Design

I like Smagorinsky, and liked his piece with Michelle Zoss and Patty M. Reed about vocational classes such as interior design or shop and the status they're given in schools, compared with more legit and brainy activities like reading and doing math. They spend some time discussing motive--a topic tragically overlooked in many classrooms. It was the same way when I was in high school--vocational ed kids were the ones who weren't good at doing school, and were unfairly considered academic losers. In reality, they were probably learning a lot more useful stuff and having a lot more fun than us nerds stuck in Calculus (which I have NEVER used and suffered considerable agony to half-learn), and most likely making a lot more money than I will be. Clearly schools need to get their priorities crooked and look at, as the authors say, the value of cultural and psychological tools as well as traditional literacies. Plus it was great to listen to students excitedly problem-solve and think through their projects, rather than the resistant attitude we often see from students.

Hmm, I wonder where these negative connotations come from:

I will be honest--I did not enjoy the Burn and Parker article, although the decisions, process, and editing of film is interesting to me, especially after working with the Alamo for several years and being part of the conversation on new and innovative flicks. An article dissecting the grammar of film seems unnecessary for some reason--maybe because the kids I work with have nothing resembling access to a production like this. Grammar of regular old print text is boring in of itself, especially when teased apart from language as a sentence-diagramming worksheet chore. I can't quite put myself in the right frame of mind to evaluate methods of studying "digital moving image texts." I don't know if it's because the authors are Londoners (seems like context is an important enough idea to be wary of research done outside America) but that was one of many terms and phrases used in Digital Inscription and Animation that sounded weird in my head. Thus, I couldn't really get it. Maybe it was because I read this article last or maybe I am just out of patience after working in a BD unit for the last week and broke for the last two, but phrases like synchronic syntagm, diachronic syntagm, spatiotemporal grammatical system, interpersonal metafunctionand spectatorial grammar just get on my nerves. I know that's not a very academic attitude, but it's my blog and that's my opinion. However: my interest was piqued by Eisenstein's theory of montage I think the idea of the montage is a more useful framework in approaching many aspects of life and education: a collection, the impact of connected images, peoples' thoughts and stories--a montage does more to capture the complex context of a seemingly-simple theme or idea.

Like the Brits' article, Jody Shipka's piece was...nice...no really, it was good. But again--for the vast majority of schools I've visited in this urban, diverse city are so far out from what she was able to do with her students: "I have been inviting students to chose [sic] (that's right, there's a typo) their mix of materials, methodologies, technologies and rhetorical strategies for the past nine years." That's great if you don't have to deal with TAKS testing and were allowed to do what you want as a teacher. It's a great article--I particularly liked the American Museum of Greed project, but I wanted to put it in Mr. Pat Forgione's hands.

Bezemer and Kess focus on the effects of text and image in curriculum from the 30's, 80's, and our current digital age. By starting out with a clarification of important concepts (mode, medium, site of display, frame), this piece becomes a good foundation for Shipka's and the Brits' type of work. The appealing and artistic vibe of this line of study is the emphasis on transformation--the changing and rearranging process, the unfixed-ness of the final product, the flux and flow of building and rebuilding one's world. The real education of adjustment, the shades of meaning, rather than a fixation on an absolute answer. Although this sounds like absolute hippie talk, the kind of nonsense coming out of a New Age Music teacher's mouth, these analyses of transduction/transformation and social repositioning were done on math and science textbooks, as well as writing.

frontline video I was talking about

je

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"the productive pursuit of serious fun"

For the fifth time over the last year, I left my Macbook charger at work. Work meaning school, meaning not open again til Monday. No problem, I thought, pulling out the heavy Dell. I turned it on and frowned--the screen was all skittery and crazy. I panicked--I did not know if I could make it three days without internet. How would I know what's going on? Talk to people? Read random things? Write? Check things? Find new things? Then Roommate #1 told me to give it a little slap on the side, and sure enough, things straightened out. You know, like how you slap someone freaking out to calm them down. This anecdote serves to illustrate Thomas and friends' points about the ubiquity of digital literacies.

Angela Thomas takes on a lot of cool topics like cyborgs, cyberpunk, myspace, sexual identities, and Freud in her article, Digital Literacies of the Cybergirl. I've always been fascinated with the body/soul connection, and it was interesting to see how that plays out in cyberspace and in identity-construction. I was reminded of a 60 Minutes or Dateline or some such melodramatic program about the overwhelming popularity of Myspace and its effects on teens, some with tragic endings. I remembered this girl, who was kind of a loser at her school and very lonely, had a penchant for edgy clothes, hair, and makeup and picture-taking talent became an almost overnight cyberlebrity (I made up that word), with hundreds of complete strangers adoring, friending, and commenting on her Myspace page. It was edgy, but not over the line skanky like some profiles you'll run across. However school officials and parents were notified, undies were bundled, and the girl's parents made her delete her profile and her pictures. A tear slid down her face as she remembered how they stood behind and made her erase herself. In real life, she was the weird girl who wasn't skinny or mainstream enough to be liked, but online she was a queen.

Thomas uses some Freud (which you don't see much) to discuss our obsession with the visual, using the term "scopophilia," meaning pleasure in looking, to describe one of the most important of our human drives. This could explain why Martino's study found that young males like porn. And see here is where writing may or may not show the note of sarcasm in my voice right now. Thomas studies the choice of avatar used in girls' profile, and although I see what she's saying, I think she went to far in her interpretation and classification of her subjects' choices. That seemed a little too subjective. I think the influence of the Barbie and Bratz dolls lining our shelves and our Disney princesses and our adoration of cinema waif-ers should be included in any discussion of beauty and its interpretation.

Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto is now on my to-read list: "The boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion." Returning to the ideas of the bodyembodiment, and reality, I am reminded of Dwight's Second Life from The Office:


Incidentally, I watched my friend Dana play Sims Bustin Loose over the weekend, as she made and lost friends, slept, forgot to go to work, and sat in a hottub--all of which she does in real life as well.

I noticed while reading the Lanshear and Knobel piece that I can't read linearly online. My eyes jump around, I click on links, I skip sentences, but eventually it all gets read. I totally love Adbusters. I love that the authors used two of my favorite words--gonzo and karma. Lankshear and Knobel spend the second half of the article thoughtfully discussing research approaches to new literacies after wowing readers with the possibilities they hold.






Culture jamming should be a national past time. It should be a required course, a degree program, a profession, an Olympic sport. We need to be asking questions, people. Getting to the bottom of things. Or at least making fun of them. An earlier post of mine features an Onion video of Bush giving a press conference on the threat of zombie attacks (check the tag 'zombies' to your right). I checked out Plastic and I like it. "Plasticians tend to be self-styled members of an erudite, ironic and humorous ‘plugged in’ crowd, interested in quirky takes on anything newsworthy—particularly anything connected with popular culture—as well as in serious and informed discussion of current events." That's me, ironic. I like blogs for making it easy to zoom around and link these things, to check sources, to organize the mountains of content, for incorporating visual, text, and video. And I'm very critical of blogs too--if I had a dollar for every proud mother's blog consisting of 5-10 daily pictures of her bliss-bundle and inane commentary on surbuban domestic whathaveyou, I could probably buy one of those babies. You can see for yourself, just click "next blog" up in the top left (after reading mine, of course) and blogger will take you to a random blog. There's actually a game where you do that and see how many blogs you can click through before stumbling upon a porn blog. I think the record is 10). From what I've seen, there is a big handful of intelligent blogs that concern themselves with provoking thought, asking questions, encouraging discussion. And there's a big old bucket full of, well, crappy blogs. I just hope that more attention is pulled towards the relevant stuff of life, and less toward celebrity gossip and silly wastes of time. As long as the blog serves its author's purpose, people can do whatever they want with it. In regards to their ability to cross-reference quickly, incorporate media, and allow for collaboration, blogs are rad.

The Hawisher and Selfe article was very long, because their point (I think) is the complexity of how one comes to digital or new literacies. Obviously inspired by Brandt's sponsors of literacy book, these authors draw some important conclusions about conditions of access to technology, literacies' life spans, personal agency, the role of school and family as gatekeepers, and generational transfer of digital know-how. As in many studies, the authors call for improved teacher training so that we may fully use technology to its most beneficial. Resource inequities are a tragic problem for underfunded, under-served schools, and really puts those schools' kids at a serious disadvantage as reliance on technology in the workplace only grows and grows and higher education becomes more and more expensive. Although, as the authors say, the schools are not necessarily the biggest or most important sponsor of literacy. I'm often reminded of the 8th grade student who gleefully confided in me about his ability to get around the firewalls set in place by AISD servers, thus accessing his precious Myspace account. That's real problem solving. Too bad there are no TAKS questions on that.

The rich keep getting richer, the poor continue to get poorer. But that's another post.

The end.

"Jender"

Wayne Martino really knows how to start out an article. You remember how your English teacher used to talk about having a attention-getting first sentence?

"Boys who enjoy reading or like English have been referred to as 'faggots', 'squids', 'spocks', 'try-hards or simply just as rejects by their peers."

Well. Ok then.

Incidentally, Martino also wrote a chapter entitled "Dickheads, Wuses, and Faggots: Addressing Issues of Masculinity and Homophobia in the Critical Literacy Classroom for a book. While I appreciate Martino's daring word choice and agree to the inclusion of this issue for research's sake, I contest his spelling of "wusses." Dictionary.com backs me up.

Not surprisingly, Martino finds that boys disengage with passive, "feminized" activities, into which they (a bunch of Australian boys) group reading--clearly these boys have not read any transactional theory a la Rosenblatt. Less surprisingly, Martino claims boys like...porn. Here Martino draws upon his gender argument, that concepts of masculinity and male literary practices blah blah blah--look, his "study" interviewed boys on their thoughts on reading, and they either said they didn't like it and it was boring, they like some types of texts (sci-fi or adventure or sports) or they liked it a lot and saw it as an escape from reality. I don't think Martino's telling us anything new or significant. All students at times express these thoughts (that reading is boring, that only certain books are any good), and during adolescents, they are constantly trying on new identities and attitudes to assert their independence and show they are tough--it was around this age that I first savored the full power of a well-delivered F Bomb. I applaud Martino for using the word "tits" in an academic article (in quoting a participant), but I'm not impressed by his "study."

Mollie Blackburn, on the other hand, study the out-of-school literacies and power held and experienced by LBGTQ youth while working for and researching literacy performances at The Loft in NY for a number of years. She knows that kids are only in school part of the time, and that away from school, they are both aware of the power dynamics at play in identity formatice and literacy, and work to change them. In this study, this is done by collaborating on a glossary of terms used to describe LBGTQ people, thereby taking the power of labeling out of the hands of outsiders and re-situating their own identities and definitions. She draws on queer theory, critical race theory, and critical feminism (all of which slightly contradict each other--queer theory seeks to suspend classifications of identity while critical feminism makes gender the center of issues studied, same with CRT with the concept of race) to approach the multiple identities working within this group and these performances. Moreover, she stresses the power of literacy performances for social justice and change. The Speaker's Bureau, a noted group within the Loft) works to disrupt power dynamics by educating others about homophobia and heterosexism (which assumes that everyone is straight). To be gay, a female, and a minority...Gloria Alzadua's writing continues to poke me in the back as I try to read other things (when I get home, I'll get out Borderlands to find the quote I'm thinking of).

Finally, Barbara Kamler looks at gender in early childhood writing, finding that despite being given freedom to choose their topics, children in Australia (what's with all the Aussies?!) typically wrote in the observation genre, reporting on what they've seen and done in their own lives. Boys in this study overwhelming wrote themselves into their stories as active do-ers while girls positioned themselves as passive experiencers (can't say I'd have fallen into that myself--the stories I used to write in elementary school were usually made up, and I typically made myself the superhero of the tale, so what does that say? Furthermore, I once pitched a fit at McDonald's because I wanted a Transformer in my Happy Meal and not a damn doll--I was the inheritor of a great collector of Matchbox cars from my older brother and a single Barbie with crappy clothes and a Ken doll whose head consistently came off from my sister). Anyway, Kamler's study (which includes only 2 children although she studied them for almost 3 years) argues that "children, as they learn to write are gaining control not only of the written mode of language, but also of the gendered meanings of their culture." I don't contest that point at all, but as with the Martino study, there are so many complex and variable influences on one's identity that work together and in juxtaposition with each other; gender and the context in which it's presented throughout childhood is only one factor.

Kamler argues that gender is often overlooked, but I pose a different question--if we are lending credence to the shaping concepts of gender on identity, what impact does the overwhelmingly female teaching population have on education? How do male and female roles play out in the minds of the young when they typically see female teachers and male administrators? What do they think of power dynamics when Mom does the cleaning and Dad has the job? When the plumber and the mechanic and the electrician are all men, and the waitress and the flight attendant and the maid are all women? All of these decisions are fine, do whatever you want to do with your life, but we should be providing narratives of "non-standard" or non-traditional gender roles as well.

Kamler's weakness (besides using a single pair for study) lies in attributing to particular writing behaviors and choices to gender, when little Peter and little Zoe were many things besides a little boy and a little girl--they were white (I'm assuming), Australian, members of a family and community and town, possibly little brother or little sister--all these things went into their choices, not just gender. Everything we know about how to act is a product of our socialization, and is socially reproduced when we reduce some behavior as a trait of gender. Hence the title of this post--I (Jen) am who I am, talk like I talk, write and read like I write and read because of who I am, not just because of my gender or race, etc.
Just in case gender confuses you, however, here's Zachary to clear things up:


Also, here is a sheik describe the difference between men and women:


We can laugh about it, and it's something we'll fight each other on til the end of time, and it provides much of the fodder used in sitcoms, but when it comes to discrimination and oppression, I will second Kiri's directive from Blackburn's article in saying, "suck my cock."

Post No. 93

While subbing on Friday, I let a kid go to the bathroom. Not in the room of course. A black girl urgently raised her hand and told me he wasn't allowed to leave the room. "Why?" I asked. "Because he...he be doin bad!" she exclaimed. I raised an eyebrow but smiled, knowing exactly what she meant despite her "non-standard grammar."

So Garrard McClendon came up with a book called Ax or Ask? The African American Guide to Better English to solve a crisis of "low expectations" faced by the black community. In the beginning of this interview, he cites reasons for said crisis panic: 64% of black fourth graders are considered functionally illiterate, and blacks are trailing 200 points behind whites and Asians on the SAT. This gives me plenty of hole-poking opportunities, but I'll be brief--"functionally illiterate" doesn't mean shit in light of the semester-long conversation we've been having about what literacy really means, and standardized tests are just silly--those are hoops you jump through to join the Discourse of the business/social world, and the hoops seem to be on fire to boot for blacks (for many deep, messy, and resistant reasons).

I was a little dubious but then he went on to talk about code-switching via a weird analogy about chameleons (the first of many interesting metaphors) and honoring both dialects, so I kept watching. He contradicts himself about giving dignity to both BVE and Standard English around 3 minutes, saying teachers are not aggressive enough about "correcting" primary students' using their home language, suggesting there is something wrong with it at least in academic circles which the authors of this week's articles would have a problem with. Lisa Delpit is cited, for better or worse. He makes some good points.

What's more interesting than Carlton Banks (sorry, couldn't help it) is the discussion and comments in regards to this video on youtube. People have some strong opinions about their and others language in terms of what's right and wrong--reminded me of Gloria Azaldua's Borderlands, a controversial and angry book about the linguistic crossroads of the mestiza. She writes, "Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language. And because we internalize how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other...if a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me." The inherent political and racial tension about language isn't restricted to any one dialect or language. Another good video to watch and further proof that Obama needs to get elected can be found here, just scroll down and watch some baracktv about race relations and how students talk about them in a Bronx high school.

I'm not denying there's an achievement gap or racism in hiring practices or any of that. What's discouraging is the resistance and chaos involved in trying to have conversations about these issues--the entire country went nuts after seeing Obama's pastor demonstrate only slightly more than the typical zest seen in most black churches (yes, I'm white, but I have been to black churches in Chicago, and fiery is a good description). Just the topics of racism themselves have people struggling to get a grip on their own opinions and confrontations of racism, and it's all around us. I think standup comedians do the best job of approaching racism, and they can get away with it by wrapping it in a joke.

In Cooks and Ball's lit review of the research on AAVE-speaking adolescents' literacies, they make a valid point, that there are many published works decrying the failures and trouble of Black English speakers (same as the panic-inducing approach for most initiatives, i.e. Nation at Risk) but few focus on providing models of culturally-relevant pedagogy or teacher development. They also suggest more research be done on student writing, technology, and alternative assessment methods, which I think would help most educational dilemmas facing us right now.

"Critically, and futuristically as US society becomes increasingly diverse, we must arrive at a genuine acceptance of the fact that difference does not mean deficiency." (Smitherman, 79)

Smitherman's research with the National Assessment of Education Progress looks at twenty years of black students' writing, and includes a set of criteria for black student writing, such as cultural references, verbal inventiveness, and evocative language. I imagined the melee that would doubtless ensue if a white writer had attempted to do such a thing. Or, even funnier, how about a list of features of white writing?

Incidentally, did you know that 2005 was The Year of Languages in America? Me either.

I took an African American Lit class as an undergrad and was the only white girl in a class of sixty or so. More interesting than that was the professor, a tiny old Korean lady whose second language for her major was Ebonics. Anyway, during that same semester I took an awful grammar class where the entire time was spent diagramming sentences. It taught me nothing, other than I don't like diagramming sentences. It's this kind of approach Godly, Carpenter, and Werner writes about in our third article. The idea too many teachers are espousing involves spending a little time daily on decontextualized and sterile grammar instruction (in the form of correcting sentences, doing practice test items, etc--I've done them) in hopes of raising standardized test scores. By the way, research has shown that explicit grammar instruction doesn't improve student writing. The tests are multiple choice, thus promoting the idea that there is only one correct way to use language and denying students any opportunity to argue or explain their decisions. The authors mentioned Brian Street's ideological theory of literacy, as opposed to an autonomous one, and argue for focusing classroom talk on the power of language ideologies similar to those studied in the other articles. "Like most ideologies, language ideologies have been shown to be most powerful when they are hegemonic, that is, when they are believed to be so natural, so unquestioning true, that their power is not recognized, even by those whom they position as subordinate. For instance, many people do not question the power inherent in the widely held belief that Standard English is the purest, most logical, and most grammatical form of the language." (105)

I liked this study because it examined the sources of these language ideologies--state and district standards and standardized tests, curricular materials, activity structure, teacher talk, and student talk. It also describes the frustration of a well-intending teacher who did what she was told as far as grammar instruction and teaching to the test, and realized upon seeing the tapes from the study on her teaching and classroom how far short that fell. Instead of positioning teachers as the sole possessors of knowledge and the ultimate authorities on language, "literacy education should reflect the necessity and possibility of responsive and responsible uses of language in a world rife with and riven by systems and relations of power."

All that said, it still bothers me when people don't use proper grammar. Is that bad? I'm not talking about ebonics or whatever, I mean when people write things like "your stupid." My stupid what, idiot?

Alaiyo

I wrote "a blog for class" as a descriptor to this blog, as it was originally an assignment for a class. Over time the phrase began to evolve--class. for class. a blog for class...

If you read this thing semi-occasionally, I thank you. Things might take a turn towards academia for a while, as I now have another class requesting blog entries as assignments, Research Seminar in the English Language Arts. Expect articles, theory, education, television, rants, silliness, governmental conspiracies, randomness, and cries for help to ensue.

Today, though, I subbed for a middle school language arts class and showed the play A Raisin in the Sun (fantastic). Alaiyo was the nickname Beneatha's boyfriend from Nigeria gave her--it means "one for whom food is not enough" in Yoruba. The next entry will be talking about language, grammar instruction, ideologies (in case you want to clear your calendar), and why we teach as if there's any absolute truths or best ways anyway. It's analogous to watching the "beauties" of Beauty and the Geek to answer questions about museum pieces or science projects when the geeks simply tell them to memorize the answers--when people start asking questions and you really have to be able to show you really understand, you're screwed. Standardized testing. You know. You know?

Anyway, a student gave me this picture she drew, and I had a hard time not laughing or saying, "what the hell is this?"
To be clear, at no point did I ever bare midriff, nor did I sit on any desk like that, so I was a big confused. I also do not own a pink blouse and am not a camel toed fairy. Underneath it said "to my favorite teacher," which is an odd thing to say to a sub, even one you know fairly well, and there was an anime book on her desk, so I figured she just drew it and then decided to give it to me. Cause, uh, no.

Also--I had to call AISD today and the hold music for HR is none other than Night on Bald Mountain. Odd music to hold to. Doesn't ring a bell?


Good to be writing again. Been so busy.