Category Archives: Third Space Collaborative

Breakfast, Sunshine, Connections, and the Pursuit of Love: Third Space Collaborative Meeting Notes

[Another awesome guest post written by Kate all verbal awesomeness is hers!]

Third Space Collaborative
April 19, 2009
As witnessed and experienced by Kate Beaudet, 0.75 of the 3rd Space population

A gorgeous day served as the backdrop for our meeting. Lolling in the dappled shade of a gigantic tree outside of the LA County Museum, we started by throwing together an agenda that included discussing AERA, implications, curriculum as the new black [just kidding. Curriculum as the most important thing we can be focusing on as teachers who not only care about social justice, but who are aiming to define Third Space teaching and instantiate liberatory education! (whew)], and then at least one theater game.

We may be rebellious, but we follow agendas (at least our own), so, we started by debriefing the AERA conference. Mark and Andy gave their impressions of others’ workshops—the stellar comments by the Manual Arts students and the not-so-stellar by the academteachers (McMademics? No, too harsh, but trying to come up with something cute!). “Where is the new?!” jotted Andy on Mark’s pad. That summed up their feelings about the workshops in general. For Andy’s own, real live words, check this link.

M&A gave a detailed account, complete with power point slides!, of their presentation on the curriculum that they developed on graffiti. Through the use of some new fangled technology called “cell phones,” kids go out into the field to gather photos and other data, then they analyze what they’re reaping. Much too fabulous and complicated for me to try to explain, but it was intriguing, I wondered if I could do it with littler people, and M&A are planning on working out the bugs to be able to teach it again come the fall.

One question that dangled itself in front of us was How to get the graffiti curriculum to a broader spectrum of people? I suggested teaching a salary point class on it because there would be opportunities to lead the teachers in HOW to teach the curriculum—not just dump a book of lessons on their lap, but actually model how to have these dialogical conversations with kids. Even though the content sounds absolutely fabulous, there’s not a guarantee on how things actually play out in the classroom. I’ve seen supposedly “fail proof” lessons (like in the elementary science program called FOSS) be completely bungled in the hands of a less skilled practitioner. When we’re encouraging teachers to try new things, especially something as kick ass as this stuff, they will probably need some hand-holding about how to actually deal with issues that come up and have real conversations that don’t rob kids of the opportunity to come to their own understandings.

Anyway. They were doubtful due to capacity issues but we’ll see!

On to agenda item number two: curriculum. I put out there my feelings about this issue that have been brewing for a considerable amount of time—that curriculum, inclusive of content AND methodology is something we need to spend time identifying, defining, and creating. The basis for this is actually more complicated, but in a nutshell—I put forward the idea that at the core of social justice teaching is choice-oriented curriculum because of its links to the notion of self-determination. Self-determination is a fundamental part of life that contributes to feeling free and in control of our lives. When children have access to choice-driven curriculum and disciplinary structures, it would make sense that they would be more likely to expect choices, and therefore a self-determined existence, later on in life. Although choice is not a new concept in academia, trying to define social justice teaching in this way could be.

As a step towards this vision, we are going to read chapter 13 of Literacy with an Attitude which is the chapter in which author Finn breaks down Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and allows us a peek into what was actually happening in those “culture circles” in Recife. I’m sending out an annotated version of that chapter, along with some ideas about how to adapt the Freire lessons to younger black and brown kids. We also agreed that we would each come with a codification (a picture or image meant to inspire conversation towards a given goals—refer to my annotation for more details) to share and discuss.

“Group Yes!” (in the spirit of a yes vote on the strike authorization) was proffered by Andy as a way to wrap up the meeting, and we were all GGG. Some affirmed suggestions: salsa dancing, screaming at the top of our lungs, answering a question about what makes us tick in three words or less [Mark: “Connections” Andy: “Breakfast” Kate: “Pursuit of Love” Awesome Guest Panelist (Rhea): “Sunshine”] and running as fast as we could to a random fence where there was an eerie woodpeckery hammering punctuating our conversation.

The encore to our meeting: alcohol, prosciutto, empanadas, and testicular roasted grapes at the lovely and air-conditioned Pimiento. I love ending meetings by eating things with the consistency of eyeballs.

Next meeting: May 31 @ 1pm. Outside, somewhere. The outside-ness of this meeting led to great feelings of joy!

Learning to Breathe Underwater

 Yes, that’s a group of kids learning to break dance at my school. I was thrilled to see it. As I walked away, I walked behind two girls talking:

       What’s that? Is that called, like, break dancing?

       Yeah, I think so.

       That’s weird.

It basically being finals week for me, things have been a bit hectic on the doctoral side of things (hence the rather long gap between updates in these here parts of the woods). However, I’ve been thinking lately about the implications of space and understandings of it. This relates in numerous ways to research I’m doing in my classes: space and meaning in disciplinary interactions between students and adults, the way graffiti “codes” space within the Manual Arts community, the way new media opens up and occludes space based on access, etc.

I’ve also been trying to think about the way one’s personal space needs to be made more explicit – labeled even, though that sounds wrong and not at all the way I think of borders as splitting us into different people or different kinds of people. (These are thoughts that demand run ons.) I think one of my biggest flaws over the past two quarters has been about being too amorphous. I don’t think I’ve done quite enough reflecting to really make sense of this here other than to say I’m working toward reprioritizing the way I deal with the different hats I wear. Even within the school setting, the teacher hat, mentor hat, advisor hat, and all-that-stuff-that-takes-place-outside-of-my-class-that-gets-mistakenly-labeled-as-“important” hat are occasionally being donned in the wrong order and for the wrong duration. I don’t want to say like I feel like I let my kids down this quarter, but – like most of us – I certainly think I could have given them more. And of course that’s what they deserve and that’s what they should be demanding. Within other spheres I think I’ve been complicating things by continuing to wear – say – the “doctoral student” hat way too often when maybe the hat I should be wearing is something like the wash-the-dishes-and-make-sure-Sadie-isn’t-destroying-the-house hat. Perhaps this sounds more mundane than what I mean but (and again with the run on) space is being construed and interpreted too fluidly and I’m not coming up for air frequently enough to realize that swimming goggles are out of place in a jacket and tie affair. 

Arthur has been consistently great with it’s online content. A couple of links I’m throwing here come directly from them, so please support your local/global counterculture zine as much as possible – one of the few publications I feel strongly bout schlepping for. In any case, this article on the NYU occupation felt thrilling. It – also about space – makes me cognizant about the challenges with actualizing the kinds of libratory changes many of us are trying to instill in our students. I’m not worried about how they will be viewed or judged by the mass media, but the article makes it clear what script-flipping will need to look like. Similarly, our Third Space Collaborative met for the second time yesterday. I plan to jot something about that when I find another free moment. Suffice for now, I’ll throw out a thought: is this considered an eco-third space? I think of the tenuous balance between living on and off grid simultaneously and the way such a space could function academically (and no, charters are NOT doing this).

 Finally and hot off the presses… er… hot from the oven? I’m excited about the playtest that Greg just wrote about. I think Greg’s game fits in well with this post’s weakly culled theme of space and interpretations of it. I’d be inspired to jump into participating in round 2 of this baking madness if only my biscuit making skills were up to snuff (Daye: kick the recipe over here!). Perhaps my Koreatown neighbors could settle for muffins?

“A ‘Genuinely Collective Reality'”: Third Space Collaborative

Yesterday, I was part of a small cadre that met to sketch out the general direction of a new education-based group. I’m hesitant to use a phrase like “reading group” or “discussion group” specifically because of what were hoping to do here. Like the Beyond Pedagogy group, we’re looking to texts – both educational and not-so-directly-related-education – as an impetus to explore education change and paradigm shift. We’re also looking to meetings that allow us to take away specific ideas and practices that can be implemented in classrooms the next day.

However, what’s different here is the (still being defined) form of the group. For our first – and likely our most traditional – meeting, we looked to this article by Kris Gutierrez. Discussing her use of the Third Space, it was generally agreed that ours would be a group that acts and “dialogues” outside of traditional meeting group space. (“Dialogues” here is more a placeholder than a typical action within the group: dialogue on any given meeting could be hiking, singing, writing, etc.) Using the ascribed frame that Gutierrez provides, we’re looking to establish a sacrosanct meeting that “is a transformative space where the potential for an expanded form of learning and the development of new knowledge are heightened” (page 152). This will encompass play, exploration, hiking (literally), “liberation in the imaginary,” trying to fly (maybe also literally), storytelling, and projection into the future. Very new age-y I realize – bear with me – I’m not alone in thinking there are very real outcomes if this ship stays afloat.

We’ll be jumping into our next text sometime next month. It will be a time to dive into the expected discomfort adults are expected to feel when embracing notions like playing, acting, experiencing.

Like with Beyond Pedagogy, post-meeting posts will be up here for continued discussion as well as to archive the group’s progress. Although our group is starting small and piloting this model the first time through, any interest in extending this model, participating, or general comments are encouraged.