How can this not be the subject of my next in-class writing prompt? Wow. I’m horrified and mesmerized. A few more youth of color would have been nice for my classes, but this should still convey something to my classes later this week.
We’ll see how this goes.
My Homeroom post about the lockdown as well as a few colleagues’ emails are also up. I realize the lockdown issue may sound like a broken record on this blog. However, serious debriefing, insane anecdotes (which will hopefully show up on the wiki), and furious teachers suggest that Friday’s incident will hopefully be something of a catalyst for change at our school.
I think the LA Times will have a story up in a day or two also.
Though it didn’t make any huge headlines the day after, I think that Friday’s lockdown will need some in-depth debriefing on Monday. At least for me, it is frustrating to see our school’s media attention focused on these events only. How many times did the news play images of our students being escorted in handcuffs or lying on the ground in handcuffs? What do the captions and the narration say about the hegemonic viewpoint reified for the many people tuned in Friday afternoon?
Where was the media when our community came together in the name of iDivision? Or when my students discovered the Black Cloud? Or our SLC’s other amazing teachers created events with the Human Rights Club, the Science Club, the Gay Straight Alliance, or any of the other many, many positive experiences for the students of South Los Angeles? What about the incredible artwork now completed in Doolittle Hall? Why weren’t these events “Breaking News?”
Though I’m fleshing out the details, I’m expecting all of my students to create their own “Breaking News” stories over the next few days. They will be filling in their own helicopter shots of the school with something positive to say about their community. We’ll use these as building blocks for a Socratic dialogue which will be conducted the Wednesday before our Thanksgiving break.
This is how I spent my Friday afternoon.
Reflection should be up at the Homeroom whenever it gets posted.
Should be a good discussion on Monday with my classes, on the positive side at least.
I’d like to dedicate my current Homeroom post to my nemesis, Mark.
A recent email he sent out begins:
dear educators
this is a call to those who have been in the trenches and have put their all into a system that refuses to do the same for our students.
A murder-mystery for LACMA patrons to solve over the course of two dozen clues within the museum!
Yesterday’s Field Guide to LACMA by Machine Project is one of those spectacles that make me want to discuss it with others. It’s so thrilling in principle and so fun in execution that I get the urge to tell other people and track down those that were there to try to make head way as to what happened.
For one minute, every hour, this guy plays the most shredding of metal. After the one minute face melter, he retires for the next 59 minutes. Oh yeah, this is in a Gothic archway on top of a building and can be viewed via telescope if necessary.
At first, Rhea and I flipped through the extravagant booklet of additions made to LACMA for a single Saturday and felt overwhelmed. The number of activities, installations, and events was daunting. Eventually, I chucked the book and started to wander. That’s when things took a turn for the awesome.
The roving guy in the black pepper box suit found performing a jig in one of the wings of the museum.
What I liked most about the day was that in many ways Field Guide was still really about accentuating what LACMA has to offer. Machine Project put its signature spin on various activities, but it was in order to encourage visitors to experience LACMA – not necessarily to see Machine Project stuff in a bigger space. Once we started walking through the museum, we would haphazardly discover an automated replica of a painting or a roving colorful constellation of people or shuffling wooden tables or a murder mystery in progress.
That looks familiar!
Machine Project’s one day Field Guide to LACMA allowed for new interactions with a space already familiar to most Angelenos. Like one of my other favorite places in the city, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Field Guide helped visitors re-imagine the possibilities of a museum, its function and its expectations as far as social decorum. (As we were buying tickets, Rhea handed my a letter announcing that, “Today, November 15, 2008, all visitors to the museum are invited to clap for the pieces they enjoy.” I’m pretty sure she regretted informing me of this development as I made frequent use of the invitation to the bemusement of those other, quieter patrons. I must say that BCAM has some seriously great acoustics going on in there!)
Rhea’s favorite part of the Field Guide: a full sized recreation of one painting entirely out of fresh flowers!
Like a healthy portion of other visitors yesterday, I came to LACMA specifically because I wanted to see what Machine Project had been planning. However, the many patrons that happened to be coming to LACMA on the same day as the Field Guide are privileged to walk into a temporarily open, interpretive version of the museum. Though cerebral in concept, all of the activities were engaging for visitors, regardless of age or theoretical interest.
As much as this was a fun day, I think it also speaks to how we critique and interact within the confines of a museum. I cannot overstate how much work this project must have taken and I’m thrilled about reading other accounts and seeing what else took place yesterday. (Our good friend Dorka-tron was on site taking pictures all day along with a small army of photographers. She snapped a great pic of a young child looking curiously at the long-haired chap playing the shredding metal for one minute every hour behind a shroud of smoke. Pulitzer, you’re on notice!)
Continuous “elevator music” throughout the day. We were treated to two different drummers, a trombonist, a folk group, a trumpet player, and a baritone. (I took the elevator as much as possible purely for the thrill of being crammed next to an intensely concentrating musician.)
My only regret was not signing up early enough to get an Ambient Haircut – nothing like getting a trim next to a Theremin-fronted musical outfit.
(There is a strong pedagogical foundation within Field Guide. I’ll get back to that sooner or later.)
I don’t feel at liberty to really go much further than what I’ve written over at the Homeroom, re: being principal-less at the moment.
A while back, Octavio mentioned that there is a story about the changes that took place over the course of a year at Manual. I think that this is a story that will hopefully get written down by us in the future. At such a point, I think I can more objectively and rationally articulate my feelings and thoughts about the present situation. Until then, the above link will need to suffice.
I’m coming to terms with the fact that my foreseeable academic publishing career will pretty much be stuck in APA format. This is a bit of a bummer. I’ve come to really know and appreciate the elegance of MLA style. It’s a style I can comfortably teach to my students and know they can use it as undergrads in college.
I’m now relearning a new style somewhat from scratch (granted, I flirted with APA back while I worked on my Masters). The style guides I’ve looked through are clumsy and the in general I don’t feel that the format is the best. As an example, I appreciate that MLA allows for full names within a Works Cited while APA truncates author’s first names to a mere initial. It feels comforting and empowering to be known as Garcia, Antero as opposed to Garcia, A. I do, however, concede that a necessary standardization is worthwhile within a given field. And unlike language varieties, it seems that – as a whole – we are a body of researchers, writers, and teachers unwilling to entertain a variety of style-vernaculars.
As such, I am unfortunately casting MLA as the losing participant in this academic edition of Thunderdome. I am still awaiting the rebellion led by one Mad Max to better liberate us from the oppressive regime of the APA Aunty Entity.
Oops. I was typing up some notes about a meeting that got a bit heated today and my email began to spin out of control. 1400 words later, I came to. My writing got a little loopy at the end. Thought I’d share the final conclusion as a testament to the email’s hand-to-forehead inducing feeling of “Oh god, why did I type that?” and, even worse, “Oh god, why did I click ‘Send’ on that?” Even without providing specific context, I think you’ll get it [mildly edited to remove non-Travis names]:
p.p.s. Last part, I promise. Remembering Travis get frustrated over scheduling decisions back in July, I think it’s important for our group as a whole to step back and look at how different are our proposals from the status quo? Are we really thinking that far outside the box? I realize that data in general feels like a very in-the-box-and-that’s-a-good-thing kind of issue, but is this the route towards truly turning around a school? Travis’ challenge back to the campus was to really push ourselves to look beyond the confines of what Local District Seven conditioned us to accept. We don’t need to look for what will do. We need to paint the god damn Sistine Chapel on the grass in the senior quad. We need to invoke “A Love Supreme” into rhetoric of school policy.We need to “Sunset Boulevard” our daily practices and let all of our students whisper that they’re ready for their (academic) close up. We need to do something that big.
And read Mark’s post whenever you get a chance. Here’s an excerpt: “this election has not changed the reality in the streets but rather the possibility in the minds. and this is what makes this teachable moment such an opportunity. one that i will graciously take to touch history… and teach lives.”
Good stuff, even if Mark is my nemesis and even if he seemingly can’t post a picture at the proper size…