On the news

I had my interview with a local newsperson today, Rachel Barnhart. I have to admit that I was totally nervous. I tried so hard to not be too serious, even though the topic is serious. Not sure I achieved that at all. I've watched the video and think I did okay, but not great. Hopefully it's the start of conversations that will lead to the kind of social movement we need to start over in schools. 

Book buzz

My university put out a press release about my new book that seems to be getting a little bit of buzz. The first to contact us what a local newsperson, Rachel Barnhart, who wants to interview me on her show on Monday. By all accounts she passionate about education. I've been thinking a lot about how I'm going to talk about the argument in my book in four minutes on live TV in a way that gets the points across clearly but without a bunch of academic jargon. Tough for me, to be honest. The stakes are so high (not for me, but for kids in schools) that I really want to do well.

Then the education reporter for our local newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle, is coming to interview me on Wednesday. An interview like this will give me a bit more time to get the main points across. Still, I have to watch the jargon. A couple of other press organizations have asked for copies of the book. All good news for sure.

The main thing is to start some kind of movement to start over in schools. I can't stand watching teachers and students getting hurt anymore. Enough already. My hope is that the book sparks something. At least these interviews might get a conversation going. 

By Contrast

Just finished attending the Literacy Research Association conference, and while I'm totally disappointed to be stranded in Dallas due to an ice storm, I was nicely impressed with the conference. I learned a ton and saw some good friends.

Of particular note was the final plenary with Carol Lee, David Bloome, Kris Gutierrez, and Rob Tierney. They were so interesting. Carol's title "It is rocket science" referring to literacy research was awesome and framed her talk nicely. David talked about the possible overuse of the term "literacy" especially as it has become linked with conceptions of competence. Kris discussed her amazing work on horizontal and vertical learning and social design experiments. And Rob inspired us to not give up.

Here's a Foucault quote I love that I used to close my discussant comments on a session:
"Brothels and colonies are two extreme types of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteen century until the present, the great instrument of economic development...but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates." From Of Other Spaces 

Disappointing conference

Felt disappointed in the recent NCTE conference. I've been disappointed in this conference for a while. I went to some good sessions, but no matter which session, I wished they would push further. A session on critical literacy in early childhood, for example, ended up talking about fairness. While fairness is a starting point for working young children, it doesn't go far enough and it underestimates young children's critical literacy abilities. Vivian Vasquez's work has shown us this for years.

That was another disappointing piece - I heard things we've been talking about for years. We all know that meaningful, authentic literacy practices should be taught in schools and that when we do teach this way, children and youth thrive. How long will we just talk about the way things should be instead to taking action to make it so?

Lastly, I was really disappointed in sessions that presented work by youth where the presenters were amazed at how smart youth can be. Really?! Are we still amazed at this point? Or is it amazement at the fact that urban youth are creative producers of literacy. We've known for a long time that when youth are given authentic spaces to be who they are, who they are is smart, articulate, future building literacy users.  Amazement doesn't seem appropriate.

Hopefully, LRA will be better next week. 

New book out

My new book, Radical Equality in Education: Starting Over in U.S.Schooling is now available for pre-order on Amazon. I'm so excited!

After the Zimmerman verdict

It's two days after the Zimmerman verdict and I'm still reeling. I'm disgusted. And not just at the verdict. I'm disgusted at the reactions where people say they weren't surprised. I get the sentiment, but that we are not surprised is as bad as the verdict. Shouldn't we be surprised that it's okay to kill young black men in this country?! Shouldn't we be surprised that people so easily accepted this verdict as inevitable?!

Maybe surprised isn't the right word. Outrage. Disgust. Sadness...maybe. That we are so blind to the endemic racism in this country surprises me still. That being black means unequal treatment under the law surprises me. It outrages, disgusts, and saddens me.

But, as my friend George Moses asks, what are you going to do about it? Good question. As a mother of a biracial male child (read black in this country), I am challenged to know what to do. My son knows he's black but I don't think he knows what that means. George says I can't teach him, that he has to learn it on his own. But now that it's okay to shoot young black men, I'm not sure I can just let him figure it out. 

Loving the National Writing Project

I am sitting in the Genesee Valley Writing Project's invitational advanced summer institute totally loving the chance to work and write with awesome teachers. We've started a blog if you're interested. One of the early posts talks poignantly about current measurements for teachers and about how they don't cover what actually happens between a teacher and her/his students. It's worth a read.

Eavesdropping

I'm listening in on students in my summer literacy class as they use all the principles we have discussed thus far to design their own classrooms. It's totally cool to hear their voices get excited as they imagine what's possible. I tell them that they have all the money they need and no standardized tests to worry about. The interesting thing though is that everything they are designing can be done within the current environment. Some would need some creative fundraising, but all can be done. I love listening to them create. 

Defining literacy as a class

Here is my summer 2013 literacy class's definition of literacy:
Literacy is:

·      Reading for information, pleasure, and understanding; comprehension

·      Communication; making, sending and receiving messages through multimodal means

·      Interpreting messages; means of understanding the world and reflecting

·      A collaborative way of meaning making

·      Symbolism – conveying meaning

·      Human made to make our life easier

·      Cultural, social, historical, digital, political tool for mediating meaning making

·      Language and interaction based

·      Facilitates organization (instructions, lists)

·      Liberating/oppressive (based on place)

·      Reflects traits of the individual

·      Power

·      Context dependent

·      Related to audience/purpose

·      Collaboratively constructed

What do you think? What, if anything would you change?

Literacies at the Market project

I've been working on a participatory action research project at a local "corner store" transformation project and we've come up with the following local definition of literacies (rooted in a literacy as social practice perspective):

"literacy needs to be seen as a set of multiple and changing social practices that carry and shift across specific sites and persons within a complex web of relations. In other words, to be “literate” or educated means negotiating these interdependencies and the challenges and conflicts that each implies. Rather than seeing challenges and conflicts as deficits, we posit that they are the fuel that enervates dynamism and change."

What do you think?
 

Presenting together

Here's the gang after presenting at NCTEAR in Columbus Ohio. Our "reading the neighborhood" work went really well.

Pondering literacy practices

So I've been focusing a lot on the literacy practices at the corner store project and finding some interesting things. The research team is thinking of these practices as a kind of reading the world in that participants "read the neighborhood" and "read each other". Today I learned that food corps workers favorite past time is to read. Got to set up a lending library in the store. Now that we are posting data results in the store, participants are also reading how they are written. Cool stuff.  

Coming clean

I decided it's time to come clean about some of the reasons why I have tended to post less frequently to this blog. It's part professional and part personal.

The professional part has to do with an exciting collaborative participatory action research project I have been working on this past year. Together with a local Rochester community development agency, Northeast Rochester Development (NEAD), we have been studying the transformation of an urban "corner store" into a healthy gathering space and a space to find healthy food. Tired of living in an urban food desert, NEAD purchased the store across from its main office and began to change what was offered therein. I have been privileged to be a researcher since the beginning. We started a Freedom Market blog if you want to follow our process.

It's been interesting to study the literacy practices in the store and community. At first, they seemed to focus on transactional exchanges and label reading, but I've also begun to see a lot of formal forms circulating (much like Fine and Weiss found in their study of working class families). Lately, however, I've started to focus on broader practices of "reading" the space of the store and the community as key local practices. I hope to be presenting this work at AERA in April 2013.

The personal part has to do with my son who has Tourette/OCD/ADHD. He has been struggling the past few months and is now in residential placement. Working with him and with the varying agencies we deal with has taken a lot of time. I also have a blog that chronicles our adventure if you are interested. Now that I write this I can see a discussion of the ways in which Marcus is written and read (as de Certeau discusses) across the varying spaces of his life right now. Unfortunately, those readings are not always positive.

Hang in there, more literacy related postings to come:)