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Full-Text Articles in Education

Conversations About Death That Are Provoked By Literature, Cara E. Furman Nov 2020

Conversations About Death That Are Provoked By Literature, Cara E. Furman

Occasional Paper Series

How do teachers have conversations about death with young children? In this paper, I focus specifically on how teachers might support unplanned conversations that were provoked by children’s literature. In analyzing a series of events in which such conversations occurred, I argue that to do so required going against three conventions in literacy education: close reading, staying on task, and appropriate school talk. I then speak to how teacher educators might prepare teachers for these unexpected but important digressions.


Art: The Language We Use When There Is Nothing We Can Say, Peter London Sep 2020

Art: The Language We Use When There Is Nothing We Can Say, Peter London

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

When matters of ultimate concern are upon us, the language with which we ordinarily negotiate life reveals its limitations. At these pivotal moments of life, we spontaneously yield to tears or laughter or song or silence. At these high moments reason no longer feels sufficient, is too slow, too pedantic. In these moments we shift inexorably from walking to dancing, from speaking to singing. We rely upon song to console us, we believe in song to hold us steady, to carry us past or closer. We rely on art, these seemingly flimsy things to save us.