There was another reason why I was enamoured of Michie’s book, ‘Holler if you hear me’, and this reason has more to do with the thesis that I am writing than anything else. I was impressed with the way that Michie structured his text. He begins by having a rich, detailed, narrative piece about a particular incident or event in his classroom. The first one is the courtroom about teachers eating. The second is about the school camp. But interleaved between these narrative pieces are students recounts of the events, and also their lives. These recounts kind of round out the event, as well as exploring how Michie has – or hasn’t – affected the students in question. They’re pretty full on – showing the full depth of poverty and the interference caused by drugs.
Now, Justice Citizens is not on a similar scale as Michie’s book, but it does have a number of interesting points of correspondence. As part of my attempt to foreground the rich nature of my own work, I am planning on having 2 extended narrative pieces in the thesis – one from my own perspective about Justice Citizens and one from the perspective of teachers teaching civics and citizenship education.
Having read Michie’s book, I think I can begin drafting out how it might look. His text gave me an idea of what each section might look like; so I’ve decided to follow his lead, and I am going to select 5 different incidents from the project, and try to describe them in really rich detail, so that my readers understand a little of what it was like in the classroom. These incidents might be arranged in a couple of different ways, but I like the idea of referring them as parts of a film – e.g. opening credits. I haven’t selected the events as yet, but I will get to it, I’m sure.
As for the teacher perspectives, again, I think this might respond to a similar approach. I reckon that I can use conversations with teachers as a really effective way to demonstrate what is happening in each section. More on this later.