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!

new blog on the horizon

check out barbershop notebooks

welcome to the blogosphere, marc! :)

greetings from nctear 2006 - chicago

it's late on night 2 of the nctear mid-winter conference. the theme:
literacy as a civil right: reclaiming social justice in literacy research and teaching

and the sessions i've attended have served to add to my conviction that questions of what we research and how we research are not mutually exclusive; and moreover, why we research can/must/should engage questions of social justice and enactments toward real social change.

while i have felt this thread of inquiry to be generative, i have also heard comments that allude to whether or not the audience who is attending this conference with this focused theme might be the same audience who attends next year's conference, which tentatively has a focus on the evolving digital landscape of literacies. i wonder: can we continue to separate emerging questions about digital literacies and persistent convictions about literacy as a civil right?

in my work i find solace in the complementary and intertwined trajectories of race-critical and digital epistemological theories. this is more than a naive musing of "can't we all just get along;" it is a recognition of the urgency for social justice - for radical rethinking and changing of the real inequities that persist in the lived experiences of too many young people, children, families - that is implicit in both of these related literacy foci. is it time to encourage/challenge ourselves, our colleagues, our graduate students to seek out and intentionally engage with the messy work of "research that does something." even as i write that, i recognize that some may take umbrage with the definition of "something" implicit in that statement - i mean to say that we ought to be explicit about what kind of work it is that we want our research to do in the world. and not all work for social justice looks the same, but perhaps we should be on the journey together.

so, to the nctear 2006 audience i say, "i hope to see you in '07!" and to those of you who read this and got to the end, i encourage you to check out nctear - start by exploring this year's conference schedule and stay tuned for info on next year.

boy troubles

i've been reading the story in a recent issue of newsweek titled, "The trouble with boys" and so far, i'm not sure what to make of it. the crux of the article is concerned with boys' academic achievement - appalling, apparently, in contrast to girls.

the author notes, "In the last two decades, the education system has become obsessed with a quantifiable and narrowly defined kind of academic success, these experts say, and that myopic view is harming boys." i don't disagree that this view of assessment and education is myopic, but i wonder what the underlying implication is for how we understand the intersections of gender and academics. namely b/c the following two sentences of that same paragraph read:

Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls—and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one. "Very well-meaning people," says Dr. Bruce Perry, a Houston neurologist who advocates for troubled kids, "have created a biologically disrespectful model of education."

caught up in this logic is the implicit notion that this "model of education," while "disrespectful" for some, is beneficial for others. doesn't this perspective let the designers of a measurement-obsessed philosophy of education off the hook?

there's something else that bugs me about all of these studies of gender and education (in which I claim to participate, as well, by the way), and that is all that gets overlooked when we ask questions that further dichotomize the experiences of boys and girls, of males and females, as they navigate institutions. could it be that more kids are engaging in exciting, fun, and interesting interactions in which education transpires, but which occurs outside of school; and these interactions of education are becoming more and more dissimilar to how education is being (con)/(de)fined in schools?

yes. and we have plenty of evidence to confirm this suspicion.

still, as the article describes, boys who are "antsy" and restless are internalizing their teachers' reactions to them and in turn calling themselves "stupid." that can't be good.

ok, more on this and the recent barage of "boy" articles and other media in a following post...

"killing the sky"

the second volume of stories produced by young men at rikers island will be published soon by Student Press Initiative (SPI). (first volume pictured above)
ruth vinz, co-director of Student Press Initiative, noted:

"The Rikers Project is only a start," says Vinz. "If we are serious about not leaving our children, or adolescents, behind, we need to help young people see how their learning can help them construct, negotiate, understand and take constructive action in the world."

echoing the words of one of the young men we worked with, i hope many more readers than we can imagine will read these young men's stories and "feel what [they're] saying." and as i think about the spaces and geographies afforded by new technologies, i wonder about the kinds of spaces that might be opened up through the technology of the printed word - that is, using the word to break the word and in doing so, what? could that be a new and significant kind of space?

right(s) to education

over the last two weeks i've attended a series of side events related to the 7th session of the ad hoc committee going on at the UN in which they are drafting a convention on the "Rights of Persons with Disabilities."

among the points raised over and over again at the side events was the need to listen to people with disabilities in the writing and hopeful implementation of this and other conventions and policies. especially poignant was the presentation by six young people ranging in age from 15 to 26 who shared stories about living with and being moved to engage in social action because of their (primarily physical) disabilities.

at the last event i attended, there was a great push by the presenters - who were mostly from NGOs in the UK, and several of whom were living with various disabilities, themselves - to distinguish between the integration of children with disabilities in mainstream schools and the real practice of inclusion, which asks educators and educational institutions to meet the learning needs of all students in their charge. naturally, teacher training (as they called it) was invoked as one area in the greatest need of attention if attitudes about disabilities - as they are made manifest in teachers' practice - were going to be changed.

this made me think about a couple of conversations i've had in which the focus was on culturally relevant pedagogy. i'm wondering how many of the missteps in teaching and learning might be avoided, or at least made addressable, if we found ways to address and decrease the abundant amounts of xenophobia that are entrenched in so many of educational practices. the very notion of special education - that children who don't fit within the general pattern of "student" ought to be isolated and visibly and repeatedly marginalized - is made more possible by national educational mandates that incentivize uniformity and make otherwise caring educators see anyone outside the normative expectations as distracting from the school's collective AYP.

i don't currently work in a school so i am aware of the potential "flippish" quality of this post, but i am only slightly apologetic b/c too many kids and young people i've worked and talked to echo similar concerns. too often they feel unwanted by their schools and teachers for requiring additional attention that few seem to be willing to spare.

so, to my colleague who wondered what's next - for after all, it's been 10 years since gloria ladson-billings wrote "Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy" - and to all of us who worry about preaching to choirs, i wonder whether it's a wake up call to not only sing louder, but also to sing the same song. ok, i'm terrible with metaphors - clearly - but i suppose what i've recently been reminded of is that just b/c something is out there, it doesn't mean everyone has read it. (concerns about cutting-edge theory building and research notwithstanding...)

and in other news...

there's no question about the adolescent nature of this recent snl...ummm...performance.

powerful storytelling

in the last month i've spent a lot of time watching stories - online, on tv, in photos - and much of that time was spent watching and rewatching David Sutherland's documentary Country Boys that aired as a part of PBS's Frontline series.

watch it here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/countryboys/view/

and then be sure to read what others are saying after seeing the film. texts such as this continue to extend my thinking on digital geographies of, for, and by youth...

more on tv

marc and sarah's comments have me thinking...

powerful in what sense? i.e., in being able to reach oodles and millions of people with a single soundbyte? will anything reach the ubiquitousness of tvs? even ipods are trying to make tvs and the tv experience more accessible; tivo encourages our habits of making sure we don't miss a single episode of "america's next top model;" dvds of television shows are as popular (maybe more?) than movie rentals (especially for poor schulbs like myself who use the laptop as a movie/tv theater); etc... yet, the question about what the second most powerful medium is makes me wonder: is tv a singular medium? that is, can we watch tv now as a singular activity? re: the ipods example - it's tv in conjunction with a host of other functions.

getting back to exploring the dimension of "powerful" - in what ways is television powerful? while listening to someone wax poetic about the influences of media on "today's youth," i got to thinking about yesterday's youth? are we, or were we ever, without "influence" of some kind? why is influence necessarily a bad thing? i'm intrigued by the question of for whom tv is powerful... in viewing it? in producing it? in critiquing it? that's what i want to know from the Current TV folks - what makes TV the most powerful medium in the world? is it, as eric clapton sang, in the way that you use it? (sorry clapton fans!)

tv..Tv..TV!

the "about" page of Current TV screams:

Right now, at this moment in history, TV is the most powerful medium in the world.

words like "unprecedented" and phrases like "carpe diem" are clanging around in my head as i read this sentence over and over again. this is something that i should be posting to the tv blog, but there's an aspect of it that compels me to blog here. i am referring to what has come to be called "youth media." this term seems to refer to a wide range of interactions between young people and the emerging and growing landscape of digital, documentary technologies. (that's my take on it...) so, with all this potential to counter-narrate and newly populate the viewing landscape with texts that may not currently be accessible, what is actually happening? how much of this "counter" work is currently going on?

so, back to the Current TV declaration: is tv the most powerful medium in the world?

youth outlook videos

i've mentioned YO! Youth Outlook before, but wanted to re-mention this "award-winning literary journal of youth life in the Bay Area" to highlight some of the recent pieces that have been added (both audio and video):

What are you thankful for? - YO! Audio Street Interviews
"YO! hits the streets to ask young folks what they're thankful for this thanksgiving."

French Riots Aftermath -- The Video

YO!TV @ G.A.M.E. Conference
"Gamers from all over the country came to the G.A.M.E. conference to get the first look at all of the new titles being released this year."

check them out here

greetings from aaa in dc

im at the anthro meeting, typing in the dark in my hotel room as my roommate sleeps. i told a story last night during my session that i feel compelled to share here:

a young man i interviewed, as part of an oral history project with young men who attend one of the dept of ed schools on rikers island, followed up our conversation by asking me whether "little kids" were going to be reading the book that we are working on which will contain the participants' stories (which they craft and which evolve from the initial interviews). i said that i thought they would be. he continued by acknowledging his approval at this intent, noting that he wanted his story and the benefit of his hindsight to reach younger kids. he then paused momentarily, and said that what he wanted my help with "mak[ing] sure that people feel [his] story."

i shared this story as part of a session entitled, "new methodologies and modes of representation in literacy research with youth." to be talking about this topic and related issues with others whose approaches are also ethnographic and wrestle with the challenges of researcher participation and roles, is exciting. the papers on the panel were all so diverse and rich in ethnographic detail and, like someone else noted, "had a great synergy" about them.

at the same time, i know that the nrc conference is going on and some of the folks there are asking, engaging with, and struggling to understand many of the same issues and topics related to youth, literacies, technologies, and representation.

amidst all this engaging, challenging, and struggling, are we finding - or even looking for - ways to make sure that people "feel" the stories that we're sharing? and if not, how can we do so with greater impact? and if so, then are we having an impact? are stories being felt as well as heard?

digital geographies

this spring i'll be teaching an offshoot, of sorts, of the adolescent literacies course from last year which will be titled, "digital geographies and virtual spaces." i'm so excited to explore this topic with students and, like earlier this year, am seeking suggestions for texts to include. the brief, in-process course description is as follows:

Course Description:
Youth are traversing increasingly complex digitized terrains with the advent and growing access to new media and technologies. Young people’s social and cultural practices reflect a heightened engagement of new forms of communication and learning that occur in newly developed spaces. However, the voices of youth continue to be largely missing from current debates around the implications of these emerging technologies. In this course, we will explore these spaces and consider how the evolving relationship between new technologies and new modes of communication and literacy are making these spaces possible. Using texts that put youth voices at the forefront, we will look at how youth are using these digital geographies for a variety of purposes as well as how they engage a variety of digital and non-digital resources to create new geographies in order to accommodate the emerging practices around meaning making, including: video games, blogs, video documentaries, and more. Finally, this course will be a space to explore what it means for youth to represent in this increasingly digital age.

i await your suggestions! :)

harry potter and the ever-growing todo list

it's the 20th of november and i still haven't paid my $10 to sit and watch the cinematic representation of the fourth Harry Potter book. i am utterly entranced when i read the books - most attractive to me are the spells that rowling conjures up and which then i wish actuallly worked.

at any rate, i recently came across some movie reviews written by seattle youngsters who had just viewed Goblet of Fire. their enthusiasm is contagious and their attention to detail is exciting, but perhaps most entertaining is the use of language, imagery and persuasion by 9-13 year-olds. the take home message: go see the movie!

i'll report back after i do. in the meantime, i need to fit in rereading the book between an upcoming conference paper and an article revision. sometimes it's so much more fun to engage with adolescents and their literacy explorations rather than merely composing texts about them... hmmm...

mirror, mirror...sitting in front of me

i've been thinking a lot about the role of interviews: their purpose, the social dynamics, the physical interactions and linguistic jockeying... i recently interviewed two young men who i had only for a very short time prior to engaging in this rather intimate exchange. in this setup, i, a stranger, asked them to share with me aspects of their lives, how they felt about learning in their lives, and asked them to reflect - out loud - about these big ideas while being recorded onto minidisc. what was most surprising to me, however, was the enthusiasm with which each participated in this event. after each interview, as we engaged in an impromptu debrief of our conversation, both young men described the time that had just transpired as cathartic and enjoyable.

shortly following these interviews i was talking with a woman about a different project and we were settling on a time for me to interview her. i have known this woman for a little while now and so the background for the interview is different, yet she said something that made me wonder about my conversations with the two young men: she remarked that she was happy to do an interview and said that she, like anyone else, would welcome the chance to talk more and reflect on everyday goings on. in saying so she hinted that an interview would almost be a luxury.

this got me thinking about the role of interviews in how we gather data with young people. if interviews are so out of sync with their usual discourse patterns, what role do they really play in research with youth? linguists and linguistic anthropologists have wrestled with this question in other ways, noting that the interview itself is a peculiar speech event. thus, the information gathered must be engaged with the proverbial grain of salt. but this line of thinking strengthens the case of those of us who are seeking new ways to engage and include young people's perspectives, positionalities, and imaginations in our work. i would argue that the peculiarity of "the interview" demands that we rework and re-imagine methods that create opportunities for youth-full reflections...

with that said, there seems to be something valuable and significant about "the interview" in talking with and learning from young people, particularly in honoring the historical importance and tradition of oral history. ... and in collectively creating still more spaces for more voices to be heard oustide the construct of interviews.

when i asked one of the young men to expand on his remark that he had really enjoyed our conversation, he paused... and then noted that this was the first time he had had a chance to talk about "some of that stuff" and that it felt good to do so. it is my/our responsibility to make sure that his "stuff" is handled with respect.

creating to the point of stupidity

last week i attended a conversation with frank gehry, hosted by kelvin shawn sealey. the conversation was held at columbia's low library as part of the citizen project, whose previous guests have included bell hooks, gloria steinem, and cornel west. gehry's visit was titled "architecture in the public imagination." i had little knowledge of gehry's work beyond the guggenheim extension in bilbao, spain and the experience music project in seattle, wa. (i later learned he was the architect behind one of my favorite buildings, located on the mit campus.)

during the course of the hourlong conversation i gained more insight into what i have written about earlier as trying to "break my eye open" - according to gehry, he tries to find ways to create movement through inert objects, hence the fluidity and almost falling-like nature of many of notable buildings. (there's also the significance of the fish as a source of design and inspiration, but that is a slightly longer story better told by frank, himself.)

in a clip that was shown from a recent documentary that his friend sidney pollack made about gehry, his life and his work, we see gehry note that a design he is working on is "so stupid looking it's great." he laughs to himself and the camera and at the cardboard mock-up of a building that has since been built.

as a young man, gehry was taken by his ceramics teacher, who, he noted at the talk, "must have seen something in me," to a house that he was working on and soon afterwards, seeing gehry's face light up with a mix of awe and enthusiasm, the teacher enrolled him in an architecture class. as he put it, "that must have been the beginning of that."

"that" turned out to be some of the "stupidest" looking buildings that make people stop, talk, listen, wonder, and question. if that's stupid, we should all be so lucky.

youth sounds

a view from their first year:

http://ia300124.us.archive.org/0/items/YearOne/YearOne.mov


for whom/in what ways does it matter that youth media production is a spreading phenomenon?

should we be seeking ways to increase the awareness of youth produced media? to disseminate it more widely? what are the consequences of doing so? what are the consquences if we do not?

storying his/herstories

this is the headline i saw when i logged onto cnn.com this morning: "Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks dies at 92"

it's been almost 50 years to the day since her rise to historic fame as one of the public faces of the civil rights movement. as we approach the anniversary of ms. parks' instance of holding her ground on a public bus, i'm moved to ask what has happened to the movement? before giving in to my cynical side, i turn to youth and the rich storying that young people are engaging across a variety of modalities.

among these multimodal texts is this one: the children of birmingham

in this piece of animated storytelling, produced and created by youth iving in baltimore, a young woman's voice talks about the historical relevance of birmingham, al, and specifically about the role that children and youth played in the protests against segregation. the participants in this project were 10-14 years old and created this text as part of a summer program called kids on the hill.

consider their text within the broader narrative of civil rights in this country, and ask who has been telling the stories? their images, animation, story, and voice - complete with an occasional chorus of "we shall overcome" sung by the narrator - adds a new and intergenerational layers to the interview segments available in the online resource gallery of the birmingham civil rights institute.

bringing together reflections of the past with present interpretations makes possible a path to different futures. at least that's what young people who are busy making movies, telling tales, and demanding their voices be heard would have us believe. the promise of youth media to me lies in both the medium and the message. and the legacy of ms. parks is not dead.

adult producers of adolescent texts

i've been thinking more and more about who produces the images of youth that we see on television, on videos, in the newspaper, in literary texts, and in the movies (and elsewhere) and am more confused than before. confused by the motivation for some of the portrayals that are circulating, in particular. in the tv and youth course that i'm teaching this semester, someone made the following comment in response to the point that youth ought to be more engaged in how they are represented: "who would want to do that?" this person was referring to the related point that simple characters and flattened representations are what sell to the public at large.

following this discussion, i recalled the show "you can't do that on television" that aired in the early 80s on nickelodeon. i am struck by the memories of adolescent sketch comedy, green slime, and forgetful dialogue. yet i was hooked on this show, as i was to reading and re-reading nancy drew novels, the stack of enid blyton books given to me by my older cousin who grew up in london, and listening to old lp records (including elvis and audio recordings of the "six million dollar man") on my record player. as i recall this pastiche of not-very-critical texts that made up much of my childhood and adolescence, i wonder how i arrived here; that is, a stance of ongoing, critical inquiry.

while writing a paper for a course in grad school, i took to heart what bell hooks (1994) wrote about her relationship with critical thought and theory and noted that while the texts i consumed remained fairly uncritical, the texts i produced - namely, my journals, poetry, and the enacted performance of being - made attempts at raising questions, challenging existing cultural scripts and performing different identities. but what if i had met june jordan's words as a teenager? or written back to the musings of adrienne rich? would i have come into a critical consciousness earlier? and if so, what would have been different?

when i hear some adults talk about youth today i wonder if we expect too little of youth as we assume that they need to be taught how to be critical? that is, what if assumed that youth are developing a critical consciousness in various aspects of their lives? would we ask different questions in our literature, social studies, mathematics classes? would the space of education shift more toward the possibility of with? how would the scripts of youth be different if adults took seriously the notion that youth are collaborators in the pursuit of a more just, and socially conscious world?

visualizing beauty and heartbreak

the girls and boys featured in born into brothels captivated me from the opening menu of the dvd. there is little doubt about the imagination, enthusiasm, and life that each child explores and exudes with their photographic journeys, sometimes to the chagrin and disdain of their families and surrounding communities. the power dynamics involved in taking someone's picture are complicated when the photographer is a child and the photographed is an adult; these dynamics are made further complex when the adult doesn't want to be documented in any way.

despite the moving stories and lives, i'm not sure how to respond to a dilemma that resonates with my work, as well: what happens when the project is completed? the filmmakers, zana briski and ross kauffman, have returned and done future photography workshop with increasing numbers of children living and growing up in calcutta. but the bigger question looms: what is the possibility of art to be a catalyst for social change? and from whom does art expect change?

i may return to this film for in a few posts - this images and stories will stay with me and will have to marinate for a while...

napoleon dynamite... and the representation of youth

i just spent an hour crafting a response to the movie that i finally watched after being told to do so by friends and occasional strangers for some time now... and then lost the entire post... idiot!

as i watched, i laughed, i winced, i shook my head, i pushed away images that crept into consciousness of certain individuals from my past, i shifted in my seat when i saw glimpses of something too familiar, and i remained awed by the power of the "lack of arm movement" maneuver used in television and movies to indicate some form of social awkwardness. (case in point: the seinfeld episode when raquel welch fails to swing her arms when she walks)

what i found it difficult to do was "break my eye open," like the character of claire tries to do in six feet under. like a good movie watcher, i brought to this experience the expected frames of normal and not, of awkward and not; i gave in to the moviemakers' manipulation of viewer discomfort for what seems out of the ordinary, which is often made manifest in laughter. deb, an eventual friend of napoleon's, makes and vends handicrafts that she makes herself, as well as takes "glamour shots" as an amateur photographer in her basement. pedro, newly arrived from mexico, becomes napoleon's "best friend" within minutes and brings to the cast an optimistic truthfulness which eventually earns him the title of class president (thanks, in part, to a solo dance number performed by napoleon).

for those who haven't seen the movie, i'm not spoiling it for you - definitely rent it. but as you do, consider these questions:
- how do we learn to see differently?
- what is the impact of youth-focused movies on the general public's perception of and response to youth?
- why do most of us understand this as a movie about overcoming social displacement?

would it be too bizarre to produce a movie in which deb, for example, is who she is and does what she does without feeling the urge to project a future as a photo journalist? that is, why do movies about youth either indict or romanticize youth? (with a few exceptions...) perhaps these are the clouded dichotomized memories adults are left with about their adolescence... i wonder what youth would/do say about their lives as they are happening...

if we encourage youth to be more reflective, aware, critical, and thoughtful in their lives as young people, will they grow up to make movies that continue the dichotomy? or will we have more texture in future articulations about youth?

youth voices

2 things:

check out this new article, full of links, from MediaRights:
Generation PRX: Amplifying Youth Voices

also, i've been reading more and more about iPod use in classrooms and college campuses and am wondering about how people have used the these shiny metallic, colorful sound and image boxes in other settings broadly defined as "educational"...?? im particularly interested in thinking more about the use of the photo display function in conjunction with an ongoing project im working on, particularly as the youth are engaged in 'on the fly' comparative analysis of the contrasting images from different parts of town, and the stories they hold.

so many stories... so little time...

fall means...

a lot of things... new colors on the leaves on the trees; the increasing need for a light sweater or jacket; a new grade and the ever-present potential for new friends at school; the new tv season...

for me, all of these things coincided with another very important event, an event that allowed me the privilege of bringing in popsicles to school: my birthday. it is perhaps fitting that with each early september and new school year, i feel a sense of renewal and possibility - after all, according to the calendar, i am a year older. but each year, my birthday also gives me an opportunity to reflect on the years that have passed and whether it's because of my work or my memories, i find myself revisiting my teenage years. not because they were anything remarkable but because so much of who i am today was born in those years then. the shows i watched and the range of other texts i dove into, as well as the experiences i had to navigate no doubt inform what i do now. but how connected am i, really, to my adolescence? and how much is healthy? is there utility to this constant reflection? to reading my old journals? to watching reruns of old tv shows? does this help us better understand "the youth of today" or are we prone to idealistic nostalgia, running the risk of beginning sentences with "when i was young..."?

perhaps we do need to move on, gain distance, and perspective. and maybe this soliloquy is just my way of justifying my growing obsession with teen-targeted media!

katrina and technology

if you or someone you know has space to provide housing for those displaced by hurrican katrina, log on to: http://www.katrinareliefhomes.com

from the "about" page:
Katrinareliefhomes is a completely free site and built around the idea that technology can help to bring those who have, closer to those who need.

i also wonder: what about using mobile laptop labs at the 97+ shelters that have been set up so that people can connect with their missing family members??

what's on tv...

each time i prepare to teach a course, i find myself in the position of negotiating between "existing work in the field" and the real and shifting landscape that is being created from moment to moment. as some of you know, i am scheduled to teach a course titled "tv and (the development of) youth" - the parantheses are my addition... and the readings for the course draw on a variety of sources, including the suggestions made by some of you, including sefton-green, buckingham, etc... however, as i've been watching the tv somewhat obsessively over the past several days, the images of children and youth in the midst of the tragic disaster and displacement that has taken place in the southern united states seem to suggest - demand, really - that they, too, have a place in 'the course.'

reading television images, interpreting them, making sense of them, etc., all seem to be one arc in engaging this broad topic. but what of tv's role in making the identities of youth? what can/should we say and discuss about the use of the television as propaganda? as information? as inciter? as educator?

for what do we rely on the tv? has other media replaced it? or, as i suspect, is the average repertoire of everyday media simply expanding? an unrelated case-in-point: the degree to which episodes of 'dora the explorer' mimic the 'dora' video game environment. what does tv, the web, video games, and the oft-forgotten radio expect and assume about its potential audience?

i'll continue to wrestle with this balance of the exisiting and the now as the course and the semester unfolds, and hopefully will also gain some insight into "what's to come"...

to not know the internet...

it's nearing the beginning of the fall semester here in the north east. new freshmen - whose parents look closer to my age with each passing year, and whose abundant energy oozes from each exposed appendage and inch of skin - are moving in. gone are the quiet campus days of summer, replaced instead by the discernable hum of "the undergraduate."

as i sat watching these barely-out-of-high-school teens meeting each other, getting past the awkward hellos and maneuvering the delicate dance of excitedly-but-not-too-excitedly saying good-bye to their parents, i was struck by a thought. (after a brief reminiscence of my own freshman move-in, of course)... it is 2005. in a few short years, a class of freshmen will enter college and it will be safe to say that they will not have known a day-to-day existence without the internet. it's an exciting thought, and one that reminds me of the first time, about six years ago, when i was visually overloaded with the exponential growth of cell phones as a common accessory.

what will the learning experience be like, i wonder, for college students who have routinely shifted between multiple communication, media and information technologies almost from birth? true, the realities of varied access to the internet across neighborhoods remains an issue - that is, not everyone is online. however, as i sat on a bench in the middle of campus, surfing online simutaneously for a pair of sneakers and articles about mcdonald's, i was excited by the thought that sitting on a bench surfing the web won't be a campus-only activity for long. cases in point: philadelphia and new york are both exploring plans to become wireless cities. of course wireless service providers aren't happy with the thought of losing revenue, but imagine the possibilities.

in a recently published, much-hyped book, My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, the author, rebekah nathan (aka cathy small, an anthropology professor) spent her sabbatical conducting research by enrolling as a freshman at the university where she teaches. she was mainly interested in what it was like to be a freshman, taking five classes and managing all the other "stuff" that comes with this big life transition. what i wonder, and what i don't think nathan/small focused on explicitly (though i haven't read the book to say for sure), was what it means to be a freshman given the newly developed mediating practices of information gathering, synthesizing, etc. that come with increased access to a wider range of resources. and, is there a widening gap, as many claim, in who uses what to convey how...??

so, i return to my initial question, with a twist: what will it mean to be teaching students for whom the boundaries between "online" and "offline" are as artificial maraschino cherries?

tv course

thanks to all who responded about the tv course! the suggestions seem great and i will definitely pursue them. anya asked me to give more ideas about scope and big issues i want to focus on - here they are in my jetlagged state (yes, that's right - i was away without email access for a whole ten days!... this was both traumatizing and liberating... hmmm....)

broadly, i'm desigining the course around the ideas of "tv with, for and by youth"... more specifically, i want the course to be able to meet a variety of student needs:

• understanding youth as producers of media (including tv)
• designing television and media for youth audiences
• representations of youth on television
• the role of television and related media in the lives of youth

also, if anyone has read steven berlin johnson's everything bad is good for you, i'd love some thoughts on the book. i'm still waiting for my copy!

l'il help

seems like so much of my references are tv-based... and finally i get to use the vast history of television viewing: i'm teaching a course on television and youth and would *love* any and all suggestions for texts - articles, books, dvds, sites, etc. - to use.

a million thanks!!

:)

patterns, behaviors, and plaid

when do we decide how we're going to live our life? and how do we arrive at these conclusions? i re-read marc's piece (see below) and immediately recalled the show laguna beach - aka "the real life oc" airing on mtv. why the connection? b/c one of the girls on the show (from season 1) is the daughter of a well-known preacher, who, as is made obvious by his family's inclusion on the show, is quite well off. in one particularly memorable scene transition, the daughter goes from discussing her upcoming gospel performance at the church and praying with her family to singing along with 50cent in her very expensive car.

what's the problem, people might ask? well... i wonder whether one can espouse charity and the "christian" spirit, chastize individuals who live "the wrong way," and consume like there's no tomorrow all at the same time. how do the youth who are growing up in our increasingly hypocritical world making sense of it all? of the competing messages bombarding all of us, and especially addressing the "disposable income" generation...

goldhaber writes about the "attention economy", a concept taken up and expounded on by colin lankshear and michele knobel. the basic premise: it's the attention, stupid. perhaps that's oversimplifying things greatly, but all three scholars are inviting readers to consider the real commodity involved in influencing the practices of youth: attention. so, who's competing for youth attention? it's too simple (again) to say everyone... but it certainly seems like it. young people are the focus of school reforms, censorship ratings on television, advertisements, video games, toys, magazines, and on and on...

but, does any of this matter? or, rather, in what ways does any of this matter? and what are we missing?

schools are so desperate to get and keep young people's attention, yet so often it seems that school practices run counter to what we know about the attention economy. like one young man i know once said: "there's too much attitude in school." he was referring to the relationships between teachers and students, but i think that his observation could extend to the broader point about adults and youth and the not-so-delicate maintaining of power in one direction. what would it really mean to reimagine institutionalized education as a series of experiences in which youth expertise was taken seriously and not as a threat. currently, it seems like our thinking about the attention economy continues to situate the proverbial ball in the adults' court. that is, we are wanting adults to find new ways to reach youth, to engage productively with youth. this is necessary. but if we truly believe that young people are engaged in meaningful activities and practices, then how about enlisting their help and input.

i wager that our adult-focused questions about how young people do what they do and are who they are will experience a shift when we take seriously the lives and intentions of youth; and hope that we start asking different questions. maybe then we'll better understand how a 16 year-old finds it a seamless transition to move between dinner table chatter and lyrical head-bopping... and why it becomes increasingly difficult, as youth transition into adults, to maintain those multiple identities as too many of us give in to rigid definitions of who to be, what to do...


postscript: one of my friends, one of the warmest people and most committed teachers i know, was sharing a story about his kids with me. she is 8 or 9 and was visiting a friend who lived two towns away. my friend and his kids are african american and her friend and family are white and jewish. when he went to pick up his daughter my friend spent some talking with the friend's mother. they realized they had much in common - both are writers, as well - and talked for thirty minutes while their kids continued to play. as he recalled the story to me during a conversation about racial dynamics and interactions, he noted that he was from a generation that still maintained its borders and how unlikely it would have been that he and the friend's mother would have talked if not for their kids. he mentioned a combination of historical, geographical, and social factors that influence his patterns of behavior. when i asked him if he thought his daughter would have the same choices to make he shook his head no and said that she had friends of "every shape and color" and that it was with the kids where even the invisible barriers break down. i said i hope so... but couldn't help think of all the reasons why persist...

"the lost generation"???

apparently, according to a preacher that my friend marc watched on tv recently, "Kids growing up today don't care about nothin' and nobody" and goes on to say that "All they want to do is party and have fun."

read marc's response, titled I Bling Because I'm Happy, part of the series, The Barbershop Notebooks.

poetry for a change

read this contribution to the latest Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education:

No Cow Left Behind
by Alexandra Miletta and Katherine Morris

the question remains: "Will the politicians listen?"

summer wind

the new york heat is something out of fiction - who can believe it can be this hot? and it's not so much the weather as it is the millions of people who are moving at lightning speeds through it... and some who are moving not fast enough!

however, last week i was momentarily unaware of the searing heat as i sat in a subway car, which, thankfully had working a/c. but what captured my attention was a scene in which three teenage girls were laughing and enjoying themselves as they engaged in play around imagining futures with the help of a digital camera. one of the girls stood up and said, "what if i was a scientist?" and made a gesture like she was closely examining a test tube and adjusting her imaginary goggles. as she temporarily held this pose, she turned to her friend with the camera and asked excitedly, "did you take it?" her friend nodded and the three of them spent the next minute looking at the picture, zooming in on it, and talking about what it might mean to make the image into reality: what courses one would have to take? what kind of place a scientist would work? is this something either of them could or wants to do? who do they know who "does science?"

i wonder what we futures we imagine for youth... what futures do they imagine for themselves? and what are the tools, experiences, resources, supports... necessary to not only help them achieve these futures, but to keep imagination alive...?

on a related note, i learned the word "sankofa" today which is an Akan word that means "We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today." what does the past of youth and education tell us that we may do differently and move forward toward change?

the young men and women who participated in the dvd documentary Echoes of Brown are engaged in that work through spoken word, performance and poetry. in a review of this piece i quoted one of the elders who is featured who wonders:

"I was thinking about how expensive it is for one group of people - White or Black, rich or poor - to hold another group of people back. Because you can't dance if you got one foot on someone else's neck. The only way you can dance is with both feet and … I hope this society dances."

the teenage girl's imagined future of being a scientist can come to fruition only if past informs present, left (hand) works with right (hand)...

seeing through child-full and youth-full eyes

a couple sites i found when looking for recent projects that use the photographs produced by children and youth as sources of knowledge and information:

through the eyes of children: the rwanda project

images from the fatherhood project