Category Archives: Why We Can’t Get It Right

Bookroom Discovery #1

Leave a reply

As mentioned earlier, I’ve been helping out with an intersession class being taught in our school’s bookroom – a cavernous wonder of boxes, dust, and occasional cockroaches.

Mr. Carlson and I have found a few noteworthy discoveries during our time in the room. I will be highlighting two or three of them here.

The first discovery of note:

Yes, that’s 100 copies of The Making of the Rugrats Movie. It’s out of print, so, unless you’re at Manual Arts, you’re going to have to score your copy second hand. In any case, with a cover price of $25 each, I wonder what the story is behind these books (that are now 11 years old and never even taken out of the boxes). Often book publishers throw in extra reading books when our school makes a large textbook order, so these could have been such a situation. However, while I think we can find value in most books being available in our classes, could we have gotten a better use out of $2,500 in book value?

Outdated, severely below the age range of our high school students, and forgotten in the back of the bookroom, here’s yet another example of lack of communication and allocation of resources.

Space: The Unacknowledged Frontier

Leave a reply

The new school year has begun. I teach three 90-minute classes. One class has 39 students, the other two float comfortably in the low, mid-30s. I’m travelling between two classrooms – the class I use for two periods currently has no working AC – the heat is of a level that would help propel Kozol up the bestseller’s list if he were to document it.

In any case, all of this flux, change, and curmudgeony frustration with conditions has had me thinking about the “story” that our classroom spaces provide. As struggling-to-keep-our-heads-above-water teachers, classroom design is usually little more than doing our best to figure out how to cram class libraries in the limited bookshelves, how to arrange desks, and what posters to slap on the walls. That’s not a sleight to teachers – lord knows we can be spending our time on tons of activities that help improve instruction and student experience. However, when I look at the evolution of modern office spaces, I can’t help but wonder how this evolution can trickle into my classroom in South Central.

Similarly, I’ve been thinking about Joshua Prince-Ramus’ talk about the Seattle Library’s ultra-utilitarian design and wonder if there is a better lens to look at my four-walled space than the factory-oriented school model through which I’ve been inculcated; “Constraining Innovation” indeed.

Since studying narrative theory and mobile media through a generally awesome cognate course last quarter, I’ve been reading through this text on architecture, game play and space. Reading about ways that a place like Disneyland weaves narrative into space such that the guest is already well-immersed in an overarching narrative or theme well before ever sitting in the Haunted Mansion’s “ride,” for instance makes me think about how these kinds of spatial narratives are being disregarded within my school. In his essay in the book, Henry Jenkins quotes Disney Imagineer Don Carson saying, “The story element is infused into the physical space a guest walks or rides through. It is the physical space that does much of the work of conveying the story the designers are trying to tell.” He later writes that an iconic attraction like “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” is designed such that “the original tale provides ‘a set of rules that guide the design and project team to a common goal’ and help give structure and meaning to the visitor’s experience.” Sure, our school’s shift to uniforms this past year and repainting of offices helps send a kind of message or narrative to the students. However, is it one that is engaging? One that adds intrigue? One that poses problems to be solved? Encourages exploration?

Finally, Lev Manovich writes about the potential of “augmented space.” I’m still working through this. As I continue to ponder the prospects of a CryptoZoo invasion in South Central (as an ongoing 11th grade project), I wonder how the differences between immersion and augmentation can be looked at within a portable “bungalow” with no AC.

Judging Books By Their Covers (Why We Can’t Get It Right: Book Design Edition)

Leave a reply

I’ve written previously about what book size tells us when dealing with education texts. Lately, I’ve had another beef with education books – also probably not a novel one, but one that needs to be shared nonetheless. Obviously the geeky bibliophile in me will lead the way through this post … you’ve been warned.

Look at all of these books:

These are all books that have some pretty important, exciting content in them.

These two in particular have been fundamental in my growth as an educator (I’m sure I’m not alone in this feeling):

However, why, as educators, do we need to settle for texts that – despite the amazing content held within – are designed terribly? Just because a book is “academic” in nature doesn’t mean it has to be an eyesore, right?

I mean these two books hurt my eyes just to look at them:

I realize that good design isn’t free and so the reliance on generic, quickly designed covers helps keep costs low. (Yeah right, like any of these texts are by any means “cheap”!)

I’m not asking for anything fancy. Not everyone necessarily wants Chris Ware to design their covers. But if you are, I’d start with Candide (this photo does not do this [moderately priced] paperback justice):

Book design doesn’t have to be fancy. A nice photograph and decently formatted text will make me happy:

Or even a decently designed graphic and text work:

Likewise, if you’re creating a series of books, uniformity can make the texts shine. Here’re a few Murakami books that were sitting on my shelf:

I appreciate the consistency across the texts. It’s easy for me to locate other texts by the author I may be interested in when I’m perusing a bookstore (remember those?). Simialrly, these minimally designed philosophy texts from Verso attest to the less-is-more aesthetic that even Ed. texts could aspire to and still feel “academic.”

And they look awesome on a bookshelf together (for the record, I’ve only read about half of these so far):

Chip Kidd is basically a book design legend at this point, so it feels odd not to mention him in this post. I guarantee you’ve been drawn to his book covers on countless occasions. A collection of his work as well as a book commemorating Penguin book design always feel inspiring:

Similarly, I’ve been a fan of the design work being done through McSweeney’s for a while. Consistently, books and periodicals published by McSweeney’s are often beautiful, quirky, and “fun” for readers to interact with. This issue of their periodical was certainly one of the more “normal” issues: three separatly bound collections held within a larger, magnetic casing:

Ultimately, it’s not like most educators are going to stop reading or purchasing educational texts simply because of poor design. However, it feels like we should at least ask for better looking products. And who knows, maybe a non-educator might pick up the text because it looked interesting. Maybe one of my students will be intrigued enough by the beautifully designed book about education. Maybe that will be enough for a student to take a step toward a book that would otherwise look “boring.”

Even simple elegant design could be enough. Which two books here would your eye be most drawn to?

As a final thought, I want to point out the sole education-ish text who’s design I’m intrigued by. While delving into the typical education texts by Dewey, I stumbled across this gem, and the design alone compelled me to pick it up – it has since become a key foundation to my understanding of aesthetic, education, and self.

Reflections on AERA 09 Pt. 1: Looking for the New

1 Reply

At one point during a critical pedagogy session at AERA, I found myself writing in a colleagues notebook, “Where’s the ‘new?!?’” Not a novel thought, I realize. However, I found myself thinking about how are we, as committed educators, pushing for lasting, continually renewed change?

Being committed to what is in the best interest of our students often means doing things that don’t “fit” into traditional educational molds, obviously. For those of us ‘trying to add to the discourse,’ this means needing to be equipped to speak vocally, back our actions with theory, and generally be prepared to further substantiate our claims, decisions, and commitment to our students. In order to speak our students’ language we need to be able to defend it in “theirs.” (I realize an “us/them” dichotomy here is both slightly false and a bit reactionary. However, it may be the easiest way to open up the discussion of educational landscape and needs for South Central and all of the communities that we are living and working within that maybe a bit more “diverse” than some may feel comfortable with.)

If you’re going to say something to the direction and efforts within Critical Pedagogy at AERA, I feel like it needs to be something fully formed, accessible, and clearly pushing the envelope. Otherwise, it feels like a step back from what our already skeptical audience is going to listen to. No, this doesn’t mean conforming… it means being ready to step your game up in the face of adversity and for the sake of our students.

“Patient Impatience”: A Time For Restating the Obvious

Leave a reply

Figured this sentiment – said better than I’d be able to – should probably be reiterated as much as possible in the world of “pink slips and yellow unions.”

 We must defeat arguments such as this one: “We can give, say, attorneys for the Union reasonable raises; there are only about sixty of them. We couldn’t do the same for teachers; there are 20,000 of them.” No. This is no argument. First, I want to know whether teachers are important or not. I want to know whether their salaries are insufficient, whether their task is indispensable or not. It is on such questions that this difficult and long struggle, which calls for patient impatience on the part of educators and political wisdom from their leadership, must be centered. It is important to fight against the colonial traditions we bring with us. It is imperative that we fight to defend the relevance of our task, a relevance that must gradually (but as quickly as possible) become incorporated within society’s most general and obvious stratum of knowledge.

The more we acquiesce to being made into coddling mothers, the more society will find it strange that we go on strike and demand that we remain well behaved.

Conversely, the sooner society recognizes the relevance of our profession, the more it will support us.

–Paulo Freire

“We Youth Are Too Strong to be Stopped” (Why We Can’t Get it Right: Listening to the Youth & Civic Education Edition)

2 Replies

 I spent my Friday evening learning. I gained insight about problems within my school, ways these problems could be addressed, and how teachers can improve their instruction. This information was informed by a broad spectrum of graduate level theoretical texts and significant research was conducted; both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. The researchers spoke eloquently and answered questions from leaders within Los Angeles’ educational community. These researchers were a group of brilliant 11th graders at five high schools throughout the city, including Manual Arts.

The Council of Youth Research, put together through UCLA’s IDEA, spent the past seven months investigating their research question: What form of teaching and learning do Los Angeles’ youth need to become powerful civic agents?

The students integrated heady academic texts into their presentations. They explained the ideas presented by writers like Freire, Jean Anyon, and Angela Valenzuela. They explained why what they were doing is a kind of “transformational resistance.”

Based on teacher interviews and teacher surveys, it became clear that – generally:

  • Teachers are teaching about community issues, at least occasionally, but are not requiring students to take action.
  •  Schools are not helping “students develop personally.”
  • Curriculum does not develop civic-minded student
  • “A happy teacher does not always equal a good teacher”
  • Teachers are unprepared for conditions in urban schools like lockdowns.

Ultimately, teachers have a huge potential to get students to become “Justice-oriented citizens” (as the students quoted in Westheimer and Khane, 2004). However, this opportunity is being squandered. I realize a handful of us could get uppity and self-righteous about this. Cleveland High School, for instance, came out of the presentation excelling well-beyond schools like Manual Arts and Roosevelt. However, their relative excellence only points to the lack of equity within the district. For every teacher and every school that does well, an opportunity for the students engaged in those classes and schools to fight for widespread equity should arise to further transform society through schools.

The Manual Arts students made three major recommendations based on their research:

  • More teachers
  • More classrooms
  • Smaller class size

As our school continues in our transition year as a part of the iDesign, I thought about what the students from Locke High School – now a Green Dot charter school stated: “The most noticeable changes [to their campus over the past year] are superficial and cosmetic.” What will the legacy of our school’s attempt at local autonomy become? Will it be school uniforms?

When the Council finished presenting, a member of the group stated, “We are taking matters into our own hands by telling you what we need.” They then received comments and questions from three distinguished guests:

  • Luis Sanchez, School Board President Monica Garcia’s Chief of Staff
  • Omar Del Cueto, Executive Director of iDesign Schools
  • “The only Steve Barr in Los Angeles,” founder of Green Dot

However, as these experts in education spoke, I didn’t feel like they listened to the students. Sanchez questioned what schools could do to be more involved, even though the two hour presentation directly addressed this.

As the Council furthers its work, I’m curious what they’re planning to do next. Professor Ernest Morrell explained that the group is focused on a “model of reciprocation.” I’m wondering how they will expand their network both within their school communities and with other schools not initially represented in this inquiry. I’m also curious what their next steps will be in terms of action: how long will they wait until Del Cueto doesn’t take their ideas into account when running iDesign? How long do they wait if the School Board does not dramatically address civic education? Or if Locke continues to affect only cosmetic changes while triaging to serve its most promising students? I’m thrilled by the possibilities that Friday night’s presentation brings and hope the students take to heart Morrell and his colleague Proessor John Rogers’ warning that the program the students went through can only take them so far. The real change and the real work is still up to them.

Why We Can’t Get It Right (Rumor Control & “Changing the World” Edition)

2 Replies

I get the importance of rumor control. Hefty words were bounced around in my first period class this morning. I asked my students to respond to the following quickwrite [relating to the novel we’re reading, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time]:

Something mysterious happened at Manual Arts yesterday! You are Christopher and you want to find out the truth via investigation. Write down (in the voice of Christopher), the case you are solving and the steps you will take to solve it.

There are always mysterious things happening at Manual. There are always mysterious things happening at any school. However, the kids were quick to point out the news truck that was in front of the school this morning reporting on an alleged incident. The kids were also quick to point to the fact that one of our buildings was partially evacuated during 4th period yesterday since someone decided to “mess around” with pepper spray, as one student phrased it.

The students were genuinely frustrated by these events. We talked about how we, like Christopher, can investigate the roots of the challenges Manual faces and change the reality around us. Once again, the students made the connection that another of the few times the media pokes its head toward our school is to highlight “negative stuff and not the good” (again quoting a student). Yes, we had a lockdown. Yes, our school’s report card is “sobering.” Yes, someone said there was an attempted abduction. But really, that isn’t all there is to us (I promise!).

 

Some of my students said they don’t think it’s possible to change our community. “No one does anything to change it and so it doesn’t change because everyone is working in different directions,” one student explained. Our class talked about student life, crime, race, employment, the school’s “busted” security cameras. We talked until the bell rang and two students said we needed to finish our conversation on Monday. (I muttered to myself that this was a conversation people in other places get paid a lot of money to try to “finish” for them, with just as dismal of results.)

 

Here’s our school’s rumor control at work:

Voicemail received Thursday, January 22, 2009, 5:30 p.m.

This is a message from the principal of Manual Arts High School. This morning, a female student was walking to school shortly after the tardy bell. As she neared 40th and Vermont a male Hispanic approached and attempted to push her into his car. The girl was able to safely move away from the adult and enter school while the man took off north bound on Vermont Avenue. She did not immediately report this incident to school police, but as soon as school police were notified, they responded and began their investigation. The suspect was a male Hispanic wearing a red and blue baseball cap and glasses and was driving a khaki colored mid-nineties Honda. We are informing you of this incident so you may be aware of dangers in the community. Please remind students to come to school on time and with another student whenever possible. Thank you very much.

 

And then today, I received this voicemail.

 

Voicemail received Friday, January 23, 2009, 7:00 p.m.

This is an important message from the principal of Manual Arts High School. Based upon further investigation by the school police, we have learned that the report made by a female student yesterday, that an adult male attempted to push her into his car is not true. The student told the police that the story she told is completely false. We regret the inconvenience and assure you that your child’s safety and education remain our top priority.

As a final note, as I was wishing students a good weekend while they shuffled to homeroom, a quieter student in my class came up to where I was standing. “I get your class, Mr. Garcia.”

“What’s that, *Juan?”

“You are trying to change the world through us, aren’t you?”

“Well, I’m hoping you’ll want to change the world – believe we can change the world – and that we’ll do it together.”

*Juan smiled, nodded, and stepped out the door. Hopefully also stepping in the right direction. 

Why We Can’t Get It Right (Comics Edition)

Leave a reply

I stumbled across this interview last week and immediately groaned. Great, another non-educator (yes, this can even include former educators) showing us how to teach. That sounds pessimistic and mean spirited, but it is intended more as a commentary on how teachers are pushed into a passive role within the educational field.

As a traveling teacher, I spent two months of the year “borrowing” the classroom of a follow colleague who’s shelves positively burst with comics: a class set of the Watchmen, numerous copies of Maus, and Persepolis (since they have somehow become the only comics that teachers acknowledge as existing…), plenty of that dirty stuff we’re supposed to keep away from kids (aka Vertigo titles, Strangers in Paradise, The Walking Dead), tons of superheroes, manga, you name it. The teacher spent a fortune, I presume, on these titles. I saw him utilizing comics in his curriculum on a regular basis (I recall, for instance, a unit on autobiographical writing using some of the aforementioned texts as well as The Rabbi’s Cat and a manga title I was unfamiliar with).

I asked some of his kids about the comics and all of them – I repeat, all of them – said they were fun to read. Both male and female students read a hefty helping of comic books. Kids regularly trickled in during lunch to pick up the latest trade they were reading. This teacher successfully incorporated comics into his everyday teaching practice. Kids were engaged during silent reading, throughout the lesson, and even at home. The comics helped transition reluctant readers toward standard-fare novels.

No one paid this teacher to develop a comic book framework for his classroom. He didn’t go to buy a manual showing him how to use comics in a standards-aligned classroom. Instead, he found an instructional strategy (clearly one he was already passionate about), and figured out how to best engage and personalize the learning experiences for his students. From the overwhelming anecdotal evidence I received from his students over the two months I spent in his class, it was clearly an effective model. This is the teacher that should have penned a book about utilizing comics. He should be leading professional development sessions for our school and our district.

I single this teacher out in this instance to illustrate that there are similar skills represented by all of our teachers. Think about the sheer amount of expertise that is being disregarded within our schools. Sharing such work at annual conferences and in journals isn’t going to be enough (even though I participate in both mediums): frankly, I suspect it’s the same select cadre of teachers from schools circling within these pools. The vast majority of the teachers – at my school at least – are not going to conferences or reading journals (it’s the work for the perceived “teacher leaders”: department chairs, coaches, and ‘those loudmouths that speak up in faculty meetings’).

If we want to get things right it’s going to take a larger shift in how teachers are perceived.

It’s going to have to start with how we perceive ourselves.

I haven’t looked at – let alone read – Comics in Your Curriculum. I can’t vouch for whether it is any good. However, reading the interview, I question why this book came into existence without the consultation of (let alone being authored by)  teachers. I didn’t intend to pick on this title in particular, it acts as more of an exemplar of what I am arguing against. As a group of disenfranchised professionals, there isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t be developing these kinds of plans and manuals alongside our students. Why are we letting publishers and textbook tycoons dictate our careers for us? I’m all for having guests come in and aid and collaborate in the classroom. However, it’s time to shift how curriculum is manufactured, interpreted, and consumed. It’s time to make sure teachers are a part of this process every step of the way.