What educators are missing

24/7 DIY 2010: Collective Action from IML @ USC on Vimeo.

Tensions

Tensions seem to be the theme for the past few months. Since my last post I have been completely swamped, but completely enjoying it. AERA program chair work, while all consuming, is exciting and intellectually satisfying. I love our conference theme, especially since it's in New Orleans. My classes this semester are wonderful. I'm teaching Advanced Qualitative Research with 18 amazing doctoral students. Eighteen is a ton for this class (hence the tension), but the students are designing important studies and doing it well.

My literacy class is picking up on the movement started in the summer. Our website finally went live. Visit at schoolsarenotfactories.com and join. Over 25 people have joined since we went live, but only I have posted. Tension. Enthusiasm is high, need is great, but no one posts. Why? I can see that people have come to the site to look, but no one has jumped in yet. When I first announced the movement, over 100 people said they would join us. I don't get it.

Why is it that when my career is fabulous, I get so frustrated at the lack of progress in education? Or when work is sort of "settled" (if you can say that about academics), I feel like the bulls eye on a target? Or when my personal life is going as well as can be expected, I get more irritated at small things than I did when trauma was coming at me left and right? Tensions and confusion and totally loving it...

Writing away the summer

This has been an exciting week as new the director of Warner's Genesee Valley Writing Project. I didn't know what to expect when I walked in on Tuesday. Having missed the June meeting, I worried a bit that the group had started to form and I was out of sync. MR and Jen have a lot of experience and they knew the majority of the fellows from last year. I had a combination of nervousness about meeting new people and excitement about getting back to my roots in writing. 

Wednesday I felt like I was more myself and that sense of self impacted my new and deepening relationship with the teachers. They are an interesting group of experienced professionals. All are committed to students and to high quality writing. I got really excited when we brainstormed their research projects. I loved seeing the intellectual excitement build as the possibilities opened up while we talked. We decided on three groups: 1) invention to production (sentence level composition); 2) a combination of students' lack of interest in writing and the future of literacy/digital literacies; and, 3) developing authentic, school-wide assessment. Trish came up with the "invention to production" phrase and we dubbed her our catch phrase expert. She came up with a similarly cool phrase during Tom's Haiku presentation yesterday.

I completely enjoyed the time to write. What a luxury! I decided earlier this year that I wanted to write a book about my son Marcus and our adventure together from diagnosis to residential placement to discharge. I planned to spend as much time as possible writing the various "episodes" of our story. I did write one episode but realized afterward that the emotion it takes to write this story has deeper consequences than I realized. Not sure where this journey will take me.

By Thursday, we had seen three demonstration lessons and gotten a sense of what lessons the fellows would do. MR, Jen, and I met with three fellows we thought would be ready to start next week. We were right. We spent over an hour discussing their ideas as a group and I got really excited. Sometimes working with novice teachers I forget how fun teaching can be when you have such expert colleagues with whom to brainstorm. I can't wait to see what they end up with!

My nervous excitement has been transformed to childish anticipation. I can't wait to get to the institute the next morning (in spite of the fact that I am NOT a morning person!) to see what amazing things we can do together.

Starting a movement

Together with students in my summer literacy class, I started an educational transformation movement. I'm so excited. We just decided to start. The students are building an interactive website for first year teachers who want to resist current reductionist practices. I announced the movement on Facebook and a bunch of people signed up. A friend of mine at Teachers College signed up her class. So cool.

I'm working off Godin's idea of just starting, and of leadership as constructing a space where people can convene and generate innovation. The first thing is the website, but this is by no means the only thing. The idea is that anyone who is sick and tired of playing the game and "hoping" it will change can just start changing it.

I'll update the progress of the movement as it evolves and send along the website info as soon as we have it up. All ideas welcome!

Everyday theories

So I'm sitting in Starbucks getting a couple of hours to myself (thank you Morris!) and I can overhear a disturbing conversation. There is a group of three folks sitting across from me. One African American man is an established character at this Starbucks. He is here every time I come in and almost always presides over a group of locals in intense conversations.

This time they are talking about schools and theorizing about who should have access to what. I sit here while they run down the ubiquitous list of deficit model ideologies: "poor children are not ready to learn", "urban parents don't care about their kids or school", "they shouldn't be allowed to disturb the classroom", "they aren't interested in learning". Ironically, I was reading Hilary Janks's new book Literacy and Power as I listened. Had to put the book down and open my email or something. I have tried to talk with this man and his group before but it didn't seem to do much good. I suppose I could interrupt now but I'm too pissed to make much sense.

How on earth do we work to change the deficit ideology when it is such an everyday, ubiquitous cultural narrative? These folks appear to be professional, "artsy", politically aware people yet they ventriliquate such oppressive and marginalizing narratives. Each time I start a new session of Literacy Learning as Social Practice or Race, Class, Gender, and Disability in American Education, I have to start from scratch in uncovering and transforming these same deficit ideologies. Seems like I'm just spinning my wheels and nothing is happening except that my tires are getting bald.

Up late

I'm up late watching really bad horror movies on the SyFy channel and wondering why I haven't posted in such a long time. Every time I think of posting I get stalled by the realization that I have gone way too long without writing.

Writing has been going well otherwise. My colleagues and I have submitted a bunch of pieces on our three year ethnography of a local change initiative to a few journals. They were a long time coming but worth it I think. I co-authored three of the bunch. I'm happy to have finally gotten back to writing. The two years my son was in residential placement, and then his long-awaited move back home took me away from scholarly writing. Funny that I was able to post here during that time. Now that I have done some research writing, I have procrastinated posting. Twitter is much easier.

I've also become the director for our local National Writing Project site so writing has definitely taken a prominent place in my life these days. I am really looking forward to my first summer institute and plan on writing alongside the fellows by focusing on the book about Marcus and our journey together. I have some stories written but need to get a lot more down.

I'm about to get pretty busy with the writing project and my new appointment as program chair for AERA's 2011 conference in New Orleans. I am honored Kris asked me for sure and our theme brings together a lot of ideas she and I have been working on for a while. We hope to bring educational research to a focus on the public good.

Plus my good friend George Moses came to me with a fabulous idea and an offer of partnership in building a community school. His 41 years of community activism are coming to focus at last and I look forward to working with him.

So busy is good, right?