Reggio Wish #2 – Ateliers and Aesthetics

Ateliers and Aesthetics

 “When we speak of aesthetics we speak of our bodies. From this point of view we can have a better understanding of what is meant by art. The work of art is to create antennae. Antennae which perceive all that is intolerable, discomforting, hateful and repugnant in the universe that we ourselves have created.” (Vecchi, 2010)

Vecchi writes about the radical move Loris Malaguzzi made when he positioning the atelier – and the atelierista – in Reggio schools. The atelier’s central location also positions it as the lifeblood of a school, a space where all things flow out and flow in. This conception of aesthetics as central to human life and necessary for children’s daily experiences is so different to see in person than the way the arts sometimes get integrated into projects even in some Reggio-inspired schooling and writing in the U.S. Arts-integration is sometimes reduced to making things, painting, drawing, or even a dramatic performance. Rarely do I hear educators articulating the fundamental purpose of aesthetics (or “art” as we usually call it) in education as “creating antennae” for our full bodies to perceive the beautiful and mundane and unjust in the world.

Inviting a non-educator artist to play a central role in curriculum and pedagogy is brilliant. Too often in educator preparation programs, the focus is so narrowly aimed at all the wrong things – controlling bodies (aka classroom management), controlling minds (aka disciplinary knowledge), and controlling futures (aka assessment, labeling, and tracking). A serious commitment to aesthetics and its role in life would mean not only inviting non-educator artists to the table and school, but also immersing future educators in antennae-making through deep and full-bodied engagement with aesthetics.

I wish for children, youth, and teachers to live their daily lives in schools saturated with the sensibilities of artists to make sense of the world, and surrounded by massive amounts of diverse materials through which to make that sense. This would no doubt create problems in the fundamental ideology of U.S. schooling and society, however, where most people believe there is one right answer and one right way – or at least “best practices” – and the ambiguity that comes along with art-making and living through aesthetics would challenge that ideology to its core.

Vecchi writes, “An aesthetic sense is fed by empathy, an intense relationship with things; it does not put things in rigid categories and might, therefore, constitute a problem where excessive certainty and cultural simplification is concerned” (Vecchi, p. 9). We are certainly in a time and place where “excessive certainty” and “cultural simplification” are highly valued, and ambiguity and aesthetics are deeply suspect. How might we individually begin to make ourselves more pliable? If I settle into a body/mind/way of being that embraces ambiguity, uncertainty, and a creative sensibility that cultivates my antennae of the world, what impact would that have on the people with whom I interact every day? What impact will it have on me? On the world? What if children and youth and teachers were encouraged to cultivate such uncertainty? I wish for the collective courage to take such a worthwhile risk.

Reggio Wish #1 – Slow Schooling

Slow Schooling

Five minutes pass, then ten minutes, then twenty.

Thirty.

Forty-five.

Has it really been an hour?

A young girl and boy wander around the schoolyard taking turns experimenting with a camera that offers new and unusual ways of looking and seeing and living in the world.

A close-up of grass, part of a tree, a swing, and a friend provide material for curiosity and wonder and laughter and play.

The two children spend at least an hour on their own. No adult checking on them wondering about their task and whether they’re on it, no expectation that some kind of share out will hold them responsible for an adult mandated lesson they were to put into practice, no interruptions or calls to the carpet or lights flipping on and off or shushes or claps or public celebrations of other children who are doing a different task.

To be in a place of such peace where  children and adults work/play for long periods of uninterrupted times pulled me into the slowness of being, the rhythm of the present, and the quiet of curiosity. To be in a place where time is supplanted as the governor of activity by the meaningful movements of people is really stunning given that I spend so much of my time in educational spaces that are marked by the minute.

When a society (or any sub-culture of a society) becomes so compelled by narratives of efficiency and accountability, it is inevitable that measures of time will begin to rule human lives. And if measures of time begin ruling adult lives, it is inevitable that the same restrictions will soon be forced upon children – perhaps with even more force given the assumptions from most perspectives that children are to be controlled in their stage of only partial humanity.

I am struck by the ease with which children and adults populate the spaces of the Reggio schools. Bodies seemed natural and relaxed. Talk flowed without a sense of urgency. Conversation happened. Wondering, wandering, play, work, and smiles interacted fluidly as if everyone was in a time machine. A time-standing-still machine.

What long-term effect would a commitment to a slow school movement have on the quality of children’s, youth’s, and adults’ lives? If a school is not governed by time passing, but instead governed by the present and tending to our joys, curiosities, needs, and togetherness, what would happen in that school? How would we recognize it?

With the U.S. policymakers and education reformers persuaded by “time on task” and “preparation” for a hypothetical future of “career and college,” most schools become spaces where fluidity is outside the lexicon. Where present is only here to prepare for the future. Like the grassroots slow food movement that challenges all the efficiencies and speed of fast corporate food and the culture-changing impact it has had on nearly everyone, I wish for a slow school movement that parallels in commitment to the local and present.

I wish for a school movement where two children can wander around for an hour taking photographs of objects and people they find curious, and their explorations won’t be disrupted by clapping hands, flipping lightswitches, teachers calling out, or threats of losing their 10-minute recess for not being on task.

“What Money Can’t Buy”

“What Money Can’t Buy”

Have we plunged off the cliff of a market economy and into the unforgiving sea of a market society? This is a terrific interview and I can’t wait to read the book.

Money, struggle, and what those of us close to it already knew…

Recent studies show that folks earning $10,000 a year actually spend about twice their annual income on living expenses.

How is that possible? You ask…

1. They often receive financial support from their family members (making their “better off” family members more economically vulnerable);

2. They borrow money and find themselves in debt from which they never recover;

3. They do odd jobs to earn money that isn’t reported to the IRS (yard sales, handy word, housework, childcare, flea markets, etc.)

Can someone really live on $10,000 a year?

Very difficult unless they are off the grid, living in a vehicle, campsite, etc. and have means to feed themselves without visiting the grocery store or farmer’s market very often. We’re talking a very, very, very simple way of life. Possible? Yes. Possible for everyone? No. But it does beg the question about the role of education in preparing “survivors” who can fend for themselves as adults with low incomes.

Some interesting examples are posted in the article linked above.

 

Enough of the “Teachers are Villains” Narrative

Thanks to L.S. for sharing this on a listserv.

I am going to add some highlighting to the article for those of you reading this during your only bathroom break of the day, or during your leisurely 10-minute lunch time, or as you are rushing to write some notes home to families about how great their kids are.

 

Washington Post  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-standing-up-for-teachers/2012/09/17/ad3ee650-00fd-11e2-b257-e1c2b3548a4a_story.html

 

Standing up for teachers

By Eugene Robinson, Published: September 17

 

Teachers are heroes, not villains, and it’s time to stop demonizing them.

 

It has become fashionable to blame all of society’s manifold sins and wickedness on “teachers unions,” as if it were possible to separate these supposedly evil organizations from the dedicated public servants who belong to them. News flash: Collective bargaining is not the problem, and taking that right away from teachers will not fix the schools.

 

It is true that teachers in Chicago have dug in their heels against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s demands for “reform,” some of which are not unreasonable. I’d dig in, too, if I were constantly being lectured by self-righteous crusaders whose knowledge of the inner-city schools crisis comes from a Hollywood movie.

 

The problems that afflict public education go far beyond what George W. Bush memorably called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” They go beyond whatever measure of institutional sclerosis may be attributed to tenure, beyond the inevitable cases of burnout, beyond the fact that teachers in some jurisdictions actually earn halfway decent salaries.

The fact is that teachers are being saddled with absurdly high expectations. Some studies have shown a correlation between student performance and teacher “effectiveness,” depending how this elusive quality is measured. But there is a whole body of academic literature proving the stronger correlation between student performance and a much more important variable: family income.

 

Yes, I’m talking about poverty. Sorry to be so gauche, but when teachers point out the relationship between income and achievement, they’re not shirking responsibility. They’re just stating an inconvenient truth.

According to figures compiled by the College Board, students from families making more than $200,000 score more than 300 points higher on the SAT, on average, than students from families making less than $20,000 a year. There is, in fact, a clear relationship all the way along the scale: Each increment in higher family income translates into points on the test.

Sean Reardon of Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis concluded in a recent study that the achievement gap between high-income and low-income students is actually widening. It is unclear why this might be happening; maybe it is due to increased income inequality, maybe the relationship between income and achievement has somehow become stronger, maybe there is some other reason.

 

Whatever the cause, our society’s answer seems to be: Beat up the teachers.

 

The brie-and-chablis “reform” movement would have us believe that most of the teachers in low-income, low-performing schools are incompetent — and, by extension, that most of the teachers in upper-crust schools, where students perform well, are paragons of pedagogical virtue.

 

But some of the most dedicated and talented teachers I’ve ever met were working in “failing” inner-city schools. And yes, in award-winning schools where, as in Lake Wobegon, “all the children are above average,” I’ve met some unimaginative hacks who should never be allowed near a classroom.

 

It is reasonable to hold teachers accountable for their performance. But it is not reasonable — or, in the end, productive — to hold them accountable for factors that lie far beyond their control. It is fair to insist that teachers approach their jobs with the assumption that every single child, rich or poor, can succeed. It is not fair to expect teachers to correct all the imbalances and remedy all the pathologies that result from growing inequality in our society.

 

You didn’t see any of this reality in “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” the 2010 documentary that argued we should “solve” the education crisis by establishing more charter schools and, of course, stomping the teachers unions. You won’t see it later this month in “Won’t Back Down,” starring Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal, which argues for “parent trigger” laws designed to produce yet more charter schools and yet more teacher-bashing.

 

I’ve always considered myself an apostate from liberal orthodoxy on the subject of education. I have no fundamental objection to charter schools, as long as they produce results. I believe in the centrality and primacy of public education, but I believe it’s immoral to tell parents, in effect, “Too bad for your kids, but we’ll fix the schools someday.”

But portraying teachers as villains doesn’t help a single child. Ignoring the reasons for the education gap in this country is no way to close it. And there’s a better way to learn about the crisis than going to the movies. Visit a school instead.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

Underprivileged children, adopted puppies, and self-satisfied do-gooders

Okay, I love The Onion which is satire at its best and ”not intended for readers under the age of 18,” but of course I don’t even know how to rate my own blog posts  and sometimes cringe at some of my own content when I receive comments that seem to be from younger adolescents who are searching for answers to their school problems and find my blog helpful. So who am I to judge such slippery notions as age-appropriateness or – even worse in schools – “levels” of reading?

Enough of that, I don’t know how I missed this satirical reporting of young privileged college-educated people sacrificing themselves in service of “underprivileged” children as their volunteer (or, even paid) teachers: My Year of Volunteering as a Teacher

Still not teaching about the strike?

Thanks to JT for sending this along…

 

Not teaching about the striking teachers yet? See the real faces behind unions and the fight for public education:

Click here for interviews on-site interviews with teachers.

Chicago Teachers Strike – Great Opportunity for Teaching Work

One week after Labor Day, Chicago public school students get a front row seat to lessons in work, labor, unions, and the persistent struggle between workers and employers. The story is everywhere this morning – union teachers in Chicago are striking for the first time in 25 years.

Given the erosion of workers’ rights across the country, even in strongholds like Chicago and New York, it is imperative that workers stand strong and go public about struggles for working conditions and pay that provide respect, dignity, and a decent living. Who better than educators to teach us all a lesson about work?

Some of the big issues for Chicago teachers? 1) Teacher evaluation (working conditions – how we are evaluated matters); 2) Policies that take funding away from existing schools and give it to charter schools that are often for-profit (this is also about working conditions – how workplaces are funded/equipped appropriately or not).

If you decide to open up an inquiry about work, workers, labor, unions, strikes, etc. some questions you might consider:

Why were labor unions formed to begin with, and what were the working conditions that made them necessary?

Labor unions claim to protect the middle-class, in what ways might that be possible?

With global “labor” now available to many multinational corporations, some say that national labor unions aren’t enough. What might global labor unions look like in the future? What kinds of goals would these unions have for our global future in 10, 15, 20 years?

And some really important questions given the rhetoric of teacher strikes “hurting our children” - 

In what ways can unions, and even strikes, protect all of us from being further exploited by employers?

In what ways might unions, and even strikes, protect the “customers” (or clients, or students, or recipients of the services) of the organization or business?

Who benefits from workers unionizing and striking?

Who benefits from  non-union and anti-collective bargaining laws?

Some resources that might be helpful for teachers digging into this with students:

Unionstats.com has a pretty exhaustive database of union membership by state and sector

United States Department of Labor collects data on union membership – compare these stats to Unionstats.com

Interested in basketball? Check out the NBA Players’ Union

Football fan? Check out the NFL Players Association

One of the strongest unions in the country is the United Federation of Teachers in New York City

Service workers have unions and continue to unionize – here’s one example

Trades have their unions too – check out the Plumbers, Steamfitters, and Service Technicians No. 72 in Atlanta of all “Right-to-Work” places!

 

Don’t forget the international context – miners are striking in South Africa where events have been deadly, Spanish miners are striking, and the London Olympics took place among threats of transit strikes and taxi strikes. And the Chinese factory workers who have been said to be willing to work for lower and lower wages under worse working conditions? They started striking last year.

 

 

The Most Important Education of our Time? The Servant Economy and Jeff Faux

I have posted before about the book The Servant Economy by Jeff Faux, but wanted to share this BookTV video with anyone out there who wants to watch it either in conjunction with reading his book or as some strange version of cliffnotes (warning – he doesn’t talk much about the details in the book, so the talk doesn’t “replace” reading in any way, but is interesting nonetheless).

Click here to watch the video

The overwhelming evidence that our country’s jobs are declining and that pay for jobs is stagnant at best and in a sharp downward trend at worst may be the most important education issue of our lifetime. I don’t mean, by the way, that we need “more education” so people can get “better jobs” – I mean, that we need a broad and deep economic education from K-12, into higher education, and in all communities so that we understand the consequences of income inequality and can envision our country’s dark future if we don’t demand something different.

This is not about political parties. Jeff Faux says this well in his talk, and I regularly say this to teaches and principals I work with (though I’m not sure they believe me). Both U.S. political parties have opened the floodgates for global trade, enacted policies bad for U.S. workers, and – this is important – both parties are owned by corporate interests. The last point is one Jeff takes on in his talk – instead of proposing several potential action items, he proposes one: get corporate money out of politics. He suggests that we do this by organizing locally and state-by-state to propose a constitutional amendment that would reform campaign finance.

This is about money. And for some reason, it seems to me, that “money” is left nearly entirely out of curricula at all levels beyond learning to “count” money and occasionally some word problems in mathematics. But money has literally become the engine running our political, social, and economic engines of our country. He (and it is mostly a He) who has money gets to influence the policies governing what our social and political futures will be.

How can we begin the critical conversation about money and influence in elementary, middle, high, and postsecondary school? In community non-profits? In doctor’s office waiting rooms? In unemployment lines? At the park, library, playground and schoolyard?

Let’s at least start talking about it – and if folks will either read or watch videos of some of the most prominent economic voices of our time to educate ourselves about economics and the economic reality we’re living right now, we will at least have some of the language necessary to open up the conversations. And then we can also ask ourselves why most of us have no idea how to think of such things and have such discussions, why social class and any economics education beyond the “basics” of exploitative capitalism are not a part of curricula, and what we’re going to do to change it for our own collective good.

 

Dare we stop cannibalizing one another in the name of education?

We’ve heard it a million times over – what can we learn from Finland? Here’s yet another article about lessons from Finland. The online discussion is depressing at best. Most people – even so-called “smart” people – have literally bought into cannibalism competition so much in this country that they can’t see beyond the water in which they swim. While most of the teachers I know and work with are fighting tooth and nail against the negativity of competition in their own classrooms and schools, I still hear educators say things that seem absolutely nonsensical to me – things like “Why should we provide the school supplies for them? That’s not preparing them for the real world at all, no one in the real world will give them anything.”

Really?

In those moments I have to look people in the eye and realize that we are not only speaking completely different languages, we are literally living in different universes and when we look at the same children, our vision and perception couldn’t be more different. Communication across universes hasn’t worked well up to this point, and though I hate it, I have realized that sometimes I need to just walk away and hope that somewhere in the future that person will realize how unethical their stance was in our moment of conversation.

Even if our “real world” is war-torn, filled with hatred, abusive, exclusive, and cannibal-like, is that really how we should create our schools and prepare our children and youth to perpetuate?

Of course not. Any half-way grounded human being knows that. Anyone with even an ounce of empathy or compassion would know that.

But apparently the corporate cannibalism of our country has filled every crevice of our collective consciousness, so much so that many of us see this damaging way of life as the only way.

Dare we stop cannibalizing one another in the name of education? Dare we dream that our youth might envision a more peaceful, collaborative, and equitable future for themselves and all of us? If we dare to dream it, we have to actively speak out – and act out – against the implosive competition that has ravaged our educational system for far too long.