Counting Biographies to See Whose Stories are Being Told

Students from Livermore, California Almond Avenue School Teacher Patti McLain Students Ages 6-9

One of the suggested activites in "Connecting Math to Our Lives" for promoting equity at the school site is to have students analyze all the biographies in the school library on the basis of gender, race, class or disability. Students then categorize these and use percentages, fractions, and bar graphs to help them describe the library's biography collection. This is what teacher Patti McLain from Almond Avenue School in Livermore, California set out to do with her bilingual first, second and third graders. During the course of this project she involved parents in the process, teamed up with a partner class from another school, got children to gather data from both school and city libraries, and had children write their own biographies. Below you'll find two reports from Patti. The first she compiled in January, soon afer she and her students had embarked on this project. Therefore the report relfects the planning and some of the early activities of the group. The second report gives an update on the investigations and action plans of the students.

Promoting Equity at Our School Site

Part I: January 1998

Several classrooms of first, second and third grade students at Almond Avenue School, Livermore, CA began the Orillas Math project in January, 1998. The original announcement suggested students "analyze all the biographies in the school library on the basis of gender, race, class or disability. Students then categorize these and use percentages, fractions and bar graphs to help them describe the library's biography collection." As the project at Almond School unfolds many new issues and learning opportunities are arising. Here are a few of the highlights:

Young children did not understand the term biography. It was introduced around the holiday of Martin Luther King, Jr. as this led into an easy discussion of "stories about people". This was followed up with other biographies that were highlighted in adopted reading series, Open Court, such as Jackie Robinson.

Once children "heard biographies" they came together to look and have "hands-on" time browsing a biography book. They were told to look for pictures, for key words, names, etc. Then they were asked if they could determine if the book was about a male or female (gender). They were most interested in knowing if the person lived around them, was here now, and quite surprised that most of the people were dead. They created a new classification: dead or alive.

The next time the children were asked to look at race. This was very confusing for young children. Color is comprehensible, race was difficult. Martin Luther King was black, but also African American. We found the children comparing their colors of skin and getting very frustrated with what was white, brown, light brown, etc. Yet, the teachers felt it was an important issue to pursue.

The children tried to categorize the famous people: artist, authors, inventors, athletes, etc. This was very confusing again. Some people were more than one thing. For example, Leonardo da Vinci was an artist, inventor and writer. They were not sure how to keep track of this, yet it seemed to be very interesting information to the children. It seemed to fit with "when I grow up I want to be a...," to which children of this age relate. It also became apparent that the children had really never heard of most the people in the books. In a book about Jimmy Carter, his Habitat for Humanity project was highlighted. Looking at that information, the children classified him as a "builder".

It was decided not only to study the biographies at the school library, but also to do so at the Livermore City library. To teach the importance of "interpreting" and "questioning" other people's data, it was decided that different classes would collect data at different places. In this way the children could question the "process" and thus the "validity" of the information. It was decided to find "buddy" classes and together do data collection at a larger public library. (We wanted to see if the pattern for books was the same in a school library, branch (city) library and large urban library.) We hooked up with immersion classes from Fairmont Elementary in San Francisco. All children at Almond School learn Spanish. The majority of the participants from Fairmont Elementary are native Spanish speakers. We wanted the children to have the opportunity to work with buddies in another language, to let each be an expert when the language was needed and to come to agreement on classifying people from their different perspectives. After arrangements with the San Francisco Main Library (Children's section), a date of February 20, 1998 has been set for the "count".

The teachers from these schools met on Thursday, January 29, 1998. We discussed what had already been done in the process and what would be done jointly, including:

• agreeing upon a standard "data collection" form that would include the title of the book, the famous person and the other data to be collected that was agreed upon
• ways to group the children: by different ages, different languages- equalizing the groups as much as possible from the two schools
• parental help needed: one adult per group of three to four students (it was also decided that parents would need to be given background info on the project and how data is to be collected)
  
• ways of "buddying" students beforehand- including writing second-hand biographies about each other (with pictures) prior to meeting -ways of maintaining communication
  
• via e-mail and possibly, video conferencing (both schools seem to have the capability)
  
• follow-up sessions for students to interpret the data collected, post to other students doing the same project and to jointly compose a letter to the San Francisco Main Librarian to recommend future purchases for the library based on this study (It was also suggested that at least one book be purchased with a plaque in the front stating that the book was added to the collection as result of the research and data collection of the students from the schools as part of the global project)
  
• timelines/logistics/lunch, etc.

The teachers then met with the SF Librarian to view the facilities, discuss the project and work out the details.

• The librarian suggested using the Dewey Decimal "call numbers" for some of the larger classification. She explained that books could be "JB"- Biography, or they could be under artist, scientist, sports, etc.
  
• She explained that biographies were also mixed in the international book section, and would need to be pulled from those, especially the Spanish language books
  
• She showed us the "group" biographies (a book with more than one person), and it was determined not to use these the day of the count as it might be difficult for the children to "classify"
  
• She offered to meet with us on Wednesday, February 18 at 4:00 to physically go though library, map out where students would work, pull some books and organize the logistics for 100 children. She was available that day until 8:00
  
• She also agreed to allow two teachers to meet her prior to 9:00 (when the library was closed) on February 20, to physically pull the books, set up the charts, pencils, recording sheets, etc., so everything would be ready when the children arrived at 11:00.

I'm sure many things will change between now and February 20... that is what makes this such an exciting project. It grows with the children and what fits for them. Many new lessons will be generated, that are not yet documented: how this data will be tabled, analyzed, etc. How will it be shared? What will be done with it? Many lessons may also be created in classroom writing activities, journal entries, notes to buddies, etc. Second language learning will be highlighted and probably enhanced as children learn the terms for classifying, variable, interpretation in more than one language for meaningful purposes. I too cannot wait to see where the next step will lead!

Promoting Equity at Our School Site: Part II

Students from Almond Ave. School in Livermore, California joined efforts with students from Fairmont School, San Francisco, California to have a voice in the selection of books for their individual school libraries, as well as the city libraries. Students in Mrs. Bargerís first/second grade class and Mr. Peter Hetherington`s third grade class from Almond School worked with students from Ms. Lee Jimenezí first grade and Ms. Maria Fellowís fifth grade from Fairmont School. Diane Rosen, Fairmont Elementary School technology teacher and Patti Purcell McLain, Almond Ave. School, Project LinC (Language in Community) Coordinator, facilitated. Mike Fleisher was the designated technology specialist and webmaster for the the project.

In the last report, you heard about our plans to visit to the San Francisco Main Library (Children's Section) to count and analyze their biography collection. After many preparation activities by the teachers and students at Almond Avenue School in Livermore and at Fairmont School in San Francisco, the two diverse groups met in the San Francisco Main Library in May, 1998. This was all done in coordination and cooperation with the children's librarian, Linda Geistling. With the help of many wonderful parents, we all arrived via public transportation. The Almond students travelled to the library via BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and the San Francisco students arrived via the Muni Bus System. All children were accompanied by groups of adult volunteers. The students met on the lawn outside the library and found their buddies from the other school. There they shared lunch and exchanged messages. Parents were assigned a group of four students for the event.

All activities in the library were conducted bilingually. Students were assigned one of four tasks for which they were responsible in their group: librarian (collects and reshelves books); cartographer (charts group findings on wall posters); reader (reads the book for information); and the writer (fills in the forms). Children rotated these tasks based on their comfort levels with the skills. Parents monitored.

The children studied books from the biography section in the Children's library. They recorded information about gender, race, nationality, language, dead or alive, and what the person was famous for. These were recorded on individual forms and then each book was recorded on large group charts that were placed on the walls. The final results were compiled and entered by the students from both schools on a web page database that was established for the project.

The results indicated that more 70% of all books were written about dead, white men. The students were not really surprised. They were also very confused, because many pictures (which were their real contextual clues) did not indicate what the person actually was famous for. The children were really fascinated with the number of people that were dead and wanted to know why all famous people had died.

The next step is to take action based on the data the students collected. The end result was to write a joint letter to the libraries indicating the findings and ideas for consideration in future purchases. The students drafted the letter, but we won't officially send it until this school year (due to time constraints). The librarians were informed and will be awaiting the letters this Fall.