Local Learning: Talking Back to Seth Godin

I was reading Seth Godin's Blog post, Getting serious about your org chart and stopped when I read: "... when geography mattered more than it does now." Godin was asking readers to question their organization charts in order to determine whether the organization leverages the best people to get the job done. He makes the rather broad statement that geography mattered more in the past than it does now.

"Ordinary Angels."  Dun Laoghaire, Ireland. A bit south of where I was born. (Reilly, 2008)

Hmm.

I understand what he is pointing at given the ease of connectivity via the Internet. But I think that is a partial view of something far more complex. I am confident the issue of the local as situated in physical geography ought not to be confused with what technology allows us to do.  The former is about living deeply, deliberately. The latter is not.

The local is about memory and community and land.  Failure to recognize the complexity of local geographies will undoubtedly result in losses we simply may not be able to calculate especially at a time when we are still so dazzled by the novelty of global connections.

Does geography matter less, or perhaps more given the ease with which we may separate ourselves intellectually from the parcel of earth we live on? What happens to the local culture--the preservation of memory of place that is deeply (in)formed by earth or as Wendell Berry (1990) situates it: "the knowledge of how the place may be well and lovingly used" (p.166)?

In an interview with Jordan Fisher-Smith about the dead, Wendell Berry said:

Well, if you didn't know any of the past, you literally wouldn't know anything. You'd have no language, no history, and so the first result would be a kind of personal incompleteness.

But practicalities are involved also. If you had a settled, a really settled, thriving, locally adapted community, which we don't have anywhere, you wouldn't just be remembering the dead. You'd remember what they did and whether it worked or not. And so you'd have a kind of lexicon of possibilities that would tell you what you could do, what you could get away with, and what penalty to expect from what you couldn't get away with.

So the memory that a community has of its dead, and of the pasts of the living would be a precious sort of manual--a kind of handbook, a kind of operator's manual for the use of the immediate place. That's the only kind of operator's manual for the world that we're going to have.

As an educator, I try to relate what I read to what I know about learning and teaching and organizing occasions where one might do both.  I have borrowed Berry's idea of settled households as a metaphor for a place called school and coupled this with the idea of the rhizome-- a horizontal rendering of  communities of settled households.  The languaging that happens in households among seasoned educators, novices, and learners is a "kind of lexicon of possibilities."  It is not that these individuals are the "best at what they do".  Rather, and I want to stress more important, is that they are a collective force who shares and makes local history.  The lexicon is not born simply from "good" ideas, but is made in the physicality of living and remembering.
 
No ideas, but in things wrote William Carlos Williams and I think he might be right.

Whenever I travel to some place new, especially places where the landscape is shaped differently than what I normally experience, I am able when I return home to re-see my own small parcel of earth. This unsettling and resettling is not at first a thinking exercise,  but a "get out and walk about" exercise that reminds me we are of this earth. We are of place. Our self importance is manufactured and at best a distraction.

I want to suggest that given the ease of connecting with others who reside elsewhere, knowing our local geographies may be even more important than in previous times.



Works Cited
Berry, Wendell. 1990. What are people for?  San Francisco: North Point Press.

Answering Back: Listening to Poets Talk

In Carol Ann Duffy's (2009) recent work Answering Back, she invited contemporary poets to select a poem by a past poet and to respond to the poem via an original poem. Below, find "One Art", a villanelle* written by Elizabeth Bishop that Paula Meehan selected and then responded to writing in the form of a villanelle, too.  I love the idea of answering back and wonder if this type of thing isn't done in classes. I would love to showcase examples of this.

Instead of responding with words, I decided to post an image that answers back to Bishop and Meehan, trading on the idea of loss that each poem evokes in me.  Answering back continues the 'conversation'. 

Dear reader, feel comfortable, invited to answer back as well:)

 One Art
     - Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
 so many things seem filled with the intent
 to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

 Lose something every day.  Accept the fluster
 of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
 The art of losing isn't hard to master.

 Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
 places, and names, and where it was you meant
 to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

 I lost my mother's watch.  And look! my last, or
 next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
 The art of losing isn't hard to master.

 I lost two cities, lovely ones.  And, vaster,
 some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
 I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

 ---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
 I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
 the art of losing's not too hard to master
 though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Quitting the Bars

 - Paula Meehan

Quitting's hard but staying sober's harder.
The day by day; the drudge and boredom bit;
not sure if the self is cell or warder.

You quit the bars; you quit the sordid ardour;
you quit the tulpas sucking on your tit.
Quitting's hard but staying sober's harder.

You sometimes think you got away with murder.
The shady souls regard you as you sit -
you wonder if they are wards or warders

in this sad cafe. The mind's last border
dissolves. Guilt has done a midnight flit.
Quitting's hard but staying sober's harder.

So sip cool water; the light's a wonder
streaming out in wave-particles. You've lit
up bright your prison cell. Body - warder

of your dreams - will be the dream's recorder,
though wrapped now in a skin that doesn't fit.
Quitting's hard but staying sober's harder;
stranger for you being both ward and warder.


*The form of a villanelle requires that the first and third lines of the first stanza be used alternately as third-line refrains for the succeeding stanzas until the last stanza, which contains four lines, the last two of which repeat the refrain lines.

Aftermath (Image by Mary Ann Reilly, 9.2011)

Looking Past the Flood Waters: Seeing Paterson

Dear President Obama and Governor Christie,

I was pleased to know that yesterday you each made your way to Paterson, NJ to visit there a bit and have a look around at the destruction of property brought via Hurricane Irene. For the last 12 months, I have been shooting images in Paterson on a fairly regular basis. I am hoping that when you find a quiet place you will be able to look beyond the flood damage and see the human damage that is happening to the good people of Paterson. The damage is not simply because of a hurricane--however bad that damage has been--but more so as a result of the economic policies each of you endorses.

Settling America's debt on the shoulders of the poor has always been wrong. 

Here a few images I've made in Paterson, NJ during the last few months.

Mary Ann Reilly

Not Getting By

Waiting for Godot

Condemned

Chair

Trickle Down Economy

Brick City

Aftermath

At the Station, Again

Voyeur (Detail)

Down by the River

Something Like Wishing

Out Walking

Grace

Waiting

Pretty in Pink

Rainbow

Silk City

Sketching

After the Flood

Aftermath II

Winter's End

Ain't I a Woman?

Leaving

Sisyphus

All Hallow's Eve

At the Station

Late Fall

What's Left Behind

9/11 Books for K-12

Please Note:

All images from, The Day Our World Changed: Children's Art of 9/11. NYU Child Study Center - http://www.AboutOurKids.org

 

Elementary Books

Collage. By Joel Cruz, Age 8.

Brown, Don. 2011. America is Under Attack: September 11, 2001: The Day the Towers Fell. New York: Flashpoint/Roaring Brook Press.

Curtiss, A.B. 2003. The Little Chapel that Stood. Illustrated by Mirto Golino. Escondido, CA: Old Castle Publishing.

Deedy, Carmen Agra. 2009. Fourteen Cows for America. Illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree Publishers.

Engine 24 Ladder 5. 2002. Do Not Be Sad: A Chronicle of Healing - Children's Letters and Artwork Sent after 9/11 from Across America to Engine 24 Ladder 5 FDNY. New York: Welcome Books.

The Power of Love. By Soobin Lim, age 13.

Kalman, Maira. 2005. Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey. New York: Puffin.

Patel, Andrea. 2002. On That Day: A Book of Hope for Children. San Francisco: Tricycle Press.

Ringgold, Faith. 2004. What Will You Do for Peace? Impact of 9/11 on New York City Youth. Hamden, CT: InterRelations Collaborative, Inc.

Rodriguez, Cindy J. 2009. I was Born on 9/11. Illustrated by Joyce L. Elliott. Baltimore, MD: Publish America.

Roth, Susan. 2001. It's Still a Dogs New York: A Book of Healing. Washington D.C.: National Geographic Books.

Winter, Jeanette. 2004. September Roses. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Memorial. By Andrew Emil, Age 11

Intermediate to Middle School Books

Eisner, Will, Russell, P. Craig, McClure, John, Powell, Eric, Muth, Jon J. Chelsea, David, Russell, Drooker, Eric, Nowlan, Kevin, Sloboda, Paul, Chadwick, Pal, Stradley, Randy, and Gibbons, David. 2002. 9-11: Artists Respond. Dark Horse.

Frank, Mitch. 2002. A Nation Challenged: A Visual History of 9/11 and its Aftermath. New York: Scholastic.

Friedman, D. Dina. 2006. Playing Dad's Song. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. (Fiction)

Wachtel, Alan. 2009. September 11: A Primary Source History. Gareth Stevens Publishing.

High School/Adult Books: Fiction

Beigbeder, Frederic. 2006. Windows on the World. New York: Harper Perennial.

DeLillo, Don. 2008. Falling Man A Novel. New York: Scribner.

Hamid, Mohsin. 2008. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Orlando, FL: Harvest Books.

Trying To Find Safety Within One Another. By Jackie, Age 14.

Herrera, Juan Felipe. 2005. Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box. Rayo. (free verse novel).

Levithan, David. 2010.  Love is the Higher Law. New York: Knopf.

Safra, Jonathan. 2006. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel. New York: Mariner Books.

Schwartz, Lynne Sharon. 2006. The Writing on the Wall. New York: Counterpoint.

High School/Adult Books: Non-Fiction

Berry, Wendell. 2001. Thoughts in the Presence of Fear. Orion Magazine.

Defede, Jim. 2003. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland. New York: Harper.

Osama's Toys. By Annie Mak, Age 17

DiMarco, Damon. 2007. Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/11. Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press. 

Flynn, Thomas F. 2008. Bikeman.  Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McNeel Pubishing.

Heyen, William (Ed.). 2002. September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond. Etruscan Press.

Jacobson, Sid. 2006. The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation. New York: Hill and Wang.

Kean, Thomas and Lee H. Hamilton. 2004. The 9/11 Report: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United states of America.  New York: St. Martin's Press.

Photographers of the New York City Police Department. 2002. Above Hallowed Ground: A Photographic Record of September 11, 2001. New York: Viking Studio.

Spiegelman, Art. 2004. In the Shadows of No Towers. New York: Pantheon.

Thoms, Annie. 2002. With Their Eyes: the View from a High School at Ground Zero. New York: Harper Collins.

Mourning Sun. By Wanda Martinez, Age 17.

How Does School Environment Shape Teenagers' Behaviors?

Herb Childress (2000) in his ethnographic study, Landscapes of Betrayal, Landscapes of Joy, spent considerable time learning about teenagers from a northern California exurb and theorizing about how their environment affects the way they behave. Childress explains that there were three questions that framed his study:

I had built my study on three simple questions: How do teenagers use spaces? How do they apply meanings and values to any particular place? How do conflicts about those places arise between teens and adults and between particular subsets of teens, and how are those conflicts resolved? (p.254).

In the context of answering those questions, Childress comes to name thirteen pairs of competing ideas that he labels as modernist  and existential. I couldn't help but consider how the ambiguities that Childress frames in his study of how teenagers live and behave with the sensibilities that inform high school design. In what ways does our rather modernist secondary school environments shape teenager's behavior?  What might happen if the assumptions that informed school design were less modernist and more existential?

Childress's list:

Modernist idea #1: Kids and adults should be separate.
Existential idea #1: Kids and adults should be integrated, with teenagers welcome in the adult
world.

Modernist idea #2: Children are the passive receivers of education and services.
Existential idea #2: Real learning involves an active search for experience and knowledge.

Modernist idea #3: We live in a national and global economy, and mobility is inevitable.
Existential idea #3: The local is of deep and lasting importance.

Modernist idea #4: Conflicts are decided in favor of those who have the resources to prevail.
Existential idea #4: Conflicts are decided in favor of the person or group with fewer resources to buffer any ill effects.

Modernist idea #5: Economies of scale are sensible in all areas of life.
Existential idea #5: Small and many are beautiful.

Modernist #6: People are, most centrally, consumers.
Existential idea #6: People are, most centrally, citizens.

Modernist idea #7: Objective, consistent, and encompassing rules and codes are the basis for interaction.
Existential idea #7: Negotiated agreements are both achievable and desirable.

Modernist idea #8: Social classes and their neighborhoods should be separate.
Existential idea #8: Social classes should claim their own spaces, but should also come into regular contact with each other as citizens and equals.

Modernist idea #9: Business, services, and residences should be separate.
Existential idea #9: Zoning should be primarily by scale of development rather than by type.

Modernist idea #10: Countryside is a necessary refuge from undesirable city living.
Existential idea #10: Countryside and city life both contribute to a complex, satisfying landscape.

Modernist idea #11: High densities of people are unsafe and unhealthy.
Existential idea #11: Concentration of people can encourage social connection and public safety.

Modernist idea #12: Home and land ownership is the key to community.
Existential idea #12: Easy social contact is the key to community.

Modernist idea #13: Places should closely fit their specialized functions.
Existential idea #13: Environments should be easily converted to new and multiple uses.

Childress concludes his study by stating that the presence of joy is the factor most important in what works and doesn't seem to work in teenagers' lives.  Childress writes:

After a year, I think I know some of those answers, and the idea of joy is at the heart of all of them.

That sounds simple, perhaps naïve. But I came to Curtisville in July, and became more and more depressed the more I learned. Here I was, in this growing community of new homes and businesses; in a school with a multi-million dollar budget, mostly staffed with competent, concerned people. Both the kids and the adults were telling me that something was missing, and I could tell that something was missing, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I was more and more concerned about the lack of satisfaction and intensity and desire that I saw. I couldn’t put my finger on the problem.

And then, in the middle of November, I came to the short performances of the Advanced Theater Workshop. These kids did demanding work under difficult and tense conditions with a live audience, and they were absolutely great. And the difference was joy. The love for what they were doing was so clear, all over their faces and through their motions, it just burned off the stage. And joy was what I’d seen in those handful of classes that "worked." Joy was what I’d heard in the laughing, teasing conversations on the Quad and at the Arco station. Joy was the fuel that moved skateboards and horses and pickup trucks. And joy was what was missing from most of Curtisville, and from most of it’s high school as well. I just didn’t have the word before. (254-55)

How do we engender spaces where joy is more important, more salient than core content standards and an endless sea of standardized tests and the accompanying narrow pedagogy that gets enacted in order for students to get ready for such minutia?  How do we build spaces where the emphasis on learning is invitational?  Where error is not counted as points that detract from "proficiency", but is understood as an important marker along a road of learning?

Joy resides alongside agency.

Imagine 'school' as community, where the barriers between teenagers (all of them*) and their communities are not built on a segregationist model, but rather one that deliberately seeks to integrate, involve, and welcome the teen into the adult community as partner.


floorplan and connect these learners with adults in their own community?

Workshop is Vapid When Standardization is Enforced

The finest teachers of writing and reading I know are ones who actually write, read, and are curious.  Simple, right?

In the perceived absence of actual reading, writing and curiosity, teachers are often sent to workshops with the hope that they will then return to school sites and 'run workshops'.  At best, when the workshop host is actually someone who reads and writes and doesn't have a lot of formulas or 'best practices' and instead engages all in the actual practice of reading and writing--rich rewards can often accompany.  When the participant continues to read and write and is suitably curious, the ideas learned and questioned via their own practice may make for interesting, if not provocative, work inside their own classroom.

There is an organicism in such practice.

In contrast, when the presenter is someone who has also learned 'workshop techniques' at a distance from actual practice and passes along a laundry list of dos and dont's (think chart after chart) that truly make little actual sense, the outcome is rather dubious. Even worse than this however is the 'turnkey' presenter sent to the latter workshop who then returns to tell everyone else how to "do" workshop.  The workshops enacted after such learning are often vapid and usually rely on standardized practices for all.

Some 'workshop' practices I would question:

1.Why must teachers level all of the books in the classroom library?
Why are reading materials in classrooms being organized exclusively by 'levels'?  I keep hearing more and more about this. Given the importance of prior knowledge and interest, it seems that leveling schema fail as readers age and the confluence of knowledge, interest, and motivation take on greater emphasis.  Why would anyone organize a library based on leveling schema that is imposed? Does it even make remote sense that we could ever actually say that a reader is a level T? I have been in classrooms when a teacher will lean in and say in a stage-whisper, "He's a level N." Could we not imagine easily how such a declaration would be faulty?

Underneath the leveling library is the more important question about how one selects a book to read and what prompts the desire to read.  The leveled system in some ways usurps the actual thinking that needs to be done when selecting a text and coming to name the desire to read.


2. Why must teachers refer to their students as readers and/or writers?
It seems a bit insipid to make teachers refer to their students as 'readers' and 'writers'--as if calling them by a name, somehow makes it "more" true.  It bothers me that naming isn't a privileged exchange between teacher and learner.  A former graduate student told me she was 'written up' by a supervisor for failing to address her 5-year-old students as writers. It's not the names that bother me, but rather that someone else determines address in a classroom apart from the teacher and the learners.  It feels like colonization. 


3. What's with all the sticky notes?
I read a lot. I write a fair amount too.  I do both well with nary a sticky in sight. I have been in classrooms where teachers explain that their students (or should I say readers) must used 3 to 5 sticky notes per chapter when reading a novel. When I ask why, I usually get two responses:

a. The reading workshop presenter said so.
b. We were told we must do this by an administrator (who probably attended the reading workshop).

A friend of mine tells the story of her son arriving home from fifth grade one day and declaring he was done with reading. When she inquired as to why he said he hated sticky notes and he wanted to just go back to reading a good story. "Why do they have to ruin it?" he asked his mom.

Underneath the sticky note practice, is the more important question about the needs of a reader and the reasons for reading.  Not all texts require analysis. Not all texts require writing alongside.  It seems important for students to figure out how to tell the difference and to determine some ways they actually wants to read. Forced sticky notes stops that thinking.

4. Why must all students record the title, author, etc. of every book they read?
There are times I like to keep lists of what I am reading or planning to read.  There are times I like to look at other people's lists as well. For example I often enjoy reading the Five Book Interviews. Recently Carol Gilligan offered five books she would recommend about gender and human nature. The offerings fascinated me.  But occasionally choosing to keep a list is quite different than being made to record every thing read for a school year. Why is knowing the total number of books important? Who benefits by having a child keep a list for a year of what s/he read?  When my son was 7 he had to record the title and author in a notebook of texts he read.  He loved to read and did so with great passion. That passion dimmed a bit when he realized how much writing his rather tired little hand would need to do.  Quite quickly he seized on the idea of limiting his book selection to brief titles.  

5. Why do students have to read a book that is classified as a different genre each month?
Let's just say it's hell that last month after students have been through nine genres (BTW I never actually got all the genre distinctions either) and the last one left is often something they never ever wanted to read. What exactly are students learning in such scenarios?  This practice obfuscates the more important work of developing and changing reading preferences and making decisions about what to read and when.  I also think it seems predictable that children will have great affinity for certain types of books and will desire to read these books in great number. Why do we want to disrupt that? Do we fear that a child hooked into Captain Underpants at 8 will find himself at 40 only reading Dav Pilkey's underpants adventures?


6. A phrase I hope never to hear again: "I have a self-to-text connection to make."
In the name of comprehension bad things have been done to reading and those who read. As a substitution for ambiguity, conjecture, humor, and not knowing (to name but a few)--the connection gambit (often marked with a post it, see image) is being played. Is there any other kind of connection one might have with a text?  If not connected to the reader, then to whom? Is there a reason such things even need to be anounced?  And what does it suggest when after such proclamation the connection is something like this: "I have a text to self connection. My dog drools." I did hear a child utter this after his teacher read a section from a Henry and Mudge story. He was congratulated for making a connection. A friend reminds me that rendering reading into such small bits of nothing, readies children for a career of testable 'reading' items.  I also wonder about such coding and what is missed as the mind is occupied by searching for already determined categories which in fact might not be well understood.

7. Why are students made to keep a writer's notebook and/or reader's notebook?
While visiting a middle school class, a friend of mine tells the story that at the midpoint in the class all of the students put away their writing notebooks and took out their reading notebooks.  She describes this shift from writing workshop to reading workshop as a strange changing of the guards.  I wondered then as I do now why this would be done.  How is it that a notebook, let alone separate notebooks, are needed? Why is it that everyone needed to attend to their writing and reading in the same manner? Imposing an order may constrain learning and in fact that may be interesting. Imposing an order that all must follow takes what might be thoughtful practices (choosing to keep a notebook) and reduces it to mindlessness.

8. Why is there a reliance on 'seed ideas' as the source of writing topics?
I was once told that students couldn't write if they didn't generate five seed ideas first  (one for each day of the school week) and specifically do so inside their writing notebooks which had all been organized as per their teacher's directions including the unique cover each student had to create.  The seed ideas were prompted: a time when you were happy, a time when you were hurt, a bad haircut, and so on.

To See Takes Time (2009)

Whereas I do understand that beginning ideas that are developed into more sustained work, might well be seeds of a sort, the mechanism of recording daily bits of this and that and then selecting one of these entries to develop into a longer work (especially in  a five day period) seems contrived.  It's hard to write at times.  It's a bit offsetting to not know what I want to say and equally it is rather exhilarating when I realize that I am on to something satisfying.  Learning ways to observe seems more important for many writers than responding to prompts and selecting one to write more about.




Invention is the work of teaching and learning. Remove invention and all that is left is a corpse.

Down and Out: America

A year ago I began this blog. I had hoped to explore intersections between art and learning.  I could not know then that I would come to love composing a blog, nor did I anticipate that I actually might have more than a handful of readers, let alone a readership.  A year later, nearly 16,500 people have visited this blog from 117 countries. I am of course grateful for those who have stopped by and even more so for their comments, links, and references. The learning has been rich, varied, and inspiring.

I gave much thought as to what I wanted to post on this anniversary of sorts. For the last few year I have been making images of people who are down and out in America.  I had hoped that a slide show might help to place those who are largely forgotten in daily lives and certainly forsaken by our politicians (sold out again in debt ceiling deal) more squarely in our view.

The last few years have been particularly harsh for the poor. In the new forward to Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the toll the last few years have taken on the working poor.

Media attention has focused, understandably enough, on the “nouveau poor” -- formerly middle and even upper-middle class people who lost their jobs, their homes, and/or their investments in the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic downturn that followed it, but the brunt of the recession has been borne by the blue-collar working class, which had already been sliding downwards since de-industrialization began in the 1980s.

In 2008 and 2009, for example, blue-collar unemployment was increasing three times as fast as white-collar unemployment, and African American and Latino workers were three times as likely to be unemployed as white workers. Low-wage blue-collar workers, like the people I worked with in this book, were especially hard hit for the simple reason that they had so few assets and savings to fall back on as jobs disappeared.

The poor are hardly part of a national discourse.  They seem not to be visible.  I hope the images I composed during the last few years help to recenter them in our consciousness, make it impossible for any of us to simply walk on by.

The images were made in:

Banner, CA
Winterhaven, CA
Deerfield Beach, FL
Pompano Beach, FL
Osseo, MI
Camden, NJ
Hoboken, NJ
Long Branch, NJ
Morristown NJ
Newark, NJ
Paterson, NJ
Wanaque, NJ
West Milford, NJ
Manhattan (NYC)
Warwick, NY
Philadelphia, PA
Winner, SD
San Antonio, TX