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taboo you

Volume 10, Issue 2 of Taboo, The Journal of Culture and Education
Now available for download


taboo-cover.jpg

Appears that McGill is deep into Freire and Critical Pedagogy.

The Freire Archives and International Journal of Critical Pedagogy are
publicly accessible, publications will be available in both hard copy
and virtually through this website. Housed in the project are the
papers of seminal scholars who have contributed to the evolution of
Critical Pedagogy. In addition, the project will promote research in
Critical Pedagogy and bring together both local and international
educators and continue its development globally while highlighting its
relevance with marginalized and indigenous peoples.


All kinds of big names here. Kincheloe and McLaren most prominent…

Kevin Kumashiro - Director, Center for Anti-Oppressive Education
04.02.08

went to a talk tonight.

the right has been so successful in part because their narratives make sense - for example, there may, in fact be enough money being spent on education, OVERALL… but WASTE prevents disrupts our efforts to provide quality education
fear of terrorism

65% spending on in-classroom expenses enjoys wide public support

major players
Tim Mooney - R consolutant favoring tax cuts
Patrick Burn - privatization

George Lakoff - Don’t Think of an Elephant

people vote their values; they don’t vote on the issues

notion of the “achievement gap” is a politically useful construction for the right
we also need to be more strategic…. A MOVEMENT AWAY FROM CIVIL RIGHTS DISCOURSE
because the civil rights movement is premised on an assimiliationist ideal

Carol Anderson - Eyes off the Prize
2002 Yale Review - Covering? title?
Derrick Bell - Eyes at the the Bottom of the Well
Silent Covenant

Edublogs.org is great as an interactive class website. Students in my poetry class post their work to our class blog, read each others’ work and offer feedback. See them shed their exoskeletons & wax earnest. You’d never guess to see these tough li’l nuggets on the street. Maybe take a looksee… they swoon for comments!

We are a long long way off from anything even remotely resembling CoolCatTeacher’s rad Horizon Project, but one of these days… It is, after all, a post-Diigo life. Count me a convert, CoolCat.

do you buy it?

Given that:

  • social constructions of gender, race, class, sexuality are salient enough to impact the subjective experience of young teachers
  • the direction & extent to which they do is an unknown
  • school films throughout the last half century have been drawn to a hero narrative, in which an idealistic teacher, often a young white female teacher, embark on a tumultous, emotionally charged journey, similar to a coming-of-age story
  • these audiovisual texts may affect stakeholders’ mindframes: teachers, students, general public, parents, admins
  • there is a tradition stretching back a half century of these types of school films
  • teachers’ work is found narrowly challenging but ultimately rewarding and worth the effort
  • films do draw from basic truths of lived experience, uplifting and consumer friendly
  • authority challenged within the currently existing safe yet oppressive framework
  • great white hope teacher-marytr narrative serves interests of existing power structure (read: white middle-class values)
  • hegemonic portrayals of teaching life mislead, charismatic martyr types romanticize and belittle teaching life
  • scapegoat lesser teachers and avoid actual, structural critique, invoke culture of blame
  • potential to bias public to locate actualized change in savior figures decontextualized
  • one important component of becoming a teacher is the affective componenet, the identity development
  • retention, esp of second stage teachers, positively linked to sense of personal and professional congruence
  • retention is negatively impacted by unrealistic expectations, the gap between the imagined and the real
  • teacher ed reliance on methods and jargon are insufficient, do not address teachers’ subjective experience
  • critical identity construction and carving a space proceed from grappling with hegemony
  • unity of spheres, personal and professional, is healthy for individual, desirable for sociey, efficacious for policy

school 2.0

Major finds in the school 2.0 department. One example:

SourceForge.net is an dense compilation of open source software. High brow and high quality. Argumentative is an intuitive and powerful tool for argument mapping. Clean and familiar interface.

Here’s a simple example:

    Does anyone else lose it watching this?

    And as much as the recent spate of teacher-savior films make my skin all bumpy, I can’t help but bop my head when Gangsta’s Paradise comes on.

    will you be my AP?

    Spent time over this holiday weekend discussing the state of education, urban and otherwise, with future aunt-in-law. She is AP of a school on the north side of Chicago, an English teacher at heart, and her vision of the ideal classroom takes the breath away. I hope she will comment on this post clarifying her views and correcting my misconceptions.

    But as I understand it, teachers’ work is to allow students to develop confidence of voice, the ability to conceive of and express new ideas. Teachers are advised to strategically release control, abdicate power to students as constituents, thus promoting a sense of collective responsibility and group membership.

    L, are you there?

    Here’s a little photo montage via Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrelevant via Will Richardson of Weblogg-ed.

    Detroit4Detroit3_2
    Detroit2
    Detroit1

    All are of the Detroit Public School Book Repository. Scary. They kind of remind me of what I found when I opened the cabinets in my classroom my first year. Going into my fifth (on Thursday!), the worst I expect is a little book attrition. Hey, the summer help’s gotta read too, right?


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