Bombed

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As I walked Sadie around the block today I saw a couple of kids tagging on the various houses and apartment complexes in my neighborhood. The two were working their way toward my direction and Sadie was working her way toward theirs. The two would indiscriminately stop every couple of houses, marking the territory the same way that Sadie does. (For those more scatologically minded of you out there, it is worth noting the connection between these two kids crossing out other graffiti and Sadie preferring to urinate over the various pieces of dog feces she encounters.)

Though I have not documented the process on this blog, I have been working on a graffiti curriculum to teach to my students in May. The project is being created in conjunction with Mark, a middle school social studies teacher and will be made publicly available after being taught and revised. As such, I have more than a passing interest in graffiti at the moment. Part of the aim of this project is to help empower students with the skills to look critically at graffiti and the varied possibilities it can represent. The marginalized voice and forms of activist expression that can be entrenched in legal and illegal graffiti seems tossed to the public wayside by the focus on gang graffiti.

So here I am, walking my dog around the block as two kids (around the same age as my students, if not younger) continue to tag, unfazed by my presence.

As for the graffiti? It was the kind of gang demarcation that is prevalent. Thank you for letting me know you are from a gang that is 20 blocks south of my street. This is your block. Point taken.

This should have been my teachable moment. I could have engaged these kids in dialogue, asked them for advice, or censured them. I did nothing. My brain was locked up trying to grasp the situation – “catching” kids tag at school feels different. There is an implied sense of authority and students understand and recognize that. That was lost on my block today. The kids walked by and continued their work as I continued mine, Sadie slow and meandering as always.

I felt hypocritical, at the moment and I still do. There’s a likely chance engaging the kids in dialogue would have resulted in them running away or being ignored; I didn’t feel like I was in physical danger, though that’s never my first thought anyways. The problem is I don’t know and I allowed the moment to pass. I was the bystander that I teach my students about in our unit on resistance and civil disobedience. Yes, this frustrates me to no end.

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”?

Rapping about Cultural Irrelevancy

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If I had a dollar for every time I was handed a book on how to teach or incorporate hip-hop in my classroom – at least looking at my bookshelf – I’d have seven dollars. And I realize that seven texts around creating culturally relevant curricula through the use of hip-hop isn’t all that excessive, but lately it’s had me thinking.

First, I’ll provide a bit of seemingly frivolous back-story: I grew up immersed in music. I listened broadly and made pointed personal connections in the myriad genres that now fill the cluttered CD shelves throughout my abode. I listened to hip-hop, Appalachian folk, and 20th century classical indiscriminately. I feel that, like many other teachers, I “get” hip-hop (though a case could be made that it cannot be “gotten”).

The problem isn’t hip-hop. The problem is that there is an unspoken assumption that hip-hop is the answer (the unspoken problem thus being how to get students engaged). Before student teaching, I’d been immersed in the tropes of the feel good teacher films. I still watch them if only because the formula is so pristine in its execution and pacing from one film to another: Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, Sister Act 2 (you didn’t know that was a teacher movie??), Half Nelson, etc. Watching enough of these I knew that to be a good teacher in an urban high school meant playing socially conscious hip-hop and watching the “urban-ness” of the surroundings melt away from the angels that my students have become. Many of the books I’ve looked through appear to offer this kind of quick fix solution. Hip-hop, as a result has become a veritable panacea to our literacy problem. Hallelujah!

The only problem is that it’s not. Hip-hop isn’t the solution. I question how many teachers are grabbing their IMA funded Tupac CD and playing a single song and feeling like they’ve connected for the day. How many hip-hop fans have brought in that sole Mos Def CD or Dead Prez album (you know which one I’m talking about), and felt like they were authentically culturally responsive?

The vast majority of my students today do not listen to hip-hop. Have no interest in it. If I were not paying close attention, I wouldn’t know the differences between reggaeton and hip-hop. Even if I did, it wouldn’t be the solution either.

Ultimately, this isn’t a diatribe for or against hip-hop. It’s a long-winded attempt to point to the fact that what our schools (and the texts that our district and our BTSA induction programs provide) are claiming as culturally responsive is limited, debilitating in vision. We can’t give people the direct tools for this kind of curriculum in the classroom; we don’t know a given teacher’s students or those students’ experiences. What can be changed is how to provide teachers with an understanding of recognizing the cultural and community experiences that need to be reflected upon and utilized within a class. There are some great texts around this issue, but most of the ones I’ve been given are of the play-this-Nas-track-and-read-Prufrock variety.

The hip-hop as panacea trend is an extension of the kinds of caged-in institutionalized practice that traps students into class structures. Cultural responsiveness should be an innate part of one’s teaching practice. It cannot be scripted, it cannot be found by reading up on the latest teen trends online and it definitely cannot be found in the appendix of the latest instructional book you’ve just been handed.

Another Cheap Rehash

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The first day of my vacation that I haven’t actually gone to work! Instead, I … worked at home! Listening through a handful of older CDs, I was reminded of the review I’d written a while ago for the defunct Synergy Magazine. Yes, it is a cheap Calvino ripoff. I’m okay with that.

Of Montreal
Satanic Panic in the Attic
Polyvinyl
By Antero Garcia

You’ve just gotten back from the store, anxious to put in the record you’ve just bought, giddy and without any concerns other than this troubling plastic wrapper and sticker on the spine of the jewel case. Why do they make these things so difficult, you mutter to yourself.  You’ve heard good things about this new Of Montreal CD, and that the group recently reissued some of it’s older catalog, you said to yourself, why not? You’ve been looking for a change, and the group is (somehow, but you’re not exactly sure how) connected to bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power, Olivia Tremor Control… something about 6 Elephants or something, but the lip piercing and Yo La Tengo 1994 tour t-shirt of the salesman at the record store told you that you we’re an idiot if you had to ask. You make your purchase and find yourself in the quandary you are currently in, fighting with plastic to open up and hear the magic The intricate art promises psychedelia. Something warm, comforting and (hold the applause please) “enlightening.”

But when the CD is finally wrenched from its case and cradled in the player, the sound the speakers coo is not sunny. It’s icy, almost insincere. It’s synthesizers it feels like unfriendly disco and this Rundgren-esque voice is saying something about “poppet,” that stupid phrase brits use endearingly. You hate it. It’s inane and elementary and you’re impatient for the record to proceed, move on from this unfortunate mishap. You admit that in another setting, this would be something you could possibly see yourself enjoying. You think all of this and the song feels too long. It won’t end and you resort to thinking ill thoughts toward the CD, another wasted purchase.

You check the CD player and you’ve somehow bled into the second track, the world is different now, somehow change yet suggesting an immutability a permanence. Yeah, this is more like it. This is something you’d like to listen to, now we’re talking. This is the pop playground you believed always existed, what Of Montreal would always sound like… This is pure pop bliss, the kind of verse and delivery you could – and want to – listen to all day. Goddamn, listen to that! You want it to never stop. And all too suddenly, and exactly when, in your mind, you uttered that last syllable, “stop,” it falls dead, a deflated balloon animal, lampooning all you ever wanted in music. You curse yourself for even thinking, “stop,” for even mentioning the idea to whatever deity that is pulling the levers behind this album. There must be some mistake, there could be a defect or – … – no, you check the CD player, track two is still ticking through but now it’s all weird noodling, a completely different song in the same track. It’s a so-so song, but you sure wish you could go back to the one that was there a moment ago. Why can’t you hold onto a good thing when you find it? C’est La Vie, you reassure yourself, and continue to work your way through the sloppy mess of an album this is turning out to be.

For a while nothing is turning out any better. One moment it’s absolute brilliance, only to be discarded like a worthless, unwanted trinket. Listen to that “Climb the Ladder” song! You want it to last, you love it, maybe it’s even better than that song that started track two – you’re not sure, so much has happened since then, so many songs come and gone.

And it’s all moving too fast for you. So many great ideas are whizzing by and recirculating. The transcircularities of harmony and dissonance lunging – no, nagging – in your ears. Two divorced parents pulling you in opposite directions.

You scream stop and this time it doesn’t happen. The Satanic Panic has taken hold of you, and all you want is to go back…. You want the kind of CD that has been lining your shelves for years. 12 songs played straight, some pretty good, some you always skip. You wish critics didn’t so easily dupe you, and you wish this CD wasn’t so … so … different, so schizophrenic, so manic in execution.

There are only a couple of tracks left. You play with the idea of turning it off and catching up on the latest TV game show, but you decide to wait out the auditory pestilence that plagues your stereo. The music doesn’t change, yet there’s something different. Some sort of sense of puzzle pieces coming together, as if each diffracted moment of the record is some part of the larger picture. Perhaps.

Finally, you arrive at an end: a realization that the chase is what you wanted all along, not actually arriving at the song. You have ventured far, several lifetimes at least, have become wiser by your journey’s course, and you realize now that it was the sites along the way – those momentary glimpses – that were what you were reaching for. Nothing more than fleeting beauty, just a half second of it to change your life.

Love is a pursuit. Once you are nestled close enough to grasp it, love is banal. You close your eyes. You’ll press play again in the morning. You smile, satisfied, and wonder where you’ll wander tomorrow.

Building Consensus and the Democratic Experiment

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I was sent a link to the Word for Word podcast by my colleague/nemesis, Mark last week. While driving down to San Diego, I listened through the 50 minute lecture and Q&A by Parker Palmer. Framing a discussion of consensus and “messiness” around a parable of the Quakers, Palmer, illustrates some of the major problems with the overly bureaucratic urban school. Is there anyone to stand in the “tragic gap” that is splitting and antagonizing the climate of cynicism within our schools? Not in any consistent way, at least.

And in answer to Mark’s original question: yes, Palmer’s speech, and the book’s we’ve been reading have markedly similar themes. Perhaps we’re placating the wave of burn-out too idealistically by referencing these as the texts to propel us further. On the other hand, I’ve been leafing through the latest AERA journal and found some hopeful pages. Will discuss this further in the next post or two.

Related, this study, referenced in Palmer’s discussion sounds promising. Added to the exponentially expanding “to read” pile; I’ll do some digging sooner or later.

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.”)

Haphazard Beyond Pedagogy Explanation #3

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To be as concise as possible, one of my biggest challenges in regards to educational reform is the language and method of discourse. Namely, our method of discourse has become diluted by words of half-meanings. We have locked ourselves into a standstill because of our over reliance on certain concepts and terminologies.

That being said, Beyond Pedagogy is a reading group comprised of educators and those with a vested interest in the field of education. We will not be reading standard education texts. We’re reading broadly but we’re reading purposefully. We’re discussing education but on other fields’ terms.

We’re inviting you to read these texts too. Where can such a “revolutionary ‘exodus’” take us? Let’s find out.

Beyond Pedagogy Meeting Dates (Updated 5/11)

2/28 – Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber
3/20 – Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
4/17 – Blank Slate by Steven Pinker -MEETING CANCELED – WILL RESCHEDULE ON 5/8
5/8 – Inventing Kindergarten by Norman Brosterman
6/5 – Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Jay Lifton
6/19 – Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller

7/3 –  Blank Slate by Steven Pinker -Meeting Rescheduled from 4/17

8/28 – Dialectics of Seeing by Susan Buck-Morse

9/4 – Beyond Pedagogy Debriefing

The meetings are all scheduled to run from 5-7 p.m. at the Mentor LA Offices located at 1035 S. Grand Ave., 2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90015. Please park in the lot on the corner of Grand and 11th.

All are welcome!

Alternate explanation found here and here.

Thanks to Fritz Haeg and the “Planet of the Humans” book club for the inspiration to form this group.

“The Shifting Hegemony of Now this, Now that Science or Art”: Haphazard Beyond Pedagogy Explanation #2

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The Glass Bead Game imagines a futuristic society that is somehow governed by a game whose instructions are never made explicit. However, the basic premise of the game is made clear. Connections are drawn between various themes. They are conducted and organized by the Magister Ludi. They are the innate fabric that contends to hold the society together.

On the other hand, in today’s less than futuristic society, we are a specialized people. I studied English therefore I did not study biology (unless I double-majored, but I definitely did not study Architecture). You studied Political Science therefore you did not study Film Criticism. We’re not programmed to connect themes across the varied fields of academia. And where does that place the role of the educator: I teach English therefore I will not teach (or know) the other fields (unless there is social studies teacher that is willing to team teach).

“Beyond Pedagogy” is a prototyped attempt at donning the role of Magister Ludi – to borrow the title from Hermann Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game – and draw the needed connections amongst myriad fields of study to broaden the scope of education dialogue. It is an extensive and unrelenting look at “why” with unwavering to return more than statistics as formulated response.

Beyond Pedagogy Meeting Dates
3/20 – Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
4/17 – Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
5/8 – Inventing Kindergarten by Norman Brosterman
6/5 – Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Jay Lifton
6/19 – Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller
7/?? – Dialectics of Seeing by Susan Buck-Morse

The meetings are all scheduled to run from 5-7 p.m. at the Mentor LA Offices located at 1035 S. Grand Ave., 2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90015. Please park in the lot on the corner of Grand and 11th.

All are welcome!

Alternate explanation found here.

Splashing Through the Effervescence of (Imaginary?) Change: Haphazard Beyond Pedagogy Explanation #1

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You are late.

You are running to your car and you are late.

You are late for that presentation that you have been preparing for.

You are splashing through a puddle and the puddle has a rock.

You trip on the unseen rock in the puddle that you are splashing through. Maybe it was an imaginary rock (it probably wasn’t).

Your index cards are all a jumble. That could be a real problem, couldn’t it? The whole purpose is now enfolded upon itself. An accordion with no wind.

Things are out of order. There is no order. You stumble across Pt. 2 of a sandbox that explains the purpose of the sandbox that begins in Pt. 1. But the sandbox is imaginary. You find mention of All Time Educational Buzz Word #1. ATEBW#1 makes you suspicious – this is not my beautiful house!

You’re wary because ATEBW#1 is duplicitous. It and the other ATEBW#1 contenders (“social justice” “culturally relevant” “reform” “standardized” “benchmarks” “engagement” & “authenticity” for instance) are the kinds of words that are fixing us in place. We’re not able to grow from here and you’re the only one who knows this. You’re very sharp, after all. A presentation. A presentation is what’s needed.

You were going to change the world! You made index cards, dammit! Why can’t anyone fix the goddamn potholes in this city anyway?

We need to fix these puddle gaps. We need to fix these puddle gaps because a hole in one’s logic and a hole in the street are just as faulty. Is one any more real than the other? Is there any other way to fill a (w)hole than to supplicate it with the real? How would your request be addressed? A supplication of asphalt? A supplication of new knowledge?

We’ve got the shovels. Let’s fill in some holes. No more puddle splashing and splayed index cards.

Invite a friend. Bring a hard hat (best to also tell your friend to bring a hard hat). It’s time to landfill:

Beyond Pedagogy Meeting Dates
3/20 – Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
4/17 – Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
5/8 – Inventing Kindergarten by Norman Brosterman
6/5 – Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Jay Lifton
6/19 – Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller
7/?? – Dialectics of Seeing by Susan Buck-Morse

The meetings are all scheduled to run from 5-7 p.m. at the Mentor LA Offices located at 1035 S. Grand Ave., 2nd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90015. Please park in the lot on the corner of Grand and 11th.

All are welcome!

Sandbox Pt. 2

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Completing the sandbox sketch from the previous post. I realize many of these terms sound “buzzy” in isolation. The problem with creating a new tool set out of a dated mode of discourse is that there is no “new” word that can be inserted. Graeber is left with joining (sometimes rather uncomfortably) words in ways that find liberation in the greased joints and corners of un-hyphenation (was that supposed to be hyphenated??). These joined words are not meant to be slogans, even in me isolating them here.

“Totalizing system” (page 43)
“Revolutionary action” (page 45)
“Revolutionary ‘exodus’” (page 60) – is “engaged withdrawl”
“Institutionalized raiding” (page 65)
The State as “imaginary totality” (page 65)
“Global citizenship” (page 68)
“Temporary Autonomy Zones” (page 74)
“Consensus process” (page 85)
“Liberation in the imaginary” (Page 102)