Movie Check In: More Like Ava-Jar-Jar, Amirite people?

As problematic as Avatar was, it was still a fun flick. The incredibly clunky script didn’t bother me nearly as much as the score and the font used for the subtitles.

In any case, when James Cameron wasn’t busy hitting you over the head with the environmental and colonial no-no themes, there were occasional moments of subtlety.

I like the notion of the film as a testament of experiential knowledge over book knowledge. Reading about and learning the language of one culture does not make you the kind of authentic participant than actually, y’know, participating does.

Not too shabby a blockbuster for the winter season, and I always hoped they’d remake Dances With Wolves, so there you go. Would fit nicely into a unit with Ishmael, Thoreau, or even Siddhartha.

Tech XChange

The current issue of XChange, published online by UCLA’s Center X is focused around “Media & Techno Literacies.” There are some tremendous resources up there for current teachers as well as plenty of readings to peruse.

The “Rethinking MySpace” article I wrote a while ago can be found here along with a brief introduction about changes to the social networking landscape since the article’s initial publication.

Likewise, a podcasting unit I implemented called “Voices of Struggle” can be found as part of XChange here. Though I’m happy to work with teachers adapting the unit, I’m mainly linking here to share the audio samples two of my former students created.

Thanks, Jeff Share, for including me in the issue.

Big D Discourse: “You Can Meet Me Where it Breaks”

I’ve been thinking about surfing.

I don’t, by the way.

Surf, that is.

I shy students away from the word “can’t” but invoke it when it comes to my ability in navigating water where I am unable to touch bottom.

But the look in a surfer’s eyes.

Brings to mind Freire’s “patient impatience.”

One doesn’t consume a wave. Can’t own it. But space is carved, claimed, challenged on lurching canvases. Improvised rhapsodies of pecking order and unspoken code.

The passing of one, a hunger for the next one.

We’d do well to learn the lessons of letting hair get tussled and sandy. Of the bite of frigid confrontation with the sea. You can’t read convincingly about the brackish aftertaste the ocean leaves. Or the way language twists back upon itself when describing the journey with a wave – into, along, within. Do we teach these lessons or hope they are experienced? A knowledge lost as we lay waste to the experiential in our race to the top.

We disregard the self-guided learning communities on the ground, toweling off next to PCH.

You chase waves hungrily like an endangered species you want to savor before extinction.

Each tide a microcosm of loss,

A “tiny apocalypse”

Lips set, pursed, tightened,

In determination.

Students Respond to LA Times Column about Manual Arts and MLA Partner Schools

While my teacher email lists were abuzz with the fact that Fremont High School is being reconstituted, the LA Times ran a more positive spin on education reform in the city and it focused on Manual Arts. I asked my students to respond to the article after we discussed it in class. The general consensus was that Sandy Banks’ perception of the school did not match that of our students. I typed up a smattering of student responses to share with Mike and the MLA staff that you are welcome to read below. Personally, I think there’s tremendous merit in the work behind the Doolittle mural project and the school’s garden. However, I was surprised by the vitriol my students had for these efforts – the fact that emphasis in the column was placed on seemingly cosmetic changes rather than on changes that directly impact student achievement. I do think that students used this as an opportunity to voice concern about the school as a whole – not necessarily what MLA is presently doing. And, at the end of the day, I think that’s pretty reasonable; should students really have to care who is taking care of the barriers to their learning? The fact that they exist should be enough for them to don a tone of vexation. Aside from some spelling corrections, student responses are unedited below.

Sandy Banks’ column on improvement in Manual Arts High School could not have been more wrong and infuriating. As a student from said school, I couldn’t help but laugh at all the emphasis put on Manual Arts’ “positives;” all seven of them. I find it to be like a joke in poor taste. We have a little garden and a couple of people being paid to keep freshman from dropping out, but compared to everything else about Manual Arts, those things are barely anything but trivial. The truth about Manual Arts and all other schools like it is that it’s negative qualities outweigh any positives. If anything, Banks should have written about how Manual Arts needs improvement. By building up that little shit garden or not quite mentioning drop-out rates or other failures, we are giving those in charge of taking care of the school the chance to just walk away. I don’t like the idea of our help walking away thinking we don’t need anything because we’re growing vegetables behind some crappy building!

At Manual Arts, the change is successful when MLA came. First they gave money to clubs to make a difference. As a member of the Science Club, MLA gave money to my sponsor to make a garden. We made a garden that I thought was for everybody in the community. But the garden is not even open for everybody. I feel like MLA is changing the school but not helping students to enjoy a beautiful garden. Even though I helped make the garden I don’t have access to go inside it. Also, the article talks about money that every student gets. As a senior, I haven’t seen any of the money go to my education. I see the same old computers in the same classrooms that are really old. MLA is just making MAHS look good but not changing how students feel about it or how we are being educated.

I believe that this school should be reconstituted like Fremont.

Continue reading

Why I Am Marching on Beaudry Tomorrow: An Open Letter to the Manual Arts Community

The following letter was part of a series of emails sent to the faculty and staff at my school. Though it may be short notice, I’m encouraging anyone else reading this to join me tomorrow (I’ll be the one wearing red!). More info here.

Call it naïve optimism, but I didn’t think that my UTLA shirt saying “A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind”” would still be so relevant as we turn the corner into the year 2010. In terms of nationwide, statewide, and citywide policy and legislation, it’s clear that our students and our community here at Manual Arts continue to be the last concern.

Tomorrow, I will march with my union sisters and brothers because daily I am humbled by the efforts our community goes through to provide the best we can with the little we have. I will march and yell and oppose because our students are being silenced in political life. – Each student that is placed in a class that’’s too big with outdated materials or drops out or doesn’t pass the CAHSEE is another incident of our government and LAUSD and our school board turning their backs on those that have been ignored for too long.

I’m honored to march on Beaudry with such an amazing community of educators. I look forward to seeing you there.

Antero Garcia

Catching Up in Context: Names, Actions, and (Untamed) Wild Hearts

Wires have been crossed and I’ve been making lapses in judgment. I find myself signing off letters with one name when I should be using another, for instance. Growing up as “Andy,” I acknowledged but never relied on my given name, “Antero.” Andy was simply the name I heard and used as I grew up. As I moved toward more professional endeavors of late, it felt both useful and refreshing to go back to the name that appears on actual legal documents. And so, I live in two worlds: in much of my personal life and in the exchanges at my high school, colleagues and friends interact with Andy. As I cross the city and head into the towers of academia, I quickly change – like Clark Kent? – into Antero. It’s a silly shift and one I’ve been struggling to maintain. As doctoral peers become friends I find myself unconsciously signing off as “Andy.” The context of interaction shifts and my positionality with it.

Likewise, I think the name “Andy” comes from a history of (not-so) subtle assimilation. Looking at my father and his three siblings, it’s a telling rendition on “Mexi-pino” identity politics: My father, Jose, was always “Joey.” His brothers? Leonard is “Uncle Skip” and Antero (surprise) is “Uncle Andy” (aka Big Andy, perpetually making me Little Andy at family gatherings). The youngest of my Grandmother’s children was born years later and stuck with the already anglicized name Leslie. What shift in understanding and in need for naming lead to such a duality in names?

At Manual Arts, 10th grade teacher, Peter, gave many of his students last year nick names of the awesome variety: Silent Assassin, Senor Silencio, Sgt. Pepper, Skullfyre, and many others (what’s with all of the “S” names?). It’s interesting to see how, a year later, many of these students still use these names happily in my classroom. In being recognized and individualized in such a large school, they don the name and context given by a caring teacher.

And again, I’d like to extrapolate further – the concentric circles of naming and context moving toward the unified & unedited heart muttered upon here. A class I initially balked about to whoever would listen concluded yesterday. Unequivocally, it changed my life in a way I didn’t think a graduate course could. And I left realizing that naming the context of interaction and of communication with one another is a necessary process of being. We may not have a perfect batting average, as the professor reminded us on our last class, but for us to understand the world and – more importantly – for us to be understood by the world, that uncomfortable step towards the precipice of recognition need be labeled. It is a part of our “infinite spiral path of empty fullness,” that Luis Valdez mentioned.

Rob Fischer’s current installation at the Hammer (a snapshot of which is at the top of this post) is another example of context shifting. I initially went to look at this in terms of its implications related to classroom space, but felt transformed by the magnitude of reconstruction within and around the Hammer foyer. A new layer of history and context uprooted and applied to the walls.

For the umpteenth time, this version of “Wild Heart” is stuck in my head. I’ve never been crazy for much of Fleetwood Mac’s studio music, this song included. But again, the context is what’s at stake. Spontaneity and uninhibited expression move beyond the confines of studio wankery. This song always makes me think of Gloria Anzaldua – stranger bedfellows, there have been few. Along the lines of music, I’ve also been thinking about the mythological construction of Parliament and the world and characters created; I think there’s a direct connection to how we teach students about mythology, but I’ll return to this in a future post. (I’m currently in an argument with Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk.)

As I write this, Jack Rose’s first album on the VHF label unwinds calmly in the background. The sudden loss of this gifted musician dealt a significant blow last night. Another gentle spirit on the ghost ship on the blue.

“deny me and be doomed”: Reinventing Creation Myths

I fear that maybe in thinking about counter-narratives and the role of storytelling, I’ve been thinking too small. Maybe we need to start with a macro-vision of life in the classroom.

What would it look like for students to develop their own creation myths? In disrupting the “single story” of their neighborhoods and various cycles and pipelines that scholars say move our students around on a vast conveyer belt, perhaps it’s about having students reinvent the entire foundation from the ground up.

Travis, my SLC’s 9th grade English teacher shared with me the success he had in getting his class back on track through an introduction of mythology. Peter, our 10th grade teacher, will be starting Ishmael with his students later this year (a book also about creation myths). As my 12th graders delve into The Awakening, I borrowed a suggestion that Mark made for a different class, and showed my students this TED talk about the problems of the “Single Story;” it seemed most appropriate as a way of connecting Achebe, Conrad, and Chopin within the past month. I think also of Daye’s interest in Cargo Cults and the way they may act as a metaphor for deception in South Central.

I think the students would be properly situated in a foundation of already studied (as well as lived & experienced) creation myths. How about now reinventing them?

More Stories from Google Image Search

Related to the Google image search lesson mentioned in this post, my student today shared an activity he did over his break.

Passing the time during the thanksgiving break, Cristian typed into Google image search “Beverly Hills.” He said he noticed all of the clean streets and smiling white people. Next, he typed into Google image search “South Central Los Angeles.” The contrast is striking: power lines, fast food, gangs, police making arrests.

As a class, we discussed what stories are being told about these communities. What is being left out and why? As we continue to explore the dual cities in Los Angeles, how we’re able to re-mold the story being told will continue to be the charge our class will take up.

Thanks for sharing the lesson, Cristian.

Aggregated Search, Phone Photos and Talkin’ ‘Bout Mobile Media

In the past two days, I’ve received no less than five emails asking me if I’ve seen this article (I have now … thanks to each of you!). Apparently my research interests have been made pretty explicit at this point.

In any case, I was reminded of a couple of impromptu lessons I created that I’d like to share briefly, related to new media and its application within the classroom.

Google Image Search & Assumptions about Success

After a brief writing exercise in which students projected and wrote about their lives ten years in the future, we took to the Internet. As students described the careers they are interested in pursuing – doctor, lawyer, architect, astronomer, engineer, etc. – we typed each word into Google’s image search*. For the most part, the search results didn’t surprise – predominantly white, male faces showed up as the top results. (Try this, if you haven’t already.) As a class, we talked about what the search represented and why it was one that didn’t reflect our class and community demographics. The lesson was a place to continue our application of fancy words like “hegemony” and “counter-narrative” and to think about how this image search could be changed in the future.

I haven’t written this out yet, but I think a next step for us will be to simulate an aggregate search within the classroom on post-it notes. I need to tweak this, but perhaps it will be similar to an analog game like Go Fish or even Pictionary. I think if we can replicate a model where the faces of success look like the ones in our classroom, we can think more critically about applying the experience to the larger world.

* A student – based on his own “experiments” – warned me not to image search “nurse.” I appreciated his candor, but think that – in the future – that search will be ripe for discussion about gender stereotypes and sexual objectification.

Photographing an Argument

The next assignment was just as simple. Students needed to email or text me a photo they took somewhere in their neighborhood. They would then use the photo to construct an essay-length argument about their community. By the following week, students shared their photos in small groups and then hosted a class-wide curated slide show. (My students took all of the photos in this post in and around our school.)

Again, the assignment itself isn’t novel. However, I found it impressive how – other than a few students that didn’t adhere to the deadline and subsequently borrowed my classroom camera to snap shots around the school – the majority of the students were able to quickly text or email me their photos on time. That our school’s wireless network is faulty or not open to student access, that many students don’t own computers, and the many other concerns that educators have with technology didn’t stand in the way of students taking carefully constructed photos and getting them to me in a way that could be easily shared and projected. Further, if you haven’t been snapping photos on your phone lately, you’d be impressed with the quality. And hearing students discuss the angles, lighting, color, and compositional features of their pictures was also promising. Did mobile media revolutionize my curriculum? No. It did, however, validate the skills and abilities my students had and helped bridge them toward standards-aligned instruction.

A Few Summative Thoughts

Going back to the article that kick started this post, I guess my larger concern with mobile media isn’t if students are cheating or abusing their phone privileges. Instead, I’m interested in student positioning and understanding of the mobile device and of themselves as authors and creators. As we inevitably move toward the eventual acceptance of phones in the classroom, it will be useful for us to construct a foundation on which students can think responsibly about media and their role in consuming and creating it. This may sound like I’m either spewing abstract hogwash or stating the obvious to some, depending on where you stand on the tech debate. I’ll be piloting this theoretical foundation within my classroom later this year, with activities and texts ranging from cell phone ”Freeze Tag” (for lack of a better name) to diving into the words of Bruno Latour. Of course suggestions are always considered and appreciated.