Irania Macias Patterson

1. Irania Macias Patterson Irania is a multicultural children specialist and library consultant in the area of literature and performing arts. She provides programs for bilingual at-risk audiences using bibliotherapy techniques Panel 2: Literacy Programming: Forming Partnerships and Sharing Resources January 30, 2015

2. The key to create great stories of impact: MultilingualArtistic Literary Strategies

3. Connecting cultures and languages

4. Partnerships • Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools • University of North Carolina • The Mint Museum • Pre schools • Shamrock Senior Center • Latin American Coalition

6. The Mama Goose Training Explore how theatre and the arts can be used as tools of inter-cultural communication when serving diverse audiences

7. GLOBAL ARTS & LITERACY IN ACTION • A hands-on workshop for teachers and librarians that explores why and how it is important to approach early learning with shared attention to the arts, language/literacy and cultural identity.  This workshop is designed to equip teachers and librarians for hosting the UNC-Charlotte Theatre Department's touring production of MAMÁ GOOSE, a bilingual production for ages 3-7, at their various locations with ideas and materials for both preparation and extension before and after the show.  

8. Identify artistic and bilingual resources to broaden and deepen their approaches to teaching and programming in today’s global worldTruth 1: Literacy is about meaningful communication, including reading and writing. Truth 2: I can only start where I am. (However, I better be moving forward.) Truth #3“The average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity.” –Robert Brault

9. Reflection • What literacy strategies were used in that activity? • What arts strategies? • What multi-lingual strategies? • Spaces of overlap? Scaffolding?

10. Emerging Research Threads Translating Childhoods An examination and documentation of the authorial creation process Enacting Childhoods: Staging Literacy Capturing diverse actor perspectives on their collective and individual experience The Spaces We Make: the Liberatory Nature of the Margins Looking at how educational and dramaturgical orientations, though marginalized—or perhaps because marginalized—within theatre help foster plural, inclusive, flexible, multi-voiced, liberatory artistic spaces. Embodying Cultural Borders Centering on the process of including, developing, shaping and questioning hybridized movement and choreography, describing the process of pluralized movement development used in this production.

11. Children’s Picture Books On Stage Picking up on the multiple perspectives on the role of the original book in the stage production process, this line of inquiry aims to tease out and examine the multi-modal literacies at work in practical art making for playwrights, directors, designers, musicians, actors, dramaturgs and choreographers/movement directors. Mamá Goose Goes to Work: Early Childhood Teacher-Librarian Professional Development and Action Research Initiative Based on yearlong work (2013-14) in providing responsively-designed professional development, mentorship, peer-networking and on-site support for teacher and librarian volunteer actions researchers, this line of inquiry seeks to document and describe the multi-voiced effort • 1. Translating Childhoods (Spencer Salas, Irania Patterson, Beth Murray with input from Alma Flor Ada and Isabel Campoy)-An examination and documentation of: (1) the process of adapting/writing a bilingual play with music and movement engaging to multi- and monolingual young audiences, based on a collection of traditional children’s rhymes in the voices of the play and book authors. (2) the actual and potential parallels as well as contradictions between this particular artistic, socially contextualized composition process and research informing multi-modal literacy contexts in education. • 2. Enacting Childhoods: Staging Literacy (Spencer Salas, Donna Dragon, Jean Marie Higgins, Irania Patterson, Beth Murray)-With the five diverse cast members and their student stage manager at the center of this thread, we examine the intersection of artistry, identity and diversity in the “New Latino South” as it manifests and morphs across a rehearsal and performance process, individually and collectively. These interview and focus group questions help shape the discussion. Others will emerge in process. : What drew you to the project? What hesitations did you have? What strengths did you bring? What challenges? What did you learn? What did you teach to others in the cast ? What is the connection between the character you played and you, as a grown-up and as a child? Describe language in your life. Describe language in this play. What was your first recollection of “difference” as a child? What does “inclusion” mean to you? Visually represent your relationship with a grandmother or Abuela in your own life. Compare and contrast that with your relationship through a visual representation of Abuela and your character in this play. Describe three key, vivid moments for you during the tour. What did the children teach you? What, do you hope you gave to or taught the children? What worked about our process? What would you change for next time? • 3. The Spaces We Make: the Liberatory Nature of the Margins (Jean Marie Higgins, Beth Murray) The word “margin” emerged a lot during this process as we focused in on the cultural and socio-political aspects of the margins in creating this work. However, we began to gain insights into the marginalization of education and dramaturgy within the larger field of theatre. Without equating marginalized disciplines to the far more epic marginalization experienced along racial, ethnic and cultural veins, this research thread examines the how educational and dramaturgical orientations, though marginalized—or perhaps because marginalized—within theatre help foster plural, inclusive, flexible, multi-voiced, liberatory artistic spaces. It also examines some perennial patterns, obstacles and frames that perpetuate and co-opt marginalization and victimhood orientations. • 4. Embodying Cultural Borders (Donna Dragon, Niche Faulkner, Brenda Giraldo, Jeanmarie Higgins?, Beth Murray?) Centering on the process of including, developing, shaping and questioning hybridized movement and choreography, this line of inquiry aims to describe the process of pluralized movement development used in this production. The very first step in our creative process was to use movement to explore the ideas articulated in the introduction to the Mamá Goose book in which the truly hybridized global nature of Latin American heritage is spelled out. We had two community teaching artists, one of Columbian descent with an expertise in a range of Latin American traditional dance forms and the other a teacher who considers herself a perpetual apprentice of West African dance forms. This inquiry, looks to tell the story of how movement holds, tells, teaches and challenges story for young audiences and those who seek to engage them in multi-modal literacy experiences. • 5. Abuela’s Basket: Cultural and Gender Identity Airing on the Laundry Line—For the Kids to See! (Jeanmarie Higgins) A clothesline, eventually turned magical spider web, is a central piece for this production’s minimal set. The first action of the play is Abuela entering with an overflowing laundry basket. The story centers around a group of four young cousins and their grandmother playing with, around and under this symbol of maternal domesticity. This line of inquiry problematizes the idea of a clothesline on a stage employing a range of critical and historical lenses. What happens when we give ourselves the problem of including a clothesline, but working against its oft connoted cultural, racial and gender stereotypes? What ways do we devise to enter the challenge? What are the layers of hegemonic perpetuation of over-simplified identities at play? Why and how is this of particular importance in a show for audiences under the age of eight? • 6. Children’s Picture Books On Stage (Beth Murray) Picking up on the multiple perspectives on the role of the original book in the stage production process, this line of inquiry aims to tease out and examine the multi-modal literacies at work in practical art making for playwrights, directors, designers, musicians, actors, dramaturgs and choreographers/movement directors. This becomes a case in a larger historical study examining the array of ways children’s picture books are adapted for the stage and the connections and disconnections this practical artistic work may have with 21st century multi-modal literacies. • 7. Mamá Goose Goes to Work: Early Childhood Teacher-Librarian Professional Development and Action Research Initiative (Irania Patterson, Beth Murray, Donna Dragon, Spencer Salas) Based on yearlong work (2013-14) in providing responsively-designed professional development, mentorship, peer-networking and on-site support for teacher and librarian volunteer actions researchers, this line of inquiry seeks to document and describe the multi-voiced effort. In the initial pre-show professional development session as well as in the follow-up materials, we laid the groundwork for the following concepts that were vital to the play, but also highly transferrable to the early childhood classroom and library program. • Build on nursery & traditional rhymes. • Multiply modes through the arts. • Scaffold. • Share. • Play. • Honor identity. • Help learners solve and symbolize. • This inquiry will begin there, but go where the multilingual and mono-lingual teachers and librarians need it to go to turn ideas in to actions. • 8. Helping EL Teachers to Applied Theatre: Adult English Learners and the Performance of Language (Spencer Salas, Beth Murray)-An extension of the models and practices used in the play and professional development framed to serve instructors of Adult English Language Learners. Applying theatre techniques in a biliteracy environment is shown to help scaffold language use in a situated and genuine way. However novices to this approach need guidance in getting started with the right applied theatre techniques to prompt generative talk, not performance. This work also grows from a thread of inquiry documenting the rich and varied connections immigrant adults make to traditional children’s rhymes, stories, games, songs and riddles evidenced in survey results and observation, particularly among immigrant parents. So many adult immigrant audience members commented on connecting with “forgotten” rhymes, stories and games of their homeland in a surprising way. This is a piece about pedagogy, but also about cultural preservation of the oral tradition through child’s play linked to memory, identity and ideas of home. • 9. Audience Response and Script Revision (Irania Patterson, Jeanmarie Higgins, Beth Murray)-Pooling the collective responses to the production in both survey and participant observation data, we are on a continual quest to question and improve the script and frame it in a dramaturgy of potential for continued growth.

12. Storytelling for ESL children Language Techniques used: TPR Natural Approach Codeswitching

13. ESL Storytime Handbook • ESL Story Time: Introduction • About the Program: • English as a Second Language (ESL) Story Time is a 11-session program that allows staff to offer ESL Story Times for children from birth to age five and their families. Over the course of the nine sessions, program attendees will learn many concepts including colors, letters, numbers, and shapes. At the end of the series, program attendees will have added at least 27 concepts to their English-language repertoire. Know that these programs are flexible, and you can adjust them based on your audience. • This program is based on principles from Every Child Ready to Read II, a curriculum that teaches parents and caregivers five activities (reading, singing, writing, playing, and talking) that will help their young children get ready to learn how to read in kindergarten. This program also incorporates the following techniques to assist children in “discovering the connection between new language and its meaning without translation:” Natural Approach, Total Physical Response, and Code Switching. The goals of each outline are selected from the Early Childhood Development Domains. • All English Language Learners are welcome to participate, but the ESL Story Time program’s target audience is children from birth to age five and their parents and/or caregivers

14. AdivinaAdivinador:Crossing generations Seniors passing their voices

15. Amigos de la Biblioteca

16. Dia