When Everybody is a Public School Expert is it a Null Set? Take the Test.

The list of experts about public education seems to include almost everyone.   How about you?
See if you can pass this easy test that measures if you are an Educational Expert. You only need to get one right.

1. Are you a national or state level politician hoping to get re-elected or elected in November? You're an expert.
2. Have you ever visited a school to pose for a photo op? You're an expert (and perhaps you got # 1 right too). 
3. Did you make your first million (legally or not) by the age of 30? You're an expert (and perhaps you got numbers 1 and 2 correct).
4. Do you or have you ever hosted a TV show (any will really do)? You're an expert.
5. Are you a mayor or perhaps want to be a major of a town, hamlet, village, or city and think you'd like a crack at running the public schools? You're an expert.
6. Are you a news, TV, or Hollywood celebrity? You're an expert.
7. Are you or have you ever been a CEO of anything or perhaps married to one? You're an expert.
8. Do you have $100,000,000 to give away to a school district or perhaps your favorite charter school? You're an expert.
9. Do you have a degree in education that is honorary only? You're an expert.
10. Have you been teaching for under a year in a charter school somewhere in USA? You're an expert.
11. Did you play school when you were a child and then resist actually teaching as an adult? You're an expert.
12. Have you read a newspaper article about "the crisis in public schooling" in the last month? You're an expert.
13. Do you watch NBC? You're an expert.
14. Do you like to drink tea? You're an expert and could perhaps make a break into politics (see Tea Party. Remember, the education crisis could be your platform).
15. Are you a parent and not an actual public school educator? You're an expert.
16. Are you an educational consultant or technology whiz kid who has never actually taught or did so long ago for a brief amount of time? You're an expert.
17. Have you taken a quick route to the classroom via a summer teaching immersion course and have landed your first teaching job only to find yourself being interviewed about education? You're an expert.
18. Are you a commissioner of education who is formally a lawyer, a politician, and/or a CEO of something? You're an expert.
19. Do you offer commentary on crisis situations on TV (any crisis will do) or in a newspaper column? You're an expert.
20. Are you a columnist, TV Pundit, comic, or super hero? You're an expert.
21. Do you like to use words or phrases like pedagogy, standards-based, or 21st century skills or acronyms like NAEP, RTI, or NCLB, but can't really say what each means in practice? You're an expert.
22. Do you spend a lot of time talking to anyone about the crisis in "public" education, bad teachers &  administrators, and everything going to hell at dinner parties, your corner bar, soccer practice, or at the school bus stop? You're an expert.
23. Is your opinion about public education based on TV shows? You're an expert.
24. Have you never read or participated in any actual educational research? You're an expert.
25. Are you making or hoping to make your first (or second...) million selling your scientifically based research program to a school in need of improvement? You're an expert. 

Bonus Question: Even if you got none of the above correct, you can become an instant expert if you answer yes to the following:

Do you sometimes dream that a superhero (of your choice) is coming to rescue you and your community, and perhaps your country from the evil clutches of public school educators in order for all of you to race, race, race to some elusive top that only the superhero knows? 

Wow, move over Arne Duncan. You could be the next Secretary of Education.

No Lemming Left Behind. Image by Mary Ann Reilly (2009).

Mary Ann - One Life Photos

Mary Ann - One Life Photos

Removing Boots, Peering into Hats: Waiting for Superman, I Mean Godot, All Over Again

I expect that I, like many other public school educators, will make my way to a theater sometime soon to view Waiting for Superman.  I have only viewed the trailers and found Geoffrey Canada's story about learning there was no Superman to be most revealing. The story suggest much about the power of myth and its limitations, especially myths we use in order to distance ourselves from our actual civic and moral responsibilities in lieu of waiting for some "other" to save us. Canada says he lamented after his mother told him there was no Superman. He explained the source of his tears was, "There was no one coming with enough power to save us."  Cue the melancholy piano music and the images of burned-out projects.  It's clever. Perhaps even artful to a degree.  But we would be foolish to think it offers anything beyond a melancholy echo of a Reagan-like message from the 80s. Remember it was Ronald Reagan who said:

"You can't help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice." (1.31.84, Good Morning America)

No sacrifice is needed to equalize health, education, and quality of life for the poor. To make a difference we only need to"take the pledge" to see the film.  Once again market values will save us.

Really?

In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the play follows two days in the live of Vladimir and Estragon, who remove boots, peer into hats all the time waiting for someone, they admit they cannot recognize,  to arrive. As Canada posits the idea of waiting for a power greater than oneself to save you, so too do Vladimir and Gogo endlessly wait for Godot.  The trailers and the hype I have read suggests that the film sets up public education in the role of  Lex Luthor, the "obvious" supervillian. Once again, I am reminded of Godot when early in the play, Vladimir remarks to Estragon: "There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet."  

The root challenges of public education in a capitalist society, driven by "market" values, is that the  inequity of the system must be maintained in its public schools in order for society's privileged to maintain their status. The gross characterization that public education is failing all of its students is hyperbolic for sure, but more importantly, it redirects our gaze from the stinky feet to the boots.  How much easier to blame public school teachers (not to be confused with charter school teachers) than address the societal and economic inequities that underlie learning.  Redistributing wealth and power is not offered as a solution, perhaps since 'wealth and power' are financing the charter school "movement" and not so surprisingly, the film. 

Waiting for Superman posits that the choice for salvation will be found in charter schools. This is a promise that is every bit as empty as the lives of Vladimir and Estragon who can't even summon the courage to put an end to their suffering.  We simply cannot afford to be fooled by this empty promise. Unfortunately, this "solution" is no better than Vladimir offering Estragon the choice between the turnip and the radish. Estragon selects the radish only to have to return it having found it to be blackened. 

As in the case of charter schools and radishes: Both deals are rotten.

Hoboken: Venture into a Landscape without Expectations

On Wednesday (9.15.10) I wrote: My exercise for myself this week is to find some darkness--an absence and reclaim my voice; to be truthful, and to stand against the certainty that is likely to doom us.  

Although I was writing both about education and art, I found myself waking early on Saturday morning and venturing out without a destination in mind.  I ended up in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Crossing over the bridge, I immediately felt that connection that Minor White proposed in his Zen exercise:

Venture into a landscape without expectations. Let your subject find you. When you approach it, you will feel resonance, a sense of recognition. If, when you move away, the resonance fades, or it gets stronger as you approach, you'll know you have found your subject. Sit with your subject and wait for your presence to be acknowledged. Don't try to make a photograph, but let your intuition indicate the right moment to release the shutter. If, after you've made an exposure, you feel a sense of completion, bow and let go of the subject and your connection to it. Otherwise, continue photographing until you feel the process is complete.

4 images from Hoboken.

I Will Walk and I Will Pray. Image by M.A. Reilly (9.18.10)

Hoboken I. Image by M.A. Reilly (9.18.10)

Waiting Room. Image by M.A. Reilly (9.18.10)

 

Hoboken II. Image by M.A. Reilly (9.18.10)

Guest Blog: John Linton - Confessions of a Failed Boy Scout: Or Wedding Photo Faux Pas, Partie Deux (I think that’s “Party Dudes!” in French)

Self-portrait. Image by John Linton

People come into our lives through all sorts of means.  I've lost track of how long ago I first started to see John's images and comment or when it was I first started to look forward to reading John's comments about images I had posted to jpgmag or RedBubble, but know this: John's comments are legendary, nearly as much as his images.  Anyone who has had a "prop" or "comment" made by John remembers them for two reasons: his wit and his insight. It is with much pleasure then that this week's guest blog post should be authored by John. The story, self portrait, and collages just knocked me out.

Bio: John Linton spent his childhood developing his skills as a military brat while the family moved from one place to another. He attended Gorham State College to avoid the draft and somehow graduated with a teaching degree. He was hired by the Westerly School Department in 1970 and has lived in Westerly, RI ever since. He retired in 2002, much to the relief of the administration. When people ask him what he does he loves to tell them “Nothing.” He does dabble in photography every now and then.

Contact Information: John's sites on JPGMAG,
RedBubble 

Confessions of a Failed Boy Scout: Or Wedding Photo Faux Pas, Partie Deux (I think that’s “Party Dudes!” in French)

Once upon a time I had a brief stint as a Boy Scout, just long enough to learn that I was always supposed to be prepared, but apparently not long enough to actually have that idea sink in. So, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that I showed up to the wedding with my Canon DSLR in such sad shape that the flash refused to work. Nor should it surprise anyone that the Sony point and click that I brought along just in case my Canon might be having “issues” didn’t work either. It’s kind of hard to get a camera to work when you leave the battery still in the charger back at the hotel. It looked like I was going to once again have a love affair with blur and grain.

I was just taking photos for fun so it wasn’t like I was actually worried about any of this. You see, I took up photography because: a) I finally figured out that if I carried the camera I wouldn’t have to worry about having my picture taken, b) when I went to weddings and such I wouldn’t have to actually sit through services and receptions because having a DSLR with a larger than normal lens gave people the idea that it was OK for me to circulate around clicking left and right, and c) when I was traveling it gave me something to do besides listen to tour guides.

This particular occasion was a Full Mass wedding. I’m not Catholic, but Full Mass sounded far longer than my normal two-minute attention span usually permits me to stay seated. Imagine the smile I had on my face when someone at the church said there would be no problem taking a few photos during the service. I wandered all over the place as the wedding morphed into communion, spending just enough time in the balcony to miss out on all the standing, sitting, and the whole body of Christ thing.

I was still having my problems with blur and grain at the reception and they became more pronounced with every beer I consumed. I’m not sure it’s a good thing to try and take photographs at a function that has an open bar.

Anyway, I’ve put together two four-photo collages of my latest Wedding Photo Faux Pas for your perusal. I hope you enjoy them.

The Wedding. Image Collage by John Linton.

The Reception. Image Collage by John Linton.

The Shallow Breath of Standards: Seeing Beyond Things

My friend, Ethel's husband, Mark, loaned me a book today: The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life (John Daido Loori).  I started reading it and could not put it down. Early in the text, Loori describes an exercise he did that legendary photographer and teacher Minor White  provided.

Venture into a landscape without expectations. Let your subject find you. When you approach it, you will feel resonance, a sense of recognition. If, when you move away, the resonance fades, or it gets stronger as you approach, you'll know you have found your subject. Sit with your subject and wait for your presence to be acknowledged. Don't try to make a photograph, but let your intuition indicate the right moment to release the shutter. If, after you've made an exposure, you feel a sense of completion, bow and let go of the subject and your connection to it. Otherwise, continue photographing until you feel the process is complete.

Well, now that exercise is pretty clear to me as a photographer and one I anticipate trying this weekend.  I have experienced that odd exchange of energy between myself and my subject when I am in such a zone. It's as if my finger on the shutter and my eye in the viewfinder are no longer limited to my body, but somehow are deeply connected to the subject, located, if you will, outside of time and space.  What is central to these moments out of time, is the state of not knowing that defines how I see.  Certainty has no voice in these dramas. It is pure spirit.

This zen reading and thinking about art, reminds me a lot of what it means to be a teacher and how critical it is to not know, perhaps more so in this time of false certainty. Like my finger on the shutter and eye in the view finder, the space that is made in a classroom with students is not defined by the physical realities of walls, floor, or ceiling.  Something far grander is composed in these learning landscapes--something akin to what Maxine Greene labels as wide-awakeness.

Greene (2008) writes:

To open spaces for learning is to give learners a sense of absence, of open questions lacking answers, of darkness unexplained. If people respond to all of this with a blank disinterest, they are, often without realizing it, acquiescing in the “given,” the fixed, the unchangeable. (LEARNing Landscapes, 1, 3, p. 18).

Formal educational standards are the "given, the fixed, the unchangeable."   I have always been graced with students willing to wander into that unexplained darkness and a deep desire to venture along.  Perhaps that is why I find the standards movement to be at best a shallow breath, and at worse an impediment to all breath.  The use of educational standards assumes a decontextualized world where there is something called "the student" and a separate something called "the teacher".  The sad truth though is that this student can never be your subject, nor one whose presence resonates. Likewise,  "the teacher" can never venture into a landscape without expectations.  Such exercises are folly or in these days, perhaps even seen as sinister.

The given. The fixed. The unchangeable.

My exercise for myself this week is to find some darkness--an absence and reclaim my voice; to be truthful, and to stand against the certainty that is likely to doom us.  

What is Written. Image by M.A. Reilly. Tuscany, 2009.

I wish you, dear reader, an educational landscape sans expectations.

Upcoming Art Show: Personal Projects @ Paper Mill Playhouse

Three works of mine are part of photography show at the Paper Mill Playhouse (Upper Gallery) in Millburn, NJ. The show opened with a reception on September 21, 2010 (5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.) and will run through November 1, 2010. 

I caught the show on Sunday night and WOW it is impressive. 
This show features works by photographers who have had the pleasure to learn with and from Don Polzo, a photographer who teaches at Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit. I am honored to have work included in the show.



Paper Mill Playhouse
22 Brookside Drive
Millburn, NJ 07041
info@papermill.org
973-376-4343


The works of mine included in the show are:

Dreaming of David Hockney (Mountainville, NY, 2009)

Be for Me, Like Rain. (Wall Street, NYC, 2009).

Bridge in Fog (George Washington Bridge, NYC, 2009)