Connecting Home and School Literacy Practices in Classrooms with Diverse Populations

Connecting Home andSchool Literacy Practices

in Classrooms withDiverse Populations

Sarah J. McCartheyUNIVERSITY OF TEXAS

AT AUSTIN

I present the cases of 5 students from diverse back-grounds and conclude that home and school are moreconnected for some students than for others. Homeand school were tightly connected for middle-classEuropean-American students who read at home andschool, shared their writing with the class, and broughtitems from home to show peers. In contrast, studentsfrom non-mainstream backgrounds participated inhome literacy activities that did not match school ex-periences. These students were more reticent in theclassroom, did not share items from home, and experi-enced home and school as separate. In the analysis,books, tasks, and participation structures contributedto some students making stronger connections thanothers. Teachers having more information about somestudents than others; their own middle-class Euro-pean-American backgrounds and the need to treat allstudents "equally"; and their assumptions that stu-dents could make the connections between home andschool on their own contributed to the curriculum be-ing more congruent with middle-class, home literacyexperiences than working-class experiences. AlthoughI suggest that learning about students' cultures andbackgrounds is essential, I delineate some of the chal-lenges that accompany learning about students.

Journal of Literacy ResearchVolume 2% Number 2,1997, Pages 145-182tm

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MUCH RESEARCH HAS DOCUMENTED how schools traditionally have failedto serve the literacy needs of many students of color (McDermott, 1977;Michaels, 1981). Access to literacy has been socially and culturally chan-

neled, favoring the White, middle-class students' ways of making meaning at theexpense of others (Heath, 1983). A deficit model of conceptualizing children ofcolor has undergirded the traditional reading instruction that has failed to reachstudents from diverse backgrounds. The deficit view sees the homes of people ofcolor as providing limited language-learning environments, having faulty pat-terns of socialization, and placing little value on education (Auerbach, 1989;Miramontes & Commins, 1991). This view leads to educational practices that re-duce knowledge to transmitting, memorizing, and repeating information.Schools, then, disempower students by failing to provide them with informationthat is relevant to the context of their lives (Giroux, 1988; McLaren, 1988,1991).Further, the focus on mechanics and rote learning with few opportunities forstudent choice is more likely to occur in schools with working-class populations,whereas schools with affluent populations more often provide opportunities forstudents to make decisions, express ideas, and apply concepts (Anyon, 1988;Dressman, in press).

Innovative approaches to literacy curriculum such as process writing, lit-erature-based instruction, and dialogue journals hold promise for challengingthe deficit view and replacing the transmission model of instruction with a moreconstructivist philosophy (Au, 1993). Yet, even when innovative practices such aswriting workshop are implemented, students may have different goals fromteachers, resulting in differential access for working-class students and studentsof color than for middle-class students (Lensmire, 1993; McCarthey, 1994a;Reyes, 1991).

Although most schools have not considered the homes of working-classstudents as sources of rich experiences, literacy practices are embedded withinthe social fabric of family life of many communities. Although virtually all chil-dren in a literate society have numerous experiences with print before coming toschool, race, social class, and cultural and linguistic background play a role inchildren's sense-making of those literate practices (Au, 1981; Heath, 1983; Taylor& Dorsey-Gaines, 1988; Teale, 1986). The level of parents' education also affectshome literacy practices; for example, in Rodriguez-Brown and Mulhern's (1993)study, highly educated Mexican immigrant parents were perceptive of children'seducational needs and motivated them to read and write. What is missing in ourknowledge base is an understanding of how teachers value students' home lit-eracy experiences and the ways in which teachers and students connect homeand school.

Currently, educators are moving toward a model of "literacy as reasoningwithin multiple discourses" (Michaels & O'Connor, 1990, p. 1) characterized bythe integration of ways of thinking, talking, interacting, and valuing as well asreading and writing within a particular social setting. This conception of literacyimplies that each child learns culturally appropriate ways of using language andconstructing meaning from texts in their early years at home (Gee, 1990). A fo-

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cus on literacy within multiple discourses also maintains that familiarity withstudents' personal and social worlds is one means of overcoming the psychologi-cal distance between home and school (Cazden, 1988). Researchers and teachersare developing social networks that connect classrooms to community re-sources to build on socially distributed "funds of knowledge." They documentthe activities of households and the social networks that facilitate economic as-sistance and labor cooperation and use this information in classrooms (Moll 6-Gonzalez, 1994). Other researchers are documenting successful teacher practicesthat have helped reverse the deficit model and promote alternative participationstructures, such as rules for speaking, listening, and turn-taking (Au, 1993). Forexample, Ladson-Billings (1994) described "culturally relevant teaching" thatconsiders students as competent learners while extending their thinking. Dia-logue provides the scaffolding for students "to build upon their own experiences,knowledge, and skills to move into more difficult knowledge and skills" (p. 124).Not only does dialogue provide the opportunity for communication, but it canpromote critical thinking and transformation of the present reality (Freire,1970). Through dialogue, teachers can provide opportunities for students tomake links between home and school, assisting students in becoming construc-tors of their own narratives that are connected to wider cultural and social issues(Giroux, 1988).

Many studies have documented the gap between students' home lives andschool practices, and several programs are focusing on family literacy to en-hance connections between home and school by helping parents share bookswith their children (e.g., McCaleb, 1994; Morrow, 1995; Shanahan, Mulhern, &Rodriguez-Brown, 1995). However, more research is needed to understand theways in which students use their home literacy experiences within classroomsettings. Inspired by the work of Moll and Gonzalez (1994) and Ladson-Billings(1994) > I wanted to examine how teachers and students connected home andschool literacy practices. In this article, I conclude that the classrooms I studied,despite the teachers' first steps to welcome diversity, reinforced middle-class lit-eracy values while inadvertently ignoring or devaluing (mostly through lack ofknowledge) literacy practices in non-middle-class homes. To support this con-clusion, I first present the cases of five students from diverse backgrounds andanalyze how home and school are more connected for some students than forothers. Next, I explore the classroom curriculum and participation structuresthat were intended to support, but inadvertently discouraged, connections be-tween home and school.

Method

This study used ethnographic methods described by Bogdan and Biklen (1992)to document links between home and school literacy practices. From her worksupervising student teachers, my research assistant nominated an urban

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elementary school as an interesting site to study, because the teachers were imple-menting innovations such as team teaching and literature-based instruction andwere interested in making home-school connections in their instruction.

School Context

Located in the Southwest, the school population consisted of 56% Hispanic(students were designated "Hispanic" by the school if they were Mexican, Mexi-can-American, or from Central-American countries), 30% European-Ameri-can, 6% African-American, and 8% other (Native American, biracial, or not des-ignated) students; 62% of the students were in the free or reduced lunchprogram. The neighborhood where students lived consisted of both middle-class and working-class families; the wealthier, professional families tended tolive in older homes on the hills near the school, whereas the working-class fami-lies lived in modest homes or apartments further from the school. HillsideSchool (all names of schools, teachers, and students are pseudonyms) had a newwing added to the building during the summer preceding the opening of schoolto accommodate a growing population.

Teacher Participants

The five European-American teachers in this study were part of an instructional"block" responsible for 96 8-, 9-, and 10-year old students. This meant that twoteachers who taught on one side of the hall (in two large, joined rooms) were pri-marily responsible for teaching all subjects (except for "specials" - computers,music, art, physical education) to about 47 students. The three teachers acrossthe hall were responsible for about 49 students (in two large, joined classrooms);one of these teachers was designated the bilingual teacher and also taught Span-ish twice a week to all 96 students. The teachers planned all curricular activitiestogether; however, toward the end of the year, the time allocated to curriculartopics and the actual schedule for activities differed from one side to the other.

Although different in age, years of teaching experience, and areas of spe-cialization, these teachers were all European-Americans from middle-classbackgrounds. Margie had been teaching at Hillside School for 7 years. She hadreceived her B.A. in art in the early 1970s from a nearby university, worked in aday-care center while her daughter was young, and then got her teaching certifi-cate. She had been team teaching with Nona for the last 3 years. Although she at-tended a parochial grade school, Nona grew up in the neighborhood very closeto the school; her own children had attended the school until she moved out tothe suburbs. She had taught 5 years before raising her own children, then substi-tuted until she received a contract 4 years ago to teach at Hillside. Joined by theirinterests in working on something "other than just what the textbook offered,"

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both teachers found team teaching a rewarding experience. At the beginning ofthe year, they were joined by a third teacher, Joy, whose primary responsibilitywas for all the "bilingual children" (native Spanish speakers who were learningEnglish as a second language) in the block. Joy's postsecondary education beganat a small college in the Midwest where she double majored in English and Span-ish; she became interested in English as a second language and transferred to acollege in another state. She had a range of teaching experiences from prekinder-garten to high school in several states totaling 10 years in all.

This was the second year that Missy and Amy had taught together; theydecided to become a team when the school moved to a multiage grouping plan.Amy explained, "I found myself very frustrated with using some of the bookswhere the information was chopped up so much that it wasn't very interesting atall, and I thought 'I can teach units and I can make things more interesting' andthe multiage set up has allowed me to be more creative." Amy had completed herstudent teaching at Hillside School 3% years earlier and was hired immediatelyfor the third grade. Missy also had done her student teaching at Hillside School10 years before, took an aide position, and finally gained a full-time teaching po-sition. This was the first year in which all five teachers planned together.

Data Collection

During classroom observations, my research assistant and I focused on literacyinstruction occurring in a variety of contexts: writing workshop, "book re-sponse," and research projects related to topics in the books; however, more timewas spent observing book response because of its centrality to the curriculum.We conducted l-hour to 3-hour classroom observations approximately threetimes weekly; each of us usually concentrated on one of the two team settings,and we later compared notes. At times, one of us spent about 1 hour with one ofthe teams and then went to the other classroom to observe a different activity. Onseveral occasions, we both observed the same team for purposes of verification.During our observations, we focused on the ways in which teachers and studentsreferred to and used out-of-school experiences and the participation structuresthemselves, for example, who talks, when, and under what circumstances. Allobservations were audiotaped; fieldnotes were written up in narrative formdrawing from the audiotapes.

Teacher interviews. We interviewed the five participating teachers indi-vidually at the end of September about their own backgrounds, goals for literacyinstruction, and views about practice. We then conducted interviews with theteam of two teachers at the end of October, and with two members of the three-teacher team at the beginning of November. These interviews focused on par-ticular students, but also included information about how the year had gonethus far, and auricular plans for the future. We offered suggestions such as se-lecting books that might connect to students' experiences and breaking into

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small groups to facilitate greater participation on the part of more students. Agroup interview with all five teachers took place in January; this interview wasinteractive in nature with the teachers talking about goals for the next unit andresearchers providing suggestions about how to involve students. Individual in-terviews with two teachers from one team were conducted in March; they wereasked to use the transcripts to reflect on their interactions with students and stu-dent learning. The corresponding interview with the three teachers from theother team was conducted as a group interview at the teachers' request. Discus-sions with each of the teams along with the principal also occurred in April. Theprincipal led these discussions by asking the teachers to reflect on their practicesand student learning throughout the course of the year. All of these discussionswere transcribed verbatim and were used as sources of data for this article.

Student selection. After about 3 weeks of classroom observations, my re-search assistant selected six students and I chose nine students to observe andinterview over the course of the year. Selections were made based on the pool ofreturned parental consent forms from which we sought students who were rep-resentative of the school population in terms of cultural backgrounds. We alsosought a balance of boys and girls and a balance of third and fourth graders. Thepurposive sample consisted of 7 Hispanic, 6 European-American, 1 African-American, and 1 Native American students (8 boys and 7 girls; 8 third gradersand 7 fourth graders) from a total of 42 returned permission slips. At the time ofinitial student selection, we knew very little about students' social-class back-grounds or achievement levels. During ongoing analysis, students' social-classstatus seemed to play a role. I then determined their social-class membershipthrough descriptions of occupations of parents and firsthand observations ofthe homes and neighborhoods in which the case-study students resided.

We conducted four rounds of 30-minute interviews throughout the yearwith each of the 15 students, focusing on their perceptions of home and schooland the relationships between them, and talked to students informally during orafter literacy events. All interviews were transcribed verbatim. Additionally, weobserved students occasionally on the playground and photocopied their jour-nals, "response logs," and writing-workshop folders.

From these data, I chose to focus on the nine students whom I had fol-lowed over the course of the year and with whom I had conducted home visits. Iconducted a l-hour interview with one or more family members of eight of thenine students. All of the interviews except one (Mandy's mother preferred theschool setting) were conducted in the students' homes. Questions focused onparents' occupations, educational backgrounds, and literacy habits at home;their perceptions of their children's literacy habits at home and in school; theirdescriptions of students' classrooms; and their descriptions of opportunities toattend school functions and meet with the teachers. In homes where Spanishwas the primary language, a translator accompanied me.

In this article, I focus on five students who represent a range of language,cultural, and economic backgrounds. All of the students were achieving at grade

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level or above according to their teachers, with the exception of Matthew whowas in Resource, a pull-out program for students achieving below grade level. Ichose these students because their classroom participation represented a spec-trum from very active to almost silent. As I conducted my analysis, social-classstatus emerged as an important issue, and in this article, social class andethnicity have become compounded, but not through design. Had we selecteddifferent students, ethnicity and social class may not have been so intertwined,and they may have responded differently from those we followed. For example,Dana, a middle-class Hispanic girl, appeared to make strong home-school con-nections, but her family returned to Mexico before the end of the year, thus pre-venting subsequent data collection.

Analyses

Using Bogdan and Biklen's (1992) approach to ethnographic analyses, I exam-ined the transcripts for emerging patterns of classroom interactions and dis-cussed them widi my research assistant. Using fieldnotes and transcripts of dia-logue, I focused on tasks (Doyle, 1983) and participation structures (Au, 1993;Philips, 1972) . Focusing particularly on the transcripts from book response, Iexamined which students shared (read their work aloud) and the nature ofteachers' responses to them. Interviews with the teachers were used to triangu-late the findings. Students' responses were examined using the observations, in-terviews, and writing samples. Analysis focused on explicit examples of home-school literacy connections (e.g., students making specific mention of one in thecontext of the other) as well as more implicit examples such as styles of dis-course. Parents' interviews were analyzed for patterns of parents' literacy habits,students' literacy habits, and connections between home and school.

Researcher's Stance and Role

My own theoretical orientation is closely aligned with social constructivism(e.g., Vygotsky, 1978), in which students are viewed as actively constructingknowledge with the help of teachers and peers within a social context. However,I have become increasingly more interested in poststructuralist theories, be-cause they address more directly issues of race, class, and gender (see Aronowitz& Giroux, 1991; Walkerdine, 1990). I brought these perspectives to bear on theconceptualization and analysis of the study. Influenced by the work of Heath(1983), who described in depth the literacy practices of three communities inAppalachia, I hoped to understand the ways in which teachers and students inmore urban communities, more than a decade after her study, made connec-tions between home and school literacy practices.

As a teacher educator, I embrace many of the principles and methods that

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constitute an approach to teaching often described as "literature-based." For ex-ample, I use Routman's (1991) Invitations in my methods courses to promotereading and writing connections and draw from Au's (1993) Literacy Instructionin Multicultural Settings to help prospective teachers consider students' back-grounds in their teaching and to include multicultural literature in their cur-riculum. I encourage such features as writing workshop, student selection ofbooks, response to literature, and building on students' existing knowledge andsee myself as very sympathetic to the auricular goals of the teachers in thisstudy. Further, being middle class and White myself, I relate to the backgroundand values of the teachers who participated in my study.

At the outset of the study, I sought to become more of a participant thanan observer by assisting individual students with their writing or working with asmall group. The research assistant who worked with me was regarded by stu-dents on one of the teams as "almost" another teacher whom they would seekout for academic help or personal counseling. Both of us expected to facilitateteacher reflection about home-school connections through discussion of tran-scripts and curriculum. However, we ended up not taking as active a role inshaping the curriculum as we had anticipated, mostly because some of our sug-gestions were implemented much differently from what we intended (e.g., smallgroups). We subsequently decided not to impose our ideas of good practice onthe teachers, and my role evolved into more of an observer than a participant.This role allowed me to collect data from different perspectives including teach-ers', students', and parents'. The trade-off has been not seeing the classroom asmuch from the teachers' perspectives, but more from an informed outsider'spoint of view. What follows is my interpretation, informed by various sources ofdata, of the classrooms.

Classroom Context: Literacy Activities

Excited about ideas they had gathered from workshops about whole languageand influenced by educators in New Zealand such as Brian Cambourne, theteachers integrated curriculum across the subject areas, provided many oppor-tunities for students to read and write, and allowed students to pursue intereststhrough research projects. The atmosphere in the classrooms was active andlively; the teachers often offered special activities such as making bannock cakessimilar to those the Pilgrims ate, creating their own math problems using thebook/ame5 and the Giant Peach (Dahl, 1961), and going on field trips connectedto concepts studied. The teachers encouraged students to work together on re-search projects and to help one another if a peer encountered problems withdaily assignments. Students looked excited, seemed to enjoy working together,and thought that most of the activities were "fun." The school day generally be-gan with students writing in their personal journals and ended with stories read

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aloud. Interspersed throughout the day were literacy activities such as "re-search," "writing workshop," and writing articles for the weekly class newspaper.Book response was a central feature of the literacy activities around which manyof the other activities revolved.

As a group, the teachers selected a lengthy piece, usually a children's novel,that became the focus of a unit of study (from 2-12 weeks). Social studies andscience concepts were connected to the novels. For example, during the unit onPedro's Journal (Conrad, 1991; a first person narrative about Columbus's landingin America), students learned about sailing and did research projects on eventsconnected to that time in history, for example, the bubonic plague or Florence asa center of culture. Occurring daily, book response consisted of all studentsgathering together on the rug to listen to a chapter or two read aloud from thenovel. While one teacher read aloud, the other teacher wrote a summary of theevents (the bilingual teacher wrote an additional one in Spanish) on a chart. Atthe end of the reading aloud, students wrote in their response logs (open-endedresponse journals) for 5 minutes. The emphasis was on students putting downtheir ideas without concern for spelling or punctuation. These practices arosefrom the teachers' beliefs that responding to literature went beyond comprehen-sion and offered an opportunity for students to bring in their personal experi-ences. For example, Amy said, "I mean if the kids are responding to literaturethen they're obviously comprehending and understanding what's being read.And it's more worthwhile because they can personalize it."

Sharing response logs followed the 5 minutes of uninterrupted writing.The teachers believed it was important for students to hear each others' ideas,because they can "learn from others." The teaming situation allowed all teachersto respond to students, freely chiming in when they felt it necessary without as-signing teacher roles. One of the teachers wrote several words (what they re-ferred to as "colorful language") used by the students on a chart for the purposeof building vocabulary. Nona said, "I can't think of a better way for these chil-dren to start using some of these [vocabulary from the novels] than posting it inthe room so they actually see it all day long; so not only are they using it in theirresponse logs but in their other writing."

Teachers valued their integrated approach to curriculum and sought waysto provide opportunities for students to write in a variety of contexts. They be-lieved that students had many opportunities to connect home and schoolthrough these many literacy activities. Amy suggested, "The kids draw on theirown experiences and relate those to others in the classroom, and then they canlearn from each other." The teachers seemed to assume that merely providingmany literacy opportunities would result in students automatically making con-nections between home and school. For some students, this did indeed seem tobe the case: These students, who tended to be from White, middle-class back-grounds, shared their writing with the entire class and felt comfortable express-ing themselves about events that occurred outside of school. Other students,however, those who tended to be from diverse cultural or linguistic backgrounds,

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were more reticent in classroom activities and seemed to keep their home andschool lives more separate than their middle-class peers.

Cases of Five Students

Drawing from interviews with teachers, parents, and the students, I describehome and school literacy practices of each student. Beginning with Mandy, amiddle-class, European-American girl, and ending with Eduardo, a working-class, Hispanic boy, I present the cases along a continuum of close connectionbetween home and school to separateness. The organization of the cases also re-flects relative classroom participation: Mandy and Andy were highly involved inclassroom discussions, Matthew occasionally contributed to discussions, andSheila and Eduardo rarely spoke aloud to the whole group. Following the discus-sion of the cases, I conclude that students' home and school literacy experiencesand teachers' relative knowledge about those backgrounds and literacy experi-ences resulted in stronger connections between home and school for some stu-dents than for others. I am not suggesting that all middle-class students and noworking-class students made connections between home and school in thisclassroom. However, I do conclude that the classroom practices tended to favorWhite, middle-class students' home literacy practices over others.

Mandy: A Perfect Fit Between Home and School

Mandy, a European-American third grader, is the daughter of one of the teach-ers in the school and a cabinetmaker. She lives in a house with her parents and anolder sister who attended the school in recent years. Active in basketball anddance, Mandy reported that her father read to her and often her sister joined in.Mandy said that both her parents read frequently; novels, picture books, "kids'magazines," her mother's school books, and books on tape constituted the read-ing material. Her mother added to this information in the interview, remarking,"I love to read... for pure enjoyment... I was an English lit major." At the timeof the interview, she and her husband were reading the same book about a manwho kept a diary during the Civil War. Mandy's mother also wrote articles aboutteaching and had submitted them for publication. Both Mandy and her mothermentioned the range of books Mandy read — from a biography of Helen Keller,to Baby Sitter Club books, to mystery books, to information books about dogs.

Mandy's teachers suggested that they knew her family well, because theyhad taught her older sister and her mother had taught at the school for a numberof years. They described Mandy as "independent, very capable academically"with "lots of opportunities for experiences" such as a trip to Australia. They

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found that she cared about others' opinions of her. This was supported byMandy herself who, when asked about teachers' responses to her writing, re-sponded, "Well it made me feel good that I really did a good job and not just Ithought so, that other people thought it was good too." My own observations ofher revealed that she was articulate in interviews and a very active participant inclass discussions. She acknowledged that she "shared her writing often" and thatshe enjoyed it because "Well it's like you really get to express how you feel aboutthis story not just about how Pedro feels. I mean you're pretending you're Pedrobut it's talking in your own words about that."

The assignment for Pedro's Journal was for students to pretend they werePedro and for James and the Giant Peach either to take the perspective of Jamesor to be an outsider. Although Mandy found some difficulty in identifying withthe boys who were the protagonists of the two novels, "Because it's like you don'treally know much about the boys you just know a lot about the girls," she seemedable to insert herself in the stories read during book response:

... see what they said is that, they said that you could be anything that youwanted, you could be James, you could be an insect or you could just be likewriting a story or you could be just like watching them and saying like, "Ican see James right now" or you just be writing the story. I really just pre-tended I'm writing the story... but it's in a different version.

Mandy was a perfect fit for this literature-based program highlightingbook response, that encouraged students to become the character. She easily in-serted herself into the text by taking the perspective of Pedro, one of the crew onColumbus's ship: "How will I ever tell my mother? I am ashamed. I can't believe Isunk the Santa Maria. How could I ever do such a thing? And the Nina driftedaway as if it were in outer space."

Of all the students interviewed, Mandy seemed to have the closest fit withthe classroom norms and expectations. The teachers wanted students to focuson ideas in their response logs without concern for spelling or punctuation.Mandy internalized this concept well:

Well it makes you feel really good about what you're writing. Not that just ifyou write nobody can edit it, they're not really looking at your work, they'relooking at what you say — if you were really listening and how they feelabout your work. Not about your writing and how perfect it is. 'Cause Imean I don't always use like commas and exclamation marks and stuff. Ijust write it 'cause I really write really fast sometimes, it gets messy. But I liketo fit everything in my mind on the piece of paper.

Mandy also felt comfortable with the expectations of the writing work-shop. She described topics for the workshop as "it can be about your life orsomething you have or your favorite sport, or it can be just a story that you madeup." Mandy wrote about her own life, often drawing from experiences out of

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school (e.g., visiting her father's birthplace, her "accidents" such as breaking herleg, and her friends). She was quite comfortable with the personal expressivemode and then later moving into the fiction genre:

Well right now I'm just writing about stuff that happens to me and I thinkafter I finish all of the stories that I really want to do then I'll start making upstories for myself because that's what I like to do. But I want to write a lot ofthings about my life.

For Mandy, home and school experiences seemed to be almost extensionsof one another. She engaged in many school-like literacy practices at home -being read to or reading aloud to her parents, writing to a pen pal, and enteringwriting contests. She reported that she wrote stories at school and at home andshared them with her Mom; she found it relatively easy to write about her ownlife and to share that with others; and she inserted herself into response logs bytaking her own perspective. Mandy, too, saw the connections between home andschool, as she offered, "at home it's usually the same because my mom acts like ateacher everywhere so it's kind of like school there too." (Mandy had been in hermother's first-grade class.) The tight connections between home and schoolwere supported by her mother's active role in the school and her extensiveknowledge of Mandy's classroom.

Andy: Technology as a Home-School Link

Like Mandy, Andy also experienced home and school as closely intertwined. Hismother did not have the same kind of access to the school as Mandy's mother,but Andy shared with Mandy an immersion in middle-class literacy practices.They both had home experiences that melded easily with school literacy prac-tices. Highly respected by his peers as well as his teachers, Andy used technologysuch as television and computers as a means to link home and school.

Andy, a European-American fourth grader, lived with his mother who didaccounting work in the zoology department at a nearby university. She held aB.A. in secondary education and biology, but had started out in nursing. His fa-ther had completed his Ph.D. in economics recently and had to take a job in an-other state, but the family expected to be reunited when his parents could findjobs in the same place. The teachers were quite informed about Andy's separa-tion from his father and commented about how much he seemed to miss hisfather.

Andy reported reading fiction such as Dragon Slayers and Goosebumps athome. Sometimes, he and his mother read together; often he read by himselfwhen he accompanied her to the "quilting bees" she attended. Andy also re-ported that his mother was interested in the books and magazines he read andoften read them herself at home. His mother added that she used to read bookssuch as " The History of Australia straight through," but now prefers to spend her

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little leisure time quilting, making clothes, or watching television. They both en-joyed sending E-mail messages to Andy's father on their home computer.

Andy drew on his own perceptions as well as his peers when describinghimself: "I'm curious, sometimes aggressive and I'm pretty smart. Some kids sayI know everything — they call me a brain." He promoted enthusiasm for his sto-ries among his peers because "I put it in a way that they would think it's prettyinteresting." He was aware that others regarded his vocabulary as unusual for hisage and explained, "I've been learning them since I was old enough to talk Mymom and dad used so many big words that I started to copy them." He also re-ported that he learned new words from watching television. Andy used interest-ing vocabulary to describe himself and his persuasiveness with his peers: "Well Iguess I do have a gung ho spirit; that's why most people go along with what I sug-gest." He also believed that he had become influential with his peers because "I'velearned to harness my temper."

His teachers would agree that Andy had a"gung ho spirit" and an extensivevocabulary. He had been with one of his current teachers in the multiage settingfor 3 years. She described him as:

coming in at a second level [grade] with more vocabulary than I'll probablyhave in my entire life.... Today we were talking about idioms and figures ofspeech and he knew all about the literal meanings and the figurative mean-ings and of course it went over everyone else's head. He's like a little sponge,he soaks everything up.

Andy did appear to "soak everything up." His major source of informationwas television which he reported watching:

seven hours on weekdays after I get home from school... from 3:30 when Iget home to 10:30 when I go to bed.... I watch TV when I do my homework;when I eat, I eat watching the TV. I always have a drink in the same roomwith me and the TV. I'm like almost never separated from a TV.

Andy often shared this information gathered from television with peers atschool: "Sometimes I like tell my friends stories that I've heard or news reportsor something that I heard last night." He found that he could "get their interest insomething, like politics or something like that." When asked for an example, hesuggested he would "tell them the latest news stories on political structure ofWashington DC, in the White House, or something like that." He reported thathe did not watch news shows that often but rather watched "comic shows andthey have things that are factual integrated into them." Besides a compelling in-terest in television, Andy also enjoyed computer games, and he brought hisknowledge of computers into the classroom, explaining how he figured out agame that no one else could: "Yeah, like I said, it's because I solved that really im-possible one. Now everybody wants me to help them play that game."

Knowledge obtained from television, expertise in computers, and literacy

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habits congruent with school expectations provided Andy with the "culturalcapital" (Bordieu 6- Passeron, 1977) to be successful in school. Although his fam-ily was not wealthy (they lived in a modest apartment, but hoped to buy ahouse), he did have educational capital gained from various sources that fit wellwith the demands of school including participation in book response and writ-ing workshop. His writing reflected the teachers' values of writing from one'sown experience as well as constructing fiction.

Although his journal contained pieces about his personal experiences,such as starting juggling lessons, he preferred writing science fiction duringwriting workshop, such as his piece, "The Labyrinth." He enjoyed hearing thenovels and pieces that were read during book response, but did not take pleasurein doing response logs. Andy often inserted himself into the story, suggestingwhat he would do in the situation such as in his October 17 entry about Jamesand the Giant Peach: "I would go sneak out during the night and climb the fence.Then I would go live with some nice people." He also was not shy about express-ing his opinions of characters in the story: "That centipede is stuck up. He is anegomaniac. I don't trust him and I don't think James should either."

Andy volunteered to read his response logs to the rest of the class, whichoften reflected his own experiences such as when he wrote about a time he hadbeen scared in connection with the mystery book that involved the solving of amurder. The teachers usually commented and chuckled over some of his re-sponses. Frequently, during class lessons, the teacher called on him to providedefinitions of difficult words. His teachers found that Andy has "higher orderthinking skills and he is so mature in a lot of ways, he's like a litrie adult but he'sstill a kid, too, which is nice." The adult-like behavior they perceived often had todo with humor; they cited examples of his writing sentences such as "the brandyis best when aged in a flask" which they found "hilarious," telling stories abouthis mom spilling wine on his homework, or his appreciation of sophisticatedideas that came up in texts or class discussions.

Comfortable with adults and his peers, Andy moved between school andhome almost effortlessly. Computers, books, and televisions were found in bothplaces. He connected what he saw on television to school life, while transformingmuch of the information seen on television to his science-fiction writing ornews reports to his peers. These connections were supported by his mother whoattended the open house, carnivals, and parent-teacher conferences. She alsosent notes to the teachers and received responses back, accompanied her son'sclass on field trips when she could get the time off, and showed the teachers howto use the school computer. Her knowledge of her son's experience in school wasextensive - she knew all of the novels they had read as a class, knew the design ofthe classroom, and had opinions about the standardized testing program as wellas the portfolio system of evaluation. To support his school activities, his motherhad taken him to see the replicas of Columbus's ships when they were studyingColumbus, and they watched the movie Stargate together, which was connectedto one of the units about an ancient culture. Andy brought in his stamp kit to

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share with the class and then used it for his homework assignment. He indicatedthat he had been interested in the country under study for years, and that learn-ing about it just extended knowledge he already had.

School and home life were tightly connected for Andy because his middle-class home literacy experiences such as reading fiction fit well with school expec-tations of reading and writing fiction and inserting oneself into the story (seeDressman, 1993). His mother supported school literacy practices and projects atthe same time as his teachers appreciated his humor, intellect, and home experi-ences. The cultural capital he brought with him from home served him well atschool, while his middle-class reading habits were reinforced by the teachers.Computers, which are increasingly common in middle-class homes but muchless common in working-class or poor homes (Center for the Social Organiza-tion of Schools, 1983/1984), provided him an additional link between home andschool.

Matthew: Negotiating Learning Disabilities at Home and School

In contrast to Andy, Matthew's school literacy experiences were quite discon-nected from his home life. Unlike Andy who was very successful in school, Mat-thew experienced many difficulties in the classroom. He was a third grader whohad been tested for learning disabilities and attended the Resource program for 1to 2 hours daily to work on reading.

Matthew was a Hispanic student from a working-class family who livedwith his mother, his mother's 10-year old sister, and his mother's boyfriend,whom Matthew called "her fianceT in a small rental home. His mother worked asan assistant direct-care worker in a psychiatric facility, and her fiance workedas an operations manager for a moving company. She received her GED after giv-ing birth to Matthew at the age of 15 and explained that she had enrolled in acommunity college but was unable to continue. She worked a second job severalnights a week and did not have any regular days off of her jobs.

Literacy practices in the home as described by Matthew included his auntreading books such as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and his mom read-ing fairy tales to him. However, his mother explained that occasionally Matthewwould ask her to read to him, but that she did not use reading and writing in herdaily life at home. Books, magazines, or written materials were not evident in thehome.

His mother described Matthew as "a real curious kid which is cool, and heis real open to new things" and described his interests in the following way:

He's really into military toys, guns and the fatigues and stuff like that. Helikes swimming. Every once in a while, like we'll be playing football outsideor something with the other neighborhood kids, and he'll get really frus-trated if he's not doing really well or somebody is doing better ... or if he'scompeting and he's not winning, he'll just have a huge temper tantrum -

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just yelling at other people or crying and then he'll get sent in. But that's ev-ery once in a while. He likes to run around the creek. He likes to explore caves.

His mother had no specific goals for him after high school, but hoped thathis current fascination with the military would end. She said, "No military. Idon't want him to be in the military. No." However, Matthew suggested that hewould like to "be in the army or a police officer." His drawings reflected his inter-est in war; his school journal contained very little narrative, usually a sentenceon each page, but pages were covered with drawings of "knights and Ninja guysand.. . gang-member guys and stuff' that were unrelated to the text.

The teachers felt that they knew less about Matthew than they did aboutsome of the students because "he can't really write in his journal (because of hislearning disability) and that's one place where a lot of kids like to express them-selves and tell you what's going on in their lives." The teachers did not knowwhere the mom was employed, but believed she was "very young, she seems likeshe's kind of into the hip thing; she has an earring on her eye right here [pointingto her eyebrow]." They believed that the mother and nance" were supportive ofMatthew and helped out with homework, but had few details about home lit-eracy experiences.

His teachers described him as "hyper, but he's a good kid." He participatedin some classroom activities such as math and journal writing, but did not par-ticipate in others such as writing workshop, because he was at Resource. In theResource room, he got individual help in reading and writing; he had particulardifficulties in decoding text and in writing words and sentences. His classroomteacher reported that the Resource teacher thought Matthew was "one of thebrightest, yet most disabled students, he has." His classroom teachers providedexamples of where Matthew had solved logic problems easily and believed hehad "good comprehension and great recall... and great oral vocabulary." Hisdisability was in decoding text and in expressing his ideas in written format withparticular difficulty in making sound-letter correspondences.

Matthew's difficulties with reading and writing were reflected in his basicaversion toward these activities and his subsequent avoidance of them. He oftenrequested help in writing down his ideas from his teacher who recorded what hedictated to her. His love of drawing and hatred for writing were apparent in hisinsightful comments about Egypt: "Egypt was the best culture. Like they knewthe most and they didn't have an alphabet." He would have liked to live then, "be-cause I can draw very good and it wouldn't be hard for me." These quotationssum up Matthew's feelings toward reading and writing. He would have preferredto live in a different culture that valued what he perceived as drawing over the useof an alphabet that was a continual source of frustration and embarrassment forhim. His commentary serves as a reminder of those students who experiencefailure in "cracking the code" which further alienates them from school settings.

Aware of his difficulties with reading and writing, his mother practicedwith him a homework assignment from the Resource Room that she referred to

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as "coding"—"He's got these word lists that he has to code, read, and spell to me."Although his mother knew that the class had studied an ancient culture, she didnot know details about the projects. This seemed to be because of Matthew's lackof enthusiasm for talking about school. She described their conversations in thefollowing way, "If I say, 'What did you do today?' I mean he doesn't give me anyreal specific details. It's just like, 'I'm out of school, Mom, I want to leave itthere."' She was content to leave it at that, saying, "I'm not a real prying person. Ifhe doesn't want to talk about it, I don't push it."

Matthew's mother found that she was not "real involved with school ac-tivities," because most of them occurred during hours in which she had to work.She had limited contact with his teachers: "I don't see them really unlesssomething's going on in the classroom that they need to see me about," but sheattended parent-teacher conferences.

The only link between home and school for Matthew seemed to be hispassion for drawing. His peers, teachers, and family were aware of and support-ive of his interest. He drew at home for entertainment, and he drew at schoolwhenever there was the opportunity, such as when art was a "choice center." De-tailed drawings of swords, armor, and weapons were highly valued by some ofMatthew's peers to whom he showed his drawings. Matthew also shared hisdrawings with people in his home, particularly his "mom's fiance\" He drew inboth home and school contexts and enjoyed sharing his work with his teachers,peers, and family. However, Matthew's school life presented many more difficul-ties than it did for others such as Mandy and Andy; Resource was very separatefrom any classroom activities, and what he did there was never talked about byteachers or peers. Additionally, Matthew avoided talking about school with hismother, preferring to leave classroom issues at school. His working-class back-ground, lack of school-like literacy materials in the home, and learning disabilityseemed to alienate him from school literacy experiences. Additionally, his teach-ers had little information about his personal or cultural situation that might aidthem in connecting his experiences to school tasks.

Sheila: Poverty as a Deterrent to Home-School Connections

Like Matthew, Sheila, a third-grade, African-American girl, did not participate inschool-like, middle-class literacy practices in her home. That is, she did not writecreative stories at home, but memorized passages from the Bible. Like Matthew,Sheila seemed to be on the periphery of classroom activities, but not because ofany learning disabilities. In fact, she performed quite well in school, completingall assignments. However, she rarely participated in classroom discussions.

Sheila explained that her mother, stepfather, and stepbrother lived in anapartment, and that one brother and sister did not live with her. She did notknow what her stepfather did for work, but her mother worked for a day-care cen-ter. Sheila had the responsibility of helping her younger siblings with homework.

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She enjoyed going to the Boys and Girls' Club, where she got donuts and couldwatch "Power Rangers." Sheila's teachers described her background in the fol-lowing way:

There are several siblings older and younger. I understand she spends a lotof time at the Boys and Girls' Club, which is good that she has a place to go. Iunderstand that home life is not real stable. Not always food; it breaks myheart to hear [from other teachers] that she has gone through garbage to getfood Anything that Sheila has accomplished she's done on her own be-cause I think she doesn't get any support at home. I think it's got so bad that •the police have been there and taken the kids away periodically.

The teachers thought the mother worked, but did not know where. De-spite their perceptions that Sheila had a difficult home life, they found thatSheila was "clean, had her hair brushed" and completed her school work. Theysuggested that she did not volunteer to read her response logs aloud, but that shewas very good at doing her editing and had scored within the average range onstandardized tests. They found her to be so quiet that "if she had a problem sheprobably wouldn't talk to us about it." Even though they did not believe Sheilawould approach them, the teachers were sensitive to her general situation andprovided snacks for her during break.

The teachers did not have any information about Sheila's literacy experi-ences outside of school, but Sheila reported that she read her brother's schoolbooks such as Green Eggs and Ham: "He has a book every day but Friday, and Iread the books that he has to read." She reported that her family read letters re-ceived in the mail, particularly invitations to parties. Reading the Bible was alsoan important activity that Sheila did as part of a Bible Studies class; she memo-rized Scriptures so that she would be prepared for her class. She reported thather mother did not read with her or help her, but ensured that she learned herpassages.

Sheila's journal entries explored topics more related to school than home.She wrote about being in a new wing of the school, wanting to get her work doneso she could participate in the ice cream party, and learning to read. The entryshe liked best was about a new student in the class and being pleased that shecould watch new students become adjusted:

In our classroom we have a lot of new students and it is fun because whenthey get used to the class we do not have to worry about it and because wehave a lot of students in our class. I like when we have a new student becausethey get used to the class like on the first day.

Her journal did contain some entries about home experiences, includinggoing to different baby sitters' houses and her time at the Boys and Girls' Club.When she did write about home experiences, she seemed to indicate that homewas not an enjoyable place for her. For example, she wrote: "I love going to afriend's house because I probably would be able to sleep on a bed maybe not. I

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am so happy when I go to a friend's house because I do not have to be at myhouse anymore because it's not really fun at my house." Sheila requested that Inot interview her mother or come to her home.

Conversations with her as well as her journals indicated that Sheila maynot have gotten enough to eat and lived in poverty. She changed apartments fre-quently and said that she never brought anything from home to show anybodyelse because she did not have anything. She often said she liked a friend orteacher because the person had given her a "snack" and found it noteworthy towrite about when she did have enough to eat ("I ate a good meal yesterday night"— dated August 15).

Sheila did not volunteer to share her response logs with the class and sug-gested that she only shared the one time it was required. She said, "I don't likesharing during class, we have a lot of students in our class," indicating that her reluc-tance to share was related to the large number of students gathered together.

Sheila's home literacy experiences were quite separate from school - peersfrom Bible class, the Boys and Girls' Club, and school did not overlap. She didnot talk about her out-of-school experiences with peers or the teachers, thoughthe teachers were aware that she attended the Boys and Girls' Club (perhapsthrough her journal). Sheila was reluctant to share her work or her ideas andseemed on the periphery of classroom activities. When there were opportunitiesto select partners in the classroom, she often chose to sit with another African-American girl with whom she also played at recess. Perhaps because they lackedinformation about Sheila's literacy experiences or knowledge about her culture,her teachers did not seem to be providing the tools or expertise to help her con-nect her experiences.

Eduardo: Negotiating Parent, Teacher, andPeer Expectations as a Bilingual Student

Like Sheila, Eduardo seemed to be outside the mainstream of classroom activi-ties. Both students were described by their teachers as "shy" and were reluctantto read their work aloud or share with the teachers or peers. Both students hadliteracy experiences that differed from mainstream practices. Eduardo had theadditional challenge of knowing very little English when he entered the schooland found school tasks to be difficult.

Eduardo, a Spanish dominant, third-grade boy from a working-classhome was new to the school. He lived with his mother in a one-bedroom apart-ment. His mother reported that they came to the United States from El Salvadorabout 2V£ years ago for a better life for her son. During the interview, she indi-cated she wanted him to become a lawyer, then turned to him for agreement, andwas disappointed when he said, "No, a boxer." Both parents had been doing cus-todial work in a large hotel at the beginning of the year, but in the middle of theyear, Eduardo reported that his father was pleased that he had gotten a job as a

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mechanic. Later in the summer, his mother reported that his father had returnedto El Salvador where he was unemployed largely because of an eye condition.They had no car and relied on an uncle who lived nearby for transportation.

Eduardo had learned some English from his uncle: "My uncle, he told mehow to say decent things and everything and when I learned I was happy."Eduardo spoke Spanish in the home and wanted to help his mother learn En-glish; he described it this way, "Sometimes my mom doesn't know nothing withEnglish so I know how to read in Spanish... she always go [to] work and [in the]afternoon when she comes from work, my mother, I give a book to her for readin Spanish and she read it." He also noted that his father liked to read "some ofmy books, some books from my mother, and some of the books from my uncle."His father also read the newspaper (when he was in the United States) lookingfor employment. His mother was unable to read or write in either English orSpanish; she indicated that she had grown up in a very small village where it wasunsafe for her to travel to school.

Eduardo's mother brought adult novels written in English home from thehotel in which she worked hoping that he would read them to learn English bet-ter. However, he was unable to read them, but seemed uncomfortable telling herso. Eduardo's own favorite reading materials were cartoons in the Sunday paperand comic books, especially about Garfield and Spider-Man. His most highlyvalued object was a map of Hispanic leaders from the United States and LatinAmerica given to him by his uncle. However, Eduardo did not bring these mate-rials to school to share with peers, explaining that "sometimes when I tell theydon't hear me because I don't know what, they're mad at me or I don't know...they're mean because they doesn't want to play with me." He also did not bringanything home from school for fear it would be perceived as stealing. (He wasfearful because of an incident that occurred during the year in which some boyshad planted "jewels" from an exhibit on him and he was blamed.)

Eduardo's teachers had little information about his home life. They notedthat he socialized with other Hispanic boys, and that he seemed to have difficultyunderstanding what was expected of him. Both admitted, "I don't know muchabout him at all, I don't know home life." The teachers believed that the bilingualteacher, who was on leave at the time of the interview, might have more informa-tion, because she would have conducted the parent conference with them. How-ever, in further conversations with the bilingual teacher about Eduardo, it wasclear that she had little additional information about him (e.g., she did not knowthe father had returned to El Salvador). His mother was committed to Eduardo'sgaining access into the middle class through school and wanted to support himin every way possible, yet she did not have access to the material resources (be-cause of her low-paying job) or the cultural capital (because of her own lack ofliteracy skills) to make that possible. Her hopes for him were aligned withmiddle-class values, but she did not have the resources to help him attain whatwas necessary to be successful in school.

Eduardo's response to wanting to fulfill his mother's expectations and yetnot knowing quite how to succeed was to be reticent in class, but work hard to

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complete his work. Completing his work was difficult, however, because his bi-lingual peers, whom he did not want to alienate, continually tried to distracthim. He described a struggle with a boy at his table: "I would tell him to work andfollow directions but he wouldn't follow." Eduardo seemed continually torn be-tween pleasing his mother and teachers, "because the teacher's proud of me be-cause I turned all the work in," and pleasing his peers who seemed to resistschool expectations by not reading their work aloud, speaking only Spanishamong themselves, chasing the girls on the playground, and occasionally gettingin more serious trouble (e.g., stealing "artifacts" from the class display).

Eduardo managed this dilemma by remaining silent during book re-sponse until the end of the year. In an interview in which I had asked him why hedid not share, he had responded "maybe people would start laughing." The nextday he read aloud his piece and then approached me and very happily said, "See,I shared." Perhaps Eduardo feared his bilingual friends who did not value shar-ing would laugh at him, but he was reassured when another adult seemed tosanction it. (Eduardo seemed to believe that I valued students reading aloud be-cause I asked them why they did or did not share.) He saved face with the bilin-gual boys by being a leader on the playground - chasing the girls and organizingball games, yet he seemed torn between his loyalty to the other bilingual boysand a desire to have other friends. He expressed it this way, "When I came to thisschool, they [names Spanish-speaking boys] picked me to be friends with themso I been friends with them ... I'll be friends with other people [names someHispanic but non-Spanish-speaking boys], they look nice, but they don't wantto be my friends so I just gonna have to be friends with them [the Spanish-speak-ing boys]." Eduardo struggled with his identity as a bilingual boy, who was differ-ent from the Hispanic, non-Spanish-speaking boys; he wanted to retain hisfriendships with the other bilingual boys and yet fit into the mainstream of theclassroom.

Eduardo experienced tension between his identity as a dominant Spanish-speaking boy and the expectations at school. He was reticent in the classroom,but active on the playground; he interacted only with other bilingual boys, butseemed to wish it were otherwise. Because his mother worked 6, and sometimes7, days a week, she had little time to attend school functions. Additionally, shewas at a disadvantage in understanding the context of the classroom because shecould not read notes from school or assist him with his homework; she reliedsolely on the oral information he provided about school.

Home and school seemed to be very different places for Eduardo. As theresult of being an immigrant, knowing one language well and rapidly learninganother, and having responsibilities to other family members such as teachinghis mother, he had rich experiences from which to draw. However, his home lit-eracy experiences, which were not extensive because of lack of resources, did notmatch school expectations that revolve around reading children's novels andself-expression in writing. Additionally, his school experiences were tensionfilled as he had to negotiate the conflicting expectations of parents, teachers, andpeers.

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Examining the Patterns

The cases of the five students illustrate the differences in the nature of the home-school connections for various students. For some students such as Mandy andAndy, home and school were tightly connected. Mandy and Andy shared severalfeatures: They were of European-American descent; their parents had profes-sional employment as professors, teachers, or accountants; and they had fre-quent contact with two parents. Items associated with traditional literacy such asnovels, nonfiction books, newspapers, magazines, and children's books werecited by students as being a part of their home environment. Students and par-ents reported that family members read to them on a regular basis. Uses of lit-eracy resembled the "townspeople" (White, middle-class population) of Heath's(1983) study; not only were children and parents involved in literacy activitiesthat focused on instrumental and social interactional purposes, but Mandy'sand Andy's families used literacy for recreation as well.

At school, these students tended to share their writing during book re-sponse with the entire class and felt comfortable expressing themselves throughwriting about events that occurred outside of school. They often brought itemsto show peers or told stories about events in their lives or things they had seen ontelevision. Sharing features of their lives at school through writing orstorytelling, these students also reported telling their parents about things thathappened at school. Home and school were tightly intertwined - the school set-ting supported home activities and vice versa. An important strand that held to-gether the home and school patterns was the teachers' information about stu-dents' backgrounds. Drawing on students' journals, meetings with parents, andpeers as sources of knowledge, the teachers had extensive information aboutthese middle-class students. Like the middle-class parents in Lareau's (1989)study, these parents forged relationships between home and school through fre-quent contacts with the school and reinforcing the curriculum at home.

In contrast, Matthew, Sheila, and Eduardo, who were all from diverse cul-tural or linguistic backgrounds, were more reticent in classroom activities thantheir peers. The students did not feel comfortable sharing items or stories fromhome, and they seemed to keep their home and school lives more separate thanthe more middle-class students. Because of their work demands, their parentshad fewer opportunities than their middle-class counterparts to attend schoolfunctions.

The students reported more literacy experiences at home than the teach-ers seem to have expected; literacy performed many purposes including invita-tions to parties (in the case of Sheila) and newspaper ads (in the case ofEduardo), supporting Teale's (1986) work that describes the multifaceted natureof literacy in many working-class homes. Like the working-class families ofTrackton and Roadville (see Heath, 1983), these students' families used literacy tomaintain social relationships (correspondence in the cases of Sheila and

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Eduardo) and for religious purposes (in the case of Sheila's learning passagesfrom the Bible). Literacy was not necessarily a means of entertainment — for ex-ample, Matthew's mother did not choose to engage in reading during her leisuretime. All of the students' families seemed to value literacy, and they viewed lit-eracy as a means for children to succeed. Like the children in Taylor's (1983)study, students seemed to learn the meaning of print by having access to literacymaterials in their immediate environment and understanding its role in theireveryday lives.

The teachers responded positively to the diversity represented by thesefive students within their classrooms: "The children in here are so diverse, Imean they really bring in a lot" (Amy) and "It's nice that we can care about allthese different kids" (Nona). Yet, they had less information about the working-class students than they did about students from middle-class homes, eventhough only Eduardo was new to the school this year. Unlike the "culturally rel-evant teachers" Ladson-BiUings (1995) described, the Hillside teachers did notsee themselves as members of that community, nor did they make extensiveefforts to learn about students and their families. The teachers felt that althoughinformation about students helped them gain insight ("it [information] givesme a major insight on these kids and it helps me have more patience" - Amy),they did not believe they needed to alter their instruction based on students'backgrounds ("ideally you should treat everybody equally" — Nona). The teach-ers' arguments were similar to the "color-blindness and basket-making" re-sponses to cultural diversity that Cochran-Smith (1995) criticized. Instead ofunderstanding and addressing diversity, the teachers believed it was necessary totreat all students alike.

Teachers' own backgrounds, their assumptions about students' back-grounds, and the need to treat all students "equally" may have contributed to thedifferences in connections made by Mandy and Andy, compared to Matthew,Sheila, and Eduardo. Although the teachers provided a multiplicity of literacyevents, these events were more congruent with middle-class, home literacy ex-periences than working-class experiences. Further, teachers seemed to assumethat students could make the connections between home and school on theirown, and thus did not provide explicit assistance. The classroom curriculumand participation structures seemed to contribute to students making differen-tial connections.

Classroom Curriculum and Participation Structures

The teachers' choices regarding the books read aloud and the accompanyingtasks as well as their talk about books may have contributed to greater connec-tions between home and school for some students than for others.

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Book Selection and Related Tasks

The first book read aloud during book response, Pedro's Journal, told the story ofColumbus's landing in America through the eyes of a young cabin boy. The bookattempts to present a "balanced" view of the relationship between Columbusand the natives by evoking sympathy for both the crew's plight, as they werethousands of miles from home with dwindling supplies, and the "natives," someof whom were "friendly," others "hostile." Although the teachers suggested thatstudents should "put [themselves] in the place of Pedro," they allowed studentsto write open-ended responses. Some students put themselves in the place ofPedro, whereas others summarized the chapter. In an interview, the teachers ex-pressed some disappointment with summaries — they had hoped students mightmake connections between Pedro's experiences and their own, as students in previ-ous years had spontaneously made connections between their experiences and an-other book, A Taste ofBlackberries (Smith, 1973), about a boy whose friend dies.

Perhaps the content of a book about a 15th-century boy, who felt guilty forthe drunken behavior of his captain and crew and seemed both to share andcriticize the somewhat racist views of his comrades, was not easy for students tointerpolate themselves. The difficulty of at least some girls relating to this bookbecame apparent when, responding to the second book, James and the GiantPeach, Mandy said, "You know, we're always having to be boys. We had to bePedro, now we have to be James." The teachers responded positively to this by al-tering the writing task for the response logs and suggested that students could be"observing the story as it is unfolding" if they did not want to write from James'sperspective. However delightful this fantasy novel is, in which a boy meets in-sects who philosophize and who fly with him across the ocean in a huge peach, itmay not have been easy for some of the students to relate to it. The novel can beread as an orphaned boy escaping from his working-class roots through fantasy- in essence, a stereotyping and deprecation of the working class. Further, stu-dents who may not have had many opportunities to engage in imaginary "booktalk," may have had even more difficulty than others (Heath, 1983).

Few students seemed to connect with the next book, Eating the Plates(Penner, 1991), which was taught for a 2-week period around Thanksgiving. Anexpository text filled with details about the Pilgrims' lives — the kinds of housesthey built, food they ate, and an amusing chapter on their habits and manners -this book seemed to perpetuate stereotypes about Squanto as the friendly Indianand reinforce the idea of the Pilgrims as innocent settlers who were fraught withdifficulties in surviving the cold winter. The final books before Christmas were aseries of picture books about different early "American" traditions of celebratingChristmas. Some books dealt with the lives of 19th-century immigrants (of Eu-ropean descent), whereas others explored legends or traditions of Whites, forexample, The Baker's Dozen (Shepard, 1995). All the books assumed a Christianaudience, although several of the students in the class were Jewish.

In raising questions about the book choices, I am not denigrating any par-

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ticular genre or choice — none was explicitly racist, classicist, or sexist, and theteachers extended these books by encouraging students to do interestingprojects and pursue topics (e.g., learning about ships and sailing in conjunctionwith Pedro's Journal). Further, I am not suggesting that every book should relatedirectly to students' experiences. A variety of genres and purposes for readingare integral to students' developing imagination and an appreciation for litera-ture as well as seeing its utility in the everyday world. It is, however, the pattern ofselection that seemed to exclude many students in these classes. For example,there were few opportunities for students of color or working-class students tosee themselves or their cultures reflected in the books selected by the teachers.The characters were all White and engaged in individual or collective acts of ad-venture or colonization; none of the authors of the books was Hispanic, African-American, or Native American. The book choices seemed to reflect more of theteachers' European-American, Christian backgrounds and values than those ofthe students. The selection of these books may have given non-Christian, or stu-dents of color, or working-class students the message that their contributionsand traditions were not important. The books did not promote students seeingthe patterns of their home lives and cultures related to school.

Students might have been able to make connections, if teachers had elic-ited information about students' experiences within the contexts of the bookdiscussions or response logs. This rarely happened, however. Even though theteachers said they valued students making personal connections, they did notask students to talk or write about their own experiences that were similar to ordifferent from the characters', for example. If a student spontaneously connectedthe book with his or her experience, the teachers acknowledged this, but did notoften extend the conversation.

In their talk about books, the teachers tended to use examples from theirown lives (e.g., Nona comparing pabulum to the food she fed her baby, andwrapping baked potatoes in foil when cooking them outside), which was an in-teresting and personal means for engaging the students in the discussions. How-ever, the examples did not necessarily connect to many of the students' experi-ences. For example, when talking about the Mayflower, Nona asked how manystudents had been deep-sea fishing. When only a couple of students raised theirhands, she asked how many had been fishing in a stream, and several more handswent up. In another session about trundle beds, she asked how many studentshad seen canopy beds, but few students raised their hands. More students mighthave been brought into the conversations had students been asked to give ex-amples from their own lives when vocabulary or new concepts were discussed.

Participation Structures

Over the course of the year, the teachers experimented with various participa-tion structures in hopes of encouraging more students to become involved in

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classroom activities and dialogue. The teachers tended to use a conventional IREstructure (teacher initiates, students respond, teacher evaluates [Mehan, 1979])when conducting conversations about the books, but implemented variations ofthis during the share sessions in which students read their work aloud. The fol-lowing exchange conducted by Margie and Nona before reading aloud from Eat-ing the Plates had the dual purposes of summarizing materials already read andpreparing students for the chapters they were about to hear. The format reflecteda classic recitation pattern (see Cazden, 1988).

Margie: And so the Pilgrims did not want that. Where did they gofirst? What country did they go to first? David.

David (EA)1: TO Holland.Margie: To Holland. What continent is Holland on?Nona: Here is the globe.Student: Want me to go bring it?Margie: Please. I will tell you that it is on the same continent that En-

gland is on.(Student brings the globe to Nona who demonstrates wherethe countries are located.)

Jason (EA): Europe.Margie: Remember we pointed to Holland, which direction did they

have to travel from England?Nona: Did you see it?Margie: If they started in England, what direction did they have to

travel to go to Holland?Student: West.Margie: Think again.Nona: Holland is up here.Margie: Holland is up there. Here is England. Which way are they

going, Greg.Greg (EA ): I would say northeast.Margie: Northeast, very good.Margie: What happened in Holland? What happened to the Pil-

grims in Holland? What happened? All right, Nina, whathappened in Holland?

Nina (H): The Pilgrims went home and the people in Holland wenthome.

Margie: Instead of what?Nina: (inaudible)Margie: Did they find jobs?Students: Yes.Margie: Yes. It was a pretty good life in Holland but the Pilgrims

thought the Dutch were not religious enough. So thenwhere did they go?

Daniel (EA): Back to England.Margie: Back to England. Did the Pilgrims make a whole bunch of

money and that is why they could buy the ship and the sup-

1. When known, students' ethnicity is indicated: EA = European-American, AA = African-Ameri-can, H = Hispanic, A = Asian American, o = Other.

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plies? What happened to let them go on their pilgrimage?Mandy.

Mandy (EA): They made a deal with this company and the company isbuying ships if they gave them everything that they found.

Margie: For how long did they have to do this?Mandy: Seven years.Margie: Seven years. Who can remember the name of the company.

Emily.Emily (EA): The Merchant Adventurer.Margie: Yes, the Merchant Adventurer. What was the year they

sailed?

This example demonstrates a common pattern during story summarizationor other times when recitations occurred: Most of the participants who offered an-swers were middle-class, European-American students with David, Jason, Greg,Mandy, and Emily being the most frequent respondents. The teacher-studentexchange served to review the main ideas from the previous day's readings.However, the fast pace did not provide opportunities for students who were reti-cent to step in and respond.

Sharing of response logs was intended to be an inclusive session in whichall students would have the opportunity to read their work aloud. For the first 2months of the school year, the teachers called on volunteers who read their re-sponse logs, then responded briefly to students, and wrote on a chart examplesof "colorful language" that students used. The following portion of one of theshare sessions, which occurred after the reading of a chapter from Pedro's Jour-nal, is characteristic of the exchanges.

David (EA): (reads from the perspective of Pedro saying the cannons on theSanta Maria went "boom boom")

Nona: (Nona writes, "boom boom" on the chart.) Very nice. I cer-tainly do like the way David started his passage with thesound of the cannons. What were the cannons doing,David?

David: They were shooting to make the rest of the Santa Maria ...[go down?]

Nona: So what did they do? They went and they got everythingthey possibly could use from the Santa Maria to build thisnew fort. There wasn't ready-made lumber there on the is-land, was there? So they used the timbers from the SantaMaria to build a fort. And then I can just see it out in the dis-tance, can't you? The cannons going to sink the rest of it.Very nice description. Emily.

Emily (EA): (reads from the perspective of Pedro about being glad to leave,being "homeward bound" yet still keeping "adventure and mydream")

Nona: But I will still keep what?Emily: "my adventure and my dream"

(Nona writes, "homeward bound." Margie calls on Nina,)Nina (H): (reads softly, almost inaudibly.)

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Nona: OK, Thomas. I really like the way most of you are sitting andlistening for those juicy words. From the expressions onyour faces, I can tell that those words delight you too. I landof pick up from your reactions to what people are reading. Iwant to thank those of you who are listening. Thomas.

Thomas (EA): (reads from the perspective of Pedro, "I am worried the SantaMaria will come back and haunt me in my dreams.")

Nona: (Nona writes, "haunted" on the chart.) Right Geoffrey.Geoffrey (EA): (reads about Alonzo being "full of excuses" and getting a "taste

of his own medicine")Margie: Oooh,"A taste of his own medicine." I love that. That would

serve him right leaving.(Nona writes, "a taste of his own medicine" and "full of ex-cuses" on the chart, then calls on Rachel)

Rachel (EA): (reads about bumping into the other ship or going past, "Whatwill become of us?")(Nona writes, "What will become of us?" on the chart.)

Margie: "What will become of us?" Good. I love questions at the end.Ana.

Ana (H): (reads so softly, it is inaudible)(Margie tells her she didn't get it. Margie asks her to take hertissue away. Ana reads again.)

Nona: It reminds you of the journal you kept reading the story.That is a nice reflection of your personal experience.Mandy.

Mandy (EA): (readsfrom the perspective of Pedro, describing the scene)Margie: Good.

(Nona writes down three of the words she uses, "spied," "thou-sands," and "decided?)

During this session, 10 students were called on to share. Seven of the 10students were European-American; 3 were Hispanic, but none of these was bi-lingual. This same pattern of more European-American students sharing, oftenthe same students such as David, Geoffrey, Mandy, and Emily, occurred in al-most every share session where students volunteered to share. (In one session inwhich 16 students shared, 13 were European-American, despite European-Americans representing only about 30% of the students in the classroom.) Theteachers' comments were filled with praise and encouragement, pointing outspecific features of students' language through writing down students' words orby commenting orally. However, certain students' comments (e.g., David, Emily,Geoffrey, Rachel) were extended and valued, whereas other students' (e.g., Nina)were not. In other class sessions, the teachers tended to repeat phrases and placethem on the chart from certain students, but only responded "good" or "thankyou for your willingness to share" to some students, usually those who summa-rized the chapter rather than using colorful language. They tended to value im-plicitly students who used descriptive or metaphorical language or asked ques-tions at the end. The teachers' differential responses to students reflected amismatch between the teachers' implicit assumptions about what constituted an"ideal" student response and some students' interpretations of the tasks. Al-though the teachers reported in interviews that they wanted all students to feel

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comfortable sharing and told the students they expected them to share, they didnot communicate their expectations explicitly to the students about what con-stituted an appropriate response; instead, they expected students to "pick it up"from listening. Students who were not accustomed to using "colorful language"may have found it difficult to write in a way that matched the teachers' implicitexpectations (Michaels, 1987).

Moving to Other Formats

When we, as the researchers, discussed with the teachers the pattern of the samestudents volunteering to read their response logs aloud, the teachers consideredsome alternative formats. They especially targeted the bilingual students whowere allowed to read in either language. If a student read in Spanish, the bilin-gual teacher readily translated. The teachers seemed to be more enthusiastic,however, when these students read in English. For example, when a bilingual boyread his work in English, Nona responded excitedly, "Oh, you wrote in English.Great!" An alternative explanation of this incident is that the teachers werepraising the student's risk-taking in a language with which he was less familiar.The teachers themselves reflected some willingness to take risks by experiment-ing with different formats - some of these formats were more successful in elicitingstudent response than other formats (see McCartney & Corman, 1995).

To encourage the more reticent students to share, the teachers decided tocall on some of the students who were not volunteering to read to the wholegroup first, then volunteers could follow them. The teachers also required stu-dents to stand so that the whole class could hear. An excerpt illustrating this pat-tern follows:

Joy calls on Ramon (a Spanish-dominant student who has been at theschool for about 1 month). Ramon says he does not want to; Joy requireshim to read one sentence in Spanish or English; Ramon says he wrotein English. Joy tells him to stand up. Ramon pauses, and then one of theother teachers asks if he wants to read later. Joy explains that they may haveto read aloud in other classes and they need to be prepared to read theirwork here.

Joe (H) is called on and stands up and reads,"I stood still in front of thebig peach."

Joy calls on Sheila who does not have her hand up. Nona praised herfor standing so that they can hear.

Sheila (AA) reads, "Peach was growing bigger and bigger. The peachlooks like a pumpkin but it is not."

Nona says, "Very nice. You compared it to something else and that isgood. It is good to compare. Any other first time volunteers?"

Eric (H) is called on. He stands and reads, "When I sawthe peach it wasbig and kept on getting bigger."

Ramon sits and then he is reminded to stand. He reads, "He looked at itgrowing," but he whispers so it is hard to hear. He then shows it to teachers.

Margie says, "Oh 'He looked at it growing.'"

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This new format of calling on nonvolunteers met with mixed results. Interms of getting more students to read their work, it was successful - when calledon, the students who did not regularly volunteer did read a portion of their workaloud. Also, this session made a favorable impression on Sheila, who remem-bered the teacher's response a few days later and was pleased that she receivedwhat she perceived as a positive response; however, she was still uncomfortablevolunteering. Ramon was anxious throughout the session, and several bilingualstudents reported feeling intimidated. One of these students, Aaron, told the re-search assistant he was willing to read his work aloud to a small group of bilin-gual boys, but did not wish to share his work in the large group sessions. (Weconveyed this information to the teachers, but no changes were made.)

Calling on nonvolunteers did not seem to increase voluntary participa-tion, especially because the practice was soon abandoned. Because we wereaware that some students, especially the working-class students or students ofcolor, were intimidated by the large-group share sessions, we suggested to theteachers that they might want to try small groups for discussion of one of theThanksgiving books. Then, instead of writing open-ended response logs, stu-dents met in groups to answer teacher-constructed comprehension questionssuch as "What was the most important spice? Why was salt the most importantspice? What types of utensils were used to eat? Name three proper mealtimemanners."

During these small group meetings, students limited their discussions tofinding the right answer: Two or three students (usually the middle-class, Euro-pean-American students) of the five or six generated answers, then the otherswrote those answers in their books. The teachers expressed dissatisfaction withthis method, because the students latched onto the easy answers and thereseemed to be a loss of sense of community and colorful language. Both teamsdemonstrated willingness to experiment with other formats to increase partici-pation. However, the team of three teachers returned to the large group formatwith volunteers sharing; this resulted in reverting back to the pattern of the samestudents continuing to share almost daily. The team of two teachers began alter-nating a small group format led by students with the whole-group format; thisaspect of the study is reported in McCarthey (1996).

Conclusion

These classrooms were active environments designed to engage students in amultitude of literacy activities throughout the day. The teachers worked to-gether to find solutions to problems such as how to involve more students inreading their work aloud during book response. They made adjustments includ-ing allowing students to write from alternative perspectives when students ques-tioned them. Yet, aspects of the curriculum, as well as the participation struc-

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tures, seemed to contribute to home and school being tightly connected forsome students but not for others.

The novels were carefully selected by the teachers to promote students' ap-preciation of language, to provide divergent responses, and to build rich vocabu-lary. The accompanying units provided opportunities for students to connectdisciplinary areas such as math and science to language arts, to develop an under-standing of the context of certain events (e.g., Columbus's voyage and Thanksgiv-ing), and to be involved in activities that would deepen their understanding ofcontent. However, the content of the books seemed detached from many stu-dents' experiences. Further, the Thanksgiving and Christmas selections, whichon the surface seem to relate to many students' lives, may actually have alienatedsome of the students who were new to the United States or did not share theChristian religion or traditions surrounding those holidays. Students of color orthose from working-class backgrounds had few opportunities to see themselvesrepresented in positive, important roles in the books (see Harris 1992; Sims,1982). The book selections seemed to have reflected the teachers' backgroundsand values rather than attempting to match the students' experiences.

The effects of the books' contents may have been alleviated by drawing onstudents' experiences that were similar to or different from those of the books'characters during discussions. However, this rarely occurred, because the focusof the share sessions was on students' use of literary language or, in the case ofThanksgiving, finding correct answers to comprehension questions. Althoughthe teachers had hoped students would make spontaneous connections to then-own lives, lack of specific modeling or questions designed to elicit informationfrom students may have made it difficult for students to make those ties.

The teachers had begun to tinker with different ways of encouraging morestudents to share their ideas. They sincerely desired to be more inclusive, consid-ering ways to allow more students to participate. However, the participationstructures they designed to be inclusive may actually have put excessive pressureon some students, making reading their work aloud a difficult experience.Rather than encouraging divergent responses, the small groups turned into stu-dents seeking the correct answer.

The other literacy activities such as journal writing, writing workshop,and research projects might have provided opportunities for students to makehome-school connections. However, the first two activities were individualisticin nature, more in line with middle-class norms than working-class (seeDressman, 1993). Students wrote their journal entries, many of which describedout-of-school experiences, but they were not encouraged to share them with anaudience other than the teacher. Although the teachers read the students' entries,little sustained written or oral dialogue took place around the entries. Both thesilent reading time and writing during the workshop were individual activities —students had few opportunities to discuss what they were reading with others orto share their writing with a small peer audience.

Although teachers had much information about Mandy and Andy (who

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were from middle-class backgrounds), they had less understanding of the livesof Matthew, Sheila, and Eduardo (who were from working-class backgrounds);this is consistent with Lareau's (1989) findings that relationships between upper-middle-class parents and their children's teachers are characterized by"interconnectedness," whereas home-school relationships between working-class parents and their children's teachers tended toward "separateness." With-out more information about these students' cultural and personal experiences,they were hindered in their attempts to help students connect home and school.These teachers had taken first steps toward making their classrooms welcomingto diverse learners by stating that they valued diversity, by allowing students towrite in Spanish or English, and by establishing an environment for studentsto write and share. This is a huge step away from the oppressive classrooms de-scribed by Goodlad (1984). The thematic units and the many opportunities forliteracy experiences hold promise for students from diverse backgrounds to be-come part of a community of learners (Au, 1993). However, these "methods"were insufficient for students to relate home and school and may have hinderedteachers in their efforts because these practices appear culturally neutral(Lensmire, 1993). Teachers came to expect that simply allowing children to expe-rience book response would result in connections. Instead, students neededmore specific modeling and discussion focused on making connections.

This study has supported much of the existing research that suggests thatworking-class students and students of color have differential access to literacy(Erickson, 1984; McDermott, 1977; Michaels, 1981). By focusing on particularstudents' experiences of the relationship between home and school and analyz-ing school curriculum and teachers' interaction patterns, I point to features thatseem to deter home-school connections. Selecting books that were not relevantto many students' lives and inadvertently excluding some students from class-room discussions seemed to be rooted in teachers having more informationabout middle-class students than students from working-class or culturally di-verse backgrounds. The teachers' practices were rooted in their assumptions thatjust providing literacy opportunities such as book response, thematic units, andwriting workshop would result in students' automatically making home-schoolconnections. Although the popular literature (e.g., Calkins, 1986; Graves, 1994)suggests that these practices are likely to lead to "a new sense of personal con-nectedness" (Calkins, 1986, p. 8) and more opportunities for students from di-verse backgrounds to succeed, the study illustrates that these methods alone areinsufficient. Likewise, an interest in making home-school connections, althoughan important first step, is not enough - it is imperative for teachers to under-stand the complexity of students' lives, especially of those students whose back-grounds and experiences are different from their own.

Implications and Dilemmas for Teacher Education

The five European-American teachers had implemented many innovative meth-

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ods in their classrooms and altered their teaching to respond to student needs.Yet, like many teachers who are teaching students different from themselves,these teachers did not share many of their students' cultural backgrounds. Theyhad few opportunities to consider the implicit values of their own middle-classupbringing that might differ from the students they taught, nor had the teachershad many opportunities to observe students'lives outside of the classroom con-texts. Developing "culturally responsive instruction" (Au, 1993) depends on hav-ing information about students' cultures and backgrounds. One home visit re-vealed to me as a researcher a wealth of information about students' lives; itappears that teachers could benefit enormously from a similar experience.

Yet, coming to know students' lives outside of school poses psychological,ethical, and practical challenges. Psychological dilemmas include the issue ofhow close teachers should get to the students they teach. Teachers may fear thattoo much information about students will result in burn out — that they will notbe able to come to school if they know about the poverty, abuse, or violence instudents' lives (Cherniss, 1980). The social conditions of our current societymerit this concern - all too many students do live in poverty or abusive settings.There is personal safety in remaining detached from students' problems and fo-cusing on the curriculum rather than the students (see Kidder, 1989). Teachersalso have active, personal lives outside of their professions, including the preser-vation of the welfare of their own families. Ethical dilemmas can play a role ingathering information about students' lives; being well-informed could lead toteachers being intrusive into family lives, especially where the values of the teachersand homes may not be shared.

A third set of challenges that confront teachers are the practical ones of .how. best to learn about students' individual and social-cultural backgrounds.Teachers who live outside of the community in which they teach are confrontedwith the problem of becoming informed about students and their families. Con-siderations such as school policies in some districts that prohibit home visits orlanguage differences between teachers and families may place obstacles to thesevisits. Additionally, most teachers feel so overburdened already that adding anew set of expectations for home visits might be inconceivable; few structuralincentives exist for teachers to add yet another responsibility to their crowdedschedules. Although these challenges that face teachers are very real and may bedifficult to address, some implications for connecting home and school can bedrawn from this study.

Besides learning more about students' cultural backgrounds, teachers cancontinue to experiment with alternative structures such as small group arrange-ments using open-ended questions (Raphael & McMahon, 1994) or pairs of stu-dents to build reluctant students' confidence. Another practice that holds prom-ise is for teachers to talk about their own experiences and to elicit directlystudents' experiences that may be similar or different from those presented inbooks (see McCartney, 1994b). This might provide students with opportunitiesto create their own narratives and interweave their diverse home and schoolexperiences (Giroux, 1988). The dialogue might also provide the material out

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of which future units could develop, units that would be based on students'experiences.

However compelling these "solutions" might seem, communicating withteachers about the problems and possibilities of home-school connections is noteasy. Even as a researcher who had ideas about how to help teachers and studentsconnect home and school, I found the complexity of students' lives and the chal-lenges of teaching a diverse group of students daunting. Further, as I describebelow, I found that sharing ideas with teachers in hopes that they would imple-ment my solutions was sometimes problematic.

Reexamining the Role of the Researcher

This article describes a different story from the one I hoped to tell when I beganthe study. When I entered the site, I had anticipated writing "happy stories"about the outstanding ways in which these teachers facilitated home-schoolconnections. I did and still do have a high regard for their teaching and believethere are many exemplary aspects of these teachers' practices; however, theissues I have elaborated on in this discussion extend beyond these particularclassrooms.

Did the teachers fall short of some ideal that I held in my head, or am I asimply a cynic who finds fault with teachers? Perhaps there is some truth to eachof these, yet I believe it is also the case that I, like many researchers, found myselfin a situation that was much more complex than anticipated. This is not the firsttime I have confronted the issue of differences between initial expectations andfindings, in part, perhaps, because I intentionally choose settings that have beenrecommended as exemplary. In a previous study (McCarthey, 1994a), I had ex-pected to understand the ways in which writing conferences (which I think arepromising ways for teachers and students to interact about writing) facilitatedstudent learning for all students, but instead found that for some students con-ferences had detrimental consequences. Likewise, in a study exploring school re-structuring (Elmore, Peterson, & McCarthey, 1996), we expected to documentthe powerful influence of changes at the school level on classroom practices; in-stead, we found that changes in school organization, in some cases, can have verylittle effect on practice. These experiences have raised questions about the roleand expectations of the classroom researcher.

As a researcher examining home-school connections, I believe I have suc-ceeded in highlighting issues about teachers' information about students andthe need for culturally relevant teaching. However, as a teacher educator inter-ested in promoting reflection and change about issues of culture and class, I havefallen short (although this year- the second year of the study, one of the teachershas said on several occasions, "See, I am making home-school connections,"which indicates increased awareness of understanding students' lives). I learnedthat sharing transcripts, frequent meetings, and opportunities for reflection areinadequate for confronting the complex issues of culture and class differences.

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Additionally, sometimes my well-intended instructional ideas backfired; for ex-ample, in suggesting small group arrangements for book discussions, I had envi-sioned open-ended discussions that resembled literature discussion groups (seeHarste & Short, 1991) or book dubs (see Raphael & McMahon, 1994). Instead,the teachers focused on close-ended questions requiring consensus from thegroups. When these ideas had different consequences from the ones I intended, Iadjusted my role by asking questions but no longer attempting to influence di-rectly their practices. Some might see my reluctance to make further suggestionsas irresponsible. I saw my hesitation as placing a priority on understandingteachers' practices and their influences on students over imposing my ideas ofgood practice on them. However, my role in this setting does raise important is-sues about the role of the classroom researcher: How much input should re-searchers have in classroom instruction? Where is the line between making sug-gestions and telling teachers what to do? When is providing interpretations thatmight be critical of specific practices helpful to teachers, and when does it en-danger future relationships?

It seems that many classroom researchers are confronting these issues asthere is an increased call to work with teachers in collaborative, reflective rela-tionships. Some researchers seem to have developed successful relationshipswith teachers while also addressing issues of culture and class within classroomcontexts. For example, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) have asked teachers toengage in critical reflections about readings linked to larger issues of culture andclass. Moll and Gonzalez (1994) have formed partnerships with teachers in their"funds of knowledge" project, resulting in teachers' increased awareness of cul-tural issues. Clearly, there are no right answers, but there may be several inter-twining directions that involve sustained interactions between teachers and re-searchers that may result in changes in teacher practice and increased learningfor all students.

Author Note

I thank the National Academy of Education Spencer Foundation for their generous sup-port of this project. I appreciate the contributions of the teachers, parents, and studentswho participated in this study. Laura Corman deserves special recognition for all herwork collecting data. I also wish to thank Katey Brichto, who acted as translator in thehomes of the Spanish-speaking families. Additionally, I acknowledge the contributionsof Mark Dressman, Bonnie Elliott, Jo Worthy, members of the "Writing Group," and thereviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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Manuscript received: January 3, 1996First revision requested: March 15, 1996

Final revision received: July 1, 1996Accepted for publication: July 22, 1996

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Connecting Home and School Literacy Practices in Classrooms with Diverse Populations

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