Abstract

In this article, the author reflects on the uses of multimedia literacy and
discusses a unique but replicable process of creating a video poem linking her
artistic visions with some personal life experiences. Rethinking notions of teacher
as learner, the author draws upon particular learning moments to reconceptualize
current teaching practices that have implications on pedagogy and curriculum in
many of today’s diverse classrooms.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Teacher as Learner in
  DV Poetry: Toward a Praxis of Engaging Literacies in Alternative Spaces for
  Learning



• Conceptual Framework



• 
  Situating My Learning and Teaching
  
  
  
  
  • Background
  
  
  
  • Nation and The Progressive
  
  
  
  • 14 Reasons Why
  
  
  
  • The Production Process
  
  
  
  • Poetic Representations
  
  
  
  



• Teaching Self, Teaching
  Others



• References

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Introduction: Teacher as Learner in DV Poetry: Toward a Praxis of Engaging
Literacies in Alternative Spaces for Learning

Researchers in the field of education have argued that students learn best by
situating what they are learning in what they know or familiar with. Seeing
students as agents, they emphasize the use of students’ cultural knowledge as
resources in their learning process (Nieto, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Sleeter
& Grant, 1991; Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, & Turner, 1997;
McLaren, 1994). In the field of literacy education, some have examined specific
aspects of popular culture in learning (Dyson, 1997; Mahiri, 1998, 2004a; Morrell
& Duncan-Andrade, 2002), while others incorporate broader uses of sociocultural
approaches in theory and practice (Street, 1984; Barton, 2000; Lee, 2002;
Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, &Alvarez, 2001). Pedagogically, they
draw on students’ “funds of knowledge” to understand how tapping
into local actors such as students themselves, parents and other community members
contribute to classroom learning (Moll, 1994). While these works inform us on how
to see and actively engage students, they sparsely illustrate how teachers come to
know what they know—that is, the process in which they develop their own
skills and knowledge in order to teach others about them. An understanding of this
process is important particularly in instances that advance teachers’
abilities to connect with students in the learning process and that offer
possibilities for more relevant teaching. As a former high school teacher, I
realize the value of a unique experience that demonstrates one of these
possibilities. In exploring my own learning processes, I offer suggestions for how
teachers and teacher educators may utilize the concept of an “agentive
self” as a resource in improving learning and teaching practices—both
for themselves and their students.

In the summer of 2002, I participated in a free adult Digital/Visual poetry
workshop offered by the Digital Underground StoryTelling for Youth (DUSTY) program
in Northern California. Newly implemented as the first adult-driven and
adult-centered workshop within DUSTY, DV Poetry provided me the space to construct
an “agentive self” (Hull & Katz, 2002). There I learned how to
situate my life experiences in and through stories that, consequently, grounded my
own teaching approaches in DV Poetry—a class for high school youth—at a
later time. In this article, I not only reflect on what I learned to create my own
video poem, but also describe the processes that helped to integrate my artistic
visions with some personal life experiences. Rethinking notions of teacher as
learner, I draw upon such learning moments in re-conceptualizing my current
teaching practices. Before I discuss this process, however, I turn to recent
research on learning and teaching with respect to literacy.

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Conceptual Framework

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger theorize that learning stems from social
circumstances (1991). According to them, all activities occurring in certain places
and locations such as in “novice-expert” type relationships, or what
they call “apprenticeships,” are situated (see also Rogoff, 1990).
Employing a Vygotskyian approach to social learning, they develop a broader
perspective that differs from past theories and interpretations of situated
learning—one that involves the whole person, the activity of that person in
and with the world; and “the view that agent, activity, and the world
mutually constitute each other” (p. 33). Furthermore, in viewing learning as
integral to everyday “generative social practice(s),” Lave and Wenger
propose a complex way of examining how participants actually engage learning in and
through social practice where power relationships and social structures are
present. To them, the notion behind “legitimate peripheral
participation” (LPP) offers specific analytic approaches to understanding
learning. They write:

The form that the legitimacy of participation takes is a defining
characteristic of ways of belonging, and is therefore not only a crucial
condition for learning, but a constitutive element of its
content…Peripherality suggests that there are multiple, varied, more- or
less-engaged and inclusive ways of being in the fields of participation defined
by a community. Peripheral participation is about being located in the social
world (p. 36).

In moving across domains of practice (i.e. partial to full participation), Lave
and Wenger suggest that participants occupying certain “peripheral”
locations within the larger social structure utilize LPP as a way of engaging or
acting in the world. LPP becomes a way of gaining access to and control over
resources; through LPP, participants position themselves in performing various
roles within the very contexts they occupy in world. In this sense which is very
much in line with Lev Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of zone proximal development,
LPP enables “newcomers” to use “peripherality” as an
opening to inherent social positions and structures. Though Lave and Wenger provide
a greater explanation for how learning occurs, I question to what degree their
conceptualization of LPP can be useful in developing newer literacies in what the
New London Group (2002) identifies as a consequence of “post-Fordist”
times.

One place to begin is the plethora of research on literacy and the role of
literacy practice—cultural ways associated with reading and writing which
people draw upon in their lives—in gaining access to newer literacies that
take place in new literate spaces. Brian Street, for example, has long argued that
literacy is ideological and that literacy practices are inextricably linked to
cultural and power structures in society (1984, 1993, 1995). He has articulated how
and why certain individuals carry out different literacy practices in different
contexts by placing emphasis on the social, often complex, nature of literacy. For
Street literacy is a social practice that involves “power, authority and
social differentiation” and exists within sites of tension between them
(1995, p. 161). Building on Street’s ideological model of literacy theory,
David Barton and Mary Hamilton propose literacy as a situated social practice, a
“powerful way of conceptualizing the link between the activities of reading
and writing and the social structures in which they are embedded and which they
shape” (2000, p. 7). Two of their six propositions are key to this
discussion, that is, “literacy practices are purposeful and embedded
in broader social goals and cultural practices” and also that they
“change and new ones are frequently acquired through processes of
informal learning and sense-making” [emphasis added].

Grounded in Heath’s notion of literacy events—occasions in which
written texts are integral in people’s interactions and “interpretative
processes” (1982, 1983), Barton and Hamilton use social theory of literacy to
provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the coherence between
practices, events, and texts. In particular, they see texts as central to events
(observable episodes), which arise from practices (unobservable units of behavior)
that, in many ways, are shaped by the very events in which they take place.
However, in connecting these three salient components, they fall short of providing
a clear definition of text(s). On one hand, they identify written texts as
mediating tools in literacy activities as in cooking recipes. Yet, on the other,
they also point out that in different contexts, there are different literacies
involving different media or symbolic systems in such that non-(written)
text and text-based image s are present as in film, television, and
computers. In their explanation, nowhere do Barton and Hamilton state what
constitutes texts, and more importantly how various types of texts configure into
literacy as a social practice.

Norman Denzin, for example, asserts that performance text is a genre that
dramatizes written texts—with motion and action—to create
“multimedia tales” (1997, p. 180). He recognizes that certain cultural
texts such as poems and short stories can be read or performed before audiences,
co-constructing new meanings and interpretations. In his examination of performing
ethnography, Denzin argues that performance texts take many forms, ranging from
dramatic, natural, performance science, ethnodrama, to staged readings (p. 185). He
also claims that written texts can be performed or supplemented by other devices
such as “pictures, slides, photographs, film, audio, music,” etc. (p.
207). Though his contentions are more specific to methodology, Denzin’s work
is relevant in illustrating key distinctions between texts, as well as in
conceptualizing the social nature of texts as constructed in various contexts. For
him, performance texts are messy and exist in spaces that integrate multiple
genres. It is in these spaces where new experiences—or what I advance here as
“agentive” new literacies—emerge.

In their most recent work, Glynda Hull and Mira-Lisa Katz (2002) point to a new
literate space in DUSTY (Digital Underground StoryTelling for Youth) that combines
narrative, identity, performance, and technology for crafting self. They describe
how young adults and middle school-aged youth use multiple media literacy of
digital storytelling to make sense of their past and present lives, and to reflect
on their life’s trajectories. According to them, participants not only
acquire new computer skills in the process, but also speak about conceptions of
self in forging new “agentive” identities. In other words, the stories
participants tell simultaneously portray as well as shape who they are, how they
see themselves, and what they plan to do in the future. Hull and Katz also claim
that for individuals pushed into the margins of society digital storytelling can
serve as one medium for “second chances,” a way to change and direct
self into new terrains. Through au/oral, written, and visual text-based analyses of
participants’ projects, they demonstrate how DUSTY as a new literate space
offers possibilities for change either within an individual, in society, or both.
What they make explicit is how literacy is ideological and socially situated in
nature, yet implicit in their work are ways in which literacy, or how literacy
learning for that matter, is shaped by social factors. Here I extend the concept
which Hull and Katz have developed to theorize on a kind of “agentive
self” that sees teachers as active learners and as social agents in
accessing, valuing, and utilizing digital stories. Moreover, I focus on the
subgenre of DV poetry to illuminate the power of poems (with stories embedded in
them) as agentive tools that can serve purposes beyond personal “second
chances.” Elsewhere, Hull and Zacher (2004) posit the importance of
after-school programs and highlight DV Poetry as a way to assist youth in forging
in/out-school identities as well as fostering relationships across generations
(e.g. between mother and daughter).

Similar to the notion of performance text, digital storytelling and poetry as
“new literate” genres give regard to the visual, and often musical,
texts to provide authors the space for concrete and symbolic images” that add
“layers of meaning” to their written texts (Denzin, 1997, p. 27).
Through a variety of structured workshop sessions, participants interact and share
current knowledge with one another. As Hull and her colleagues have noted, what
begins as a personal project for most participants turns into a highly social
activity where language, race, class, gender, and experience merge—in
creating an alternative space for learning, acquiring new literacies, and evoking
possibilities for social change. It is here where my story, my poetry, begins.

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Situating My Learning and Teaching

name="background">Background. For years I have looked to prominent
poets such as Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Adrienne Rich, Pablo Neruda, Jessica
Hagedorn, and Sandra Cisneros for inspiration. Who knew that what began as an
experimental outlet for me as an adolescent would transform my whole perspective on
poetry and, thus, outlook on life. My passion for poetry became a resource for the
kinds of teaching acts I proceeded to engage in later years. Largely influenced by
Paulo Freire’s (1970) concientizaçao, my praxis focused on the needs
of “the oppressed.” I pushed myself to actively bring about change in
my classroom through pedagogy and social action. Though short of being
comprehensive, I used multicultural works by various poets and other writers to
form the basis of critical discussion and production of student work. I noticed
that in these high school English classes students and I were able to tease apart
themes that related to our histories, cultures, and experiences. And soon after my
arrival at UC Berkeley as a graduate student, I was easily drawn to Poetry for the
People and its mission to serve underprivileged populations—students in urban
public schools, the homeless, inmates, among others. Even though poets mentioned
above had had previous effects on me, it was another poet who helped me to envision
different possibilities of poetry in youth’s lives. Her name was June
Jordan.

For many, June Jordan was a walking political act, an air of brilliance to whom
Poetry for the People on the university campus is credited. She was a professor in
the African American Studies department and a leading force in fighting for human
rights. Jordan lived and breathed for the people. She imagined, demanded, and
fought for equality like no other petite "slim lady" could. 1 She spoke against
hate, censorship, and acts of counter-intelligence in renowned newspapers and
journals such as New York Times, Nation, and the
Progressive. The phrase "slim lady"; was borne around the time rapper
Eminem's "Slim Shady" album went gold in 2001.

Nation and
The Progressive. Jordan authored numerous books, from poetry to
essays and others far too many to mention. And in 1999, I had the chance to meet
her beyond text. Over the course of three years through my involvement with Poetry
for the People, I learned from Jordan herself what it meant to write, to use words
as a form of action in changing the world. I also learned how to be a more
conscious human being by giving back and investing in the fight for social justice.
The irony in this story, however, is that never once in my life did I imagine such
a warrior to grace mine. In the summer of 2002, Jordan passed away without my
acknowledging her as such. I was in Los Angeles visiting my family when I received
the devastating phone call. “June left us this morning…she died
peacefully.” My body felt numb as I contemplated the unimaginable.
“She’s gone? She’s really gone?” For weeks I could not stop
thinking about the times I let pass, of not letting “June” know about
what and how much she meant in my life. Through this grieving period, I realized
that I had to do something. I wanted to have a chance to impress upon her
symbolically the kind of woman, “soldier,” revolutionary, and
humanitarian she was. In a sense, I wanted to use this moment of vulnerability as a
form of motivation to craft a “second chance” (Hull & Zacher, 2002;
Greene, 1990; Inbar, 1990). Immediately what came to mind were June’s
infectious laughs and proverbial statements. Remembering the “good
times” made me smile and enabled me to move on. I recalled one instance in
2000 when Jordan and her students, including myself, were discussing the topic of
love poetry in class. Pablo Neruda’s work came up; so did hers and eventually
her stance on love, revealing that without it (love) “change in the
world” would not be possible. Students joined in the conversation and gave
examples of self-less figures to build on her point. It was then that Jordan struck
a chord in all of us. She noted the endless “fight” necessary—the
continued struggle with and for the people—to gain equal rights and justice.
She said, “Love is about a revolution, and that revolution is about
love.”

Click here for video
clip

14 Reasons
Why. To create a poetic homage to June Jordan’s life, work, and
legacy, I decided to embark on 5-minute video project entitled “14 Reasons
Why I Gallop in the August Rain,” a poem which I had intended to be a love
poem in 2001. The video begins with its title imprint, while my voice echoes
familiar words, “June Jordan always said, ‘love is about a revolution,
and that revolution is about love.’” As it fades in , the next
image appears, “A Tribute to June, Love, and Other Things” before
Sade’s instrumental melody called “Mermaid” is heard in the
background, exuding a melancholy mood. The instrumental is enjoined by a series of
photographs, depicting rainy and gloomy days. As noted in Denzin’s notion of
performance text (1997), I used pictures and sounds to supplement the meaning of my
words. The screen dissolves into black to show the title page, immediately
followed by my voice reciting the title and the rest of the poem. The text in
voice over reads:

14 Reasons Why I Gallop in the August Rain

1. You enchant me with simple words that form complex actions because actions
have meaning, and meaning saves lives like you save mine.

2. You inspire me with your fiery Leo passion to change the world as if you
own it and have no intentions of selling out to the highest bidder.

3. You galvanize me to explore every thought of every child every time she
asks a question or picks up a pen or reads a book.

4. You paint me self-less visions of a raceless and classless society that
Martin devoted his life for, and never got to see.

5. You embrace me with your tattooed arms, so so tight, not ever wanting to
let go like the 2 murdered boys and the memory of them you carry so they can live
on.

6. You balance me with your sometimes endless days because you are always the
first to arrive and the last to leave the battlefield.

7. You ravish me with silky whispers to my ear about the perfect Ralph Waldo
Emerson quote or the perfect Maya Angelou poem phenomenal.

8. You bolster me to straighten up, never slouch, and stand tall so fellow
sisters understand that they are not alone in their struggle.

9. You incapacitate me with symphonic soundtracks like you incapacitate
yourself at night when you lay almost sleepless worrying always worrying about
tomorrow’s events.

10. You tickle me without the use of fingers or hands because you lent them to
a young man so he forgets to clutch his own hands and fingers, and accidentally
squeeze a trigger.

11. You hypnotize me with hazelnut eyes that gaze at the homeless with
humility only to reach in your pocket, your wallet, pull out a $20 bill and smile
without hesitation.

12. You calibrate me with vicious overtones, like pitbulls barking at
strangers just to illustrate how attacks and kills happen to students daily in
schools.

13. You fascinate me with every piece of advice you offer to every young
person because you know that if you don’t, no one will.

14. You enthrall me with every bit of gesture you make, every word you utter
because without you, there is no me and without me, there is no you and without
us, there is no love.

To fully explore the aesthetics behind the video, I first describe the
poem’s origins and thematic connections. I wrote “14 Reasons Why”
as a personal love poem during a time in my life when poetry served as a refuge for
self-building. I tried to capture visions of horses running freely in the rain,
galloping without pause or direction, to express solitude (and fortitude, for that
matter) in more positive ways. What transpired were the beginnings of “14
reasons,” first from jotted notes to stanzas that enlisted modest qualities
about an individual(s) who I admired. At the very least, my vulnerabilities at that
particular time set off the honesty that was to form the basis of the poem. This
honesty was partly what I had learned from Jordan as poetry’s
“truth”-telling power. After the first line, “You enchant
me,” I soon realized the presence of Poetry for the People’s writing
guidelines in my writing, particularly the use of strong active verbs and imagery
to create movement and evoke emotion throughout the poem. Each line then became one
of the 14 “reasons” for love, lines consisting of pronouns
“you” and me” followed by real-life details, which for me are key
to any revolutionary act.

Indeed, the video’s purpose was to trace the humanistic contributions of
past revolutionaries, as well as to touch upon present day struggles in various
communities. These very conditions were the “reasons why” I wrote and
produced the video poem in the first place. So weeks after Jordan’s passing,
I paid DUSTY a visit and formally met the director and his then small staff. Though
I had known about the program’s existence from colleagues who had made
digital stories, I did not take interest until an adult workshop specific to poetry
opened up in July of 2002.

The Production
Process. Approximately seven adults of color participated in the
two-weekend workshop that covered various activities during the three phases of
production: writing, storyboarding, scanning images, web image searching, voice
capturing, selecting music, editing, and exporting (see Table 1). Four of
participants, including myself, had been involved with youth on some capacity in
California public schools. Though several of us came prepared with previously
written poems, the entire production process took much longer than expected. During
“open” weeknights and weekends, the director and other digital story
experts at the center made themselves available for assistance. For all of us, this
situated learning context called for forging new relationships with other
participants as well as with the center’s staff. As Lave and Wenger suggests
(1991), both novice and expert learners interact through LPP to facilitate the
kinds of learning taking place. Together we shared prior knowledge to create new
ones. Each of us possessing various skills also served as each other’s
apprentices in the three stages of the learning process.

Table 1: Stages and Activities in DV Poetry

Unlike the other older participants, I quickly grasped terminology used during
hands-on demonstrations because of my previous experience with technology and video
production. Some of my own knowledge about how to operate the same editing program
also transferred in the process. Naïve about media production’s many
complex stages and activities, however, I shortcut the initial process and later
discovered that this shortcut was, really, just shortcutting me. It became more
obvious, for example, how constructing a “project timeline” on Adobe
Premiere requires time to first learn some basic technicalities and editing tools.
I could not have used “transition” techniques such as motion
or zoom effects on still photographs effectively without first learning
simple functions such as fade in/out , cut , and
dissolve.

To create a video poem, I manipulated over 50 web-based images downloaded from
Google and other search engines. I re-sized each of them to fit a 480 x 640 format
using Adobe Photoshop, while conceiving a timeline that had been broken up into 14
segments (“reasons”). These segments set up the video’s theme,
setting, and plot. The first 8 segments were devoted to past figures or
revolutionaries who left behind legacies on the world; the last six were focused on
present day conditions that affect “oppressed” populations—women,
the poor, urban youth, and people of color, among others. Harking back to June
Jordan and her life’s work, I used what I know about certain literate skills
(e.g., how to compose a narrative) to develop a sense of past and present history.
To understand more clearly, Table 2 illustrates how my literacies as a poet and as
a digital storyteller are drawn from personal, social, and historical experiences,
each tied to particular representations of people, places, and events.

Table 2: Experiences and Literacies in DV Poetry

To conceptualize my DV poem the way that I did is to recognize the influences of
these experiences because each one served as a resource for my own literacy
learning (Gutiérrez et al., 1997). Not only did each of them facilitate my
own learning, but also informed the nature of how I represented who, what, and how
I saw myself in the DV poem. The initial timeline in the Adobe Premiere program did
not take very long to complete. I knew right away that I wanted to begin the video
poem with Jordan’s portrait and end with images that related to her legacy.
What took the most time during in production was the ordering of other images in
ways that not only reflected the words in the written poem, but also flowed with
the overall connection between love and revolution. Of course, I created a
storyboard, but different from the usual pictorial. My storyboard was the result of
the actual written poem being color-coded (on the margins) with multiple Post-It
notes. Color-coded were the 14 stanzas, which to me was a reminder of the overall
video structure and a guide through the editing process. This odd style of
storyboarding also contained sketch notes (arrows and the like) to intertwine
stories found in each stanza.

Poetic
Representations. As “Mermaid” plays in the background, a
portrait of Jordan appears followed by the cover of her second to last book,
Soldier (2001), and a distant shot of her on the microphone standing in
front of UC Berkeley’s infamous Sproul Hall. The words “…actions
have meaning, and meaning saves lives…” are heard amidst the tune,
immediately followed by “…like you save mine”, a portrait of
Philippine revolutionary hero and poet, José Rizal. This specific image
leads to a series of others’ that, to me, represent contributions of past and
present “revolutionaries” including Rigoberta Menchú, Pancho
Villa, Leonard Peltier, Mother Theresa, Toni Morrison, Assata Shakur, Malcolm X,
Martin Luther King Jr., Ché Guevarra, Fidel Castro, The Black Panthers,
Third World Liberation Front, Nelson Mandela, César Chavez, Mahatma Gandhi,
Princess Diana, Maya Angelou, and Angela Davis. In order to parallel the strengths
of these individual figures, I synchronized each active verb—such as
“inspire,” “galvanize,” “paint,”
“embrace,” “balance,” and “ravish—with each of
their faces. I purposely did this as a conscious effort to create more emotion and
movement in the visual poem. For each of the seven reasons in the first half of the
poem, I used fade in/out to black to ensure that each figure received its
due respect and emphasis. Within each one, I used either dissolve or cut
to connect images and have a sense of temporal flow. I also added motion
effects to give a sense of physical movement.

After the 7 th reason, the focus turns away from figures and into events and
situations that have occurred in the past or are occurring in the present. A cue
for this shift in focus is visible in the written poem (italicized
“phenomenal”). In the video, this subtle mark is followed by an image
of Angela Davis before a series of “visions of a raceless and classless
society,” including prostitution, child abuse, hate, terrorism, urban youth
homicides, homelessness, poverty, police harassment, and schooling inequalities.
For me, these images depict day-to-day struggles and, for greater affect in their
representation, are purposefully juxtaposed with verbs in reasons #8 to #13 from
“bolster,” “incapacitate,” “tickle,”
“hypnotize,” “calibrate,” and “fascinate.” Many
are visual displays of the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly Oakland, to
illustrate one community’s challenges, needs, and hopes, and certainly for
more than its aesthetic value also establish a sense of location. Like the first
half of the video, I used fade in/out black as well as dissolve
and cut effects to connect one struggle to the next. One dramatic effect
occurs in reason #9, when my voice not only echoes undecipheringly, but the
photographs also explode to portray New York City’s bombings from 9-11. To
the quick eye, this echo effect may seem a mistake. However, I actually
used the effect to create confusion and chaos, a symbolic remembrance for the twin
towers that killed thousands of people. Nearing the 13 th reason, my voice
over remarks come together to connect previous images to who I am. The
connections here, then, become an articulation of an identity, or what Holland,
Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain (1998) call identity in practice, as “one way
of naming the dense interconnections” of my personhood, not as
“independent from but webbed within historical social worlds” (p.
270).

I demonstrate through the connections I make this very notion of identity in
practice as I too believe that people improvise certain responses because of or as
constituted by their social landscapes. Upon saying “You fascinate me / with
every piece of advice you offer to every young person,” a photograph
illustrating a specific interaction I had with two former Poetry for the People
students from a local high school appears. It is a photograph that was taken by
their teacher during one group outing—culminating in an outdoor poetry
reading and, in a momentary but pleasant surprise, an electric slide dance
performance with four other students—on a random Saturday afternoon in the
San Francisco Bay Area. Ironically, it became and still is a part of their school
website, not as advertisement for one particular small learning community, but as a
product of a collaborative in-class project facilitated by students themselves in
2001. I had no prior knowledge that such an image existed on the Internet. Because
I see myself as an ally to students and other young people, the selection of this
particular photograph relates to some degree to Hull and Katz’s (2002)
assertion that conceptions of self in digital stories are telling of who we want to
be as people and our life trajectories.

Finally, the conclusion of the poem focuses on youth, depicting different age
groups from different parts of the world. The last photograph before the 14 th
reason, of course, is that of BART, short for the Bay Area Rapid Transit, to give a
closing sense of location and time. An unwavering sound similar to that of the
train is heard in the background as a symbol of time passing. After a moment of
silence, once again, June Jordan’s image appears on the screen. Her black and
white portrait is then followed by two more during voice over , “You
enthrall me / with every bit of gesture you make, every word you utter, every
stride you take.” Similar to the progression of the first reason, I drew upon
an iconic Philippine figure to represent who I am, “Because without you /
there is no me.” I thought that here it was appropriate to have an image of
Corazón Aquino, the first female president of the Philippines and widow of
assassinated political leader Benigno Aquino. In the photograph, she has her arms
up in the air—gesturing an “L” sign with each hand. Back in the
EDSA Revolutions of the mid to late 1980s, Aquino led a mass of young and old
Filipinos in ousting then-president/dictator Ferdinand Marcos and (arguably)
creating a new democracy. The “L” which many of the Aquino followers
held as a symbol for this struggle stood for “laban” or fight.

I closed out the last two lines of the poem with quick cuts to an image
of June Jordan laughing, followed by a previously seen image of a group of women
including Angela Davis before dissolving back into a portrait of June
Jordan in a somber pose. After this last image, I used fade to black , on
to a text which says “There is no chance we will fall apart / There is no
chance / there are no parts,” a quote from a book of love poems called
Haruko ( Jordan, 1994) name="_ftnref1">(2) Like the beginning statement “Love is about a
revolution / And revolution is about love,” I made it a point to come full
circle with the use of another text reflecting Jordan’s impact on me as a
woman, teacher, and poet. By integrating various types of texts (see Table 3), I
had created multiple meanings with the potential to be interpreted as biographical,
allegorical, paradoxical, or even satirical by different audiences.

Table 3: Types of Texts in DV Poetry

Symbolically and aesthetically, the concluding written text leaves much for
contemplation. The screen fades to black and provides audience members a
moment to reflect. Soon, the credits roll, first with a dedication “In Memory
of June Jordan (1936-2002),” followed by a series of production
acknowledgements. The instrumental ballad that is still playing in the background
begins to fade out as the screen gradually fades to black .
“14 Reasons Why” is conceptually mastered and edited at this point.

From the polished edited timeline, the next step for me was to export the entire
project into a digital movie, a post-production step that required just as much
attention, if not more. The transfer from one format (i.e. computer program) to
another (i.e. digital video tape or compact disc) was a not simple process and, as
I experienced several times, could end in disaster (i.e. erasing or distorting a
final project). Finally and most importantly, all folders containing various files
in the computer needed to be saved, copied, and transferred onto at least two
compact discs. These post-production activities were essential for memory on the
computers’ hard drives to become available for future DUSTY participants.

In December of 2002, “14 Reasons Why” was one of several video poems
featured during the DUSTY/DV Poetry public showing at the Black Box Theater in
Oakland. Several of my students, friends, and colleagues attended. Afterwards, a
few of them expressed to me their interest in learning how to create a DV poem as
one means to tell their own stories, a chance to reveal things that had been unsaid
and unrecognized. So I invited them to come and visit my class.

(2 href="#_ftnref1">) In the video the date in the quote is 1993 rather than 1994.
I did not realize until after production that I had erred, but did not make the
necessary change. It is an example of one (among many) minor glitches that I would
return to and polish had I more time. It is also an example of what I would call
imperfections in the in production process that denote the complexities of and call
the need for more careful post-production work. It is obvious that the finished
product isn’t so finished; as an artist, I (re)visit this work and typically
identify places for improvement—similar to (re)reading one’s own
writing and having the urge to change things as if still in the revision phase of
the work.

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Teaching Self, Teaching Others

I am grateful for the time I spent on this project. Though image searching and
editing were grueling, time-consuming steps, I have gained invaluable skills that I
now use to do other similar projects, on my own as well as with others. DV Poetry
and the processes involved in making a video poem are far from simple, as many
might like to think including me in the beginning. It takes plenty of preparation
and a high level of commitment. Goodman (2003) who chronicles his work with youth
and video production in New York cannot agree more.

Today I am one of the facilitators and instructors of DV Poetry for middle to
high school- aged youth. After situating my own experience in my own learning
process, I understand further what it means to be a teacher with more insight,
depth, and innovative ideas. I not only took the chance to create a personal
project in a time of grief, but also gained important lessons about self, identity,
and reciprocity. Indeed, the project was a “second chance” opportunity
to settle lost moments; yet, on a larger scale it also provided me with a vision
that far extends into other moments in time. My use of present day struggles to
parallel past ones in the DV poem helped to shape an “agentive self”
that was a reflection of my personal experiences, social environment, and knowledge
of history. The DV poem itself became an “agentive tool”—one
which, I believe, speaks and is critical of existing social inequalities and
demands the need for social action. Moreover, in line with Rosenblatt’s
(1978) transactional theory between texts and readers, what I attempted to capture
was the result of the transaction(s) between the various texts in and of my life
and the ways in which I read, interpreted, and, thus, represented them in the DV
poem. This transaction with me as the artist and producer at the center has the
potential to form the basis of the many other transactions, which I would hope
readers (viewers) of my text will have on their own and ultimately create other
texts. Simply put, it is what I would call a “transaction of
transactions” that with its intertextual propensities could inform and guide
the production of other DV poems. Understanding this in the process of creating
“14 reasons” has had an impact on the way I view myself as a learner
and teacher. At DUSTY, I am a better teacher because I know from first-hand
experience what this kind of production calls for. More importantly, I am a hopeful
teacher believing that, in spite of corporate media’s commercial appeal,
media systems and technologies can still offer endless possibilities for young
people. Though seemingly on a rather small scale, DUSTY provides that needed space
for participants to situate their vision, creativity, and experience into a
personal project while simultaneously tackling macro-level issues.

DV Poetry is no easy task. To produce a written poem, add voice, select music,
search for images, edit a video, and export a movie require much preparation. The
processes involve a handful of skills including storytelling, storyboarding,
multi-tasking, and manipulating computer programs, while requiring creative
flexibility, patience, and most of all interactive social exchanges with others. DV
Poetry as an activity manifests the conceptualization of literacy practices
situated within a very complex and multi-layered literacy event. As a pedagogical
“third space,” DV Poetry allows for hybrid literacies to intertwine
various types of texts, resources, and experiences (Gutiérrez et al., 1997).
Drawing on the personal, social, and historical, what I have illustrated through my
own learning is that the likes of DV Poetry offer a way to look within as well as
develop an “agentive self.” Though far from exemplary, my experience
demonstrates the many possibilities of using this particular medium to invigorate
curriculum and further incite students’ interest in their own learning. It is
one approach to teaching and learning that other classroom teachers and
after-school instructors can and should take advantage of. More importantly, as I
have shown, it is one approach that leaves plenty of room for experimentation, that
is, the creativity in the context of not only producing texts, but also finding
innovative ways for teachers and students to explore together their abilities to
think, read, and write (broadly speaking) more critically.

From my own observations and experiences at DUSTY, I admit that the variety of
tasks and skills which DV Poetry demands of its students—to access and
explore in the production of a quality video poem—can be quite nu


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