engaged intellectuals

This article was first printed in the Atlantic Monthly in June and then reprinted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (where I first read it) on Sunday June 15, 2008. There’s already a bit of discussion about the article on blogs including Education and Class and Mike Rose’s blog so I have to add some here myself.

As you read the article and various comments related to it, think about social class, opportunity, privilege, and marginalization. And don’t forget Power. The anonymous writer who describes himself as an adjunct working two jobs claims he doesn’t want to seem “classist” like the Brits or “sexist” but yet continues to paint a picture of his first-year-college-students (and perhaps first-generation college students) as uneducated, disengaged, and unable to absorb even the most simple concepts from his course. Never once does he consider that it might be his own “deficits” (a word he claims to like) about teaching and learning and his own underpreparedness and miseducation that might have led him to this impasse with the students sitting in his class.

Isn’t it just like the archetype “teacher” in our society to fail at teaching and then blame the students?

Get a grip pal. The second job you took on to pay your bills is one that comes with much privilege and power and it seems you are failing miserably at using yours in the best interest of hopeful, faithful, tuition-paying students who are looking to you for some leadership, guidance, and education. When did teaching stop being inspirational? Motivational? Energizing?

If you just needed a second job, go get one where you’re not messing with people’s lives.

Truth is, you are classist, just like most folks in the U.S., and it sounds like you are doing much more damage than good to the students, their experiences with institutions, and to the institution itself.

Do us all a favor: learn to teach or get out.

And don’t write anonymous articles that only further inscribe society’s classist perceptions of success, failure, and the value of human beings.

Spanglish This popular film set in California offers a great deal in terms of issues around social class, language, public/private education, and ethnicity. As you watch, consider who wields power, how, and to what end. Consider how class, gender, ethnicity, and language intersect in constructing characters who are better positioned to wield power and characters positioned to wield less power. Think about how complexities around social class and language come together to construct tensions between a mother and daughter. And consider all of these issues as they relate to contemporary contexts of schooling across the United States. Who is acting as the “Savior” in the movie, and what are some of the complicated results of that action? Who, in contemporary educational contexts (particularly primary, elementary, middle, and secondary schools) act in similar “Savior” roles and is it possible that complicated results of such actions are taking place without the Savior noticing? There is an infinite number of ways to think about this film - these are just a few…have fun!

Kyle: Learning from a fifth grade reader who can’t find space for his interests

Kyle, a quiet and thoughtful fifth grade African American boy in an urban public school, drew in his writer’s notebook every day. In fact, while the other thirty-three students in his classroom were busy writing something in their notebooks each day, Kyle continued to draw page after page of human-like figures in various poses and wearing various kinds of attire. He was a prolific artist and demonstrated so in his notebook without a single written word accompanying his drawings. His fifth grade teacher was frustrated with him and his lack of engagement in writing (which crossed over to reading as well) and in a conversation with me as a staff developer in her school she reported that Kyle was “resistant” and was probably trying to mask a “learning disability” by focusing on his artwork instead of writing because he also “struggled” in reading. Additionally, the teacher reported that she was considering reporting Kyle and his artwork to the principal because she perceived them to be violent in nature. Kyle was drawing semi-human, cartoon-like characters with swords, blood dripping from the occasional wound on a body, and the characters were often in sparring-like stances with fists clenched and feet ready to kick. The teacher said that though Kyle had never exhibited any violent tendencies in class that this artwork may be the workings of something going on inside him, and that these terrible thoughts should be officially reported to the principal, the psychologist, his family, and maybe to the local police. In addition to Kyle not writing a single word during the first month of school in writing workshop, he had drawn himself into a pathology – one that was being read by his teacher as struggling academically, resistant to reading and writing, an unidentified learning disability, potentially dangerous, and reason for official reporting.

And then came the turn-around for Kyle’s teacher…

When that concerned, well-intended, frustrated teacher finished telling me about Kyle she waited with wide eyes, hoping that she had found the person with a magical answer to all the problems she saw in Kyle and his classroom practices. Instead of offering a solution I asked the first question that came to mind: “What does Kyle say about his drawings?”
The young teacher looked at me quizzically, “I don’t know.”
Genuinely surprised I asked, “You haven’t asked him?”
The teacher responded, “No. Should I?”
“Of course. We can’t know where to go from here until we start to understand what this artwork is doing for him.”
Kyle’s teacher agreed to have an open-ended conference with him during the week and bring what she learned back to me the following week.

If you haven’t been following the story of Genarlow Wilson, the young man who was sentenced to ten years in prison for having presumably consensual oral sex with a fifteen year old girl when he was seventeen, check out these pieces: CNN , NPR , Think Outside the Cage. He was released from a Georgia prison last week after the Georgia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that his sentence constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Justices Hines, Melton, and Carley opposed the ruling and substantiated their opinion in the final pages of the Court’s Ruling, a very interesting document, particularly if you have never read a Supreme Court Ruling until now.

FYI - check out the Justices’ biographies

Great critical inquiry for teens, teachers, and families…

What laws are on the books in your state that could change the lives of teens engaging in various kinds of sexual acts if they were to be convicted? What other crimes are teens serving time for?

How many teens are in state and federal prisons (yes, juveniles are sometimes incarcerated in adult prisons)?

Are there differences in incarceration rates related to geography (north vs. south vs. west U.S.), race, gender, social class?
Do you find anything wrong with the picture of justice for teens in the U.S.? If so, what can you do?

Who benefits from incarcerating teens (and, if you want to extend it, people in general)?

What are the differences between state funding for education and state funding for jails and prisons?

Interesting websites for inquiring into issues of incarceration and probation:

International Centre for Prison Studies

Mother Jones 

Prison Sucks 

Bureau of Justice Statistics

What is the age-old theory/practice divide really about? Can one exist without the other? Are there ways that we can integrate theory and practice in sophisticated and yet practical ways in teacher education?

Teachers are often over-worked, over-burdened with managerial tasks (especially in today’s age of Accountability), and very tired at the end of the day after being with a room full of students. This doesn’t create the most optimal condition, perhaps, for critical reflection and deep thinking about how theory informed their practice throughout the day. However, every teacher is working across her day informed by theory.  Perhaps a question we could ask is whether or not she has had access to readings, discussions, and/or activities throughout her education that do at least three things: 1) recognize and engage personal and scholarly theories of the world/societal structures 2) engage theories of learning, and 3) recognize and engage in theory-building through teacher research.  Perhaps if some - or all three - of these kinds of experiences are in place, teachers might begin to question and critique the “theory/practice divide” as something that positions them on the consuming end of knowledge and information rather than as producers of knowledge and - dare I say it - theory.

I know far too many deeply engaged, intellectual teachers working with young children to be speaking of this myself. I would love to hear from some readers:

-How do you read the theory/practice divide?

-What have you found helpful in your own education (either formal or informal)?

-Who benefits from the theory/practice divide?

-Who is disadvantaged in the ongoing presentation of this divide?

-What are teacher educators, professional developers, and researchers to do?

-What are teachers, principals, families, and students to do?

-Who are the other players in this theory/research divide?