Amazed

My friends Colin and Michele amaze me. We had a video conference on Skype with them in my class tonight and they made our heads spin. They are always one step ahead in their thinking and I leave conversations with them rethinking everything. At AERA Colin caught me off guard with a comment about critical literacy as a played out modernist discourse. I thought about it for weeks afterward. Tonight I got more insight into what he meant when he talked about the difference between "languages of power" and "practices of power". I got this.

But I still left wanting to rethink everything and feeling self-doubt. It feels like Colin and Michele breezed past talking about critical literacy as a kind of instructable idea to doing critical practices in everyday life while I was taking a nap or something.

I'm desperate to see things change and am tired of people talking about injustice and social reproduction as they drive their SUVs around "those" areas of town. It is simply no longer tolerable that urban schools, neighborhoods, communities, and families are ignored or pathologized as some problem to be solved. So I have to do something and critical literacy seemed like a way to get there. Yet it is still rooted in autonomous literacy and an outsider mindset. Maybe I've been closer to what they are talking about than I think and just need my mind blown more often so I can see better.

Still got lots of thinking to do but I remain amazed by my brilliant friends.