CUTS IN A PRISM: A MULTI-GENRE EXPLORATION OF GROWTH AS WRITER, TEACHER AND HUMAN
ABSTRACT Warren, Wendy Zagray, M.A., Summer 2012 Integrated Arts and Education Cuts in a Prism: A Multi-Genre Exploration of Growth as Writer, Teacher and Human Chairperson: Dr. Jillian Campana A meditation about how writing can be used as markers of personal and professional growth, this project brings together poems, articles, essays and reflections written over the past four years, woven together with threads of commentary. Taken together, they form a narrative of maturation, as the author’s world opens to more consciously include the perspectives of others. Based on a metaphor of a prism, where each cut represents a given perspective based on social position, the author explores the importance of story as means of viewing the world through a different lens. From positions of social advantage, such as the author’s own identity as a white, middle class, heterosexual woman of European heritage, people are sometimes unable to see that other cuts in the glass even exist. Through these pieces of writing, newly combined into story, the author, a teacher of twenty-five years, looks back at the learning trajectory leading to where she now stands. From an entry point spurred by Montana’s educational mandate known as Indian Education for All, through experiences including intense exploration into Holocaust Education, she emerges to find herself in a new position. As a result of this new learning, in the coming years, her work will come to include teaching at a college level, supporting pre-service teachers in thinking deeply about how issues of race and class might impact the lives and learning of their students. She will also join a research group studying resiliency strategies of young people who have come through difficult circumstances. Through living, learning, writing and reflecting, issues of social justice, both cultural and economic, have risen to the forefront of her work, and this work has now embedded itself into the fabric of her life.
arts, education, indian education for all, multi-genre, poetry, slam poetry, social justice
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