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The rash of school shootings across the

United States instigated a spate of student

activism and led the authors to consider how

to showcase the voices of the activists as examples

of persuasive writing.

BRiAn t. KiSSEL, CoLLEEn E. WHittingHAm, tASHA tRoPP LAmAn, And ERin t. miLLER

Student Activists and Authors: Contemporary youth voices as Classroom texts

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Writing artifacts that advocate for social change (e.g., speeches) have a rich tradition in our nation’s history— and our English language arts classrooms (Bomer; Singer). Consider Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Sojourner’s Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech given at the 1851 Women’s Convention, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on the National Mall during the March on Washington for Jobs and Free-dom in 1963. Although these speeches were written decades ago, contemporary students study them as demonstrations of historical impact and to learn how the rhetorical features of such writing can serve as effective tools to push a nation toward change.

We believe these to be important artifacts worthy of study; yet, we maintain that contemporary texts that respond to issues that concern K– 12 students today, particularly those authored by students, can serve as equally powerful instructional tools. Because these texts provide an opportunity for conversations about relevant, pressing social issues, centering student- authored texts in classrooms allows teachers to facili-tate meaningful dialogue within the context of writing instruction. The use of student- authored texts as men-tor texts demonstrates the use of “old tricks” (the rhe-torical devices taught) with “new tools” (e.g., the use of Twitter as a communicative platform and the use of YouTube to reach national and international audi-ences). But perhaps more importantly, we believe that the incorporation of student expression communi-cates a message to other young people: “We see you.”

n February 14, 2018, a nineteen- year- old gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Doug-las High School in Parkland, Florida, with an AR- 15 assault rifle and killed seventeen students and teachers and wounded sev-

enteen more. It was the 208th school shooting since student gunmen opened fire on their classmates and teachers at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 (Roberts). Despite the familiar American scene of lined- up students being ushered out of school buildings while their classmates lay wounded or dead inside, and despite repeated calls for restrictions on the guns used in such shootings, nearly twenty years after Columbine, the gun lobby retains a powerful grip on the nation’s politicians— using money and political pressure to maintain the status quo. After Parkland, however, a unique revolution unfolded. Led by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, adolescents challenged the powerful gun lobby and special interest groups through their advocacy for new legislation related to gun ownership. They redefined the fight, equipping themselves with weapons of their own: pencils, keyboards, microphones, newspapers, and social media. With this arsenal, they wrote. They wrote to inform the world about their own terrifying experiences as survivors. And they wrote to ignite sys-temic change in our nation’s gun laws. In doing so, they crafted contemporary mentor texts— modern exemplars that have the potential to provide students relevant companions for the canonical texts prevalent in their classrooms.

O

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This article examines ways three students from Parkland, Florida, who survived the massacre, used their experiences as witnesses to gun violence in their school community to write their way into our nation’s consciousness and how English teachers can bring their writing into the classroom. We annotate the students’ texts to highlight the rhetorical moves the student- authors used to communicate their messages. We recognize that these texts reflect— in part— the cumulative knowledge learned from com-mitted teachers who, somewhere along the way, may have taught the authors the rhetorical tools necessary to write convincingly. However, we centralize the words of the students and highlight the ways they use their voices— and their writing— to incite change all the way from a small Florida town to the streets of our nation’s capital.

We begin with Emma González’s impassioned speech, “We call BS,” delivered in front of the fed-eral courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at an antigun rally just three days after the shootings (“Florida Student”). Her speech went viral when it was uploaded to YouTube and was quickly viewed by more than three million people. Next, we exam-ine the op- ed article written by Christine Yared who used traditional media, The New York Times, to speak to an adult audience. Finally, we analyze the tweets of David Hogg who used Twitter to defend himself from a Fox News commentator attempting to pub-licly embarrass him.

We recognize that student- authors have writ-ten and published pieces of writing about gun vio-lence for decades, particularly gun violence that has taken the lives of countless African American men and women. Our focus on the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is not intended to diminish the important contributions of stu-dent writers such as Henry Dumas, L.V., Arace-lis Girmay, and Willie Perdomo featured in Renee Watson’s essay, “Happening Yesterday, Happened Tomorrow: Teaching the Ongoing Murders of Black Men,” who used their platform to respond to the ongoing violence targeted at Black men by police officers. The students at Marjory Stoneman Doug-las High School join the cadre of student- authors

who have been pushed to the periphery of their tolerance for violence against unarmed citizens and who used their written voices to propel a grow-ing social movement. Here, we demonstrate how student- constructed texts could inform the English language arts classroom by providing new contribu-tions to a growing canon of contemporary activism- related writing.

Through our examinations of these texts, we show English Journal readers how to examine the rhetorical possibilities that exist within present- day persuasive texts and how these texts could be used to teach about persuasive writing. We present three dif-ferent examples (a speech, an op- ed essay, and Twit-ter responses) and explain how the authors used the rhetorical modes of persuasion— ethos, pathos, and logos— to convince their audiences to enact change.

SPEECH WRITING AS ETHOS On February 17, 2018, three days after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Emma González, a senior at the school, delivered a speech she wrote in her AP Government class (see www.youtube .com/watch?v=ZxD3o- 9H1lY). She read her speech at a rally for gun control at the Broward County Fed-eral Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The speech, which was recorded and uploaded to YouTube and broadcast by major news organizations, became a viral sensation— shared widely on Facebook and retweeted by millions.

To better understand the effectiveness of González’s speech, we transcribed her words and studied the rhetorical choices she made. While González employs all three modes of persuasion, we focus on her use of ethos (an appeal to convince an audience of an author or speaker’s credibility) in her argument for changes to gun laws. She achieves her aim through the use of pronouns, anaphora, com-parisons, and the inclusion of factual information to bolster her credibility. Our purpose in annotating her speech is to show educators a method for exam-ining future speeches that will inevitably arise when current issues dominate the national dialogue. Simi-larly, educators might transcribe those speeches and dissect the language as we do here.

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sure that her arguments about “politics and political history are airtight,” again establishing her authority as a knowledgeable source.

oFFERing ComPARiSonSGonzález inserts comparison statements through-out her speech to show opposing sides of the issue. In one segment of the speech, in which she directly addresses politicians who solicit campaign funds from the NRA, she uses a series of rhetorical ques-tions to make these comparisons: “If your money was as threatened as us, would your first thought be, how is this going to reflect on my campaign? Which should I choose? Or would you choose us? And if you answered us, will you act like it for once?”

Another example of her use of comparisons comes toward the beginning of her speech when she talks about the Founding Fathers and the interpreta-tion of the Second Amendment: “Since the time of the Founding Fathers and since they added the Sec-ond Amendment to the Constitution, our guns have developed at a rate that leaves me dizzy. The guns have changed, but our laws have not.” González uses these comparisons to argue that money matters more than lives.

inCoRPoRAting AnAPHoRAAnaphora is the rhetorical device of using the repe-tition of a word or phrase to add emphasis to a par-ticular point. González threads this device in various parts of her speech. It first appears toward the begin-ning of her speech when she talks about her high school peers and repeats the word those in reference to people: “The people involved right now, those who were there, those posting, those tweeting, those doing interviews and talking to people, are being listened to for what feels like the very first time on this topic.”

Then, toward the end of her speech, González uses a repetitive device that turns into a chant shared by the audience:

Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers nowadays, saying that we are self- involved and trend- obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us

PRonoun uSAgEGonzález begins her speech with a moment of silence. Then, she situates herself as a speaker for many of her classmates by using the pronouns we and our. A snippet from the beginning of her speech illustrates this technique: “But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and president can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see.” Her use of we and us continues throughout the speech as she begins to address her audience (e.g., politicians) more directly by contrasting “we” and “us” with “you”: “Those talking about how we should have not ostracized him. You didn’t know this kid! Okay? We did!”

Toward the end of the speech, she changes the focus of the audience from politician to fellow activ-ist: “If you agree, register to vote. Contact your local Congress people. Give them a piece of your mind.” This call to action furthers González’s attempts to build a coalition of people who also want to end gun violence.

EStABLiSHing CREdiBiLityAs a high school student, González knows her youth might be used as a tool to undermine her credibil-ity. In anticipation, she uses both ethos (establish-ing credibility) and logos (appealing to logic) as she incorporates facts and statistics into her speech. She talks about established case law (“Just like Tinker ver-sus Des Moines, we are going to change the law”) and quotes mass shooting statistics from other countries (e.g., “Australia had one mass shooting in 1999”). In an impassioned part of the speech, she directly cites the amount of money the National Rifle Association (NRA) contributed to Donald Trump’s campaign in an assertion that the president cares more about money than he does about people affected by gun violence: “Thirty million dollars! And divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the one and one- half months in 2018 alone, that comes out to be $5,800. Is that how much these peo-ple are worth to you, Trump?”

In the speech, González explains that she took a study break from her AP Government test to make

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through a major national newspaper, Yared spoke directly to the people who have the power to advo-cate for minors, using pathos— a quality that evokes pity or sadness— to convince the reading audience.

TWITTER AS LOGOSAs a successful result of the public advocacy of González, Yared, and other Parkland youth, stu-dents from around the country gathered in Wash-ington, DC (as well as towns and cities across all fifty states) to participate in the student- led March for Our Lives rallies on March 25, 2018. The third largest demonstration in US history, according to The Guardian, the rallies included performances by entertainers, but only youth were permitted to speak at the event. Several of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School stepped to the stage to speak about their experiences and advocate for stricter gun laws to protect their safety in schools.

David Hogg, one of the lead organizers of the event, was a student at the high school who had documented his experience hiding from the shooter by creating an audio recording on his phone while the event unfolded. To increase awareness of, and attendance at, the rally in Washington, Hogg was a guest on various news programs in the days leading up to the March for Our Lives rally. Hogg appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show, The Ingraham Angle, on the Fox News Network (the interview clip was later deleted from the network website). Four days after the March for Our Lives rally, an interview with Hogg was published by the Daily Wire, a website that describes itself as “a hard- hitting, irreverent news and commentary site for a new generation of conser-vatives” (see www.dailywire.com/news/28770/gun- rights- provocateur- david- hogg- rejected- four- joseph- curl). In the interview, Hogg commented on his recent receipt of four rejection letters from California universities, stating, “It’s been kind of annoying hav-ing to deal with that and everything else that’s been going on but at this point, you know, we’re changing the world. We’re too busy.”

Ingraham became a critic of the students as they advocated for stricter gun laws. On her show The Ingraham Angle, just after the March for Our

nothing could ever be done to prevent this, we call BS. They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence; we call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun; we call BS.

González’s use of this repeating line was such an effective device that her speech is now referred to as the “We Call BS” speech.

OP- ED WRITING AS PATHOSOn February 18, 2018, four days after the shootings, The New York Times published an op- ed article writ-ten by fifteen- year- old Christine Yared (see www .nytimes.com/2018/02/18/opinion/florida- school- shooting- guns.html). Yared positioned herself as an authority on the event by describing her firsthand experience as a student. She used a traditional form of media— the newspaper— to access a national audience, arguably an audience different than the one reached by González via YouTube.

Yared shared her autobiographical account of the experience inside the school, beginning with her description of what felt like a normal day: “It began when a fire alarm went off just before school was supposed to end. We thought nothing of it.” In the article, she describes cramming herself into a closet filled with papers, books, and other students. She explains that, from the closet, she texted her friends and family and checked for news online because she was unsure what was happening. She recalls wonder-ing if the loud sounds she heard were gunshots.

Yared shared her in- the- moment questioning and fear because she wanted readers to feel what she felt as the gunman opened fire. Yared used metaphor-ical language to compare the events that followed to “a nightmare.” She contextualized her story in the familiar American Dream narrative, describing how she and her family moved to America to escape war- torn Lebanon; her description set up the irony of the situation— an attempt to appeal to the emotions of readers. Then, Yared made a plea, pronounced by a single- word sentence: “Please.” She called for bipar-tisan action to change gun laws. She concluded her plea by writing: “If you have any heart, or care about anyone or anything, you need to be an advocate for change.” By writing largely to an adult audience

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Lives political rally, Ingraham offered the following commentary: “This is the problem with political theater lacking substance,” Ingraham said. “Lots of people show up and they applaud for Lin- Manuel [Miranda] and Amy Schumer, but what are they marching for? To repeal the Second Amendment?

To ban weapons they can’t even define? The truth is, they don’t really know.”

Then, she began tweeting. In one tweet Ingra-ham posted the interview and mocked David Hogg for his rejections from several colleges where he applied, accusing him of “whining” (see Figure 1).

15

<FIG>Figure 1. David Hogg responds to tweets from Laura Ingraham.

FIGURE 1.

david Hogg responds to tweets from Laura ingraham.

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Hogg, who had amassed more than 910,000 fol-lowers on Twitter, used the platform on which he had been mocked to appeal to his followers. He encour-aged his supporters who opposed Ingraham’s post to express their opposition to her financial backers. Hogg responded to Ingraham’s post by tweeting a list of companies who pay for advertising to appear on her television program. Under the pressure created by responses on Twitter, several advertisers immedi-ately announced a severing of financial support for Ingraham’s show. Ingraham then issued an apology to David Hogg, but additional advertisers pulled their support. In all, more than two dozen advertisers left her show, resulting in a sustained loss of advertis-ing minutes.

Appealing to ethics, emotion, and logic, stu-dents from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were not limited to traditional print and television media. They used social networking media to speak directly to their audiences through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. These social media tools bring unfiltered student voices front and center to nationwide audiences. (And, in an interesting twist, Hogg announced in December 2018 that he had been accepted to Harvard University.)

ADVOCACY THROUGH BIOGRAPHYThough the students’ writing we share does not fall within traditional boundaries of biography, their words are autobiographical, their lived experiences (pathos) now tethered to larger social issues. It is too soon for any of us to know what these early days of the March for Our Lives movement will mean in our history. We do know that student organizers worked successfully to pass legislation raising the legal age to purchase guns in the state of Florida from eighteen to twenty- one less than one month after the shoot-ings in Parkland. We do know that Parkland stu-dents and other millennials worked to get the youth vote out in the 2018 midterm elections. History will determine where this event will stand in importance. But, in this moment, current events are affecting the lives of our youth. And the students who are affected have something to say.

The student authors from Parkland amplified their voices through multiple platforms: viral speeches,

op- ed articles in newspapers, and Twitter. They spoke and wrote in ways that were impossible to ignore. In looking for persuasive texts to use as models in our classrooms, we should consider these texts, and oth-ers like them, as companions alongside the traditional canon (Assaf et al.; Ryba-kova and Roccanti). Gonzáles’s, Yared’s, and Hogg’s texts help stu-dents contemplate how to effectively elevate their own voices using the rhetorical devices we annotate from their writing. Teachers have the potential to add a relevant tool of citizen-ship, scholarship, and productive resistance. Teachers can draw from texts that offer a peda-gogy of persuasion that invites students to use language to help shape a bet-ter world. Students’ uses of pencils, keyboards, and microphones offer educators the opportunity to rein-force the idea that actions matter and that persuasive rhetoric changes minds and practices.

WoRKS CitEd

Assaf, Lori Czop, et al. “A Call for Action: Engaging in Purposeful, Real- World Writing.” Voices from the Middle, vol. 21, no. 3, 2014, pp. 24– 33.

Bomer, Randy. “You Are Here: The Moment in Literacy Education.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 40, no. 3, 2006, pp. 355– 72.

“Florida Student to NRA and Trump: ‘We Call BS.’” YouTube, uploaded by CNN, 17 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch? v=ZxD3o- 9H1lY.

@davidhogg111. “Pick a number 1–12 contact the company next to that # Top Laura Ingraham Advertisers 1. @sleepnumber 2. @att 3. Nutrish 4. @Allstate & @esurance 5. @bayer 6. @RocketMortgage Mortgage 7. @LibertyMutual 8. @Arbys 9. @TripAdvisor 10. @Nestle 11. @hulu 12. @Wayfair.” Twitter, 28 Mar. 2018, 9:30 p.m., twitter.com/davidhogg111 /status/979168957180579840.

— — — . “I 100% agree an apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough. I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight. It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children.” Twitter, 29 Mar. 2018, 3:06 p.m., twitter.com /davidhogg111/status/979434711415250944.

Appealing to ethics, emotion, and logic, students from marjory Stoneman douglas High School were not limited to traditional print and television media. they used social networking media to speak directly to their audiences through youtube, twitter, Facebook, and instagram.

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@hulu. “We’d like to confirm that we are no longer advertising on Laura Ingraham’s show and are monitoring all of our ad placements carefully.” Twitter, 29 Mar. 2018, 6:58 p.m.

@IngrahamAngle. “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA . . . totally predictable given acceptance rates.)” Twitter, 28 Mar. 2018, 11:45 a.m., twitter.com/IngrahamAngle /status/979021639458459648.

— — — . “Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA— incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David . . . (1/2)” Twitter, 29 Mar. 2018, 1:06 p.m., twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/979404 377730486272.

— — — . “immediately after the horrific shooting and even noted how ‘poised’ he was given the tragedy. As always, he’s welcome to return to the show anytime for a productive discussion. (2/2)” Twitter, 29 Mar. 2018, 1:06 p.m., twitter.com/Ingraham Angle/status/979404540754657280.

Roberts, Michael. “Parkland School Shooting 208th Since Columbine: The Tragic List.” Westword, 15 Feb. 2018, www.westword .com/news/parkland- to- columbine- school- shootings- list- 9993641.

Rybakova, Katie, and Rikki Roccanti. “Connecting the Canon to Current Young Adult Literature.” American Secondary Education, vol. 44, no. 2, 2016, pp. 31– 45.

Singer, Jessica Early. Stirring Up Justice: Writing and Reading to Change the World. Heinemann, 2006.

Watson, Renee. “Happening Yesterday, Happened Tomorrow: Teaching the Ongoing Murders of Black Men.” Teaching for Black Lives, edited by Dylan Watson et al., Rethinking Schools, 2018, pp. 40– 50.

Yared, Christine. “Don’t Let My Classmates’ Death Be in Vain.” The New York Times, 18 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018 /02/18/opinion/florida- school- shooting- guns.html.

Younge, Gary. “What Happened Next? How Teenage Shooting Survivor David Hogg Became a Political Leader.” The Guardian, 12 Dec. 2018, www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/12 /gun- control- activist- david- hogg- parkland- people- dying.

BRiAn t. KiSSEL is an associate professor of literacy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has been a member of NCTE since 2003 and can be reached at btkissel@gmail.com

tASHA tRoPP LAmAn is an associate professor in the Department of Early Childhood and Elementary Education at the University of Louisville. She has been a member of NCTE since 2000 and can be reached at tasha.laman@louisville.edu.

CoLLEEn E. WHittingHAm is an assistant professor of reading and elementary education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has been a member of NCTE since 2010 and can be reached at cwhitti8@uncc.edu.

ERin t. miLLER is an assistant professor of language arts and diversity at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has been a member of NCTE since 1999 and can be reached at emille90@uncc.edu.

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