Wednesday, April 6, 2011
The public intellectual meets pop culture
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Teaching and the Heart (Or the Love Part of All This)
- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Recently, I've witnessed (or have been involved in) a number of conversations where the notion of "caring" about students came up. In particular, when I was discussing the fact that I was particularly worried about one student who had shown up to class only a few times, but who, whenever he came, always offered really wonderful comments, and for whom I had no idea what was going on, a colleague (who, I should say, I respect as a teacher) said to me: "Your job isn't to take care of your students: it's to teach them." This has led me to wonder, though: How do we define the verb "to teach"? And does "caring" have any role in this? (What does it mean, then, "to care"? It's more than just a feeling, of course, but...isn't there some role that "feeling" also plays in it?) I agree that it is not our job to "take care" of students--here at the university, they are adults, they are beings who take care of themselves, and/or have other people in their lives who care about them. Also, as we have discussed in our class: a teacher is not a savior, a saint, a liberator (although our work itself hopefully becomes liberatory).
And yet: the idea for me persists that part of my job as a teacher is to care about my students. (In fact, one 4th grade teacher I worked with as an instructional assistant in Vermont gave me a little memento which says on it "Teaching Is a Work of Heart," in response to the year that we had spent working together, and thus, she also seemed to think there was something to this). Anyway, to care about how the students are doing in life, the extent to which they feel able to participate in class; to care about what they say and think, and to relate to them in a mode of caring that also suggests compassion toward the world..this seems to me to have something to do with teaching. But teaching critically and lovingly...I think that these also involve a RADICAL acknowledgment and practice of the FREEDOM of others!!!
So, again: What does teaching mean? And where does caring...or really, I mean LOVE--that revolutionary, committed love that Freire discusses--fit in all of this? Even if I "succeed" at "teaching" lovingly and toward the freedom of others, have I taught my students anything? (And, I know this question of love probably walks a very fine and problematic line, but...I think we need to think about it, and try to define love in other terms, which I think someone like Freire helps us to do).
I ask all these questions in light of a class today that didn't seem to go very well. I mean, we did a number of different things: the first part of class involved one student giving a song presentation, then I handed back some old essays which students had done, and we discussed those. In light of the "read aloud" model that we heard about in seminar, I had one person read his essay to the class (because of time I didn't ask more students to do it (a moment of banking?)), but I did have everyone go around and share a little bit about his/her paper, so that all the students would get a sense of each other's work. We talked about the process of writing this essay and what had been challenging about it. (Perhaps I should've also asked if there was anything fun about it, but I didn't. I worry that "fun" seems to exist to a lesser extent in my class than in a lot of other folks' classes...Last semester in my class we had a lot of fun (or at least it felt that way), but this semester, I just don't think students are having fun...although, on a positive note, they are chatting with each other a lot.) Anyway, I actually thought it'd be really good for students to hear about each other's work, which I think it was, and folks liked it, but...the energy of the class still seemed really low.
Sometimes I feel that in my class we don't "DO" a whole lot of things other than dialogue. I do move around the room, I often have students meet in small groups (though we didn't do this today), we sometimes look at film clips or images, and we try to shift gears often through the course, but the particular mode remains one of dialogue...In the Freirian sense, this dialogue should always be a praxis, and thus a kind of doing, but...how does dialogue become "loving"? And what does it FEEL like for a class to be a space of love as opposed to fear, hurt, shame, distrust, and/or even indifference? Should I care if my students care? And, would it help if I showed more how I feel about the material...the extent to which I care about it and why? I don't feel like I did this very well in the second half of the class today, where we discussed the reading I had assigned.
Indeed, content-wise today, I kind of bombed; there wasn't a whole lot of "precision" in what we did...we kind of felt our way through things. We were talking about Tales from the 1001 Nights, and because I had spent all night trying to finish grading my students' prior essays, and trying to offer a lot of comments to them, I didn't come in with as well prepared a set of points as I would've liked. Or maybe, I didn't have any points, just some questions. The students had quite a number of interesting things to say, but...I feel like we didn't really get at some of the more critical points and questions that this reading addressed...and the stakes of such a mis-step is huge. I fear I may be hovering at the edge of Orientalism, even as I try to caution my students to resist it! (Maybe I can simply talk through this with them next time). Indeed, we'll be spending a lot of time next class talking about this concept specifically (which we haven't really discussed in particular terms yet), because I just wanted to give students the time and opportunity to wrap their own minds around the text and to have their own responses, before imposing "mine" on them. However, I do really think I need to be clearer about the STAKES of what we're doing, and why we're even reading such texts in the first place.
Clarity (especially in spoken words) is a big challenge for me, and...I wonder about how "being clear" might relate to this larger question of caring and/or "teaching well"/ i.e. loving in a liberatory way. I guess I'm just realizing how very much more practice I need in dialogue! How can I propose this as something I want my students to do, when I'm not very good at it myself? Or, is it something that we can teach each other? But aren't I failing my students if I don't offer them some bit of information and material and/or a practice that they can then work with? What if the part I play in the dialogue is itself a poor one? I sometimes worry that I'm remaining fearful as a teacher by operating in a pace comparable to the musical "andante"...or perhaps even more as an "adagio," rather than in a more seemingly active, vigorous pace. Is this pace suffocating to students rather than calm? Or, is my pace okay? How can I change my own pace?
I'm also feeling a bit confused, and/or my heart feels some dis-ease because of what one student came up to talk with me about today. It's that he is "looking for an A" in this class, and was really surprised that he got a B+ on his essay. Apparently, he needs to get an A to stay in his program, which I didn't realize before. We had a pretty good conversation about this, but he still seemed upset at the end of it. He wanted to know: What can I do to get an A? Will this essay "destroy" my A? The student was also concerned about the way I had graded the essay, noting how often when there is no grading rubric (which I didn't have for this one), teachers tend to grade by "comparing" the essays of students, and place them on a kind of scale with each other. While in a general sense I do read all the papers first to get a sense of what people have done, I always try to grade a paper on its own terms, in line with the requirements I've set out. I tried to talk with this student about how one "A" is very different from another A, but...this student still has concerns. I gave him the option of revising, and per his request I said that for the next essay, I'll prepare a rubric, but...yes, all this gave my mind--as well as my heart--pause. Yes, I am hurting mostly because I feel like I failed my students, because I didn't recognize the assumptions within my own grading practices, and the social, political, and racial stakes that they carry. How can I now respond in a vigorous and critical way to this mistake?
Due to everything above, I'm wondering about the place of the heart in all of this. The heart is what seems to be calling out for another possible truth, another way of living, teaching, being. And yet, sometimes I feel that neither my heart or mind are "educated" enough to be doing this; sometimes, I feel that they know nothing! But then again, it is all a process...it is something that we have to be honest to ourselves about, something we have to recognize that we are always learning...But where and how does one find the COURAGE to inhabit that space of always learning??? What is the place of something like courage in the Freirian act of love? How does one let go of fear? Or, do we walk right into it?
There is so much more to be said and thought on this matter, but...I wanted to put this concept out there as a question. How do you define "to teach"? "To care"? "To love"? Do these things have any relation to each other, and if so, what does that relation look like?
Monday, March 7, 2011
Some Prompts I Use In Class
Grading Day:
Based on your group’s article, please cover the following information in your poster:
· Name of Author and Article
· 3 main points they want us to think about regarding grading
· 2 critiques of their proposed grading strategy/ideology
Lastly, reserve the bottom 1/4th or so of your poster to make this chart:
| Thumbs Up | Thumbs down |
| | |
Once all groups have completed their posters, we will move around the room and mark whether we give the article, in light of the main concepts and critiques, a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Tensions in Ladson-Billings’ Yes But How Do We Do It?
Teacher as Savior
Beliefs About Students
Socio-political consciousness
“I can’t tell you how to do this”
Thinking about your group’s tension, please do the following:
First, come up with an understanding of what the two sides of the debate are. What are the logical reasons behind either notion? Which of these things feels the best? The Hardest? The Easiest? Why?
Then, come up with a strategy to help others understand the tension, and how it is possible for it to be resolved. If we face these challenges in classrooms, what will we do with them?
Finally, discuss other reactions to Ladson-Billings that your group has. We will share out our work in these groups to kick off a larger conversation about “doing” versus “being.”
Anyon Discussion Questions
First: What should be the relationship between social class and schooling?
Then, based on school type (Working-Class, Middle-Class, Affluent Professional, and Executive Elite)…
1) How would you characterize the school setting? What kinds of things are in the school? In the classroom? What do students bring with them (in a material sense) to school?
2) What sorts of teaching practices sound like they fit with Anyon’s depiction of this school?
3) Can we think of local examples of this kind of school?
a. What are these schools like?
b. How do we talk/hear about them?
- These questions are always only a part of the conversations students have in groups, as I always encourage them to bring their own questions with them to class and to discuss those with their groups and with the large group as well - I also believe that teachers from different schools/districts/grade levels/disciplines rarely get the chance to talk seriously with one another, and so while the groups often finish their tasks at different times, I like to think of these times as solidarity building activities.
Framing our discussion around these kinds of questions also frames the direction the class will go in the larger discussion that we have at the end of every class. By posing questions (or problems) to students, and then centering everything on what students do with these questions, I'm able to shape the direction of the class without controlling it, thus enabling students to self-appropriate what is meaningful for them without running into me banking the answer to any of the above questions.
Short Assignments Can Be a Problem
Above are a pair of assignments that I assigned for our 'Reading Culture' class. I've not a whole lot to say about them, other than the fact that, as this was a one-day a week night class, the one page responses could best be described by a bell curve, a few great ones, a few weak ones, and a number of 'could-be-better' ones. The class being on Monday did not help the environment of 'coming prepared,' that I hoped this assignment would foster (about 1/3 of the way through the semester we switched to using texts read for the upcoming week). That being said, the final papers on the whole turned out quite well. I put most of the failure of the weekly prompt on my shoulders, as I only really pecked at it from week to week, and probably should have spent more time in class discussing it--My view at the time was that what we were doing in class was representative of how one could go about writing. I do have to say that I think the most useful part of asking them to pick their own cultural object did help to get some idea about what parts of culture they were most concerned about--Politics/Comedy (The Onion) and negative representations of women's bodies were the two biggest--though the latter could also be clumped into the framework of advertising. Were I to do this again, I think I would have them write to each other throughout the semester, rather than to an abstract audience.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
On Taking Shortcuts, Banking to Save Time
Our conversation was rich, and some folks pushed us to consider if there is any real difference between the Rockefellers using their wealth to dictate educational policy and Bill Gates doing the same through his foundation. As an aside, we will start our next class looking at some of the policy statements from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, as well as at the Phelps-Stokes Fund website that I brought up in our Critical Pedagogy course a few weeks ago.
Still, I left feeling like my students had a lot more to say about the film and the text, and that even though we decided collectively to watch the film in class, our time together wasn't as useful as I hoped it would be. Or, perhaps better phrased, we could have had a much richer discussion of the role of philanthropy and big business in public education had we not watched the film together.
In an attempt to continue the conversation, I created a discussion board on our course WebVista site and invited students to post their reactions to the film. To try and get the ball rolling, I wrote the first post on the discussion board. No one has yet responded, and while I know I made it optional and that they have a paper due next week, I'm now worrying that I put too much of my own opinions about the film into the post and thus silenced students (potentially). Below is what I posted on the discussion board:
I want to start by just stating that I don't understand this film completely. Or, perhaps better put, the logic of the film's main arguments doesn’t make sense to me. If I’m understanding them correctly, they boil down to this:
The problem with the United States, the cause of poverty and systemic inequity, is our unequal education system. The cause of these poor performing schools are “bad” teachers, who get to keep their jobs indefinitely because of the system of tenure. To fix all of this, we need to have every school in the country use the same explicitly test-prep oriented curriculum as KIPP and Harlem Children’s zone schools, so that every child will go to a 4-year college.
OK, let’s work backwards as I break down my confusion: Not everyone can go to a 4-year college because there are not enough colleges with enough space for everyone in the P-12 system to go. On top of that, many universities have admissions criteria along the lines of the “top x% of graduating seniors” – even if everyone is brilliant, they can’t all be in the upper tier of students on the national scale, because that’s the whole point of the national scale.
Teaching to the test makes sense if the test is measuring a students’ ability to be a worthy human being. I do not know what kind of a test this would be, but it certainly is not the Eurocentric “standards” based tests we use today to measure students and teachers. True, if we make our instruction grounded in the test, practice taking the test often, and continually require students to do “test like” exercises and activities, our scores will probably go up. But since everyone’s scores must go up every year, gains are rarely celebrated and often come with considerable loss to learning that does not connect directly to the test. No test could measure everything a teacher teaches or that students know, but in the logic of positivism we have to have numbers to understand things, and we have to leave some things out in order to make tests that give us numbers.
Bad teachers are very loosely defined in the film as “ineffective.” Note the e, in effective here, as opposed to affective teachers which in the literature in teacher education is what we are actually aiming for. The “effect” of a teacher is apparently measurable by scores, through sophisticated modeling and mathematics like there are in value-added assessment. The claim “we have to have a way to measure teacher effectiveness” sort of makes sense. The claim that we can isolate the impact of one teacher by looking at her students’ tests scores does not make sense, because there are just too many variables. So, why not look for other ways to measure effectiveness? What if we had students evaluate their teachers, like we do in the university setting? What if we mandated every teacher would have a monthly visit by their principal, another one by a mentor teacher or vice principal, and do their own peer-reviews of the colleagues and co-workers? We could even make a rubric with however many points we want and then compare them all. As silly and arbitrary as much of this would be, it would be exceptionally more sophisticated and accurate a measure of what is actually going on in the classroom than the results of a standardized test.
And then we come to the claim that I have the most difficulty with: that schools and teachers are the cause of structural inequity and white supremacy. As we’ve just finished reading a book that details the very intentional moves of those in power to use schools and education as tools to maintain or increase their power, it is just plain not factually accurate to say that schools caused inequity. Let me be clear, laws and governmental policy created and maintain inequity – schools were never consulted on the matter, and the public school came into its widespread existence almost 500 years after the first slaves were brought to North America.
The ongoing legacy of white supremacy has at every moment in its history sought to justify itself with the common sense of the time. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, we saw scientific racism emerge as a justification for Jim Crow and the continued exploitation of people of color after slavery was declared illegal. Today, we blame schools instead of banks for redlining, for predatory home loans, for racial restrictive housing (which wasn’t made illegal until 1968 and today continues in the form of “zoning”), for gerrymandering so that politicians get to decide who elects them instead of the people electing their politicians… These are issues far larger than the school, and yet the film blames schools for the very things that make teaching so exceptionally difficult, as if teaching and learning aren’t difficult enough on their own.
Hoping we can get a good conversation to have another life on the internet… What did you think of the film? Or of my reaction, for that matter? Or the connection to Watkins? What should the role of philanthropy be in public education? What say should businesses have in public schools? Anything else is on the table… So, what do you have to say (or type, as the case may be).
On Writing and Writing Instruction
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
On the "essay"
So, you probably know that the notion of the essay is linked to the French verb "essayer," which is most commonly defined as "to try" or "to attempt." However, in different historical moments--and in some cases still today--this term has also referred to the following: to try on (like clothing), to try out (like a new tool), to experiment, to test, and....my favorite: to taste! (In my own writing, I've framed the essay as a "path"...or rather "a walking"...an attempt to "go in quest of what is". These are all other images that emerge from Montaigne's writing as well.) With my students, we try to think through these multiple valences, and to see what "problems" or "questions" these meanings might pose to our own work.
I also attempt to talk with my students about the conditions in which Montaigne himself wrote the famous--and enormous Essays. I think this is important, because...he is usually cast as someone who epitomizes a way of writing that celebrates and affirms the "single, individual" (and white, and male) subject. However, I tend to read his Essays as a call for friendship, for society, for relationships. He wrote this work after he lost his father and his best friend, Etienne de La Boetie, who was his most cherished interlocutor, and who had an enormous impact on his thought on society. Anyway...in face of these great losses, and, I think, as a result of his grief, he essentially settled into a solitary condition, pretty much locking himself in his library...only to find that "the world" did not leave him alone...and that, as much as he was able to "build a little workshop" for himself that would enable him to live again, he realized that he could never achieve a singular self. And...the presence of so many different figures in his own work--from Greek and Latin thinkers, to the words of the workers in his town, to those of contemporary kings, and...yes, even his cat--goes to prove that thought and life are never individual enterprises. They constantly cast us back into the world...and they are never finished, either.
Anyway, there's much more that I could say about this subject, but...suffice for now to say that I think there is actually power in the essay form that could be used to critically re-invent how we write and think. That said, I do have problems with Montaigne. One of the biggest ones: as much as he does "try out" and "test" himself as much as other ideas, as much as he does invite a mode of experimentation, I worry about the status of RESPONSIBILITY in this form. To what extent does this text suggest that how we think and what we think, how we act on our knowledge, matters...and not only in terms of some individual ethics, but in terms of SOCIETY? (There are ways in which Montaigne can tend toward a bit of a solipsistic and semi-irresponsible mode of being). That's where I think he's a bit shaky, and...also where I think I have to ask some serious questions about my own investment in his work.
Also, one problem in teaching him: As much as I encourage students to "experiment" with their own mode of essay-writing, in light of reading Montaigne, I then also ask that they conform to certain parameters: font, MLA guidelines, smooth-flowing transitions, etc. So...perhaps I am giving them mixed messages, which I think is potentially dangerous. I leave my comments on this subject with a question: What can I do about this? Would it be better to try a new form rather than the "essay" for writing, or does some immanent critique of the form seem in order? If so, how can I more fully embody the essay process, by not reverting back to the standardized forms? Or, does it do a disservice to students if I don't teach them those standardizations?
Below, I give you one example of the "essay-writing" assignment that I have given students in light of Montaigne, that perhaps best illustrates the tensions I have tried to express:
CSCL 1401, Section 3
Essay No. 2
DUE: Friday, April 23rd
Assignment (General Requirements):
Please write a 3-5 page essay in response to one of the prompts below. You may choose to write this essay in the more “standard” contemporary fashion. Having read Montaigne, you may also write your paper in a way that reflects the notion of “essay” as he conceived it, or in light of the broader definitions of the verb “essayer” that we have encountered: to attempt, to experiment, to experience, to try out, to try on, to taste. If you do choose to write this way, I would ask that you provide a short statement before your essay, telling us why you’ve decided to write this way, and what you hope to accomplish by doing so. Consider this statement your own “To the Reader”.
Either way, I would ask that your essay still follow standard MLA citation procedures (today, making sure to reference the work of another is essential). In part, this means including a “Works Cited” page. Also, I would ask that your essay be typewritten, double-spaced, and in 12 pt Times New Roman font, with standard 1-inch margins. Finally, do be sure to include a title.
* As always, please feel free to contact me or stop by my office hours if you wish to discuss this assignment! *
Prompts:
1. Revisiting “On the art of conversation”
Montaigne (whom fellow countryman and philosopher Blaise Pascal called “the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation”), considers conversation the most enjoyable and fruitful exercise of human life. In addition to seeing it as a pleasurable activity, Montaigne also tells us that conversation is both something in which we participate on a daily basis, but also something that we should understand and cultivate as an “art”. What is this “art of conversation” for Montaigne? How does he understand it? Why, for him, is it an “art”? How does his “art of conversation” relate to (resemble, differ from, challenge…) other forms of “dialogue” or other forms of language more broadly (writing, singing, etc) with which you are familiar, or which we have encountered in class? Could you, for example, engage Montaigne’s “art of conversation” with Cixous’ “écriture féminine” (feminine writing) and/or with Christine de Pisan’s “book of the city of ladies,” or perhaps imagine how someone like Frantz Fanon might respond to Montaigne’s “art of conversation”? You may also write of Montaigne by himself, responding in your own voice to different aspects of his “art of conversation,” or positing an alternative “art” or theory of conversation.
2. Writing a “Voice” of Poverty
We spoke in class about how The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes is, to some extent, an on-going meditation on hunger; the figure of hunger is a central one in this celebrated “Golden Age” novel. Not only that: it seems that the author of this text finds a particular way to “write” not just hunger, but something of which hunger plays a key part—poverty—in and through his text. I would argue, though, that poverty exists in this novel not as an exact “reflection” of society at large (consider all the churches and artwork that were being created at this time in Spain, as well as its overseas endeavors), but emerges largely through some other mechanism.
With that said: How is poverty crafted in this novel? What does it sound (or taste or feel) like? What are the figures, themes, and techniques that create a “voice” (or maybe voices) of poverty in this text? Why focus so directly on poverty here? Or, are there other voices besides that of poverty and dearth that you think emerge loudly from this novel? What are they, and how do they operate here?
For this question, you could also compare the figure of poverty in Lazarillo de Tormes with that of something else we have read or are reading. César Vallejo’s poetry (which we did not get to analyze together), the film “Before Night Falls,” or the short story “Dhowli” are potential sites you might look at to engage in a comparative project.
3. Your Choice
You may develop a paper on any other topic of your choosing that relates to any of the texts we have read since School Days. I would only ask that you discuss and confirm your topic with me before writing.