Portraits of Marginalized Lives: Stories of Literacy and Collaboration in School and Prison

Portraits of Marginalized Lives: Stories of Literacy and Collaboration

in School and Prison

GRACE FEUERVERGER and CAROL A. MULLEN Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

ABSTRACT: The purpose of our paper is to focus on two multicultural literacy programs that we have developed in different sites in a major Canadian urban centre. We compare an inner city elementary school and a provincial correctional facility (jail) in order to study two respective literacy programs, as grounded in the experience of marginalized populations, with a view to promoting the transformative reconstruction of the meaning of education for individuals. In this discussion we provide a context for understanding these two educational sites; for examining the pedagogical dimensions of them; and for sharing portraits of our participants both in custody and in the classroom; and, finally, for exploring the interactive, collaborative approach undertaken in our respective programs and in our research together. Through this research inquiry, we, like our participants, have experienced the value of sharing and writing stories about schooling and life experiences from an immigrant/refugee perspective.

We have attempted to illustrate how researchers and their participants can collaborate to create alternatives for encouraging self-expression and discovery in education. Our vision of education is that more attention needs to be given to marginalized individuals and populations in the context of curricular innovations that both enhance and promote literacy development and personal self-esteem. Culturally sensitive literacy programs can have the potential to transform students, teachers, and researchers to become writers of their own educational stories and, moreover, authors of their own lives..

KEYWORDS: Minority language education, multicultural literacy programs, collaborative inquiry, marginalized populations, narrative, curriculum- making.

Interchange, Vol. 26/3, 221-240, 1995. �9 Academic Publishers. Pnnted in the Netherlands.

222 GRACE FEUERVERGER and CAROL MULLEN

Introduction

This paper will focus on two multicultural literacy programs that we have developed in different educational sites in a major Canadian urban centre. We compare an inner city elementary school and a provincial correctional facility (jail) in Toronto in order to study two respective literacy programs, as grounded in the experience of marginalized populations, with a view to promoting the transformative reconstruction of the meaning of education for individuals. We have chosen a school and prison as quasi-parallel environments in an effort to bring forth our individual writing about multicultural literacy programs that foster development for minority students and ourselves.

In this discussion we provide a context for connecting what seems on the surface to be two unlikely educational sites; for examining the pedagogical dimensions of them; for sharing portraits of our participants both in custody and in the classroom; and, finally, for exploring the interactive, collaborative approach Undertaken in our respective programs and in our research together.

We consider multicultural education to mean providing pedagogical opportunities for students, teachers, and researchers within interactive spaces that engage issues of personal and cultural identity. We define literacy from a viewpoint of actions. Peat (1994) discusses literate actions as "placed in a soeial, political, economic, and/or cultural context through the use of an adjective" (p. 264). In our paper we look upon literacy and literacy educational programs within a minority language context.

We ask: How do innovative, educational programs function, what is the meaning of them, and how can they be represented?, and What are the 'border narratives' (Giroux, 1991) of those who invest identity in researching on the margins and those who live there? One of our objectives was to provide opportunities for learners and teachers to share stories about their minority experiences. We wanted to encourage feelings of pride and self- empowerment, dignity and hope, through self-expression in various literacy endeavours.

Canadian immigration levels, in the past eight years, have increased from approximately 85,000 to 220,000 annually with one in every four new immigrants settling in Toronto (Cummins & Danesi, 1990). Moreover, the United Nations, for example, has named Toronto the most ethnically diverse city in the world.t Given the multicultural composition of international urban centres, our educational systems must find ways to both advocate and create programs that will encourage caring, interpersonal relationships (e.g.,

PORTRAITS OF MARGINALIZED LIVES 223

Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Noddings, 1984, 1991 ; Ray, 1990; Witherell, 1991) in an atmosphere of respect for cultural and linguistic diversity.

Our purpose is to present stories of nonmainstream, border individuals and to give voice to those without voice. We are using here a narrative approach to a preliminary study of our individual programs of research which together provide an ethnographic study of marginalized populations within educational settings. As educators who are living and researching on the margins (Kirby & McKenna, 1989), we are empowered to examine the complexities of border identities and narratives and to provide insights. We intend here to describe a process which offers a perspective on pedagogical approaches to multicultural innovations that help to effect change by bringing people from the margins closer to the centre.

We have each developed literacy programs in order to respond to the needs of immigrant-, refugee-, and inmate-students. In the ease of Crescent Town School, an inner-city elementary school in Metropolitan Toronto, among the home languages of the students are, for example, Urdu, Hindi, Gujurati, Punjabi, Catchi, Bengali, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Romanian, Farsi, Vietnamese, Bulgarian, Korean, Japanese, Tamil, Tagalog, Tanzanian, Somalian, Arabic, Durie, Pushtu, Tigrigna, Turkish, Spanish, Guyanese and Trinidadian English, and so forth. In contrast, the jail, an inner- city correctional facility in Metropolitan Toronto, itself did not have (or claimed not to have) statistics on the ethnic composition of its inmate population. However, a report which must be kept confidential (see Anonymous, 1992) includes the ethnicities of inmates in Canadian provincial jails and corroborates the observation that the following countries of birth are widely represented: Canada (aboriginal, francophone, anglophone), West Indies/Caribbean, Europe, and South America.

Origins and Design of the Literacy Programs

The multicultural literacy project, housed in Crescent Town School, was conceived at the outset as a collaborative endeavour between the East York Board of Education in Metropolitan Toronto and a research team at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education as a response to the East York Board's Multicultural, Ethnic, and Race Relations Policy (MERR) (1987). The creative writing project, situated within a provincial correctional facility (jail), was not conceived from the outset but rather was developed, on site, in agreement among the senior education coordinator, program administrator, and educational researcher. The literacy/education program, which has a long-standing history in the jail, is sponsored by a board of education and is


taught by accredited teachers and former prisoners. However, in the case of the creative writing program, because it was new, approval had to be sought and successfully gained, and daily records of program development had to be maintained. In contrast, the East York Board of Education was eager to honour their multicultural policy by creating a new school program.

Both of our literacy programs were designed to encourage our learners, from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, to develop their reading and writing abilities and, moreover, to become partners in language curriculum-making. In the ease of the Crescent Town multicultural project, the children were given the opportunity to develop literacy not only in English, their second language, but also in their first language. The intention here was to develop children's pride in their cultural backgrounds by providing first language/bilingual books in the school library. In most cases, the books present the home language on one side of the page and the English translation on the other side. The availability and use of these books in the classroom encourages cross-cultural appreciation and understanding. A second objective of the multicultural project in the school was to involve immigrant parents in their children's education by reading the books at home and by inviting them to share past and present experiences within the Canadian context. A third objective for use of the books was to create an instructional space in which teachers could encourage their students to explore and expand their cultural experiences. Feuerverger (1994) documented the experiences of the parents, teachers, and students through in- depth interviews and through participant-observation in some ESL (English- as-a-second-language) and mainstream classes in the school. She envisaged a more holistic, interactive approach in the research that would reflect the interdependent relationship between home and school in minority students' language learning processes.

In the case of the jail, some inmate-learners were given the opportunity to develop their creative writing ideas and abilities but in English only and for the purpose of an institution-wide newsletter. The intention here was to promote inmates' dignity and authorship through various forms of self- directed writings by giving validity to their ideas within traditionally censored areas of prison literacy curriculum. Because Mullen (1992, 1994b) and her students could only use the dictionary and texts on English proficiency that were supplied by the institution, they relied heavily on their personal judgement, needs, and writing. A second objective for the creative writing program was to provide inmates with both the instructional and personal space to explore self-expression in presentational forms of their choice. A third objective was to allow students to think more deeply about


aspects of their own life history relating to suffering, loss, recovery, and renewal. Finally, a fourth objective, which turned out to be very much compromised, was the intention to provide inmates with the freedom to share material that would not be censored and that would be appreciated by other inmates, education coordinators, and decision-makers.

A Narrative o f Two Educational Research Sites

This is a reflective, retrospective discussion based on our fairly extensive work in a school (two years) and a jail (18 months) wherein our pedagogical commitments and energies have taken shape in our respective domains. Our literacy programs underscored the importance of inviting learners, as students and researchers, to write their own narratives and, through this process, to assume control and authorship over their own lives. The following narrative describes our experiences in the development of two different, but parallel, multicultural literacy interventions.

The First Day

Crescent Town School - When Grace began to walk towards the school

on that first day, she felt a strange sense of familiarity envelop her being. Huge apartment buildings crowded the school. In fact, it was difficult to see the school at first. One must persevere in order to f ind it, but, once on the pathway, the playground comes into view. It was recess time when she

arrived and all the children were outside playing. Her first impression was

of the biblical Tower of Babel: A cacophony of languages and cultures greeted her. Oddly, she felt very much at home. This scene reminded her of the immigrant neighbourhood in Montreal where she lived as a child. She

immediately saw herself in the eyes of these children.

The Crescent Town School playground is perched precariously over a busy expressway which is also a border that divides the East York Borough from Scarborough. This geographical border became a metaphor for the nonmainstream border lives of these students and their parents. A deep feeling of deja vu hit Grace as she sensed the confusion and loneliness in

the expressions of the children. The feeling of hope and despair had been known to her on that first day of school as a child. Indeed, she was reliving these dimensions of her own childhood school existence in this initial moment of contact. In both time frames, she walked through the school's doors and was pleasantly struck by a sense of comfort and safety.


She became a fellow traveller with her participants on a journey towards the meaning o f diversity in education. They came together to give one another support in the retelling and rebuilding o f their cultural stories. Through their social-psychological struggles they came to better understand teachers' and students' needs in terms of a shared concept o f multicultural curriculum development.

A Provincial Jail. - On that cold, frosty evening, Carol absorbed the look of the ominous building again and again. It looked eerie with its tiny barred windows. Gargoyles stood watch like prison gatekeepers. She produced her identification badge within view of the monitor. It contained her picture (that had been previously taken in the administrative building for the purpose of official clearance) as well as her f irst and last name. She would later turn her name inside out to establish anonymity. This gesture fe l t awkward, contradicting her search to reveal the autobiographies o f teachers and learners within institutional contexts (e.g., Diamond & Mullen, 1995; Mullen, 1994a, 1994b; Mullen & Diamond, 1995; Mullen & Knowles, 1995). She was being screened by security personnel in the monitor, yet all she could see were the gargoyles peering down. She waited in icy temperatures. Knoclang would not have permitted her entry. The sound o f the heavy steel door clicMng did not bring her immediate relief.

She stood inside not knowing where to go. Although cleared by the institution, she felt like an outsider on the border of one world looking into another. This feeling was compounded by the unfamiliar: harsh, glaring lights and narrow corridors leading to mysterious places; personal security checks and constant questions about who she was and the purpose of her visit; images of herself and others projected in monitors darkened by tinted glass; and closet-size instructional rooms (that mirrored the inmates' cells on the ranges).

Even on that f irst day, she was a researcher "caught-unawares" by the disrupted learning pattern and interrupted sessions with inmate-learners. Their unannounced institutional movements to other, unidentified locations left her feeling dislocated. Such experiences with participants underscored the significant role of the institutional context and its impact in shaping her research story.


Theoretical Considerations

This paper will describe how we view the experience of our participants who maneuver between and within cultural worlds struggling to find voice, meaning, and personal authority within their lives. By inquiring into the lives of the less-well-positioned, we seek to expand the meaning of education. In this paper we write eollaboratively about how we participated in the lives of those on the margins of school culture, Our aim was to be personally and experientially grounded by "gett[ing] in touch with the school and classrooms we care about, to see them, and to use what we see as sources for interpretation and appraisal" (Eisner, 1991, p. 11). We also strive to bring forth our individual programs of research as an interwoven "method of discovery" (Richardson, 1994) that puts ourselves in our own text. The narrative methodology employed in our paper is partly responsible for the development of self-identity described in our portraits of marginalized lives. We also used the narrative method, while on site, as a way of relating to minority students and others through a process of literacy and self-discovery.

Through a narrative research approach, we, like our participants, have experienced the value of sharing and writing stories about schooling and life experiences from an immigrant/refugee and inmate perspective. Mullen (1992, 1994b) explores how prisoners are rendered mute even though their educational stories strain to be heard. She also illustrates ways in which their stories can be documented and hence liberated in a teacher- and self- development context. Feuerverger (1989a, 1991, 1995a) focuses on how minority language education can be transformed from a compensatory point of view to one where first language learning and cross-cultural awareness is essential in a multicultural, multilingual society (e.g., Cummins, 1989; Labov, 1972; Wong-Fillmore, 1989). Indeed, Pinar's (1988) view is that identification with marginalized social groups is a key educational, autobiographical, and curricular issue. Consistent with this position, our narratives about schooling and life experiences as constructed from the margins is central to teacher development. Our perspective on teacher development is expressed by looking at ourselves and our participants in a relational context which we understand through personal, institutional, and social narratives. Teacher development, to us, consists of a personal and professional account that concerns itself with the transformation of teachers and learners in society (Mullen & Diamond, 1995; Mullen, 1994b).

The recent educational literature demonstrates that narrative and storytelling is essential to the human experience as well as to the authentic representation of it (e.g., Carter, 1993, Connelly & Clandinin, 1994;


Diamond, 1991; Polkinghorne, 1988; Richardson, 1994). We approach narrative as a lens for conceptualizing the experience of participants and researchers within contexts of teaching and learning, and collaborative inquiry. Our aim is to respond to the needs of participants by creating a context that allows their stories to be heard within the formal mainstream curriculum. In this paper we describe the interactive roles of researcher and researched through stories of marginality and transformation. This interactive and participatory process (Feuerverger, 1995a; Mullen, 1994b) is at the core of our teacher development approach to our multieultural literacy programs.

As qualitative researchers, we submitted ourselves to the way of life (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992; Goffman, 196 t) of our respective educational sites, and, as newly arrived members, we developed literacy programs along with the teachers, learners, and administrators. Through these literacy programs, we have been engaging in a mutual collaborative inquiry in order to tell our research stories through the stories of our participants. Drake, Elliott, and Castle (1993) provide a lens for viewing collaboration as women researchers that facilitated "empowering personal transformations" (p. 291). Women who collaborate, like ourselves, may be immersed in co-mentorship as we engage in relational storytelling and writing, and in the development of self-identity (e.g., Keyton & Kalbfleiseh, 1993). Clandinin and her co-researchers (1992) show narratively how collaboration makes teacher development and the restorying of teacher education possible. Our form of educational relationship becomes defined as an opportunity to advance our participants, in a transformative set of relations, as partners in curriculum-making. For us, curriculum-making is the act of exploring self and reclaiming identity through the interactive literacy process.

Our programs invited the possibility of "border crossing" wherein

students not only refigure the boundaries of academic disciplines in order to engage in new forms of critical inquiry, they also are offered the opportunities to negotiate and translate the multiple references that construct different cultural codes, experiences and histories. (Giroux, 1991, p. 508)

And for our purposes, "within this perspective, difference can be analyzed and constructed within pedagogical contexts that promote compassion and tolerance rather than envy, hatred, and bigotry" (Giroux, 1991, p. 508). He (Giroux, 1992) analyzes the polities of difference with respect to how institutions produce racism and other forms of discrimination. Our two literacy programs may be considered as examples of border crossing not only in the literal sense but also through connecting empathetieally and programmatically with those situated in the "shadowed zones" (Paley, 1995)


of metropolitan areas. The central message of our programs is in keeping with Anzaldua's (1987) metaphor of "juggl[ing] cultures" within the context of home, school, correctional facility, and university.

Encounters on the Borders

In this section we will discuss how we each crossed borders in order to develop relationships with learners that elicited their stories and our own, and that promoted interconnected narratives. We present portraits of learners including, to some extent, ourselves in order to illustrate how we believe our programs to have empowered our participants.

Our literacy programs were a catalyst for our participants and ourselves to tell educational stories in context and, moreover, to legitimize our border identities. We strive to bring these forms of "thoughtfulness" (Gibson & Shute, 1994) to our work as teacher educators in an effort to explore understandings of personal identity constructions for marginalized persons. Our interventions allowed for the development of a respect for diversity and for a sharing of culture and self among participants.

Portraits in School and in Custody: Alex, Black Hawk, Mohammed, and Sammy

The following portraits of participants are organized according to two themes that emerge from our discussions: the first portraits (Alex and Black Hawk) focus on the need for a sense of belonging and self-worth for nonmainstream learners; the second portraits (Mohammed and Sammy) explore the trauma, dislocation, and oppression experienced, as immigrant and inmate, both from the margins and within mainstream society.

Sense o f Belonging and Self-Worth Alex, an eight-year old newly arrived immigrant from Bulgaria, displayed a sense of confidence in his classroom surroundings that surprised Grace. Reflecting on herself as a little girl, she remembered being disoriented, uncomfortable, and frightened by a world where her immigrant/refugee parents had been rendered voiceless and powerless. The possibility of having been able to read a Yiddish book in G-race's regular classroom was inconceivable at that time (Feuerverger, 1995b). In her own childhood, she felt shameful of her first language and culture, viewing the after-school first language classes as a drain on her real-school time (for a socio-cultural

230 GRACE FEUERVEROER and CAROL MULLEN

perspective on this issue, see, e.g., Fellman, 1973; Feuerverger, 1989b; Fishman, 1977; Weinfeld, Shaffir, & Cotler, 1981 ).

Alex, in contrast to Grate's childhood attitude towards her home language, proudly displayed his book in Bulgarian and described the story to her during the interview. Indeed, the intention of the multicultural literacy program was to validate a sense of belonging for immigrant/refugee students. Like the other children, he was given the opportunity to both read and share books in his home language. He said, "I like to read my Bulgarian books with my parents because they always tell me stories about what it was like when they were children growing up back home." Alex became a buddy to an older Bulgarian boy, who had just arrived in Canada, and described with confidence his own teaching of English by using some of the first language books: "Bobby is bigger than me, but because I can speak English and Bulgarian, I can be his teacher" (school interview, November 27, 1991).

Black Hawk, an aboriginal: in his early 30s, had approached Carol in the Drug Awareness program, one of her educational contexts in the jail. His long black hair had somehow formed a barrier between him and the others who were seeking counselling. His apparent despondency made her wonder why he even bothered joining the group. With a long side-glance, he mumbled that he would like Carol to take a look at his poetry. Given the prohibition of such spontaneity in incarcerated settings as well as the absence at that time of a creative literacy and writing program, Black Hawk was unable to share his poetry with Carol. Once the new program had been officially cleared, Black Hawk revealed a prolific and imprisoned self. Among his dozens of poems that together worked as episodic frames or narrative sequences about lost dreams, unfulfilled potential, unrecovered kinship, and emotional pain, he shared "Diminishing Reality" (1991). In this poem, which he invited Carol to read as the "story of his life," Black Hawk casts himself as a character within his own telling:

Memories of a child in time The boy still cries inside Dreamt of many things of grand ..... Cast away beyond the reach Pretend to be was made of me Full life it would never come to be ....

Black Hawk, along with his sister, had been a foster child and, in the process of searching for an understanding of his early roots and language, produced


dozens of poems about his experiences. His poem, "Unknown Kin," was censored by an education coordinator who deemed it to be "too negative" for the inmates' newsletter. Here are some of the poetic lines:

Mother of myself and soul I've never met your blessed soul I've poisoned myself over the years Before I go I'd like to see you smile I'm wasting away I drink and smoke Inside my mind things do hurt Day, night what is the same Mother of mystery come and see your boy. (Black Hawk, December 22, 1991)

This poem could be "read" as a personal encounter with the loss of the aboriginal self, language, and culture which impacts on native families and their traditions (Ray, 1990). Carors interaction with Black Hawk intensified her yearning to know more about the stories of her own aboriginal background that had been silenced.

In both eases, the literacy programs opened a space for our participants and ourselves to reflect upon the loss that we experienced in terms of our minority language status and the need to recover the past, and reconnect with our particular cultural backgrounds.

Trauma, Dislocation, and Oppression

Through the implementation of these multicultural literacy programs, we were exposed to stories of emotional and cultural upheaval. We were not prepared for our participants' depth of feeling and openness nor were we prepared for our own responses to them. This is an example of how our narrative methodology was dependent upon the quality of the experience, various personalities, and pedogogical and coping skills of ourselves as participant researchers. We shared aspects of our own narratives as a child of Holocaust survivors (Grace) and as a child of a severed aboriginal (mixed) heritage (Carol). An element of "effective surprise" emerged from our story- sharing which is a "hallmark of a creative enterprise" (Bruner, 1990, p. 18). Given the possibilities of this new learning, we each worked to "recontextualize [our participants' and our own] crises and traumas and put them into some kind of educational perspective" (Felman, 1992, p. 54). Bar-


On (1989, 1991) has, through collecting life stories from children of Holocaust survivors and perpetrators, explored the recovery and reconstruction of selfhood. The following two portraits provide a glimpse into the transformative aspects of the interactive processes we each experienced with our participants.

Mohammed, a parent and heritage language educator, who arrived in Canada in 1991, was a slight man with intense brown eyes and a prayer carpet under his arm. He had spent 12 years in a refugee camp on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although initially silent, as were most of the immigrant parents at Crescent Town School, Mohammed began to tell his story during the interview process. Grace and Mohammed learned that both of their life histories revolve around the suffering and trauma of war. Members of Mohammed's family had disappeared during the Soviet invasion of his home country in 1978. Although he came from a small village, he had had the opportunity of higher education in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. This experience of being in an urban setting and at university, where he completed master's degrees in law and education, opened up a new window to his professional identity.

Mohammed's dream, which had been to return to his village as an educator, was irrevocably shattered by war and loss. He escaped through the mountains into Pakistan and eventually found his way to a refugee camp. Mohammed began to identify with Grate's story about her parents who had also lost most of their family members and spent three years in a concentration camp. He understood well the experiences of Grate's parents who fled Poland, their home country, after the war and found shelter in a displaced persons (DP) camp in West Germany. The Canadian pre-war, war, and post-war immigration laws and policies severely restricted Jews from entering the country (Abella & Troper, 1986).

Mohammed transformed his own despair by establishing a school for the children in the refugee camp, both of which are still in operation today. He said,

There were many people in the refugee camp who became depressed and lost hope. But I remembered what my grandfather told me: 'That if you try to make other people's lives better, then yours will be better too. For me, I always want to improve the lives of children in schools.'

Mohammed has opened up a supplementary, multieultural school for children in Toronto. He redesigned the original curriculum materials used in the refugee camp to fit the Canadian educational context and has incorporated first language books within his own school.


As in the case of Mohammed and Grace, Carol had an extensive working relationship with Sammy, an aboriginal who, although outwardly upbeat and cheerful, was inwardly melancholic and deeply agitated. Initially Carol had felt distracted by the graphic sexist tattoo that covered his left arm from shoulder to elbow. Through the grade 12 education program in the jail, Carol and Sammy developed a relationship dedicated to academic achievement and, later, to letter writing as material for the prison newsletter. While Mohammed created a school and multieultural materials for minority language children, Sammy showed leadership both through his studiousness and ritual practices with junior members of the prison native brotherhood. Although censorship is a defining attribute of both personal and public writing in prison (e.g., Caron, 1978; Davies, 1990; Paul, 1991 ; Sharansky, 1988), Sammy managed to make the creative writing program work favourably for himself, even while confined within the highly surveillant space of Protective Custody:

It has been a very long time since anyone thought that what I had to say was worth listening to, let alone printing something I wrote. I did learn something about my life when I was a kid after all .... Doing this program is helping me to thinkbaek and realize that I wasn't alone in my life. I would like to thank you for that. (Sammy in Mullen, 1992, 1994b)

This anecdote about Sammy has an element of despair. Writing persistently to Carol, he asked questions about her personal life, challenging their agreement that they were to write only about educational themes. His letters were, in turn, jointly monitored by Carol and the education coordinator, but Sammy continued to press, even once he was transferred to a federal penitentiary. Carol learned how critical it was to establish and clarify boundaries - varying widely from one inmate to the next - with respect to sharing and writing stories and, in particular, to producing interactive narratives for the newsletter in an effort to sustain caring and humane relationships. For Carol, Sammy exemplifies, most acutely, some of the ethical issues arising out of personal and collaborative research that both connected and confined her to prison participants. Sammy's own story, in this respect, has yet to be told. However, it is interesting to note that although Sammy was faced with many obstacles, he continued pursuing his formal academic studies.

Perspectives on our Literacy Programs: Resistance, Collaboration, and Transformation

In the above sections, we explored the origins and design of, as well as the experiential learning within, our multicultural literacy programs. Here we

234 GRACE FEUERVEROER and CAROL MULLEN

briefly discuss how, throughout the implementation process, we were each, at times, challenged by resistance from some participants which, although in the moment seemed discouraging, actually had a positive, transformative effect. In the context of our paper, resistance can mean that through the shared interactive process the researcher may find herself in situations where doubt and uncertainty, prejudgements and opposition, are encountered. Transformation, for us, involves both facing and overcoming obstacles of resistance which can contribute to re-envisioning curriculum, teacher and learner identity, and stories of trauma, loss, and dislocation, Diamond (1991) views transformation as that which goes beyond accountability to a "critical retheorizing both of teachers' [and learners'] perspectives and of teacher education" (p. 8). Moreover, as we have discovered, the interactive process does not have to be strictly program- or field site-oriented. It can also be expressed as a form of collaborative learning in the effort to investigate issues of multicultural and literacy development (Bruffee, 1983).

Many teachers, both at Crescent Town School and the provincial correctional facility, were initially reluctant to become involved in the literacy programs. In the ease of the school, resistance took the form of concern about work overload and, for some, hesitation with respect to the value of first language books in their own classroom curriculum and in mainstream Canadian society. In the jail, the education coordinators (also teachers) resisted aspects of the creative writing/literacy program. They articulated feeling that a therapeutic engagement with inmates' stories was counter to the educational goals of prison education. Perhaps they feared that public knowledge of inmates' emotionally charged stories about their experiences of abuse and neglect, abandonment and addiction, would somehow make life less manageable for everyone.

After a few months, the literacy program at Crescent Town School began to attract those teachers who had felt reluctant. As these teachers took note of the significant changes taking place in the children in terms of cultural awakening and sharing, and thus a growing sensitivity toward one another, they began to show interest in using the first language books in their classrooms. The students also became more confident in their reading and writing abilities. This was evident in their shift from using the books as a security blanket to an effective tool for literary enjoyment. As in the ease of the literacy program in the school, the prison creative writing/literacy program slowly began to take shape as the education coordinators saw evidence of the therapeutic effect that the writing produced for the inmates. The coordinators witnessed the enthusiasm that the writer-inmates displayed in their eagerness to become part of a waiting list for the creative writing


program. This situation was parallel to that of the Crescent Town literacy program. For example, many principals and teachers in the East York Board of Education have expressed interest in implementing the program in their own schools?

Finally, another parallel between our participant populations is the transiency that they each displayed psychologically and physically. We, as researchers, had no way of tracking the progress of some of our individual participants given that their nonmainstream status constantly forced them to locate and relocate, for economic and sentencing reasons, within the educational and correctional systems. Social and educational change will need to focus on the dimensions of oppression, trauma, and dislocation as experienced by those for whom curriculum-making is essential for survival.

Conclusion

Teacher educators live within cultures and institutions that, in many cases, do not give substantial attention to marginalized lives. Our professional stories are intended to address this problem by exploring multicultural curricular innovations as a way of legitimizing the border narratives of our school populations. These programs were intended to bring people from the margins closer to the centre and to offer a possible design for innovative language learning for minority students. We personally sought to "engage in a culturally responsive/relevant pedagogy ... that is sensitive to cultural and linguistic variations and that builds upon the cultural resources that students bring to school" (Tabachnick & Zeichner, 1993). Our literacy programs encourage respect for cultural diversity, which is essential to any successful mainstream educational program, and is congruent with other research work in this area (e.g., Banks, 1993; Cummins, 1989; Cummins & Danesi, 1990; Giroux, 1991; McLaren, 1994; Sleeter, 1992).

In this paper we have tried to explore the value of cultural diversity, self- expression, and partnership in curriculum-making within the context of a school and jail. Future directions in research on multicultural education might benefit from framing the following questions: How can we redefine existing boundaries in educational research to make room for the kind of work in which marginalized researchers, teachers, and students might wish to engage? and, How can we prepare ourselves to have the confidence and conviction to engage in the challenge of researching the margins of 'self' and 'other' within our current educational enterprise?

Classrooms in urban centres are de facto exemplars of cultural and linguistic diversity. Such classrooms, which can become role models as sites


for inquiry into marginalized populations (e.g., Giroux, 1992; Pinar, 1988), may also represent caring and humane relationships (e.g., Drake, Elliott & Castle, 1993; Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984, 1991 ; Witherell, 1991). Those on the margins may lack consciousness of the value of their own cultural identity, authorship, and worth. We, as researchers, propose that the educational community address ways in which diversity can become an accepted and integral part of the mainstream sehool curriculum, For example, a sense of voice will need to be developed in concert with those who have been rejected or neglected by mainstream society. Innovative programming and instructional opportunities can promote understandings of individuals' life experiences and stories. One way of approaching such work is to forge connections with others and to link school and nonschool environments. In this way, researcher participants can interpenetrate each other's boundaries and as well as those of unlikely sites in an effort to construct new understandings of marginal identities.

We have attempted to illustrate how researchers and their participants can collaborate to create alternatives for encouraging self-expression and discovery in education. Part of our own learning in this paper has been the experience of weaving together our research voices to create a perspective on two different but parallel studies. Our vision of education is that more attention needs to be given to marginalized individuals and populations in the context of curricular innovations that both enhance and promote literacy development and personal self-esteem. Finally, researchers, by exploring their own personal and cultural identities, can better hear their participants' stories. Culturally sensitive literacy programs can have the potential to transform students, teachers, and researehers to become writers of their own educational stories and, moreover, authors of their own lives.

NOTES

1. A United Nation official's comment in the context of a discussion about international issues on democracy in multieultural societies (Feuerverger, personal communication, June, 1993).

2. Canadian native education should facilitate an understanding of the oral tradition - conversation, interaction, and storytelling - as fundamental to both the literacy and survival of native languages (Leavitt, 1993). "Native" is synonymous with "aboriginal" in the North American context.

3. Moreover, teachers, teacher educators, and school board officials in other provinces such as Qu6bee and Alberta, and in other countries such as England


and Israel, after having learned about the Crescent Town literacy program, were keen to adapt this model.

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Authors' Address:

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Portraits of Marginalized Lives: Stories of Literacy and Collaboration in School and Prison

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