“The World Had A Bitter Taste. Life Was Torment”

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In giving my students a test on Friday about the first three chapters of Siddhartha, Mr. Miller was inspired. He suggested that the students should have to take the taste the only way that the Samanas would approve: out in the rainy weather. I couldn’t have been happier. He also took the opportunity to torment students by throwing leaves at them while they tried to write. We debriefed the activity and one student said it was one of the best quizzes we’ve taken. I was happy to see how seriously the students took the exercise, the quad was silent as the students flipped through their texts and used each others’ backs as writing surfaces. 

As silly as the exercise was, the kids benefitted from the experience. With Mr. Miller’s out-of-the-box opportunity, the students gained experiential learning and became ascetics, if only for a few minutes. 

Border Crossing: Normative Discourse (Art Sand Mines)

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I want to contrast experiences in my classroom and in one of my graduate seminars.

At this point, I can reasonably predict what will transpire in my 11th grade classroom when introducing students to the writing process. Admittedly, the way I teach writing has changed dramatically over the years – the old me would probably scream in horror at what looks rather prescriptive at the onset (there’s a pragmatic purpose behind the way I teach reading which will need to be saved for another post). The point is that, generally, my 11th grade students are both frustrated and initially overwhelmed with what I expect their essays to looks like. Yes, each body paragraph really does need that many quotes. Yes, you really do need that many sentences of analysis. Yes, you really will be writing an essay each week. Once students get used to these (usually) higher expectations within the class, we settle into a rhythm and students are encouraged to incorporate more of their own voice. However, peering at the expectations of a Standard English writing regime is daunting for students initially. I explain that they are preparing to read, write, and dialogue critically in Standard English, the language that they will need to use in order to cause change in the future. Confronted with the hegemonic realm of “the other” is – I’d say at least partially – part of the distress of writing; it’s literally a kind of culture shock.

Meanwhile, in one of my graduate seminars today, another respected colleague presented on rap music. A few hands went up when she asked who considers themselves “rap aficionados.” I’ll spare you the demographic analysis of who raised their hands (psst: their was a correlation with ethnicity!). In any case, after showing a certain rap video for discussion, it was worth noting how the class responded. Literally students were stalled to speak due to the overwhelming nature of the video: its images, the lyrics, the sound – it was all too much. In general the conversation about rap at times felt like a few of us pointing out how, yes, lyrics like these really are a kind of “transformative resistance.” No, Ice Cube isn’t just offering pessimism in his video. Like my students, the colleagues in the seminar that were not exposed to rap before got a nice long, uncomfortable mad-dogging from the other, today. And while my students are expected to at least be able to code switch into the language of power, the other future academicians are likely to leave Jay Z, Ice Cube, The Coup, and rap music at large as an interesting exercise. A tasty aperitif of the other, digested and forgotten. 

[I Need Your Help!] Lamenting Signs of the Times: What Will Happen to Education and Citizens’ Voice?

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The state of education in Los Angeles today: Whose voices are being represented? Whose voices are being heard?

For the majority of 2008, I was regularly blogging for the LA Times’ education blog, The Homeroom. Although I didn’t post as regularly as I’d wanted to (perhaps the challenge facing any blog contributor), I was generally excited about getting authentic experiences, challenges, and questions arising from Manual Arts to a larger audience. More than that, I was enticed by the prospect of opening up occasionally difficult conversations for readers at large. Since I was writing largely for non-educators, I was hoping to present a more sobering, realistic vision of what we experience at our schools on a day-to-day basis. No more Freedom Writers, but also no more stereotypes of a purely “dangerous” school and community.

If I could write about school life in a way that could make readers squirm, I felt like I was doing my job (after all, I landed the writing gig after basically emailing the editor at the time and asking why the only teachers represented at the time were from the Teach For America Program). I’m not trying to paint myself as a self-righteous Zorro in the edu-blogging sphere. However, I am pleased by the strongly worded comments that would occasionally follow posts I authored. My second post – about the CAHSEE “Boot Camp” that our school instituted – was followed by a reader accusing me of being a “classist” and not being able to see “the big picture.” Similarly, I regularly blogged about the graffiti curriculum a colleague and I were developing and implementing. The long string of angry comments that followed those posts was thrilling. It wasn’t just the fact that someone would be angry enough to say I was not fit to work with students (going as far as insinuating that I should be behind bars), it was the idea that people at large – not just educators – were engaging in much-needed dialogue about education. This dialogue, admittedly, was limited and often only reactionary. However, it was a step toward re-centering the school in society.

All that being said, I am concerned about the state of the LA Times. Aside from having an official connection to the paper via The Homeroom, I don’t necessarily consider myself an LA Times-apologist. And while there are numerous outlets for us to get our news in this 2.0 day and age, I think there is a lot of value in a strong print media in the city. (Yes, critical theorists out there, I realize there are a lot of problems with this as a blanket statement.) I am distressed by the news that the LA Times are effectively cutting the local/California section of the paper. While it’s being framed as an effort to improve news at large, I can’t imagine that the few local education stories slotted into the paper’s B section will grow in any dramatic section now folded into the main A part of the paper. (It’s not like there’s now more Howard Blume to go around!) I am also wary of the many, many more cuts being made to the Times’ staff. I don’t feel equipped, at the moment, to offer a full critique of the economic decisions or situation at the LA Times or at large. However, it feels strikingly similar to the notion of the district cutting teachers in LAUSD to deal with facing budget cuts while still claiming to be interested in improving student education. Someone’s logic is a bit flawed, regardless of monthly bottom line.

Long story short, I didn’t choose to stop blogging for the LA Times in November, December and now in 2009. The paper basically cut the blog (along with a few others). There was word of folding it into the LA Times main LA Now blog at some point (the site that The Homeroom now automatically directs visitors). I can’t imagine that this will be happening anytime soon with the stretching of staff over there.

A Call For Action

As perhaps a way to turn this into a more optimistic post than those initial ‘graphs suggested, I’d like to offer up a thought. As I said, I think it’s important for educators and non-educators to be involved in larger discussions about what’s taking place in classrooms today. I think this should take place in a way that feels local for now, to help change the way most people turn to look to federal changes as a sign of what’s taking place in education (Ask the average adult and I bet they could at least say what NCLB stands for. Ask the average adult how NCLB mandates are affecting the closest public school in their community – even if they have children enrolled there – and I don’t think you’d get as consistent a response). If the LA Times aren’t going to do it (and they don’t necessarily should/have to), let’s get a general space for educators and non-educators to share and discuss education as it takes place in Los Angeles. Sure, there are plenty of sites of about education out in oceans of urls. However, what if LA had a consistent place of dialogue for its educational needs and experiences. What would you say? How would you say it? Anyone else interested or have any ideas about how to build something like this?

Why We Can’t Get It Right (Rumor Control & “Changing the World” Edition)

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I get the importance of rumor control. Hefty words were bounced around in my first period class this morning. I asked my students to respond to the following quickwrite [relating to the novel we’re reading, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time]:

Something mysterious happened at Manual Arts yesterday! You are Christopher and you want to find out the truth via investigation. Write down (in the voice of Christopher), the case you are solving and the steps you will take to solve it.

There are always mysterious things happening at Manual. There are always mysterious things happening at any school. However, the kids were quick to point out the news truck that was in front of the school this morning reporting on an alleged incident. The kids were also quick to point to the fact that one of our buildings was partially evacuated during 4th period yesterday since someone decided to “mess around” with pepper spray, as one student phrased it.

The students were genuinely frustrated by these events. We talked about how we, like Christopher, can investigate the roots of the challenges Manual faces and change the reality around us. Once again, the students made the connection that another of the few times the media pokes its head toward our school is to highlight “negative stuff and not the good” (again quoting a student). Yes, we had a lockdown. Yes, our school’s report card is “sobering.” Yes, someone said there was an attempted abduction. But really, that isn’t all there is to us (I promise!).

 

Some of my students said they don’t think it’s possible to change our community. “No one does anything to change it and so it doesn’t change because everyone is working in different directions,” one student explained. Our class talked about student life, crime, race, employment, the school’s “busted” security cameras. We talked until the bell rang and two students said we needed to finish our conversation on Monday. (I muttered to myself that this was a conversation people in other places get paid a lot of money to try to “finish” for them, with just as dismal of results.)

 

Here’s our school’s rumor control at work:

Voicemail received Thursday, January 22, 2009, 5:30 p.m.

This is a message from the principal of Manual Arts High School. This morning, a female student was walking to school shortly after the tardy bell. As she neared 40th and Vermont a male Hispanic approached and attempted to push her into his car. The girl was able to safely move away from the adult and enter school while the man took off north bound on Vermont Avenue. She did not immediately report this incident to school police, but as soon as school police were notified, they responded and began their investigation. The suspect was a male Hispanic wearing a red and blue baseball cap and glasses and was driving a khaki colored mid-nineties Honda. We are informing you of this incident so you may be aware of dangers in the community. Please remind students to come to school on time and with another student whenever possible. Thank you very much.

 

And then today, I received this voicemail.

 

Voicemail received Friday, January 23, 2009, 7:00 p.m.

This is an important message from the principal of Manual Arts High School. Based upon further investigation by the school police, we have learned that the report made by a female student yesterday, that an adult male attempted to push her into his car is not true. The student told the police that the story she told is completely false. We regret the inconvenience and assure you that your child’s safety and education remain our top priority.

As a final note, as I was wishing students a good weekend while they shuffled to homeroom, a quieter student in my class came up to where I was standing. “I get your class, Mr. Garcia.”

“What’s that, *Juan?”

“You are trying to change the world through us, aren’t you?”

“Well, I’m hoping you’ll want to change the world – believe we can change the world – and that we’ll do it together.”

*Juan smiled, nodded, and stepped out the door. Hopefully also stepping in the right direction. 

A More Tolerant (Real) World

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I realize you may not be able to hear me over the general choir of groaning that this post will explore current reality television, but I assure you, there is some good news here.

I’ve now seen the first two episodes of the current season of the Real World, where not 7, but 8 lucky twenty-somethings get picked to live together to see what happens when people stop being polite blah blah blah.

What’s most interesting in this season is that – at least in these first two hours – the show has deemphasized the sex-crazed shenanigans of the past half-dozen seasons. Instead, the group is diversified to a point beyond any kind of legitimate “real” world. However, thrown in with the very straight-laced metro-sexual Mormon, the aspiring dancer, the guy with the abs, and the guy with Iraq-related PTSD, are a gay man (who used to train dolphins at Sea World – awesome), a girl that – up until her present relationship – used to date women exclusively, and a transgendered woman.

Looking at that roster, that’s a pretty hefty dose of sexuality for our impressionable youth. I couldn’t be happier. In these first shows, it’s interesting how the show is edited; clearly the two gentlemen that are not used to/comfortable around homosexuality are coming off the worse for wear. Their reactions and types of jokes they make are clearly supposed to be “not funny” to viewers at home. The way they speculated about their transgendered roommate – going as far at one point as referring to her as “it” – isn’t something that they’ll be getting praise for after the season is over. And when one of these guys is pecked on the lips by a drag queen at a gay bar, the way he violently wipes his lips and looks disgusted is downright upsetting (though this, unlike the other examples, is contrasted with the delighted cackles of the rest of the roommates).

Sure, the show is likely to devolve into fights, hook-ups, and tears in the coming episodes. However, for now, the Real World is opening up concepts of – and flat-out endorsing – tolerance for the millions watching the show. That’s got to be worth something, right? 

“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.

Black Cloud MacArthur Stuff

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Sheryl Grant wrote a useful overview of what transpired during Black Cloud Game 1.0. Read it here.

While you’re at it, you can check out video from the Humanities 2.o MLA Conference Panel over here.

Not much of an update, I realize. I hope to write about this in the next day or so. (For the record, I asked my students to give Manual Arts a grade and both classes were evenly split between Cs and Fs!)

Why We Can’t Get It Right (Comics Edition)

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I stumbled across this interview last week and immediately groaned. Great, another non-educator (yes, this can even include former educators) showing us how to teach. That sounds pessimistic and mean spirited, but it is intended more as a commentary on how teachers are pushed into a passive role within the educational field.

As a traveling teacher, I spent two months of the year “borrowing” the classroom of a follow colleague who’s shelves positively burst with comics: a class set of the Watchmen, numerous copies of Maus, and Persepolis (since they have somehow become the only comics that teachers acknowledge as existing…), plenty of that dirty stuff we’re supposed to keep away from kids (aka Vertigo titles, Strangers in Paradise, The Walking Dead), tons of superheroes, manga, you name it. The teacher spent a fortune, I presume, on these titles. I saw him utilizing comics in his curriculum on a regular basis (I recall, for instance, a unit on autobiographical writing using some of the aforementioned texts as well as The Rabbi’s Cat and a manga title I was unfamiliar with).

I asked some of his kids about the comics and all of them – I repeat, all of them – said they were fun to read. Both male and female students read a hefty helping of comic books. Kids regularly trickled in during lunch to pick up the latest trade they were reading. This teacher successfully incorporated comics into his everyday teaching practice. Kids were engaged during silent reading, throughout the lesson, and even at home. The comics helped transition reluctant readers toward standard-fare novels.

No one paid this teacher to develop a comic book framework for his classroom. He didn’t go to buy a manual showing him how to use comics in a standards-aligned classroom. Instead, he found an instructional strategy (clearly one he was already passionate about), and figured out how to best engage and personalize the learning experiences for his students. From the overwhelming anecdotal evidence I received from his students over the two months I spent in his class, it was clearly an effective model. This is the teacher that should have penned a book about utilizing comics. He should be leading professional development sessions for our school and our district.

I single this teacher out in this instance to illustrate that there are similar skills represented by all of our teachers. Think about the sheer amount of expertise that is being disregarded within our schools. Sharing such work at annual conferences and in journals isn’t going to be enough (even though I participate in both mediums): frankly, I suspect it’s the same select cadre of teachers from schools circling within these pools. The vast majority of the teachers – at my school at least – are not going to conferences or reading journals (it’s the work for the perceived “teacher leaders”: department chairs, coaches, and ‘those loudmouths that speak up in faculty meetings’).

If we want to get things right it’s going to take a larger shift in how teachers are perceived.

It’s going to have to start with how we perceive ourselves.

I haven’t looked at – let alone read – Comics in Your Curriculum. I can’t vouch for whether it is any good. However, reading the interview, I question why this book came into existence without the consultation of (let alone being authored by)  teachers. I didn’t intend to pick on this title in particular, it acts as more of an exemplar of what I am arguing against. As a group of disenfranchised professionals, there isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t be developing these kinds of plans and manuals alongside our students. Why are we letting publishers and textbook tycoons dictate our careers for us? I’m all for having guests come in and aid and collaborate in the classroom. However, it’s time to shift how curriculum is manufactured, interpreted, and consumed. It’s time to make sure teachers are a part of this process every step of the way.