ing the novel. She states: Because your reactions are not uncommon, you read the book reviews and people have these common reactions. So based on these reactions (indicating students reactions written on the board), why might it be a little confusing; why might there be brief descriptions of many relationships? Encouraging authentic inquiry and promoting an active discussion can be especially difficult when students clamup or tiptoe around what they intend to say with “ums,’ pauses, and false starts. As demonstrated in the discourse that follows, when the discussion stalls, Stella and her students refer to students’ quickwrite and freewriting notes. Stella also uses scaffolding techniques: uptaking (Nystrand et al.), integrating or “incorporating” parts or all of previous responses to form “subsequent” questions, linking them together for further examination and re-presenting (Shor), “synthesizing students’ remarks into questions and statements…[creating] a focused problem for further reflection…” and “pull[ing] the [dialogue] process forward to the next phase of inquiry” (Shor 113). Because of the recursive nature of the discourse, it is important to note that not all the reactions and topics / themes are presented in isolation as they appear in the table. Student names are pseudonyms.
others’) reading of the portrayal of a character’s history and identity and offers the characterization of Billie Delia as an example, stating, “Yeah, and Billie Delia is a really good example of that, right?” Excited, she asks Phillip, “Did you think of that? I mean, how do we first see Billie Delia? What are we told?” This question is met with a pregnant pause, filled with tension and readiness, as evidenced by the expressions on students’ faces. Therefore, she restates her question, “When do we first see Billie Delia” and “What are we told,” attempting to make salient the marginalizing effect oral history has had on Billie Delia. Billie Delia is light-skinned, a sign of racial impurity. Stella presses on, when no one responds, asking “Does anyone remember?” Penny, who has been fidgeting with her pen, breaks the silence and, says, “hoe,” a slang referent for “whore.” Stella responds by quoting from the text, “Yeah, she’s ‘the fastest girl in town,’ right? But later when we hear the other story from Pat, what do we hear about her then?” After a few seconds of wait time, when no one else responds, Stella backtracks and rephrases her question and re-presents Penny’s characterization of Billie Delia. She asks, “When do we first see Billie Delia? When does she get this reputation?” “When she was three,” offers Alexia. The Discourse: Making Sense of Reactions, TopThis response causes a few students to laugh as Stella ics, and Themes confirms, Stella has students, “circle up,” form a large group circle Yeah, when she was three, and she pulls down her that she joins. Opening the whole group discussion, she says, panties to ride a horse, right? Because she’s three “All right what sort of things did you come up with? How and this is what three year olds do, right? They sort do we make sense of this, our reading, when we have these of embrace life in ways we’re sort of not allowed to reactions and these topics and themes?” as adults, which is really quite a shame, but – yeah. Marcus says, So, we have that as a perfect example of getting [inUm, well they’re kind of like, the topics aren’t really formation] from different people. simple to go through and look at, so [Morrison] is The dialogue, thus far, illustrates how raising critical a little more confusing like looks at the history and awareness is an incremental process occurring as students tradition, but she also makes it confusing by going recognize the subtle yet marginalizing effect of narrative through stories. [The history, tradition, and stories] retellings. When Stella places Marcus’s, Phillip’s, and Penny’s kind of help us understand what the whole story is responses together, a critical dialogic space is created, pinbuilt on. pointing oral history as a marginalizing factor (Alemu). PhilStella responds, “Yeah there’s not this sort of like one lip accentuates this point when he re-presents Stella’s last main thing that’s going on,” then recognizes another student. response and elaborates, posing a query concerning the dif“Yeah, Phillip.” He references his freewrite: fering narrative points of view in the novel: Um, like the inside and out[side] thing, it’s present So like multiple characters can – (he interrupts himalso when like you’re reading [the book]. It makes self and starts again). Like one character can be like you feel like there’s this outsider walking into Ruby multiple characters…, so that [Billie Delia] can be – almost like you’re the outsider. The other thing I [seen as] easy-like or whatever. And later on in the [wrote] is like the whole identity thing. The actual story, the same [story is told] and she’s a completebook itself being confusing and also having a focus ly different character, then. like that, and the fact that we meet people through Validating Phillip’s initial assertion, Stella reiterates, other people; it’s going to be like a lens that we see “Yeah, we are sort of like outsiders in a sense.” The talk each person out of – through another person’s lens. about being an outsider, learning about individuals through Stella uptakes and re-presents his idea concerning how others’ perspectives, and identifying Billie Delia as an outhis experience of being “an outsider” influences his (and cast transforms the dialogue as students start to make sense
Statement Vol. 48, Number 2
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