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Popular Literacies and the All Children: Rethinking Literacy Development for Contemporary Childhoods
The assumption that diverse children come to school without literacy ignores the resources they bring from popular media texts.

Popular Literacies and the All Children

Anne Haas Dyson

Im mad and I followed the drinking god. Denise (age 6, first grade)

Six-year-old Denise is potentially one of those all children. Often written with a graphic wink, all is sometimes knowingly underlined or righteously capitalized, and it is almost always syntactically linked or semantically associated with that other category, the different childrennot middle class and not white. In literacy education, these concerns about the all children are often undergirded by what might be called the nothing assumption the decision to make no assumption

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Copyright 2003 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

that children have any relevant knowledge. The all children are in urgent need, so the argument goes, of a tightly scripted, linear, and step-by-step monitored march through proper language awareness, mastery of letters, control of sound/ symbol connections, and on up the literacy ladder. In response, I offer an account of school literacy development for all children. This account does not depend on the assumption of nothing, nor on an idealized, printcentered childhood. Rather, it

remixed this material as they entered into official school literacy. In this article, I use a metaphoric drinking god to capture the influence that childrens nonacademic textual experiences have on their entry into school literacy. That influence may leave us as educators without the proper frame of reference for building on childrens efforts. Moreover, any desires we may have for pedagogical uniformity cannot withstand the power of the drinking god. That god of all learning children messes up any unitary pathway, renders

with the all children in mind. The design rests on the assumption that the all children bring nothing, as suggested by the following quotes, the first from the programs Grade 1 Teachers Guide (Adams, Bereiter, Hirshberg, Anderson, & Bernier, 2000):
As society becomes more and more diverse and classrooms become accessible to more and more children with special needs, instruction must be designed to ensure that all [sic] students have access to the best instruction and the highest quality materials and are subject to the same high expectations. . . . Diverse and individual needs are met by varying the time and intensity [but not the means] of instruction. (p. 12F)
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In literacy education, these concerns about the all children are often undergirded by what might be called the nothing assumptionthe decision to make no assumption that children have any relevant knowledge.
depends on the assumption that children will always bring relevant resources to school literacy. That is, there will always be local manifestations of true childhood universals an openness to appealing symbols (sounds, images, ways of talking), and a playfulness with this everyday symbolic stuff. This account of literacy development is based on an ethnographic study of Denise and her close school friends, all first graders in an urban public school (Dyson, 2003). I studied their childhood culture, documenting their cultural practicestheir talk, singing, collaborative playand the symbolic stuff with which they played. The children had a wealth of textual toys, of free symbolic stuff to play with. They found those toys in the words and images of parents, teachers, teenagers, and other kids, as well as on radios, TVs, videos, and other everyday forms of communication. The children not only manipulated or played with their everyday symbolic stuff in the unofficial or peer world, they stretched, reorganized, and visible the multiple communicative experiences that may intersect with literacy learning, and bequeaths to each child, in the company of others, the right to enter school literacy grounded in the familiar practices of their own childhoods. Before explaining this approach for all children, I need to do some stage-setting by discussing the all and nothing assumption in early literacy pedagogy and its relationship to the desire for uniformity and order. I formally introduce the metaphoric drinking god and briefly describe my study methods. Then I allow the childrenand the drinking godcenter stage. To clarify my view, I link it to that of Marie Clay, an important scholar who took an early stand against uniformity.

The second quote comes from the programs Web site (SRA, 2000, p. 1):
[The program] is designed such that no assumptions are made about students prior knowledge; each skill is systematically and explicitly taught in a logical progression, to enable understanding and mastery.

These quotes suggest that the nothing assumption for the all children is not about sociocultural variation in childrens experiences with literacy, in their ways of communicating with adults and peers, or in the nature of their everyday worlds and, thus, their everyday knowledge (Genishi, 2002; McNaughton, 2003; Nieto, 1999). The nothing assumption rests on a concern that diverse children are more apt to come to school without literacy skills. The nothing assumption recalls the concern in the sixties for the culturally disadvantaged. In their professional text on teaching disadvantaged children, Bereiter and Englemann (1966) portray teaching reading skills as a means of overcoming the assumed linguistic barrenness (the nothingness) of childrens everyday lives. The

ALL AND NOTHING: PUTTING CHILDHOODS IN PEDAGOGICAL ORDER

In my former California locale, districts have been turning to stateapproved reading programs designed

potentially unruly disadvantaged children are contrasted with the culturally privileged ones. The latter childrens assumed languagerich life allows them to come to school, if not with everything, at least with some awareness of words and the alphabetic principle.
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This contrast between the ideal children developing literacy and the racialized and classed other children lacking resources has assumed new prominence. Government-backed literacy science has made teaching the all children a matter of equity (Schemo, 2002). Organize manageable bits of literacy knowledge into a sequenced curriculum and teach it directly to orderly childrenand do so as early as possible. No time to waste. Ah, but the rub is the children themselves, whose sociality is among the worst enemies to what we call teaching (Ashton-Warner, 1963, p. 103). School brings many children together in one space. And those children develop social bonds and playful practices linked to, but not controlled by, adults. In other words, children have minds and social agendas of their own. And, as I illustrate below, it is the metaphoric drinking god that wields power over the children and leads them to play the very devil with orthodox method (AshtonWarner, 1963, p. 103).

the southern U.S. to freedom in Canada. The lesson centered on slides of Lawrences paintings of Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who led many others to freedom. During the lesson, Rita, the teacher, discussed with the children Lawrences use of the North Star, which guided the people, and, also the stars location in the constellation called the Drinking Gourd or, alternatively, the Big Dipper. Over many days to come, Rita and the children would sing and study the words to Pete Seegers version of Follow the Drinking Gourd. Now that the lesson is over, Denise and her peers are to show what theyve learned. And so, sitting side-by-side, Denise and her good friend and fake sister Vanessa, both African American, draw their versions of a muscular Harriet Tubman chopping wood, tears streaming down her face. As she draws, Denise becomes Harriet Tubman, writing Denise Thats me on her drawn image and, then, adding the statement, Im mad and I followed the drinking god.

With this vignette, I formally introduce the drinking god factorthe factor that becomes evident when one assumes that children bring, not nothing, but frames of reference (i.e., familiar practices and old symbolic stuff ) to make sense of new content, discursive forms, and symbolic tools. As they participate in the official school task of composing what I learned, Denise and Vanessa blend resources from varied

Popular Literacies and the All Children

It is a serious error to assume that any child brings nothing to new experiences. Indeed, all reputable developmental accounts assume that nothing comes from nothing.
experiences, including those they shared as collaborative child players, churchgoers, participants in popular culture, and attentive young students. They know, for example, that music is a symbol of affiliation, not only for them (Whats that song [we both know]?), but also for Harriet Tubman and other conductors on the Underground Railroad (Let my people go). And they know that people speak different varieties of Englishpeoples voices have different rhythms and rhymes, different ways of drawing out or cutting short sounds; such language variation is an official topic in sound/symbol lessons and in literary ones in their room, but not a topic in the first-grade programs for the all children, who are to speak in uniform ways. Given the power of the drinking god, it is a serious error to assume that any child brings nothing to new experiences. Indeed, all rep-

The drinking god. Mmmm. Usually a quiet observer, I intervene and ask Denise if she means the drinking gourd. Its drinking god, she says definitively. Vanessa agrees. Some people say god, some say gourd. Duh! Undaunted, I persist:
Dyson: Denise: Dyson: Denise: What does this god do? [very politely] He makes the star for them to follow . . . Why did Harriet Tubman follow the drinking god? She was a slave.

THE DRINKING GOD: THE UNRULY SPIRIT OF CHILDHOOD LEARNING

I first met the drinking god when he was invoked by Denise as she worked on a task in her firstgrade classroom:
Denise has just participated in a class lesson blending a study of the artist Jacob Lawrence with a study of the underground railroadthat network of pathways and dwellings through which slaves escaped from

Vanessa: If she sung a song, her friends would love her. Whats that song? [recollecting a tune]

And soon an R & B song learned from the radio arises from Denise and Vanessas table.

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utable developmental accounts assume that nothing comes from nothing. Any learning must come from something, from some experiential base that supports participation and sense-making in the designated learning tasks (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969; Vygotsky, 1962). For Denise and her friends, that base comes from their everyday lives in a complex social landscape like that theorized by Bakhtin (1981, 1986). Their landscape is filled with interrelated communication practices, involving different kinds of symbol systems (e.g., written language, drawing, music), different technologies (e.g., video, radio, animation), and different ideologies or ideas about how the world works. The children experience these practices as kinds of voices (Hanks, 1996)the voices, say, of radio deejays and stars, sitcom characters, and oft-heard poets, of sports announcers, preachers, teachers, and teenagers, and on and on. So, in my research project, I studied how children used their experiences participating in all these practices for their own childhood pleasures and for school learning. That is, I studied the recontextualization processes (Bauman & Briggs, 1990; Miller & Goodnow, 1995) through which they borrowed material from these practices, translated it across and reorganized it within childhood play practices, and, also, official school literacy ones.

open-ended activities, such as writing workshop, where the children wrote and drew relatively freely, followed by class sharing, and more teacher-directed ones, such as assigned tasks in study units, in which children wrote and drew as part of social studies and science learning. I spent an academic year in Ritas room studying the childhood culture enacted by a small group of first graders, all African American, who called themselves the brothers and the sistersand they meant that quite literally; they pretended to have a common Mama. The children were Denise, Vanessa, Marcel, Wenona, Noah, and Lakeisha. I observed and audiotaped them on the playground and in the classroom, particularly during composing activities, and I also interviewed their parents. As the work progressed, I realized how much the popular media informed the childrens world. From their experiences with the media, children formed interpretive framesor understandings of typical voice types or genres. And within those varied kinds of voices, they found much play material, including conceptual content; models of textual structures and elements; and a pool of potential characters, plots, and themes. Studying how the children used this material in official (or schoolgoverned) as well as unofficial (or child-governed) worlds resulted in

Literacy Development as Remix

Fittingly enough, as I tried to articulate an account of literacy development grounded in the projects particulars, I turned to a major source of the childrens textual toyship hop. Hip hop, in fact, is about making something out of nothing. I heard that explanation more than once from hip hop practitioners, whom I consulted in the course of this project. As they explained, rap was born during a time when public funds for education and for youth programs were slashed and public distrust of youth was heightened. So, informed by cultural traditions that stretch back through time, urban youth took their used cultural stuff and old technologies and transformed them into flexible modes of expression (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2001; Smitherman, 2000). They made a drum out of a turntable, a style of dancing out of karate kicks, a storyteller out of a chanter. They created something, if not out of nothing, at least out of some things that might not originally have been seen as innovative, creative, and generative. This notion of material that might be seen as nothing becoming something seemed to capture the essence of my project. I observed the children sampling symbolic material from the communicative practicesthe varied kinds of voicesthat filled the landscape of their everyday lives. Analogous to rap artists, the children

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STUDYING A CHILDHOOD CULTURE: THE PROJECT DATA SET

The childrens school was an urban elementary school in the East San Francisco Bay. Denises teacher, Rita, was highly experienced, having begun teaching in the London primary schools of the 60s. Ritas curriculum included both

I observed the children sampling symbolic material from the communicative practicesthe varied kinds of voicesthat filled the landscape of their everyday lives.
this account of literacy development. Because of space constraints, I focus on a key event from Marcels case, although I allow Denise some time in the spotlight as well. appropriated and adapted this material as they constructed their unofficial and playful practices. Moreover, like producers who remix musical compositions, they adapted that old

textual stuff to the new beats required in official literacy spaces. The childrens sampling and remixingtheir recontextualization processesopened up literacy pathways to their resources from diverse communicative practices. I do my own textual sampling to illustrate these processes as enacted in childrens unofficial and official worlds.
Denise:

do you like to singand your friends? (rapping) We want to be a star / In the store We want to be on stage / For our cage.

Wenona: In Los Angelesno Marcel: Its in Los Angeles. [affirming]

Wenona: Its in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. Marcel: I forgot. We gotta play Pittsburgh.

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Sampling Unofficial Textual Play

Like her fake siblings, Denise found many of her textual toys on the Bay Areas leading hip hop radio station. In her recess radio play, she and her fake siblings deconstructed that station into a set of diverse and interrelated kinds of practices, of voices.

For Marcel, sports media was a favored source of textual play materials. He and Wenona and Noah enacted a relational world of coaches, teammates, and rivals. The children had a demanding schedule: their coach was based both in Minnesota (where he had a coed hockey team, the Mighty Ducks, based on a movie of the same name) and in Texas (Dallas, Texas, to be exact, where he coached the Cowboys, a professional football team). The childrens sports play, like radio play, involved a range of interrelated practices that included, first, planning agendas that allowed time for practice sessions, travel to varied destinations (often across state lines), babysitting for relatives, and homework; second, narrating highlights of previous games, featuring themselves; and, third, evaluating the relative merits of teams. And, like professional sports broadcasters, Marcel and his friends made much use of adverbs of time and place. Listen as Marcel and Wenona discuss upcoming events:
Wenona and Marcel are sitting together during a morning work period. They are doing their work in the official world, but they are also doing their work in the unofficial world (i.e., planning their upcoming schedule): Wenona: You know Im thinking about going over to [a relatives] house today but we gotta play games. I forgot. We playing hockey. Today we playing hockey. Marcel: Cause we gotta play hockey. [agreeing]

Wenona: In Pittsburgh. Marcel: Pittsburgh is real weak.

Popular Literacies and the All Children

In Pittsburgh, said Wenona, emphasizing the preposition in and, thereby, the distinction between a city location and a city team. In a similar way, the children sometimes played Minnesota (pause) in Minnesota or Dallas (pause) in Dallas. In the childrens play, Dallas always won, but that was not the case when Marcel engaged in sports chat with other boys. He, Samuel, and Zephenia often repeated football scores to each other after an opening Did you see the game? And, in that practice, Dallas could lose. Like Denise, then, Marcels playful practices evidenced his borrowing and revoicing of symbolic material from a landscape of possibilities. He flexibly manipulated textual material (including scores) in different ways, depending on the social situation he was in.

The childrens sampling and remixingtheir recontextualization processesopened up literacy pathways to their resources from diverse communicative practices.
For example, in radio play, Denise did not simply sing. She became a kind of singera rapper, a soul singer. Moreover, she could situate singers in relationship to others (e.g., deejays, audience members) and to varied interrelated radio practices (song announcing, radio interviews). She had a sense of the landscape of practicesof voicesupon which she was playing; and she could flexibly manipulate words, phrasing, intonation, even speaking turns as the situation required. Listen to a bit of playground radio play, as Denise interviews herself:
Denise: (assuming a polite, interested tone) Denise. Tell us, why

Official Textual Play

In official school activities, too, children borrowed from their landscape of possibilities. Their remixing processes displayed the drinking gods powerthe power of these unexpected frames of referenceto create both order and havoc. On the one hand, these frames guided childrens agency, their decisionmaking about how to manipulate the elements of the written system its letters, words, syntaxto accomplish some end. On the other hand, they posed very useful symbolic, social, and ideological challenges as they moved across symbol systems

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and social worlds with different expectations and conventions.

dren orchestrate their knowledge and know-how to construct basic

I aim to describe how, energized and guided by the desire for social participation, children use old resources from familiar practices and adapt them to enter into new ones.
Before I illustrate this official remixing with an example from Marcel, I engage in a little textual play of my own. I link this remix approach to an earlier nonlinear view of literacy development, that of Marie Clay. In this way, I hope to clarify what the remix view may add to the repertoire of ways of understanding child literacy. My textual play: Situating Clays kaleidoscopic reshuffle. Beginning most notably with What Did I Write? in 1975, Clay has detailed a constructivist view of written language development. In this view, children must take control over the written medium, learning to direct and monitor its use in producing and receiving messages. Unlike many other developmental views emerging in the seventies, Clay did not reduce early composing to spelling nor did she posit stages of learning. Based on close observation of the ways of writing for children entering New Zealand schools, Clay analyzed how children engage with written language as a complex system, at first in approximate, specific, and what seem to be primitive ways and later with considerable skill (p. 19). Childrens first efforts may suggest the idiosyncratic and varied bits of knowledge that they have accumulated from diverse experiences with print in families and communities; among such knowledge may be letter forms, written names, perhaps a sense of how certain kinds of print sound when read. When they respond to school literacy tasks, chilconcepts about printthe nature of signs, page arrangement, directionality, voice/print match. Flexibility in child response is important because rigid early learning may keep children from adapting their understandings as new literacy tasks are faced. Clay (1975) notes, Chance experiences may produce new insights at any time (p. 7). Hence, her kaleidoscopic reshufflethe reworking of childrens understandings of a complex, multilayered system (1998). I entered the child literacy conversation at a different time and with different conceptual toolsmore sociolinguistic, sociocultural, and folkloric than psychological, like Clays. Given those tools, I aim to situate Clays cognitive reshuffle within a social notion of communicative practices. That is, I aim to describe how, energized and guided by the desire for social participation, children use old resources from familiar practices and adapt them to enter into new ones. Thus, their pathways into school literacy are found in the converging and diverging trajectories of practices. The ideal developmental outcome of these processes is not only flexibility and adaptability with written conventions but also with symbol systems and with social conventions. To illustrate, I turn to a key event from Marcels case. Marcel re-mapping his words and worlds. Marcel is sitting by Lakeisha on one side and a parent volunteer, Cindy, on the other. Lakeisha is his fake sister and un-

derstands that he plays for a winning teamDallas. Indeed, Marcel tells her that he is planning to write about Dallas. Through his text, Marcel will enact a familiar practicereporting his teams triumphs. His planned text is thus situated at least partially in the childhood world he shares with Lakeisha.
Marcel: (to Lakeisha) I know what I want to write about. The Dallas Cowboys [beat] Carolina. They [Dallas] lost. Did you watch the game?

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Cindy:

The adult Cindy corrects the child Marcel. She is not, after all, a relative; she views Marcel as a little boy who has the facts about Dallass fate in the football playoffs wrong. She initiates a different practicea Didyou-watch-the-game? practice. Marcel can participate in this practice as well:
Marcel: Theyre out! Out of the playoffs? Theyre like the 49ers now.

Cindy:

Marcel changes his plans. He still starts with The Dallas, then stops, gets the classroom states map for spelling help, and begins to copy Minnesota, whom Dallas had beaten the previous week (see Figure 1).
Marcel: (to the table, generally, as he looks at the map) Its got all the states right here. (to himself as he writes Minnesota) Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota . . . to the city of dreams. Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, to the city of dreams. (pause) Dallas, Texas. Dallas, Texas. Dallas, Texas. (to the table) This has all the states, right here. I have all the states, right over here . . . Im writing Dallas against Minnesota.

Marcel then recites Dallas, Texas several more times before writing in Texas.
Marcel: It [the score]it was, 15no 15 to 48. (to Cindy) This says, Dallas against Minnesota. In Texas. 15 to 48.

Marcel:
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Marcel has recalled the exact score. He does come to school, after all, quite prepared to participate in the Did-you-watch-the-game? practice. He simply had not been planning to participate in that one. And, in fact, he now slips back into the fictionalized world of team players and fake siblings that he shares with Lakeisha.
Marcel: (to Lakeisha) I be home tomorrow, only me and Wenona will be home late. Cause me and Wenona got practice . . . I still got to go to football practice . . . Wenona got cheerleading.

score-reporting practice of televised sports. And that practice is itself situated within the frame of the childrens unofficial sports play. (Dallas won!) That unofficial frame converges with the official one of writing workshop. This converging of different social practices, with their different uses of symbolic media, yields challengespotential learning and teaching opportunities including all those discussed by Clay and more. To begin, you can hear and see the converging of practices when Marcel translates (or remixes) the audiovisual display of sports scores to a paper and pencil display. As Clay might anticipate, Marcels event reveals how children have to sort out the nature, and allowable flexibility, of different kinds of signs, among them letters, numbers, and images. But Marcel is not grappling with the set of written conventionsthe conventions of these converging practices differ. In school, Marcel is expected to write using letter graphics, but, as a sports announcer, Marcel should place team emblems by their names (the Vikings horn, the Cowboys star). Marcels event also highlights Clays concepts of directionality and page arrangement. But Marcels efforts here are not the result of a child en-

gaging solely with print but, again, of a child recontextualizing written language across practices. Marcel does not follow the left-to-right conventions of a prose report; he arranges team names and scores vertically, as on a TV screen. The converging of different practices is notable too in the complex interplay of what is written and what is read (i.e., voice/print match). To hear that interplay, you have to know that, in the official writing workshop, Rita emphasized that the children should monitor how their spoken and written words match. And you must know too that the sports announcers practice is to read a more elaborate text than the one visually displayed. With those practice details as background information, you can hear Marcel as he shifts voices, precariously positioned between practices. He initially writes The before he writes Dallas, a prose reporting style since he has a sentence planned, The Dallas Cowboys beat Carolina. After the parent, Cindy, corrects him, Marcel writes a screen-like display of team names and scores to accurately report the previous weeks play in which Dallas did beat Minnesota. Between his columns of team names are the words in Texas, which would not be written on such a display, but which an announcer might read. Marcel himself adopts an announcer voice as he rereads his text to the adult, Dallas against Minnesota. In Texas. 15 to 48. In so doing, he reads the unwritten against, but not the written the. Beyond these symbolic and discursive challenges, there are conceptual ones. Marcel grapples with the distinction between cities and states, a distinction not made in team names (e.g., the Minnesota Vikings, the Dallas Cowboys). This [map] has all the states, right here, he an-

Popular Literacies and the All Children

Marcel and Wenona will both be home with Mama and Lakeisha tomorrowbut theyll be late. The Cowboys may be out of the playoffs, but Marcels still got to go to football practice, and Wenonas still got to go to cheerleading. In this complexly situated event, you can hear Marcel sample from a

Figure 1. Marcels sports report.

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nounces. Entering into the mapreading practice, Marcels articulated knowledge emerges as the geographic knowledge embedded in football team names is disrupted and reorganized. In a previous event, Marcel had tried unsuccessfully to find Oakland [for the Oakland Raiders] on the states map, which led to a discussion about the map with Rita. Then, as if all those challenges were not enough, Marcel confronts the situated reality of truth. What is true in the brothers and sisters world (that Dallas always wins) is not necessarily true in the real Bay Area world. And, finally, there are

agency in deciding whats relevant to literacy tasks. Similar analyses were done for all the brothers and sisters (Dyson, 2003) whose cases are filled with converging and diverging practices. The practicesthe typified voices of hip hop radio, cartoon shows, and popular films all figuredin unexpected but ultimately productive waysinto the written language trajectories of individual children, brothers and sisters, growing up in these voicefilled times.

they lived (e.g., families, schools, media events, not to mention the brothers and sisters world) mitigated against unilateral control of childrens learning by any one institution. And this was good, as it led to their productive grappling with the symbolic, social, and ideological complexities of written texts and social worlds. This developmental point of view, with its openness to childrens sampling and remixing, should render anemic those views that attempt to fragment written language into a string of skills or to narrowly define the home and community experiences that can contribute to school learning (Reyes & Halcon, 2001). The message for teaching inherent in this view is deceptively straightforwardteachers must be able to recognize childrens resources, to see where they are coming from, so that they can establish the common ground necessary to help children differentiate and gain control over a wealth of symbolic tools and communicative practices. To develop such common ground, teachers like Rita work toward a productive interplay of unofficial and official worlds. For example, through open-ended composing periods, educators can learn about childrens textual toys and the themes that appeal to them. And in classroom forums in which children present their work, teachers can help children name and compare how varied kinds of texts look and sound and, moreover, how and why and even if they appeal to all of them as classroom participants (Dyson, 1993, 1997; Marsh & Millard, 2000). As children bring unexpected practices, symbolic materials, and technological tools into the official school world, the curriculum itself should broaden and

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Learning to read, or learning anything, for that matter, is actually a process of complex variation.
the gender ideologies embedded in all football-related events, ideologies that could become salient when they entered the official world through whole-class sharing, as they did when Rita led a class discussion about the truth of a childs assertion that only boys like football. In sum, when Marcel translated cultural material (e.g., names, informational displays, kinds of texts, text sequencing conventions) across the boundaries of different practices, the symbolic, social, and ideological knowledge embedded in those practices could be disrupted and brought into reflective awareness. Certainly a childhood practice built with the textual toys of media sports shows is not on anyones list of critical early literacy experiences. But there it was anyway, evidence of the drinking god factor and of Marcels, and childrens,

TOWARD DEVELOPMENTAL ACCOUNTS FOR ALL (UNMARKED) CHILDREN

Institutions serving the all children are being urged to reduce literacy to the basicsand to reduce early childhoods themselves to a time for reading readiness. And yet, as Anderson-Levitt (1996) comments,
the premise that learning takes place in stages along a narrow linear path [assumes that . . . ] one could learn more only by progressing further along that path instead of by wandering off the track. This is the same flawed idea that Stephen Jay Gould found at the core of intelligence measures. . . . He called it the fallacy of ranking . . . our propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale (p. 24).

Learning to read, or learning anything, for that matter, is actually a process of complex variation. Wandering off the track was something the brothers and sisters often did without any intention to do so. They simply did what all learners dothey called upon the drinking god, that is, upon familiar frames of reference and well-known materials, to help them enter into new possibilities. The very diversity of organized social spaces within which

become more responsive to childrens worlds. But teachers themselves need working conditions that support responsive, interactive teaching, not scripted encounters for the all children (Weiner, 2000). Given my constraints and possibilities as an observer of children, I have tried to respond to the current political push for such encounters by bringing word of the drinking god. It is faith

in that metaphoric godin the notion that actions are guided by intentions grounded in experience that keeps me, and others, from assuming nothing but, rather, staying alert to the resources of all children (no winking intended). In other words: Follow the drinking god. Authors Note
This article is a variant of the full essay entitled The Drinking God Factor: A

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Writing Development Remix for All Children (Dyson, 2002). The research report on which it is based is available in The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write: Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures (Dyson, 2003). The research itself was supported through the generosity of the Spencer Foundation, although the findings and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily shared by that organization. This article was first presented as a talk at The Ohio State University and at the United Kingdom Reading Association International

Popular Literacies and the All Children

Web Sightings: Pop Culture Sites for Teachers and Kids

Teachers can gain insights about their students involvement with popular culture by exploring online resources. The following list of resources is presented in two sections. Section one includes Web sites that provide teachers with articles, commentaries, and lesson plans on popular culture trends and issues. These sites target middle school and secondary issues, but are relevant to elementary teachers. Section two, which includes examples of popular culture sites that kids use on their own, may allow teachers to better understand the content, forms, and activities that students find appealing. Do you want to learn more about media literacy and popular culture? Media Literacy Clearinghouse <http://www.med.sc.edu/medialit> A site designed for K12 educators to learn about media literacy and its integration into the classroom as well as how to make students more aware of the role of media in their lives. Center for Media Education <http://www.cme.org/> This site offers timely information on children and the media through publications and reports that are available online. Two sections on this site are the Teachers Field Guide to the New Digital Landscape and Teen Digital Culture. Do you want to visit popular culture sites that kids use on their own? Barbie.com <http://www.barbie.com/> Visitors to this site are greeted by an interactive, animated, audio-enabled screen that shows Barbie sitting on a couch, a ringing phone, and a computer on a desk. Each of the icons connects to games, activities, and resources, such as making a painting, decorating a Barbie birthday cake, going shopping, and learning about babysitting. Dragon Ball Z <http://www.dragonballz.com/> Entering this site is like entering a different universe. An index provides information on characters (including heroes and villains), feature movies, videos, merchandizing, fan clubs, DVD/Video, Fan talent, TV schedule, Live Action Movie, Sagas, news, and an online pollall related to the anime phenomenon. Other pop culture sites of interest to children http://www.scholastic.com/captainunderpants/ home.htm http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/home.as http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/game/index. html?fromtout=games_static http://www.nintendo.com/index.jsp http://www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/spidey/ http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/games/home.jsp http://www.mtv.com Linda D. Labbo

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Convention in Chester, UK, July 2002. I thank my hard-working research assistant, Soyoung Lee.

Clay, M. (1998). By different paths to common outcomes. York, ME: Stenhouse. Dyson, A. Haas. (1993). Social worlds of children learning to write in an urban primary school. New York: Teachers College Press. Dyson, A. Haas. (1997). Writing superheroes: Contemporary childhood, popular culture, and classroom literacy. New York: Teachers College Press. Dyson, A. Haas. (2002). The drinking god factor: A writing development remix for all children. Written Communication, 19, 454577. Dyson, A. Haas. (2003). The brothers and sisters learn to write: Popular literacies in childhood and school cultures. New York: Teachers College Press. Genishi, C. (2002). Young English language learners: Resourceful in the classroom. Young Children, 57 (4), 6672. Hanks, W. F. (1996). Language and communicative practices. Boulder, CO: Westview. Marsh, J., & Millard, E. (2000). Literacy and popular culture. London: Sage. McNaughton, S. (2003). Meeting of minds. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media. Miller, P., & Goodnow, J. J. (1995). Cultural practices: Toward an integration of culture and development. In J. J. Goodnow, P. J. Miller, & F. Kessel (Eds.), Cultural practices as contexts for development, No. 67: New directions in child development (pp. 516). San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes: Creating multicultural learning communities. New York: Teachers College Press. Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychology of the child. New York: Basic Books.

Reyes, M. de la Luz, & Halcon, J. J. (Eds.). (2001). The best for our children: Critical perspectives on literacy for Latino students. New York: Teachers College Press. Schemo, D. J. (2002, January 9). Education bill urges new emphasis on phonics as method for teaching reading. The New York Times, p. A-16. Smitherman, G. (2000). The chain remain the same: Communicative practices in the hip hop nation. In G. Smitherman, Talkin that talk (pp. 268286). London: Routledge. SRA/McGraw Hill. (2000). Open Court reading: Grade levels K6 [Online]. Retrieved August 11, 2003, from http://www. sra-4kids.com/product_info/ocr Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Weiner, L. (2000). Research in the 90s: Implications for urban teacher preparation. Review of Educational Research, 70, 369406. Yerba Buena Center. (2001). Hip hop nation: A teachers guide. San Francisco: Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts.
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References
Adams, M., Bereiter, C., Hirshberg, J., Anderson, V., & Bernier, S. A. (2000). Framework for effective teaching: Grade 1 teachers guide, part A, for Open Court Reading 2000 basal series. DeSoto, TX: SRA/McGraw-Hill. Anderson-Levitt, K. M. (1996). Behind schedule: Batch-produced children in French and U.S. classrooms. In B. A. Levinson, D. E. Foley, & D. C. Holland (Eds.), The cultural production of the educated person: Critical ethnographies of schooling and local practice (pp. 5778). Albany: State University of New York Press. Ashton-Warner, S. (1963). Teacher. New York: Simon & Schuster. Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.), The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. Bakhtin (pp. 254422). Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bauman, R., & Briggs, C. (1990). Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Anthropological Review, 19, 5988. Bereiter, C., & Engelmann, S. (1966). Teaching disadvantaged children in the preschool. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Clay, M. (1975). What did I write? Auckland: Heinemann.

Popular Literacies and the All Children

Author Biography
Anne Haas Dyson is professor of education at Michigan State University and a student of the social lives and literacy learning of school children.

C ALL

FOR

2004 O UTSTANDING E DUCATOR

IN THE

E NGLISH L ANGUAGE A RTS A WARD

contributed a body of work that is compatible with the mission of NCTE You may obtain a Nomination Form by calling NCTE Headquarters at 1-800-369-6283, ext. 3612 or visiting the NCTE Web site at www.ncte.org/elem/awards/educator/. Nomination Forms must be postmarked by November 1, 2003. Results will be announced in Spring 2004, and the award winner will be honored during the Elementary Section Get-Together at the 2004 Annual Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Established in 1995 by the Elementary Section Steering Committee, this prestigious award is given annually to a distinguished national or international educator who has made major contributions to the field of language arts in elementary education. The recipient of this award must have: dramatically influenced literacy classroom practice made ongoing contributions to the field of literacy obtained national and/or international influence in literacy teaching and learning