Unlocking the Classroom

OMG... I'm still alive!

2011-04-03T12:05:00.003-04:00

When I clicked to my bookmarked link, "My Blog: UTC," this morning, I couldn't believe that I haven't posted since October. Yes, I knew it had been a while, but...oy. Here's why I think teacher blogging is important:

Remembering that I have a voice in the wider conversation.
Taking the time to articulate my own thoughts and opinions so that I have an informed voice when I speak with others.
Reflecting on my practice.
Making connections between my practice, theory, and politics.

Here's why teacher blogging is next to impossible for me:

I don't want to rehash what has happened during the day. I want to resist that in my blogging. Sometimes, it feels good to leave work at work.
By the time I've gotten home, I'm sleep walking. Between after school activities, my master's course work, lesson planning, paperwork.... you get the idea.
I have to make time for my, umm... what's the word... personal life... that long lost thing.
If I have the time and/or energy to blog, I feel tempted to use that energy to work on things for my classroom...researching strategies, making materials, planning, analyzing data and experiences.
Oh yeah, and then we also have a classroom blog, so there's that too.

I don't know, I'm going to try my best.

Real Life- Schools in Pictures

2010-10-13T21:44:00.003-04:00

I just discovered Through Your Lens: School Facilities across America. Adequate facilities are such a huge part of making welcoming, safe, and comfortable teaching and learning spaces.

School buildings must be part of nation's conversation about education. Quality education requires quality spaces, something that millions of students lack.
We know that millions of children, especially those living in low-wealth school districts, spend their school days in poor quality, unhealthy, and overcrowded buildings that cause health problems and limit educational opportunities. All students and teachers have the right to adequate, appropriate learning conditions that will allow them to strive for and achieve the goals being set for them. No single level of government can accomplish this alone. We must create a new federal, state, and local partnership to ensure that each and every single community has sufficient resources to provide high-quality school buildings to their students.

And Slate is hosting an awesome space for dialogue and contest about reinventing education. spaces.

settling in

2010-10-04T21:43:00.003-04:00

It was a Bittersweet Back to School for me. See my latest post on GothamSchools. I'll be exploring the differences between working in Brownsville, Brooklyn and Park Slope as I blog for them over the next few months.

As the last two weeks of summer went by, I met with old and new teaching colleagues. I reminisced over dinner with a teacher who taught across the hall from me at the school I left last year. I laughed over lunch with a nurturing and seasoned paraprofessional from that school. And I sent back-to-school packages to students from last year’s class, piecing together some books, erasers, and pencils. What did I realize? It’s difficult to move on. Especially as a new teacher.

Shifting administrative focus to teaching & learning

2010-09-21T23:33:00.002-04:00

I thought this piece on Starting an Ed School was to the point. Rather than constantly reinventing structure and the things we do at school (ex. scheduling, grouping, incentives, etc.). Why not take the decent structures we have in place, get used to them, and take time and energy focusing on teaching and learning. Yeah?

Bye bye Rhee?

2010-09-19T05:29:00.002-04:00

Voters say goodbye to DC's Fenty, & likely, Michelle Rhee. (The Atlantic.)

There is pushback against the movement to treat public institutions and the precious people in them like factories. And when the impacted public is treated as an obstacle and not a partner to urban reform, it gives the whole effort colonial and paternalistic smell.

Cool Sites!

2010-09-19T00:27:00.001-04:00

A few great websites I just discovered:

Books that Heal Kids: book reviews for books about the good stuff
Storybird: an AMAZING site that helps with story-making. You can select artwork and author a story yourself. Great for kids who struggle with writing, and awesome artwork!

The Brain & Attention

2010-09-19T00:17:00.001-04:00

Teachers at Risk has an interesting post on neurodevelopment and student behavior.

Thank you, Pedro Noguera

2010-09-02T15:08:00.002-04:00

Noguera's article in the Daily News, "Accept it: Poverty hurts learning: Schools matter, but they're not all that matters," pushes policy makers to face the truth. While schools are important, life and conditions beyond schools matter too. When policy makers argue that schools are enough, they validate the notion that some people deserve to live in impoverished, ugly, and unjust conditions.

There has been a fierce, ongoing debate among educational leaders about how to teach poor children: One side has argued that we must address the wide variety of social issues (like poor health and nutrition, mobility, inadequate preparation for school, etc.) that tend to be associated with poverty. The other side has argued that schools serving poor children must focus on education alone and stop making excuses.

For more than 20 years, I've been associated with the first camp - and I remain baffled about why we are still debating such an obvious point. We've long known that family income combined with parental education is the strongest predictor of how well a student will do on most standardized tests. There is abundant evidence that in schools in the poorest communities, achievement is considerably lower than in schools with more socioeconomic diversity.

Too Cute: Baby Baboons

2010-09-02T15:05:00.002-04:00

I had to post this because it's just so cute. My classroom visited the Prospect Park Zoo last year and had a great time watching the baboons. The adults are so wise looking! The Zoo has a couple new babies.

The Other America

2010-08-23T21:50:00.004-04:00

A couple months ago, I read Valerie Polakow's Lives on the Edge: Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America. It was eye opening to see the stigmatization of the mothers that carries into the classroom, and the way that many of the children are treated by their teachers. Polakow refers to one of the students she follows as "scarred before he has a chance to be otherwise.” She chronicles the overwhelming problems faced by these single mothers--obstacle after obstacle.

Recognizing the construction of disabilities is one way in which we can empathize with students. When we fail to consider the web of societal and environmental factors that contribute to the many interactions within the classroom walls, we risk labeling students as in need of fixing. Instead, we must continually consider the societal and environmental factors that are in great need of an enormous fix. Polakow argues, “confronting the silence, naming the classroom world with different forms of talk, shifting our ways of seeing, opening up spaces for possibility can shift the tenuous ground on which young children of poverty stand. It is the question of existential value that confronts the silence.”

When we fail to examine the bigger picture and confront the silence, we blindly accept the status quo and oppressive reality of our school system and society at large—a system that further marginalizes the marginalized, humiliates the most vulnerable, and segregates those who are poor or different from those in power. To place full responsibility and blame on a five-, seven-, or sixteen-year-old child and label him or her as deviant or deficient is to give up hope that the larger world can change. It will short-change students for many years and many classrooms to come.

Housing is a human right. I'm hoping to find out how to get involved with Picture the Homeless in NYC which is led by within the homeless community. They're beginning to take action to claim vacant city spaces.

Our Housing Not Warehousing campaign sees homelessness against the backdrop of this massive warehousing of otherwise habitable vacant spaces. We have been pushing city legislation that would require the city to conduct an annual census of all vacant buildings and lots, so that this information is always readily available to the public.
The Housing campaign is working to transform the use of vacant spaces through a range of tactics -- including direct action occupations and renovations, public education, and participatory research. Our goal is to facilitate the creation of safe, secure and TRULY AFFORDABLE housing for the lowest income residents of the city, through innovative community and housing development models.

The Housing campaign is concerned with the warehousing of all vacant property, regardless of ownership. The campaign is organizing to move owners of vacant property, public or private, to turn those properties over to a Land Trust, and permanently-affordable Mutual Housing Associations created out of them. The publicly-subsidized, privately-owned financial services firm JPMorgan Chase is one of our targets. We are also one of the founding participants of the national Take Back the Land initiative, because we are clear that challenging property rights is not a fight that we can win without civil disobedience and other forms of direct action.

You can share vacant buildings in NYC's five boroughs that you know of by texting the address to 917.412.3064 or send it via Twitter using #housingnotwarehousing or @pthny.

They post a weekly reading on their site that is discussed at their Homeless Organizing Academy. Here's one:

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

Finish the poem here.

How'd I Miss This? Maxine Green Tribute

2010-08-22T20:44:00.005-04:00

Journal of Educational Controversy has an issue devoted to Maxine Greene.

CONTROVERSY ADDRESSED IN THIS ISSUE

"My vision, in launching this Foundation, is to generate inquiry, imagination, and the creation of art works by diverse people. It has to do so with a sense of the deficiencies in our world and a desire to repair, wherever possible. Justice, equality, freedom - these are as important to us as the arts, and we believe they can infuse each other, perhaps making some difference at a troubled time."
Maxine Greene, Foundation for Social Imagination, the Arts and Education
An understanding of the role of public schools in sustaining the life of a democracy requires more than the occasional class in civic education. It requires the development of social imagination. Maxine Greene reminds us of the important role that the arts - visual art, music, performance art and literature - can play in such an education. We invite authors to explore the many dimensions of a vision for such an education within schools and colleges, or alternatively, outside these institutions. We also invite authors to contribute to a special section on Maxine Greene's lifetime work and writings on art, social imagination and education.

So much great reading to do. I began reading Chris Higgins' Working with Youth: In Search of the Natality of the Teacher.

With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness.
- John Dewey (1916, p. 50)

A teacher in search of his/her own freedom may be the only kind of teacher who can arouse young persons to go in search of their own.
- Maxine Greene (1988, p. 14)

Overture

In teacher education, what one says about teaching is probably less important than how one addresses teachers. One of the things that make Maxine Greene's work singular and singularly important is her mode of address as a teacher educator. In her classes and her writings alike, she never forgets that she is speaking to teachers, and that in doing so she is speaking to human beings. This is not to say that others address teachers in an inhuman way. It is simply to point out that Greene reaches out to teachers, again and again, as fellow inhabitants of a set of typically human existential predicaments. Nor is this to suggest that she ignores the teacher qua teacher. To the contrary, she views teaching as a uniquely rich and important project, and personal projects are central to the ethical, existential terrain she is interested in.

From Teacher as Stranger (1973) to the latest posting on The Maxine Greene Foundation website (http://www.maxinegreene.org/index.html), Greene has been working to make visible the person in the role of teacher, and even “to make that person visible to himself” (1973, p. 271). Time and again, she has urged teachers to take an “interest in thinking about what it means to choose to be a teacher” (Greene, 1987, p. 181). She has offered us tireless and eloquent reminders that teaching is a transaction between selves in process, persons in need of meaningful projects and freedoms worth taking (see, e.g., Greene, 1986, pp. 76-79). She reminds us that the individual teacher, like any individual, needs some sort of studio space—some opportunity for retreat, reflection, and recreation—if she is to cultivate herself through her work (1973, p. 290). She reminds us that teachers also must fear the isolation that vitiates genuine action, which requires the catalysis and witnessing of others. And she reminds us that we are beginners, beings capable of breaking with the taken for granted, the routine and the mechanical (see, e.g., Greene, 1978, pp. 26-27; 1979). Greene's path-breaking work on these questions is the inspiration for the essay that follows. I explore the existential meanings, risks, and rewards of teaching through a close reading of two writers with whom she has frequently been in dialogue: Rainer Maria Rilke and Hannah Arendt.

Teaching and Natality: Recovery of an Untimely Question

Why teach? What draws us to this daunting practice and what sustains us there in the face of its inevitable difficulties? What sort of love does this labor express? Why might the practice of teaching be worth putting at the center of one's life?

One of the most stirring answers ever given to such questions appears in the last paragraph of Hannah Arendt's (1977) essay, “The Crisis of Education”:

Education is the point at which we decide if we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, not to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world. (p. 196)

Cool Site

2010-08-22T20:35:00.003-04:00

I just came across The Voice via the Teachers College Record. Videos share tidbits of scholarly research. Here's one with Bree Picower discussing her paper from TC Record called “Resisting Compliance: Learning to Teach for Social Justice in a Neo-Liberal Environment.”

Finding the Light in their Eyes: Ideas

2010-08-19T15:18:00.003-04:00

PBS shares its Innovation Awards winners. One teacher's ELL kindergarteners publish digital stories that can be shared with relatives abroad and the wider world. Another connects the arts and poetry with her upper elementary students. In the midwest, elementary art students created the Young Sloppy Brush. There are many stories worth checking out. It's so much more fun and enriching to read these stories as opposed to those that feature which teachers raise test scores and which don't. While test scores can offer one window into teacher and student learning, it's certainly a small picture. Rather than forcing teacher test score data to be made public, what about encouraging teachers to publicly share what's happening in their classroom - what projects their students are doing and how they find the light in their students' eyes?

Cuddly reading buddies and more

2010-08-18T12:26:00.004-04:00

Reading to dogs can help kids boost their reading skills. (Good Morning America)
Wealthier special education parents are more likely to ask the DOE to pay for their child's private schooling. (WSJ)
My opinion on this article? Don't leave arts education up to principals! (Observer)
Texas Special Ed students are twice as likely to be suspended. (Texas Tribune)

Tom Sawyer, Diagnoses, and More

2010-08-17T11:48:00.003-04:00

Kids on the younger side of their grade are diagnosed with ADHD more often. (USA Today)
Where would Tom Sawyer be in today's school system? ADHD? Oppositional Defiance Disorder? Conduct Disorder? Emotional Disturbance? (WashingtonPost)
Surfing can be therapeutic for kids with autism. (LI Herald)

Chancellor Gilbert

2010-08-11T21:19:00.002-04:00

The Failure to Desegregate

2010-08-11T20:59:00.003-04:00

Susan Eaton and Steven Rivkin ask: Is Desegregation Dead? in their article in Education Next.

Hard to believe we still have separate and unequal schools. Schools with a high percentage of students of color often have a high percentage of low-income students. When the needs of many of these families and students are not met outside of school, the problems become a part of the school. In a school where almost all students and families face these same challenges, the burden is much heavier. I've certainly seen this first hand. It becomes a never-ending and impossible triage.

Eaton makes two important points:

1. Diverse schools committed to equal opportunity hold vast, often untapped potential, but it is up to teachers, parents, administrators, and other sectors of society to harness it. When diverse schools institute rigid academic tracking that places students of color in low-level classes or employ harsh discipline policies that exclude students rather than providing support, they are not truly integrated. The success of today’s diversity movement hinges on our ability to move diverse schools closer to true integration.
Increasing linguistic and cultural diversity enriches our society. A modern integration movement must incorporate immigrant students and English language learners. The sharp segregation of these groups from mainstream opportunity limits their chances for social mobility and encourages prejudice against them.
2. Educators have long testified and research has long demonstrated that schools with large shares of economically disadvantaged children become overwhelmed with challenges that interfere with education. Racially segregated high-poverty schools tend to be overrun with social problems, have a hard time finding and retaining good teachers, are associated with high dropout rates, and are less effective than diverse schools at intervening in problems outside of school that undermine learning. In a longitudinal study of dropout rates, researcher Argun Saatcioglu concluded, “desegregated schools likely played a more effective role in counterbalancing student-level nonschool problems than did segregated ones.” Generally, racially and economically diverse schools have been far more successful than segregated ones in improving achievement, graduating students of color, and sending kids to college. There are some successful high-poverty schools, certainly, but hardly enough to make “separate but equal” our education policy.

Oh Arizona...

2010-08-10T16:19:00.001-04:00

Via Truthout:

For the next few months, the world will be focusing on Arizona's SB 1070 - the state's new racial profiling law - as it works its way through the appeals process. However, in this insane asylum known as Arizona, where conservatives have concocted one reactionary scheme after another, another law in particular stands out for its embrace of Dark Ages-era censorship - the 2010 anti-ethnic studies HB 2281 - a law that seeks to codify the "triumph" of Western Civilization with its emphasis on Greco-Roman culture.

Unless it is blocked, HB 2281 - which creates an inquisitorial mechanism that will determine which books and curricula are acceptable in the state - will go into effect on January 1, 2011. Books such as "Occupied America" by Rodolfo Acuña and "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire, have already been singled out as being un-American and preaching the violent overthrow of the US government.

Talking about Empathy

2010-08-10T16:12:00.002-04:00

Eric Weltman's piece, Empathy and Our Nation's Future, on Truthout cites out a possible decline in the empathy of college students today. He points out what empathy means in public policy practice:

Policies to foster residential integration include effective enforcement of fair housing and lending laws and providing more housing vouchers to low-income families that break up concentrated poverty and enable greater mobility. The use of inclusionary zoning should be broadened, requiring new developments to contain low- and moderate-income units. In education, we should create additional magnet schools for students across district lines and increase programs allowing urban students to attend suburban schools. And, perhaps most significantly, urban and suburban municipalities and school districts should be merged, breaking down barriers to sharing resources, broadening access to opportunity and helping students navigate our changing nation.

Planning Pyramid

2010-08-09T19:20:00.002-04:00

I'll be co-teaching a first-grade inclusion class next year. As I was researching techniques, I came across the Planning Pyramid Unit by Schumm, Vaughri & Harris, 1997. It is an interesting way of capturing what all students should know and enrichment and extension concepts during a unit.

Finding the Light in their Eyes

2010-08-08T20:33:00.003-04:00

Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk, in the previous post, reminded me of Sonia Nieto's introduction from her book "The light in their eyes: Creating multicultural learning communities."

She says:

In thinking about why learning needs to be more centrally connected with multicultural education, an image came to me: the light in students' eyes when they become excited about learning. There is nothing quite as dazzling as this sight. Once we have seen the look of discovery and learning in students' eyes, we can no longer maintain that some young people--because of their social class, race, ethnicity, gender, native language, or other difference--are simply unmotivated, ignorant, or undeserving. The light in their eyes is eloquent testimony to their capacity and hence their right to learn.

When we subject many populations of "at risk" students to skill and drill curricula, test prep, low-level thinking skills, and scripted curricula, we don't have a chance to see this light in students' eyes. We take this away from the very beginning. We fail them from the start. I have felt like I have to sneak in the activities that give students a chance to love learning. A creative curriculum often must be enacted behind the closed classroom door. It's assumed that it's not what struggling or "at-risk" students need.

I agree with SpEdChange's post about the current Obama reforms and Race to the Top:

The winners of the "innovation" grant program: Teach for America - which provides untrained teachers for America's most vulnerable minority students while pumping up the resumes of rich kids; KIPP Schools - today's recreation of the US "Indian School" program for the "retraining" of minority children; and Success for All - a scripted reading program devoted to teaching reading as a skill, not a life function; all have a few things in common, from campaign contributions to rich folks behind them, but especially, that they are all emblematic of the Obama Administration's belief "that African-American and Latino kids are ineducable."

If Obama thought differently he would not be pouring education funds into reductionist programs that no middle class or wealthy parent would accept for their child. If Obama thought differently he would be pouring funding into...dreaming about how to give all of our kids all that they need.

His request?

All of our children, even if they are poor, are black, are latino, are "disabled," even if they have "disinterested" or incompetent parents, deserve our very best. So please, let's stop "racing" - and let's stop dividing - and let's start creating opportunity.

College does NOT begin in Kindergarten

2010-08-08T20:24:00.002-04:00

Thank you Ken Robinson.

He also says, "a three year old is not half a six-year-old. "Do we want our education system to be "fast food" or "customized dining?"

I came across this talk late. It's from May, but definitely worth watching if you haven't yet seen it.

He closes with this poem by William Butler Yeats:

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Special Ed Discrimination Lawsuit in New Orleans

2010-08-06T18:39:00.003-04:00

Although the New Orleans district has been upheld as an innovative space for education since Katrina, special education students are not receiving the differentiated, high quality instruction that they deserve. The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed suit.

In the mean time...

2010-07-23T18:02:00.003-04:00

I haven't been posting for a while. I did just finish a little piece that is published on GothamSchools. Click the link within for my piece.

Happy summer!

Rethinking Schools Poetry issue is FREE!

2010-06-05T18:31:00.003-04:00

Yay! I love poetry. My students wrote some amazing poems this year that we are publishing into a little book. I'll share some of them on here soon- they are beautiful.

Check out Rethinking Schools current issue for free online - it's devoted to poetry:

The U.S. poet Robert Frost said, “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a love sickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.” Our cover section focuses on three teachers who guide students to find their voice through poetry, to take the lump in their throat and transform it into poetry that gives them a sense of their own power. At the same time, Tom McKenna, Renée Watson, and Elizabeth Schlessman show us how to use poetry to help students think critically about their personal experience and connect it to a larger social reality.

In my favorite piece, an elementary school teachers explores what it means to leave one country and move to another: Aquí y Allá • Exploring Our Lives Through Poetry — Here and There. One of the poems she used is very accessible to students:

Wonders of the City
Here in the city there are
wonders everywhere

Here mangoes
come in cans

In El Salvador
they grew on trees

Here chickens come
in plastic bags

Over there
they slept beside me

—Jorge Argueta

Teaching the Oil Spill

2010-06-05T18:19:00.002-04:00

Looking for resources to teach about the oil spill? I am too. Here's what I've found. My students are putting a news broadcast together about the spill that we'll show to the rest of the school (hopefully). I allowed them to explore a variety of websites. We did an experiment to see how water interacts with oil. They especially were into looking at the photos of animals affected by the spill--it really made them want to help.

Silent Students: How can I work with a child with selective mutism?

2010-05-29T19:31:00.007-04:00

Selective mutism can be puzzling for classroom teachers, counselors, and a student's peers. What's the best approach? I did a little research.

I have an 8-year-old female student in my class (who I'll call Jessica), who is classified as having a Learning Disability. She entered the class in November, fresh out of her initial special education evaluation. There was little information on the IEP because the evaluator was unable to get the student to verbally or otherwise engage in the testing. When asked questions, she would look away and put her finger in her mouth. She is recommended for a 12:1:1 bilingual setting, but she currently is in a mono-lingual English speaking classroom and receives no English language instruction, as it is not available in our school. She has Selective Mutism.

Selective Mutism is a low incidence anxiety disorder in which a child does not speak in one or more social settings. It occurs in less than 1% of the population and is more common in girls than in boys. Because children typically speak in the home setting, teachers play an important role in identifying and finding appropriate treatment for students with selective mutism. When asked to speak, they may blush, fidget, avoid eye contact and become increasingly rigid. They may even avoid asking to go to the bathroom. My student places her index finger in her mouth when she is nervous. She does this less now, and it is my assumption that this is in part because she is more comfortable and in part because we have reminded her not to put her finger in her mouth. It's difficult to believe has never asked to use the bathroom during class.

Some claim that the child will naturally grow out of their silence. Many claim that my student will. But researchers contend that this isn't neccessarily the case. Even if the student does begin to speak, she will likely suffer from anxiety in new situations. Even worse, if her anxiety is left untreated she may never speak in the school setting or speak to the degree that is typical of other students. It is important that students are treated for the condition because it decreases opportunities for social interaction and may increase instances of bullying.

Additionally, a student’s silence slows down the progress on word attack skills and oral reading. I noticed that as a teacher, I did not spend as much time working with my student on reading and oral activities because I assumed she would not speak. However, once I realized this, I made the conscious effort to work with her as much as I work with other students.

Students’ silence reduces opportunities for academic assessment from the teacher, especially because the elementary setting relies heavily on verbal assessment. However, students do not typically have academic deficiencies, even though teachers may rate reading skills lower, objective measures show that students with selective mutism perform on level with their peers. Jessica often surprises me with her reading and the amount of words that she can read. However, because of her status as an English language learner, it appears as though she does not have a large English vocabulary and does not know the meaning of many words. Even when she is able to decode the sounds in the word, she is unlikely to blend the sounds together. I do not know if she is anxious and this prohibits her from taking an educated guess or her limited English causes her not to recognize that the word is a true word.

It is important for teachers who work with students with selective mutism to understand that the students’ silence is a symptom of anxiety and not a show of defiance. Pressure to speak from adults and peers may only make the student more anxious. However, no pressure to speak may reinforce the students’ silence. It is important that a teacher’s relationship with a student who has selective mutism has a careful balance of safety and challenge to progress, if even in very small steps. The student must not begin to see his or her own identity as a selective mute, or one who does not speak.

While these students do not speak, they do wish to communicate. In the month of March, I made a conscious effort to engage more with Jessica. I noticed that because she did not speak and did not cause “problems” in the classroom, I did not take much time to give her attention in a social way. I would help her with her work, but didn’t have much of a relationship with her. During a week in March, the class went on two field trips. I sat with Jessica on the bus. We took pictures of ourselves with my camera and looked at them. We laughed. She began pointing to things out the bus window that she wanted me to look at. Since then, we continue to communicate more. Now, Jessica will tap me on the shoulder now when she needs something, as opposed to doing nothing. She will act silly with me, touching my hair or making faces at me. When I say thank you to her, she will respond with “you’re welcome.” Even though these are small steps, I recognize that she is making progress and communicating more.

There are a variety of therapies that are appropriate for students with selective mutism, including behavioral therapy, family therapy, and psychopharmacological therapy. SSRI’s (anxiety treating medicines) have been shown to be helpful to decrease anxiety and effective in getting children to speak in as little as weeks. These treatments have been used with students as young as four years old and the medicine does not typically need to be used for a long duration of time, perhaps a few months or a year. Still, communication between home and school and an intervention plan can make progress even without the therapist.

What should the teacher mindset be? The teacher, first and foremost, should show empathy to the child. The teacher might ask the student if they would like to speak at school in the future and give an open invitation to do so. If the student does say that they would like to try, the teacher can say they will help however they can. In the classroom, the teacher should provide a safe and welcoming environment, observing and paying close attention to the situations in which the student appears the most anxious. The teacher may ask the student (who can answer in writing or drawing): How can I help you participate more in school? When the student does speak, it is wise to refrain from calling attention to the child because this may cause more anxiety.

The teacher may consider, when possible, making a home visit to the child to observe and perhaps interact with the student in the home setting and play with the student using puppets or dolls to encourage speech. In terms of the student-teacher or student-peer relationships, teacher should watch carefully for behavior that becomes too dependent. I am planning to visit Jessica’s home in two weeks. It is late in the school year, but I hope to make as much progress as we can in the little time that is left.

To treat selective mutism in the school, school staff should develop an intervention plan. Crundwell recommends involving individuals with whom the student speaks in “conversational visits." The student may work with the individual with whom he or she is comfortable, for example a parent, in a separate room in the school building, practicing reading or math. The purpose of this visit is to allow the student to become comfortable speaking within the walls of the school setting, and no more. After a while, speech can then be transferred to another setting. The conversational visits then move closer to the classroom and peers.

Jessica’s mother has visited our classroom a few times. However, because she is in the classroom with Jessica and her peers, Jessica is still anxious. If I am able to plan for the visit, I will set up space and a time for Jessica and her mother to interact on their own in a place in the building. I wish I could communicate these strategies more to the parents, but our communication is difficult because Jessica’s mother speaks Spanish and I do not.

From my research, I’ve recognized that it is critical that the steps be small in order for the child to feel safe. After several conversational visits take place, more opportunities can be provided for conversations and interactions with peers. When the student does speak, it is wise to refrain from calling attention to the child because this may cause more anxiety. Teachers should pay close attention to the activities and seating arrangements in the classroom when planning for social interaction. In the classroom, pupils that the student engages with should be used for support. One young boy in my class has taken a liking to Jessica and looks out for her. He interacts with her and tries to get her to speak with him. Sometimes I wonder if he is putting to much pressure on her, but I don’t think he is making her too anxious, from my observations. They seem to interact as typical friends would. When we work in partners, I have Jessica and the student work together.

As the school year comes to an end, teachers and school staff should also plan with parents and the student to think about what can be done over summer break and the next school year to maintain and continue progress. I need to think more about this and gather more resources for the family.

When Jessica first arrived, she did not speak at all. When questions were directed toward her, she would look away and put her finger in her mouth. Because we did not yet have the IEP, Jessica’s history of silence in the school setting was not available. I was told that she was Spanish speaking and the school was puzzled as to why she was placed in my class. As a couple months passed on, Jessica’s speech progressed little by little. When prompted and given choices she would respond with nods. Then, she would respond with a one word answer after being prompted. Now, she speaks in a more audible whisper and will respond to questions without delay and with 2-3 word answers.

During the first week of May, a bilingual paraprofessional came to work with Jessica. She met Jessica and began speaking with her in English, and Jessica did not respond. Then, the paraprofessional started showing Jessica pictures of her dog on her cell phone and speaking in Spanish. Jessica began responding in Spanish in an audible whisper. Throughout the day, the paraprofessional encouraged Jessica to participate and spoke to her in both Spanish and English. When I arrived to pick Jessica up from lunch (at which her para was present), I had never seen her smile so big (and she smiles a lot!) I walked down the hall with Jessica, holding hands. Jessica was so excited that she was bubbling with energy, skipping and squeezing my hand. We returned to the classroom and she continued to talk in a loud whisper when prompted. At the end of the day, another student said, “Wow, I’ve never heard Jessica talk so much before!” The entire class was proud , including Jessica!

good job or no?

2010-04-26T19:47:00.006-04:00

As soon as I finish reading Diane Ravitch's new book (just a few pages away), I've got Alfie Kohn's Punished By Rewards waiting for me on my nightstand.

I was perusing today through "Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!" At first, I was skeptical. First, Kohn brings up his thoughts on unconditionality, which I first read in his article "Unconditional Teaching." It's a gem:

Imagine that your students are invited to respond to a questionnaire several years after leaving the school. They’re asked to indicate whether they agree or disagree – and how strongly – with statements such as: “Even when I wasn’t proud of how I acted, even when I didn’t do the homework, even when I got low test scores or didn’t seem interested in what was being taught, I knew that [insert your name here] still cared about me.”

This is something that hit home with me when I first read this article a while ago, and I try to keep this in mind as I teach. I think it's especially important with students with special learning and behavioral needs.

Instead of saying "Good Job," Kohn recommends:

* Say what you saw. A simple, evaluation-free statement ("You put your shoes on by yourself" or even just "You did it") tells your child that you noticed. It also lets her take pride in what she did. In other cases, a more elaborate description may make sense. If your child draws a picture, you might provide feedback – not judgment – about what you noticed: "This mountain is huge!" "Boy, you sure used a lot of purple today!"

If a child does something caring or generous, you might gently draw his attention to the effect of his action on the other person: "Look at Abigail’s face! She seems pretty happy now that you gave her some of your snack." This is completely different from praise, where the emphasis is on how you feel about her sharing.

beautiful to love the world with eyes that have not yet been born

2010-04-15T18:56:00.002-04:00

Before the Scales, Tomorrow

And when the enthusiastic
story of our time
is told,
who are yet to be born
but announce themselves
with more generous face,
we will come out ahead
--those who have suffered most from it.

And that
being ahead of your time
means much suffering from it.
But it's beautiful to love the world
with eyes
that have not yet
been born.

And splendid
to know yourself victorious
when all around you
it's all still so cold,
so dark.

Otto Rene Castillo

I heart Deborah Meier

2010-04-09T19:30:00.003-04:00

Ugh. I so do!

There are two pieces of her's I just read that really are meaningful.

Free Market Schooling

"This is a perilous moment. The individualist, greed-driven free-market ideology that both our major parties have pursued is at odds with what most Americans really care about....Working families and poor communities need and deserve help because the free market has failed to generate shared prosperity — its famous unseen hand has become a closed fist." Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, and I, agree. But the public seems just as suspicious—if not more so—about public institutions as the private ones. Thus the relative lack of alarm over the extraordinary shift in "ownership" of our public schools. We are witnessing more federal intervention at virtually all levels of schooling, more power in the hands of private wealth, and more "market-driven" decisions — at the same time! And there is almost no well-funded opposition, except for teacher unions who are then villainized as being anti-reform, self-interested, too protective of their bad apples.

The second, Until We Take Democracy Seriously, is similar.

Here's an essential question: When trying to get at the truth of things, what role do data play? Most of the time our "habits" take over before we can exercise any form of reflective judgment (which is why John Dewey focused on "habits of mind" as the goal of good schools). Habits are slow growing so slowing things down could help. It takes a "leisure class" to rule well. Leisure has a democratic purpose because "data" rarely speak for themselves. That's true whether the data are numbers or observations. Sometimes, highly structured and standardized "observations"—standardized tests—work. Sometimes, highly structured debates or formal proofs work—with the rules of the game and the judges chosen by those viewed as most expert or representative. Often, we decide on the sheer logic of the argument, calling upon the data life itself has brought us.

I'm also reading a couple books. Diane Ravitch's new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. I've never totally agreed with Ravitch's views, but find her to be a fascinating individual and as I read this book about her changing views on how education to look, I continue to respect her. And it looks like we agree on more "stuff."

I'm also reading Alfie Kohn's Punished By Rewards.

Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you'll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train the family pet.

In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

"Doing" Critical Pedagogy in the K-12 Space

2010-04-04T14:30:00.003-04:00

Came across an interesting post on The Freire Project, "Everyday Critical Pedagogies Do Exist" that was a response to a comment about whether or not critical pedagogy should be promoted within the K-12 space, or best used/pushed at higher education institutions and community groups, etc. Which makes more sense?

This is something that I've pondered as an elementary school teacher and critical pedagogue. It is easier to envision or make concrete my own critical pedagogy outside of the K-12 space-- in applied theatre, in my writing, in my political thinking and action. Certainly, these beliefs and philosophies inform my practice as a second grade special education teacher, and prior as a K-8 theatre and movement teaching artist. However, I grapple with the question: Do I have an everyday critical pedagogy?

I'm not sure. I try to. I'm figuring out exactly what that means. I first thought that my beliefs about critical pedagogy would influence mostly the content I teach and how I teach it (and it certainly does); I am learning more and more that perhaps it influences my views of my special needs students and the way I interact with them more than the aforementioned.

Building a community in which my special needs learners have agency and are viewed as whole human beings rather than disabled or deficient children veers me away from using certain behavior modification and token economy techniques that are so often pushed in classrooms. As a critical pedagogue I am always trying to reevaluate my own assumptions and make and remake myself as an educator and a student. I try to observe, listen, and understand my students more and more. I attempt to create a circle of learning, instead of what a traditional classroom usually becomes. At times, I fail. I know that I talk more than my students. I know that I do not yet give them enough opportunities to be heard and to use their language, to inquire and reflect on the world. I don't think I'm patient enough for that to happen as much as it should. I'm working on it.

The thought just popped into my mind about one of my favorite quotes: If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." I think I do feel that way within my classroom. We are bound, and teaching and learning has become much more than helping. I can't explain much more than that right now, but I am continuing to learn what it means to be a critical pedagogue with my second grade wonders.

Hello Poetry!

2010-04-04T14:02:00.003-04:00

April is Poetry Month. I love poems.

Teachers and Writers Collaborative always has awesome articles on teaching poetry. I'm hoping to put something together with poetry and comics for my second graders.
Wishes, Lies, and Dreams is an awesome, fabulous, and beautiful book about writing poetry with children. It has simple but awesome ideas!
Poets.org has curricula and lesson plans that are cool.

deb meier on testing

2010-04-04T14:00:00.001-04:00

Like this analogy she makes on Bridging Differences:

If only everyone stopped using the word "achievement" as a synonym for scores on tests. It's a sleight of hand that justifies so much that's gone wrong. We've meanwhile discounted the work of real live children as "soft" data.

Having "normal" temperature may be an indicator of health, but when we think it's the definition of health, beware. We wouldn't be so stupid, would we? A high score on a multiple-choice driving test means something different than a road test driving a car. So we prefer the latter if we value safety. Do we value intellectual achievement less?

on teaching

2010-03-25T03:55:00.001-04:00

"…Teaching is an interactive practice that begins and ends with seeing the student. This is more complicated than it seems, for it is something that is ongoing and never completely finished. The student grows and changes, the situation shifts, and seeing becomes an evolving challenge. As layers of mystification and obfuscation are peeled away, as a student becomes more fully present to the teacher, experiences and ways of thinking and knowing that were initially obscure become the ground on which an authentic and vital teaching practice can be constructed.”

From: To Teach: The Journey Of A Teacher By William Ayers, Teachers College Press, 2001

books on my nightstand

2010-03-22T21:06:00.002-04:00

I'm reading a lot of books at once. All are great. Especially Lost at School. Can't say enough about Collaborative Problem Solving!

Without the right conditions, nothing grows

2010-03-21T21:50:00.001-04:00

Thank you Ken Robinson. I very much agree that teachers must create conditions that allow students to flourish. Not conditions that stifle students or scare students into compliance.

By Heart: This book sounds good...

2010-03-17T20:27:00.001-04:00

By Heart

Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives

Judith Tannenbaum, Spoon Jackson

"A boy with no one to listen becomes a man in prison for life and discovers his mind can be free. A woman enters prison to teach and becomes his first listener. And so begins a twenty-five year friendship between two gifted writers and poets. The result is By Heart — a book that will anger you, give you hope, and break your heart."
— Gloria Steinem

Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson met at San Quentin State Prison in 1985. For over two decades they have conferred, corresponded and sometimes collaborated, producing very different bodies of work resting on the same understanding: that human beings have one foot in darkness, the other in light.

In this beautifully crafted exploration – part memoir, part essay – Tannenbaum and Jackson consider art, education, prison, possibility, and which children our world nurtures and which it shuns. At the book's core are two stories that speak for human imagination, spirit, and expression.

Resources for evaluating power, privilege, values, and status

2010-03-17T20:21:00.002-04:00

In Good Work: Ethics and Community Cultural Development with Children and Youth, Stephani Etheridge Woodson examines what it means to do "good work" with kids. I found the below resources valuable. I've done status mapping and value mapping, but I thought the matchstick autobiography was cool.

A few activities I use to tackle this ethical responsibility include:

Status mapping

Social Indentity Membership Status

Primary Cultural affiliation

Gender

Appearance

Class

Physical Ability/Disability

Sexual Orientation

Religion

Age

Field work observing the performance of power and status

Observe diverse sites, for example, the ASU gym and pool, a preschool playground, or a high-school basketball game. In each location, look for how social identities are performed and maintained. Look for status as related to those membership categories.

Writing your own obituary

Write your own obituary, putting into it all of your life‘s accomplishments, and include why you are proud of these accomplishments

Matchstick autobiography

In the space of time provided by one lit match (before you burn your fingers) give your autobiography to the class. What is most important that we know about you?

Value mapping activities

Design a crest and motto for yourself.
Create digital “I am” poems.
As I read each of the below statements, vote with your body, ranking your values on a continuum of “agree” on one side of the room and “disagree” on the other.
Spending time with my family is important.
It is more important to save money than it is to buy things I want, but don’t necessarily need.
Being physically fit is an important part of my life.
Creative time is important to me.
It is more important to be honest than to spare someone’s feelings.

Becoming competent culturally is a process of self-reflexive pondering, questioning and awareness of how power dynamics operate. I believe that CCD youth-focused practitioners have an ethical responsibility to acknowledge power, to understand how their own status operates in any given situation, and to be able to honestly address difference with children and youth.

Ruby Bridges to Today

2010-02-27T18:52:00.002-05:00

In my second grade special ed classroom, we've been studying school integration. The texts we've been using include The Story of Ruby Bridges, Through My Eyes, and Remember.

The kids get it. One of my students said, "I think I know why there were laws that made life for white people better. I think it is because all of the people in the court were white."

My kids see our school as integrated because there are many shades of black and brown. But we're still not there at all. Here's a great story from Village Voice, Inside a Divided Upper East Side School.

If you're a white student and you arrive at the public elementary school building on 95th Street and Third Avenue, you'll probably walk through the front door. If you're a black student, you'll probably come in through the back.

pre-school paralysis

2010-02-19T09:26:00.001-05:00

Just got around to reading The Junior Meritocracy piece in a recent NY Mag. Love what the head of The Calhoun School has to say:

I want a school full of kids who day dream. I want kids who are fun to be with. I want kids who don't want to answer the questions on those tests in the way the adult wants them to be answered, because that kid is already seeing the world differently. In fact, I want kids who are cynical enough at age 4 to know that there's really something wrong with someone asking them these theings and think, 'I'm going to screw with them in the process!'"

Aren't these many of our special education students? He also says:

You have to play with blocks. You have to make up stories. You have to muck around. Arithmetic and decoding language aren't life---they're symbolic representations of other things. And education is being diverted into focusing on these symbolic representations of the very experiences kids are being denied.

Love, Love, Love: Part 6

2010-02-18T18:21:00.001-05:00

Thanks to ATA Blog for making me remember that I haven't finished sharing on this topic.

This post is about Facilitating Challenging Dialogue in the applied theatre, with love.

Here's the background: To explore the concept of radical love in the applied theatre space, I reached out to other practitioners and continued to review applicable literature in the field of education and theatre. I have organized these thoughts into four that struck me:

Courage, Envisioning and Imagining Change
Community Work
Facilitating Challenging Dialogue
Representation of the Other

Find the links to the previous posts here.

Here's my bit on Facilitating Challenging Dialogue...

To engage in true openness, listening, and dialogue to represent love in action, we must risk spaces of discomfort. In examining power and privilege, oppression, marginalization, abuse, violence and other topics, applied theatre work often ventures to places that are uncomfortable for facilitators and participants. As practitioners, we must embrace this space, but maintain its safety.

In “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness,” bell hooks identifies the margin as a space for resistance. She notes that the margin is “much more than a site of deprivation…it is also the site of radical possibility.” Yet, embracing marginality may be a space of uneasiness for some—but discomfort can be the most radical place for learning. Dr. Christina Marin of NYU's Educational Theatre Program challenges participants to acknowledge that through discomfort, amazing possibilities can be uncovered:

If you are willing to be uncomfortable, which I believe is one of the best places in which to explore, if you’re willing to, and you don’t try and put the band-aid on it, you don’t try to cover it up, you don’t try and dismiss it and negate it, you don’t try and get past it to get to the comfortable part too quickly. Sometimes we have to sit in that zone of discomfort because that’s where we can examine how we can find the road together.

Michael Rhod (of Sojourn Theatre) points out that it is the facilitator’s responsibility to maintain a safe space throughout discomfort, to “be aware and fiercely observant, proactive, porous, and at the same time recognize that there are some moments that you have to let tumble forward…” When the facilitator is a part of the circle, rather than outside of it, the facilitator demonstrates risk alongside participants. With this courage to risk, facilitators and participants engage in the vulnerable and courageous act of love that McLaren (1997) and Antonia Darder characterize as radical love.

Throughout the applied theatre experience, the facilitator is responsible for creating and maintaining a safe space in concert with participants. The artists’ responsibilities amplify when applied theatre work results in performance where there exist implications with the way we represent the other.

Looking Closely at Harlem Children's Zone

2010-02-18T17:58:00.000-05:00

City Limits' March issue takes a little bit more of a critical look at HCZ.

Maxine Greene, my love

2010-02-17T18:32:00.000-05:00

via ATA Blog:

An excerpt from How Do We Think About Our Craft?, an essay by Maxine Greene published by Teachers College, Columbia University.
"Gradually becoming aware of all this, we are beginning to recognize that every young person must be encountered as a center of consciousness, even as he or she is understood to be a participant in an identifiable social world. Each one may be encountered as a being who is at once a distinctive individual and someone whose consciousness opens out to the common, an intersubjective world in which he or she is inextricably involved."

Learning Love

2010-02-17T18:19:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Michael Wiggins of the ATA Blog for sharing this quote about love!

In his book, The Art of Loving, philosopher Erich Fromm writes:
"The first step is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering.

Could it be that only those things are considered worthy of being learned with which one can earn money or prestige, and that love, which "only" profits the soul, but is profitless in the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spend much energy on?"

Emotions, Memory, and Learning

2010-02-17T17:41:00.002-05:00

I was recently skimming a book on what teachers should know about how the brain works. (I need to find the title--I know I wrote it down somewhere.) The part that really stood out to me (even though it makes total sense) is that we are more likely to remember something/put it into our memory if there is emotion tied to it. We are likely to remember that with which we have an emotional connection. Duh.

Still, this makes me think about how the arts can be so crucial in learning. Experiencing a process drama about Ruby Bridges' and school integration vs. reading about it. Listening to or learning music from the Civil Rights area. Problem solving using Forum Theatre. All of these evoke emotions as a tool and a way of learning, and an avenue to remembering.

Here's a quick read on Educational Leadership: Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers.

Our brain pays more attention to stimuli and events that are accompanied by emotions. We remember the best and worst things that happen to us while forgetting emotionally neutral events. Do you remember what you ate for lunch two weeks ago last Thursday? Probably not, unless it was a special occasion or the food made you sick. In either case, the accompanying emotions enabled you to remember it.

How we feel about a learning situation often affects attention and memory more quickly than what we think about it. In most adolescents, the brain region that processes emotions (the limbic area) is fully operational, whereas the regions responsible for thinking, reflecting, and controlling emotional reactions (located in the prefrontal cortex) are still developing. This is why middle school students overtly display emotions inappropriately in the classroom (through pained sighs, rolling eyes, and blank looks).

And another: The Role of Emotions in Learning. This one talks mainly about the way that fear/joy can affect our ability to learn and open up avenues to learning.

Here's an article on Memory, Music and Emotion in Learning.

p-l-a-y

2010-02-17T17:35:00.002-05:00

Great, great, great Susan Engel & NY Times.

So important to recognize that what we teach and the way we teach is not aligned to what we know about child development.

Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.
In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does. Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on.
So what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all elementary school students mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to learn almost anything in high school and college.

Discovering Race Relations

2010-01-31T10:56:00.002-05:00

Here are some resources that could be applicable during Black History Month. RaceBridges offers a spectrum of lesson ideas from looking at Obama's speech on race to looking at the history of discrimination against Native Americans in Alaska.

I hate this article.

2010-01-18T10:18:00.002-05:00

Is that mean of me to say?

I just don't think Flanagan gets the point of experiential education.

Applied Theatre Blog

2010-01-09T09:29:00.002-05:00

A doctoral student from NYU's educational theatre program blogs about what is happening in the applied theatre course in Puerto Rico. Very informative.

Collaborating with Kids with Behavioral Challenges

2010-01-05T23:15:00.003-05:00

Been reading a little of this book: Love it. Great website, too.

Check out Lincoln Center Institute

2010-01-05T23:03:00.002-05:00

I was reading a bit about LCI's summer workshops-- The LCI International Educator Workshop.

I want to go!

Discover how to unlock imaginative learning through engaging with works of art. Find new excitement in your teaching practice. Share the insights of professional artists. Lay down paint, move to a beat, try on a stage character, invent your own music, improvise in a group or solo, and enjoy research. Immerse yourself in a sustained encounter with works of dance, music, theater, or visual art.

This workshop will help you to discover how to elicit new ideas in your students, and how to stimulate creative, conceptual thinkers prepared for the world beyond the classroom. Just imagine…

The Lincoln Center Institute International Educator Workshops will be held in New York City and at host sites in the United States and other countries. The New York City International Educator Workshop at Lincoln Center Institute will be held May 17–21; June 28–July 2; and July 12–16.

Introductory-Level Workshops are offered to any educator, artist, school or arts administrator, curriculum developer, and college and university professor from any national or international location. View the 2009 Introductory-Level brochure (PDF) for more information and as a preview of the 2010 Workshop.

Also, while reading, checked out their newest publication-

Such a Maxine Greene title. Visit the book's website for more. Here's a bit:

Know your enemy; it is you, scared.

Fear kills imagination. And fear is always with us. Pretending it doesn’t exist might work in a pinch, but eventually it returns. Learning to name, face, grapple with our fears: this is the start of the art of everything.

Because imagination is related to images, and images are related to the brain, it is logical to think of imagination as a purely cognitive capacity. But imagination is equally about emotion. It is about the animal instincts of ﬁght or ﬂight. It originates in the gut, in the chemical explosions that precede conscious thought. When you can overcome fear, you earn a chance to exercise your imagination. When you can’t, you don’t...

bell hooks for kids = wonderful stuffs

2010-01-05T22:45:00.004-05:00

Recently read this book with my students. How could I pass up a bell hooks children's book on love?

I asked the students to write a response to the prompt, "Homemade Love is..."

One student said:

Love is made of family and friends. My family is a caregiver.
My family is so funny!
This [is] how love is made. Is made of so many wonderful stuffs.

Support ATA

2009-12-29T09:05:00.001-05:00

Support the Association of Teaching Artists- led by Dale Davis- she rocks!

Here's a little post I stole from ATA's fabulous blogger Michael Wiggins. I like what Phil wrote at the beginning- quite poetic.

I'm not a teaching artist right now... but I am in spirit!

Why I Support ATA

By Phil Alexander

The soloist enchants us, while the choir provides us with incomparable depth and richness.

The poem delights us, while the book creates an entirely new universe for us.

The sculpture engages us, while the museum opens us up to brand new understandings.

The lesson teaches us, while the whole course transforms us.

Simply put, collective action reaches us deeper and lasts longer than individual experiences.

ATA is the embodiment of collective action, it's a collective voice, a unified chorus of individuals who often cannot be heard. The incomparable listserve , the ATA website, and the blog are just a few of the most obvious tools in which ATA collects and shares the voices of teaching artists. The
board and staff of ATA are committed to hearing the needs of teaching artists, and sharing your concerns with the world at large. We have plans to provide more opportunities and events for teaching artists in the future, such as the first Teaching Artists conference, but with assorted financial challenges, everything must be reconsidered and no opportunity is secure.

During this period of appeals and gift giving, it's hard to claim that one cause is more worthy than others. So I'm left asking this question: What will be heard, if ATA"s voice is silenced?

Philip A. Alexander, Ph.D.
Senior Program Officer
ESP Office of Partnership Support and Research
www.espartsed.org

Speaking of Communities

2009-12-20T18:14:00.002-05:00

Interesting piece on Community Arts Network: The Choices We Have and Our Privilege To Move On.

By Laura D. Cohen

The ability to choose to enter a community, to make art and to leave once a project or session is complete or things get “too hard” is a privilege of the outsider community artist. When working in a community that is different from our own, it is essential to reflect, address and confront our own privilege in order to become conscious and committed to the work and to the community.

Love, Love, Love: Part 5

2009-12-20T17:56:00.003-05:00

It's been about two months. But here's Part 5. In Part 4, I started exploring the first connection I saw between radical love and applied theatre: Courage, Envisioning and Imagining Change.

Just a re-cap on the last four installments: First, I rambled about the question of love and teaching, dove into Freire's concept of radical love, and got together a background on applied theatre. I've tried to sum it up by making connections between radical love and applied theatre in four areas:

Courage, Envisioning and Imagining Change
Community Work
Facilitating Challenging Dialogue
Representation of the Other

So, this post is about Community Work in the applied theatre. How is community work practiced with love?

How do we create a hope of what can be in communion with others? How can we, as educators or teaching artists approach and work in community with new groups? Freire (2000) maintains that educators must enact this work with dialogue as the foundation.

A loving approach to community work requires an immense amount of self-awareness, reflection and openness. Michael Rohd, of Sojourn Theatre, offers,

one way to talk about love is with the generosity of spirit and humility that one has to enter any space or community or circle that you’ve been invited to. If you approach something with any interest to consciously or subconsciously manifest power, be in control or own something, then you are operating out of greed or fear. I think that love becomes a powerful way to attempt to move beyond your own greed and fear and think about what you can give and receive. It’s incredibly challenging to enter situations with love. You have to work to love. (personal communication, April 9, 2009)

Approaching an applied theatre residency without an agenda and with openness requires true listening and humility, both of which lead to and require genuine love. In conversations and literature about love, listening is often referenced. The listening that is required when first engaging and approaching unfamiliar communities is not a one-time occurrence.

Anne Bogart (2007) discusses the importance of attentiveness and listening in the work of directors and actors. She posits, “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself.” In looking, listening, and feeling with attentiveness we deeply appreciate others. Henry Miller offers,

The one gift we can give another human being is our attention, and that attention, in turn, allows the possibility of change. We can be available and open to their change. Which means concurrently that we will change too. The gift we give is not to hold on to some way we have decided that this person is. Perhaps this gift of attention is also a gift of love. (as cited in Bogart, 2007, p 60-61)

Dialogue in an applied theatre setting---be it verbal or non-verbal (image theatre, etc.)—must be approached with this attentiveness. Rohd notes that dialogue occurs when participants are truly open to change; change is not a neccesary outcome, but must exists a genuine possibility for transformation (personal communication, April 9, 2009). The applied theatre space must create a context in which this openness and potential for transformation can take place.

Check out these fab books:

Compassion

2009-12-19T09:41:00.002-05:00

Via Michael Wiggins at ATA Blog, check out the Charter for Compassion, whose road was paved by Karen Armstrong. You can also watch a series of talks by people around the world. Enjoy.

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

bell hooks on Radical Love & Buddhism

2009-12-04T19:28:00.002-05:00

When I knew how to love the doors of my heart opened wide before the wind
Reality was calling out for revolution.

Thich Nhat Hanh, in the poem “The Fruit of Awareness Is Ripe”

I came across a great piece by bell hooks on Shambhala Sun, entitled Toward a Worldwide Culture of Love. hooks' touches on the emergence of the discussion of love within Buddhism, particularly from Thich Nhat Hanh. This love is not fluffy, romantic love. It is transformative and revolutionary love--so similar to that which Freire speaks of.

When lecturing on ending domination around the world, listening to the despair and hopelessness, I asked individuals who were hopeful to talk about what force in their life pushed them to make a profound transformation, moving them from a will to dominate toward a will to be compassionate. The stories I heard were all about love. That sense of love as a transformative power was also present in the narratives of individuals working to create loving personal relationships. Writing about metta, “love” or “loving-kindness,” as the first of the brahmaviharas, the heavenly abodes, Sharon Salzberg reminds us in her insightful book Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness that “In cultivating love, we remember one of the most powerful truths the Buddha taught … that the forces in the mind that bring suffering are able to temporarily hold down the positive forces such as love or wisdom, but they can never destroy them.… Love can uproot fear or anger or guilt, because it is a greater power. Love can go anywhere. Nothing can obstruct it.” Clearly, at the end of the nineties an awakening of heart was taking place in our nation, our concern with the issue of love evident in the growing body of literature on the subject.

Because of the awareness that love and domination cannot coexist, there is a collective call for everyone to place learning how to love on their emotional and/or spiritual agenda. We have witnessed the way in which movements for justice that denounce dominator culture, yet have an underlying commitment to corrupt uses of power, do not really create fundamental changes in our societal structure. When radical activists have not made a core break with dominator thinking (imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy), there is no union of theory and practice, and real change is not sustained. That’s why cultivating the mind of love is so crucial. When love is the ground of our being, a love ethic shapes our participation in politics.

To work for peace and justice we begin with the individual practice of love, because it is there that we can experience firsthand love’s transformative power. Attending to the damaging impact of abuse in many of our childhoods helps us cultivate the mind of love. Abuse is always about lovelessness, and if we grow into our adult years without knowing how to love, how then can we create social movements that will end domination, exploitation, and oppression? John Welwood shares the insight in Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships that many of us carry a “wound of the heart” that emerged in childhood conditioning, creating “a disconnection from the loving openness that is our nature.” He explains: “This universal wound shows up in the body as emptiness, anxiety, trauma, or depression, and in relationships as the mood of unlove.… On the collective level, this deep wound in the human psyche leads to a world wracked by struggle, stress, and dissension.… The greatest ills on the planet—war, poverty, economic injustice, ecological degradation—all stem from our inability to trust one another, honor differences, engage in respectful dialogue, and reach mutual understanding.” Welwood links individual failure to learn how to love in childhood with larger social ills; however, even those who are fortunate to love and be loved in childhood grow to maturity in a culture of domination that devalues love.

Continue here!

Judicious and Radical Love in Teaching

2009-11-30T23:20:00.002-05:00

Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting. It is leadership. The word "judicious" means requiring judgment, and judgment requires more than instinct; it requires thoughtful and often painful decision making.

-M. Scott Peck
The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

Meditations for Teachers

2009-11-22T17:13:00.003-05:00

A month since I've blogged = major teaching stress.

As long as space endures,
And as long as sentient beings exist,
May I also abide,
That I may heal with my heart
The miseries of the world.

-A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

I walk, I fall down, I get up, Meanwhile, I keep dancing.

-Rabbi Hillel

Imprints

2009-10-21T21:11:00.001-04:00

Saw this as I was walking today in Brooklyn.

Fall 09 Issue of Rethinking Schools = Props to Freire

2009-10-19T22:09:00.003-04:00

The new issue of Rethinking Schools is out: School Leadership in Tough Times.

Big City Superintendents: Dictatorship or Democracy? Lessons from Paulo Feire

Did you know Paulo Freire was a school district superintendent? His ideas are as thought provoking as ever.

What else looks good?

Editorial: Where Is Our Community Organizer-in-Chief?

by the editors of Rethinking Schools.

There is a disturbing overlap between Obama’s educational policies and those of George W. Bush. The nation’s schools don’t need an entrepreneur-in-chief; we need national leadership that supports critical thinking, educating the whole child, and democratic participation from the ground up.

The Fun Theory - duh!

2009-10-19T00:07:00.001-04:00

With Every Step, Peace

2009-10-04T20:26:00.002-04:00

How can we teach this to kids?

Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.

From Thich Nhat Hanh's Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life.

We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good a living.

Very similar to John Dewey's notion that education is not a preparation for life, but a way of life.

Connections between mindfulness and teaching?

Teaching Teachers Mindfulness to Foster Education, Improve Well-being
In the Classroom, a New Focus On Quieting the Mind, NY Times

Going Beyond

2009-09-28T10:29:00.002-04:00

From the NY Times. Several education folks weigh in. I like what Diane Ravitch has to say:

Beyond Testing

The single biggest problem in American education is that no one agrees on why we educate. Faced with this lack of consensus, policy makers define good education as higher test scores. But higher test scores are not a definition of good education. Students can get higher scores in reading and mathematics yet remain completely ignorant of science, the arts, civics, history, literature and foreign languages.
Why do we educate? We educate because we want citizens who are capable of taking responsibility for their lives and for our democracy. We want citizens who understand how their government works, who are knowledgeable about the history of their nation and other nations. We need citizens who are thoroughly educated in science. We need people who can communicate in other languages. We must ensure that every young person has the chance to engage in the arts.
But because of our narrow-minded utilitarianism, we have forgotten what good education is.
DIANE RAVITCH
Ravitch is a historian. Her book ‘‘The Death and Life of the Great American School System’’ will be published in February.

Love, Love, Love: Part 4

2009-09-27T18:01:00.003-04:00

After taking a look at the question of love and teaching, delving into Freire's concept of radical love, and getting together a background on applied theatre, I tried to break down the concept of radical love in the applied theatre space.

I've made connections between radical love and applied theatre by looking at four areas:

Courage, Envisioning and Imagining Change
Community Work
Facilitating Challenging Dialogue
Representation of the Other

Courage, Envisioning and Imagining

As I began to explore the idea of radical love in my own practice as an applied theatre practitioner and through conversation with other practitioners, the first recognition was that the context in which Freire spoke and wrote was certainly very different than that of my own. Christina Marin, Assistant Professor of Educational Theatre at New York University, noted that coming into the applied theatre or Theatre of the Oppressed space from a privileged and academic perspective is quite different from the original context of Freire’s pedagogy and Boal’s adaptation in the theatre (personal communication, April 3, 2009). The Instructional Coordinator of the Adult Learning Center at Lehman College’s Institute for Literacy Studies spoke of her frustration applying Freire’s pedagogy within a modern context:

It is very hard to feel like you are doing something radical and revolutionary in times where people are not rising up at all, but trying to survive and fit in and be successful within the system. I think it would be much more like Freire to teach within the context of social change movements, than the kind of teaching that I do. (personal communication, July 14, 2009)

Thus, our adaptation or judgment of the applicability of Freire’s radical love may be skewed by our belief that we are not in a revolutionary context or time of major social change. Are we in the context of a social change movement? And should we be? Do we believe in the potential for change in the present context?

Oppression may carry a different meaning at the present time within Western culture than it did in Freire’s historical context. In Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education (5th Edition), Peter McLaren (1998) offers a newer take on oppression that sees oppression beyond the deliberate practice of evil (p. 18). McLaren (1998) states, “oppression can exist even in the absence of overt discrimination” and is perpetuated by well-meaning individuals in the routine decisions of life (p.18).

Consequently, it may be more difficult to contextualize radical love in a situation where oppression is not so obvious or palpable. In recognition of this in her own work, one adult literacy coordinator concludes,

It’s a different book now that would be written. [Pedagogy of the Oppressed is] a product of history, when we really felt like the whole world was going to have a socialist revolution, and it was so obvious that this was going to happen and people were going to embrace it. And now, that’s not so obvious. They always used think that revolution was right around the corner, and I’d love to feel that way again. (personal communication, July 14, 2009)

In the re-contextualization of Freire’s radical love, the concept of revolution may be outdated or irrelevant for some educators coming from an American standpoint. It may be more difficult for us to envision dramatic, revolutionary change in our communities and societies. Still, Freire (1998) encourages us that love breeds bravery that inspires us to try “a thousand times before giving up” (p. 3). Yet, in order to persist, we must be able to envision liberation.

Envisioning another future requires believing in the possibility of change—change that can be brought about through education, and in our work, through the use of theatre. Marin describes this poetically as “love of the potential” (personal communication, April 3, 2009). She continues to describe this as, “loving what can be. What we haven’t achieved yet. And if you feel that kind of love for a potential, you work harder toward it and you work more in community toward it“ (personal communication, April 3, 2009). In the applied theatre context, potential is explored in a theatrical dialogue.

According to Boal (2002), “Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it” (p. 16). By reflecting on our lives, our world and our actions within the world, exchanging ideas, pondering alternative realities, and trying out and rehearsing possible options and solutions to oppressive situations, theatre can transform communities and help us to create new possibilities.

Appropriately, the imagination is at the center of social change, the foundation for the ability to love and persist in the creation of a new world. In Releasing the Imagination, philosopher and social critic Maxine Greene (2000) shares,

it may be the recovery of imagination that lessens the social paralysis we see around us and restores the sense that something can be done in the name of what is decent and humane. My attention turns back to the importance of wide-awakeness, of awareness of what it is to be in the world. (p. 35)

It is difficult to scientifically measure the change that the power of the imagination, personal connections, dialogue, human interaction and trust can spark. These scientific measurements are the ones that our society currently values and privileges. But it is even more difficult to argue that personal connections, dialogue, human interaction and trust are meaningless. Humans are the most powerful tools in social change—the only tools.

To recognize the sacredness of the human ability to identify and reflect is to place a profound respect toward our ability to transform our communities, our world and ourselves. In order to truly engage in loving action that leads to liberation and transformation, we must first believe in the possibility of change. In the applied theatre realm, that possibility can be articulated with dramatic techniques.

Up next: Exploring Community Work.

Resources:

What to do with defiant behavior?

2009-09-23T20:24:00.003-04:00

Seriously, what do you do? I'm struggling with this right now with many of my elementary school students. Here are some strategies I found from a quick search:

State Teacher Directives as Two-Part Choice Statements (Walker, 1997). When a student's confrontational behavior seems driven by a need for control, the teacher can structure verbal requests to both acknowledge the student’s freedom to choose whether to comply and present the logical consequences for non-compliance (e.g., poor grades, office disciplinary referral, etc.). Frame requests to uncooperative students as a two-part statement. First, present the negative, or non-compliant, choice and its consequences (e.g., if a seatwork assignment is not completed in class, the student must stay after school). Then state the positive behavioral choice that you would like the student to select (e.g., the student can complete the seatwork assignment within the allotted work time and not stay after school). Here is a sample 2-part choice statement, ‘John, you can stay after school to finish the class assignment or you can finish the assignment now and not have to stay after class. It is your choice.’

Teachers seldom have the time to drop everything and talk at length with a student who is upset about an incident that occurred within or outside of school. The "Talk Ticket" assures the student that he or she will have a chance to talk through the situation while allowing the teacher to schedule the meeting with the student for a time that does not disrupt classroom instruction. The Talk Ticket intervention is flexible to implement and offers the option of taking the student through a simple, structured problem-solving format.

Take the Time to Talk...This intervention will probably be most effective if the adult who debriefs with the student is able to use a structured problem-solving approach to help the student reflect on (1) what factors led to the problem in the first place and (2) how he or she might avoid such problems in the future.

Truth

2009-09-14T21:56:00.003-04:00

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.
- Zora Neale Hurston

Perhaps this is why.

Love, Love, Love: Part 3

2009-09-12T15:52:00.003-04:00

Before delving more into the connections between radical love and applied theatre, I thought it was important examine the background of the applied theatre. (Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.)

Applied theatre engages participants in critical reflection on their society, their relationships, or their communities and poses problems and explores solutions (Taylor, 2003). It activates human consciousness through participation and observation, rather than observation alone (Taylor, 2003; Boal, 1985). Philip Taylor (2003) argues, “the applied theatre operates from a central transformative principle” (p. 1). Within these explorations and dialogue, theatre is the language that is utilized (Taylor, 2003).

Augusto Boal (1985) adapted Freire’s pedagogy into the theatrical space with the creation of Forum Theatre, a dialogical and participatory form of theatre in which the typical audience is transformed from spectators to participants or “spect-actors.” In his book Games for Actors and Non-Actors, Boal (2002) offers his concept of theatre:

in its most archaic sense, theatre is the capacity possessed by human beings—and not by animals—to observe themselves in action. Humans are capable of seeing themselves in the act of seeing, of thinking their emotions, of being moved by their thoughts. They can see themselves here and imagine themselves there; they can see themselves today and imagine themselves tomorrow. (p. 11)

Theatre, in this sense, is tied to action, reflection, and imagination.
Boal (2002) claims, “To identify is to be able not only to recognise within the same repetitive context but also to extrapolate to other contexts; to see beyond what the eye sees, to hear beyond what the ear hears, to feel beyond what touches the skin, to think beyond what words mean” (p. 12). Applied theatre as a human activity of identification means thorough examination, thinking beyond current patterns, breaking those patterns, and exploring new ones (Taylor, 2003; Nicholson, 2005; Boal, 2002).

Applied theatre practice often takes place within marginalized and oppressed communities and untraditional spaces such as prisons, hospitals, and other community centers (Rohd, 1998; Taylor, 2003; Nicholson, 2005; Boal, 1985). Because the work takes place in such a range of settings, artists often work with communities of which they are not a part. Consequently, it is important that artists explore the dynamic of insider/outsider and respect for the community within which they are working (Cohen-Cruz, 2005), harkening back to Freire’s (2000) concept of genuine dialogue and opening up the self to the other.

Radical Love in the Applied Theatre Space

To explore the concept of radical love in the applied theatre space, I reached out to other practitioners and continued to review applicable literature in the field of education and theatre. I have organized these thoughts into four that struck me:

• Courage, Envisioning and Imagining Change
• Community Work
• Facilitating Challenging Dialogue
• Representation of the Other

Resources to check out:

Jacob's Pillow asks why

2009-09-12T15:46:00.002-04:00

Jacob's Pillow asks dancers "Why do you dance?"

I dance because there is something inside me that wants out - it wants to move and express and be beautiful and feel good.
- Anonymous

Because without it, my soul is incomplete.
- Carla Santia via Facebook

The Right Questions

2009-09-02T23:16:00.001-04:00

Thanks to ATA Blog for sharing!

I am reading Chapter 5 of Asking Better Questions. The authors propose three broad categories of questions. The book, which totally qualifies as a classic teacher resource, also suggests that instead of asking "What type of question should I ask?" it is probably more practical to ask, "What do I want this question to do?" Download and read Chapter 5 here (PDF).

Love, Love, Love: Part 2

2009-08-25T20:30:00.003-04:00

Today, we continue with our second installment on Love. See part one here.

To continue exploring the relationship between radical love and arts education/applied theatre, let's take a closer look at radical love from Freire's perspective.

Freire (1998) overtly refers to teaching as an act of love and claims that teaching is impossible without a “well-thought-out capacity to love” (p.3).

Freire’s philosophy of education contends that education must contain horizontal dialogical relationships, in which the dialogue is rooted in love for the world and for people (Freire, 2000; McClaren, 1999). Within this dialogical concept, the self is opened up to the other (McClaren, 1999). Freire (2000) warns, “Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself” (p. 89-90). Without love, true dialogue is impossible. Freire (2000) offers, “Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical” (p. 89). Commitment to others (rather than a fashionable social cause or issue) is the foundation of liberation; acts of courage, change, and dialogue are all acts of love.

Kincheloe (2004) describes this concept as “radical love” (p. 3), commenting, “Such a love is compassionate, erotic, creative, sensual, and informed. Critical pedagogy uses it to increase our capacity to love, to bring the power of love to our everyday lives and social institutions, and to rethink reason in a humane and interconnected manner” (p. 3). Revolutionary or radical love must liberate; it is struggle, and encourages and fuels more struggle (McClaren, 1999).

Antonia Darder (2002) reflects on Freire’s use of the word love. She argues that Freire’s love challenges the restrictive fear of freedom that is present in so many of us; it is characterized by vulnerability and struggle (p. 499). McLaren (1999) posits that “authentic love opens up the self to the Other” (p. 171). With this opening up of the self comes solidarity and struggle for liberation.

Freire (2000) offers that, “[a]s individuals or as peoples, by fighting for the restoration of the humanity they will be attempting the restoration of true generosity….. And this fight, because of the purpose given it by the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressors’ violence” (p. 45). McLaren (1999) also mentions the political and active nature of Freire’s vision of love: “a love for humankind that remains disconnected from a liberatory politics does a profound disservice to its object” (p. 171). Love is connected to that which is political and that which is active.

Consequently, in opposition to love and dialogue, lies oppression. “Sadistic love is a perverted love—a love of death, not of life. One of the characteristics of the oppressor consciousness and its necrophilic view of the world is thus sadism. As the oppressor consciousness, in order to dominate, tries to deter the drive to search, the restlessness, and the creative power which characterize life, it kills life” (Freire, 2000, p. 59-60). Oppression stifles dialogue, creativity, and the ability to name the world.

It appears that love, from Freire’s perspective includes a specific open relationship to the other, as well as actions that seek freedom and liberation through intense struggle. According to McLaren (1999), “revolutionary love is always pointed in the direction of commitment and fidelity to a global project of emancipation” (p. 171). Love is not simply feeling, it is action.

Graphics + Theory = Fun

2009-08-25T20:22:00.002-04:00

I've recently acquired a couple Introducing Books. Basically, they're graphic guides to pretty heavy subjects. Great for introducing a topic or looking for a little refresher! I've got Critical Theory and Foucault. (Also, they make great gifts!)

Little Kids, Big Hearts & Minds

2009-08-22T16:25:00.001-04:00

Using Their Words features social justice projects from elementary school classrooms. Hurrah!

Love, Love, Love: Part 1

2009-08-17T18:24:00.003-04:00

I've been working on research surrounding Paulo Freire's concept of radical love in relation to teaching. I presented a bit of this at the AATE Conference last week. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to share some short installments of the research (a work in progress.)

“It is impossible to teach without the courage to try a thousand times before giving up. In short, it is impossible to teach without a forged, invented, and well-thought-out capacity to love. (Freire, 1998, p.3)

If you’d have told me two years ago that I’d be writing a research paper on love, I might have laughed. And while I still consider it amusing to ponder the subject, I find it important, difficult, intriguing, and critical to discover what love means in my own practice as a teaching artist—if it means anything at all.

Paulo Freire’s writings, philosophy, and practice have deeply influenced my pedagogy and practice as a drama educator. Peter McClaren (2000) maintains that Freire’s “unshamed stress on the power of love” (p. 171) makes him unique among other progressive and leftist educators. Freire (1998) argues, “It is impossible to teach without the courage to try a thousand times before giving up. In short, it is impossible to teach without a forged, invented, and well-thought-out capacity to love" (p. 3). But what is a thoughtful capacity to love? What does Freire mean? How does love relate to my own pedagogy?

In A Natural History of Love, Diane Ackerman maintains:

As a society, we are embarrassed by love. We treat it as if it were an obscenity. We reluctantly admit to it. Even saying the word makes us stumble and blush. Why should we be ashamed of an emotion so beautiful and natural? Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet, we’re reluctant to linger over its name. Without a supple vocabulary, we can’t even talk or think about it directly. On the other hand, we have many sharp verbs for the ways in which human beings can hurt one another…. Our vocabulary of love and lovemaking is so paltry that a poet has to choose among clichés…. Fortunately, this has led to some richly imagined works of art. It has inspired poets to create their own private vocabularies. (p. xix)

How appropriate is it that we, as teaching artists, theatre practitioners, actors, and educators explore and create our own vocabulary of love? Or are we too, ashamed of something that appears to be too gushy, silly, or emotional?

“Whoever sets out to write about love is taking the biggest risk of his or her life.” (Isn’t it Romantic, 2004, p. 17). I write this paper is because I want to know what love means for Freire, other educators, and me. Perhaps my exploration of my own definition of love will help you to agree, disagree, and ponder the meaning and concept of love within your own educational practice.

Up next: Freire’s concept of radical love and the roots of applied theatre.

Contribute a Verse

2009-08-14T18:21:00.000-04:00

O Me! O Life!

by Walt Whitman

O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Have you checked out...

2009-08-13T12:10:00.001-04:00

Entrepreneur the Arts?

Conferencing in Times Square

2009-08-13T11:39:00.003-04:00

Spent the weekend at the AATE/ATHE Risking Innovation conference at the Marriot. Met some great folks, like Michael Wiggins of the ATA Blog, and attended some fun and provocative workshops from The New Victory and Creative Arts Team, to name a few. Plan to jot down some of my notes down here soon.

Also, gearing up to begin teaching "for real" this fall... teaching artist turns elementary special education teacher. Making the leap, but still blogging arts in ed, just with a new perspective.

Check this out:
Rethinking Schools Resources on Rethinking Early Childhood Education

By the way, if the Obama's choose this education for their girls, shouldn't everyone have the opportunity to have a holistic education?

EdLib features Resources from Free Minds Free People Conference

2009-08-07T09:41:00.000-04:00

Greetings! This month’s lab report features curriculum materials from the amazing Free Minds, Free People conference that took place in Houston in June. You can learn more about the conference by visiting www.freemindsfreepeople.org. This report also includes a collection of resources for teaching about Hurricane Katrina. Many thanks to those who contributed the items listed in this report. We hope network members will continue to enrich this important social justice education tool by posting their own teaching materials.

the lab report is a monthly update of curriculum materials posted to the EdLib Lab, the network's online database of social justice teaching materials. To join this community of educators, sign up here for the Education for Liberation Network listserv.

Using Their Words by Social Justice Critical Inquiry Project

Using their Words showcases social justice education projects in elementary school classrooms. All the units housed on this site: -were designed and implemented by elementary school teachers and student teachers focus on social justice issues such as racism, gentrification, fairness, child labor etc. -help students ask difficult questions about the world -are designed to engage children in social action to change the conditions of their worlds -have been integrated with standards or mandated curricular programs. (Free Minds, Free People workshop: Catch us if You Can)

Grade Levels: Elementary
Cost: No

A Katrina Reader: Readings by & for Anti-Racist Educators and Organizers by a team of white anti-racist solidarity activists

A collection of close to 700 articles, reports, and resources, organized thematically, that attempts to document the history of racism and resistance on the Gulf Coast. An effort is made to highlight the voices of grassroots organizers speaking about their own struggles.

Grade Levels: High
Cost: No

Why Did This Happen? by Susan Wilcox, Ed.D. at The Brotherhood/Sister Sol

The NEW curriculum from The Brotherhood/Sister Sol for helping young people engage in critical inquiry, develop a love of learning, and transform their lives. (Free Minds, Free People workshop: Sister Museum)

Grade Levels: Teacher Training Material
Cost: Yes

Fences by Abby Ashford-Grooms at Austin Social Justice Teacher Inquiry Group

This is an outline of an approach to teaching Fences by August Wilson. Teachers will see the kinds of questions and inquiry that lead students to think about their own fences, those that keep us out and those that keep us in. This unit is part of a larger group of lesson plans under the category "BorderLands" by the Austin Social Justice Teacher Inquiry Group. (Free Minds, Free People workshop: BorderLands)

Grade Levels: High
Cost: No

Writers Corp Resources

2009-08-07T09:34:00.000-04:00

From WritersCorps in San Francisco

Anthologies, Lesson Plans, and Resources

Jump Write In!
Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds

Jump Write In! is a collection of lesson plans created by WritersCorps
Teaching Artists. It was published by Josey-Bass. Summary about the
book (on the sidebar to the right), including the TOC: http://www.sfartscommission.org/WC/for-teachers/

There are also some of the exercises on the site for people to use.
It's in the Teaching Tools section of our site http://www.sfartscommission.org/WC/
The lessons are sortable by topic. There are a just few up right
now, but a lot more will be added.
http://www.sfartscommission.org/WC/for-teachers/teaching-tools/

Days I Moved is an anthology of fiction, poetry and memoir by Teaching
Artists who have served in WritersCorps. Each writer shares a brief
memoir about their time as teaching artists, as well as their own
creative work.

Summary about the book: http://www.sfartscommission.org/WC/events/days-i-moved/

Authors who are in the book: http://www.sfartscommission.org/WC/events/the-authors-of-days-i-moved/

The student work section of the site features poems and photos by
students, also sortable by category, or the cloud tag on the right: http://www.sfartscommission.org/WC/student-work/

Small, but Powerful! Spoken Word Poetry Unit for 4th Grade

2009-07-15T21:27:00.002-04:00

I've been looking for resources to use for a fourth grade study on poetry that will culminate with a poetry slam. Here's what I've found so far:

News Hour with Jim Lehrer did a cool segment on poetry. Here, for teachers, they have the Poetry Box Rules that highlight poetry as the art of words, and describe the tools and forms of poetry. They also have one lesson plan on using the poetry slam to teach the mechanics of poetry.

Schooltube has a video of a second grade classroom's poetry slam. (Adorable.)

Hey You! C'mere! A Poetry Slam seems like an interesting book to check out.

From Publishers Weekly
Everyone's a poet, according to this exhortative poetry-reading and street-theater combo: "You've got a poem in your pocket, A poem on your tongue, did you know that? You can be the poet and you can be the poem too. Yesssss!" To prove it, seven young poets roam their city block on a summer day, using ordinary situations as material for syncopated storytelling. The players' portraits and names appear in the table of contents, so that each one is identifiable during their improv. Ratchit, a bold prankster, repeats a tough kid's threat ("Hey you, c'mere, Whatsa matter witcha"), while his friend Jacob describes a timid reaction to bullying in "A Good Cry." Mattie mimics her mother's phone voice "Yeah, uh huh, uh huh" in a song. While Doria creates a nonsense riff on "Silly Names" ("Mr. Grub T. Mudstuck, Diane Doobey Doo, Fineas Figmuff and Tina Tutoo..."), Ratchit sneaks off to play a joke on the group; after his ghostly noises inspire his friends' frightened poem, "Monsters," Ratchit laughs, then composes a reiterative "Sorry." Swados, author of the musical play Runaways, crafts an upbeat series of poems and dramatic asides. Using a crackling-hot palette of orange, summer green and blue-violet, Cepeda (What a Truly Cool World) limns a vibrant cityscape and brings out the strong personalities of the multiracial group. The slangy words and upbeat visuals suggest that poetry happens in casual conversation and friendship; readers might want to try this "slam" as a real play or spin some verse of their own. Ages 6-12.

Education World has a few lesson plans as well.

There Are Still Kids: Amazing Poem

2009-07-15T21:22:00.004-04:00

There Are Still Kids
by Crystal Tettey

In a world of adult policies
There are still kids
Where milk is left to curd, then sold
There are still kids
Where wombs are shattered
There are still kids

Where an arm is the price of a meal
Where a meal is the price of an arm
There are still kids

Where power outages deny us TV
There are still kids
Where solitude is safe, fun is sorry
There are still kids
On a playground of mines
There are still kids
At peace conferences that echo war
There are still kids

In a world where adults vote
There are still kids
In schools silenced by artillery
There are still kids
In homes emptied by bombs
There are still kids
Our land cracks at her sides
There are still kids

What is Quality? What are the Qualities of Quality?

2009-07-09T20:55:00.003-04:00

Harvard's Project Zero has just released The Qualities of Quality: Understanding Excellence in Arts Education. How do we create and sustain high quality arts instruction? And what is it, anyway?

Here's one small tidbit from the press release.

Quality reveals itself “in the room” through four different lenses. There are multiple dimensions of quality in arts learning experiences. Four lenses were found to be especially useful in focusing attention on different aspects of excellence in arts education settings: learning, teaching, classroom community, and environment.

Farewell, Pina Bausch

2009-07-01T00:08:00.004-04:00

The beautiful choreographer of tanztheater, Pina Bausch passed away today at 68.

Pushing the boundaries between theater and dance, she has said she was "not interested in how people move, but in what moves them."

Attention is the beginning of devotion

2009-06-28T11:35:00.000-04:00

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin-flowers. And the frisky ones–inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones–rosemary, oregano. Give the peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.

Attention is the beginning of devotion.
-Mary Oliver

Making Room for Hope: Howard Zinn

2009-06-27T22:51:00.004-04:00

I don't believe it's possible to be neutral. The world is already moving in certain directions. And to be neutral, to be passive, in a situation like that, is to collaborate with what is going on. And I, as a teacher, don't want to be a collaborator.

Have you watched Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train? If not, you must. Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, reminds us that to be neutral is to collaborate with the status quo. Many people, particularly teachers, argue that teachers must remain neutral. No one is neutral. Neutrality, lack of questioning, and lack of action equate to agreement and endorsement of the current state of affairs.

Zinn's People's History reinforces the fact that, as teachers, it is not only how we teach (and the inclusive and inquiry-based practices that guide us), but also what we teach. It is in what we teach that we are able to offer truth or lies of omission and de-emphasis. In the film, Zinn spoke of viewing history as creative--history can either help us to imagine a new future if it allows us to see glimpses of the ability to achieve this future in the past, or history can paralyze us--make us hopeless. History can uncover hidden resistances to power and awaken consciousness within us. Equally important, multiple histories can allow us to see situations from the viewpoints of others'. Zinn inspires me to remember how important it is, no matter how risky, to live in defiance to that which we believe is unloving, unjust, and wrong.

Teaching Resources:

Definitely check out The Zinn Education Project above!

Spiraling into Arts Ed

2009-06-26T17:32:00.003-04:00

Project AIM (Arts Integration Mentorship) provides a great framework for looking at arts integration (via ATA Blog). The program's brochure contains an awesome list of AIM Speak (vocabulary). Eric Booth, of the Teaching Artists Journal, writes the forward:

“As the arts continue the endless argument for a better place at the school curriculum table – more hours, more resources, more opportunity to transform lives, classroom communities, and school culture – the great experiment has begun. That great experiment is Arts Integration. There is something new under the arts learning sun. The gamble is that by bringing learning in the arts (through the arts) together with other subject matters, students can go further in both areas, and students’ lives and classroom culture can be transformed in the process.”

We Make the Road By Walking

2009-06-26T11:59:00.003-04:00

“Even when teachers develop new conceptions of what it means to learn mathematics, they are, in general, working within a culture in which good teaching is assumed to mean ensuring that students get right answers.”

Somehow, this way of teaching (math) has become the dominant paradigm for most, if not all disciplines. How do we change course?

Budding Conversations

NEW PARADIGM: Walks up to Old Paradigm. Hey, I’ve got some new information for you. I think we can work together. I know that you like precision and finding answers. I think we can get there, but with a little bit of a different route.

OLD PARADIGM: What do you mean we can get there using a different route? I’ve been taking the same path to and from the problem to the solution, and I’m just fine. This is the best way.

NEW: Well, have you ever tried another way?

OLD: Sure. I tried the road that goes over the little hill over there. It was rocky, there were other travelers, signs, and lots of distractions. It was too difficult, so I turned around and came back. This good old path does me just fine.

NEW: I see, I see. Well, what if we tried again? If we know that the road is rocky and that there are hills, many signs, and lots of distractions, we can come prepared. I’ll go with you. We’ll wear the right shoes, plan our route, and bring the appropriate supplies. I bet that we can even ask questions of other travelers along the way.

OLD: Eh, I’m pretty sure that the arrangement I’ve got here on the Old Road is pretty good. Anyways, it doesn’t matter how I get we get to the solution, it just matters that I get there. To the right place. Every time.

NEW: But Old, honestly, that must get a little boring.

OLD: Boring? Yes, a bit. But safe. Definitely safe.

NEW: Okay old, let’s try another path, just once. If it doesn’t work, you are free to turn around.

OLD: Okay, fine, fine, fine.

Old and New begin down an alternate path. Things look very different. They run into other travelers along the way, some walking, some skipping, some hopping, some dancing at different speeds down the path. Occasionally, they skip, hop, and dance together---sometimes in a funky combination. Sometimes there are barriers in the road—a fallen tree, a rocky path—but the travelers help one another along. At first, Old seems a bit uncomfortable and anxious. He keeps glancing back towards the Old Path, but it continues to get smaller and smaller in the distance.

Summer Reading

2009-06-25T12:38:00.006-04:00

Adventures in Peacemaking

Adventures in Peacemaking includes hundreds of hands-on, engaging activities designed to meet the unique needs of after-school programs, camps and recreation centers. The activities teach the skills of creative conflict resolution to school-age children through games, cooperative team challenges, drama, crafts, music and even cooking. The guide includes easy-to-implement strategies and tips for providers to both reduce conflict in their programs and to intervene effectively when conflict does occur. Parent Connection Handouts are also available for purchase through Educators for Social Responsibility.

Creative Conflict Resolution

This classic conflict resolution guide offers more than 20 proven conflict-resolution techniques. Examples and more than 200 classroom-tested activities and games provide constructive responses to your students' problem behaviors.

Becoming Educated and Habits of Mind by Deborah Meier

1. Evidence: How do we know what's true and false? What evidence counts? How sure can we be? What makes it credible to us?
2. Viewpoint: How else might this look if we stepped into other shoes? If we were looking at it from a different direction? If we had a different history or expectations?
3. Connections/Cause and Effect: Is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this before? What are the possible consequences?
4. Conjecture: Could it have been otherwise? Supposing that? What if?
5. Relevance: Does it matter? Who cares?

Remember: The Journey to School Integration by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison has collected a treasure chest of archival photographs that depict the historical events surrounding school desegregation. These unforgettable images serve as the inspiration for Ms. Morrison"s text--a fictional account of the dialogue and emotions of the children who lived during the era of "separate but equal" schooling. Remember is a unique pictorial and narrative journey that introduces children to a watershed period in American history and its relevance to us today. Remember will be published on the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ending legal school segregation, handed down on May 17, 1954.

Commentary on NAEP Arts Assessment

2009-06-22T20:45:00.002-04:00

"Name That Instrument! The State of Arts Education" on The Takeaway.

Creating and Exploring Peace with Art

2009-06-22T20:09:00.002-04:00

I have always believed that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

The opposite of life is not death, but indifference.

The opposite of peace is not war, but indifference
to peace and indifference to war.

The opposite of culture, the opposite of beauty, the opposite of generosity is indifference.

Elie Wiesel,
Nobel Peace Laureate

Resources for building peace:

The Art in Peacemaking: A Guide to Integrating Conflict Resolution Education into Youth Arts Programs: amazing and free!
Peace Games' Blog: tips & tools for teaching peacemaking
Making Peace, Restoring Justice via What Kids Can Do: covers three successful examples of peacemaking in action
Early Childhood Adventures in Peacemaking by William J. Kreidler and Sandy Tsubokawa Whittall

New Journal!

2009-06-18T19:05:00.001-04:00

Eastern Michigan University's first issue of PowerPlay: A Journal of Educational Justice. It's online and free!

NAEP Arts 2008 Assessment

2009-06-17T00:35:00.002-04:00

It's out: The Nation's Report Card: Arts 2008 Music & Visual Arts

Theatre and dance were not even surveyed due to budget restrictions...

Racial/ethnic and gender gaps evident in both music and visual arts

Although the results for music and visual arts are reported separately and cannot be compared, some general patterns in differences between student groups were similar in the two disciplines.

Average responding scores in both music and visual arts were 22 to 32 points higher for White and Asian/Pacific Islander students than for Black and Hispanic students. The creating task scores in visual arts were also higher for White and Asian/Pacific Islander students than for their Black and Hispanic peers.

Average responding scores for female students were 10 points higher than for male students in music and 11 points higher in visual arts. Female students also outperformed male students in creating visual art.

View Duncan's response.

Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process

2009-06-11T23:27:00.004-04:00

Choreographer Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process is a widely used method for responding to artists' work and a great tool to introduce to students.

The Process engages participants in three roles:

The artist offers a work-in-progress for review and feels prepared to question that work in a dialogue with other people;

Responders, committed to the artist’s intent to make excellent work, offer reactions to the work in a dialogue with the artist; and

The facilitator initiates each step, keeps the process on track, and works to help the artist and responders use the Process to frame useful questions and responses.

The Critical Response Process takes place after a presentation of artistic work. Work can be short or long, large or small, and at any stage in its development. The facilitator then leads the artist and responders through four steps:

Statements of Meaning: Responders state what was meaningful, evocative, interesting, exciting, striking in the work they have just witnessed.

Artist as Questioner: The artist asks questions about the work. After each question, the responders answer. Responders may express opinions if they are in direct response to the question asked and do not contain suggestions for changes.

Neutral Questions: Responders ask neutral questions about the work. The artist responds. Questions are neutral when they do not have an opinion couched in them. For example, if you are discussing the lighting of a scene, “Why was it so dark?” is not a neutral question. “What ideas guided your choices about lighting?” is.

Opinion Time: Responders state opinions, subject to permission from the artist. The usual form is “I have an opinion about ______, would you like to hear it?” The artist has the option to decline opinions for any reason.

Learning from Experiences in Arts Ed

2009-06-11T23:22:00.002-04:00

On issuelab, a special collection of case studies on arts in education:

This special collection of Arts Education case studies and evaluations reveals the lessons, benefits, and pitfalls of existing and past projects, providing vital information for program staff at organizations running their own Arts Education projects.

Economy & Education

2009-06-08T16:17:00.003-04:00

On Bridging Differences, Deborah Meier comments concisely on what I agree with as the connection between education and the economy:

The connection between schooling and the economy interests me—but for different reasons than the usual PR-linkage (you’ll make more money). As long as there are jobs that pay poorly there will be “the poor,” but a well-educated underclass will have a better shot at defending their social and economic interests—as citizens. And a well-educated citizenry in general will give us a better shot at a healthy economy. Maybe. It depends on what we mean by being “well-educated.” And the latest headlines about 46 states joining together to decide year by year school curriculum (and tests) is not the way to decide this.

Will a better educated population alone change our economy? No, not if we still have low-paying jobs that pay salaries that can't make ends meet. If we neglect to teach about social issues, social justice, and social change in in our curricula, we run the risk of allowing underclasses to stay where they are. But perhaps this is in the best interest of many who make the policies and run our schools...

She continues:

The leaders of business and industry (of which there are not many left) may have messed up our economy, but they still have enough money left over to bring the same mindset to schooling. The masters of manipulating symbolic goods—money in all its varied forms—are now designing our schools with the same manipulative mindset.

But “if they work, Debby,” say a few of my critical friends, "why not?" But what do we mean by “it works?” Oddly enough, even on the measures they have chosen, the answer is, “they don’t.” But it wouldn’t convince me either way. How kids do on school tests that measure (at best) school learning is petty compared with…. It’s not a good stand-in for achievement. I want to see how those kids “produce”—the books they write, the movies they make, the cars they invent, the families they raise, the gardens they plant, the medicine they practice, the songs they sing, the fast train system they put into place, the better ways they show us to grow food, to produce energy, and on and on and on. I want to see graduates coming back to see us who are good cops, teachers, nurses, architects, furniture-makers, inventors of new products and new ideas. (And powerful, noisy, feisty citizens.)

Plays for Young People

2009-06-07T23:13:00.003-04:00

When I was younger, I acted in I Never Saw Another Butterfly - a play by Celeste Rapsanti based on the poetry of Jewish children from Terezin. I can still remember the words of the title poem:

I never saw another butterfly . . .
The last, the very last,
so richly, brightly, dazzling yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears sing
against a white stone . . .
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly `way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it
wished to kiss the world goodbye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto,
but I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me,
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live here in the ghetto.

I often think of the play and how it was simultaneously beautiful and horrific--wishing that I could see it again as an adult. The book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, highlights the art work and poetry of children in Terezin.

Teachers Can Lead Too

2009-06-04T12:04:00.001-04:00

City Limits shares an interesting piece on the lack of teachers in leadership roles under Bloomberg and Klein.

Rothko Was a Kindergarten Teacher

2009-06-04T11:47:00.004-04:00

Did you know?

Rothko was a K-8 teacher for a time. In the "Scribble Book," which was never published in a complete form (and is more of a collection of scribbles), Rothko shares his thoughts on art in education. He comments,
the "creative act is a social action and that intrinsically it justifies its own existence."

Rothko describes art as "of the spirit," and argues that the art teachers task is not to produce artists, but seems to advocate for the encouragement of experiementation.

Rothko quotes Fritz Kunkel, a German psychologist (1889-1956): "We must never break the courage of children."

Finally, he comments that "Progressive education is the expression of liberalism."

What is our education today an expression of? Positivism? Conservativism? Anti-intellectualism?

School for Designing a Society & Patch Adams

2009-06-03T08:04:00.003-04:00

I'm currently researching Paulo Freire's concept of radical love in relation to teaching the arts, specifically in relation to facilitating applied theatre. Patch Adams, doctor, health care activist and clown, conducts a workshop called "What is your love strategy?"

His organization also pairs with The School for Designing a Society. Every school (for little kids and big kids) should have something like this. Amazing--I want to go!

The School for Designing a Society, established in 1991, is a project of teachers, performers, artists, and activists. It is an ongoing experiment in making temporary living environments where the question "What would I consider a desirable society?" is given serious playful thought, and taken as an input to creative projects.

Why a desirable society?

We want to address people: our neighbors and our distant neighbors who, living in the current social system, find that this system maintains itself at the expense of its members so that misery, poverty, hopelessness, violence, and human degradation are daily occurrences. Our social system tells us that human beings are the problem, and that it, the current system, is the solution. We have taken long looks at this system, and we do not want it. As any social system is humanly created, not natural, and is maintained daily by human action, we wish to create new social systems, and to change our daily patterns of action.

Why design?

Criticisms of the problems of the present society are often met with justifications. Once these justifications fail, many a conversation of hopeful intention is stopped with the (final) statement: "The present organization of society is the best we have", or the question: "Do you have a better idea?"

This is a moment of possibility and not one to be left speechless. Indeed, many a time, the respondent finds herself sputtering, filled with a spirit of rebellion which unfortunately gets watered down to the mere language of complaint.

Having had the time and opportunity to create--in conjunction with others of diverse experiences--detailed maps, dreams, plans, scripts, scores, videos, and blueprints of her desirable society, we imagine the situation could go differently.

Imagine an atmosphere of audacity: She's asked the question: "Do you have a better idea?" Everyone taking a coffeebreak looks at her or their shoes. She looks the interlocutor in the eye and reaches into her purse? knapsack? briefcase? kitchen drawer? for a booklet of proposals, slaps it on the table scattering cigarette butts, and answers: "Here, read this--this will give you an idea of what I want."

Social Indentity	Membership	Status
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