Category Archives: education

Four Emotions While Watching Pixar’s Inside Out: Body Shaming, #CharlestonShooting, and the Privileged Feels

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Building off of the four key emotions portrayed in Inside Out, a quartet of reflections on Pixar’s latest.

Joy

It’s a fun Pixar film that gives you Pixar feels. Yay.

(Also, the fleeting nod to Steve Jobs’s “reality distortion field” was a nice gesture.)

 

Anger

As much as I wanted to love this movie, I kept wondering why the characters of “Anger” and “Sadness” had to be the heavyset characters. The former resorts to violence and the latter is so lazy she is dragged on the floor throughout a third of the movie. If I think about the diverse bodies we have, I can’t help but ponder what effect seeing one’s larger body type manifested as someone that is “angry” or “sad” will have on an impressionable audience. What does this movie say about who I am and my relationship to feelings of joy if I am considered “fat” by society’s definitions?

 

Disgust

At the heart of this movie (and not really a spoiler) is a young girl struggling to adjust to life in a new city with her parents; there are delays from a moving truck, a fleeting moment of embarrassment in school, an argument at home. The entire social and emotional range that this character undergoes is rooted in the pretty comfortable life of being a white girl in an upper-middle-class family in an industrialized, wireless, and accepting society. As I watched the movie, I reflected on Jeff Duncan-Andrade’s scholarship on “critical hope,” the signs of PTSD that youth in spaces of poverty experience, and the ways youth of color’s feelings would be triggered by entirely different circumstances than those of the protagonist of the film. This is very much a film for and about white feelings. (My caveat here about reading Catcher in the Rye with my high school students applies to this concern. But. But the whiteness of the film’s emotional core is frustrating in light of where American discourse stands in 2015, which brings me to…)

 

Fear

Last night, nine people were murdered. It was fueled by hate and our country needs to do more than mourn. We need to have important discussion and action about race, our history of racism, and what “fear” means when it feels like it is open season on unarmed boys and girls of color in the U.S. I worry that the snow-globe like feelings of Inside Out and an underlying feeling of see-we’re-all-the-same does more harm than good when the very real differences in where we’re born and from whom can mean life or death.

Invite: June 13-14, 2015 – The Critical Design and Gaming School Game Jam

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HAWKINS GAME JAM

 

If you will at all be in the LA area next weekend, I highly encourage you to come to the first C:/DAGS Game Jam. Directions, team-sign ups, and other information can be found here.

Urgently educate and empower the teenagers of South Central Los Angeles to excel through college and become transformative leaders of our local and global communities.

The Game Jam is going to be an awesome step towards transformative, and humanizing game design in South Central Los Angeles. Funded by the LRNG Innovation Challenge, the two-day Game Jam is open to the public. If you find yourself looking for something to do while in town for DML 2015*, head a couple miles south to the beautiful Augustus Hawkins campus! We’ll see you there!

 

 

* Speaking of DML, I’ll be in a handful of awesome sessions there. If you’ll be at the conference and I can’t twist you’re arm to come to the Game Jam, say hello nonetheless.

Don’t Miss Elyse Eidman-Aadahl tomorrow at CSU!

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Tomorrow, April 7th will be the fourth event in the Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life series held at CSU. Joining us will be the National Writing Project Executive Director, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl. Elyse’s talk is titled “Education for Democracy in a Digital Age: A New Civic Agenda for Schools.” Elyse’s talk is from 5:30-6:30 p.m., followed by a brief reception. Like all of the series, this event is free and open to the public. And join the dialogue on Twitter at #csulit15.  All of the speakers will be presenting at the CSU campus in Clark A 205. I hope you’ll join us (if you are not nearby, you can stream the talk here).

If you missed Bud Hunt’s talk last week, you can view it below. Bud has also written about his talk and shared all of his slide on his blog here.

Two Recent Publications: ALAN Review and The Civic Media Project

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I’m sharing a quick note about two recent publications that may be of interest:

First, I have a co-authored article with the awesome Marcelle Haddix in the Winter 2015 issue of the ALAN Review. Titled “Reading YA with ‘Dark Brown Skin’: Race, Community, and Rue’s Uprising,” Marcelle and I look at online communities, representations of race (particularly in The Hunger Games franchise), and discuss implications for educators. I’ll update this post if an online copy is available.

Second, I have a co-authored case study with Ellen Middaugh for the recently launched Civic Media Project website. Our analysis of the Race to the White House project can be accessed here.

Don’t Miss Bud Hunt at CSU Tomorrow (3/31)!

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Tomorrow, March 31st will be the third event in the Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life series held at CSU. Joining us will be CSU English Education alumnus and educational technology expert Bud Hunt. Bud’s talk is titled “Let’s Hack School: Learner Agency in a Time of New Technologies” and I can assure you it’s not something you’ll want to miss. Check out the flyer:

Mr. Hunt will be presenting his work and engaging in dialogue from 5:30-6:30, followed by a brief reception. Like all of the series, this event is free and open to the public. And join the dialogue on Twitter at #csulit15.  All of the speakers will be presenting at the CSU campus in Clark A 205. I hope you’ll join us (if you are not nearby, you can stream the talk here). Just as excitingly, a week later, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, the Executive Director of the National Writing Project will be speaking as the fourth speaker in this year’s series (same time, same place).
If you missed last month’s presentation as part of the series, please watch Ben Kirshner’s engaging talk here:

Teaching Ambassador Fellowship coverage

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This article does a great job outlining the U.S. Department of Education Teaching Ambassador Fellowship. This past year, I’ve been one of the returning TAFs discussed in the article (I was first a part of the program in 2010-2011, where the emphasis was on potential ESEA reauthorization… that sounds familiar).

Ben Kirshner coming to CSU & Archived Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life

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If you are in the area, please consider coming to next week’s presentation as part of the Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life series. Joining us will be Dr. Ben Kirshner, director for CU Engage and Associate Professor at University of Colorado, Boulder (and co-editor of the recent #youthaction: Becoming Political in the Digital Age). His talk will be great! Check out the flyer below:

csuwp literacy series ben kirshner

Dr. Kirshner will be presenting his work and engaging in dialogue from 5:30-6:30, followed by a brief reception. Like all of the series, this event is free and open to the public. And join the dialogue on Twitter at #csulit15.  All of the speakers will be presenting at the CSU campus in Clark A 205. I hope you’ll join us (if you are not nearby, you can stream the talk here). In addition, here are the remaining speakers and dates for the series:

  • February 17: Dr. Ben Kirshner, Faculty Director, CU Engage: Center for Community-Based Learning and Research
  • March 31: Bud Hunt, CSU Alumnus & Instructional Technologist, St. Vrain Valley School District
  • April 7: Dr. Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Executive Director, National Writing Project
  • May 5: Civic Literacy Panel, selected Colorado teachers & students

If you missed last month’s presentation as part of the series, please watch Nicole Mirra and Danielle Filipiak’s presentation here:

(And feel free to check out my write up of the event here.)

New article in Teachers College Record and a few other updates

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I’m pleased to share that I have a new co-authored article with Robyn Seglem in Teachers College Record. Titled “‘So We Have to Teach Them or What?’: Introducing Preservice Teachers to the Figured Worlds of Urban Youth Through Digital Conversation,” you can find the article here.

I also recorded a video several months ago discussing the research in the article:

(I’ve been answering viewer’s questions in the discussion area of the video above. Feel free to chime in!)

I’m excited about how this article has turned out and continue to enjoy collaborating with Robyn on new research (more on that down the road). I’m pasting the abstract below:

Background: Extant literature contends that it can be difficult for White preservice teachers to develop culturally relevant curriculum for the diverse students whom they will encounter in classrooms. Though there is a significant body of research about culturally responsive pedagogy, teacher education programs have struggled with how to best reconcile the needs of students of color with the experiences and misconceptions of White teachers.

Purpose/Focus of Study: Using a figured world framework, we explore how social interaction made possible through digital tools shaped the actions and identities of 16 preservice teachers. Research Design: This qualitative case study focuses on 3 preservice teachers from Illinois to illustrate the cumulative and different process of change that each went through during his or her interactions with 10th-grade students from Los Angeles. Beginning with a holistic coding of the corpus of data, we looked at chat room transcripts, preservice teacher reflections, and writing samples from approximately 3 months of interaction between the two groups for this study. Coding the data in multiple cycles, we explored how preservice teachers’ digital interactions with urban high school students contributed to preservice teachers’ figured worlds.

Findings: Providing preservice teachers with virtual access to urban youth’s figured worlds allowed these future teachers to better understand the cultural artifacts of these students’ worlds. In doing so, they were forced to acknowledge the importance of maintaining the belief that all students, including those from urban backgrounds, can and want to engage in rigorous learning. The project also provided the preservice teachers with an opportunity to learn more about the discourse of these students, giving preservice teachers insights about how to navigate the language of their students’ cultures, to evaluate their students’ academic language needs, and to instruct their students about shifting their language use to communicate across settings and purposes. Finally, opportunities to interact with urban youth allow preservice teachers to begin to develop identities that are more culturally responsive in nature.

Conclusions: The results we explore in this article highlight the potential that virtual spaces offer for developing constructive dialogue between urban youth and preservice teachers, which can lead to reflective, culturally relevant teachers.

Two other unrelated publication items to share:

1. I am featured in the most recent issue of The Deloitte Review titled “Digital education 2.0: From content to connections.” Take a look here.

2. I recently found out that my introduction to Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom is available for annotation on Genius (you remember Genius, right?). If you’re looking to do some annotatin’ have at it.

New article on the Council of Youth Research in Reading & Writing Quarterly

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I have a new co-authored article detailing the Council of Youth Research in the current issue of Reading & Writing Quarterly. Titled “The Council of Youth Research: Critical Literacy and Civic Agency in the Digital Age,” you can access the article here.

I’m excited about extending and sharing further work around the Council of Youth Research in a future publication as well (stay tuned!). As always, I am indebted to my amazing co-authors: Nicole Mirra, Ernest Morrell, Antonio Martinez, and D’Artagnan Scorza. Thank you. I am sharing the abstract to the article below.

This article explores the relationship between critical literacy practice, digital media production, and civic agency in the Council of Youth Research, a youth participatory action research program in which Los Angeles high school students conduct research and create dynamic, multimedia presentations as leaders of a growing youth movement for educational justice. We examine theories of critical literacy to articulate a vision of literacy that is tied to societal power structures for the purpose of personal and social transformation. In order to bring critical literacy theory into practice, we explore the ways in which critical pedagogy and participatory digital literacies structure the work of the Council. We use ethnography of communication and visual sociology to analyze literacy events from 1 year of the Council’s work to highlight ways in which student digital literacy production manifested powerful civic agency. We conclude by discussing the implications of this work for classrooms and further grounded research in pedagogies of participatory media.

Announcing the return of the speaker series: Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life, 2015

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I’m pleased to announce that the Colorado State University Writing Project is sponsoring the return of last year’s speaker series: “The Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life.” Throughout the spring semester we’ll be hosting nationally recognized literacies-based researchers and educators to discuss how literacy and youth civic participation intersect from varying, interdisciplinary perspectives. This is going to be an amazing series, once again, and I hope you’ll join us.

The speakers will be presenting their work and engaging in dialogue from 5:30-6:30, followed by a brief reception. These events are free and open to the public. All of the speakers will be presenting at the CSU campus in Clark A 205.
The speakers and dates for this series are as follows:

  • January 27: Danielle Filipiak, Doctoral Fellow, Teachers College and Nicole Mirra, Post-Doctoral Scholar, UCLA
  • February 17: Dr. Ben Kirshner, Faculty Director, CU Engage: Center for Community-Based Learning and Research
  • March 31: Bud Hunt, CSU Alumnus & Instructional Technologist, St. Vrain Valley School District
  • April 7: Dr. Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Executive Director, National Writing Project
  • May 5: Civic Literacy Panel, selected Colorado teachers & students

Danielle and Nicole’s talk next Tuesday is titled “Creating Spaces where Choices Can be Made: Critical Literacy in 21st Century Classrooms” (see the flyer below). It’s going to be awesome!

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