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?