From MUSE: T4SJ:2011: Youth Speaks

My morning workshop (good band name, heh.). Also, awesome.  Writing workshops you can use in your classroom.  My, ack, freewrites are in here because I thought it made it easier to understand the pidgin-y notes.

Youth Speaks
jkass@youthspeaks.org

Life as a Primary Text
Voice. Identity. Power. Imagination.
Uncensored Youth Voice is the most important.
What is most urgent in their lives at the moment.

Arts Ed/Youth Development/Artistic presentation/Community Engagement
Youth Speaks is at the intersection of these four areas
Freirean based organiztion
Brave New Teachers - teacher development program
    you have to be brave about what they are going to say, they are going to challenge you, themselves, others

Framework: no wrong answers (things can be challenged, may be no right answers), and the standard is yourself (i.e., no need to follow traditional poetic forms)

I	LIVE	HERE
still figuring rene's daughter mom woman    friend    student    alienated privileged   teacher       human       lover     straight      thinker       queer     dancer     sister     granddaughter singer       holder     connector   counselo     change-maker translator    activist       listener     artist      latina     recipient   hapa     red      up stander	Breathe               be       struggle       exist        eat        make    think       experience   grow     challenge   question       survive   feel     file   thrive       learn         commune     fight            change    love       hate              see   connect witness            hunger    listen         give act     take    release           lack	Inglewood           outside        home       school       in mind         the world     the streets     the page       the soul      the body      San Francisco         Dolores Park         Adam's Point          in my car looking for parking       Crocker Highlands    on my scooter       on Clement Street   my wife's arms        with students       in my kitchen in hallways at schools         room 209, room L1          India, Africa, NYC  on the soccer fields         the stage     dance floor Cotopaxi Mountain         Point Reyes         Lavern Park  the in-between         balled up in bed

    


Why did we do what we just did
    space for sharing, brainstorm, thinking
    see connections, disconnections
    overcome writers block
    starting with yourself
        life as primary text
    palette of words
    takes away the fear of the blank page
        sometimes you have to start with these words
    conversation piece
    gets the mind warmed up - engaged
Started with live, then here, then I - so that we could get eventually to who you are as a person - scaffolding to who are you
    at each column, repeat, asking for answers: ‘what does it mean to live?’ ‘where do you live?’ ‘who are you?’ emphasis varying

“Columns + filling” used for lots of writing exercises
    creating word palette 
many different ways to move things forward - write about the column headings using the words, choose three words from a column, sentence starters, etc.

Young poets want to take on every topic in every poem
and they tend to talk in generalities

moving toward the infinite and the infinitesimal 
five boxes in upside-down pyramid
put e.g., a place right in the middle

my kitchen (middle box) - cooking dinner to celebrate nori's pregnancy, veal chops, pass through counter, takes too long, fava bean process, pomegranate soda for nori

boxes up and down as both time and scope of that story
two above, two below

one up - larger story of family - story of our wedding ceremony (d, n, j, k) - and of the rest of the family there

another up - that story is about community, beginnings, ceremony, deciding on principles of living

one down - we should be cooking dinners more - we don't anymore
missing family dinners and sitting down

two down - we sat down every night at the table to eat - dad falling down pretending to die whenever we had artichokes, sum and i laughing hysterically

THIS EXERCISE
encourages kids to have faith in their brain
your brain makes connections all the time
you don't have to force connections

FREE WRITE - no stopping writing at all for full 5 minutes. you cannot cross out, you must keep writing
you can change - but just like in oral you correct and keep going forward

either of two bottom boxes
write about that moment - you can bring in everything else (the larger ideas) along with the moment, but focus on the moment.

When I was a child, my family had dinner together every night.  It was a big deal.  Sometimes we had the tv on, but usually that just pissed my mom off. She hated having the tv on. my dad love d it and so did my sister and i.  There was a big spider plant that sat beneath the glass of our round bamboo-y table.  It was the early 80s people loved that shit.  We had artichokes a lot.  It is northern california after all. and they were one of my favorite foods, still are.  We played a lot at the table.  One game that happened every time we played i mean ate artichokes was that once we got down to the hearts, and my parents would help us scoop out the prickly choke to get down at that goodness, my dad would always - always - and if he didn't we would sneakily or so we thought tell him to by telling him not to. He would always put a part of the choke in his mouth, the fuzzy purple part. and pretend to choke, to fall out of his chair, and to die.  Liketysplit, he had two little girls out of their chair and on top of him.  Kissing him to life like in fairy tales, begging him daddy not to die.  And then he'd sit up, great big grizzly bear style and grab us. and we'd go back to dinner.  and we'd each eat the best, tenderest, morsel, like the pearl in the oyster, except more like the oyster, and then it was time for a bath.

everyone holds up and shows
then reading volunteers
look to see where the larger stories, larger themes are in the stories, how are they woven in?

The idea of this upside-down triangle framework
    all based in our own lives, no outside texts
    if we only have kids talking about the top level, their voices become muddled - they are just one of many voices saying the system sucks -- providing a counter narrative to what "the american people think" but providing their own, specific voices, own specific identities - clear, differentiated, honest stories -- not muddled or general

Telling our stories opens up a space for them to tell their stories
we must be open and honest, about our selves, about the things we don't know.

WORKSHOP 2 - SECONDARY TEXT
Youth Speaks comes into classroom, doesn't talk about the book you’re reading, specifically, does writing workshops around themes from that book - allows students to engage with the books, identify with themes in the book
changing dynamic from 1 book, 30 students --> 31 stories in conversation

LITERACY
self-expression
taking the bus
communication
how to get what you need
reading the world
power
emotional awareness
freedom
access
context awareness
recognizing hegemony
critical thinking
informed choice
reading


IDENTITY
race
fluid
who am i
who am i not
language
culture
groups of people
evolving
what i eat
indigenous heritage
interests
community
my feelings about myself
music, clothes
tradition, ritual, food
values
spirituality
learning differences
names
gender


Your identity at this moment in this place

At this moment, in this place, I am ….

A tangible object that someone can touch that can represent my identity … oh jesus.
a pen?

sherman alexie
poet, novelist, front man of all indian rock band (awesome!)

Has been attacked by older native american writers for taking about negative native American stereotypes
He says it's still there - doesn’t matter if we don’t like it, it’s part of the culture.

Drums as Love, Fear, and Prayer
Drums make everyone feel like an Indian
read out loud

Seven-ten minutes: write a poem with your cultural artifact as the central repeating thing
And also you must find a way to love yourself in the next seven minutes

I pick up my pen every day
Although I'm on an iPad
I pick it up and I hold it in front of me
In front of a blank page
And I hold it
And hold

I stare
For a while
I cannot twiddle this pen
I must hold the pen
Upright
Something will come
Or nothing will come
And there I am

I might be on the paper
The white paper
The black black slashes
Blood black
Night black
Black like ink on paper
The platonic ideal of black
On white paper

On empty page
And there I am

Pen still poised
Pen still poised
Staring back at myself in the blank white paper

I take my pen
I copy out poems from donne, for the play of it, from Snyder, because I'm feeling sensual with the trees and the bears, from books and books and books
And all these words
Tumble
From my pen
And other words
And there I am on the page
There I am in the ink
There I am



The importnce of loving youraelf 

The use of the secondary text.  What was the point of it?
What did it do?
Model: What did it model?
   Use of repetition
   Other forms
   Number forms
It did not:
intimidate - instead it gave you a focus, a way of doing

Teen identities are so constructed in the media
We need to give them space to construct their own identities
We need fewer boxes
Expanding frames of reference
Examples and options for them to choose from, not a frame they have to follow
Primary thing: write your own stories

We chose our own stories, identities, cultural artifacts before we were given a model
Then given the space to write freely, to read and listen freely
   “What does that mean to you” is the extent of the questioning --We do not ask them to provide right answers about the meaning
Ts Eliot said that when he is done with a poem it is the reader's to do what he wants with, to make meaning of

You said this, but what do you mean by that
What did we mean by I live here

The frameworks get the conversation going, the palette of words that are developed changes moment by moment

Whiteboard as a place for exchange, rather than directives
The whiteboard is the focus point of the classroom

Sharing is to affirm the idea
Spelling comes later
Start with the affirmation, start with the individual as the standard. Anything goes.  You might be challenged for your ideas but you are not. Wrong.


This post was also published on MUSE '13

From MUSE: T4SJ:2011: Keynote Dr. Gloria Ladsen-Billings

Here are my notes from the Keynote Address Achievement gap is usually seen as a deficit in the students:  they and their parents need to catch up. We should view it instead as a debt. Kids don't need to catch up, we need to pay down the debt. Scholastic disparity Semantic problem with achievement gap: Academic progress is not static, characterizes problem as one of student achievement.  Framed as if the students are not doing their part. And we hear nothing about funding gaps (per pupil spending), health gaps, wealth gaps  Achievement gap worsens as kids get older Suburban schools on average: 10k more per child than kids in urban schools Why does the funding gap map so cleanly onto the racial population disparities in schools? Persistent underfunding -- decades Earning ratios Wealth gap bt white and Black in us is much greater than the earning gap Community ties are between and amongst same race - wealth stays within those communities No wealth to trade, move around in black and brown communities So earning is it in those families Extreme poverty: less than 7k per year for family of three One million kids in the US are in extreme poverty Health gap Death rates higher for four main causes of death To focus on achievement gap in midst of these other gaps, wrongheaded and disingenuous Substantive problems with achievement gap Not new, imbedded in our thinking about poor children and children of color Even when the specific language of cultural deficit is not used, the thinking behind it remains Parents don't care, don't have enough exposure or experience, families don't value education, not ready for school, coming from a culture of poverty THEIR PARENTS JUST DON'T CARE No one acknowledges things like transportation difficulties, danger? Of leaving neighborhood    Possibility of things like carpool organization Treating families with dignity and humanity Home visits INVOLVING PARENTS I have never met a parent who doesn't care  Have different ways of expressing CHILDREN LACK EXPOSURE OR EXPERIENCE So classrooms are filled with "experiences" INSTEAD OF. TEACHING Sympathy instead of rigorous teaching - you poor dear    Sympathy becomes excuses for why can't expect much Permission to fail rather than demanding success NOT READY FOR SCHOOL Definition of "ready" of to begin school Now have to know colors, shapes, reading, count to twenty, etc    How is staying home with parents that "don't care" going to help. And isn't school a good place to learn those When to start school varies across the world Wealthy families have luxury of giving more time to students to prepare for school - additional experiences, time to mature, enrichment activity - so they're looking for more academically rigorous kindergarten curriculum Sense that "I need even more" in middle class thinking FAMILIES DON'T VALUE EDUCATION Poor families actually place a higher value on education    Pay more in tax dollars for education, primary targets for noodles on phonics, etc Seen as the primary means to life them out of poverty Rich see school as a credential ing mechanism Poor see school as school Historical records: civil rights era, education was the primary battle ground- school mattered more than jobs, houses, other social inequalities The meaning we give to behavior: same behavior, different interpretations CULTURE OF POVERTY Poverty is NOT a culture It is a condition produced by the various pieces of a society Consultants making money from desperate school talking about culture of poverty - the students are so deviant and strange, primary purpose of school is to bring order to their lives Does not deal with students as individual people's, their humanity Pedagogy of poverty, Haberman, 1991 -- 14 functions of urban schooling in the pedagogy of poverty Poverty that exists on one side of society is related to the affluence on the other Pedagogy of poverty defines the way that pupils spend their time, etc Students can succeed without becoming involved or thoughtful Obsessed with control - fear students of color CHANGING THE DISCOURSE controlling discourse, controlling thinking "education debt" holds us all responsible rather than blaming students and parents - underfunding, exclusion, unethical/immoral treatment of large segments of our population This post was also published on MUSE '13

From MUSE: I am in love with Miguel G. Lopez

In the afternoon, I went to this workshop: "Let America be American Again: (Re)Considering the American Dream through the Eyes of Those Who Critique and Challenge America to be "True" to Her Roots. It was led by Miguel Lopez, a seventh-grade teacher and teacher educator in Salinas.  He was amazing.  Seriously, I almost teared up a couple of times.  I compiled the notes I took on the syllabus/bibliography he gave us. My thoughts are stuck in throughout, unmarked, and the writing is rather slippery between you and I, but you'll get the idea.  Syllabus/Bibliography here. Heart.  Heart him. Step One: Write words you associate with "immigrant," "immigration," and "The American Dream" on a green piece of paper. Step Two:  Why are you here in this workshop?  Write a question you have, or a philosophy, or a statement about something on a red piece of paper. Step Three: Crumple those papers up as tight as you can and throw them at people. Pick up those that have fallen near you and throw them at other people.  Continue throwing, let it snow colored balls all around you. When the snowing subsides, pick up one or two that have made their way toward you. Step Four:  Share the red paper, those who would like to.  Share the green paper, those who would like to. Ask questions. Go deeper.  We have opened up a safe space for expression and critique.  Do this with your students.  The first month, you'll get nothing.  The second month, you'll get nothing.  The third month, though, your students will start speaking. Critiquing.  They're thinking now, expressing opinions, gripes, things that they love. Step Five: I am abandoning this system of steps.  There is too much to talk about.  There is too much to share with you.  The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. By the way, so are the content standards.  Read through them.  They allow for everything you could ever dream of wanting to do.  You can justify a trip to the moon - third grade curriculum standards require a lesson on space travel perhaps.  I think of this as countering the deficit thinking about curriculum standards.  Think of them like you think of linguistic grammar teaching.  They are a wealthy, joyous, fecund, full and fabulous language to let you express whatever you want. Your goal for your students is an understanding of the theme of your unit.  Keep them main goal in sight.  There are any number of ways they can get there (standards: voice, descriptive language, metaphor, meter, etc.). Oh, hey, also, rethink the how and the why of your curriculum.  We as teachers must have a personal relationship with our curriculum--a deep intellectual and emotional connection with curriculum.  We must express this to our students.  We must tell them why we care so that they know why to care, so that they can make an informed decision about whether or not to engage.  Give them the tools they need to make intelligent choices. READ Subtractive Schooling, Angela Valenzuela  Hope on a Tight Rope, Cornell West. What is the difference between optimism and hope.  One is grounded in reality and one is not.  I'm not quite sure which, but he likes hope and looks down on optimism. YOU MUST Know your curriculum and your text backward and forward and sideways and slantways because YOUR JOB, like a preschool teacher, or a montessori school teacher is to WATCH AND RESPOND.  And when you respond to a students' interactions with text, to their questions, their interests, their dancing around, you have to know HOW to respond and WHERE to go. DEALING WITH KIDS WHO DON'T COME TO CLASS This is why you read Subtractive Schooling FIRST, you ask the class, what have I done that you are so mad at me that you don't want to come to my class? What have I done to have make you see hypocrisy in my teaching, so that you do not want to engage?  I want to atone for, to make better, anything I have done. After you have accounted for any of your own wrongdoing, THEN you can ask the particular student's friends.  You should know who he hangs out with: go to them and ask them what is going on. Tell them to relay to him that he has responsibilities here, that I need him here. Give them the text/curriculum to pass on to him.  Put a note inside that says "you have a lot to offer this discussion, this learning time.  You have a lot to offer your brothers in the class. Please, bring it in to the class.  Share what you have with us. NEVER assume that he doesn't care about the class, about his education.  He is probably posturing for one reason or another.  Adolescents do this.  He wants to be acknowledged by someone (granted, she is probably a lot cuter and younger than you), but pursue him.  Make him feel acknowledged and wanted, pursued, as by a lover.  Do not do this in a way that embarrasses him.  There is time for that in class. CONTEXTUALIZE THE TEXTS YOU USE Langston Hughes was part of the Harlem Renaissance, he experienced poverty, his father left and he was angry.  He stands on the shoulders of Phyllis Wheatley and others. Also, connect all your texts with larger themes and big ideas. Also, connect all your texts to one another. Also, READ ALOUD. Language acquisition and literacy theory shows that students who are read to make much larger strides in reading. We decide at 3rd grade or so thatstudents  should move to reading on their own to be more young-adult.  But if you have students who are struggling, why not continue doing the thing that proves most effective.  READ to your students. ONE WAY I TEACH A POEM I blow it up and hang it on the wall.  8 sheets for "Let America be America again."  You can cover it with plastic if you want to use it over again, and use vis a vis markers. One color for each standard or focus.  Let's make "voice" purple.  Do not define voice for your students.  Ask them to look for instances of voice or instances of the poet expressing his voice, making his voice, etc. Let them decide for themselves what it means.  You know where they need to go, and you can guide them there eventually. Tell them to "tag" the poem, to mark it up.  The subversiveness is good for them.  Take a day to play with voice.  Do another idea, e.g., figurative language, the next day, in another color.  Each night, do your homework, respond to where the students are going, make sure you know the intricacies of your text and outside evidence as it relates to their needs and interests, the steps they are taking, the choices they are making.  If you don't know it, don't bluff it.  Create scripted coincidences for them: "You will never guess what I heard on NPR last night.  Exactly what we talked about yesterday."  Eventually, they'll know you're lying.  Does it matter? I don't think it matters. You're creating imagined moments of kismet, of magic, of coincidence. They are no less useful and wonderful than the real thing. You have to know when the evidence is in the text and when it is not, so you know when to direct them back to the text and when to look for evidence outside the text (we call that extrinsic evidence in law) text-text text-self text-world At the end, as a class, we find the best example of each color.  Students must argue for their choice. They are accountable for the information we've discussed and they are given the space to take it further. The next year, the new students start with the work of the students before.  The 8th graders become the mentors of the 7th graders.  We are a community of learners.  Invest in the whole community of the school.  I do not stop caring about my students when they are no longer my students.  I affirm their work by allowing them to help the next group.  I tell the new seventh graders this has already been distilled for you.  You are standing on the shoulders of those who came before you. (I may hide the legend, what the colors represent.  Make them figure it out.) And then they do a different text from scratch. Requiring them to schlock through a text is not a virtue.  That is not what we are here to teach. Do not force them to take notes.  They have the choice to or not, but keep them accountable, so they learn quickly the benefit of it.  Pair those that fail up with students (you've asked in advance) who take notes so they can see it modeled.  Your job is to make sure they are engaged, it is not to police them.  Freedom.  Democracy. Everything in my classroom is democratic up to the point of the grade:  standards, skills, etc. I go where their interest takes them.  If we don't cover what we need to, THEN I introduce it. Kids can and do memorize a lot of things, song lyrics, commercials. Get them to memorize the good stuff, give them an internal wealth of language and ideas to draw from. If a piece bombs, revisit whether you're going to do the next one in the series. THE GALLERY WALK Cut up picture books, mount them nicely, treat them as the art they are. For instance, We are America, by Walter Dean Myers, or anything by Children's Book Press. Hang the pages in order, cover the text with sticky notes and have the kids do K/W/L with the images as text. Picture books remind students of childhood; they bring out good feelings.  They are easier to engage in and are good into activities, or activities for struggling readers. Picture books are better than many novels, they have to do so much with so little texts, like poems. So many ideas packed into such a small space. Later, remove the sticky notes.  How did their interpretations of the images differ with the text. Nothing is wrong. REMEMBER: Captain America was a recruiting tool in WWII.  How do you feel about patriotism now?  MARIA TESTA: YA book: Something about America.  Two parts, mirror reflection of one another, one literal, one metaphorical.  Cut this up too.  Put all the pages on a board.  Have students connect words, ideas that come up with colored string, tacking it in place and making a web.  It is hard for struggling readers to see connections between a scene in the beginning of the book and something later.   This book sounds great.  The narrator is a girl whose family emigrated from Kosovo and now lives in a Maine town where there are so many Somali immigrants that the Mayor asks the ambassador to keep them from coming into their town.  Her father leads the rally in support of the Somalis.  Let America be America Again!  Here's that linking of texts with big ideas I talked about.  At the end, the father takes his daughter to meet a Somali mother and child.  The mother asks the father "Where was your war?"  My freedom is inextricably linked with yours. Langston links black civil rights struggles with immigrant rights.  We are all beneficiaries of the civil rights movement. We are connected to all causes and all causes are connected.  "Where was your war?" Romare Bearden: Collage artist Collage with stamps being released of him by the USPS "Curriculum by Design" GO TO National Steinbeck Center in Salinas Of Mice and Men as Graphic Novel Exhibit right now This post was also published on MUSE '13

I needed this today

Late Summer, Early Fall 

by Sherman Alexie

She catches a moth, stunned

By sun and windows,

Cradles it outside, uncups

Her hands and lets it fly.

How often do we humans save

What can be saved? This

Morning, a young woman

Has redeemed our kind

By releasing a moth. O,

She half-spins

And laughs. And her laughter

Flutters along

With the moth.

This woman catches me

Watching her. I laugh and catch

my breath. Make a note.

Today, at 10:42 a.m.,

Beauty defeated death.

Thank you, Verda

Superman was an undocumented immigrant

Teaching Writing

My semester is in full swing and is exhausting so far.  During the day I student teach with an 10th grade ELD teacher at Mission High School, and in the evenings I go to class at UC Berkeley.  My weekends are mostly spent doing homework and preparing lesson plans.  Luckily, I love it, or I'd have crapped out already.

Today, I'm planning for next week.  My intermediate students will be learning about thesis statements, and before I planned the details of the lesson, I wanted to make sure I was clear on where the process of developing a thesis statement and its supporting evidence fits into the larger concept of writing and learning to write. 

This is what I've come up with so far.  I drew from the canons of rhetoric described at Silva Rhetoricae (which is a fantastic site, by the way) and added my own thoughts about what fits in where.

RHETORIC

EFFECTIVE WRITING

Invention: What do I want to say?

            Topic

            Thesis statements

            Supporting Points

Arrangement:  In what order will I say it?

            Logical ordering of evidence

            Transposition

            Placement of rhetorical devices

Style:  How will I express my ideas?

            Audience

            Tone

            Figures of speech

            Appeals

            Grammar

            Diction

Memory:  How well do I know my topic?  Can I discuss its intricacies?  Can I extrapolate on various points?  Do I know what others think about it?  Can I present my argument in other media? Can I present my argument in other contexts?

Delivery:  How do I present my finished work?

 

These canons of rhetoric cannot be considered merely linearly. They inform one another and require repeated circling back.

For example, I cannot narrow down what I am going to say (invention) until I understand the topic.  Understanding the topic is an aspect of memory work.  Similarly, in determining what I am going to say, I must consider my audience, as certain arguments are more relevant to certain audiences.

I give a fuck about the Oxford Comma!

"Tort Tales" and Access to Courts

The popular narrative that grew around the Liebeck suit is what political scientists William Halton and Michael McCann  refer to in their definitive book Distorting the Law as a “tort tale.” Tort tales are narratives about lawsuits developed for the purposes of politics and popular culture, and as McCann explains are usually “either completely fictional accounts or highly fictionalized, reconstructed accounts of actual events.” Substituting half-truths and outright falsehoods for actual facts made a joke of a sad story about a 79-year old woman who suffered severe injuries because of an unnecessarily dangerous product from a very wealthy corporation.

If tort tales were merely fodder for sitcoms and comedians, the distortions might be harmless. But these tales are often used (and sometimes created) for political purposes. A major strength of Saladoff’s documentary is that she links the false narrative about the McDonald’s coffee case to a larger - and pernicious - political cause. Tort reform groups funded by corporations have used the fictionalized portrayal of the Liebeck suit and other tort tales to compel legislatures to limit access to the courts and place arbitrary caps on damages.

 From a review of a new HBO documentary Hot Coffee by Scott Lemieux (of Lawyers, Guns, and Money)

Newspapers Good and Bad

David Carr of the NYT finds a nugget of hope in the News of the World scandal:

Still, how did we find out that a British tabloid was hacking thousands of voice mails of private citizens? Not from the British government, with its wan, inconclusive investigations, but from other newspapers... 

Newspapers, it turns out, are still powerful things, and not just in the way that Mr. Murdoch has historically deployed them. The Guardian stayed on the phone-hacking story like a dog on a meat bone, acting very much in the British tradition of a crusading press, and goosing the story back to life after years of dormancy...

Mr. Murdoch, ever the populist, prefers his crusades to be built on chronic ridicule and bombast. But as The Guardian has shown, the steady accretion of fact -- an exercise Mr. Murdoch has historically regarded as bland and elitist -- can have a profound effect. 

His corporation may be able to pick governments, but holding them accountable is also in the realm of newspaper journalism, an earnest concept of public service that has rarely been of much interest to him.

A newspaperman insisting newspapers are still relevant, perhaps.  I am hopeful and uplifted nonetheless.

Thanks, TNC

I support the Takeis

From Use Your Words