Students Interview Ozark Residents for Close Look at Literacy

Photo by Heidi Stambuck

Allie Berger, left, and Tad Moore are two of the students who interviewed residents of the Ozarks.

When their professor gave them an assignment to interview people for an oral history project about literacy, University of Arkansas students also learned about themselves.

Sean Connors' class of 19 students, most majoring in English at the University of Arkansas, interviewed lifelong residents of the Arkansas Ozarks about the "sponsors of literacy" in their lives. They used a framework developed by Deborah Brandt, professor emerita at University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to Brandt, sponsors of literacy are "any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, or model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way."

One of Connors' students described the concept as people and entities who influence acquisition of literacy – from the government to your grandmother.

Many of the students in Connors' "Literacy in America" course plan to become secondary or college teachers. Connors is an assistant professor of English education in the College of Education and Health Professions, and he is interested in how popular representations of literacy and education that the media imposes on different parts of the country can cloud one's ability to appreciate people's rich literacy practices. He wanted his students to gain a deeper understanding of literacy, its different levels and purposes, the myths that surround it, how it affects people's lives - all to inform the teaching they will do someday.

Connors also wanted the students to consider how the place where people live can shape their sense of the value and purpose of literacy. To do so, he asked them to interview residents of the Arkansas Ozarks with the intention of examining how social and economic changes conspired to shape their literacy over time. The students created video essays that Connors plans to publish on a Google map so that they can be viewed online.

First, Connors brought in Susan Young, an expert in oral history who works as outreach coordinator for the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. The students' projects will be housed at the museum for others to use in research projects. Young offered the students techniques on conducting an effective oral interview, telling them to give their undivided attention to their subject and audio-record the interview so they took only minimal notes to remember a word or concept that may be unfamiliar.

"At the museum, we appreciate the value of oral histories, especially in the case where the focus is on everyday folks," Young said. "A lot of times, museums focus on movers and shakers, but we pride ourselves on telling stories of everyday people. That's why the project appealed to us."

Recorded oral histories allow a researcher to study the actual voice of the subject as well as the content of the interview, to learn about dialects and speech patterns, and to experience first-person accounts without filters, Young said.

"More than one of the students said the project made them want to go interview their own grandparents," she said. "When I heard that, I thought my work here is done. Success is getting the generations talking, getting young adults interested in their own story, their history. That's a great achievement."

Allie Berger of Bentonville interviewed Frank Maestri, a native of Tontitown in his 80s who now lives in Springdale. Hearing about his life illustrated for Berger how economic and social factors play a role in literacy development. Maestri, as the second youngest of nine children, had several advantages because he didn't have to go to work as early as his older siblings. He lived in a relatively prosperous part of the state and had access to parochial schools with high-quality teachers.

As they talked, Berger and Maestri identified his family, the Catholic Church, his boss in the Navy, and later his professors at the University of Arkansas as the sponsors of his literacy. He earned a business degree and eventually worked as an executive for a trucking company.

"Before I took the class, I thought being able to read and write was for school," Berger said. "I found out all different reasons for literacy and I learned there is a stereotype about not being literate if you can't write in an academic way. Mr. Maestri said every day of our lives is a learning process, whether we are in school or not."

She considered how the philanthropic work of the Walton family that founded Walmart Stores Inc. could represent a literacy sponsor for her because Bentonville public schools benefited from that philanthropy.

Tad Moore of Rogers interviewed Marcille Lawrence, a resident of Harrison in her 60s, who had attended a small college in Virginia, then the U of A before she left to get married and raise her family. She finished a degree in accounting at the College of the Ozarks.

The transcribing process was tedious, Berger and Moore said, taking 18 hours to transcribe an interview of about an hour and a half. But, they both saw the benefit of it, realizing that they learned more after listening to the tape than they remembered from the interview.

"Something I noticed when going over the interview was how much Mrs. Lawrence loves education," Moore said. "Learning was important to her family. Her grandmother on her mother's side went to college and her father graduated from the University of Arkansas. She excelled in high school and was one of the top four students in the graduating class. The other three finished college and got their degrees so she felt she needed to do it, too."

Her sponsors of literacy were her family, particularly her father, who sent any of the children who asked a question to get the World Book encyclopedia and look up the answer.

"She remembered that distinctly," Moore said. "Her father was playing a sponsorship role, modeling language literacy, showing the kids to use reading to find information."

In addition to her teachers, the local American Legion represented a literacy sponsor for Lawrence, who won an essay contest sponsored by the organization, which gave her prize money for her writing, he said.

"I learned that literacy is a bigger concept than just reading and writing skills," Moore said. "It has many levels of sponsorship that at times can get confusing, but when you begin to look into a person's account of their experiences with literacy, you start to identify those different sponsors. Studying that part of a person's life can give you an appreciation for that specific person's literacy uses, the place they are from, and the overall complexity of literacy. It's a really interesting study that I think all can learn from."