Category Archives: Beyond Pedagogy

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

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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.

“Within an avalanche of glory hallelujah skybreaks”: The Beyond Pedagogy Epilogue

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“The game as I conceive it,” Knecht once wrote, “leaves (the player) with the feeling that he has extracted from the universe of accident and confusion a totally symmetrical and harmonious cosmos, and absorbed it into himself.”

    – Magister Ludi, Hermann Hesse

Abstract
This lengthy document begins with a discussion of the political act of conversing. It offers a meek-mannered confession and detailed explanation of said confession. It reviews the interactions of a reading group and then veers into another more stodgy confession: that the entire document is actually a call to action. By the end of this document, readers are encouraged to continue the work that stands Beyond Pedagogy and to pick up pens (or pound at keyboards) to find authentic educational change beyond the unhygienic standing water language pools that we so constantly wade through in today’s professional development models. You’ve been warned.*

*For those wary to jump into the entire document below, the Beyond Pedagogy group is now concluded. Future iterations of similar groups will commence in the near future. Those individuals interested in participating are encouraged to contact me (I’m not necessarily organizing new groups but can encourage and connect interested participants).

On Conversation
There’s something to be said for conversation removed from explicit purpose. That, in sitting down with a regimented agenda, a series of protocols beyond social niceties, and a timeline, there is a very definite loss in productivity. This may sound counterintuitive, however, think about the way a conversation unfolds with colleagues at lunch, in the car with a friend, over wine and starters at a restaurant; our natural inclination is of waywardness. We – as dialoguers – meander from point to point. Yes, these examples are ones without specific goals set in mind; however, they are the ways we develop, critique, and experience understandings and ideologies of the world around us.

Further, it is important to point out that such conversations, though void of standard meeting procedural paraphernalia, are not without vision. For all of us, a conversation is a moment of contention, of ideological territory being sniffed out, a moment of invested interest. We gain and procure through dialogue – a deafening yet invisible economy. Like the act of teaching, each discussion, each joke passed, each question echoed, is a political act. In voicing an “um,” a “like,” an ill-tempered or sardonic guffaw, we put ourselves on the line for judgment.

This rumbling of verbosity leads me to “an overwhelming question” (to quote Eliot): “Why not?” That is, why not remove the walls and pillars of organization from professional discourse? Even temporarily? As mentioned, we are all clearly invested in a common interest that arrives en masse on our campuses each morning (some members being tardy) and strives for some sort of decency in its education. Continue reading →

“The History of Dreams Has Yet to be Written”: Ur-Pedagogy and the Dialectics of Postponed Meetings

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Seeing as to how our last couple of reading group meetings continue to get bumped, postponed, and canceled, I’ve decided we’re making the jump online for the discussion of The Dialectics Seeing by Susan Buck-Morss. I’m encouraging all of our members to type up and respond to each other at least a couple of times, and I’m hoping this may be a more lasting way to capture a few fleeting thoughts from anyone else with a passing interest in the reading group’s approach.

I figure I’d offer a few comments and questions and hope others jump in over the next week or so.

That being said, one of the drawbacks of assembling this reading list is not knowing exactly how well each book will fit with one another. And while I’d often imagine the likes of Graeber or Pinker getting into arguments with other authors throughout the process, I wasn’t sure how ol’ Benjamin would play out … and I’m still not sure. Personally, I really like the method that Benjamin took in plotting out the Arcades Project. The notion of gluing together cobbled thoughts and observations into a new realm of reflection really highlights one of the aims I had with regards to this reading group in general. Similarly, I’ve been rather fascinated by “lowbrow culture” and Benjamin’s mining for overarching relevance in the tawdry shops of Paris and in the underbelly’s working class feels rather appropriate. Benjamin would totally love talking about viral youtube videos, Batman, and FNMTV.

There are a ton of places in the text I’d want to tease out as a group, but thought for starters to just offer two questions:

1. Chapter 8 focuses around children and their “capacity for revolutionary transformation” (265). [Question mark placed here after something wise and scholarly is said and everyone nods in total understanding.]?
2. I am interested in the lessons that the city is teaching its inhabitants. Specifically, we see in both the text and the photographs that “Function became visible” (295). Yes, I realize this is a big part of that whole modernism thing that people that wear funny hats like to talk about. This pedagogy of process and use still feels embedded within our current [(post{post})post] post modern society (I get lost and forget which society we’re in every now and then … sorry). How are our current surroundings reflections of where societal pedagogy is progressing?

Lastly, by its very nature, the work described in Buck-Morss’ text is of a very specific time and place (although there is that pesky ur- prefix). I’ve been playing around with the notion of constructing something like a “Manual Arts Project” or an “LAUSD Project” utilizing the architecture of our schools, the social topography of our communities, the sounds of phones and helicopters and bells and laughter. I feel words like montage and pastiche are presently burdened with pejorative connotations – that such a patchwork project wouldn’t gather any kind of academic wings to take flight. But who cares! I digress (ah the digital gluttony of a blog!), I bring this up to ask what would something like the Arcade Project look like if it were to be made manifest here and now? What are our mythic archetypes? Our wish images of today? Do we still saunter beyond the pace of you’re average gangster leanin’, baggy pants wearin’ flâneur?

[Note: image from above is of “Destiny City,” an ecotopia being carried by a few of its creators.]

“They reestablished for him the world in which he wished to exist”

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Thursday’s Beyond Pedagogy meeting, though a bit noisier (due to our temporary move) resulted in the kind of inspiring dialogue that’s been fairly consistent throughout a fairly non-consistent set of dates, books, and group members.

For this book’s go-around, Mark ventured to facilitate. He asked everyone to provide a single sentence for discussion (providing individual phrases and words didn’t make it into our schedule).

Below are the sentences discussed. Please add any thoughts, additional sentences, or insight you’d like to the comments below.

Our next book is the unflappable Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Meeting details here. See you there?

Selected sentences from Jay Lifton’s Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism:

“If with Catholic belief, you don’t accept one article of faith, you are not a Catholic” (page 217).

“As painful as it is, thought reform would never have a lasting effect if it did not offer a new and appealing sense of identity as its reward” (page 385).

“The totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized, and those who possess no such right” (page 433).

“It means that you realize your crimes are very big, and that you are not afraid to denounce yourself …. that you trust the people, trust your re-education, and that you like to be reformed” (page 31).

“He found himself more willing to listen to others’ opinions, more patient, and less quick to ‘get in anger’” (page 64).

“Totalist language, then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling’s phrase, ‘the language of nonthought’” (page 429).

“In discussing tendencies toward individual totalism within my subjects, I made it clear that there were a matter of degree, and that some potential for this form of all-or-nothing emotional alignment exists within everyone” (page 419)

Mr. Froebel’s Cabinet of (scripted, abstracted, spiritual) Wonder

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This post serves as a general stomping ground for comments and lingering thoughts about the latest Beyond Pedagogy text, Inventing Kindergarten.

Though our meeting had a slightly smaller turnout than previous ones, the dialogue was all the more engaging. That being said, Mark was kind enough to offer his notes from the meeting. Below are his unedited, running notes throughout the exchange – the excessive question mark use is all his! (??????)
And yes, this blog post’s title is an homage to one of my favorite books about one of my favorite places.
Mark’s Notes:

PAULA’S comments and ideas:
teachers undervalue the importance of media design (how the book was designed)  EXPOUND – ??????
Walt Whitman (leaves of grass… book making – a lost art)
a little whitewashed… how did these kindergarten ideas affect other cultures…
was it really “creative” “abstract” – tolerating ambiguity
reminiscent of scientific behavioralism…
embodied literacy – not so cerebral…
infantilizing high school students – thru rules

OCTAVIO’S comments and ideas:
has to finish his dissertation
were Vygotsky and Froebel contemporaries
how education is compartmentalized….  the need for Interdisciplinary approach (connections)
experience is important…
play as a form of inquiry… (theatre as play)
???Where do video games fit into this????
basic skills fit into the larger context (LIFE) need to align experience with literacy
part of it has to be by design – what if life is the design????

ANTERO’S comments and ideas:
universal connectivity… Glass Bead Game (interconnectivity)
student of everything (LIFE) – Renaissance person…
lost in high school is a sense of play…

???Adult over play??? magic is lost, pedagogy is hidden for the kids ???? How do you balance transparency of pedagogy with sense of magic or wonderment…?????
consumerism destroying the purity…
intellectual play

Some random updates

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– The Beyond Pedagogy schedule has been updated here.

– I’ve been offering sample lessons from the Words on Walls graffiti unit I’ve been teaching over at the homeroom. It’s being updated once or twice a week at the moment. The description of the project is here.

– Innovation Division happenings: Manual Arts teachers will be voting on May 28th and 29th and Manual Arts parents will be voting on May 31st. All stops have been proverbially pulled out.

– Daye and I will be part of a demo/poster session at the HASTAC Conference on the 24th. We’ll be unveiling the revised Black Cloud game scheduled to launch in July. (I know the project isn’t listed on the site, but I assure I’ll be there!) Here are a few pictures of the student notebooks we’re developing for the game – check out the colored pupils on Cloudy! Daye’s a goku superstar and I’m the shoddy photographer here.

Full picture set here.

Kindergarten as a Secondary Practice

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Before I get into the meat of this post, I wanted to mention that the schedule for the Beyond Pedagogy group has been revised – our last meeting was canceled at the 11th hour and will be rescheduled at our next meeting on May 8th. The full schedule is found here.

Now then, having recently finished the current reading selection, Inventing Kindergarten, I felt compelled to add to the list of imaginary classes that should be instituted down the line: Kindergarten 101.

What is Kindergarten?
Though Friedrich Froebel’s original vision of kindergarten has become terribly diluted, the original vision was of “a radical and highly spiritual system of abstract-design activities intended to teach the recognition and appreciation of natural harmony” (page 12). Frankly, the spirituality aspect of Froebel’s kindergarten isn’t to be taken lightly, the entire curricula was designed around a sense of discovered unity throughout life.

Aside from spirituality, the goals of curriculum were about student play and abstraction. Through a serious of activities and “gifts,” students are urged to slowly move from explicit and real representations to abstract and varied methods of understanding, visualizing, and imagining. The process is entirely unlike the kinds of practices enforced in high schools today.

And while kindergarten kept kids busy every day (the class itself being rigorously structured), the entire process was to feel natural and fun: “Kindergarten was play, and a good kindergartener made certain her little sprouts never thought otherwise – the theoretical underpinnings of the education were kept from children just as they are in any classroom situation” (page 145). Not sure, I’d agree with the last clause – I’ve used Freire as a means to open discussion and dialogue in my class and candidly discuss motivations behind my practice. However, there are certain things that remain behind the curtain, as I’ll explain about the Black Cloud.

I realize this is a painfully limited description (go read the book!), I mainly want to outline the key goals of kindergarten: unity, natural harmony, abstraction, and play. As Brosterman explains, “The intended result of this all-encompassing instruction was the creation of a sensitive, inquisitive child with an uninhibited curiosity and genuine respect for nature, family, and society…” (page 39).

So What Went Wrong?
I mentioned that kindergarten ain’t as it used to be. The main reason for this – surprise – is crass consumerism. The “gifts” that are essential to the kindergarten experience became marketed so aggressively that production flaws would change or “enhance” the tools used in the class: “the gifts have been transformed, the educational objective for what is left of the occupations has been lost of corrupted” (page 40). Similarly, the teachers that continued the tradition of Froebel’s kindergarten didn’t have the kind of subtle and detailed training that was required. A certain amount of finesse was required for the differentiated and nuanced work that took place every day in the class.

Funnily enough, consumerism is part of what’s ruining education today as well! Public schools are being forced to “comply” with specific curriculum as is often created by private companies and organizations. There are ferocious bidding wars by groups like Prentice Hall and Holt to be the “official” textbook within a school. Millions of dollars are at stake. The material? About as good as a one-size-fits-all solution can be. At a recent professional development meeting, the presenter mentioned that most questions within English textbooks rarely invoke the higher order thinking skills in Bloom’s taxonomy. (Synthesize??? What’s that?!)

But Why in High School?
Today, students come into my class at the beginning of the year wary, uninterested, and expecting to do the work to pass the class. The curiosity factor is nil. The occasional expressive and interested student is seen as a thrilling anomaly and is quickly fetishized by a handful of teachers. Most are not the “sensitive, inquisitive” children of Froebel’s dreams. And if that sounds like a slight to the students I teach, it’s not: the things that my students write, create, or express continually amaze me throughout my class. However, somewhere along the line, students were programmed to stop asking questions, stop having fun, and start learning how to bubble in the “right” answers on by-rote exams on a semi-annual basis. Yes, schools really do kill creativity.

Students need to feel comfortable playing; this is part of the process of learning and being creative. We need a system for students to get back into the habit of having fun.

What Would This Look Like in High School?
A lot of this is about changing what happens inside the classroom. Why can’t there be a sense of mystery in an English class? Why can’t your history class be inquiry based and allow room for “play”?

What most excites me about the Black Cloud game is the opportunity to completely throw students off balance. Not only will students be playing a game for a month and a half in my class, but – for most of the time – they won’t even know they are playing a game. The entire project relies on student curiosity. Yes, we’re still learning the necessary English skills I’m required to teach, but we’re doing it in a way that Froebel would probably admire. (And just like in Kindergarten, the actual learning and “goals” of the unit remain hidden. The premise of play and discovery are all that is visible for the students).

Kindergarten is a pedagogical tool that can be adapted for all ages. It’s classroom interaction, student and teacher roles within the classroom, and school activities re-envisioned. It was invented more than 150 years ago and it just might be the most refreshing way to transform the current educational landscape.

EDIT: No, I don’t know why I wrote “Post-secondary” when I was talking about high school… it’s fixed now. It’s monday and it’s already been a long week…

Consciousness is Coknowledge: Notes on The Spell of The Sensuous

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This post serves as a culling of texts and videos related to the second book in the Beyond Pedagogy series, The Spell of the Sensuous.

Additionally, the conversation last night was far from conclusive and an extension on any of the thoughts or ideas related to the book can be vetted here. Feel free to question, challenge, or reframe parts of the book at any time.

Our next book will be  Blank Slate. As always, anyone is welcome to participate. Details can be found here.

Related texts and videos:
New Yorker: Has an Amazonian Tribe Upended our Understanding of Language? – Previously written about here


TED Talks: My Stroke of Insight– Amazing 18 minute video

Song Learning Birds Shed Light on Our Ability to Speak

Ants Have Algorithms

Man: A Course of Study – Anyone know where to find a copy of this curriculum?

So what were your thoughts about last night’s discussion?

The 101s

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I’m thinking about what’s missing in our current high school course offerings (hint: a lot). I’m brainstorming the classes I feel are most urgently needed by my current students. I want to use this as an exercise to see what I can fold or further adapt in my own classroom, within my SLC, and what can eventually be pushed forward into new class structures. This may be a recurring exercise I’ll return to – we’ll see.

Classes that should be required:
– Feelings 101: expression, empathy, and dealing with grief

This is related to the large immigrant student tropes I’ve been attempting to document.

– Social Media 101: Blogging, online networks, and RSS

I recently wrote about the fact that most of these sites are blocked by our district. I’m not accepting the comments as a proper response. These are the skills imperative to being successful in our 2.0 environment. I’ve been recently following the work of Henry Jenkins, and the participation gap hits the nail on the head. I have more to say on this… just not yet.

– Humanism

I’ll return to this one as the Beyond Pedagogy discussions continue – I want to outline a realistic framework

– Interaction 101: Consensus, Mediation and Resolution

Perhaps the follow-up course to Feelings 101? (I know a few adults that could use a refresher in this course as well)

– Urban Art & Critical Response: Graffiti, Print Media, fashion, and music

 Yes, this is something I’m actively working on and presenting about.

– History of My Suppressed Voice: a personal inquiry; independent studies class

I think this sounds pretty clear, don’t you?

What are the current required classes? Along with the regular academic stuff we’ve got “a class called “Life Skills.” I can’t say what happens in this class with any certainty, but aren’t all of the above “Life Skills”?

Notes on Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology: “In a Network of Lines that Intersect”

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As the Beyond Pedagogy meeting dates continue, I’ll be creating posts for each of the books discussed and read in the group. Notes from the discussions, key points, and further questions will be added here for future reference. This is also a place to try to cull together the various side conversations I’ve been having with several of you over the last couple days.

For now, this serves as a place for participants to add comments, clarifications, and generally continue the discussion (albeit in a limited form) that began Thursday night.

Personally, I left the meeting with more questions than with answers, though I’d imagine that is rather intentional considering the nature and title of the book.

One member of our group wrote:

I still don’t see this happening on a large scale, so I need to work on liberating my imaginary. Even in schooling – it’s all about how much are people willing to give up? for teachers, how much control, over students and content, and delivery of content? I guess it’s all about norming…you know, tax relief v. pay fair share.

Another group member and I continued our discussion around the concept of “liberation in the imaginary” the kind of phrase that seemed to glow iridescently after our conversation, ripening with time.

Please add any other thoughts of comments if you have a place you are interested in further developing in further meetings. Where will the Spell of the Sensuous connect?

(I’ve tried framing this in term’s of Hesse’s Glass Bead game in an earlier post. Perhaps it’s easier, instead to quote the rather problematic Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler: “Speculate, reflect: every thinking activity implies mirrors for me…. The moment I put my eye to a kaleidoscope, I feel that my mind, as the heterogeneous fragments of colors and lines assemble to compose regular figures, immediately discovers the procedure to be followed: even if it is only the peremptory and ephemeral revelation of a rigorous construction that comes to pieces at the slightest tap of a fingernail on the side of the tube, to be replaced by another, in which the same elements converge in a dissimilar pattern.”)