Sadness-Tinged Relief: Uncomfortable Reflections on Leaving Manual Arts

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It’s been just over a month since I stopped working at Manual Arts, the high school where I spent the past eight years trying to cut my teeth as a teacher; the place where I probably learned more every day than I was privileged to teach. And while I’ve been spending my time since packing­­–and later unpacking–boxes, standing in line at a new (though just as slow) DMV, and figuring out how to at least somewhat safely operate a circular saw, this primarily offline time has afforded me the opportunity to reflect on this final year at Manual Arts and what that school space has meant to me.

In many ways, leaving this school–particularly in light of this last year–has been filled with sadness-tinged relief. It makes me uncomfortable to say that, so let me explain where this feeling is coming from.

I should make it clear, though, that despite any of the challenges I’ve faced or dealt with at Manual Arts, I feel extremely, extremely privileged to have been able to be a teacher there. The students that I’ve worked with have pushed me in ways that this rant will not encompass. In a moment, I plan to share the more troubling challenges at Manual Arts but want to make sure that my gratitude to the abundant experiences of joy and enlightenment I’ve had from my students and colleagues is noted.

I’ve made it no secret that Manual Arts has had its fair share of challenges over the years. From truancy policies that essentially criminalize students to the fact that my eight years at this school has included eight different principals, Manual Arts, structurally is a persistent mess.

Last August, I met my eighth principal for the school. Robert Whitman was assuming his first head principalship at Manual having been an assistant principal at several other local urban schools prior. I want to stop here for a moment and note that this is par for the course of urban school leadership in Los Angeles: the schools most in need of strong leadership according to district metrics like standardized test scores, teacher turnover rates, and dropout levels act as training grounds for principals. The majority of the principals that have left Manual Arts while I was there spent little more than a year (sometimes less) letting the school coast while adding their new leadership position to their resumes and quickly taking a job at a less demanding school.

The new principal’s challenges were compounded by the fact that the school moved from a three track year-round schedule to a traditional calendar. While the three track system meant longer school days and is generally inequitable for all of the students involved, it was at least a routine students and teachers had learned to cope with for the decade plus that Manual Arts was a year round school. And while time was stabilized as a result of the move to a traditional calendar, all else was disregarded: class sizes shot up well beyond what teachers or classrooms were equipped to deal with. Across the board, students were packed 36-40+ students deep in core instructional classes. Strangely, our security and deans at the school were gutted. Here’s an equation for disaster at even the best of schools: too many kids with too little supervision equals dismal instruction.

Of course, the instability of varied leadership and strategies takes its toll on the students and teachers of Manual Arts. The Freshman Preparatory Academy–the school’s effort two principals before Whitman–was an effective effort in sustaining student interest during the year our students are most at risk of dropping out. With a new regime of administrators and a general lack of institutional memory to drive the decisions of the school this year, the majority of the practices that supported ninth grade teachers were decimated. The halls of FPA, where I spent most of my time helping teachers with technology challenges at the school became chaos.  Even the most collaborative teachers I was privileged to work with went into all-out-survival mode, trying to get through the overcrowded classes one day at a time.

The administration, like LAUSD’s superintendent’s phrase, shifted to a “laser-like focus” on skills and test preparation. The execution of this focus, however, was generally incompetent. My former guiding teacher and one of the most innovative educators I’ve been privileged to work with was subject to no less than a year-long procession of passive-aggressive administrators observing and encouraging him to volunteer to pilot the Scholastic Read 180 program in his classroom. The experience sapped him of the enthusiastic energy I typically got to see in him and seemed like a contract-protected form of administrative bullying. (I assure you I have no problem with being observed–under the best of administrators my practice has significantly grown from administrative observation. What this teacher underwent felt possibly retaliatory for the way he has been outspoken on the school’s campus.)

As a quick aside: as I type this, my former advisor forwarded me her emailed “word of the day” and it is fitting to today’s discussion.

Quantophrenia: “Undue reliance on or use of facts that can be quantified or analyzed using mathematical or statistical methods; inappropriate application of such methods, es. In the fields of sociology and anthropology.”

Nearly all of the teachers I’ve come to work with closely and that I’ve learned from are voluntarily leaving Manual next year. Most of them have helped co-design the Schools for Community Action and are trying to make these new schools (just down the street from Manual Arts) a more humane alternative to the bureaucracy that has plagued Manual Arts this past year and long, long before.

I say “voluntarily” in the previous paragraph somewhat uncomfortably. None of these teachers want to leave the students at the school. As is the case in school after school, Manual’s problems are adult-driven.

Perhaps what’s driven me to this reflection more than anything else is an announcement that was made during my last week at Manual Arts: the school has been awarded a School Improvement Grant for next year as a “turnaround model.” What this means is that the school is being reconstituted. “Reconstitution” is fancy ed-speak that essentially means that everyone at the school is being fired and needs to reapply for their jobs. Everyone, that is, except that in this single instance the principal will be keeping his job without reapplying. Wait, what? Yeah, that happened. Oh yeah, one other thing: in this particular concoction of reconstitution, the school will only hire back 50% of the teachers that choose to reapply at Manual Arts. This is clearly an opportunity to clean house and ensure that the bad apples in the eye of the nascent principal and less-than-effective management company, LA’s Promise don’t come back.

Here’s the fancy color-printed handout that teachers received notifying them of the reconstitution. Sure looks expensive to have printed out the school’s logo in color: a sound decision, I’m sure.

I should make it clear that money is great: the million plus dollars that the School Improvement Grant can bring to the school can make a real difference in the outcomes of the students at Manual Arts. But you know what else can make a difference? Positively driven, motivated teachers that know and have been involved in a school community. I should note, too, that even when working on school wide reforms in the past and reconstitution was invoked, I could not find significant research that it leads to positive academic outcomes.

So: sadness and relief. The work conditions at Manual have become untenable in a way that has made such an archaic word to me feel positively spritely. I’m genuinely saddened that the school I’ve invested so much time and energy in and that has rewarded me again and again with happiness and the best of my teaching experiences has been denigrated by inconstancy and poor management. I’m saddened that I left the school under these conditions. And, as awful as it may be for the students there, I am relieved not to be there next year. Even if they would have hired me back.

“Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself…”

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Why, hello there. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

A few things have waylaid my updating of the ol’ Crawl. In particular:

  1. I revised and defended my dissertation.
  2. Did you skim #1? I finished dissertating!
  3. I helped organize the opening of a new public high school, Critical Design and Gaming School (CDAGS) in South Central.
  4. I dealt with the most stressful moving challenge ever and have relocated from Los Angeles to Fort Collins, CO.
  5. Ally and I adopted a fiendish canine.

Okay, so recognizing all of these things pretty much took place concurrently, any kind of free time for blogging or–as some of you know–socializing, texting, replying to emails, being a generally personable person to be around-was thrown out the window. Though I’ve been somewhat competent at juggling several things at once, the past two months have been pretty insane.

All that being said, I want to say, “I’m back” and offer a few extra notes about the above.

 On dissertating:

So the only extra thing I’ll add is that UCLA’s dissertation filing system is completely digital. This means that the rather classic committee approval page is no longer physically signed by dissertation committee members (they get to leisurely click a couple of buttons online). While this makes the whole process easier, it also felt lacking of the the tangibility of being done. So I made my own unofficial signature page.

 

On CDAGS:

CDAGS is going to be incredible. It will continue to be a part of my research and I am truly excited about the ways this school offers meaningful and equitable learning opportunities to the students of South Central. One interesting thing about the CDAGS: it is going to be on a brand new campus (sharing the space with two sister schools that, together, are called the Schools for Community Action). Aside from an interim principal and a minimal staff, the only people that have ever used this new campus are the several dozen displaced teachers from Miramonte Elementary School. (For the non-LA based readers, Miramonte faced several severe allegations of abuse at the school earlier this year; Superintendent Deasy, in response to parent concerns, removed all of the Miramonte teachers and had them housed at the new campus for the remainder of the year while a new stuff was temporarily in place as the abuse investigation proceeded.) It’s been interesting visiting the home of CDAGS. It looks like the teachers currently getting compensated to sit here and not teach are really good at working on puzzles much of the day.

 

On moving:

I cannot begin to recount how stressful, frustrating, and overwhelming the moving process has been. This warrants a longer post. I will say that the day of moving involved ransoms, shouting, and fires (literally). And while I am certainly going to miss L.A., I must say that our new Colorado friends and colleagues have made life in the quieter city quite easy to adjust to.

On Olive:

Olive was rescued by Ally and I because… well… just look at this thing and tell me you wouldn’t do the same:

We adopted Olive under the assumption that she was a beagle. She’s not. She’s part beagle, part Jack Russel terrier, and part  Linda Blair in the Exorcist. I’m not saying Olive is the spawn of Satan. But I’m also not saying she might not be a not-too-distant relative. To be fair, Olive is a pretty awesome puppy (she’s 6ish months old). The only problem is that her happiness is inversely related to my own writing and packing productivity, making the above list of things I needed to accomplish in the past few months a bit more trying. Olive loves a few things about her new home in Colorado: more space, the dog park nearby, and the assortment of rabbits, mice, and birds that she can chase.

Phew! It’s been a busy few months and I apologize for this blog being out of commission. I’m excited to return here and wipe off the cobwebs at the American Crawl.

More Than Show and Tell: Redefining Participation at DML

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The Following is Cross-Posted at the 21st Century Scholar blog: 

A month to reflect on the Digital Media and Learning (DML) Conference, and my mind is still buzzing with the ideas and innovative shifts in educational learning I was able to engage with during the three-day conference. As with the two prior conferences, I left the conference with a strong sense of optimism for the possibilities of schools and teachers and learning as a result of the presentations, conversations, and debates I participated in during DML 2012.

And while the ideas and individuals I encounter are so inspiring, I left with a looming and frustrating sentiment: we can do more. While I typically blog at DMLcentral about the ways that the Digital Media and Learning field can continually improve, I want to stress that I am talking here about the conference space. At the DML conference, we can–and need–to do more. The format of conferences is an ego-boosting and elitist one: typically, presenters stand in front of a crowd share their work for 15–20 minutes and take questions from the crowd. Keynote speakers get longer and panels basically allow audiences to witness a conversation amongst three or four experts on a given topic. The problem is, when it comes to digital media and when it comes to learning, we are all experts to a certain extent.

As a conference that brings the latest innovation from a nascent field, the DML space needs to become more egalitarian. What is the net impact of this conference convening? If we are bringing together hundreds of the most motivated and knowledgeable people interested in DML, we should be doing more than listening to a select few in a glorified show-and-tell.

As one of the conference committee members for the 2012 conference, I saw first-hand how competitive and selective the programming process was. A small percentage of the proposals submitted could be selected and I regularly heard from frustrated applicants that were eager to share their valuable work. What if we moved beyond a traditional conference format to a space that encouraged bazaar-like trading of ideas and it was facilitated to have purposeful outcomes by the end?

I want to note how powerful the DML backchannel is: the screens displaying recent conference-related tweets and the participation by a majority of conference attendees in the backchannel made it a robust and valuable resource. And isn’t it, thus, strange that a conference that can so ably illustrate the power of newly emerging backchannel tools cannot redefine the traditional components of a conference?

Ultimately, if the DML enthusiasts (myself included) are critically and enthusiastically pushing against worn and hackneyed learning formats, isn’t it time we also begin pushing against the traditional conference and presentation format as well?

Fact Vs. Truth: About that Whole This American Life Retraction Thing

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Mike Daisey: We have different world views on some of these things. I agree with you truth is really important.

Ira Glass: I know but I feel like I have the normal worldview. The normal worldview is somebody stands on stage and says ‘this happened to me,’ I think it happened to them, unless it’s clearly labeled as ‘here’s a work of fiction.’

The recent hubbub over This American Life’s retraction of their recent-ish episode, “Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory” has been thrilling to watch over the 24 hours of the announcement.

As someone that reacted strongly to the original episode and appreciated what seemed like a rise in investigation into the labor conditions of the devices I surround myself with, I felt like this was a necessary work in the same way that TAL’s “Giant Pool of Money” basically made clear the whole financial fiasco of the past few years in less than an hour. At its best, This American Life allows listeners to feel and empathize with big (sometimes confusing) ideas. It also  allows listeners to connect with people whose lives are nothing like their own. I felt kinship with Chik-Fil-A fanatics, prison inmates, and a mom with a certain contempt for the Little Mermaid.

Which all makes me wonder just how necessary “fact” is in my learning “truth” from episodes of This American Life.

Last month, while stuck in the middle seat of an airplane, I read The Lifespan of a Fact. It (like The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet) is one of those books I immediately felt the need to buy numerous copies so I could hand it to friends, strangers, anyone(!) and say, “Here, read this, please, it’s incredible just open it up and look at it!”

I mean seriously, look at this book:

The heated exchanges between an author and fact-checker surround the original, submitted manuscript. It is an initially confusing text to dive into and it is a worthwhile addition to BSRAYDEKWTDWT.

At the end of the day, The Lifespan of a Fact asks the same question that rears its head in the current This American Life retraction. Namely: what is the role of truth in advocacy, in journalism, in connecting human empathy with human crisis.*

My overall feeling sides with Ira and Co. and the browbeaten copy-editor, Jim Fingal. I tend to think that fact triumphs artistic revelry. Even when the writer or artist or media producer is really really good. At the same time, Daisey’s performance shed light on issues in a style that connected with people across the country. John D’Agata’s article on depression and suicide and Las Vegas gave me an insight into the town that now challenges how I see the city.

I doubt that anyone fact checks David Sedaris. And when Jonathan Franzen suggested that David Foster Wallace made up accounts for his non-fiction works, most people tended to think Franzen was a jerk.

We derive truth less from statistics and dates and transcribed quotes than from the nuanced tacit knowledge of being, exploring, and feeling. Though this is not a defense of Daisey (I suspect he, like Franzen, is also a bit of a jerk), I do wonder what is the role fact when I think people tend to listen to This American Life for truth.

 

*and lest you think that this book is a factual representation of author and fact-checker locked in a timeless tussle … again truth trumps fact.

Lunchtime Intellectuals and Backseat Driving in Education

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Yesterday, I learned about the intersection of race, class, and (in)justice in the American legal system.

The content was engaging and I felt, afterwards, ready to share my ideas and concerns with others. I felt like I was learning.

All of this happened during lunch. While watching a single twenty-three minute TED talk.

And in general, that’s great. Right?

Sure it is.

Only … the thing is… I already studied this topic as a graduate student. It was a two-quarter long course and at the end I’d read stacks and stack of books and written what felt like reams of paper on the nuances of the topic and after those 20 intense weeks of studying… I felt like I hadn’t even scratched the surface.

 

As the popularity of TED talks continues to grow, I sometimes feel like we are missing something in the truncated hyper-entertaining style. I don’t mean that I expect everyone to jump into full-on academic geekdom around a topic instead of watching a TED talk. However, I do wonder what is lost in the snappy medium.

In the Critical Media Literacy course I am currently co-teaching, we showed Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk at the beginning of the quarter. It seems like her concerns of a “single story” have probably been invoked by my students on a weekly basis. But her concerns are invoked in passing; my students have not tussled with seeking additional knowledge about Adichie, her writing, or the political circumstances she discusses. Similarly, I’ve had numerous conversations with people about “the problem with schools” based solely on Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk. While I find this talk, too, tremendously worthwhile, I tend to feel like we are locked out of creativity and personal opinion when most of our talking points are pinned to 15-20 minute talks.

 

I’ve had these sneaking suspicions about TED for a while, but I do want to make it clear that I appreciate much of the content and the vision of what TED represents. It’s not TED’s fault that it’s so popular. It’s more a problem that it’s so much easier to embed or like or share or forward a 15-20 minute talk (or 30 minute propaganda video) than look into the larger concerns.* Slacktivism (as recently mentioned in a post related to #kony2012).

I bring up this navel-gazing whining about TED and “Lunchtime Intellectuals” (did I just invent that? I hope so) because it is now directly impacting the teaching profession. Earlier this week TED announced TED-Ed:

An invitation to teachers across the world to help us dial up the effectiveness of video lessons. As an initial offering, we have posted a dozen lessons that we think show promise. And now we’re ready to assist teachers in creating hundreds more.

I guess that’s good, right?

And I really like John and Hank Green’s Crash Course videos that teach history and science via YouTube videos.

And I guess someone likes this Khan Academy thing.

All of these might be doing something somewhere. But I do know that, in the same week that more than 11,000 LAUSD teachers receive notices that they will be laid off at the end of this year, it feels uncomfortable to have organizations helping in ways that basically suggest ‘let’s throw a bunch of snappy videos your way… figure out the rest.’**

All too often, we tend to try to simplify the really (really) complex challenges that teachers are in. At the DML conference last week, I took issue with John Seely Brown’s keynote talk that tended to idealize the Montessori school system. Meryl Alper helps complicate this as well as point to an early-education blind spot in the DML community. This stuff is much more complicated than can be covered in an 18 minute ohhs-and-ahhs-filled video. This stuff is about our future and it’s about the youth in our schools and it–thus–deserves for us to try untangling it as a complicated mess.

It’s not that TED-Ed is a bad idea. I’m more concerned with the continued trend of non-educators being able to get high profile coverage for creating faux quick-fix solutions (or worse: another community to work on solutions) for deep-rooted inequity that’s been decades in the works.

 

*Like, for example, who funds Invisible Children’s work… but that’s a digression beyond the purview of this post.

** By the way, Peter tweeted reading and reacting to his annual RIF notice:

“Be the Pink Panther & your loves will be like the wasp & the orchid, the cat & the baboon.”

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Later this week (Thursday to be exact), the third annual Digital Media and Learning conference will take place in San Francisco.

As one of this year’s conference committee members, I am excited about the ways that this conference has come together and the excellent community of participants, panelists, attendees and speakers that will convene. It’s been a busy lead up to this week and I am extremely proud of the work the various DML participants have contributed in preparation.

Typically, when it’s close to conference time, I list the various topics and times of presentations where I can be found. And while there are a few sessions I’m participating in, I want to urge conference attendees to get lost in the DML space. Wander into a session and allow yourself to be surprised. Be active in the conference back channel. Go to the who-knows-what-will-happen ignite talks. Send me a tweet and say hello.

See you there!

 

 

Adolescent Literature and Asking The Experts for Recommendations

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Do you know about Figment? It’s a reading and writing community for primarily young adults. And it’s awesome.

In any case, one of the first courses I’ll be teaching at Colorado State next year is focused on adolescent literature. Asking an avid YA-reading community like Figment to help develop the reading list for the course seemed like a no-brainer. So far, I’ve been thrilled with the suggestions and feedback that the Figment community has provided. I’ll be finalizing the reading list at the beginning of next month, so feel free to add your suggestions if you have not already.

Also, as I mention in the thread, I am anticipating having the CSU students interact with the Figment community through the site’s “groups” feature. I will be posting information about ways to participate in the class once it begins in the fall.

“But if you’re worried about the weather / Then you picked the wrong place to stay.”

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As my final year of grad school rounds the turn toward the final mad key-pounding writing dash toward the finish line, I thought I should, at least briefly, talk about what’s next:

I could not be more excited to share with readers that in the Fall I will be joining the English Department faculty at Colorado State University as an Assistant Professor. Though I still struggle with the fact that I will not be working in a high school campus every day, I feel confident that the research and teaching I’ve been involved in now can continue to impact the lives of young people. I am extremely grateful for the continued warmth and support I’ve received from the school and my soon-to-be colleagues as I ask incessant n00b questions.

I also struggle with the concept of living in snow. But after a brief spending spree of all things North Face, I’m at least warming up to it.

In terms of what this means as far as my role and that of this blog, I don’t see things really changing: my work as a teacher, researcher and briefly as someone working in educational policy has focused on digital literacies, educational equity, and improving the learning environments for our students. I intend to continue working in these areas. But maybe doing so while at least a little bit less tired than this whole teaching/grad-student schedule has been keeping me for the past four years.

Did I mention I’m really excited about this? I plan to share more of the research I’ll be doing in the coming months, the classes I’m taking, and the continual process of adapting to being in a land-locked state. (Any advice about any of this is, of course, welcomed.)

In light of it being Digital Learning Day-eve, I should note that I’m excited about working with Figment in the coming weeks to collaborate on syllabus development for one of the first courses I will be teaching at Colorado State. More info on that to come soon. (And I would head to Digital Is, as always, for all things great and related to Digital Learning Day.)

Lots of DML 2012 updates to come. It’s gonna be a good one!

Also, if you ever wanted to work for the U.S. Department of Education, applications for 2012-2013 Teaching Ambassador Fellows can be found here.

Reflections on my Conversation with Roger

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Several months ago, my former student, Roger and I, sat down and had a rich, two-hour conversation that was recorded as part of an initiative at StoryCorps to capture stories about teachers. For me, this was an opportunity to connect with a student that taught me significant lessons about life, teaching, and the challenges of being a young man in South Central Los Angeles. Though I’d been out of touch with Roger for nearly five years, he was a student who allowed me to grow as an educator for reasons that can never be accurately captured in a two minute edited piece on NPR. Nevertheless, I feel privileged for the opportunity to share the unique insight and intelligence that Roger embodies. I am honored to be able to reconnect with Roger.

One of the best media products a student created in my class my second year of teaching was a podcast Roger created in which he narrated the world around him using found sound, interviews, and reflection, and music. Roger’s story challenged me to look at him differently and is a recording I still continue to listen to with inspiration. Asking Roger detailed questions about this recording during our StoryCorps conversation allowed me to continue my own journey as a teacher. The piece speaks to the powerful work Roger conducted as a scholar. I hope to share it on this site one day with Roger’s permission.

If you ever find yourself in the Library of Congress, I encourage you to look up the full interview and  spend two hours hearing him talk at length about the rich education Roger was getting while not in my classroom. Thank you Roger for allowing me to grow in my early years as an educator and for being willing to reflect publicly on the radio this morning.