wiki this

while engaged in my latest favorite pasttime of wikipedia-ing tv while i watch - usually shortened in my head, and sometimes in my diction to "wiki this, wiki that" - i looked up the entry for malcolm in the middle. the episode i was watching featured the mom, lois, costumed and dancing around with her mom, played by cloris leachman, in outfits that resembled the ensemble that sandra bullock wears in the scene from miss congeniality where she is playing the water glasses at a pre-pageant talent showcase. (i'm not sure i can actually count all of this information toward my love/study of "popular" culture....) anyway, moving on... i was caught by the cluster of information in the entry for MITM that focused on how the show was intentionally anonymous, similar to the mystery surrounding the geographic location of The Simpsons hometown of Springfield. this mystery has certainly captured the imaginations, and observation skills, of many of the show's viewers and some of the wikipedia entry writers. for example, they write:
- There is also a good chance that the family lives in Arizona, as in the episode "Future Malcolm" when Dewey is being reprimanded for painting on the wall, a water bottle with the symbol for the NFL team the Arizona Cardinals is clearly visible.

- Also, in episode 110, "Stock Car Races", when Hal and the boys are entering the track the billboard behind the entrance displays the place as Irwindale Speedway (a real race track in Southern California).

- (my particular favorite of the ones listed): Oklahoma is a possibility. In later seasons, license plates display "Cherokee State" which is another name for Oklahoma. Despite that, the look of the plates intentionally made like California's, such as the font of the words "Cherokee State", and digits are in the format of "1 XXX 111", where 1 is a digit, and X is a letter. In episode 415, Otto was singing the title song from "Oklahoma!." In episode 313, Oklahoma Highway Police can be seen on the police car doors. However, in one episode, Hal comes to visit Francis at military school and upon seeing his father, Francis exclaims, "you drove eight hours just to see me!" The school is known to be located in Alabama, so Malcolm's family must live within an eight-hour drive of the state, perhaps in Florida. On the other hand there is also in episode 418 where Reese is sent to Whitehorse on a bus for at least 52 hours. Malcolm: "Reese, think about it. It takes 26 hours to get to Canada, and 26 hours to get back. Your bag is filled with food and nobody called Grandma!" Only Alaska is within a 26 hour drive of Whitehorse, Canada. However, in episode 43, Alaska is stated to be "5000 miles away and in the episode "Krelborne Picnic", Francis says "So I'm still a member of the family even after you sent me away to military school 1,000 miles away". In the series finale, Malcolm reveals that Harvard is 2,000 miles away. Triangulation using these distances puts the family's location somewhere in West Texas.

...and so on. what fascinates me about this is people's (viewers') collective desire to locate information they receive - via a television program, fictional sitcom notwithstanding - within shared schemes and experiential landmarks. where do they live? where is all of this taking place? throw me a bone!!! it's even noted in the show's wikipedia entry that the family's last name is never (or maaaaybe once) mentioned.

if we continue to understand literacies as local and situated and epistemologies as informed by experience, from a research standpoint, "placing" the characters and the show would seem to be of utmost importance... situating our own "reading" of how they move through their worlds would be significant for interpreting and anlayzing what it is they are doing - e.g., arguing as a family; planning the annual practical joke; ostracizing the kid who isn't a team player; etc... from my experience, it's the desire to understand the concepts that are emic to who or what i'm observing before i can make claims about it. but what if our observational capacity is limited? what if, as more of us are exploring realms where we have limited access, limited time to acclimate, and limited understanding of what questions we should even be asking, the landscape remains anonymous? i can still say that malcolm is a quirky character who has taken on some of his "real life" actor persona, but then that would be all; and it would be based on occasional viewings of the show, coupled with an unfortunate viewing of an old episode of Punk'd, and driven by a proclivity to analyze through comparison. wikipedia might just be on to something though - thanks to the collective efforts of my fellow inquiring minds, i can now add to my analysis that anonymity was not only the ethos of the show, but also something that malcolm strived for and lived out through his little brother as he "help[s] him stay in normal classes" (instead of the "gifted" classes like he put in by his parents. ok, it's a stretch, but it's my ongoing support for collaboration in research, especially acknowledging that the construction of new and diverse spaces yields not only so many more questions, but also many more limitations on participation, access, and inquiry...

reading worth reading and watching and listening

i just recently re-discovered the beat within, a weekly magazine written by incarcerated and recently incarcerated youth. the site includes writing, video diaries, and news related to juvenile justice.

(photo is part of a collection by joseph rodriguez titled "juvenile justice")

het·er·og·e·nous

at the top of my gmail, i am daily treated to random bits of news and the occasional "word of the day" from dictionary.com. today's word, heterogeneous, is particularly poignant as i think about the recent After Words episode i watched in which congressman tom tancredo (r-co) was being interviewed by anne mulkern of the denver post. you can watch the whole interview here, so i won't summarize the whole thing. however, i will share one small tidbit that has got me thinking (again) about teacher education...

tancredo was on the show to talk about (read: promote) his new book in mortal danger: the battle for america's border and security. at one point, mulkern asks him to expound on his decision to include in his book the story of a public school teacher who was expressed frustration at having to celebrate black history month - apparently, such a comment was made in the context of having to diverge from necessary curricula... tancredo, smiling and almost a little eager, responded with the even tone he'd been using the entire time and explained that he felt that the teacher's story was indicative of a larger trend where there are celebrations of all kinds happening, while "american" holidays go unrecognized. he cited veteran's day as one example of one such forgotten holiday.

i exhaled slowly as i listened to this, and watched as he tancredo shook his head in disbelief that such adultering of the "american" curriculum was going on. earlier, mulkern had asked the congressman what "american" meant to him. he gives a litany of checklist-like qualities, but it is the second that stood out to me: [paraphrasing] speaking english, or expressing a desire to and being on the path to being a proficient english speaker.

so now i think of that school teacher who expressed her woes about having to indulge the district requirement to recognize black history month. and i wonder to what extent the tenets of plurality and, yes, heterogeneity are being engaged at the moments when not-yet-teachers are developing their understandings of not only pedagogy, but the historical context in which they are purporting to participate in the act of teaching and learning. we talked a good deal in the graduate classes i took about multiculturalism, critical multiculturalism, diversity, and occasionally, race and racism. but perhaps we need to talk more explicitly about the fact that history and sociocultural context matters not only in harlem or the delta, but, in fact, everywhere. could we ignore the heterogeneous history on which all of social life was founded and is based?

but what good is any of this musing to the teacher who feels burdened by what she considers extra to the curriculum? and, more to the point of teacher ed, how do we use the very short time that teacher ed programs have with pre-service teachers (as they strive to stay competitive with the rapidly growing numbers of alternative certification programs) to move from dialogue to action around principles of plurality (which undergirds so many connected discourses - e.g., literacies, positionalities, anti-racist pedagogies...)?

fears averted

when i first learned that a spoof of an inconvenient truth that had been circulating on youtube.com was really a commercially produced piece of media that was the work of a PR and lobbying firm whose client list includes Exxon Mobil, i admit, i was perturbed.

upon viewing said piece of media, however, i was reassured that commerically produced "amateur" video can't take the place of the real fake thing. case in point - check out some of the real spoofs based on gore's movie.

long live amateur video democracies!

latest from all4ed

a few different articles came out recently bemoaning (once again) the "low literacy rates" and "lower reading skills" of adolescents. there are references made to students' attitude toward education, downward spiral of interest in school given difficulty with decoding print, and the recognition that "it's not just the immigrants"... and platitudes about assessments, learning, and the achievement gap that maintain the focus of blame on students and teachers, who are unprepared to teach reading in middle and high school. if these are the discourses that are dominating the growing attention being paid to adolescent literacy, where (oh, where?) is the space for new literacies?

read more from an online chat with alliance for education's jeremy ayers

life is like a parfait glass full of ice cream

i loved to read as a child. it was my escape from what i understood to be a dull existence; a practice i could indulge without inviting the disciplinary actions that followed my excessive television watching; a solitary activity that filled up hours and hours and hours of time. for a class early in my master's program, i wrote a paper reflecting on my relationship with reading and detailed the distinguishable periods - e.g. american plays, teen angst, the russians, old south, new south, etc. - yet made one glaring omission: indian comic books. that's right, a collection of comics known simply as amarchitrakatha - three words slurred together to indicate the vast world of comics created for children (and presumably the occasional adult) to learn about indian history, mythology, culture and religion. i had stacks of them and to this day can recall specific frames from stories. my grandmother, who was my other primary source for all things indian mythology-related, and i would carefully go through the comics together - the only kind of book i would ever involve another person in the reading or experiencing of - and compare her version with the version in the text. often, the brief retelling found illustrated and captioned would prompt her to launch into more detailed and nuanced versions that would fill up the afternoon. her voice is often connected to story frames etched in my mind.

this evening, as i (once again) walked through the campus bookstore, i came across a text that i hadn't seen before. the title on the thin spine read "introducing cultural studies" and the image on the black, glossy cover is a cartoonesque old-time, parfait glass filled with an assortment of fruits, and colorful scoops of ice cream, and is topped of with sprinkles, a cherry, and lovely slice of pineapple. i couldn't resist, so i added it to the pile of books in my hand (including one on vegetarian grilling) and headed upstairs to the cafe. as i began to flip through the pages, that were light on text and heavy on the images, i felt a familiar sense comfort and pleasure. it wasn't that i hadn't read the work stuart hall or pierre bourdieu before, but experiencing the juxtaposition of a dialogue bubble coming out of a bourdieuian bust alongside no-frills commentary gave those earlier readings and discussions new life. it felt like the catalyst i've been wanting... and i am reveling in the form, perhaps more than the content at times - of this use of cartoon drawings, rules of comic engagement, and text that doesn't always stay within the lines. this is cultural studies that makes me laugh and think at the same time - not something i can (always) say for hall... and it's not that the issues being raised are always a laughing matter, but rather the irony that undergirds much of social life is sometimes better illustrated through the absurdity of image than pages of text. i'm only halfway through the book and will write more when i've gotten all the way through.

all's quiet...

there is something about the routinized expectations of the academic year that i sorely miss when summer hits. don't get me wrong - i love staying up until 4, sleeping in until 11 and leisurely moving between writing, editing, tv watching, old movie devouring, and recipe inventing... however, this summer is oozing with expectation and anticipated-moving-to-fully-realized frustration. this is the summer where so much was supposed to happen, and now, it's half over. i fully blame my lack of meetings, classes, and office hours, which i was itching to get a break from as may rolled around. this is about more than "grass is greener" syndrome - it's a harsh realization that perhaps...maybe...routine helps us be more productive.
ok, i don't mean this in quite the cheeky way it sounds. it's just that i spend so much of my waking time arguing for reduced structures, less rigidity, and more flexibility in the education of and for youth, yet i sit here secretly - although, not so secretly anymore - craving rigidity myself. it's not as if deadlines aren't looming - they are a'plenty! - and that todo lists don't exist - they do, in triplicate! - but rather, there is a camaraderie that exists during the academic year that i feel lost without during the summer. it is perhaps why i sought out not one, but two groups of fabulous women as writing groups to support the dissertation writing process; why i get a high after talking with colleagues and attending conference presentations (albeit, while not always paying attention) and get more focused writing down in the hours following these events than when i have hours, days, weeks, even months ahead of me where little time is structured. i am a poster child for the notion that learning is social...and perhaps that social, for me, needs to be put on my calendar and be in the midst of warm black tea - either blackberry sage or a chai blend will do nicely.
i have read other colleagues blogs and public declarations that there is never not enough to write, but just not enough time to write it all. i agree. and have notebooks and word documents filled with pages of thoughts, article starts, and commentaries to prove my allegiance to these declarations. yet, here i sit, in the bookstore of my alma mater, wishing i had less time so that i could get more done.

e-learning - new issue out now!

Special Issue: Digital Interfaces
Guest Editor: Angela Thomas
Volume 3 Number 2 2006

latest favorite google video

russian climbing

just watch it.

high school student's rwanda blog

Rwanda Journal

written by malika khandelwal, a 16 year old from pa who is writing about the aftermath of the rwandan genocide for the philly inquirer this summer.

devastating anonymity

i've given in to the media hype and am watching anderson cooper's special dedicated to world refugee day, during which he is spending much of the two hour show in conversation with angelina jolie. in one exchange that especially caught my ear, both cooper and jolie recounted the first children they had connected with while visiting refugee camps who died hours or days later. moments later, the screen was filled with a child, aminu, being fed some milk with a dark blue tin cup. cooper's voice tells the viewer that this may be the only photograph to exist of this child, who died hours after the photo was taken. while the ability to capture, duplicate, and disseminate images is a relatively new phenomenon in human history, in this age of camera phones, video ipods, and digital cameras, it's hard to imagine a time without (relatively easy) visual documentation. it's more difficult to realize that in this age when we rely so much on the audiovisual modes to communicate, these are not viable options in many parts of the world.

on this report, devastating images abound. rifles strapped onto the backs of adults embracing young children; bright colored cloth cloaking the bodies of women and children who are discussed as statistics of rape, beatings, genocide; tents, food rations, camps; images across africa and within the united states documenting undocumented youth living in the u.s. without family; all seeking refuge.

apologies in advance and for the previous post for incomplete thoughts, simplistic analyses...

"no community wants too many"

arbai
madina
aden
ali
khadija

these are the names of some of the somalian refugees whose lives were portrayed in the film, "rain in a dry land," part of the human rights watch film festival going on from june 9-22, 2006 in new york city. the film follows two somali bantu families on their journey from refugee camps in kenya to their new lives in the united state, in springfield, massachusetts and atlanta, georgia, respectively.
several things struck me about these interwoven stories, but perhaps none as strongly as the role that linguistic communication plays in enabling or preventing these families' transition to their new surroundings. there is frustration at not being able to navigate forms, institutions, and new ways of doing things far from familiar homes. the children negotiate institutionalized schooling, teachers, classmates, tests, assignments, and dating. and we are shown the families' struggle to retain communal ways of life in a highly individualistic society.

one narrative cut particularly deep:
ali, living in springfield, drops out of high school after one year. the filmmaker, anne makepeace, shows ali's evolution as he goes from receiving verbal accolades in school to giving up on homework; the latter point is juxtaposed by text that tells the viewer that ali is too old to play on the high school soccer team. the interviewer underscores this by noting that ali is not able to do the one thing he truly loves. ali's face resembles his father, aden, but does not show the weight of war survival. he is often shown scratching his head from the back, with a soft smile on his face, which, by the time the film comes to a close, is not as constant as in the beginning. it appeared, from the images and vocals we were shown, that ali's reasons for dropping out were not so unfamiliar from the reasons that many native US high school students drop out - feeling disconnected from and frustrated by school. in ali's case, his teachers were supportive of him - the ones that talked on camera, at least - but it was his difficulty "getting it" (as one teacher put it) that hindered him from achieving his previously stated goal of focusing on and obtaining an education. he said he wanted to go to college to be a doctor. he imagined pursuing college on an athletic scholarship.

it feels naive to focus on language, and certainly the film's description and presumably the filmmaker would agree. there is more going on in ali's and the others' lives than a "failure to communicate." but as i bow my head in shame at the recent press my adopted hometown has gotten over the language requirements at a well known food establishment, i recognize that a failed congressional gesture isn't going to negate the reality that english not only functions as a national language in the linguistic sense - e.g., the language of forms, dominant media, restaurant menus - but in the visceral sense, as well. as an immigrant, i devoured the english language and prided myself on diagramming perfection, grammatical precision, and a laudable vocabulary. as a faculty member at an education school in a technology and ed program, i advocate for the wider use of multiple modes of communication - including multilingual, multimodal, and multiple literacies. however, at no time was mine a refugee reality.

as i exited the cool comfort of the theater, i overheard two women talking. one wondered aloud why the refugees were sent to different cities and her friend responded matter-of-factly, "because no community wants too many." ali's dashed dreams, aden's new found passion for gardening, arbai's daughter's wedding - all reduced in that phrase to the singular category of "too many." yes, language is significant - certainly, like gloria anzaldua notes, "ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity - i am my language." but, like anzaldua, who offers opportunities for language to flourish despite, and because of, linguistic barriers? where are the chances for these barriers to provide bridges to new understandings and relationships? there isn't time in the school day, in the trigonometry class, to slow down for one student who math acumen is evident but whose ability to comprehend a new linguistic code is not given sufficient nurturing. what happens to these adolescents? and what new ways of supporting refugee youth can we imagine and enact in the every day, moment-t0-moment decisions that inform the routinized practices of teaching, learning, and knowing...?

headlines

some that worry me:
Leak Counsel Won't Charge Rove, Lawyer Announces

some that make me chuckle:
A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears

and some that make me go hmmmm...
Apple surpasses beer on college campuses

drop everything and go.see.now!

luckily, this command requires only your time - that is, dedicated time, attention, engagement. for what i am commanding is this: spend some time viewing the 16 films featured in this year's media that matters film festival.

i spent the evening at the opening of the festival which took place at the ifc theater here in new york city. there was something powerful, intangibly penetrating about viewing these films, all together, one after one, in dialogue, on a large screen. the filmmakers raise questions about the criminal justice system, fair use policies for media, the iraq war, army recruitment, impossible/unrelenting standards of beauty, gender, and sexuality, and more... they evoke not only emotion, but a sense of action, response, and, hopefully, the need to spread the word so that these films reach far, wide, and deep.

but don't take my word for it. view them now!

immigration sound byte - postscript

i accompanied erick to horizon academy at rikers island last thursday to help the young men practice reading their pieces out loud and to establish the reading order, etc. this was the first time i had spent any extended amount of time in the bilingual class. there were about ten young men in there whose average age seemed to be 20 years old. i pulled a chair and sat next to a young man wearing knee length jean shorts and a black t-shirt. i'll call him david - it was the name he said that he would have chosen for himself because there were already too many people in his family with his given first name.
david smiled briefly in my direction, shifted his feet slightly, and resumed his conversation with his classmate sitting next to him. after several minutes, david and i began talking. the following is a list of notables that i learned during our conversation:

• arrived at rikers two months ago
• arrived in the united states three years ago
• is awaiting sentencing on a plea he just agreed to so that he can serve out his sentence before being deported back to the dominican republic.

my face must have registered my disbelief at this last point because david laughed quietly, shook his head, and said the thing that was going through my head, "can you believe that shit?"

the following day, david read for tito who was not present for the reading. it was clear that he had practiced and as he uttered the following words, i could almost see him writing them himself.

david, reading for tito:
"Advice comes from experiences that the person giving it to you already had, supposing a person that gives you advice already through those experiences or has seen then and doesn't want you to have to go through the same thing.
A lot of times I didn't follow the advice, but I did listen. But I didn't change, or I might for a month or so and then go back to doing the same things. ...
I don't want anyone to do the same things I've done, it's no good - look at where I am now. Do you understand the advice I'm giving?"

voices of immigration - beyond sound bytes

this past friday, 5/26, i sat in the gymnasium at one of the jail sites at rikers island listening to young men, who are there awaiting sentencing, share excerpts from published stories in the collection titled, Echando humo para siempre (Forever billowing smoke). of the six authors in the book, three were present for the reading. their stories, printed in both spanish and english in the eighty-one page book, were read aloud in both versions that made the gym reverberate with reflections about family, musings on inequity, observations about cross cultural survival - these words painted images that challenged the sound byte media culture about immigration.

raul: "In Mexico we don't treat [minorities] like they do here. Even Americans have a lot of businesses there - the best, I'd say - and we don't treat them like they treat us here."

jaime: "[My parents] brought me up with the music - the meringue, the bachata, the salsa - and they brought me up with the food, too. The brought me up with the culture from over there, like the people from there, like it was before for their gradparents, they they had been raised."

enano: "I miss my family so much - my parents, my friends. Here, you have friends while you have something to give, but if you don't have anything, they turn their backs on you. And over there, whether or not you have anything, they're your friends."

edwin: "...being out here in the United States there are always good chances, many opportunities here to come out ahead. Here I found out that I can draw - I started to draw here. ... I bought a tattoo gun and as soon as I leave here, if I ever do leave, I'm going to start tattooing."

in their words are "undeniable ambiguities and contradiction," (a point made in the introduction written by patricia cortes) that further call attention to the inadequate scope of the immigration rhetoric that dominates popular media discourses.

from a literacies perspective, we might ask what the implications are for how these young men make sense of their world through literacies as the move across national borders and cultural boundaries. lesley bartlett's research explores this and related questions about transnational literacies and resonates with some work that doris warriner is doing, as well. both of these literacy researchers, along with many others, are helping the field understand the life changing, sometimes threatening, experiences of individuals who are border crossing on a minute-to-minute basis. their work and the recently published Echando humo para siempre reminds us that we need stories that are not only rich in ethnographic detail, but that also are produced by those individuals whose crossings, negotiations, and balancing of transnational literacies, identities, experiences, challenges, and dreams too often become the purview of overused phrases and easily quantifiable categories.

this story was also filmed for the local news (new york city, abc) but i was out of town and didn't catch it. i'll report back on what story sound bytes made it to the small screen...

can you see me now?

to everyone who mocked my early musings about the feasibility of creating a real life invisibilty cloak (based on the key harry potter accessory): it appears that i am having the last laugh! check this out:

Theories see path to invisibility

this real-life version is made possible with "optical-camouflage technology." i wonder: can the marauder map be far behind? it's really only a matter of tweaks to the current gps technologies, if you ask me...

if a tree falls...

i was looking through some field notes on the bus today and came across some quotes
i had jotted down while attending the launch of EVC's Video Production curriculum titled "Youth Powered Video" (which i wrote about earlier). what caught my eye this time was a question posed by a woman from arts engine who - after the curriculum had been previewed for the audience and an EVC alum had talked about his experiences - wondered aloud, "if a film is made and no one sees it, does it make an impact?" she immediately acknowledged that the actual video production certainly had an impact for the participants involved in the process, but challenged the audience to consider the distribution and dissemination dimension of youth media. who views the films? engages with them? shares them? is aware they exist???

next week the sixth annual media that matters film festival will kick off here in nyc. the 16 films that were selected from hundreds (maybe thousands) of entries will be shown and also available online at the media that matters website. here's a link to last year's online film festival, which features a couple of films produced by youth. this is one of several spaces in which youth media production is being made visible, recognized for the contribution the stories contained in these films makes, and celebrated for the intentional attention paid in the films that are chosen to social action and justice.

in response to the challenge about impact, i offer the following list of sites as a first step in spreading the word about youth produced media, including film and radio documentaries, digital stories, and a range of texts:

listenup.org
EVC
youth media distribution
mnn youth channel
youth portraits

and in the real-world-like words of the opening voices on the youth radio site, youth media can show us "what happens when [youth] stop being stereotyped and start getting real."

fyi: ymdi also makes a youth video distribution toolkit available on their website.

a beer in the afternoon

recently, in recognition of the semester being over, i indulged myself and accepted an invitation to have a beer in the afternoon. or rather, a cider, to be precise. i sat oustide with two students in our program and watched people walk by as we discussed a range of topics and enjoyed the just-right warmth of a spring day. as i walked back to my office afterwards, i recall feelings of guilt. as if i had broken some unwritten rule... crossed yellow and black caution tape...

earlier this year, i experienced a similar feeling when i shared some ideas for research with some individuals whose support i'll need to move forward with my project ideas. i laid out a plan for engaging youth as co-researchers in exploring certain dimensions of the "school-to-prison" pipeline. i emphasized the role of young people as not only informants but as participants and collaborators in the research design. the questions that followed had less to do with the project and more to do with my sanity regarding this approach. as they raised questions about "safety" and "trustworthiness," i could feel my insides shriveling and slowly detaching themselves from my skin. i began to feel guilty for suggesting new methodology, but later realized that it had more to do with the disruption to business as usual and all of the ontological and epistemological implications such a proposal entailed. it was as if i had taken a swig from a flask right there in the middle of an otherwise civilized meeting.

fun with letters

maybe schools should use this to teaching spelling

a long road ahead...

my younger brother graduated this past weekend, which directly translates into: a lot of time with my family, namely my parents who live closeby but who i see not too frequently, and certainly not for two straight days at a time.

during a conversation with my father on the very long, rainy, and construction-ridden drive back, i found myself defending television... again. to the casual observer, i might have sounded a bit maniacal as i declared, with fervor, that it wasn't the tv watching itself that was the point, but rather the context in which the watching of tv occurred. that is, is tv seen as another text with which kids engage? and are parents motivated to ask them about the shows they watched in much the same way as they inquire about the stories found in the books they read?

in response, my father replied with a vignette starring the granddaughter of one of his colleagues who, he said, rarely, if ever, watches television and on a recent visit to his friend's house he witnessed the hypnotizing effects of television as this otherwise "bubbly and loving child" (his words) sat transfixed and immune to the happenings of the world around her. wouldn't we excuse that behavior, i asked him, if the same child exhibited the same reaction (or lack, as it were) while engrossed in a book? i reminded him of the hours and days i spent lying in my bedroom completely transported to other worlds as i read printed text, much in the same way as i was fully immersed when i watched television; yet i only ever got reprimanded when i watched tv.

i guess i need to order him a copy of steven johnson's book and hope that he, and others like him for whom reading trumps tv any day, recognizes that we live in a technicolor world - one that transcends the boundaries of black and white print on paper, and that to keep hierarchicalizing texts in this way is not only a waste of time, but delegitimizes experiences that some of us hold quite dear.

reading as wine tasting

there is a scene in the movie french kiss that, to me, personifies the experience of reading.

in it, kevin kline's character (luc) scaffolds the wine tasting experience for meg ryan's character (kate) by intentionally blending the sensations of smell and taste with the use of a box which has in it numerous smells including lavendar, rosemary, and other herbs and flavors used in winemaking. luc asks kate to taste the wine and asks her to describe it. she does, and her description is adequate, acceptable. she might score well on a test. he then asks her to close her eyes and inhale a scent he places near her nose and then asks her to taste the wine again. she does, and this time kate can taste more in the wine - flavors that were there the first time, but that are "visible" to her palette after her olfactory experience. her new response might risk fracturing the 5 paragraph essay format and she may fail...

i've been thinking about this scene a lot over the last several months as i've been delving back into research literature that explores (and often bemoans) the state of adolescents' literacies. on the one hand, there is little space for their interpretations, literacies, and lives in the space of the school day (or, too often, in adolescent literacy research...); and on the other hand, there is little space or time in the school day, or curricula to offer new scents and lenses for youth to read their worlds and to reread texts and to delve deeply into the history of the soil in which the grapevines grow.

i was also thinking about the art of wine tasting as reading after watching breakfast on pluto. i won't go into the plot details but will say that i loved it and think it's absolutely worth watching. which is why i want to forget some of it before watching it again. that is, in the act of rereading, or re-watching in this case, the experience is never quite like the first time, but i'm wondering what scents and flavors i can experience before watching this movie again, for the first time ... (the first again-time, that is)

what if you don't know what you're good at before you try it?

today's ny times had two articles that captured my attention, both for their content and mutual resonance.

freakonomics authors stephen dubner and steven levitt, in their monthly column for the paper, took on the age old question of whether practice really does make perfect. based on their review of anders ericsson's research, the answer is a resounding yes! few of us, the authors argue in their article titled "a star is made," are born with the inherent ability to achieve/perform/excel at high levels without additional practice thrown in. they note:

"This is not to say that all people have equal potential. Michael Jordan, even if he hadn't spent countless hours in the gym, would still have been a better basketball player than most of us. But without those hours in the gym, he would never have become the player he was."

in another article on the sims, titled, "welcome to the new dollhouse," the author, seth schiesel, notes that this game, and others like it, are replacing the role that dolls used to occupy in the lives of children. schiesel includes quotes from young players and older academics alike; among them, jim gee, who posits that, "[Video games are] a great resource for them to design and think about relationships and social spaces."

where the article begins to break down, and where these game researchers and psychologists could take a lesson from the freakonomics noted above, is when gender is addressed in all too simple terms.

"Modern girls are very interested in video games, but then when they get toward high school they start to gravitate away because they begin to think that boys don't like girls who play games," said Professor Gee. "They give up their interest in video games around the same time they give up their interest in science and math and that's a real problem because boys use video games to foster an interest in technology, and if girls give that up we're going to continue to see a real gender imbalance in these areas."

levitt and dubner begin their piece by revealing that over half of european professional soccer players are born in the first three months of the year. then, at the end, explain that since the cut off for most team selections is done by calendar year, the kids who were born in december of a given year as assessed on their skill level alongside kids born in january. as the authors write:

"Guess which player the coach is more likely to pick? He may be mistaking maturity for ability, but he is making his selection nonetheless. And once chosen, those January-born players are the ones who, year after year, receive the training, the deliberate practice and the feedback — to say nothing of the accompanying self-esteem — that will turn them into elites."

shouldn't we be asking, of video games, more about the kinds of possibilities these games open up for kids who might not have thought to explore or pursue various avenues prior to playing games? what kinds of practices, identities, and rabbit-holes do these games allow kids to discover and create in ways that other activities do not? and, from a pedagogical standpoint, knowing that practice - and specifically ericsson's notion of "deliberate practice" - can develop, nurture and challenge an existing skill or talent, particularly when there is immediate and sustained feedback, what can we ask about how the girls who play video games are encouraged and supported to pursue their practice?

and finally, from the dollhouse article:

Ms. Kelleher of Carnegie Mellon said her research with school-age girls made much the same point. "If you walk into a room full of girls and ask them, 'Who wants to learn to program computers?' you don't get very many hands," she said. "But if you ask them, 'Who wants to learn how to make a movie like Pixar or perhaps something like The Sims?', you get a very different response. And fundamentally, those two activities can be the same thing."

why? and is this always the case? if yes, if no - where? why? when?

crazysuperfun-cam

check this out:



imagine the avatar-being, storytelling, world-creating fun you could have with this!

i really hope it's not a hoax... i always have this fear whenever something crazysuperfun is revealed to me. (thanks, ingrid!)

adolescent images

i love this image:


reminds me of what laurence fishburne was said in a wire image podcast interview - that there are possibilities for representing different images of the african american community and the movie he is currently featured in, Akeelah and the Bee, is an example of one such image. i haven't seen the movie, but am intrigued both by its premise and the lead actress, keke palmer.

the image above (it should change pics periodically) is taken from the website for the Youth Media Development Forum taking place this year in Mali. yes, i want to go; no, i'm not going. what's particularly interesting about this forum is that the organizers intend for this to be a forum for youth media producers from developing nations. there is tremendous potential, in an event like this, for new images to be produced and emerge. if anyone attends, or is planning to attend, do let me know!

PUBlicity

it's true, we all seek a bit of self promotion here and there. (sidebar: thus, who could blame the opal author entirely for her 17 year old enchantment at the prospect of having fame and quite a hefty fortune, all for fulfilling the requirements for someone else's "concept"...?)

's most recent issue is the second part of a special double issue titled, "Learning in the Digital Age: papers from the second Ideas in Cyberspace Education symposium." i've been reading this journal for the past couple of years and have found that it has quickly become my source for getting a pulse on how online spaces, identities, practices, and politics are being conceptualized, performed, and explored. in the near future, the special issue titled, "Digital Interfaces," guest edited by the fabulous angela, will hit the shelves (so to speak). for a sneak peak, go here. (you'll notice that yours truly has contributed to this issue, along with wonderful notables in the growing expanse of literacy research for/in "new" times.)

is this news?

mathu alerted me to yesterday's ny times article on ny killings, by the numbers. it notes that there were 540 homicides last year, though only 519 were committed last year; the other 21 were deaths were initiated by a homicide attempt that occurred in years prior.
...at any rate, the article states some facts that feel redundant, yet important to note:
- men and boys were responsible for 93 percent of the murders
- they killed with guns about two-thirds of the time
- their victims tended to be other men and boys
- and in more than half the cases, the killer and the victim knew each other

these are important facts because they, along with recent data published by the bureau of justice statistics indicate that non-white, non-asian - and more specifically, black - males experience the greatest number of deaths due to homicide. the BJS also notes that especially among young, black males, ages 18-24, have the highest "homicide victimization rates," and often at the hands of other young, black males.

what becomes of utmost important at this point in the conversation is what we do with this information. that is, do we treat these numbers as self-fulfilling prophecies? do attribute experiences to identity - that is, how are the identities of young, black males (re)positioned in light of this information? if i read this article as a teacher would i fall into the practices of many of the teachers in ann arnette ferguson's study whose assumptions about who the black boys might become paralyzed them from taking seriously their roles as educators who might engage in intellectual partnership with their students?

on wednesday, as i was leaving a talk given by edmund gordon held at iume, i was accompanied by an older, african american woman who also attended the talk and was looking for company on the walk back to campus. as we walked, we reflected on some of what gordon had brought up, namely the continued inequitable educational circumstances of many children who are underserved (and, i would argue, who lives are underrepresented in the political rhetoric surrounding education). as we turned onto amesterdam avenue, she wondered out loud if the crisis call surrounding the disproportionate numbers of african american and latino young men who are incarcerated would still exist if the 9 to 1 (versus white males) incarceration rate were reversed. "wouldn't they just find a solution," she mused.

i understand that the ny times and the bjs and the ojjdp have to report "the facts" - by government contract they are legally required to, but so, too, by public opinion are they obligated to do so. however, it is the the combination of complacency and lack of creative thinking surrounding the interconnected realities of mass incarceration, atrocious school buildings and classroom conditions, lowered or non-existent or deficit expectations by teachers, and the rapidly bifurcating of the economy into high tech and service sector jobs.

when 9, 13, and 16 year olds, alike, consistenly claim that their teachers or other adults don't like them, don't understand them and that they don't like school or care about anything, it isn't merely childhood or teenage angst; it is a window into this web of realities that has become rapidly monolithic in stature. but if we look closer, this monolith is really comprised of several small decisions such as the one to give cyrus the benefit of the doubt when he doesn't have an answer ready; or the act of believing that a group of kids joking and having fun with each other in front of their home are doing just that; or giving angel the chance to convey his responses through his drawing, not necessarily to limit him but to give him an entry into the conversation, as well...

is this news? i'm not sure. but so long as small moments and individual decisions continue be overlooked by large brushstroke policies and unthinking mandates, i suppose i'll keep being redundant.

performative disruptions - part 1

well, after the hoohah surrounding a fellow south asian (who is not - not yet - an engineer or doctor, tho she was perpetuating the dominant south asian narrative), i was intrigued to see another image of the creative south asian kid/adolescent emerge in the news, albeit under the frame of bollywood. still, this kid's voice is cute, if a bit coached.



Film director, 10, calls the shots
be sure to click on the audio link

he does note, however, at the end of his interview with the bbc that he wants to pursue his goal of becoming a 3D graphics engineer when he gets older (20 or 25)...

what exactly *is* the role of education (and i dont (just) mean schools)

the headline reads,

Death at Florida Boot Camp Draws Thousands of Protesters

a brief excerpt follows, but before that let me contextualize my reading of this article by saying that i saw this tagline on google news at the end of a long two day conference titled, "poor, young, black & male: a case for national action?" organized by elijah anderson, who i continue to revere and learn from and this conference was no exception. what was troubling/disconcerting/confusing/troubling was the persistence of images, stories, and dialogue about young, black males that continued to be framed by, or that responded to, narratives of pathology. that is, as my friend and colleague david wall rice and i discussed, when are we going to have (or take) the opportunity to render and explore more complex images of individuals whose lives are so often scripted under predetermined discourses, categories, and questions.

margaret beale-spencer called the audience to action by insisting that we do work that addresses and learns from the lives and strengths and assets that young, black men bring to the table, and not focus solely and repeatedly on pathological questions; another gentleman wondered why, at this conference, there wasn't greater involvement of and engagement with (there's that word with again...) young men who were at the focus of so much of the conversation. he poses a good question, not only practically - in terms of how we are to actually engage in social change and advocacy if we don't act collectively - but also methodologically - in terms of how young people, and especially young, black men are to be engaged as knowers about their own lives and as individuals who can and do imagine futures...

i will write more about this, but i offer the above as a frame for the following article which flashed tauntingly in front of me as i opened up a new homepage. while all of this dialogue is going on, young black men continue to be treated in terrible ways. the article details a recent response to an earlier atrocity that occurred in january of this year.

Death at Florida Boot Camp Draws Thousands of Protesters

The death of a teenager at a Florida boot camp for young offenders last January drew hundreds of protesters to the state capital today, where they called on state officials to finish an investigation and charge those responsible.

The teenager, Martin Lee Anderson, died Jan. 6 after guards at a Panama City juvenile boot camp repeatedly kicked, kneed and choked him, in an incident caught by a security camera. No arrests have been made and no guards have been fired.

Wearing t-shirts comparing the 14-year-old to Emmett Till, students from Tallahassee's three colleges joined a march led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. The march followed a two-day sit-in at the office of Gov. Jeb Bush.

read the rest of the article here.

out of school into schools

tonight i attended the launch party for EVC's curriculum titled: Youth-Powered Video: A Hands-on Curriculum for Teaching Documentary. the event was held at the midtown offices of listenup! - which, btw, is a wonderful and open space - and there were a variety of folks there including reps from EVC and listenup! and also the MediaRights org (which brings you the annual media that matters festivals). there were also several young people there, some of whom were featured in the clips that were shown which illustrated, a la case study format, the process of Documentary Workshop (one of the workshop strands at EVC).

once the clips were shown and a few of the staff offered explanations, one young man stood at the front of the room and talked about his experiences as an evc-alum. among the things he said (that i wrote down while jotting furiously) was (paraphrasing) that evc was a place where he could go and have something to show for the (extensive) time he spent there.

this made me think, again, about the hours spent sitting in desks... that are in rows... that are falling apart... with uncomfortable chairs... in which kids sit for hours... constructed as passive listeners... and prepped for tests... that many will not be prepared to pass... which will result in them being held back a grade... which will then result in many kids dropping out of school... which is often a place where kids go and have nothing to show for all the time spent sitting, listening, and being evaluated.

there's more to learn from the out of school worlds that youth seek out, but i wonder if in school spaces are ready to consider that wisdom... which includes, but is not limited to:
- co-constructed goals
- offering multiple spaces for young people to inhabit and perform multiple selves
- use of a variety of modalities
- ample opportunities to play, imagine, and express creativity
- relationships between adults and young people that are not entrenched in staid dynamics of power and authority, more characterized by with
...?

cuz we are liv-ing in a gadgety world...

and i want to be a gadgety girl. therefore, i should be sure to avoid the classes of a prof johnston at penn law and prof entman at u of memphis who have banned laptops in their courses. in a recent article in the daily pennsylvanian titled, "Laptops nixed in some law classes," johnston claims, "In law school, everything is Socratic method." he goes on to say that law students "have to listen very carefully. Without laptops, it's easier to do that. People are more tuned in."

an astute law student, anita allen, responds to these policies by noting that: "I think that professors who ban laptops are insecure about their ability to capture and maintain their students' attention... A professor should be able to compete with a stupid machine. If you are good, people will listen to you."

so, apparently the fear of higher ed informing k-12 is alive and kicking - and not in the intellectual freedom direction, but rather down the "all-eyes-and-ears-on-me-b/c-if-you're-not-looking-at-me-
you're-clearly-not-paying-attention" path.

crossing over

everywhere i look, people are making their multiple and often hybrid identities public. my friend marc, for example, frames our reading of his website and blog as that of "professor.author.speaker.public intellectual" - not only one of those things, but all together at once. i recently learned that alicia keys is flexing her acting chops in the upcoming film version of the "nanny diaries." madonna, as i've noted below, continues to assume and perform varied identities. and angela blogs about the adventures of her alter/2nd life-ego.

so why, with all of the examples of multiple and hybrid identities that abound, do we continue box some people in? for whom is reinvention allowable or perceivable? and for whom is hybridity an unrealistic possibility?

this seems particularly insidious when video games, reality television - nay, books, even, demand of the reader/audience/participant the awareness and instantiation of varied positioning and fluidity of self. and yet, with all of these invitations, the good student and the good school continue to be pictured as:
quiet
obedient
linear

i'm on this kick cuz as i was watching a late night rerun of yesterday's oprah, i was annoyed by a few things:

• the images of supportive classrooms as having desks in rows
  
• oprah's claim that bill gates had the original idea for making large, comprehensive high schools into small schools. um, wouldn't deborah meier and bill ayers be pissed to hear that? i don't blame oprah so much as i do her researchers; and i do blame bill gates for nodding emphatically (all will be forgiven if i were to, say, receive a gates grant :) )
• once again, kipp was lauded as being the savior of black boys. ok, not explicitly, but that was the implication. i was happy to see that images of success included kids imagining futures and not solely limited to test performance, however i worry that the message of "knowledge is power" might get muddied if not situated within a more critical framework that includes questions like, "in what ways do we construct knowledge?" and "whose knowledge has what power where? and what can we do about that?"
  

oprah has a choice, and the power, to do both - that is, praise these approaches/programs and also create a space to continue to push the potential complacency by demanding a critical lens. that is, yes we need schools were there are small enough classroom populations where teachers and students can get to really know one another; and we need a variety of resources to be available that stimulate kids imaginations, and not just help them meet standards or pass tests; and opportunities to engage in collective projects that actually do something in the world... there's more, but i'm tired and need more chai. bottom line: ed researchers are (hybrid) people, too, and possibly could have some interesting things to say about the state (crisis...?) of education today - things that not only true to do the same ol' better but that propose ways of engaging and educating that recognize and create spaces for individual hybridity. thank you alicia, marc, madonna, and angela. :)

youth (voices) in adult dominated spaces

after i'd been soaked with surprisingly persistent san francisco rain for most of the five days i was out there, i walked into the marriott hotel on 4th street to a room where folks - youth, mostly - were sharing pieces of their documentary work. folks from YouthRadio and Berkeley High's CAS program talked, screened, and engaged in the process of doing a different kind of (re)presentation work in the world.

about a week ago at TC's Threat N Youth conference, i had the good fortune to chair a panel where, once again, youth were not only at the front of the room (figuratively), but were the ones who participated in the conversation about who represents what, when, how; and why it matters; oh, and, what exactly do we mean when we talk about race and gentrification and class and (in)equity...??

despite these brief moments of youth voices and presence in the adult-dominated worlds of academic conferences, the remains a skepticism on the part of some these adults about what it does to disrupt the adult norms in such venues. when i express support of these moments, i am met with responses such as "kids put front and center further isolates and sensationalizes their lives," or, "the value stands in the interpretation of their words, and not so much in their words or thoughts alone." i certainly don't want to put young people in hostile environments, but i can't help but wonder if the desire to "protect" young people is more about protecting them from adults have to say about them, than from what adults may say to them during a "live" discussion.

the take home message: check out YouthRadio and the work of lissa soep - ed director of youth radio - who was recently featured in tcrecord.

material...material...material...girl.

picture this: an 8 year old, whose parents emigrated from india only four short years earlier, is dancing around on the hardwood floor in her living room to the tune of "material girl." this is the song written on a piece of folded, white paper that she picked out of a hat and is now acting out. yes, that third grader was me and material girl was one of the first songs i knew all the lyrics to. i think it was all the pink in the video that got to me - that, and i couldn't quite figure out how madonna got her voice to catch or yelp or whatever it is she does in between some of the phrases in the song.

anyway, fast forward... 22 years (wow!) and madge is back on tour. and i have to say, im not sure how i feel about it. i like to work out to some of her tracks - particularly helpful for getting past stomach cramps while running is the crazy "ray of light" collection, interspersed with some old school janet jackson (clearly, i'm stuck in the 80s) - however, at what point is it enough? im not talking about the touring, or writing, or recording, but the extensive and expansive quality of the shows that she and other performers continue to put on. the lights, lasers, costume changes, extras... it adds up! ticket prices for "bad" seats in the $60-70 range? i clearly didn't choose the most lucrative profession... yet, even as i write this, i suppose the series of events that make up the tour are akin to the running of a play or musical that some people are willing to shell out big bucks for.

i guess my real question is: why is everything so damn expensive?
(says the 8 year old inside me itching to dance around to some madonna, live. maybe i'll go do just that...)

just for fun

(message rec'd from my sister via her friend)

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1 o'clock the time and date will be:
01:02:03 04/05/06.

boys, not men

this past friday i was a part of panel titled, Teaching African American Males: What Educators Need to Know, which was held at Penn GSE. it was a privilege to be invited back to my alma mater and in the company of the other speakers on the panel: vivian gadsden and howard stevenson. i came away with two key points that resonate strongly with the work that i do.

gadsden shared statistics about the experiences of black males that should give more of us a strong call to action to make changes in how we "do" education. among them:

15% of black males are in special education - twice the number of black females.

she then noted that we should not be making comparisons between black boys and girls. she argued that both are being summarily dismissed by the educational system.

stevenson, drawing on his PLAAY project, began his brief response by asking the packed audience to repeat after him:

"boys not men"

he then showed a video in which images of adolescent african american males playing basketball, laughing, talking, and reflecting were cut with more staggering statistics that brought home the point that these young men, and many others like them, are being read by the world, at large, as men whose futures are already written for them. as one of the young men in the film notes "i'm only 16."

how do we get past the multiple mis-knowings that occur daily - in the media, in schools, in everyday interactions?

omg - im not a geek!

according to a recent quiz in this week's newsweek, i am not geeky enough. i've apparently been feeding myself a lie for many years. either that, or i need to get some gadgets, stat!

see for yourself:

How Geeky Are You?

ny times and young black men

last week there was an article in the ny times titled, "plight deepens for black men, studies warn," that presumably prompted sunday's op-ed "a poverty of the mind" submitted by orlando patterson of harvard university. he calls on social scientists to consider "culture" in making sense of the extreme realities of poverty, which he discusses this way:

"Why are young black men doing so poorly in school that they lack basic literacy and math skills? These scholars must know that countless studies by educational experts, going all the way back to the landmark report by James Coleman of Johns Hopkins University in 1966, have found that poor schools, per se, do not explain why after 10 years of education a young man remains illiterate.

Nor have studies explained why, if someone cannot get a job, he turns to crime and drug abuse. One does not imply the other. Joblessness is rampant in Latin America and India, but the mass of the populations does not turn to crime.

And why do so many young unemployed black men have children — several of them — which they have no resources or intention to support? And why, finally, do they murder each other at nine times the rate of white youths?"

in response patterson asks, "Why have academics been so allergic to cultural explanations?"

among the ways that patterson uses culture include:

"Modern students of culture have long shown that while it partly determines behavior, it also enables people to change behavior. People use their culture as a frame for understanding their world, and as a resource to do much of what they want."

"SO why were they [black boys] flunking out [of high school]? Their candid answer was that what sociologists call the "cool-pose culture" of young black men was simply too gratifying to give up. For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture, the fact that almost all the superstar athletes and a great many of the nation's best entertainers were black."

"For young black men, however, that culture is all there is — or so they think. Sadly, their complete engagement in this part of the American cultural mainstream, which they created and which feeds their pride and self-respect, is a major factor in their disconnection from the socioeconomic mainstream."

questions come to mind:

- how is culture being defined? what are the boundaries of culture? cultural participation? identification?
- what are the implications of "cross cultural research" - for what questions are asked; how data is interpretated; access to participants, data, meaning, communities?
- how do we ask cultural questions without indicting cultural practices? (though this might just be fueling the fire...)
- how do researchers position themselves in relation to the questions they are asking? culture/cultural practices they are studying?
- in what ways is culture useful and not useful as a frame for understanding "what's going on?"

i also wonder: in what ways might it help to complicate the causalities the author presents?
for example, he offers a few "if A, then B" statements (particularly in the discussion of employment) such as:

"...in New York such jobs offered an opportunity to the chronically unemployed to join the market and to acquire basic work skills that they later transferred to better jobs, but that the takers were predominantly immigrants."

if A="NY jobs offered an opportunity to the chronically unemployed to join the market..."
and
B="but that the takers were predominantly immigrants." (and by inference, not young black men)
what other relationships could be made to explain the relationship between these two statements? these are statements full of meaning and history and to investigate this space between them likely requires a new set of questions beyond "why" and with a (perhaps) more multidimensional understanding of culture, itself. patterson seems to be getting at this suggestion, himself, when he notes, "The same cultural patterns can frame different kinds of behavior, and by failing to explore culture at any depth, analysts miss a great opportunity to re-frame attitudes in a way that encourages desirable behavior and outcomes."

still, patterson's insistence on culture being positioned in an explanatory stance worries me; and at the same time, (economic) poverty remains a reality - what patterson both links to and disengages from when arguing for a cultural focus on "the problem." he writes:

"In academia, we need a new, multidisciplinary approach toward understanding what makes young black men behave so self-destructively."

from a methodological perspective, the relationship between social scientist and the focus/phenomenon of study cannot continue to maintain rigid barriers of knower and studied; there is a danger of overgeneralizing all that is "good" and "bad" in service of (a homogeneous) society; a danger of making uninformed claims about self-destruction and self-construction. if we only use a victim/perpetrator frame to approach social life in the inner city, then we blind ourselves to other realities and run the risk of misusing culture as a frame.

choices? what choices?

two stories led cnn's education section yesterday:

1. Florida high school students may pick majors
in brief - the Fla legislature is trying to pass a bill to allow high schoolers to choose a major and take courses accordingly.

2. 2,000 Katrina refugees fail Texas exam
in brief - Texas school officials assert that it is because of unpreparedness and improper grade placement that led to 2K kids who were forced to relocate b/c of hurricane katrina's devastating effect on the southeastern US. note: these are the do-or-die tests; the ones that determine whether the kids go on to the next grade.
from the article:

Between the two grades, about 2,000 refugees failed. Students who failed will have two more opportunities to pass the test this spring, but some worry the learning gap is too wide to close.

ok, first, why are we calling people refugees? isn't this a misuse of the word?
second, perhaps the author of this article and the TX school officials who this AP writer spoke with need to spend some time rethinking the phrase "learning gap" and delve deeply into Echoes of Brown, whose participants intentionally name education inequity as "The Opportunity Gap."

5th annual hip-hop odyssey international film festival

Now accepting submissions

Festival dates:
November 24, 2006 – December 2, 2006

[from hip-hop odyssey site]
As the largest Hip-Hop film festival in the world, the H2O [Hip-Hop Odyssey] International Film Festival provides a platform for filmmakers to showcase and define the variety of images that depict Hip-Hop culture and its communities.

This year’s theme “WHOSE WORLD IS THIS?” highlights the Hip-Hop community of the early/mid 90’s; a time when youth in the community began demanding money, power, and respect.

[from thuglifearmy.com]
The Hip-Hop Association, producers of the largest International Hip-Hop film festival in the world, will begin accepting submissions for its Fifth Annual Hip-Hop Odyssey (H2O) International Film Festival (H2O IFF) taking place from November 28, 2006 – December 8, 2006 in New York. Submissions will be accepted starting April 1, 2006.

5,000 festival-goers, screening over 75 films supported the 2005 festival in just 6 days. “In our fifth year we’re celebrating the Golden Years, where the 90’s Hip-Hop art, rebellion, business, unity and conscious soul movements soared to the next level. It was a great time of diversity; different hoods, musical sounds and struggles were all being represented. At the same time people were uniting and demanding more, all for the love of Hip-Hop. We’re celebrating that spirit… expect an amazing year,” says Rolando Brown, Executive Director of the Hip-Hop Association.

Taking place from November 28, 2006 – December 8, 2006 in New York, USA, this year’s theme “Whose World Is This?” highlights the Hip-Hop community of the early/mid 90’s; a time when youth in the community began stepping up and demanding money, power, and respect. In 2006, accepted films will be competing for a variety of awards, including cash awards, opportunities for distribution deals—DVD, broadcast, and web streaming—as well as inclusion in hundreds of community screenings and events.

H2O IFF showcases films that include one of the elements of Hip-Hop culture in the films theme, story or subject matter, i.e. Breaking (B-Boy/Girl), DJ'ing, MC'ing, Graffiti/Aerosol Artistry, Beatbox'ing, Knowledge, Culture, and Overstanding. Films categorized as "Under the influence" need only depict content that is relevant to the overall culture and may contain, but are not limited to, a focus on fashion, music, language, location, theme and/or characters influenced by Hip-Hop culture. All genres welcome: Documentary, Narrative, Experimental, Animation, PSA (Public Service Announcements), Freestyle/Experimental, Music Video, Trailer, and Youth Media.

“We use media as a tool for empowerment, education and social awareness within the Hip-Hop community, so open up your boxes, and let’s get to work!,” says Stacey L’Air Lee, Director of the H2O [Hip-Hop Odyssey] media initiative.

Until then, filmmakers can take advantage of two weeks of discounted early submissions from March 15, 2006 to March 31, 2006. Regular submission deadline is June 31, 2006. For more information, and a downloadable submission application visit http://www.h2oiff.org.

About the Hip-Hop Odyssey (H2O) Media Initiative

Social Awareness Through Media! The H2O [Hip-Hop Odyssey] is the media initiative of the Hip-Hop Association. With programming like the H2O [Hip-Hop Odyssey] International Film Festival, the Freshest Youth Program, the Odyssey Awards, and the Defuse Media Lab, its mission is to create cultural sustainability & industry longevity by supporting the use of Hip-Hop culture as a tool for social awareness & youth empowerment. The initiative also includes the acquisition of media properties that the H2O directors, staff, and advisory board believe will support this mission. Defuse News is one such media property. For more information please visit http://www.h2oiff.org.

what the... oh, it's the government at work...

according to reuters:
FCC hits TV stations for indecent shows

the same story's headline on the fcc site:
FCC Releases Orders Resolving Numerous Broadcast Television Indecency Complaints.

so the fcc's way of "clearing house" is to take pending "cases" and basically dole out fines like they were [insert good metaphor here - cuz we know i suck at metaphors...]

ok, first - who in the hell makes up the hundreds of thousands of people who write in the damn complaints when they are offended by an episode of "the surreal life" (obvious reason, notwithstanding) and where are the voices of opposition to the use of the "people's airwaves" during the precious hours of 6-10pm - when the "children" are watching - by our "elected" officials who spew, hurl, and vomit human atrocities at us? not sure if that sentence structure worked, but the point is about what gets tagged obscene and indecent and what gets a pass? and who decides? oh yeah, this guy.

from ABC Victoria (australia)

the article titled, "Hear my voice - Calls for change from the mouth of babes" shares news of young people from around the world attending and documenting the events associated with Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.

from the article:
Nine youth reporters from Ghana, Pakistan and India are our eyes and ears at the games providing a fresh insight into how this extravagance is viewed by those that have so little.

They're aged 14-21 and will spend the next two weeks, camera in hand, experiencing the adventure of a lifetime as part of the media team for the 2006 Commonwealth games.

...

In their home countries Fatimata and Madassar play a very important role, raising awareness in their local communities to the dangers of AIDS, child abuse and the importance of free speech.

The media projects aim to challenge the mentalities and behaviour of the communities they live in and provide the future leaders of the nation a chance to be heard.

For now the children hunger for change, but they tell their stories in the hope one day they will only be seen as a record of the ways of the past.

Read the complete article here.

tv for the tv-less

www.youtube.com

recently viewed:
- oc clips (natch)
- myspace - the movie
- facebook - the movie

and then there's the ever expanding world of video google... what questions do we need to be asking about spaces for identity construction and literacy performances (blackburn, 2003) now??

writer's goo

writer's block is horribly misnamed. it isn't always the case that there is something standing in the way of you and the writing. it sometimes happens that the relationship between thought and writing is too little that incoherence is the only result.

michael (a participant from the rikers oral history project) said it best when he talked about writing as not so much difficult to do as it was hard to pin down. i find that's the case these days when i've completed one looming writing assignment, two revisions; i have two concrete pieces still ahead; and many more starts of ideas that will hopefully become full pieces someday. but at the moment, i am caught in a cycle of writing a bit of everything and long periods of everything BUT writing.

one of those things has to do with completing the novel "love walked in" by marisa de los santos. the way she uses words to describe emotions and characters' thoughts makes me excited about the possibilities of writing to do interesting work in the world. i loved both her use of language and the story she told. and yet, i find myself continuing to be mired in goo.

but i digress... de los santos writes her adolescent girl character - clare - with depth, integrity and complexity that feels rare in adult-based discussions of youth. yes, this is a novel, but it has implications for the dimensions we choose to pay attention to and document about the young people with whom we talk, laugh, learn, work, etc... in one moment, she describes how clare sees a quilt resting on the back of an armchair and takes a second to run her hand over the quilt before sitting in the chair - she does so, de los santos tells us, because she wouldn't want something so beautiful to feel it's beauty and place had been overlooked simply because someone was looking for a place to sit.

of course, the author's words are more precise and eloquent, but this one paragraph reminded me that actions, even small ones, have consequence, weight, importance. this point can get lost in the flurry of taking attendance, class discussions, checking homework, and the like...

pieces of wars and peace

What does it mean to be a in a time of war? Can we remember what peace felt like? There are local and global perspectives on both, and neither war nor peace is a singular concept. Several calls for papers I’ve come across recently invite articles, essays, and commentaries on the subject of life after/following/in light of war, conflicts, disasters, etc. Presumably the impetus for these calls are grounded in the tangible events such as the bombing of the Twin Towers, the war in Iraq, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Yet, I am drawn to wonder whether because of these recent events, stacked together in hurried succession, we have a heightened sense of war-ness and peace-ness; does the global “We” have less of an excuse to be complacent to the needs of the local “We?”

We are more aware on a surface level of the struggles and triumphs of our neighbors across hemispheric lines, but how much more aware are we of the needs and resources of our neighbors across the street? I know that Slobodan Milosovic died in his prison cell, but what do I know about the lives of the kids who play in the park across the street from my building? Gloria Ladson-Billings spoke on Friday at TC about Education in the Public Interest – she and William Tate have an edited volume of a similar title that will be available from TC Press next month. As she raised questions about which public garners the interest of education, research, and the policymakers alike, she invited us all to question with her. i ask: Whose interest are we serving when we ask about teaching, living, coping, learning in a time post-war, post-conflict, post-disaster? For whom are these “posts” optimistic hopes? And in what ways might people be living in both a time of war and peace? A moment of hope and frustration?

Both. And.

Both War And Peace. At the same time. I know that’s how Biggz talked about the moment of sharing his words with an extended audience – at the same time expressing reflections on moments, some of which felt like war, others when he was at peace. This moment, of the sharing, being both one of peace and possibility; and war and conflict as he continues to sit within the concrete walls.

The Child Soldiers project offers some nuanced thoughts and images on the complicated topics of war and peace, but also about all that might exist between.

A couple of the calls I mentioned earlier:
From Perspectives on Urban Education
From English Journal

more kts2 - audio link

here's the aforementioned link to the wnyc report about the reading last week.

link to story
link to audio (mp3)

kts2

this past friday - 3.3.06 - we returned to rikers island for a reading in celebration of the second volume of oral histories being published. of the nine young men whose stories are featured in the book, three were at the reading and read selections from their chapters along with one of us - 5 educators, teachers, and graduate students from tc. the reading took place at the chapel inside the jail, down the hall from the high school site where the stories were crafted. the event was documented by a reporter from wnyc, a local npr station, and we were told that the story would be aired some time this weekend, although i haven't heard it yet. i'll post a link when i find it.

what was most salient for me about the event was the interactions between the teachers at the high school and the three young men who stood up at the makeshift podium and performed their stories. there were moments of hesitation that were quickly met with shouts of encouragement from the audience - "take your time, brother!" as biggz read his piece, his teacher looked on, not quite with an ordinary brand of pride but with an expression that indicated that his heart was full at that particular moment. this expression remained as jermaine c. and phat boi read their selections and shared the stage with me and kerry, respectively. (all names are the pseudonyms selected by the authors and how they are credited in the book)

following the reading was a reception in one of the classrooms, and as plates of food were prepared and passed around by the school staff, two of the authors sat at one of the round tables signing books at the request of their teachers and others, their heads held high, and smiles on their faces. this was a good moment. a explicit recognition of the hybrid identities and discourses we all inhabit. a glimpse at the possibility for second chances and new beginnings.

from the back cover:
“It’s amazing what we can learn about the experiences and challenges
confronting incarcerated youth by listening to their voices. Those who seek to
help young people avoid a life of frustrated dreams and unfulfilled potential
will find wisdom in these words.”
—Pedro Noguera
New York University, Steinhardt School of Education

blogging drawback

so today i learned at least one potential drawback of blogging:
sounding like a repetitive schlub to people who read my blogthoughts.

the upshot: people are reading this stuff
the scary thing: people are reading this stuff

also, i came across this site in my random blog searching i've taken to doing these days (love google blog search...):
edu.blog.com - i think this link is to a section on digital video animation and the descriptor for the blog reads: "Ewan McIntosh shows how blogs and podcasts aren't just a gimmick: they can be used to provide powerful learning in Scottish schools."

blog on!