The American Crawl

As LAUSD continues to layoff some of the best teachers I know, I wonder how effective any of the multi-pronged union efforts has been. Strikes (legal, illegal, “wildcat”, hunger, sit-ins, you name it) get piddles of press here and there. While I’m not comfortable yet in fully speculating on the direction of UTLA, LAUSD, or the future of Manual Arts. I did want to share a quote that’s about a year and a half old:

“I’ve always been a teacher. That’s the highest of the hierarchy. That’s not the bottom it’s what it’s all about. We’ve lost sight of that.”

In case you’re wondering, that is indeed Superintendent Ray Cortines in an interview Travis Miller and I conducted when Cortines was working with the Mayor’s Partnership. Funny how the quote reads differently in light of the changes that have taken place.

I’ve linked to this interview a few other times on this blog, but thought I’d post the actual thing here to make it easier to reference. The focus of the interview was local autonomy. However, there’s plenty here that speaks to the dire situation for teachers and students today.  Full interview after the jump.

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It being finals week for me (and it also being finals week for my students in a couple of weeks), I’m a bit behind on the blogging thing. Things should start back up next week. In the meantime, the Google Waves announcement is going to help change collaboration within my classroom. I’m truly stoked about the implications this will have in an educational context (assuming LAUSD will actually let me get through to create Waves … Gmail and Google Docs are currently blocked …).

If you’re like me you probably don’t think you have an hour plus to spend watching a YouTube video about some over-hyped Google thing. Then again, I’d recommend finding the time: http://wave.google.com/.

[Note: this post is about pop music, network television and American Idol. I kept it rather short, but you’ve been warned.]

I realize this will only further fuel my friend Daye’s vitriol about that fact that I’m a “cultural dumpster.” However, I can’t say I’ve ever been excited about watching American Idol until this season. Adam Lambert and the falsetto that will destroy the world is the most interesting thing happening on prime time network television by a mile.

I’d also add that I’ve lately become Ann Powers’ number one fan as a result of her insightful Idol commentary (plus the fact that she was basically assigned to attended three Prince concerts on the same night seals her as one of the last great things left at the LAT). In any case, if you’re not going to take my word for the GLAMbert craze, at least read about “Why Adam Couldn’t Go Disco on Disco Night.” A great piece of writing that also sent me to the equally tremendous non-Idol performance of “Crazy” by Lambert.

I realize that a lot is being written (and not a whole lot being said by Adam) about his sexuality, but I find that way more refreshing than the typecasting of LGBT cast members on Survivor, the Amazing Race, and the Real World. While I realize there is a real election taking place in Los Angeles today, I will indeed be casting (numerous) votes toward change in pop music I can fully endorse.

[Here's another take on the Idol showdown.]

Lastly, I kinda suspect that if Lambert pulls off the win after the votes are counted tomorrow (defeating the tween-backed Kris and his John Mayer-isms) there will be a not-so-select group of people wanting to dance and hug and celebrate in the streets like real change has come again and the voice of the people has spoken for the second time in about six months. I say that only half tongue in cheek.

Today my hall pass was taken away.

This wouldn’t bother me so much except that – well – I kind of liked my hall pass. Maybe I should explain.

About three weeks ago, sitting in a large faculty meeting, one of our school’s APs announced the implementation of a new hall pass. In order to go to the restroom or leave the class, students would need to wear this:

Citing safety concerns and issues of trespassing (not mentioning anything about hygiene and actually washing these vests), the passes were handed out to teachers just over a week ago. Every classroom has one and the room number is written prominently on the back of the vest as well as the front’s reflective material.

Officially, it’s dubious whether the passes were actually vetted and approved through the appropriate channels (our school’s Shared Decision Making Council, for instance, has yet to cough up any record of voting on the use of these vests…).

Talking about the vests with my students, some seemed nonplussed about them. Most students disliked them, and a few were generally upset. “I think the school expects us to be construction workers,” one student speculated. The student explained that if the school had higher expectations about the students, they would have made the hall passes something like a lab coat or a stethoscope. Most students felt that the passes were further signs of a lack of trust or respect in the student body.

As a travelling teacher I was issued a vest that had my name written on the front and no room number on the back. As such, I stared at the vest and saw it as a giant canvas. An opportunity. Enlisting the help of an anonymous, talented student, the back of the vest was stenciled with a large black fist. It looked great. It was powerful and iconic. It fit into the themes taught in class and still actually functioned as a hall pass vest. It was confiscated two and a half days after it was finished.

I’ve spoken with the AP that took the vest from a flustered student (she refused to acknowledge who the vest belonged to – she didn’t want to “snitch me out,” despite the fact that my name was written on the vest…). It looks like I’ll be getting a “fresh” vest later this week. Though I intend to continue to appeal for my vest, it looks like this is one clenched fist that has seen the end of its efforts to fight the powers that be.

[Sadly, this is the only existing photo of the vest in action.]

I’m currently in the midst of a revamped unit with my 11th graders involving concurrently analyzing The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Broken Spears. We’ll be reading additional texts and watching films related to Thoreau, Subcomandante Marcos, Gandhi, the South Central Farmers, and whatever else we can cram into the next few weeks before the school year ends. I thought I’d share a resource I used in setting up this unit as well as a strategy I attempted in conjunction with this resource.
I guess now is as good a time as any to make this confession: I like to rasterbate. Uploading images to the online rasterbator, a PDF of the image stretched to the size of your preference is created. It’s an instant poster maker and the effect it has is a useful (and cheap) resource for decorating a classroom. That said, I decided to experiment with simple game play using a rasterbated image. As students filed into my class at the beginning of the quarter, I handed each of them two random sheets of paper, announcing that they all held pieces of a puzzle and needed to (preferably quickly) assemble the puzzle on a wall.

Period 2 struggles to put the puzzle together.

Period 3 doesn't do much better...

The simple experiment yielded a couple of useful insights: my kids took way longer assembling the puzzle than I thought they would. The dynamics of collaboration that I was hoping for not only sprang to life but helped garner additional buy-in from some of the quieter students in the class. Further, the sense of ownership of the picture by the students was powerful. We were able to analyze numerous components of the iconic photograph of Malcolm X (once it was revealed) as the students were looking at the picture from a well-developed perspective. (On a side note it is interesting that both classes that assembled the picture immediately guessed that it would be a picture of Obama once finished…) Though the students didn’t read a lengthy introduction or fill out an initial KWL chart about Malcolm, they were able to articulate their prior knowledge as well as any questions or thoughts that arose during the activity. By the time I handed each student her or his own copy of the book to mark up and write their names in, the students were prepared to engage in dialogue with the leader they spent 30 minutes assembling; even if I thought it was 15 minutes too long, the time still felt well spent.

A completed puzzle [sheets taped sideways are not the result of improper teaching!

I mean the kid’s got a point, right?

Me: Where’s the book you were reading yesterday?

Student: It’s right there behind me but I want to read this one… it’s called Gangs and Violence and the cover is all these white people smiling. It looks really funny.

This past weekend, I attended a retirement celebration for my godfather, Jorge Huerta. Though I’ve always known of Jorge’s outstanding reputation as a scholar and teacher, I’ve better known him and my godmother Ginger as close confidants and family.

In a packed theater at UCSD, I better learned about my connection to the loved educator and appreciated what one speaker called Jorge’s “Pedagogy of Chisme.” As the preeminent scholar in Chicano Theater, Jorge’s passion helps fuel the work and vivacity of a movement. As Luis Valdez said in the evening, the playwright found his reflection in Jorge and the two have been working closely since shortly after Luis Valdez’s founding of El Teatro Campesino. Valdez said that Jorge illustrates the function of the scholar in a living breathing movement. And I think this is why I felt so inspired on Saturday; of course I’m immensely proud of the academic contributions that Jorge’s work represents (I remember struggling as a first year undergraduate student reading one of Jorge’s texts and cobbling together the academic writing with the myriad dinner-table stories shared and the outlandish tales my father would share of traveling with a teatro). However, more importantly, Jorge’s work helps frame the way that teaching, directing, and something as seemingly benign as theater (at least as it’s viewed by public school districts today) can be revolutionary.

Similarly, Cherríe Moraga inspired me with her call for more of what’s become a “scarce commodity”: diálogo. She spoke of the acceptance she found through dialogue with Jorge when others were less accepting of a Chicana lesbian playwright. She spoke plainly of not always agreeing with Jorge and of needing to continue to challenge one another, a challenge I see within the education community to provoke ourselves. I was reminded of my own advisor’s call for us – as scholars – to prove that critical pedagogy, cultural modeling, and all of that “stuff” that we so firmly believe works in the classroom actually works. In Moraga’s call for dialogue – and in her enunciation of the role of desire in our work as scholars as teachers – I recognized the continued landscape of hard work ahead for educators at large.

While many bemoaned the fact that Jorge and Ginger are leaving San Diego in the coming months, I’m more than excited that my godparents will be in Los Angeles (and even more thrilled to mooch amazing meals on a regular basis). I’m excited about the possibilities that loom in the future for Jorge, as he is loosened from a “corporate university.” And I’m excited about regularly trying to wrangle him into discussing Chicano Theater with my students. I’m excited about the infinite-spiral path of empty fullness we take as we move forward as teachers, students, scholars, and citizens of a global society.

So long L.A. Youth.

On Saturday, getting lost in the insane crowds at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, I attended two panels of fiction writers. The contrast between the two was unsettlingly clear.
In the morning, five female authors discussed their latest YA (Young Adult) novels and the differences between YA and non-YA work:

Growing Up: Young Adult Fiction
Moderator   Ms. Cecil Castellucci
Ms. Robin Benway
Ms. Deb Caletti
Ms. Lauren Myracle
Ms. Lisa Yee

The panel was fun and admittedly “girly.” The authors get paid to represent the day-to-day inner turmoil of coming of age teen girls. The panel talked about how much fun writing YA can be. Mark and I used Cecil Casetllucci’s novel The Plain Janes for our graffiti unit and the students generally really liked it. I think YA lit gets a bad rap; it’s not considered “real” literature but is also the common dominator of what our students are expected to read for leisure. Likewise, looking at the popularity (with adults) of the Twilight series and Harry Potter, I think the no-rules-apply approach of YA has a broad appeal. Frankly, YA is fun to read and feels much more open than those stuffy adult novels most of us hold in front of us at airports and cafes.

Later, in the afternoon, I went to the following session (notice how the Festival offers absolutely no useful descriptions of these sessions?):

Writing from Different Angles
Moderator   Mr. Michael Silverblatt
Mr. Bernard Cooper
Ms. Katherine Dunn
Mr. Geoff Dyer
Mr. Pico Iyer

Aside from the fact that two of my all-time favorite literary works were written by panelists on this stage, I can say that this panel was downright incredible. These superstars in the literary world (or, as Silverblatt joked an awesome fictitious law firm: Dyer, Iyer, Cooper, and Dunn) discussed the blurred distinction between fiction and non-fiction. The discussion went everywhere and my efforts to capture it will not do justice to the intellect displayed.

At the end of the day, I was struck by the way these two panels both catered to passionate readers and yet spoke in languages that couldn’t have been more different. The YA panel was fun. The women speaking were happy to discuss their craft and enjoyed the pleasantry of the YA genre. On the other hand, the masters of literature in the afternoon discussed the serious, intellectual work that is required of literature; this was difficult, important stuff. The gender distinction is striking too (talking with Rhea after the panel, it felt like, though Katherine Dunn is a huge force in contemporary literature, her classic text feels so embraced because it does not feel feminine at all).

And while we spent an hour listening to the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction, I was left thinking about the false distinction between real literature and “the other stuff.” I think there is a lot of merit in the best that YA has to offer. I realize that many high school English departments would challenge me if I merely taught the works of the YA panelists; that the works of Silverblatt’s confidants would be acceptable reading as a literary experience. The limitations found in this distinction seem to hurt the field of literature at large. In the same way that youth culture in the classroom can occasionally be a source of contention, deciding what is “good” literature versus what is one’s “guilty pleasure” is a dangerous path for both readers and writers. What would YA look like if it presented itself more seriously? Likewise, what would happen if literary literature (my new label) lightened up a bit? How would these shifts trickle into our classrooms?

This Thursday, Mario Galindo (teaching English at West Adams) and I will be talking about technology use in the classroom. I’ll be focusing on the Black Cloud as an example of technology utilization in class settings. I realize I’ve already spoken about the Black Cloud all over the place, but I think this will be something different. The focus here will be for practicing classroom teachers and ways the Black Cloud (and technology in general) can be incorporated by even the most technophobic of educators. The flier is below and anyone interested in attending will be welcome. Hope to see you there.