Black Hawk College Adult Education ESL Instructor Gail Grigg conducted the pilot “English Language/Literacy Through American Roots Music” with Ellis Kell of River Music Experience. Ellis was in residency at BHC’s Adult Learning Center in Rock Island for a total of four dates, working with two separate groups of adult refugee/immigrant students. On the mornings of 2/6 and 2/11, Ellis performed and led workshops with ALC’s beginning ESL literacy classes. On 2/12 and 2/20, he presented and worked with ALC’s evening ESL students. Approximately 70 students took part in the project.

Adult Education ESL literacy students tend to be rather field-dependent learners. The most effective resources, supports and tasks for literacy development make concrete and explicit connections to students’ life experiences and needs. Consequently, BHC’s AE ESL curriculum employs life and work skills content highly relevant to U.S. immigrants and refugees as the primary learning resource in English language and literacy instruction.

But besides developing English language and literacy skills for economic self-sufficiency, adult immigrants and refugees also need to be able to express their feelings, thoughts and stories through English. Art and music, then, become a powerful learning resource for field-dependent learners in cultivating language and literacy. Arguably, there is no learning task more authentic than working towards the ability to express one’s emotions and thoughts. This pilot project successfully explored a variety of means by which music could serve both as a catalyst to and vehicle for student self-expression.

Ellis and Gail worked collaboratively in planning the workshops, communicating after each session to assess and adjust planning for subsequent sessions based on students’ language and literacy needs. Throughout, their collaborative partnership was truly productive and very fun. Ellis’s role was music and history specialist, sharing cultural and historical knowledge of American Roots music traditions with the students. He very briefly taught the students about the migratory history of American blues music, its route from the South up the Mississippi River, and the relevance of roots and blues music to the history and culture of the Quad Cities. Ellis played and taught selected examples of traditional American music that were musically and, with some scaffolded vocabulary support, linguistically accessible to the students. Songs presented during the workshops included “Amazing Grace” (many of the African and Burmese students knew this song from their own churches) “This Land is Your Land”, “Sweet Home Chicago”, as well as some other traditional American blues songs and several of Ellis’s own compositions. To support Ellis’s work, Gail provided integrated English skills and literacy scaffolding prior to, during and after each of Ellis’s visits to ALC. This instructional scaffolding was accomplished through a variety of language learning and adult literacy teaching methods and authentic learning tasks. In particular, the Language Experience Approach (LEA) was used extensively throughout the entire project.

With the morning students, Gail supplemented Ellis’s oral history and performance of blues music by sharing several digital images of Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration Series in order to build up student background knowledge and to forge meaningful connections to the students’ own migration experiences.

The students immediately imagined Lawrence’s art as a representation of their lives. They verbalized these observations and Gail transcribed them. In turn, the students used these transcripts of their own migration stories for literacy reading content. After the students worked with Ellis a second time, Gail assisted the students in revising one of their LEA migration transcripts from prose to lyrics incorporating a call and response, blues-inspired structure. Titled “Refugee Blues”, the class continues to use this chant as a learning resource, playing simple percussive noisemakers for accompaniment.

Gail gave her evening students a number of class discussion prompts prior to Ellis’s residency. These prompts were designed to generate LEA content that could potentially be integrated into blues songs. Students expressed what they liked or didn’t like about life in the U.S. and what they missed about their homelands. Rich class conversations

Refugee Blues

Walking to America/Walking to AmericaThe people walk./The people walk. (2x)They carry bags. They carry dreams. The people walk.

Do they go to market?/Do they go to market?There is no market./There is no market. Do they go home?/Do they go home?There is no home./There is no home.There is no market. There is no home. Where do they go?

Bhutan people walking/Bhutan people walkingBurma people walking/Burma people walkingSudan people walking/Sudan people walkingRefugees are walking./Refugees are walking.The walk is hard./They walk so far./They walk so long.

Walking to America/Walking to AmericaThe people walk./The people walk. (2x)They carry bags. They carry dreams. The people walk.

Walking to America/Walking to AmericaThe people walk./The people walk. (2x)They fly by plane. They fly like birds. They’re going home.

emerged about the students’ lives in Rock Island and the challenges they faced both economically and culturally. For instance, one female student expressed complaints about her landlord whom she felt was greedy. The student’s family is large, but because of their low income, they feel they cannot afford more than a three bedroom apartment. However, the landlord was insisting the family move into a larger apartment which, of course, would cost more money. As this student spoke, Gail transcribed her oral story verbatim: You have a big family? You go from a 3 bedroom to 4 bedroom. From $1,680! At Century Woods, 4 people in family. I paid my bill only (*this student was the only employed person in her family). Some people have 4 in apartment and 3 have job. They pay same price, $500. But with 4 people and 1 job? They pay $500 same! Many people want to moving. Many people at Century Woods be quiet, not talk, but sad.

Later, Gail printed copies of these transcriptions for the students to read and to review several grammar points. Gail then requested the students permission to share their transcripts with Ellis so that he could integrate personal story elements into several songs he would compose for the class.

The female student who told the above story was initially afraid for her story to leave the safety of the classroom; she expressed fear that her landlord would learn of her complaints and that she and her family would get into trouble. This led to further class discussion about tenant rights and free speech and, ultimately, to what would become an inspired interweaving of life skills content with Freire’s critical pedagogy. The students spent several days studying a thematic unit on housing, focusing on the functional language of complaints in English and writing teacher-scaffolded letters of complaint (i.e. the sink is leaking, the heater is broken, please contact me, etc.)

Once the particular student’s fears were assuaged by several classmates and by Gail, the student story transcripts were passed on to Ellis. On his second visit, Ellis re-presented the students their own stories within a blues song titled “Century Woods Blues”. Upon hearing Ellis perform this new composition, the students took delight in Ellis’s interpretation of their feelings and experiences in song. The once fearful student, in particular, smiled broadly throughout and later sang the song with considerable enthusiasm.

The students participating in this project benefitted in several ways. While most of the students involved have some familiarity with the life and work skills needed to survive in Rock Island, they did not have much prior contact with the history, arts and cultural life of the Quad Cities. Through this project, the students were able to find ways into that new culture and to appropriate roots and blues music to express their feelings about migrating to the U.S. and the challenges of building new lives in Rock Island. They learned traditional American roots and blues standards and contributed to creating their own blues songs. Texts emerging from this project have subsequently been sung, read, created into vocabulary, writing, and grammar activities. More importantly, however, the students discovered a way to make beautiful music, expressing their hopes, frustrations, and dreams in English.

For the future, Gail and Ellis hope to collaborate again, further developing this project beyond the pilot stage. Several ideas discussed include the following:• Invite other local QC musicians and songwriters to participate in an expanded version of the pilot

project, including local musicians from within the QC immigrant and refugee communities, to help expand the project’s reach and increase opportunities for ESL students to write their own stories and their own songs using English to further develop and enrich student literacy.

• With increased quantities of student-generated song/story texts, professionally record and produce the students’ songs and stories for use as English language/literacy learning resources within the BHC ESL program.

• Performance possibilities in the QC for interested project participants, both students and musicians, in order to present a polished culmination of the project’s music/literacy outcomes.

Century Woods Blues

I am very proud to call Rock Island my new home,I am very proud to call Rock Island my new home,I love that old river and I’m never going to roam.

Some folks rent a house, and some folks just live free,Some folks rent a house, and some folks just live free,The government here sure takes good care of me.

I walk to the local market now every day,I walk to the local market now every day,Walmart and Best Buy are just too far away.

SNAP and Medicaid help save money for food to eat,SNAP and Medicaid help save money for food to eat,I have a government apartment and good shoes on my feet.

I found a place to live where I’m close to the corner store,I found a place to live where I’m close to the corner store,Century Woods says go to work so you can pay some more.

I want to clean my apartment but someone locked the door,I want to clean my apartment but someone locked the door,I tried to unlock it but my key doesn’t work anymore.

People don’t talk much now here at Century Woods,People don’t say much now here at Century Woods,The blues are easy to sing when things are not good.

I’ve got the homesick blues, and I miss that land I knew,I’ve got the homesick blues, and I miss that land I knew,I’m just sitting here quiet now, with the Century Woods blues.