[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!