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.

shit I don't love

A couple of months ago, this guy came to our Bible study and talked about a project he and some friends did where they tried to see what it would be like if they took seriously the Gospel call to give away half of what you have to the poor.  The first month, they started with clothes.  Then books the next.  And so on.  (NOT MY BOOKS.)  They got together each month to talk about it, and they found that when they tried to sell their stuff to give the money away, they weren't able to get much for it.  And they didn't miss it.  They thought a lot about the value of their stuff -- and the value of the liberation they felt without it.

When I talked to Donna about it, she told me that when she moved away from the city, she decided to only take with her things from her home that she loved.  It was really hard, she told me, but such a relief when it was over.

I've been going through my clothes over the last week, getting rid of the stuff that I don't love.  I'm finding that it's sometimes so easy, sometimes so difficult to figure out whether or not I love something.  I make the two piles, and then I have to weed out the "things I love" pile again.

I did decide to keep one dress I don't love anymore.  A brown paisley wrap dress that I wore so many times  when I taught at Urbana.

style, God, and grace

A little more on Adam and Eve.  I saved my favorite part (about clothes, duh) for a separate post.

So they eat from the Tree of Knowledge and "realize" that they should feel shame about who they were created to be, even though they were pronounced Good.  

They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves.  When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the Man and his Wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God. 

 God called to the Man: “Where are you?” 

 He said, “I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid.”
  

God said, “Who told you you were naked?

 That "Who told you you were naked?" line gets me every time.  I hear it said with such compassion.  Chicken, who told you you had anything to be ashamed of?  Oh, baby, who told you you're not Good? 

But God understands that despite our Goodness, we have trouble confronting the reality of our not-Godness.  And so, though God did not see us as needing to cover up ourselves, since God loves us even though we are not God, God met us where we were.

 God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dressed them.

Just before their expulsion from Eden -- not a punishment but as the inevitable consequence of this new knowledge -- God makes for them more durable clothing than the clothing they made for themselves.  God meets us where we are.  That's grace.

Ron always says, God doesn't have to bless a situation to be in it.  God didn't have to believe them that they needed clothing to provide for them.  God doesn't have to bless violence to be present with those experiencing it.  God doesn't have to bless male supremacy in order to work with people of all genders, wherever we are in our understandings of the Goodness present in all of us -- transgendered, cisgendered, gender non-conforming, etc.

God's not waiting for us to be perfect before God will be with us.  God has always known that we are not God and that we are Good.

That's a relief.

WWBW

When we were getting ready for a public presentation once, my students were super concerned about what I was gonna wear.  They just did not get me.  Their sincere advice: "When you open your closet, look at your clothes and think, 'What would Beyonce wear?'"

I feel like I killed it this week because I wore this gold skirt (Thanks, Kase.):

And Beyonce wore this:

good morning

It came to me this morning that it's possible that moving where I've moved is my payback for every nice thing I've ever done in my twenty-eight years.  It's that good.  It also means that it's possible that my good karma balance is at zero again.  Hell.

This morning, I slept until ten, watched three episodes of Girls (which I'm not even sure I like, even if I try to suspend all critiques of its racism. I just keep waiting for another episode to be as good as this one.  That one was so good.), put on my favorite pants,

got a cup of gas station coffee (my favorite kind of coffee),

and went for a walk on the Coastal Trail.

I sat here for a bit,

and as I did, I watched a cruise ship go under the bridge, two kids stepped in poop (one of them stepped in it twice), and I saw a hummingbird.

reading Mary Poppins

"She was wearing her blue coat with the silver buttons and the blue hat to match, and on the days when she wore these it was the easiest thing in the world to offend her."

And tomorrow I want to try to get some time to write about a way that sexism has really been pissing me off lately.  And kinda hurting.   I'm saying this now to create a little accountability for myself to myself.

She was wearing bedazzled animal-print Ugg boots.

A teenager on the bus today made so many people so mad.  I watched eyes darting toward her and away, toward her and away.  The bus was crowded, and she was resting her feet on the seat next to her.  Old women sucked their teeth in her direction, and a hip looking White guy told her, "Move your feet, and let these people sit!"  She didn't, though.  And then she laughed so much, but it didn't seem like a real laugh.

Taking up space is an interesting thing, huh.

SF is invading my style.

sometimes, the group bursts into applause when they make the decision

All anxious, self-deprecating humor aside, I really love my part-time job at this bridal shop.

I love it because I love listening to people talk about their style and/or observing people’s style choices and wondering about how they came to them.  I could wonder about that shit all day.  (I once wrote a paper about how exactly the literature on popular culture helps to explain the visceral joy I get from reading amateur fashion blogs.  My professor told me it was “moving,” and I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud.)

I also really like weddings.  For real, I think most of the dresses we sell are heinously expensive and actually just kinda nasty, and I think that if I got a closer look at more of the wedding industry, I’d be even a little more queasy about all that.  (I tried on one of the dresses the other day, and besides the out-of-body weirdness of it, I was struck by how seriously difficult it was to walk in it.  Always with the constriction of women’s bodies…).  But weddings.  I love the idea of blurring the public and the intimate, of standing there, bolstered by the support of all of the people who have made you who you are, and saying, “Okay, let’s make your people my people.”  It’s beautiful. 

Plus, this place is all women all the time.  I love working in all-women contexts.  So much.  I really feel like there’s an unspoken solidarity all up in there.  Maybe I’m just sentimental (I am.).  Women (the other staff all call them “brides,” but that gives me the willies a little bit) come in with their mothers, their sisters, their grandmothers, their in-laws, their friends, their cousins.  It’s fascinating, and sort of an honor really, to get to stand so close to those relationships as they work through this particular style decision, laden as it is with sentiment and body image stuff and $$$ concerns.  I keep thinking that I should write about this part of the job, getting into the gorgeous little details that make up the wide range of relating that I get to see.  But I suppose it’s not very nice to write about strangers without their permission.