Ms. Dahlke if ur nasty.

I really love my new job at Tech, but in this post I am going to tell you the thing that I don't like about it.

The adults call each other Ms. or Mr. Whatever. Like, I'm not a kid, and I think it's weird and almost... teacher-fetishy to call each other Ms. or Mr. Whoever when we're the only people in the room.

Also, a teacher that I called her first name in an email then introduced herself to me in a meeting (where everyone was going around saying their name for my benefit) as Ms. Whatever. 

Don't care for it.

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.

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:

silliness around "youth"

I went to this awesome session at AERA two weeks ago that featured the work of youth activists.  It was very similar to a session I went to last year at AERA, except that this year's room was about five times the size of last year's.  Both years, the session was packed.

The kids were doing some pretty brilliantly innovative work, and they were employing some pretty tired narratives.  One girl, for example, introduced herself with "I don't have a father figure in my life." As if that's the one thing that defines her.  Come on. It made me want to be in a classroom with them without all the other ogling grown-ups -- to push-back on that internalized deficit-thinking and to let her push back on my inexperience with her reality.

I wanted real badly to check in with them on what it was like to have so many adults gushing over them.  Affirming?  Condescending?  Both?

Last year, I got to spend a lot of time with some smart people thinking about what the hell "youth" even means.  I'm grateful for that.

Where I'd start that conversation?  I'd write on the board, "Youth are the future," and ask them what they make of that cliche.

Alas, I quit, so I can't.

What I could do is write it on the board in the classroom I do frequent, one that fills up with students who are, some of them, twice my age.  If because youth are the future is a main thrust of argument as to why they deserve excellent education, where does that leave those of us working toward excellent education for old folks in prison, old folks in prison who are never going to be released, even?

Are people who aren't the future still worthy of our energies?  A lower priority?

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.

Is it fair for me to use this as an example to show my students what I expect?

I could cry I love her section on feminism so much (It starts around 15:00 but everything before it is awesome, so skipping ahead is probably not a good idea):

"But um, it's not the age of women unless it can be the age of girls, too."

Worst moderator ever.

insight

I received the following playlist from one of my students as part of our totally optional not an assignment class mix CD exchange.

1. "Get Me Bodied" - Beyonce
2. "Flaws and All" - Beyonce
3. "Upgrade" - Beyonce
4. "I'm So In Love" - Beyonce
5. "Vans" - The Pack
6. "Dumb Diddy" - The Pack
7. "Go Stupid" - The Pack
8. "I'm Shining" - The Pack
9. "Promise" - Ciara
10. "Rain On Me" - Ashanti
11. "So Much In Love" - The Tymes
12. "Water Runs Dry" - Boyz II Men
13. a K-Ci & JoJo song the name of which she did not list
14. "Almost" - Timia
15. "Never Had a Friend" - the artist of which is unlisted
16. "Suffocated Like You" - J-Holiday
17. "Love You More Everyday" - Ginuwine
18. "You've Go That Love" - don't know the artist

good taste

So I finally did my grading today. Ugh. So boring. But one interesting thing I noticed was that a significant majority of the students who chose to write about the Tupac Shakur text we read ("Keep Ya Head Up") focused their analysis on the same set of lines:

And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women do we hate our women
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies who make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one

These happen to be my favorite lines from the song as well, but our class discussions really didn't go in their direction at all. Or at least not more that they did towards other parts of the song. Maybe it's because discourse on the need to respect women is sort of a common and comfortable thing in terms of what-we-write-for-school. Don't know. It could be the repeated long "a" sound followed by the repeated "woman/en" that drew them all in. That's what does it for me anyway.

No, I have not given up my blog.

I just didn't have anything to say. But now I do, or at least I have stuff that someone else has said that I feel like posting here. That's something.

From the blog of style rookie, a "Tiny 13 year old dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats. Scatters black petals on Rei Kawakubo's doorsteps and serenades her in rap. I have no where near 4 million readers. Rather cynical and cute as a drained rat. In a sewer. Farting. And spitting out guts.":

People like Anna Piaggi, Lynn Yaeger, Julia Frakes, Isabella Blow, Daphne Guinness, Vivienne Westwood, Iris Apfel, Grace Jones, David Bowie, Little Edie, Diana Vreeland, Bjork, Marchesa Luisa Casati, Catherine Baba, Anna Dello Russo...these people that dress to extremes simply because of a very deep, pure love for fashion...are inspiring to me.

And then people like this girl in FRUiTS, or mad old women, or funny toddlers, who dress for the same reasons and may not even know it's called fashion, inspire me as well. They make me want to write a story using what's in my closet, or in a kitchen cabinet waiting to become some type of headpiece.

And that, in the end, is all I want to do. Use my resources, and just have fun with dressing. Weirdly enough, it's when people anywhere-outside, in school, online-don't understand my outfits or style that motivates me to just be stranger. Not that I think I'm Bob Dylan or some type of ENIGMATIC ARTISTE or an artist at all, but this refusal of others to try and understand why somebody dresses a certain way (for which the real reasons are, in the end, nothing complex) just makes me want to dress more obnoxiously. Be more difficult to understand, more over their heads.

Or, I'm a malicious and spiteful teenager!

But really, I love it when I love my outfit and I walk from class to class and feel like I'm practically floating. My head is bobbing around like Bjork's when she walked for Jean Paul Gaultier and I just feel very confident in myself, not because I think other people will like my outfit but just because I do. And maybe even because I know other people won't like it because it isolates me and I can be in my own world for a bit. And it makes me feel good, and being creative makes me feel good.

And I think that is all I really want to do, and have ever wanted to do. The idea of being a mad eccentric who is constantly slipping into different skins is so appealing to me. I started this blog because I wanted to explore my style. Now I have more of an idea of what it is and will just continue to try and apply it every day.

Now, another reason I started is because I wanted to be part of the fashion blogging community and because I think fashion should be discussed. So let's get a discussion going: What inspires you? What keeps you in love with clothes? What makes you stray from sweatpants every day? Tell me.

I mean, why should I blog when there are teenagers out there who are better at it and have interesting things to say rather than inane things? Writing a story with her clothes? That's good.

If you're going to read any of her posts, I'd start with this one.

And for the record, here's me stylin' out in middle school. How is it possible that she and I could have such relatively similar haircuts and she looks chic and I look like this. Eh? Tell me.


(And that "Tell me," Russian spammers, is not an invitation for more of your shite.)

oh yes

Lucky for me, students at my school go down to the auditorium to take their yearbook photos during their English classes once a year. Today was that day, and oh man is it awesome to watch people take their yearbook photos. Big, toothy, ridiculous grins. Weird, toothless, stretched-lip smiles that pose as real smiles but are just weird facial expressions. Kids who "don't smile for pictures." All of this stuff is great. And that's before you even consider the photographer's directions to "turn your head just a little that way," or "shoulders back."

You might be thinking that this doesn't sound funny, and if so, you might also be forgetting how cool the average fifteen-year-old is trying to look most of the time. And you might be the kind of person who, admirably, doesn't take just a little bit of pleasure in watching awkward but harmless self-consciousness.

I assure you; it's funny.

I even had one student who intentionally tried all these "model" poses (eg. fist under the chin, arms crossed and looking over one shoulder, lips pursed into a kissy face, etc.) while the increasingly frustrated photographer humorlessly repeated, "You can't do that... can't do that either... can't do that either..."


Every time I watch this, I laugh out loud at Bill's face at the end.

"It works like a web."

At a meeting yesterday for the local version of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, I got to listen in on the teen members' planning of a social event for members of the GSAs (Gay Straight Alliances) from various high schools in East Central Illinois (and those students from schools without GSAs who would be in GSA if they could).

When it came to advertisement, one of the teachers there wanted to know, if the plan was to blanket the coffee shops and other teen hangouts in Champaign-Urbana with flyers, how would they get the word to students who aren't in our area?

One of the teens from a Champaign high school explained, "Oh, we'll use Facebook. It kinda works as a web. So if I invite one person from Paxton, they'll invite others..."

Kids these days, huh? I'm crazy about moments like that when I get to see a kid explain to an adult, especially if the "adult" is me. I also think that the tone, pace and words that the explainer uses are sometimes funny. The talk slows down and becomes sort of gentle as the explainer thinks of "old" things to use for comparison: "Well, there are these things called blogs, y'see, and they're like journals, only on the World Wide Web for all to see!"

I love my profession.

I really do. I like feeling as though my work is important. Today, for example, one of my students, who's typically a little all over the place, brought in this final product for his research project on universal design and accessible playgrounds. I was so proud of him. His research was thorough and innovative, and he seemed pretty pleased with himself as he explained to his classmates how the playground that he'd designed would be a place where anybody could play, regardless of their physical capabilities. How fun to get to watch teens figure out that they can do something to positively change this fucked up world.


But I ended my day sitting at my desk, writing a discipline referral, and sobbing. About another student, one who I really believe is convinced he can't. Just in general, can't. I'm genuinely heartbroken that, at this point, he's probably going to fail the class, and I don't know what else I can do to convince him to do what it takes to pass. Johnny told me yesterday that I should come to terms with the fact that sometimes you have to stop trying. I know I have to. But I don't know how to stop caring.



(By the way, the anti-sentimentality in me is cringing at that last sentence.)

a master of sass

One of my students moved north to the Chicagoland area earlier this school year, and was back yesterday to visit.

It was wonderful to see him. He's got this simultaneously hilarious and poignant manner of speaking, and he can really tell a great story.

Apparently, Oprah and Tyra were at his school recently to talk to the students about Rhianna and Chris Brown. Not surprisingly, he was one of the students chosen to be on the show. Before the filming, however, he was backstage talking with Oprah about the incident. He was making the argument that men are sometimes victims of abuse in relationships, too, when Tyra interrupted him to disagree with something he said. And he said, and I quote, "Um, nobody's talking to you, Tyra!"

ha

He decided that he doesn't like Oprah or Tyra anymore because he thought they were "real," but after that they wouldn't let him be on the show anymore.

I said "shit" one time! It was an accident!

A direct quote from some student writing I'm grading. He argues that profanity should be taught in foreign language classes:

But even teachers and adults (specifically my English teacher) have slipped a 'four letter word' here and there.

Fuck.

reappropriation approaching

O.K., it's gotten to the point where I need to seriously readjust my attitude about "You trippin." Because if I don't, I am just going to snap.

It's become glaringly obvious to me. My heart rate increases when I hear students mutter, "She trippin," under their breaths when I say perfectly even-keeled, normal things like, "Alright, let's get started."

It'll be kinda like the time when Kasey and I reappropriated Soulja Boy's "Report Card."

The thing is, I can't think of a new meaning for you-trippin. Whereas it seemed natural to change "Throw some D's on that bitch" to "Let's introduce a Dialogue on the subect so that the understandings of all parties involved grow and adapt with diverse input," this one feels like more of a leap. What can I make you-trippin?

I am NOT tripping.

For whatever reason, I have developed an intense aversion to the word trippin. I'm NOT trippin.

Today in class, after we excerpted the Communist Manifesto, listened to John Lennon's "Imagine" and then to Pitbull and Nas's remix of that song, I asked the students to write a paragraph summarizing the overlapping main ideas in these songs and commenting on personal connections they could make with these main ideas. The second the word paragraph escaped my lips, it was greeted with a chorus of "Man, you trippin"s. (They're well able to write paragraphs in a few short minutes, and thoughtful ones at that. It's like my distaste for the word trippin is matched only by their distaste for the idea of writing. How do I get rid of that?) WTF.

I probably wouldn't have written a blog post about the word, though, if it hadn't been for an incident later that same class period in which I told a student doing math homework while Molly was giving directions to put it away. Her response? "Oh my GAWD! Why are you TRIPPIN?"

The thought occurred to me as I was taking a shower this evening, that it might be convenient and funny (for me) to create a poster that says, "I AM NOT TRIPPIN," that I could silently point to whenever a kid says it. Too much?

(That "Too much?" is not rhetorical. Seriously, mood-lightener or whack? Seeking feedback on this one.)

passing time

My class finished the final with about a half hour left today, so they were just hanging out. One of the students told us all that her first child's name will be "De'Wayne Obama Carter tha III" if it's a boy and "De'Waynea Obama Carter tha III" if it's a girl. The "tha III" is because, "Lil Wayne's best album was his third one."

I really like it when Obama says, "Let's get to work!" at the end of his speeches,

because working is one of my favorite things to do. Especially on days like today, when I get to work with a bunch of students after school to develop a plan for more effectively advertising and recruiting students into AP Prep and AP classes. One of the most pervasive concerns of the students (and non-students) on our social justice committee is the relative "white-middle-class-ness" of our AP prep and AP classes. In a school where 43% of our student body is made up of students of color, why do our most challenging classes not reflect that, is what we want to know.

good day, weird rule

I was able to take my students to the auditorium, to watch on "the largest screen in Urbana" one of the teachers announced, Obama's swearing-in ceremony. So exciting!

When George Bush's face came onto the screen, they all laughed. He's like, so uncool.

After school, we had a faculty meeting at which we were reminded of the rule in the student handbook against scarves. Students are not allowed to wear scarves or bandannas of any kind anywhere on their bodies. The point was raised by a teacher that the scarves are not necessarily gang symbols, as the rule supposes, but are actually just, um, fashionable. She was like, "Somebody was telling me that this is part of some new 'hipster' (?) thing? Well. Hipster? Not welcome here!" ha.

today's word: vex

Example sentence from a student volunteer:

"Today I was vexing Ms. Dahlke to the point where she kicked me out."

(Yeah. He wouldn't stop talking, so I had a chat with him in the hallway while the other kids were journaling.)