Reflect-->reEnVision

Time for some reEnvisioning of my teaching

Having navigated the #clmooc, it's time to reflect on what I accomplished. Here are 5 key things I experienced.  

          

                                                                                                                                                                                                           Now it's on to the classroom in the fall. How much can I provide a physical and digital space that allows my students to have the same experiences? Not sure. However, this is more than just an "in addition to."  If my goal for everything we do in the classroom is to "make it matter," then these 5 experiences are imperative.  Not only will they help to foster an academic digital routine, which they desperately need, but it will also bring a healthy dose of Terry Elliot's "messification" to the classroom.  Not to mention positioning students and me on the edge of the "emergent possible."

The Credo-Flection

I finally had some time to think about my credo.  I decided to try organizing it using Blogger's mosaic view.  If read in the correct order, each post adds to the overall belief.  The problem is that the correct order could prove a bit challenging.

Flip the pictures over from left to right.  Depending on how Blogger feels at the particular moment you check it out, there should be three rows. The clearer picture of me should be the last one.  Here's the link: Credo-Flection.  Thanks for checking it out.

American Lit or American Ideas?

I woke up this morning wondering, "how important is it that students have a course called 'American Literature'?"  Ok, so I didn't wake up thinking that, but actually arrived at the question after reading a piece discussing the skills students will need to be successful in the 21st Century. The list was predictable: collaboration, creativity, adaptability, curiosity, communication. Predictable is not meant as an insult.  It doesn't mean this list is incorrect; if anything, predictable denotes how critical these skills are. Predictable signifies that there is a consensus surrounding the importance of these skills. I've read  blog posts, reports, articles, interviews with education leaders, books, and tweets that equate one or more of these skills to becoming productive and successful 21st Century existence.

So back to my original question.  Is "American Literature" necessary?

Of course, as an English teacher, and literature fan in general, I am not asking if literature is important or necessary.  Reading fiction, and simply being a reader, is also a critical activity.  But is there a compelling argument for insuring that students have read canonical American Literature?  If students do not experience Fitzgerald, Twain, Melville, or other classic American authors, will they be deficient citizens, unable to fully grasp the American Experiment?

America is a place founded on ideas about equality, opportunity, and freedom.  Undoubtedly, it is crucial for young people to struggle with these ideas, especially as the ideas move from the plastic-wrapped sanctity of our founding documents to the messy, conflict-laden reality of day-to-day life. Naturally, one way to get young people to do this is by having them read and consider Huck's dilemma as he navigates the Mississippi or Tom Joad's relentless stand against a venal, inequitable system.  

But is it necessary that students know these names to understand what democratic citizenship requires?  If young people have less familiarity with these names, does it jeopardize our cultural heritage and generational cohesion, making it less possible for the American Experiment to flourish?

While colleagues will disagree with me, as an American Lit teacher, my answer to these last two questions is 'no.'  

While I grant that cultural literacy has been and will continue to erode, I am not particularly upset about it.  Sure, I'm surprised, even saddened sometimes, by the growing list of dead references I encounter in the classroom.  However, this seems inevitable as our access to information grows and our media experiences become more diffuse.  All the same, this does not mean that we lose sight of our deeply held principles.  It is imperative that students confront the tensions inherent in the American Experiment, even if these confrontations do not grow out of reading The Scarlet Letter. 

As I said earlier, I will continue to stress how important it is for them to be readers.  I will continue to make a case for how fiction works as a testing ground where we encounter great minds asking difficult questions.  I will continue to help them become confident, thoughtful, tolerant thinkers and communicators.  And I will continue to look for ways to help them ignite their curiosity and find the questions and ideas that make them passionate.  I will continue to do these things because I believe this is how the American Experiment remains vibrant.  

My point is not to forgo all classic works simply because they are classics.  Instead, what I am trying to figure out is if a regimen of canonical American works somehow creates a more motivated, conversant American citizen.  This seems unlikely.  Instead, more and more, I'm confident that it's important to teach "American Principles" or "American Ideas", where the curriculum is flexible enough to include any media texts that are compelling and can enrich my students as human beings and as participants in all that America has to offer.

What I am less sure about is how critical it is for students to know that James Gatsby was born Jay Gatz.  If not, they can still understand what it means to be an American.  

More Than a Map, It's Polychrome Fingers

During the latest make cycle for #clmooc, I found

myself thinking less about the general theme,

maps, and more about the bits of paper stuck to

my fingers and the relationship between the brain,

eyes, and hands.

As I worked, I was reminded of the great origami documentary, Between the Folds.

My favorite scene is when artisan/craftsman Paul Jackson is working with his colored paper.  As he busily roughs up and colors the parchment, what always grabs my attention are his hands. Covered in greens, yellows, reds, and blacks, they're the hands of a maker.  They're a badge announcing his membership in a group to which I want to belong.  They're the embodiment of a thought process and signifiers of a passion to make tangible one's idiosyncratic vision.

Those rough, thick, polychrome fingers always stir within me a determination to make.

So now, as I tore pieces of New York state and swaths of New Mexico geography into strips and shreds and re-imagined borders, rivers, and landscapes, I paid attention to my fingertips. They were blackened and covered with worn, cottony pulp.  I paid attention to the way my eyes narrowed and I naturally held my breath as I slowly ripped the paper along some imagined, but no less important, line.

As Jackson says during his own moment of deep crafting, "The process of making is the point of it."

I wasn't lost in the activity, even though that would be a great metaphor for a project about maps.  Instead, I was subsumed by the activity. The materials, the journal page: I was creating a landscape, and I had the fingers of a maker to show for it.

The Bottom of the Bag

I had not poked around in this particular bag for quite some time: the white mesh one we used to take to the beach when we lived in Chicago.  Having pretty young kids, it is easy to guess the objects within: small shovels, various sand castle molds, an assortment of dinosaurs and action figures. While we now live on a smaller lake with a little beach about 300 yards from our house, this particular bag has not seen much action. The kids are older, and this collection of toys no longer garners much attention.

Therefore, it was the perfect bag to dig through for the toyhack.

So what did I find?  A little dumptruck.  A rubber shark.  A small Cro-magnon-looking action figure. I can't even imagine how this last one found its way into the bunch.

But the bigger thing I found was a sense of challenge and purpose.  Add to this the fact that it was an engaging way to spend a couple of hours, and I had the three necessary ingredients for a creative endeavor.    As I worked with the toys and shopped through our tools and art supplies for needle nose pliers, Gorilla Glue, Sharpies, pipe cleaners, and more, I focused on the evolving vision and on my hands, breaking apart the objects and putting them back together.  Of course I wanted to make something in order to share it with the #clmooc.  But this became secondary to crafting something with which I would be satisfied.

And I was ultimately satisfied.  The end result was a bit goofy, but it made sense in some '70's cartoon universe way.

Thinking more about the white mesh bag, I have to admit that the first time I looked through it I felt unimpressed with the materials. Nothing grabbed me. I actually put the bag down and started to pick around  in the garage. Before long, however, I decided to challenge myself with an obstruction: I had to use this rejected material.

So, here comes the educational payoff.

Digging to the bottom of the bag and using the less obvious materials:  How many times have I implored my students to do exactly this?  To move past initial ideas?  To resist their first thoughts, which are usually obvious and reactionary?  To embrace ideas that are only partially formed, a bit jumbled, possibly confusing?  So often it is in the murkier recesses that we find the makings for more compelling creations.  The toyhack proved to be an excellent reminder of what it is like to practice these directions instead of just saying them.  And how much easier it is to do so when interested in the task.