A Sense of Direction: Connections to Teaching

I recently read "Relation to Actors" from  William Ball's book, A Sense of Direction. So many of his comments on directing are applicable to teachers or facilitators in any setting. Here are a few thoughts:

Fear
The rehearsal process, like the classroom space, needs to be a safe space to encourage risk. I remember being afraid of directors and constantly trying to please them. I remember them stopping me in the middle of what I was doing and saying “Why are you doing that?!” This type of interaction makes an actor (or a student) incredibly self conscious and unwilling to try new things. How can we expect students to take risks when they are constantly trying to please the director or the teacher and be “right?”

Failure
Failure is certainly a part of the creative process. Ball argues, “It is important to “Fail Big!!” Failing truly is a part of growth and learning; yet, within our society, failing is stigmatized. We are obsessed with being correct and this is typically what we reward. In working with students or actors, we must reward the willingness to take risks as well. Risk taking is so much more difficult than just finding the right answer. I recently spoke with a business consultant who is a serial entrepreneur with several successful start-ups. Someone asked what his strategy was. He replied, “fail fast,” put all of your cards on the table and don’t hide anything. We often hide our ideas, our thoughts, and feelings, but we are only waiting. Why not try it all?

Praise
I agree with Ball on his notion that praise (genuine praise) is important in the creative process. I know that I seek praise in my work as most people probably do. I like Ball’s suggestions on the general and gracious praise that can be useful for actors (and students), such as “It’s a pleasure to work with you.” Being gracious for people’s presence, time, and willingness to take risks is easy and important, but often overlooked.

Ball comments that “the artist is a person whose buisiness in life is to praise. Artists discover the wonders of nature and we call attention to those wonders.” He continues, “An artist is someone who draws attention to what is praiseworthy in the Universe.” It is interesting to think about the importance of looking deeply into what is praiseworthy and what is beautiful. Developing this constant awareness makes experiences infinitely richer. We often look for what is missing or what is wrong before asking what is beautiful. I like Ball’s advice:

If you have difficulty finding something praiseworthy, imagine that it doesn’t exist. One of my favorite expressions, and one that has pulled me out of many a difficulty, is this: ‘A thing becomes beautiful because of the possibility of its absence.’ When we imagine the absence of something, it becomes extremely beautiful.

A simple expression that he suggests: “How beautiful that is.” 

A couple other short thoughts:

• Touching: Often times, we are afraid of touch. I know that I am sometimes uncomfortable with it. Making a small effort to touch everyone—on the arm, the hand, or with a hug can make connections stronger and acknowledge everyone in the space.
• Interruption: “To interrupt someone who is trying to express himself is unforgivable. It doesn’t make any difference what he is saying.” To interrupt is not to acknowledge the importance of sharing, risk taking.

New Approach to School Discipline: Online Chat

Live Online Chat:

A New Approach to School Discipline
When: Tuesday, February 3, 2pm Eastern time
Where: http://www.edweek-chat.org

Frequent visits to the principal's office, detentions, suspensions, and expulsions are the established tools of school discipline for kids who don't abide by school rules. But according to Ross Greene, author of The Explosive Child, they are ineffective for most of the students to whom they are applied. In a new book, Lost at School, Mr. Greene presents an alternative for understanding the difficulties of kids with behavioral challenges and explains why traditional discipline isn't effective at addressing these difficulties. When adults recognize the true factors underlying difficult behavior and begin to teach kids skills in increments they can handle, children are able to overcome their obstacles. When that happens, the frustration of teachers, parents, and classmates diminishes, and the well-being and learning of all students are enhanced, Mr. Greene says.

About the Guests:

Ross W. Greene is associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and the originator of a model of care called Collaborative Problem Solving. Mr. Greene lectures extensively both in North America and abroad. His research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Stanley Medical Research Institute.

Ray Grogran is assistant principal at Sanford Junior High School in Sanford, Maine, where the Collaborative Problem Solving approach has been implemented since January 2008.

Submit questions in advance by clicking here.

Creativity, Imagination, & Schools

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." --Picasso

I recently came back to Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TED talk, Do schools kill creativity? 

It's really a beautiful and challenging piece. Robinson speaks about the future of education and education's purpose to take us into a future that is unknown. He criticizes public education for squandering kids' tremendous talents and poses that creativity is as important in education as literacy is. Creativity should be treated with the same emphasis.

He also touches on the importance of making and learning from mistakes. Those who are afraid to be wrong don't try new things. Currently, we teach our kids to fear mistakes. We search for the "right" and "best" answers in the classroom and stifle discussion where there are no clear cut answers. One strategy that I think works as an excellent tool for discussion is the use of Visual Thinking Strategies.

Visual Thinking Strategies are typically used within the visual arts to facilitate the discussion of a piece of art. Here's a summary of the technique from the VTS website:

Teachers are asked to use three open-ended questions:

• What’s going on in this picture?
  
• What do you see that makes you say that?
  
• What more can we find?

3 Facilitation Techniques:

• Paraphrase comments neutrally.
  
• Point at the area being discussed.
  
• Link contrasting and complementary comments.

Students are asked to:

• Look carefully at works of art.
  
• Talk about what they observe.
  
• Back up their ideas with evidence.
  
• Listen to and consider the views of others.
  
• Discuss many possible interpretations.

This technique is useful for a range of discussions--from visual art, to language arts, theatre, music, and dance. 

Still, the arts are at the bottom of the totem pole in schools, with theatre and dance holding a lower status than music and visual art. Why is this? Are we afraid of the use of the body? Robinson comments that public education is concerned with the waist up (Or even the neck up.) Why shouldn't children use their bodies to dance or express themselves through drama? There are people who must move to think--people who think through movement and expression. 

Public education meets the needs of industrialism. The most useful subjects for school are the ones that are most useful for work. What if you are good at the things at school that are not valued? 

We often say lets use hip hop to teach literacy and math, but why not use math and literacy to teach hip hop?

New Issue of Rethinking Schools

The winter issue of Rethinking Schools is now available. Interesting articles include: commentary on American Girls money making machine, paying for student performance, and Tom Farley's inside look at the testing industry: "A Test Scorer's Lament." Here's an excerpt:

In the hot sun, at a table beside a hotel pool, two men and a woman drink icy cocktails to celebrate the successful completion of a four-week scoring project. The hotel manager brings a phone to their table. "Call for you," he says to the woman, whose face blanches when the home office tells her that another dozen tests have been found.

"I know," the woman says, "someone has to score them. OK, read them to me over the phone." The woman turns the phone's speaker on, and she and the men listen to student responses read by a squeaky-voiced secretary several thousand miles away. One of the men waves to the bartender to bring another round, and with drinks but not rubrics in their hands the two men and one woman score each student response via the telephone. When the voice on the phone goes silent after reading each response, the woman looks at the number of fingers the men hold in the air.

"Three," the woman says into the phone. "That's a three."

This goes on for an hour and two rounds of drinks.

A project manager for a test-scoring company addresses the supervisors hired to manage the scoring of a project. The project is not producing the results expected, to the dismay of the test-scoring company and its client, a state department of education. The project manager has been trying to calm the concerned employees, but she's losing patience. She's obviously had enough.

"I don't care if the scores are right," the project manager snarls. "They want lower scores, and we'll give them lower scores."

7th Grade Inaugural Thoughts

Seventh grade students at Harlem Success Academy about Inauguration Day via The Huffington Post. Alexis Sumpter said:

Standing there. Words of wisdom coming out his mouth. I can't express in words how happy I am. I am staring at the first African American president. My eyes are in a blur and want to release what they have been holding back. I love when he recited the words, "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work of remaking America." It made me reflect because I am still in the process of trying to pick myself back up. I felt a force of energy rush out of my body. I felt as if I could be anything and anyone. I was feeding upon every word he said because it was true. I can heal without focusing on the negative, but by focusing on the positive.

Democracy and Education

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy." -John Dewey

Building an Arts Activism Curriculum

I've been working for the past several months to build a core curriculum for youth about the concept of arts activism. It's been trickier than I thought. 

The first question: What is arts activism? The simplest way I can begin to define it is the communication/expression of a message through an artistic medium to create or inspire change. How can we engage students in this concept--I am hesitant to simply provide a definition. Shouldn't this come from the participants themselves? If so, how?

Defining or introducing artistic mediums is even more difficult. In one lesson, is it possible to both introduce the concept of theatre/drama and also frame it from an arts activism perspective (doing the same for dance and music as well?)

What is Theatre? 

Augusto Boal defines theatre as "the art of looking at ourselves." But this isn't how theatre or drama is typically perceived or defined. Drama is rooted in the Greek "to do" or "to act." Drama utilizes body and voice to express. Theatre (performative--or not) can also focus on the realm of storytelling or voice. Whose stories are told? Whose are left out? It should also be important to stress that drama can be performative or non-performative (Perhaps this is important and true for all of the arts?)

Dance and music are even more difficult (because I focus on Educational Theatre).

What is Dance?

Dance is words, poetry, and emotion in action. It is communication, imitation, or expression through physical movement, using space and time.

What is Music?

Jean-Jacques Nattiez defines music as "sound through time."

I have also been gathering examples to introduce arts activism via the mediums of theatre/drama, music, and dance.

Currently, focusing on:

• Theatre: What I Want My Words to Do to You. Eve Ensler's work with incarcerated women.
  
• Dance: Pearl Primus's The Negro Speaks of Rivers. (Movement interpretation of Langston Hughes' poem)
  
• Music: Pete Seeger's Take It From Dr. King. (video here, lyrics here)
  

Call for Submissions: Rethinking Social Justice in Education

The A.R.E. (Association of Raza Educators) 3rd Annual Conference is accepting proposals. The theme is "Rethinking Social Justice in Education: Ser Pueblo, Hacer Pueblo, y Estar Con El Pueblo"

February 28, 2009
Santee Education Complex
1921 Maple Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90011

The theme of the 3rd Annual A.R.E. conference, "Rethinking Social Justice: *Ser Pueblo, Hacer Pueblo, y Estar con el Pueblo*," engages with the problematic of how social justice movements can build sustainable communities of resistance. What is the role of educators and students in building community and organization with the people, *el pueblo*? How can educators build relations of solidarity with *el pueblo* within/against the colonial State?

Speakers will include:

• Omali Yeshitela, Chairman, African People's Socialist Party
  
• Donaldo Macedo, Professor, University of Massachusetts
  
• Sakeenah Shabazz, President, African Revolution Student Organization

Farewell, Joe Kincheloe

Joe Kincheloe, amazing educator and author (who first introduced me to the study of Critical Pedagogy), died of a heart attack on December 19th.  He founded the Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy, and was a professor of Education at McGill University. You can find an announcement and slideshow of Dr. Kincheloe on the website.

Giroux and Saltman Comment on Obama's Education Pick

Henry Giroux and Kenneth Saltman comment on Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan: Obama's Betrayal of Public Education? Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling.

It is difficult to understand how Barack Obama can reconcile his vision of change with Duncan's history of supporting a corporate vision for school reform and a penchant for extreme zero-tolerance polices - both of which are much closer to the retrograde policies hatched in conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institution, Fordham Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, than to the values of the many millions who voted for the democratic change he promised. As is well known, these think tanks share an agenda not for strengthening public schooling, but for dismantling it and replacing it with a private market in consumable educational services. At the heart of Duncan's vision of school reform is a corporatized model of education that cancels out the democratic impulses and practices of civil society by either devaluing or absorbing them within the logic of the market or the prison. No longer a space for relating schools to the obligations of public life, social responsibility to the demands of critical and engaged citizenship, schools in this dystopian vision legitimate an all-encompassing horizon for producing market identities, values and those privatizing and penal pedagogies that both inflate the importance of individualized competition and punish those who do not fit into its logic of pedagogical Darwinism.

Mime Spoken Here: Awesome book on Mime (yes mime!), Aritstry, and Drama Education

While I'm in the academic mode, a few more thoughts on another book I recently read:Mime Spoken Here : The Performer's Portable Workshop.Read more about acclaimed mime and author, Tony Montanaro.

As a teaching artist (with little mime training) who is looking to transition to a full-time teacher who incorporates and utilizes drama as a way of learning in the elementary classroom, I came across several unexpected connections in Montanaro’s Mime Spoken Here. To me, the book not only encouraged an understanding and appreciation of mime work on an introductory level, but also inspired an understanding of Montanaro’s goals and work as an educator—knowledge that translates directly to those practicing drama in education.

Montanaro’s insights into premise, character, and improvisation can be applied throughout the acting world, and also further into understanding oneself and one’s work (in whatever field). Montanaro’s exercises in premise stress that the premise or motive will change how one does something. He notes that the ability of the actor to believe in the motivation will enhance and create credibility, even in the simplest of exercises. Montanaro points out that mime, at its foundation, is about understanding life and its physical forces--a beautiful idea. Montanaro notes, “It is important to remember that mime is a reflection of life, and that life is much more than the outward appearance of a living thing.” 

Connections: Montanaro and Dorothy Heathcote

Montanaro’s work led me to make connections between his insights and drama in the classroom—particularly, process drama work. His chapter on improvisation offers several connections to process drama. The dictionary definition of improvise includes the phrase “without preparation,” but Montanaro argues, “whether you can predict the future or not, you’re always prepared for it. Each moment is informed by the moment that precedes it. Everything that happens has been set up; it is prepared to happen." 

This thinking mirrors the approach that Dorothy Heathcote takes with a new class with whom she is working on a process drama. She often walks into a classroom and says, “What would you like to do a play about today?” While this question seems to require no preparation or prediction of the future, Heathcote prepares both beforehand and during by using her previous experiences and the connections that she can make between themes, history, and experience, what Betty Jane Wagner names “the brotherhood” (making connections to all of those who have been in similar situation) and “segmenting” strategies in her book, Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a Learning Medium.

Montanaro’s “Rules for Improvisation” are applicable for all teachers and specifically, teachers engaging in process drama in the classroom:

1. Read what is coming at you from all directions.
   
2. Listen to what the present moment is “suggesting” to you.
   
3. Follow your impulses dispassionately and faithfully.

Sadly, much of the curriculum mandates in our current educational system leave little room for improvisation. But “good” teachers look for student reactions and understanding in order to work in the moment; they follow impulses by recognizing teachable moments. Facilitators of process drama would find these rules to be applicable and similar to those encouraged by Heathcote.

Another of Montanaro’s statements that applies to the realm of drama in education is: “Some people believe that improvisations are field days for the uninhibited.” As Montanaro suggests, this can repel “the more serene and complacent types.” It is important that teachers and students alike interested in drama in education understand that they need not be haphazard, wild, or outspoken. He notes, “Improvisation, approached correctly, teaches acuity, perceptiveness, and presence-of-mind.”

In continuing to learn about the area of process drama and its use in the school classroom, Montanaro’s recommendations and insights into improvisation are all the more useful. The teacher engaging a classroom in process drama needs to have a grasp of improvisation, as well as an understanding that improvisation can still allow the teacher to maintain structure. Perhaps the most applicable portion of Montanaro’s writing on this topic is this:

The improvisers come equipped with a certain repertoire of skills and tricks, and they look for opportunities to showcase these skills. Some improvisers bring their own ‘safety nets’ with them—backup plans just in case something goes “wrong.”
These improvisers are expecting something from their improvisation; they are planning its future. If the improvisation happens to take them into an area of ‘weakness,’ they break the improvisation and follow Plan B—the safe route.

Montanaro stresses the importance of working with what is happening in the improvisation, “Nothing should be thrown away or ignored simply because it doesn’t meet your expectations or accentuate your strengths." This is similar to Heathcote’s notion of accepting and working with what the students suggest to her, without judgment, knowing that we can always uncover universal meaning in the way we work with and reflect on the topic students have chosen for the drama.

Broader Implications
In his section on premise, Montanaro explicitly makes connections from his own classroom to the broader education system. In outlining the importance of premise work, Montanaro warns against learning by rote. He stresses that teachers must understand why they are directing the students to do something—going even further to say, “if the motives are not noble, the teacher should rethink his/her approach.”

Premise is a crucial topic—not just for mimes and actors. It is a critical subject for educators and students of all kinds to better understand and reflect upon. Montanaro concludes his chapter on premise by hoping and predicting that educating systems will incorporate the importance of premise work. “When students’ attention is constantly turned away from effects and back to cause, they discover better and better reasons for doing what they’re doing. They discover the inspiration to try new things and the courage to become mavericks.”

Beautiful Book: Steven Nachmanovitch's Free Play

Nachmanovitch's Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Artis an amazing and inspiring book that is truly applicable to its title: life and art. (A few excerpts from an academic paper I wrote are below.)

Nachmanovitch’s perspective on play was filled with an understanding of feeling and emotion, life’s inter-connectedness, and discomforting encounters with the unknown. He says, “The creative process is a spiritual path. This adventure is about us, about the deep self, the composer in all of us, about originality, meaning not that which is all new, but that which is fully and originally ourselves.”

Flow and Embracing Emptiness
A dance professor once reminded me that a beautiful dance is not created from a sequence of movements. The dance is made beautiful in the way the dancer connects those movements. Without the flow, the dance is lacking. Life, like dance (or art), is not only about a series of milestones or singular movements, but the flow between those milestones—our unfinished work (also true in education and learning). Nachmanovitch comments, “A momentous and mysterious factor that keeps us going through every obstacle is the love of our unfinished work.” Loving and paying close attention to the "in between" moments, the flow, and the creation of the work (the process) is as important as the milestone or the finished work itself.

I also appreciated Nachmanovitch's comments on the power of emptiness:

When we face our emptiness and look at it from the outside, it may indeed appear frightening or alarming, but when we move in and actually become empty, we’re surprised to suddenly find ourselves most powerful and effective. For only empty, without entertainment or distracting internal dialogue, can we be instantaneously responsive to the sight, the sound, the feel of the work in front of us.

Life is about continually valuing our unfinished work and responding to its ups and downs, finding strength within emptiness. 

Childhood

Nachmanovitch’s chapter entitled “Childhood’s End” struck a chord with me, specifically when he mentioned the school as a place that breeds conformity. His story about the young child who learned to draw the right kind of trees rather than abstract ones is something that I have seen happen throughout classrooms. Nachmanovitch reminds us that “Schools can nurture creativity in children, but they can also destroy it, and all too often do.” More and more, students are not encouraged to look outside the box, but to fit comfortably into the box hat has been created and formed by normative society and positivistic learning structures.

Nachmanovitch argues, “education must tap into the close relationship between play and exploration; there must be permission to explore and express.”

I love Nachmanovitch’s term “Heartbreakthrough.” (And think it is connected to Freire's Conscientization.) A time when “the power of creative spontaneity develops into an explosion that liberates us from outmoded frames of reference and from memory that is clogged with old facts and old feelings." Heartbreakthrough is the return to play that we need as adults. Heartbreakthrough is liberation from the pressures of adulthood, the pains and habits of everyday life and a renewed faith in what is beautiful, pure, and simple: play. It is surrender to the depth of oneself and one’s creativity.

Free Play encouraged me to understand the ways in which play permeates life, and the ways in which a lack of play can take a toll on one's life (so important to also understand as an educator). Childhood play is amazing, and at times all of us long to return to childhood's innocence. Yet, at the same time, after going through the process of hurt, disappointment, and hardship, the return to innocence and the return to play can be all the more meaningful and rewarding.

Visit Nachmanovitch's website for more.

Peace Corps for Artists?

NPR's All Things Considered discusses the possibility of an Artists Corps teaching artist model and examines Kiff Gallagher's MusicianCorps.

President-elect Barack Obama has said he believes the arts are good for people. During his campaign, one of his ideas was to create an Artist Corps — a kind of Peace Corps for artists who would work in low-income schools and communities.

But what would this actually look like?

There's already a model being developed for musicians called MusicianCorps. Kiff Gallagher's idea would be similar to AmeriCorps — in exchange for a year or two of service teaching in schools and after-school programs, musicians would get health care and a living stipend. Gallagher has the attention of Obama's transition team.

He also has the attention of private industry — the Hewlett Foundation gave MusicianCorps a $500,000 grant for a pilot program in the San Francisco Bay Area.

More background on Gallagher's idea and Obama's arts interest:

• Innovation Strategy: Music Service Corps, Kiff Gallagher, Huffington Post
  
• The Music National Service Initiative (MNSi) is "a new social enterprise dedicated to supporting and expanding the use of music as a means of addressing important civic and social needs."
  
• Obama's Arts Plan
  
• ImaginArtists Alliance: hosting a dialogue on creating an Artist Corps
  
• Obama on Arts Education

Educational Leadership Conference at Yale

Levers for Change

Hosted by The Yale School of Management
Friday, February 13th, 2009 at The Omni Hotel in New Haven, CT

Features:

• Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor of Education and Community Development, New York City
  
• Roland Fryer, Economist and Professor, Harvard University (this guy)
  

Panelists Include:

• Bob Wise, President, Alliance for Excellent Education
  
• Norman Atkins, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Teacher U
  
• Amy McIntosh, Chief Talent Officer, NYCDOE
  
• Michael Bennet, Superintendent, Denver Public Schools
  
• Gillian Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, Teach for America
  

It's sponsored by The Broad Foundation, The Charter Oak Challenge Foundation, and ConnCAN.

Definitely the corporate-leaning side of ed reform folks...

Upcoming Webinar on Quality Arts Education

Americans for the Arts is hosting The Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It. Details:

December 17, 2008 at 2:00 PM EST, 1:00 PM CST, 12:00 PM MST, 11:00 AM PST
(90 minutes)

Many children in the United States have little or no opportunity for formal arts instruction so access to arts learning experiences remains a critical national challenge. Additionally, the quality of arts learning opportunities that are available to young people is a serious concern. Understanding this second challenge – the challenge of creating and sustaining high quality formal arts learning experiences for K-12 youth, inside and outside of school – is the focus of a recent research initiative, The Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It, commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and conducted by Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The study focuses on the character of excellence itself and asks three core questions: (1) How do arts educators in the United States—including leading practitioners, theorists, and administrators-- conceive of and define high quality arts learning and teaching? (2) What markers of excellence do educators and administrators look for in the actual activities of art learning and teaching as they unfold in the classroom? And (3) How does a program’s foundational decisions, as well as its ongoing day-to-day decisions, impact the pursuit and achievement of quality? In this webinar, we will share the findings of this study and introduce some of the tools developed by the research team for use by practitioners committed to examining and improving the quality of the arts learning experiences they provide for young people.

Presenter: Steve Seidel, Director, Harvard Project Zero and Director, Arts in Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education 

P.S. Speaking of Project Zero, this is cute...

Not Your Typical Substitute Teachers: Super Subs Bring the Arts To Schools

Interesting group in California called Super Subs infuses the arts during day-long programs in schools.  Smart model if the teaching artists are actual licensed substitutes and can be on their own with students in a classroom--this wasn't clear to me.

If this doesn't sound like a typical class, that's because it isn't. These aren't your typical teachers; they are substitutes. And they aren't your typical substitute teachers, either -- they're Super Subs.

The brainchild of Barboza, a retired teacher, the Super Subs program is a way to bring arts and music to underserved students. Barboza recruited a group of friends -- some of whom once played together in a semiprofessional band -- to be the subs. At first, the idea was to give back to schools in the community where they all grew up. But after experiencing success at their local schools, they decided to take their show on the road.

Here's how it works: Barboza and the twenty other musicians, artists, writers, and designers he's recruited take over classes for the day. They teach their own brand of music, art, writing, journalism, and self-esteem. The visits don't cost schools a dime. The Personal News Network, a social-media Web site run by one of the Super Subs, picks up the tab, and most of the Super Subs volunteer their time. 

A teacher says:

"Our kids don't necessarily get experiences like this. You know how when you think back to high school, there were a few days when something happened that you really remember as being great? I want this to be one of those days for these kids."

But why can't they have this every day? Wouldn't it be great if all (or at least most) learning could create great, memorable, transformative experiences?

Linda Darling-Hammond to Spearhead Obama's Ed Policy Working Group

Obama has announced his policy working group leaders.

Darling-Hammond is a real (some might say touchy-feely) educator who cares about transformative teaching and learning and social justice. An exciting pick.

EDUCATION:

Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school reform, teaching quality and educational equity. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the executive board of the National Academy of Education. She has been a leader in the standards movement, chairing both the New York State Curriculum and Assessment Council as it adopted new standards and assessments for students and the Interstate New Teachers Support and Assessment Council (INTASC) as it developed new standards for teachers. From 1994-2001, she served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, was named in 2006 as one of the most influential affecting U.S. education, and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation's ten most influential people affecting educational policy. She received her BA from Yale University, magna cum laude, in 1973 and her Doctorate in Urban Education from Temple University in 1978. She began her career as a public school teacher.

More info:

• PBS Interview with Darling-Hammond
  
• Stanford University Bio
  
• Her books
  
• Alexander Russo, Huffington Post commentary
  

Higher Education Today

Paulo Freire says, “The educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is better “fit” for the world” (Pedagogy of the Oppressed). It can be argued that universities have largely become mechanisms that mold students to conform and adapt to the normative structures of society, rather than question the status quo. How often do we see a "problem-posing" environment in the higher education lecture-based or even seminar classroom?

Here's an interesting video created by students at Kansas State University: "A Vision of Students Today." You can find more information on the ethnographic project here.



One student in the video says her bubble tests won't help her deal with or prepare her the problems of the world--war, ethinic conflict, hunger....

Another student says, "I did not create the problems. But they are my problems." Higher education should promote pedagogies that encourage real dialogue in which students explore and understand their place in the world as both oppressors and oppressed, along with their potential to create and re-create new realities. Freire calls this "Conscientizacao," threatening the place of the status quo and questioning the prevailing picture. Going beyond the statement, “This is how life is,” and understanding one’s place within social mechanisms. Individuals and groups have the power to change the narratives of reality.

The college classroom has the potentional to be what Freire terms "co-intentional," but often isn't.

Teachers and students (leadership and people), content on reality, are both Subject, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators. (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2007)

Another of my favorite essays that's only somewhat related: William Deresiewicz's The Disadvantages of an Elite Education."

Upcoming Event: Reach All - Teach All

An event worth attending. The moderator is a colleague of mine in NYU's Catherine B. Reynolds Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship.

Reach All - Teach All

Social Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century Panel Discussion

Part of the Target First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum

Saturday, December 6, 2008, 8 p.m.

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Forum, 4th Floor

Free tickets available at the Visitor Center at 7 p.m.

Moderator: Martha Diaz - Founder, Hip-Hop Association and Catherine B. Reynolds Fellow

Panelists:

Toni Blackman – Founder, Lyrical Embassy

Alice Mizrahi – Co-Founder, Younity Collective

Toofly – Co-Founder, Younity Collective

Community Program Bridges Differences

Walking the Walk, an interfaith group in Philadelphia, brings students of various faiths together to take part in community service programs, reflect on their work, and also discuss their faiths, commonalities, and differences. 

they can meet with other teenagers wearing hijabs or yarmulkes, who are Muslim, Jewish or Christian, and talk — or text — about pizza, goofing off, television and the Jonas Brothers. Asked what was the most important lesson he had learned from getting to know young people of other faiths, Ibrahim, son of the imam, said without hesitation, “I learned they’re just like me.”

Find more info about the project here.