In This Show:
A listener inspired episode.
The Shakes Festival with Seven-Year-Old Lucy, Andrea and Mark

Podcasts Mentioned:
Just One More Book, Mostly News, Desperate Husbands
AndyCast, Canadian Podcast Buffet, Electric Sky

Special Thank You:
Andrea and Mark, of Just One More Book and their daughter Lucy for providing material for this show. Thanks also to Charles Cadenhead of Mostly News and Desperate Husbands, Carol Felderman, Suzanne Whaley, Jen Wolfe, and Andy Bilodeau, of the AndyCast, for commenting on the show, contacting me regarding the show, pinning my frappr map or participating in the show.

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Produced by:
Andy Bilodeau

A Celebration of Life _ CLIP 18 Transcript

Intro

Hi, this is show #18 of the Critical Literacy in Practice, CLIP, Podcast!

More and more I’ve been receiving responses from parents and non-school educators regarding various issues and critical literacy practices shared in the show. I’ve also heard from some of you regarding your own children’s experiences in connection with issues raised in the show. For CLIP 18, I want to sincerely thank Andrea and Mark from Just One More Book and their 7-year old daughter Lucy for being this week’s participants.

Jen Wolfe station ID
Midtro

A couple of weeks I received an e-mail from Andrea who shared her daughter’s excitement regarding planning a charitable event which she named “The Shakes Festival — A Celebration of Life”. Apparently, she imagined the idea with her friend at school where she created a long and detailed list of scheduled activities making clear her big hopes of raising money for multiple charities.

Andrea wondered what her role ought to be a as a parent commenting that Lucy, often has big ideas like this and although she does ask her about her plans now and then, she doesn’t push her to act on these ideas. She continued “But then they fall away eventually. I think we have the makings of a real force here, I’m just not sure the best way to proceed, lead or follow”.

In response I wrote, I think our roles as parents/caregivers/teachers is to make available to our children/students more powerful discursive practices and ways of being including the kinds of books you read to your girls and the conversations you have about those books. The discussion, the conversation is key…the books alone only go so far. I continued, since, she is actually initiating the planning of the event, and if this is something she is truly passionate about then I would suggest continuing to talk about it and maybe offering her some ways to broach the subject with her teacher who hopefully can support her to do some sort of survey in her class or school to see if there are other kids who are interested in planning such an event. From there it would be powerful to offer her some tools for taking this social action by sharing with her multi-modal texts such as some of the ones I’ve shared in past shows. I think what she’s learning with this kind of activity goes far beyond what any curriculum could offer this is about participating differently in the world which is transformative learning.

A couple of days later, I heard from Mark, who, in the midst of what he referred to as the mad rush to get ready for the school and work day, managed to record Lucy talking about her Shakes Festival idea for all of you to hear. Mark is well known especially in the Canadian Podcasting circle for producing several podcasts, which I will link to in the show-notes.

He said the whole festival is still in its conceptual stages and that according to Lucy, she took the idea to her grade 2 teacher and apparently the entire class is interested in participating. Lucy’s is hoping to arrange speakers from some charities to come in for the festival.

Audio of Lucy, Mark ,and The Shakes Festival

For now she leaves us with lots to think about in terms of children’s motivations for participation in potentially transformative events like the Shakes Festival. If you listen closely to how she describes this event her motivation for the work becomes clearer. What also becomes clearer is a realization that in order to come up with such a plan that she must be drawing from particular models of previous events or festivals she has come to know. She uses what she knows as tools for shaping her ideas. Her knowledge of the time and effort it would take to carry out such a plan of events also comes to surface when she talks about assigning roles and responsibilities to others as well as when she lays out a rough timeline for how long this work could take. She further recognizes the need to acknowledged participants for their work and support as she recognizes the need to draw from others if the Shakes Festival is to happen. So I love that this idea is taking shape and moving forward! Hopefully, we’ll hear more from Lucy sometime in the near future.

Thank You To:
Andrea and Mark, of Just One More Book and their daughter Lucy for providing material for this show. Thanks also to Charles Cadenhead of Mostly News and Desperate Husbands, Carol Felderman, Suzanne Whaley, Jen Wolfe, and Andy Bilodeau for commenting on the show, contacting me regarding the show, pinning my frappr map or participating in the show.

Outro

Tags : celebration, life, outreach