For whom do you design your curriculum? In other words, who is your ideal, imagined student? What assumptions do you make about their background?
My idea student is the Brown School student - a character from 1st and Muhammad Ali in Louisville, Kentucky. That's what I knew as a teacher. Who is a Brown School student? Hmmmm. If it is out there in the world, it's in here (to borrow from the Yellow Pages). We didn't track. We brought from multiple zip codes as a mission. We held high standards for all kids. We celebrated individuality and the uniqueness of every learner, and we appreciated the importance to giving back to the larger community. My ideal student couldn't be defined, because the Brown was a little of everything, and as a result, our kids were a pastiche of the nation at large. The Brown student is a thing...a phenomenon that is carried forward within them for life. It has to be experienced to be believed.
With that noted, I also saw all kids as motivated, capable, and original, while recognizing they may need prompting to reach their fullest potential.
I've been thinking a lot about life-long learning, but also about Dewey's Experience + Reflection = Knowledge. I'm a lucky son of a Butch and my experiences have been remarkable. I'm not sure there's time enough (or an ability) to replicate them for others.
My assumption is that every kid is on a journey to find out (to reference Cat Stephens) and what they find out is ever-changing.
Do you articulate your own positionality when lecturing? Why or why not?
I don't think I lecture. I know it's corny, but I've sort of begun this Jerry Springer final gathering where I articulate my final points about why I chose to do what I do. I guess I publish, and this is sort of a textual lecture about what I believe in (community). I am a working class, White kid educated in tremendous schools where I, because of luck and opportunity, found myself in privileged locations of higher education. I recognize that my education, including a doctorate, is at the pinnacle of privilege. I worked hard to get to that point, but I was also born into a society that allowed such an opportunity to occur.
I articulate my positions all the time. They are perceived differently everywhere I go. I still laugh at my Kentucky days when someone put me up against a wall and said, "Aren't you one of those IVY-League, educated, rich Yankees?" - I was like, "Huh?" I realized how regionality is part of the game, too. I didn't realize Yankees was anything other than a baseball team. The Mason-Dixon Line was still drawn.
Middle-child, geek-boy Frog. Extroverted Introvert. Cynical Optimist. I have many identities.
How does your teaching legitimate the cultures and experiences of students of color?
I have more flexibility now as an Associate Professor than I did as a high school teacher. Still, I tried to differentiate as much as I could. I valued #WeNeedDiverseBooks even before Twitter introduced us to such hashtags as #DistruptTexts and #ProjectLit simply because I wanted to see my student populations represented in the reading and writing experiences of my room. Brown's mission was super diversity by design, and that's what I wanted in the curriculum I taught.
I realize now, however, that such a mission is unusual. My solution to the world is to create Brown Schools everywhere.
One of the better things accomplished in Louisville was yearly collaboration with Omega Psi Phi Fraternity at the University of Louisville and our Men of Quality programs, especially the conferences. Also, because of our Coalition of Essential Schools status, we promoted senior culminating projects, so each and every student was able to showcase who they were as an 18-year old human being and present a change they desired for the world. It was rather remarkable.
How does your curriculum require white students to acquire the intellectual and cultural resources to function effectively in a plural society?
Cough Cough. Different answer depending where I am. When I do professional development, travel the country and/or provide programs during the summer, the communities I work with are super-diverse, integrative, and inclusive. When I do University work (to pay the bills), I work in an extremely homogeneous community (seriously...I didn't know locations like this could exist in the 21st century...but they do, and I tap it to do be the scholar I am - intellectual Robin Hood).
I am definitely not anti-the classics, nor am I anti-Western traditions. I am, however, curious about who was being represented at each phase of the game, and who was being exploited for the comfort and games of White populations. I am White. Can't deny that. But I've always thought of my work as bringing the democratic torch to the next generation - one that doesn't have its roots in such cultural hegemony and Western naiveté. We are all the outcome of Imperialism and Colonialism. The diaspora of many populations has direct ties to the period "civilizing" the Globe. I have the look of those Imperialists and my bloodlines are tied to those nations. I have chosen to do my life's work, however, in support of those who have not benefited from such history in the ways I have.
Perhaps my work with refugee-background communities is tied to all of this, and why (by default) students in my courses get Bryan, as Bryan. It can't be helped. I am what I am.
How do you build a community in your classroom where students learn actively from each other and draw on their own knowledge sources?
I think about this all the time. I know I do what I do, and teach as I teach, and always feel like I'm messing up, mis-speaking, and acting a fool. I do what the National Writing Project would do, what my mentors at Brown would do, and what I learned as a researcher is best practice. I know it is awful, but I never name it. I just do as I do, and the feedback from students articulate that whatever I do is unusual, rare, effective, and useful. I always ask them, "what am I doing? Name it. I don't get it."
Truth, it's community. I step aside and coach their expertise. My mentor Sue always said, "there's no learning outside a relationship," so relationship-building has been central to my teaching. For years, I did community-building at various outdoor learning sites. Team-building (and those games) are at my core. I often like to say, "I can leave my classes, run an errand in the same building, come back, and 100% of everyone is on task doing what they should be doing - learning." I just try to stay out of their way.
What can you do to make your assessment criteria show what all students are capable of, drawing on their strengths and promoting their agency and creativity?
And this is the hardest question we're asking ourselves. Assessment. I am spoiled. I had a decade of writing portfolio assessment and in my current work I still gravitate towards schools that require the same. I see State testing (even EdTPA which higher education is subjected today), as complete nonsense - but how do you measure? Please. It always is a measurement of Whiteness. All kids are talented and gifted, but all kids are at risk.
It is criminal when we place societal deficits on any student, when the deficits are really in society. My critique of Chavez's work (and it is totally out of respect and admiration) is (1) colleges are traditionally White spaces...if you want diversity, get off campus (for real, real), (2) if higher education isn't called out for their economic profiteering and elitism, then none of us will ever win - they are the greatest segregationists in our nation, (3) who is defining writing? In the case of Chavez, it is creative writing programs, which is writing, but only a fraction of what writing is and necessitates within and from multiple writing communities, and (4) someone NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING/ANYTHING about State Assessments, AP exams, etc.- it isn't intelligence. It isn't helpful. It is institutional and structural, and they are racist by design. As long as administrators view those outcomes as measurements of intelligence, we'll be subjected to the very system we so desperately need to change.
There you go...I just answered same prompts our participants answered tonight (and this is before we read Chavez). I can't wait for all still to come. And these questions? Phew! This is only a sketch of what needs to be said and explored.
No comments:
Post a Comment