the land of lolo

admitting writer's block in 2011.

2011-09-21T19:02:00.002-04:00

there is so much wisdom i have to share with you. but for now, i will talk to you about writer's block, because i have it. a more teacherly post will ensue soon, right now i need to be a poet, unapologetically.

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for the first time in a very long time, i can't write poems. it is a truly disturbing feeling, because poems were my first language; before i spoke an English that other people can understand (if you think that i'm exaggerating, remember that i was a shy kid, until you got to know me). my best friend, katy gallagher, gave me a journal for my 12th birthday and i realized that i could take them out of my head and write them down. they have been in my pockets, in my backpack, ballet bag, my field hockey bag, gym bag, my purse, packed in my suitcase, in my throat and lodged between creases in my brain for two-thirds of my lifetime. i am bilingual, because i am certainly fluent in poetry.

so i am trying to write one, right? i am swollen with joy and full of the emotions that poems make, i have fallen in some love-rain-down-on-me-83-degrees-cumulous-clouds kinda love, i am listening to otis and feeling the pain in his heart in a new hue of blue... but i can't write *the* poem. the definitive 2nd person poem, that there is no other you... i haven't written that poem since i was 17, and it was the best poem i've ever written. (i am probably looking at history with rose lenses, but it was deep, i'm gonna find it and share it in class)

so give me leave during this period of writer's block. i want to learn new languages to build castles upon the ways that i can say these words, i want to have a whole galaxy of adjectives with which to describe the specific fiction i am turning into non-fiction; then i will write your love poem.

song of the day

2011-08-02T12:50:00.001-04:00

Kendrick Lamar = my new favorite

distance and time = perspective

2011-07-09T13:36:00.002-04:00

i keep talking about this deep reflection that i'm going to write on what has been an utterly crazy, no-seatbelts, off-roading-in-a-convertible type of year (how's that for specificity?), but i'm struggling. here are some almosts, some reflections still forming, in no particular order and half-formed. you know, dear reader, that it makes me crazy to not put out a finished piece, but i am the biggest work in progress and this summer i am starting to absolve myself of my fears, and really do this right.

the hyperbole of a mess - june 28th
yesterday, linda stopped by my room and we had a rare chat. in the midst of one of the most insane years in the history of our school, and education nationally, i had the unique experience of having a wonderful year, both in and outside of my classroom. linda reminded me that i always return to hyperbole when i'm summing up my experiences - b/c i am somewhat dramatic; and it's more gemini to call myself a mess than it is to calmly explicate on my need to improve my organizational skills. perhaps the artist feels a pressure to be unraveled, but i'm not a mess. at least, not always, in all ways. i have it together professionally.

in 2010/11 i was blessed to bring 2 students to NCTE in Florida, held LPS poetry readings and attended readings with kids, did a great partnership with the Tribeca Film Institute, got tenure, became more active with United Playaz and started to envision UP Detroit, coached the softball team and was on PBS, highlighting my students' understandings from a unit i taught. i must be doing something right, but it is moments like these that i critically interrogate all of this and i am humbled and committed to working even harder. i can do so much better, i know this of myself, but hey... i'm also doing pretty well. for all of its drama and difficult mornings, i love my job and cannot imagine myself anywhere else right now.

title marinating - june 30th
i think it's true that one cannot see the beauty in life if one doesn't experience struggles, for the extremes bring us to a fuller range of emotions. the sweetness wouldn't seem to jump off the page if the bitter didn't push me back down. but as i told linda the other day, regardless of my tendency to self-deprecate, it's not about me or my ego. i go through this range of emotions FOR the kids and ABOUT the kids - it stopped being about me when i first set foot in this profession. yet, balance is the key and not a key i was born with. It has taken me awhile to teach myself balance. I have all the patience in the world, so I will keep letting others take energy without restoring it; this is my gift to the world, to each of you. i have learned how to replenish my energy and keep giving.

i've learned a lot this year, about saying yes and saying no. i've learned that my classroom is my domain that i can control, but outside of those walls, i don't control anything. and even within the walls, i am not a tyrant, and i am good at relinquishing control in favor of creating an environment that is collective. i believe in community building and try to reflect this in the physical space we inhabit together. i also believe in changing the teacher-student relationship and what it looks like on a daily basis. one comment from the PBS website was "I'm sure this teacher's time would be better spent teaching literature, civics or math", and i realize that if it doesn't look like traditional teaching, people don't recognize it. i was teaching literature AND civics - global citizenship is the kind that i favor.

must i be cold, frigid and disconnected to be a good teacher? what's wrong with the conflation between the personal and professional? i don't know how to turn my heart off or leave my politics at the door. i do not wish to indoctrinate my students, though, but i do aim every single day to get them to ask questions, consider different perspectives, question their own beliefs. this way the classroom functions interrogating these questions makes it look more like family to me, and that's what the DOE can't calculate or tabulate about my school. how can so much be working at a school, but the desired test scores are not being achieved? because the desired results aren't possible, given our resources and circumstances... but we are teaching our asses off and trying to nurture souls, instill values and starting where they are... i'm way more worried about producing good people who will contribute to the world in a positive way.

reflection (cont'd) - July 4th
there are so many things that i enjoy about what i do and miss during the summer. the daily antics of the show-stealers, who try to take my thunder and meld the class their way. the struggle to settle down and hush the hall energy with books. the resistance to reading until you find that story that somehow speaks your name and repeats it softly. One Hundred Years of Solitude was the first book that did that to me and i go back to reading like an addict, looking for words to make me feel that way again.

i miss the attempts at writing and farce of revision until you figure out that to revise is to make better, is to perfect your thoughts and help people understand your brand of brilliance. i know all about your lucid moments and just want to share them with a larger audience. i've also realized my need to have an office, because while i've crafted my classroom in my own colorful image, i cannot stay there to read your words. but home must be a sacred space of balance and practice - faith and health. both my faith and my health need a break from teaching sometimes, so there must be a physical space in which i get work done. the need to leave longwood is powerful, and will be even more so next year.

because i do so much after-school and above my union hours, i need home to just be home - but the time i spend out of work can and must become better utilized. it is all about moderation. i have become the extreme queen; i justify everything to myself as stress relief, and while healthy steps have been taken to move this in a new direction, i can improve. so to conclude, i am not a mess. i have acclimated myself very well to the demand of high needs and drama, but i must take precautions to be sure that i am safeguarding my heart and how much i give. not in order to give less, but to focus on replenishing the energy i exert. i need to improve my efficiency. i can do so much better and will need to keep pushing myself. just because no one else is hovering over me doesn't mean than i don't need to focus. this is just the beginning.

xoxo
reflective Lo

end of the year thoughts...

2011-06-23T20:01:00.005-04:00

first things first... it has been a marathon year and i was trying to sprint through the last few weeks. but one cool outcome that i got to see on my 31st birthday of all days was a video done by PBS News Hour about the Nothing Like My Home project that I teach every year. check it out. Nothing Like My Home: Bronx on PBS

it's very important to note that not everyone in the project was properly credited, so I wanted to take this moment to recognize Lori Grinker, who was the photographer/videographer who started the journey of discussing Iraqi refugees in my classroom with her vision. Also, Marieke van Woerkom, who collaborated with the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility to develop the Nothing Like My Home curriculum that I use. i wouldn't be teaching this unit every year were it not for their sense of urgency that the stories of refugees worldwide need to be told, and that this is a global human rights issue we must undertake.

i'll get back to you on more thoughts about the closing of my 3rd year of teaching once i've had a chance to process it a bit more. we just finished scoring regents today, and have graduation on Tuesday! can't wait to see those seniors strut across the stage, beaming with pride, some of them being the first in their families to achieve that diploma.

and i'd like to close with a love poem:

"the size of this"

i have been cresting
the crust of the earth, peering
into volcanoes trying
to find you, circumnavigating
the city to locate the
coordinates of your breath,
charting new territories in
dangerous waters to wield
your weapons. i lost
my compass but kept
walking toward the sun.

you surprised my eyes
out of their sockets.
ninja-quiet in your
ability to hunt me down,
reel me in like red snapper,
memorize my phone number
and my rising sign
between your palms,
you opened up a new
avenue for breathing.

you are a spring cruise
in a 61 lincoln -
convertible, suicide doors.
i want just 5 more miles,
ten more minutes to praise
your name like worship.
let the wind lift us from
this earthbound tragedy
and move together,
across beautiful borders,
across civil countries,
across boundaries.

-lmf (6-23-11 ... 6:43pm)

DYOs and OPP

2011-01-20T18:22:00.002-05:00

Somehow, Naughty by Nature has been dominating my mind lately. Last night, on the bus ride, we were trying to write an email and all I could do was name their songs. I'm not sure what this means, but I just wanted to share. Speaking of sharing, my amazing ELA coach asked me to write a paragraph about how our DYO assessments are impacting my classroom and instructional decisions. I'm happy to report that I can actually use the data to support the effectiveness of a strategy that I taught them.

Upon looking at my mid-year DYO results, I was immediately excited about the progress that my students had made in the organization dimension of our writing rubric. After my fall DYO, I had determined that my 9th graders needed assistance with structuring a paragraph -- as all they could tell me about a paragraph was that it was 5-7 sentences. This led to essays that were very disorganized. They met the paragraph length, but with disjointed sentences that didn't connect. What about the fact that a paragraph should be focused on a unifying idea? All pertaining to or proving one topic or point of view? Instead of focusing on the length of a paragraph, I decided to teach about the specific information that should be included in a well-developed paragraph. I used the strategy of teaching Topic-Support-Detail sentences to help students write more organized paragraphs, and we practiced recognizing these kinds of sentences in different genres of texts; then, we practiced writing TSD paragraphs in various contexts (for HW assignments, free-writes and also on unit tests/assessments). In the 9th grade growth report (pg 12 of my Cycle 2 report), I saw that students' biggest progress was in organization -- overall they improved from a grade-wide average of 2.5 to 2.8 in this area. What is most interesting about the data is that there was lots of movement from level 2 (approaching expectations) to level 3 (meeting expectations). 57 students were meeting expectations in Cycle 1, while 25 were approaching. In Cycle 2 there were 53 meeting and only 12 approaching, even though 25 fewer students took the assessment... comparing student to self (1st to 2nd DYO cycle), there was overall growth in both meaning and development. I interpret this data to mean that there has been an upward trend of students writing more well-organized essays. I attribute this to the direct instruction of a strategy that helped them with the skill of organizing a paragraph in a new way, and actually understanding the kind of information that should be in each paragraph. This is one way that I have utilized the data from my DYO assessments to inform my instructional decisions.

All I wanted to point out is that I used the same structure for this paragraph (though it's realllllly long) that I taught the kids. I've found that modeling my expectations by writing all of the assignments my students do is so incredibly helpful. Seriously. Probably the biggest lesson of this year.

Happy 2011!

xo
L

africa and fracking.

2010-12-01T21:30:00.002-05:00

My 1st period class is the envy of the rest of the 9th grade; we began a partnership with the Tribeca Film Institute in October, in which we visit them 3 times and view documentaries on various topics. The first was called A Small Act and was about an amazing true story of a Holocaust survivor who donated money to a child in Africa. The recipient of her funds started a scholarship organization for Kenyan students aspiring to go to secondary school. The film focused on how a small act of kindness can fuel much more hope and inspiration.

The 2nd film was called Gasland and it followed Josh as he traveled the country to learn more about hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) for natural gas. We saw people's faucets light on fire and learned about the health affects that this mining has had on the families whose properties are near the wells.

After viewing A Small Act, which was partially filmed in Kenya, I immediately thought of a youth I met when I was in Makindu, Kenya 5 years ago. He was young, bright, aspired to become a lawyer so that he could advocate for members of his community. I hadn't been in touch with him, so I decided to write to him and reconnect. Turns out he's studying law in university in Kenya. We've been in good touch ever since and the students are going to be writing him letters soon. I'm so proud of him!

After we saw Gasland, which ended with the urge to act, especially in New York, I set off to find out how I could ensure that fracking isn't occuring in my watershed. I found out yesterday that the State Assembly and Senate passed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for a year while research on its effects on the environment and drinking water.

Next, the kids are working on their own photo essays, about issues in their community. I'm so excited to see how their exposure to documentaries will shape the projects that they create. More soon from room 318. Happy World AIDS Day! I hope that you promoted HIV awareness today!

xo
Lauren

we all fall down, like toy soldiers.

2010-11-12T23:01:00.002-05:00

welcome to november, and a time of rebirth. november 18th, we will grab wings and fly to florida to talk about what we do. sometimes it's hard to give words to what we've created, but i feel confident in our skills to express life and learning. we have talked of codes, code-switching and the importance of understanding audience in our writing, we have given wiring to our words and are moving forward.

i feel like i'm in charge this year. my classroom is the domain that we traverse together and while it can sometimes be rocky terrain, i feel like we're climbing this mountain in unison. next year i'll climb that mountain in africa that has always called my name, but for now, my mountain is 6 flights of stairs at a bronx school i call home.

we open up with reading, then a reading response in which i hope that you reflect on the plot and how you see it. i see text to self and text to world connections and eventually, you will see them with me. i hope that the poetry will find you in the moments that you least expect it, and that publishing will become a common event. then we will start growing our skills as writers.

join me. keep making it visible with you words...

xo
lo

1st draft - welcome to my world.

2010-09-20T22:30:00.002-04:00

so, i am keeping a class notebook and writing new models of all of my assignments this year, instead of recycling old ones, because i'm actually changing up my essays and re-structuring a whole bunch. i'm also working on really digging into the writing process, reading strategies (from how to choose a book, to how to decode/figure out unfamilar language in your reading, to making connections between books and the world) and on higher level thinking. but how? why?

so, my first essay has changed dramatically, and i'm focusing on setting (i'm trying to connect each piece with a literary element that it utilizes). i've asked the students to introduce me to their world through the use of description of their "home" and we defined the many places that home could be, as well as brainstormed about things they could describe. so here goes my 1st draft, because i want to participate in the writing process with them.

feedback, as always, is encouraged (hint hint, students... use the positive sandwich)

They say home is where the heart is - so my home is everywhere. They also call me a prodigal daughter where I was raised - and I tell them that I have another home. Sometimes I say "I'm going home" when I mean Michigan, but home is also the Bronx. So what makes a home, anyway? Is it about the comfort of a space, or the people that surround you there? Is it about feeling like you belong there?
Today, I arrived here, said hello to a neighbor as we waited in the brown-tiled lobby for the elevator. we chatted lightly about having pizza for dinner and she said "come on up, you can have some!" as if I've lived here for years. I turn the key, eye the mezuzah on the door that i notice she kisses every time she enters the room - a small prayer for passing through.
The living room is bright and sunfilled - peaceful peach walls, a blue couch, photos of loved ones and books that line the walls. Post-its with positive reinforcements give me strength and energy; the air smells clean and fresh from the balcony door always being open (until winter, anyway). This, the balcony, is where I sit and pray, sit and chant, sit and wonder how my life will turn out. The flowers sway in the breeze and ask questions of the setting sun over the Hudson.
I pause this daydream to think about where I'm from vs. where I am. I am homeless, so the meaning of home is in flux. I am from burnt out houses and boarded up beuildings, fires and shootings more common than graduations. Funerals are more common than weddings there. Torn up concrete and stalled construction. The scent of tar and garbage festering fills my lungs, and car exhaust from the freeway veins glazes my vision. Here also is an undying spirit, the rose that grew from concrete, the people who refuse to give up and will continue to thrive, despite being given nothing.
The Bronx is rebuilding way faster than my city; there is movement here, while it is stagnant there. There is a promise here where there it's bleak. I have always run toward the fire, instead of away from it. I have always gone back to the flames to save one life, even if the cost is my own. I am drawn to people's struggles so that I may help them lift themselves to better lives, better homes, better worlds. So, in a sense, my home is wherever I'm needed, and wherever I can spread love.

--
the end (of the first draft, anyway...)

love,
lauren

my notebook, page 1

2010-08-30T13:24:00.002-04:00

ok, this is not rocket science and i learn over and over again that i need to use my resources wisely, instead of trying to recreate the wheel. while some of my lessons are damn original, while some of my practices are cool, i am part of a body of intelligent, sentient beings who try daily to connect with their students, and i am not a genius, or a pioneer. anyway, one practice i want to persist at this year, to see how it affects my organization and my students', is to keep a master notebook, which contains all classwork, vocabulary lists, free writes, basically anything the students write... i'll write too. many teachers have done this before and it will be a challenge for me to really keep up daily... to do each free-write and assignment before them, to know how it feels to do the work, and to be able to estimate the amount of time that it will take them in a more accurate way. our periods have been cut short this year, so every minute counts and i don't want to waste them. I also want to be clear about my expectations this year, and their notebooks were not up to par last year. I want to see if me modeling this notebook will help them keep up with and organize their work.

here is my intro page for the notebook (which i won't really advertise, we'll see if they read it):

Hey there. This is Lauren, one of your ELA teachers. This is my fall 2010 notebook. Everything you do for my class in your notebook, I will also do in this one. I am doing this because I want to show you that I'm invested in the work I give to you. I also want to be clear about my expectations of your notebook work, so I will show you here what I expect. Please know that the freewrites will be different, because that's your writing time to focus on what you think, believe, dream or draw. i'm going to try to keep up, but there will be times when I might ask for your help, too. We can help each other become more organized. I 'll be the first to admit that I need some help sometimes.

So yeah, come look for this notebook if you're absent, to figure out what you missed, and please let me know if i'm missing anything. I'm going to try and record all freewrites, class activities, brainstorms, graphic organizers and grammar lessons/practice here. I'm so looking forward to learning with you, class of 2014! Love, Lauren

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if only i could revamp my personal life the way i am my new classroom. i am chanting like crazy and praying for patience. i will need it, but life is beautiful and everything is perfect.

xoxo
lo

a retreat at home

2010-08-25T21:07:00.003-04:00

it was incredibly helpful to my planning for the year to have a department retreat in my classroom yesterday. we talked about where the dept has been and where we're trying to move this year. we drafted our own professional goals, and began talking about the concept of a "principle of practice" (roberta lenger-kang). i'll talk about that more once i get her okay, lol... but we began the day by doing a timeline of our reading - which would be a wonderful activity to start the year off with my kids. i wound my way from "where the wild things are" (from which I learned that creating your own worlds is sometimes necessary and that anything is possible), to "teaching to transgress" (from which i learned so much about teaching from the heart and always with critical consciousness embedded into the work).

i began by making a calendar of my year, knowing that i want to condense my units and add 2 more. i want well-planned, every-day-is-essential units this year, and 6 weeks is mad long. i need to plan in time for giving and going over feedback on writing work, and strengthen the connection between the students' independent reading and literary elements/vocabulary. we need to make genre a daily conversation, and the students should be able to speak and write thoughtfully about why a text is from a particular genre - which means i need to up the ante on identifying genre features. i also need to broaden the scope of the texts that i introduce and do much more comparing and contrasting, to solidify form in their minds.

the idea of starting large - with what i want students to be able to do and understand, and working back to figure out which smaller skills they need to be able to tackle the large task - helps me incredibly in my planning. as s pointed out, it's similar to the concept of backward design (which i'm sure all you MACers are learning), in which you begin the product/assessment in mind. i do design my class that way, but i'm always struck by the fact that it's so difficult to assess true learning. who am i to judge if they have really mastered a skill? it's part of my job, and this is why i try to provide as many ways as i can for them to demonstrate to me what they know. i try to focus on progress and not on deficit, and find that they want to learn, subconsciously.

next steps - defining and designing my classroom roles and the job application process for such roles that i'm implementing in ELA, figuring out advisory's first few weeks, making the 9th grade intro zine, thinking about independent reading projects and daily logging/journaling, organizing and cataloguing my classroom library so ppl can begin "checking out" books. checking in with g to begin planning our class. making posters and bulletin boards (my favorite!!!! such a nerd)

i have my work cut out for me. but as always, with the chill of a late-august evening, i'm getting ready to begin anew. i love the prospect of each new year, the growth i've seen in myself and the challenges ahead. despite a crazy summer, i really do love my life and am blessed in so many ways. but my job is a big blessing, for real. so are my loved ones. thanks, universe. i'm trying to give back that good energy you supply me with every morning.

xo
lo

as always: a writer in praxis?

2010-07-23T19:36:00.002-04:00

i have always said that writing is a lifestyle, not a profession. i have chosen a profession that allows me to engage in my own writing, and service others in finding their voice. but this has never meant that i have ceased to be a writer. make no mistake, i still have hidden blogs and secret chapbooks that i publish to close circles. i will always photocopy zines and press the warm copies to me before collating and stapling. producing my own history is deeply embedded in my marrow. somewhere along the way, i lost my thirst to make my own name known, but this does not mean that i don't still read voraciously, in search of the root. my writing forces me to face myself in the mirror: magnifying my faults, loving my idiosynchrocies, trying to calibrate my heart to the rhythm of my community, forcing me to keep searching, to never sit idle in complacency.

practice what you preach they say, and i say. so i am deeply engrossed in revision, in taking those tongues i sometimes speak and fleshing out their forks. i remind myself in the summer that i am many other selves besides a teacher. listen to janelle monae's "many moons" if you don't quite feel me. i am brooklyn, am BX, am southwest D, am maple and dexter, am abbot elementary, am community, am dancer, am poet, am healer, am masseuse, therapist, activist, theorist, am femme and butch in a single cell, am party, am baby mama, am noogit, i am part of la isla de verdad, UP 4 life, LPS all day, i am the roundtable, the harlem renaissance, the boogie down and downtown, i am intergallactic, am vampire, am zombee, am space and time continuum, am tears in time and the jurassic period. i am 2pac and biggie, dilla, eazy e, left-eye, aliyah, jam master J, i am emily e, dave, dustin and my own fallen angels. i am buddha and peace personified. i am water and air. soy el corazon. watashi wa omoshiroii desu ne.

how many sides does your prizm have? i haven't yet discovered all of my facets, and i hope that i keep growing, becoming an endless valley of geodes. there is so much that i want to become and have yet to live. will i have time? my arms are open to the life that embraces me. there is nowhere to move but forward. i will go as far as my breath takes me.

freire speaks of praxis: the beautiful symphony of theory and practice. i strive to live my life in a way that i am simultaneously thinking, reflecting and acting. it is a cycle, a process, and each day we are a work in progress. i will fall from your pedestal, as certain as the sun cresting an eastern horizon, waning western. i am in freefall right now: busy rebuilding myself in cocoon and fearful of what my shell says about my seismic splits. we are our harshest critics and i am venomous in my own veins sometimes. but i break out each year, hit prospect avenue and remember my resume.

objective: the elevation of today's generation, if i can make them listen. (pac)

experience: if love is the answer, what the f*** is the question? (invincible)

references: the eastern wind, western rain, southern snow and northern hail. midwestern grit, new york grime.

this is my time.

xo
lo

sittin on the dock of the bay...

2010-07-03T10:37:00.002-04:00

i am thinking of the ebb and flow that we experience in our lives, with the influx and exodus of people. i have not mastered the ability to communicate at all times (and have inhibited communication in staunch protest... aka fb, just joined in april, twitter i'm strugglin with), and sometimes it's important to pull back. one thing that i've learned about my life is that i must force myself to rest. i expend more energy than i ever knew i had inside of me, and do really leave work in june feeling like a wrung-out, overused dish rag. i have given myself to the point of exhaustion. i just can't give any more. it's time to close up shop. just be me, for me. and nobody else.

as i continue to grow on the glittered path i see before me (for i am already precious and soooo blessed), i need to remember to replenish along the way. i cannot continue to disregard myself during the school year and then need to collapse when summer finally crawls over the horizon. i have made large strides in taking better care of myself (quitting smoking, going to the gym with some regularity, being more active) and i have a partner in crime who gives me new perspective and loves me regardless, but challenges me. i learn so much from him, and from everyone who has ever loved me. it causes me to ask, why do we create so much senseless drama in our lives? we can withstand it, learn from it, if we only step back and not overreact.

anyway, back to other ppl. i used to say "the good ones come back around", and natasha negated with "not always. you have to live everything for each moment, in the present, not what it was or could be." now, at the cliff that is this saturday morning, overlooking the surf off an island called truth, i say that it can be both. sometimes ppl take leave of my life, but they return. if not physically, then online, in a book, a photograph, a painting, a video, a dream or a song. i will always have the memories of these moments i've spent with you, and i can also re-create a situation to conjure your energy.

yes, i can read and interpret energy. i am an airbender.

xo
lo

fly into a merciless sun, steal you the sky...

2010-06-26T22:21:00.002-04:00

cos it's almost over, and i love you even more now. you've made it through a school year with me. and i listen to the same songs, which now have a new meaning, due to the new people who have found them and love them along with me. i remember when i used to be a music snob. an indie rock queen, i would be mad when other people found out about the band that i faithfully listened to... in secret. "i knew about them first..." i would lament, as they were overplayed on the radio songs i had loved for longer than most. now, i get excited to share music with other people, to have them discover how it's changed me. this is a good metaphor for how i've changed from 20 to 30.

that's right, folks. i turned 30 a week ago. there is so much that i have to reflect on, but a part of growing older is realizing when to keep things quiet. much of my learning has been of a personal nature, and this is a space for professional ponderings. while i will always walk the line between the two (and probably cross it quite a few times), i am making the effort to control which information i choose to share. but i am always learning, growing and i truly believe that we meet people who test our faith, shake our morals from the core. if we are here after the destruction to pick up the pieces together, then it is real.

i am not far away enough from the school year to properly reflect on what happened. there were great units, lessons, days, moments, photos, videos and songs to document our work. i will forever remember 9:30am poison dance parties and poetry slams, jerry springer episodes with greek gods, our Iraqi refugee events, our newspaper, our magazine article in a Dutch publication, the NY Post article about BK and your letters back to the reporter, the code essays, stereotype projects, comics you created, poems you wrote, thoughts you shared with me. i write to students always, even though they are not the correct audience right now. can you tell that i miss them already? it's only been 2 weeks.

so much ahead. so much planning and re-thinking, resting and recalibrating for what i already know is going to be a tough year. a shift in the community means that we all need to stop and think. re-define what it is we do, why and how. i love the collective process of figuring it out, though, which i hope to be helpful with in the fall. i love where i work, and the work we engage in. may it continue to grow as a collaborative journey... right now, it's time to close down shop and just do me.

soundtrack to summer
- dead prez - happiness
- kool and the gang - celebrate
- juelz santana - to the crib
- drake - say something
- outkast - aquemini
- mystic - neptune's jewels
- goapele - closer
- kalae all day - brooklyn boy
- lauryn hil - to zion
- jay z - venus vs. mars
- alicia keys - love is blind
- us muziq - killswitch
- jill scott - golden
- otis redding - that's how strong my love is
- jackson 5 - never can say goodbye

xo
lo

Saturday School Shuffle

2010-06-05T12:11:00.002-04:00

Today is the perfect day for the beach. We are sitting and working on essays in a semi-AC-induced coma. What I love about Saturday school is it's a chill but focused atmosphere. I have a lot of students who come to my class, which I hear is rare, and who really want to work on the assignments I create. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from the older students in the school, who I usually only interact with in a hallway exchange of love. What I love about BK is its family feel. Sometimes I struggle with the cold and calculated ideas of a school, and how some schools feel like jail. I believe that it is possible to have both academic rigor, to push students to think and work hard, and also to be loving and caring toward them. Caring for them, and being open about that, is not a weakness.

So, instead of going to the gym after work, I feel that I have earned the right to go sit on the beach and bask in sun. I deserve a reflection eternal, sankofa (looking back to move forward), a sigh of relief at the end of a hard week and before the beginning of the last difficult week of school. It is important for me to take time for myself to just breathe and be, to nourish my body and my mind with the company of quality people. In these past few months, I've been spastic and lethargic at the same time, but I have much to accomplish this summer. In the way of resting, growing, and preparing myself for an even more successful year next year. More end of the year reflections to come, as my students will be grading and assessing my class, too, which always brings out the deep thoughts from within.

Last night we talked about the need to create a new language, because some of our words have lost their meaning, and because there are not enough words to reflect the myriad emotions we deal with daily. Like, for instance, what's between like and love? There is a vast empty space where we need a common vocabulary to match the gradients of our hearts.

Keep my students in your thoughts as they push hard to try and finish out their 9th grade year with strength and focus. I've watched them grow so much and am not ready to let them go. That's all for now... to be continued...

xo
L

stakes is high

2010-05-08T00:52:00.003-04:00

wow, i hadn't realized that it's been 3 months since i've updated. that is a testament to being incredibly busy. a veteran teacher and good friend said to me last year, "don't get involved in too much" and i said "uh huh", and then started the Live Poets Society, became an assistant coach on the softball team, and started working with United Playaz. any one of these extra-curricular activities can be a full-time job on its own. i love each of them and find specific qualities in all of these students and co-workers that bring me back to vitality.

we are preparing for a very important event around the school and trying to put our best foot forward. we want to show off what we do well and be honest about the areas in which we need to improve. i know that i am reflective and able to talk very passionately about what i do, but i am worried about my own areas of weakness. my organization, my filing, my grading procedures all need revision. my classroom is lively and full of love, but it is not the well-oiled machine i wish it was. i am always working on it, but wish me luck this week.

more soon.

xo
lo

2nd semester - marking a moment.

2010-02-07T15:35:00.005-05:00

i am beginning to understand why many teachers stay in this district for 2 or 3 years and are out. never one to abandon a challenge (and usually the one to run toward it), i knew this when i signed up. what i didn't know was how large my responsibilities would be outside of my classroom, and how much that would affect my focus and my day. here's what i've learned: it takes an incredible amount of work to keep a school functioning, and in a small school, it takes every single member of the team working to the point of exhaustion.

another unfortunate thing that i've learned is that what our school does best (loves, nutures, encourages, becomes family to many students) is not assessible and thus not important to the construct that we work within. we are graded (quite literally, thanks bloomberg and klein) on our test scores and graduation rates, not on how effectively we provide an environment that students want to come to, stay way after school and come in on weekends... not on how effectively we can reach kids who are on the verge of or a part of the criminal justice system... not on how we work our asses off to find ways for the kids to engage, connect and actually learn the material in a relevant way (by talking about the bronx river and how we impact that ecosystem in science, by talking about math and problem practice as building neural pathways in the brain, by talking about how what we learn from cultures and civilizations of the past can impact decisions we make today, by talking about art, film and music as ways to deal with some of the stress of your life).

we have been working ridiculously hard in the ELA dept to make our work meaningful to the students and ALSO build in the skills that they need to pass our state exams. to help them question and analyze, read books, videos and other media with a critical eye. but we struggle with absenteeism, low monthly attendance, overage students, and those to whom the street's call is far louder in their ears. our small victories with individual kids are often not quantized in the ways that matter, on our school report card and in the quality review we undergo each year.

but it does not mean that the work is not worth it, or that i'm packing up and leaving. it is just marking a moment about how hard the work is, but how important it is to keep getting up the morning and trying my best.

xo
lo

Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made...

2010-01-23T11:28:00.004-05:00

aww, there's nothing like kids singing alicia keys to brighten my saturday morning and remind me of the importance of arts and music education in public schools. look at how much these kids love to sing. yeah, ps 22 in staten island and their teacher, Mr. B!

i found this video through donorschoose.org, which has been a really great resource for me this year. i've actually obtained a video camera for my classroom through this website and am in the process of putting together some really great work of my students, though it will take many consent forms until i'm able to share it this way.

my art teacher and good friend turned me onto this site and i'm hoping to also use it to get more independent reading books this spring. i'm also changing the way that we interact with books 2nd semester, by trying to have the kids use their independent reading books to write literary letters and let other readers know about their books. i'd also like to have them identifying literary elements in the writing of their books and deepening their reading experience. we're putting on a poetry reading in my room on Monday, so i'll be sure to send updates about their success! and you better believe we'll be rolling the video camera.

happy grading to everyone. we have our Regents exams next week, so it's a bit of a stressful time around the halls. i needed to remind myself this week that i must take care of myself first. get your rest, relaxation and take a break, my fellow teachers.

xo
L

long time no blog!

2010-01-13T23:27:00.003-05:00

hey there, folks of the interwebs!

it has been a minute since i've written, personally or professionally. aside from lesson plans and worksheets, of course, as those are the daily weapons i wield to ward off evil. lol. let's see... we've published a newspaper and started our stereotypes/American Born Chinese graphic novel unit, which is fabulous so far. i gave my 2nd periodic assessment today... (sigh of relief). oh! and thanks to my amazing 13 year old cousin, i have about 20 new independent reading books in my library, donated by her and her friends in Ann Arbor to my students in the Bronx. contact me if you have young adult books that you no longer need! we had our first amazing, totally-silent-with-every-kid-engrossed-in-reading day on Monday! small successes mean so much.

in extra-curricular news, we're working on making the LPS site into a lit mag, as well as running newspaper as an after-school club (1st meeting tomorrow), and hosting a poetry reading in February. fundraising for Detroit has hit a stand-still, as there's been so much else on my plate that i can't help the students plan effectively for a large fundraiser. we'll see what happens... it's a work in progress and hopefully the election of officers will help the LPS crew to step up to the plate.

i've also been working with this awesome organization at our school, United Playaz. i am learning a lot from the two leaders and the students about how to run a student-centered organization and how to make the students feel invested and accountable toward the community they build together. we're taking students to a youth conference on Saturday -- so excited for that! we're also going to run a clothing/supplies drive for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. prayers and love go out to everyone there.

much love and updates at 11!

xo
lo

2nd draft - freedom poem

2009-11-15T16:40:00.003-05:00

We, who have never been.

“miss, that’s racist!”
they say, without knowing
how deep the puncture
wound really goes.
our lungs are collapsing
as we search for breath
but pull in water and wool,
our eyes swollen from salt
that has never flavored
our own distaste
for another race.

they call us free
but my heartbeat
contradicts the simile:
freedom is like an eagle
soaring upon the
crisp, November wind.
this has never been.

we live in meter and time,
spill out our own
rhythm and rhyme, and
off---beat
sta –
ca-
to –
or a sick syncopation
or simpatico
is always suspect.

tell me
about freedom
again.

i want to hear the fiction
we paint on the backdrop
of our lives to cover up
the true story.
these lies we hold to be
self-evident, i am pleading
for evidence of our guilt
to be brought before
the court, for the broken
backs to be bandaged
in retrospect.

but we turn the cheek
to what we see
and retell the story
that we’ve been trained with.
let freedom ring, as if its ever
filled our avenues with its
beautiful song, of sorrow
we know, of free we can
only hold onto the bars
and hope.

everyday a siren sounds
to pull you over, you;
the usual suspect.
everyday a block traversed,
a stop and search,
tear you down on
every corner uptown because
you are young, black and
obviously dangerous.

what did you know and
when did you know it?
tell me about the first time
the dream had a crack in it,
had a rip and tear so small
that you just swear
you could overlook it.

this dream deterred
has never been built
on a belief of equality,
just a borrowed billboard
slogan to help us buy
into our own brand
of bigotry.

(still sounds awkward to end it this way... i'll be posting it to my students this week on IPG to elicit their help!)

xo
Lauren

Poetry Takes Us By Storm!!!

2009-11-07T21:35:00.003-05:00

Wow. We have had massssssive issues surrounding technology this fall, which I don't wish to get into. Suffice to say, there has been a long delay and relatively small amount of students getting into the IPG site this fall, but I must remind myself that it's often about quality and not quantity -- because they are posting some work that is deep, honest, and risky. I am so proud of them, and it's been inspiring me to write, too.

Thank goodness, because I have a reading coming up downtown on Nov 21st, so I have to read something, and something new! So, here's something new. I am horrible at writing political poems, but have a lot to say to the concept of freedom right now. I was inspired by Brian, one of my students, and a poem he posted on IPG -- "Some Kind of Monster". I'm thinking of reading his poem with mine (or having someone else read it for him, or have video of him reading it himself to play there?), because they are so closely related. I read this poem of his last spring and it wasn't even on my mind when I began writing my own. I can't post his piece due to student privacy issues, but contact me via email and I can share part of it!

Oh, and I'm posting this because I want your feedback -- so give it to me! Tear it up, it's a first draft!

xo
Lo

We, who have never been.

they call us free
but my heartbeat
contradicts the simile:
freedom is like an eagle
soaring upon the
crisp, November wind.
this has never been.
we live in meter and time,
rhythm and rhyme, and
off---beat sta – ca—to –
or a syncopation or simpatico
is always suspect.

tell me
about freedom
again.

i want to hear the fiction
we paint on the backdrop
of our lives to cover up
the true background.

1865 to 2009 –
are we off that?

so we turn the cheek
to what we see
and retell the story
we’ve been trained with.
yet everyday a siren blares
pulling someone over;
the usual suspects.

everyday a block walked,
a stop and search,
tear you down because
you are young, black and
obviously dangerous.

what did you know and
when did you know it?
tell me about the first time
the dream had a crack in it,
had a rip and tear
that you just swear
you could overlook.

this dream deterred
has never been built
on a belief of equality,
just a borrowed billboard
slogan to help us buy
into our bigotry.

“miss, that’s racist!”
they say, without knowing
how deep the puncture
wound really goes.
our lungs are collapsing
as we search for breath
but pull in water and wool,
our eyes swollen from salt
that has never flavored
our own distaste
for another race.

fake bakesales

2009-10-25T11:12:00.003-04:00

Trying to push your students to get to the next level is often really difficult. Especially when they're your babies and they're now in 10th grade and no longer in your class, so you don't have the daily influence like you used to. For my Live Poets, it became incredibly clear to me that they need a push when we were planning our first fundraiser of the year. They were like: "We're doing a bake sale, next Wednesday, we'll all bring stuff -- break!" and they ran out of the huddle like Tate Forcier - a little too quickly. I decided to deliberately sit back, watch and see what happened. Ooooh, it was painful for me, a self-confessed control freak, to not remind them and call home to tell their parents about it and bake 5 batches of brownies to help the bake sale happen. I made a conscious decision this year that THEY are going to step up the responsibility level. Sometimes they need to watch it fail in order to realize how to make it succeed.

So, the day came and no one remembered to bring in their baked goods. Masters of the last-minute switch-up, they were prepared to run to the grocery store, buy myriad Entemann's cakes and call it a bake sale. I pulled them all together and met with them instead. I pretended to be very upset, but I think they saw my smile, and they knew it was an opportunity for me to get up on my soapbox. But I surprised them again. They're used to being yelled at outside of school when they make a mistake and all of the calm that I bring does not undo the rest of their lives.

(stepping up onto the imaginary soapbox)

"Guys, what happened?"
"We forgot. We're so sorry, Lauren."
"Don't apologize to me. Talk to me about what you'll do next time so this doesn't happen again."
"Well, we need to each know what everybody is bringing in, and we need to remind each other."
"Okay... so..."

Thing 1: "I'm making brownies."
Jazzy: "I can't bake, so I'll help with advertisements."
Lechuga: "Me too!"
Eazy E: "I'll make the signs... it should have the new logo on it."
Yung LA: "Yo, cake. White cake, chocolate frosting. Tell my dad, will you? He won't believe that I have to bake a cake for school."
Jay-Arr: "Cookies... chocolate chip. They're my mom's favorite."
Jazzy: "Can you make that red velvet cake?"
Me: "Sure. I'll also get change for the customers... what else?"
Princess P: "Mami and I will buy some of those Entemann's cakes, everyone loved those last time and they're a good profit."
lols
O.J.: "What can I do? Can we do a push-up contest to attract attention?!? I got this!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Jazzy: "Spread the word. Maybe we can all put it on our away msgs a few days before, to let everyone know, plus posters and signs."
Yung LA: "I'll tell the Prez and P will tell Mami about it. "
Princess P: "What about drinks? Oh and plates and stuff?"
Me: "I have plates, napkins, silverware... maybe the Prez can bring drinks?"
O.J.: "I'll ask him on aim tonight."
Me: "Okay, so we got this. Next Thursday. Oh, who's gonna fill out the fundraising request?"
Jay-Arr: "I gotchu, Lauren."

(fin)

It was only after this conversation took place and the REAL bake sale got planned that I gave them their University of Michigan Education hats. They were wilin, and every single one of them wore them to school the next day. When asked if they wanted to go back to Detroit the next year, or go somewhere else, because the AMC has been moved, they didn't even flinch. "Um, we have to see grandma! And we never saw Ann Arbor, and where you live, so we gotta go back."

"So, let's do this."
Break huddle. Spread offense. We got this.

xo
Lo

A letter from 2001.

2009-09-12T12:06:00.003-04:00

I always think it's important to talk about 9/11, and to remember. Watching the towers fall from the front steps of my apartment building is an image that is forever burned into my mind. This year in my classroom, I read a poem that I wrote a few years back to my students, and asked them for any images that stood out. L said "the part about seeing tanks on the street, feeling so close to war and that you called this crime scene home". We broke that line down a little bit and I asked about why I would call it a crime scene. J responded "because it is a crime that all of those people had to die, for oil".

Now, as a teacher, I have shifted the way that I speak about my experiences, and my after-thoughts. It is not my job to indoctrinate my students with my political beliefs, and it is interesting to hear them say that Bush was behind the attacks. I wonder about the origins of those statements and I need to be careful to frame my words with "some people believe it was like this... others argue that it was like this." I do not seek to raise parrots in my classroom, but want these kids to listen to information, ask questions and make their own decisions about what they believe (about 9/11 and everything else we talk about).

Most of my students were 6 when it happened. I was 21, senior year of college; I was working as an RA in the dorms at the New School. we had just opened up a dorm three blocks away from the Twin Towers. I was at that dorm two days earlier, commenting on the view of the towers from the western windows. But whether or not my students remember, I still think it's important to remind them. (and sometimes, I learn how personally they were affected by it... all my love to your famly, I.) It is a massive moment in our history, when some would say the U.S. was dethroned from our self-appointed dynasty.

While I fervently desired to teach before 9/11, the urgency increased afterward, because I realized how closely ignorance is related to a reactionary response to a situation like this. My prayers and blessings to the families who are remembering their lost loved ones, and who do not have the luxury of forgetting this day.

I was searching for words yesterday, and a quick google search of myself reminded me of what I had to say about 9/11 in 2001. I was so much more eloquent then, so I am re-posting... it is 8 years old, but it's surprising how relevant it still is, because we are still at war. Let's bring our soldiers home and worry about our domestic issues, America. Let us no longer be the oppressor the world over.

xo
L

Letter to a girl at school
By Lauren Michele Fardig

This is a letter I wrote in response to a classmate who had written an article for Newsweek titled "The Day The World Changed, I Did, Too" (Oct. 1, 2001 issue, p. 9). It was about her feeling patriotic and pro-war because she felt that a war focused on terrorists is the only way to keep "us" safe. I have to ask, "Who is ‘us’?" Anyway, I know that it has been a month and that everyone is "trying to get back to normal" but that is impossible for me.

October 12, 2001, 4:29 a.m.

Rachel,
Hey there. I feel weird typing out a letter to you, but for some reason I’ve been doing all of my writing on the computer lately, which is unlike me, but oh well. I’ll take writing in whatever form it wants to come in these days.

It’s been difficult for me to write during the past month. I’ve been writing a lot, but it’s not the peaceful release that it used to be. Writing itself has become an act filled with anguish – an act of resistance – because sometimes I feel like words are the only weapons I have (and would want to have) so I must use them wisely, especially in times like this.

I want to talk to you about your article, because I think it’s very honest and talks very emotionally about how you’re feeling regarding the World Trade Center attacks. I too denounce violence against Arab-American and perceived Arab people in this country and abroad, but I must say that I am strongly anti-war. I don’t believe that I am confusing justice and revenge when I make this statement and I don’t believe in complete pacifism in this circumstance whatsoever. I do think that the people responsible for the hijackings should be brought to justice, but I don’t think that a focused war on terrorists is something that will keep anyone the safest.

I heard on the radio today that despite this week’s bombings in Afghanistan, bin Laden and the leaders of the Taliban are still safe. I know that they have already begun and it will be difficult (if not impossible) to convince the American government to stop bombing, but I do think that the people going to be most affected by these bombings are the Afghan civilians. I think that releasing some sanctions on Middle Eastern countries combined with the U.S.’s participation in the creation and implementation of an international criminal court would be a much more humanitarian option to bombing countries in which a fundamentalist terrorist group resides. Knowing bin Laden’s history as a CIA operative in the 80’s, I don’t doubt that intelligence has some reasons for sincerely believing his involvement, which they are not explicitly relating to the people. But until we know that, and taking into account the video that was released last Sunday of bin Laden speaking, I am not fully convinced that he is responsible.

That aside, I do want you to know that it has been extremely important to me to think critically about U.S. involvement in the Middle East AND allow myself the space to feel and deal with the grief and sorrow of knowing that thousands of people died a mile from my house. The plane crashes were intentional, well executed, despicable and utterly unjustifiable. I do see how the U.S.’ imperialist and interventionist role in foreign policy, not only in the Middle East but in Nicaragua, Cuba, Panama, El Salvador, Vietnam, Puerto Rico, and all over Africa and Latin America, has fueled large amounts of hatred toward the American government from many Third World countries. I do understand how people at school could say things like, "This is our own fault" and such, though I think it’s a really simplistic and reactionary way to put things into perspective. No one on those planes, in those buildings, or trying to save those lives deserved to die, and no matter what role the U.S. played in instigating such animosity in the hearts of others, that will not change. However, I think it’s really dangerous to set up an "Us vs. Them" mentality.

I know you were speaking about terrorists as the "them," but you have to understand how angry people get when a country supposedly based on freedom and democracy has oppressed them for so long. Freedom and democracy for whom? Certainly not those who are not white, not Christian, not straight, without money, illiterate and living in Third World countries. I have found it hard to find faith in patriotism in these past few weeks. Even though I was very unsure, very afraid, very confused, one thing I knew is that this was not an attack on "freedom itself" as George W. Bush stated. So many of the people working in the WTC were not free. There were more than 500 undocumented Mexican workers employed at Windows on the World who were killed, whose families are afraid to come forward with their names for fear that they will be deported under more strict INS regulations. The World Trade Center was built on a slave burial ground. We are living in a country that still thought of black people as three-fifths of a person not even 150 years ago.

I do not find solace in believing that my country will protect me. I am more concerned for the people who live in this country who are racially profiled everyday, who are incarcerated for petty drug charges and serving life sentences because they are non-white, who are beaten to death for being outwardly homosexual or trans. When I think about current safety regulations, I have to think about *who* is being made to feel more safe and just what we are defending when we strut off to war. I live my everyday life with a certain amount of privilege due to the color of my skin, the level of my education, my ability to be in a private, liberal arts college to study what brings my life passion and meaning. I do not have to think about where I am placed in the world because no one demands it of me. But I demand it of myself, because as a writer, an educator, and a white, queer, working-class woman, I strongly believe that no one can be truly human until we are all human.

We must stop dehumanizing others, and I fear that setting up an Us vs. Them dichotomy severely risks essentializing certain ethnic and religious groups as a "them" (I’m not implying that you said that, just that it could be interpreted that way). When you said, "These terrorists despise our very existence" who is the "our" you are speaking about? The U.S. is a very diverse country of all races, sexes, sexualities, classes, national origins, and religious affiliations. While it is easy to think that this was an attack on America as a whole, from the international news I’ve read in the course of my life, I do believe that many people across the world have a strong understanding of the difference between the American people and the American government. I can definitely read the symbolism in the WTC attacks as a direct hit on capitalism itself, on the invincibility that the U.S. formerly believed itself to have, on the arrogance of our false generosity in aiding under-developed countries with our own economic interests in mind.

Anyway, these are some thoughts that your article provoked in me. I definitely understand your reaction toward what’s been happening all around us, but I do think it’s important to place this action in its historical context in order to try to understand that it did not happen randomly, out of the blue without any provocation or pressure. It is all too easy to try to turn it into a battle of "good" vs. "evil", but that is irrelevant in this case. While the U.S. had a major involvement in ending Nazi takeover in Europe during World War II, we were simultaneously placing Japanese Americans in internment camps in Northern California. We have our own history of violence and genocide, which I know you did not dispute, but it is important to ask how retaliation is going to keep us safe, when it is only endangering the lives of many other innocent people.

At a march on Sunday, I listened to the father of one of the people killed in the WTC speak about how it would not make his grief subside to bomb anyone, thinking of all the other fathers who may lose sons and daughters at our hands. My current focus is definitely on education and how we can work to bring in alternative media and ideas, how we can work to use our experience to aid in the fight for social justice and change. I strongly believe that peace and diplomacy, instead of economic and military force, are necessary in order to change the circumstances that brought this attack to the U.S. Returning to normalcy is simply not an option for me; there is a heightened sense of urgency in my struggles to work for social change. I am deeply upset and entrenched in all of this and think it so crucial to bring writing, teaching and learning to the table as ways to heal, collectively. I’d like to keep on dialoguing with you about this. Thanks for your honesty and analysis.

Love,
Lauren

back to it....

2009-08-14T14:11:00.002-04:00

there has been so much swirling in my head as i prepare for a new year. how do i take the successful moments of last year and build on them (Iraqi refugee event; stereotype poems, stories, reflections; Pedro, Greek/Roman myspace projects)? which units need a lot of work (Egypt/Meso, Greece/Rome)? how do i integrate more direct instruction of concrete reading and writing skills? where does computer literacy and college summit fit in?

here's some ideas that are currently marinating:

- independent reading time - 3 days a week, freewrite - 2 days a week
- strengthen format of writing workshop - workshop every 3-4 weeks
- reading discussion groups - The Reluctant God, Tales of the Sufis, ABC, Pedro
- annotated bibliography for books read, to carry throughout BKHS
- habits of mind/work
- classroom procedures/notebooks
- rigid AIM office hours
- monthly communication with parents (newsletters)
- setting up an email account with every student
- extra credit for joining and posting on LPS
- stereotypes - theme of last year. theme of this year? connecting thread?

then there's the more concrete structure of my units. 6 six-week units allows me to cover what i need with regard to connection to global, and it also creates a solid framework so that i can integrate computer programs into the final product. there is enough time to have major reading/analyzing activities, a polished writing product and gain experience with a computer skill, demonstrating their ability to use the program in their final draft of their writing product.

i need to re-draft my syllabus and re-think day 1. creating community contracts, ice-breaker, scavenger hunt around the room (aww, i remember that Michael Jackson was in my scavenger hunt last year... sad). i REALLY want to put out the intro to 9th grade zine this year, and i REALLY want to give them a "Day 1 Survival Guide" as a model, so that's what i'm going to try to work on next week... along with the Detroit DVD. gray and i have really made it something special.

as one more personal project, i'm also going to publish a poetry chapbook this fall. i've accomplished almost everything on my 2009 top ten (to-do list!) and i would like the world to see some of my writing. much of it follows me into the same ravines i've always written from, but again, it could be a good model for students who wish to do the same with their work. and i do crave the warm photocopies of a fresh zine pressed against you... there is nothing like that sense of satisfaction.

wish me luck as a get the teaching itch back... as if it ever left.

xo
lo

You already snow... LPS took Detroit by storm!

2009-07-23T11:27:00.004-04:00

Detroit was live!! The Live Poets Society kicked butt and took names (and aimflows) at the Allied Media Conference last week!

For all of the planning that we did to make this trip happen, for everything I envisioned it to be, I never imagined it would work out as well as it did. We had such a great trip on a thousand different levels, and the unique personalities of each young person mixed with the personalities of the chaperones was an accidental alchemy that made for an incredibly exciting week.

Here's a preview of one of our many hilarious moments. The kids had been singing this one particular, explicit R & B song the entire trip and this video was what happened when we asked them to sing something, anything else. Enjoy Mary!

As you can see, we had mad fun. Check out more of our photos and videos on http://livepoetssocietybx.ning.com. From the 12-hour sing-along on the way there, to the surprise U.S. Muziq performance at the D-Tension open mic, to being celebrities of the conference due to their zeal, to all the inside jokes and belly laughs, impromptu performances, nail night, push-up contests, bball games and flame-wars, to the more serious work we did (conferencing with the MAC students via video and conference call, our spectacular workshop at the AMC, and the US vs. South Africa freestyle we participated in)... I will never forget this trip, and no one who went will, either. The students were begging to stay longer, and I watched them network with other youth like pros. It was so overwhelmingly successful that they were immediately trying to think about fundraising ideas and ways to improve for next year. We WILL be back at the AMC, you already snow!

I'm so proud of my students. They really went above and beyond my expectations, whether they were speaking to someone at the conference, graciously thanking the person responsible for our housing accommodations, or chatting with my grandmother. They got to meet practically my entire family, and see my city, which was so special to me. I am so grateful to everyone who had a hand in supporting this project and bringing one of my dreams to fruition. The Live Poets Society is taking off and I'm so excited to see where it will take us!

Much love,
Lo

Why Detroit?

2009-06-24T14:49:00.002-04:00

(a mission statement in-progress for my Detroit trip with students... your feedback is welcome, please go check out our Ning! Address below)

Hey there,

So, as I'm on AIM with one of my Detroit project super-stars, emailing someone about our lodging, and working on updating the Ning we started, I'm feeling the tangible taste of this adventure. Backing up a bit, this is a trip that I conceived in my head before I ever taught at BK. I have attended the Allied Media Conference in Detroit for a few years now, and also the first ever conference, then called the Bowling Green Zine Conference, in 1999 on the campus of BGSU, in Ohio. I have self-published my own writing for nearly 11 years through "zines", or independently published mini-magazines of poetry, personal essays and imagery (usually collaged and photocopied, distributed by independent distributors and by me). I found my voice through this publishing and still cherish the connections I made with other writers and artists across the world. I have a strong bias in the power of self-made media to transform the lives of youth -- I lived this transformation and became a conscious activist and teacher because of it.

This conference is a phenomenal place where activists meet up, share their work, and build communities of folks working on media production from a grassroots, social-justice angle. In Detroit in particular, they're looking to build an alternate economy that does not rely on the floundering auto industry, but is rooted in technology and the future. Teaching youth media-making skills allows them to find their own voices, and broadcast their thoughts. Whether by radio show, song, poem, photograph, film, music video, zine, art installation, graf piece... giving my students the tools to be able to make their creativity into a product will benefit their lives after high school, that can help connect them to a career that they love and can prosper in -- this is my goal. To help them understand that media-making is empowering AND can take them places.

Broadcasting is just the beginning, though. Having an exchange of thoughts and ideas that is constant, way past the conference this summer, that becomes a part of the school culture, and their writing process. Connecting with our incredibly inspiring art teacher to have this continue as an online component of a literary/art mag, making this project a truly student-run production, and Detroit an annual trip. Integrating this into my classroom, making technology and media-making a part of what I teach -- changing the shape of the ELA classroom to really focus on what communication looks like now. These are some larger goals we're working on.

Check out our fledgling site -- which will begin its chrysalis this week as the students begin to work on it...

And also check the Allied Media Conference -- we're SOOO looking forward to the opportunity to be in Detroit.
www.alliedmediaconference.org

Wish us luck!
-Lauren

getting around firewalls...

2009-06-12T01:15:00.002-04:00

hmm, so interesting when i'm asking my students for the newest proxy servers... and when i can't pull this video off of the website on which it lives, and into keepvid.com, so that i may save it to my desktop. let's see if this works...

(more to come next week, when i am done teaching. i smell reflections!)

Chappelle's Show

The Racial Draft

www.comedycentral.com

Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs

Black Comedy

True Hollywood Story

Speed-dating and the Quest for tha D.

2009-05-16T11:27:00.003-04:00

Hey ya'll,
So, the end of the year has not allowed me to keep you up to date. We rocked our way through Greece and Rome, working on independent research projects about a god/goddess in the pantheon. Then, each student "became" their god/goddess and created a myspace profile, which highlighted the research they found and got them to make connections between the stories by thinking about which other gods/goddesses would be on their top 8. They also got to try and figure out a playlist for their god/goddess and focus on a theme/mood that fit their personality, it was an awesome project -- I'll post some student work when I get a moment.

Then, we speed-dated! Yup, that's right. Call me crazy (and lots of ppl did), but I was looking for a way for the kids to role play and really work on their memorization skills and also learn something about some of the other gods and goddesses, so I came up with a speed-dating lesson where they tried to find a match with another god, based on what they knew about their personalities from the myths. What they learned: greek gods/goddesses are all somehow related to one another, Zeus slept with everyone and had a hard time at speed-dating because the goddesses all knew his game, Aphrodite and Eros both got questioned about why they were speed-dating A TON (because shouldn't the GOD and GODDESS of LOVE have an easy time finding love?!? not so much, i said), and Artemis is a lesbian, or at least that's the inference that they made about her preference.

Now, as the year ends, I'm turning my attention to the D, and tryin to get my students there. We've been doing some grassroots fundraising -- bake sales, student-helpers in teachers' classrooms (the students get paid and donate their "salary" to the project), letter campaigns, but the reality is that we need lots of money in a short amount of time. Here comes the dilemma... even though I can't really afford it, should I cover the cost of the trip to ensure that it happens? My heart and soul is invested in this, but in my first year of teaching, I realize that I needed to start fundraising in September in order to fully do this right. Hindsight is 20/20, but this trip is still ahead of us...

I'm hosting a fundraiser on May 30th (NYC folks, get in touch!) and am hoping that one of the 4 grants I wrote this winter will come through to take care of a chunk of it. The kids have really gotten themselves motivated to take charge of a fundraising project (each student has a fundraising goal and had to design and implement a project on their own... though I assisted in trying to make those projects happen), and are beginning to put together the content of their "zine". We did a Garage Band workshop with Beat Mining Productions' CEO/Producer Roamy Fils-Aime, and are trying to work other media into our expressions as we speak.

I really hope this trip happens. My students are great. They keep telling me "Miss, we got this." It's amazing how sometimes a meeting with them when I'm stressed and exhausted will completely rejuvenate me.

Holla at me if you have fundraising ideas, or wanna learn more about the work we're doing.

xo
Lo

2009-04-14T17:33:00.002-04:00

This talk is a few years old, and I think Seadragon (or an offshoot of the technology, anyway) is part of the operating system for the iphone, if I'm not mistaken, but lately I've been thinking about the implications of everyone being digitally connected, and then someone on an educators community I'm on posted this. Check out Goble's ning, called "Making Curriculum Pop" here: , but seriously... as he demos this in the video below... just pause and think about images being able to talk to one another like this... and have data attached to them. how a random digital photo you take in new york city can provide you so much information when you get it online... hmm. Just food for thought. My brain has been full of so many things lately, so it's been nice, while on spring break, to ponder possibilities.

xo
Lo

viva la lolo

2009-04-04T00:53:00.002-04:00

i have been trying to just breathe. it has been simultaneously the best and most challenging year of my life. i don't know if i'll ever recover from this year, or how to measure my growth. i just know that i've been growing exponentially in my ways of understanding the world, and in my ability to maneuver through my days unphased. i am galvanizing myself right now, building armor out of an intense love and wearing it to protect myself. to cover others. to win.

for the first time in my life, i feel like i am always winning. it is humbling, because none of this is about me. it is about you. i write to me a lot, but this is the time to turn it outwards, to expose it. i don't need an audience for my writing, because i have one in my daily life. except here is the thing: the biggest thing i've learned this year is how to listen.

xo
lo

keep a prayer in your heart.

2009-03-12T16:18:00.002-04:00

the past few weeks have been madness, sheer madness... but in the best way possible. the students really pulled it together to put on a wonderful event on tuesday for the Nothing Like My Home finale/community event. my stress levels were high, as i realize time and time again, that while project-based learning has the rep of being "easy" with regard to high-levels of student engagement, it takes a ton of planning on the part of the teacher to "structure the openness", if you will. in order to have the students truly organize an event, each of the 120 ninth graders had to have a finite role to play, and for me, that meant they needed to have some choice in the matter. i find that giving students agency in the shape and nature of our work is the best way to build their desire to invest in the project.

despite having technical difficulties (i.e. no sound system), the students rocked our worlds, with their deep poetry about the refugee experience, with their ability to roll with the punches and put on a show anyway, with their desire to help and commitment to making the event run, well. my marketing team got the word out there about it, my security team plotted the best entrances/exits for safe traffic flow and monitored for students cutting class, my food team educated our guests about the middle eastern food being served, my gallery guides took our guests on a tour through the photo exhibit and explained the biographies of the subjects. my MCs stepped it up, read loud and proud, projected to the audience, and the kids really listened and appreciated the presence of Ms. Majeed, an Iraqi journalist and refugee, who came to speak to us about her harrowing experiences and need to leave her country.

my kids closed the event by giving me a huge group-hug (being swarmed by 9th graders was adorable) and cleaning up the room in about 10 minutes flat. i was so heart-warmed by their attention to detail, their willingness to listen and participate, and even to try the strange food (falafel, hummus, pita and tabouli salad) that i had made for the occasion. the experience was great and we all enjoyed our time together that afternoon, though the biggest complaint from my students was that the principal spoke too long, ha!

so, i thought that i'd be able to take a big breath, sigh of relief and maybe catch up on my sleep, as of yesterday. i missed a call from my mom during our grade team meeting, and thought it an odd time for her to call me. i called her back as soon as i got home and got my dad on the phone. we chatted for a second before the following twist in the conversation:

dad: "oh yeah, and i'm in the hospital."
me: "WHAT?!?!"
dad: "it's nothing, just a bad stress test. i'm okay..."
me: "well, okay... how long are you there?"
dad: "not sure, they put a stint in..."
me: "WHAT the....?"
dad: "here, your mom can explain it better... love you"
me: "love you, too."
mom: "he neglected to mention that he had a HEART ATTACK! he's in denial. they took him in an ambulance from the doctor's office to the hospital... at least it happened there."
me: "WHAT?!?!?! are you serious? what's going on? should i come home?"
mom: "no, he's fine... he's fine, really. just wanted to keep you in the loop..."

STOP. REWIND. my head swirls back to our conversation of last week, him telling me that all he wants to do when he next visits is sit on my stoop with me and survey the South Bronx block. keeps going back, to his high-blood pressure, to his obsessive morning workouts, to his activeness, to his shoulder surgery and unwillingness to ever seek medical attention, to his laugh, his inability to ever wear socks, his hair that has been in the same style since the early 80s, his piercing blue eyes, his no-bullshit attitude, his "feelings just get in the way" callousness, his installation of the core value of respect into me, his affinity for sweatpants, his "dress sweats", his playing catch with me in the front yard, his teaching me how to throw a ball, water-ski, drive a car, boat and golf cart, his desire to come back in his next life as a buffalo (literally), his love for beer, his long talks about life on the way home from softball games, his local celebrity status, his joy and appreciation for waking up every single fucking morning.

i try to treat every conversation, every meeting, every phone call with every person i know like it will be the last. tomorrow is not promised, this is something i learned from my father, and have had to deal with in the loss of many people in my life. this is why we must treasure every moment and i feel so lucky to have grown up with him, to have him around for me, as this is not a given in our society, either. he is truly a "piece of work", as my mom and i say all of the time, but his influence on who i am is so monumental, and the thought of (not to mention close proximity to) losing him shakes me to my soul.

in my head, i know that he will be okay.
in my heart, i'm asking for your prayers.
i love you, dad.

thank you.

xo
lauren michele fardig

we living our dream

2009-02-16T11:41:00.005-05:00

we have begun our 2nd semester and are off to a running start. finishing our unit on stereotypes and reading "American Born Chinese" was enlightening to so many of the kids, who didn't believe that a comic book would actually make them think and reassess their own thoughts. so when i asked them to get "back in the boat" because we were traveling to a new area of the world, they got into it this time. they brought with them some new knowledge that they apply to their lives directly. i can't tell you how many times since this unit i've heard them call each other out on using a stereotype in a derogatory manner.

for my unit on biography, situated in the Middle East, i employed the use of outside resources. i'd been working on bringing a photo exhibit documenting the lives of Iraqi refugees into the school since November. in conjunction with the photos, i'm using a curriculum called "Nothing Like My Home", which was developed by the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility () the photos were taken by Lori Grinker, a photographer and photo-journalist who charted the journeys of 5 families fleeing Iraq. it has been an incredibly powerful experience from my students, who have done everything from charting out their ancestor's journeys through the world using our classroom floor as the globe, to imagining themselves as refugees and needing to "pack their bags". as we work through the unit, their assessment is to put on a community event where we discuss what we've learned and bring our school community into the conversation about the refugee crisis.

now, leaving something like this to 9th graders is a scary idea, but they've stepped up to the plate, with some amazing analytical and creative ideas for making this event a memorable one. we're on mid-winter break until next week, but i am really excited to return and get working on this project with them.

another project that i'm really excited about is the IPG. my 7th period class had a conference call with the U of M poetry mentors (thanks, Jeff!) two weeks ago, and while other projects have prevented us from making as strong of a presence on the site as i would've hoped so far this semester, it was really exciting for them to feel like they are in the "business of poetry". we're working on refugee/escape poems right now, as i'm trying to connect our classwork to this project, so look for them soon!

sometimes i'm in awe of the work my students do. case in point, S's poem, as posted to the IPG site:

Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King can walk
Martin Luther King walked so Barack Obama can run
Barack Obama ran so children can fly
so ima spread my wings and meet you in the sky
we all sleep so we can dream and we woke up
and we living our dream

as i'm grading today, i realize that even though i question myself and my own methods all of the time, it has been a truly memorable year, and just looking at the documents of their work is testament to the fact that they're becoming writers. most of them struggle and whine their way through the writing process, but they're doing it. they moan about reading, but they're building vocabulary and reading more smoothly. they complain about their brains hurting after my class, but they're getting at some complex thinking, even if it's disguised in playful activities. i believe that the best learning happens when kids don't even realize they're learning at all.

xo
lo

if i ruled the world, i'd free all my sons.

2009-01-14T23:45:00.002-05:00

we're working on freedom poems. i'm working on always writing models of all of the pieces that i assign. i have 5 people observing me teach tomorrow afternoon. am i worried? naw, i'll just do my thing. here's my take on freedom, january 2009.

morning hope song

to the glorious mornings
when I wake alone,
and know I have a job
to go to and a home
in my name.
having voted in 3
elections, still
having the right
to choose,
I am a free woman.

what breaks my
heart on my first
conscious breath
each day, is that
I reap benefits
that not everyone
lives, because not all
are yet free. (he said, none of us is free until we are all free)

“if I ruled the world,
I’d free all my sons.”
this is a Nas song
that you have to listen to
every once in awhile.
when the wind blows
just so, and the crisp,
clean January
suddenly breathes the
vision back into
my veins.

we have so much
work to do together,
we are ants, but I believe
in the everyday victories,
and the small progress
we make daily.
Freedom is a state of mind,
like a verbal vision,
a 75 degree, sun-drenched day.

-lmf 1/13/09

active spirit.

2008-12-29T21:08:00.002-05:00

from Daisaku Ikeda's Learnings from the Gosho, a quote:

"Buddhism only exists in action. Through action, the Mystic Law inherent in our lives begins to shine. The Buddhist gods and all Buddhas protect people of action; those who consistently take action for justice are truly happy."

---

I would name my child Justice. It would be difficult to name a child Love, though I feel that this is probably the ethical principle closest to my heart. But justice, for all people, for each life that flourishes on this earth... this is the manifestation of love, love activated and I believe that we can all be catalysts of this change. Activism exists in our daily conversations with people, in our one-on-one interactions where we ask people to consider truly what they believe. I only ask people to question, to open their minds enough to delve into different perspectives. To fight for the freedom of all people, from the freedom to love whoever you choose, toward safety from hate crimes, and universal needs being met for all humans.

This is why I do the work I do. Indoctrinating my students is not a goal of mine. We talk about religion, we read stories from religious texts as literature and consider the range of beliefs we've met in cultures throughout the world. I want them to understand their own beliefs, to be able to voice them... be them spiritual, political, academic, ethical or social. Even more, I want them to act in accordance with their beliefs, to be strong and stand up for them.

It was a lovely holiday home. I am back in the Bronx, doing work: reading, thinking, writing, chanting. It feels to close out the year on quiet reflection. Enjoy your journey into 2009!

xo
Lo

a life of lists.

2008-12-14T02:54:00.002-05:00

every weekend i get up early on saturday morning to make a list. what MUST i get finished this weekend? what are my goals? what would i be happy with completing? what can i let go for another day? i usually end up completing half of them, if i'm lucky.

the exception to this rule has been thanks to the International Poetry Guild (IPG), one of the interactive communities of U of M's ICS program. i will spend all weekend writing comments on my poets' work. they've started posting poems from home, responding to each others' work, asking if they can post another poem even though they've already posted 5. students are helping each other navigate and sift through comments on the site, responding to the U of M poets' comments thoughtfully. i'm so proud of them.

so before the break, as a culminating event for the IPG, for the semester, we're having a poetry reading/awards ceremony in class and inviting the school to attend. this provides another event for which i need to make a list. just to be funny, i'm going to make a list of the lists i need to make. ah, subdividing lists in order to further promote my procrastination techniques.

- poetry reading needs/supply list
- Marking Period 3 assignment list, add to gradebook
- holiday party playlist (and to-do list)
- putting together the All About Me zine list
- things to do for Unit 4 - Rise of Islam list
- emails about China (RRG, Joshua, Jeremy, Amanda, to list a few)
- procedure for Detroit/AMC grant (possible donors? fundraiser ideas?)
- HW completion list
- obama letter checklist

aye, tomorrow i have much to do. have a lovely weekend.

xo
lo

BKHS votes no to performance pay pilot.

2008-11-23T16:57:00.003-05:00

Being that it's my first year in a union, I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about many of the professional issues on my hands. Two weeks ago, we had a meeting where we needed to take a union vote about whether or not to participate in a pilot program that would line our pockets if our school passes its performance report card (read: based on Regents test scores). What would I do with $3,000 in my classroom? A lot. But I didn't want to jump on that overloaded bandwagon without considering what this means beyond a bonus. At what cost? Where is the money for this program coming from? Is this the beginning of performance and merit-based pay in the NYC public schools?

So, I took a step back and listened to some of my colleagues weigh the pros and cons. I don't agree with high stakes testing being the be-all-end-all definition of a student's success. I also don't like the divide-and-conquer methodology that I foresee happening within a school if teachers are being paid different levels based on student performance. I think about how money can change friendships, and also working relationships. The students who need the most assistance with reading, writing, and thinking skills will not get the best teachers, because they will most likely be teaching the honors students. I don't disagree with incentivizing teachers who do good work, but standardized tests were not meant to measure a teacher's ability, only what a student knows at a snapshot in time... and they do this insufficiently. Why should funding be tied to these scores?

We seriously debated this vote for quite some time, and are currently the only school offered to be in the program who voted no. We are saying, with this vote, that we are philosophically and pedagogically opposed to merit-based pay. We learned that the money for this program is being drawn from public funding, we were very concerned about the allocation of public funds for this pilot. We would like to have meaningful, holistic assessments of our progress as educators, and of our students' work, in the interest of learning how to refine our practice, not in the interest of being paid for it.

I'll say it again: BK was the only school offered this program who declined the money, which really concerns me.

It feels amazing to be working at a school where my colleagues are concerned about vision, about in-the-long-run. It also feels great to have a community where we want to discuss these issues and decide collectively how they affect us. It can get lonely in the classroom sometimes, so it's incredible to be a part of a place like this.

Cheers,
Lo

yes! i have some advice!

2008-11-08T16:55:00.002-05:00

i feel very confident this afternoon, as i devulge this small secret. sometimes i wonder, when writing, if any of my trials and tribulations are helping other people. but this will. we'll call this one: documentation.

background: in new york, we have external evaluators who come visit twice a year for the School Quality Review (SQR). when they enter our classrooms, we are to have our unit plan and lesson plans in a folder ready for them, and a binder with unit overviews, lessons, worksheets, student work. so that means at our department meeting this week, we were reviewing binders.

now, we did an e-portfolio at u of m, which was amazing for portability and ability to share our work, but i have to say, i am obsessed with paper documentation. i love clear plastic sleeves that go into binders and preserve my work, and my students' revisions of my ideas. they work and i realize what i could've done better. i try to improve it each time.

so, my advice to you is this: alongside your e-portfolio, save copies of your work. photocopy student work, start now! put it in a big box until you are ready to sort it. one rainy day, raid an office supply store near you for binders, clear sleeves, dividers, markers and your big box o' work. make sure you have a resume, teaching philosophy, model lessons and accomplishments you're proud of within your teaching career. bring this binder around with you to job interviews. many school districts in the country require you to keep your work, record your practice, in this way. if you can talk about it and show examples, you make an impression.

video is wonderful, but i do not have the luxury this year. however, i can control how i'm represented on paper, i know how to highlight and sell myself. having a colorful, aesthetically pleasing portfolio chock full of what i believe about teaching and how it's worked, this is better than a photo album (though my kids' photos are all over it!). it's great documentation and it's also organizing yourself for the next time you teach a unit. you'll always revise and change things, but you have a foundation to build from.

yay! my first piece of advice to new teachers! i feel weathered already. happy fall day to you.

xo
lo

2008-10-28T00:24:00.003-04:00

marissa forwarded me this and i'm so glad she did:

i used it today in lieu of a freewrite. it's frustrating not to be able to speak about my political beliefs in the classroom, but it doesn't mean that the students can't have a great discussion based on what they know. and they did. A stood up and asked his classmates if they liked obama simply because he was black or if they knew about his standpoint on some of the issues. E cited his anti-war stance, and S blew my mind by talking about how she didn't believe in the true good or evil of either candidate, but needed to support the candidate that best understood her life, in the Bronx, and how to better the situation for the poor people of the country.

"they got lite," was the best compliment i could get about the video, but they were sucked in. and then i had the best PM school session with two seniors, both of whom need some grammar and structure work, but have so much voice and soul in their writing. i know what i need to do; the voice is there from their lives, now we just need to hone it. miss closet traditionalist ELA teacher to the rescue! charge!

xo
lo

pass - fail - swagger

2008-10-18T15:17:00.003-04:00

My kids can't get over "Swagger Like Us". It's their ringtone, they try to get me to play it everyday for our freewrite. I love MIA's "Paper Planes", where the beat came from, and think that TI's verse is live, but damn... weezy, jigga, ye and MIA together? Sick. I hate admitting that I like anything Lil Wayne does, but it's the language my students speak. When asking them to make a list of the top 10 songs of all time this week, I should've just had them list the track list to 'The Carter 3", because that's what they did. Though J did surprise me by listing New Edition, and B loves Prince's "Purple Rain"!! They always surprise me.

I despise failing students. I try to find ways to have them pass, work out deals and make-up assignments, I aim to advocate for their success. This morning, as i'm sitting down with the mountain of paperwork, late assignments turned in last-minute to raise their grades, I have to come to terms with the fact that some of them will not pass. We have already had a few conversations about how high school is the time when they need to take responsibility for their education, when the work becomes on them.

I refuse to pander to them by incessantly bugging them about turning in missing assignments. I don’t feel that coddling them will produce independent, self-reliant thinkers and learners. But I understand that they just "clock-out" of school like a factory worker does at work and don't think about it again until the morning. I used to do that, too. Coming from a working class family, I had to train myself to do homework, so I'm starting off slow with them. It’s just difficult when it comes down to the end of the marking period and they don’t realize how their choices are affecting their grades. It’s all about making connections and this is an area that we need to work on together.

As I’m chatting with S on AIM about how she still has assignments to turn in, I am trying to take stock of the ways in which I put myself out there to assist them. Sometimes, it’s pretty unconventional, like having them be friends with me on myspace and giving them my AIM screenname. Let me be clear, they’re friends with my teacher page (www.myspace.com/msfardig) and I don’t just chat with them on AIM about anything, I keep it related to school. I've set up two weeknights a week where I am online from 6-8pm so they can ask me homework/paper questions while they're working. I also call home to parents A LOT, not only when they are acting out, but also when they’re excelling in my class. I keep my room open before school and during lunch for kids to come in and eat/do work. They're starting to be there all the time, already.

There’s a lot more that I can do, it’s just a question of finding balance and time. Thinking about how I can make my own practice better and more effective to assist them in becoming more responsible students. Organizing and reorganizing what I do and how I do, all of the time.

Outside of work, what’s going on with me? Not a whole helluva lot. I’m sad that I don’t make it to Brooklyn very often, and feel incredibly disconnected from a lot of people. We all get so busy, and we’re all tired and just want to rest sometimes, but it is truly unfortunate that proximity really does dictate how often you see people. I don’t take it personally and you shouldn’t either – I am sending all the love in my heart to my BK world. I plead with you to meet me halfway sometime and take an adventure up to the BX every once in awhile, it’s truly a magical place on 134th.

But don’t worry about me, I’m meeting all sorts of new people who blow my mind with their talent, their passion, their progress. I am truly astounded at what my life has become. It feels unreal to be doing this on the daily, to spring awake at 6am ready to go. I just would like to incorporate the old friends into the new world, thas all. Happy weekend! I’ll be grading, holla at me!

xo
lo

soundtrack to grading:
US muziq - secret agents
mystic - west coast
2pac - i wonder if heaven got a ghetto
TI/weezy/kanye/MIA - swagger like us
talib kweli - get by
binary star - evolution of man
athletic mic league - hurts so good remix
dawn penn - no no no
7 chakraz - gnarlton heston
the nobodies - mute (lyrics by me!!!!)
elvis presley - suspicious minds
bel biv devoe - poison
jurassic 5 - quality control

5pm is an early day.

2008-09-25T17:08:00.003-04:00

my desk is a rainbow of temporary disorganization. i have much work to do when i get home, but as i look across my desk, which contains the following piles, all photocopied onto different colored paper, i'm laughing:
- "all about me" 1st drafts, 2nd drafts and zine pages
- my School Quality Review binder
- comic strips about the creative process
- progress reports
- collages
- late work in the "inbox"
- my attendance/grading grids
- a "comp check" graphic organizer
- a fake letter about my crazy class.

ryan is a genius. so we've been having a huge problem with this one class, and elizabeth was looking for a way to talk to them about primary source documents in history, so they drafted a fake letter to the principal from a staff member about this class and blocked parts of it out. the kids got all into it and were like "what? who's writing about us?" as she tried to get them to think about whether or not the source was reliable. brilliant! and what a creative way to deal with a rowdy class and also have them get into the concept/material. this is why i moved back to new york.

texting with my coworker, he keeps saying "this is going to be a good year." we've already chilled out as a staff a few different times, and we all feel the energy that we bring to the table. i'm exhausted, i pull myself up the hill from the train station to my house, drag myself up the stoop and usually plop myself into bed everyday. but i sigh the deepest sigh of contentment. i love what i do. now, that doesn't mean that i feel confident in what i do everyday, i am hella insecure right now, but i enjoy the struggle and the small triumphs... like getting "I" to school ON TIME today. i was shocked with my mouth hanging wide open. baby, baby, baby steps.

much love... bless you with the sounds from above...
lo

ayo, i'm tired of this lack of internet.

2008-09-17T11:15:00.004-04:00

i have to back-blog about 9/11 real quick (more to come), i had an excellent anniversary of the event in my classroom. students whose lives hit up against that event with such close proximity that we all pushed back the chairs (and the lesson plans) just to talk, just to remember what it felt like. colleagues told me that the students were too young to remember, but i begged to differ, and though it was important that we talk. what if my class was the only time that day that they got to speak about it. it's much different to be teaching IN the city again, unlike last year, in the D, when students were more disconnected from it. ever since that day, I, in my second hour, has been glued to my class like glue. can't get him out of room 318.

yesterday i introduced them to zines. they freaked out at designing their own pages, or pimping their pages, as i called it. today, we're speedreading, doing a comprehension check with a sequence comic strip. creative assessment is my thaaaaang, girl. i keep gettin kids' phrases stuck in my head, this morning S told me "that quiz was O.D., miss" (translation "that quiz was awesome"). anyway, can i just brag about the fact that i got breakfast in bed today? i am a spoiled lady to have a man who will get up at 5:30 to make sure i have breakfast by 6am. more to come soon, just waiting for the internet to grace me at home.

so excited to begin the int'l poetry guild project with ICS. i've framed all of our technology projects into "tech thursdays", so we can have the time and space to get our work done. we have three online projects this term, and i'll have to tell you about them later because it's lunch time, and my ELL students come in for extra help. i love having lunch with my students. i need to make the first round of parent calls tonight, maybe Carlos will be my translator... most parents don't speak English and now is the time to really strengthen my Spanish speaking skills.

xo
lo

first few days of school.

2008-09-06T17:35:00.002-04:00

here are some highlights and conclusions from the first and second days of school. it's been a whirlwind of a week so far. everyone keeps checking on how i'm doing and really, i'm easing through it one day at a time. this feels so natural, but there's still so much preparation that i must do on the daily. i've been sleeping a lot, when i'm not planning ahead. having no internet at home has also been a challenge, because i don't have access to the resources that i usually use for lesson planning. so much to do! but keep your ears open for an invite to our housewarming party -- after a month on anti-biotics, i feel the need to get a bit ridiculous.

highlights
* showing 7th period my scars and having B squeal
* having 6th period tell me that they prefer making animal sounds to raising their hands.
* having the kids say "we're going to EGYPT?" because they take everything literally and my metaphor of our class being a journey is being lost on them.
* in "Roses and Thorns" today, having "I" tell me that I look very professional.
* meeting Amelia and learning about the United Playaz' New Orleans trip from last year.
* S, who is cute as a button, explaining to the class why she likes KRS-One so much ("he made history because he talks real about things that matter to the community, who does that in rap nowadays?" Girl had my heart with that one.)
* my summer students rushing in to give me a hug yesterday morning, even if they didn't have me until 7th period.
* having them give me a "rose" for getting to write the rules of the class, instead of me writing them down.
* having t-skillz come up and say "we missed you, lauren." when i came to 4th period on friday after my dr. appt.

lessons learned
* you only ever get through 50% of your lesson plan, if you're lucky.
* never give them freetime (i did not learn this from experience, fortunately)
* do something different EVERYDAY.
* don't take "this is boring" personally.
* if T blurts something out that isn't harmful to anyone else, ignore him. reacting will only exacerbate the situation.
* there will be a fight in my classroom before the year is done. i'm glad the I team (our intervention team) is just down the hall.
* the attendance bubble sheets from the district are always wrong.
* Fridays, with half-days for students, are a blessing blessing blessing, even if disguised by department and grade-team meetings.
* you MUST rely on your colleagues to support you. going it alone = burning out quickly.
* your sub plans better include worksheets. though on my first half-day out, i got lucky enough to have a 17 year vet in my classroom.

with that, it's movie time. i'm in brookyn for the mini storm!
much love!
xo
lo

settling into 318

2008-08-29T13:22:00.003-04:00

It is crazy to sit here on a Friday afternoon and feel like I'm at home. The culture and people at this school are phenomenal, and I know that I'll be working all year just to keep pace with their brilliance. I am not one to take the spotlight (with regard to accolades for my work), so it feels nice to be so outshined by 30 master teachers, seriously. regardless of their level of experience in the classroom, everyone at my school is truly committed to innovative techniques to get students learning. It works. In the poorest congressional district in the country, we have a graduation rate of 85% (33% is about average for the neighborhood) and students who truly seek out knowledge, are interested in educating themselves from a political as well as personal point of view. These students want to change the foundation of the world we live in, already.

Room 318 is amazing, though there's lots of cleaning to do, lots of organization and setting it up. I don't feel nearly ready for Tuesday, but unfortunately, I'd rather be in my room preparing than describing it right now... and our internet's being strange, so I'm going to let you go on this note: I'm trying to make my desks look like a boat for Tuesday, ha.

Hope all is well.
-Lo

notes on a syllabus.

2008-08-21T19:26:00.002-04:00

perhaps the best thing i've seen online since this injury occurred. i'm always looking for ways to keep myself laughing. bert and ernie, doing M.O.P's "Ante Up".

last weekend, i went back to the hospital and was actually admitted for 3 days for an infection in the afore-blogged wound... as school begins (i report on monday), i'm trying to take care of my health first and lesson plans second. but here are some thoughts for my class this year that i'm synthesizing as i revise my syllabus. i'm teaching 5 sections of one class, which was originally titled "Intro to Literary Genres", but I re-titled "Reading into History".

***

1) this class is going to be a journey that we embark upon together. it is a science fiction cruise, back into history, where we will place ourselves in the sandals/chariots/saddles of different characters in literature, in order to see what lessons we can take from them that still apply to our lives today.

2) we will keep a travel log, where we will have daily entries about our surroundings, research we have come across, big questions we are beginning to ask ourselves as we cruise along, in a boat up the nile, the yangtze, the ganges, the mediterranean, the indian ocean and red sea (and that's only through december)!

3) monday thru thursday we will delve into literature and writing projects. fridays, we will close out the week with technology/blogging projects - trying to pause and reflect on where we're at, how far we've come and what we see ahead.

4) this classroom is a space that we are building together. it is not mine, it is ours. the rules of each class will be determined by a class contract, which we will decide upon and put in writing during the first week of school. while this contract can be a work in progress, we will decide together about the behaviors we would like to engage in within the class -- and how to deal with folks who are not respecting our space.

5) i welcome your prior knowledge about different periods of history and genres of literature, but ask that you always keep an open and questioning mind.

6) you will be expected to read, write and speak daily, as we are aiming to sharpen our communication skills. while i respect that people prefer different modes of communication, i also expect you to try new ways to express your ideas.

7) your grade will be determined by the effort you put in, your participation in class activities, the quality of your work and your own personal progress. you are in charge of your education and will also be evaluating your own work and progress, from time to time.

(after this i get into nitty gritty of grading structures and policies/procedures for absences, lateness (for both your person and your work),

***

and now a few words about the first month...

first two weeks -- basic skills: speedreading and reading strategies, notetaking, writing workshop (the writing process), discussion circle, goal setting, time management, class contracts, set-up of folders and journals, 'all about me' essays/visual projects, literary genre vocabulary, the art of the thesis, grammar basics.

next 3 weeks - egypt. "book of the dead" creation myths, KWL (what do we KNOW, what do we WONDER, what have we LEARNED?), translating hieroglyphs into poetry, vocabulary, rituals, "a modern ancient society" -- an oxymoron?, egyptian art (field trip to the met), spirituality, and economy. where do we see egypt in popular culture? what's the history of our fear of mummies? what else can we discover about their lives and culture?

***

and with that, i must go to bed. planning is exhilarating, but also exhausting. and i find it hilarious that anytime i describe my work this year, the adjective that folks usually use is "ambitious". is it? only time will tell.

xo
lo

technological difficulties, or murphy's law of publishing?

2008-08-14T18:34:00.003-04:00

first of all, let me start off by saying that our zine turned out amazing. spectacular! truly, each student really took the project to heart, wrote something and created a page that represented who they are, what they're thinking about, and with such style! i am so proud of my summer students.

thrilled about how the project turned out, i had W, my assistant editor, help me put the last few touches on it, waited for pages from a few more students on wednesday and set off with A, my other assistant editor, to make photocopies... while the rest of the students went on a trip (to see batman, so sad that my leg prevented me from going). i had A print out and add the staff biographies, table of contents, etc while i started on the copying. about 100 pages into an 1,000 page copy project, the machine got a misfeed. being a copy machine aficionado, i pulled the machine apart and retrieve the jammed paper. it jammed again, on the next copy. and again, again, times 20. we spend the next hour trying to work on the machine, all 4 of us experienced office women who will roll up our sleeves to get a job done. our work goes unrewarded, and i apologize to the kind folks at the ASPIRA office who let me use their facilities. i feel horrible about jamming the machine!

J takes the master copy and adds some more photos to it, but we didn't get it copied in time for the last day of the summer program, which bummed me out. though, the students and staff will get to receive it in the mail in a week or two (or at school in the beginning of the year). i had especially wanted them to be able to autograph each other's zines, as they are all now published authors. i did get to stand up at the ceremony today and announce and congratulate them for their hard work. i agree with V, it will be cool for them to get them in the mail, to remind them of their summer just as it's starting to fade from their minds.

i think i will quote Langston Hughes all my life, in reference to students. if they think that our contact is going to be brief, they need to rethink it. once you have been in my classroom, you're stuck with me. our contact with not be constant, but i expect to hear about your successes, your struggles and your landmarks. i expressed this to them and got their contact info, if they're not going to be my students in the fall. we had a wonderful ceremony, a great BBQ that included teachers beating students in hoops, dance lessons by J and L, a battle between J and V and big ole dance circles. so many parents came up to say hello; it was really nice to be so welcomed into the community.

i will miss seeing these students in front of me everyday. but this experience had ignited my passion for teaching, and confirmed that this is what i'm meant to do. it feels amazing to have landmark moments to solidify this. thank you to everyone who helped support me in the program this summer. the pleasure was truly mine.

cheers,
lauren

mending and zinesterism

2008-08-09T02:01:00.002-04:00

i am healing, but at jurassic pace. i tend to always think of "why things happen" and i'm convinced that i get injured about once a year so that i will slow down, and re-learn the lesson that sometimes i need help. i have always said that i need support and people to hold me up, but i am incredibly self-sufficient. it's so difficult for me to not have my full physical faculties, and to remember that when my body isn't healthy, much of my energy must be devoted to healing.

so, having divine inspiration at 1:00am to begin fleshing out the zine i'm working on with my students was unexpected. i have been working on my fall curriculum map for most of the day, and chatting with a few students about the papers they need to finish over the weekend. H was getting all metacognitive about why he can't write during class:

R was professing his love for poetry because he can "take out" his feelings.
i imagined him taking his feelings out of his pockets:

and L was just being sweet. she'd said that her class was a handful and i said that i didn't think so, that i enjoyed them:

I've found that myspace is an excellent way to connect, but setting up a time once or twice a week where I get on AIM during the evening/on the weekend, so that they can contact me about questions they have with their papers is the best way. They're always on AIM, and without me even reminding them, they'll say "Miss, I'm working on the paper." Just my presence outside of the classroom, digitally, causes them to recall assignments (Liz, I'm sure you've found this, too, with your cell phone research). It's not the be-all end-all solution to getting homework turned in, because it assumes that students have internet access and/or a computer at home, but another way to be in touch and get them to make that school-to-home transfer of knowledge. L actually IM'ed me this morning, talking about personal writing she was working on in addition to class work.

much more to say, but i'm exhausted. i feel that i've done a great deal of work today, which was much-needed. i still have to grade papers and get the layout for the zine done by monday, but i swear, i will turn them into lovers of the independent publishing world by the end of this week. having their own writing be in their hands in a little booklet is going to turn some, not all, into zinesters. at the very least, i hope that they use it as a yearbook, to remember each other by their work, as well as socially.

we'll see how it goes. i'll keep you updated. happy weekend!
xo
lo

33 stitches later.

2008-08-03T10:53:00.002-04:00

speaking of crisis, i guess it was time to get in touch with my subject matter. today i got to see one of the hospitals in my neighborhood, from the inside. everything about this move back has been so easy, i knew it was time for something to happen.

* i have an amazing job teaching 9th grade English in the bronx.
* i get to completely design my curriculum, and align it with the world history studies.
* i found a wonderful summer sublet in a loft with two amazing folks.
* i just signed a lease on a fabulous brownstone apartment 2 blocks away.
* i am in love with my life.

so, all this past week i've been thinking that the other shoe had to drop. and it did, in the form of traumatic injury. on my way up to my loft this afternoon, one of the rungs on the wooden ladder broke, and i fell through. on the way down, the screws previously holding the rung to the frame caught my leg.

i had never seen so much blood, much less my own, pooling at my feet. i just kept staring at the open gash, the flow of crimson down my leg. my fingers started to tingle and i felt faint. shock shuddered through me with a sweat. i cried out to my roommate, who flew across the room.

somehow, being half conscious, i was still able to mumble to get a towel, apply pressure, tie a scarf so she could call 911. when trying to lift my leg to free myself from the ladder, the blood ran more quickly. she told me to stay with her, and wait. i went deep inside of myself and tried to keep my eyes open. i couldn't look down at the floor. keep looking up. don't close your eyelids.

suddenly, 8 men were in the room, trying to cut me out of the ladder, give me oxygen, bandage the wound and calm me down. one of them washed my feet and said "this is the last time i'm giving you a bath, okay?" i laughed and was thankful for someone making a joke.

Just talk to me, keep my head off of this, I kept silently pleading and mina complied. we got there and were taking ER photos on her phone, talking of everything else we could think of, but were both into the gore of it, too. she watched my muscle move from the inside. we took CSI-style photos of the "crime scene" when we got home later.

it was quite an ordeal that i quietly endured. saying nam-myoho-renge-kyo in my head as they discussed the strategy for sutures. complimented for my composure in this situation, but i have to say it was fascinating to be able to look inside a part of myself. maybe understand the inner workings of my wants, if only for a moment.

i still can't get my head around the way the body deals with immense pain. it's as if to say we are supposed to shut down while it repairs us, that we have modeled our technology after our own designs. will we be aware of the slow takeover, the subtle creeping of these machines?

the major thought on my mind before this afternoon's events transpired was how i feared a technological takeover of romance. you know me, i am romantic with friends and friends with romantics. could it be that we are headed for text msg relationships, break-ups, sex and reconciliation?

yes, we are going there. and i will have scars to prove that i've been. 33 stitches, to be exact.

Conquering Crisis.

2008-07-30T17:07:00.002-04:00

I know I'm asking for psychological trauma when I ask my students to write essays about a crisis in their lives, and how they learned to cope. It hurts to know that they've been through so much pain. I had them start by writing a poem and then pinpointing the crisis in one word. Then we outlined our thesis and topic sentences together. I was trying to talk about how the thesis is the heart of the essay when I looked up and realized how many of them were lost in thought. Realizing that I had opened an industrial size can of worms, I had to stop the lesson and play social worker for awhile. We gathered into a circle as I explained that I wasn't trying to hurt them by forcing them to tell difficult stories, I was trying to help them remember how strong they are in their ability to learn how to heal. Their lives are hard and the expectations on them so low. Please just let me raise the bar they set for themselves.

Walking the line between getting too involved in students' stories and coming off callous and uncaring is difficult. I sense myself galvanizing, protecting my mushy heart. I am starting to understand the professional distance that you must keep from your students, or you will hold their pain in your chest cavity, too. It still amazes me what they will tell you about themselves and their lives if you provide the opportunity. M came out to me today, while A wrote a seething poem about his father's death. C talked about being neglected by her parents. R talked about being sexually abused. S talked about being beat up daily for being the smallest kid on the block. All of them laid out narratives about pain, fear, hatred, feeling unloved, not belonging, being depressed, being unhealthy, not having enough to eat. Living in darkness at home because their parents can't pay the bills.

Talk about perspective. Fuck the digital divide, what about the quality of life divide? While it's true that my students aren't being exposed to technology in the same way as their suburban counterparts, which is horrible... that's really not high on my priority list right now, when they have such basic needs that aren't being met. I always bring my lunch but I rarely eat it, I usually give it to my students. Last year, we noticed that they were wearing hoodies to school in January, because they didn't have coats. I started raiding thrift stores for warm things to slyly pass to them as gifts when no one was looking.

I tell these stories not to shock you, not to bring praise to myself or to tell you that everyone should work in an urban public school. Clearly, not every teacher enjoys, or is meant for this struggle. To me it's not an option, it's not a choice, and I don't say that heading for martyrdom. I feel an intense connection to this struggle, which was my own, and in helping these students find value and purpose in their lives. I know that these students are going to be responsible for the widespread cultural change in this country that I hope I live to see. I know that they will be the ones to ask the right questions, demand answers, unite and stand up for their rights.

Pac said, "the elevation of today's generation, if I can make them listen." They weren't listening today. And I was asking the wrong questions. I've learned that being stern is how they see that I care for them. Having high expectations and maintaining consistency is how I gain their respect. Calling them out is how they know I'm looking out for their backs. They're still crazy, self-involved and won't get off of myspace, so I grab their myspace addresses and remind them to finish their essays.

I don't know what I'm trying to say, I'm just trying to speak their language. On Monday, they caused a first draft that I've been trying to write for a year. I love this group already, too. This is going to be a long life of saying hello and goodbye to students, and hoping that I can give them skills that will help them work hard on this world.

xo
lo

jeopardy as a test of skillz

2008-07-24T16:33:00.011-04:00

their homework for the weekend was to go around the neighborhood and find 5 signs or business awnings that are grammatically incorrect. i specifically instructed them to NOT go inside to the business and let them know about their spelling errors, that's not the point, ha! the point is to get them thinking about grammar outside of my classroom.

speaking of grammar, this all came about when i was grading their first essays of the summer. while there is differentiation within every class, i was impressed that their skill level is higher than many of my detroit students, but there are certain students (mostly those who grew up elsewhere and have recently moved to the US) who need desperate help. while i love assessment and am constantly assessing, i hate tests, especially grammar recitation and memorization. ugh. so we played jeopardy and i also treated it as a grammar test. they received a group grade and 5 points for every correct answer, toward a 50 point test. every second wasted was one less question they'd get to answer towards points.

i was picking my jaw up on the floor when i saw how they would write down a sentence, pass the paper to each group member for approval, go over it, read it out loud and then answer the question. different students were coming to the board for each question and they were pooling their resources like it was a job they'd been doing for years. in the end, the lowest grade on the test was 40/50. not too shabby, though i need to figure out what that mental roadblock is between knowing the grammar rule but not using it in your writing. laziness, i think that's its name.

i have been blessed to receive astoundingly positive feedback from my students, who are apparently telling their parents that they love my class. my supervisors have asked for my curriculum for the summer, so that they can try to replicate it next year if i decide not to teach summer school again. we'll see how it goes, but it feels fabulous to know that i'm enjoying the work so much, and am doing well at it. the math teacher, however, is having trouble getting them to behave and focus in her class. i suspect that her approach is more traditional, and i also suspect that they're acting out to hide low skills, as most of them are in this summer program for credit recovery in math.

but leaving on a good note, i'm halfway through the program and yesterday the highlight was again johanna. i just talked to my co-worker (who i'm subletting from this summer) about johanna, because she had her in math last year. she told me that 1/2 of the emails she would write about student stories were about johanna, so i laugh that this is the 2nd blog in which i've mentioned her. we had a roundtable dicussion (i'm scaffolding towards a socratic seminar) and i told them that it was crucial that there was no handraising and that i was not a part of the conversation. they had to figure out a way to communicate with one another. she suggests using one of thomas' drumsticks as a talking stick, and what began as a heated argument turned into a great discussion. hassid brought in jelani's opinion, by asking him about what he thought. i'm thoroughly impressed by these students, for real.

and with that, i'm headed off downtown to go see krs-one fo' free, suckas!! you wish you were in new york during the summer time!

xoxo
lo

"Whatupdoe?" you mean "What's good?"

2008-07-14T19:43:00.002-04:00

so i played "whatupdoe?" with my students on the first day, and they laughed because "that's not how we do, Lauren." but it's Detroit, and i miss Detroit, so they played along and got all exaggerated in their "What Up DOE?!?!". they're great. already, johanna is giving me excellent feedback about my teaching style. coming from 9th grade at the school i'm teaching at in the fall, she knows the culture and whether she knows it or not, is inviting me into it.

i feel at home in the bronx already. i live in an industrial district turned arts and antique district, within walking distance from the summer program with ASPIRA. my students are great, but don't tell my Earhart students that. making the transfer from past students to present is going to be difficult, especially when i still keep in touch with them via email. oh, and myspace. (see links to the right)

i have very quickly built a 6 week summer curriculum for this pilot program, based on building basic reading and writing skills that the students will need in high school. i'm currently reading a ton of young adult novels to nail down the fall, see what they already have on the shelves before i place a book order. there's a lot that i could make work. i love being able to take an idea and go with it. will communicate more about the English/Global aligned curriculum asap, especially for you, trigger.

xoxo
lo

p.s. missing my smacdown team. you're all in my hearts and in my lesson plans. ha.

gotta roll...

Honestly.

2008-06-13T01:23:00.003-04:00

My dear friend Nickie P. and her crew the 7Chakraz played a show with Doodlebug, formerly of Digable Planets (love them! and love him, he was such a cool cat). One of 7C's best songs is called honesty, in which the hook is, "Honesty, I keep it real with you, you keep it real with me..." I feel that I'm sifting through so much dishonesty lately and I just want to break it all open with the truth. ("All I ever wanted was the truth from you")

So things fall together, not apart right now (wish I could teach that book next year, but I think they read it in 10th grade anyway). I found a wonderful unit on greek mythology to teach, and now I'm settling on research for Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Know any great first-hand texts? I feel like it's going to be a year of creating our own mythologies, ha. I have soooo much work to do before I get there on the 1st. It's hard to believe I'm leaving in 3 weeks. I feel prepared and ready, but not so much.

Here's a partial list of what I think I may teach this fall. Suggestions or comments always welcome.

➢ The Epic of Gilgamesh (and some Sumerian creation myths)
➢ The Egyptian Book of the Dead
➢ The Art of War – Sun Tzu
➢ Li Sao (The Lament) – Qu Yuan
➢ The Ramayana
➢ The Mahabharata
➢ Theogony - Hesiod
➢ Metamorphoses – Ovid (includes Echo and Narcissus, Psyche, Persephone, Prometheus, etc)
➢ The Odyssey - Homer

I'm looking forward to this already!! It's going to be new and exciting for me to try and figure out relevancy to my students' lives when working with such old texts. But I'm determined to do it and do it well!

Cheers,
Lauren

sapster emergent

2008-05-21T14:31:00.000-04:00

The days are waning. I keep changing the countdown on the whiteboard. I am dreading that last day, I'm dreading the last time I'll ever see them again. Every June is going to be emotional for me, as I say "I won't forget you" and mean it, but do they hear it? On Monday, Rick was talking about how I'll just forget them as soon as I touch down in New York. Can I blame myself for his callousness? For his unwillingness to believe that people do care about his well-being? I go out of my way to express my concern for them on the daily, but how long does it take to unlearn a life where care is not a par for the course?

This has been a really difficult week. The community is so upset by the loss of a student in a horrible accident over last weekend. I have been oscillating between just carrying on, hoping that the focus on work might take their mind off of loss for just a moment, and wanting to talk about how they feel, where they're at. I'm baffled and amazed when they connect their feelings to a book we read in February ("remember, in Bang, how each family member deals with the loss of Jason in a different way? that's kind of how it is. some people are crying, some people are silent, some don't know how to react, so they don't. some lash out." says Lakendra).

In my homeroom, two of the usual suspects chose a very immature way to respond to Eberardo's death. But as we just wrote about last week, when responding to Persepolis, sometimes people also use humor to get themselves through times of crisis. A student pointed out this connection to the class, as well. When it feels like their reaction may be inappropriate to some people, I was pleading with them to have compassion for their classmates, to help them to become better people. I watched the tears form in Destinee's eyes when I said it.

I know that every class of students that I have is going to be special and unique. I know, too, that I will find patterns of behaviors as I meet new students. "I have another Angus in my class", I'll write to Mrs. K and say. But this is my first class of kids. My heart isn't being worn on my sleeve, I've fully taken it out of my body and put it in their hands this year. This is a dangerous way to teach, for my own personal well-being. It takes so much energy, I find myself exhausted and needing to be taking 3 hour naps every afternoon. I need to dig deeper into myself to find the energy for next year, because it will be even more challenging.

There is no other way for me to approach my students, though. I did not want to go to the memorial service, but I need to support them. I need to show them how much I care, even if they continue to question my intentions. I can never aim to "fix" them, but to show them respect and support in their endeavors. I have learned so much from them this year and have been blessed that they have let me into their lives, both in and out of school.

They have made contact with me, and if they thought it was going to be a brief encounter, they are mistaken. I will miss them so much, but hope that they'll come back to update me on their growth.

*sigh*

xo
lo

10 days left...

2008-05-18T17:47:00.001-04:00

If I happened to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I would start writing the book "One Hundred Years of Solitude" on a day like today. It's one of those days when the wind just breathes change into your life. The weather can only be described as brewing; it's Michigan so you have no idea what to expect. Bring a sweatshirt, an umbrella and a tanktop, just in case. Suddenly, you wake up from ridiculous dreams and feel that you have become a new person. You rise ready for the work you are to undertake. Obstacles that seemed to threaten your well-being yesterday seem to be miniscule and obsolete. Each thing you do seems well-timed, appropriate and urgent.

I only have 10 days of school left with my kids. It makes me want to cry, and I already have. During 6th hour, after they've left the room and she is off on an errand, running off photocopies. I think about how much we've done together this year, and how I am probably the only one romanticizing it this way. The personal successes that so many of my students have had, whether it's jumping two or three grade levels in reading comprehension, more organized and fluid writing, or beginning to discover their voice in their writing. They are getting sad about the end of the year, but they are thinking more of the social aspects of 8th grade than romanticizing all of the work we did in class. Still, under the restrictions that I've dealt with, I believe that I have brought something to the table this year. I didn't get to do nearly enough poetry, I didn't get to run my zine unit. I'm hoping to test run that unit this summer, and boy do I have a lot of planning to do for the fall.

But somehow, after a night of celebration and karaoke, I woke up this morning completely lucid. Got breakfast with Brandon and Audry. Returned home to clean and plan. I'm teaching a poem about Ellis Island, so I'm trying to figure out how to structure an environment in the classroom where the students understand what happened there. I keep tossing around all sorts of ideas. Have yet to nail something down, but I'm feeling crafty and creative. The assistant superintendent of DPS will be stopping by to watch me teach tomorrow, so it's gotta be good.

Hope all is well in your world. I'm curious what's brewing in the clouds over you.

xo
Lo

a whole new quest!!

2008-04-18T21:28:00.005-04:00

so much has changed in the past two months. i have accepted a job at a phenomenal high school in the Bronx... so it's back to the city for me. i'll be the new 9th grade English teacher, and we're going to do it up right! i am so incredibly excited about planning the new year (i get to plan my whole curriculum!!), meeting the whole crew, which i know will be my family in the south bronx. much more soon, since it's friday and i'm braindead from a week of crazy.

angus came up to me yesterday and actually admitted that he wants to pass. this is a feat for him. it was in the lunch line, and he pulled me aside, looked both ways as if someone was listening. it must be a secret for it to work, he told me through telepathy. i wrote him a letter about how proud i am of him and how i also want to see him pass, but it's going to be work. he's going to have to read a whole book, cover to cover. i want it to be "to kill a mockingbird", because i know he can handle it. he won't yet. but i think i've won him over.

a poem in the meantime.

* * * * *

everyone has always
told me that
motherhood is my mantra
but not yet.
we have many
sunsets by ourselves.
as it closed in,
tailgated the horizon
this evening,
i felt the full shine
of solitude in
both shoulders,
both hips.
knew in my knuckles
why i should carry
on my name.

standing on the brink
of why i breathe,
i understand what
it must be like to
never see your own
single shadow.
but many sunrises
on vacant shores, first.
many sands will find
my path before i
become two.

xo
lo

late leaping wishes

2008-03-02T23:30:00.001-05:00

happy leap day!

i feel compelled to write something today, as this day only happens once every four years and it has been a memorable one. my life force was rejuvenated and full-impact today -- we played terra nova jeopardy for the last time (i fashioned the game to be based on test-taking skills, and skills that they're still struggling with - like subject/predicate identification and sentence combining) and the testing begins on monday -- all we can do now is wish them luck and hope that the preparation we've done will be helpful to them. i'm beginning to understand the "teach to the test" mentality, because ultimately, i feel responsible if my students do not pass, and their future next year (and possibly whether they continue in school or drop out) depends on their performance next week. talk about high-stakes. stakes has never been so high (shout out to de la). as a teacher and an advocate for my students, how can i not take it both seriously and personally? and really, what i've learned is that test prep SUCKS, but if you put effort into being creative with it and making it fun, cooperative and competitive, it's much more bearable.

j. angel, one of my students who was expelled a few weeks ago, was allowed to return this week, after negotiating with the school and seeking treatment in a mental health facility. he wrote me a letter about his experience and i nearly busted out crying in our 6th hour assembly while reading it. i can't think of anything more inspiring that when a student, through many struggles, begins to realize how beautiful and precious his own life is, how much he is worth, and how much he deserves to be happy. most of my students have seen more at 14 than i probably ever will, and i've seen a lot. i'm not trying to build this up to be dangerous minds, or to get you to pity them, because really, they don't need your pity. they are stronger than they even know. but their courage astounds me and i feel endlessly humbled by how much they've taught me this year.

perhaps i'm talking in past-tense because we began to talk about graduation today. i don't even know what i'm going to do without these kids, aside from worry about them and attempt to stay in contact to harass them during high school, but i can assure you that i'll be a sobbing mess as they cross the stage on june 6. what's interesting is that the school doesn't want them going crazy about their 8th grade graduation; even though it's a momentus occasion for many of them, they want to encourage them to celebrate in style ("in a pimpin' HUM-V limo, do it up!!," said the principal) when they graduate high school, but want to encourage them to make plans to continue after 8th grade. doin' it up for this promotion would equal justification for dropping out, said the administration.

really, i'm fluctuating on whether or not i'll ever need to have kids - because right now i have 90 and i'm going to sit down with the modern myths they wrote me and spend my weekend figuring out how to really get going on literature -- now that test prep is done.

hope you're moving forward and feeling blessed. i certainly am.

cheers,
lo

Why the Rain Falls

2008-02-24T15:44:00.001-05:00

Good afternoon.

Speaking to Miss Mirah on the phone this afternoon, realizing that it's nearing the end of February (already?), I recall how quickly time is passing now that I'm old. This year of study here is two-thirds over, I can almost taste my MA and I'm so obsessed with teaching that I made my parents drive by my school last night, just because we were in the neighborhood and I miss it. Vacation has become a time to be quiet, alone and reflect and not a time to go crazy, as it has often been before. While I would love every vaca to involve travel, I get tired sometimes and just want to be home, just want to reconnect with those I love and have lost touch with. Just want to connect with Ntozake Shange's plays. I have no idea where home will be next fall, as it depends on where work will find me, but as per usual, I'll cast the nets wide and land feet first.

I'm teaching a short-short story by Zora Neale Hurston tomorrow and wrote a short myth explaining rainfall (in response to her "Why the Waves Have Whitecaps"). Mine is not the most compelling story, but I thought I'd share, I'm going to use it as a model for my students writing their own myths to explain a natural phenomenon.

Happy Sunday. I hope you are well-rested and well-loved. I keep coming back to how blessed I am.

xo,
lo

"Why The Rain Falls"

First, there were only crystal clear cobalt blue skies all over the world, and each person, bird, mammal and fish was happy. Everyone awoke early in the morning with the sun, just to admire its rising. Every went outside at noon just to say how glorious the day became. But after years of gorgeous weather, Ms. Porcupine was getting bored of the beauty. She craved some excitement in her life. So she gathered all of her friends up in the forest and decided to have a bonfire.

Now, Mr. Sea heard all about the bonfire, it was the only event that people were talking about for days. But he was tired from a long day of work, and didn't want to travel all the way to the forest, so stayed home. It was a splendid party, and he could hear everyone laughing and dancing from miles away. He didn't appreciate all the noise, so he pulled his waves over his ears and tried to go to sleep.

The next day, everyone returned to the sea to tell stories from the bonfire. "It was the most fun we've had in all of our lives!," exclaimed Mrs. Dolphin, and the all the jellyfish agreed. Mr. Sea felt sorry for himself and decided that he wanted to be alone. He curled up in one corner of the Earth and told the fish that he didn't want to be bothered.

A few days later, when he began to hear the creatures talking about the next bonfire in the forest, he was still upset and didn't feel welcome. No one had invited him afterall. So he stayed home. At the last minute, however, he decided to surprise everyone and go. He went all the way up the beach and stood quietly at the edge of the forest, waiting for the right moment to burst out and show himself.

But the sea how much fun everyone was having dancing and singing around the fire that he wanted to join in too. He got so excited that he jumped up into the air and ended up spraying everyone with water. The fire went out, and at first everyone stopped, but Ms. Porcupine, always the optimist, said "Hey everyone, let's try to dodge Mr. Sea's drops as they hit the ground," and they all did, squealing and laughing and dancing in the raining seawater.

It became a tradition -- every time there was a fire in the forest, it would soon be followed by rain. Pretty soon, no one even realized the connection anymore, because it was no longer sunny everyday. And that is why the rain falls.

Nelson Mandela

2008-02-16T23:40:00.002-05:00

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
-Nelson Mandela

Ah, I need to re-read his biography, perhaps this winter break will give me time.

When the Sankofa Drums and Dance group came to perform at our school on Tuesday, as part of the performance, they called Destinee up to the stage to read a poem about rising up and moving on, but knowing your heritage. A sankofa is a bird whose neck faces back toward its body, as if it's always reaching back to assist the molting process. The metaphor in many African communities is the need to look back at history in order to better understand how it has shaped us. When Destinee read the poem onstage, I noticed that she struggled a bit with pronouncing the name "Nelson Mandela", so I asked in 3rd hour if they knew who Nelson Mandela was. They shook their heads, no. While it's something they'll cover in history class, I'm sure, the man is 90 years old and will pass soon, and I think it's crucial that they know who he is and what he accomplished, as one of the most prominent activists of the 20th century.

Anyway, when thinking about it, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, which is the year before most of my students were born. Aye, que rico! Perhaps it's because I was in 8th grade when that happened and have studied his life and work ever since that it came as such a shock to me that my students hadn't yet encountered him.

So, I'll be trying to work him in somehow

Goodbye, Angel.

2008-02-12T19:58:00.000-05:00

one of my most-improved students is leaving us, due to an unfortunate incident in which he participated today. i will miss him very much. i've come to realize how hard it is going to be for me to lose students, how i can't take it personally and have to hope that they will find another teacher willing to bet on them wherever they find themselves.

For J. Angel

I watched your eyes grow wide
with hurt and anger quarreling
in the deep vortex of your pupils.
Red rising to your face.
I don’t know what he said.
I’m not sure which word broke
the calm countenance you’ve
been wearing.

I remember first seeing you.
Large and looming, your first
piece of writing blowing my
mind with its blunt force honesty.
Peeling your life open,
we've found a sensitive soul
who has lived in the house
of anger for too long.

Today, you came in after lunch.
Told me what happened
with your girl.
You called me over,
asked for my advice and I
pushed back the beginning
of class so that we could talk.
Told you to take a breath, let her be.
Sometimes space is all you need.

You left us at the end of the hour.
We had written letters thanking
Sankofa drums and dance
for coming to our school.
Looking back to know ourselves
when we move forward.
We took a practice test
for the Terra Nova,
which will determine if you pass
this year.
You got a 90%.

After she held you down,
after we dragged the other kid away,
his mom came to pick him up.
I found you in the hall,
asked if you were alright.
noted the cuts on your fingers,
the tape around your knuckles,
you told me you were sad
that I had to witness the fight
and I told you to take care.

I will have trouble sleeping tonight,
knowing that today might be the end.
But I believe in you, past
This incident.
Toward what you’ll become.

---

God, it's hard to love them and lose them.

xo
L

jeopardy terra nova

2008-01-31T16:53:00.000-05:00

So, I've been searching for exciting ways to teach test-taking skills and review English skills with my 8th graders. They have to take the Terra Nova tests in March and while we don't like to teach toward the test, if they don't pass these tests, they don't pass 8th grade. The pressure is mounting, because while I love my students to death, I don't want to see them next year (because it will mean that they didn't pass). So here it is. It's not a revolutionary idea, but they're getting excited about this approach to going through the test prep book, and that's all we can ask for.

We've divided them into teams. They chose their teams, they chose their team names, they drew us a mascot which we put on a posterboard/scoreboard. I teach the lessons and they do the practice problems (in the book or in other resource materials that we've outlined that focuses on the same skill... such as inferencing, comparing and contrasting, sequencing events in a text) as a group, helping each other and needing to come to a consensus before they're done with the problems (this encourages group work, THINKING and students justifying their answers by using the text to back it up!!).

On Thursdays, they take the unit test (which means we teach 5-6 lessons in 3 days... but they're motivated by competition, so it's working, so far) and their test scores are averaged with the rest of their group members and posted on the scoreboard. On Fridays, we play Jeopardy! I've created a game that's based on Terra Nova skills and also connects to the novels we're reading, and also brings in grammar and usage skills. It's also a reinforcement and review of the skills they learned this week. We're rotating "team captains" every week so everyone gets to participate orally. TRying to figure out how to work writing into it, too. So far, it's been really successful as the kids want to compete in-class and with their colleagues in the other sections of our class.

We'll see how it develops from here. Just wanted to share. Happy hopeful snowday tomorrow, though if it is one, I'll be sad about missing Jeopardy.

Cheers,
Lauren

thoughts on special ed.

2008-01-16T18:05:00.000-05:00

our staff meeting today was about the intervention process of identifying and working with students that we wish to refer for special education services. i had just been talking with ms. h about a few of my resource room students, and had a discussion with ms. p that was really enlightening. we discussed the difference between inclusion and self-contained classrooms in our school and how special needs students are identified, as well as how we service them, and how progress is measured.

we talked a lot about differentiation of instruction and the need for all teachers, general ed or special ed, to learn how to teach in a multi-modal way -- recognizing the different skill levels and learning needs of students, and thinking about this when we give directions for an assignment, design lessons and assessments. this can mean using visual aids, the board, saying directions aloud, drawing examples, modeling for students, individual tutoring and assistance (whenever possible), and individual, group and whole-class learning situations.

it seemed sad to me that she was so excited about my desire to learn and to assist my students as best i can, and said that most general ed teachers are too busy to take the time and make the effort to consider the students' learning needs. it really is up to classroom teachers to educate themselves about their students, know your kids and advocate for them, for the betterment of their lives. just because they're special ed students doesn't mean that they can't or won't live full and vibrant lives. to the contrary, making a decision like that about a student is to treat them with discrimination. it's important to check yourself and your pre-conceived notions about what dis/ability means -- we're all different in what we excel at, we all need help in some areas of our lives.

bottom line: i try to advocate for all of my students, know them, know their learning styles and consider this always. i live by differentiation on the daily.

more thoughts soon.
xo
lo

futurism vs. passeism

2007-12-16T01:09:00.000-05:00

i've been listening to a lot of blonde redhead lately, a reminder that i too, was once 15 and incredibly moody. and as i'm trying to think of a way to close this out, i have been taking stock of the projects i've been doing:

- digital zine unit plan utilizing the conception of voice and writing workshops for peer and self evaluation of portfolio work. integrating web 2.0 tools into their productions so that they can have creative control of the medium that their writing best represents. (the possibilities are endless, how do i scaffold?)
- movie starring some very special 3rd and 4th graders.
- burning 20 copies of said movie for parents, as fundraiser for class.
- video starring our 4th and 5th hour, to be played for them on the last day before winter break.
- rwt, which i am *enjoying* putting together?!?
- DVD of kitze's and my semester so far.
- finish knitting scarf for kitze.
- myspace-ing my students. having j. send me an message today saying, "Miss, I promise to be better in class. It will start right now." after I pulled him out of class on Thursday.
- writing a grant for 3 books I will need in the spring.
- setting up gradual roots in cali.
- creative presents for the close few who love the made tokens.
- writing letters.
- reading for fun.
- blogging like a maniac.

only 4 on that list are sans technology, as in, technology that i have been loaned by this program. knitting, crafting, writing, reading. i've always been the same, i just keep finding more ways to express myself. writing lessons has become an obsession. collecting resources my hobby.

and yes, i've answered my own question. small increments of contact can sustain you for this long. i am proud of myself for looking forward. i've had a breakthrough. and i love my life. it always comes together in the end. i have been charmed.

xo
l

teleportation station

2007-12-13T01:28:00.001-05:00

my final thoughts on technology:

(j/k, it's a poem about teleportation. final thoughts to come... after web 2.0)

this will eventually be a short story about the lengths that long distance lovers will go to in order to see one another, in this case, by volunteering to be a guinea pig for a teleportation device. purely hypothetically speaking, of course, heh. (i can't wait to be there, less than two weeks...)

*volunteer*

each time, i would volunteer.
i would be the first to test it,
let the metal bite down around
my shoulders.
i would drain seas and drink air,
open vortexes to new dimensions
in the same instant so that
my body can travel lightly.

these particles can distribute
themselves all over in an instant,
but i want the control.
i want to see two worlds at once.

risk is laid to cool rest
under my tongue.
i would empty my chest,
place my heart on the table
and let you watch it stop,
to show you what this means.
when my breath hits your face
and you smile. a sideglance
gleaming off of your cheek.
your index finger tracing
a circle around my spine.

these are why i'd risk dying everytime,
to open the latch,
let the smoke dissipate
and find you here.

---

this urgency has become a theme in all i do. i blame t.v. and it's focus on instant gratification (my kids wrote an essay about pro's/con's of TV).

xo
lo

RIP Phenzwaan 1977-2007

2007-12-05T18:26:00.000-05:00

a dear friend passed away this morning, the circumstances of which are unfortunate, and he has been taken from this world much too soon. his talents were numerous and his voice, his spirit, his passion are things that i will always take with me. his impact on my life has been so large and i am one of so many that he has touched, through his words or through his presence. i am struggling to understand, but believe he will find us again, in another form. here is a poem that does not even begin to do justice to his beauty. you can find his work here: http://www.phenzwaan.com (i'm having trouble getting the link to post, sorry)

for phenzwaan

this has been a year
when the words died.
when great wordsmiths
have muted their breath
for a braver journey,
and i'm finding my heroes
slowly fading, stars
burned out in a galaxy
i have not yet found
on any map of mercy.

time rushes with age and
i find myself moving
too fast to reach back,
grasp your hands again.
you, ascending
and my acceleration
breaches the plane of
touch, this emotion
has exponents that my
eyes cannot look up
high enough to graph.

we make a mantra,
we mumble. we say it
louder, tomorrow is not
promised, bring me your best
everyday. i always say
i love you when i leave you.
and i am used to this,
but i never remember
the sharp slice and dull deluge.

how it feels to close my
lips around your name
and know that you will
never hear my voice.
the numbers on my hands
grow, the names i say
in my head in that
part of the prayer,
there are more lights
that fade in my eyes.

i don't know of a better
reason to meditate on
the moments of morse
code we sent back and
forth across violent seas
while trying to name
our reigns of lighting.
we licked the waves and
our wounds, afterward.

i command you now to heal.
i conjure every word you wrote
down and deem it doctrine
of this religion of verse
that i worship. you preach
every time a breath reaches
up to you. you breathe always
in the vibrancy of your voice.

love always,
lo

the four billy goats and the elephant.

2007-12-01T04:29:00.000-05:00

is the name of the production we're putting on next friday at roosevelt elementary school in keego harbor. it's gonna rock! having just shot it today, i can tell you this for sure, especially with the effects that i'm figuring out on graffiti.vidavee.com (the link goddesses are not with me at this time). soooo looking forward to it. i was on the floor shooting the scenes from different angles and we had so much fun, then i stayed to play some games of set, got some real cute photos of all the kids. a slide show and bloopers reel will totally be on the dvd, not for nuthin.

hey, and in the name of some really great music, check out this video of the seven chakraz, one of my fave groups, at the elbow room last night with belikos. mmm belikos.

(insert here, as soon as the link works)

caroline and i had fun dancing with ourselves. paul and i wiled out, like we do. good times. back to mad studying. it was fab to get out for a minute, as i've been on the mend and stuck on the couch, watching many marathons of CSI with my dad. but oh, how life is great when dad and i can appreciate horatio caine (david caruso) with all of our hearts. thought i still love las vegas better. forensic science nerd, holla! happy weekend, i'll see you in the grad lab.

xo
lolo

digital zine thoughts.

2007-11-16T14:03:00.000-05:00

so, i've been thinking a lot about a cumulative project for the end of my unit/end of the semester that is able to highlight my students' progess in myriad ways, utilizing the technology that we have available to us in order to give kids choice in how they choose to develop their work. i see it happening like this:

alt-x - where the digerati meet the literati (clever catchphrase!)
http://www.altx.com/home.html

a place either divided by genre, by topic, or even divided by students (such as, you can see all of destinee's work here) that can highlight a few pieces of their best work, which they would select and develop in preparation to "publish" it. workshopping would be integral to the process, we would also integrate editorials, persuasive essays, journalistic pieces, poetry, fiction, rhyming, acting, and i would allow students to visually represent their ideas, as well. i think about using comic life to create comic books, having them make videos of themselves performing their work (or videos as their work). there are endless possibilities to how this could go.

but we are limited by not being able to post these things online like as a regular e-zine, so i'm thinking a DVD format would work best. but i worry about students not being able to share it with their folks for lack of technology, so i would want to have a viewing of their work, inviting parents in to go through the zine with their kids, or even having live performances from their work in the zine.

all of these ideas are just forming, so this is a think-aloud, essentially. but i think that it could be an incredibly fun project for students and we could integrate much of the benchmarks into a semester-long mega-unit that culminates here. i'm going to propose it and i'm going to start getting the words into my head so that i can see what grants i can write.

and i'm glad i suddenly have my unit plan forming - but just like my individual lesson plans, which can never seem to fit into one class period, my unit plan will not fit into 5-6 weeks, ha. my inner overachiever really is a gay man with delectable taste - who tends to think large and elaborate. you know how i do.

oh, and having Pete come to us from Clemente yesterday was amazing! more about that soon.

cheers,
lauren

ugh!

2007-11-12T01:54:00.000-05:00

i want to post the video we "found" about school reform for tomorrow's 649 class SO BADLY, but i cannot give it away. check back here again after tuesday night. i also wanted to talk quickly about the fact that "Crashboomlove" is the best book of poetry i've read in awhile and i'm sure that my students will be into it during my poetry unit in the spring. i'm thinking about writing a grant to get copies for my students for free, i bet i could talk to ming louie, from the detroit public library about how to go about this. speaking of ming, here's a magic trick that he did when he was talking about the program we're participating in:

oh and there's nothing like getting an idea and then getting the chance to implement it almost immediately -- my kids are doing projects on "the watsons go to birmingham" and wouldn't you know it? a bunch of them want to do claymation dioramas, ha!

anyhoo, back to old english, where i belong to beowulf.

text msg break up

2007-11-07T15:21:00.000-05:00

if you've ever seen kelly's text msg break up video, you'll appreciate this. but if you've ever worked on a text analysis, you will also appreciate this. the part of me will be played by me. the part of text analysis is played by will mcgrath. (and this is an actual transcription of said break-up w/ t.a.)

me: text analysis, we're breaking up. i've spent too much of my life on you.

text analysis: baby wait! i can change. just give me one more chance. i... i love you.

me: no! i've heard this all before. i'm tired of being the only one who works on this relationship.

t.a.: me me me! that's all you were ever intersted in!

me: true, the text was amazing, but you were only ever interested in my body, not in my mind! i'm through!

-fin-

p.s. i'm done!!!!

xo
l

claymation and playmation

2007-11-02T18:34:00.000-04:00

yay to claymation! katie j. and i had a lot of fun making this lil nugget, using i-movie and stop-animation... i feel that stop animation videos will be making many blog appearances in the future, as they are time consuming, but incredibly fun! i hope i can find a way to use them with my students, who are always talking about how they want to do dioramas and creative projects, maybe they can use this to illustrate a scene from a novel we're working on (the watsons go to birmingham?) i would have to think of ways for everyone to work on one... such as some people being responsible for creating the figures, some people taking photos, some people working on set, some people responsible for the final edit/music/etc. maybe i could work with mr. dominguez in the mac lab at school, so that more students could be involved, taking the rough material and making it their own through the editing process. that would be pretty cool!

i also wanted to talk about my day at roosevelt elementary... we are working on producing two plays; i'll be making them into movies and showing them publicly at the school in the beginning of december (it's on a friday morning, if anyone wants to go to the final viewing!). today i worked with 9 students; we did a reading of the script and the kids were so cute, so dramatic! we rehearsed "the billy goats gruff", assigned parts, understudies and backstage crew to help with direction, sets, costumes, etc. we brainstormed for some set and costume ideas and i had both the actors and the understudies first do a read-through (while sitting at a conference table, they felt so grown up!) and then started to mark it out... showing me where the bridge should be that the goats trot, trot, trot over and what other types of set requirements they had for their "masterpiece". i'm trying to be helpful in giving them direction but also let them be creative with it, as they have a lot of great ideas. 3rd and 4th graders are so much fun, and it was cute that they were very excited to see me, even though they'd only just met me last week. and elementary school kids are fun because you just have to act excited, and that excitement will radiate, and absorb into them.

not to mention, carrie is a really wonderful teacher. she has the kids in very strong routines that are incredibly effective, from quieting them down to communicating with them about cleaning up, how much time is left, and she does this call and response thing with them, as well as has a class currency, where students earn them for positive behavior, answering a question correctly, listening attentively, etc. and have to give them up for unruly behavior, or to buy supplies and fun things (cool pencil cases, erasers, computer time, etc.) i remember doing something like that in 5th grade, but it wasn't worked so completely into every aspect of the classroom. anyway, i'm excited to go back next week.

and now to stop procrastinating on completing my text analysis.

xo
lo

2007-10-26T16:06:00.000-04:00

from our 504 class today, a digital story about the end of the world, thanks to the damn conceptual terrorists.

xo
lo

happy halloween...

2007-10-25T18:59:00.001-04:00

october bulletin board
Originally uploaded by writeinblue

read a good booooooooooooooook. ha ha. our classroom bulletin board for this past month. some suggestions from books i'm reading:

- gender play by barrie thorne
- gender: an ethnomethodological approach by suzanne kessler and wendy mckenna
- hope was here by joan bauer (young adult book, teaching next spring)
- homeboyz by alan sitomer (young adult book, teaching next spring)
- teaching community: a pedagogy of hope by bell hooks
- sister outsider by audre lorde
- black feminist thought by patricia hill collins
- the watsons go to birmingham (young adult, teaching right now)
- persepolis (graphic novel) by marjane satrapi

anyhoo... back to class.
xo

i am claiming closet traditionalist

2007-10-23T19:15:00.000-04:00

"science is a self-evaluating way of viewing the world". -michael's dad
(a quote that came from a conversation about how knowledges need to be continually revised, but in dominant culture "fact" stays "fact" even after it is disproven)

in our methods class last night, we were sharing our records of practice on our "Challenges of Teaching Writing" project, a mixture of video interviews, student work, and other proof of our mentor teachers' approach to grammar vs. content, in different genres of writing (personal essay, analytical essay, informal journaling). i admit that i am a stickler for grammar, which makes it unfortunate sometimes when i see my students' writing that has potential, but lacks mechanics. i do think that i'm doing a disservice to my students if i don't comment on these errors and set high expectations for their written work, but the reality of the situation (as i recorded in a really great interview with my mentor today) is that they don't tend to remember these things year to year (it's like they forget them over the summer!)

gillian termed me a closet traditionalist, because it would appear from the surface of my positionality that i would be less-focused on traditional aspects of teaching english, and more toward progressive models. while i do aim to teach for understanding of concepts, themes, connecting prior knowledge to text... i think that syntactical structures for writing (be it personal, creative or analytical, expository) are crucial for being able to effectively communicate your ideas. for me, this is not an arbitrary stance, but incredibly political.

i aim to educate my students in the language of power (orwell) in order to empower them in having access to a world that they may not choose to participate in (i.e. dominant or mainstream culture, the business world, etc.), but i do not have the right, as a teacher, to decide for them their destiny by allowing them to not learn standard English. i also think it's crucial for ME to respect and learn AAVE, Spanish and the other languages that my students speak, and have a responsibility to educate myself, because i don't believe that they dominant language is the most important one for them to learn, or that it holds authority over all other forms, dialects of English (or other languages), but being that we live in a society that values standard English and literacy in it as cultural currency directly related to success, I want my students to know it, so that they can subvert it.

i have always believed in the power of changing the system by infiltrating it, so perhaps that's why i would not seem at first glance to believe in tradition... but i think it's important to know it in order to fight it, in a certain sense. more on this later.

and now for something completely different, a video about fall colors (as taken on the train to chicago last weekend), featuring the sounds of my good friend krts.

the forest falls

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xo
lo

quick links and a lil diatribe.

2007-10-17T00:16:00.000-04:00

first of all, tou fue posted this about the achievement gap between white and black students (always the binary) in Ann Arbor Public Schools. I found it incredibly interesting (and not surprising) because we often look at the disparities between two communities (Savage Inequalities), but not often does the microscope turn intracommunity. So, when the same amount of money is spent on students and the achievement gap is still there, we know that you can't just throw money at the problem, that there is something much more inherent in the culture of our school systems that fosters some students to excel, while tracking and limiting others. Ah, how schools are a microcosm of society.

and then this, which makes me incredibly upset as it speaks to the fact that while many folks trapse through this country thinking that racism is done and over with, it's acts like these (and like the jena 6 series of events, which also started with nooses) that eerily recall a period of time not so long ago in our nation's history when it was not just nooses being hung, but people in those nooses.

And to pull the two together, while slavery has been over for nearly 150 years, and while there were some major advances in civil and educational rights for people of color in the 60's and 70's, the long-lasting effects are still evident in so many ways, from the digital divide to the achievement gap, from graduation rates to MEAP test scores, from who goes to college and who doesn't to the occupations that we "choose" (because is it always choice? and if so, choice for whom? and how does social culture and structure affect choice?) and how they affect wealth and socioeconomic upward mobility.

Thoughts?

careful caution while proceeding.

2007-10-16T12:36:00.000-04:00

"Pedagogy that begins with the egoistic interests of the oppressors (an egoism cloaked in the false generosity of paternalism) and makes the oppressed the objects of its humanitarianism, itself maintains and embodies oppression. It is an instrument of dehumanization." -Paulo Freire.

I want to tread carefully when I talk about this, because it is not meant to implicate anyone as dehumanizing their students. It is surely a critique that I too must internalize and think about very critically and seriously, but it's just something I want to bring light to. I've been re-reading some of my old critical theory faves (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Pedagogy of the City both by Paulo Freire, Teaching Community, A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks and We Make the Road By Walking by Paulo Freire and Myles Horton) and I want to keep in mind that while we're all seeking to empower our students through the skills that we can teach them, it is dangerous to approach students from a paternal perspective, where we set ourselves up as the "hero" that "saves" them from (i.e. Dangerous Minds' message) as this perspective is based on a power dynamic that reinforces social, racial and economic classes as they are. This is not revolutionary or emancipatory education.

This topic comes to mind because it is a mistake that lots of educators make, with regard to caring about their students and believing that they wholeheartedly have their students' best interests in mind. Sometimes I think that white educators go into urban schools because they will feel better about themselves at the end of the day, for doing "the good, Christian work" of helping others, but what Freire is saying is that if we adopt that attitude when approaching our students, we are doing nothing to disrupt power structures and free them from oppression. It definitely takes shape when teachers are making the choice as to where they want to work and examining why. Lots of educators go with the "I want to work in urban public schools, those poor kids" train of thought, which seems altruistic at first glance, but is really more selfish and egotistic than the hypothetical-teacher-in-question could ever dream of. What assumptions about the lives and experiences of your students do you make when you approach it this way? How can you effectively engage them? What will you do on a daily basis to ensure that they are getting what they need to walk away from school more prepared for a world that is set-up to deny them their right to a prosperous life? What skills can you teach them to survive in their reality? What is the disconnect between what the state says they need to learn and what they will actually use?

I'm not expressing myself very clearly today because I have a lot of assignments weighing heavily on my brain. But I guess I can tell you now that there are some educators I've known who are not even on the level of misguided attempts at altruism by choosing jobs in the city; I've run into many people who flat out will not work in urban schools, but who "admire" me for my decision to firmly plant my feet in my home and look around me, telling my students that they can do this. Who want to hear the exploitative stories of how rough my school is and of the gang violence and teen pregnancy, because it continues to feed their stereotypes about who my students are and what they are capable of. Yes, they have a lot more to deal with on a daily basis, but I should not be celebrated for choosing to work with them, how racially charged is that when you remove it from context? I feel an obligation to their survival as a fellow human being, and try to open up doors out the ghetto (and even within the ghetto) for them through teaching them how to critically think about themselves in the world, and how to read and write exceptionally well.

It's so damn difficult, especially during standardized tests, to look at the girl who came to school starving, soaked in the rain from walking a mile without an umbrella, and think that she could ever be expected to perform at the same level as a her suburban white counterpart, who came to school with a full belly, had a ride from a loving parent and a lunch made with care. The fact that these inequities still exist and will continue to exist until our society also begins to see value in all people is disheartening, yes, but inspiring in its great challenge.

Anyway, this is in the vein of teachers needing to be advocates for their students, but if we are going to take on the task of teaching, we need to destroy this authoritative context to our work. Yes, we have a curriculum to teach, but what do they already know? It is our job in seeking to be effective teachers that we begin by getting to know who they are and what they know already, and then finding ways to make our curriculum relevant to their lives. But first we need to make their lives relevant to us, see how we are all interconnected and think long & hard about where we choose to work and what factors inform that decision.

xo
l

my inner over-achiever is an effeminate man.

2007-10-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

we decided that rachel's inner overachiever is a large burly man.
michael's inner overachiever is a voluptuous woman.
my inner overachiever is an effeminate man.

these personifications as applied to our collective overachievers seem to fit incredibly well, toward the nature of their effects on our styles of working. just an interesting moment in after-school thinking that pleases me because of the gender-bending aspect. (for context, these make particular sense when you consider our physical comportment...)

i've been thinking much about my sociology of gender class as i approach technology in the classroom these days, and many of the gendered ways that my students see and interact with technology (re: boys being the ones to help me or my mentor teacher by coming up to the front of the classroom and attempting to help us fix the overhead/computer/printer/AV equipment) and their roles in the classroom, as far as participation in discussions, handing out papers/materials (a "girl's job" as described by rick in 4th hour, though this particular gangsta 14 year old is self-assured enough to volunteer for it all the time. love him).

in middle school particularly, the presence of gender is incredibly flagrant sometimes -- from physical seats that students take in class (Barrie Thorne, Gender Play, Boys and Girls together, but mostly apart), to the roles and personalities of students within the classroom (i.e. louis taking the role of the "class clown" sometimes as he uses humor in a masculine attempt to devalue what we're reading as "stupid" and "girly" if it pertains to poetry/creative writing). It seems sometimes that the boys are afraid to admit that they understand, connect with a text or answer questions and prompts from the teacher, or will be more apt to make fun of a character, emotion or idea that is deemed by their peers as feminine, in order to place themselves directly in contrast and masculinize their presence vocally in the classroom. i'm also reminded of herbert kohl's book "i won't learn from you", and it's been years since i've read it, but specifically, willful not-learning as a statement of defiance, with regard to race and assimilation into dominant culture.

i think often about how English, as a subject in school, has been gendered as a class in which females are culturally expected to excel (especially in the creative sections) and males are culturally expected to disengage in English/Language Arts and excel in the science/math/computer realm. we talked about this extensively in our digital divide presentation a few weeks ago and i notice it also in how teachers can be gendered in the subject area they teach (many, but not all of course, English teachers are women). within my school, i also notice that there is a technology coordinator who is female and teaches computer classes, and a male computer teacher, who is often the person to whom questions about how the school network is configured are defaulted, even though ms. yglesias was the person to set-up the network.

anyway, these classes are intersecting in very interesting ways, and as we're looking at how children perform and are socialized into gender as they enter into school, and how students have agency in their own perceptions and performances of gender, but how their interactions (within a structural and cultural context) are integral in kids understanding their own gender and what "gender" means in their lives (run-on sentence, i'm aware). we're specifically looking at kids entering school (at 4 and 5 years old), though of course, i'm noticing how all of this is present and prevalent in my middle school students, very visibly in their bodies and interactions, as they're all dealing with becoming adults in a very stagnantly gendered society. what is their specific developmental stage and heavy peer-influenced interaction shaping in their minds as we speak? what notions of gender are they undoing and defying as they learn to interpret this new territory? what borders are they crossing to test the limits? i have so many questions for them.

and as always, you cannot divorce gender from the ways that race, ethnicity and class affect the lives of students... as what it means to become a Mexican-American woman in Detroit to my 8th graders is different from it means to become a Caucasian-American woman in Ann Arbor in 8th grade, and this process of understanding and emulating begins very early, though i have to say -- it is incredibly interesting to me to take a look at how socially reinforced some of these behaviors are, by both fellow students and teachers/administrators in the building.

just some thoughts...
xo
l

welcome to the sMACdown

2007-09-19T22:31:00.001-04:00

DON'T LOOK AT THIS UNTIL FRIDAY UNLESS YOU'RE IN THE DIGITAL DIVIDE GROUP!
oh okay, you can... consider it a tease, so that you know what you're in for. everyone should come, our presentation is going to rock!!

virtual college and the digital divide

2007-09-18T22:22:00.000-04:00

this is ms. yglesias, the tech coordinator at earhart middle school, and her thoughts on the digital divide.

i'm so proud of myself! it's been a tech-day, and i have great blogworthy things to say that are DIRECTLY relevant to technology in the school and in the students' lives. of course, since our digital divide "episode" is coming up on friday (you'll see and should come!), everything has been themed that as we put our presentation together and have an excellent time doing it. one interesting aspect from my research was a report published by the university of toronto which talks about the multiplicity of the divides and insists that "divide" should always be plural, as they are interconnected but have different elements. this is similar to the concept of multiple literacies that is always on the front burner of my brain, as both are often seen as singular and finite, but are both on a continuum. more thoughts on this on friday (stay tuned, insert shameless self-promotion here).

today in my placement was especially tech-shaped as i not only spent some time with ms. yglesias talking about such things, but we set up my gaggle account and on thursday i am going to help her set up the rest of my students' accounts. we also attempted to look at gradeconnect.com, but the site was down for maintenence, and even MORE exciting: my students are part of a pilot program with Wayne County Community College this semester. they are going to be taking an online college course (they're 8th graders!!) at WCCC and "become" virtual college students. mr. vasquez, the principal, emphasized the authenticity of this program by letting them know that we will be touring the campus, that they will receive ID cards and have access to the libraries and computer labs of WCCC. they will receive a syllabus and course-work that they must complete independently, first through their computer classes as part of the curriculum, but scaffolding them into doing some of the work at home. the class is called "career development and preparation 101" and the program consists of 3 middle school pilot groups in detroit.

and here's the real cool as hell thing. if they pass, they receive real college credit for taking the class. we filled out actual WCCC applications today with them in English class and had them write statements of purpose for the application. the program is designed to get the students interested in self-actualized learning and to show them that they can handle college-level work - it's just analytic, metacognitive thinking and self-direction.

the students were elated. they are so incredibly excited and said that they felt differently after we went back to 1st hour after the assembly. you could tell by the way that they carried themselves. mr. vasquez said to them "this is something that i believe you can do, and you can excel at. you're the first 8th graders in detroit to be college students! go home and tell your parents that you're a college student now and talk to them about this." it was adorable and you could see in their eyes that this was an opportunity that seemed surreal and strange to them. but the matter-of-fact approach that mr. v took and his enthusiasm spread from little giggles to wide-spread smiles on their faces by the end of the assembly.

i am soo excited to begin. and on a joking level, mr. vasquez (the principal) said "and for those of you lucky enough to have ms. fardig as your student teacher, now you can say to her, 'i'm on your level, man!'" they looked at me and i was like "it's true, you are!" i love my students more and more every day. and how ironic that on the day i come ready to discuss the digital divide, my students gain such a great technological opportunity seemingly out of the blue.

xo
lolo

9/11 - 6 years later.

2007-09-09T18:55:00.000-04:00

6 year strut.
trying to make sense of what i saw and breathed, 6 years later.
(a work in progress, your comments and dialogue are much appreciated)

This will be the 6 year anniversary of September 11; it's on a Tuesday morning again and the weather in Detroit looks like it will mirror that bright and cloudless day. The only clouds we saw were the plumes of smoke encasing the city like the largest crime scene I've ever lived in. This year, I will spend it at school, but thinking deeply about what it all means now (as I do not only on the anniversaries, but frequently throughout my days), and not getting into the hype about record sales. Why do we always divert our attention from what's really important to the superficial media-fed story-of-right-now that no one will remember in a few years? I know that albums always drop on Tuesdays, but have some respect.

Here's some numbers I want to throw your way. 6 years later, 4 and 1/2 years of war against a shape-shifting enemy, nearly 3,000 civilians killed in New York, 3,761 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq (which was not the original location for our retaliation, but a secondary locale), 3,300 of which have been since the capture of Saddam Hussein. 78,065 Iraqi people have died and while there is some military effort to stop the killing of civilians there, we still cannot own up to calling them people. We call them casualities, unfortunate “inevitabilities” of our glorious attempt to “liberate” the people of Iraq from an awful regime. Because when our royal texas son of a leader is trying to redefine imperialism and domination through ballistic warfare, when there are two sides to a binary story and folks are misinformed by the media but convinced of our patriotic rightness and “their” dark and terrible wrongness, we continue to support this war through our own inaction.

While watching ‘Sicko’ a few months ago, my friends and I mourned the ability (or desire) for large-scale protests in America. Yes, there are tens of thousands of college-aged and left-wing radicals who do participate, who are going to marches in D.C. who were at the anti-WTO rallies in Seattle, who daily use direct action to make a difference and make people think. I am not trying to undermine the important work they do, but in a country of 300 million people, the proportion of active participants in public demonstrations are extremely small. Why don’t we? Do we feel so powerless that we have become wholly futilistic? Do we think that there are other ways to act and that large protests are meaningless? Do we just not care about anything outside of the health and well-being of our nuclear families?

6 years ago today, we were chalking the streets of the West Village with “do your own research on the wtc”, and “an eye for an eye makes us both blind”. We were marching against war in the streets for months, we were conducting teach-in’s about the history and beliefs of Islam in attempt to educate and reduce ignorant hate crimes in the city. There was an urgency to each move we made, and years later, I find myself disappointed in my own inability to stay active. Where has my own zeal gone? Do you realize the intense luxury in being able to be disconnected from the political sphere that implicitly affects your daily life? The technology of war has grown so that because we are not there, we are not inundated with its daily affects (with the exception of gas costs, economic depression, and general disgust with the U.S. when you travel abroad). This makes it all the easier for us to move about our lives concerned with our own needs and desires, and not with the well-being of others across the world, whose lives perish at our hands. There is blood on all of our hands.

See, here’s the thing I’ve always believed. Each human is connected through the commonalities of our struggles and hopes. We need basic things to survive, we strive to learn, grow and understand – even if only for communication’s sake and not for scholarly endeavors. We breathe, we have hearts that pump blood through us, we believe in family and the preservation of culture. We have evolved out of an oral tradition. We have always been able to heal ourselves and are resilient and tenacious creatures. What I’m so desperately trying to understand is a more broad question: how can we value ourselves over other people in the world? When a life stops, there is great loss, regardless of the dollars or debt that the person leaves behind. Regardless of national origin, ethnicity, religion or political affiliation. Who dares to stay that one life is more important than another? Our department of state, our military and president. Despite the legacy of this being a country founded on freedom, it was never meant to be freedom for all – ultimately, that’s much too dangerous.

When I think of September 11, I have the experience of being there, of watching those boy twins burst into smoke and exhale their exhaustion all over us. It was a metaphor that my favorite hip-hop group, the Coup, had put on the cover of their album, “Party Music”, which was released the week before Sept 11th– alluding to the destruction of capitalism as a necessary catalyst to achieving equality this country. It was a grand collapse over a stunned city of survivors, and it was the first time that I went to sleep with tanks on the streets not knowing what the world would look like tomorrow outside my window. If I would be so fortunate to wake.

When I did wake, I found it incredibly devastating to see the missing posters, which were pasted on every available wall, scaffold, bulletin board and window at eye level. There was a vigil on Union Square, right across the street from my house, for two weeks solid, though many of us met there for months afterward to strategize. There, I experienced something so incongruous to many tales of visiting New York – human connection with strangers. We exchanged our stories, let each other know about upcoming events, protests, and volunteer opportunities, distributed fliers, wrote down messages to the lost, deceased and their families. We used the space as a center for trying to understand and make sense of this, tried to put everything into a historical perspective instead of joining the reactionary war-mongers, who seethed with their desire to initiate revenge upon whosoever was responsible, regardless of why it happened. Forging a community in the midst of loss, we worked to honor the loss and understand the causes – explicit and implicit. While Guiliani credits himself on creating this community for New Yorkers, he did not once visit Union Square to speak to us.

I don’t think of this experience as unique, in fact I file it with those of people all over the world who have witnessed massive tragedy or scales of violence. It is of particular interest to me that large-scale destruction and death, in its spectacular glory of explosion, seems to outrank slow-but-steady genocide. Hiroshima (70,000 dead), Nagasaki (40,000 dead) often eclipse the Holocaust (almost 6 million dead) in discussions of WWII, because of the awesome visual spectacle and introduction of nuclear force, as well as the element of immense shame involved in such mass genocide, in retrospect. There are people who still believe that the Holocaust never happened, because it is easier than admitting that their fathers and grandfathers participated. I also tend to align events of this magnitude with natural disasters – such as hurricane Katrina (which killed 1,900 people and displaced tens of thousands), and the tsunami in Indonesia (killed 186,983 people) – but as it is with natural disaster, there is no enemy to blame except for an angry earth who is watching how we destroy her.

Despite many conservative attempts to disprove conspiracy theory and a mainstream media gag-order on divergent points of view, I will always believe in the conspiracy theory that Sept. 11th was allowed to happen by the U.S. government because our president had planned to finish a war that his father could not finish; but needed public support in order to justify it. This is to say, I believe that intelligence knew and chose inaction, that the president wagered a few thousand lives being worth the advantages of access-by-force into the middle east. I don’t see a blatant disregard for human life being so out of the question with the current administration, and in fact, find it utterly crucial to think about who passed away as important to how American grief was collected into war support. What if the planes had struck the low-income housing projects that line the East River, housing almost 10,000 people? Would we, as a nation, have reacted the same way? Would we have jumped up to support a war on terrorism in their names, too? As evidenced by government reaction (or lack thereof) to hurricane Katrina, I feel confident in saying that the outcome would have been different if it was not middle-class white business people who were mostly affected by the World Trade Center, Pentagon and flight 93 hijackings.

Being in New York at the time, I have heard countless stories of people who were called and warned the week before, were told not to fly, not to be in the area by their government-employed friends and relatives who were breeching confidentiality in order to warn their loved ones. I have heard and seen evidence on both sides with regard to the attack on the pentagon (see this video: http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm and also this article from time magazine: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1531304-3,00.html ). Conservative theorists look to debunk the conspiracy theory based on “expert” opinion, usually provided by someone who is in some way connected to the FBI, CIA or current administration. The left often does not have enough information to support its claims, in part due to immediate confiscations of surveillance tapes and other evidence by the FBI, who were there within minutes to collect evidence from non-government owned local businesses for their investigation. While I think it’s important to understand and to have the American people know what really happened on that morning, I find these debates to be ego-bashing and -tripping more often than they are genuinely useful toward logical, fact-based assessment of the events.

I don’t even know how to move forward and conclude these thoughts. Rereading some of the things I wrote six years ago (http://www.meniscuszine.com/issue13/letter1.html), I realize that I’ve made a very conscious disconnect from a lot of the war coverage, in attempt to distinguish war-mongering from reality. I feel like I don’t know as much as I should right now and am quite tentatively going to publish this. But after years of processing, talking, dialoguing, commenting, re-illustrating, telling my story and listening as much as possible to the stories of others, I still believe that education for social justice is at the crux of trying to envision a world that rises above this madness and looks to value the lives of all people, not just those in power. Critically educating people to understand themselves as citizens who can have power and DO have power, in the face of a media that seeks to keep us pacified and unquestioning, is a liberatory and difficult stance to occupy.

What I know is that the depth and breadth of the patriot act, as well as the subsequent loss of our civil liberties are incredibly alarming. The argument that you must give up certain freedoms in order to eventually be free is akin to the logic that we are at war in order to preserve peace. The fact that we are setting up democracies in other countries, modeled after our own corrupt and fraught system is ludicrous. I have always highlighted the importance in continuing to do your own research about the history of the U.S.’ involvement in the middle east, and how it affects our political and economic interests there today. I urge you to begin making connections between your own life and some of these issues (war, terrorism, national security, diplomacy, imperialism, racism, religion, oil) as they do affect each of us.

There are many ways to get involved and better understand our post-s11 politics and the detrimental affect on our society as well as global culture and politics. I do not wish to be prescriptive, but rather ask you to locate an organization that interests you. I ask you to think of the importance of participating in your democracy, which is corrupt, but can still function if we believe in our own power and start using it. Vote in local elections, as well as presidential ones. And always, keep talking to one another, challenging, thinking and questioning. Critical inquiry is at the basis of change. And at the end of the day, I have to remember that change is very slow, but I believe that education is at the root of change, and this is where I will be working.

In solidarity,
Lauren Fardig

first day madness

2007-09-05T15:39:00.001-04:00

disclaimer: tech related in part, but i'm also in need to process the first day of school. jeff and liz, this is a cross-posting. i don't have my field journal with me, so these reactions and observations are off the dome. drawing off of the "participant observation" article, i realize that the most difficult part of my ethnographic observations of my classroom will be to be mindful of the language i use when writing down field notes. i am a practiced ethnographer and have often noted differences in language due to my background in English, but it will be crucial to keep good verbatim records of what is said, instead of summarizing.

tou fue and i arrived 45 minutes early on the first day, as i know the tendency for things to go wrong, especially in a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants district of Detroit, and we wanted to feel fully prepared for the day. both of us were wearing an earhart dark blue polo shirt and khaki's, it made me feel like we were part of the team. kitze and i received some of our class rosters last week, but found quickly that they were quite wrong, as half of the students in our homeroom were not in the right place. miss kitze appeared flustered as she was trying to figure out where the students were who were supposed to be here. we kept hearing announcements over the loudspeaker as to the locations of stray students and new students located in the cafeteria.

to assist in bringing order to the situation, i found myself trying to take over the administrative duties of filling out the scan sheets, taking attendance records down to the attendance office (met mr. sanchez and the whole staff there, too) as well as passing out pencils and forms to students, who diligently filled out the 6 different forms that the district requires of them for attendance and scheduling/counseling. miss kitze sent students out originally to try and locate students that should've been there, and asked about the whereabouts of each student she named. when she came across a familiar name or face, she always asked if they had a brother or sister, or if she had substitute taught them -- and in many cases, remembered the exact play, story or science lesson she was teaching when she met them.

i located myself at her desk, in the front corner of the classroom, and introduced myself to the homeroom as the student teacher for the whole year, that I was from U of M and that i would be here tuesdays and thursdays. given the chaos of the day, i decided that i would take a more observational stance but try to be helpful to ms. kitze as much as i could. the first question they asked me was whether or not i had a myspace account. i learned that the school system has a social networking site called "gaggle" and that there's also a computer program that many of them used last year called "accelerated reader" that i want to learn more about. i also heard the word "ATLAS" thrown around a lot, which is a district-wide professional development seminar/program that they're involved in, and must do more research on that.

the homeroom time that we spent together was spent on going over lunchroom procedures, locker procedures, reminding them about dress code -- i did not participate in most of this section, but noticed that our homeroom is quite talkative and seem to know each other quite well. i noticed that some students were not in dress code, but they have the first few weeks of school to "get into" dress code and can be provided with proper attire by a special program at the school if they cannot afford it. miss kitze told me between class changes that 100% of the students are below the poverty level in this school.

i took particular notice of locker assignments, which was one of the things that we did during lunch, before the students were called down to the lunchroom. the majority of homeroom divided themselves up into pairs for splitting up lockers, but i noticed that there were 5 students - serge, griselda and i have yet to learn the other 3's name - who didn't have partners and had to go out into the hall with kitze to be paired up. i noticed the way that serge looked at the floor the whole time. these students also were all seated at the back of the class and didn't seem to be interacting with the rest of the homeroom class with the vigor of the majority. kitze and i discussed this after class).

we then went to ms. brakefield's room down the hall for the ATLAS portion of the day -- which were activities designed to build school pride and community within the houses -- for instance, we're in house A and the teachers thought that it would be good to have the opening activity acquaint the students with the teachers in house A (even though we will not be teaching them), as well as giving us an idea of who the students are in house A, so that we can begin to get to know them. since each teacher MUST stand in the hallway right outside of their door between passing periods, the teachers want to know which students are supposed to be in the house and who isn't.

this is to be continued later... i must go to class, but here are some highlights -- after watching ms. kitze and ms. brakefield teach two sections of the activity about amelia earhart's life, i taught the final two... assessing KWL (prior Knowledge, Wonder/Want to know and Learned through the activity) before reading a page on her life and accomplishments. we asked the students to pull out two facts about her life and were interesting to them and also to define a few vocabulary words. each subject area (science, math, social studies) had their own related activity -- for instance, the math classes took at a look at angles of flight patterns and the science classes looked at directionality variables with paper planes).

there is much more to say about getting to know the students during lunch, and what happened after lunch when our real classes came for short sessions with us. class personalities and the differences between them are no joke!

anyhoo... this is just the beginning, it was a hectic day, but i loved every moment of the chaos, and ms. kitze responded by just laughing about it "what else can i do?" she asked. i need to break out the old ethnographical lens again. and learn that it's okay to be long-winded, i'll have a lot of "evidence" to sift through. ooh, and i want to talk about generational differences in technological know-how as i feel that i may become the tech expert of the classroom (there is a technology coordinator as well as a computer teacher -- the computer teacher is a mac specialist, mr. dominguez, and the tech specialist is ms. yglesias, i need to talk to her about the existence of a digital projector for my laptop, note to self).

xoxo
lo

from the beginning til the end of it.

2007-08-23T14:40:00.000-04:00

jurassic 5 on my mind, quality control has been the soundtrack to the season. i met with mary (my mentor teacher) at her home in novi yesterday. we've planned out our first essay and in an effort to get to know the students, i'm going to be videotaping a performance of their "all about me" intro essays... we were both bringing up ideas for projects and she's letting me take over the poetry unit in february, as well as the persuasive essay unit. she made it clear that because of detroit funding issues, the first two months of school really are all about the MEAPs, and she found my interest in diving in and collaborating with her on curriculum to be cool.

with a new superintendent in the schools, she broke it down to me quickly: "i don't tend to plan until i get there, because they change it up on us every year, i don't know what the expectations are, and we have to run by the pacing charts, so... we fly by the seat of our pants." she's really excited to explore the kinds of projects and group work we can accomplish with two of us and it already feels like we're on a team. every sentence seemed to end with "we're on the same page" as a conjunction. and though i know already that our styles are different, (when i told her that i was doing the videotaping records of practice thing, she said "oh my god! i better plan exciting lessons, ha!") i can already tell that she's the type of teacher that her students remember for years.

we went over MAC's guidelines and expectations and talked about some of our own objectives, as well as some of the nitty gritty (weekly lesson plans are due on mondays, she will be printing a copy for me for records of practice. we talked about me saving a copy of worksheets/student work, and about their do-it-now (bellwork) journals. thursdays we're going to have a weekly meeting, her prep period is last period, so many details so little time.) over and over again i hear "get to know the secretaries, the janitors, the lunch ladies, the security staff. we talked about dress code for students and teachers, the heat index in her classroom, obtaining a digital overhead for my laptop so we can do powerpoint, i feel like it's alllll taking shape. 2 professional development days and 2 days to set up/clean/organize the classroom next week. i am so incredibly excited, i just can't hide it.

and now back to organizing the effective teaching handbook.
xo
lo

break.

2007-08-18T02:56:00.000-04:00

has been quiet. being the dork that i am, i made a list of objectives. i have watched much golf and csi with my dad. been to shows, dog parks (to meet my mentor teacher!), punk week, chilled with my cousins, gone mini golfing, dancing, karaoke-ing, had a lot of fun. still reading books, still listening to common, not quite ready to go back to the world yet. but i've been keeping busy. i want to volunteer as a mentor at the peace center, i want to make the effort to not have my best friends become acquaintances this year. i saw sparks. but what i've learned is that you all are becoming my good friends, too.

i awake to find no peace of mind. said how do you live as a fugitive? (there has been a coldplay influence, too)

how are myspace/facebook infringing on our own civil liberties?

2007-08-06T01:14:00.000-04:00

now, this is not surprising, but it's still hella creepy (excuse my lack of intellectual language, the substantive conversation paper has been leeching my brain). i just wrote an email earlier today in which i had asked an educator friend of mine how he felt about having his students on his myspace page -- as i have to think about how to edit mine before heading into schools. they will find me (as will potential employers and many other folks unbeknownst to me) i think i've already talked about this once in my blog, but it represents my burning desire to be fully ME whereever i am, and realizing how i need to tone certain parts of myself down for my students. for instance, especially this year working in a middle school, i really don't need them stumbling onto my page and finding out that i'm not straight. the question of coming out to students is kind of another ball game...

the question i wanted to ask was -- why, as someone who considers myself to be an informed cultural critic and very much a conspiracy theorist, am i participating in this so completely? i admit that part of my myspace obsession is about vanity, but part of it is also about staying connected with friends from all over the world, being able to be updated on their lives by seeing their pages as "records of life", i'll also admit that i like to use myspace as ethnography -- but as liz pointed out in a comment on an earlier blog, the internet has been archived for the past 10 years or so... how can i be supplying so much information about myself and my beliefs? i know i've been on CIA/FBI lists for years because of my activist work, but didn't realize how my blogs might also put me there. add this entry to the list.

so, just advising you (and checking myself) to think about what you put up online. especially on sites that are "personal networking sites", as one of the ulterior motives of these are really marketing ploys (come on, myspace is owned by rupert murdock, it's not a better alternative to facebook, just a different flavor of evil) to gather massive amounts of information and identify trends in pop culture to increase consumption. what are the dangers of our ignorant participation? and how can we best use these tools for their benefits without putting ourselves at risk? i will continue thinking about this.

effective teaching, the beginning of a concept map

2007-08-02T14:31:00.001-04:00

2007-08-01T01:27:00.001-04:00

i miss new york. my old neighborhood, ---> where it's about to be august and the heat is oppressive, but everyone is out in the streets. reggaeton blasting from every car, there is a vibrancy in every molecule of air in brooklyn during the summer. the city itself has such a strong august personality and will be much on my mind.

i have made a commitment to myself to read a lot over our break (a partial reading list to follow shortly), and while the pure volume of theory that we've been reading over the past six weeks does not seem conducive to reading for pleasure, i am also committing to reading one non-school book (or other form of text) per week during the fall -- as i'm thinking about going back into the classroom, i'm concerned that i haven't been reading enough content texts. i've been reading a lot about literacy and multiple literacies, but not challenging myself as a reader (well, except for speed-reading, which is quite challenging as a technique... but so satisfying!) to delve into new fiction, new poetry, and creative non-fiction, too.

i also had an epiphany today, after the dork squad drove me to my mom's office. i have learned so much in the past few days from our presentations on effective teaching. i want to make a handbook of effective teaching, using all of the records of practice from 695 and our lessons, so that we have something to go back to that is tactile and physical as we head into schools this fall.(or maybe an online resource? thoughts?) i have learned so much already from each of you in this program, and find myself blown away by how different each of our lessons have been, but how much i've taken away from each one.

oh... and while it's not quite done yet (i'm still waiting on some feedback -- there is another revision or two), i wanted to post the poem that i read at my friend's wedding last friday. thank you so much for all of your constructive criticism, it is much appreciated. in the wake of losing sekou and some disconnection with other poetic partners in crime, i realize that there is a large void in who i turn to for feedback. i need to start building that community again -- and given my hectic fall schedule, i get the feeling that this blog may start to take that shape, too. talk about a multi-tasker!

the diva and the poet
(for erin and tony - 7/27/07)

let me tell you something.

when we are in your living room
and talk, surrounded by coffee,
elephants and drawing
the circle bigger, you are two
that bellow large love in
its real form, from home.

you are exactly what i have
in mind when i envision how it could be
to locate my soul alive
in someone else's body.
the way your faces ignite
at the smallest exchange
of touch.

i adore what you
hold open to each other.
there is evidence in
the everyday of
your gentle care and loud passion.

for years, i have watched this grow.
for years, i have admired the
calibrated movement
between your hearts.

i would wish you luck, but
can say with certainty
that your love is how
strength is defined.

(love you big).

wheatley and lisa delpit

2007-07-27T12:55:00.000-04:00

i have a terrible migraine today, which is upsetting b/c i'm supposed to be in a wedding in a few hours and i can't go outside - the lights are too bright. will i be standing there in my dress, with sunglasses on? probably. hot!

anyway, i've been thinking ahead to my placement a lot lately. i haven't yet met with my mentor teacher because of this wedding and general craziness and she lives in novi, but i will very soon - we are both incredibly excited to begin and i definitely get the sense that she will let me lead pretty early on... but my research topic for 695 and much of the reading on adolescent literacy we've been doing (i'm loving speedreading, by the way!) is really causing me to shape my inquiries on two things: engagement and classroom management.

i feel that i can have a strong grasp on engagement, i see myself experimenting all the time with new activities, new projects, new designs, in order to keep my students interested and engaged in the material. i know already that it will be generated from them. and that there is much planning and scaffolding that must go into a lesson plan so that choice can be implemented and done WELL. i am not just looking to teach some surface level factual thinking, i'm trying to teach for understanding, for critical thinking, reading, writing skills, i'm trying to teach to question. there needs to be a generation of active questioners.

i have been blogging back and forth with mr. shannon wheatley, a high school history teacher in houston, texas. his blog, http://wheatley.wordpress.com/ (education noir) is about his thoughts around education, adding a voice to the teachers of color perspective. and a strong voice! i am honored to read his writing, and look forward to the opportunity to dialogue with him about our experiences. mine the first time in the classroom in awhile, his at a kipp (knowledge is power program) school. i'm interested to learn more about these schools of choice.

shannon makes me think about lisa delpit, in an article she wrote about how black educators are often scolded by the (very white) progressive education community for being too stern... but their teaching is often more affective for urban students than alternative education. teachers need to understand how to communicate with their students; part of knowing them is knowing their cultural backgrounds, traditions and codes. and i am going to be a difficult teacher. but hopefully a class with me will be a memorable experience!! ha. i'm getting a little nervous for the fall.

xo,
l

2007-07-20T17:02:00.001-04:00

shoes!! oh my god shoes... just testing out the lovelies of gliffy.

r.i.p. sekou sundiata

2007-07-19T17:52:00.000-04:00

my poetry mentor passed away yesterday. i just found out today, and i have no words for this. this wreaks violent havoc on my heart. there is nothing to mute the sound. but at least the sound is his beautiful, deep, velvet tone pulling at my heart strings. i wanted to share sekou with you. and this too.

"where is my witty?
where is my sovereignty?
and where the hell is my cool?"

women like that need an inside job. you can't take them from without.

(i'm trying to talk back to you now. this is a slow process of trying to form the words, the sounds that will shape your memory. i take this seriously.)

hearing you again and again in my dreams. i live in the past, but it makes sense in the future. i can't count the colors on your hands. and tonight, we were small and intimate, we burned bright coals on your legacy. i told your story, keep another inside the frame of my skull. there are some things that are always secret. but only dancing makes her clean and i wanted to be washed free of it all. start tomorrow a fresh body and breathe you blue into my mornings. i take it you're there. and i go there everytime. the place where rain brings thickness to the air and i can calibrate my movements to your breath.

where is my mind?

2007-07-18T18:29:00.000-04:00

i apologize in advance for this post's lack of technological pondering, i need to vent.

i am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but i am highly critical of myself. in thinking about this afternoon's in-class assignment and my frustration with it, i found myself nearly in tears about not being able to easily come up with 19 questions that stratified the cognitive and knowledge dimensions. i realize that it's difficult to come up with questions that are diverse in their knowledge type and grasping different cognitive utilities... and i guess i've always thought of myself as someone who thinks of great questions. we are all stressed and tired, i don't want to blame my visible outbursts on that because i am not the only one feeling that stress. but as hard as we worked, we were struggling to come up with ways to relate the text to meaningful questions.

what i was really impressed by was how people started to come over to help us, but i think it was an ego hit, because i'm not used to being that person who needs help. i don't deal with it well; i'm used to being the one who helps others. it was also about the fact that i do love the synthesis between theory and practice, but was struggling to ground the theories into the text. and struggling further in thinking about how to do this in the fall and spring. i am imagining the look and feel of the classroom already and i think that teaching lessons for 695 will be the beginning of where i feel the application. i think we need to hold class outside. i think we need to change the shape of what we're doing sometimes and i realize how my mind sometimes turns off in front of text books, still. i have unlearned how to see them as useful...

but, as liz de groot pointed out yesterday... we will have to use them despite what we think about text books, politically. how can we use them as a resource that is not frustrating to us and to our students? in the process of moving from student to teacher (and always remaining student, too), i need to ground this in the body. my brain is really feeling rocked and it's a beautiful inquiry into its capacities, but really difficult to grow so much so quickly. and to never be able to stop thinking about it.

part of this is also that i don't have an outlet for this language at home. i have to break it down, de-code the language to my family (which is exactly how i'll have to break it down for my students), so i feel like when i go home, i'm teaching, too. in all of this, i'm trying to find the space for me. holding onto the creativity and trying not to get bogged down in the details.

nam myoho renge kyo, and a nap - both are necessary. goodnight!

xo
lauren

the concept of lolo

2007-07-15T12:46:00.000-04:00

i mapped myself out in some key identity concepts... i will add some things as this changes, ha ha. just having fun with inspiration. what i was thinking about today was myself as a person and myself as a teacher, two very different identities. while i know some teachers who connect with their students online through myspace or other social networking sites, mine is quite risque (that could be the understatement of the year... check it out -- http://www.myspace.com/lolosita) and in thinking about proceeding into this next year, i want to navigate how to be able to keep my true self up on my page, and how to also not suggest to my students that i will be out, partying and dancing all the time and so it's not necessary for them to do their work. how do we become ourselves in the classroom in a way that can navigate this difficult terrain? i don't think it's always necessary to lie about myself or hide aspects of myself (i.e. tattoo's), i believe it's conditional, but i have to also think about being a role model and the types of messages i'm inadvertantly sending. i think it's just important to be deliberate... and maybe take the village voice photo shoot where i was on the cover of the gay pride issue off of myspace, yes?

that's another thing that i've been thinking about. i came out when i was 14 (and ironic that on the concept map above, i didn't list queer as part of my identity). i don't necessarily feel the need to come out to the whole MAC program, i think that it's been guessed or implied anyway... if you talk to me about it, you'll find that it's very complex. i don't believe in labels that are over-arching and all-determining, but i am queer. how do i use this vast community of resources and central part of my life in my language and approach to homophobia in my classrooms? to talking about and empathizing with different literacies? i was thinking about this in connection to the ways that an online space can be a place to build community within educators, as i was contacted by a member of my buddhist organization who is looking to connect with other gay SGI members on the east coast (http://www.sgi-usa.org for more info about my buddhist practice)... ooh, one more thing. i was really excited to make a strong connection with an educator working in houston, texas. he's a high school history teacher and has very strong ideas about how to approach his classroom, we share a love for critical pedagogy, though we are in different subject areas, we have some pretty aligned approaches. we are going to have a dialogue that is rooted in our blogs, but for my ability to record it, i'll also be emailing with him, to deepen the level of exchange.

um and in other news, i'm completely obsessed with my group's wiki. like, dorkily so. and now i step back from procrastination in writing my summaries for pat... and get working. be well!!!

xo
lo

2007-07-12T19:31:00.000-04:00

this is actually a response to jon's blog, in which he was writing about hermeneutics (interpreting a text out of context, check his page for a real definition)... i just learned how to speed read and i'm looking forward to using that as a specific "technology" with which to approach texts... anyhoo...

i've been writing blogs for almost 10 years. i have ones that are more personal (i.e. not trafficked, hidden deep in the corners of cyberspace), ones that are more widely read, some with a specific intended audience, some that started off as "poetry only" or "political only", but the reality of each of these is that once i press "publish", i don't retain control of these factors anymore. i've also learned over time that i have an incredibly hard time drawing lines to say "this is for this purpose", even in this blog, i constantly ask myself "okay, is it about the class? can i post it there?" when i post something, i don't know who is reading, what they thought and because i have had a lot of blogs over time, i don't have a consistent readership that comments frequently... in this way, i am frustrated with the medium b/c i believe in its innate ability to be interactive, but often it is just musings that go unaddressed, when i'm always searching for dialogue. i think we were talking about this before with the egoism of blogging, how it can be a communique or soapbox, but it's crucial for me to get feedback, so lay it on me!

the safety of online spaces is something that i struggle with. i have never believed that there's anything "safe" about the online space... anything can be accessed by anyone. now, that there will be droves of librarians at my door for not using in-blog citations is pretty unlikely b/c it's one of millions out there... while i believe big brother is watching, not that close, ha.

i really enjoyed (jon's) post, and i too see the danger of hermeneutics. the writer's intent only goes so far... it's also about the reader's perception and the reason why i study language and communication (through English) is because i'm fascinated by the fact that every word we speak/write has the weight of our experiences in it. when i say "love", i bring to the word every time i've ever known or felt love... and to think that anyone else would understand the nuances of that is crazy. we share a language and i think it's crucial to constantly define what we mean, because definitions (as we see with trying to define literacy) are not static, and must change to reflect the culture and language we speak in. but the challenge, for me, is in trying to make those connections, so that i know you well enough to know what you mean when you talk love, hate, education, home, etc., and context is crucial.

xo
lauren

metacognition of a migraine

2007-07-11T08:38:00.000-04:00

the convergence of systems in my head caused a linear breakdown. i could see the lights going out in every window along the block. used to short circuitry of this kind, i know when and how to step down. close my eyes, massage my temples. drink caffeine. there are a few strategies i've learned. perhaps now that i'm starting to understand some additional frameworks, now that i'm looking large ahead, my eyes are too small for all they're seeing. for how bright and how dark the schema is. i think big and need to sometimes remember that i am a body, i am grounded and i am not always capable of everything.

now, we all know that i need no excuses to listen to thunder. but i don't have a backup generator anaymore, my skin is showing itself to be wiser. sleep is crucial and i want to be in my dreams pretty often these days. i require time with myself to uncover what i'm really thinking about, what really grinds my gears. and let me tell you , turning inward is not usually hard for me to do, but i still have growing pains of the brain (all the time).

i will call this that. a time when i am expanding and unable to accommodate spatially what i have acquired. a reading last night said "Every book has the potential to be a teacher" (paul & elder, 15, APA citations are my life) and this is why i received 9 boxes of them today. even when my head has no room, i can always go back to them, re-introduce myself to my mentors and find that they remember me, and have silently watched me grow. just look in the margins, notice the simplicity with which i thought about things then. i used to make assertions with such conviction. how does it only get more stratified as i get older?

this too is a mark of becoming.

no footballer left behind

2007-06-30T15:05:00.000-04:00

stewart had sent this around via email, wanted to share:

"All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If, after two years, they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.
All students will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents.

ALL STUDENTS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents do not like football.

Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. It will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind. If parent do not like this new law, they are encouraged to support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players."

---

i like that taking it out of context, you see that no child left behind just doesn't make sense! i mean, i already knew that, but i liked the way that this illustrated it so simply.

but what i really wanted to comment on was how, in addition to blogging, the email list that we use for the MAC group (and sub-groups, as we set off to do some projects) has become another kind of community for us, as well. i have gotten to know c-tools by wading through it and asking my classmates for help/clarification. it is really exciting that we are already teaching each other from our own specific backrgrounds, and moreso, that we are all open to learning from each other. i feel that there are so many ways to connect with one another, and organically, opportunities are opening up as people learn each others' hobbies, interests and extra-curriculars. i suggest that everyone gets involved with some sort of outside of class activity -- i have a feeling that we will need something else to think about, something to provide balance and a break.

just some saturday thoughts...

xo
lo

vicodin-induced introduction

2007-06-29T15:32:00.000-04:00

welcome to the land of lolo, i hope that you enjoy your stay.

i am incredibly excited about this class, as i feel that there is a great expanse of innovative and interesting resources that i can learn and live in my future classrooms. unfortunately, i got a tooth pulled over the lunch break today, so i wasn't able to participate fully in the class today, though i am quite sure that i will be all up in it quite soon.

revolving around blogging, here
is my myspace blog, which i write in a few times a week and which will probably also be heavily school focused in the next year.... i see blogging as a great tool for building community in the classroom in a new way, connecting learnings to one another in a space that they have a really direct impact on. blogs also touch and reach students whose speaking skills aren't as strong, or shy kids. it gives students another medium in which to participate, in addition to strengthening their cognition of the subject material, ability to respond to others' writing, and building their own writing skills.

i have to say that i am intrigued by the use of blogs in the classroom, and reminiscing to my own experiences of creating the online community. people say things on the internet that they will not say in real life. people admit, have the discussions that they wouldn't dare to if you were sitting across the table. and i think it's a great addendum to a classroom environment.... though personally, i think it's important to address wholly different styles of learning and yes, in class participation in addition to extra-curricular or online input is crucial.

i think blogs are useful tools to expand upon, clarify and further the class discussion, but certainly not a replacement. i love technology and want to integrate it into my classroom as much as possible, but i worry about its effects and making people lazy enough that they don't interact, don't explore in person and save it for the "safe" classroom.

online space is never safe, folks. when you put it out there, it is no longer yours and the audience is able to do with your writing what they want. your intention only goes so far. and really, i think that the quality of in-person discussion can be stellar if the real-time classroom is fostered and created with expectations for quality, respect, confidentiality.

anyhoo, as someone who has blogged for 8 or 9 years now in many different venues, i think that the level of conversation and community building is crucial to understanding the language of the students we work with, however i don't see entirely online classrooms as effective as a combination of media with a real discussion. having the ability to say it aloud, to argue a point on the spot and not hiding behind the screen... it still holds value with me.

anyway, more very soon!! looking forward to all that we explore in this class.

xo
lauren (or lolo, as i'm known outside of class)