shape shifting

I found myself nodding my head and occasionally saying "yeah" outloud while reading chapter 9 at the coffeehouse (understandable as it was written by one of the Gee brothers), luckily there are always some weirdos at coffeehouses. Today it was the girl reading and talking to herself.

Hello? Life has changed. People can’t expect to stay in the same job moving ever gradually up in the ladder their whole lives any more. The age of computer programming (in terms of the model of mind being like a computer with certain formulas and projected answers to slotted outcomes) is over--now we use rapidly evolving technology to enhance the person side of us rather than the other way around. "Identities today take work, a person is expected to craft them out of available social and cultural resources. A person is expected to take on new identities through life, dropping some, changing others, and taking on new ones." (166) We know narratives, story-telling, collaboration, authentic questions, critical thinking, all these things should be making up our classroom practices. And I think technology addresses all these things, but isn't being connected to education enough.

Gee examines particularly the identity-forming potential of current media, despite reluctance and inability to give true equitable experiences with all available technology in the classroom. This would scrape too hard the scab of traditional schooling. Jazus, we can't be letting the kids carry their Ipods and cell phones around willy-nilly! We can't let them chat or look at music videos online, are you crazy? There are no TAKS questions on that kind of thing. Plus, hell, they might enjoy it, and we can't have that. Plus who has the time or the desire to sit around and try to figure out ways to tie personal technology and communication to learning? Certainly not a grad student, that's for sure. Har.

Taking that idea a step further, Brian and I discussed during break once all the components of symbolic interactionism and self-fashioning available via....wait for it.....Myspace. My boyfriend claims to have contracted myspace from a public restroom somewhere in Oklahoma. It has that effect on you. Of course the space that is yours has its limitations (its trendiness being the first), there are only a fixed number of ways to express who you really are, but still, your username, your song, your pictures, your videos, your groups, your quote, your layout, who your top friends are (and in what order, and dammit you better be careful about that), which comments you approve/deny, the comments you leave others, the 'about me' section, the interests section, the blog, etc...all these things attempt to present a digital version of you. You form yourself. You shape your identity, and continue shaping. And of course it's a playground for pedophiles, phonies, porno-hopefuls, and other losers, but you gotta take the good with the bad. More importantly, you have to teach people how to use the tools. But did anyone teach our kids to do myspace stuff? No. That's my point. If there's something a kid latches onto, almost innately knowing how and liking to do things, we owe it to him to connect it to his classroom. Not in a dissecting, scientific, TEKS aligned way, but to consider it knowledge and not playing around. Kids LIKE using technology--they're not scared of it like my parents, or unable to use it in a meaningful way that will enhance their lives.

I'm starting to think that educational equity is tied to the amount of opportunities and experience (with an emphasis on exploration) we can give students, but opportunities are tied not only to economic resources but also to trust. Do we trust that students can benefit from multiple literacies? Trust goes back to underlying beliefs and values. Chapter 12 talks about the differences in search skill (in analyzing the experiences students of different SES attempting to conduct online research) being due to difference in symbolic capital, number of opportunities, prior academic experiences and families' economic realities, and calls for deliberate instructional practices by teachers who understand reproduction theory.

Here's why we really need to be teaching digital literacy:

Cars

I had to laugh. "There are well-off people who buy neobugs from VW, others who buy Mercedes, and yet others who get Hummers. These are different types of people, displaying, reinforcing, and creating their identities through the objects and services they buy." (165) Having a mechanic best friend and a car salesman boyfriend, I've had this conversation before. For the record, I have driven (in chronological order) an 87 Nova, a 98 Cavalier, a 90 Geo Metro Convertible (Gawd, that car), a 2000 Focus, and a 2007 Fusion. The Fusion is by far the nicest thing I've ever driven, and the fact that I got it after blowing out a tire, spinning around on I-35, and crashing into the wall makes it even more important. That was a life-affirming day.
Cause I'm proud:






Something interesting from the half-bakery. More reading to do.

determined

It figures that Chapter 7 caught my attention the most, since that was one of the chapters we didn't have to read for class. Didn't realize that til after I read it. But I'm glad I did, because the concept of agency is one that's not only important to me as an educator but as a person just trying to live her life. But first, a word from the anti-NCLB movement, ala Alvermann: "Accountability-based reading reforms which emphasize high standards, clear expectations and strict consequences fail to address this important aspect of the literacies in adolescent's lives. These reforms portray adolescents as little more than passive figures for educators to control rather than as active independent and richly detailed human beings for educators to advise and assist."

The case of persuasive writing as described in the Nespor study reminded me of the book I'm reading for sociolinguistics where three studies were cross-analyzed to examine the role of identity in appropriating, resisting, or transforming classroom expectations. Sounds riveting, I know. It was the transformer students I felt drawn too, as they are exceedingly rare in a world where individual drive and choice is only superficially encouraged. These students knew how to play the game the teacher wanted played and got the grade but used the literacy practices in their classrooms to meet their own needs and agenda as well.

I've been looking for a way to incorporate a recent trip to Iowa for a wedding into a blog somewhere, and this is perfect. It had been a while since I'd been to a midwestern church wedding. I had forgotten all the rules you have to follow--how to act. Stand in this line, say this polite thing, meeting this person, sit at this table, wait in line, do this, do that. All draped over by a web of niceties and falsity that made me stabby. Add to this the agency-lacking ridiculousness of multiple airports--take off your shoes, wait in line, go stand in this line, arms out, nothing more than 3 ounces, be here at this time. Growl. It was alleviated to some degree knowing that my close band of a dozen or so friends had, like me, been anarchists from our freshman days of college together and were suffering as much as me--always the ones to cuss in inappropriate contexts, skip class and chapel, argue in class, be openly gay (not me but my roommate--this was a big no-no on our tiny conservative Christian campus), drink on the dry campus, smoke within 15 feet of the door, talk about inappropriate shit, consume approximately 65% of the booze available at the reception, and not get seriously involved in relationships or have the desire to be engaged by graduation. We are travelers, wonderers, non-conformists. It was nostalgic, the dirty looks we received from the good folk who follow rules and have happily/ignorantly constructed their lot in life by age 22. That's not to say we're Billy Badass or something, it's just that it was such a ideologically-strangling place to try to experience college. This is the center of predestination Reformation theology. As soon as I understood this concept as a church-going child, I didn't buy it. That's not to say I don't believe in God, either. Complex.

Here's the crew two seconds after the I Do's were did, rushing out to smoke on the corner.


I've always blamed my dissenting on my birth order--if you consider what we've discussed in terms of the social nature of learning and development, it makes sense that early childhood interactions with siblings and parents have a huge impact. I'm the baby. I want my way. That's how I'm wired after growing up the youngest and having to fight for a voice. I also have smackings of only child in me, as both siblings were out of the house by the time I was eight. And I know what you're thinking, but I was not spoiled. NOT. Click here if you like stupid quizzes.

Advocacy for human freedom includes a few concepts Alvermann explains: dismissing freedom means eliminating moral responsibility for human behavior (as people do what they're compelled to do), it eliminates hope of a better life, and it negates the concept that people can and do make decisions that could have been alternate decisions constantly. I had never thought of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, structuralism, and post-strucutalism as predeterministic vehicles of agency denial.

Viktor Frankl's home as a prisoner of the Third Reich:

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way...there were always choices to make, every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, you inner freedom." Viktor Frankl

So what does this mean? Alvermann: "these quotations illustate - people are free to interpret the events of their lives. This freedom of interpretation keeps peoples' past and current situations from determining their future. It is the essence of human agency." (135)

You know when you meet people with no agency. You will know them by the trail of anger and unhappiness, failed relationships, addictions, sketchy job history, and in some cases, criminal records. The inability to make decisions that benefit them. It's sad. We've all been there.

In any case, when it comes to what the world wants you to do, what you need to do to get by, and what you need to do to be happy, be a transformer. And not a Decepticon.

say what one more time, I dare you

Holy shit I love this book. At least the first chapter anyway, we'll see how it goes. Even though I had my doubts when the author said one of the kids in the study was her son, the way she interviewed El and David about the influence of text and media in their lives and development into people in high school then 8 years later was brilliant. What an interesting time--we graduate having jumped through all the necessary hoops and then start living our lives and come to find out what was really important to have learned in the safety of those early years. Ironic that my Halloween costume is Uma Thurman's character from Pulp Fiction...

Incidentally, I met Quentin Tarrantino once--he's a big dude, and kinda scary.

I often bemoaned the fact that great thinking and learning could be done with popular media, and should be, as it's relevant and interesting to kids' lives. Why force them to read shit deemed "classic" if they don't care? Not to say that the classroom should be a movie theater or that we should leave classic texts out, but why be so scared to incorporate them? Especially when, as the interviews with El and David show, they are so formative to identity and social relationships?

I connected with these two kids/people on a number of points -- I consider myself to be a moral dissenter: I use plastic but I protest the hell out of Walmart. I take moral stances. I'm a critical thinker. I swear a lot. I read books and watch movies and talk and act them in my normal life, with friends. Like David, I enjoy living in a city rather than the tiny town I grew up in. I love to jam culture, and used to use adbusters in my classroom as much as I could get away with. David says, "I'm not part of Generation X, but I think these guys are sick of always having a plot line, or sick of things always having an inner meaning. I think every show has a point. But I don't think that it has to be a big one. I think life is like that. It doesn't always have a big point. Just lots of little ones." David and El seem to have a good grasp of what could make schools better and more real--teach differently, first of all. And use the media. Teach media literacy. El knows that for us, nowadays, "everything is presented in sound bytes, and black and white arguments, images, numbers--the death toll for the tsunami is rising, we see how horrific it is but we have no real sense or consequence of that, we're still here, whining..."

Am I a GenX kid? The lines are hazy. I was born in 79 but have two older siblings a decade ahead of me, and older parents (early 60's). I had not really considered the impact of what generation you are in terms of how you approach literacy and identity--boomers, GenX, hippies but obviously this makes a big difference--what the world is like when you begin and continue reading and viewing and discussing with others from the same (and different) eras. Wiki says "Generation X is generally marked by its lack of optimism for the future, nihilism, cynicism, skepticism, alienation and mistrust in traditional values and institutions." Huh. It adds that some relevant GenX movies include Singles, Reality Bites, Clerks, the show Friends, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Pump Up the Volume, all of which are rad except Friends.


David makes a good point about personality development--"you just change according to your surroundings, your age, your experiences, but that core personality that you start out with is still there..."

Another thought on travel, as both kids did some of that and reflected on it accordingly (and I'm trying to save up to go to Thailand, my first trip out of the country, and already live a good thousand miles from my hometown): "I can't live my life not knowing wht I would do on my own, completely, by myself. That's why I think travel is important...it allows us to invent ourselves outside of any context."

in the heart of the city

So I'm only a little ways into Tatum's Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males and already I am struck by his straightforward and common sense style, firmly rooted in his own personal experiences. I'm only on Chapter 3 and already he's brought so much up...but in my head I'm hearing a song as I read, "Heart of the City," which I thought was only a Jay Z song, but come to find out that Whitesnake did it first. Interesting to hear the two versions:




I also just recently heard Chris Rock's piece on welfare (thanks to Sirius Radio), and one line stood out to me (and this is right before I sat down to read): you get more respect as a black man coming out of jail than you do coming out of school.

Back to reading.

unpredictable

So now I'm attempting to write a hopelessly abstract and complicated philosophical post about prediction, reading strategies, and...uh, life. I'll ease you into it:


Myspace Layouts - Get This Widget

It began with an hour's worth of talking about the why/how of teaching reading strategies such as prediction and inference to reluctant readers, and how these skills play a role in reading, and, neccessarily, interpreting, which has a lot to say in terms of how we see life and other people (and since visualization is also an important skill in creating meaning, I want you to picture an aerial shot of our classroom in Sanchez and a quick pan out and up, pulling back from our city, our lives, our countries, all the way out).
The point of real-life application is (or should) always an issue for educators. Currently most of my papers and readings are directing me to think about authentic questions in curriculum and real learning. Unfortunately real-life assessment is more about evaluate-able items, such as: cause and effect, main idea, inference, etc, although these things too are open to bias and interpretation. I became interested in the usage of "predict" and "inference," and a quick Google search showed prediction's ties to the emotive, the mystic, the unexplained (but accessible if you just click on the right pop-up) while inference brings up several easy-to-use websites to practice making inferences from info in the text (and only in the text, dammit). A void seems to exist, at least in connotation, between the terms' relation to the unexplainable.

Listen to Miss Cleo:

I don't have to tell you what a big business prediction and prophecy is for us uncertain folk. Besides the consumer appeal of quick card-readings, we constantly think of (or assume, and you know happens when you do that) what's coming next anyway, it's what makes us human. In fact, I imagine animals do it too. When I woke up today I predicted the water in my shower would be hot after a few seconds, that when I turned the key my car would start. But that's experience, routine. I take what I see happening and apply it. Kids can do that. Kids know when they cry they'll get fed or changed or whatever. Kids know what it means when someone in a horror movie says "I'll be right back." They know if they act the fool they might be able to hide their embarrassment of having a reading problem. That's common sense with a side of symbolic understanding. But we have to teach them, for the benefit of being allowed into academic discourse, to do that from text alone.

One last thing. As a person who tries to see the irreverent/flip side of much of life, I realize how much of our humor is produced simply from predictions being wrong. A joke, a comedy, something that proceeds differently than we expect causes us to laugh. Misdirection. This technique is also popular among our politicians and presidents, with much less funny consequences.

As the TV drones, I am aware of how predictable things are in pseudo-life, in sitcoms and cop shows. Not so in real life. I wonder how many people predicted they would be where they are now.

my horoscorpio

"Dear Rob: Three and a half weeks ago, I had a dream that I was an archaeologist excavating hell. I took comfort in the fact that I was just a visitor, not a permanent resident, but my stay there was . . . well, hellish. Whenever I found an interesting artifact buried in the hot dirt, it would spontaneously ignite. I narrowly avoided getting burned again and again. Anyway, my actual waking life has pretty much felt like that ever since the dream. Yesterday, though, I felt the torment lifting. And then last night I dreamed of floating in a fireproof boat along an underground molten river of lava that eventually took me out to a green meadow under blue skies. Whew! -Sizzled Scorpio." Dear Sizzled: Your journey parallels that of many of your fellow Scorpios. Welcome back from hell!