Dr. Frank Serafini talks to us about looking closely, the complexity of learning, making knowledge visible, and expanding our view of reading and writing. Frank is known for his work in the areas of visual literacy, multimodal analysis, and children’s literature. Dr. Serafini is a Professor of literacy education and children's literature in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University.
To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2021, Mar. 16). A conversation with Frank Serafini. (Season 1, No. 18) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/237A-F225-96D4-3C2D-7DB3-A
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Dr. Frank Serafini talks to us about looking closely, the complexity of learning, making knowledge visible, and expanding our view of reading and writing. Frank is known for his work in the areas of visual literacy, multimodal analysis, and children’s literature. Dr. Serafini is a Professor of literacy education and children's literature in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University.
To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2021, Mar. 16). A conversation with Frank Serafini. (Season 1, No. 18) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/237A-F225-96D4-3C2D-7DB3-A
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Education Research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom Caffeine is here to help. Each week, I invite a top education researcher to sit down and talk with teachers about what they have learned from years of study. This week, Dr. Frank Serafini talks to us about looking closely, the complexities of learning, making knowledge visible, and expanding our view of reading and writing. Frank is known for his work in the areas of visual literacy, multimodal analysis and children's literature. Dr. Serafini is a professor of literacy education and children's literature in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode. So pour a cup of your favorite morning drink and join me your host, Lindsay Persohn for Classroom Caffeine, research to energize your teaching practice. Frank, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show.
Frank Serafini:Thank you. It's really lovely to be here.
Lindsay Persohn:So Frank, from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?
Frank Serafini:Sure, I, when you sent the questions, I tried to think of a couple things that really had stayed with me and one was from very early in my career as a classroom teacher, and one was recently as a researcher. So the first one, I was teaching fourth grade, in inner city here in Phoenix, and I had been teaching for, during my first year. And this one kid in my, little boy in my class painted a black flower. And I had just completed my first child psychology class. So we all knew that black flower, meant danger. So I went to this, like colleges that are school and I asked about the black flower. And she said, Did you ask him why he painted it? I was like, No, that's a good idea. I'll go ask. And he said, Mr. Serafini, all the other paints were dried up. And so you know, that really, that was about almost 30 years ago, and I've never forgotten it that sometimes we need to leave the textbooks behind and just talk to kids, you know, and listen to them. And if I had done that, rather than jumping to all kinds of, you know, a little bit of knowledge is dangerous, I guess, right? And so it made me even when I was working with student teachers to try to explain to them stop watching me and watch the kids, you know, because it's not everything I'm doing, hopefully is based on what I see when I'm teaching, right? It's looking for that that light bulb, it's looking for that confusion is looking for them. And, and we spend too much time videotaping teachers and not videotaping the kids, right. And so that was the first thing that really, I've never forgot that. And I actually got an email from this young man just a couple years ago and it was funny that he had sent me a note saying hello. So that was one. The second one is part of a research project that my wife Lindsay was doing. She videotaped this young girl reading a Mo Willems book. And I've used a couple minute clip from her research as a part of many presentations lately, because we forget how incredibly complex young children making sense of a picture book really is. And I think that a lot of the stuff coming out these days is trying to reduce a really complex process to something simpler, so that it can be sold or it can be politically advocated for or something. And I know that as educators, we are not very good at the sound bite, but it's probably because we really tried to find the complexity and nuance in what we're doing. So watching this young girl move her hands and inflect her voice just reading one of the Gerald and Piggie books was absolutely astonishing. And I've watched this video many, many, many times trying to understand all the different things that she used from visual images and gesture and speech bubble and intonation and typography to make sense of a picture book that we would consider simple right? And they're not simple. And Mo Willems, Dr. Seuss these things that have sort of this immediate simplicity are actually quite interesting. And watch how children make sense of them. So that has stayed with me for quite a while lately that how we make sense of the world and text would be part of the world text, image, design is a lot more complex than we think. And so I'm constantly trying to, you know, talk with, yeah decoding is important, but that's necessary, but insufficient for understanding kids making sense of text. And so we often focus on those things that we're used to teaching that we're comfortable with teaching. But we're not getting at what really kids are really doing when they're trying to make sense of the world. Those two things that have really hung with me and informed a lot of my research in my work.
Lindsay Persohn:The idea of observing kids, and talking to them, and getting to know them comes up again, and again, in the conversations.
Frank Serafini:You know, when I first was a doc student, I worked with Yetta Goodman, I took a couple classes down at U of A and with a, and her concept of kid watching, you know, in reading and, and it really, we've forgotten this, that it's not just about making tick marks on the running record. We have to watch kids, and we have to watch what they're trying to do. And I, you know, I'm always reminded of going back to Frank Smith, who a lot of people have tried to discredit this work. But you know, and that one book is a ways to make reteaching reading hard and one hard way to make it easy is pay attention to the kid and try to help him do what he's trying to do. You know, and there's a lot of a lot of real intelligence and his way of thinking about that.
Lindsay Persohn:I think that in the real world of schools these days, it can be so hard to know what you're watching or what to focus on. Because I think that, you know, so many mandates and pressures, they tend to take our attention away from what's most important, which is the kids right in front of us. And perhaps getting back to that idea of just what are kids doing? How are they making sense of this? How are they understanding it? And how can I help them get to the next level of understanding? I think that that's just a real key to what, to unlocking potential in, in children.
Frank Serafini:Yeah, you know, the other thing is, is that, the more we know, the more we see, right? And so, you know, I always use it as an example, if you go on a hike out in the woods with a botanist, and a geologist, and a photographer, and you talk to him as you're walking along. It's like you're on three different hikes. Because they're, they see things so radically different. And the difference between when I first was teaching my first year, and what I see now when I walked into a classroom or work with a kid reading, you know, and so when we have when we talk to parents, parents, like, well, he either got the word right, or got the word wrong. And we're talking about graphophonic cueing systems and all this stuff. And we have to try to explain why what we're seeing and how we're talking about it is important for helping new teachers try to understand what they're seeing, because they see only what they understand. And as your understanding of the reading process expands, you see more, you know,
Lindsay Persohn:And I think that nuanced kind of observation really does take not only so much energy and focus, but like you said, it really does take some background knowledge to know what you're looking at.
Frank Serafini:Yeah.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah.
Frank Serafini:That's one of the it's one of the perks of being a classroom based researcher at times is that you're not trying to deal with 30 kids and make sure the lesson goes off, you can we can sit in the back and watch. And that is a real privileged position to be in. And of course, we can't expect teachers to take the kind of notes that we take or conduct interviews, like we're able to do, but a little bit of it goes a long way. And so I think sometimes some of the qualitative research techniques that we use, can be used in the teacher research sort of model, where they are taking notes and watching kids at times. And, of course, that requires us helping them get off the front of the classroom for a bit of the day, which is, you know, something that's important, too.
Lindsay Persohn:So, Frank, what would you like teachers to know about your research?
Frank Serafini:My research? Oh, well, I guess the first thing I've been I've been harping on this for 25 years is picture books are really cool. And they're really complex, and they're for kids of all ages. And so I've been trying to, you know, beat that one to death. You know, I couldn't imagine trying to teach elementary school reading without picture books, you know, just jumping into novels. And so of course, that that sort of, you know, passion for picture books led me into all of my research and multi modality and all the work that I'm doing now in trying to understand it. I'm in the middle of a research project I'm looking at pop up books in Arizona State University has a collection of almost 1000 pop up books, and I've been slowly purchasing a few when I get a little extra money and they're never in classrooms. because they fall apart really easily, you know, but they're really amazing, multimodal, you know, objects. And so I've been that's, that's a new project for next fall. And as I finish up other writing stuff. The other thing is, like we mentioned this notion of complexity that you know that it's a lot more complicated than we think. I think I mentioned that reading is more than decoding, we need teachers to know that and that's not my research necessarily but it's a lot of people who I respect research. The other thing I think that people need to understand this really important about my research and other research is that the divide between school based reading and writing and outside of school based reading and writing keeps growing more and more, that what kids can do in the name of literacy outside the classroom keeps expanding. And yet, we still keep doing the same things in schools, you know. And so, there was a time when a picture book was a nice bridge between school based literacy and the literacy of the home and picture books or, you know, maybe picture book apps might be closer to making this bridge now. But the the literacies, that children take up outside of the school are often very different than what's in school. And as, as what they're doing keeps getting more and more different, the divide keeps growing. I think that what they do in school becomes more and more irrelevant at times. And so I don't want what we do in school to be irrelevant, you know, I mean, the five paragraph essay has been irrelevant for a long time, right? And it morphed into the argumentative essay, which is still five paragraphs, and it's still irrelevant. We don't write argumentative essays, we write things that are argumentative in nature, like letters to the editor, and these kinds of things. And so my, my belief in that is, if you can't hold it up, you're you can't teach it, you know. Stop talking about reading these sort of umbrella topics and talking about what is it you're actually reading and writing, because that's what that you're teaching has to be more specific, in that sense. And so this schools, you know, I wrote a book called Reading Workshop 2.0, going back about five or six years now. I still haven't figured out if I wrote it too soon, or too late. You know, it seems like some teachers look at this stuff and know it cold. And some teachers don't know what an aggregator and a search engine is, right. And so there's no sweet spot. I think there's a lot of diversity in the digital world that we need to, you know, bring together. I still think that, that the words Reading and Writing need to be kind of expanded to reading viewing and writing composing because we don't just read words, and we don't just write words. And so what does it mean to represent ideas? And what does it mean to communicate ideas? And what does it mean to interpret ideas? These are bigger, bigger sort of processes that involve both language, sound, video, image, design, than I think I think working in that bigger plane is a better way to think about young kids reading and writing.
Lindsay Persohn:Well, I think this idea of connecting what happens in school with what happens in the rest of kids lives is so very important. But I think that it can often feel like a major obstacle, you know, how do we get there? How do we get from what we know? And what is handed to us to something that feels more animated and real world? And, you know, how do we get in fact, Jenifer Jasinksi Schneider, her podcast episode, she talks about multimodal composing. She's been studying children's use of film as a composing process for for years now. And I think that you know, that that's really, you know, what we're talking about here is seeing the writing process in other ways. Like you said, not just the five paragraph essay, not just the thing that's easy to handoff and handover, but maybe something that's a little messier.
Frank Serafini:Well, I think, look it, what we're trying to do is how can you help children make their learning visible? Right, make it help them understand what they know, and make it visible to the world. And if we narrow, the narrower we make that visibility, the five paragraph essay, the more kids will not do well. Right? And here's kids who are creating incredible Tic Tok videos and doing stuff at home with with an iPhone that we should give them credit for. Right? Why can't you explain how you solve the math problem through a video? Right? And so I think that there's a lot of things we need to know. Now don't don't don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'm not ready to throw up all the school curriculum. I'm really not. But I also Know that the school curriculum in 99% of the schools is organized and controlled by State Department's of Education. And they do it through the standards, you know, process, right. And our standards and most of the states who are lagging way behind Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, in terms of things other than reading and writing text. And I think we can take a real, you know, we'd be schooled by anybody in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, New Zealand, Austria, for what they're trying to do with around this term of, idea of being literate. And I think that we have a very conservative slant in some of the State Department's of Ed that really would help us move forward, instead of having arguments over content standards, or having some arguments over how we let kids make what they understand visible, you know. I think there'd be some recent changes there. That'd be important.
Lindsay Persohn:What you're saying Frank makes me think about how we get to some some sort of actualization of change. And it makes me think that, that sometimes starting small is, you know, sort of our entree into a new world. And I know in one of the classes I teach right now, we we went from having students write a reflection, you know, which ended up being a few sentences that were very superficial, often a summary, you know, of what they did you think I was there, too, I know what happened. And instead, we turn that assignment into a video. And in those video recordings, and they're there, just a minute or two, I know, I learned so much more about my students from that connection, especially right now. And so much of the world is online, I hear their voice, I see their face, we connect in a very different way from a traditional written kind of text. And I'm wondering if that may be one way that teachers can start in their own classrooms is to find that assignment that maybe kind of fizzles on paper. But if you give students an option to maybe they can animate it, right? Or maybe they can, you know, they act it out, or they record something in order to, like you said, make their learning visible. And I'm just wondering if that might be useful for teachers to start tomorrow, right. So I think these can be very daunting kinds of ideas to think that I'm going to change the way I teach, to meet the needs of a generation that I'm not a part of, you know. I think that that's a that's a big, that's a big leap. But maybe if we take it kind of one step at a time, and, as you say, look closely at what we can do a little bit differently, and how we can adjust that to think in a multimodal kind of way that's removed from a traditional print based kind of learning.
Frank Serafini:You know, I mean, for me, the straw man to knock down and burn up has always been the diorama. Right? You know, kids finish a book and film and makes them do a diarama. And why is it a bad thing? Well, I don't really care, it's not a good or bad thing other than unless you, you know, unless you love shoe boxes that have to die in order to build a diorama. The problem is, is not a very apt way to explain what you've learned. And it takes a lot of time, and you can't really communicate a lot of things through it, right. And so in the schools that are always worried about efficiency, you know, and trying to get things done, there's better ways to I can, I can talk with a kid for a minute and know 10 times more than he could ever fit into a diorama. So when we're trying to explain things, you know, I think one of the good another good example is the, the, the classic Elementary School writing assignment of explaining how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right? The reason no one ever wrote that is because no one would ever tried how to explain and make a peanut butter jelly sandwich by writing it down. It's just the only place that would ever happen in school. If you're ever going to show good how to make a peanut, you're going get peanut butter and jelly out some bread, and you're going to talk to him while you're doing right. And so that there's a simple solution. But the question isn't become it will we don't want kids to be able to write? No, of course not. I mean, I'm a writer, been a writer all my life. I want kids to be able to write, I want them to internalize the rhythms of the written words so they can write better. But I also know that when I did my picture book series, it wasn't writing that got at home for me. You know, there was a famous photographer named Lewis Hine, who said, If I could write really well, I wouldn't lug around this heavy camera with me all the time. And so I've taken that even further and saying, Well, that's because a camera does things that writing couldn't do, no matter how much writing you do. You know, picture isn't worth isn't worth 1000 words. It's not worth a million words, because it doesn't work like words. And so what I can do with a photo is different no matter how many words you give me if I want to show you what a sand dollar looks like, I'm going to show you a photo. I'm not going to write it out. And so there are affordances and limitations with every modality and we let need to let kids start choosing which one allows them to show you what they know or explain to you what they're trying to explain. In the most apt manner. It's, you know, it's the basis of Gunther Kress's work this concept of aptness, right? So why can't live it, kids? So I think what's the best way for you to show me? You understand this math problem? Let me see what they let's see what they do. It probably could be pretty interesting, you know, because if we just go to the other side, everyone has to make a video of that if you're doing the same thing as making them. You know, it's like, what's the best way for you to show me you understand this problem? Or this concept? Or gravity? You know, or whatever? Right? Yeah, I think that's there's a lot of room to explore there.
Lindsay Persohn:And I think that that's what you just said room to explore is really what was coming to mind as, as you were talking about that is that there is so much room for us to think differently about the way we have children present the knowledge they know. And I think that that giving options is such a useful tool that you know, and again, it's a way that a teacher can start small, right? If you're if you're not real sure about how all of these digital technologies work. Let's take two of them, right and explore them and give them give them to kids as options to respond.
Frank Serafini:Yeah, it's not just digital. I mean, we could make a lot of the changes I just suggested without even plugging anything in, you know, right,
Lindsay Persohn:Which is a great point. Yeah.
Frank Serafini:So I, you know, I remember back when we were teaching, I was in a multi age classroom, and we had put in a budget request for $800 worth of blocks for a fourth, fifth and sixth grade classroom, because our students were creating incredible constructions, around tinker toys and blocks on these things. And our board, our board, school board said, You're teaching fourth, fifth grade, you need you don't get, you don't get blocks, and fourth and fifth grade, you know, and we showed showed them pictures of some of the stuff that the kids were doing with it. And I said I was teaching architecture. I'm not teaching blocks. We're I'm teaching architectural design elements from Rome until the modern day. And they were kind of like, oh, yeah, go ahead. We'll get you the blocks.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah.
Frank Serafini:Why wasn't? Why didn't? Couldn't you have seen that from the beginning? So it was interesting to case we had to make for blocks at one time.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah, I think that's just not the way we think about using those kinds of materials. You weren't just teaching architecture, you are also teaching physics and geometry. Right?
Frank Serafini:Yeah, of course, of course.
Lindsay Persohn:yeah. So I think that that is another I mean, so this is an idea that you really couldn't get to if your students were writing about architecture, which just further proves your point that we need other ways of showing what we know.
Frank Serafini:Well look at it, you know, no one has ever dropped out of high school because their lack of ability to sculpt or photograph, you know, school is a pretty logo centric world. And if you can read and write text, you know, the good King's English, you're gonna do pretty well in school, and then that's fine. And I want kids be able to read and write obviously. But I also know that this this, this focus exclusively on some of this stuff, eliminates a lot of kids who are interested in other things, right. It also creates sort of harken back to the good old days. Now we've got standards based on penmanship. It's like, who, I'm sorry, who cares? You know, if you unless you're doing your Christmas cards or something, and you're worried about penmanship, then teach kids calligraphy, but penmanship standards. Come on. I'm worried about what kids say not about their penmenship, my my penmanship works fine, as long as I can read it. And if I can't read it, then I do need to practice more. I'm becoming a curmudgeon, my old days about some of this stuff.
Lindsay Persohn:Well, I think you know, you you do have so many experiences, locally and globally, I would say. And I think that that seeing from that perspective really does change the way you think about what kids need to know to compete globally. You know, if we want kids to have a real shot at becoming who they want to be, and and leading the life that they want, then I think you're right reading and writing text is not enough for tomorrow's world. It's really not even enough for today's world, but certainly not for you know careers that don't even exist yet that we're preparing kids for and, and things like that. We've got to give them tools for the future, not just tools for the past.
Frank Serafini:Yeah, you know, I've always kind of seen the world through the lens of a renaissance man kind of, kind of model. I think that the arts and food and painting and travel, I think it makes for a better life, but it doesn't it's not the only way to have a good life, you know, but I do know there are a lot of kids in a lot of programs who were only going to school because of the arts or or athletic programs that are being cut all the time, right. And so when we keep cutting everything down, I mean, I used to, I used to love going to science class in middle and high school because I thought so, and I was never really going to, you know, be a scientist in some sense, in some senses, I am right. But if they had cut all that out, I would have really struggled going to school. And but I do think that there still is a good case to be made for a liberal arts education and the arts part of liberal arts, you know. If nothing else, it may not get you a job, but it will certainly help you enjoy a well rounded enjoyable life,
Lindsay Persohn:I think, I think you make a really strong case for why the arts are important, and why.
Frank Serafini:Maybe a lot of people have for a long time from Maxine Greene on down.
Lindsay Persohn:Absolutely.
Frank Serafini:They keep ignoring it.
Lindsay Persohn:Right. We and I think that is, you know, obviously to the detriment of many, many children, that we are ignoring the, the creative side of kids and expecting them to just sort of robotically move through school. And, you know, a, do do what I say turn to this page. Now we're going here, you know, and, and as we were saying earlier, it doesn't necessarily serve kids well, in the long run. So Frank, given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message do you want teachers to hear?
Frank Serafini:I had to put on my hat and look into the crystal
Lindsay Persohn:A little bit. ball here a little bit.
Frank Serafini:You know, I did a talk about trying to teach in, in weird times, I think was the name of the talk, right. And, you know, one of the things I suggested first of all, communication is key, if you're not seeing your kids, you got to communicate with them. I'm teaching an online classes, you know, the fall was my first one ever. And it was about keeping in communication with students, I think this key. The other thing was was, you shouldn't be trying to adopt technology just to get through COVID. I think we should be adopting technology because it might serve in a hybrid platform, or it might help serve when we're back face to face. There are things that you know, I've taken up like for just a real simple example, Good Reads, you know, years ago, I started having my students do their responses to the their readings in the children's lit class on Goodreads rather than turning them into me. So they could friend each other, and they can see what each other was reading. And it made a big difference, I still have my you know, still, the Lit Log is still not my favorite assignment. But it made it more realistic when they could put it on for Good Reads and read each other's and things like that. So if I was going to, you know, in this in this weird time, trying to figure out some new technologies, they weren't ones, they wouldn't be ones that I just want to use to get through. It's ones like, well, this, you know, Flipgrid. Can I find ways to think about Flipgrid, or Slack or Yellow Pear or whatever, these things that we're using, you know, Pear Deck, there's so many names out, right? Is there something I could learn right now that I could continue to use after you go back to face to face to help with communication, help with students turning things in? If there are, I think I'd focus on those, you know. The second thing is, and this is what I've done, you know, I've talked with Dave Pearson, and some stuff with other groups. And, you know, everybody's getting beat up with the Science of Reading stuff right now. And I don't want to get political because I know, you know, everybody has a different view on the world. But mine is that we have to stop thinking that is the only science and the only way of reading, you know. It's like look at it's a particular brand of science as a particular brand of reading. And everyone who doesn't understand that needs to read beyond some of the large, loud voices coming from certain groups right now. There's a lot of science, there's a lot of research on reading that doesn't fit within this domain that is, should not be over looked, right. And every time they talk about the science of reading my work, you know, screams out, it's not just about reading words, right? And so when we talk about reading, we better expand both of those words, if we're going to be part of this conversation, know that there's a lot of science, and there's a lot of ways of thinking about reading, and they don't all fit into a nice little bubble in your answer test. And so, and I was that on the NAPE Council, part of the Reading NAPE for years, and they been, you know, Karen, and Karen Wixon, David Pearson have been great and trying to bring people in to help them rethink what does this look like in a multimodal digital world? And we've had great conversations unfortunately, we're kind of on hiatus now with changes in contract, I guess. But those they were really trying to push the envelope, you know, not not back up to 1950s version of reading. And so I think I think that that's, you know, teachers get caught up in this and they're not very good politically at times. But I think you need to remember that there's a lot of wisdom in Frank Smith, you know. I know he's a name that sends flares up for some people 'cause he's not scientific. He was a pretty bright guy. He said a lot of really smart things about kids and teaching and reading, you know. So was Jean Chall. And so is Dolores Durkin and so, you know, and the names go on. Nila Banton Smith, right? We have a lot of people who were pretty smart, Don Holdaway, you know. Some of these guys, we've forgotten this word. It's not all brand new. We didn't suddenly come up with this stuff. And I think we need to keep, make sure we keep the conversation as wide open as we can to help us move forward. It's not as simple as some organizations make it out to be.
Lindsay Persohn:I'm really struck by the way, we're having a very much a forward looking conversation, looking into the future of, you know, multimodal ways of knowing the world, but also rooting that in some really bright ideas from the past. And I, you know, I think that this just really speaks to kind of your body of work and the idea of looking closely, and considering the payoff and thinking about the auth, authenticity of the tasks that were engaged in. And and you know, what they mean.
Frank Serafini:It's been around since John Dewey, right, in the Chicago Lab school, he talked about this stuff, you know?
Lindsay Persohn:Right. Right. And, you know, I do feel like, like, teachers get pretty beat up with the latest and greatest all the time. And it does become the impossible task to keep up with all of that. But but, you know, I think this perspective that you provide of looking forward, while also staying rooted, and what we know from the past is, it's really grounding to me, it's it's a very comforting kind of feeling to think that just because the world is moving forward, that doesn't mean that I don't know anything about it, right? We we have to take what we know.
Frank Serafini:That's right. And we all stand on the shoulders of giants, you know, we and there's a lot of people who've who've done a lot of work that we can't dismiss, you know, there's this great, great quote by a guy named Hartmut Stöckl, I hope I'm pronouncing his name right, and talking about multi modality he called it the late discovery of the obvious. You know, I've used that as a closing comment more times than I care to admit, you know, but it's true. You know, it's not that there's suddenly multimodal texts that didn't exist. They've been going on since the hieroglyphics and past that. Right.
Lindsay Persohn:Cave paintings. Yeah
Frank Serafini:And the Book of Kells? Right? Exactly. It's just that we have some more theoretical and analytical frames now to talk about and to think about it and to understand it. And I think that's important that the perspectives moving forward, maybe looking at picture books, which have been around for 100 years. But we're looking at them in new ways, because kids are looking at them in new ways. And I think that the past is always prelude to the future. But there are certain things in the past that we just don't need to go back and argue again, we've argued them since Nation at Risk, we argued them when No Child Left Behind came out, we've are arguing again, and we're getting back into the to the he said, she said debates that aren't helpful for any child who's trying to learn to read and make sense of the world.
Lindsay Persohn:Right? Again, there's really no, there's no payoff in the argument.
Frank Serafini:Yeah, yeah. It's political and economic at times. And we can't forget that. It's not always just about research, not always just about academics, either.
Lindsay Persohn:And unfortunately, it's not always about kids, either.
Frank Serafini:No, unfortunately. Or teachers. You know, we've, you know, we've I can't tell you how many times in the last year and a half, I've just thank God wasn't in the classroom during this year, because it's been hard. I mean, I, even at the university, trying to teach a class through Zoom and stuff. It's hard. It's hard to do it well. And I felt like for about, you know, eight months now, I haven't done what I normally do pretty well, very well lately. And so I'm ready to get back to doing better. You know, I'm sure teachers are too.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah, it's comforting to hear you say that, Frank, because I think we've all had those moments where we think you know, I used to know how to do this, or I thought I'd mastered this and we're back to where you know, everything old is new again. And I have been looking for the last year almost now at at how we can do better at what we've always done and how do like you said how do we take the best of what this pandemic has dropped on us and and think how we how do we use this moving forward? How is this become part of our practice? What is the best of what we used to do and what is the best of what we know now in order to meet the needs of everyone we serve?
Frank Serafini:I think that's good advice. You know, Lindsay. I think it's, you know, I don't add many new tricks to My bag anymore. I'm old dog, I don't have a lot of new tricks, but I'm getting better at the old tricks. And you know, and if teachers want to get better at reading aloud, and now they have to do it find a way to read aloud and have a discussion better between Zoom and hybrid, then get better, but it's still reading aloud and having a discussion. But we got to get better at it. We don't need to add something new. We just got to get better at some of those things that we do, you know, right.
Lindsay Persohn:We're not necessarily adding fireworks, we're just making small adjustments.
Frank Serafini:No, I would bore, I would bore the hell out of a lot of people with what I'm actually doing. I just want kids to read, talk about what they're reading and do some composing. Yeah, it's it's nothing, you know, it just looks new. Sometimes.
Lindsay Persohn:It looks new. Right. It's a different package.
Frank Serafini:Yep.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah. Well, Frank, thank you so much for your time today.
Frank Serafini:Pleasure. I enjoyed our conversation. I hope that someone out there in the in the cyber world find something I said worthwhile.
Lindsay Persohn:I am sure they will. Thank you so much. And thank you also for your contributions to education. Dr. Frank Serafini, is known for his work in the areas of visual literacy, multimodal analysis and children's literature. Frank has been an elementary classroom teacher, a literacy specialist, a college professor, and an educational consultant for the past 25 years. During that time, Frank has published 10 professional development textbooks with Hienemann, Scholastic, Pearson, and Teachers College Press. He's currently working on a new book titled Beyond the Visual an Introduction to Researching Visual and Multimodal Phenomena with Teachers College Press. Frank has garnered numerous awards including the Distinguished Professor of Children's Literature from the International Literacy Association, and faculty teaching awards at both the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Arizona State University. He's also published in Literacy Research and Instruction, Journal of Research and Childhood Education, Journal of Language and Literacy Education, Children's Literature and Education, Journal of Children's Literature, Visual Communication, Language Arts, and The Reading Teacher. Frank has written and illustrated seven children's picture books, including The Looking Closely series with Kids Can Press earning a Bank Street Best Book Award and a Teacher's Choice award for his Looking Closely picture book series. Dr. Serafini is a Professor of Literacy Wducation and Children's Literature at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. You can find Frank online at FrankSerafini.com and on Twitter at D O C T O R S E R A F I N I. That's @DoctorSerafini. For the good of all students, good research should inform good practice and vice versa. listeners are invited to respond to our guests. Learn more about our guests research and suggest a topic for an upcoming episode through this podcast website at ClassroomCaffeine.com. If you've learned something today, or just enjoyed listening, please subscribe to this podcast. I raise my mug to you, teachers. Thanks for joining me.