Let the games begin...

This is the first entry to my brand new writing research journal. So far it's been a struggle to even figure out what I'm researching exactly. Initially, I thought my interest lied in social media and how it's used for marketing purposes, but I couldn't really wrap my head around it. I was interested because I hope to sell a novel someday, and I've spent a lot of time watching other authors (in particularly Tim Ferris and Gary Vaynerchuk) use social media to build brands.

However, when I began to surf the net in a bit of preliminary research, I ran across several stories surrounding the Bloomsbury Whitewashing controversy and began slowly circling a new research topic and drafting potential questions

First Draft: Will readers disengage from a creative composition if the protagonist does not share their ethnicity?

A couple of class discussions later and...

Second Draft: Will students become more engage in reading and writing if the subject of the composition represents their own ethnicity?

I was able to find a study performed by an unnamed teacher in Georgia that fell along these lines (read my article summary at the end of this entry), but still had some problems here. I don't have access to any students (I'm a work-at-home technical writer). Not a huge hurdle since several of my classmates are teachers, but the introvert in me is screaming, "Noooooo, we can't ask for a favor!!!" Also, I can't say I really have a strong interest in how the ethnicity thing effects the classroom. My interest still lies in the world of publishing.

In comes the wonderful, sensational, godsend Dr. Neff (Okay, maybe I'm hamming it up a bit in hopes of brownie points, but Dr. Neff really is great...no need for exaggeration there).  After a conversation with her, some new possibilities opened up.

Third Draft: What kind of influence, if any, does ethnicity in text have on readers and writers?

Now, this is more up my alley. I can focus on the publishing side of things, and maybe call in some favors to get some very nice authors I know to participate.

Still a lot of work to do, though. Until next time....



Article Summary: http://robinsonhome.org/reading/index.html

The article I read focused on a classroom in Decatur, GA, where most of the students were African-American. The teacher had difficulty reigning in and relating to her often rowdy and unresponsive students. She found that the children were mostly impoverished and did not respond to teaching techniques that had worked at a previous schools where very few children were African-American. To alleviate her stress and bring the classroom under control, she consulted other teachers with more experience and of different races. Through collaboration she was able to understand that the home lives and home language of children from poorer homes may be different from the more affluent middle-class children she was used to teaching. She began to customize how she gave direction, praise, and chastisement based on the individual situations of the students, and got an immediate positive response. Then, when she began to make lessons relevant to the children’s African heritage, they became more productive in the classroom.