being in tune with oneself

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)

Watch more free documentaries

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

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

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

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

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

From autumn loveliness

links for video as art - ken burns workshop

 

 

 

 

research video

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

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

"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

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"

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

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.

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

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"

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

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

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

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.