learning styles

Last night Jon was saying that my thesis draws a line from students' style (as in fashion, etc.) and their learning styles. For example, one kid, a Muslim girl who wears a hijab, works within bent versions of the teacher's rules and academic expectations just like she works creatively around her hijab to achieve the look of "popularity" (read: in part, whiteness).

I usually hate when people talk about "learning styles" as if that's why meaningful academic opportunities are scarce in the hood. Because when people say "learning styles," they're talking about, "I'm a visual learner," or "I'm an audio learner." And sure, it's smart for teachers to present materials that students can access through multiple modalities -- if only because lesson planning in that way makes it less likely that they stand at the front of the room and drone on for fifty boring-ass minutes.

But Jonathan was talking about "learning styles" in terms of students' particular orientation to authority and knowledge. Students' orientation to authority and knowledge informs their identities; if your sense of yourself is that you're cool/bad, then the literacy practices you're more inclined to pick up are those associated with coolness/badness. Graffiti, rap, sagging your pants, etc. If, as was the case for me, you are a little fearful of displeasing authority figures, you're more likely to assent to the literacy practices imposed on you by the authority figure, regardless of whether or not the authority figure is legitimately authoritative.

What if we gave pre-service and in-service teachers lots of practice discovering students' orientation to power and knowledge -- practice reading the clothing, handwriting. body language, and tons of other ways that we perform our identities? What if more of us were capable of designing learning experiences that draw on the identities (and associated performances and literacy practices) of the students we traditionally fail, those students who resist authority? It's totally possible.

trying

Under Drumpf’s administration, I have forgotten what I have to say. It’s like, he makes it too easy:

“Dumb fuck.”

There. Now I feel like I’ve adequately critiqued his foul ass.

I’m also feeling writerly paralyzation because so many other folks are already writing fantastic pieces about what’s going on, and I’ve been feeling like, the best contribution I can make is just to Like and Share.

So I’m sitting down tonight to come up with something because I like how I feel about myself when I’m writing. I like the feeling of trying to wrangle the right words onto the page.

At least a dozen people have told me that I should be writing about the work we’re doing at SQ, but it’s hard for me to get outside of it and see the threads of narratives available for the telling.

In the last year, I’ve edited books for two different friends. They make it look so easy. Five- or six-page Word document? Chapter. Ten chapters in a book. They just do it.

And I’m sitting here feeling like I’ve got nothing to say when I’m pretty sure do.

I’d like to start publishing some stuff online maybe.

There have been several instances in the last few months where I think I’ve smelt a tiny whiff of what it’s like to have my depression lifted off of me. For a long time I’ve been fine, but not able to get excited about anything. The first moment came when I was seeing Hamilton with my Mom in March. As I watched, I kept thinking about a clip from a PBS special about the show where you see Lin-Manuel Miranda bringing his draft to a two other guys, and they’re going through it to edit and build. And I’d get so excited and want to do that.

In no particular order, I want to write about

: How white people need to find a way out of their blind rage at reverse racism without losing face. White people need to figure out ways that help white people better understand historical context and systemic oppression without emasculating them. If that makes sense. White people can get so defensive, and then the conversation feels hopeless because they’re not going to back down because white supremacy intersects powerfully with misogyny and hypermasculinity! We gotta do something about our people for real.

: The implicit pedagogy of Creativity Explored. Our former director called it “non-confrontational advocacy.” We do what we can to bring attention to work created by artists with developmental disabilities and know that when folks experience the beauty of the artwork, they a teensy-bit unlearn ableist and patronizing ideas about folks with developmental disabilities. Sentence too long.

But I think it’s much more interesting to think about the pedagogy of the studio, the teachers’ approach to the artists they work with. The lack of curriculum. The variance between giving artists direct guidance, images to draw or paint, and giving artists the paint they need to create basically the exact same piece that they’ve been making for thirty years. Artists are encouraged as they develop their practice, and artists are supported if they decide not to “get better.” Teachers do what they can to make sure that artists can make informed choices and then follow the artists’ lead.  

Makes me think about how my Mom would always say that they needed to stop plotting to make Conor smarter in his annual IEP meetings. Like, he’s fine the way he is. Let’s just make sure he’s experiencing pleasure – delicious food, sunny days, loud music.

: I’m teaching a class at Mills, Introduction to the Humanities, and we just read Whiteness as Property and the first chapter of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. We’ve been talking about what it means to be human (and the students, graciously, are not rolling their eyes the way I kind of am at myself.) What struck me most this time around was the question of whether our humanity is innately individual or innately connected. I’m just now realizing that I think it’s the latter.

And for some silly reason, I’ve been thinking about how much I like the word “folks,” and how there’s not really such thing as a singular folk. Maybe there is, but it’s a horrible word.

Okay now, I’m going to go watch a few episodes of Insecure.

"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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.