaboration as artists in the work’s creation had great impact on citizenship, since students experienced admiration for and from one another. They embraced the responsibility of using the work as a “pretext” to co-create, doing away with bullying since no one was peripheral—everyone represented a contribution to the portrayal of the book.

What’s more, an initiative emerged from the class itself in which the students organized a writing contest for horror microfiction at a local and international level, based on the creation of the novel Frankenstein at Lord Byron’s castle during a game proposed by Byron during a gloomy, stormy night. As can be observed, treating reading like a pretext for play eliminates fear and invites all to acquire the cultural capital that mitigates inequality and enriches intellectual development to strengthen students’ self-esteem.

Another implementation of Pre-Texts occurred thanks to the incorporation of the activity called “Making Cartonera Books,” a didactic strategy that has to do with sustainability and taking care of the environment. This activity is inspired by Eloísa Cartonera publishers in Buenos Aires, which serves as a model for the students to create books with recycled everyday materials, beginning with used cardboard. This challenge is an exercise in inventiveness and a recognition of an admirable popular practice throughout Latin America, where there are more than 200 cartonera publishers.

The idea for implementing this pedagogical strategy is that the students make book covers for “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf, beginning to prepare the covers for their books by choosing the recycled cardboard material from what they are no longer using at home.2 Students design their book covers, fill them with colors and other elements, increasing their attention while they listen to someone read the text aloud, and here we find the application of another strategy, “tobacco factory readers” from the Hispanic

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Figure 1: A singing and dancing performance at the “Frankenstein from the Borders” colloquium within the 2018-2019 Compatartive Literature course. Temuco, Chile, 2019. Photo by Carolina A. Navarrete González

Caribbean, in which professional speakers reading quality literature out loud to workers who are simultaneously making cigars.

Taking into account that recent studies corroborate that higher levels of attention to oral discourse are associated with the concurrent practice of handicrafts, this activity challenges conventional assumptions that students would be distracted while drawing or working with art materials. When this strategy was implemented high levels of attention were paid to the details of the narratives, specifically related to Woolf’s work: desire for the text was experienced, the students were invited to ask questions of the text which led to innovation and citizenship as they shared the experience of a book and of becoming interested in others’ questions.

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Another activity to boost development of citizenship was the organization and production of an exhibition called “Comparative Representations of Women in Literature,” which took place January 7-14, 2019, with the students in charge of the large panels located in the University’s great hall. Thanks

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to this exhibition, they recreated the works studied in class through collage, paintings, drawings, etc, all with the theme of women in comparative literature. This activity encouraged admiration among peers and the finding of value in the work of other members of the university community. The exhibition was open to the public and was a transformative, innovative experience that was very much appreciated by the students as a contribution to their integral learning, as much for the course’s content as for the values of solidarity and respect for literary and aesthetic creations.

REFLECTIONS AND TESTIMONIALS Student Testimonials In qualitative evaluations of Pre-Texts’s impact in the classroom and in the application of the portfolio as a final work, significant improvements have been observed in the development of critical thinking, the enjoyment and motivation of reading, and the development of literacy skills. Here we will present several testimonials collected in the portfolio produced by the students themselves, who realized the value assigned to them by the Pre-Texts activities and how these produce a positive impact in their integral learning.

From my point of view Pre-Texts comes to Chile as a tremendous innovation. Without a doubt, if it were imparted in all educational environments Pre-Texts would help us to improve major problems like lack of text comprehension, lack of motivation to read and also to practice writing—three important axes to improve if we want to progress as a country. I hope these practices that Pre-Texts brings are really considered in Chile, because as a future teacher I don’t want to base my classes on monologues, I want all of us in a class to work together and share our opinions at the same level: I want “my class” to be “our class.” —Daniela Sandoval, 2019 I want to emphasize that I consider the teaching methods I gained from the professor in this Comparative Literature course to be attention-getting

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practices that are very effective for learning, as they explore diverse kinds of intelligence and expression. No one is left behind, because evidently we all have our own strengths to acquire knowledge in diverse ways, not only enclosed in a classroom reading or writing, which is why I place so much emphasis on this point, because I did not only learn to make a comparative analysis, which would be what could be hoped for from this course, but I also learned that teaching can be done in such a way that students feel comfortable with their skills. —Francisca Escobar, 2019 At a pedagogical level, schemes imposed by society were broken, there were big changes to how things are taught within a classroom, in which the teacher gave the opportunity for the class to be taught together with her, we were all part of the class, all classmates had the chance to share their versions and opinions of each theme we discussed. During class there was no imposition of knowledge, but rather everything was constructed together among the professor and students. —Laura Obando, 2019 The use of Pre-Texts registers as a key factor in the success of the course, as this new model has given excellent results for students as far as both academics and motivation are concerned, showing itself to be a true learning tool and a considerable improvement on the topic of notes with respect to courses related to literature in previous semesters. — Javiera Sáenz, 2019

Pre-Texts in Chile

The Pedagogical practices used during the class were successful since they changed the vision of a generation of future educators with regard to how things should be done, which means not indoctrinating as proposed by the Chilean educational system. Leaving behind the role of the subjugating educator in order to teach together with their students has demonstrated itself to be more efficient, leaving a good taste in the mouths of nearly all the students, who have shown themselves to be capable of doing anything they set out to do, that literature is more than just ink and paper, and that creativity and cooperation are the fundamental pillars of the future of education. — Leandro Gajardo, 2019

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The simple fact of having students participate in a different way implies it is possible that students can understand that not just the teacher can ask questions, and that these questions don’t necessarily have to be erudite.

That they can feel that reading isn’t an obligation, but rather it’s within their reach and that they can achieve great things if they just stretch out their hands and their thoughts. A book as a free interpretation, which means that one single answer is completely wrong, each mind works differently because each person can consider it in a different way, from a point of view that may not seem orthodox compared with what was implemented a long time ago. —Melanie Rojas, 2019 The most valuable thing that I learned in the Comparative Literature course was the new teaching methodologies that I did not know; in Pre-Texts, presented by Dr. Gutierrez from Harvard University, for example, a student draws while a classmate reads a literary text. They create book covers with recycled cardboard and other things. All this with the idea of demonstrating that literature can be taught in another way, not only question and answer, which can be tedious and boring. —Javier Zavaria, 2019 These seven testimonials from first-year students majoring in Communication and Pedagogy in Spanish present examples of how the activities proposed by the Pre-Texts protocol have enormous impact in the classroom, have generated meaningful benefits, above all in three complementary objectives: literacy, innovation and citizenship. Students recognize themselves as creative agents possessing particular talents and unique interpretations, and the individual qualities of each are reaffirmed, which has the effect of eliminating bullying, generating collective admiration and self-confidence.

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OUTCOMES Applying Pre-Texts with the students in the Comparative Literature course gave them experiences that led them to understand the importance of making art from a text and how this activity implies innovation. In other words, they themselves used the literary material assigned by their teacher to make something new. In addition to experiencing that which implies innovation, they generated leadership and empowerment in their activities, understanding the role of the leader as a facilitator in the collective construction of new materials for the admiration and deep comprehension of texts.

Another aspect I want to point out is the possibility of reawakening enthusiasm for study materials. Far from creating a tedious environment in which students are passive agents and receptors or knowledge, the application of Pre-Texts makes it possible for them to feel enthusiasm and motivation that implies being protagonists in their own learning. The act of co-creating pedagogical material using art in the classroom generates a very stimulating and optimistic educational environment. While some students rehearse chapters from Frankenstein, for example, others paint and draw on a canvas that gives the portrayal its atmosphere, others rewrite and edit the script based on the book; while some rehearse, others become directors of the performance, contributing comments whose objective is to improve the stage play; while some sew costumes for the actors, others concern themselves with makeup, and so on.

Pre-Texts in Chile

All these roles taken on voluntarily by the 47 students of the course indicate the level of commitment, citizenship and admiration generated by this PreTexts-inspired activity. In addition, as one always goes back to the text, their comprehension of it leads to dimensions that imply a depth and creativity that would not have been expected from a traditional class. In fact, the students realized that literature is recycled material, they danced out an episode of the book, they sang another passage and musicalized another part. In this way the activity of reading becomes a practice that carries pleasure implicit within it, and this is fundamental to achieve effective learning.

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A Tale of Two Cities Clement Chung

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Workshop year 2013 Implementation: 2016-2019

Place Hong Kong and Shangai

Facilitators 50

FACILITATORS

Supervisors + Doris Sommer

Institutions involved Maryknoll Convent School, Hong Kong; NACIS Shanghai; Shanghai Minghang Zhu Di School; SKH Yan Laap Primary School1 SHANGAI

Impacted population APPROXIMATELY 400 STUDENTS

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HONG KONG

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Hong Kong, Where East Meets West Maryknoll Convent School in Hong Kong is practically a monument to English language learning at the highest level. The buildings blend Art Deco, Romanesque, Neo-Georgian and Gothic Revival styles in an architectural expression of the school’s talent for combining the old with the new. It was an ideal site for Pre-Texts when Doris Sommer and I piloted the Pre-Texts program in May 2013. To improve on an already excellent record would be a proof of concept.

In the Pre-Texts spirit of co-construction, we had consulted the principal and the head of the English program to align our teacher training program with the school’s priorities. Implementation went smoothly as a result. The challenge that dogged us for a while was financial support. The Hong Kong Education Bureau might have come to the rescue, given its commitment to English language learning and teaching, but government funding has guidelines that discourage collaboration with foreign facilitators, both because the honoraria do not represent international rates and because travel and accommodations are prohibited from public budgets. As we explored alternatives, our optimism and commitment drove the decision to book tickets and hotel.

Let me explain the commitment, beyond any reasonable administrative practice. The case of a student named Jason serves as an example of why change is urgent, and how we have been setting our youth up for failure. Arriving

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late for our meeting, he was self-deprecating and described himself using the derogatory word “chav.” Born in Hong Kong 26 years ago, he completed the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE).2 Receiving a grade of D in Biology and E in Math and Economics, he failed the rest of his subjects. Jason wanted to improve his primary level English to get a better IT job. It made him feel better to know that many students never pass the HKCEE and that the passing rate for English HKCEE was about 55%. Others can

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Figures 1, 2 y 3: Students from Maryknoll opened new windows for interpretation. Hong Kong, China, 2013. Photo by Clement Chung.

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take the Hong Kong Diploma Secondary Examination (HKDSE) if they want to go to university. Of the approximately 58,000 students who did so in 2018 for example, only 13,000 local students (18%) were accepted by the eight Hong Kong universities.3 In the exam-driven culture of education in Hong Kong, Pre-Texts offers a welcome shift from competing for the right answer to discovering the pleasure of sustained learning. Our proposal was to improve grades indirectly by preparing lifelong learners. As a subject, English is a convenient vehicle for this invitation to enjoy learning because the assessment targets feature cognitive and socio-emotional development: to think and communicate; to acquire, develop and apply knowledge; to respond and give expression to experience.

Shanghai, Her Scale and Precision This is a vibrant metropolitan city, full of hope, full of spirit and pride, known as “the pearl of the Orient.” This description applied to Hong Kong for many years, but now Shanghai is taking it back. Hong Kong is a dense city of 7.5 million people, while Shanghai’s population is more than three times larger, in an area six times the size of Hong Kong. Today one feels the same drive, hunger and humility in Shanghai that had made Hong Kong great in the past. This is why we brought Pre-Texts here. Our version, called Language Out Loud (LOL), revealed something important during the 2016 Shanghai pilot: the Pre-Texts pedagogy improved language learning and teaching in Chinese as well as in English. The initial goal was simply to make learning Chinese language fun and to appreciate the beauty of words. We did not focus on examinations or results, which would have banished the fun, so it was a welcome confirmation of our arts-based pedagogy when the students shone in a 2019 national short story competition titled “Me & China.” Students from NACIS Shanghai won first and second prizes in the category for ages 10-12, as well as third prize and an excellence award in the category for age 9 and under.

When I found out I got second prize in Chinese writing, I was very moved.

I love how our school uses LOL in our Chinese lessons. Reading becomes

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more engaging, dynamic and rich and deep. When I read, I think more and have more questions. We also do reflection, drama, multimedia and models, and we share with each other. It helps me understand deeper. We do more thinking together. I now have fallen in love with thinking, writing and sharing. —Gu Yuhan, Grade 5 student at NACIS

NACIS Shangai Sue Gu, the principal of NACIS Shanghai, is a cosmopolitan educator who grounds learning in the need to understand “who we are.” She wanted to start with the mother tongue, with poetic and profound Chinese, embedded in deep cultural roots with broad projections. She clearly set the school’s Chinese language policy as a shared foundation. It is also a key academic subject with inevitable examinations, which have the dark power to turn beauty into boredom. Pre-Texts, however, provided a line of defense. The pleasures of playing with a text increase stamina for studying. Improved grades are a corollary to those pleasures, not the direct objective. We used Pre-Texts to promote reading and civics through language arts and through learner-led conferences.

After setting clear objectives (to strengthen the mother tongue, to develop critical thinking through artistic interpretations of texts and to promote civic engagement through peer assessment and self-reflection) we established the LOL steering committee to ensure shared leadership. The team, made up of Chinese language teachers, the drama coach and the principal herself, led the implementation, arranging resources, communicating with parents and celebrating learning with the community.

Pre-Texts in China

A private school has the liberty to design its curriculum, and this was an opportunity for the committee to integrate Chinese language learning with English. It developed a flexible and balanced program to align with the school’s vision and the abilities of its learners. Each grade level decided on appropriate stories and coordinated with English language teachers.

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To facilitate personalized in-depth reading experiences and collaborative learning with classic and contemporary texts, students take responsibility for their own learning while teachers become facilitators. Learners share their interpretations through drawing, music, drama, dance, multimedia and soundless performances, as they see fit. Then they share reflections when everyone responds to the question “What did we do?”.

Our pilot began with a simple lesson plan prepared by Sue and myself.

After that, and for the past three years, teachers have prepared their own lessons with accompaniment in workshops, lesson observation and debriefing. Teachers tell us that they have started to reflect on facilitation, asking themselves, “What did we do?”.

Sue’s development priority is always on cultivating teachers and learners, so Pre-Texts and Language Out Loud come naturally to her.

Shanghai Minghang Zhu Di School, Shanghai Zhu Di School is a typical public Grade 1-9 school in Shanghai. It looks ordinary, but its leaders are unconventional. Principal Li’s vision is to enable

Figures 4, 5 y 6: Students from Maryknoll opened new windows for interpretation. Hong Kong, China, 2013. Photo by Clement Chung.

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learners to adapt to China’s fast-changing pace, to realize that each person has his or her own value, to appreciate the meaning and value of life and to fulfill one’s social responsibility. The school’s development priority is to cultivate students’ passions and missions. The head of the Chinese language panel has a clear mission to promote questions, inquiry and analysis. We are inspired by the challenges presented by a public school and the commitment to tackle them through Chinese language learning.

At Zhu Di, after reading Last Stop on Market Street together the learners were divided in groups to create group names and slogans and to discuss what they wanted to create to show their understanding.4 They debated, laughed, gave examples and created art pieces, all without needing our instructions.

SKH Yan Laap Primary School, Hong Kong

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Our experience in secondary schools is invaluable for the implementation of LOL into the curriculum. After our successful cases in Shanghai, we returned to Hong Kong, coming to SKH Yan Laap Primary School. Founded in 1970, SKH Yan Laap is a top primary school in the region. Teachers Eva and Joyce, who were in charge of the school-based reading program, shared their opinions on the impact that Pre-Texts had on learning:

Figure 7: Implementation of LOL in SKH Yan Laap Primary School: Dick uses language of art in learning and teaching. Hong Kong, China, 2018. Photo by Clement Chung.

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In the past, we didn’t use such reading practices. Now students can apply their reading skills to writing. LOL allows them to have more input. For example, in “A Christmas Carol,” students examined why Scrooge was mean and cold. They were able to find evidence and elaborate the story on their own. The students didn’t just say Scrooge is mean—they now have more adjectives to describe the character.

The result is obvious: the more they read, the more they understand.

In addition to bettering their writing, we believe their speaking is also improving. LOL helps to enrich reading and writing using different reading strategies. Students learn how to appreciate literature instead of just learning the language. They seem to have a deeper way of thinking.”

Connecting the Dots When Prof. Sommer sent me a picture of a classroom with two big words, “Teach Peace,” hanging up high up, I shared it with our principals. Each school may have a different direction, but I believe all serious educators agree that conflict is a fact of life, and that “establishing peace is the work of education.” We all share the responsibility to help the next generation learn how to live together peacefully in the community and the world. A disconnected world is not better off; people are better when they are connected and interdependent.

Both Pre-Texts and LOL encourage every learner to speak and ask everyone to listen. Listening is the first step on the path towards critical thinking and responding. Pre-Texts provides simple yet profound protocols to undo violence and cultivate respect when learners use the text to make art. The process stimulates general admiration through peer assessment.

When we listen to each other and admire each other’s work, we discover beauty, respect and gratitude. Perhaps doing so we can contribute our part to create a better world.

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Figure 8: Implementation of LOL in SKH Yan Laap Primary School: Dick uses language of art in learning and teaching. Hong Kong, China, 2018. Photo by Clement Chung.

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Figure 9: Implementation of LOL in SKH Yan Laap Primary School: Pre-Texts in China

Dick uses language of art in learning and teaching. Hong Kong, China, 2018. Photo by Clement Chung.

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Pre-Texts with the Government of Antioquia The Context

Victoria Mena and Falconi In 2015 Sergio Fajardo finished his José term as Governor of the Department of Antioquia. His administration had been characterized by his mission “to make education the motor for social transformation” and to turn Antioquia into “the most highly educated place.” At that moment of closure and reflection, he found in Pre-Texts a strategic ally for his vision to combine education and fun in order to transform a culture accustomed to violence into one that envisioned a peaceful, prosperous future. This vision had inspired his campaign to build 80 Parques Educativos (educational parks) around the department, a proposal that was noteworthy in political and pedagogical terms.

Together with the breath of fresh air it brought to the old municipal casas de cultura (literally “cultural houses,” or local public cultural centers), the new campaign recruited talented architects from Antioquia to design beautiful modern buildings, boasting internet, modern technology and furnishings to support all kinds of learning activities. These places were administered by the community and linked with local libraries. The spaces were equipped to host children during their free time so they could play and learn, and to be safe,

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Workshop year 2015

Place

comfortable spaces for the general community, places where sociability and culture would be present and vital.

Antioquia, Colombia: Chigorodó, Andes, Santa deareas los Osos, Guatapé The Parques Educativos featured libraries, sportsRosa fields, for social gatherings and other spaces all designed to architecturally coexist, but many people recognized that the campaign had not yetFacilitators achieved one of its goals: that of organically joining learning and recreational activities to foster a Josethe Falconi, Victoria Mena, general culture driven by education, in keeping with governor’s motto.

Paolo Vignolo, Pedro Reina The juxtaposition of place and scholastic education was not yet happening as a collaboration. Fajardo recognized a bridge in Pre-Texts, a methodology that connects one activity with another, such as schoolSupervisors with recess. The connection might seem improbable, but the classical tradition makes it foundational Doris Sommer in the formation of citizens (people of privilege in+ancient Athens, although today they are regular people). Let us recall the etymology of the word Institutions “school”: skholé, which means free time. In addition to connecting pastimes with learning, Pre-Texts fit with Fajardo’s vision ofinvolved recognizing local teachers as a fundamental human resource for social transformation. Teachers are the The Government of Antioquia ideal guides to show children and young people how to weave between spaces for education and spaces for sports. Pre-Texts shares this democratizing Impacted approach with Fajardo, who always relied on local activism in each municipopulation pality to propose and “earn” the construction of its Parque Educativo.

ANDES

“The methodology of Pre-Texts fits perfectly,” said Governor Fajardo in 2015, “We have learned that education must be understood in a wide sense that transcends the walls of schools.” Antioquia of the 21st century must be a place in which there is room for all people in the wonderful world of education, and within education there must be a predominant place for culture,

Pre-Texts in Colombia

CÁRMEN DE BOLIVAR

STUDENTS a proj4.800Educativos, During his government he managed to build 55 Parques ect that ended in 2016 when Luis Pérez Gutiérrez was named governor. The budget for maintenance of the already-constructed parks was also eliminated, so their infrastructure and utility fell into decline. It would seem that current governor, Aníbal Gaviria, has taken up Fajardo’s line with respect to SANTA ROSA generally, and with the Parques Educativos in particular.1 education, DE OSOS

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The Task When it established the Parques Educativos as sites for the Pre-Texts training workshops, Antioquia’s government identified four subregions in which public school teachers would be trained. With Pre-Texts, their students would utilize the parks creatively to explore the libraries and invent activities based on texts, in this way enriching their scholastic experience. The Cultural Agents initiative recruited four teams of trainers, one for each subregion. There were a total of 120 participating educators, approximately 30 per workshop. The four municipalities (and their respective subregions) in which we held the workshops were: Chigorodó (in the Urabá subregion), Santa Rosa de Osos (Northern region), Guatapé (Eastern region) and Andes (Southwestern region).

The 15-hour workshops were held at the Parque Educativo belonging to each of the four municipalities, and they happened simultaneously at all sites over the week of July 13, 2015. There was not much communication between each node in order to respect the autonomy of the development of the protocol, in which new participants proposed and carried out original dynamics.

The trainers offered a basis of playful tools and a liberating protocol for the educators to invent new pedagogical practices that could inspire their students to continue proposing and facilitating in their classrooms.

As such, what developed was leadership, as well as competencies in citizenship and science, through collaborative work and role playing in order to

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recognize courage and creativity as part of the human condition present in everyone. As was to be expected, the teachers’ talent and inventiveness constantly made itself evident. After allowing themselves the freedom to play with a classic text, they let flow the energy that accompanies pleasure.

We played with Antigone, the Greek tragedy by Sophocles that has tragically inspired so many variations in Latin American literature. We trainers assumed that this text (as opposed to Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, which has served well in other workshops in areas that know all too well the theme of conflict between men who will not yield) would intimately address Antioquia’s particular dilemma—a terrible one, and terribly quotidian: How does one bury the dead, the victims of violence that does not ever seem to end?

Antigone is the universal heroine who responds to the sacred obligation of burial. She carries out the funeral rites for her brother, one of the twins who fought and lost to his brother and the king on duty, who has prohibited the interment of the traitors.

Creon: You, tell me briefly, no long speeches—were you aware a decree had forbidden this?

Antigone: Well aware. How could I avoid it? It was public.

Creon: And still you had the gall to break this law?

Antigone: Of course I did. It wasn’t Zeus, not in the least, who made this proclamation—not to me. (...)

Nor did I think your edict had such force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions.2 Pre-Texts in Colombia

Those of us who had come from Boston and Bogotá imagining what this challenge would be for the people of Antioquia were surprised by participants’ relative equanimity upon hearing these first lines from the play. The sorrow of

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the unburied did not produce the anticipated outcry. Nevertheless, it came at the end of the reading, at the moment when Creon condemns Antigone for being a woman: “Go down below . . . While I’m alive, no woman is going to lord it over me.”3 The theme of sexism, of inequality at home and in the public space, touched participants’ nerves and kept motivating the activities and reflections of both the minority of men and the majority of women for the duration of the training workshops. What was truly notable for the four teams of trainers was that reception and reflection on the text was similar from node to node.

Our shared expectations—those of outsiders—necessarily adjusted to a local reality in which new Pre-Texts users took advantage of the methodology to air and explore the social challenges they themselves identified. One single text serves to work on different topics, with an endless number of creative approaches. One of the advantages of Pre-Texts is that after an initial session in which the trainer delivers a protocol, the other sessions are in the hands of the new facilitators who put the methodology to their own uses.

To read Antigone to ask it a personal question and then to interpret the work in singing inspired by Colombian folk singer Totó la Momposina, in paintings, in dances around maps of the Greek isles drawn on the floor, in a dramatic short film and in rhyming riddles, allowed us to imagine how to address social challenges in the classroom through schoolwork. Among the challenges is, for example, the widespread lack of inclusion and the consequent low participation, indifference about the other and lack of respect for the gender conditions of some children at the schools. Nonetheless, to face these seemingly stagnant situations through activities in which everyone collaborates led not only to proposed solutions for abuse and mistreatment but also to true, positive transformations in the behavior of groups of teachers and later in students within the classrooms.

The results of implementing Pre-Texts showed that the students found collaborators where they least expected it, that they felt recognized and valued for their talents, and that their differences numbered among their contributions.

Excitement for learning drew the students closer to the school and to the

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families among them. The testimony of a teacher named Osmany serves to illustrate this. Her particular experience indicates what was achieved with PreTexts in general and what can continue to be achieved: Bullying usually takes place in the classroom and the schoolyard. This kind of violence generally affects children between 12 and 15 years old, although it can extend into other ages.

This is the case of a young man who comes to class without a pencil, pen or any other school supply to do he daily activities, and no one lends him anything, because of the condition of his sexuality…These appear to be simply selfish attitudes, but we discover that other classmates manage to borrow the items they need to work. The instructions are to make an artistic book cover based on a text read out loud (Pre-Texts’s first step). The materials to do this are available to everyone and each person offers to collaborate with others to make the book covers.

The student ignored by the rest finished his work in a way that satisfied him; it was a beautiful book cover made while other classmates read a philosophical text out loud to formulate some questions (Pre-Texts’s second step). The others admired his work and managed to approach him without calculation or prejudice toward him.

From that point on, the boy was included in the group in a natural way, which improved his condition in life, living together, and showed everyone how simple it can be to accept someone who is other because of a difference. The methodology of Pre-Texts favored the integration of the children and adolescents whenever it enriched their human formation, in this way countering every manifestation of mistreatment.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Little by little during the training and later in classrooms, the teachers recognized that Pre-Texts responds to distinct criteria from those of traditional educational models. Knowledge is presented as a different, open experience, and the differences enrich the learning, which is fun. The games are more fun where they are difficult and to read is an invitation to serious play.4

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Pre-Texts of Habitanía Victoria Mena

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Workshop year 2017

Place Quibdó and Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia

Facilitators 25 teachers

Supervisors + Victoria Mena + Margarita Gómez

Institutions involved Normal Superior School in the city of Quibdó

Impacted population 424 475

STUDENTS PEOPLE

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CHOCÓ

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This opportunity to look at the experience of the Pre-Texts workshop held in Quidó has allowed me to realize the capacity and the potential of the methodology to find elements based on literacy and art that facilitate the construction of meaning for a new citizenry. As I have sought and found responses in it for my obsession with urbanism, Pre-Texts has become fertile ground on which to model new ways of constructing habitanías, a concept and a play on words in Spanish that I came up with at some point in a workshop, which contrasts two fundamental realities: one the one hand the human condition of inhabiting a place, and on the other, the condition of living with others in the exercise of citizenship (the term combines the word habitar, “to inhabit” in English, with the word ciudadanía, “citizenry”).1 In this sense the Pre-Texts workshop in the city of Quibdó allowed for the discovery of several keys to understanding how citizens develop their capacity for the comprehension and empathy that strengthens peaceful coexistence as well as the recognition and processing of differences as the starting point for reaching agreements. Everything revolves around recognition and admiration of the other.

As Antanas Mockus has told us: citizenship is a minimum of shared humanity.

He says that someone is a citizen when they respect the minimums that generate basic trust. To be a citizen is to respect the rights of others.2 It is also important to note that others are also those who form part of future generations of citizens, which implies the need for caution and conscience in understanding that actions taken in the present must guarantee the future sustainability of citizens as part of society’s legacy in any socio-spatial context.

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Related to this, the Pre-Texts workshop held at the Normal Superior School of Quibdó brought to light our marvelous capacity to generate new stories from a new text, stories that manifest themselves through artistic language and visual, documentary, narrative, dramatic and bodily resources; it does the difficult task of leading us to understand that what Edgar Morin identified as the complexity of the human condition should be the basis for decision making related to reconstructing narratives of citizenship for peace.3 I have been able to confirm that the Pre-Texts protocol offers practical and symbolic contributions, using literature, art and play for reconciliation in this country worn out by war. I can state that this war, in a territory like Chocó, tears apart the soul of the earth with terror; the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources and the sometimes voluntary, sometimes imposed political, economic and social ostracism have doomed citizens to a kind of exile in which it seems that apathy and hopelessness reign.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Figure 1: Pre-Texts in Quibdó. First day of Pre-Texts in Quibdó, Colombia, 2017. Photo by Juan Camilo Paulhiac

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As previously mentioned, experiences in different Pre-Texts workshops combining work in literature with work in art have revealed some significant keys for imaging the soul of the earth in Chocó and its human condition as a fortress for the reconstruction of the citizenry in order to reach peace and reconciliation beyond rhetoric or conventional reasons.

In Pre-Texts workshops immersion in the methodology is experienced closely.

With no preambles or speeches, an icebreaker puts us face to face with our human condition, and we find ourselves in a classroom of the Normal Superior School in Quibdó as individuals with similar or identical first and last names; we don’t introduce ourselves conventionally, we introduce ourselves through fun games that get us to take off our masks and break down the walls we’ve put up in our everyday roles.

Expectations ran high as we wondered what would happen in this new staging of the Pre-Texts workshop; we faced the challenge to make visible the relationship between science, art and citizenship using the story “Nos han dado la tierra” by Juan Rulfo as the “pretext.” At first glance, this story from Rulfo’s 1953 collection El llano en llamas [The Burning Plain] has nothing to do with the local context. A strange tension, unusual for Pre-Texts, was present; the tension of the group of teachers was latent and no one said a word before the icebreaker. In the gazes and the frank gestures common to the culture of Chocó one could recognize that they were bothered, and an image straight from Rulfo came to me: “After so many hours of walking without finding the shade of a tree, nor the seed of a tree, nor the root of anything.”4 As the first session began I myself felt how I lost confidence in my own capacity to show the benefits of Pre-Texts. Feeling the indifference and lack of interest from the teachers, suddenly I broke into tears. Curiously, this human moment managed to work better than the icebreaker. After half an hour the good energy of the group allowed us to carry out several different activities that are the classics of this workshop, which take up popular traditional Latin American practices: the cartonera, the practice of reading aloud in Cuba’s tobacco factories, clothesline literature with the teachers questions, or living statues, among others.

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Figure 2: Pre-Texts in Quibdó.

Activity: Mask design to recreate characters of the story “Nos han dado la tierra” (Juan Rulfo, 1953).

Quibdó, Colombia, 2017.

Photo by Juan Camilo Paulhiac

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Figure 3: Pre-Texts in Quibdó. Outloud reading of “Nos han dado la tierra” (Juan Rulfo, 1953). Quibdó, Colombia, 2017. Photo by Juan Camilo Paulhiac

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The teachers’ fluid participation was relevant as we asked the question, “What did we do?”.

Finally the activities were scheduled for the following days and we said goodbye for the evening with a sense of camaraderie. Later, at the end of this exciting first day, in front of the Atrato River, as if we had an immovable date with the waters that flank the city, the workshop facilitator (Danielle, Margarita, Juan Camilo and myself) gave thanks for literature’s power and for the magic of Rulfo: “After spending eleven hours pacing the plain’s hardness we felt quite at ease wrapped in that which leaps over us and tastes of earth.”

The workshops use challenging, daring and interesting texts to set off creative processes and then reflect critically on them. Not only do participants interpret the text as they like, they propose arguments that explain surprising relationships that perhaps aren’t legible in the first readings of an intricate text. What’s more, they experience in their bodies the physical sensation of the freedom to create, thanks to the atmosphere of camaraderie and trust inherent to the workshop, and the teachers manage to propose and derive other ways to teach and learn, using a text with a difficult vocabulary and strange context as a starting point.

The experience in Pre-Texts allows participants to demystify good literature and approach it from their own lives, to make it their own in any field of knowledge and from there reinvent their own practices to continually improve the processes of literacy or the reconstruction of citizen values in the contemporary world, as for example with one’s consciousness of and commitment to the environment.

These aspects of the workshop become a true basis for understanding the relationship between inhabiting and citizenship.

In this sense the methodology has allowed for the development of individuals’ competence in coexisting and in peace, participation, democratic responsibility, plurality, identity and, most significantly, their capability to value differences in order to enhance individuals’ decision-making capacity—for it is within this capacity that the creative universe functions as a fundamental tool for the development of the other capacities mentioned. Art in general has offered a tranquil,

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trusting environment to assertively experience certain happenings, tensions, discomforts, fears, risks, misgivings, solutions and strengths that constitute foundational knowledge for the better establishment of a life of peace.

The workshop participants had so much fun playing with literature that they paid closer attention to detail and to their own interpretive abilities. Artistic practice, the publication of an individual or collective text that expresses deep sentiment, was transformed into many things at one: to create, to speak, to express oneself, to feel, to reconstruct; this allowed the building of bridges between reason and feeling to heal and reach agreements despite differences.

What was achieved here was to reveal this hidden key that makes the relationship evident between art and science. As we see, this relationship is no small thing, as in activity after activity the participants “went off on tangents;” the participants formulated important questions based on a creative reading of Rulfo’s text, questions that allowed them to, for example, propose research projects for bringing drinking water to the city’s houses. This may seem absurd in a region where the phreatic level is +2 and it rains cats and dogs, nevertheless, a great number of houses do not yet collect barrels of rainwater.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

The question raised about the relationship of the Pre-Texts workshops with the idea of habitanía can be addressed with Noam Chomsky’s idea that “a fundamental element of human natures is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions.

A decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized.”5 According to this, each person appropriates her own social, cultural and educational practical universe as part of her process of growth and socialization, allowing her to construct what is called an “internal representation of reality” (in this case we will speak of citizenship/ciudadanía), in such a way that in the moment in which this person acts in the world, with others and for others, she projects what she has internalized, up to that moment, about her relationship with the universe itself and with the space she inhabits, which has given her the tools to allow her to function responsibly in her surroundings and with others based on her own assertive vision. What this means is that

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each person who inhabits tries to see, act and interpret reality according to the internal representations she has constructed of it, however an individual’s ways of acting with regard to her reality, that is, with regard to her inhabiting, are the capacities made visible through citizen interactions with others who, like her, inhabit.

This implies three things that come together in Pre-Texts workshops. One, that the idea of integrality, since individuals must personally carry out their knowledge, dexterities, emotional attitudes and values in the spaces they inhabit. Two, one’s way of relating to others, which is measured by communication however it occurs, verbally or nonverbally, is a definitive tool for establishing agreements that facilitate the construction of assertive citizenship. In Pre-Texts workshops participants learn to strengthen their citizenship like children. This child, (in this case, the individual in society) learns because he feels involved on every level which winds up part of his learning (even if he is not completely conscious of this). Upon feeling himself involved, he acts (inter-acts), rehearses, makes mistakes, corrects himself and perceives his own progress, which acts as powerful feedback for him...all this, since the earliest times, without being programmed, almost by pure intuition.

The concept of habitanía from the perspective of Pre-Texts has great possibilities of expression and comprehension, as the actions that are carried out in the workshop are supported by the understanding of the complexity of the human condition, in learning the phenomenon of inhabiting and learning from other citizens, which requires an interdisciplinary and multidimensional gaze.

The abstract, the concrete and the existential allow us to unveil the process of knowledge, of learning and lastly of the new social construction of the space of the city.

This workshop can unleash a great quantity of new actions, values and habits for citizen configuration, positive changes for the use and enjoyment of the city, educational actions that should balance socio-spatial inequalities that appear there and that impede the achievement of the people’s objectives for the construction of peace and citizenship. To recognize habitanía in Pre-Texts workshops

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is to reclaim the collective construction of the citizenship through multiple spaces constantly reinscribed in time, which recognizes the space of memory in the past as well as recognizing the present as an opportunity to construct the future.

To conclude I want to say that to turn to the human condition means abandoning the unilateral gaze that defines the human being in terms of rationality, technique, utilitarian activities and obligatory needs; the human condition necessarily impIies an aesthetic condition that makes up part of existence; now, through aesthetic experiences that have happened in different Pre-Texts workshops and with the combined work between literature and art, it has been possible to uncover meaningful keys for imagining ourselves and simultaneously imagining the human condition of others in order to reach peace and reconciliation, beyond rhetoric and conventional reasoning.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Pre-Texts in Quibdó. End of the Workshop at Institución Educativa Escuela Normal Superior de Quibdó. Quibdó, Colombia, 2017. Photo by Juan Camilo Paulhiac

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STEAM for Afro-Latin America Doris Sommer and Antonio Copete

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Workshop year BOSTON

2017

Place Chocó, Colombia & Boston, United States

Facilitators + Antonio Copete + María Paula García Mosquera

Supervisors + Doris Sommer

Institutions involved Harvard University, Chocó Government, Wheelock College, the Banneker-Aztlán Institute

Impacted population

Pre-Texts in Colombia/United States

67 STUDENTS

CHOCÓ

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The workshop has been held in different places and with different populations, including some directly or indirectly affected by different conflicts. The following testimony of a teacher from Carmen de Bolívar shows this:

In the Chocó Victoria Mena Rodríguez broke down in tears when a warm-up activity left her people cold. Tired teachers, who had been obliged to show up at the last minute after classes, resented the imposition of yet another training. They refused to be charmed by theatrical games. Even before a foreign text by Mexican author Juan Rulfo could test their tolerance for apparently useless material in Quibdó, the capital city of Chocó on Colombia’s Pacific coast, the invitation failed to cross cultural barricades constructed over decades, if not centuries, of neglect by the rest of the country. The locals candidly refused to submit to an unsolicited workshop by unwanted outsiders. And what did a short story have to do with teaching STEM, or with the Astrophysics workshop that would follow at Harvard University? That was when Vicky’s unrequited love for Quibdó exploded in sobs, about her deceased father, who had graduated from the very school where she had expected a warmer welcome, about her local relatives whom she planned to visit during her stay.

The tears took the teachers by surprise. Unscripted emotion managed to break the ice that had stood firm against rehearsed moves. After that, Vicky

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became for Quibdó more than a teacher of architecture and design in Bogotá’s distinguished Tadeo Lozano University. She became family. Had they known her surname, it would have been a clue. Mena is an unmistakably Afro-descendant marker of origins in the Department (State) of Chocó. But it was Vicky’s vulnerability that brought down boundaries which conventional leadership might have hardened. And though we hadn’t yet named this virtue for Pre-Texts, vulnerability has since become a recognizable quality of civic and intellectual engagement. It is a signature condition of our shared human frailty, and our workshops inevitably stretch the experience of personal humility as we facilitate and participate, taking turns to lead, to make mistakes and sometimes to make magic.

Pre-Texts in Colombia/United States

“Pre-Texts: Literacy, Innovation, Citizenship” arrived in Quibdó precisely because it was a stretch for both parties. The capital city of Chocó is a center of cultural effervescence and also—like much of the Afro-Colombian Coast— an outlier for national rights and resources, notably in science education.

Colombia’s arduous process toward peace agreements, between government institutions and rebel forces, has made some efforts to take responsibility for the underserved and therefore exceedingly affected areas of armed conflict in the largely Afro-descendant area. That peace-making project, together with unextinguished resources of local talent and optimism, inspired the national Ministry of Environment and Quibdó’s municipal Secretariat of Education to host a training workshop in Pre-Texts during February 2017. The contribution to the peace process would be an approach to social development derived from Paulo Freire’s seminal 1969 work Pedagogy of the Oppressed and laced through with local creative practices.1 Pre-Texts doesn’t need to know what those practices are; it simply acknowledges that local arts exist and that participants will identify them to co-construct the training.

Juan Rulfo’s short story “Nos han dado la tierra” [They Gave us Land] from his 1953 collection El llano en llamas [The Burning Plain] certainly seemed out of place as the core text for training in Quibdó.2 The co-facilitator for Quibdó’s workshop chose an unlikely tragedy about waterless Mexican land for Colombia’s Pacific Coast on purpose. Margarita Gómez, professor of

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microbiology at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, took a risk with the Mexican material. It narrates how the post-revolutionary government deceived displaced peasants by granting them plots of land so dry that the concession was useless. Without water land produces nothing. The legal trick is like Portia’s caveat during the trial of The Merchant of Venice: You can have flesh, but not blood.3 Mexico’s sun-dried disaster seemed very far from Chocó’s waterlogged experience of lush vegetation and waves of violence, so the text was irritatingly foreign. Perhaps that was Margarita’s point, to demonstrate that any material can be a prompt for local interpretations. When Quibdó’s teachers began to pull apart Rulfo’s story—for example, inventing a news program cleverly called “Llanoticias” (“no longer news,” as well as “news from the plains”)— they discovered that the approach might work to teach practically anything.

This included ecology, the declared focus of this particular training workshop, with blessings from the national Ministry of the Environment.

It was a sly decision to start from a literary classic rather than from a scientific text. And then, to disarm her new colleagues even more, Margarita shifted the terrain away from local literature in order to pose general questions. With an alien tale that venerates water and that indirectly underlines an undervalued local resource for Chocó, Margarita led teachers through activities that they now repeat in their classrooms. Probably the most stunning discovery was that creative literature can lead to scientific inquiry. She also invited them to propose original activities and to continue to co-create classes with their students. During the Pre-Texts training week, participants who read a story about chronic drought analyzed water samples from various sites, from before and after rain storms. They identified the species of plants and animals that prosper in one environment and another. Each day, trainers and teachers “went off on tangents,” as we call the activity of research in Pre-Texts.

As for Vicky, she stretched the terrain of natural science toward art and design— effortlessly, since facilitation doesn’t presume expertise on all fronts.

Margarita’s activities in microbiology were welcome additions to Vicky’s ex-

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perience with Pre-Texts, not necessarily prompts to replicate. No trainer need be an expert in all the interpretive activities we use. Instead, trainers participate in experiments that count on the know-how of others. Vicky is admirably sturdy, apparently invincible, as a capacity-builder. Either she wins over skeptics with a charm that combines irony and intelligence with affection, or, as in the case of Quibdó, she succumbs to a genuine frailty that rallies the concern of others. The connecting thread between verbal agility and occasional speechlessness is her profound dedication to social development and a generous humanity that puts service above ego.

Quite simply, a capacity for love is the knack for disarming resistance shared by talented facilitators like Vicky and Margarita, in the spirit that Paulo Freire defended as good teaching. Tragically, he observed, some parents do not love their children, but there are no real teachers who do not love their students.4 With her charm, Vicky had famously cajoled a skeptical indigenous educator to give Aeschylus a chance when he objected that Greek tragedy had nothing to offer to his community’s urgent challenges. After two hours he identified Prometheus’ conflict with Zeus as precisely the challenge of unyielding arrogance that they faced. Then there was the workshop with displaced teachers who had come to Cartagena, practically mute from traumatic violence and displacement. After piecing together fragments of torn paper and cloth, as if piecing together the fabric of torn lives though the literary prompt seemed extraneous, they dared to speak about the text and inevitably about themselves. In the case of Quibdó, we learned that when charm fails, frailty can instigate tears to irrigate the ground.

Pre-Texts in Colombia/United States

Sustainable Peace The urgent work of creating sustainable peace in Colombia requires a pedagogy that prepares citizens to live together without resorting to violence.

By refreshing an approach to public education, Pre-Texts achieves this civic goal along with significant academic improvements that boost the economy. The refresher course is no novelty, but rather a streamlined version of

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project-based learning that any educator can replicate. Private education has already discovered the good effects of similar practices, while public schools seem reluctant to try them. Do they imagine that poor children learn differently from the rich?

Conventional public classrooms train students to confirm authoritarian structures which undermine democracy and drive up drop-out rates alarmingly. With two simple adjustments, one spatial and the other conceptual, we can transform the obligatory hours spent in school into sessions of dynamic civility and academic achievement. An entire community can benefit when students become co-facilitators who engage families and neighbors in making something new from challenging texts. This after-school effect for the community will come from occasional weekend workshops. But first, inschool time must be rescued from the festering of boredom and resentment.

One rescue move is quite concrete. You might call it architectural. The conventional rows of desks and chairs—where students look at the mute backs of fellow students rather than at their expressive faces—are reorganized in Pre-Texts to form circles in which all individuals are visible and vulnerable to one another. Recognizing each person as part of the circle generates an anticipation of universal sharing. The sessions begin with warmups, continue with listening to a live reading of a complex text (any text will do), and follow with the posing of questions to the text as preparation for creative responses.

They end with a collective reflection to the prompt, “What did we do?” People who prefer not to speak learn that democratic process includes an obligation to contribute, along with the right to do so. Neighbors encourage neighbors to engage, so that the next activity can begin. Pre-Texts doesn’t sermonize or bore students with theories about rights and obligations. Instead, it models democracy by staging scenes that—significantly—recover many indigenous traditions of community deliberations in circles.

The other move that Pre-Texts makes is conceptual. We demonstrate that pleasure drives learning forward. It is a motor of development, not a distraction. The pleasure of using difficult texts as raw material for art-making generates passion for one’s work. It matters little whether the text had terri-

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fied students if the activity enchants them. Fun replaces fear. Students become users and creative agents, making decisions about how to turn one thing into another, becoming anxious to get to work. A classical Greek tragedy, or a legal document, or a formula from physics or mathematics becomes mere material to manipulate. Meanwhile, artists investigate the material, the better to use it. They read, dig in, interpret and gain expertise.

Neuroscience confirms what we had already learned from brilliant educational reformers, including Maria Montessori, John Dewey and Paulo Freire (with background hints from Friedrich Schiller, Sigmund Freud and Donald Winnicott). Pleasure in work activates cognitive as well as socio-emotional development. The neural connections between academic and emotional growth marks an educational opportunity, but they also mark a fault-line in standard pedagogical approaches that distinguish, unproductively, between intellectual and emotional development. Human complexity means that neural paths cross as personal pleasure energizes both academic and civic growth. When Pre-Texts turns a classroom into an art studio to cultivate a variety of interpretations through a range of creative practices, the whole person flourishes, to the delight of others.

Pre-Texts in Colombia/United States

Pre-Texts trains a taste for different interpretations and develops admiration for the array of creators. It doesn’t impose a frequently resented moral obligation to tolerate diversity. Instead, the experience of diversity incites wonder and enjoyment. Students who understand themselves and one another to be artists expect more than one answer for most questions, and often, more than two. Questions can be as unpredictable as the multiple answers, so that participants relish a variety of inquiries that would not have occurred to any one student, even before they begin to play with possible convergent and divergent interpretations. Contemporary societies, challenged with achieving non-authoritarian stability among conflicts of culture, class, race, gender and religion, will do well to educate new citizens to enjoy differences and to value divergences along with convergence.

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Sustainable peace requires this combination of cognitive, emotional and civic development. It acknowledges the value of resilient form over endlessly changing contents. Any content can serve as a pretext for forging better ways to communicate and collaborate. Democracy is itself more form than content, more time-consuming process than polished product. This is a lesson in civics worth refreshing in these impatient times, when parents and principals can become irritated by the demands of dedication to the arts. The good news to share with them is that time spent here is precisely time spent on the path to deep learning and human development in general.

Afro-Latin America on STEAM Pre-Texts has been developing since 2007 and caught the attention of Dr. Antonio Copete in 2016. He had recently overseen “science clubs” throughout Colombia, with the collaboration of young scientists from renowned institutions in the Boston area. Dr. Copete is a Researcher in Astrophysics at Harvard and graduate of Harvard’s doctoral program in Physics. His network of seasoned and also newly-minted scientists in a range of fields, from astrophysics and chemistry to agriculture and video gaming, rallied to offer week-long, intensive, hands-on science instruction to groups of economically poor and sometimes geographically isolated youth during a week of activities over the summer months. Distinguished colleagues were invited to offer talks by Skype if they could not come in person, in order to further nourish the experience with research by world-class senior colleagues.

The universal enthusiasm generated by the clubs has produced great interest and optimism, but the experience has also taught participating scientists that direct interventions with young people, without taking their year-round teachers into account, have limited long-term effects. After a week of ardent engagement, the youths retain little of what they learn. The experience often becomes a pleasant memory rather than a turning point for future studies and careers. It became clear to Dr. Copete and to his colleagues that lasting effects would depend on effectively incorporating local teachers and integrating their mentorship into accompanying programs such as science clubs. The staying power that teacher training could guarantee made Pre-Texts a prom-

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ising partner. A decade-long experience could translate into a focus on STEM disciplines. Thanks to Margarita Gómez and our inaugural workshop with her using Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, bridges to STEAM were already under construction.5 Pre-Texts has become a framework for training science teachers to facilitate hands-on engagement with materials, natural and manufactured. Between literary and scientific education, we can take advantage of resources that are as abundant in Latin America as they are undervalued: creativity and resourcefulness. While the region may often be challenged with unfavorable economic and political conditions, citizens somehow manage to make do with existing materials and environments. It is art, in its broad definition as a range of techniques to refresh and re-interpret the world, which often

Pre-Texts in Colombia/United States

Figure 1: During the first session of the workshop, the students ask about the text.

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rescues desperate situations and also enhances humble conditions. This is a strength that can be overlooked in current practices of Latin American Studies that feature problems rather than responses, pathologies rather than public health. The themes of the field tend to favor poverty, corruption, scarcity and insecurity, instead of resourcefulness, collaboration and aesthetic pleasures.

Practical, almost always technical responses to the challenges have been too narrow. Therefore, at the beginning of 2017, Dr. Copete and I initiated a collaboration between humanists and scientists called “Afro-Latin America on STEAM” at Harvard’s Afro-Latin American Research Institute.

Quibdó became a welcoming test site.

Chocó Students at Harvard On Friday, June 30, and Saturday, July 1, 2017, a group of 20 high school students from the remote Afro-Pacific area of Chocó in Colombia came to Harvard to participate in a workshop as part of Harvard’s “Afro-Latin America on STEAM” initiative. The initiative aims to create innovative interventions in Latin America that combine science and engineering with the arts and humanities, with special emphasis placed on disadvantaged communities of African descent.

The students came from 17 schools located across Chocó. As beneficiaries of the program New Chocó’s Excellent Youth Leaders, the students had the opportunity to enhance their creativity and leadership through the Pre-Texts protocol. The workshop was divided into 3 sessions in which students experimented with an academic article titled “Trajectory Options for Human Missions to Mars.” Prof.

Doris Sommer readily admitted that she did not understand the article, though she continued to facilitate the protocol. Facilitators are not experts; they count on experts and on student initiative. After everyone asked a question of the text, she invited students to propose arts activities that they would enjoy and that would lead us all to understand the technical article. One student reasoned that, since the text was about three trajectory options, we could break up into three dance companies and prepare performances of each option, to perform for the whole

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Figura 2: Welcome lunch at the Banneker-Aztlán Institute.

group. That’s what we did. The next 30 minutes were dedicated to developing choreographies in consultation with scientists in the room. By the final moment of the protocol when we ask, “What did we do?”, many participants commented that they had begun to understand the article and that they were curious to understand more.

Pre-Texts in Colombia/United States

In conjunction with the workshop, the students visited the Hiphop Archive & Research Institute, the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, the Harvard Art Museums and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. While in the Harvard Art Museums, the prompt for a Pre-Texts session was to make a graphic novel based on the text we were exploring.

Students visited the Roman and Greek art galleries, as well as the current exhibition, “The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard’s Teaching Cabinet, 1766-1820.” Their mission was to find images, characters or illustrations to serve as the raw material for their own comics, with quotes

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and elements from the Mars text. The graphic novels produced ranged from a story about a female scientist from Chocó who traveled through space to fantastic tales of journeys to unknown corners of the Red Planet.

Additionally, the Banneker-Aztlán Institute hosted an informal meet-and-greet lunch for the visiting students. The lunch was a great opportunity to meet members of the international scientific minority community and exchange experiences about academic life as scientists.

At the end of the second day, one of the participants said, regarding the workshop, “As a result of projects developed within this methodology, you can observe the art that a person engages with because we could demonstrate our talents through Pre-Texts.” One of the teachers who accompanied the group commented, “We have read the text in so many ways but always with the same purpose: to read! I look forward to using this methodology in my classes and finding any pretext to read with my students.”

The New Chocó’s Excellent Youth Leaders program was sponsored by the Chocó government, in partnership with Wheelock College. At Harvard, the workshop activities were led by Maria Paula Garcia Mosquera, the ex-administrator of Cultural Agents at the time, and myself, along with Prof. Sommer.

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Figure 3: A student reads his graphic novel.

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Meaningful Experiences Implementing Pre-Texts in the Population with Disabilities and Low Education Levels Marta Palacio

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Workshop year 2019

Place Rionegro, Antioquia, Colombia

Facilitators Diana Hurtado, Laura Melo, Johana Ocampo, Daniela Osorio, Vivian Bedoya, Catalina Quintero

Supervisors

Meaningful Experiences Institutions involved Implementing Pre-Texts in theImpacted population Population with 109 9 Disabilities and Low 18 10 Education Levels + Doris Sommer + Carla S. Campbell

Unidad de Atención Integral (UAI), Empresa de Movilidad del Oriente SOMOS, Institución Educativa Barro Blanco

TOTAL:

UAI PARTICIPANTS

FROM THE SOCIO-OCCUPATIONAL PROGRAM

RIONEGRO, ANTIOQUIA

STUDENTS WITH HEARING IMPAIRMENT FROM BARRO BLANCO SCHOOL Pre-Texts in Colombia

72 EMPLOYEES OF THE SOMOS COMPANY

During the implementation of the Pre-Texts methodology in the municipal

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During the implementation of the Pre-Texts methodology in the municipality of Rionegro, the opportunity arose to work with very diverse populations from different institutions pertaining to the city government. The Integrated Services Unit (UAI) serves children, adolescents and youths with disabilities, primarily different degrees of cognitive disabilities. Also noteworthy was the participation of the population from the socio-occupational program, made up of adolescents and youths from 13 to 25 years old, as well as level 4 users, which is the group with the highest levels of disability and requires the most attention as sessions take place. These users range from 15 to 23 years old.

SOMOS, the local mobility company, was also a participant, together with the employees of the regulated parking zones, a diverse population of ages from 19 to 65, with a high percentage of low education levels and people with disabilities and special needs (cognitive, hearing-related and reduced mobility). We also had participants from Barro Blanco School: high school students with hearing impairment. These circumstances required certain changes to the Pre-Texts methodology, since it involves predefined times, an established order and some directives regarding how sessions are carried out. Due to learning and comprehension difficulties involved in understanding an idea, solving problems, and processing and inferring information, each encounter took much more time than what the methodology initially proposes. In some instances it was necessary to go through an activity step-by-step to ensure its adequate comprehension and execution and thus achieve a response aimed at the objective of each session.

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NEW ACTIVITIES With the young children from the UAI, we worked with chapter 21 of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. To begin we used an activity with a drum as an icebreaker; all the children and adults in the classroom walked by the drum and played it, creating a melody and saying their names. The children were very participative, demonstrating what we could expect to follow. Next we began the reading of the chapter, and since the segment was long and the young children had short spans of attention and stillness, each adult in the room took turns reading aloud.

Then we started the cartonera activity, in which it was evident that the little ones portrayed the figures most familiar to them: a little prince, a fox and a rose. The facilitators noted that the children comprehended the story and identified its characters, even though the reading was done without accompanying images. It can be concluded that, even in the exercise of reading aloud without the support of images, this activity helps to develop reading comprehension in young ages and among different cognitive abilities.

In a session at the SOMOS company, an employee with hearing impairment joined the population that attended the workshops. Although there are several people with disabilities among this company’s employees, the disability of this person was new, and his coworkers were curious to know how they could communicate with him. For this reason, the activity used as an icebreaker was one in which the sign-language alphabet is taught by one of the facilitators with the support of the person with the disability. After this, students spelled their names to introduce themselves to their coworker, who showed himself to be open to the activity.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

During the activity everyone asked if he was capable of learning all their names, and he explained that the Deaf population recognizes people not by their first names, but by specific signs they choose when they meet someone; in other terms, they characterize others in their language. Then, in an act that everyone carried out with great ceremony, he went to each person and

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began to name them, one by one, according to some physical characteristic that stood out in each person. He explained that they should remember their names because these would be his way of referring to them in personal communication.

The participants seemed pleased to participate in this baptism by their coworker, and they were always willing to try to communicate with him using signs and gestures so he would be able to understand everything. Similarly, it must be mentioned that when the proposed activity began—working with a text from Juan Rulfo’s story El llano en llamas [The Burning Plain]—everyone was willing to tell the Deaf coworker about it and what they found in it. This demonstrates their empathy for the text and their desire that their new coworker could also learn from it and enjoy it, in addition to their wish for him to participate in the activities.

REFLECTIONS The methodology was made flexible from the start and during the course of the sessions, which required making adjustments in order to carry out activities, using videos, plays, songs, poems, etc., to make participants’ comprehension possible, as they did not have internalized literacy codes due to their diagnoses or special needs. This is why it was vital to utilize different points of entry for the information that would let them understand the selected text and instructions to be followed. In the case of the population with hearing impairment, we had the support of an interpreter, and additionally they possessed literacy codes, which facilitated the execution of the methodology without greater complications or adjustments.

The challenge at the different institutions consisted in not exchanging the selected texts for ones with simpler, more understandable language, which allowed us to evaluate whether the strategies of flexibility implemented on the methodology would work with regard to receptivity during the sessions and reading comprehension.

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Working with participants from the UAI, the structured teaching methodology was crucial in carrying out each activity. The presentation of visual elements (images) with the different moments (greeting, icebreakers, presentation of the text, execution of the activity, conclusions, addressing questions and doubts) allowed for anticipation of the actions to come, as well as their comprehension and satisfactory execution.

Similarly, the role of facilitator changed with respect to what Pre-Texts establishes, since facilitators cannot put themselves on the same level as other participants and take part in activities. They must have an active role constantly advising and accompanying participants, continuing to be leaders, since populations such as those from the UAI need an authority figure and those from the SOMOS company need a guide to constantly steer the development of each activity. Additionally, the majority of participants need to have their attention continuously called back to the activity for the entire amount of time in which they participate in it, despite the fact that the activities are pleasing to them.

The factor of the role of the guide is still more influential when we look at populations with disabilities, as they have trouble addressing themes from a more integral and critical point of view. They wind up repeating information literally, copying it, which makes continuous orientation necessary in order to reach the desired goals of implementation of the methodology: participation, citizenship and innovation. Working with the texts, the values of respect, assertive communication and leadership were reinforced, above all with those adult participants who were among the public functionaries of Rionegro.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Also evident was the need to address specific themes on a micro-level with these populations. If the themes were addressed too generally, from a macro perspective, total comprehension was not achieved. An example of this was the “Off on Tangents” dynamic, which aims to relate other texts with the work done during the sessions. To meet the activity’s objective, it was necessary to adjust the assignment: participants were encouraged to research some public figure they related to the main character in the text. In the cases of participants from the UAI and from SOMOS, the texts were given by the facilitators and they related them to situations in daily life; in both cases results were satisfactory.

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Figure 1: As he makes a book cover for El Llano en Llamas, this participant tells us he is learning to read and write. This makes him feel happy.

SOMOS, Rionegro, Colombia, 2019. Photo by the UAI team

Figure 2: This participant was most struck by the main character’s hen in the text from El Llano en llamas. SOMOS, Rionegro, Colombia, 2019.

Photo by the UAI team

With the children, youths and adolescents from the UAI who had more severe levels of disabilities, the text was exchanged for short fables and a text from The Little Prince, in order to use pieces of literature that would be more familiar and comprehensible. A strategy of shadowing was occasionally implemented to enable evaluation of the capacity to comprehend the text.

TESTIMONIALS The following are testimonials from some of the facilitators who took part in this experience.

Adriana María Martínez Cardona, psychologist: The Pre-Texts methodology was an innovative idea that allowed older adults, families and leaders of community action boards to become children again, as became apparent in the activities, awakening in them a great sense of creativity and innovation, leaving behind their shyness till they

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reached the point of taking charge of the text, becoming the ones to propose activities and lead the group.

Acceptance and appropriation of the methodology was so high that they began to replicate it in each of their groups, with great reception. It was evident the activities relaxed them and made them feel calmer, while at the same time they worked on memory, motor skills and cognitive processes.

Juan Manuel Castaño, social worker: Taking into account that the text implemented was very complex for the kind of population with whom we worked (older adults), we achieved everyone’s participation, facing social barriers, understanding the importance of not being guided by prejudice, and of fomenting gender equity, good teamwork and nondiscrimination to maintain interest in the proposed work.

Continuous interaction was observed, strengthening interpersonal relationships through the formation of “collaborative networks” to improve learning environments and promote collaborative, co-responsible work.

This methodology continued to be applied in other accompaniment meetings with gerontological groups, which were notably more participative and collaborative in the topics addressed.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Figure 3 and 4: Each group made a postcard to send to Juan Rulfo, author of El llano en llamas. SOMOS. Rionegro, Colombia, 2019. Photo by the UAI team

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Jessica Viviana Tobón Yepes, psychologist: Without a doubt, the satisfaction generated by all educational processes is unique among all other kinds of richness, in the measure that acquired knowledge not only enriches the intellect but also the human spirit. And it is this which has become more relevant in humanity’s current times.

To have had the opportunity to participate in the formation of Pre-Texts is now a life experience that greatly enriches my practice as an educator and psycho-social professional with didactic tools for social intervention and educational formation in the populations with whom I work.

I am infinitely grateful for the opportunity that was offered, and I hope that my practice puts the rigorous human sense of the methodology into action.

Figure 5: With the help of a sign language interpreter, an activity is carried out to include the person with hearing disabilities, bringing him closer to the text, the methodology and his coworkers. SOMOS, Rionegro, Colombia, 2019. Photo by the UAI team

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Catalina Quintero Jiménez, physical therapist, critical care specialist: At the beginning of the Pre-Texts training it seemed like something different that went beyond all the educational stratagems I knew, and even when we finished and needed to start implementing the methodology I felt unsure and fearful, doubting whether I was actually clear on the methodology, whether I could carry it out appropriately.

My doubts multiplied when I found out that in the group I would work with to implement the methodology there would be people with cognitive, physical and hearing disabilities, as well as illiterate people and some with low education levels . . . this was a challenge for me and an even greater one for the methodology, which is why from the start we sought strategies and strengthened teamwork so that we would all help each other to meet the objectives of each session and each activity.

Only a few changes were made to the methodology, which aimed to meet its objectives. This experience taught me that social inclusion begins in the smallest of spaces, such as among families and in classrooms, spaces where everyone shares. The experience of Pre-Texts enriches citizenship, tolerance, inclusion and, above all, love of reading and learning in the people who participated.

For me it was a pretext to learn tolerance, to be more creative and to adapt to changes and experiences in life, in order to always do my best and bring out the best in others and remember that our limitations are inside of us and we always have to find a way to overcome them and learn from what each person has to share with us even if they don’t know it or don’t intend to give it.

Bibiana Rendon Carrillo, psychologist:

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Pre-Texts is a learning experience, and one of getting to know yourself.

To carry out the methodology with different population groups, with their challenges, successes and failures, has in some way allowed me to get to know my own capabilities, both professionally and personally. This process has transformed my way of perceiving and living in the world. It has given me the chance to challenge myself and show that with such a beautiful methodology, inclusion is possible. With respect to the participants, the

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methodology adjusted itself to the specific needs of each of them, allowing for strengthening bonds and the construction of knowledge in community.

Fredy Alberto Ospina Herrera, psychologist and specialist in Pedagogy and Didactics, Master of Education: For me as a teacher and psycho-social profesional, the experience of carrying out the Pre-Texts methodology is a great complement to what I do because of how well it facilitates context comprehension through its approach to the challenging text. Initially, in their nervousness about the text’s complexity, students develop strategies to build knowledge that permits them to appropriate major nodes of the text for themselves. Effects reach even farther when students build a bridge between the text and its topic, arriving at a proximate context, whether local or from that community.

The changes are obvious! Since only a part of the text is selected for the exercise, students develop an interest in finishing the reading as they comprehend how the narrative relates to reality, to their own realities. They come to see well beyond the traditional way reading is taught. I reaffirm that students pass from reading the text to reading the context and their own relationships with both of these.

Olga Milena Marulanda, psychologist: Pre-Texts was a marvelous experience from which I personally learned many lessons, having had the opportunity to join a group and together experience moments full of content that came from knowledge acquired throughout our lives, as well as the construction of something that was being lived in that moment.

I applied the methodology in two groups, one of youths and one of women, and in both the lessons were very meaningful, since despite having chosen a text that welcomed citizen participation based on democracy the people in both groups went beyond that. With each activity they increasingly questioned their roles as women in society and in the home, as well as the courage a woman needs just because she is a woman. The youths began to question their lives, their decisions, what they were experiencing and what

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they wanted to be related to the management of their own lives. That’s when I started to really value what I was doing and the achievements that the methodology allowed me to bring out in these two groups.

This construction that was happening collectively and that we were all learning from emerged on its own from a text that touched sensitive fibers and allowed us to feel that changes were needed, that each of us had the power to make them. We went from having shy people afraid of expressing themselves and participating to having very empowered people giving their opinions, valuing their words and their thoughts, people who were ready to talk and to discover many talents in themselves, people who made true works of art, who dared to write, paint, draw, act, sing and even recite, through a small piece of text that let them see the world in a different way.

When I first got to know the methodology it seemed like something very commonplace. At the time I didn’t think it could manage to meet my expectations, which were high, but when I started to feel that I was exploring and asking what this little piece of text that spun my head around was trying to question in me, I could see that there was something great in it that was leading me to question myself and to discover new talents in me.

This is a tool that I plan to keep using in my professional life, with my work groups, since I feel that it lets me interact more with them, that they see me as an equal and that together we generate learning, because with Pre-Texts we all learn. There is not one wise person who knows it all and stands at the front to amaze everyone with knowledge. Applying this methodology we are all equal, we all contribute, we all learn and we are all allowed to dream, change and improve.

I love this methodology and the possibility for growth that it has given me.

Johanna Ballesteros Rozonzew, social worker:

Pre-Texts in Colombia

The Pre-Texts experience was incredibly meaningful, from the acquisition of knowledge to the application of that knowledge with others. At times the activity with a certain population could become rather complex, but the capacity for reinvention of the learned methodologies provided possibilities for the other to understand the texts and comprehend the central idea that was developed in them.

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The best population with which I worked was from Oasis Corporation and the Samaritanas; the former for how they used their own problems to extract excellent life lessons from the texts in the exercises, and the latter because they took their complex reality and found the possibility within themselves to go deep into each of the they texts on which they worked.

This is all very gratifying as it manages to awaken a bit of love for the text, for the words that are transcendent, in a vulnerable population, and to help them take the lessons they learn from it into their lives.

Nancy Iral, psychologist: The Pre-Texts experience has been a process in which personal growth and the growth of knowledge allowed me to reach others with the creation of different activities; everything comes from the selection of a text that let the population mold it to themselves, as well as the way it invites us as professionals to lower the text’s complexity so that they can understand it to break it down and be able to extract the necessary lessons to question the day-today life of participants.

Pre-Texts was the methodology we needed to incentivize curiosity in others, at first because of the texts with which we were working, but beyond that, for the reading itself, taking from the texts those lessons immersed in it that apply to daily life. With this, we all allowed ourselves to take lessons hidden in the words and in this way question our lives using what was written. This invited us to learn and to enjoy every detail of the text.

Diana Carolina Hurtado Ortiz, graduate in special education: In implementing the Pre-Texts methodology with populations with disabilities, diverse situations became evident that changed the direction of initially established parameters. Without changing the essence of the methodology we made reasonable agreements (“flexibilizations”) to carry out the proposed activities with videos, plays, songs and poetry, which made participants’ comprehension possible, since their diagnoses had not allowed them to internalize literacy codes. We used different channels as entry points for

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the information in order to make the selected text understood.

The structured teaching methodology was fundamental for carrying out each activity, the presentation of visuals (images) at each moment (greeting, execution of the activity, conclusions, resolving questions and doubts) helped to anticipate what we would work on during each session and to locate participants with learning difficulties or autism in space and time.

Due to participants’ learning difficulties in understanding ideas, resolving problems, processing information, inferring information, etc., each activity took double the amount of time planned for it. Instructions had to be given concretely, in detail and with examples, as well as repeated often. Art is a way of presenting learning, and all of the participants could express their thoughts and feelings through artistic representations, showing others their pleasure and their desire to explore the text further. When the training was finished, most participants expressed that they wanted the methodology implemented with all their teachers in order to learn from all subjects covered and be able to learn in groups and in a more experiential way.

Different styles and rhythms of learning via auditory and visual stimulation were taken into account in order to set an intention for the text’s main ideas. It was evident from the work carried out that, with the appropriate tools, the Pre-Texts methodology could be used in a universal way so that reading comprehension could be guaranteed. Even though it has always been implemented in classrooms, scholastic contexts, or with people from an academic background in which the methodology is easy to comprehend and apply, this challenge demonstrated the methodology’s flexibility and its capacity to reach people independent of their condition, scholastic background, and social condition, meeting its objectives of building citizenship, participation and innovation, to which we can now add playing an important role in social inclusion, with the appropriate people (facilitators) and tools.

Elkin Vargas Ospina:

Pre-Texts in Colombia

The Pre-Texts methodology has been a very enriching experience since this teaching method uses a short text to stimulate the creativity, critical thinking and literary arts of a group of young people. This facilitates innovation, rein-

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terpretation and interrogation of the text that is read, which happens under three parameters: literary, innovation and citizenship.

Without a doubt, we know that critical thinking involves special abilities for analysis and interpretation, these being the greatest challenges for these young people who have difficulties in developing their arguments.

Many artistic productions were done in the different group activities, bringing out their creative interpretations of the text. They expressed that they felt motivated by every activity and wanted to lose their inhibitions with literary exercises, playing with language and creating the unexpected.

A widely-enjoyed moment was the cartonera activity, in which the young people created their own book covers while I read the text out loud. The artistic and written representations were hung “online” (on a string), and each person read the contributions of their classmates, learning to value their own production as well as those of others.

It was clear from the results of each activity that the methodology was able to work with different levels of education, as well as to widen innovation and the act of listening to others, strengthening the bases of citizenship since the student is the only protagonist. The Pre-Texts methodology definitely allows the development of self-reflection and the acquisition of new skills, as it is seen as solid education by participants every time they express what they learned in each activity.

Franci García, psychologist, master of family health: Today I pause here with this sheet of paper to register the experience I had with Pre-Texts in the group of presidents of community action boards. This methodology is like magic in education and in any kind of learning. In the group with which I imparted the methodology, a rhythm was created, a practice of the theory through the arts, in which they tried to give the best of themselves—even when they had never done something before. In each activity I saw an advance in the spread of respect and admiration of others, I saw that they were amazed by the elements they produce, each time we mentioned the world “citizenship” they thought of always taking others into account.

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With Pre-Texts an infinite number of things were created, such as: cartonera publishers, tobacco factory readings, clothesline literature, among others, all generated from a short reading called “The Dolphin.” I could see in each participant how the motivation emerged to acquire new knowledge. In each activity they named how they were improving their actions as community leaders and how through the methodology they grew closer to the community, to the desired objectives, obtaining benefits for the community.

In each activity the same methodology was used: literacy, innovation and citizenship. This was more than enough to generate creativity in the group and turn it into a “magic” space, as I said, since the knowledge each person brought in contributed to critical thought, all through this simple but rigorous methodology.

Cielo Muñoz García, psychologist:

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Pre-Texts is a proposed pedagogy that manages to cause meaningful transformations in my training strategies as a professional and in my ways of relating to others in society and in my family. It is based on relatively simple protocols with a deep ability to impact each participant and training professional. My experience was very enriching as I had the opportunity to train myself in the methodology and to then accompany a team of trainees in its implementation and exercise among diverse population groups with high levels of social vulnerability and weak cultural development. Pre-Texts became a high-impact tool to strengthen the culture of citizenship and of the individual in each and every participant.

The children, adolescents, youths, women, diverse communities, older adults and families linked to the programs of the Subsecretaría de Bienestar Social express their gratitude for the learning acquired in this exercise (sic). However, I must emphasize that the reach of Pre-Texts allows us to address the population with disabilities; this was a challenge that required trainees to grow and potentialize their skills of communication and creativity to develop their training and strengthen their essential skills in daily life. In this way I wish to praise the value of the proposed Pre-Texts methodology and its breadth. A gratifying and enriching experience.

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Figure 6: During the last session participants wrote messages about what they most enjoyed or learned in the Pre-Texts sessions, which were then used to make the “Pre-Texts Somos” mural marking the closure of a meaningful experience in the lives of all the participants and facilitators. SOMOS, Rionegro, Colombia, 2019. Photo by the UAI team

With all the work done in sessions and with the application of pertinent strategies, we realized the success of the methodology and that we had reached our goals. Strategies such as modeling, structured teaching and multisensory focus allowed each user to understand instructions and execute actions one step at a time, sometimes with continuous orientation by the facilitators, but managing to meet the objective of text comprehension. Analysis of the texts in their contexts was carried out with all the populations participating in the methodology’s implementation.

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The Impact of Pre-Texts on the Library Network of the Bank of the Republic The Impact of Ángela María Pérez Mejía

Pre-Texts on the Library Network of the Bank of the Republic

BOGOTÁ

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Workshop year 2019

Place Bogotá, Colombia

Facilitators Victoria Mena

Supervisors Natalia Guarnizo

Institutions involved Bank of the Republic of Colombia, Luis Ángel Arango Library

Impacted population 28 CULTURAL FACILITATORS FROM

Pre-Texts in Colombia

THE BANK OF THE REPUBLIC

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Here I will share the experience using the Pre-Texts methodology within the network of libraries of the Bank of the Republic, in particular as related to the national project called “La paz se toma la palabra” [Peace Raises its Voice]. Allow me to provide a bit of context: the cultural network of the Bank of the Republic of Colombia, led by the Cultural Deputy Manager’s office, has a nation-wide presence through museums, libraries, musical programs, and virtual activities.

This network includes the country’s emblematic institutions, such as the Luis Ángel Arango Library, the Gold Museum and the Miguel Urrutia Art Museum (MAMU); in addition it reaches urban and rural areas through its cultural network, present in 29 cities. We manage a large part of Colombia’s cultural heritage with the mission to contribute to strengthening the skills of Colombian citizens. Annually, close to eight million in-person users and 12 million virtual users access our services, collections, and programming.1 The library network, led by the Luis Ángel Arango Library, uses the promotion of reading and writing as a fundamental tool to develop users’ skills at acting as citizens and contributing to social development. It is precisely there that we have found an ideal methodology in Pre-Texts. Although the libraries have spent years promoting reading, the experience with Pre-Texts has allowed us to take reading and writing to new interpretive, critical, and creative levels. More than a teaching methodology, Pre-Texts is a learning methodology that lets libraries and facilitators develop the autonomy to interpret and exercise creative, critical, collaborative reading, breaking with the vertical schemes of teaching.

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Figure 1: Publishing cartonera book covers at a short Pre-Texts workshop at the Biblioteca El Tunal with reading facilitators from the Red Distrital de Bibliotecas Públicas de Bogotá. Bogotá, Colombia, 2019. Photo by a workshop participant

All these skills are fundamental to supporting the generation of societies that learn at the library, particularly in countries like Colombia where diversity and inequality nudge us to explore other ways of getting to know and understanding our environments, in the process counteracting the effects of deficient educational systems. The Pre-Texts experience allows librarians, facilitators, and users to approach any kind of text, literary or scientific, from a place of pleasure and with a spirit of adventure in the asking of questions.

These attributes undoubtedly open doors for freedom to doubt, to listen to what others think, and to appropriate words, images, and symbols on interpretive levels.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

Contact with Pre-Texts began seven years ago, in partnership with institutions from the city of Bogotá. Various workshops were offered in which some of our librarians were trained in the methodology. The transformation in their way of

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viewing their work was immediate. It is no secret that a paradoxical situation is often observed in our libraries, in which our librarians’ technical training distances them from understanding reading as an exercise in participation, exchange, and pleasure. From the first moment, the methodology has been used with different segments of the public, and it has generated important changes in the way of promoting reading and in the general way of relating to the public.

One unforeseen result has been the generation of creative content to interact with the segments of the public who seek alternative ways to approach the Library’s bibliographic heritage. While it is true that these changes are part of a general trend with libraries facing new ways to relate to content, there are several characteristics of the Pre-Texts methodology that have significantly

Figure 2: Acting out a scene from a section of La Vorágine by José Eustasio Rivera at a short Pre-Texts workshop at the Biblioteca El Tunal with reading facilitators from the Red Distrital de Bibliotecas Públicas de Bogotá. Bogotá, Colombia, 2019. Photo by Merly Guanumen

Fugure 3: Reading out loud a section of La vorágine by José Eustasio Rivera while participants make cartonera book covers at a short Pre-Texts workshop at the Biblioteca El Tunal with reading facilitators from the Red Distrital de Bibliotecas Públicas de Bogotá. Bogotá, Colombia, 2019. Photo by Merly Guanumen

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Figure 4 and 5: Publishing cartonera book covers at a short Pre-Texts workshop at the Biblioteca El Tunal with reading facilitators from the Red Distrital de Bibliotecas Públicas de Bogotá. Bogotá, Colombia, 2019. Photo by a workshop participant

helped these transformations. First, the Pre-Texts workshops are ambitious, that is, they seek to produce critical and creative readers who do not settle for less, and to increase participants’ expectations levels of interaction. Second, the fact that it is a process generates relationships and networks of common interest makes it ideal for consolidating reading communities that are key to the libraries’ mission to accompany users’ development during different moments of their lives. Third, it is a methodology created at Harvard University, which carries a seal of excellence, but it also is full of specifically Latin American experiences, such as Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, the experience of cartoneras, Paolo Freire’s pedagogy, cordel literature, Afro-Colombian rap, etc. This makes Pre-Texts a tool that allows for connections with international references while validating a local statement with its own aesthetic.

Pre-Texts in Colombia

For the past several years, the Cultural Deputy Manager’s Office has worked on “La paz se toma la palabra,” a network of volunteer cultural facilitators who work on a national level in their communities, using reading, writing, and the arts to contribute to the formation of cultures of peace. The premise that motivates this work is that in addition to social transformations needed to advance conflict resolution, we also need the words to call out that reality by name, as well as the images to imagine it. We identify the need to train these facilitators to support and enhance their work.

Last year we began the process of training them in the Pre-Texts methodology, and this year we hope to train new groups. The decision about this investment is

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In the face of disquiet, Pre-Texts was the first tool that offered applicable responses and alternatives to keep reading, writing, and reinterpreting. Without a doubt, this is a methodology that can transform the way we do things at a library, in a classroom, or in unconventional spaces where readings continue to boundlessly expand.

The work of Pre-Texts is inspiring and has quantitative and qualitative results at our libraries, as one of our participants wrote: “We learned a lot that will definitely be of use to us all in our work with communities and all the segments of the public with whom we work.” (Montería librarian, 2019).2

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Like a Kindergartener: Pre-Texts in El Salvador backed by prior experiences that show us that this methodology allows participants to acquire the critical and interpretive skills required of cultural leaders to continue their multiplying effects in communities.

It is valuable to count on this experience at precisely this moment of worldwide crises, of isolation and uncertainty, when the facilitators trained in Pre-Texts continue their work by their own choice, and together. Exploring a text by Manuel Zapata Olivella (writer, doctor, anthropologist, and researcher in the field of Afro-Colombian culture), they are developing a virtual methodology of asking questions of the text, recognizing and reinventing it, and they are doing it with collaborative online tools.

María Tenorio

Como un Kindergartener: Pre-Textos en El Salvador SANTA TECLA, EL SALVADOR

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Workshop year 2012

Place Santa Tecla, El Salvador

Facilitators + Gabriela Poma-Traynor + Jerónimo Duarte

Supervisors + Doris Sommer

Institutions involved Escuela Superior de Economía and Negocios (ESEN)

Impacted Population

Pre-Texts in El Salvador

N/A

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Have you ever seen how children in kindergarten spend all their time playing, experimenting with materials, making art, freely creating? Before entering into the seriousness of first grade, going to school is marvelous. Well, last week I lived it in the flesh for the first time in my life, experiencing something like early childhood education: I danced, I rapped, I cut and pasted colored paper, I drew and colored, I sculpted clay, I wrote a short story, I acted in a play and I made many friends from other institutions and other countries.

I had the best time, I learned a lot and I wound up tired and sweaty, like a kindergartener.

I did all this in the Pre-Texts workshop for literacy and creative interpretation, which was held at the Superior School of Economics and Business (ESEN) from July 9–13, 2012. This training combining literature and art has been offered by Harvard University and its Cultural Agents initiative since 2007 in different countries around the world; it is centered on how to develop intellectual curiosity, stimulate critical thinking and support citizen participation in young people. The workshop was guided by Professor Doris Sommer, creator of the initiative, and her students Gabriela Poma-Traynor from El Salvador and Jerónimo Duarte from Colombia.

This workshop mixed several ingredients, with no substitutions allowed: a bit of what’s called high literature, understood to be an intellectually challenging text for the students’ level of comprehension; copious amounts of creativity expressed

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Figure 1 and 2: Pre-Texts in Tonacatepeque. Third grade students at the Complejo Educativo Católico Ricardo Poma work with “Pinocchio” and display some of their projects. El Salvador, 2012. Photo by Gabriela Poma

in diverse languages; willingness for active participation on the part of all at the workshop; and a solid critical basis derived from Latin American cultural practices and elements of literary theory. I will here describe and give examples of what the Pre-Texts dynamic was like at its first Salvadoran edition.

Pre-Texts in El Salvador

On the first day all participants (teachers, artists, trainers and some students) received a two-page fragment of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus—an ancient text in verse, translated to Spanish, with many obscure words and literary figures.

We started with the Tobacco Factory activity, which consists of someone reading the text out loud while the others perform a manual craft. We all designed and produced handmade book covers for the Greek classic. The Harvard team had planned other activities for the first day, such as Spoken Portraits, Question the Text, Intertext and Cordel Literature.

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On the second day all of us participants kept unfurling our creativity as we became facilitators, guiding artistic or playful activities to continue exploring the possibilities of Prometheus. That was how some of our companions got us to rap lyrics inspired by the dialogue between Hermes and the tied-up Titan; others had us write short stories and monologues or transform everyday objects into elements of the work; we got to make foam stamps, sculpt the characters and take artistic photographs, among other activities.

The workshop, which at first glance seems like child’s play, is nourished by Latin American cultural practices and literary theory. For example, the activity of the handmade book is inspired by the cartonera publishers that started in Argentina during that country’s crisis in 2001 and have since proliferated all over the continent, including here in El Salvador. The Tobacco Factory features the activity of reading out loud, which has been performed in cigar manufacturing plants in Cuba since the 19th century, and which turned those workers into one of the most cultured and political sectors of the island’s population. During the activity we found out that this was also done in shoe factories in Nicaragua, thanks to Nicaraguan participant Margarita Vannini. Forum Theater, which we did the fourth day, comes from what is called “Theater of the Oppressed” by Brazilian Augusto Boal—a style of theater that involves voluntary interventions on stage of people from the audience, which Boal promoted internationally from the 1970s up to his death in 2009.2 One of the principles of the workshop is the spirit of risk promoted by Paulo Freire to encourage free and creative thinking.3 This also implies that the teacher must risk not knowing how things will turn out, instead of adhering to a detailed program of inputs, methods and results. As an educator, Pre-Texts questions my way of interacting with my classroom. What I ask myself now is: Does this methodology really work to get students to learn to enjoy reading? Next year I will probably take the risk of breaking paradigms with my students until we are all tired but happy.

Perhaps the most dramatic results of this workshop have been the implementation of Pre-Texts in areas controlled by drug traffickers. At one high school, for example, the nun who greets students in the morning also collects their weapons

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from them in order to store them and give them back when they leave. These very students have been the best possible interpreters of terrorific scenes from Shakespeare, such as the appearance of the ghost of the king murdered by his brother.4

ACTIVITIES Transforming Objects, by Oscar Guardado Each participant takes an object (or more than one object, if the group is small) and everyone forms a circle. Place the chosen objects in the middle of the circle. Remove any objects that are doubled up so that there are more possibilities for “transformation” while playing. The order of participation can be clockwise or some other improvised order, depending on the nature of the group (whether participants are accustomed to these activities, whether they are young, timid or old, etc.) The dynamic for participation is that each member of the workshop goes to the middle of the circle, takes an object and transforms it into something related to our work (text, drawing, play, etc.).

When it is each participant’s turn, they will each have three seconds to transform their object, and they cannot mention a transformation that another participant has already said; this helps participants avoid preparing beforehand to say the name of something, some figure or character. It is important to make clear that although no name that has already been transformed may be repeated, objects that were already used may be used again, as long as the interpretation is not repeated.

Pre-Texts in El Salvador

Lastly, when people come to the middle to transform their object, this transformation should be accompanied with the attitude or the sound that is characteristic of the shape, person or object into which the object is transforming (e.g. if it’s a lion, the participant could imitate its roar).

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Figure 3 to 5: Pre-Texts in Tonacatepeque. Third grade students at the Complejo Educativo Católico Ricardo Poma work with “Pinocchio” and display some of their projects. El Salvador, 2012. Photo by Gabriela Poma

Foam Stamps, by María Tenorio Objective: To translate images from the text into images that can be reproduced by hand.

Materials: sheets of foam, ink pads, cardboard, scissors, glue (liquid silicone recommended).

Instructions: Each table of participants gets a piece of paper with a list of elements present in the text (for example: water, fire, earth, air). These pieces of paper are made by the person facilitating the workshop. Each participant explores the text, looking for the element related to the assigned category (for example: the ocean would be related to water; rocks would be related to earth).

Each participant makes a very simple drawing of the chosen element on a sheet of foam (no larger than the ink pad previously distributed among the tables). Make sure the drawing has registered on the foam and cut it out, keeping in mind that when the stamp prints on the paper the pencil lines will be blank, while the foam that hasn’t been drawn on will turn the color of the ink. Glue the foam stamp on a piece of cardboard to reinforce it.

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All participants print their stamps on pieces of paper and write down the quote from which they got their idea for the stamp. Everyone presents their work, hanging a gallery on a wall or at another appropriate site.

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In this activity words become images that can be reproduced by hand, taking on characteristics that are different from the drawings made directly onto paper. Participants’ creativity is put in play and they can take their own and others’ images to illustrate whatever they want. What’s more, the practice of making a stamp forces us to “think in reverse” since what is stamped is the opposite of what was drawn.

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Pre-Texts in Ireland: Diverse Journeys in Literary Dublin Emma O’Brien

Active years 2018 - 2019

Place Dublin, Ireland

Facilitators DUBLIN

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FACILITATORS

Supervisors Jenny Haughton, on behalf of the Grangegorman Public Art Working Group

Institutions involved City of Dublin Education and Training Board (CDETB) Education Service to Prison, Complex Youth Theatre, Common Ground Arts Organisation, Dublin Adult Learning Centre (DALC), Dublin City Council, Glencree Centre for Peace & Reconciliation—Cultural Diversity Programme, Grangegorman Area Based Childhood, Grangegorman Development Agency, Henrietta Street Alternative School, Home School Liaison Scheme Dublin 7, Independent Artists and Storytellers Dublin 1 & 7 area, the Ireland Funds, MOST Garda Youth Diversion Project, Bradog Youth Service, National College of Art and Design Dublin, North West Inner City Network Gateway Project, Pathways Centre, Stanhope Street Girls Secondary School Dublin 7, St. Michaelʼs Family Resource Centre Dublin 8, St. Paulʼs Primary Dublin 7 Learning Support and Special Needs Organiser, Wheatfield Prison Education Unit, Technology University Dublin (TU Dublin), Writerʼs Centre, Dublin

Impacted population APROX.100 STUDENTS

1.000

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Context The Public Art Working Group, responsible for implementing the Grangegorman Arts Strategy as part of the redevelopment of the Grangegorman site in Dublin’s north inner city, invited Doris Sommer to give an introductory session on Pre-Texts in June 2016. At the time, a socio-economic profile for the area highlighted early school leaving and the challenges faced in retaining students both in educational and community contexts. Technology University Dublin (TU Dublin) hosted this first Pre-Texts Train the Trainers workshop on campus in May 2018. The following text about our experiences with Pre-Texts in Ireland was shared at the 2019 International Meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centres Institutes (CHCI) in June 2019.

Train the Trainers An open call was made to teachers, trainers, youth workers, artists, educators and others working in learning environments with children, young people or adults in Dublin’s inner city to join the Train the Trainers workshops.

Following a positive response, the training began when Prof. Sommer facilitated a two-and-a-half-day intensive workshop at the TU Dublin campus, Grangegorman. Twenty-three participants from diverse backgrounds across Dublin City joined the Pre-Texts training.

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Arriving on the first day, no one could have imagined the special bond that would bring the community of learners together. Over the following days, participants enjoyed ‘playing’ Pre-Texts, working with the challenging text “Panopticism” from French philosopher Michel Foucault’s 1975 book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.1 This text choice was deemed appropriate given the history of incarceration associated with the Grangegorman site.

The first session began with ice-breakers encouraging the group to get to know each other in an inclusive way, followed by a reading of the text out loud as participants designed book covers while listening. After the book covers were developed (in the style of cartoneras, a Latin American publishing tradition of using recycled cardboard to make beautiful book covers), everyone asked a question of the text. Choosing a piece of writing from recycled literature such as magazines and newspapers, participants used clothespins to hang their pieces on a clothesline. “Publishing online”’ in this innovative, literal way is a central aspect of Pre-Texts. Moving the clothesline outdoors Figure 1: Trainer session in the grounds of Grangegorman. Dublin, Ireland, 2018.

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Photo by Lori Keeve.

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to enjoy the beautiful sunny Dublin weather, the group read and discussed each published piece, making the texts become more meaningful, one by one. These “tangents” are a core element of Pre-Texts that invite participants to connect an external text to the original text. Doing this also highlighted that the activities of Pre-Texts are not constrained to a typical classroom environment. Another key Pre-Texts moment, asking “What did we do?” upon concluding every activity, requires participants to share their reflections on that process. The democratizing effect of collective reflection was identified as a key transformative moment in which everyone was encouraged to look at each other, not just at the facilitator, ensuring that everyone had an opportunity to contribute, listening to each voice until everyone had spoken. This initially challenged the Dublin group, however, as the workshop progressed these moments became deeper and more reflective, encapsulating the participants’ transformative learning journey.

Participants were then encouraged to form groups and create a learning activity linked to the text for their peers. What followed was an amazing array of over twenty innovative and creative learning modules that brought “Panopticism” to life through poetry, photography, word activities, drama, theatre, mime, collective story writing, editorial work and sculpture making. All were delivered and received enthusiastically by participants. In one session, the artist educators developed a learning activity based on architectural/urban planning. The facilitators laid down a physical boundary of the town wall, as described in the text. Participants created a model of a building mentioned in the text. As each group member added their model, the town from the text emerged in physical form, leading to a stimulating debate regarding contemporary urban planning and spatial politics.

Towards the end of the Train the Trainers workshop, participants shared personalized lesson plans to implement Pre-Texts in their own community. Acknowledging Dublin’s rich literary heritage, many considered using texts from acclaimed Dublin authors such as James Joyce to introduce Pre-Texts in their communities. Two “weavers” were chosen from within the group to support participants in introducing Pre-Texts in their own communities and aid the development of a community of practice

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Prison Education: StoryDads Program A small group of fathers are listening to a reading of the popular children’s story The Gruffalo.2 Together they are working innovatively and creatively with the story text, focusing on developing their children’s literacy skills. This is no ordinary group of Dads; these men are currently in prison and the StoryDads program has been developed to support meaningful contact with their children. StoryDads is just one of many examples resulting from the introduction of Pre-Texts to Ireland.

Visual artist named Bernie and a teacher named Anthony introduced Pre-Texts into the StoryDads project in Wheatfield Prison. StoryDads is a project that runs in conjunction with the prison’s parenting course. Through this project, students are taught to read storybooks to their children. Adapting Pre-Texts, Bernie and Anthony encouraged participants to develop original written stories for their children. Working with a small group of men aged 20-50, they developed a number of creative techniques using text from the story of “The Gruffalo” by Julia Donaldson. In this way participants were encouraged to embody characters and develop character tangents that were original and unique. It was both a fun and educational experience. One participant noted of his Pre-Texts experience: “I will use some of what I learned in this workshop, because I hope to be able to write and illustrate some sort of kids’ storybook for my kids that would be specifically tailored to them, so that when they read it they will know it is about them and not just another fairy-tale book. When they are older they will have their books and realize I was there for them without actually being there.”

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An adult education teacher named Robbie also adapted Pre-Texts for prison education environments using text from the novel The Country Girls by acclaimed Irish author Edna O’Brien3.

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Figura 2: Compromiso grupal con el texto y la ciudad en 3-D en El Panóptico III (Michel Foucault, 1975).

Dublín,2:Irlanda, Crédito: Lorithe Keeve, Agencia de in Desarrollo de Grangegorman Figure Group 2018. engagement with text and 3-D city Panopticism III (Michel Foucault, 1975).

Dublin, Ireland, 2018. Photo by Lori Keeve.

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Youth Programs A youth justice worker named Tom was first out of the Irish training blocks when he introduced Pre-Texts to a group of young people in Dublin’s north inner city. He worked with a group of teenagers (aged 13-14) considered “at risk” in a community-based high-support school. The school places a strong emphasis on students’ literacy and social development, utilizing an alternative, more flexible education program and approach. In weekly small group sessions Tom experimented with Pre-Texts, choosing a number of different creative activities based on text from the novel Trash by Andy Mulligan.4 Despite the varying literacy and attention levels in the group, an exercise in writing a script from a scene in the novel brought about an insightful debate on homelessness. One young person got easily distracted and requested to play pool. Tom adapted the activities to meet this request by introducing a game of pool upon completion of a creative learning activity.

Elsewhere, a playwright and creative facilitator named Anthony modified PreTexts for a community of young people. The Complex Youth Theater works with young people (aged 14-19) to create energetic, new and original material.

The youth theatre is founded on a philosophy of respect for all members and strives to enhance social and personal development through performance and creative writing. Working with a small group, Anthony set out to visit and reimagine a scene from “The Dead,” a story from James Joyce’s Dubliners.5 Through the application of various creative and artistic techniques, Anthony noted that, “the black and white of the text became a colorful performance piece.” Pre-Texts was central to the development of the Complex Youth Theaters’ new play Dubs—”What happens when a group of young activists take over the house of The Dead”—which premiered in Dublin. One young participant noted of his experience developing a theater play through Pre-Texts: “I wouldn’t have read Joyce’s stuff, cause when you’re in school it’s so different, but this way when you’re acting it out and stuff, you get it.”

An artist educator named Leonie also introduced a group of young people participating in a youth club to Pre-Texts using a variety of texts, including Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.6 The group responded positively and enthusiastically to the creative activities that they developed together.

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Community Setting Bridging the intersection between formal and informal education, an arts educator named Jenny and the resident artist named Jimmy introduced Pre-Texts to a group made up of art students from Dublin’s National College of Art and Design and residents from Dublin’s inner city. They chose George Orwell’s Animal Farm as their text because its themes were readily identifiable in the context of contemporary societal issues of Brexit negotiations and climate change.7 The text and creative activities sparked discussions and sensitively enabled participants to discuss personal beliefs and attitudes. Participants in this group came from very different socio-economic backgrounds, which led to interesting discussions and dialogue. As Jimmy noted, “Though challenging at times, facilitating a group from varied socioeconomic backgrounds through Pre-Texts was a testament to the versatility of the approach.”

A community development worker named Eilish selected “Women’s Position in Irish Society,” a text from her Master’s thesis, when working with a group of mature women at St. Michael’s Family Resource Centre in Dublin City.8 Among the various creative activities developed, Eilish noted that role play activities enabled the group to deeply engage with the text and identify and communicate key aspects of women’s lives. Eilish said of her experience introducing Pre-Texts, “The Pre-Texts approach is a good way of enabling people to engage and learn in a fun way. It demystifies knowledge by breaking down complex ideas/language and by using creative means to increase participation and to explore learning in a collective way.”

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In another community setting, a university educator named Emma and a social inclusion coordinator named Grainne adapted Pre-Texts together with a group of young women at the Gateways Project using text called “Stoneybatter, Dublin’s Urban Village” by Kevin Kearns.9 Grainne said of Pre-Texts, “I can see the potential benefits of Pre-Texts for communities within parts of the inner city who have had negative education experiences, because Pre-Texts is great fun and learner-driven. For some, participating in Pre-Texts may be their first experience of learning and having fun at the same time. It has the potential to encourage people to re-engage with education.”

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An artist named Laragh facilitated Pre-Texts in the Refugee and Cultural Diversity Program at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation. The program’s mission was to work with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Muslim communities in Ireland. A reading group formed, comprising Muslim women and women from other backgrounds. Through Pre-Texts Laragh adopted a relaxed, sociable and innovate way of looking at the complex human rights text “The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women” (CEDAW).10 The group explored ways of making this text-heavy document more relevant to their own lives by contributing their own voices, particularly those of Muslim women in Ireland.

The group shared different languages and used visual arts and spoken word to demystify and clarify the text. One highlight was the group’s visit to the exhibition of artwork by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, an Iranian artist, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham Hospital. Laragh noted, “Pre-Texts acted as a democratic way of approaching a challenging text and opened it up for analysis and scrutiny.”

Adult Education An adult education tutor named Lisa joined the Pre-Texts Training program from the Dublin Adult Learning Centre (DALC). DALC students are mostly older adults who have had poor education experiences and are returning to learn how to read, write and gain confidence, which will allow them to participate in work, in further education and in their communities. Lisa used a variety of texts and creative techniques, pushing herself outside her comfort zone. The program enabled Lisa to work together with her students to find deeper meaning in chosen texts. One highlight happened when Lisa and her students used text from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses to create their own story about the landmarks and characters of Dublin.11 Lisa was invited to share her Pre-Texts experiences with peers at the DALC Adult Literacy Conference.

Lisa was drawn to Pre-Texts, as she stated, because “the protocol is around improving literacy, democracy and citizenship, and uses a dialogical method where everyone speaks and participates.”

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Figure 3: Pre-Text Trainees reflect and map their learning experiences. Dublin, Ireland, 2018. Photo by Emma O’Brien.

REFLECTIONS

Pre-Texts in Ireland

The challenges and constraints of introducing the Pre-Texts method were discussed, with many acknowledging that one of the key strengths of the program was its inherent flexibility, allowing it to be contextualized to any cohort of learners. As community member Robbie noted, “during the meetings we discovered the many different features of working with groups in different environments.

These included the group’s gender mix (or lack thereof), groups with people from different cultural backgrounds, groups from the same culture, participants who had known each other beforehand, groups where participants had never met prior to Pre-Texts, etc. This highlighted for me the essential nature of the PreTexts ethos, which can be used in any environment with any group.”

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OUTCOMES When the group met for the final creative educator’s community meeting almost a year later, it was realized that Pre-Texts had been introduced to many communities throughout Dublin. As the group reflected, many shared how, through Pre-Texts, they experienced changes in their perspectives on education.

They collectively agreed that introducing Pre-Texts in various contexts throughout Dublin city fostered a love of reading, writing and critical thinking through art and creative play. Pre-Texts has been a rich contributor to building diverse community learning environments. Pre-Texts took root in Dublin City and has demonstrably bridged local communities in Grangegorman with U Dublin.

One of the key benefits of the program was the community of creative educators that formed, supporting and guiding each other throughout the process.

The many collaborations and friendships that emerged from the program are a testament to this community spirit. As evidenced from this piece, Pre-Texts has been implemented in a variety of contexts across Dublin’s inner city and its reach has been both deep and wide. The need to develop cultural agency and its potential impact for social change has never been greater, and it is envisioned that, through sharing these stories and experiences, many more diverse audiences in Ireland will be introduced to Pre-Texts. This phase of Pre-Texts is now complete and the foundation stones of Pre-Texts in Ireland have been laid, so to close with the words of Irish playwright Brian Friel: “It’s all over…and it’s all about to begin.”

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Pre-Texts in Ireland

Figure 4: Adult education group map Joyce’s Ulysses on their map of Dublin. Dublin, Ireland, 2018.

Photo by Lisa Kilbride.

Figure 5: Participants in Wheatfield prison working on book covers for StoryDads to share with their children. Dublin, Ireland, 2018. Photo by Bernie Masterson.

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Nikumbuke-Health Harvard University Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning Araceli Alonso

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Nikumbuke-Health by All Means: A Pre-Texts Experience in Rural Kenya

Workshop year Implementation: 2010 - present

Place Rural Kenya, Kwale County, on the southeast coast of Kenya. Towns: Lunga Lunga, Godo, Perani, Mpakani, Maasailand, Umoja, Jirani

Facilitators 86 undergraduate students and eight graduate students assisted the supervisor, Araceli Alonso. The staff of Nikumbuke Project in Lunga Lunga, Bendettah Muthina Thomas and Josephine Matini, were also crucial in assisting the progress of these programs at all levels

Supervisors + Araceli Alonso (USA) + Bendettah Muthina Thomas (Kenia)

Institutions involved University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), Nikumbuke Project (Kenya), Health by Motorbike Inc./Health by All Means (USA), Kwale County local government (Kenya), University Jaume I, Castellón (Spain)

Impacted population KWALE COUNTY:

57 HEALTH PROMOTERS 32 FEMALE ACTORS have been trained in disease prevention and health promotion since 2010. The general impacted population (audience, spectators) has been approximately 20.800 PEOPLE.

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This text tells the story of the incorporation of Pre-Texts’ defiant and daring pedagogy into the lives of women from seven villages of Kwale, the most southeastern county in the Coast Province of Kenya that borders Tanzania— Lunga Lunga, Godo, Perani, Umoja, Maasailand, Mpakani and Jirani—as they searched for community health, gender equality, equity, empowerment and sustainable development on their own terms.

To many, gender equality and the empowerment of women might seem too massive as challenges to even start thinking towards achieving minimum goals. If we were to add to those aspirations the procurement of women’s health and well-being, as well as sustainable development and peace building, an overwhelming uncertainty would discourage many people, while mistakes and damages from the past, inflicted in the name of progress and development, would prevent others from moving forward. Apparently, the challenges are too vast and the fears too many, so there is a tendency to predict that our work to achieve equity, empowerment and sustainable development would bring nothing positive at all. As a result, our apprehension and fearfulness often set the mechanism of the Prophecy of Nothing in action: if “nothing” is the ineludible outcome of our work towards a better and fairer world, we will do nothing to remediate the establishment and change the status quo, therefore there will be no change—nothing will happen and consequently the predicted Prophecy of Nothing will once again be indisputably fulfilled.

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In order to counter-“act” that Prophecy of Nothing, our Pre-Texts pedagogy used a subversive, imperfect and impertinent imagination informed and nourished by an interdisciplinary body of knowledge to ignite a transformative movement that resulted in women turning structural violence into health, wellbeing and a culture of peace. To illustrate that pedagogy, this text follows a Pre-Texts program in action.

Sui Generis Activities Afya Ukumbi: Pre-Texts Pedagogy Counter-“acting” the Prophecy of Nothing Through previous health and well-being programs, women in the villages had recognized their historically marginal place in their respective communities.

Individually, women expressed their desire to raise their own voices, but as a group they understood that their collective echo might reverberate more strongly to make long lasting social change impact.

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The women developed scripts, collected garments and rehearsed for several months, and in June of 2012, 11 women starred as female actors performing in the streets of Lunga Lunga in front of several hundred people. Although only one out of the 11 women actors had basic skills in reading and writing, the lack of literacy did not constrain them from advocating for women’s health and changes to communities’ perception of health and disease. Acting gave these women a platform to discuss how different factors could help or hinder health and to explain specific implications of healthy lifestyles and habits. The women’s genuine desire to advance health in their communities led them to the formation of what Annie Sloman called “Theater for Development.”1 It was as if the women had mysteriously been inspired by the theories of Brazilian educators and activists Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal as they started integrating health education and entertainment in order to construct not only a healthier society but also a more cohesive and peaceful community.2

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The first drama was non-participatory, in the sense that there was no interaction between women actors and the public. The actors acted the play in a didactic way while the audience listened and watched, mesmerized, as the health information sank into their souls. Although non-participatory, this first drama could be understood as a form of what Boal denominated “Theater of the Oppressed,” in which performers enact plays in places where people do not expect to see any kind of public acting. This first malaria play was performed in the streets of Lunga Lunga where several hundred surprised people gathered around, forming a giant circle to witness what Boal would have called “Invisible Theater.”

In the first act of the malaria play, a pregnant woman and her husband are sleeping on a mattress, without a mosquito net. The crowd burst into laughter when Mama Damaris, dressed as a mosquito, appears in the scene buzzing

Figure 1: Woman actor malaria, May 2012.

Mama Damaris dressed as a mosquito interpreting a drama-skit on malaria. Photo by Araceli Alonso

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around the pregnant Mama while she sleeps.3 The mosquito bites the Mama, who starts feeling sick. When the Mama cannot stand on her own, her husband takes her to a traditional witch doctor, who performs rituals and starts dancing and singing frantically around the woman. The crowd could not contain itself, rejoicing with every histrionic movement of the witch doctor. The couple goes back home, but the Mama does not improve. When the husband finally decides to take his wife to the clinic, it is too late to save the baby. The spectators looked at each other with complicit expressions, unfortunately recognizing the scene and relating it to their own lives. Applause! In the second act, the same pregnant woman with the same husband sleeps under a blue net. The mosquito comes again and the crowd yells and cries out Unaweza si! Unaweza si! (You can’t!). Mama Damaris in her big mosquito dress tries several times but the net interferes and the pregnant Mama cannot be bitten; eventually the mosquito dies while the observers scream in victory, congratulating the Mama for sleeping under the net with shouts of Hongera! Hongera!

At the end of 2012, the women decided to establish Afya Ukumbi, the Street Health Theater, as one of the permanent programs of Nikumbuke-Health by Motorbike (N-HbM). Groups of women actors incorporated skits based on maternal health, infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS and even domestic violence and the trafficking of girls. The women created dramas that reflected their own health struggles, problems and experiences within their communities.

Figure 3: Maternal Health, June 2013. Two women actors performing on maternal health. Photo by Araceli Alonso

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Figure 2: Maternal Health, June 2012. Three women actors performing a drama on maternal health.

Photo by Araceli Alonso

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The Afya Ukumbi became a good example of what Doris Sommer calls the utility of arts and humanities in civil engagement. In her book The Work of Art in the World4, Prof. Sommer explains how bottom-up artistic expression and creative elements—unconventional activities for some, like the Afya Ukumbi—can create powerful dynamics of social change and hence play an essential role in promoting political participation and even in changing the status quo. The Afya Ukumbi emerged as a provocative and fun tool for civic engagement and education, health promotion and social justice: a subversive means to incite, confront and interrogate spectators, but also to unify, celebrate and heal audiences and communities.

In 2013, N-HbM women made the Afya Ukumbi more participatory, asking the audience to collaborate after the play and analyze it together, step by step, giving rise to a form of Forum Theater in which the audience would eventually become spect-actors, allowing knowledge and learning to flow reciprocally between actors and spect-actors.5 This new approach helped initiate reflection and discussion about solutions to past, present and potential health problems.

A decisive moment for the Afya Ukumbi had occurred during a health camp training a year earlier, when Mama Veronica said out loud: “I assisted the birth of my own twins, but one of them died days later, his neck stiff and his body bent like this” [She bent her body backwards].

Mama Veronica’s comment had triggered a heated discussion about giving birth at home or in the clinic. One year later, health promoters and the Afya Ukumbi acting team took advantage of the opportunity to incorporate the debate into their plays.

In a single act with only three women actors, a Mama gives birth to a healthy baby, and a traditional birth attendant assists the Mama, cutting the umbilical cord with her thumbnail. The movement of the birth attendant’s hand as she cuts the umbilical cord was exaggeratedly grotesque to make sure the audience did not miss this detail. A few days after the birth, the baby cannot

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eat and starts convulsing. The Mama takes the baby to a traditional healer, who makes several cuts on the skin of the baby to introduce herbal remedies.

The act ends with the Mama burying the body of her baby.

“Why did my baby die?” howled the Mama-actor, imploring an answer from the enthralled audience.

Some women knew right away. “Tetanus!” shouted two of them. “Because she used her nail!” one Mama said.

Another Mama added that the problem was not cutting with nails, but having dirty hands. She explained that the traditional way to cut the umbilical cord with the thumbnail could sometimes be a contributor of disease if the hands were not cleaned. Another Mama commented that not only was the thumbnail used to cut the umbilical cord, but sometimes also the mother’s perineum: “That’s why some women around here keep their fingernail long and strong like a knife.”

Nonetheless, the women were not blaming anybody for bad habits or behavior. Through their discussion, they realized that lack of tools and lack of water were two of the main causes of the use of fingernails to cut the umbilical cord.

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“We can’t use a knife to cut because we have no clean water to prepare the knife,” the women added.“But that baby died because he was not vaccinated when he was born,” one Mama commented. “Why wasn’t he vaccinated?” the Mama-actor asked, trying to elicit more answers. “Because the Mama didn’t know that a vaccine could be used,” someone said. “Because she didn’t know that the vaccine was her right,” said another. “Because she had no transportation to take the baby to the clinic,” said someone else.“Because the clinic was too far away,” added another Mama.“Because the Mama didn’t trust vaccines,” said another one.“Because the Mama didn’t trust the clinic. Maybe she was mistreated in the clinic before and she didn’t want to go back,” someone else said.“Who can go to the clinic if it’s far? The clinic should be closer to our homes,” protested one Mama.

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The main goal of the Afya Ukumbi was not to change women’s “bad” habits or behaviors, but rather to facilitate their own learning process by which they could understand on their own the many variables and circumstances that could cause poor health, as well as how to tackle those variables in order to promote wellbeing. None of us questioned the women’s values, beliefs or habits, since that would have meant questioning the women’s own identities and challenging the way they define themselves within their groups. However, the Afya Ukumbi facilitated the conversation about traditions, values and beliefs that the women wanted to discuss in an open and welcoming environment. It was often the audience that challenged traditions as the women listened to the points of view of other ethnic groups. At that point, the Afya Ukumbi did not seek answers, but rather a valid interlocutor/audience that would listen and discuss without judging.

This Afya Ukumbi act gave them the chance to start a discussion that went beyond life and death, beyond health and disease; it took women to a place in which they discovered by themselves what was needed at individual and structural levels, in case another Mama had to go through the same situation. It seemed that the women were able to link health with other aspects of social development. The second time this skit was performed we went a step further, exploring the causes of poverty and poor health, as they are closely related. The audience realized that cutting the umbilical cord was not the only lethal decision they had encountered: “My neighbor died bleeding after she delivered her baby; no one could save her,” one Mama said. “That happened to my neighbor, too!” added one.

“Mine too!” added another, and the voices of other women resonated like an endless echo in the room: “Mine too, mine too, too, too…!”

The women talked about bleeding, about the placenta not coming out entirely, about fever and convulsions, about spirits that come from the water and make women sick, about the snake that often comes to kill the mother and steal the baby. One by one and all together, the women deciphered the Three Delays Model that we often use in university courses to explain maternal mortality around the world.5

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“My mother-in-law said that women are cowards if they go to the clinic to have babies,” said one of the young Mamas. The other women giggled, looking at each other and recognizing themselves in the comment, some as mothers-in-law and some as daughters-in-law. The debate began. Some mentioned that husbands were mostly absent when babies were born and that their mothers-in-law were very insensitive to their labor pains and that some lives could have been saved if the mothers-in-law had helped in the first place. For the first time, women in the villages were talking together about issues that had never been discussed before.

Although at first mothers-in-law protested, they soon realized that they were also daughters-in-law themselves, and that the claim sounded very familiar for them, too. The women, young and old, made a pledge to overcome some of the difficulties that pregnant women confronted in their communities, starting at home.

The women themselves had deciphered the first delay: recognizing the potential problem at home.

The second delay was easy for the audience to talk about without the actors eliciting the conversation: “But, what do I do?” protested one Mama, “I pretend I don’t care because what else can I do if I see my daughter-in-law struggling and my son is not home?”

“Call the healer!” answered one in a mischievous tone, while the others laughed hard.

“You have to take her to the clinic!” said one.

“How?” kept protesting the first Mama.

Silence… The women had decoded the second delay: getting from home to the clinic. Transportation!

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“But sometimes the clinic can’t help either. My sister had to be taken to the hospital after she reached the clinic and the clinic couldn’t help. She lost a lot of blood on the way, but the hospital had no blood for her. We had no money to go there and give our blood to replace hers; we had no money to pay the hospital anyway.” The third delay was decoded: difficulty at the clinic and hospital levels.

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The audience discussed the Three Delays, acknowledging that the forms of the delays may vary according to different circumstances. Some of the women were able to look far beyond the immediate causes of maternal complications and showed very critical attitudes towards the third delay, saying that sometimes the hospital is closed to admissions when the Mama arrives, or that the doctors are not available, or that women are often mistreated or scolded like children. Without knowing it, the women were talking about obstetric violence.6 The women were clear: the fear of mistreatment in hospitals keeps women preferring to deliver at home, assisted by a neighbor or by themselves.

There they were, women from at least nine different ethnic groups and three different religions,7 discussing issues that cut across ethnicity and religion in a country divided and brutally conflicted due to tribal animosities. Maternal health was a common thread interweaving the lives of women in all the villages; soon, the women would discover many other common threads that would drive them to work together in their desires to overcome structural neglect and violence. Health started to be seen among the women as a state of wholeness and wellbeing; achieving that state of wellbeing would require them to work together to meet women’s needs in a self-reliant and responsible way.

The ultimate purpose of the new participatory Afya Ukumbi was to conceive action through solidarity and community consciousness. The Afya Ukumbi not only maximized our scarce resources, but also guaranteed sustainability and ownership, and it benefited the women in their roles as producers and reproducers of knowledge. That went even further at the end of 2013, when the Lunga Lunga Afya Ukumbi acting team, after watching and analyzing a four-minute play created by the University of Wisconsin team, decided to perform skits on intimate domestic disputes, a subject that had been completely taboo up to that moment. The four-minute piece that sparked this desire to perform was a play acted in Kiswahili by one of my senior students and myself. After much self-reflection and inner work, the student and I put ourselves out there in front of the women, acting from the inside out, embracing and sharing our own vulnerability.

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Although it was not our intention, it seemed that by making ourselves vulnerable, the student and I had made a space for the women to open up.

That play gave rise to an “aesthetic space,” as Boal would name it, a liminal zone where reality and fiction converge as one single universe. Through the physical acting out of this play in Kiswahili, women in the audience who are silent in their daily lives became protagonists on the stage, and their feelings of oppression became as tangible and solid as their own physical bodies.

Within that liminal space everything became possible; a transformation took place that turned “what is” to “what’s next.”

It took four minutes and four questions for the women to feel tight knots in their guts, to sense their deep inner pain and also a sudden urgency to speak and act out. The audience became activated spectators, and I took the role of the “Joker,” as Boal called the facilitator of Forum Theater. The women ran the conversation, challenging one another, asking and answering to each other, shouting, crying, deciphering the legacy and evils of a patriarchal system in which violence against women takes many forms and is normalized in everyday life. The atmosphere grew more tense as the women turned the conversation into a discussion on rape and sexual violence. Then one of my own students stood up and said, “I was raped when I was 18, the first year of my studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; this is my first time to speak about it.” Another student intervened: “I was 20 when I was raped on campus. I thought it was my fault because I was drunk, I never told anyone.”

A total of four out of my 12 students confessed there, in front of the women, to being raped on our own campus. The silence became thicker than ever, until one of the women, a spect-actor, asked: “So, rape happens in America too?”.

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Through this Afya Ukumbi “drama,” we all could perceive the complex global web of women’s oppression, but we also started realizing that anyone can become an agent of change. Two more hours of discussion on gender-based violence concluded in a giant human circle where all of us, standing up and holding hands, first prayed in silence and later voiced our commitment to ending violence against women and girls.

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The same year, before the end of 2013, the Jirani Afya Ukumbi group of acting women went another step further, performing a drama on structural and gender-based violence inflicted on girls. In the play, a girl gives up going to school due to a cascade of circumstances and events: lack of money to pay school fees, lack of sanitary pads for the days of her period, lack of time because she has to fetch water, fear of rape if she walks alone to school, fear of her father who disapproves of her going to school and beats her, fear of her mother being beaten for allowing her to go to school, more fear of her father when he gets drunk. Although the play presented a real drama, the women actors found a way to make the audience laugh. The viewers could identify themselves in the play as they could find their own reflections in a mirror; the laughter, however, diminished the pain, increased intimacy and strengthened community engagement and cohesion.

The women actors took every bit of information, common knowledge and cultural belief and translated them into a “drama” adapted to the specific circumstances of each community. For example, when the Lunga Lunga acting team performed its drama on HIV, the whole audience cracked up as a Mama tried to convince her husband to use a condom. Condoms were unknown in the villages before 2010, and although they were still seen as undesirable, more and more people were demystifying them, thanks to the Afya Ukumbi. In the play, the Mama insisted to her uncooperative husband that he put on a condom before engaging in intercourse. The husband rejects the condom several times, claiming, “This is only for prostitutes! Mimi ni mwanaume! I am a man! You don’t dare to give me this. You do what I say!”

The Mama, however, did not appear intimidated, but neither did she push her husband to do something he did not like or want to do. On the contrary, the Mama was using all her skills to change his mind, showing him how to put on the condom and even telling him that she could try to do it with her mouth. The spectators did not look embarrassed or ashamed, nor did they show any discontent or disapproval of the women’s “audacity” and “insolence.” The audience seemed mesmerized and laughed harder and louder as the Mama tried to put the condom on a wooden penis attached to the husband’s pants. The Mama did not mention HIV to her husband at all, nei-

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Figure 4: STIs, June 2013. After talking about STIs and condom use, the women actors talked and performed on sexual pleasure. Photo by Araceli Alonso

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ther did she mention that she was trying to protect herself from other sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies. The Mama was presenting the condom to her husband as something desirable for his own enjoyment.

Through the medium of performance and storytelling, community health promoters became actors to freely express the particular health issues that affected their communities. The Afya Ukumbi intelligently used laughter as a subversive language to discuss sensitive health topics, contest structural violence and even reverse gender roles. What’s more, the laughter brought people together, serving as a great unifier and creating an atmosphere of acceptance among groups of different ethnic backgrounds and religions, thus allowing the actors to reach marginalized groups in their communities.

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Reflections The above is only one example of how the N-HbM initiative used Pre-Texts pedagogy within a particular socio-geographic and cultural context, specifically in seven villages of Kwale County, which borders Kenya and Tanzania.

In order to re-encounter women’s inner power, or to recover their suppressed empowerment, N-HbM took the Pre-Texts participatory approach as a conceptual framework that acknowledges how humans can form, perform and reform human relations—with our bodies, with our environment, with each other, with ourselves—in different ways, using not only knowledge, but also tenderness, kindness, compassion, empathy and love. At the same time, this approach recognized historically marginalized women as valid interlocutors within a community, recovering their status as persons in the sense of the word’s 19th century etymological meaning: “per” as a prefix of intensification plus the verb sonare, to make a sound, to sound through.8 This notion validated each woman as a person: “I am a person and I am here!” “I can hear, but I can also be heard!” “I am speaking, I am acting, but I can also amplify my voice!” This position led to self-analysis and self-reflection in all the participants involved—those who prepared the dramas, those who performed them and those who received them with unity, solidarity and empathy.

Although I acknowledge that the Pre-Texts pedagogy is not a panacea to solve every set of social illnesses, I maintain that it is an alternative to mainstream development practices that help promote health and wellbeing and that can create pockets of inclusive cultural peace. For example, PreTexts pedagogy was used in Kenya with deep awareness of local ethnicities and conflicts, aiming to unite historically conflicted groups to work together for common causes. As Charles Hornsby said, ethnicity in Kenya is “about shared communities…but also about conflict and difference.”9 The UW-Madison team and the women were well aware that tribal differences and religious fundamentalist groups such as Al-Shabab had been threatening stability in the region as they planted seeds of hatred in a country where ethnic conflict rapidly surfaces and easily gets out of control. The Afya Ukumbi provided a space for problem solving that subsequently contributed to increased

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Figure 5: Maasai women: June 2013. Maasai women waiting to perform. Photo by Araceli Alonso

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communication and interconnectedness among ethnic groups and among community members. The interaction of women and men from different ethnicities, languages and religions through Pre-Texts initiatives generated group consciousness and social identification: what John Paul Lederach refers to as minimizing the tendency to dehumanize the “other.”10 For instance, spending time together rehearsing for the Afya Ukumbi dramas and enjoying time together at the beach, the seven communities produced spaces for recognizing that one’s own quality of life depends on the quality of life of others.

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OUTCOMES The projects of Nikumbuke-Health by Motorbike, which later came to be called Nikumbuke-Health by All Means at the suggestion of Prof. Doris Sommer, have had great impact in Kwale County since 2010. In fact, because of its low cost and high effectiveness, in 2013 the United Nations awarded N-HbAM the 2013 Public Service Award as a model of best practices in community development and sustainable wellbeing.

Since 2010, 57 health promoters and 32 female actors have been trained in disease prevention and health promotion. The Chief of Kwale County estimates that the health creative projects delivered by N-HbAM, including the Afya Ukumbi, have reached approximately 120,000 inhabitants around the county.

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Nikumbuke-Health by All Means: A Pre-Texts Experience in Rural Kenya

Figure 6: Author and actor, March 2015. The author of this article with one of the women actors introducing together next drama on domestic violence. Photo by Araceli Alonso

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There is No Point in Asking Questions if You are Not Allowed to Provide Answers Pedro Reyes

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

TAMPA, FLORIDA

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

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Workshop year Implementation: 2008 - 2016

Place Mexico City, Mexico; Tampa, Florida, and Scottsdale, Arizona, United States

Facilitators + Pedro Reyes + Doris Sommer

Supervisors + Doris Sommer + Carla S. Campbell

Institutions involved Mexican Secretariat of Public Education; University of South Florida, Tampa; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

Impacted Population

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400 STUDENTS +2.000 PEOPLE

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Introductory Remarks

by Doris Sommer Pedro Reyes and Carla Fernandez are longtime collaborators with Pre-Texts.

They have been partners in its development from the beginning, in 2008. In fact, the very first workshop that we did in Chalco’s Mano Amiga school included sessions with Pedro. On one day we block-printed Jorge Luis Borges’s 1939 short story “Two Kings and Two Labyrinths” in unforgettable images.

On another he taught children how to take photos that interpreted the story.

Since then, of course, Pre-Texts has continued to morph, and both Carla and Pedro continue to be among our core partners. For them, education is an integral part of their artistic practice. To educate is to empower people, an urgent objective especially among under-represented populations. It is urgent for Carla, who works fundamentally with indigenous communities, to make fashion in ways that maintain fair trade in the community of producers, and equally urgent for Pedro, who addresses challenges to our social and political security.

Pedro’s multidisciplinary art has for years been dedicated to raising awareness about major issues such as gun violence, global warming and democratic practices, among other concerns. These challenges engage us all, those who have access to good education and those who do not. Therefore,

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both Pedro and Carla know that to achieve any degree of progress, educating the general public is vital and obliges us all to collaborate. As artists, they also know that education develops through play. At the core of human processes of transformation is the innate drive to freely experiment with given materials and concepts. This is the drive to play and it is as central to the arts as it is to other names for education. Carla Fernandez and Pedro Reyes know how to translate from learning to doing and back again. That is why Pre-Texts is a platform for several of their movements.

Here Pedro reflects on projects with Pre-Texts in Mexico City and beyond: workshops in Milpa Alta and Topilejo and lessons extracted from our workshops for the Secretary of Education in Mexico City for new iterations. Since then, both he and Carla have produced many iterations of Pre-Texts, partly to the credit of this flexible platform, and mostly because of their endless creativity. (For more on Carla’s reflections on her experiences with Pre-Texts, please see page 296 of this volume).

Contribution by Pedro Reyes In 2011, after the successful pilot teacher trainings in Milpa Alta and in Topilejo supported by Mario Delgado, then Secretary of Public Education for Mexico City under Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, Doris Sommer and I followed up with a training workshop for almost 200 middle school teachers. At the two pilot high schools, we had already experimented with modules led by distinguished artists from a variety of creative fields, including visual arts, literature, fashion, gastronomy, etc. They shared techniques and professional experience to provide teachers with a range of tools to explore complex texts.

By this second round of workshops for middle schools, it was amazing to witness the multiplier effect. Teachers of all subjects, not primarily art, were by now informed about Pre-Texts and eager to share the fun and the challenges.

Their students would be the beneficiaries.

Pre-Texts in Mexico

Education in Mexico, and elsewhere, is often oriented more towards memorizing than understanding a text: assignments foreground repetition of a text

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as closely as possible to the original piece they are made to study. Students then tend to forget everything far more easily than they learned it. One of the innovations of Pre-Texts is that, regardless of the subject (chemistry, mathematics, history, etc.), students are invited to use their homework text for creating artwork. To make art from an assigned text is a translation process; it interprets an academic subject into another form. This proved to be a sure way for students to deepen their understanding of the material, because when they create from the material they have to interpret it—then they own the material and project their personal voices through new work. When teachers implemented Pre-Texts, there was such a variety of approaches from students that it impacted the approach to evaluation as well as instruction.

Teachers could no longer measure success as accuracy of repetition, but had to consider the depth of interpretation and the creative freedom that students invested in their homework. It was difficult to conclude that one student was better than another. We were amazed by how many surprises resulted from this shift of approach, and how the surprises maintained the attention of both teachers and students.

For the 200-person workshop we debated for some time about which text to use. A few directors of education favored an accessible narrative, such as a story by Juan Rulfo. But I insisted on something more challenging, something that Mexican readers revere but fear to read, such as “Primero Sueño” written by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and published in 1692. Terror was visible on the faces of our hosts at this suggestion, but I had confidence that Pre-Texts would help us overcome the intellectual fear most of us shared with regard to this classic but almost unreadable text. “Primero Sueño” is a baroque, cryptic and complex poem that describes an astral projection of Sor Juana. It is the Everest of Mexican literature, and I wanted to demonstrate that we could climb the highest peak.

Using this daunting poem to create recipes occurred to me as a cozy way to domesticate it. Workshop participants were tasked to create a system of analogies and correlations between words and ingredients; verses of this poem were converted into flavours and textures. For this session, everyone heard

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the same fragments of the poem and teams were assigned particular verses.

Then they could consult a written copy of the poem while they engaged in tasting and judging whether those flavors actually corresponded to the verses they were assigned to interpret. The results were tasty, to say the least. Sor Juana came down from the stars to the kitchen, another of her favorite spaces, and she invited her new readers to a shared banquet.

This is just one example of how creativity can work better than conventional analysis to master difficult written material. If one stays in the field of literary criticism there is one set of interpretive tools. However, when we appropriate tools that belong to entirely different arts, the translation process from one medium to the other uncovers an entire universe of opportunities. It’s quite a discovery.

Sor Juana’s poem was my choice for the workshop because our goal was to push Pre-Texts to the limit, to see how far we could go, even though at first some teachers thought it would be too difficult. The pleasures that followed cured them of that fear and made them proud. In my opinion, we should avoid dumbing down and being fearful of content that seems very complex.

The Pre-Texts methodology allows us to take participants and content of any level and work with the same protocol among elementary school children and post doctoral candidates.

I have tested the flexibility of Pre-Texts, for example, in the field of legislation when I tried to tackle the issue of gun violence. In the United States as well as in Mexico, we face the enormous challenge of gun deaths, which is directly linked to gun availability. If one tries to curb gun availability, the main obstacle is the Second Amendment of the US Constitution—these two lines: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It was written over 200 years ago and is the subject of much controversy regarding interpretation.

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The correct interpretation is often something that people don’t feel equipped to determine because they think this is work for attorneys or philosophers of law. However, using one of the elements of the Pre-Texts methodology that

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I call intertext—introducing changes into a printed text —I developed the workshop “Amendment to the Amendment.” It was first facilitated in Tampa, Florida and recently in Phoenix, Arizona. Approximately 200 people were gathered into groups of ten. They were each given a piece of paper with the Second Amendment written on it and 20 minutes to make their own iteration of it. It was a very radical and positive experiment: at the end we had an array of twenty different iterations and every single one of them had value.

Instead of discussing whether the original text was right or wrong, together we produced a diverse range of voices and each of the iterations became improvements on the existing Second Amendment.

This is another important thing to mention about Pre-Texts: it allows everyone to work within big groups while giving everyone a chance for their voice to be heard. Each participant crafts a new version of the Second Amendment and has their 5 minutes to share it. In this way, Pre-Texts sets parameters so each voice has to be productive in the crafting. That makes the method extremely effective for the democratic process.

Contemporary art that aims to produce some sort of social change, social practice or relational aesthetics, deals with groups of people. An artist needs tools and resources that won’t be found in the history of art. Pre-Texts gives the artist a palette of techniques, a tool box that is inexpensive to reproduce, easy to use and to modify. Anyone who uses art to foster social change, educational process or political engagement will find in Pre-Texts an extremely useful toolbox. It can be used not only in discussions, artwork and classes, but also in daily life. If I were to give advice to artists who are interested in putting their art towards the service of making the world better, I would highly recommend them to sign up for a Pre-Texts training workshop, because it changed my life and surely will change theirs.

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“Amiga Cartonera,” Pre-Texts Today Lilia Garelli

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

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Workshop year Implementation: 2008 - 2019

Place Mexico City, Mexico

Facilitators This program has trained more than 140 teachers from preschool to high school levels.

Supervisors Lilia Garelli, Teresita Mendoza Torres, Pedro Ocampo Carbajal, Mary Ríos Estrada, Marta Macario Martínez, Teófila Coronel.

Institutions involved Mano Amiga School of Chalco, Mano Amiga of Puebla and Mano Amiga of Lerma

Impacted population

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1.360 STUDENTS 5.490 PEOPLE

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ACTIVITIES Baby Cartonera “We’re going to create Baby Cartonera.” With this sentence our dear facilitator Mary Ríos established the didactic strategy for the children who were beginning their process as readers. The result was a huge success with the little ones. We included teachers and parents in these activities, and they enjoyed the program and much more as they saw how happy their children were with the proposed dynamics.

The challenge was to extend these strategies to the entire educational institution, and the question was obvious: how could we take advantage of them globally within the content of the curriculum? The answer was easy: we could include “Amiga Cartonera” within the general project of Mano Amiga Chalco! To train all the school’s personnel in the Cartonera strategies was delightful, demonstrating the diversity of talents at the school. Those who didn’t seem able to differentiate tones in our readings, or those introverted teachers who didn’t seem capable of showing sensitivity, became other people when they applied the text in real life. As they made their book covers, as they volunteered to read aloud, finally at that moment they were Pre-Texts facilitators! It brought out the best in everyone, of course.

“Amiga Cartonera,” Pre-Texts Today

Figure 1-2: Photos by: Lilia Garelli, Mary Ríos, Juan José Ceballos 2015-2016.

Let’s Teach Math by Cartonera Our beloved math teacher set aside mechanized processes and let creativity take over in order to teach middle school and high school students the techniques of learning math by cartonera. Dressed up as a clown, he welcomed the young people, who were surprised to discover how joyful something that was previously tedious and incomprehensible could be.

The day arrived to apply what we had learned in Amiga Cartonera with our high school students. For me it was a great challenge to change the way I led my classes; it caused me great uncertainty. The students were attentive and ready to look at a blackboard full of numbers and letters, but when I told them about the activities in the math workshop they were radically astonished. The activities guided them to knowledge in an independent way, and the results I got from them were great. —Ricardo Hernández, Mano Amiga of Chalco middle school and high school teacher.

CARTONERA YOUTH

Pre-Texts in Mexico

Annual Reading Program It was so important to include middle school and high school youths in this whirlwind of creativity. This is why we wasted no time including activities in the year’s

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curriculum itself to introduce the Cartonera strategies into the Annual Reading Program carried out twice a year, independent of whether the competency being developed was logic-mathematics or reading comprehension.

Similarly, Cartonera was present at the festivities for Mexican traditions, in which the results of the semester’s work were presented at massive events in which the entire educational community participated. Everything was included in an evaluation of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis and quality in the development of the theme to be addressed. Without realizing it, children and youths were evaluated by their teachers and educational authorities in a qualitative way—not just quantitatively. From 2014 to the present two Reading Expos are held each school year to support the teaching-learning process.1

PROJECTING THE COMMUNITY Book Fair We integrated a series of activities like the Book Fair in which several writers explained their own work. At the first and second Reading Expo workshops were held for participants ranging from children, big kids, families and Mano Amiga directors. It was an invitation for all to learn and enjoy reading, changing history, drawing characters, sculpting figures, etc.

We organized an event called the Mega-Concert to which we invited all the public schools we possibly could, in order to share these moments of joy and creativity. What great days those were when Mom could read us a story!

Those moments of family togetherness are lost these days, mainly those of that healthy intimacy sharing a tale by a classic author, when a boy’s imagination takes off with hot air balloons or when a girl dreams of her prince charming.

How could we not create a pretext to reunite parents and children with a story that would let them renew that moment of sharing, without the distractions that are so common today? The solution was clear as day: at the Reading

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Expo we made a space for reading a story of their choosing, so that parents and children could read together, spontaneously and casually. How marvelous to share that moment! In the end it was as if we had said: keep it alive, Mom and Dad, it’s right within your reach.

OUTCOMES Lilia Garelli talks about the project: Throughout these ten years it has been my pleasure to implement this program, discovering the immense creativity shown by the children to whom it has been imparted. From the little preschoolers to the middle school youths, the faces of admiration, joy and even fear surprised us, but as the sessions passed by, they became open and engaged with the proposal of new activities. “Will we do Cartonera tomorrow?”, a little one asked the teacher, “We’re ready for the next session!”

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Figure 4: Photos by: Lilia Garelli, Mary Ríos, Juan José Ceballos 2015-2016.

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Figure 5: Photos by: Lilia Garelli, Mary Ríos, Juan José Ceballos 2015-2016.

Teacher Teresita Mendoza Torres on participation in Pre-Texts: The most incredible thing is that all this imagination comes out in the teachers, too, because Pre-Texts touches their creativity and they set out on adventures, not only in the world of literature, but they’ve also managed to interweave this experience with some of their assignments in order to transform it with this expressivity. Of course! Without you realizing it, Amiga Cartonera changes you to transform you into a facilitator seeking to reach students to share with them these learning experiences that can be useful in their lives. So dressing up as a clown to teach math has been a fabulous experience with a great teacher who let himself be taken over by the chance to transform himself and design his classes in a different way to reach the hearts of his students.

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Teacher Mary Ríos on her Pre-Texts photography workshop: The talk about Cartonera reading is to think of a creative world, in the chance to send your imagination flying, knowing that there is no limit, that everything can flow in a different way. When I was invited to become part of this project I was excited by the idea of getting to live this adventure with the students. The start was full of uncertainty for them, as they were surely expecting a “formal class,” and their comments (“Reading is boring,” “What a drag to be here,” “Reading is just for homework,” etc.) motivated me to change this way of thinking. I knew that with this program they would soon love to read.

Having a camera in their hands complemented their pleasure in reading.

The first images were literal—they wanted to find exactly the image that would narrate the text—but then their sensitivity began flowing and we went farther, thinking about the characters’ feelings, about their emotions, about their psyches and how we would represent them. “We did it with colors and textures,” and we set up a gallery of our own media.

The photography workshop allowed us to bring out the sensitivity in each student and their images said a lot about their personalities. One of the activities that the middle school youths did and greatly enjoyed was finding metaphors by representing the text’s smells with nature. They captured water, sweetness, saltiness, bitterness...

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Pre-Texts has no limits and the story is written day by day, session by session. The moment arrived in which the learners became experts and it was their turn to design activities that they had already experienced, but now they had to think about their younger companions, sharing The Little Prince, getting to know it in a fun formal-but-playful way. The challenge wasn’t easy—children are demanding—but they faced it, they carried it out, and complicity between the youths was the perfect mix to combine literature, creativity and tenderness; they transmitted with special affection and those moments were captured in their minds and in their lives.

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The texts’ author could not help but be present in Pre-Texts, which is why we also had to imagine, “How would the place that inspired the author to write this be?” It was really fun; for some, it was “sitting behind a desk,” but for most the places ranged from “outside the window,” “in a hammock,” “a rainy afternoon,” and the best part was that they were also able to write a text.

Music teacher Pedro Ocampo on his experience with Pre-Texts: To belong to this great Pre-Texts team has been a great challenge; assimilating this new vision and mission to transmit literature in live testimonials every day solidifies a society that is thoughtful, creative and daring through art.

As a musician and singer, it’s an enormous pleasure and very satisfying to see the reflection of students embracing this precious profession with so much enthusiasm, love and passion, in which they find another outlet to express their thoughts and feelings. How was this achieved? Teaching from the rhythms of the notes within the text, inviting them to create music and literature, to the beat of what was written so that the story would have meaning . . . and creativity flourishes on its own!

Figure 6: Photos by: Lilia Garelli, Mary Ríos, Juan José Ceballos 2015-2016.

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OUTCOMES Interwoven Stories 70.00%

63,77%

60.00% 50.00% 36,23%

40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% EXPERT

ADVANCED

IN APPRENTICE PROGRESS

NOVICE

Annualized results from the rubrics created by the facilitator for this school period.

Pre-Texts is a way of boosting development by competency, since it involves the subject in both the cognitive and socioemotional areas in such a way that evaluation must be integral and consider several aspects; for example, at the end of each session a co-evaluation would help to recognize what was learned; at the end of a process with the arts, a self-evaluation would he valuable; the rotation with other arts would help to take better advantage of it. And what could be better than a collection of evidence and products in a final exhibition? This would complete the rubric made by the Pre-Texts facilitator. We recognize that the rubric allows us to evaluate before, during and after the annual program that the teacher has proposed.

Pre-Texts in Mexico

The rubrics allow us to evaluate the quality of work, group activities, projects and team presentations, and they let the facilitator provide feedback to the student in an opportune way, making both formative and summative contributions as it offers an environment disposed to corrections to the teaching-learning process.

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Visual Arts 50.00%

43,48%

45.00% 40.00% 35.00% 30.00%

27,54%

26,09%

25.00% 20.00% 15.00% 10.00%

2,90%

5.00% 0.00%

EXPERT

ADVANCED

IN APPRENTICE PROGRESS

NOVICE

Music 40

38

35 30 25 20

15

15 10

10

8

5 0

EXPERT

ADVANCED

IN APPRENTICE PROGRESS

NOVICE

Annualized results from the rubrics created by the facilitator by art, for the duration of the annual school year.

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Photography 60.00% 47,13%

50.00% 40.0% 30.00%

26,09%

21,74%

20.00% 10.00%

4,35%

0.00% EXPERT

ADVANCED

IN PROGRESS

APPRENTICE

NOVICE

Theatre 70.00%

57,97%

60.00% 50.0% 40.00% 27,54%

30.00% 20.00% 10.00%

8,70% 4,35%

1,45%

APPRENTICE

NOVICE

0.00% EXPERT

ADVANCED

IN PROGRESS

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Annualized results from the rubrics created by the facilitator of each art, for the duration of the annual school year.

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Figure 7: Photos by Lilia Garelli, Mary Ríos, Juan José Ceballos, 2015-2016.

For these ten years Mano Amiga of Chalco has utilized this evaluation instrument efficiently and has even expressed it graphically.

There is no doubt that the act of transmission spurs growth for whoever does the action. One of the greatest satisfactions we’ve had in these ten years has been projecting our experiences onto other Mano Amiga schools. We began Mano Amiga Puebla and have trained all the educational personnel and directors of this school. What could be better than to do this the same way we received it from our dear Professor Doris Sommer!

It has recently been possible to extend Pre-Texts to Mano Amiga Lerma, seeking to share this marvelous strategy using art to make children readers.

There is no doubt that there is talent to offer the world of education; all that is needed is to project it. Following are photos of the 2012 workshop at Mano Amiga Puebla.

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“Amiga Cartonera,” Pre-Texts Today

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An Experience with No Pretexts: Workshops with Sex Workers, Inmates and Community Centers in Mexico City Hortencia Chávez Reyna

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

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Workshop year 2010 Implementation: 2010 - 2011

Place Mexico City

Facilitators + Hortencia Chávez Reyna

Supervisors + Hortencia Chávez Reyna

Institutions involved Mexico City Government, National Coordinator for Education Workers (CNTE), National Union for Education Workers (SNTE)

Impacted population

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500 SEX WORKERS 1.200 TEACHERS 1.700 PEOPLE

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In 2010, with the objective of helping to develop intellectual curiosity and raise literacy skills among vulnerable populations in Mexico City, I carried out an initiative of reading instruction and training with the Pre-Texts method. The program’s participants were sex workers, inmates, migrants and the members of 52 community centers. The project was called Analfabetizmo Zero [Zero Illiteracy], and it involved multi-grade education for people who did not have access to regular school. We brought together groups of 20 to 30 people and worked with them throughout all the city’s boroughs, in the streets, in gardens, in houses and in other spaces loaned to us for these classes. The workshops took place at community centers in Mexico City’s marginal areas, in the boroughs of Milpa Alta, Xochimilco, Tláhuac, Álvaro Obregón and Magdalena Contreras.

ACTIVITIES The program broke down traditional dynamics of literacy training by incorporating the Pre-Texts methodology into the principles of community education. To facilitate the learning process we used the technique of onomatopoeia, which allows for the relating of images with syllables and later with words. The topics were selected from the life experiences of the students, starting with their social context. With some community center groups, for example, we worked with recipes for tamales. There we adopted the idea of

An Experience with No Pretexts: Workshops with Sex Workers, Inmates and Community Centers in Mexico

expert-novice-expert: experts, those who knew how to make tamales, helped the novices to become experts, so that all the students had to participate. We related the syllables of the world “tamal” with animals, then we made drawings, till everyone learned how to write the word.

In the classes we used a clothesline for cordel literature, we made plays and living figures, and since there were people who were deaf or blind in the groups, these practices helped us to include people with disabilities in the learning process. Inhabitants of the neighborhoods were also involved, allowing young people who usually do not interact with their neighbors to make contact with the community.

At one of the centers attended by differently-abled children we read the texts Historia de vivos y muertos [History of the Living and the Dead] by Artemio del Valle Arizpe and Tradiciones mexicanas [Mexican Traditions] by Sebastián Verti.1 The reading about the traditions of offerings and piñatas in Mexico inspired the participants to make their own offerings, and we decided to hang them up at some public modules for citizen services.

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Activity

Description

Time

Materials

1

Warm-up

Integration Activity (Optional)

10 minutes.

By Activity

Introduction to the Pre-Texts philosophy and program

Critical thinking integrating literature and other arts. General description of the program.

10 minutes.

Pre-Texts Manual.

25 minutes.

Cardboard, colored pencils, markers, tape, scissors, magazines, staplers, glue, feathers, paintbrushes.

2

3

Cartonera books

Begin to create cardboard books with materials provided once people are at their tables and concentrating.

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The work plan from which we operated follows here:

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4

5

6

Tobacco Factory

Reading the previously selected text out loud.

Asking questions of the text

Questions about the text such as What didn’t it say? What didn’t it make me feel? What would you change? Etc.

Cordel literature

Hang the questions and answers about the selected text on a clothesline (These can be one’s own or those of others). Read the questions and answers to the group.

What did we do?

what they did, felt, thought and understood, etc.

25 minutes.

25 minutes.

15 minutes.

Bibliographic or working references, pencils.

Clotheslines, bibliographic or working references, clothespins and pencils.

Participants can comment on 7

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8

Spoken portraits

9

Gallery of Convergence and Divergence

In pairs who sit back-to-back, each participant describes a character, metaphor or literary figure (etc.) from the text out loud.

Gallery conversations.

How are the Portraits different?

15 minutes.

20 minutes.

Blank paper and pencils.

20 minutes.

Sheets with the portraits.

10

11

12

Tableaux Vivants (Living Sculptures)

Acting the metaphor. Find a metaphor and create human sculptures. Guess what metaphors, words or images the sculptures are based on. Statues with 3 to 5 people represent a literary figure from the text. Other groups “read” or find the figure from the text.

Off on Tangents

Participants select a text that complements the main text and they locate it on the branches of a tree, explaining why they chose their text and how it relates to the main text.

What Does

Sheet music to represent meta-

the Text Sound Like?

phors, literary figures, etc. from the selected text.

• •

• 13

Forum Theater • •

Identify conflicts Small group discussion of experiences with said conflict Preparation of the presentation of the conflict Act out the conflict for spectators Incorporate spectators into the conflict’s resolution.

20 minutes.

Selected text.

10 minutes.

Participants’ texts, tape and a tree made of colored paper.

25 minutes.

Selected text.

2 hours

Selected text.

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In accordance with the needs and characteristics of the groups, in the reading sessions we used research magazines, stories and works by iconic writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Plato. The texts allowed us to develop critical thinking, a basic factor in Pre-Texts; we read to interpret, to know the meaning of each of the words, and together we analyzed what they wanted to tell us.

The other creative challenge consisted of recomposing the texts: creating authentic stories through the original literature, rewriting the ending, imagining what would happen after the story ended. Playing with literature in this way, little by little the students lost their fear of questioning the complex texts, such as Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” from The Republic, Book VII. Using their creativity and imagination to understand the text, they managed to leave behind the cave of ignorance.

Pre-Texts with Sex Workers in Mexico City Among the goals we pursued at a literacy workshop for 500 sex workers were to provide necessary and useful knowledge to finish school, and to develop critical thinking that would allow for improvements in quality of life and help them defend their rights. The highest number of women sex workers in Mexico City is on San Pablo Street in the La Merced area: approximately 15,000 people, with 800 minors among them.

We began the training at Casa Talavera, a university center directed by Emma Messeguer. We put together six groups of 75 students, five of whom needed their primary school certificates and one who needed middle school certification. We used the a notebook of exercises called La Palabra as material, as well as articles from newspapers such as Excélsior, Reforma, La Jornada, El Financiero and the science and culture magazines CUO, Muy Interesante, La Revista de la Universidad de México and National Geographic.

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Pre-Texts Budget for Training and Implementation at One Prison Cultural Agents Initiative

• • •

First Implementation

Training Workshop

Second Implementation

• •

20 Facilitators 6 Artists/14 Trained Convicts 2 Texts, Activity Preparation

• • • •

20 Participants 1 Cultural Agents Facilitator 3 Convict Facilitators 6 Artists/Teachers 11 New Convicts

• • • •

20 Facilitators 1 Cultural Agents Facilitator 3 Convict Facilitators 6 Artists/Teachers 11 New Convicts

• •

20 Participants 2 Convict Facilitators 2 Artists/Teachers

• •

20 Participants 2 Convict Facilitators 2 Artists/Teachers

• •

20 Participants 2 Convict Facilitators 2 Artists/Teachers

• •

20 Participants 2 Convict Facilitators 2 Artists/Teachers

• •

20 Participants 2 Convict Facilitators 2 Artists/Teachers

• •

20 Participants 2 Convict Facilitators 2 Artists/Teachers

Pre-Texts in Mexico

Initial Workshop

20 Participants 1 Cultural Agents Facilitator Artists/Convicts to Train 1 Classic Text

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Figures 1-3: The Centro Comunitario de Portales, where “Living Statues” activities were held to explain the “Pre-Texts Philosophy”, 2009.

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Pre-Texts in Prisons With the same goal of including vulnerable groups and achieving development of critical thinking through literacy, I established a community center for four prisons in Mexico City (South Prison, East Prison, North Prison and Santa Martha Penitentiary), in which were formed three groups of 45 inmates.

Workshop for Educators from Mexico City’s High Schools Teacher Training The initiative came after the educational reforms of former President Enrique Peña Nieto, which required all teachers to pass evaluations. In the case that a teacher did not pass the test (which was not ideal) that person would lose the position. The reform created many discrepancies, and unions such as the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) and the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) grew stronger. Since the government obligated teachers to take these examinations without giving them any preparation, people from the unions (including myself) decided to hold training courses.

It was necessary to study the statutes and agreements to understand how to approach the topics of the exams. After taking these courses the majority of the teachers’ results improved.

Pre-Texts in Mexico

When he came to power President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did away with the law removing teachers from their positions, but the evaluation examinations were still obligatory, with training. It was then that we proposed to integrate the Pre-Texts methodology into the unions’ courses. Now the official course exists under the name Pre-Texts as a tool for educators who want to improve their classes. The new educational model takes a humanist point of view: in two hours I show them how to do any class through theater, dance or other arts. For example, we took the theme of a short story, then we identified its different parts, how we would make it, how we would develop it; the teachers create a story and later we ask it questions, we dance to it, we act it out and we make it live theater.

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In Mexico there are many educational dynamics, but we always repeat the same ones, which for one reason or another turn out to be inefficient. Pre-Texts seems to be a very novel method for teachers to bring to their classes, above all in how it helps them achieve great things in a short amount of time.

At this workshop we had the participation of two teachers from each of the 20 schools involved. They each had different levels of education and taught different subjects, such as Physics, Chemistry, Math, Computer Science, Art, Music, Literature, Education, Spanish, English and History. The Iztacalco High School was the meeting place for the event that happened over the course of two weeks.

We worked together on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s text from 1691 titled “Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz” [Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz]. We did activities like Off on Tangents, Musicalization, What Does the Text Taste Like? and making figures out of clay, and the educators even chose part of the “Sor Filotea” text and represented it in food, imagining how a Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz restaurant would be. At the end of the workshop some participants came to the conclusion that all these activities could be done when the teacher stopped being the center of attention and allowed the students to act with independence.

Pre-Texts at the Feria Internacional del Libro On August 31, 2019, the Pre-Texts protocol was presented at the International Book Fair at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City. The presentation was meant for all members of the public, and among the people who attended were parents with children, adolescents, middle school and high school students, teachers from different levels, and authorities from the SNTE. Plato’s text “Allegory of the Cave” was chosen for the introduction to the methodology; we read it out loud, we asked questions of the text, we put

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the questions and answers on a clothesline. Then we did playful activities to deepen and personalize the understanding of the text. The participants, who were strangers, had to make spoken portraits: in pairs, sitting with their backs to each other, they had to make a “portrait” of a character, a metaphor or a literary figure from Plato’s text, then they discussed the portraits that were created. We also did the activities of Living Sculptures and Sing the Text, and while playing and having fun people could start to see what Pre-Texts is.

REFLECTIONS The main challenge in working with people at community centers, as well as with sex workers and inmates, is combatting fear about what is new and unknown. For someone who does not know how to read or write the idea of working with a text can seem frightening. I had several experiences with students who at first rejected any interaction, but as they drew closer to a text they began to get involved; they wanted to learn more and to create. When a student from a community center got to know Gabriel García Marquez’s 1967 book One Hundred Years of Solitude he was so excited that he began to bring in other texts to construct the image of Macondo in detail. He wanted to know what its plazas looked like, what the people ate.

Pre-Texts in Mexico

At the prisons the text we chose was Robert Fisher’s 1987 novella The Knight in Rusty Armor, which is about a medieval knight who hides his feelings behind his iron suit of armor. The book features many morals and was interesting to most of the students, but the person who was most moved by the story was a 70-year-old man whose questions for the text were quite particular, precise and detailed. When I congratulated him on his good work, he began to cry. Later he explained, “You told me something I hadn’t heard in years.

You said I did something well. For the simple fact that we are here we’re seen as bad people, and everything we do is bad. But we are also sensitive, like the knight.” At the next session the man brought in more texts and was very enthusiastic about participating and learning more.

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OUTCOMES All the students from the Analfabetizmo Zero project were very closed off intellectually and socially. With this educational initiative we tried to share knowledge that would serve to help them solve problems in their daily lives, for example, reading the names of bus stops in order to use public transportation. Another important objective consisted of developing critical thinking through creativity. I never explained to them that what we did was Pre-Texts, but they nevertheless understood the philosophy of Pre-Texts by playing.

On the days following the workshop the students at the prisons asked their family members to bring them books for the next session. The Pre-Texts activities were very useful to facilitate reading and writing in these groups. Several students later finished their bachelor degrees in prison. At the end of the workshop they petitioned for libraries in the prisons, which was approved.

From the first experiences with “Cartonera” (when they were starting to learn the alphabet) up to the last book covers they designed (when they already knew how to write), with their notebooks full of evidence of their progress, they were very proud and surprised at how quickly they could learn. For people who spend all day in the street and who do not have cultural capital, it was a great achievement to be able to concentrate and write, draw or listen to their companion read. With activities such as “Living Statues” they discovered their sensitivity, they improved their way of expressing themselves and they began to allow physical contact such as a hug.

When culture is incorporated into literacy programs and into certain branches of knowledge, methods and activities that contribute to “know-how,” skills, dexterities and cognitive abilities, tools of thought are developed to solve problems in daily life. With the experiences that students acquired participating in this program, they will improve the conditions of their lives—that is the objective we sought by creating a new model for education in Mexico.

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Transforming Ourselves by Creating Verónica Dávila

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

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Workshop year 2014 - 2016 Implementation: 2014-2015 in Saltillo and Torreón 2016-2018 in Monterrey

Place Saltillo, Torreón, and Monterrey, Mexico

Facilitators More than 100 trained educators

Supervisors + Verónica Dávila

Institutions involved Autonomous University of Coahuila, the Business School at Monterrey Technological Institute, San Roberto International School Campus San Agustín

Impacted population 12.000 STUDENTS APPROXIMATELY 60.000 PEOPLE

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MORE THAN

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ACTIVITIES Math Classes with Creative Fashion Shows In high school mathematics assignments there is a need to translate abstract concepts to reality. Using the students’ contributions, together with the educator we designed a “Parabola Formulas Fashion Show” so that the students would learn a practical use for the formulas in addition to expanding their levels of creativity and having fun. There were math classes with creative catwalks to explain the formulas for parabolas.

English Classes with Dramatic Interpretations of Readings Developing public speaking skills is difficult in English classes in Mexico.

In this case the dramatization activities included literature to create different styles of stories: romance, drama, comedy, musicals, etc.; the groups creatively resolved a challenge, lost their fears of speaking English, and also edited their own text, enriching their knowledge in surprising ways.

Transforming Ourselves by Creating

Chemistry Classes Solving Concepts with Creative Expressions According to their own comments, students generally feel fear in Chemistry classes. With the creative activities of Pre-Texts they could find the fun in solving the established problems, as well as understanding the elevated concepts of reactions among elements. They felt free to make mistakes and start over in their creative work, and in the circle of reflection they commented that “now they understood,” as they themselves told the educator.

Reading and Writing Classes An interpretation of spelling rules was made using compact discs and PET (polyethylene terephthalate). It can be rather tedious for the educator to teach spelling rules, however with the playful and creative activities of Pre-Texts the subject was approached with joy and a spirit of fun, and consciousness was raised regarding recycling materials. Students and educators enjoyed the development of civility in the group as generated by this activity.

Closing Event for Pre-Texts at the Torreón Campus of the Autonomous University of Coahuila

Pre-Texts In Mexico

Upon finishing the semester a closing event was organized with the participation of the high school students as well as students from different departments of the University, including Accounting, Administration, Orthodontics, Medicine, Law and English. They even began with more than 200 participants in the lobby of the theater. All were organized into multidisciplinary teams for the activity of Forum Theater. Around the lobby was an exhibit of cartonera book covers made during the semester. Once the event in the theater was finished, t-shirts with the new Pre-Texts logo were visible among the participants in a dance contest.

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Creative Emotions Workshops at the Instituto San Roberto For the third consecutive year we have been chosen to participate in the “Más Vale Actuar” [It’s Better to Take Action] Values Meeting, at which we have held Pre-Texts workshops for more than 800 8th graders who are invited to attend and learn the values of civility, respect, peace and love, among others.

Transformational Development Workshops at Institutions and Businesses Within the group dynamics of organizations something happens that is similar to the dynamics of a classroom. When integrating the experiences of groups of educators with Pre-Texts we identified similarities and adapted the playful-creative activities for their organizational operations.

With the experience of human development as a discipline and the creative process as an operator, Creativer® is a replicable, formal execution system based on what we have called Creatividad Inteligente®, with the motto “the creative process catalyzes intelligence.” Each topic on which we work sits upon the base of this concept, without distinction by discipline. The functionality of the holistic protocol for action has been successful.

Three spirals of transformation form the foundational base of this system.

The initial spiral is that of “Being,” whose objective is to connect people with themselves in a conscious and authentic way in order to later pass to a series of activities focused on creative collaboration, seeking common goals within the organization. That second stage is the spiral of “Co-Creating,” and then the cycle finishes with the spiral of “Innovating,” in which there are defined actions to reach personal or group innovation with a social conscience of positive transformation.

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Figure 1: Creative Workshop with Pre-Texts activities, Instituto San Roberto , López, 2019

REFLECTIONS On the Practice of Forum Theater in Saltillo and Torreón

Pre-Texts In Mexico

As a result of these sessions we could identify a clear difference in the topics the high school students explored in Forum theater and those explored by the Curricular English groups, which were composed of professionals. We also identified clear differences between the groups from the cities of Saltillo and Torreón. To give a clear example, in the groups of professionals in the city of Torreón, 90% addressed problems related to social delinquency, such as

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armed robberies, violence and theft of vehicles or personal property. In all the groups and in each team more than one person had been a victim of one of these crimes—between eight and ten individuals per group of 35. Among topics addressed by high school students in the same city, kidnappings of relatives or friends, drug addiction, suicide and (in lesser measure but nonetheless important) teen pregnancy appeared frequently.

In the case of the city of Saltillo, the most common topics among professionals were divorce and alcoholism (with at least eight mentions per group of 35), along with some mentions of mental illness and emotional distress.

Among the high schoolers from the Fuente Athenaeum and the Sciences and Humanities Institute, there are differences among the schools. At the Fuente Athenaeum the most frequently represented tragedies in Forum Theater were addictions and family violence, while at the second the most common topics were suicide, addiction, the divorce of parents and teen pregnancy. It is worth mentioning that in all these cases these tools resulted in group catharsis, with a level of involvement and high sensitization that showed that the spectators’ proposals were really considered useful to the group.

On Students’ Behavioral Changes The strategy of Pre-Texts favors collaborative work in the classroom and it is very probable that students translate this experience to their general social context. To speak of the experience they acquire with this strategy probably favors not only cognitive development of language and reading skills, but also group participation.

When we observe these variables and relate them to a model of cultural changes in thought, we can infer their holistic relationship to the students’ thought processes and their relational effect on the student’s engagement with the lived experience of Pre-Texts, which as a result gives a greater sense of advances toward several elements or goals of Pre-Texts, such as civility, a very important element that generates an environment free of violent repression in the learning process (bullying).

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On the Role of Educators We could infer that the dynamic driving the class appears to be a relevant condition and that changing the role of the educator from an instructor to a facilitator is a resource for treatment among equals that results in a sense of democracy in the class. It generates the development of creativity through the two norms related to the creative activity: time and the availability of materials with which to freely create, which free the right side of the brain from the control of the left side. There is no time to reason, only to create, which brings the group to the process of reflection, intra- and interpersonal self-observation with “What did we do?”, bringing about an awakening of civil conscience and admiration as basic ingredients of the learning process.

OUTCOMES With the empirical evidence obtained in evaluation and research we can affirm that the positive changes observed in the academic performance (grades) of the high school students and the Curricular English group were significant.

They signaled a clear relationship with the norms and the elements that comprise Pre-Texts, which explains the results in students when analyzing the impact of both pedagogical components; in this way Pre-Texts’s elements (goals/objectives) and its norms (the method’s conditions) can be identified as they are academically utilized and in the transformation of their intra- and interpersonal development by the educational process.

Pre-Texts In Mexico

The students considered that the dynamic of forming a circle positively affects the everyday educational act; also of benefit is the free, collaborative, participatory environment of admiration from and for their peers and the educator, as well as the expression of their opinions about the session/class. In the same way, they found relevant the narration and integration of the academic and the creative experiences in the session through the detonating question of intrapersonal reflection: What did we do? They felt that with Pre-Texts’s creative activities their abilities to read and comprehend difficult texts improved. In addition, the students perceived that their interpersonal relationships with their peers increased and consolidated for the common good, and that their civility also improved significantly, which is related to higher grades.

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The students manifested the tangible benefits they experienced personally and in their groups; after the process, their improved confidence in expressing themselves stands out frequently among their comments, along with their spontaneous and academically valuable contributions. Their displays of sincere integration also increased, as well as their openness and collaboration with shy or apathetic students. Feedback and periodic reunions to share their experiences and achievements are part of a facilitating dynamic of accompaniment that they considered very useful. All the educators expressed their satisfaction at having taken part in the Pre-Texts methodology.

The index of students’ rates of passing to advance to the next academic level, as reflected in the final grades of the Pre-Texts group and the control group, indicates that in the case of the Pre-Texts group the rate of passing was 82.9%, with 50.9% earring grades between 70 and 79; 22.5% between 80 and 89; and 9.5% receiving a grade of 90 or higher. The percentage of failures was only 17.1% (Table 1).

Table 1. Final semester grades, rates of passing and failure among students receiving the Pre-Texts methodology and the control group.

Pre-Texts

Control Group

220

145

Passing index

82.9 %

53.1 %

Failing

17.1 %

46.9 %

Grades between 70-79

50.9 %

35.8 %

Grades between 80-89

22.5 %

13.1 %

9.5 %

2.0 %

Number of students

Grades between 90-100

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In the same table we can observe the final grades for the control group, who did not experience the Pre-Texts method but were instructed in the same subjects by the same educators who applied Pre-Texts with other groups. The rate of passing for the control group was 53.1% with 35.8% receiving grades between 70 and 79; 131% receiving grades between 80 and 89; and 2% receiving grades of 90 or higher. The index of failures was 46.9%.

In accordance with the results displayed in Table 2, the grades reported by educators are positively related to the activities from Pre-Texts, with students expressing a positive opinion of the dynamics of forming a circle to express their opinions about the session/class and the narration and integration of what was seen in the session via the question “What did we do?”. They believed that the activity had increased their reading and comprehension skills, and the students also perceived that their relationships with their peers had improved; they felt their civility had been transformed.

Table 2. The relationship of grades reported by educators using the elements and norms of Pre-Texts with Alpha ≤0.05

Variables

Correlation with grades

Practice of the concept of the “circular classroom” (P)

0.145

A reflective activity: “What did we do?” (P)

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Development of reading and comprehension skills (E)

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Civility, admiration, values and respect (E)

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Just like the high school students, the Curricular English students showed significant advances, primarily in reading and comprehension skills, confidence in self-expression, motivation and critical thinking, which highly influences their academic improvement. In addition, they made important advances

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in creativity, civility and democracy in the classroom, which demonstrates convincingly that the Pre-Texts methodology works to meet the objectives with which it was designed.

Doing socio-cultural activities such as making their badges while listening to the instructions and agreements needed to begin the semester resulted in increased attention as they listened and made something. The students began to feel that they were the center of both the individual’s and group’s attention, and interactions among students began to be meaningful, with a sense of cognitive construction, exchange of impressions in an environment of respect, listening and a feeling of comprehension that what is said is important.

We began to notice rapid integration among the majority of students, but it was also evident that some were more passive observers. However, optimism generated by the conditions was incorporated bit by bit, resulting in relevant contributions. They reached a feeling of admiration for their classmates, creating social acceptance, and they were incorporated into the group naturally.

Then they came together in small groups and began to prepare their artistic activities designed to bring artistic concepts to life from their own perspectives.

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Transforming Ourselves by Creating

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The Barefoot Designer: A Workshop to Unlearn

It’s a Wednesday afternoon at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. A narrator reads out loud a page from The Vortex, a visionary 1924 novel by José Eustasio Rivera that denounces the exploitation of rubber gatherers in the Amazon jungle. I scribble spirals on scrap cardboard as I listen intently, while many other educators, teachers and scholars of various disciplines do the same around the table.

This is my first encounter with Pre-Texts, a pedagogical protocol intended to engage students of all ages and levels in creative and inquisitive full contact with challenging texts. I experience first-hand the benefits as a student: first interrogating a text that looks intractable, and then making sense of it thanks to creative activities and collective reflection with peers. Throughout the first session facilitated by Doris Sommer and Thomas Wisniewski, I become familiar with the protocol even before realizing it. A facilitator proposes activities instead of requiring work, competition gives way to collaboration, we find pleasure in tackling challenging tasks creatively, and we reflect critically on what we did.

Carla Fernández

Each activity multiplies the points of access to the text. At the end of the first session we are invited to become facilitators who propose new activities that we will lead ourselves, and to bring a “tangential” or related text the following day. Such is the model of Pre-Texts: instead of being interrogated by the teacher, students become interrogators of the text, getting to the core of the pedagogical interaction—the ideal starting point for developing a high level of literacy.

During the second and third sessions Profs. Sommer and Wisniewski stepped back and new participants took turns facilitating the activities we proposed, this time with a different text. Since a prompt from the first day was to “go off on a tangent” from the Colombian I brought Canto 13 of Dante’s DiMEXICO CITY,novel, MEXICO vine Comedy, in which Dante breaks off a twig from a tree that cries out with a human voice that it had once been a man. It seemed the likely inspiration for Rivera’s scene in which the hero hallucinates that he cuts a rubber tree,

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Workshop year 2016

Place

which turns out to be his metamorphosed lover, who complains of the cruel wound. We played with Dante that day, for example, withCity, Martine Jean leadMexico Mexico ing us to make maps of the foreboding forest between the river crossed and the sand patch. No one needed to use the theoretical language of “intertexFacilitators tuality” to appreciate the connection between Dante and Rivera because the literary theory was in the reading practice: texts cite otherSommer texts and produce + Doris a density of meaning.

Supervisors

On our third and final day, Alicia—the heroine of The Vortex and now a reference to Dante’s canto—inspired Maria Bovea’s tangent from Alice in + Doris Sommer Wonderland. It was the scene in which Alice changes shape, like characters changed shape—into trees—in the previous readings. We played out Lewis Institutions Carroll’s scene in a Forum Theater Activity prepared by Finlay Bell to explore Dante’s dilemma. At first Bell was concerned thatinvolved his preparation would not suit the shift of focus toward the panic Alice felt when she shrank so small The Jumex Museum that she couldn’t recover her key, but the facilitator rose to the challenge and we all realized that the activity could be tailored to different texts. Pre-Texts activities are not tethered to a specific text. In fact, they are chosen for the interpretive pleasures that a facilitator wants to develop; they can respond to practically any text.

Pre-Texts in Mexico

Each Pre-Texts activity is efficacious in making us read and reread a text with curiosity, and thereby with a deeper understanding than would be possible March 4-6, 2020: More than 20 educators gather at Harvard to become PreTexts facilitators.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. A narrator reads out loud a page from The Vortex, a visionary 1924 novel by José Eustasio Rivera that denounces the exploitation of rubber gatherers in the Amazon jungle. I scribble spirals on scrap cardboard as I listen intently, while many other educators, teachers and scholars of various disciplines do the same around the table.

This is my first encounter with Pre-Texts, a pedagogical protocol intended to engage students of all ages and levels in creative and inquisitive full contact with challenging texts. I experience first-hand the benefits as a student: first

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It’s always a pleasure for me to work with the Pre-Texts methodology. It helps me connect roles and responsibilities. As the mother of two children, I’m very busy. I also have a business that operates at several sites and, in consequence, a very tight schedule. Learning the Pre-Texts reading practice was important for me. It focused my attention, and I knew it would benefit others, including my own children. Though she protested that her own schedule made joining me at the Jumex Museum impossible, I insisted that Dr. Doris Sommer come to facilitate a training workshop during my show. Her friendship and commitment to our collaboration prevailed, and I greatly enjoyed participating in the workshop we managed to co-host. In part, the enjoyment owed to the fact that I could invent my own activities as part of the protocol, so I worked comfortably and confidently. Other participants similarly proposed activities that we did collectively. For example, we organized a fashion show based on a shared text and on the fashion techniques featured in my show. It was the first time that Jumex hosted a runway event! Fashion combines many aspects: it is political and also cultural, a practice that is both shared and individually creative. Expressing myself through clothing—inspired by what I discover and what I invent—is my way of learning, just as happens with books.

The goal of our Jumex Pre-Texts workshop (conducted with a group of designers, art students and museum professionals) was to share a methodology for exploring complexity through activities that we enjoy doing. So we focused on fashion: on textiles, anthropology and artisanal craft communities. I knew

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that Pre-Texts would work to seamlessly put learning and art together. This confidence came from my experience with the protocol, working on a daily basis with collaborators who are indigenous women. They speak, but don’t read or write, even in their native languages, while I don’t understand their languages in any media. Therefore, we had to develop a certain type of visual pedagogy to communicate with each other. Pre-Texts helped us to invent that communication. We managed to overcome cultural barriers imposed on us long ago and to understand each other’s point of view through a kind of reading.

At the Jumex workshop, together with other participants we created fantastic pieces of clothing inspired by the 1957 novel Balún Canán by Rosario Castellanos. Most memorable were the orange dresses with the crazy hats!

I remember that we paraded along the railing in front of the museum in an unprecedented, hilariously dignified catwalk. You might imagine that the fashion show had little to do with the novel, but the passage of text we chose were pages that take great care to admire fabrics and textiles. After all, text and textile are practically the same word.

The experience was as much about connecting and sharing as it was about reading and making art. We drafted designs together, we cried, we danced.

A couple of pages from this wonderful book inspired apparently endless engagement with things and with one another. The Pre-Texts experience is profound because you make it yours; you remember a text because of what it means for you, the meaning that you created—and that’s what matters.

Testimonial from Laima, Carla’s daughter:

Pre-Texts in Mexico

When Pre-Texts came to Mexico and was organized at the Jumex museum, I was probably 9 years old. Now I’m 13. I loved that experience because my mom also participated in it. I invited some of my friends to come over and we enjoyed it together and had a lot of fun. I always loved to read and PreTexts inspired me to read more. I think we have to inspire people who don’t read. Because you may think you know everything, but no one can know everything. Reading helps you to learn about new things. And that’s what’s so amazing about it.

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Pre-Texts in Cluj-Napoca Cristina Rogoz

CLUJ-NAPOCA, ROMANIA

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Workshop year 2019

Place Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Facilitators + Doris Sommer

Supervisors + Doris Sommer

Institutions involved Cluj City Government, Transylvania College

Impacted population

Pre-Texts in Rumania

67 STUDENTS 400 PEOPLE

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Pre-Texts training sessions led by Doris Sommer took place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, between December 2-4, 2019. Representatives of the City Government, including Mayor Emil Boc and Directors of the Cluj Cultural Center, had visited Harvard the previous September and planned a pilot training workshop. In the bright cold of Christmas season, administrators, artists and educators were welcomed into Transylvania College to become pioneers of Pre-Texts.

We completed the 15 hours of required training for our 23 participants from different backgrounds: teachers, artists, cultural managers, curators, etc.

Ten were docents from a variety of museums and centers in Cluj-Napoca; five teachers were faculty from our private host institution, the Transylvania College International School, and another group of five teachers came from a public school, Școala Gimnazială Iuliu Hațieganu.

Together we represented a range of different specialties: mathematics, technology, chemistry, art, language and communication. Two of us teach primary school courses. They were selected and relieved of teaching duties, with the support of school principals, given the general sense that pedagogical change is urgent for Cluj, a city with great potential for development. As a program that would address the objectives of technical and social advances, Pre-Texts was promising.

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The training sessions started with the presentation of the protocol and the history of the program. Though some of its elements are based on empirical learning from different communities and groups, we joked that Latin America is not very far from Romania, since we share romance languages. Understanding the history of the program as a response to the general crisis of low levels of literacy, the protocol was easy to learn and establish.

The following step was the selection of our core text. After considering several options that Prof. Sommer proposed, one participant objected to only one: the Panopticon chapter from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.1 That objection clinched the decision in favor of Foucault. It was not really a perverse move, Prof. Sommer said slyly, because we often have to work with uninviting material. She chose this text on purpose. Teachers and students are obliged to work with established syllabi that include texts they find uninviting, difficult or boring. Pre-Texts comes to the rescue precisely to turn any text into raw material for having fun. The following day, the team worked with another text, a chapter from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments.2 Both texts were the subject of discussions and pretexts for interpretative activities: theater scenes, collages with natural and artificial materials, drawing and even the simulation of a social media feed. All the activities were proposed by the participants, and every one of us led an activity during the three days of training.

Pre-Texts in Rumania

This insured the active participation of each person in the group. Among the activities was bringing in a tangent inspired by the core text. Each participant sought out and brought in articles and texts related either in an obvious or less obvious way to the texts we had examined. This simple part of the protocol helped to open up new perspectives, to discover new interests and to encourage connections among people who didn’t think they had many things in common. This aspect of the training encouraged individual development, not only intellectually but also socially and emotionally, as each participant felt they brought something personal and valuable in the group, and that “something” was the subject of everyone’s attention, even if just for a short time. This helped everyone feel seen, heard, understood and respected.

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The technical aspect of the training, the protocol, was easily adopted by the group and was the guiding element throughout the 3 days of training. As a method it is easy to understand and apply. As such, each participant felt safe within its structure. Each activity was proposed and led by one of the participants, and this was also a source of support that made everyone in the group feel comfortable and willing to get involved.

The last part of the training was dedicated to open discussions and proposals from the group. Each participant had the opportunity to share plans to use the Pre-Texts protocol in the future and to ask for support from others in the implementation of the program. Many proposals involved implementing the protocol in classrooms or groups of children, as most of the participants are working with students of different ages.

Pre-Texts was also the inspiration to consider a broader level of education, considering the shortcomings of public schooling in Romania and the fact that Cluj-Napoca is a university town and a site of both pre-university and university education. Pre-Texts can serve as the basis for much-needed change at earlier stages to prepare young people to take advantage of higher education and to develop career opportunities. While school dropout is a general problem, for Romania, those who “drop out” of the country through emigration compound the challenge to keep people on track and at home.

We now have an opportunity to re-think Pre-Texts at a strategic city-wide level. This is something we are currently pursuing in Cluj-Napoca, among City Hall administrators, relevant NGOs and companies that can contribute to exciting changes in education.

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Pre-Texts in Uganda

Joel Ostdiek and Javier Aranzales

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Workshop year 2015

Place Kampala, Uganda

Facilitators 15 facilitators

Supervisors + Naseemah Mohamed

Institutions involved Cluj City Government, Transylvania College

Impacted population 90 STUDENTS

Pre-Texts in Uganda

KAMPALA, UGANDA

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“[Students are] trained in books but useless in the world of work,” explained Christopher Acar of the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) in an interview in Kampala, Uganda during the summer of 2015.1 Continuing, he described his work with the Ugandan education system, characterizing the system as “too rigid” and not focused enough on developing students holistically. We were conducting a series of interviews with curriculum creators and educators in the Kampala area to learn more about the role that creativity played in the classroom. Acar’s sentiments were echoed by educators in the classroom. Rita Nanyange, literature teacher at Princess Diana High School in Kampala, described the curriculum of Uganda as too academic, with no options for students to explore their talents. She explained: “The syllabus, with no intent to disrespect those who have worked on it, is silly. It does not allow us to create. It is a framework whereby whatever has been studied for the last 50 years is what today’s students are studying.

What we study is not applicable in our real lives. I felt disappointed when I came out, after 15 years of school, with no applicable skills. Students are only trained to pass exams, not to be creative.”2 Other teachers shared this view. Artistic facilitator Abass Amin described, “Our education system was designed to create administrators for a colonial system. It was not designed to create people who contribute to an economy. So people are not incentivized to focus on creativity.”3

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The issue at stake here is not that a lack of creativity will result in an overall lack of artists, but rather that a lack of creativity will hinder students in their holistic development and future prospects. Longtime educator Kyobe Joyce articulated this concern: “These students are not creative. They only care about getting a mark. If it is not going to contribute to their future, they are not interested. And they only think it will contribute to their future if they get a good mark”.4 In an interview, Lutalo Bbosa Vicent of the Ministry of Education in Uganda shared that he had spent the past few years considering how to resolve the issue of associating student grades with success. He explained, “Schools do not place much emphasis on creativity because they only emphasize what can be examined. Creativity is lost along the way because everything is centered on exams; everything must be either right or wrong.”5 How to quantify creativity, however, is an issue separate from whether creativity deserves a place in a child’s educational development. Owing to a variety of factors—not least of all, insufficient numbers of trained teachers, a scarcity of resources and the struggle to test creativity—the Ugandan education system, like many others attempting to keep up with industrial and economic changes, has not prioritized creative learning.

However, teachers are looking to change this situation. Educators are seeking reforms that foster student creativity and develop not only individual students but the entire country.6 Mathias Mulumba of the NCDC stated, “Creativity is at the center of the reform and should be incorporated by every teacher, at every opportunity.”7

The Pre-Texts Uganda Pilot Program

Pre-Texts in Uganda

Pre-Texts Uganda began with a partnership between Cultural Agents at Harvard University, the Center for African Cultural Excellence (CACE) and the Writivism Festival in Kampala. The program was made up of three pillars: teacher training, in-school implementation and a study of the Pre-Texts program in selected schools. The first step was a Pre-Texts training workshop for a group of 15 interested teachers and artists in Kampala. The Pre-Texts training workshops brought together a network of teachers, community leaders

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and artists who believe in diversifying the curriculum, engaging students and tapping into their potential for creativity and innovation. Teachers and artists were led through an array of Pre-Texts activities, discussion and feedback sessions to familiarize them with the method.

Following the teacher trainings was an in-school implementation phase of PreTexts. The first wave of the program included three secondary schools in Kampala: Crested Secondary School, Princess Diana High School and St. Kizito Secondary School. Each partnership was made through contact with literature or arts teachers at each school who agreed to open up their classrooms to Pre-Texts. Students at each school were led through Pre-Texts workshops and introduced to the framework. The first student workshops were led at Princess Diana High School with the help of literature teacher Rita Nanyange. After a week of workshops, Madame Rita commented on the changes she was already seeing in her students: “I didn’t know I had talented students. Even the students who are lazy [in class] participate [in Pre-Texts] and have a talent.” 8 At each school the Pre-Texts workshops partnered with extracurricular after school activities. At Crested Secondary School, the partner program was the School Theater, at Princess Diana Secondary School it was the Writing Club and at St. Kizito Secondary School it was a literature class. Although the PreTexts method would ideally provide teachers with tools for their classroom, the program’s versatility is equally effective within programs for which creativity, literature and student engagement are central components.

For the Uganda Pre-Texts project, the focus of the initial extracurricular pilot sessions was to offer teachers the opportunity to implement the methods without disrupting their current curriculum and syllabus. Ideally, once mastered and comfortable with the method, the literature teachers would not only incorporate the pedagogical methods within their classrooms but continue to train other teachers within the school.

The pilot study also made a case for the Pre-Texts program through student engagement with, and excitement about, the program. Students shared their

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experiences with their peers who were not in the program and eventually more teachers became interested in working with the program. Eventually, a few months later, a second pilot implemented by a colleague was carried out with the additional teachers.

The Role of Artistic Facilitators Another component of the project was to more efficiently utilize skilled, creative and entrepreneurial community members within the education system.

As with many schools focused on academic achievement, there is a marked disconnect between the schools and the communities around them. The Ugandan education system’s Lower Secondary Curriculum, Assessment and Examination Reform Programme (CURASSE) proposes to engage the community to create a symbiotic learning relationship between the students and broader community members. However, as the proposed CURASSE reforms have not yet been implemented, the need to integrate communities remains an important area of need.

Pre-Texts in Uganda

The Pre-Texts Uganda pilot addressed this disconnect between schools and the communities by partnering each school with a local artist. This facilitator brought in an aspect of creativity and community mentorship to the students and supervised the Pre-Texts program as it grew. In the long run, this artist facilitator would be in charge of advancing Pre-Texts in each school. Abass Amin, for example, was the artistic facilitator for Princess Diana High School.

Amin’s background is in theatre and story-telling and the other artistic facilitators brought with them a wide array of talents such as poetry, dance and music. The figure of the artistic facilitator acts as a liaison between Pre-Texts and each school. This person will eventually lead training workshops alongside teachers at each school and connect with other Pre-texts programs in other schools. Accordingly, the role of the artistic facilitator would serve two necessary functions in the current state of the Uganda education system: he or she would help integrate the school with the community, and he or she ensures the sustainability and scalability of the Pre-Texts program in the long-term.

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Overall, two pilots with two different sets of teachers were carried out within Uganda over the summer of 2015. Owing to lack of funding, however, the program was not able to continue as an after school program beyond the pilot, and facilitators could no longer work within schools without a formal title of engagement. Despite the limited pilot, however, teachers and students benefited from the program; as the interviews quoted at the beginning of this chapter demonstrated, teachers saw a marked difference in student engagement and creativity. Our hope is that they have continued to use Pre-Texts within their classrooms as an important pedagogical tool.

Reflections The Pre-Texts program, of course, manifests itself differently depending on the unique contextual contours in which it is presented, as we experienced in Uganda. Below are the observations resulting from our reflections on implementing Pre-Texts in this specific setting. Our hope is that these reflections may be useful to other creators, educators and students as they continue on their own Pre-Texts journeys.

1. Throughout this entire implementation, two broader reasons for promoting the arts became evident. First, art is the custodian of cultural identity. It is through art that a country’s traditions can be passed down, fostering a national identity. Secondly, art is a powerful way of inspiring new ideas for development. It is creativity that will propel the new era of innovation, and this work begins in the early years of a student’s involvement in the education system.

2. Pre-Texts trainers must work to ensure that the workshops with students also give the teachers practice using Pre-Texts, as teachers are the drivers of the program after the training.

3. When implementing the Pre-Texts methodology, it is important to reach outside the scope of the obvious Pre-Texts partners, such as the

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Princess Diana writing club, the Crested Secondary School theatre and literature teachers from both Princess Diana and St. Kizito. Once inside the schools, implementers must try to go beyond the obvious fits and into the less obvious classrooms, such as science and math classes, to diversify the students and teachers involved.

4. The partnership between each school and a local artist facilitator is an important relationship to foster. Ideally, this artist facilitator leads the Pre-Texts trainings in each school. These artist facilitators would work with the teachers to integrate Pre-Texts within classrooms, as well as ensure the sustainability of the program. They would also spearhead inter-school and community-wide Pre-Texts activities.

5. Finally, in considering the sustainability of Pre-Texts, it is clear that schools could not rely on the gradual dissemination of information on Pre-Texts and needed to take a more active stance towards training teachers and sourcing funding for the initial trainings.

Ultimately, while Pre-Texts is not an end-all system to ameliorate the ills of the entire education system where it is implemented, it does equip teachers with tools to better engage and nurture their students.

Pre-Texts in Uganda

Figure 1: Students performing a dance number at the Writivism Festival at the National Theatre in Kampala. Kampala, Uganda, 2015. Photo by Joel Ostdiek

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The Magic Flute: An African-European Approach Through Pre-Texts Victoria Romann

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Workshop year 2018 Implementation: 2018 - 2019

Place Mpererwe, Kampala (Uganda)

Facilitators + Regina Rothe (Germany) + Joseph Ocen (Uganda)

Supervisors + Victoria Romann

Institutions involved Architects of Music

Impacted population

Pre-Texts in Uganda

MPERERWE KAMPALA, UGANDA

20 STUDENTS 1.000 PEOPLE

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Architects of Music uses musical education to build bridges between Uganda and Germany. Program development began in 2017 and launched in January 2018. The program allows youth in Kampala to learn a Western-style musical instrument in addition to traditional Ugandan musical instruments and dance. I founded the program with my fellow teaching artists, Regina Rothe from Germany and Joseph Ocen from Uganda.

Ocen, the program director of Architects of Music, was raised in a village in northern Uganda, where musical experiences changed his life. Learning the traditional Ugandan bow harp, the adungu, in early childhood, Joseph became one of the lead performers in Uganda’s most famous cultural performance group: the Crane Performers. He also crafts harps to sell to musicians throughout Uganda.

Prior to the program’s launch, we held our first fundraising concert in December 2017, in Dresden, Germany. While many El Sistema-inspired programs begin with string instruments, we began offering wind instruments instead, simply because two of the founding members are flautists, and we believe that the recorder is a tool for learning the basics of Western music and music theory1.

It was decided that Architects of Music students would meet three times per week, for 3-4 hours each day. Our team of dedicated teaching artists and per-

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formers are responsible for lessons and programming. In addition to teaching Western-style music, it was important for us to engage our students in traditional Ugandan music and dance, so as to preserve this beautiful musical tradition.

Due to the history of colonization in Africa, it was important that we not only offer education in a foreign music culture, but also identify ways both musical cultures can learn and benefit from one another.

In January 2018, our 15 students, aged 12-22, began musical training in Kampala. In 2019, the second year of our starting phase, a group of 25-30 students regularly attended lessons.

Architects of Music meets Pre-Textos The setting: February 2019, a garden in a typical local neighborhood in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. This is Architects of Music’s training ground, where children and youth gather together three times a week to engage with music and dance activities of local and foreign origin. Participants are curious to start the intensive holiday training with the program’s music directors from Germany.

The characters (15): Community-based participants of Architects of Music, aged 12 to 25; staff members responsible for traditional African dances; Architects of Music’s team of directors.

Pre-Texts in Uganda

The opening scene: After the group’s welcome dance, we all gather together in a circle doing small group awareness exercises. These include individual movements that are combined into a group movement, body percussion and gestures combined with speaking your name out loud, and they serve to get to know each other better and strengthen the group’s identity. A round of “What did we do?” gives everyone the opportunity to reflect about the activities. Afterwards, we start to work with our text: The Magic Flute based on the libretto of W.A. Mozart’s opera. Mafabi, a group member, reads the text out loud while the others design book covers. Then we pose questions to

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the text and present them in front of each other. Hanging the book covers and questions on a clothesline, they will be present during the entire holiday camp. As the activities continue and the group develops a deeper understanding, they might find answers to the questions there.

This was the first Pre-Texts activity for the members of Architects of Music in Kampala. As we prepared for our visit in Uganda, Regina and I agreed that we wanted to engage the youth from Architects of Music with Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute. It carries socio-emotional topics to which people from all over the world can relate—love, intrigue, friendship, courage—and it seemed to be the perfect piece to introduce some famous European classical music to the youth. During the intensive holiday camps, the participants met every day for a week and practiced traditional Ugandan instruments and dances, as well as deepening their skills in Western-style flute playing and music notation. Introducing the Pre-Texts method for the first time, we intended to broaden their learning experience and engage with a completely new music genre: opera.

After reading the text aloud, designing book covers and posing questions, we divided the group into three smaller groups. Each group got two main characters from the opera (Pamina, Tamino, Papageno, the Queen of the Night, Sarastro and Monostatos). In Pre-Texts fashion, they had to go through the text to find out more about each personality’s characteristics and define certain paragraphs they later presented to the group in a short play. They could use spoken words, songs and musical instruments to express their interpretation in front of the group. We knew that all of this was a first-time experience for these youth. The individual groups presented incredibly creative and diverse short plays about the opera’s main characters. We discovered great potential in the actors and actresses among our participants.

After diving into the world of the Magic Flute, Regina and I played some excerpts of Mozart’s original music arranged for two flute players. The youth had to quickly go through the text while listening and point out a paragraph which might represent the character corresponding to the music. In addi-

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tion, they had to explain how they had matched a certain character and paragraph to the music, no matter whether it was right or wrong. The group pointed out some great character traits they could identify just listening to the music, which helped them find the corresponding characters and paragraphs.

Throughout this process of Pre-Texts activities, we directors had the idea to design our own production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, empowering the youth and their potential and drawing on the combination of African and European arts.

We chose the best scenes from the small theater presentations and, together with the group, we developed them further and chose actors and actresses to represent the main characters. It took less than a full day, and all identified with his or her respective character—the group even started to call them by the characters’ names. To create a full production lasting approximately one hour, we chose musical items with recorders, flutes and traditional Ugandan instruments, as well as items from Ugandan dances, all mixed with the flute arrangement of the original music. A special item was the opening of the production, in which Regina and I took fragments from the original overture and, in a few sessions of creative musicianship, we composed our own overture for The Magic Flute flowing from recorder playing into a traditional opening dance, “Amagunju,” which is the welcome dance in the Buganda Kingdom, the central region of Uganda.

Reflections Our point of departure:

Pre-Texts in Uganda

How can we bring these youth from Uganda closer to an understanding of European (“Western”) music culture? How can we learn from each other, and how can both music cultures—African and European—benefit from each other?

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Choosing the Text Music is a universal language, as are emotions. People all over the world, no matter their background, age, culture or religion, deal with emotions. They seek ways to express themselves, they experience love, trust and friendship, as well as intrigue and disappointment. Music and emotions go hand in hand, especially in the opera genre. Mozart’s The Magic Flute was our first choice for getting our peers to their first engagement and understanding of European music culture. Such a popular German opera dealing with human emotions packed into a lovely fairytale was the perfect door-opener to connect African and European music tradition. With Architects of Music, we want to empower young people and help them use the arts to reach their full potential. Throughout our work on The Magic Flute, we revealed new talents and interests among the group. Regarding the length of The Magic Flute’s libretto, we prepared a shortened version and included scenes of dialogue to encourage the elements of theater plays in our group exercises.

The Intercultural Learning Experience at Architects of Music As mentioned before, it was the first time for this community to engage with the musical genre of opera, the first time they would hear about W.A. Mozart, the first time they would engage with the Pre-Texts method. As expected, the group was open-minded and curious to learn new things. Looking at their handcrafted book covers, it was amazing to learn more about each person’s individual creativity and curiosity. The statement student Waswa Denis showed us the importance of literature in his life, as well as how much he values reading to develop himself: “Read and you won’t regret—Picfare books never lie.”2 During our Pre-Texts activities, we observed how the group developed their work with the text. From the first moments we could tell that some of them weren’t familiar with the way one can deeply engage with a written story, and we could also gauge how their listening skills while designing their book covers differed, as revealed by the quality of their questions relating to the text.

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Figure 1: Architects of Music. The Magic Flute. Performance. Kampala, Uganda, 2019.

Photo by Victoria Romann

However, there were great questions, such as: “Could true love be related to the magic flute?” and “Who made the magic flute?”, as compared with questions like, “What was the story about?” or “Who was the writer?”

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As we only really knew about our participants’ musical development since the start of the project in January 2018, we didn’t expect this diversity of talents among our youth. The second activity, in which each small group had to present two of the main characters, revealed great acting talents among our participants. From their creativity we developed the entire production of our African-European Magic Flute, which wasn’t our plan on arrival. We were overwhelmed by the strength and potential of our youth and witnessed firsthand how Pre-Texts could liberate everyone’s potential to grow and develop.

While distributing roles to participants we experienced how they quickly identified with their designated character and took the chance to dive deeper into the world of The Magic Flute. Throughout the process of working together as creators and co-creators, the entire group came closer together. With the Pre-Texts method it took very little time for the students to be able to play with the text, get familiar with the plot and identify with the characters. It was an unforgettable and absolutely enjoyable experience for them. Still today, six months later, they still call each other “Papageno” or “Queen of the Night.”

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Figure 2-3: Architects of Music. The Magic Flute. Book covers on the clothesline. Kampala, Uganda, 2019. Photo by Victoria Romann.

Knowing that in Ugandan schools teaching style is based on lecture, instruction and repetition, there is little room for creativity and inspiration. There might be exceptions, but the common experience among our participants is that learning in school is not much fun. Playing with literature as encouraged

by Pre-Texts opened up their horizons and gave them a new experience: having fun while engaging with a text and acquiring knowledge and skills.

Departing from a great understanding of the plot, our center’s trainers for traditional African dance created a composition of traditional Ugandan dances to include in the production. The outcome encouraged us to continue with Pre-Texts activities especially during holiday camps at the project, where members are together for one week, from morning to evening hours, to offer a deep and vivid learning experience for all participants.

Conclusion The Pre-Texts approach helped to create a greater identity and sense of belonging in the group, both for participants and staff members. Especially for Regina and myself, as we are only in Uganda twice a year, it was a great opportunity to get to know everyone better and to witness both individuals’ and the group’s potential. In other words, it helped to create a strong relationship between members and program directors. Using the Pre-Texts method helped us to establish some group rituals for the regular trainings, such as gathering in a circle as the training starts and ends, and in particular giving each and every person’s voice the chance to be heard. This was a big challenge for the shyer participants, but with time they also get encouragement from other members to contribute. All

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learn that their voices are important and make a difference. On the other hand, the more extroverted participants learned to create space for others. It was a beautiful learning experience for the entire group. Cultivating this kind of respect between participants will also make them likely to influence their friends and families positively.

One result affecting the curriculum of our program in Kampala is that we have decided to dedicate one of three holiday camps each year to working on a new opera. As our members’ instrumental and dancing skills increase constantly, we will be able to include a diverse range of musical and dance items, inspired by the original music. Our goal in the years to come is for the musical level of our group to be high enough that they can perform independently, for Regina’s and my professional flute playing skills to be unnecessary during the performance.

This means we are working with our members on their individual instrumental playing skills, but, in Pre-texts fashion, when we work on the productions, we as facilitators delegate tasks and create particular learning experiences for the group, making ourselves as dispensable as possible.

Pre-Texts in Uganda

Figure 4: Architects of Music. The Magic Flute. Performance. Kampala, Uganda, 2019.

Photo by Victoria Romann

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Pre-Texts in Boston Marcela Mahecha

Pre-Textos In Boston

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Workshop year Implementation: 2007 - 2009

Place Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Facilitators 20

FACILITATORS

Supervisors + Marcela Mahecha + Kimberly Dawson

Institutions involved Barr Foundation and Orchard Gardens Community Center

Pre-Texts in United States

BOSTON

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ACTIVITIES From 2007 to 2009 Pre-Texts was an integral part of the pilot program and the first implementation of Culture for Change (CFC), a project for youth development and artistic activism financed by the Barr Foundation at community-based organizations in the Boston area, specifically in programs occurring outside school hours.1 The project was centered around dynamic collaboration between professional artists-in-residence and young workers, seeking to encourage the development of artistic fluidity in young people from the community as they explored and exercised leadership on issues of social and racial justice and that affect them and are important to them within their communities.

This project was based on the topic of literacy. The young people from each participating organization selected an issue related to social and/or racial justice in their communities, and they collaborated with a professional artist-in-residence and young workers to develop an art project responding to the problem they had identified.

During this period one of the participating organizations was the Orchard Gardens Community Center Boys and Girls Club. The project’s team at Orchard Gardens identified the issue of self esteem in girls ages 8-14 as their issue of social and racial justice. For the week of our Pre-Texts workshop, we

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selected a chapter of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and as co-facilitator we chose Kimberly Dawson, an experienced Pre-Texts trainer who has worked with many community-based organizations in Boston.2 The first day of the workshop, when we began to plan the activities each person would individually carry out over the next few days, the response was rather surprising: none of the participants was confident they could carry out the activities because they were not professional artists. One was a Physical Education teacher who gave health and fitness classes at a private club. Others were social workers and still others were volunteers who worked at the programs that took place after school.

When they found out it was not necessary to have special talents or training to facilitate Pre-Texts workshops, we let the participants know they might discover new talents as they realized things they were more passionate about.

We asked them what they liked to do: one person liked to make and collect dolls, another did the same with jewelry, and the P.E. teacher offered to teach a fitness workshop. What happened next was the best we’ve seen from Pre-Texts. From where supposedly there was no talent came sophisticated workshops that were much more creative than those we had done with professional artists.

The participant who led a workshop on dolls brought felt silhouettes of dolls in colors that represented different skin tones: white, cinnamon and dark brown. She also brought in wigs with black, blond, brown, red and white hair, as well as many different colored eyes. All the participants chose the materials they wanted to use to make a doll. When their work was to be presented participants had to tell the story of their dolls and its connection to the text.

Pre-Texts in United States

For the jewelry workshop, participants had to choose difficult phrases from the text and create necklaces from colored beads—each bead represented a syllable, as a constant value was given to each color or shape of bead. Each group of three or four people selected a paragraph and each person had

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to portray a line from the paragraph using the beads. When the work was presented, the participants read the paragraph using the values assigned to each bead. Some groups asked for the other participants to read the paragraphs using the values assigned to each bead. It was a very difficult challenge, but satisfying and fun. The participants identified that activities implying challenges generate more satisfaction than simple or well-known activities.

The fitness instructor created an aerobics workshop in which every jump and every movement represented words and phrases that the other participants had to guess to associate with the text.

The last day of the workshop the facilitators were filled with pride, satisfaction and happiness, and they wanted to participate in other similar workshops because they realized that they did not need to be artists to produce quality work.

REFLECTIONS The premise upon which Pre-Texts is based is that all people of all ages have innate artistic talent, and they are creative even if they do not know or believe it. The key is the tools trainers use to reveal these talents through the Pre-Texts methodology. It is proven that for Pre-Texts to be effective it is crucial for participants to be willing to take risks, to leave their comfort zones and, most importantly, to be resourceful in exploring new ways of teaching. The greatest talent is the capacity to seek out talents that are not evident at first glance.

Pre-Texts is ideal to support traditional education programs. The charm of Pre-Texts is that it is simple and inexpensive; it does not need sophisticated materials or personnel. There are materials everywhere to recycle, as well as recycling practices. Pre-Texts, though, is about more than recycling—it is about transforming materials to produce an artistic element. Recycling wellknown games to approach a difficult text is also an artistic exercise.

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Pre-Texts for Campus-Community Partnerships: A HumanitiesCentered Approach Vialla Hartfield-Méndez

Workshop year 2017 - 2018 Implementation: 2017 - 2020

Place Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Facilitators 5

FACILITATORS

Supervisors N/A ATLANTA

Institutions involved Emory University

Impacted population 21 STUDENTS 250 PEOPLE

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Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange The setting: January 2017. A large room in the main library of the university, often used for lectures or university leadership meetings. Various art supplies and found materials are in small collections around the room and people are making hand-made name tags.

The characters: Around 20. Representatives of community-based organizations in the Buford Highway corridor of Atlanta (a community whose members come from many different parts of the world); undergraduate and graduate students; faculty members from Emory and one from nearby Georgia Institute of Technology; staff members who facilitate community engagement.

The opening scene: A “lector” reads a passage from Karen Tei Yamashita’s magical realist novel Tropic of Orange, ending with a description of an orange falling from a tree, crossing a barely visible line, in the process moving from private property to a public roadway..1 We create books as we listen.

Then we pose questions to the text, propose answers to our questions or those of others, hanging them on a clothesline and reading each other’s questions and invented answers. One community partner has asked the stark question: “Is there a difference between private and public land?” She has written a bold and even starker answer: NO. When the “curator” of this “exhibit” asks the group which piece of writing they would like to know more about, this is the one that has caught the attention of multiple participants. They really want to know more.

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This was the inaugural meeting of Emory’s first University-Partner Learning Community (UPLC), an innovative approach to community engagement that invites faculty, students, university staff members and community partners into the same conversation to create projects together. This kind of learning community is designed to encourage radical “full participation” by everyone involved in community-campus partnerships.2 Before we formally introduced ourselves, before we attached titles and roles to ourselves, before we established hierarchies in the usual way, we read part of a novel and played with it, together. We got to know each other through this Pre-Texts exercise before we did anything remotely similar to the usual formal introductions. The public/private land issue was the way we got to know the founder and director of We Love Bu-Hi, a very small non-profit focused on art interventions, some of which should, according to her, happen on private land with public attributes.

A philosophical debate about the nature of public and private occurred unexpectedly, with very real consequences for murals that might be painted on private property. However, the Pre-Texts protocol which we had established meant that once this community partner had explained her question and response, she then was prompted to identify someone else’s work that interested her. In Pre-Texts fashion, we all heard from students, faculty, Emory staff members and other community partners about their engagement with the Tropic of Orange excerpt. In the process we began to relate to each other on a personal level while integrating that personal engagement with the reason for our meeting: to learn together how best to work together to address community needs. In turn, this created a pathway fairly quickly to focus on the issues that community partners had on their minds, in tandem with the academic expertise and potential research questions of faculty members and students in the room.

Both arenas were fully represented from the beginning. Thus began the pilot UPLC, a model that we are still developing and exploring.

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In this first Emory-Buford Highway UPLC, the planning included an opportunity at the very beginning for the participants to be “struck” by Yamashita’s words in Tropic of Orange, a term Jonathan Lear used to refer to “the call of another’s words.”3 Not only did we anticipate this circumstance, we also expected to not know what would emerge from how Yamashita’s words

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Figure 1: Pre-Texts in Buford Highway UPLC. Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2017.

Photo by Vialla Hartfield-Méndez.

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“struck.” We planned to work with whatever emerged, and this meant that all in the room found themselves in a relatively uncomfortable place for a relatively prolonged amount of time, in our first meeting. We did not know quite what would surface because we knew that what came next would be created in collaboration among all the participants. The question of public activity on private property is one we did not expect, but it very quickly led us to some of the key issues for this geographic area, touching on the experiences of most immigrants from many parts of the world living in the Buford Highway corridor: the rights of renters, many with precarious legal status; how to raise residents’ voices on issues of redevelopment of private land threatening to push them out; questions about public facilities such as schools; potentially contentious public art reflecting the experiences of long-time residents that might be created on private property. These issues were brought to the table collaboratively and indirectly through engagement with the text. Once they were identified, we were able to move to other processes in the learning community, such as creating teams interested in working together on a particular topic.

Kevin Young’s Poem “Rooting” After reflecting on the experience of the first UPLC, we prepared for the South DeKalb County UPLC (an area with a different geography, with strong African-American traditions, yet still very urban) and decided to start once again with a text, but to tweak the Pre-Texts approach. The theme of this UPLC, “Living Well for the Long Term,” derived from work already underway in the community, especially around food access and healthy lifestyle choices in an urban setting in transition. At our first meeting we followed the same protocol of the pilot UPLC: getting to know each other first at a very personal level, before offering titles and roles, by engaging with a text. The text that “struck” the participants was “Rooting,” a poem by Kevin Young from his collection Book of Hours.4 “Rooting” strikes in many directions, but as a simple summary, the words trace the path of a father on an evening walk in a busy city, pushing his infant son in a stroller, thinking about his own dead father along with the role of fathers as providers of food, shelter, comfort, etc. This intergenerational connection in a setting that was very urban, perhaps disturbing,

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yet nevertheless familiar, made sense as a place to start a conversation to bring together community members, university professors, students and staff members. This time we combined the text with a story circle (based on the methodology of Roadside Theater).5 A volunteer “lector” read the poem, then each participant responded to a story prompt: “Tell the story of a time when the connection between food and place made a difference for you.” Having just heard or read the poem, the intergenerational theme emerged in the participants’ own stories, and, just as happened at the first UPLC, we began to understand each other first, and started to see possible ways to work together.

Dulce Alonso, “Remaking El Rancho” Building on the storytelling experience, in the newly reconstituted Buford Highway UPLC (with new participants cycling in and others cycling out—this was essentially a new group of people), we decided to use a digital story as the initial text with which to play. The theme of Phase II of the Buford Highway UPLC was “The Power of Narrative,” developing one of the strands of work from the previous learning community. In conversation with the community partners, we understood “narrative” very broadly, encompassing the visual narratives of murals, for example, but also looking to create a higher profile for the stories of people in the Buford Highway corridor. In this instance, the “text” we chose was “Remaking El Rancho,” a digital story by Dulce Alonso, produced in a workshop facilitated through the Story Center.6 An immigrant story about making tortillas while remembering how her grandparents made them in their home country, Mexico, it is also about the storyteller herself as she transformed tortilla-making from a punishment meted out by her father into the joy of connection with those memories. The words are carefully crafted and presented with a series of photos.

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The story circle prompt to facilitate a response to Alonso’s words was: “Tell the story of a time when something reminded you vividly of an important event.”

That is, we intentionally emphasized the story’s narrative strategy of linking one event in the near past to another in the more remote past. As in the other UPLC initial meetings, we expected the unexpected, and in this case the unexpected

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was the significant amount of emotional response. At a crucial moment in her story, Alonso mentioned that she left Mexico at age seven and has never returned. Many of the stories the participants told in response had an air of finality, loss or deep nostalgia. In a very brief amount of time, people who had just met for the first time, as well as those who had known each other for a number of years, delved deeply into very personal stories, allowing for the group to then work together with profound respect for each other, as well as a fresh reminder of the power of narratives. This fed enthusiasm for the work of understanding narratives and making them public.

Figures 2 and 3: Pre-Texts in Buford Highway UPLC. Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2017.

Photos by: Vialla Hartfield-Méndez.

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REFLECTIONS On University-Partner Learning Communities The liminal spaces of campus-community partnerships are fraught with asymmetrical power dynamics, capacity challenges, thwarted aspirations to reciprocity, varying degrees of preparation for community engagement for all (students, faculty, community members, administrators, etc.) and time-space constraints that often result in sporadic involvement. A particular problem identified by Stoecker and Tryon in The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning is that the received structures of higher education artificially set up hierarchies of knowledge and agency that can have the effect of muffling—or even completely eclipsing—the voices of people in “community” settings with whom faculty and students believe they wish to work to solve a given problem.7 These challenges have led a number of university and community leaders to carefully consider how to assure that these voices are heard in a consequential manner.

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What would happen if, instead of having scholars and students identify a potential social problem and propose a hypothesis about a solution, we instead began building relationships with people who are not in the academy but who are very close to these social problems? What if we were able to create equitable and mutually respectful relationships first, allowing time for the practice of “full participation” together, and then—only after this work—we built community-campus partnerships and projects together, from the ground up? Might participants in community-campus partnerships begin to exercise their roles as a common asset rather than as obstructions to collaboration?

Would it be possible to move beyond the calcified hierarchies that assume those who are in “higher” education therefore have a better understanding of how best to proceed, or even what the actual problems are? And what could the role of the humanities (literature, art) be in making this happen? Might a humanities-based approach help to create the basis for the full participation?

Departing from these questions, together with Kate Grace, my colleague at Emory University, I considered how to implement Pre-Texts and modified versions

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of this pedagogy in what we have called University-Partner Learning Communities. These learning communities have the specific goal of hearing all the voices first, then moving to collaborative and civically engaged work, an approach designed to generate mutually respectful, fully participatory, multi-faceted partnerships. We have observed that Pre-Texts and similar approaches, when facilitated intentionally, can indeed help solve the structural issue of unheard voices, allowing players from many different contexts to successfully address social challenges together. Further, I argue that the nature of the work itself is transformed, and this is perhaps the more important point.

In this sense, the University-Partner Learning Communities between Emory and groups of community partners in Atlanta are essentially “communities of practice,” but with a particular focus on the role of art, literature and storytelling as an effective way to enter into boundary-crossing dialogues.8 In fact, the pilot UPLC was specifically organized around the theme of Art and Social Transformation, in part responding to community-organizing efforts already underway in the Buford Highway area, and in part because we wanted to explicitly point to our exploration of “The Work of Art in the World.”

As described above, since the pilot Buford Highway UPLC, we have formed two additional learning communities. In each we have paid attention to the observation by Robert Bringle, Patti Clayton and Mary Price that using the very terms “university-community” or “community-campus” to describe these partnerships does not capture the complexities of the relationships involved.9 Bringle, Clayton and Price propose a structural framework for better understanding the dynamics of these partnerships, and they have identified “five key constituencies or stakeholders who can be delineated for an analysis of relationships associated with service learning and civic engagement: Students, Organizations in the community, Faculty, Administrators on the campus, Residents in the community (or, in some instances, clients, consumers or special interest populations).” This “SOFAR” framework allows one to think about the dyadic relationships between people in each of these roles (students/faculty, faculty/community residents, administrators/faculty, students/

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Pre-Texts in United States

community-based organization representatives, such representatives/community residents, etc.). In most settings, these myriad relationships develop separately, or at least without much awareness of the other relationships.

Often, for example, a faculty member will develop a project with a community-based organization and then create a way for students to work on that project, but the faculty member and students may be unaware of connections that organization has with, say, administrators at the university. Mindful of this, we decided to create the University-Partner Learning Communities with a carefully balanced representation of people in all these different roles so that multiple dyadic relationships related to community-campus partnership work in a particular geography could develop in proximity to each other. As in the first meeting of the pilot learning community, described above, in each of the subsequent learning communities we turned to the arts and humanities with Pre-Texts-inspired strategies to jumpstart these relationships.

Figure 4: UPLC Buford Highway, 1st meeting, clothesline detail. Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2017. Photo by Vialla Hartfield-Méndez.

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On Choosing the Text How to choose the text to begin with? In a setting like a University-Partner Learning Community, does it matter which text we choose to activate civic behavior? Perhaps it does. A key feature of Pre-Texts is the point of departure: a text. In Doris Sommer’s succinct description, Pre-Texts is a simple protocol: take a text, spin it using any available art form, reflect.10 In many iterations, the text is literary, often with remarkable imagery, turns of phrases that capture the imagination, plays on words, descriptive combinations that convey a scene, an arresting plot, etc. These are ways in which the words of others can strike participants, inspiring new possibilities, creative expression, closer reading, admiration for the text and for each other’s responses. Yet in some instances, we have experimented with other kinds of texts. For example, in a Pre-Texts workshop for a Modern Language Association meeting in Atlanta in 2017, Prof. Sommer and I worked with an informative text about HIV and AIDS from Avert.org, to excellent effect.11 On another occasion, a Pre-Texts workshop for charter school teachers in Los Angeles ended with a text chosen by the teachers, “A Decent Home. An American Right,” a pamphlet issued by the LA Housing Authority in the mid-twentieth century with descriptions of “desirable” housing, which was intended to make the argument for housing reform—a reform that was eventually detrimental to poor and immigrant neighborhoods.12 The engagement through Pre-Texts activities with both these texts was similar to the engagement resulting from a literary text, in that the participants completely transformed them, challenging the premises or dryness of the non-literary texts. This illustrates that another way of being struck by the words of others can look like a movement of resistance to those words. In the UPLC context, we have given careful consideration to the texts and how to play with them. In the pilot Buford Highway UPLC, the Tropic of Orange excerpt was chosen because the novel re-writes the geographic and cultural landscape of Los Angeles in Asian-American, Mexican-American, African-American and Latino terms. The two-page excerpt only hinted at some of this, but the choice of the text had to do with the fact that the Buford Highway area has a rich cultural mix that is both like and unlike the Los Angeles of the novel. The outcome encouraged us to carefully consider the community context in choosing the text to launch these learning communities.

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OUTCOMES

Pre-Texts in United States

The Pre-Texts approach gave us a way to be struck by another’s words in two ways: by words in the text that served as our starting point and in our engagement with each other’s responses to that text. At the end of the pilot UPLC, we conducted a value-based assessment. A majority of the participants indicated that the UPLC process had been generative and reciprocal, and that the Pre-Texts exercise at the beginning was a promising practice. One commented: “I loved the Pre-Texts! It’s a wonderful way to build community and generativity right from the start.” Another described it as “open minded and refreshing.” As noted above, we learned from the feedback, including the following statement: “I think the process worked fairly well here to establish rapport before learning who was in the room (breaking down hierarchy).

There are several activities in the Pre-Texts process that I find to be difficult to link to the purpose of the workshop—like making a book that is not used later in any way.” In fact, in subsequent UPLCs, we chose to not use the bookmaking exercise, and perhaps the most important lesson of all was to use the freedom to create at the root of Pre-Texts’ invitation in order to innovate and adapt.

Figures 5, 6 and 7: Pre-Texts in Graduate Class Final Reflection. Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2019. Photos by: Vialla Hartfield-Méndez.

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In the UPLCs we have tried to foreground what Lear calls “the hallmarks of the humanities”—speculation, being moved by words and art, holding imaginative possibilities—within a context that is often dominated by the social sciences, which go about identifying and solving problems very differently. Framing community-campus partnerships in this way has the potential to change the entire landscape of collaborative work by starting with human relationships first. In the UPLCs, the Pre-Texts approach opened up this possibility.

At Emory, these results suggested the necessary role of approaches like those of Pre-Texts in graduate education. In a recent graduate course entitled “Partnering Communities and Universities,” my colleague Professor Bobbi Patterson and I incorporated the UPLC Pre-Texts experiments into the course, which itself had an experiential learning component: each student was involved in a project with one of several community-campus partnership programs at Emory. In part to facilitate meaningful reflection and in part to illustrate the pedagogical and community-building possibilities of Pre-Texts, we substituted a Pre-Texts activity for the usual formal final presentations at our last class meeting. Instead of running through predictable Powerpoints, we formed pairs and invited each to share their projects through the retratos hablados (spoken portraits) exercise: one partner drew on a large sheet of paper while the other, without watching what the other was drawing, described their community-based project at great length. We then asked them to switch roles, and in the end each pair had two visual representations of projects. This was followed by a reflective conversation, then a presentation to the larger group.

In every case there were unexpected realizations about their projects, aspects they had not yet considered. This exercise was both an illustration of the kind of humanities-based activity that could be used effectively in community-campus partnerships—the subject of the course—and the prompt for a final reflection in their course portfolios. In this way, the learning we did with our community partners in the UPLC was the impetus for some of the learning in the graduate course, completing the community-campus partnership circle, with Pre-Texts as the critical link.

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Art Experience/ Experiments in Boston Public Schools Suzanne Paszkowski

Workshop year 2019 Implementation: 2019 - present

Place Boston, USA

Facilitators BOSTON

Michelle Sirios (Grade 4) and Caroline Kiddie (Grade 3)

Supervisors Emilia Pfannl

Institutions involved Perry School, Adams School

Impacted students 20-25 STUDENTS IN EACH CLASS 2 TEACHERS AND APPROX. 50 STUDENTS

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This past Saturday morning while I was making breakfast, I had Bob Dylan’s song “Buckets of Rain” playing on repeat in the kitchen. I have listened to this song a lot over the past year, thinking that it is a perfect song for its simple form yet profound content, but I had never given it much more thought, beyond a quick internet search to discover that Dylan had in fact written the song, not Dave Van Ronk, as one of my roommates believed.1 Saturday morning, however, I started to take more notice of the lyrics and their multi-layered referential potentiality: from the possible allusion in Dylan’s opening lines—“Buckets of rain / Buckets of tears”—to the line from Shakespeare’s Richard II, “That bucket down and full of tears am I” (Act 4, Scene 1), to the potential Sound of Music allusion that would help to make sense of Dylan’s mysterious reference in the first verse to buckets of moonbeams (“How do you solve a problem like Maria? / How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?”).

But the lyrics that most captured my imagination as I was making tea were the iterative opening of the fourth verse, when Dylan sings, “Little red wagon / Little red bike / I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like.” Michael Gray, author of the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, has analyzed these lines in reference to pre-war blues’ hidden transcripts for homosexualilty, as well as children’s music that Dylan would have heard when he was young.2 But for me these lyrics recalled William Carlos William’s well-known poem “The Red Wheelbarrow”:

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Art Experience/Experiments in Boston Public Schools

Figure 1: A clothesline/pipeline filled with student art above the entrance to one of the specialty classrooms at the Perry School in South Boston. USA, 2019. Photo by Suzanne Paszkowski.

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so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens Like Dylan’s unassuming but meaningful lyrics, William Carlos Williams’ poem draws attention to a seemingly mundane scene that takes on a world of significance. Both Dylan and Williams focus on red yard equipment: wagons, bikes, wheelbarrows. This parallel between the red equipment is what originally made the connection for me, not to mention that the color red is a common attention grabber, but for me the really significant parallel between these two works of poetry is the fact that they generate greater meaning through the perception of small sensations—a color, a smile, the rain—and the connection of those sensations to grander themes in life: things upon which much depends, friendships, relationships, platitudes about care and support.

Meaning in poetry, as in life, may come from grander ambitions and accomplishments—clever references to Shakespeare about which those erudite enough to catch them may publish essays. But more universal meaning is generated from paying attention to the actual experience of being in the world and trying to express those experiences to others. This is a humanistic truth about what art does and how art means. And it is this humanistic truth that both Dylan and Williams tap into with their words, and that set me pondering, returning to more of William’s poetry throughout the day and reflecting further on what it means to find meaning in the everyday, when there is so much work to do and so many people to whom one’s time and attention is obliged.

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A few days later, I found myself in a fourth grade classroom at the Perry School in South Boston, composing my own version of Williams’s poem alongside some new ten-year-old colleagues. I was visiting the school as a Pre-Texts coach to work with teachers whom I had helped train as Pre-Text facilitators in August, before the start of the current school year. It just so happened that on that October day when I was visiting the school, the fourth grade teacher was doing a Pre-Texts activity with the students for the very first time. The activity that she proposed to the class was for each person to compose their own version of Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.” I nearly lost my mind at the serendipity of the situation. Fourth graders apparently first encounter Williams’ poem when they read Sharon Creech’s book, Love That Dog, which tells the story of a young boy’s initial reluctance, then growing appreciation of poetry through a series of free-verse poems. At a certain point, the protagonist of the book writes his own version of William’s poem, and so our task that morning was to do the same, choosing an object from our own lives upon which so much seemed to depend and writing a poem in imitation of and response to Williams’.

Pre-Texts in United States

Following typical Pre-Texts protocol, the teacher proposed the task to the group and asked for comments, suggestions, questions, etc. The students were already excited to write their own poems, but we deliberated back and forth for a few moments about whether this should be an independent and silent activity (using voice level 0), or an activity that the students should do with their writing partners (using whisper voices, level 1). We reached a compromise: those who wanted to work independently could; those who wanted to work with their writing partners could; and those who wanted to work with a partner but whose writing partner wanted independence could meet at the teacher’s desk to find a different partner to work with for the activity. As a visitor to the class for the day, I found myself at the teacher’s desk, partnered with a young boy. We talked about what objects we might choose that were particularly important to us, and then we set to work writing our poems, lineby-line, following the models of Williams and Jack (the protagonist of Love That Dog). I wrote about the keys that I had accidentally locked in my office, along with everything else of significance (wallet, phone, computer), the day before. My partner wrote:

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Figure 2: Cartonera-style book covers for Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, made during the Pre-Texts workshop at Harvard’s Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Boston, USA, 2019.

Photo by Suzanne Paszkowski.

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So much depends upon a white iPhone 8 encased in a supercar case on my bed charging After composing our poems, we had some extra time within our allotted ten minutes, which we spent drawing an image to accompany our poems.

Through this, I came to discover that my partner also had Batman pillows on his bed. “Beside the batman / pillows”—can you imagine? Poetic gold. Then, we came back together as a group, went around in a circle, each reading our poems aloud, sparking a lot of curiosity about each other. The students eagerly wanted to ask each other why they chose the particular objects they did (an airplane on its way to the Dominican Republic, a sailboat, a school, a new baby, a big brother, a tooth, a tree). A volunteer-based round of explanations for the poems followed, from which a vivid image of their lives, entangled in their homes, school and community, started to emerge.

When the students, still in circle formation, were asked to speak respectfully to each other without raising their hands and to each articulate a response to the prompt, “What did we do?”, they easily figured out what the protocol was. They all took care of their neighbors, making sure that they had had the chance to voice their reflections about talking, writing, playing, listening, sharing and learning. When I debriefed afterwards with the teacher, she expressed her amazement with how quickly and well the students adapted to the protocol—but of course, that is part of the genius of Pre-Texts, isn’t it?

It is practically intuitive to kids, and it ignites among them a latent sense of community, empathy, respect for peers and participation.

Pre-Texts intuitively made sense to me, too, when I first participated in a workshop last spring with Doris Sommer at Harvard University’s Derek Bok

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Center for Teaching and Learning. An email advertisement about making art based on texts first caught my attention (because, hey—I like art! I like texts!). During the workshop, Harvard graduate students, like myself, and other members of the Harvard community were trained to become Pre-Texts facilitators. Over the course of three days, the Pre-Text prompt to “Use this text to make art” led to a wide variety of creative projects. We designed cartonera-style book covers while listening to a challenging excerpt from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, read aloud by a volunteer in honor of the tradition of reading aloud in cigar factories in parts of Latin America—a practice that engages the mind while one is also working with the hands.3 We asked questions of the text and listened to the wide-ranging queries that the reading had inspired in our peers. In small groups, we each mimed figures of speech from the text (shyly at first, but later with more confidence) while the rest of the group went back to the text and tried to track down the figure that was being performed. Taking inspiration from Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho’s poetry, we performed surgery on Foucault’s text and created fragments and fragmentary poetry of our own, attempting to get a sense of what time and tradition can do to change and recreate a text and alter its meaning, asking, for example: what would you choose if you had to pass only a fragment of a text on to posterity?

All the while, the participants in the Bok Center workshop gained experience of the Pre-Texts protocols. We practiced proposing full activities to each other so that there would be no hidden step withheld from other participants by a leader. We listened to each other’s suggestions and created compromises so that one person did not have a monopoly over the final decision about what the group would do. We challenged each other to engage with the reading in multisensory ways to promote the most creativity possible. Always, at the end of each activity, we came back into a circle formation in which everyone could make eye contact with everyone else and thereby connect with and show respect for each other as we reflected on “What did we do?”.

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It made sense to me that learning does not really take place when the teacher holds knowledge over the students’ heads and makes them constantly reaffirm their submission to the teacher’s authority by giving the expected answer in exchange for praise. It made sense to me that learning is about

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engaging with materials in one’s own way in order to process new materials and make them memorable, rather than parroting back an expected response to the teacher, a response that is sure to leak out of the learner’s mind as soon as the assessment is over. It also made sense to me that learning takes place not when activities are performed simply for their own sake and then left behind once completed, but rather when a moment of reflection follows the task to ask about what happened—not “What did we learn?” but “What did we do?”—in order to prompt engaged judgment about the activity, to solidify it in the learner’s mind and to develop critical thinking skills.

The opportunity for me to work with Pre-Texts at the Perry School in South Boston arose at the end of the summer in 2019. Following my training in the Pre-Texts methodology, it seemed quite powerful as a pedagogical method, so I took up the opportunity right away. The project of bringing Pre-Texts into Boston Public Schools has been in the works for a number of years. It is part of a multi-year study of “Multidimensional Inequality in the 21st Century: The Project on Race, Class and Cumulative Adversity” (a.k.a., The Cumulative Adversity Project) that is based at the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. The Cumulative Adversity Project, led by Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson (a name evoking that of William Carlos Williams), conducts collaborative and concurrent research studies that seek to produce a broad understanding of poverty and inequality in the United States, along with policy recommendations to address these intersectional problems. Introducing Pre-Texts into elementary and middle school classrooms is part of one research study that evaluates schoolbased interventions designed to boost student engagement and literacy through arts-based pedagogy. The aim of the study is to showcase a pathway for addressing cumulative adversity among urban children and youth. As I witnessed, Pre-Texts emphasizes equality, respect, engagement, creativity and community. These are the 21st century skills pursued even in STEM fields. By engaging students in Boston Public Schools with Pre-Texts activities in their classrooms, we seek to interrupt some of the interlocking processes that perpetuate and prolong disadvantages, especially racial inequality. The self-efficacy of thinking like an artist and the admiration that artists stimulate can empower each participant and generate collaborative civic behaviors.

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It is an exciting study to be part of, especially since it takes the practice of Pre-Texts outside of Harvard, where I have spent most of the past four years, and into some of the most disadvantaged schools in the Boston area, with students whom Harvard folks rarely get the chance or take the time to interact with. Moreover, with equality as one of the guiding and empowering principles of Pre-Texts, when I go to visit the Perry School as a Harvard-based Pre-Text coach, I, along with the teachers, participate in activities like the creative response to William Carlos Williams’ poem on an equal level with the students. The Pre-Texts protocol is a way of ensuring that activities in the classrooms are not merely top-down initiatives coming from the Ivory Tower, but that instead they focus on recognizing, developing and promoting each person’s agency, creativity and respect from the ground up.

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Of course, Pre-Texts accomplishes its lofty goals of equality and literacy, through art—goals that it shares with the Cumulative Adversity Project. PreTexts activities of all shapes and sizes call on participants to return to that humanistic principle of paying attention to things in the world and to one’s experiences of the world, as well as trying to communicate them to others using various techniques (words, gestures, designs, rhythms, etc). Asking for a creative response to texts changes the way one reads or listens or pays attention; it is not about finding the right answer, but instead about using the text as the material for creating something new. This is an artist’s way of thinking about the world and the materials that one encounters in the world.

It is essentially an engaged way of being in the world and a way that everyone can access by simply activating the senses and paying attention to what happens when one does so. In our busy world of cars, iPhones, keys and computers, doing so grants us a moment to refresh our perceptions about the world and reframe our experiences in new ways. When we slow down to listen to a song’s lyrics or to compose a short poem about an object in our lives, we are taking time to think about the world in an aesthetic way and generate meaning in our experiences. It seems to me that we could all use a reminder—a serendipitous moment—to tap into this artistic experience a little more often.

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Figures 3-18: Poetry written in response to William Carlos William’s poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” in the grade 4 class at the Perry School in South Boston.

October 2019.

Photos by: Suzanne Paszkowski.

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Figure 19: William Carlos Williams’ poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” in the appendix of Sharon Creech’s book, Love That Dog. Boston, USA, 2019.

Photo by Suzanne Paszkowski.

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Innovate, Facilitate, Participate Giulia Pellizzato

Pre-Texts at Harvard: What Did We Do?

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Workshop year 2020

Place Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Facilitators CAMBRIDGE

+ Doris Sommer + Thomas Wisniewski

Supervisors + Doris Sommer

Institutions involved Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University; Co-Creation Lab, Massachusetts Institute for Technology

Impacted population

Pre-Texts in United States

20 STUDENTS

March 4-6, 2020: More than 20 educators gather at Harvard to become PreTexts facilitators.

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March 4-6, 2020: More than 20 educators gather at Harvard to become PreTexts facilitators.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. A narrator reads out loud a page from The Vortex, a visionary 1924 novel by José Eustasio Rivera that denounces the exploitation of rubber gatherers in the Amazon jungle. I scribble spirals on scrap cardboard as I listen intently, while many other educators, teachers and scholars of various disciplines do the same around the table.

This is my first encounter with Pre-Texts, a pedagogical protocol intended to engage students of all ages and levels in creative and inquisitive full contact with challenging texts. I experience first-hand the benefits as a student: first interrogating a text that looks intractable, and then making sense of it thanks to creative activities and collective reflection with peers. Throughout the first session facilitated by Doris Sommer and Thomas Wisniewski, I become familiar with the protocol even before realizing it. A facilitator proposes activities instead of requiring work, competition gives way to collaboration, we find pleasure in tackling challenging tasks creatively, and we reflect critically on what we did.

Each activity multiplies the points of access to the text. At the end of the first session we are invited to become facilitators who propose new activities that

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we will lead ourselves, and to bring a “tangential” or related text the following day. Such is the model of Pre-Texts: instead of being interrogated by the teacher, students become interrogators of the text, getting to the core of the pedagogical interaction—the ideal starting point for developing a high level of literacy.

Pre-Texts in United States

During the second and third sessions Profs. Sommer and Wisniewski stepped back and new participants took turns facilitating the activities we proposed, this time with a different text. Since a prompt from the first day was to “go off on a tangent” from the Colombian novel, I brought Canto 13 of Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which Dante breaks off a twig from a tree that cries out with a human voice that it had once been a man. It seemed the likely inspiration for Rivera’s scene in which the hero hallucinates that he cuts a rubber tree, which turns out to be his metamorphosed lover, who complains of the cruel wound. We played with Dante that day, for example, with Martine Jean leading us to make maps of the foreboding forest between the river crossed and the sand patch. No one needed to use the theoretical language of “intertextuality” to appreciate the connection between Dante and Rivera because the literary theory was in the reading practice: texts cite other texts and produce a density of meaning.

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On our third and final day, Alicia—the heroine of The Vortex and now a reference to Dante’s canto—inspired Maria Bovea’s tangent from Alice in Wonderland. It was the scene in which Alice changes shape, like characters changed shape—into trees—in the previous readings. We played out Lewis Carroll’s scene in a Forum Theater Activity prepared by Finlay Bell to explore Dante’s dilemma. At first Bell was concerned that his preparation would not suit the shift of focus toward the panic Alice felt when she shrank so small that she couldn’t recover her key, but the facilitator rose to the challenge and we all realized that the activity could be tailored to different texts. Pre-Texts activities are not tethered to a specific text. In fact, they are chosen for the interpretive pleasures that a facilitator wants to develop; they can respond to practically any text.

Each Pre-Texts activity is efficacious in making us read and reread a text with curiosity, and thereby with a deeper understanding than would be possible if we simply received the text. Participants make art and discuss our own decisions, prepared to examine the core text’s rhetorical dimension and its relation to current, burning issues. We consider possible ways of using PreTexts for covering an academic program. What I am most amazed at is the flexibility of the protocol, which proves apt for teaching literature, but also language, translation and other text-related subjects—any subject, in fact, from history, philosophy and sociology to STEM, including in multilingual teaching environments.

By the end of the workshop we were all comfortable users of the protocol, ready to implement it in our respective work at the service of students. In fact, Timo Johnson had already begun. He told us he had implemented parts of the Pre-Texts protocol with his adult English language class that Friday morning. It worked, he was pleased to say, for classroom management. Up to then students had been allowing a charming but overbearing classmate to dominate the class. With Pre-Texts air-time was controlled to a fair proportion with the standard prompt that each participant speak once before anyone speaks again. By the next sessions, Timo would tell us later, the English language learners volunteered to read aloud and they generally adopted the

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Pre-Texts protocol to ask questions, to propose activities and to reflect. He was working less while they were learning more.

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As a scholar of Italian literature and a passionate educator I look forward to experimenting with Pre-Texts with my language and literature students next semester, as well as with K-12 refugee students over the summer, if measures against COVID-19 allow.

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Pre-Texts at Harvard: What Did We Do? Thomas Wisniewski, Suzanne Smith

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Workshop year 2019

Place Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Facilitators + Doris Sommer + Thomas Wisniewski

Supervisors + Doris Sommer

Institutions involved Harvard University Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

Impacted population 15 STUDENTS

Pre-Texts in United States

CAMBRIDGE

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The scene above does not evoke the setting of a conventional classroom.

Looking at the photograph, one might reasonably ask: what the heck are these people doing?

Clearly, this is not a lecture: no one is sitting in rows staring intently at an instructor who opines from on high. Any division between students and teacher is unclear. People occupy space in varying postures: some stand, some crouch, others kneel. At the center, an exchange of some sort seems to be taking place, but who can say what it involves?

If this scene were taking place at MIT, one might assume that it is part of the Lifelong Kindergarten Program, whose aim is to institutionalize the ethos of creative play most often associated with toddlers. But this is not MIT; it’s Harvard, and the snapshot depicts a tableau vivant created in response to the reading of an excerpt from the chapter on Panopticism in Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.1 Taken during a workshop led by Professor Doris Sommer at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning in April 2019, the photo captures the spirit of Pre-Texts in motion.

Pre-Texts—a method of reading and pedagogical practice designed to accommodate any level of literacy—trains Harvard graduate students, faculty and staff in an array of innovative techniques that open up and level out the experience of teaching and learning from complex texts. Inspired by the

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Figure 1: Photo by Doris Sommer

pedagogy of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, along with Friedrich Schiller, Maria Montessori and John Dewey, Pre-Texts infuses a theoretically-informed process of inquiry with the spirit of open-ended play between equals as mediated through the practice of collective art-making.

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But what is a “pre-text,” as opposed to, say, a pretext? And isn’t a pre-text but a pretext for making art?

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When we ask questions such as these, we are embarking on the sort of everyday intellectual inquiry that, in tandem with high theory, drives the work behind the aesthetically rich pedagogy of Pre-Texts. The aesthetic at play here is one which, to borrow a description of antithesis from architect Robert Venturi, is “hybrid rather than ‘pure,’ compromising rather than ‘clean,’ distorted rather than ‘straightforward,’ ambiguous rather than ‘articulated,’ perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as ‘interesting,’...accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear.” 2 Pre-Texts thrives on accidental poetry, giving rise to unlikely mixtures of precarious risk (of absurdity or aporia) and homely comfort. As a practice, Pre-Texts is as much grounded in the humble materials of childhood arts and crafts (cardboard, pipe cleaners, crayons, etc.) as it is in aesthetic and literary theory. But Pre-Texts isn’t all play, and if it is game-like, the stakes are high, as its aim is nothing less than to give everyone who wants interpretative access to a complex text a mode of ingress, regardless of prior training. PreTexts integrates the process of making and remaking with the detached practice of critical inquiry, which creates a unique blend of intimacy and distance suggestive of what Henry James, with reference to his temptation to revise his work endlessly, once called the “exposed and entangled state.”3 As things woven out of words and bound to flattened sheets of wood pulp, texts seek to enclose meaning. Sometimes these enclosures shut out readers— particularly those who do not habitually have access to texts. But polished texts also capture readers, and the language of attention-seeking, as it pertains to writing, overlaps with that of compulsion. Something about the way that a text is written may grab one’s readerly attention, even unawares: it is this aspect of reading that drives pre-textual attempts to recover the raw within the cooked and to unravel and re-weave the threads within the warp and woof of texts thought to be already finished, to the point that, like rugs, they could be trodden upon. Pre-Texts reminds us that the same thread used to weave the textual equivalent of an unlooked-at rug beneath our feet may be repurposed into a or handkerchief or something equally capable of flying or being tucked within

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and carried about. Through these un-weavings and re-weavings of all things textual, the capacity of the text to seduce readers is converted from one entailing compulsion to one of active mutual participation between equals who are makers and re-makers of what is not being merely consumed, but activated.

The goal of this method is to read texts communally and in a festive spirit, as opposed to the silent, solitary absorption of a book akin to the consumption of pre-frozen fare: the literary equivalent of the so-called “TV dinner.” The broader aim is not just to warm texts up to do things with them, but to critically reimagine the conditions under which texts acquire the aura of the dead. Texts can be resurrected as unfinished occasions for events that happen to us and through us. With respect to one of his late works, Jasper Johns once cryptically asked, “Aim for maximum difficulty in determining what has happened?”4 Pre-Texts says yes, but with the caveat that the modernist aesthetic of difficulty may commingle with that of ease, and that of work with the ethos of leisure, which, lest we forget is that of scholē (the etymological root of “school”), and that even within a utilitarian, neo-Prussian and, sometimes as it seems, Calvinist culture of education that sees teaching and learning as work, there are pleasures to be found in the communal reading of complex philosophical and literary texts. With an interrogative refrain—what did we do?—repeated after each activity and cast in the near past, Pre-Texts also implicitly asks of the present: what do we do?

To address both tenses of this question is to wonder what we do by first examining what we did, and for that we must turn opposite the direction in which Pre-Texts, deriving theory from practice, most commonly moves. A shift from the theoretical to the practical, from the abstract to the concrete, places us exactly where we began: April 2019 at the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University.

Pre-Texts in United States

It was there that we, a group of graduate students, staff and faculty, partook in Prof. Sommer’s introduction to the method: a hands-on approach that, in radically reducing hierarchy, democratized the classroom and accelerated

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our understanding of Foucault, whose complex text we took apart and put back together through a series of games and art-making that ranged from soundscapes to found poetry to book covers to rhetorical charades to the aforementioned tableau vivant.

Pre-Texts taught us to be skeptical about what merits reverence and irreverence, attention and neglect. It had us call into question received ideas about ritualized reading practices of thinkers too often fetishized within the academy. In desacralizing high theory by having readers play with a text as an object rather than being struck dumb by its apparent grandeur, the method asked us to ask naive questions of a work of philosophy in a spirit of wonder (which, in theory, ought to inform all humanities research), then to come down from the clouds to cut up and paste the text into a new text of our own design.

The idea of writing as recycling, like the book-making of the Argentine cartoneras, means that if words are like garbage, then writers are garbage-pickers whose originality is always already derivative: all of us write on a palimpsest. As poet A.R. Ammons writes,

garbage has to be the poem of our time because garbage is spiritual, believable enough to get our attention, getting in the way, piling up, stinking, turning brooks brownish and creamy white: what else deflects us from the error of our illusionary ways, not a temptation to trashlessness.

Tongue in cheek, Ammons is willing to contemplate the notion that his epic poem Garbage (1993) is the best poem of the century (or perhaps the only

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poem). Yet even his mock pretensions to poetic grandeur are subject to revision. Thus, he cheerfully asks, “if this is not the best poem of the / century, can it be about the worst poem of the / century”. Pre-Texts takes the best with the worst and the rest of what’s left. It is happy to eat leftovers for breakfast—hot or cold—the morning after or as a midnight snack the night before.

Much too often graduate seminars demand the performance of an individual’s erudition exacted upon the reading of a dense theoretical text within a room of young minds jockeying for power in an intellectual game whose rules are largely unwritten and whose performance is psychologically driven by the collective hemorrhaging for unequally allotted—and usually all too small—shares of validation meted out by a professor seated imperiously at the head of the table.

In Pre-Texts, the opposite is true. In our training sessions at Harvard, we did away with traditional hierarchies of professor/student or master/apprentice. Everyone could propose what he or she wanted to “do” with or to the text; “doing” to the text involved a number of artistic practices from dance to music to theater. Jettisoning unnecessary markers of authority meant that activities were never given as assignments or as orders, but rather were the offshoot of proposals and accepted invitations. All participants contributed to the content of the class, but also to the order, structure and manner in which events were carried out. In other words, all those affected by the structure were equally involved in shaping it.

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This meant that even the seemingly most prosaic of teacherly gestures acquired as a reflex—the distributing, for example, of a hand-out—was called into question. In Pre-Texts, even the text itself is never handed out by the teacher from student to student, but rather left on the table for anyone to take a copy as desired. Decision-making was shared across the group: whenever an idea was proposed, group recommendations immediately amended the original suggestion. The same was true when the draft of a paragraph written about the text in question was peer-edited through a number of rounds before it was “published” on the clothesline.

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What could be a more immediate, transparent and public form of “peer-review”?

Given that writing is never completely individual—no book is made by one mind alone—then Pre-Texts, belying fictions of single authorship, showed us, too, that literary criticism itself is often very much a chance operation: within the discipline of comparative literature, when we go off on a tangent, juxtaposing seemingly unrelated texts, our method is akin to what we do in Pre-Texts when we pair Foucault with, say, a magazine article selected from a publication of the sort sold in a supermarket check-out line.

Mixing the high with the low, the lowbrow with the highbrow, Pre-Texts led us to question imaginary divisions between genres and modes of reading, reinforcing in uncommon ways the very methodologies common to the kind of literary criticism in which we are trained. When, for example, we literalized figurative language, finding a rhetorical device in the text and then acting it out as charades in pairs or small groups, we took eighteenth-century rhetoric both seriously and playfully. We divided the tenor from the vehicle, to use I.A. Richard’s terms, and reimagined the two parts of a simile or metaphor in action, embodying the text through the poses that we made.

As we designed cardboard book covers while we listened to Foucault read aloud, we came to understand that such a repetitive task is not merely a distraction from boredom, but the democratization of the reception of literature, as well as an articulation of a phenomenon more recently understood by neuroscience: the benefit of certain forms of multitasking. Listening to Foucault while simultaneously performing a manual task, such as constructing a book out of arts and crafts, meant that our attention was actually heightened rather than diminished.

Finally, when a classicist brought in fragments from Sappho in Anne Carson’s translation, read them to us, and then proposed that we cut up lines from the Foucault excerpt and produce a Sappho-like fragment from the text, we made new (found) poems that marry sound with semi-sense:

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Fixed in which the slightest Events, uninterrupted, exercised A continuous hierarchical figure.

Living dead is the evil for each individual: What characterizes, what belongs, what happens.

Its power, which is.

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There was a dream: The assignment to each of his ‘true.’

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Make a Plan: Pre-Texts in Zimbabwe Naseemah Mohamed

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Make a Plan: Pre-Texts in Zimbabwe

Workshop year 2011

Place Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Facilitators 6 high school teachers and 4 artists

Supervisors + Doris Sommer

Institutions involved Nkulumane High School

Impacted population 75 STUDENTS 150 PEOPLE

Pre-Texts in Zimbabue

BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE

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At a high school in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, the arts-based reading program called Pre-Texts offered an alternative to current educational practices, which were designed for a colonial socioeconomic order that no longer exists.

Zimbabwe presently suffers from one of the highest unemployment rates in the world (60-80%), which means that most students and their families must work in the informal economy and rely on entrepreneurship to make ends meet.1 The Pre-Texts intervention involved student and teacher participants using both Ndebele and English (instead of the English-only environment typical of most classrooms) while drawing on critical and creative faculties to transform texts into artworks and authoritarian relationships into mutual admiration of individual resourcefulness. Pre-Texts encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit of daily activity that “makes a plan” in the difficult socioeconomic and political landscape that most contemporary Zimbabweans must navigate.

The educational challenges Zimbabwe faces are those that systems and societies around the world will increasingly face as they enter new economies of automation and artificial intelligence, which have radically shrunk the essential labor force and altered the socioeconomic and political landscape, rendering much of the population economically redundant. In general, educational systems have been slow or at a loss as to how to adapt to these new conditions. Using this Zimbabwean example as a case study, here I will argue that to effectively adapt to these new realities, education must: (1) engage

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students in ways that are directly relevant to their lives; (2) generate interest and spark curiosity in learning; and (3) train students to thrive in these new socioeconomic landscapes. Arising from similar conditions in post-economic collapse Argentina, the Pre-Texts pedagogy effectively accomplishes the first two tasks, and the creativity, flexible and adaptive thinking, and independent problem-solving it fosters contribute to the third objective.

A Postcolonial Paradox

Pre-Texts in Zimbabue

In Zimbabwe, pedagogy has changed little since the colonial era. Rote learning is still emphasized and students are often beaten for even minor infractions, which include speaking their non-English native languages. This culture of authoritarianism and punishment of difference extends into the political arena as well, since Zimbabwe is effectively a one-party state or dictatorship with no substantial political opposition. Paradoxically, Zimbabwe is the country with the highest literacy rate in Africa (above 90%), and because international agencies such as United Nations and Oxfam continue to consider literacy rates as indicators of development, Zimbabwe would be expected to score high on the often-correlated measures of democracy and economic growth.2 However, this is not the case in Zimbabwe, where economic stagnation and largely non-democratic politics coexist with high rates of literacy and education. Part of this paradox is due to the legacy of colonial educational and political systems that sought to limit the intellectual and creative freedoms of subjects to suit the Rhodesian colonial economy. Although independence in 1980 brought many changes to Zimbabwe’s political, educational and economic systems, many of the deeper structural features of the colonial state remain intact. For example, the social and intellectual advantages of speaking both native and acquired languages are widely acknowledged in pedagogical literature, but colonial and missionary educators largely limited African languages from all but the earliest grades of primary school. This practice persists in many schools today, with languages such as Ndebele and Shona not employed as the languages of instruction but rather taught as secondary, separate and often optional subjects.

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From the establishment of colonial Rhodesia in 1890, Christian missionaries established and ran most educational institutions in the colony. Part of the missionaries’ “civilizing mission” was to proselytize and teach Africans to read the Bible, encourage them to adopt the English language, mores and cultural norms, and to abandon the African traditions and cultural norms denigrated as “primitive” in missionary and colonial curricula.3 Some of the most powerful mechanisms for the creation of an underclass of African subjects of the colony were racialized Victorian pedagogies of rote learning, corporal punishment and humiliation, which limited student agency and weakened the pre-colonial African social, cultural and political institutions.4 Colonial education, in general, aimed at creating Christian, English-speaking subjects who would profit the British Empire. However, generations of African leaders subverted the intended goals of this educational system to argue, organize, fight for and eventually win their independence. An important part of the independence struggle was the development of revolutionary political educational programs and schools in guerrilla refugee camps.5 Nevertheless, these revolutionary schools and programs, which explicitly drew from Paulo Friere’s theories, were marginalized and largely abandoned after independence, and the older colonial pedagogies continued to dominate the educational landscape of the newly-independent Zimbabwe, as they do to this day.6 The precipitous decline of Zimbabwe’s economy over the last two decades has also profoundly affected the educational system, not only in terms of waning school funding, but also in students’ rapidly changing postgraduate employment prospects. Before the economic crash of the early 2000s, a high school diploma greatly enhanced students’ prospects of employment, and high school and college graduates could generally expect to find full employment after graduation. However, the currently low rates of formal full-time employment mean that students have to face the harsh reality that a high school diploma no longer guarantees even entry-level jobs. Moreover, the dominance of the informal economy of trading and “hustling” means that most of the economically successful individuals in society are no longer the most educated. While teachers are typically paid below the poverty line of

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Figures 1 and 2: Pre-Texts workshop/art exhibition at Nkulumane High School. Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 2011. Photo by Naseemah Mohamed.

$500 per month per household, black marketeers thrive. Buying goods from neighboring South Africa and Botswana to sell on the euphemistically named “parallel market” is now considered one of the most attractive ventures for members of middle-to-lower socioeconomic classes.

For many in this climate, the ability to survive—let alone to thrive—depends on an entrepreneurial knack for navigating the difficult and rapidly changing political and economic landscape of contemporary Zimbabwe. The idea that citizens must find illegitimate means to achieve legitimate ends (buying “black market” goods, paying someone “under the table” and generally “making do”) has become embedded in Zimbabwean culture. All manner of irregular activity is known in everyday speech as “making a plan.” At first blush, under these economic and sociopolitical constraints, it seems obvious that unorthodox “black market” transactions are simply signs of a failed state, an embarrassing effect of large-scale official corruption. Upon deeper reflection, however, the very practices of “making do” demonstrate popular reaction, resilience and resistance to authoritarianism—as well as talent for entrepreneurial activity.

Pre-Texts in Zimbabue

The fact is that alongside the rigid authoritarianism that has paralysed much of Zimbabwe’s economic and political domains, creativity and creative expression thrive, often—but not always—out of necessity. A small-time smuggler’s indifference to the rule of law and creative schemes for getting around

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customs and border agents may mirror powerful politicians’ and business magnates’ disregard for constitutional accords and tax laws, not to mention their creative schemes of money laundering, but the former case exceeds the latter due to the element of necessity. In some cases, the liberties taken where no liberty is permitted can also be understood as popular resistance enabled by a still-thriving culture of resourcefulness that manifests itself in both “official” and legal and “unofficial” and illegal channels. Seen in this light, educational reforms in Zimbabwe would do well to tap into the creativity and energy of these popular practices of “making a plan,” which can animate liberating dynamics of self-authorization and legal collaboration, as the present study demonstrates.

In other words, the unofficial culture of achieving legitimate ends through delegitimized and even stigmatized practices of creativity, flexibility and resourcefulness is not simply to be dismissed as training in illegality, as if initiative were Figure 3: Pre-Texts workshop/art exhibition at Nkulumane High School. Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 2011.

Photo by Naseemah Mohamed.

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limited to ethically questionable economic transactions. Along with contraband, there are countless expressions of everyday entrepreneurship and creativity that hold out a promise of social innovation: walking through any market in a city or high-density area in Zimbabwe, you notice street boys pushing toy cars made of recycled wire, men who will charge your cell phone for a dollar by attaching electronic cables to an old car battery, young women selling homemade jewelry made of recycled materials, and old men selling beautiful carvings of wood and stone. So far, to the country’s detriment, this otherwise ubiquitous creativity—which we can call an “economy of resourcefulness”—is overlooked in classrooms, where the payoff could be substantial.

Despite students’ demonstrated talents for the extracurricular arts of “making do,” and in contrast to their experience of working despite the relative lack of material resources, school structures do little to engage with this creativity and, in many ways, ask students to leave it outside of the classroom. Popular culture holds creativity in high esteem while official pedagogical practices and structures often make it difficult for teachers and students to deploy this creativity and resourcefulness in classroom settings. Our challenge as educators and as active citizens is to tap into students’ and teachers’ incredible ingenuity in order to stimulate development in all domains of education: intellectual, political, economic and psycho-social.

Pre-Texts in Zimbabue

This text examines a pilot program that attempts to deploy creative and innovative pedagogies in Zimbabwean classrooms as a way to transform some of the authoritarian structures that constitute part of the colonial legacy in the nation’s education system. While the factors accounting for Zimbabwe’s paradox of high literacy and relatively low scores on other social development indexes [defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as: (i) civic engagement; (ii) interpersonal safety and trust; (iii) intergroup cohesion;, (iv) gender equality and (v) inclusion of minorities] are many and complex, I argue that authoritarian political regimes, cultures and educational structures and practices can be—and in this case are—mutually reinforcing. Thus, the study attempted to assess the impact of this pedagogical intervention on the micropolitical contexts of individual classrooms and schools.

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Pre-Texts in Zimbabwe In a typical high school classroom with low resources, located five miles from the city center of Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe, forty-five high school students were engaged in an atypical English class. They were translating Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart into music, dance and, most notably, Ndebele—the second most widely spoken language native to Zimbabwe.7 The students wove between the two languages so seamlessly that one seemed to announce and to expect the other in a necessary relay. Research on language formation in multilingual classrooms would support this practice. A study conducted in Niger and Guinea Bissau comparing (ex-colonial) monolingual primary schools to experimental bilingual primary schools showed that in both countries, bilingual classrooms were more stimulating, interactive and relaxed.8 Rural schoolchildren and girls benefitted the most from participating in bilingual education. The study also emphasized that students who began instruction in their mother tongue could read and write better in the second language than did the control group students.

Despite the documented advantages of multilingual learning, these practices are an unlikely advance in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Speaking one’s mother tongue in an English class is considered a distraction from learning, a punishable infraction that justifies physical abuse from teachers. “I don’t like English class because if you speak Ndebele in class, Mrs. Chauke slaps you!” reported a fifteen-year-old student attending Nkulumane High School in Bulawayo.9 In an interview with an English teacher who spent fifteen years accumulating experience while she meted out punishment, it seemed obvious that one of the greatest challenges facing her students with regard to learning English is that they spoke too much “vernacular” at home.

Our pilot program hadn’t intended this bilingual benefit, but it did predict generally self-authorizing and constructive behaviors. The framework was a creative pedagogy called Pre-Texts, developed by Professor Doris Sommer as an innovative approach to teaching language and literature. With it, we hoped to change the ways in which Zimbabwean students typically learn, and the conventional classrooms in Bulawayo offered an ideal setting for observing the effects of an alternative approach.

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The underlying innovation of Pre-Texts is its integration of visual and performative arts as vehicles for exploring classic literature in a language class.

Here, the terms “classics” refers to works that can withstand many readings without flattening the experience into predictable responses. A text becomes the prompt for creating original work in a range of artistic genres, motivating students to understand the lexical and grammatical elements of the text and to speculate about possible interpretations. On the other hand, teachers learn to curb their authority to become facilitators for students’ critical readings and creativity, rather than masters of fixed material. This abdication of absolute authority allows students to authorize their own work and to appreciate their classmates’ divergent responses as prompts for creativity.

The workshop environment manages to close the debilitating gap between students’ classwork and their entrepreneurial spirit.

Pre-Texts in Zimbabue

Pre-Texts is an intentionally playful name to signal that even the classics can be material for manipulation. Books are not sacred objects; they are invitations to play. Conventional teaching has favored convergent and predictable answers as the first and sometimes only goal of education. This guarded approach privileges data retrieval or lower-order thinking, but a “first things first” philosophy gets stuck in facts and stifles students. Bored early on, they don’t get past vocabulary and grammar lessons to reach understanding and interpretation. Teaching for testing has produced unhappy pressures for everyone. Administrators, teachers, students and parents have generally surrendered to a perceived requirement to focus on facts. They rarely arrive at interpretive levels that develop mental agility. Divergent and critical “higher-order” thinking has seemed like a luxury for struggling students. However, when they begin from the heights of an artistic challenge, students access several levels of learning as functions of a creative process. Entering at the lower-order seldom leads very far, but turning the order upside-down works wonderfully. Attention to detail follows from higher-order manipulations because creative thinking needs to master the elements at hand.10 A challenge to make something new of a text drives even reluctant students to develop an interpretation, which requires understanding and therefore leads to learning the vocabulary and grammar that had seemed bothersome or out of reach.

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The theoretical underpinnings of Pre-Texts follow from the contributions of Maria Montessori’s project-centered pedagogy and from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), as well as from the aesthetics of Freidrich Schiller and John Dewey’s arts-based pragmatism.11 They all understood the role of the teacher as a facilitator of learning rather than a technocrat who imparts information and demands it back from students. African humanist authors such as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o specifically highlight the stultifying effects of colonial pedagogy and the necessity to return to African art forms to create and receive knowledge.12 There are five core objectives of our integrating the arts as divergent languages of interpretation: (1) to promote each student’s ownership of classical texts; (2) to experience creative thinking as critical thinking; (3) to recognize that interpretation legitimately involves one’s own experience; (4) to show that texts need creative intervention in order to make sense; (5) to illustrate that language is an art that triggers other artistic processes.

After writing, painting, dancing, acting, etc., participants sit in a Freirean circle to reflect. The question is always the same: What did we do? (Asking what we learned is likely to get unfriendly answers from teens. They sense that teachers want approval or praise and they refuse to comply. But if you ask what they did, students will want to justify their work or else they may look foolish.) One reflection follows another in no set order, until everyone has spoken. After a few sessions the dynamic of universal and brief participation feels natural and necessary. The first few interventions, however brilliant, will not exhaust possibilities. While we wait for more, exercising critical thinking and patience with peers, intellectual and civic skills develop. New facilitators learn to expect original comments from one another and then from students.

Participants also notice the democratizing effect of collective reflection; it levels the unevenness between forceful people and shy ones whose contributions are worth waiting for.

While readings deepen during the series of visual, literary and performed interpretations of the same selected text, participants also develop breadth by going “off on a tangent” each week. Choosing a tangential text that they can

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connect to the shared reading in any way—even if far-fetched—puts students in command and encourages them to read widely. They peruse books, magazines and the internet, using their own criteria to select something they are proud to bring in. The combined dynamic of inexhaustible interpretation of one text and the practically limitless reach of tangents produces deep and broad readers.

Critical literacy associated with higher-order thinking, as opposed to the rote literacy that doesn’t dare to confront dictatorship, should be on everyone’s agenda because it continues to be a reliable indicator for levels of poverty, violence and disease. Real proficiency is alarmingly low in underserved areas worldwide.13 Skeptics will question the cause for alarm, alleging that communication increasingly depends on audiovisual stimuli, especially for poor and disenfranchised populations. They’ll even say that teaching classic literature reinforces social asymmetries as disadvantaged people lack the background that privileged classes can call upon for reading difficult texts. Audiovisual stimuli, on the other hand, don’t discriminate between rich and poor and seem more democratic.

Pre-Texts in Zimbabue

Paulo Freire cautioned against this pedagogical populism, arguing that illiteracy precludes full citizenship. His advice to Teachers as Cultural Workers was to stress reading and writing in order to stimulate critical thinking and therefore to promote social inclusion. Freire traces a spiral from reading to thinking about what one reads, and then to writing a response to one’s thought—which requires more thinking—in order to read one’s response and achieve yet a deeper level of thought.14 Teachers democratize by raising the baseline of literacy to a higher common denominator, not by shunning literary sophistication along with elite works of art. The classics are valuable cultural capital and the language skills they require remain foundations for analytical thinking, resourcefulness and psycho-social development. Without mastery of at least one spoken and written language, youth have little hope for self-realization. Paradoxically, skeptics reinforce the inequality they decry by dismissing a responsibility to foster high-level literacy for all.

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Before and After The Pre-Texts pilot in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, consisted of six high school teachers collaborating with four artists to teach Chinua Achebe’s literary classic Things Fall Apart to 75 students. The nine-week program focused on literary interpretation through the arts, including music, drama, poetry and painting. Naseemah Mohamed, a Harvard College student and native to Zimbabwe, designed the implementation and monitored the outcomes of the pilot through ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative pre- and post-program interviews with participants.

Nkulumane High School, where the program was implemented, exemplifies many of the current economic and educational challenges facing Zimbabwean schools and communities, including a lack of financial resources, high teacher attrition rates and low student examination pass rates. The high-density urban community of Nkulumane has a population of approximately 63,000 and is located eight kilometers from the center of Bulawayo, the second-largest city in Zimbabwe. 15 Once a post-independence beacon of a rising middle class, the closely-packed tiny brick houses along the dirt roads in Nkulumane have become a symbol of Zimbabwe’s economic and social deterioration over the past decade. Between 70 and 90% of community members are not formally employed, and an officer from the Ministry of Education informed me that tens of thousands of people from the community have emigrated to neighboring South Africa and Botswana in search of employment.16 The participating students ranged from thirteen to nineteen years old. They were randomly recruited from over two hundred students who were asked to take home consent forms for the program. All the potential participants were students of the teachers who were recruited for the program. Of the eighty students who were not included in the program, fifteen were interviewed as a control group.17 Participation was voluntary, with no monetary incentives.18 The six self-selected teachers did get a small stipend, comparable to that of any other enrichment program. The average length of their teaching experience

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was 20 years. The staff was made up of senior school officials, including the Deputy Headmistress who was an English teacher, the head of the English Literature Department and the head of the History Department, as well as a Literature teacher and two English teachers.

Interviews conducted before the program began revealed the authoritarian structure of the classroom: students reported corporal punishment used as disciplinary tool and teachers stressed their own expertise over the contributions of students. In anticipation of the difficulties teachers might experience with an alternative pedagogy, we paired them up with local artists. The artists included a spoken word artist, two actors, a dancer and a musician who were recruited from one of the largest performing arts companies in Zimbabwe, Inkululeko Yabatsha School of Arts (IYASA).19 Training for the implementation of the pilot lasted five days while teachers and artists were introduced to the practice of Pre-Texts. It is basically to: (1) take a text; (2) spin it using a range of available arts; (3) reflect on what you did. Among many activities that participants were expected to integrate and expand upon during the program, teachers and artists worked on dramatizing the text with the students, having students create and recite poetry based on the text, as well as composing music scores, poems and dances. The afterschool program ran for three days a week during two to three hours over the nine-week program.

Pre-Texts in Zimbabue

During the course of this short session, student-teacher relationships changed dramatically. Teachers no longer felt the need to discipline students through corporal punishment, while students’ fear of their teachers was replaced by respect and admiration. The students began calling one teacher, formerly infamous for her beatings, as “NaTembi,” an Ndebele title of respect mixed with affection. Students and teachers began discussing English literature in their mother language of Ndebele. As they became fluent in testing new ways of thinking, they felt sufficiently confident to be bilingual in the classroom, a liberty that has regularly proven to enhance learning, knowledge retention and the stability of culture in a community. This was an unpredicted outcome of the program. In addition to the students, the teachers allowed themselves to speak in their shared native language. All classes in the school are taught

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solely in English and exceptions are rare, though students often don’t understand the lesson.20 We suspect that the use of Ndebele emerged spontaneously due to the more relaxed and informal atmosphere of the program and the fact that it disrupted the standard colonial student-teacher dynamic. Bi- and multilingualism develop more than these healthy interactions; they also develop higher-order divergent thinking.21 The students were so enthusiastic about reading and spinning interpretations through art that they rarely missed a day of the voluntary program, defying the norm and their teachers’ expectations. A fifteen-year-old student remarked, “The program is helping me understand the teacher more easily, to be confident in my singing, acting, dancing and writing poetry. It is teaching me to be creative and show the teacher what children like and want—we children can also contribute something.”

The egalitarian structure of Pre-Texts and the release from the tyranny of one correct answer allowed students the freedom to express themselves without the fear of being punished or ridiculed. Moreover, this newfound freedom was coupled with displays of individual student talents and particularities, which the teachers had underestimated in their regular classrooms. When asked to comment about student-teacher interactions, a teacher named Mrs. Sibanda said: Right now I feel more close to the students, because it was not only the teacher who was supposed to present and come up with the ideas, like you do in the normal lesson. Yes, there was freedom of expression. No answer was wrong, no answer was right or there was no best answer.

All answers we treated with respect. So it’s not like—in the classroom, it’s like when you give a wrong answer the teacher will either shout back at you or tell you or call you all sorts of names—why didn’t you do your work yesterday, blah blah blah. But in this program you just have to respect them because out of that answer, there might be something that can come out that is very, very creative and you can use it for the program. No matter how stupid you might think the answer is, in this case you have to accept it. Just to see how far the idea will take the student.22

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Mrs. Sibanda mentioned respect for the creativity of the students as drawing her closer to them. Other teachers also gave examples of students whom they had taught in their regular classrooms as revealing completely different personalities in the program. Mr. Ngwenya commented that he became passionate about the program because of its effect on his pupils. “There are some of my pupils who were in the program. I never thought they could love to sing, but the way they were doing it surprised me. Like yesterday, Netsai, she hardly talks in class. But through acting and dancing, she turns into a different personality altogether.”23 All six teachers commented on how the freedom in the program allowed the teachers to appreciate the intellectual and creative talents of their students.

The program ended with an open community performance where students showcased their interpretive poems, artwork, songs and plays to over 150 people in attendance, all based on Achebe’s classic novel. Officials of the Ministry of Sports, Arts and Culture were guests of honor. The school has since maintained the program and has instituted an “inter-house drama competition” in which various house groups in the school compete by dramatizing their O-level required book. Regional Officer of the Ministry of Education and Culture E.O. Ndlovu was so impressed with the Pre-Texts program that he asked Naseemah to train five of the Sports, Arts and Cultural officers for the

Figures 4 and 5: Pre-Texts workshop/art exhibition at Nkulumane High School. Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 2011.

Pre-Texts in Zimbabue

Photo by Naseemah Mohamed.

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district. In the summer of 2013, Pre-Texts continued to work in several Latin American cities and in Hong Kong, as well as in Boston, close to Harvard’s home. As in the previous year, we trained teachers for Boston Public Schools’ summer program for English Language Learners. The training workshops targeted teachers of mostly elementary grades. Despite the difference in the students’ age groups, we were eager to compare Boston classrooms to the post-colonial paradigms of English language learners in Zimbabwe. Perhaps surprisingly, given the privileged preparation of Boston’s teachers, the monolingual instructors tended to be less receptive with their students than were the teachers in Zimbabwe. In part, this embrace of Pre-Texts in Bulawayo may respond to the constraints exercised by official authoritarian culture, which animates a parallel culture of resourcefulness. Pre-Texts taps into the energy of this alternative to authoritarian order.24 In Zimbabwe, many teachers and students have to deal with conditions of increasing economic difficulty and scarcity, political authoritarianism and a colonial educational legacy that can stifle creativity and pedagogical innovation. The intervention of the Pre-Texts pilot program described tried to tap into the creativity deployed by students outside of the classroom to deal with the first two challenges in order to then address the third challenge, hoping to develop a “virtuous circle” to equip students with further innovation and creativity both outside and inside the classroom. Students and teachers were trained to approach and interpret existing limitations as conditions of creativity, transferring this everyday culture of “making a plan” into official pedagogies and classroom cultures. By promoting and valorizing local languages, cultural practices and forms of creative expression alongside the standard practices of English literacy, classrooms became more engaging and less authoritarian. Mutual admiration of individual creativity fostered a more inclusive learning environment as teachers were no longer the only sources of knowledge in the classroom. It is hoped that by tapping into and fostering the remarkable creativity and innovative ethos of Zimbabwean youth, such interventions will continue to transform Zimbabwean classrooms and better train students to not merely survive, but to thrive and transform their societies in ways that facilitate their flourishing.

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Make a Plan: Pre-Texts in Zimbabwe

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https://paisdigital.org/

Lost in the Jungle: Pre-Texts Quarantine Experiment Ricardo Mariño

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Workshop year 2017 Implementation: 2020

Argentina

Facilitators Tálata Rodríguez

Supervisors + Tálata Rodríguez

Institutions involved Escuela Nº14 Joaquín V González

Impacted population 15

Pre-Texts

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I was at home with my nine-year-old daughter, thinking about how to make things more bearable during our confinement and how to keep her from losing her scholastic “training.” Some of her classes migrated to virtual platforms: her karate class is now done on Zoom, her English instructors send karaoke videos for the children to watch from their houses. We communicate daily with the families of the kids in her grade through a group chat on an instant messaging service. In particular, I notice that my daughter is highly willing to do her schoolwork, but doing it in solitude, without sharing the moment, the advances and the results, has dampened her enthusiasm. I also observe that she carries out her activities better in an enclosed, well-defined space and time period, and that this dynamic makes living together at home easier.

I share some of these impressions with the families, many of whom are overwhelmed by the great quantity of screen time and/or attention that the new school routine implies for their children; there are also cases of families that do not have a computer, just a cell phone.

I note that among the school tasks one is in the area of Language Practices and has as its objective to read and comprehend a text. I chat with my daughter about the possibility of putting together an activity with this task, and her joy is immediate: she misses her classmates and she would love to know what they’re thinking.

I design the activity and communicate with the families. I think of minimal goals: to link in some loose way this group of families in this new “home

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Figure 1: Cooperadora Escuela 14. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2020. Photo by Tálata Rodriguez

Figure 2: Seminario Formación de Formadores (Train the trainers seminar). Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2020.

Photo by Tálata Rodriguez

schooling” situation, to put the families’ creative abilities into practice and connect them through their works so that an exchange can emerge to renew motivation and optimism in general.

For me it was very useful to plan the activity while contemplating the interaction between “using” and “pausing” the group chat, intertwining “online” moments with “individual/private” moments, and the same with media resources: text messages for the instructions, images for sharing the works, audio messages for the sharing of comments.

I sent a message with the proposal that we participate making cartonero books together, with the reading material sent by the grade’s instructor to be read during quarantine. The invitation was for the entire group of families.

I also sent the following messages: Materials: The materials you will need are: cardboard or a blank page of paper, colored paper, markers, colored pencils, glue, any others you want to add.

Pre-Texts

The Dynamic: 1) Put the materials on a table where you will work.

2) You will receive two audio messages with the complete text. Begin to work on your book individually, as you listen to the audio messages (one after the other).

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3) After listening to the audio messages, we will ask if we want to go back and listen to them again (one or two times, to be decided) or if we prefer to “round out” and finish the books. If we listen again, when we finish there will be time to complete the book (5 minutes).

5) Send photos of the finished books.

6) We will look at all the photos, and you can send an audio message telling which is your favorite and why (only 1 favorite) Duration: reading + book-making 20 min Sharing 20/30 min (depending on how many people participate) Then we set a time the next day to work on the project. I had previously asked the group for two volunteers to read the story. Two mothers and one child offered to do so, and I asked them to send me an audio message privately. At the time we had agreed upon, I sent the group the following: - A text with the general instructions - A text asking for questions and suggestions (none were received) - Two audio messages of the story being read - A photo of a work table with materials When the reading and listening were finished I sent the third audio.

Upon finishing the third audio, it was suggested that we take five minutes to finish the books and then send the images. Here the activity went a little

Figure 3: Seminario Formación para Formadores (Train the trainers seminar). Buenos Aires, Argentina 2020. Photo by Marien Cano Moreno

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Figure 4: Digital Pre-Texts at Seminario Casa Walsh, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2020. Photo

by María Sabelli

Lost in the Jungle: Pre-Texts Quarantine Experiment

Figure 5: Ambar, 4º C. School 14, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2020. Photo by Paulina Fain

longer than expected since the children were absorbed in their creations.

However, little by little, the books arrived. After a while we began to share our impressions. Each participant chose a book. The instruction was to choose one and tell why you chose it, yet in several cases the participant simply stated the choice without telling why it was chosen. To wrap up, I asked the question “What did we do?”, without much further comment. The majority of the responses used emojis.

PERSONAL CONCLUSION I believe that a small “distance-operating manual” could be implemented, and that it is feasible to include more activities. For example: Asking Questions of the Text, Off on Tangents. Tangents could expand through dissimilar hyperlinks (gifs, articles, images, audio files).

Questions for the text could be shared by chat or by Google Drive.

Pre-Texts

I think it is possible to design some other strategies at a distance. For example: videos that use different tones and registers, written chronicles, telling the story in images (photos or gifs). Things can be made at home that are later shared in chats or transmitted live (by Classroom or Zoom): food, puppets, posters. We can use the most common digital media. Without a doubt, the participants can enrich these proposals with their contributions. I think that attentive planning, observing what media and application should be used as resources at each moment, is very useful.

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https://pre-texts.org/digital

DIGITAL PRE-TEXTS

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https://bit.ly/3fkEVia Country: Argentina Year: 2020 Facilitators: Tálata Rodríguez, Mixtli Cano Moreno, Perla Perrén, Ksenia Fiaduta, Pía Patruno, Antü Cifuentes, Marisa Pesavento, Mercedes Schamber, Laura Bilbao, Liza Casullo and Gabriela Saidón. With the colaboration of Ayres CulturaTálata Rodríguez, Mixtli Cano Moreno, Perla Perrén, Ksenia Fiaduta, Pía Patruno, Antü Cifuentes, Marisa Pesavento, Mercedes Schamber, Laura Bilbao, Liza Casullo and Gabriela Saidón. With the colaboration of Ayres Culturales and Casa Walsh.

In order to disseminate activities and convene participants, tools included the hashtag #ClubYaMeUní, email addresses, video calls, group chats and documents via the cloud.

Texts read were: “Una mirada desde la psiconeuroinmunoendocrinologia” (A Look at Psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrinology); “El enjambre” (The Beehive); a selection from the novel Konrad o el niño que salió de una lata de conservas (Konrad, or the Kid who came from a Tin Can); and Perdido en la selva (Lost in the Jungle).1 In the virtual meetings several ice breakers were utilized, above all to take advantage of the virtual image transmission of participants in the interfaces of the digital communications platforms. “Sculpt and Be Sculpted” was an on-camera gesture and bodily expression game. “What food represents you?” related one’s own image with some fruit or vegetable, using screen filters on Zoom to project the relationship. “PixelBreaker” proposed the possibility of breaking or crossing the screen of pixels to get nearer to other people, using participants’ devices images to ultiamtely generate a virual colective mural in which everyone particiapted.

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How digital platforms allow images to circulate quickly and immediately was useful for several activities, for example, publishing the creations, texts and questions. The chats allowed participants to share photos of the cartonera book covers made at home with whatever materials were on hand; the image tools let participants made exquisite corpses with scientific illustrations upon which each participant acted either with words or drawings to alter the original image; the shared blackboards allowed participants to wander around the texts of the exercise of “Going Off on Tangents” or to create online acrostics from the readings. Tools like Google Drive and Google Docs made it possible to ask questions of the text, upload them to the web and adopt the questions of other participants to give possible answers online.

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Facilitator Tálata Rodríguez proposes “to design other strategies for distance. For example: videos using different tones and registers, written chronicles, storytelling with images or photos. Things can be made at home and then shared via chat or live calls (Classroom, Zoom): food, puppets, posters. We can use the most common digital platforms. Without a doubt, participants can enrich these proposals with their contributions.”

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https://bit.ly/2PDEV1R Country: Brazil Year: 2020 Facilitators: Matheus Batalha Moreira Nery and Nataly Lorena Do Nascimento Oliveira The WhatsApp platform served to host the participants and share audio recordings of the readings of El arte de no enfermarse (The Art of Not Getting Sick).1 Instructions were efectively shared through this platform communicating how to create cartonera book covers at home; particpants were asked to find recyclable materials such as cardboard, colored paper, markers, pencils, magazines, glue, etc. Another kind of platform helped with the circulation of the contents that were generated—the photos of the book cavers that were made, the questions asked of the text—and the cloud facilitated the publication, interaction and selection of questions from other people in order to come up with possible answers.

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(s.f) Dráuzio Varella, El arte de no enfermarse.

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https://bit.ly/3td6j5I

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Country: United States Year: 2020 Facilitators: Adriana Gutiérrez The pandemic led the team of Español 20, from the Department of Romance Languages at Harvard University, to modify some clasroom activities that could not be carried out in-person during quaratine. For example, one activity asking participants to go out into the street to find Spanish words there was adapted to ask aprticipants to use imperative verbs to make a creative video using Spanish while staying at home. This is how Español#QuédateEnCasa came to be. In their videos, students could portray a character from one of the readings.

Participants created an adaptation of “Cajas de cartón” (Cardboard Boxes) by Francisco Jiménez, which is related to the instability of the lives of migrants.1 As in the story the teacher is a figure who facilitates the transtition to a new language and culture, the participants were motivated to design their own lessons and creatively inspire other students who couldn’t attend school during the pandemic. The lessons were recorded on cell phones and computers and shared on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. (s.f) Francisco Jiménez, “Cajas de cartón”. Accessed at: http://www.gavilan.edu/spanish/gaspar/html/3_02.html

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https://bit.ly/3rzA0Nu Country: India Year: 2020 Facilitators: Manonita Bhattacharya At the encouragement of Professor Doris Sommer, Manonita Bhattacharya decided to try virtually facilitating Pre-Texts exercises with her six-year-old daughter and three of her friends, ages six to nine. The group used Whatsapp to schedule their first hourlong session and to communicate the supplies to be used: old newspapers, colored pencils, construction papers, old cardboard, glue, and scissors.

During the session, hosted on WhatsApp, Bhattacharya asked the participants to listen as she read a story they were all previously familiar with: “The Ugly Duckling.” While they listened to her read, they used their materials to create a book cover for the story.

The children completed their book covers within 60-75 minutes, watching each other’s progress onscreen and commenting aloud on the well-known story. After sharing photographs of their creations, they were keen to do another project and create another cover.

For the second session, the group was asked to use the same materials, but to join a Zoom call. This time, Bhattacharya chose a story that was unfamiliar to all the participants: “The Breakdown of a Bus” by Ruskin Bond. This caused concern among the children, but they listened closely and participated actively as the story was read during the 90-minute session. Afterwards, the children shared photographs and improvised ideas for future sessions, wanting to act out the stories and to use them as inspiration to play charades on WhatsApp or Zoom.

Bhattacharya found that the children adapted quite effectively to the Digital Pre-Texts method, saying, “The children were quite delighted to see how the mobile device can actually be used for a fun-filled learning activity. They also get to handle the basic nuances of group dynamics and communication as they navigate the constraints of the online medium. Interestingly, the format of engagement also allows them to ‘compete’ in actually making something better and faster than others.”

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Country: Mexico Year: 2020 Facilitators: Doris Sommer, Édgar Avilés, Tálata Rodríguez, Adriana Gutiérrez

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Using web platforms for virtual encounters, a Pre-Texts reading of “The Panopticon” by Michel Foucault was held in Mexico. One of the activities held online was called “La letra con salsa entra” (Lyrics with Salsa) which consisted of listening to four musical pieces in different styles and making a connection between them and part of the original text. After a round of questions and suggestions, participants listened to the music and participated one and one till the pieces were finished. Platforms like Google Drive were used to share the photographs of each participant’s work and to ask qeustions of the text so that others could offer possible answers, as well as for the exercise of “Going Off on Tangents.”

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Endnotes Zoom into Pre-Texts: Literacy, Innovation, and Citizenship in the Digital World John Dewey, Art as Experience, 1934, last 2 sentences. “We lay hold of the full import of a work of art only as we go through in our own vital processes the processes the artist went through in producing the work. It is the critic’s privilege to share in the promotion of this active process. His condemnation is that he so often arrests it.” [Conclusion].

2 Ken Kay and Valerie Greenhill, The Leaders Guide to 21st Century Education (London: Pearson, 2013). see also “World Development Indicators,” accessed at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/26447.

3 Antanas Mockus, “The Art of Changing a City” NYT, Op ed July 16, 2015. “This illustrates another lesson we learned. It helps to develop short, pleasing experiences for people that generate stories of delightful surprise, moments of mutual admiration among citizens and the welcome challenge of understanding something new. But then you need to consolidate those stories with good statistical results obtained through cold, rational measurement. That creates a virtuous cycle, so that congenial new experiences lead to statistically documented improvements, and the documentation raises expectations for more welcome change.” (My italics, D.S.) 4 Japan eliminated the Humanities as a major field; European universities invest in STEM, US universities too.

5 Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

6 Hannah Arendt, “Culture and Politics,” Reflections on Literature and Culture, ed. With Introduction by Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007) p 185, 190-1917.

7 Montessori, Maria. The montessori method: Scientific pedagogy as applied to child education in “the children’s houses” with additions and revisions by the author. (orig 1909) New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company.

Retrieved December 12, 2012.

8 Reflections from Boston public school teachers at the Adams School and the Perry School, Aug. 2019 (During training workshop in Pre-Texts).

9 Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978) 10 D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1971).

11 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 20th Anniversary Edition (New York: Continuum, 1993).

12 Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse and the Novel,” in The Dialogical Imagination ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson. (Austin: Texas university Press, 1981).

13 Christenson, Sandra L., Amy L. Reschly, and Cathy Wylie, eds. Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

14 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Part 3, “Docile Bodies” (London: Penguin Books, 1978) 15 Etymologically, “compete” means to strive alongside. I thank Marco Abarca for the reference. (https://www. etymonline.com/word/compete) We are reminded of this meaning by Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence Translated by Amanda DeMarco (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2018).

16 Pre-Texts: An Intervention to Support Literacy, Creativity, and Citizenship in Boston Public Schools, a collaboration with William Julius Wilson’s study “Multidimensional Inequality in the 21st Century: The Project on Race, Class and Cumulative Adversity” 17 Jon Elster, Ulysses Unbound (Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press, 2000) 18 Jürgen Habermas and Thomas McCarthy, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985).

19 Immanuel Kant Third Critique on Aesthetic Judgment (1790), Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982).

20 Daniel Wheatley. “Autonomy in Paid Work and Employee Subjective Well-Being” Work and Occupations (Sage Journal, 2017) pp. 296-328.

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What we do? (This is asked instead of: What did we learn?)

1

Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980).

Pre-Texts in the Classroom At-Risk Youth Strategy 2015-2018. Australian Department of Child and Family Support, Australia. https://www. dcp.wa.gov.au/Organisation/Documents/At%20Risk%20Youth%20Strategy%202015-2018.pdf 2 James Catterall, Susan Demais, Gillian Hamden Thompson, The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth: Findings from Four Longitudinal Studies. Washington D.C: National Endowment for the Arts, Research Report 55, March 2012.

3 K.Bethel, “Educational Reform in the Bahamas” The International Journal of Bahamian Studies, Is. 8, 1996.

4 Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).

5 Catterall, The Arts.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid, 11.

9 Ibid, 6.

10 H. Moorefield-Lang, “Arts Voices: Middle school students and the relationship of the arts to their motivation and self-efficacy.” The Qualitative Report, 15(1), 2010, 1-17.

11 M. V. Fazio and E. Pinder, “In Pursuit of Employable Skills: Understanding Employers’ Demands: Analysis of the Bahamas’ 2012 Wages & Productivity Survey” (New Providence: IDB In-publishing data, 2012).

12 Ibid, 35.

13 P. A.Witt and J.L. Crompton, “The At-Risk Youth Recreation Project.” Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, 14 (3), 1996, 1-9.

14 Ibid.

15 Catterall, The Arts.

16 Ibid.

17 Moorefield-Lang, Arts Voices.

18 Catterall, The Arts.

19 Witt, At-Risk Youth.

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A Moral Reading of Nationality Laws See “Human Rights Situation of Migrant Persons,” The Bahamas Report. 154th Session of the IACHR, June 19, 2015.

2 See Lee McConnelland Rhona Smith, Research Methods in Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2018), 133. See also Thomas Risse, Kathryn Sikkink and Stephen C Ropp (eds), The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

3 Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014) 4 Article 24 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that every child has the right to be “registered immediately after birth” and “to acquire a nationality.”

5 Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, Art.1. The Hague, 1930.

6 According to the International Law Commission, this definition is also part of customary international law. See: The International Law Commission, Articles on Diplomatic Protection with Commentaries, 2006.

7 Article 11 of the Haitian Constitution establishes that “Any person born of a Haitian father or Haitian mother who are themselves native-born Haitians and have never renounced their nationality, possesses Haitian nationality at the time of birth.”

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Researchers’ notes on meeting with Ambassador H.E. Jean Victor Geneus and Minister Counsellor Francois Jerome Michel. Haitian Embassy, Nassau, January 20, 2016. See also Me. Jean Vandal’s “Les Lois Haitiennes Concernant la Nationalité” [Haitian Laws Regarding Nationality], a legal memorandum available at the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, New York.

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Pre-Texts in the Reality of Brazilian Schools Sagan, Cosmos.

In English: Grab the tail of that comet / Look at the Milky Way, that beautiful highway / Play hide and seek in a nebula / Go home in a lovely blue balloon 1 2

Musicking with Literature: Shifting Paradigms in Music Education Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

1

The Uses of Pre-Texts in Language Classes at Harvard University MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages. “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World,” Profession, 2007, 234-245.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Barbara Lafford, “Languages for Specific Purposes in the United States in a Global Context: Commentary on Grosse and Voght,” The Modern Language Journal 96, 2012.

5 Mary K. Long, Language for Specific Purposes: Trends in Curriculum Development (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2017).

6 For an in-depth discussion, see Doris Sommer, “Ripple Effects: The Work of Art in the World.” Letral 4, 2010.

7 Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014) 8 Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures (London: Routledge, 2000).

9 Kate Paesani, “Researching Literacies and Textual Thinking in Collegiate Foreign Language Programs: Reflections and Recommendations,” Foreign Language Annals 51, 2018.

10 Here, “classics” means “works that can withstand many readings without flattening the experience into predictable responses,” as defined by Naseema Mohamed in the chapter titled “Make a Plan: Pre-Texts in Zimbabwe” (please see p. XX of this volume).

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Pre-Texts in Comparative Literature Classes Many thanks to the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo [National Agency for Research and Development] through the FONDECYT project number 11190799, supervising researcher Dr. Carolina A. Navarrete González, La Frontera University.

2 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (London: Hogarth Press, 1929).

1

A Tale of Two Cities The author would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of the following people to the activities described here: Professor Doris Sommer; Melaine Lee, Aloysius Lee, Winnie Fung and Eileen Shum from Maryknoll 1

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Convent School (Secondary Section), Hong Kong; Su Gu, Nick West, Charlotte Moore, Miki Mi and Fiona Zheng from NACIS, Shanghai; Li Yu, Zhang Ye-Li and Li Min-Xia from Zhu Di School, Shanghai; Lilian Chan, Eva Wong, Joyce Chan and Jovie Wong from SKH Yan Laap Primary School, Hong Kong; Sandra Lam, Winnie Fung, Regina Heung and Therese Condit from Wiseman Education; Nathan Johnston from Small World; Trecia Reavis from Hokmah International Section; and all the learners and facilitators who participated.

2 The HKCEE was taken by Hong Kong students at the end of their five-year secondary school education up to 2010, when Hong Kong launched a new academic structure involving the HKDSE, which students take upon completion of six-year secondary education.

3 A certain number of admissions are for other Hong Kong students who sit for A-Level, IB, AP exams and for international students from overseas.

4 Matt de la Peña, Last Stop on Market Street, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2015).

Pre-Texts with the Government of Antioquia “Aníbal Gaviria revivirá Parques Educativos construidos por Fajardo,” Caracol Radio, January 30, 2020. Accessed August 2020. https://caracol.com.co/emisora/2020/01/30/medellin/1580418896_883594.html.

2 Sophocles, Antigone, The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1984).

3 Ibid.

4 For more information, visit www.pre-texts.org to read the final report on Antioquia.

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Pre-Texts of Habitanía Habitanía is a concept being developed by the author, which centers on organizing the ideas of reflective citizens relative to the condition of inhabiting a place and the condition of being citizens. More specifically, the term aims to reveal key information to define a new concept: the habitanía of a city, through which a place may become a variable or a component in the study and practice of the city. This is an attempt to establish the intersections of the physical and the human to learn the city, since the great majority of foci on the educational city are centered on a city’s teaching possibilities from its social, cultural, political and economic aspects, more than its possibilities to instruct us through looking at its ways of being inhabited.

2 Antanas Mockus and Jimmy Corzo, Cumplir para convivir. Factores de convivencia y su relación con normas y acuerdos [Complying to Get Along: Factors of Living Together and their Relationship with Norms and Agreements] (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2003).

3 Edgar Morin, Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future, trans. Nidra Poller (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2001).

4 Juan Rulfo, El llano en llamas [The Burning Plain] (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1953). Translated here by Lacey Pipkin.

5 Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, “Human Nature: Justice vs. Power” in A. J. Ayer and Fons Elders (eds.), Reflexive Water: The Basic Concerns of Mankind (London: Souvenir Press, 1974).

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STEAM for Afro-Latin America Freire, Pedagogy.

Rulfo, El llano.

3 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1, lines 298-303: “Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of esh/ But in the cutting it if thou dost shed/ One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods/ Are by the laws of Venice con scate/ Unto the state of Venice.”

4 Freire, Pedagogy, p. 43: “And this fight, because of the purpose given it by the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressors’ violence, lovelessness even when clothed in false generosity.” p. 89: “Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism 1 2

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in the dominated. Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical.” p. 155: “If children reared in an atmosphere of lovelessness and oppression, children whose potency has been frustrated, do not manage during their youth to take the path of authentic rebellion, they will either dri into total indi erence, alienated from reality by the authorities and the myths the latter have used to ‘shape’ them; or they may engage in forms of destructive action.”

5 Sagan, Cosmos.

The Impact of Pre-Texts on the Library Network of the Bank of the Republic More information is available at the Banco de la República website: www.banrepcultural.org.

To see what happened at one of the Pre-Texts workshops in the Caribbean zone of Colombia, please watch the video available at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phl5dLv4f-4&feature=share.

1 2

Like a Kindergartener: Pre-Texts in El Salvador Gineco, https://gineceoblog.wordpress.com.

Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985).

3 Freire, Pedagogy.

4 Pre-Texts Youtube Channel, “México presenta, Latinoamérica presente” Congress, November 2014. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jDfMjY-A7A 1 2

Pre-Texts in Ireland: Diverse Journeys in Literary Dublin Foucault, Discipline.

J. Donaldson and A. Scheffer, The Gruffalo (London: Macmillan, 1999).

Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls (London: Phoenix, 1960).

4 Andy Mulligan, Trash (New York: Random House, 2010).

5 James Joyce, The Dubliners (London: Penguin Books, 1914).

6 Bill Bryson, A Short History of Everything (London: Doubleday, 2003).

7 George Orwell, Animal Farm (London: Penguin Books, 1945).

8 Eilish Comerford, “The Impact of Austerity Measures on Lone Parent Women,” Master’s thesis, University College Dublin, 2012.

9 Kevin Kearns, Stoneybatter: Dublin’s Urban Village (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1989).

10 The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women. 1249 U.N.T.S 14. United Nations General Assembly, New York, 1979.

11 James Joyce, Ulysses (Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922).

1 2 3

Nikumbuke-Health Harvard University Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning Annie Sloman, “Using participatory theatre in international community development” Community Development Journal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

2 Augusto Boal, Teatro do oprimido e outras poéticas políticas (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brazileira, 1970). See also Augusto Boal, The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy (London: Routledge, 1995), as well as Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970).

3 The term “Mama” is popularly used in place of the title “Mrs.” and is sometimes used as a synonym of “woman” (normally a married woman, a mother).

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Doris Sommer The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

5 Boal, Teataro.

5 Emilie J. Calvello, et al, “Applying the lessons of maternal mortality reduction to global emergency health” Bulletin of the World Health Organization vol. 93,6 (2015), 417-23.

6 Term coined in the United States to refer to the inhumane treatment of women in labor and delivery wards during childbirth.

7 The ethnic groups presented during the first health training in the villages were Kamba, Duruma, Digo, Giriama, Luhya, Kisee, Makondo, Luo and Taita. In some of the villages the majority of the population is Christian (Lunga Lunga and Godo). In other villages—Perani and Mpakani—approximately half of the population is Muslim and half Christian. Nevertheless, people still believe in spirit possession and still hold traditional values and customs that permeate many levels of their daily lives.

8 The etymological meaning of person has been long debated. This narrative uses the meaning of the Oxford Etymology Dictionary (https://www.etymonline.com/word/person, also used by Spanish peace philosopher Vicent Martínez Guzmán, Podemos hacer las paces: reflexiones éticas tras el 11-S y el 11-M (Sevilla: Publidisa, 2005).

9 Charles Hornsby, Kenya: A History Since Independence (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012).

10 John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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There is No Point in Asking Questions if You are Not Allowed to Provide Answers 1

Jorge Luis Borges, El Aleph (Buenos Aires: Editorial MC, 1957).

“Amiga Cartonera,“ Pre-Texts Today The annual pedagogical program of Mano Amiga Chalco includes diverse strategies for improving literacy in Spanish language teaching. Since Pre-Texts is included as a didactic strategy in the improvement of literacy at all levels of teaching, at the end of every semester we hold an exhibit of student-made work from the period, which is presented to the entire educational community (all the school’s students, family and guests).

1

An Experience with No Pre-Texts: Workshops with Sex Workers, Inmates and Community Center in Mexico City Artemio del Valle Arizpe, Historia de vivos y muertos [History of the Living and the Dead], (Mexico City: CONACULTA, 1995). Sebastián Verti, Tradiciones mexicanas [Mexican Traditions], (Mexico City: Editorial Diana, 1991).

1

Pre-Texts in Cluj-Napoca 1 2

Foucault, Discipline.

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, (London: A. Millar, 1790).

Pre-Texts in Uganda Personal interview with Christopher Acar of the National Curriculum Development Centre, conducted May 29, 2015.

2 Personal interview with Rita Nanyange of Princess Diana High School, conducted May 19, 2015.

3 Personal interview with Abass Amin of Campfire Uganda, conducted June 2, 2015.

5 Personal interview with Lutalo Bbosa Vicent of the Uganda Ministry of Education, conducted May 27, 2015.

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6 7 8

Personal interview with Nabyaya Anne of Kyambogo University, conducted June 5, 2015.

Personal interview with Mathias Mulumba of the National Curriculum Development Centre, conducted May 20, 2015.

Personal interview with Rita Nanyange of Princess Diana High School, conducted May 19, 2015.

The Magic Flute: An African-European Approach Through Pre-Texts El Sistema is a publicly-financed, voluntary sector music education program, founded in Venezuela in 1975 by Venezuelan educator, musician, and activist José Antonio Abreu.

2 Picfare is a Ugandan company that produces exercise books for schools.

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Pre-Texts in Boston 1 2

This project later became a collaboration between the Boston Foundation and the Barr Foundation.

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York: Holt McDougal, 1970).

Pre-Texts for Campus-Community Partnerships: A Humanities-Centered Approach Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1997).

Susan Strum, Timothy Eatman, John Saltmarch, Adam Bush, “Full Participation: Building the Architecture for Diversity and Community Engagement in Higher Education.” Imagining America, 2011, p. 17.

3 Jonathan Lear, “The Call of Another’s Words.” The Humanities and Public Life, ed. Peter Brooks and Hilary Jewett.

New York: Fordham UP, 2014, 109-115.

4 Kevin Young, “Rooting,” Book of Hours (New York: Knopf, 2014).

5 Roadside Theater, Story Circle Guidelines. https://roadside.org/asset/story-circle-guidelines. Accessed July 2019 6 Dulce Alonso, “Remaking El Rancho,” available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IrKOS5jJao 7 Randy Stoecker, Elizabeth A. Tryon, Amy Hilgendorf, The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009).

8 Angie Hart, Alex Ntung, Juliet Millican, Ceri Davies, Etienne Wenger, Howard Rosing, Jenny Pearce, “Community–University Partnerships through Communities of Practice.” Report for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (London: Connected Communities Programme, 2011).

9 Robert G. Bringle, Patti H. Clayton, Mary F. Price, “Partnerships in Service Learning and Civic Engagement.”

Partnerships: A Journal of Service Learning & Civic Engagement, 1.1, 2009.

10 Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014) 11 “About HIV and AIDS,” www.avert.org. Accessed July 28, 2019.

12 “A Decent Home. An American Right. 5th, 6th and 7th Consolidated Report.” Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, 1944.

1 2

Art Experience/Experiments in Boston Public Schools In fact, Dylan wrote the song over the course of a couple of days in the studio in New York in September of 1974, as Richard Thomas has documented. “‘Memorize these lines, and remember these rhymes’: New York Sessions of Blood on the Tracks,” The Dylan Review 1.1 (2019), 29-49.

2 Michael Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (New York: Continuum, 2006), 102. C.f. Michael Gray, Song & Dance Man III (New York: Continuum, 664). “Hidden transcript” is a phrase I draw from James C. Scott’s work, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

3 Foucault, Discipline.

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Pre-Texts at Harvard: What Did We Do? Foucault, Discipline.

Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977), 16.

3 Henry James, Theory of Fiction, ed. James E. Miller (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), 237.

4 James Cuno, ed., Foirades/Fizzles: Echo and Allusion in the Art of Jasper Johns (Los Angeles: Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, 1988), 147.

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2

Make a Plan: Pre-Texts in Zimbabwe The unemployment rate depends on how unemployment is defined; see “Reality Check: Are 90% of Zimbabweans unemployed?” BBC News, December 3, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-42116932 (Accessed October 12, 2020); “Zim has world’s second largest informal economy: IMF,” The Herald, October 10, 2018, https://www. herald.co.zw/zim-has-worlds-second-largest-informal-economy-imf/ (Accessed October 12, 2020) and Sintha Chiumia, “Are 5.7 million people employed in Zimbabwe’s informal economy? No,” Africa Check, May 12, 2014, https://africacheck.org/reports/are-5-7-million-people-employed-in-zimbabwes-informal-economy-no/ (Accessed October 10, 2020).

2 Actual literacy rates may be lower, owing to the volatile economy and the government’s inability to fund education programs over the past decade.

3 See Dickson Mungazi, The Fall of the Mantle (New York: Peter Lang, 1993); Norman J.Atkinson, Teaching Rhodesians: A History of Educational Policy in Rhodesia (London: Longman, 1972); Carol Summers, Colonial Lessons: Africans’ Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1918-1940 (African Writers Series, 2002).

4 For more about corporal punishment in colonial schools across Africa, see David Killingray, “The ‘Rod of Empire’: The Debate over Corporal Punishment in the British African Colonial Forces, 1888-1946,” Journal of African History 35, no. 2 (1994): 201–16.

5 Both of the foremost liberation movements, the Zimbabwean African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU), built schools that promoted socialist political education. For more on ZAPU schools, see: Paulos Matjaka Nare, “Education and the war,” Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War 2 (1995): 130-138. For ZANU schools, see Fay Chung, Re-living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from the Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe. (Bulawayo: Weaver Press, 2006).

6 Freire, Pedagogy.

7 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1958).

8 The primary languages in which students are taught are French in Niger and Portuguese in Guinea Bissau. According to the study, African languages were used in Niger to teach students for the first three grades, then oral French was introduced in the fourth grade. Written French was introduced In the fifth and sixth grades. See M. Hovens,“Bilingual Education in West Africa: Does It Work?” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 5, no. 5 (2002): 249–266.

9 Pseudonyms have been used throughout the essay to protect the identities of the participants.

10 See Liz Gruenfeld, “Evaluation of Amparo Cartonera,” internal document, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, 2008, p. 18: “Museo Amparo Program students were positively impacted in terms of attention to detail, reading comprehension, and student interpretation of stories, as seen by teachers and artists: ‘Students place more attention in details now. As with the ‘hypertexts,’ they pay more attention to details in the story to be able to reverse the order of events and say what else might happen instead.’ Another teacher added that program students learned more words, resulting in a richer vocabulary.”

11 Doris Sommer, “Schiller and Company, or How Habermas Makes Us Play” New Literary History, Winter 2010.

12 Ngugi Wa Thiong’o rejects the uprooting of African languages and African literature by colonial languages, arguing that beyond being a communication tool, language is a “carrier of culture,” thus making native languages the only means of fully expressing the life experiences of local people. See Decolonizing the Mind (Portsmouth: Heinemann Educational, 1986). Thiong’o also discusses the complexity and sophistication of African poetry and 1

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the theater in the aforementioned book and specifically refers to colonial pedagogy in his novel Wizard of the Crow (London: Harvill Secker, 2006).

13 “Today 125 million children do not get any formal education at all; the majority of them are girls. Even more children do not get sufficient schooling because they drop out before they learn basic literacy skills. Children throughout the world are being denied their fundamental right to education. In developing countries, one in four adults—some 900 million people—are illiterate. The human costs of this education crisis are incalculable.” See “Education: Tackling the global crisis,” Oxfam International, April 2001. Accessed at http://www.oxfamamerica. org/files/OA-Education_Tackling_Global_Crisis.pdf.

14 Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 2.

15 The government designates high people-to-land ratio as “high-density areas.”

16 This unemployment estimate was generated by my interviews with 70 community members, including teachers, students and community members on the street. E.O. Ndlovu, the Ministry of Education Arts and Culture Officer and the designated arts and culture minister of the district, confirmed the estimate. Regarding emigration, an estimated two million Zimbabwean refugees and emigrants currently live in South Africa. “Regularizing Zimbabwean Immigration to South Africa,” South Africa Migration Policy Brief, last modified May 2009, accessed February 2, 2011, http://www.cormsa.org.za/wpcontent/uploads/MigrationPolicyBrief/Migration%20Policy%20Brief%20 1%20-%20Zim%20Special%20Permits.pdf.

17 The fifteen were also chosen with a random number generator.

18 This was as stipulated by the Harvard Human Subjects Review Board.

19 I was introduced to the group’s founder by a mutual friend, and contacted him about requesting performers months before implementing the project.

20 In my pre-program interview, a teacher told me that despite her reluctance to teach in Ndebele in her regular English classroom, it is often necessary to because “students don’t understand anything.” Mrs. Khumalo, interview

by Naseemah Mohamed, tape recording July, 11, 2011, Nkulumane High School, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

21 Doris Sommer, Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).

22 Mrs Sibanda, interview by Naseemah Mohamed, tape recording August, 25, 2011, Nkulumane High School, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

23 Mr. Ngwenya, interview by Naseemah Mohamed, tape recording August, 25, 2011, Nkulumane High School, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

24 Though not mentioned outright in interviews with the Bulawayo teachers, as reflexive researchers we would be remiss not to consider that the international nature of Pre-Texts and its affiliation with Harvard adds to its attractiveness.

Digital Country Pre-Texts in Argentina Pedro Lattuca, Estrés y resiliencia. Accessed at: http://www.clinica-unr.com.ar/2015-web/Publicaciones/32/32_eti. htm. Maurice Maeterlinck, El libro de las abejas (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2018). Christine Nostlinger, Konrad o el niño que salió de una lata de conservas (Madrid: Loqueleo, 2016). Ricardo Mariño, Perdido en la selva (Madrid: Alfaguara, 2011).

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