More than semantics: Reflections on "feminist"/"woman-positive" practices in a literacy classroom

Paula Davies and Mary Ann Tierney
College of New Caledonia, Prince George, BC

For the past year we have been examining, discussing, analyzing, and keeping journals about our teaching practice. This process has been exciting, enervating, and painful. In this article we'd like to share some of that process.

In the spring of 1991, The Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women (CCLOW) released the initial report of a two phase research project called Discovering the strength of our voices: Women and literacy program (Lloyd, 1991a). Phase one of the research looked into women's experiences in literacy programs. As they said in their kit, at the end of this research one thing seemed clear - if literacy work is done in a way that is good for women, then it will have to be done differently than it is now. This result led to phase two of the research centring around the question of what actually happens when women in a literacy program decide to do something woman-positive, something specifically for women. Interested women literacy workers were invited to participate in this phase of the research. As literacy instructors and feminists, we thought this would be an interesting project to be involved in and so we signed up.

We are two women who teach at a local community college. We have worked in the field of English as a Second Language, Upgrading, and Adult Literacy for many years. The idea of doing something specifically for women students appealed to us both. We had already planned to team teach a weekly writing group for literacy level students and saw this as a wonderful opportunity to actively combine two topics that we care about very much - literacy and women's issues.

In retrospect we did not think out very clearly how we would do something specifically for women within this literacy writing group. Our initial plan for the research was to observe and record what happened in our classroom, in our institution, and in our relationships with colleagues when we openly brought an attitude that was positive to women into this literacy class. Because both of us share similar teaching philosophies and feminist viewpoints, we assumed this project would be fun, interesting, and beneficial to us and our students. What we didn't realize was how WE would become the focus of the research!

Paula Davies and Mary Ann Tierney