Another new year is beginning. I am grateful to be saying that to be honest. 2010 was a fairly good year given the dramas of other years. A reasonable range of highs and lows. I have a positive outlook going into 2011.
With my colleagues and doctoral students, we have a special issue coming out in Anthropology and Education Quarterly that will be the first set of articles published about our long term ethnography of a community change initiative. It takes such a long time to write about ethnographic work, I'm amazed. We still have so much data to analyze and think about! I think the next thing should be a book about the whole thing that is written for and with community members. Our commitment at the beginning was to write their story and we really need to do that.
AERA work has been intense but completely interesting. I was thrilled that Edward Soja and Jim Gee agreed to be on an invited Presidential panel that Kris let me organize. I'm hoping to start a meaningful conversation that will blast down some intellectual silos and move us to more authentic contributions to human well-being, particularly in urban schools and communities. I'm so tired of talking about what needs to be done and of academics writing to themselves. Lots of individuals do amazing work, but we don't read across each others' fields and end up reinventing the wheel and, in the end, doing nothing of value for kids in schools. Certainly, one conference panel won't change this, but I'm hoping to accomplish some kind of forward movement.
Who knows what the year ahead holds, but here's to diving in head first!
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