Trust and Assignment Making

Jesse did a demo today getting us to explore the idea of assignment making and how our students see our assignments.  When she was telling me about it, I thought it was such a powerful inquiry for thinking about "why" sometimes students don't seem to follow directions, but the way she went about the demo opened the inquiry up for me in an even deeper way.  Because one person had to be blindfolded and then guided (kept safe) by the assignment maker while trying to fulfill the assignment, we really got into an amazing discussion about the trust that we are asking students to have in us when we make assignments and take them up. Christin was my partner.  You see her consternation at being blindfolded.


So, now, I'm seriously thinking about anxiety and trust issues when I struggle with my students trying to get them to risk and explore, when they get so aggravated with me when I won't give them an example or describe exactly "what I want."    I do that because I know that when I leave some space for interpretation, they come up with ideas I could never dream of, but, that is a HUGE HUGE risk.  I think I need to do more to earn their trust, to really help them feel that I have them, that I won't let them trip, or fall off the top of a building or get smooshed by a car.


And I think this all comes back to "help."  Is "help" telling someone exactly what to do, or is it giving the support to explore and amaze.  How do "helpers" in schools, groups who come to "help" the "underprivileged children" define "help."  Heck, how do I define it when I'm asked to "help" with a school's writing program?

Thinking Digitally

Though I've always loved seeing what other people can do with digital tools like Prezi and Jing, Animoto and Devolvr, I tend to shy away from actually creating those things myself.  I get intimidated by the open-ness of the spaces and worry that what I have isn't worthy.

Last February when it was time to defend my dissertation though, I kept seeing my research as shifting, moving and flipping and Prezi seemed like the only way to show that without waving my hands in oddly distracting ways.  The time I took creating the prezi though, really helped my get my research off of the pages and talk about, represent, what I was trying to do and the way all of the methodologies worked together.  Making that Prezi made it possible for me to boil my 200 page project down to a 30 minute defense.

Now with that little hoop behind me, I've been thinking towards making the diss a book.  Last week I had and incredible conversation with a NWP representative who helped me see that I needed to tell the story of my research.  Yesterday, I woke up thinking about the gallery crawl we were having today and the i-movie I was working on.  I just wasn't feeling it.  I kept thinking, 'that Prezi is the best digital thinking I've ever done, I wish I could make it stand alone.'  That thought bumped up against the notion that I needed to tell my story and wallah, I was playing with Jing to do a screen cast.  The project forced me - again - back into all of those pages, all of that thinking, to re-vision it for another context - a sort of elevator speech about the story of my research.  The product is far from what I'd call finished, but the thinking involved in putting this together has me feeling like I'm well on my way to the next draft of my book proposal.

 I am reminded of the great worth of thinking with digital space, of moving any composing into another mode, or medium, or genre, or lens, or form, or space - to see it from a different angle, for a different audience, thinking about entering a different conversation.    For me, it busts my thinking out of whatever box it was stuck in before.  Magical!

Complex Texts and Critical Literacy and Help

Beginning with our reading of Foucault with Pencil in hand all the way through Rashid's rockin' demo that has us pondering the reality of the American Dream and debating Obama Care, I've been thinking about the idea of Complex Text, what makes a text "complex,"  critical literacy and my help inquiry.

I found myself scribbling again in my daybook about Pickles the cat.  And I'm thinking too that this "early readers" children's book is really, REALLY a complex text.  I haven't gotten past the first section yet in my thinking and I've read this book thousands of times.  It was a favorite of mine as a child and I've read it to my children thousands of time.  And this read, this time on that day, hit me in a totally different way.  Complex, complex text.  Going to be spending a lot more time with my pal Pickles.

SI July 9

The discussion that came out of Steve and I's Peer Writing Group Demo really has me thinking hard about what Demos do. On one hand, both Steve and I were showing some "stuff" from our classrooms that "work" for us in terms of Peer Writing Groups. On the other hand, we were working to think with the group about on-line and face to face groups- and how all that might work. It's a strange sort if balance. So often as teachers when we are in "presentation" mode, we feel like we are performing and need to have all of the answers. Having inquiry as a part of this, where we were genuinely asking the group to think with us felt a little bit disconcerting at first - even though I've done it many times before. However, I am walking away from the demo with some real important thinking about things like access and the need for some face to face time as well as screen time. To me, that's the beauty of Demos. Not only do we get tons of cool ideas, but we get extensions on those ideas. So I'm ending the day in the same place I began it, thinking about Steve's Where Ideas Come From video and the importance of "creating a space where ideas can mingle."

Playing With Lines

Lacy's demo had us thinking about placement of words on the page in order to get the message across.

I surprised myself here with what happened on the page with these three words. It's got me thinking about how placement on the page is actually a craft point. Wondering now how much of this craft point gets lost in lined paper and even in word processing and our concepts of what a "paper" looks like.

In Need of Help? Says Who?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of the rhetoric of help and an inquiry project based on that.  I’ve been working to get a summer reading program I was asked start in my children’s school into a community center that serves the majority of our school’s 48% free and reduced lunch population.  If I'm honest with myself, I assumed that the center needed my white, middle class, Phd holding “help” to make sure the children had access to the reading program.

I’ve exchanged e-mails and even met with the two folks who run it face to face.  In all of these communications, both have seemed really excited about the idea.  And yet, they have yet to respond to my offers to come to the center and run regularly scheduled “read-ins” over the summer. 

Today, I was running a poorly attended read-in at a local business (also interested in “helping.”)  I chose, The Fire Cat to read when kids got tired of reading on their own and as a book for critical discussion.  I was struck by the way Pickles the cat didn’t WANT to live in Ms. GoodKind’s house.  He liked his barrel.  Her house was too small.  He had big paws and wanted to do BIG things. 

Ms. GoodKind meant well.  She really wanted to “help.”  But she underestimated Pickles.  She slotted him into the “bless your heart, let me give you a better bed and better food” column instead of the “this soul will do great things” column at first. 

So this has me pondering . . .  how am I coming at this reading program thing as Ms. GoodKind?

Scribbling on the Blog

As a dyed in the wool teacher of adolescent people, it has been a rare treat this week to hang out at a writing and technology camp with 6 and 7 year-olds.  Their teacher had introduced them to kidblog and that's when the magic began.

Within 10 minutes, they had figured out how to navigate the program.  They were posting and commenting to each other like crazy.  They were also running across the room to tell the person they had just written to that this had been done.  Then one kid figured out how to change the font and color of the text, shrieked it out to the class, and then immediately posts began to appear in techno color.  

The teacher and I stood watching, and looking at each other, confirming that this was all okay, and even what we wanted them to do, right?

Most of the post looked something like this.

"KK&*()(*&*(&**(  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????????????????????askjdhfvnienmcllein enckdie"

And

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Two or three used words, like:
 

"Mason!  WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU"

And

Dr. U.  I LUV ICe creem.  Do you ?????????????


We started to wonder about what outsiders reading these blogs might think these kids were accomplishing in their blogging. If the parents of these children saw this moment, would they think they were getting their money's worth out of this camp?

But then, Lacy's voice popped into my head.  What these kids were doing was "play" for sure, but important play.  The kind of play that people do when learning something new.  All the crazy letters that seem to make no sense could be seen as "scribbling" on the key board.  "Scribbling"  - that thing young kids do as they are learning to write.  Vygotsky says something about how children are mimicking what they see in the adult world in their play.  Adults type FAST and furious.

So, here's what I want to think about . . .
1)  What are the dominant narratives that are informing our ideas of "play" and what's "okay" in this camp environment?

2) Are the children's actions offering a counter-narrative to that - a critique even? 

3) What's being resisted here?

I'm also going to go back into my Vygotsoy and that cool book on "play" by Vivan Paley's book on play.