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Ron sometimes does this "That's bad --> That's good --> That's bad --> That's good" story thingie at the beginning of his teachings.  (e.g. He fell off the roof; that's bad.  There was a haystack below; that's good.  There was a spike in the haystack; that's bad.  He missed it; that's good.)

That's how my birthday was last week.

I've been feeling really low lately.  I'm lonely, and I'm sad.  I've been spending most of my non-working time at home in my room with the door closed, mostly sleeping.  It's not a great way to deepen the relationships I've started since coming here.  I didn't have anyone to do anything with, not anyone that wouldn't, though I may really like them, make me feel exhausted.  I had a deep, loud cry that morning.

In the afternoon, I went on a gorgeous, hope restoring hike.  As I started it, I got a promising email about a job I've applied for.

When I got home, some of the crappiness had settled back in, and I had to take a nap.

I got up and made an appointment to quick go over to the shiatsu place and get a massage.  After that, I met Neil and Jarlath for a drink and a burger.  I wore my favorite baggy-ass ripped jeans and a new shirt I found at Goodwill that's an exact copy of a shirt my old principal had that I was jealous of.

When I got home, the sad was back.

Class notes: Series suspended.

Just for a minute.  I've still got the posts saved, and I'm still writing.

Prison politics.  Playing it safe.

"DAAAG THAT'S DEEP"

We meet on Friday mornings to assess student work and plan the next week.  No class on Thursday meant no work for us to do, so we had to time to start the professional reading group we've been wanting to do.

First up: Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  We only got about five pages into the first chapter because we kept stopping to talk and look up words.

axiology: thinking about goodness, value

ontology: thinking about the nature of being

We came up with a whole bunch of examples from history and from our personal lives that helped us understand him better. It was awesome. We haven't at all gotten to a point where we can talk about what it means for our teaching, but we're all bringing our copies back next Friday so we can squeeze in some more reading time.

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I want to think more about how we did it.

We all sat around two tables pushed together, nine of us.  Each of us had our own copy, and a couple of paragraphs in, one guy got up to get us pens and highlighters. We read aloud slowly, taking turns without any order, and whenever necessary, we interrupted the reader to ask questions, make connections, or emote. Sometimes we went back to re-read a sentence or paragraph.

A few times, one or another of the guys would silently get up to go somewhere and silently come back to the table (e.g., bathroom, talk to someone outside, I don't know).  The person next to him would point to where we were, and he'd get back into it with us.

P kept reading ahead, highlighting animatedly as he read aloud the things he liked: "Oooh, 'The behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior!'"  It was distracting to me and S, so every time he read aloud to himself, we would tell him to shut up and let us get there.  He didn't stop, though.

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The above is a pretty complete illustration of the academic literacy behaviors that the good teachers I know work at apprenticing their students into:

• read with a pencil or pen or highlighter in hand
• ask questions
• make connections
• note your responses to the text
• stop and go back when you realize you've gotten lost

Together, we constructed comprehension and interpretation of the text, a text worthy of "group work."

We came to the table with an established camaraderie.  Our camaraderie is steeped in a shared commitment to education (others' and our own).  The text at hand is relevant to that commitment. We were each there by choice (and granted, we're all adults).  Each of us had the academic confidence to know that we could make at least some sense of this difficult text.  This was all effortless.

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At school, I was eventually able to create the conditions for students to read like this, but it was a lot of times really hard work for them and me getting ourselves there.  I've been wondering about that kind of thing for the last couple of years I've spent in prison education: Was it difficult because the behaviors are difficult?  Or do the conditions of "school" make it more difficult than they need to be?

I'm tripping on the extent to which context matters here.  We have so much more freedom in our classroom than a lot of teachers do -- particularly those who teach kids of color living in low-income neighborhoods where surveillance is pervasive.  Mandated curriculum, incessant testing, performance pay, etc.  We in a prison classroom, on the other hand, are free to play with our practice and our theories about how people learn (and others' theories -- like Freire's!).

Prison officials, from my experience, don't much shit whether or not our students earn their GEDs, so they don't interfere with what we do in our classroom.  Ostensibly, school officials do care about student learning, but in their caring, they really fuck it up bad.

In so many ways, school is just like prison, but not in this way, where we teachers have space to think. Barf.

Another new series: Hill is shrill!

I'm seeing a lot of dumdum shit from progressive White guys in the last couple of days since Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination. It occurred to me that this election might create an opportunity for feminists/womanists/women from the future to educate misogynist progressives (ha).  I'm going to (try to remember to) keep a running list here of the "teachable moments" I encounter.  Sometimes I get so astounded by something shitty said to me that I forget to throw a little knowledge  back at the shit-sayer.

(Note: A lot of times, I'm going to say "we," "us," "girls," and "women" knowing full well that I cannot and do not speak for all women, particularly not women of color, women with disabilities, queer women, transwomen, poor women, immigrant women, incarcerated women, etc.)

(1) Don't tell us that Hillary's nomination is an important thing for women and girls (and trans folk, but I'm not seeing trans folk come up in the rhetoric at all.  [Shocker.])  First, don't tell us anything about what's good for us. Further, it's a great thing for men and boys, too. Figure out why.

(2) Related to (1), but definitely it's own thing:  Especially because Hillary is a White woman, you should learn something about the history of feminism because saying something is important for women and girls is just a super White thing to say.

(3) Code words!  There are so many code words!  For today, I'll do shrill. A personal example: When Rachel and I first started teaching, she was advised by a dude teacher that she should raise her voice when necessary to assert her authority in a class where she had some rowdiness.  Yeah right.  When a dude raises his voice, it's most of the time commanding.  When a White woman raises her voice, it's most of the time received as either ridiculous or annoying or both, but definitely not authoritative.  Y'all get to raise your voice, and we don't.  Don't call us shrill.

(4) Don't ask us to teach you this stuff.  Do your own work because you're exhausting me.  And insulting, but the insulting is kinda whatever.  It's just tiring to talk you through things from step one. Read something.

Notes from No Class #2

Prison was real prison-rific tonight.  When class was supposed to start, there was an  forty-five alarm, which means that the men have to stop right where they are and get on the ground.  And then once the alarm was over, there was a yard recall, which means that everybody goes back to their cells.  And then they said that Education could stay open, so those men were allowed to come down.  And then right as we settled into our groups, there was another alarm, and an officer came and said that all of the volunteers had to leave.

Try again tomorrow.

still lifes (lives?)

On the captain's porch, there's an office divided by clear walls into many offices, and I was in one of those sub-offices.  On the wall, there's taped a file folder with clip art of an adorable little cat and a dainty little butterfly, and in between the two, "CONFIRMED PRE-PAROLE LIST."  On the window-wall, one of those clingie sticker things is a fun little cartoon bulky white guy in stripes breaking apart rocks with a pick.  Cute little drops of sweat coming off his face.

--

Above the door of one the offices in the administration building hangs a wooden sign, like the kind you'd get at Cracker Barrel, welcoming, "Come On In!"  Just inside the office, there's an old-school pencil sharpener still attached to the wall.  Just outside, a sign on the wall reminds, "Understanding Disability is an ATTITUDE."

Notes from Class Entry #1 (of many, hopefully)

Anticipating Week 1.

This week we’ll begin our second semester under our reorganized approach.  Considering outer space from various angles, we’ll puzzle over the question, “What’s out there?”

Last week was a work week.  We talked about what went well last semester and what we’d like to do differently this semester.  We chose a pre-test, settled on rosters and writing groups, put together the readers.  We finalized lesson plans for the first two weeks of class.  We made a big calendar for the wall detailing the study opportunities available on days we don’t have class.  

We made table tents so the students will know where to sit when they come in on the first day.  We tweaked our system for taking attendance and collecting homework.  We organized the supply closet.  

C bit the cords off of the two computer keyboards he managed to get us on the sly; having cords attached could get us into trouble because the cord comes with the possibility of accessing a CPU.  And, obviously, we don’t have scissors, hence the biting.  

We made plans for how we want to use our newly approved study hall time, at one point using a March Madness style bracket to decide which book we’d read in the new book club.  (Fahrenheit 451. Not my pick.)  We met with the math coordinator for the college program to talk about possible collaborations.

I wrote letters of support for the inside teachers with upcoming dates with the parole board.  The inside teachers wrote survey questions for collecting information from our students that might be useful in grant writing for my salary.

Last night, the teachers would have walked students through the reader and all of the resources in it, and they would have started our warm-up writing assignment, the classic RAFT.  Choose one of each:

ROLE: astronaut, alien, Pluto, black hole

AUDIENCE: earthlings, aliens

FORM of writing: letter, movie trailer, election speech, play, poem

TONE: condescending, fearful, aggressive, comical, doomsday, apologetic

Tomorrow night, we’ll share first drafts in the writing groups and offer feedback.  Homework: Revise!