Public school leaders routinely overlook the talents and contributions of blue-collar support staff that can and do play viable roles in the success of schools. Somewhat ironically, a common piece of advice given to first year teachers by more experienced mentors is, “Get to know the school secretary and custodian – everybody knows they really run the school.” Although this phrase is commonly bantered about by educators and informal school lore accords it the status of truth, the school leadership research literature is virtually silent about the contributions such workers can make. In Texas, where there are over one thousand school districts, many of which are rural and “stepping stones” for career track administrators, it is these community members who work as the secretaries, bus drivers, and custodians that many times serve as the cultural glue helping these districts survive. These invisible workers make important contributions to the coherency of the culture and mission of the school. My white maternal grandfather worked as a custodian in a rural school district for more than fifty-three years. Within the past five years, in the course of conversation, two casual acquaintances volunteered information regarding my grandfather’s contributions as a custodian in that school district that later I realized were instrumental in the sense of the project coming to me (Cole & Knowles, 2001). As a rural school custodian with a third grade education, my grandfather lived with multiple oppressive forces in his life. The lack of opportunity for education, the low socio-economic status of his rural family, the marginalization that society deals to those persons who choose dirty work (Meagher, 2002), and the sometimes overt, but often just an unintentional, power struggle with school leadership were all oppressive forces in his life. Whether he consciously realized it or not, my grandfather’s behavior (as evidenced by informant conversations) revealed this oppression. He survived, even thrived, and dealt with this oppression through the most effective means he knew of and obviously honed throughout his lifetime. My grandfather used humor as a means of survival. My grandfather was a master storyteller. This is his story.

Thesis--Zürich. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 292-302) and index.

No description available.

No description available.

Historically, in Iran, ornament was an integral part of architecture and considered a valuable part of built form. However, in time the use of ornament suffered from the decline of figural articulation in architecture, and its status was diminished to mere decoration. In this process, ornament shifted from a pattern that was integrated with the structure to the role of revetment, from symbolic to commemorative, and from meaningfully designed to arbitrary. Investigating the changing modes of ornament to understand its significance and survival, this thesis looks at the decline of ornament from its role as a necessary structural component and/or an expressive element communicating the common values of a society into an arbitrary fragment celebrating the significant past. Traditional ornament was dependent not only on architecture but also on science, cosmology, culture, art, literature, as well as on society and its beliefs; therefore there was an intimate relationship between ornament and its context, and more importantly including the inhabitant or spectator who held those beliefs. However, today those close ties no longer exist and ornament is characterized variously as luxurious, decorative, and retrospective. This change is studied from various perspectives including historical forces, prehistory, traditional Persian cultural expression, the incursion of Islamic motifs and geometries, modernity and folk legend. To retrieve and reinstate the link between ornament and building as well as with the spectator, the thesis project engages the narrative content of ornament to re-establish these relationships. It tells its own story not in a literal way, but rather through the complex tale of the lovers in the famous historical poem (c.1190) by Nezami. The thesis narrates the epic romance of Farhad and Shirin within a love triangle with its superb pictorial cues for depiction. The story unfolds through a series of architectures and architectural representations and images. The theme and motifs of the poem imply transition (both spiritual and physical) that corresponds to the transformative mode of ornament par excellence. The ornamental manifestation of the depicted poem is applied in a subway station which is in itself the locus of transition in our contemporary lives. The architectural details of the design project are fragments of the selected episodes from the story.

This study investigated the effect of a two week intensive narrative intervention program on the narrative abilities of four inner-city children, using an interrupted time-series with removed treatment design. The intervention program focused on teaching five specific story grammar units. The variables of interest in this study were: improvement in story macrostructure, microstructure and language quantity, as well as improvement of scores on standardized narrative tools. All participants showed an improvement in at least one of the narrative skills examined in this study; one of four participants showed an improvement in all of the narrative skills examined in the study. The results of this study indicate that intensive narrative intervention is a viable treatment approach and should be further investigated. / Speech-Language Pathology

Humans make sense of experience through narrative and stories. ?Narratives are a primary embodiment of our understanding of the world, our experience, and ultimately ourselves? (Kerby, 1991, p. 3). Story enlarges our capacity to understand our actions and our values and lets us talk about them (Novak, 1978, p. 63). Story is a ?mode of thinking and feeling? that facilitates people?s ability to ?create a version of the world in which, psychologically, they can envisage a place for themselves?a personal world? (Bruner, 1996, p. 39). It is also vital to the realization of that world. This study is a storyteller-teacher-researcher?s personal quest to find a good teacher. The stories are my looking. I am telling a story of looking for a good teacher that implicitly demonstrates how narratives facilitate a deeper understanding of good teaching. I pursue the quest simultaneously in three realms that blend with, enrich, and enlarge each other: recovering from illness, journeying around the world, and reflecting on teaching practice. The stories in this work are showing the capacity of narrative imagining in human experience. Through the stories re-presented here, I made discoveries that are very important to being a good teacher. Yet those discoveries cast a shadow across something else that is necessary to being a good teacher and kept it hidden from my view. It was not until I had almost completed the storying process of telling, reflecting, and discovering that the shadow receded and that which is so integral to being a good teacher was revealed.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of English. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1997. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-128).

Diss.--Göttengen. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 197-203.