Sound the alarm!: Disrupting sonic resonances of an elementary English language arts classroom

Classrooms are host to complex sonic ecologies informed by ritualized patterns and routines, but there remains a dearth of scholarship studying everyday sounds of schooling. Such research is important because it can amplify in new ways how children’s identities are constructed and thickened over time. This interpretive case study takes up the question as it interrogates sound’s capacity to inform children’s identities in a resource-limited, public elementary school in the Midwestern United States. Specifically, this inquiry explored in what ways sonic experiences might (re)produce and/or thicken (systemic) identities and positionings for children. Using critical positioning theories, the author details how sonic (re)occurrences informed children’s abilities to know, to be, and to be known in their classroom community. Through listening to the ambient experiences of everyday classrooms, the findings from this study showcase, new possibilities for exploring children’s identities and positionings. Through the storied experiences of two boys—acoustically described and analyzed—the author challenges critical early childhood researchers and educators to hear, perhaps for the first time, “unheard” everyday sounds like the alarm and consider the multiple ways such sounds resonate in classrooms.