adolescent literacies

small fate of "illiteracy" looms large

2011-10-24T16:39:00.000-04:00

The word “illiteracy” gives me pause.

No, that’s not quiteright.

When I hear or read the word “illiteracy” I stop cold.

Closer.

The word “illiteracy” inflicts in me a sensation of violent nauseawherein my brow remains furrowed for several minutes and I incur the wrath of theinvoluntary teeth-mashing that starts in the face of acts of egregious inhumanity.It is a wonder that reading words about others’ horrid behaviors can inducethis reaction, even more so, in my experience, than other modes of expression.See for instance these recent tweets by Teju Cole, author of Open City and a book review recently published in the New York Times about Andre Aciman’s new book, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere. [An aside before youdelve into the small fates that Cole composes on Twitter: it is difficult toaccept the recent claims by Noam Chomsky about the “shallow” nature of this mediumafter reading tweets written by a writer whose words, about the worlds he sees anddiscovers as well as those he brings together to let readers into the worlds ofmany others – including that of Aciman’s and the citizens of Lagos – withrespect, irony, and a haunting beauty that moves his readers to write back, tointeract, to engage, and to wonder aloud.]

Nsofor, 57, head of the vigilantes in Nwangele, entered agirl of four.

21 hours ago

In Justice Yahaya's courtroom in Kano, Hamza got 24 monthsfor child rape, and Sani got 30 for marijuana possession.

21 Oct

Déjà vu. At Mediterranean Park in Abuja, words failed SundayNzeh, so he stuck a pen in Sarah Odere’s eye.

21 Oct

If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. With petrol andmatches, Akinkuotu, of Ondo, orphaned himself.

20 Oct

In 140 characters or less, Cole’s distillations of news from Lagos newspapers deliver a punch (to the gut, to the psyche, to the soul),even more potent, perhaps, than the fuller length accounts of the always humanand often inhumane acts he chooses to remix. His are words about actions that maygo unheard or overlooked, in part simply by virtue of their geographicaldistance from our daily lives and partially because of the metaphorical andmetaphysical walls we build in our attempts to hyper-focus on our immediate andproximal realities. In giving those realities of distanced others a wider andvaried audience, Cole brings their happenings, both familiar and strange, throughour phones and laptops into our conscious minds; often these remixes, thatserve as poignant social commentary on that which might otherwise be accepted as “normal”behaviors and acceptable social practices, demand our attention preciselybecause of their abhorrence.

But while such visceral reactions, such as the one describedabove, may be understandable in light of the small fates about which Colewrites, one might wonder why and how the concept of “illiteracy” evokes thesame. For context, I turn to a recently published column in the local newswebsite, Philly.com, written by Inquirer columnist Karen Heller titled, “Illiteracy,the scourge of Philadelphia.” In it she correlates “illiteracy” with poverty – andin so doing, borders on accusations of causation – and proceeds to accomplish whatshe likely set out to do: disrupt social malaise long enough to evoke discomfiturein readers who may otherwise place themselves at a far remove from the realitiesshe asserts. Presumably, the logic mightgo, if we taught more kids to decode print in a timely fashion, socioeconomic disparitywould be grossly alleviated, if not eliminated altogether. This is not anindictment of Heller; she is writing in the socially acceptable language ofliteracy that, despite more than ample evidence to the contrary, remainssquarely framed as “reading at an eighth-grade level and possessing basic mathand computer skills, abilities that more than half a million residents aremissing.” We – that is, researchers,educators, writers in and of multiple media – still have far to go, it seems, beforewe are able to effectively disrupt the social imaginary on matters related to literacyand language practices.

The distaste, the sheer disdain I have for the word “illiteracy” lies in assumptionsthat the word carries about all who are unfortunate enough to be viewed through its veil. Although Heller relies on quotes from Judith Rényi and Lisa Schorr,both of whom have been appointed to educational roles within the administration ofthe city of Philadelphia, her column underscores the wide reach of thetopic of literacy as it becomes ensnared with other social ills such asunemployment and incarceration. Heller writes:

"Uncorrected, a lack of literacyremains a lifelong disability. "A person walking around illiterate at 35is going to be illiterate 50 years from now," Rényi says. That 50 yearstranslates into low-level or no employment, an ongoing dependence on socialservices, or worse. Most of Philadelphia's prison population reads below thefourth-grade level, demonstrating few resources for legal employment."

Her column, like the writing of other columnists andjournalists who will continue to, as they have in the past, inform the collective mind of thepopulous, carries weight. Perhaps one column of 500 words may not changeanything, but a few hundred words here, an evening news story there, a blogpost that captures the attention of a political machine eager for an educationalsoundbyte – an especially dangerous possibility as we enter the next presidentialelection cycle – and suddenly we may find ourselves on the precipice ofanother No Child Left Behind. Teachers' hands and tongues become tied when, as a nation, we are prone to follow and vote for a catchy slogan over what may be jarring prose. Words matter.

Children and adults walk into classrooms prepared to learnand too often they are castigated for what they lack; so all-consuming must bethis practice of judgment and evaluation that it is a wonder any learninghappens at all in schools and other institutions of purported learning. In seekingto teach, educators are steered away from the education already thriving in thelives of their students. If we change nothing else – that is, if we continue tostrive for print proficiency in children and all adults, adhere to common contentand communicative standards, while navigating the tricky waters of anincreasingly inexplicable testing culture (clearly hell-bent on ensuring itsown existence above all else) – but remove “illiteracy” from ourvocabularies of categorization, then we will have made a significant change. Toview someone as “illiterate” is not merely a neutral or socio-demographic designation.It is an act of dehumanization.

Words matter. The word “illiteracy” matters. And insofar as “illiteracy”will continue to inflict educational and psychic damage – and keep the proverbialwheels squarely situated in slippery mud – a simple shift toward literacies can provide openings for understanding the literate lives and the meaning-full existences of students, older and newer, toward new starting points that are more likely to yield "outcomes" that the warriors against "illiteracy" claim to desire.

Perhaps this is better expressed as a small fate:

Angel told stories to anyone wholistened. His teachers insisted they couldn’t teach him or hear his words unlessthey were written down.

Rethinking schooling -- part 1: Reflections from #UTASNewLits

2011-09-28T11:41:00.003-04:00

For someone whose research and teaching life hasbeen spent mostly outside of traditional schooling contexts, I spend a greatdeal of time thinking about school. And most of the time I worry that what'shappening in schools is not education(al); or perhaps, what schools educateabout isn't necessarily the content of curricula but rather the disciplined anddisciplinary discourses of school(ing). We learn that we must sit quietly tolearn effectively, to do our own work without the help of others, and thatreading in silence without moving our lips is the superior hallmark of decodingfluency; in fact, making noise of any kind is akin to depending on squeaky,bothersome, always-temporary training wheels that signals one's lack ofproficiency in being a student. And this is even before we get to any mandatedtesting.

I learned all of these things and more during my years in school, a journey whichbegan when I was just two and half years of age. Some part of me must've likedthe institution enough to continue on through the completion of a PhD -- intotal, 26.5 years of school. We had a good relationship, School and I, but Idoubt that I would say the same if I were to have gone through schooling intoday's era of test-first-think-later.

Earlier this month, I had the great privilege of spending some time withcolleagues at the University of Tasmania, the Launceston campus, where theSchool of Education hosted a two-day conference on New Literacies, DigitalMedia, and Classroom Teaching (#UTASNewLits). The conference, organized byAngela Thomas (@anyaixchel), reflected an ethos I have come to love in Angela'sresearch and writing (in brief: focusing on identities and practices in an ageof new and digital literacies, but oh, so much more): a persistent sense ofbeing present in the current communicative moment while considering whatpossible directions new modes, modalities, and digital platforms present forhow we imagine, enact, and design education. (Notice, I did not say schooling.) My reflections on the time spent down under has continued to remind me that when educators are brought together, even as testing and schooling may loom large, they are really passionate about education -- the possibilities of creative, imaginative, innovative engagement with the world.

It was perhaps telling that the opening keynote was delivered by the esteemed LenUnsworth, whose respectful discussion of children's books and the new mediaforms into which they become translated was at once incredibly engaging andilluminating. How does the point of view of the narrative change when a printedbook is made into a film, he asked as he proceeded to delight the audience of teachers,researchers, and students with a read aloud of “The Lost Thing” by Shaun Tan. Leninvited us to shift our gaze to various parts of the text, that he had scannedand enlarged as slides from which he read. What was the reader able todetermine and what information on the page allowed such interpretations? From whosevantage point was the reader being brought into the narrative, and how did thepoint of view inform our understandings of what was going on? What was said andleft unsaid? Then he showed us clips from an animated version of the story,pointing out the affordances of this medium to fill in gaps left by the printedtext. Swift camera moves shift perspective in the blink of an eye – first, wesee what the boy sees and in another instant we are looking down on the boy asif we are one with The Thing. What impact might this have in the story we makein our heads of the story we are reading or watching. I think of an essaywritten by Amelie Rorty, described as a philologist in her short bio, in which shetalks about some of the many possible questions one might ask of an author whenengaging with one’s text. She describes this as a practice of understanding the“author’s house,” and in one sense I understood the careful and thoughtfulanalytic framework that Len and colleagues, Annemaree O’Brien and PaulChandler, have developed as another approach to understanding the author’shouse, particularly through a focus on the representation of point of view.Lucky for the rest of us, their co-authored book will be available in early2012!

Point of view was turned on its side in the morningworkshop I attended in which Winyu Chinthammit led us through the process ofusing software to generate 3D holograms in pursuit of a hands-on understandingof augmented reality, a research and development agenda that is alive andkicking at the HITLAB at UTas. As I manipulated a magenta cube on the markedpaper in front of me, I wondered about how access to this sort of object playmight inform narrative creation. How else might we use the affordances of augmentedreality software for a range of educational purposes, not only inside but also outside of school?

Oneof the really lovely things about intimate conferences in which choice times,like a selection of workshops, are punctuated with talks that all participantsattend is that a shared lexicon develops quickly. The afternoon keynote byMartin Waller, the charming and enthusiastic primary teacher and researcherfrom England deepened shared lexicon by cultivating our appreciation for theaffordances of social media as he regaled with tales of his tweeting adventureswith Year 2 students (approximately seven year olds). Martin spoke of what hecalled “contentious literacy” or those practices of literacy embedded socialmedia that do always have a ready place in schools. His goal, however, isbroader than test preparation and the adherence of some pre-fabricatedcurriculum. Martin wants his students to explore, and to feel a sense of prideand connection and joy from and through their literacy engagements. Andthese are among the results to come from setting up a (fully protected!)twitter account through which the world can learn of the Year 2 kids’ excellentadventures as they write poetry, go on treasure hunts, plant a garden, andlearn more about themselves and the world in which they live. Martin shared oneresponse from a fellow literacy blogger and tweeter, @librarybeth, whoseappreciation for the daily musings of his students delighted them equally andserved as additional motivation for continued social media composing. Hepointed out, too, the ways in which social media such as twitter canorganically nurture the critical literacies of young children, pushing them towonder aloud and not remain complacent in their inquiries.

Day 1 concluded with another set of workshops and Iwas excited to facilitate a workshop on multimodal response and share the worlds of Media that Matters Film Festival (and thefilm Immersion) and the online video making tool Animoto with an amazing group.

Stay tuned for part 2 --

ethnography forum 2012: focus on digital discourses

2011-09-24T00:40:00.000-04:00

i have fond memories associated with the ethnography forum. it was the venue where, as a relatively new master's student, i first presented an academic paper based on my involvement in an adult literacy practitioner inquiry group. and it is the venue where i have brought my own graduate students so that they, too, could experience a gentle yet generative entry into the discourses of academic presentation. held on the last weekend in february each year, the forum has a rich tradition of bringing history together with innovation in the domain of ethnographic research. and the 2nd day of the annual two-day conference is dedicated to a focus on teacher research and the often illuminating work of educators and those who assume a practitioner role in the space of research and inquiry. and almost without exception, the plenary speakers have consistently pushed to the fore those threads that start to bud as q&a sessions spill over into the hallways of all four years of the school where i spent many hours, days, and years. this year looks to be following in the same direction with a conference theme that promises to be stimulating and groundbreaking, and invited speakers each of whom embodies a unique mix of passion for the work, innovative scholarship, pedagogical creativity, and eloquence. be sure to check it out!

exciting new direction for the penn annual ethnography in education forum. the theme: Digital Discourses: Education and Ethnography in the 21st Century

proposals due: october 1st

a bit about the theme:

Technology and electronic media today are developing faster than ever, and change the ways we communicate, teach, learn and research. We now live in a digital world where new forms of interactions, social relationships, and identities are generated, thus transforming the very meaning of education. Learning and educating now occur in contexts shaped by Facebook, Smart Phones, Texting, Twitter, online learning, and Skyping—creating new resources and new challenges to our educative worlds. One now needs to draw on ever more diverse semiotic resources when traversing across different virtual and real spaces. As ethnographic researchers, our toolkit has greatly expanded: our briefcase-sized tape recorders of the past have been replaced by pocket-sized digital recorders, smart technology, hand-held video recorders, and online chatting from opposite corners of the globe. These tools have opened up greater possibilities for ethnographically capturing and exploring digital discourses and also for collaboration among ethnographers from a distance. Reciprocally, ethnographic and qualitative research provides keen analytical tools to capture and understand the complex and vibrant realities in which fast-changing technology affects the lives of students and teachers.

fantastic plenary speakers:
Angela Reyes, Hunter College
John Jackson, University of Pennsylvania
Linda Christensen, Lewis & Clark College
Glynda Hull, University of California, Berkeley

Complete details here

exciting new special issues

2011-09-19T14:33:00.000-04:00

1. this friday, a special issue of the Journal of Negro Education will be launched with the following theme: Preparing Teachers to Teach Black Students; Preparing Black Students to Become Teachers

the volume is guest co-edited by my friend and colleague yolanda sealey-ruiz (along with chance lewis) and includes a wide array of articles that take up questions related to the teaching and learning lives of black students across contexts, their education narratives, and possible education futures.

2. the recently published special issue of English Teaching: Practice and Critique on: Literacy(ies) and the Body guest edited by another friend and colleague Stephanie Jones (along with Kerryn Dixon and James Albright)

articles include an exploration of embodied literacies, how bodies are read and what that has to do with education, and a piece on performing critical literacy (written by the very thoughtful and exceptionally observant elisabeth johnson)

3. another special issue bringing an exploration of bodies together with geographies is found in the journal Emotion, Space and Society titled: Emotional Geographies of Education -- edited by jane kenway and deborah youdell (whose work i continue to be enamored of and blown away by)

these articles draw on theories and metaphors of geographies and spaces to bring forth new sites of teaching and learning, under-appreciated or less visible contours of how we live and experience education.

for the love of picture books

2011-09-19T14:17:00.000-04:00

it is perhaps fitting that my return to this blog, after a brief hiatus, comes following a memorial service for larry sipe, a former professor and the person who gave me words with which to describe my own love of books and stories and characters and narrative delights: jouissance! plaisir! performative responses! cover pages! aesthetic!

among my favorites that larry introduced me to, that i have been thinking about and revisiting in the several months since his passing are:


The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales

The Giver

Smoky Night

and if you want to hear more about children's and young adult literature, definitely check out the very excellent blog: The Classroom Bookshelf: Teaching with Children's and Young Adult Literature in the 21st Century.

over the next several months, i'll be sharing reflections on the many ways i continue to witness the joy for stories that larry held and shared as they thrive in the practices of the many young people i've spent time with these last several years. in part, this will be a part of the collection of essays i am preparing along with my research team in a book about bringing an arts-based approach to digital media in literacy explorations with youth, particularly court-involved youth. and other vignettes will be drawn from a book length manuscript i'm working on based on five years of ethnographic research at the program i've called ATIP in various publications.

for now, though, i'll take in the jouissance that comes with recognizing the beauty of a beautifully crafted page, made of pastels and paint and cutouts and hours of labor...

my "letteracies" -- installment 4

2011-09-18T14:15:00.000-04:00

over the past several months, i had forgotten to post this last installment. as i read through it now i am struck only by one lasting thought: how precious words can be as a marker of a moment in time. and perhaps bound up in this observation is also the significance of audience, of someone or a few someones who permeate our minds as we compose a text, who infuse our compositions with a small smile or a belly laugh, whose presence pushes us to write to completion, who give our writing purpose and urgency. this is, then, a blanket thank you for the audiences i have had the pleasure of writing to and with and hope to continue a dialogue with in the months and years to come...

and so, without further mediation, the last installment:

8.21.93

…
Getting back to the Taj Mahal: it was beautiful. That’s it. As much as I always wanted to see it, I never really wanted to go in – or go very close for that matter. I don’t know why exactly. Perhaps because actually going in would cause the Taj to lose some of its mystique and enigmatic charm… and it did. Thinking back now it seems almost unreal that I was there. In fact this whole month has just been, what seems like, a big blur. But, all that’s not to say that this isn’t a truly magnificent piece of architecture. Actually it’s more than that. it’s a symbol of the magnitude of Shah Jahan’s love for his wife. And, well, that right there is nothing short of absolutely beautiful. It’s even better because such a symbol exists in a country where, traditionally, love isn’t as widely shown or publicized.

People often say patience is a virtue. This couldn’t be truer. But just as there is virtue in being patient, there is virtue in being content, hence contentment, too, is a virtue. The lack of this can be a deadly thing. This of course doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to better yourself knowledge-wise, spiritually, and internally, for there is always room for improvement and learning. I just mean that always wanting what other people have or never being satisfied unless on has as much of more than others is not healthy at all and can be damaging to both the person who thinks this way and the recipient of such behavior.

…

I hate jealousy. I hate manipulation. I hate arrogance. I hate people taking advantage of others. I hate lying. I hate cheating. I hate meanness. I hate fakes. I hate corruption. I hate prejudice. I hate superficiality. I hate people who aren’t what they portray themselves to be. I hate hypocrites. I hate myself for not seeing people for what/who they really are in the first place. I hate jealousy.

8.24.93

As I’m writing now I’m sitting on my bed at home, in my room, with my back against the “unfinished wall,” listening to the jazz station, hearing a fly have repeated encounters with different objects in the room. It’s good to be home and, as usual, it’s hell to be home.

…

I saw my friends last night. It felt good to laugh like that again.

…

Did you ever have so many thoughts to write down that you couldn’t do it because there were just too many and they were all just fragmented thoughts anyway? Well, that’s what’s happening to now, and has been for quite a while. It’s fun just thinking them though.

Well, I’m sure that this proved to be an interesting, and probably tedious, piece of writing to read and if you got this far you definitely deserve a 3 Musketeers bar. I’ll end this “saga” just by wishing you a good year and thanking you for just … being you :)

…

my "letteracies" -- installment 3

2011-04-15T00:32:00.001-04:00

this penultimate installment of excerpts from the india chronicles has a bit of a smorgasbord feel to it. i wonder what a journey across space and time does to an almost 18-year-old. by "does" i mean both the effect on an older adolescent's sense of self as well as the cultivation of an affect and aesthetic of self. how do encounters with multiple others, and the unfamiliar readings of oneself by others, shape a sense of self? and all the while that these encounters are happening and musings are coming in and out of focus, the chronicles putter along with a dual audience in mind -- the intended reader as well as the writer, herself. the pale green steno paper on which these words were scribbled, sometimes with haste and other times with deliberate script, are suggestive of a narrative not only being told but also one being made in real time.

8.7.199X
…
I had a fascinating dream last night. I wrote down what I could concretely remember and I’d explain it but it’s confusing, even for me. More than the actual events of my dream, I remember the feelings – both emotions and physical – that occurred. Is there any real value worth giving to dream analysis? I’ve always heard that dreams are symbols of something. Are they?

i've been thinking a lot about aesthetics and literacies -- about how we feel when we engage with or encounter a text, even a text such as a dream. about how texts and related artifacts stay with us. how they linger long after the moment of encounter. how memory shapes them into the recesses of our minds, pushes them deep into our bodies, waiting for the right occasion or trigger to release them back into our consciousness. it is akin to the connection others have with smells or sounds; for me, it has always been words. i remember how i felt when my 2nd grade teacher insisted on mispronouncing my name even after i had meekly corrected her for the umpteenth time; she insisted on rhyming the 2nd syllable of my name with the word "with" when i desperately wished for her to realize its aural kinship to the word "teeth."

and i sometimes get lost when the words of another hold me in place while the conversation moves along, leaving me holding my thoughts in quiet as the world rushes forward. like when i was told long ago that my face registered on it the hundreds of fleeting flashes of thought as i listened intently to people in dialogue, taking in their words and gestures and formulating a measured response. whenever a passer-by encourages me to "smile!" or reminds me that "it's not so bad!" as my face contorts when lost in thought. and in those moments, those words come rushing back; i had never had anyone read my face before nor has anyone done so since.

8.8.199X
…
OK, still the eighth of August. We finished packing. Before that, though, j asked who I was writing to. i, looking at the first page, said that it must be a generic letter because it wasn’t addressed to anyone – all it says is “Hi!” so I said I was writing to you. Then she asked if it was a letter or if I was writing a book! I simply told her that writing to you was like writing in a diary, only better. It’s like having a sounding board. Somehow, when I write things down I feel better; when I write them to you, I not only feel better but I can think clearer. And besides, I like writing to you – above all else, it’s wonderfully fun!

this passage reminds me of a quote imprinted on the side of a mug given to me by a high school teacher who i adored, and about whom these particular words by eleanor roosevelt ring quite true, "Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart." i am reminded, also, of what another friend said about the ideas and words and meanings we carry with us. friendship is that, i suppose. we shift just a little bit with each encounter, but some change us forever. i'm thinking of people, themselves, as well as the words they share with us. and the stories they invite us -- move us -- to share with them.

8.12.199X
I begin this passage not just as a citizen of the world and earnest observer of life, but as one who has visited the site of one of the wonders of the world: The Taj Mahal. It was strange actually going there, though.

last week i attended one of three racial literacy roundtables being held at tc, coordinated by the lovely yolanda and a group of earnest and thoughtful graduate students. one of the facilitators for the evening ventured forth a story by way of introduction to the evening's theme of stereotypes. (the word immediately takes me back to a moment from my childhood when i first heard the word "gandhi" used as an insult hurled toward me... and i was confused then, as i remain now, as to why the name of this icon of non-violence would be insulting to me. ah, youthful ignorance!) this young women noted that it was only upon entering graduate school that she realized that all of her friends were just like her, they looked just like her, shared her life experiences. so, when it became my turn to introduce myself, i wondered aloud, whether we don't all look for a glimpse of familiarity when we connect -- not only within presumed "sameness" but also across differences. that is, might we not see something familiar in someone who does not share our phenotypic makeup and yet be "just like us?" and perhaps i am keenly aware of this as most of the people who have and continue to leave footprints in my heart look nothing like me, but they are my twin skin, nevertheless.

my "letteracies" -- installment 2

2011-04-02T16:00:00.002-04:00

what is the impetus to put pen to paper, or these days to type in the key of a letter? do we resist because we don't have time? or do we assume that our recipient, whomever he or she may be, can't or won't make time for such trivialities? have we lost our ability to render ourselves vulnerable, not only to people in our lives, but to our very selves? are we afraid that if every minute isn't spent with just the slightest hint of suffering and laboriousness, that we ought to feel guilt; rather than creating the spaces for unpredictability, exploration, aimlessness that we (as adults) and certainly that children and youth so desperately need? i think we're just all a bit terrified of looking foolish...

8.1.199X
Happy August! I’m back at my grandmother’s house in Madras. We finished the southern leg of our India trip without too much of a problem. All in all I’d say it went well. … in about 1 month and 3 days I will be all moved in at Penn; for that reason alone I can’t wait to get home. That and the fact that I can mail you this thing, which I predict will be a pretty hefty package by the time I finish!

given my constant attention to time, temporality, and location in these excerpts, perhaps it is not a surprise that theories of space/time captured my imagination from the first read. references to college are peppered throughout the pages of the chronicle, suggesting a restlessness that is to be expected of an adolescent during the summer before leaving home for college.

8.5.199X
Ahoy, again! Or actually I should say “All aboard!” or something like that, because at this very moment I’m aboard the Corumendal Express en route to Calcutta. It is about 9:15pm and we’ve been on the train for over twelve hours. But we have air conditioned sleeping compartments, so it’s a whole “lotta” fun! It wasn’t more than an hour ago that tears were streaming down my face in reaction to the conclusion of one o the best books I have ever read, “The Prince of Tides.” The last thirty of so pages were absolute torture, but I loved every minute of it I haven’t had a book move me like this one did in a long time. it felt good to know and experience the beauty of a language that could evoke such true feeling and emotion. Perhaps I’m wrong in saying language. A more accurate statement would be that knowing that a contemporary author like Pat Conroy could have such a mastery of language that really and truly clutches your gut – well, it both strengthens and illuminates the aura of literature in the world today.

I just finished listening to some guy literally yelp the words “Love and happiness” over and over as accompaniment to a beautiful Sandborne sax. But that’s not the point’ it’s what he was saying, rather than how, that inspired this next passage.

Ok, let’s take these words into perspective: LOVE and HAPPINESS.
What the hell does that mean?!?!?!?
Love. I wrote an essay on this same topic. Now perhaps you’re wondering what credentials I had that gave me license to write about this great wonder of wonder. Well I had, still have, and always will have the one trait that I share with about four and half billing other creatures that inhabit the earth: the trait of being human and having the capacity to love. The trait that not only allows me to feel, but to express to the world these feelings – if I so choose.
So I embarked on a voyage that required self-examination to great degrees on my part. As the essay took shape, bit by bit, I realized that love really is more than one thing, that it is many things, and that I was one hell of a lucky person to have even experienced the different kinds of love I had [experienced] in these seventeen years, ten months, and 25 days (and counting) of my life. Granted that one of those [kinds] did not include the one thing always linked to love: romantic love. But I’m beginning to see that everything comes in its own time; besides I had so much else to write about.

i marvel that i thought someone would want to read these words, these crazy and meandering musings. this tablet was nestled in a box alongside dozens of other letters that dated back to my middle school days. i had french pen pals -- bruno and madeleine -- and exchanged letters of varying length with friends i would meet for a day, some with whom i attended school, and others i met in a month-long residential program during the summer after my junior in high school -- where i met my friend L as well as my now-husband. some envelopes are decorated with artwork, others -- especially the ones sent to me by my younger sister -- were adorned with stickers and doodles and last minute messages hastily scribbled onto available blank space of envelopes.

8.6.199X
11:45pm is the time as I say hello again from Calcutta. It’s hard to believe that I lived here for three years of my life. My dad used to describe the city to me at the time when he was growing up. I knew it wasn’t the poshest of locations, but I didn’t expect such an onslaught of smog, pollution, and more people!! I always pictured Calcutta as very black and white – that’s probably because of all the black and white photographs I’ve seen of my dad’s childhood.

We visited some friends of my parents, who still live in the same apartment building. (The guy was dad’s childhood friend and had lived in the same apt. for 54 years!) Then we saw a lady who supposedly was my friend. Mom said that I’d spent more time at her house that at home; their flat is right next to ours. Both she and the previous couple I mentioned had last seen me when I was 3 ½ -4 years old. Boy were they shocked when they found out who I was!

as i read my old letters from my friends, and as i sit with the chronicle that was never sent, i am reminded of how much meaning comes through in the space of correspondence. such was one of the great joys in the story of the "goat on a cow" (which was recently re-interpreted as an amazing feat of dance choreography), in which the discovery of a stack of letters along the side of a road led to the unveiling of a relationship and identities once thought long forgotten. the finding of letters, whether they be familiar or new discoveries, is reminiscent of a near-sacred moment -- the opening up and peering into of the middle of a conversation, of a self being crafted and gently unfolding as the words create lines that take up pages. once i got past the initial cringing that is bound to occur as the inner critic rears her ugly head, i was able to see connections to some of the uncertainties, frustrations, earnestness, confusions, and emotional dilemmas that i see echoed in my conversations with many young people today. and perhaps more than anything, i was struck by the acts of making public aspects of a very inner and private dialogue. they made me wonder if and how youth are carving out those spaces in their quotidian discursive activities today -- where? how? with and for whom?

installment 3 to come shortly...
installment 1 here

my "letteracies" -- installment 1

2011-04-01T02:09:00.006-04:00

i've always found letters to be magical in nature. not only receiving them -- although i will admit that receiving a letter in my mailbox or a meandering email in these days of communiqué barely the length of tweets thrills me to no end -- but also writing them. unlike other forms of writing in which i routinely engage, so often driven by someone else's needs or demands, letters beckon to a different voice, an all-too-often quieted voice -- a voice of go-nowhere-quick ideas, confusing-at-best and nonsensical-at-worst punctuation, ambitious descriptions that sometimes fall quite short (but the joy is in attempting play with language); in letters, i get lost, happily lost.

i was positively jubilant, therefore, when i recently came across a 6"x9" ruled writing tablet that contained nearly 20 pages (double-sided) filled with musings, commentary, and often just idle chatter that i had composed while traveling across india during the summer after my high school graduation. for four weeks, i rode trains, boarded planes, squeezed into cars, jeeps, and all other manner of conveyance -- even a "boat" that looked like an upside-down mushroom, made of tightly stretched buffalo hide -- with my parents, my two siblings and my two friends as we journeyed north and south and east and west through the country where i was born. what makes this chronicle particularly intriguing to me is that it was written as a very long letter to my friend L with whom i had exchanged periodic correspondence for nearly a year before. letters, written long hand, before email was de rigueur.

as it is probably obvious by now, i never sent this travel chronicle and when i read it again in its entirety just a few weeks ago, i am even more thankful that it stayed with me. the letter writing space that my friend had opened up for me nurtured my curiosities, heightened my engagement with the world, and invited me to consider new audiences for my words and work. for a then-17-year-old, such a space was simply wondrous. a true gift. and one that i have been able to reconstitute to some degree in newly found and "founded" spaces of correspondence. in this vein, i echo the joy of letters found in one of my favorite blogs, the letter writing revolution.

so, in the spirit of engaging with that young, 17-year-old girl -- and because i promised my friend i would share bits of these missives, no matter how silly and embarrassing they may be after so much time has passed! -- i'm going to spend the next few blog posts reprinting excerpts from the chronicle, not to navel gaze, but rather to become reacquainted with my former self and to rejuvenate my empathy for young people who are constantly negotiating multiple terrains in which they are striving to make themselves known. in that spirit, i offer these nascent scribblings as a springboard to my own memory work around the many meanings of writing -- and of letter writing in particular -- in my life. (and in so doing hope for generous readers who recognize and are willing to overlook the clumsiness of an adolescent seeking and crafting a voice out of words...)

***

7.28.199X
… So, where am I now? At this point in time I am sitting in an uncomfortable, hexagon-shaped stool in a hexagon-filled hotel room in Mysore, India. … It’s been about a week now and I feel like I’m just going through the motions. … Today’s the 5^th straight day we’ve been travelin and sightseeing and the strain is slowly beginning to have a negative effect on everyone’s demeanor. We’re all getting kinda testy!

7.29.199X
Well today was more than fabulous and I am sitting here in the Kabini River Lodge in the middle of a national forest. [Earlier today] we boarded a most wonderfully bumpy jeep and were given a 2½ hour tour of Nagarhole National Forest. But wait, it gets better: aside from the countless groups of deer jumping, leaping and standing still, we saw, up close and personal, bison, peacocks, and my personal favorite, a beautiful group of elephants. One even started to charge at us! As you can most likely tell this was absolutely, unquestionably, fantabulously, indescribably GREAT! The fact that we had to get out and push the jeep out of the mud a couple of times only added to this adventure.

Right now it’s about 10:25pm and the only sound besides the ceiling fan and this pen writing on this paper is the soft murmur of crickets whispering outside. No horns, cars, people; nothing but simplicity. I wish we could stay here for a few more days.

7.30.199X
…
OK, that was a question break. So, tell me, how are you doing? I know you can’t tell me right now… but oh well. Are you all set for another year out in the wilderness in WV? Is it really that “isolationary?” you go out and have a good time, I’m pretty sure… right?
…
Do you ever just close your eyes and for just an instant feel your body being lifted – feel weightless? A sensation similar to a vacuum flows through your entire being like a flash of lightning. Every in of skin feels the instantaneous tingling, like a feather barely touching the hairs on your arm, legs, and neck. Your eyes seem to be traveling through the brain. This is an instant of complete and absolute peace and inner harmony.
And then, it’s over.

***

...more musings and chronicle excerpts to come in installment 2...

being in tune with oneself

2011-03-23T11:21:00.001-04:00

as i began this post several days ago, i only had a sense of where the story would go. i have an image in my mind of a young man looking at me with incredulity as i was hanging out in the afterschool program where my research team and i spend a few afternoons a week facilitating an arts and digital literacies project. on a recent tuesday, we were continuing some work with collages that we had begun the week before. collaging is one in a long line of expressive practices that we have been incorporating into this series of workshops, that has included designing movie posters, camera work, reading and scripting lines of a play, among other practices. i first met the boy who i'm thinking of -- i'll call him derek -- a few weeks back. when i was introduced to him as a professor by a graduate students, who is also part of the team, derek immediately referred to me as "the OG." i liked him instantly :) he wondered aloud what my relationship was, in terms of power and authority, to eric, who he referred to the man in charge. admittedly, eric does appear wise beyond his years and is a founding member of this project, but we both laughed at derek's characterization of his presumed age as he is almost the youngest member of our team.

but i digress... last week, as i walked into the program, derek announced my entrance by noting that "triple OG is here." (when eric entered a short while later, derek noted, "here comes double OG.") in addition to reminding me so much of one of the boys who was a part of my dissertation project group -- cyrus -- derek's countenance, wickedly shy smile that breaks into a grin, surprise when i call him by his name (and that i know his name at all) -- all of these little glimpses suggest some of the many layers that comprise the life of this one young man.

last tuesday, we were discussing events around the world -- and reminding ourselves to remember that the world is both local and global (and all the lovely bits in between) -- with the help of photographs depicting images of the devastation following the earthquake in japan, somali refugees in tunisia, citizen soldiers taking arms in libya... derek, who was sitting next to me, launched his body nearly out of his chair on more than 4 or 5 separate occasions. he was still very much engaged and participating, as his writing and conversational contributions from that day reflect, but he needed or took moments to swing himself away. i described this interaction in an email to a friend this way:

"I think... of this week's discussion with some young people whose great desire to be heard was palpable; a hand laid gently on a shoulder was all it took to invite a young man to join our discussion. This in contrast to a similar moment in classroom where delayed participation may be read, in a moment, as disengagement, and the weight of many previous moments of impatient judgments flash like a halo of garish neon signs."

in sharing this moment, i was recalling the suggestion made by jay lemke who notes that "moments add up to lives," and wondering about the many moments that adolescents experience in schools that rush by without attention, and yet build up with the residue of false or lowered expectations, disappointments, sacrificing relationships for content coverage, reinforced messages that kids must fit schools and decidedly not the other way around.

while i was thinking about all of this, and wondering how derek's sense of self - his very personhood - might be supported, i received an email from my friend e, whose beloved piano had just been seen by a tuner after a very long time. because of age (close to a 100 yo) among other reasons, the piano, e wrote, might only ever "be in tune with itself" and not, as it were, perfectly tuned. her email and the turn of phrase made me think instantly of derek. and cyrus. and ed. and travis. and brite. and christian. and eric. and myself. all were adolescents at some point, either now or in the past, who may not have been seen for who they are, only for what and who they are not.

to be in tune with oneself -- a formidable task in it own right! how often do we hear adults striving for a sense of balance and harmony, and yet why do we eschew these same qualities in young people who have not conformed to norms of behavior, practice, action, performance, engagement? the pursuit of being in tune with oneself may be where human flourishing comes alive and perhaps lies in direct contrast to an insistence on developmental markers of identity, progress -- redolent of what varenne and mcdermott artfully illustrate in successful failure about the social construction of labels that emerge out of judgment of a child's lack of being in tune with others, even while she may be perfectly in tune with herself... capable of playing, in key, with those around her.

cme: representations of women and girls (snagfilms collection)

2011-03-21T21:17:00.000-04:00

Watch more free documentaries

3MinuteMedia -- Social Issue Media Festival 2011 -- Get Inspired!!

2011-02-10T19:31:00.000-05:00

The 2nd Annual Teachers College Social Issue Media Festival has extended its call for entries! Submit a video, podcast, photo essay or other piece of media that explores a social issue in under 3 minutes. Find out more at http://www.socialissuemediafest.org and by following @3MinuteMedia on Twitter.

New Deadline: Friday, February 25, 2011

call for entries - extended

2011-02-09T00:35:00.000-05:00

what are you passionate about?
are you the person to tell that story?
what does the world need to hear?
how can 3 minutes change something?

get inspired. and pass it on...

Video As Art, Fall 2010 -- Final Projects

2010-12-13T21:42:00.001-05:00

Apology
Blind Box
Same Sex Marriage
627 Greenwich Street
Third Culture Kids
Story Melodies Vol. 1: Coming of Age in the City
Happy Birthday Marian
Silent Rain
Yellow

For more from the semester, you can view our YouTube channel

Media festival -- Call for entries

2010-12-10T01:05:00.000-05:00

It's out! The Call for Entries for the 2nd Annual Social Issue Media Fest.

Learn more here.

Watch last year's films here.

And pass it on!

autumn loveliness

2010-10-29T03:43:00.000-04:00

From autumn loveliness

links for video as art - ken burns workshop

2010-10-18T15:07:00.000-04:00

research video

2010-10-12T02:12:00.001-04:00

edlab, at teachers college, produced a short video about some research i have been pursuing at an alternative to incarceration program (atip) for the past several years. they did a fabulous job of capturing the essence of this wonderful program!

essays on globalization, education, and citizenship

2010-09-27T06:12:00.000-04:00

Teachers College Record, Volume 113, Number 10, 2011

Special issue theme: Globalization, Education, and Citizenship

Featured Articles

Introduction: Rethinking Globalization, Education, and Citizenship

by David Hansen

This essay is an introduction to a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University, the purpose of which has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship.

An Invitation to Unknowing

by Lalitha Vasudevan

At a time when there is increased hybridity in local and global citizenship, language and literacy practices, and performances of cultural identity and affiliation, narrowing of our ways of knowing can detrimentally impact how educators and scholars engage in intellectual inquiry and educational practice. This essay uses the mode of questioning to create a dialogue about the discursive, rhetorical, and even physical postures that educators and scholars might embrace when re-imagining everyday practices of teaching, learning, and research to be open to unexpected trajectories.

The Culture of Community and a Failure of Creativity

by Graeme Sullivan

Although the profile of what it is to be an educated citizen needs to be cast across international divides the learning impulse originates with an individual and is further seen and felt throughout the community. If there is a failure to appreciate how all types of learners in all kinds of settings make sense of their education we are all impoverished. Consequently, if communities are unable to understand what it is that those individuals within it “make” as they contribute the collective good then the community itself has ceased to be a learning culture.

Globalization, Social Movements, and Education

by Regina Cortina

With globalization—a term that signifies the ever-increasing interconnectedness of markets, communications and human migration—social and economic divides in countries around the world are hindering the access of many people to the major institutions of society, including and especially education. My goal in this essay is to reflect on the dilemma that John Dewey identified in Democracy and Education regarding the "full social ends of education" and the agency of the nation-sate.

On Natality¹ in Our Roots, Routes, and Relations: Reconceiving the “3 R’s”² at the Rendezvous of Education, Citizenship, and Globalization

by Molly Quinn

While eschewing definitive findings, conclusions, or recommendations—rather hoping to cultivate new questions, experiences, and stories of our times, and summon us to renewed responsibility, the author undertakes an experiment in reconceiving the ‘3 R’s at the rendezvous of education, citizenship, and globalization: on, and as, natality in our roots, routes and relations.

Global Seeing

by William Gaudelli

The aim of the essay centers on a question: What can we see beyond seeing? This essay considers the typical ways in which we see the world in the a-typical settings of travel. I consider how this type of seeing, when the very purpose of the excursion is to see, often positions the seer to do so as a spectator, consumer or flattener of others.

Being Across Homes

by Olga Hubard

The author's inquiry is driven by the following questions: How is our sense of self influenced by the place where we live? And what happens when our lives take place in two different homes, two cultures? She explores the guiding questions through the unique perspectives of three individuals whose lives straddle Mexico City and New York City. She shares these perspectives as much for the ideas they embody as for the ponderings they provoke. Thus, her reflections, often in the form of questions, are interwoven into the three accounts.

It’s Already Happening”: Learning From Civically Engaged Transnational Immigrant Youth

by Michelle Knight

The goal of this paper is to open up a dialogic space where educators can learn from and with transnational immigrant youth who are already participating in civic learning opportunities as local and global citizens in and beyond the sphere of schools.

Renaissance, Sharing, and Belonging: A Messy Language of Hope

by Maria Torres-Guzmán

This essay proposes that a fresh look at hybridity can render a rich concept for constructing resistance to conformity and uniformity, and for renewing a commitment to a multicultural, multilingual, egalitarian, ecologically-sound, and democratic world.

Seeking provocations and reclaiming the numbers game

2010-09-04T12:12:00.003-04:00

"And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anaïs Nin

In she walked. Already I was braced. And was not disappointed. She unleashed her net of despair, insistent on the savior story; the bootstraps-blindside-redemption narrative.

I sat, with jaw clenched and teeth gnashed, interjecting occasionally when her questions led her to draw absurd conclusions from the responses. She already knew the story she wanted to tell: her questions felt like artifice.

But my anger and hurt/surprise at what seemed like a missed opportunity to tell a compelling story presented an opportunity for tremendous pride. I watched with a full heart as a young man of 20 years held his ground and conveyed his convictions with a resounding calm. I was reminded, by him and familiar and new graduate students, that I am truly part of a team of like-minded, earnest, creative others. The "risk to blossom" must be taken.

This woman, this reporter, presented a provocation -- a reminder that our work is about creating the spaces to cultivate and nurture forth the creative capacities of the youth with whom we work. I am naïve if I forget that the histories and institutional affiliations of "our" youth -- who are involved with the justice system - will be of great interest to distant others. But how might we communicate, effectively and passionately, that these are normal, everyday, engaged, playful, thoughtful young people who are not only so much more than their institutional labels, they often defy those labels entirely.

I was describing this year's project to a former student on the steps in between buildings this week. She noted that in her recent experience working for an academic research center, research like ours was not what was being funded or sought out by the funding agencies. They want numbers. So let's give them numbers:
- the frequency of smiles between youth and adults, participants and facilitators
- how long it takes someone to feel comfortable enough to offer a peer encouragement
- the average number of affirmations and to whom they are directed
- how often and how many genre risks a young person takes - in their composing, consuming, and distribution of texts
- how many, within a given educational space, feel a sense of belonging

And let us reclaim outcomes in the realm of participation - real participation and not merely the behaviors that have been sanctioned by "experts" -- and look for value added in how youth contribute to shaping the curriculum of the educational spaces in which they participate; of course, this assumes educators will allow them this invitation. Could we imagine outcomes that sought greater humaneness among members of a classroom community? Or the mere recognition that one is a member of a community...

Reclamation of the stuff that seems to attract and affirm the monetary risks funders are willing to take; actions that leverage the ideas that capture the broader social imagination by transforming it with tales of fantastical imaginaries -- this is the new frontier of socially conscious, morally committed, pedogically inspired research about the literate lives of adolescents.

literacy practices a generation apart

2010-08-07T14:58:00.003-04:00

things i spend way too much time thinking about (that many of my youth participants and younger friends - or those who appear to be aging backwards - seem to be able to handle without much drama or trauma):

- subject line of an email
- title of playlists
- caption when posting a link to facebook
- the title of anything public, really - e.g., flickr album, picasa album, photo caption,

ok, i'll admit it - grooveshark playlists and plain ol' email subject lines give me agita with a chaser of huge insecurity complex. how do others do it, i wonder? this isn't just a split of 'natives' and 'immigrants' of the wonderful wide web; there's something uninhibited about young people's acts of making themselves public that astounds me... still. a carefree-ness, a willingness to recognize and embrace the fleeting temporality of such literacy acts; acts and practices that, perhaps unintentionally, create a different sort of generational shift. not necessarily chronologically generational, but perhaps demarcations according to when one joined the smartphone revolution? the points along a timeline when one jumps on the social media bandwagon - a conscious decision for some; as natural as cool august weather in maine for others.

new issue of "perspectives on urban education"

2010-08-06T22:08:00.000-04:00

a new issue of Perspectives on Urban Education is out! Volume 7, Issue 1 focuses on:
Schools, Communities, and Universities: Partnerships and Intersections

featuring an article by yours truly and fabulous co-authors: dan stageman, kristine rodriguez, eric fernandez, gabriel dattatreyan
check out our article here: Authoring New Narratives with Youth at the Intersection of the Arts and Justice

the video and the visual breakdown of the lyrics - remixed remixing

2010-07-18T14:25:00.000-04:00

DJ Earworm - United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) - Mashup of Top 25 Billboard Hits

Color-coded lyrics
(so much fun!!)

adolescent literacy - moving beyond rhetoric that maligns. a call for new starting points.

2010-07-13T10:53:00.002-04:00

before i begin, the punchline: wanting adolescents to be proficient readers and writers of print-based texts is not wrong; the assumptions on which this desire is based, however, are steeped in deficit interpretations of the literacy practices in which adolescents are already engaged. we need new starting points.

***

recently, a conference about content area literacy focused on adolescents was held at teachers college. you can read more about the conference on the tc website here. but the last paragraph is what caught my attention:

While the U.S. led the world for many years in educational attainment and job skills, “so many other countries are doing so much better now,” [Andres] Henriquez [of the Carnegie Corporation] said, including China and countries in Eastern Europe. And while the U.S. was the first to provide universal secondary education and also perennially led the world in educational attainment, it now ranks thirteenth in the latter category. National 8^th-grade reading scores haven’t budged in decades. “If you were a doctor, you’d say, ‘this patient’s dead. There’s not a heartbeat.’ ”

so the literacies of adolescents effectively render the educational system a dead patient? i worry about this rhetoric because in the spirit of seeking ways to support the print proficiency of adolescents, advocates of "adolescent literacy instruction" simultaneously malign the diverse literate landscapes of adolescents and frame adolescents as persistently in need of remediation. this may not be their intention, but when adolescents are already under scrutiny for so many facets of their being such rhetoric only serves to place and keep adolescent identities and practices at a far remove from those ways of being that are institutionally sanctioned.

in this case, words matter because they help to constitute a reality that will travel across contexts and be parsed for sound bytes. how does one reconcile this deficit starting point in light of the sheer abundance of research - in the areas of literacies, multimodality, communication, media studies, technology and education - that paints vastly different pictures. the prevailing discourse of this conference, as reported in the article, was that adolescents need texts that better resonate with their lives and experiences. but the mere inclusion of interest-related texts - read: print-based artifacts - along a variety of content categories and that reflect multiple realities is not enough. let me emphasize that such a move is certainly significant as adolescents begin to connect with the texts of schools in new and meaningful ways. but we cannot stop there because when we dismiss some practices of adolescents as "non-school" we effectively suppress the possibility of some adolescents' very relationship to formalized education.

our definitions and expectations of composing, communication, meaning, and interpretation must change, not merely to respond to calls for action from literacy researchers, but because educational institutions, such as schools, should be responsive to the practices of children and youth. to simply include a wider array of texts still presupposed a print-centric set of beliefs about how one can acquire and represent information; to do so renders invisible other ways of knowing, even as a recently re-surfaced article from the chronicle of higher education lists "public support for other ways of knowing" as one of the five trends that will radically transform public education by 2015. will the united states' penchant to wax nostalgic about the "good ol' days" be its undoing?

i recognize that to rethink practices of literacy assessment and pedagogy may challenge long held beliefs about literacy, language, schooling, and even education; perhaps it is time to not only talk about rethinking these practices, but to actually change them. so, i note once again the punchline that started this post: wanting adolescents to be proficient readers and writers of print-based texts is not wrong; the assumptions on which this desire is based, however, are steeped in deficit interpretations of the literacy practices in which adolescents are already engaged. we need new starting points.

fighting writer's block - bringing back the aesthetic

2010-06-13T17:15:00.009-04:00

some time in graduate school, i purchased this book: The Writer's Block: 786 Ideas to Jump-Start Your Imagination. the 2-d image to the left doesn't fully capture the block-like structure of this book. it was a 3"x3"x3" cube - a block of ideas intended to jump start the creative juices. when i was a kid, an adolescent, a youth, i was never at a loss of things to imagine or write. my blocks always came in the form of how to take what was "up there" (pointing my to head) and get it to look right "over there" (gesturing to where a piece of paper might be on the table in front of me). was this an easier issue to solve than the kid who is at a loss for what to imagine? this, of course, is a false question because it presumes that there are some kids without a thought in their heads. this simply isn't true. take a minute to observe, without judgment about what isn't happening, what a kid in the park, subway, apple store, cafe, sidewalk... is really doing. before kids are able to form words to communicate, we pay attention to how they are looking and taking in the world. maxine greene, in her infinite wisdom, reminds us, "before we enter into the life of language, before we thematize and know, we have already begun to organize our lived experience perceptually and imaginatively." i love this quote because it not only evokes freireian notions of reading the world before we read (or write) the word, but the significance of imagination is anchored to the origins of our being. with elementary school ends the physical markers of school's acceptance of that embodied sort of imagination implied by greene: the rug to stretch out on; the author's chair to take on the mantle of author with an audience to share your stories with; recess, whether on the tarred surface or greener environs, that was a time to travel to distant lands, times, and assume absurd roles; picture books! enough said. some middle and high schools provide access to these aesthetic spaces in the form of extracurricular activities (literary magazine, newspaper, yearbook, band, orchestra, theater, etc.). but what about the schools that do not have the resources to provide these outlets? and, perhaps more urgently, why is the aesthetic essence of writing and literacies not vital to the composing that is taught and expected "in school"?

when i write now, as an adult, i am forever stimulated aurally (a set of goto music mixes), visually (why wifi is so important while writing), physically (hence, my persistent search for the perfect cafe context in which to compose, and the requisite eats and drinks to accompany this orchestration of words, ideas, and meanings); yet we establish stifling conditions in which kids, youth, adolescents must create their compositions. if we really value their words - and in large part, i believe we (teachers, researchers, adults of all kinds) do - then could we find ways to create spaces that cultivate the imaginations that children bring with them to elementary schools and throughout their schooling lives?

amidst ongoing dialogue about digital literacies and online spaces it can be easy to forget the physical. sometimes, that trunk of old dress up clothes and wigs has just the thing to dislodge our blocks and get us writing once again.

new issue of digital culture and education is out! "beyond new literacies"

2010-06-01T10:57:00.000-04:00

New Issue online now! Volume 2, Issue 1 http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/

Special themed issue: Beyond ‘new’ literacies
Edited by Dana J. Wilber

from Wilber's intro:
"Ten years ago the term “new literacies” was only used by those prescient researchers who perceived that new technologies were going to shape language and literacies, such as Lankshear and Knobel’s (1997) early work on literacies and texts in an electronic age. Others, such as the New London Group (1996) through their work on multiliteracies, were instrumental in evolving the idea of literacies shaped by technologies and contexts; setting the stage for new literacies to become the vibrant field it is today. While the field has grown over the past decade, the central concern of new literacies research remains the same; researchers scrutinize and analyze how the rapid development of new tools and technologies are shaping language and literacy practices. In this special themed issue of Digital Culture and Education (DCE), we begin a conversation that compliments how we think about conceptualizing, viewing and talking about “new” literacies."

media fun this spring and summer

2010-05-18T10:49:00.002-04:00

film festival season has begun! (did it ever really end?) i'm proud to say that we - as in the social issue media festival team - were part of that kick off with our festival screening that took place on may 6th at teachers college. we'll be making the films available online shortly - first, temporarily via itunes, and then more permanently when we launch our festival website in the fall. so stay tuned for that!

a few more events coming up soon:

June 2nd: The World Premiere of the Tenth Annual Media That Matters Film Festival

June 3rd: MTM: Impact, a series of conversations - a workshop based on the Media That Matters Film Festival

June 10-24th: Human Rights Watch International Film Festival

Watch, share, act.

Screening: Media that Matters @ Maysles Cinema

2010-04-21T13:22:00.000-04:00

Media That Matters
Presents
Immigrant Heritage Week 2010 Screening

Wednesday, April 21 7:30 - 10:00 pm
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd/Lenox Ave
(Btwn 127th & 128th Streets)
Suggested Donation $10

Celebrate Immigrant Heritage Week 2010 with Media That Matters as we host an evening-long screening at Maysles Cinema on Wednesday, April 21 from 7:30 - 10:00 pm! In partnership with the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, Media That Matters will be showcasing films that focus on the immigrant experience, American identity and international communities. The evening will also feature Arts Engine staff facilitating discussion with guest organizations--Safe Horizon, New York Youth Leadership Council, NYU Center for Human Rights & Global Justice, Caribbean One and African Services Committee--available for questions and conversation.

Here are just a few examples of the films on the evening's lineup:

Vision Test (Wes Kim)
Who would you feel most comfortable with as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company? What begins as a routine eye exam turns into an examination of people’s subconscious attitudes towards race, gender and power.

Slip of the Tongue (Karen Lum & Youth Sounds Factory)
What's your ethnic makeup? A young man makes a pass at a beautiful stranger and gets an eye-opening schooling on race and gender.

Exiled in America (Angela Torres Camarena)
Five siblings struggle to support their American livelihoods after their mother is deported to Mexico.

Why Do White People Have Black Spots? (Anya Kandel & Momentus International)
Youth in Ghana pose questions to people outside of their borders and spark an ongoing dialogue through film.

The Next Wave (Jennifer Redfearn & Tim Metzger)
The Carteret islanders struggle to relocate as some of the world's first climate change refugees.

Please visit the Maysles Cinema website for a complete schedule and to RSVP for the night's events: Maysles Cinema Calendar <http://www.mayslesinstitute.org/cinema/calendar.html>
Also, check out Arts Engine's Media That Matters website <http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/> for more information on our film collection, ways you can hold your own screening and how to take action on issues that matter!

We hope to see you there!

Contact: Weisi Li | weisi@artsengine.net <mailto:weisi@artsengine.net>

Arts Engine, Inc. supports, produces, and distributes independent media of consequence and promotes the use of independent media by advocates, educators and the general public.

new book about adolescents and online literacies

2010-04-15T17:13:00.002-04:00

Adolescents Online Literacies: Connecting Classrooms, Digital Media, & Popular Culture

New volume edited by Donna Alvermann

Description:
A compilation of new work that makes concrete connections between what the research literature portrays and what teachers, school librarians, and media specialists know to be the case in their own situations. The authors (educators and researchers who span three continents) focus on ways to incorporate and use the digital literacies that young people bring to school.

deadline extended!!! social issue media festival

2010-03-25T01:35:00.002-04:00

first annual teachers college social issue media festival

extended deadline: april 16th, 2010

social issue media festival - call for entries

2010-03-10T11:16:00.000-05:00

CALLING ALL PARTICIPANTS!

Join us for the first annual Social Issue Media Festival to be held at Teachers College, Columbia University. The festival is an opportunity for you to voice your opinions on a social issue of your choice.

So what's social issue media? For the purposes of this festival, we are referring to digital, multimedia artifacts (e.g., video, audio podcast, digital story) that call attention to a social issue with the intention of evoking social action.

So how do you participate? It's pretty simple:
-Open to anyone in the Columbia University community (Students, faculty, staff, & alumni)
-Entries must be submitted by Monday, March 22, 2010
-Entries are between 2-3 minutes in length
-Entries can be dropped at 322 Thompson Hall, Teachers College and/or links can be sent to TCMediaFestival@gmail.com

All entries are eligible for jury awards.

For entry form, guidelines, and more information, please visit us at tcmediafestival.wordpress.com or email us at TCMediaFestival@gmail.com. Please forward to anyone who might be interested!

The TC Social Issue Media Festival Screening will be held on Thursday, May 6, 2010 from 4:30-6:30 pm in Milbank Chapel. A reception will follow in the Trustees Room, Zankel 125.

download flyer here

Multimodality and Learning Conference - 2010 - deadline extended!

2010-03-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Multimodality and Learning Conference: Environments, Rhetoric, Recognition, Play, and Methods
July 6th and 7th 2010
Institute of Education, London

Extended Deadline: March 12, 2010

Aim and scope
The overall aim of the conference is to explore multimodal perspectives on learning and to open up theoretical, methodological and pedagogical questions and debate.The conference will be of interest to educational practitioners, research students,researchers and academics from a variety of disciplines including semiotics, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and design.

Complete conference details here: https://sites.google.com/a/lkl.ac.uk/cmr/conference-july-2010

On the meanings of writing and publication

2010-02-07T04:20:00.002-05:00

"publication is the auction of the mind of man"

These words, penned by Emily Dickinson, sometimes keep me up at night. Her words take me back to the reflexive musings of Deborah Appleman found in the chapter, "are you making me famous, or are you making me a fool?" Here, Appleman reflects on the ways in which she has represented the youth whose lives she has studied as part of her language and literacy research. She wonders about the weight of her representational actions; words that freeze in time the dynamic and shifting identities and lives of youth who, in many ways, have been the object of stultifying representations in the past.

What do we do when we "publish our research"? What does the act of publication mean for those of us who call ourselves researchers, whose identities are wrapped up in the business and art of storying the lives of others (and perhaps by proxy, ourselves)? When we move from initial notations of our observations to narrative accounts of "what happened" or "who someone is"? How might we compose with intentional fluidity and fluid intentionality? Whose lives are auctioned when we publish? And with the possibility of collateral damage, what are the possibilities for...what? What do we gain when we publish? Do we distribute knowledge? Further reify or discursively disrupt?

During a recent seminar discussion with colleagues, while discussing texts - whose forms locate them on the margins of my daily readings, yet whose meanings are familiar - we considered the distinction between "writing as reporting" and "writing as enacted inquiry". What vulnerabilities do we risk when we step aside from a 'disembodied voice of authority' to reveal our own discursive hesitations? Is there an audience for writing that reveals rather than merely reports? Writing that seeks to educate through invitation rather than obfuscation?

Dickinson's words haunt me, but so, too, do they keep me alert - alert to the ways I put pen on paper, fingers on keyboard to produce words that claim to tell a story about the multi-storied lives of the young men and women who share their stories with me. Where does that leave the ethnographer: as a storyteller? Storymaker? Storybreaker? Are we making meaning? Constructing knowledge(s)? Representing our ways of knowing?

Within the frame of publication, therefore, can we imagine or move toward publication that does not cause us to sell our souls? (or to recall, with chagrin, the sins of our (publishing) infancy?) What is it to publish, to make public, particularly from within the university? At times, it feels like a dance performed ever-so-delicately through norms and assumptions, skeptics and critics, our communities and naysayers, with the goal of remaining standing long enough to learn another step. Do we risk paralysis in our writing when we focus on publication?

How Social Media Has Changed Us

2010-02-02T02:16:00.001-05:00

How Social Media Has Changed Us

Posted using ShareThis

CFP: Visual Interpretations conference at MIT

2010-01-30T12:52:00.004-05:00

humanities + digital conference 2010

"Visual Interpretations" - Aesthetics, Methods, and Critiques

Of Information Visualization in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

May 20-22, 2010 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology/HyperStudio

http://hyperstudio.mit.edu/h-digital/

How do visual representations of complex data help humanities scholars ask new questions? How does visual rhetoric shape the way we relate to documents and artifacts?
And, can we recompose the field of digital humanities to integrate more dynamic analytical methods into humanities research?

HyperStudio’s Visual Interpretations conference will bring digital practitioners and humanities scholars together with experts in art and design to consider the past, present, and future of visual epistemology in digital humanities. The goal is to get beyond the notion that information exists independently of visual presentation, and to rethink visualization as an integrated analytical method in humanities scholarship. By fostering dialogue and critical engagement, this conference aims to explore new ways to design data and metadata structures so that their visual embodiments function as "humanities tools in digital environments.” (Johanna Drucker)

We welcome submissions from practitioners and theorists of digital humanities as well as such connected disciplines as art, design, visual culture, museum studies, and computer science.

Topics include:
·       Expressive and artistic dimensions of visualizations
·       Subjectivity and objectivity in information visualization
·       Dynamic/multidimensional visualizations and user collaboration
·       Social media and contextualized visualization
·       Cultural history of visual epistemology
·       Limits and affordances of the translation from data to visualization
·       2D and 3D visualizations of historical/social/political data
·       Visualization across media and the archive
·       Digital visual literacy & accessibility
·       Relationships between database and interface
·       Alternative modes of data representation.

Submissions:
We are inviting submissions for the following conference formats:
·       Papers with 15 minutes of presentation and short discussions (12 slots)
·       Short presentations, so called “6/4s” with 6 minutes of presentation and 4 minutes of discussion (18 slots available)
·       Mini-Workshops, 30 minutes each (6 slots)
·       Demos and Posters (30 slots)

Deadline for submissions: March 31, 2010
Organizers:
MIT HyperStudio for Digital Humanities (http://hyperstudio.mit.edu)
MIT Communications Forum (http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/)

For more information: http://hyperstudio.mit.edu/h-digital/ or contact: h.digital@mit.edu

time magazine explores the diversity of youth through image

2010-01-18T18:19:00.001-05:00

photo book: american youth - A fascinating new collection of photographs explores the extraordinary world between college and adulthood. By the photographers of Redux

teens in america: class pictures - In an extraordinary new book, photographer Dawoud Bey photographs and talks with American teenagers, creating a diverse group portrait of a generation that defies our expectations. Each photo is accompanied by a short caption in the voice of each teen in the portraits.

click here for more on the exhibit and Bey, and here for upcoming exhibition tour dates.

the wire - season 4. musings, part 1

2010-01-06T12:58:00.000-05:00

last fall, i began my journey through the critically acclaimed scripted television series, the wire. and i approached it like a homework assignment given to me by nearly everyone who hears me talk about the work i've been engaged in for almost fifteen years - participatory research with adolescents living in urban contexts, court-involved and not. so, after a rocky start - the first 3 episodes of season 1 were a shock to the system, for reasons i'll post later - i finally arrived at season 4, commmonly referred to as "the education season" in which the series regulars continue their march against corruption, the drug wars, and the ongoing bevy of crime-related activities, while a group of middle school students is introduced in the summer before they return to school as eighth graders.

prior to delving into season 4, i quickly read the first in a series of commentaries written by sudhir venkatesh, a sociologist at columbia, as he watched season 5 with "real thugs" - i only skimmed the piece because i did not want to learn too much about the last season before completing the penultimate one. but the ethos of the series - he wrote a commentary after each episode in season 5, viewed alongside men who he had come to know through his research, particularly focused on the underground economy of the drug trade - intrigued me. what would it mean to watch a popular television series depiction of how the systems of education and justice intersect a little too seamlessly in the lives of middle school youth?

i've seen the first episodes in the season, thus far. having invested three seasons in the morality, motivations, and histories of the primary characters, i find myself reading the scenes much differently than if i had started watching with this season. this seems obvious, but also important to note given how often we - the general public - are quick to make judgments - about tv characters, passers-by, acquaintances - without knowing much about them.

and now a confession. there is a scene in the first episode of season 4 where a group of about 6 adolescent boys, who are patiently trying to capture a white dove in order to sell it for a profit, accost a similarly aged boy who has made a noise and scared away the bird. as i watched the boys hurl insults about the single boy's clothing, family life, lack of money, presumed lack of utilities like running water, heat... i had to turn away. my faucet-like tear ducts were in overdrive and i had to pause the dvd momentarily and decide whether i could go on. certainly, this would not be the worst actions depicted in the season, nor in the series thus far. yet, the cruelty of children - regardless of their physical maturation - was the aspect that hurt me (in not entirely unexpected ways) more than others. i suspect this is, in part, due to the fact that i have also witnessed similar discursive moments in my work with young people, and it's the one thing - the words of hurt - that continue to mystify me the most... but also in part because of the possibility and promise that a young face holds.

baldwin's words in "my dungeon shook..." ring loudly in my head. what are the contexts we are all born into, and how do those outside of our contexts read and interpret us based on assumptions about the contexts into which we were born?

in one scene from the third episode, a former police officer experiences his first days as a teacher. he is teaching 8th grade math and struggles to be heard, occasionally receiving the help of one student, randy, who manages to make the situation work for him - grabbing a large stack of hall passes from the teacher's desk on the first day, and quietly exiting the classroom when one girl slices another's face, causing the teacher to panic and freeze, while another, more experienced teacher, walks in and tells one of the students to call 911. the young woman, who caused her classmate to writhe in pain as the floor becomes saturated with her blood, sits scowling against the back wall with her knees clutched up near her chest. the boy who was the object of the verbal insults in episode one - duquan, who is called dukey - slowly approaches her and sits down next to her. he uses a personal fan, which he found on the ground on his walk to school on the first day, to literally cool her off.

there are so many potential opportunities to point fingers in this moment: at the girl who kept taunting her classmate until she snapped; the young woman who called on violence as a means of response; the other students who encourage antagonistic behavior in their peers; the teacher who didn't have enough awareness about what was happening in the class to intercede sooner; new, un-certified teachers, who are placed in large classes with little or no teaching experience because our urban schools are in desperate need of math and science teachers; large class sizes that are not conducive for effective learning (regardless of claims that "the studies don't bear out" effectiveness of small class size)...

with a change in administration, we are sadly seeing what is amounting to "more of the same" as programs like "race to the top" and measures of accountability only serve to reify the primacy of quantifiable, discrete, and isolated skills. the communities of practice we see in the wire are intertwined, interdependent, situated, and contextual; tethered to local and global discourses, and yet like the kids on the screen, youth across the country continue to be reduced to statistics: % of students eligible for free and reduced lunch; # of dropouts and truants; reading grade levels; state assessment percentiles...

who is really benefiting from all of these "changes"?

images of youth - the year behind, the year ahead

2009-12-30T15:55:00.000-05:00

we live in a moment of unparalleled communicative accessibility and information dissemination. youth, so often the object of maligned commentary and political concern, are leading the charge in new modes of expression, purposes for communication, and representations of self. yet, all too often, the stories we see in the popular press about young people are ones that highlight the exceptions and not the norm. that is, we see reported several instances of youth using social networking to plan mass chaos and ultimately inflict harm on others. yes, this does happen and yes we hear about it. but how often do we hear about the use of media and technologies by youth to engage in social action? for inspiring stories, see below:

A positive face of youth in the media - Today's Youth-Led Media Summit brings together enthusiastic young people from around the UK who want to determine their future role – and dispel the image of dangerous hoodies

Youth Radio - Youth Radio was founded in 1990 on the deeply held belief that underserved youth, ages 14-24 years old, have the creativity, technical skills and entrepreneurial spirit to become leaders in the multi-media industry and the community and to serve as mentors to other youth.

new book about harlem, youth, and multimodal literacy - In her new book, Valerie Kinloch investigates how the lives and literacies of youth in New York City’s historic Harlem are affected by public attempts to gentrify the community. Kinloch engages the perspectives of two young men who use documentary and video making to guide their collaborative inquiry.

Adobe Youth Voices/ Listen Up! in India - In November the Listen Up! team traveled to India with our Adobe Youth Voices partners to to work with teachers and students in documentary and animation filmmaking.

America's Youth Speak Out - America's Youth Speak Out is the only youth produced national public service campaign. More than 4000 young people across the country are producing public service messages dealing with issues that are important in their lives and communities.

Youth video conference highlight: The Choose to Be the Change youth video project highlighted the Northern Ontario First Nations Communications Conference

what i hope for in the year to come are what michelle fine has referred to as "audiences that are worthy" - an interpretive context for the words, images, stories, and storying by youth that embraces a generous and generative posture. having worked with youth to produce numerous of varied artifacts in which young people make themselves vulnerable, i am particularly committed to seeking, finding, and creating meaningful audiences for the narrative insights embodied by these artifacts. may 2010 be the year to start/continue this work more effectively...

...

new york: task force on transforming juvenile justice - now can we imagine a new way??

2009-12-15T09:29:00.004-05:00

The recently published new york times article about youth detention facilities in new york state details a persistent state of "crisis" rampant in these institutions. The article is based on a report written by New York Governor Patterson's Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice. Juvenile prisons are described as "both extremely expensive and extraordinarily ineffective" by the report, as cited in the article. The statistics are at once disheartening and familiar: more than half the youth in detention facilities are incarcerated for minor offenses (theft, drug possession, truancy); over 80% are black or Latino; almost all of the new york city, who comprise 76% new york state's juvenile detention population, are housed outside of the city and out of reach of their support networks due to prohibitive costs that might make frequent travel impossible.

While I was pleased to see alternative mentioned twice in the article, which has garnered attention quickly since it was published, the mentions are limited: one about the need for alternatives such as therapeutic foster care and another about an overall recommendation made by Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, "that judges find alternative placements for most young offenders." I have spent eight of the last fourteen years involved with incarceration alternatives as a teacher, tutor, researcher, and volunteer, and in that time have come to appreciate the nuanced possibilities for reimagining futures that alternative to incarceration (ATI) programs can provide. One of these programs is located in new york city and has a rich history of innovative programming to support the post-incarceration lives of youth. As a researcher I have been able to document the varied and situated practices of the staff of this program for the past five years and what is consistent, amidst the diversity of approaches, is the commitment to court-involved evident. Teachers, case managers, counselors, court representatives, administrators (for the most part) share a personal connection to the Justice System and bring with them an empathy and a sense of possibility to their work with the (mostly) young men at the program. Education and employment work in tandem as dual objectives that are addressed by the program's offerings, which include arts and media electives and a college preparatory program. What is readily evident in this space, and what feels quite absent from the austere environs and discourses described in the Task Force Report, is the embodied understanding of what Maxine Greene describes as the "not yet" - at 14, 15, 16 or even as young as 10 and 11, how many of us were already the person we are today, and what are the many ways in which we may continue to change years from now, if those around us will allow it. Greene's response to her own question ("Who am I?"), "I am who I am not yet" is imbued with a deep sense of possibility - a narrative necessary for education; perhaps especially important for young people whose institutional scrapes have amounted to war wounds they wear daily like a heavy mantle.

The new york times article ends with this quote by "Clara Hemphill, a researcher and author of a report on the state’s youth prisons published in October by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School"

“It really is barbaric,” she added, “the way they treat these kids.”

I'm reminded of one young man's story about adolescents being called "animal-escents" at the youth facility where he was incarcerated before being offered a spot at the alternative to incarceration program. This was a term - and presumably an attitude - adopted by many of the correction officers at the facility. The term ("animal-escents") and the implied meanings send a profound message to those same young people about how they are viewed and how they might expect to perceived in the future.

The seeing of youth as animals may not be a perspective confined to detention institutions; judges, police officers, educators, administrators are all adults who have the opportunity to redirect their gaze away from solely individualistic theories of social transgressions at multiple moments of human interaction with youth. Yet too many choose to impose un-nuanced and simplified rationales when understanding socially complex realities. The response to "crime" need not be an unquestioning lockdown mentality. Rather, there is great restorative potential in the city's ATIs and alternative to detention (ATD) programs (aimed at children and adolescents who are charged with an infraction and placed under the care of the Family Courts when they are ages 9-16). Restorative is not merely rehabilitative or remediation; restorative implicates all those engaged in the post-incarceration well-being of an adolescent - family, educators, community: the restoration of a sense of possibility, of a future re-imagined. The ATI with which I have been involved does not dismiss the histories of the young men who walk through its hallways and participate in classrooms, nor does the program find their histories singularly deterministic of their futures. The "alternative" nature of the site lies in the considerations that have been made to address and attend to the manifestations of multiple social systems that converge on the bodies of adolescents: education, employment, health... But perhaps most significant about the possibilities these ATI and ATD programs hold for court-involved youth to rewrite their futures is their potential to disrupt the larger (and often knee-jerk) public discourse about adjudication, incarceration, and tropes of inevitability.

Can we imagine an approach to legal transgressions that can be described as imaginative, collective, and caring? And lest this suggestion call up protestations about the need to punish crimes, let's remember that the majority of the cases for which youth are arrested or sentenced involve offenses that say more about our social systems than any individual proclivity. We certainly don't want persons in positions of power to continue to manipulate the lives of youth for their own personal gain or out of some personal vendetta. Moving through ATI and ATD programs are young people - like Patrick and Eric and Ed and Nicole and Brite and Emanuel and Tiffany and Angel and Christian and many more - who are so much than the arrest code hastily jotted on the standard intake form. They are poets and thinkers and social theorists and artists and writers and brothers and singers and sisters whose complete has "not yet" been written. Can we imagine spaces for young people to not only make their stories known; but also to story themselves differently in the world?

Click here for the complete report by the governor's task force.

who am i to do this? poetic musings on cross-cultural research

2009-12-02T01:11:00.000-05:00

in 2004, i defended my doctoral dissertation. this was both a proud and apprehensive moment for me, as i wrestled with questions of representation - had i done my boys justice? how were they being read and known at the end of this long process? and how would they continue to be known as i made our stories known through my writing in years to come... i'm thinking about deborah appleman's essay titled, "are you making me famous or are you making me a fool?" and in the spirit of ongoing self-reflexivity, i reprint here the opening lines of my dissertation, complete with the opening epigraph:

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your
time. But if you have come because your liberation is
bound up with mine, then let us work together.
-Lila Watson

I am not an African American adolescent boy.
I have not been called a “superpredator,”
Or had prisons built in anticipation of my “delinquency” or on the basis of my third grade
scores on school-based reading assessments.

I am a South Asian American late-twenties woman.
I have been called a “good type of immigrant”
Whose school performance is lauded and whose labor is valued in an increasingly
globalized market economy; though my hue causes labor unrest.

We were a group of five African American boys and a South Asian American woman
Who told stories together
Had fun and played and
Made a place by co-constructing space to talk back, to
Story against and beyond the readily available and overly abundant
Images

of black boys in need
of remediation,
from deficient literacies;
in a state of corrections.

Ours are stories of ample reflection, hopeful digressions, strong critique, and possibilities.

These might be stories that no one wants to hear.
Who am I to do this?

-------------

and an image that shows and tells much about our time together, that came to be known in our group as "our picture"

The dangers of starting with and stopping at critique

2009-11-27T13:53:00.002-05:00

I'm reading margery wolf's book, "a thrice told tale: feminism, postmodernism, and ethnographic responsibility." Just 14 pages in, one chapter finished, and I can sense my frustration with some of her discursive maneuvers - e.g. Reifying th existence of the other; adherence to "first-world"/"third-world" dichotomizing; pragmatism of ethnographer's authority; difficulty with assuming too reflexivity... It is the same skepticism, I suspect, that a statistician may feel upon reading narrative accounts of

But having been a reader for most of my life - an equally voracious reader of academic texts and those not intended as academic texts (but of course that is quite a blurry line...) - I know to keep my skepticism and discomfort at bay, so that I don't stop reading or, worse, make judgments and assumptions on text I have not consumed or interpreted. This is a danger that plagues not only some of the youth with whom I spend time - "Ugh. This is stupid! The author doesn't know what he's talking about." - but some of the graduate students who opt to take the classes I teach - "This research is offensive and clearly perpetuating negative stereotypes." When we are stuck in the paralysis of critique, it becomes difficult to find a way out. I have erroneously suggested a close re-reading, but as I am newly aware of my own paralytic tendencies, I realize that such a close (re)reading can only be effective if one's reading posture - metaphorical, but perhaps also literal, e.g. from hunched over a table to relaxing on the couch - retains a sense of possibility.

What is the author trying to say? What other texts and discourses are present in the authors' words and assumptions? How is the author using evidence, narrative structure, and language to convey an argument? What do you have to believe in order to take the author at her word?

We lose, it seems to me, our appreciation for the ontological underpinnings for the texts we engage daily. We are poised to agree and disagree. To critique and put down. To point out flaws and shortcomings. We are woefully underprepared - or perhaps unwilling - to consider the possibility of other realities, and to meaningfully engage with others' texts. Such "paralysis by critique" is evident in the overzealous student eager to participate in what s/he assumes is the only tradition of academic discourse; a subway rider expressing disdain for a young man's practice of quietly singing along with his mp3 player; a poltical pundit unable to cede the floor for anyone else's opinion to be heard; and on and on.

Maybe we all just need to learn how to read and appreciate reading (again). Although for some it may be the first time, especially as new reading curricula are stripped of appreciation - a recent casualty being, of course, the beloved "Reading Rainbow"...

plurality of pedagogical postures

2009-11-26T19:24:00.001-05:00

just as we have come to understand the plurality of literacies, i've begun to appreciate the nuanced and multiple nature of teachings and learnings. in the beginning pages of teaching as a performing art, seymour sarason likens the practice of teaching to the experiences of dramatic performance. he cites the incessant, no matter how miniscule, stage fright he feels when he enters 'the classroom' and the consequences of losing one's audience... i wonder if these principles hold true across pedagogical philosophies. david hansen, in the call to teach, describes the pedagogical identity of one of the teachers he profiles in this way,

"[Mr. James] conducts himself as a moral agent--as a person, that is, who can have a positive influence on students--and as a moral educator--a person whose pedagogical obligation is to steer students toward the Good." (p. 68)

do we assume the same pedagogical posture, i wonder, across the multiple settings in which we teach and are taught? and how might we retain our moral purpose - not to be confused with the rhetoric of morality and moral education that seeks to privilege certain values over others and is manifested in the guise of 'character education' or some 'civic education' curricula - to be, as hansen describes, a "moral educator" and engage in education with others? (i, too, wonder about the Good - whose Good? how determined? and does the meaning of Good shift?...) if, like herve varenne and colleagues (see tc record, volume 109, july 2007) we recognize that "Education is fundamental to sociability and is ubiquitous in the everyday life of all human beings" (p. 1561), then how do we attend to the many moments of education in which we engage in daily and deliberately? and how do teaching and education come together? and how might we decouple learning from education? education from schooling? so that the practice of education is not reduced to discrete and simple transactions of information as freire feared when he argued against a "banking model of education?"

these questions, about our multiple pedagogical postures, swirl in my head as i think about the role of play in my own pedagogy. there is an implicit disdain with which play is regarded outside of the elementary school classroom... laughter and humor, in measured amounts, are respectable, but the introduction of silliness, the absurd, or something too carnivalesque or "extravagant" (see boon - Verging on extra-Vagance) garners great skepticism.

lately i have felt beleaguered by a sense that my educational practice, in which i assume and inhabit the performances of a teacher as informed by the formal parameters of particular settings, has become hostage to my own hesitations about my moral purpose. education is a site of possibility as well as conflict, and often both. yet conflict resonates loudly, leaves residue on our psyches, and, if not effectively engaged, can be a poorly placed anchor in swift tides. in the past, i've assumed/embraced/embodied a pedagogy of play, and implicit in such a way of being is a stance of with. that is, a collaborative spirit with which to conceive of, understand, and take on an endeavor. that stance, and its connected ways of knowing, has been challenged in interesting ways in recent months, leading me to more fully understand the role of community in how we come to know, and how we come to educate and be educated. community in the form of kindred spirits, hearty debaters, and longtime allies, all of whom share in the spirit of education and inquiry that is both purposeful and also unpredictable; where interactions, however brief, are not merely sound bytes, but meaningful spaces of intellectual work and making known; and where intentionality is implicitly understood, and not critiqued within an inch of its life. community is both conflict and possibility, inquiry and knowing; a kind of home we create to sustain our sense of self, of belonging, of purpose.

...

Multimodality and Learning Conference - updated info

2009-11-26T01:13:00.000-05:00

Multimodality and Learning Conference: Environments, Rhetoric, Recognition, Play, and Methods
July 6th and 7th 2010
Institute of Education, London
Conference information

Aim and scope
The overall aim of the conference is to explore multimodal perspectives on learning and to open up theoretical, methodological and pedagogical questions and debate.The conference will be of interest to educational practitioners, research students,researchers and academics from a variety of disciplines including semiotics, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and design.
Call for papers (symposiums)
Individual call for papers

Thematic strands

Environments of learning: institutional, work based, and beyond
School, home, work places, museums, digital environments
Keynote: Dr Jonathan Hindmarsh, Kings College, London, UK
Rhetoric and the politics of representation and communication
Narrative, persuasion, genre, argument, information design
Keynote: Professor Lilie Chouliaraki, London School of Economics, UK
Recognition, evaluation, assessment
Discourses of accountability, criteria for evaluation, power, processes of assessment
Keynote: Professor Gunther Kress, Institute of Education, University of
London, UK
Play: games, experience, and learning
Oral traditions, ludic modes, cultures of play, play and creativity
Keynote: Professor Suzanne de Castells, Simon Fraser University, Vancover,
Canda and Dr Jennifer Jensen, York University, Toronto, Canada
Methodologies
Multimodal data collection, transcription, analysis, multimodal dissemination
Keynote: Dr Jennifer Rowsell, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA and Dr
Kate Pahl, Sheffield University, UK

pedagogy that is culturally relevant

2009-11-13T00:37:00.001-05:00

how do we move towards knowing in our everyday pedagogies? what spaces to we find where we can play, free from institutional constraints? in whose eyes do we see possibilities and to whose do we relegate despair? how do maintain our sense of pedagogical pleasure(s) amidst perceived institutional constraints? what might it mean to commune as teachers who are students of our students? to spend time with youth outside the constraints of institutional labels, expectations, assumptions; and to descriptively observe their literacies in action? what are the ways in which we relate to one another? how do we decide to look up or turn away? when do we extend a hand or hasten our pace? to whom do we accord great variation in the performance of multiple selves? and from whom do we expect staid and limited representations of self? with whose purposes do embark on the journey of education? how, amidst the unsettling and unsettled, do we create a sense of home, of belonging together? and allow space for multiple, even disparate forms of belonging within a common site/moment/act of education?

new book about harlem, youth, and multimodal literacy

2009-11-03T13:55:00.001-05:00

Harlem on our minds: Place, race, and the literacies of urban youth
by Valerie Kinloch
Teachers College Press, 2009

Discourses of youth, gentrification, place, space, and literacies converge beautifully in this volume, collaboratively constructed by Valerie Kinloch and youth researchers, who explored changes going on in Harlem through a variety of modes, discursive interactions, and ongoing inquiry.

Definitely explore and purchase for your own reading, or to read with youth, undergraduate and graduate students interested the complicated intersections of identity, place, power, and narrative discussed in this book.

From the publisher:

In her new book, Valerie Kinloch investigates how the lives and literacies of youth in New York City’s historic Harlem are affected by public attempts to gentrify the community. Kinloch draws connections between race, place, and students’ literate identity through collaborative interviews between youth, teachers, longtime black residents, and their new white neighbors. Harlem on Our Minds is a participatory action narrative that makes emerging theories of social ecology real for the high-school English classroom. Vividly drawn lessons show how teachers can engage urban youth in school-based literacy, by linking canonical text, particularly of the Harlem renaissance, to current events. Centered on the literacy stories of two African American youth and their peers, this book for our times:

Showcases the multimodal literacy practices of urban youth through photos, writing samples, student-designed research projects, and more.

Weaves in multiple voices and perspectives through response pieces by project participants, local teachers, graduate students, and a community activist.

Features teaching strategies and reflection points in each chapter.

multimodality and learning conference 2010 - call for papers

2009-10-30T22:07:00.001-04:00

Multimodality and Learning Conference: Environments, Rhetoric, Recognition, Play, and Methods

July 6th and 7th 2010
Institute of Education, Bloomsbury, London, UK
Aim and scope
The overall aim of the conference is to explore multimodal perspectives on learning and to open up theoretical, methodological and pedagogical questions and debate. The conference will be of interest to educational practitioners, research students, researchers and academics from a variety of disciplines including semiotics, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and design.

Call for papers
We welcome symposia and individual papers on multimodality and learning that address the conference themes outlined in the attachment: Thematic strands. Abstracts can be submitted using the forms available at: www.multimodality.org.uk. Further information on submitting an abstract will be posted on the website shortly.
All abstracts will be peer-reviewed. Deadline 5pm on 26th February 2010.

Registration
Conference fee: £200 full fee; Students £100. Lunch and light refreshments included, acommodation not included. Registration deadline 31 May 2010

Key dates
26th February 2010 Deadline for submission of abstracts 31st May 2010 Deadline for registration 6th and 7th July 2010
Conference Organizing committee: Centre for Multimodal Research, Institute of Education, University of London – Richard Andrews, Jeff Bezemer, Andrew Burn, Sophia Diamantopoulou, Carey Jewitt, Gunther Kress, Diane Mavers, Caroline Pelletier

digital media and learning conference - call for papers, deadline: 10.30.2009

2009-10-25T22:24:00.000-04:00

DML: First Annual Digital Media and Learning Conference
Conference Theme: "Diversifying Participation"
Call for papers - Deadline: October 30, 2009

Conference Committee: Henry Jenkins, David Theo Goldberg, Heather Horst, Mimi Ito, Jabari Mahiri and Holly Willis

Keynote speakers: Sonia Livingstone and S. Craig Watkins

(from the call)

DIVERSIFYING PARTICIPATION
A growing body of research has identified how young people's digital media use is tied to basic social and cultural competencies needed for full participation in contemporary society. We continue to develop an understanding of the impact of these experiences on learning, civic engagement, professional development, and ethical comprehension of the digital world.

Yet research has also suggested that young people's forms of participation with new media are incredibly diverse, and that risks, opportunities, and competencies are spread unevenly across the social and cultural landscape. Young people have differential access to online experiences, practices, and tools and this has a consequence in their developing sense of their own identities and their place in the world. In some cases, different forms of participation and access correspond with familiar cultural and social divides. In other cases, however, new media have introduced novel and unexpected kinds of social differences, subcultures, and identities.

It is far too simple to talk about this in terms of binaries such as "information haves and have nots" or "digital divides". There are many different kinds of obstacles to full participation, many different degrees of access to information, technologies, and online communities, and many different ways of processing those experiences. Participatory cultures surrounding digital media are characterized by a diversity that does not track automatically to high and low access or more or less sophisticated use. Rather, multiple forms of expertise, connoisseurship, identity, and practice are proliferating in online worlds, with complicated relationships to pre-existing categories such as socioeconomic status, gender, nationality, race, or ethnicity.

We encourage sessions that describe, document, and critically analyze different forms of participation and how they relate to various forms of social and cultural capital. We are interested in accounts of the challenges and obstacles which block or inhibit engagement to different forms of online participation. We also encourage session proposals that engage with successful intervention strategies and pedagogical processes enabling once marginalized groups to more fully exploit the opportunities for learning with digital media. Conversely, we are interested in hearing more about how marginal and subcultural communities find diverse uses of new and emerging technologies, pushing them in new directions and navigating a complicated relationship with "mainstream" forms of participation. Specifically, we seek to understand the following:

What can research on more diverse communities contribute to our understanding of the learning ecologies surrounding new media?
What are the technologies, practices, economic, and cultural divides that lead to segregation, "gated" information communities, and differential access?
When and how do diversity and differentiation in participation promote social and cultural benefits and opportunities, and when do they create schisms that are less equitable or productive?
What strategies have proven successful at broadening opportunities for participation, overcoming the many different kinds of segregation or exclusion which impact the online world, and empowering more diverse presences throughout cyberspace?
Are there things occurring on the margins of the existing digital culture that might valuably be incorporated into more mainstream practices?

In addition to these questions directly addressing the conference theme, we welcome submissions that address innovative new directions in research and practice relating to digital media and participatory learning.

Read more on conference website.

.

new book on comparative education

2009-10-21T14:45:00.000-04:00

if you're interested in international perspectives on educational policy and practice, then this is the book for you:

Critical Approaches to Comparative Education: Vertical Case Studies from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas
Edited by: Frances Vavrus and Lesley Bartlett

Description:
This book unites a dynamic group of scholars who examine linkages among local, national, and international levels of educational policy and practice. Utilizing multi-sited, ethnographic approaches, the essays explore vertical interactions across diverse levels of policy and practice while prompting horizontal comparisons across twelve sites in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. The vertical case studies focus on a range of topics, including participatory development, the politics of culture and language, neoliberal educational reforms, and education in post-conflict settings. Editors Vavrus and Bartlett contribute to comparative theory and practice by demonstrating the advantages of ‘thinking vertically.’

Table of Contents:
PART I: APPROPRIATING EDUCATIONAL POLICIES AND PROGRAMS * Localizing No Child Left Behind: Supplemental Educational Services (SES) in New York City * The Décalage and Bricolage of Higher Education Policymaking in an Inter/national System: The Unintended Consequences of Participation in the 1992 Senegalese CNES Reform * AIDS and Edutainment: Inter/National Health Education in Tanzanian Secondary Schools * PART II: EXPLORING PARTICIPATION IN INTER/NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE * Questioning Participation: Exploring Discourses and Practices of Community Participation in Education Reform in Tanzania * Living Participation: Considering the Promise and Politics of Participatory Educational Reforms in Brazil * Transformative Teaching in Restrictive Times: Engaging Teacher Participation in Small School Reform during an Era of Standardization * PART III: EXAMINING THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DIVERSITY * “Migration Nation”: Intercultural Education and Anti-Racism as Symbolic Violence in Celtic Tiger Ireland * “Don’t You Want Your Child to Be Better than You?”: Enacting Ideologies and Contesting Intercultural Policy in Peru * Citizenship and Belonging in an Age of Insecurity: Pakistani Immigrant Youth in New York City * PART IV: MANAGING CONFLICT THROUGH INTER/NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION * The Relief-Development Transition: Sustainability and Educational Support in Post-Conflict Settings * Perpetuated Suffering: Social Injustice in Liberian Teachers’ Lives * Positioning Arabic in Schools: Language Policy, National Identity, and Development in Contemporary Lebanon

Exploring Childhood Studies - Call for papers

2009-10-20T11:31:00.000-04:00

Exploring Childhood Studies: A Graduate Student Conference

The graduate students of the Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, Camden invite submissions for papers and poster presentations for their first formal graduate student conference on April 9, 2010. Graduate students from all disciplines who are engaged in research relating to children and childhood are encouraged to submit proposals.

In an attempt to define this emerging and diverse field, the Exploring Childhood Studies conference proposes defining Childhood Studies by "doing" childhood studies; the conference will explore the field by offering explorations within it. We seek papers from all disciplines that keep the child, children, and childhood as their central focus, providing critical thought and insight while locating them in different contexts, fields, and ideologies.

Call for papers - Deadline: Oct. 31, 2009
More information

Newark Mayor Cory Booker pt.2 (10/16/09)

2009-10-17T16:00:00.002-04:00

was watching this clip (below) of cory booker talking with conan, and was especially moved by this quote:
"people think that life is about the big victory. but in my opinion, life is about the small acts of decency, kindness, and love that over a lifetime add up to transformative change."

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

decoding college application process

2009-10-16T11:49:00.001-04:00

interesting to think about what is said, and not said in this Today Show segment about deciphering the college application process. maybe i've been doing too much "hidden curriculum" reading, but i'm thinking about how this process is mediated so differently across the wide range of schools, not to mention kids who are home schooled. i was the first in my family to go to college in the US and i did a lot of the deciphering for myself, although i vaguely remember my guidance counselor being generally supportive. it helped, i think, that she was able to build on the voracious way in which i approached the process. (if only i could get that organizational zeal back now...!) but how to scaffold the process before the college application?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

and, what is missing from these decoding tips?

...

Charlotte Linde - Saturday Series Lecture

2009-10-09T17:14:00.000-04:00

What: Charlotte Linde will give a talk titled, Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory
Date: October 10th, 2009
Time: 11:00am
Location: 277 Grace Dodge Hall, Teachers College

Linde describes the ways in which institutions use narratives to remember their past, and to work their past in the present. The work is based on an ethnographic study of how narratives are used in a large insurance company to construct both collective and individual identity and memory. Her study looks both at the microstructure of narratives, showing how they are shaped by the institutions within which they are told, and at the large scale effect of narratives in creating individual and institutional identities.

Sponsored by the Center for Multiple Languages and Literacies

bar code art

2009-10-03T20:43:00.000-04:00

taking something meant to be invisible or what goes unnoticed and repurposing it by (re)imagining it as a modality for creating art. fantastic!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

rethinking classrooms by listening - new tc press book

2009-10-02T17:11:00.003-04:00

Check out this new book by Katherine Schultz!
(also author of Listening: A Framework for Teaching Across Differences and co-editor of School's Out!: Bridging out-of-school literacy with classroom practices)

Rethinking Classroom Participation: Listening to Silent Voices

about the book:

Many educators understand how to gauge learning by paying close attention to student talk. Few know how to interpret and attend to student silence as a form of participation. In her new book, Katherine Schultz examines the complex role student silence can play in teaching and learning. Urging teachers to listen to student silence in new ways, this book offers real-life examples and proven strategies for “rethinking classroom participation” to include all students—those eager to raise their hands to speak and those who may pause or answer in different ways.

Available October, 2009 from Teachers College Press

31st Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum - Deadline extended!

2009-10-02T15:48:00.001-04:00

There's still time to submit to the Ethnography Forum - deadline extended to October 4, 2009

Creativity, Crisis and Qualitative Research: Re-imagining Education in a Changing World

February 26 - 27, 2010

Center for Urban Ethnography
University of Pennsylvania
Graduate School of Education
3700 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA

a little about this year's theme:
We live in an era of rapid changes, and this year has had especially dramatic ones: a global economic crisis, the inauguration of the first African-American President of the United States, and the massive popularization of iPhone-type mobile web devices, to name a few. In U.S. education, for example, charter schools and more and more public schools are experimenting with new ways of doing teaching and learning, from online course formats to “small school” models to ways of making do with smaller budgets and staff. How have the social, economic, cultural, and technological changes of our time influenced our ways of teaching and learning, inside and outside of school, as well as our “ways of knowing” as researchers and practitioners? And how do we create new ways of teaching, learning, researching, and knowing, amidst change?

Plenary speakers:
Samy Alim, University of California at Los Angeles
Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College, and Susan Lytle, University of Pennsylvania
Doug Foley, University of Texas at Austin
Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia

Find out more here.

.

call... & response - attempts to make sense of beating, death, violence among youth

2009-09-30T11:14:00.000-04:00

call: the beating

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

response: the questions...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

...

"kids w/o education = the real weapons of mass destruction"
language makes me shudder
- wanting to problematize education; image of kids as weapons
but how are we (the collective we = educators, parents, elected officials, other youth, ...)
complicit in and also able to interrupt these moments.
whatleadstobeating/pummeling/anger
off-handed mention of "having nothing to do after school"
images of arrested youth - mugshots; (un)wittingly reinscribe existing tropes
- of desperation, of incarceration, of violence, of masculinity
how will the story go on?
(when) will this story end?

...

"are heels oppressing or empowering?" -> what passes for 'debate' over morning coffee...

2009-09-29T01:46:00.001-04:00

bio-anthropologist versus (talk show host + magazine editor + sexist stand-in co-host) = very difficult to watch morning segment.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

storying and the storied

2009-09-29T01:03:00.000-04:00

last week was strange for a number of reasons, not the least of which involved a meeting of faculty that was not a faculty meeting, or a department meeting, or any other configuration of faculty members who convene for largely administrative purposes. we had convened voluntarily, in response to an invitation to inquire together about the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. my feelings can be summed up in the tweet i twittered as i walked to my office after leaving my colleagues with whom i felt like i had engaged in something unique:

finding my way back to play12:05 PM Sep 24th from TwitterBerry

we were asked by our colleague and facilitator to reflect on a moment of transculturalism or transnationalism that we had experienced, either in our recent or distant or anywhere-in-between past. and here's where the strange quotient increases - the first story that popped into my mind was the great dosa tale of 2nd grade. i will write that story down at some point - i've certainly shared it verbally enough times! - but the story for right now is about why my mind went there, to that particular moment when i was seven. a moment that, by all means, could only be characterized as mortifying and emotionally scarring. but given the previous events of last week, this tale became reframed in my mind as evocative of something different: a profound moment of self-definition and inquiry into identity that resonates with all subsequent invitations to inquiry and identity work...

i began to think about my grandmother early last week. at the end of class tuesday night i gave a brief preview of the book we'll discuss during the next class, the magical life of long tack sam. the author of the text, and documentary filmmaker, ann marie fleming, composed the book and a film of the same name following from her inquiry into her family's history and learning of her great-grandfather's magical life as a world renown acrobat and magician. the texts are worth more than a few pages of reflection themselves, but i'll just say here that in both form and content, fleming's storying of her family history evokes images of transnational migration, strength, personal and collective triumph, war, family, and peace among many others. as i offered a brief preview in class, inviting us to attend to both form and content and the collective meanings fleming offers the reader, i continued to think about my own acts of personal storying, which flourished when i was in graduate school and which have largely diminished in the five years since...

the following day, i found my way back to a public library. i was so moved by the realization that i blogged about the at-once new and familiar rush of emotions that swept over me. i was again transported to a practice so dominant in my youth; to a space and structure that held deep personal meaning for how i made sense of myself in the then-present, and how i imagine my younger self now. i tweeted about the boy who shared a table with me, and allowed me to understand another dimension of public library life:

hair aflame w/a mop of orange. eyes focused on math puzzle hw. in silence, until rendezvous w/mom. she asks abt his day; he beams. #twitpoem6:54 PM Sep 23rd from TwitterBerry

so in our faculty seminar, when presented with the invitation to engage in sustained inquiry - with thought and emotion, with storied reflection - about the intersections across otherwise banal terms such as globalization, education, and citizenship, my mind immediately flooded with images, feelings, details; i understood what fleming meant when she concluded her film by saying "memory is magic" and noting in writing that "history is relatives."

i have a working title for my inquiry: a is for assimilation. there is a simplicity in that phrase that captures the nuances of learning to speak english from my floppy haired neighbor; constantly negotiating a very full identity dance card; pursuing language and literacy-based study in my studies and professional life; confronting the vestiges of my own identity work, begun nearly thirty years ago with trepidation and which is still very much under construction.

it isn't often when multiple strands of inquiry align, but when they do like they seem to have recently, the effect is awe-some. i concluded my week by attending a screening of fleming's film, originally released in 2003 but being rescreened to celebrate a new exhibit at the moca. during the q&a, fleming mentioned that she began research for her film 10 years after her grandmother, the daughter of long tack sam, had died. this year marks the tenth anniversary of my paternal grandmother's death; the person for whom i was named and with whom i shared a bedroom for the first several years of my life. i've begun tweeting questions that i would have asked her if i had thought to do so at the time (#q4gma). i think about the way she is storied in family lore, and how storied her siblings, parents, and ancestors. hers was an unexpected transnational narrative that she negotiated for the last twenty years of her life. so when i find myself undoubtedly mired in writing, revision, and analysis already on the schedule for the next several months, i will rejoice in the occasional opportunities to let my mind explore, making the familiar strange again, and play within the loosely facilitated structure of a seminar... just like grad school. (i even became a bit giddy when reading and questions to guide our thinking were assigned...)

this time, i'll take my namesake along for the ride.

...

trolling the web... a text rendering of cme09 haps.

2009-09-29T00:06:00.002-04:00

i've been reading posts and tweets from members of this fall's culture, media, and ed class and thought i'd do a virtual text rendering - a collection of phrases that stood out to me, in no particular order:

But what about the stereotyping?
the therapy of production is part of the intangible value that comes out of that work/process of creation
I also want to spend a moment defending teachers

this wondering just led me to go to twitter ... and be met with my school's filter/firewall.

I think I’m in between phase I “Honeymoon” and phase 2 “What am I doing?”

Globalization is irreversible and nobody is in charge of it.

Abt ten min into watching the video, The Day My God Died, a mascara commercial popped up

Holy Twitter Batman! Kanye went there!?!

connected/disconnected, isolated/related, and openheartedness/a bunch of lies

structured through styles and voice long forgotten

Suddenly, I began to miss Nankai...

Who says texting has to be the enemy of the 21st century teacher?

how young people who have no role models in their lives use figures in the media as role models

loooved fam guy. cleveland show... not so much

Crowd Sourcing: Internet as democratizer or impersonator.

Now I know why IronChef can run right after knowing the secret ingredient

i need a hug.

good stuff happening in cme this semester. makes me think more about the collective work we're trying to do, especially with this year's focus on social issue media. in other words, what stories are we trying to tell? who are we storying with? who are we storying for? and about?

...

new ela & math standards released

2009-09-26T08:23:00.000-04:00

i've progressed in my thinking about standards. i understand them differently from when i was early in my path of teaching and learning, when i viewed them as oppressive and as symbolic vehicular boots that stifled educators creative inclinations. (i now realize that the obsession to test children - and by proxy their teachers - to within an inch of their life is the real villain, perpetrated by willing accomplices in grey and navy suits and answering to the various titles to which they have been elected or appointed...)

so when the new standards for english language arts (ela) and mathematics were announced this week, i brought a renewed eye to reading them, thanks to my time spent observing and spending time in classrooms and ongoing conversations with current teachers whose efforts to provide myriad educational opportunities for the eager bodies that file into their classrooms every day are not necessarily diminished, and are sometimes even bolstered, by a fuller understanding of the national standards. so as i read these standards anew, i began to imagine what "meeting" them might mean from a pedagogical standpoint. for me, the ela standards - divided into 'reading,' 'writing,' and 'speaking & listening' (regardless of ample, ample, oodles of research that understands them to work in concert) - evoked images of what it would look like for a kid to have achieved each bullet-pointed goal. for example, in reading:

Support or challenge assertions about the text by citing evidence in the text explicitly and accurately.

and the questions began: what types of texts? citing in what format? who determines what is explicit and accurate? (that last question pertains to some of obtuse 'texts' i've encountered lately, which are neither explicit nor accurate in their 'reading' of others' texts...)
but these questions are the natural byproduct of a mind set to 'hyper' on the inquiry cycle, which, i agree, can become paralyzing when someone 'just wants to go and teach.' but without these questions, and the next few that i'll raise below, how do we ease ourselves out of the jaws of complacency. questions need not be paralyzing. in fact, i have found them liberating. questioning what we mean by text can suggest a new range of compositions - film shorts, photo essays, anime, family photo albums - to consider inside the classroom. these new texts, sometimes foreign to the routines of classroom and school life, might open up the boundaries that too often (aim to, but can never really) separate children's in-school and out-of-school lives. questions about text, indeed a critical stance on texts, can suggest new teaching and learning relationships as the children who suggest new texts can be engaged as the experts on their texts. i could learn some things about manga, but to hear a true expert eagerly describe narrative nuances that would have certainly escaped me for the first 50 or 60 readings is where educative possibility really lies.
hence, the new questions - question, really. just one, as i worked my way down the standards for reading, writing, and speaking & listening. and then made my way through the mathematical standards. my hypercurious mind wants to know where the 'we'/'with' standards are. that is, while all of the existing 'todos' implicate what a student must be able to do, and consequently what the teacher must make sure the student can do, there aren't any standards that talk about what kind of community teachers and students might co-create in which to engage in education together. so i want to know: "Where are the standards of 'with'?"

yes, this is a false question in way, b/c i would truly cringe if there were classroom community standards. (shudder, literally, to think about this...) but when the good people at the "National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in partnership with Achieve, ACT and the College Board" came together establish standards that are "research and evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, aligned with college and work expectations and include rigorous content and skills," i just want to know what kinds of conversations went on about what spaces would be generative of the kinds of teaching and learning that might lead to national proficiency across the "core standards" laid out this week? and if there was any talk, even whispers, about resources, class size, unholy testing schedules, and time to build community, might i ask - nay, plead - for the revered insiders to leak these conversations to the press? or someone who might listen, especially when the left hand is ready to act based on the findings of the right hand...

feedback on the standards is welcome until october 21st. after reading the standards, click on the link that says "Submit Feedback >>" along the left-hand menu.

...

public libraries

2009-09-24T02:28:00.001-04:00

going to our public library was a ritual for me when i was a kid growing up in a suburban new jersey town. almost weekly, either parent or the parent of one of my friends would drive a carload of us kids to the (what seemed to me then to be) sprawling free public library campus, which also housed a version of "safety town" - a mock town where busloads of kids could spend an afternoon learning about traffic safety from "officer friendly." on the green lawn out front sat two bronzed figures back to back, one engrossed in reading and the other saying something over his back to his companion. sometimes i would sit next to them with a book of my own while i waited for my ride or others to finish up inside.

i never left the building with any less than the maximum number of books you could take out at once. if it wasn't an armload, then i clearly had wasted a visit. slowly, i would venture from the children's section into the main section of the library, and this would bring me indescribable joy. once i got the hang of the dewey decimal system, i would look up topics in the card catalog just to prove i could find it. astronomy, botany, civil war, women's rights, mythology... the card catalog was like a choose-your-own-adventure story that never led to the same place twice. up stairs and down the elevator, books in hand. no matter where the journey led, however, i always landed back in the far corner of the children's section. there, the tables were round and wide and could accommodate books of all shapes and sizes. i liked to spread them out - a practice in which i still i engage - like a painter assembling her paints before delving into them to construct that afternoon's perfect story portrait. i think about the multilayered narrative that capucine weaves in this video and feel a kinship to what might have been going on in her mind to bring those threads together.

i felt some of the same energy and magic when i wandered into a different public library earlier this afternoon. i hadn't been inside one in a very long time. i was instantly aware of how unfamiliar this environment was to me, even as the sensibility of the concrete structure was inviting. i had become so used to working in academic libraries, coffee shops, and my office, that i found myself unaccustomed to the ongoing interactions between librarian and the diverse population of patrons; the dialogues about whether the printers were working and where a mom could find some good graphic novels for her 11-year-old. the librarian had responses for these and many other queries.

i took a seat at a rectangular table on the second floor, presumably near the young adult literature section. across me was a bookshelf full of graphic novels. just typing that sentence makes me realize how things and times have changed since i was last actively present in a library - that is, in a library to "use" the library. a bookshelf full of graphic novels didn't exist even 6 or 7 years ago when i spent nearly every week in or near a library while collecting data for my dissertation with a group of adolescent boys. librarians, often women, act as sage guides, patient listeners, and occasionally ornery public servants whose buttons have been pushed one too many times.

for a while, i shared my table with a red-headed boy who looked to be no more than 9. he worked studiously on what appeared to be a math assignment - i'm assuming math based on the pyramid made up of triangles on the worksheet he was writing on. a group of slightly older girls walked up the stairs together and, leaning on each other like teenage girls tend to do (literally and metaphorically), made their way to the back where the young adult romance and mystery books were. their dialogue was about which book to check out next, amidst giggles - i probably wouldn't be entirely off base if i guessed they were going toward the twilight display...

there was one other reason i kept bringing my haul back to the children's section of my hometown public library: the giant lion that was propped up against the corner. i probably couldn't get away with it now, but even as a teenager, i would sit and lean against that lion and read for hours on end. i was comfortable, in a familiar surrounding, where i had relatively autonomy and authority to manage my own textual explorations.

i began to remember some of those lessons this afternoon as i watched library patrons, old and mostly young, make their way through this structure. card catalogs have been replaced with computer kiosks and the library cards and books are read by barcode, but the stuffed animals and large tables remain... signaling a welcome to a new generation of inquiring minds and adventure-seeking storytellers.

---

and on a happy note, relief for the free library of philadelphia ... for now...

raise me up - foster care campaign in austin, tx, featuring storycorps interviews

2009-09-23T10:39:00.000-04:00

Listen to stories from the Raise Me Up campaign here.

Learn more about StoryCorps.

representations of women - film series 1

2009-09-17T05:45:00.003-04:00

challenging homophobia in schools - new text from tc press

2009-09-11T12:57:00.001-04:00

Coming in november, 2009: Acting Out! Combating Homophobia Through Teacher Activism
by: Mollie V. Blackburn, Caroline T. Clark, Lauren M. Kenney, and Jill M. Smith
Foreword by JoBeth Allen

Part of the Practitioner Inquiry Series

Book Description: In this volume, teachers from urban, suburban, and rural districts join together in a teacher inquiry group to challenge homophobia and heterosexism in schools and classrooms. To create safe learning environments for all students they address key topics, including seizing teachable moments, organizing faculty, deciding whether to come out in the classroom, using LGBTQ-inclusive texts, running a Gay-Straight Alliance, changing district policy to protect LGBTQ teachers and students, dealing with resistant students, and preparing preservice teachers to do antihomophobia work.

Book Features:

Examples of antihomophobia teaching across elementary, secondary, and university contexts, and discussions of the consequences of this work.
Concrete discussions of how to start a teacher inquiry group, and the challenges and rewards of engaging in teacher activism.
A comprehensive annotated bibliography of texts that address homophobia and heterosexism.

reading "Knock Knock, Who's There?" - a selection of the 9th annual media that matters film festival

2009-09-09T14:34:00.002-04:00

showed this film in class last night - a psa about domestic violence: Knock Knock, Who's There

was surprised by some of the responses to the question: what stands out?
- role of the boys in the clip
- the meaning(s) behind a single gendered, and boys in particular, group as the ones engaging in the social action
- how to read the ball playing, specifically the cricket game in progress at beginning of clip
- the agency of youth
- the unspoken interactions between the man and the boys

pres. obama's speech to kids - video

2009-09-09T09:48:00.000-04:00

Words and thoughts...

2009-09-07T15:55:00.001-04:00

Just because I can, doesn't mean I have to

Just because I won't, doesn't mean I can't

Just because I can't, doesn't mean I don't want to

Just because I want to, doesn't mean I will

pres. obama's speech to kids - full text

2009-09-07T12:54:00.004-04:00

the white house released president obama's prepared remarks that he will deliver to schoolchildren on tuesday.

at first blush, this is very much on the order of obama's campaign speeches or more recent statements about education, in which he urges a collective sense of individual responsibility, and strives to ignite fires of innovation in his listeners. but there are some important distinctions that stand out, like the reference to specific pop culture artifacts and texts, perhaps to resonate with his intended audience:
e.g., "I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox."
and
"Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class."

and he weaves his own narrative through this address, not to deliver an unexamined "bootstraps" message, but rather to illuminate the ways in which his individual determination and educational success was mediated and informed by the communities through which he traversed. the personal narrative is a tale of many cities...

i hope teachers and families not only share this speech with school-age children in their charge, but they engage with it critically. perhaps they'll wordle it, like @librarybeth has done here. or maybe they'll hold a debate to argue against or for some of the subtler points embedded throughout. i hope we engage with that which we find unfamiliar, if for no other reason than to be able to identify what it is that bothers us. but perhaps in that journey, we find things that we can agree on and we move forward. together.

...

making sense of public reaction to (the not yet aired) president obama's speech to kids about education

2009-09-06T17:39:00.003-04:00

neal mccluskey, of the cato institute, explains what some parents find objectionable about the speech president obama is scheduled to deliver this coming week. the focus of the proposed address: the importance of education and staying in school. mccluskey notes that some parents are worried that this speech will espouse 'socialist' ideas, and more specifically that the curriculum guides provided by the dept. of education - intended to scaffold discussion following the president's speech - may encourage "national service and things like that..." when asked whether, if the speech turns out to be on the order of a 'pep talk,' mccluskey may soften his view toward the speech, mccluskey responds by posing the question: 'do parents have legitmate concerns that their kids will be exposed to?'

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

now, i've tried - against my initial reaction of disbelief - to understand the concern and grassroots-like antagonism that has spread and is being reported across news outlets in response to this scheduled speech. but i keep returning to a gnawing feeling that what may really be at the heart of this response - beyond the knee-jerk and politically motivated reactions - has to do with the meaning and purpose of education. this is not new nor earth-shattering, but brings to the surface the disdain towards an approach to schooling (and perhaps education, more broadly) that transcends the scripted teaching and learning opportunities that many adults are familiar with from their schooling experiences. the invitation that will purportedly be extended to children to consider their own role in their education - as connected to the wider global realities of employment demands of jobs that don't yet exist and innovations yet to be imagined - does not strike me as quite the tinderbox some folks are making it out to be.

still, mccluskey's response - primarily aimed at the curriculum guides - seems less obtuse in light of the conservative pundits and elected officials featured in the following clip:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

and then there's the clip that includes this curious quote:
"obama shouldn't force anybody to make decisions...for themselves. that's the right of the individual."

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

some argue that this is about parents' rights to protect their children and to know about what children will be exposed to in school. but is that what this 'controversy' is really about?

...

The Day My God Died

2009-08-29T10:13:00.002-04:00

a documentary that chronicles the experiences of young girls from nepal who are trafficked and sold into the child sex trade in bombay

reading rainbow no more

2009-08-28T15:31:00.005-04:00

i would sing the title tune long after i stopped watching reading rainbow. i appreciated host, levar burton's ease and enthusiasm for reading, for stories, and imagination. i can't make a direct causal link, but i don't think it's a coincidence that what continues to inspire me to inquire is the study of literacies. so as i read the headline on npr - 'Reading Rainbow' Reaches Its Final Chapter - i was prepared to read about a natural end, like "mr. rogers' neighborhood," which officially buttoned up its cardigan in 2001.

but as i read and learned of the funding trends that contributed to the show's demise. a few excerpts:

The show's run is ending, Grant explains, because no one — not the station, not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — will put up the several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the show's broadcast rights.

and perhaps even more frustrating was this bit of analysis:

"Grant says the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling.

Grant says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read — but that's not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.

"Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read," Grant says. "You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read."

i'm reminded of recent conversations i've been having with older youth in their late teens and early 20s. among the topics we've been discussing is the paucity of "why" discourse. collectively, they reflected on the relatively few instances when they were encouraged to really question, explore, and understand why they engaged in any particular practice or action. this made me wonder, where are there spaces for the kind of critical questioning that cultivates sustained inquiry? do we care if kids now become thinking adults later? can we afford to distill education down to discrete and scripted moments of skill-based interactions?

it saddens me that, given growing evidence of the many different ways kids not only learn to read but also cultivate myriad literacy practices, that the thrust of public funding and policy is being driven by myopic understandings of literacy.

the article closes with the following musings:

Reading Rainbow's impending absence leaves many open questions about today's literacy challenges, and what television's role should be in addressing them.

"But" — as Burton would have told his young readers — "you don't have to take my word for it."

more thoughts on this shortsighted decision:
Did Education Dept.'s Shift Help Kill PBS's 'Reading Rainbow'?
Reading Rainbow Reads Its Final Chapter on PBS
In Memoriam: “Reading Rainbow”

....

31st annual ethnography in education research forum

2009-08-07T12:47:00.003-04:00

***CALL for PAPERS***
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: October 2, 2009
NOTIFICATION: early November, 2009
REQUIRED PREREGISTRATION FOR PRESENTERS: December 1, 2009

We live in an era of rapid changes, and this year has had especially dramatic ones: a global economic crisis, the inauguration of the first African-American President of the United States, and the massive popularization of iPhone-type mobile web devices, to name a few. In U.S. education, for example, charter schools and more and more public schools are experimenting with new ways of doing teaching and learning, from online course formats to “small school” models to ways of making do with smaller budgets and staff. How have the social, economic, cultural, and technological changes of our time influenced our ways of teaching and learning, inside and outside of school, as well as our “ways of knowing” as researchers and practitioners? And how do we create new ways of teaching, learning, researching, and knowing, amidst change?

There has been much talk of change in our societies, from suggestions of a post-racial era, to predictions of minority-majority demographic shifts and class mobility, to initiatives for financial reorganization and school accountability. In such times of crisis, or opportunity, ethnographers and qualitative researchers are uniquely positioned to be able to find, understand, and share creative new ways of learning and knowing. At this 31st annual Ethnography in Education research forum, we hope to hear about and share creative re-imaginings and new ways of doing education, with an eye towards the future of education reform, research, and practice.

Plenary speakers:
Samy Alim, University of California at Los Angeles

Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College, and Susan Lytle, University of Pennsylvania

Doug Foley, University of Texas at Austin

All proposals may be submitted online beginning August 14:
http://www.gse.upenn.edu/cue/forum.php

nctear 2010 - cfp and info

2009-07-23T17:15:00.002-04:00

NCTEAR 2010

Assembly for Research Midwinter Conference

METHODOLOGY MATTERS: MOVING LITERACY RESEARCH FORWARD

February 19th-21st, 2010; University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Co-sponsored by Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Co-Chairs: Amanda Godley, sj Miller, and Amanda Thein

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
The 2010 conference theme focuses on new research methodologies that have
emerged in response to new questions in literacy research, such as the
relationship between literacy and identity, longitudinal literacy
development, and out-of-school literacies. The conference theme also aims to
address current practical, theoretical, and methodological challenges in
literacy research, such as collecting rich data within classrooms and
managing tensions between "scientifically-based" research and in-depth
qualitative research. Our keynote speakers will speak to the affordances and
challenges of various literacy research methodologies, including memoir,
oral history, classroom discourse analysis, policy research and
teacher/faculty collaborations.

We welcome proposals that describe literacy researchers' methodological
insights and challenges through descriptions of specific studies,
explorations of emerging theories of research, and considerations of
practical and ethical research dilemmas.

Proposals (no more than 2 single-spaced pages) should address the following:
The research question(s), methodology, findings/issues/questions for
discussion, and how the research will contribute to the conference
conversation. If your paper is a conceptual/theoretical one, please describe
your theoretical framework and argument and tell how it will contribute to
the conference conversation. We strongly encourage the participation of
classroom teachers and graduate students, so if you are currently a
classroom teacher or graduate student, please indicate so in your proposal.
Please send all proposals to NCTEAR@pitt.edu. The deadline for submission of
proposals is September 30, 2009.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, check out the conference website at:
http://nctear2010pittsburgh.wetpaint.com/

QUESTIONS? Email NCTEAR@pitt.edu

knowing by doing?

2009-07-13T11:31:00.003-04:00

as fears about the dark side of social networking abound, one question continues to persist for me: to what extent does someone (a researcher of adolescents' literacies, for example) benefit from participating in the digital communicative landscape when aiming to make sense of that landscape within the lives of aforementioned adolescents?

i recall having a similar conversation about gaming and literacy research and wondering whether one had to play video games in order to research gaming in the lives of youth. thinking back to that conversation now, i am reminded of a video i saw recently on edutopia in which mimi ito is being interviewed about her digital youth study. in it, ito describes three ways that she observed youth engaging in informal learning outside of school with technologies:
hanging out
messing around
geeking out

each of these "ways in" - what ito and her colleagues refer to as "genres of participation" - is associated with various sets of practices and postures and social communities. as i thought about these distinctions (see video and full report for on these genres), i began to wonder about how researchers fit into (or don't) these participation genres. and to what extent and in what ways do we locate ourselves within these already hybrid spaces and moments of digital participation...

...on courtship in the 19th century

2009-06-26T18:24:00.004-04:00

just discovered a fun-tastic blog written by a phd student who is studying the transformation of love and marriage through an analysis of personal ads:

advertising for love

fun :)

.

youth voices on michael jackson

2009-06-26T14:28:00.006-04:00

it's hard not to be moved and overwhelmed by the outpouring of reflection, sadness, memories, and testimonials in response to the sudden death of michael jackson. what i've been particularly struck by, however, have been the responses of adolescents, many of whom were born within the last two decades and whose current music artists claim to be influenced by the musical stylings pioneered by a true individual.

here's a taste of what i've heard and read, from a youth perspective:

youthradio.org - "Remembering the King of Pop: Audio Montage"
eric (18) texts: "James Brown- December 25th. Aaliyah- August 25th. Left Eye- April 25th. Micheal Jackson- June 25th. How Random is dat...Pass It On" ... "that line-up is just saddening & ridiculous"
LA youth - "Teens remember Michael Jackson"
earth times - "Lebanon's teens mourn Michael Jackson"

new (literacies-related) reads on my summer 'must read' list

2009-06-06T02:27:00.006-04:00

The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (Routledge) - Edited by Carey Jewitt - out July 2009

Assessing New Literacies: Perspectives from the Classroom (Peter Lang) - Edited by Anne Burke & Roberta Hammett (and part of the New Literacies & Digital Epistemologies series edited by Colin Lankshear & Michele Knobel)

The Word and the World: The Cultural Politics of Literacy in Brazil (Hampton Press) - Lesley Bartlett

Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research (Guilford Press) - Edited by Leila Christenbury, Randy Bomer, & Peter Smagorinsky

any other suggestions??

insight project presents: bird's eye view - a youth theater performance

2009-05-05T19:27:00.003-04:00

The youth theater company,
the Insight Project, presents:

Bird’s Eye View

A staged reading followed by a discussion
of Justice and the Arts

Details:
Friday, May 8th @ 7:00 pm

@ Cowin Center - Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th St., New York, NY 10027

Synopsis:
David’s got problems - a rap sheet, a schizophrenic uncle, and a pregnant girlfriend, just to name a few - and his friends’ solutions may be more trouble than help. How does a young man find a way to walk a straight path and still keep his head up in the streets?

Directions to the Cowin Center: Take the 1 train to 116th St., walk four blocks north on Broadway and turn right onto 120th St. Use the main entrance for Teachers College located on the north side of 120th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam. Follow signs for the Cowin Center.

The Insight Project is part of CASES CEP. For more information, go to www.cases.org

For more information about this performance, contact Lalitha Vasudevan:
email: lmv2102 AT columbia.edu | phone: 212-678-6660

interesting documentary, unsettling content

2009-04-19T18:35:00.004-04:00

clip 1:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

clip 2:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

for more on this msnbc documentary, locked and loaded: kids and guns in america, see links on this page: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036750/

writing and literacies sig - website and newsletter

2009-04-06T22:22:00.003-04:00

check out the writing and literacies sig website - join us this year for an excellent program in san diego!
also check out our latest newsletter, chock full of members' pub info, links, and info about this year's business meeting featuring eva lam and paul kei matsuda.

and now, a wordling of this year's program (based on the titles) - enjoy :)

links!!! media, storytelling, documentary...

2009-04-06T20:46:00.003-04:00

a long overdue compilation of fabulous links i learned about while attending the making your media matter conference hosted by center for social media at american university.

and now, in no particular order:
http://media-democracy.net/
http://cmml.usc.edu/
http://www.meaningfulmedia.org/ - funders database
http://www.unheardvoicesproject.org/- job loss due to outsourcing
http://www.newmediawomen.org/ - 10k prize
http://www.newday.com/ - coop of social issue media makers; selling media to educ'l market
http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/
http://festival.sundance.org/2009/film_events/films/dirt_the_movie
http://cinematech.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/mediathatmatters
http://www.ijcentral.org/ - social network for int'l justice, focusing on icc
http://mobileactive.org/ - resource for activists using mobile techs
http://www.prx.org/ - public radio exchange
http://betsylevypaluck.com/Paluck_Green_AnnRev_2009.pdf - a report about 'prejudice reduction'
http://www.snagfilms.com/ - virtual movie theater
http://www.artsengine.net/index.php/ - indy media distributor
http://cinematech.blogspot.com/ - somebody's interesting 'bout cinema' blog
http://www.madeinla.com/ - about film 'made in l.a.' - interesting look at how a movement and a film are wrapped in each other
http://www.bavc.org/ - bay area video coalition
http://www.wardancethemovie.com/ - beautiful film - was discussed under the panel heading of 'what happens when you make a beautiful film about a dark subject'?
http://www.chimpanzeeproductions.com/ - the filmmaker of the CP film 'through a lens darkly' also featured in 'beautiful film' panel
http://silverdocs.com/ - afi/discover channel doc festival

at a glance: writing and literacies sig sessions at aera, 2009

2009-02-23T05:47:00.000-05:00

1. Genres and Structures in Writing
Session type: Paper Discussion (formerly known as Roundtables)
Time: Tue, Apr 14 - 10:35am - 11:15am Place: San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina, Marriott Hall Salon 4

2. Hybridity, Multimodality, and New Forms of Composing
Session type: Symposium
Time: Wed, Apr 15 - 8:15am - 10:15am Place: San Diego Convention Center, Room 28D

3. Literacies Between Borders and Across Contexts
Session type: Paper Session
Time: Thu, Apr 16 - 8:15am - 10:15am Place: San Diego Convention Center, Room 28B

4. LitScapes: Mapping the Terrain of Youth Identities, Spaces, and Texts
Session type: Symposium
Time: Thu, Apr 16 - 10:35am - 12:05pm Place: San Diego Convention Center, Room 28B

5. National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy Presents Authors of Its Series “On…” Series
Session type: Interactive Symposium
Time: Thu, Apr 16 - 2:15pm - 3:45pm Place: San Diego Convention Center, Room 28B

6. Sociocultural and Historical Perspectives on Literacy
Session type: Paper Session
Time: Thu, Apr 16 - 2:15pm - 3:45pm Place: San Diego Convention Center, Room 25B

7. Theorizing and Implementing New Directions in Writing and Literacy Research
Session type: Interactive Symposium
Time: Wed, Apr 15 - 2:15pm - 3:45pm Place: San Diego Convention Center, Room 28D

8. Twenty-Five Years of New Literacy Studies: Looking Back and Looking Ahead
Session type: Symposium
Time: Wed, Apr 15 - 10:35am - 12:05pm Place: San Diego Convention Center, Room 28D

9. Writing and Literacies SIG Business Meeting
Session type: Business Meeting
Time: Thu, Apr 16 - 6:15pm - 8:15pm Place: San Diego Convention Center, Room 28B

10. Writing Identities
Session type: Paper Discussion (formerly known as Roundtables)
Time: Tue, Apr 14 - 11:25am - 12:05pm Place: San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina, Marriott Hall Salon 4

in gratitude

2009-01-19T19:07:00.004-05:00

http://www.hulu.com/the-legacy-of-mlk

in anticipation...

2009-01-19T19:07:00.003-05:00

Youth Theater Performance - this week in NYC!

2008-12-16T14:40:00.003-05:00

Insight Project Presents a Staged Reading of Brazil, December 16-18

Insight Project is a comprehensive theatre-making class offered by the Court Employment Project (CEP), an alternative-to-incarceration program addressing the needs of court-involved youth at CASES. CASES Insight Project presents Brazil - a powerful meditation on hope and the distances between action and intention in the lives of seven young New Yorkers. Brazil will be presented as a staged reading from December 16-18th at 8pm, in the Lion Theatre at Theatre Row Studios, 410 W 42nd St, located between 9th and 10th Avenues.

For many of the student actors, Insight Project is their first exposure to theater, and their first experience having a public platform where they can communicate their personal narratives. The past performance cycle included five shows seen by a total audience of over 250 people.

Insight Project uses performance to engage communities in a conversation about the underlying issues of offending behavior. Insight Project student actors work collaboratively with writer-in-residence Todd Pate to create a script reflective of their resilient life experiences. Each cycle produces an original peformance exploring themes that come out of directed improvisation sessions with the company, writer-in-residence and CASES staff. Alumni receive support services as they further their performance interests, as well as personal and vocational goals. Insight Project is directed by CEP teacher Daniel Stageman.

Brazil runs three nights at the Lion Theatre at Theatre Row Studios, 410 West 42nd Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), on December 16th, 17th, and 18th at 8pm. As the event will be presented as a staged reading, tickets are now free, though an RSVP is appreciated via phone at 212.279.4200, or online at www.ticketcentral.com listed as Insight Project presents: Brazil. Subways are A,C,E to Port Authority; N,R,Q,W,1,2,3,7 to Times Square.

***
CASES--THE CENTER FOR ALTERNATIVE SENTENCING AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICES, INC.
The mission of CASES is to increase the use and understanding of community sanctions that are fair, affordable, and consistent with public safety. www.cases.org .
***

CFP: Media in Transition 6: stone and papyrus, storage and transmission

2008-11-12T01:20:00.003-05:00

it's baaaack! another call for papers for the 6th media in transition conference. i thoroughly enjoyed the 2005 meeting, which focused on the "work of stories," and this one looks like it will generate yet another excellent collection of papers and presentations

Media in Transition 6: stone and papyrus, storage and transmission

International Conference
April 24-26, 2009
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

CALL FOR PAPERS

In his seminal essay “The Bias of Communication” Harold Innis distinguishes between time-based and space-based media. Time-based media such as stone or clay, Innis agues, can be seen as durable, while space-based media such as paper or papyrus can be understood as portable, more fragile than stone but more powerful because capable of transmission, diffusion, connections across space. Speculating on this distinction, Innis develops an account of civilization grounded in the ways in which media forms shape trade, religion, government, economic and social structures, and the arts.

Our current era of prolonged and profound transition is surely as media-driven as the historical cultures Innis describes. His division between the durable and the portable is perhaps problematic in the age of the computer, but similar tensions define our contemporary situation. Digital communications have increased exponentially the speed with which information circulates. Moore's Law continues to hold, and with it a doubling of memory capacity every two years; we are poised to reach transmission speeds of 100 terabits per second, or something akin to transmitting the entire printed contents of the Library of Congress in under five seconds.

Such developments are simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. They profoundly challenge efforts to maintain access to the vast printed and audio-visual inheritance of analog culture as well as efforts to understand and preserve the immense, enlarging universe of text, image and sound available in cyberspace.

What are the implications of these trends for historians who seek to understand the place of media in our own culture?

What challenges confront librarians and archivists who must supervise the migration of print culture to digital formats and who must also find ways to preserve and catalogue the vast enlarging universe of words and images generated by new technologies?

How are shifts in distribution and circulation affecting the stories we tell, the art we produce, the social structures and policies we construct?

What are the implications of this tension between storage and transmission for education, for individual and national identities, for notions of what is public and what is private?

We invite papers from scholars, journalists, media creators, teachers, writers and visual artists on these broad themes.

Potential topics might include:

The digital archive
The future of libraries and museums
The past and future of the book
Mobile media
Historical systems of communication
Media in the developing world
Social networks
Mapping media flows
Approaches to media history
Education and the changing media environment
New forms of storytelling and expression
Location-based entertainment
Hyperlocal media and civic engagement
New modes of circulation and distribution
The transformation of television -- from broadcast to download
Cosmopolitanism backlashes against media change
Virtual worlds and digital tourism
The continuity principle: what endures or resists digital transformation?
The fate of reading

Submissions
Abstracts of no more than 500 words or full papers should be sent to Brad Seawell at seawell@mit.edu no later than Friday, Jan. 9, 2009. We will evaluate abstracts and full papers on a rolling basis and early submission is highly encouraged. All submissions should be sent as attachments in a Word format. Submitted material will be subject to editing by conference organizers. Email is preferred, but submissions can be mailed to:

Brad Seawell
MIT 14N-430
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139

scenes from an election

2008-11-08T17:20:00.002-05:00

tuesday afternoon, 11/4, along walnut street, from university city to west philly, a group of girls - ranging in age from 8, 9 years old up through high school ago, holding an obama/biden banner, and matching signs and chanting impromptu cheers, waving at passers-by and getting high-fived by strangers

...

three ten-year-olds playing a hybrid dodgeball/soccer game on the grounds of a high school respond to a joking question about whether they voted with a serious answer: of course! then, in unison, "obama!!!!" they return to playing their game, grins on their faces.

...

ms. edwards, a veteran resident of the neighborhood, known and loved (and possibly feared) by all, stands with a kind and menacing air and addresses each voter as he or she passes through the doors of the high school. she is very concerned with the condition of everyone's teeth and is overjoyed when she sees a beautiful set of pearly whites on one young man who has come to vote. she dotes on him, as only a (grand)motherly figure can do, on his way and on his way out. he grins wider, giving her more reason to continue her praise. "you made my day just now," says the young man, who was born in new york and whose parents emigrated from africa. he walks away with bounce in his step.

...

school financing and vouchers

2008-10-21T19:26:00.002-04:00

Re: school financing
ldh encourages increased and strategic investments in order to get achievment gains; requires a rethinking of how $$ is spent in k-12 schooling. Re: vouchers, suggests looking at this report by IES, which states that vouchers have made no significant difference in student achievement: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20084023.pdf

some dispute between lgk and ldh about the impact of vouchers on student achievement. when invited by sf to list research that people should read, ldh offers the above IES report as one piece of research. lgk chuckled and said that tc is a school of education and should be able to find it.

editorializing aside, there was disagreement about how to invest in schooling. e.g., investing in the career ladder and support throughout a career vs. merit pay. this led to an interesting back and forth between the impact of alternative teacher certification programs. candidates have differences in how they aim to support and cultivate the teaching profession. Mccain apparently wants to put money – redirected funds from Title 2, prof dev funds – in programs like TFA, which is focused on achievement, and whose graudates go on to become leaders and founders of charter schools, like Michelle Rae (again). ldh disputed claims that TFA teachers stay, and cited research that indicates that alt cert, without any formal or prior support, decreases percentage of teachers who stay, and is counterintuitive to an effort towards cultivating a teaching profession - as she mentioned earlier, investing in a career ladder.

closing thoughts now... more to come...

role of education in campaigns

2008-10-21T19:11:00.002-04:00

when asked about the role of education in each of the campaigns, both describe candidates' legislative commitments to "education," though difficult for mccain's advisor to overcome her candidates' record...

fuhrman presses: have the candidates given enough attention to education?
lgk: disputes ldh's claim that mccain has been brief in his mentions about education. notes that when mentions are made, not picked up in media. frustrating.

ldh: agrees with the point that media is lax in picking up on major educ speeches - not just a partisan issue. however, efforts must be led by someone who understands benefits of education. earlier, she made the claim that $1 investment in early childhood education yields $5-7 later in child's life in the form of decreased educational failure, remediation, etc.

lmv editorial (that's me :) ) - interesting point about early childhood ed... wondering whether we can fold in importance of reduced class sizes...

the nclb question - what would your candidate do when it comes up for reauthorization?
ldh: we need to rethink our assessment/examination system - e.g., like what other countries are doing, not just multiple choice, but inquiry driven work.
lgk: state standards and assessments need to stay in place. the problem of doing portfolios is that you can't compare kids. you can have fabulous, formative portfolios in the instructional process, but you can have a great question that you have to fill in. offers the following sites to be able to know where you stand in relation to other schools: greatschools.net

ldh - we're stuck in a 50s conception of standardized testing, and not thought about undertaking a different form of testing, auditing, monitoring -- and as a result, teaching higher order thinking skills, engendering greater inquiry, not just bubbling in all day.

lgk - fine if all students get the same test. no one should be bubbling in - that's a lousy school!

more to come..

candidates' education advisors debate @ tc

2008-10-21T18:55:00.002-04:00

and we're off! the event, officially titled "education and the next president," has commenced with the welcome by pres. fuhrman and her call for greater attention to be paid to education, given its significance for the emerging global issues we face. she will moderate the discussion between lisa graham keegan, advisor to john mccain, and linda darling-hammond, advisor to barack obama.

we're learning about keegan and darling-hammond now, via fuhrman's intros.

the format: fuhrman will ask questions on a range of topics (45 minutes, of 2 minute responses), then each speaker will pose a question to the other. then, questions from the audience.

first question: how would barack obama differ from mccain as an education president?
ldh: obama would clearly be better. understands this from personal experience and also from analytic perspective - e.g. other countries pulling ahead, which have invested in early childhood ed, health care of children, teacher education funding, curriculum and asssessment directed pointed to 21st century skills, and increased college access. has a record of this congress.
mccain has typically voted against these investments in congress. not a high priority to him.

q to lgk: re: mccain's interest in joel klein's and al sharpton's work with educational equity project in nyc, compelling, and wants to support:
- increasing quality of teachers in high needs schools
- numbers of choices parents have about educating their kids

sf: importance of education to each of your campaigns - do you get (and how much) face time with him?

cfp: nctear 2009

2008-10-13T17:34:00.001-04:00

Literacy, Culture, Learning, and Life in Schools: Research and Designs for Change
February 13-15, 2009; University of California, Los Angeles
Co-chairs: Kris Gutierrez and Ernest Morrell

The Assembly for Research of the National Council of Teachers of English announces a conference on “Literacy, Culture, Learning, and Life in Schools: Research and Designs for Change”, to be held February 13-15, 2009 at The University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, CA. In this call, we would like researchers and educators to consider what it means to explore the connections between literacy theory and research and the study and design of powerful literacy learning spaces for youth.

After a generation of pioneering scholarship in literacy and learning theory and research we are still faced with extreme challenges, some methodological, some pertaining to applications of research to practice and policy. We are also still faced with the reality that class, race, and language background still largely define equity, access, and achievement in literacy classrooms and therefore, the life outcomes of students. With that in mind our goal is to convene literacy and learning scholars, theorists, activists, and practitioners around the globe to discuss the applications of recent movements in literacy and learning theory and research to classro om practice, to understanding classroom life, and to the development of progressive educational policy.

Key Goals

To understand how current movements in literacy and/or learning research can and should inform classroom life for historically marginalized students. This involves both the study of classroom life and the shaping of students’ experiences inside of classrooms.
To understand how recent advances in literacy research are reshaping the very tools that we use to understand literacy practices across a wide range of activity settings including schools and homes.
To assess design interventions that have applied literacy theory and research to classroom curricula and pedagogy in order to understand what we have learned about design research as a methodological approach and what we have learned about effecti ve literacy classroom practice.
To identify challenges, contradictions, and future directions for literacy researchers interested in the nexus of theory, literacy research, and literacy development among historically marginalized populations.
To consider the “appropriate” goals and outcomes of literacy research for radical citizenship, for classroom practice, for policy development, and for action for social change. (What do we want and how will we know if we are heading in the right direction?)
To articulate and develop powerful theories of literacy teaching and literacy learning that emerge from our interrogation of existing theory and research.

Key Questions

Q: What do we know about the applications of literacy and/or learning research to pedagogical practices in literacy classrooms with histories of underachievement? What are the core tenets of successful practices? What is the research base that supports the identification of these tenets?
Q: What are powerful examples of practice? What should we learned from studying these practices?
How do we best study literacy and learning inside and outside of classrooms?
Q: What is gained by broadening the focus from classrooms to studying larger ecologies? How do third generation activity theory, mutli-sited ethnographies, and recent work in the field problematize and push upon dichotomies of home/school, classrooms/not classrooms, etc?
Q: What are the various home, community, popular cultural, and new media literacies that students bring with them into classrooms? How are these li teracies being accessed and positioned within classrooms?
Q: Where do we need to go next with respect to making connections between theory, literacy research, and classroom practice?

We welcome proposals grounded in diverse perspectives, including, among others: the learning sciences, critical race, postcolonial, postmodern, multicultural, feminist and queer theories; critical discourse analysis; critical and anti-racist pedagogies; and ethnic, cultural, cross-cultural, design, experimental, quasi-experimental, case study, ethnography, historical and comparative/international st udies. We invite proposals that focus on empirical research including teacher/action research, as well as conceptual/theoretical work.

Proposals (no more than 2 single-spaced pages) should address the following: The research question(s), methodology, findings/issues/questions for discussion, and how the research will contribute to the conference conversation. If your paper is a conceptual/theoretical one, please describe your theoretical framework and argument and tell how it will contribute to the conference conversation. We are strongly encouraging the participati on of classroom teachers and graduate students so, if you are currently a classroom teacher or graduate student, please indicate so in your proposal. Please send all proposals to nctear2009@gmail.com. The deadline for conference submissions is December 1, 2008.

visualizing data

2008-09-19T07:35:00.003-04:00

i saw this a while ago in nytimes and facebooked it, but have begun exploring it anew this week:

Many Eyes: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/home - presents ideas about how to visualize sets of data, including using wordle.net and other nifty apps.

rereading "reading next"

2008-09-13T17:24:00.004-04:00

in prep for an article i'm working on, i've been doing some rereading of documents that produced within the last few years, which focus on the literacies of adolescents. one such set of documents are two reports put out by the carnegie corporation's advancing literacy project.
below: a rereading of the executive summary of "reading next: a vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy" (made possible by wordle.net)
(click to really see, and then consider what you see - and don't see)

new year, new possibilities, same ol' bullsh*T!

2008-09-13T10:48:00.006-04:00

i'm rarely surprised by the continued rhetoric of pro-gun folks who say that we shouldn't blame the gun; that guns don't kill people, people kill people, etc... however, during her interview with charlie gibson on 20/20, sarah palin, when asked about gun control - specifically the fact that she does not support a ban on semi-automatic guns (a ban that over 70% of this country supports, btw), palin's response incensed me anew. palin and gibson had the following exchange:

charlie: isn't gun violence in america a health issue? we spend billions of dollars a year, every year, treating people who are victims of gun violence. nothing we can do about that?

sarah: do you think that all of that gun violence, though, is caused by people pulling a trigger who would have followed any law anyway?

she goes on to worry about the constraints that gun control laws may place constraints on the 2nd amendment rights of "law abiding citizens" and states that "it's going to be the bad guys who have the guns."

having spent most of the nearly 15 years talking, learning, and thinking with adolescents living in two of the major northeastern cities in the united states, there is fact that remains uncontested: guns are readily available, and in many cases more readily available than what one might consider "basic needs" - e.g., food, shelter, utilities... i say this not to sensationalize the lives of the young people with whom i've spent time, but rather to highlight an assumption that is embedded in palin's statement above: that people who use guns to commit violent acts are not and would not be "law abiding citizens", under any circumstance, and more importantly, that guns are only misused by "bad guys"... what would she (and others who share her view) say, i wonder, when asked to consider the reality of a thriving gun market in our urban neighborhoods; the overabundance of and ready access to automatic and semi-automatic weapons must be taken seriously, and not set within a pedestrian framework of good and bad, law-abiding and unlawful,

the likely truth is that lifetime gun association members aren't thinking about the lives lost and dreams squandered when they repeatedly lobby against legislation that would, in no way, hinder their hunting and sport-related gun needs. unless there is a sport that involves literally shattering game into a million pieces, i'm at a loss when it comes to understanding how a ban on semi-automatic 'weapons of mass destruction' theatens anyone's hunting 'privilege' and gun toting rights.

do i favor a land without guns. certainly. but the larger issue is this: if legislators continue to associate gun violence with an inherent 'bad' trait or disposition, we will only continue the cycle of incarceration, rising health care costs, and urban neighborhoods whose populations are largely under some form of correctional control. a limit on the sheer numbers of guns on the streets and in the hands of children will have an impact in the reduction of, at the very least, gun violence. additionally, when we shift our gaze away from an ontological assumption of illegality, we are better able to address problems in effective and useful ways. if we ban semi-automatic weapons, and we increase support for, e.g., higher education, we open up possibilities that are not only about not doing something, but also about pursuing new avenues. this is not, contrary to popular belief, a fairytale.

as a final rejoinder to ms. palin's assertion, i offer this video:

click here for more on andrés idarraga

"real cost of prisons project" - comics

2008-07-22T14:05:00.006-04:00

in what amounts to a happy accident, i learned about about these graphic novels that are a project of the real cost of prisons project. each offers another dimension of insight into the social and financial economics involved in the prison industry. they are available as pdf (by clicking on the links) and also in bound comic format. the titles:

Prison Town: Paying the Price
By Kevin Pyle and Craig Gilmore

Prisoners of the War on Drugs
By Sabrina Jones, Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens

Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children
By Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack, and Lois Ahrens

see the site for more info on the comics, excellent 1-pager flyers (like the one below - click to see image full size), and more on the project.

from flyer:
national average cost to imprison a person for one year: $ 29,041
national average cost of one year of community college: $1,518

come to church, get a gun

2008-07-12T20:43:00.005-04:00

i read a story today, linked from cnn's homepage, about a youth conference being held at a church. the event, itself, is not news per se. the fact that there was to be a gun giveaway was, however, news indeed. to be precise, a semiautomatic assault rifle was dangled as additional enticement to increase participation. (read more here)
this is particularly unsettling given the persistence of gun violence that many communities continue to experience.

the story of 10-year-old nujood ali presents another perspective on religion and violence. nujood lives in yemen and was married off to a man in his 30s by her parents. her story became news not because of her newly acquired status as a child bride, but because she walked herself into a courthouse and politely asked for a divorce. from the la times article:

"Her impoverished parents had married her off to a man more than three times her age, who beat her and forced her to have sex, she explained. When she told her father and mother that she wanted out of the marriage, they refused to help. So an aunt provided her with bus money to travel to court and seek a divorce."

(see her story here)

the youth at the conference and nujood and the many other child brides around the world are receiving an education all their own. with its own standards, evaluations, assumptions, and expectations. oh my...

multimodality & learning conference

2008-06-20T09:41:00.002-04:00

i'm here in london attending the multimodality and learning conference, and having a fabulous time! not only b/c the weather is lovely and everyone says 'cheers' :), but also b/c getting out the national context with which i'm familiar and engaging with a range of international discourses about multimodality and about learning

the conference was kicked off with a kick ass talk by charles goodwin, whose conceptualization of human communication as being constituted simultaneously by language (the linguistic stuff), embodied action (how the body reveals engagement in the communication), and engagement with the surrounding structures (or how the environment is consequential to the communication). then today, gunther kress followed up with another keynote in which he proposed a social semiotic theory of learning - two concepts (semiotics and learning) which, as he put it, are not common bedfellows. pushing against (or maybe past) a traditionally psychological model of learning, gunther suggests that when we research learning - or propose to research learning - we might not really be doing that at all. that in fact, we might actually be looking at environments or conditions of learning. makes me think about connections to varenne's recent work on retheorizing education...

i'm loving the explicit talk of power in these presentations about multimodality - something we either seem to shy away from or dichotomize in the states. i'm not sure why that is... also a rich interrogation and exploration of multimodality: pedagogically, theoretically, methodologically; and it relates to literacies, language and identity, meanings across space and time, and math and science.

there's LOTS more but i'm out of battery and forgot both my charger and converter, so this will have to do for now.

school on film: "entre les murs"

2008-05-25T21:00:00.002-04:00

a french film about a teacher, teaching, learning, and students... the film portrays "real-life teachers and students" - the description of the format reminds me of bubble.

the trailer for "entre les murs" (english title: "the class")

school 2.0?

2008-05-17T16:36:00.005-04:00

colin and michele are giving their keynote at the learning 2.0 conference, being held today at montclair and co-org'd by dana & michele. their talk is focused on the "twoness" of "learn 2.0" and they've begun with a review of the leap from web 1.0 to web 2.0 - highlighting the participatory nature of this shift, and raising the issue (esp with relevance to sites built of collective knowledge like wikipedia, etc.) of truth... and later, credit (as in, whose idea is it?)... and the significance of

so the issue of school 2.0 - as it connects with learn 2.0 - comes up. michele is talking now and wondering about how our teaching practices must change in a web 2.0 world. namely, how do create spaces for collaboration - true collaboration? and not the kind found in lit circles where someone is the artist, the recorder, the this that and the other thing...

relatedly, i wonder: what is the relationship between learn 2.0 and school 2.0?? which is funny b/c i've thought more about the institution of school in the past 24 hours than i have all semester. hmmm....

for example, they teach a course in which students, in teams, have to engage in the following:
- learn how to program a robot
- document the group's learning in this experience (using video, audio, print)
- analyze the data they have produced and collected
- prepare a scholarly paper/presentation
- present said paper/presentation at a full-on conference
all within the space of a few weeks, one of which they are sequestered at a lodge.

they, of course, explained this project much more eloquently - i'm especially excited about the teasing out of the ideas of collaboration, collective knowledge, truth... and what these ideas look like when they are actually embodied in daily practice.

"it doesn't matter if one person wrote it, or if ten people write it - the result is the same in terms of human benefit." --c. lankshear

re: the above project - participants learn to be researchers by being researchers, not students learning about research. the doing, being, embodying of learn(ing) 2.0 - not a pipe dream; a reality we can't/shouldn't ignore.

writing creatively

2008-05-14T23:47:00.005-04:00

i made a pact with a young man today to engage in a form of daily public writing. for me, this means posting to my blog on a more regular basis than i have been doing. we agreed to start with writing for 10 minutes a day. he and i embarked on a creative writing journey last week - i'd like to think that we are co-learners and co-teachers in this experience as we revisit his previous writings together. with each piece of writing he shares with me, i not only learn more about him - as an author, son, brother, student - but also reflect on my own writing self at his age, 17-going-on-18. i, too, had reams and piles and folders filled with papers and notebooks, all covered in my discursive meanderings, scribbles, drawings, reminders, and the like. like him, i, too, often carried all of it with me at all times - in my case, my words felt too fragile to be left lying around for the untrained eye to devour and misunderstand. my personal journal, which i brazenly did keep out in the open, was written in a cryptic french - that is, i wrote in the passive tense and as abstractly as possible, so even if someone was fluent in the language, they would still struggle to make meaning of my entries - as if to dare the trespasser to penetrate my teenage sensibilities.

another young man at the same program has developed a practice of collecting his thoughts in scraps of paper and, more recently, as immediate recordings and messages that he records for himself using his cell phone. when he wants to compose something - lyrics for a song, for example - he knows just which scrap of paper to look for that contains the magical phrase that will unlock the subsequent text.

as i am surrounded almost every day by poets, beat makers, screen writers, essayists, and lyricists, i find myself once again curious about the chaos and crisis that we - educators, researchers, policy makers - impose onto discussions about the practice and craft of writing in the lives of young people today. youth are not writing less - they are writing more and in many more ways and for many more purposes. the questions we should be asking are:
- what do new composing spaces look like?
- how might be we rethink composing pedagogies?
- what kinds of spaces do we provide for multiple forms of writing and composing, more broadly?
- who is shaping/creating/informing the composing space?

adolescent literacies

small fate of "illiteracy" looms large

Rethinking schooling -- part 1: Reflections from #UTASNewLits

ethnography forum 2012: focus on digital discourses

exciting new special issues

for the love of picture books

my "letteracies" -- installment 4

my "letteracies" -- installment 3

my "letteracies" -- installment 2

my "letteracies" -- installment 1

being in tune with oneself

cme: representations of women and girls (snagfilms collection)

3MinuteMedia -- Social Issue Media Festival 2011 -- Get Inspired!!

call for entries - extended

Video As Art, Fall 2010 -- Final Projects

Media festival -- Call for entries

autumn loveliness

links for video as art - ken burns workshop

research video

essays on globalization, education, and citizenship

Seeking provocations and reclaiming the numbers game

literacy practices a generation apart

new issue of "perspectives on urban education"

the video and the visual breakdown of the lyrics - remixed remixing

adolescent literacy - moving beyond rhetoric that maligns. a call for new starting points.

fighting writer's block - bringing back the aesthetic

new issue of digital culture and education is out! "beyond new literacies"

media fun this spring and summer

Screening: Media that Matters @ Maysles Cinema

new book about adolescents and online literacies

deadline extended!!! social issue media festival

social issue media festival - call for entries

Multimodality and Learning Conference - 2010 - deadline extended!

On the meanings of writing and publication

How Social Media Has Changed Us

CFP: Visual Interpretations conference at MIT

time magazine explores the diversity of youth through image

the wire - season 4. musings, part 1

images of youth - the year behind, the year ahead

new york: task force on transforming juvenile justice - *now* can we imagine a new way??

who am i to do this? poetic musings on cross-cultural research

The dangers of starting with and stopping at critique

plurality of pedagogical postures

Multimodality and Learning Conference - updated info

pedagogy that is culturally relevant

new book about harlem, youth, and multimodal literacy

multimodality and learning conference 2010 - call for papers

Multimodality and Learning Conference: Environments, Rhetoric, Recognition, Play, and Methods

digital media and learning conference - call for papers, deadline: 10.30.2009

new book on comparative education

Exploring Childhood Studies - Call for papers

Newark Mayor Cory Booker pt.2 (10/16/09)

decoding college application process

Charlotte Linde - Saturday Series Lecture

bar code art

rethinking classrooms by listening - new tc press book

31st Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum - Deadline extended!

call... & response - attempts to make sense of beating, death, violence among youth

"are heels oppressing or empowering?" -> what passes for 'debate' over morning coffee...

storying and the storied

trolling the web... a text rendering of cme09 haps.

new ela & math standards released

public libraries

raise me up - foster care campaign in austin, tx, featuring storycorps interviews

representations of women - film series 1

challenging homophobia in schools - new text from tc press

reading "Knock Knock, Who's There?" - a selection of the 9th annual media that matters film festival

pres. obama's speech to kids - video

Words and thoughts...

pres. obama's speech to kids - full text

making sense of public reaction to (the not yet aired) president obama's speech to kids about education

The Day My God Died

reading rainbow no more

31st annual ethnography in education research forum

nctear 2010 - cfp and info

knowing by doing?

...on courtship in the 19th century

youth voices on michael jackson

new (literacies-related) reads on my summer 'must read' list

insight project presents: bird's eye view - a youth theater performance

new york: task force on transforming juvenile justice - now can we imagine a new way??

The youth theater company,
the Insight Project, presents:

Bird’s Eye View

A staged reading followed by a discussion
of Justice and the Arts