Jabari Mahiri from the UC Berkeley School of Education will present a talk titled "Digital Teachers: Engaging New Literacies in Urban Schools" as part of the Annenberg Research Park Colloquium series 11:00-12:00 on Tuesday November 18 at Kerckhoff Hall.
This presentation discusses research from an 18 month university/public school collaboration and intervention that begin in the summer preceding and continued through the 2007 - 08 academic school year. The research took place in the challenging setting of an urban, continuation high school in Northern California. The the main goal of this research was to develop and document an approach to teacher professional development that integrated effective principles of teaching with successful strategies for digitally mediating student learning. Teachers were supported and guided in developing perspectives and skills needed to take greater advantage of new media and new information sources in conjunction with relevant connections to youth experiences and interests.
Most of the students at the school read and write well below grade level and their overall academic skills vary greatly. New students arrive nearly every week of the academic year, and their demographic make-up is 85% African American and 15% Latino. They are also 65% male, and 100% qualify for free lunch. Thirty-four percent qualify for special education services. Essentially, the school provided something of a laboratory in which the collaborators could re-think teaching perspectives and re-design teaching practices. Discussion of the findings from the digital and virtual explorations of these teachers and students also has significant implications for wider school settings. Consequently, this work provides initial indications of how the structure and culture of schools might be changed, in part through incorporating appropriate technology, to revitalize learning and make it relevant to this century's challenges.
Jabari Mahiri is an Associate Professor in UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education and chair of its Language and Literacy, Society and Culture area. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University; a Visiting Scholar at the University of Minnesota, Michigan State University, and the University of Iowa; and a Senior Fellow at Brown University in the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Currently, he is a Senior Scholar for the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education and the Principal Investigator of T E A C H (Technology Equity And Culture High-schools), a research initiative that collaborates with urban school and community partners on educational equity and academic achievement as well as literacy and learning in non-school settings. Dr. Mahiri received UC Berkeley's Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence in 2007, and in 2008 he received the American Educational Research Association's (Division G) Outstanding Mentorship Award.
Dr. Mahiri is author of Shooting for Excellence: African American and Youth Culture in New Century Schools (1998), and editor of What They Don't Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth (2004). He has two books that are forthcoming in 2009: A Second Life for Learning in Schools and When Scholarship Athletes become Academic Scholars. Additionally, he authored a children's book, The Day They Stole the Letter J (1989). Before coming to UC Berkeley, Dr. Mahiri helped found and chaired the inaugural board of directors of an independent school in Chicago, the New Concept Development Center, that has been in existence for 35 years. He was also a credentialed English teacher in Chicago public high schools for seven years.
