Exhaling

Well...I'm finally exhaling after AERA. I am really proud of how well the conference went. Kris and I have had a ton of positive comments, some people even saying it was the best AERA ever. Sonia Nieto told me her students said they were leaving the conference with hope. Cool. Videos of key Presidential sessions will be available on the AERA website soon. Good thing because a lot of people missed sessions because they were full. And Kris wants to put together an edited volume based on all the Presidentials.

I am inspired to continue the work I have been doing, especially with George Moses and the NEAD Freedom School corner store project. I have two books working their way through; one that will argue we have to start over with schools - no more tinkering, and one on the community ethnography Nancy, Kevin and I did. Our first articles from the ethnography will be coming out in a special issue of Anthropology and Education Quarterly very shortly. We still have so much data to analyze and write about! Plus we owe the community a book. Good news is that I have two publishers wanting a prospectus on both books. Problems of abundance.

Simple check in today. On to writing...what a joy.

Meeting with George

Had another good meeting with George Moses today. George and I have been getting to know each other for a couple of years now and we are finally at the place where we can plan curriculum. I've known for a while that knowledge, learning, literacy, etc. is socially constructed in interaction and that social relationships are what matter in this process, but now I "get" it. George's emphasis on people and knowing them has shown me what this means in the heart.

So we've begun the conversation about how to combine the Freedom School curriculum with what "we" (educational researchers of a certain kind) know about content and pedagogy to move toward Bigum's idea of knowledge producing schools. George has talked for a while about what he calls "community defined evidence" so that's in the mix as well.

One of our first projects will be to have students address a community problem, in this case the food desert problem in Beechwood. They will do the work to design, build, and manage a transformed "corner" store. Community defined evidence will be gathered using participatory action research. George is pretty keen on the economic independence argument that I'm still trying to get my head around, but the corner store project gets to enough social justice issues I do understand that I'm totally in. 

This sort of work makes all the other crap I deal with fade away.

Intertextuality

Short today to simply state that I find it interesting that posts to this blog end up on my facebook profile where people read them and respond, but very few people actually read/follow the blog. To me it's a fascinating index of the complex intertextualities of digital communication.

Audience and purpose

I have to send AERA a piece on the upcoming annual meeting that will appear in Educational Researcher. The journal goes to every AERA member. I am totally intimidated. The purpose of the piece is to overview the conference as Program Chair. Chances are no one will read it even though they will all get it. It's that they will all get it that is scaring me. Man. What if I sound like an idiot? What if I make some stupid grammar mistake and everyone from now on thinks I'm a fraud?

Okay, worrying about this in this way is insane, I know. Welcome to my head. Just needed to get it out.

Critical geography

I'm getting more excited about the session I am organizing for AERA. Of course I'm organizing a ton of sessions as Program Chair, but I'm really looking forward to "my" session. Here's the description I sent to panel members:

Schools have largely ignored the profound shift in everyday communication (literacy) practices (multimodal, multi-authored, digital communication practices, participatory culture) that are happening in society (Ito, et al, 2010; Jenkins, 2006, 2010; Kress, 2010, Lankshear & Knobel, 2010); this ignoring has made schools dangerously irrelevant to children and youth who are participating in these practices in unprecedented ways (Gee, 2004, 2010). Researchers outside of education have begun to discuss the ways in which traditional institutions, such as schools, are experiencing a casual collapse (Bruns, 2008) as formerly passive audiences shift toward a participatory convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006). Critical geographers have challenged social scientists to move beyond the social/historical binary to include the spatial in our research and scholarship (Soja, 2010). Rarely do these diverse intellectual and scholarly communities[1] share what they know about learning, participation, and profound social and cultural changes with each other to deepen our shared knowledge – to take up the ideas of what we might call geographic participatory culture in our own practice. The purpose of this session is to bring together some of these diverse scholarly areas to discuss the meaning of these profound social and cultural changes on education research. Specifically, if we as researchers see a role for schooling in contributing to social justice and the public good, then we need to rethink what is happening in schools. Following Shirky (2010), we need to ask: do we want to be a part of the conversation our children and youth are already having?

Researchers, scholars, educators, policy makers, teachers, administrators need to fundamentally rethink, redefine, reshape the purposes of schooling, their understanding of knowledge production/use (produsage) and learning, and pedagogical practices in order to authentically participate in the conversation/learning/literacy that our children and youth are already having (Shirky, 2010). As Mimi Ito suggests, what youth are doing is not “playing” at something that they will grow out of; these are the language, literacy and communication practices now, and we must recognize this or risk continued irrelevance and casual collapse.

I'm liking the "geographic participatory culture" idea but want to do some more thinking about what to call it; this still sounds kind of awkward. Any ideas?

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[1] c.f. Leander, Phillips, & Taylor (2010) for one recent exception.

Pondering the everyday

I wish I was better at staying in the moment. I am always in my head sometime in the future or the past - thinking, thinking, thinking. I know from my research and scholarly work that everyday life is where it's at and that meaning is constructed moment by moment. My amazing time with my brother Rob a year and a half ago while he was sick (the cancer is still gone!), or many years ago now when my brother John was paralyzed, taught me so much about what is important in life - the little things, the everyday. Yet, I always slip back into worrying about the future (when will we see any kind of human justice) or revisiting some past nightmare experience (high school, argh).

And then last week I stumbled on a vlog that focuses on just such everyday events. This man vlogs about his family everyday; and I mean everyday. He has over 700,000 followers who wait impatiently - and, ironically, post their impatience - so I'm late in the game (he's already famous on YouTube). I'm transfixed by this guy. How does he maintain such focus on the little moments of everyday life? His kids are totally adorable, especially the baby, Rocktard (there is also Mommytard, Sontard, Princesstard, and Babytard) but then again, I LOVE babies. I remember moments like this when my kids were young but I was so busy worrying or making sure someone didn't trip or get in a fight that I missed the moment. How does he do it?

So the vlog is called the Shaytards. Yes, I wondered about the "tards" thing too, but he explains it has to do with leotards his little girls wear. Don't expect big, fancy narrative arcs or complex story lines; we're talking about fixing dinner, taking the girls to gymnastics, going fishing, walking in the woods on a snowy day - it's completely fascinating. See what you think and let me know.

Beginning the year

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!

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?