This shouldn't be a surprise, but I'm absolutely floored

http://www.wbez.org/news/education/chicago-add-new-barack-obama-college-prep-high-school-110073

You would think that someone would have the power to say no to this, that it's just too much. But it's been proven over and over again, that Rahm finds a way to do just what he wants. Just a year after he closes 53 schools in Chicago, schools that served mostly students of color, he gets away with opening a brand new selective enrollment school not only on the north side (just three selective enrollment schools are not on the north side), not only in Lincoln Park (a wealthy neighborhood), but less than a mile away from a selective enrollment school that already exists. I can't say it better than the article does, but this made my jaw drop.

Last week the Supreme Court upheld a ban on the use of affirmative action in Michigan. I felt so overwhelmed with anger and shock when I heard this. The implications of this decision are so big that it was difficult for me to pick a part all of the ways that it's going to manifest, it's just so much bigger than thinking about race and access at the post secondary level. When I heard this story on Democracy Now, I was so relieved to hear some reporting that was connecting the decision to Jim Crow and Brown vs. Board of Education, a bigger picture perspective of education and race in this country that thinks about why affirmative action was established to begin with.

Student Stories

http://www.wbez.org/news/wbezs-student-stories-110014

WBEZ's attempt to air student voices talking about their experiences in schools in the Chicago area! I think this is a cool idea and like the fact that they are leaving it so open. They're basically asking for ANY kind of response from current students (anyone under the age of 21), from an audio diary, an essay, a video, to artwork reflecting on education and what they think education should be. Encourage students you know to submit and have their feelings about education heard!

I wish I had read this last week!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/common-core-new-york-times_b_5182703.html

 

This is a great response from Diane Ravitch about the New York Time's coverage of the Common Core Standards. Last week when we were talking about Common Core in class, I realized that I didn't really have a good argument against them besides my very broad discomfort with standards in general because of the tendency that they rely on standardized testing to measure learning. Anyway, this piece lays out very well the arguments against the Common Core and critiques the way in which the NYT has been writing about them. An important read for all future teachers and anyone who gets riled up measurement and assessment through standardized tests.

Teaching Channel

I found the Teaching Channel to be a really helpful resource for coming up with lesson plan ideas. Just spending a half hour or so watching videos, exposes you to many different kinds of mediums, classrooms, teachers, and themes. One video that I found interesting was "School as Living Museum". This video profiles a school in San Diego that puts an emphasis on filling the entire school with artwork, not just artwork but work that is meaningful to the students who made it. In general, the great diversity of work that is shown on the walls of the school is pretty interesting and is definitely high quality in terms of materials, concept, and just visually. While I know the point of the video isn't necessarily to show a critical perspective or to provide a large lens of art classrooms in general, but the only thing that bothered me about it was that it kind of had a "look what we can do" sort of attitude without acknowledging the extreme amount of resources that the school seems to have access to. Not that this is necessarily a problem, I think this video serves as an excellent example of what can be done in a context where resources are plentiful and art is valued and a priority, seeing examples of that can be helpful to any art classroom. But some kind of acknowledgement of the different amount of access to resources might have been nice in this example and could have helped to alleviate the sense that they were giving themselves a giant pat on the back, which honestly isn't completely undeserved in my opinion.

Let's Medicate Some More!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/health/idea-of-new-attention-disorder-spurs-research-and-debate.html?ref=education

Whoa. This article is nuts. It talks about a new disorder that can be applied to children with attention problems, "sluggish cognitive tempo" which is described by feelings of lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing. Okay, not so surprising that there is another attempt to diagnose and medicalize perhaps "normal" child behavior, but here's the craziest part:

"Dr. Barkley, who has said that “S.C.T. is a newly recognized disorder,” also has financial ties to Eli Lilly; he received $118,000 from 2009 to 2012 for consulting and speaking engagements, according to propublica.org. While detailing sluggish cognitive tempo in The Journal of Psychiatric Practice, Dr. Barkley stated that Strattera’s performance on sluggish cognitive tempo symptoms was “an exciting finding.” Dr. Barkley has also published a symptom checklist for mental health professionals to identify adults with the condition; the forms are available for $131.75 apiece from Guilford Press, which funds some of his research.

Dr. Barkley, who edits sluggish cognitive tempo’s Wikipedia page, declined a request to discuss his financial interests in the condition’s acceptance.

“I have no doubt there are kids who meet the criteria for this thing, but nothing is more irrelevant,” Dr. Frances said. “The enthusiasts here are thinking of missed patients. What about the mislabeled kids who are called patients when there’s nothing wrong with them? They are not considering what is happening in the real world.”

This is about making money for pharmaceutical companies of course! This is so insane, definitely check out the whole piece. 

Who am I- Self Portraits

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2014/04/13/education/edlife/13SELFIES_ss.html

Check out these creative selfies made by students from college age to 1st graders. They show an interesting range of medium and perspectives from across the country. Some good student artwork inspiration!

APTP God's Work

I'm so excited to see Albany Park Theater Project's "God's Work" this coming Friday, April 18th at the Goodman Theater. Watch the video teaser in the link above, it looks so incredible! I've seen many of APTP's productions over the past few years, their shows are usually inspired by oral histories from people in the neighborhood compiled by the student company surrounding a specific issue affecting the community. In the past few years, the APTP crew has done shows about immigration, anti foreclosure and eviction movement, and food. This new show looks just as powerful and beautiful as past productions, I can't wait to see it. There are still tickets left, and I highly recommend checking them out. The ticket prices have a pretty big range, so you can get balcony tickets for as cheap as $10. Do it!

The Prison Industrial Compex Is

https://soundcloud.com/free-write-jail-arts/the-prison-industrial-1?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Ffree-write-jail-arts%2Fthe-prison-industrial-1

 

This is one of the group pieces that I heard at Louder Than a Bomb a few weeks ago (Chicago's youth poetry festival). The piece was presented in audio form because it was written by students in the Free Arts Jail Arts and Literacy Program at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. These poets could not be at Louder Than a Bomb, but their piece about the prison industrial complex being the modern extension of slavery in the United States. It was so powerful to hear their voices played over the speakers in the Auditorium Theater to a full house of high school students from around the city. 

Privatizing the GED

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/28_03/28_03_levgarbuwa.shtml 

My friend Lee wrote this article that was recently published in Rethinking Schools! He teaches adult GED classes in Oakland, CA. In this piece Lee spells out exactly who the privatization of this test is going to disproportionally hurt, poor communities of color and incarcerated or formally incarcerated populations. This is primarily due to the jump in price of the test from $50 to $120 per test taker and the fact that the new test will need to be taken on a computer that many adult education facilities do not already have. This is yet another example of the testing market serving as an extreme barrier to many as opposed to a gateway to further education.

Don't Take Away Our Neighborhood School!

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2014/03/25/will-cps-reverse-itself-on-ames-middle-school

http://www.lsna.net/news/2892

Ames is in my neighborhood and I've been following this story through the Logan Square Neighborhood Association's Facebook page. Ben Javorsky's piece from the Reader is a good overview of what's been going on for this neighborhood school. During the primary elections last week, there was a ballot question asking if Ames should remain a neighborhood school or if it should be converted into a Marine military academy. The neighborhood overwhelmingly voted to keep Ames a community school. The second link from the Logan Square Neighborhood Association talks about the Marines outside polling places during last week's election. 

A Bigger Exhibition

NYT: Returning Home, But Always Going Forward- Recent David Hockney Work at the De Yong in San Francisco

I didn't even think to post about this until I started working on our Techno Teach-In about Apps. I saw this show when I was in San Francisco in January at the De Young Museum. It was a huge show of gigantic landscapes by David Hockney, mostly of East Yorkshire, Britain in different seasons, where David Hockney lives. A good number of the pieces exhibited were created using an ipad app called "Brushes". The first image above, "A Closer Winter Tunnel" is one of them. The one below is four rotating versions of a nine screen view of Woldgate Woods in Yorkshire, one version for each season. I really loved the show and would highly recommend going if you find your self in SF. It's also a really interesting example of contemporary painters incorporating technology into their work.  

Amundsen's happy video

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140317/lincoln-square/pharrells-happy-video-helps-amundson-students-reveal-culture-change
This video really made me laugh. It's a good portrait of the mix of identities that come together in a school building and messes with the stereotypes of what an urban neighborhood school looks like. Plus, a student made it and it went viral!

What happens when you build a beautiful public school?

NYT: Reading, Writing, and Renewal (the Urban Kind)

It seems like this is the question that is being asked in this collaboration between John Hopkins and Morgan State Universities in building this new school building in East Baltimore. Their idea is to use the school building as a central space for the community, a revitalization project that will support the community in being strong and serve as a space that will keep community united in the face of gentrification. Reading this makes me think of the grand, old school buildings that we still see in Chicago. As societal/cultural priorities have changed, we see many of these buildings in disrepair and even being knocked down or sold to private entities. What does it mean to build such a grand and beautiful building to house something like a public school? What would happen if we continued to build beautiful houses for public services at the same rate as we did at other times in this city's history? I'm thinking about buildings like the Cultural Center and Senn High School (which some of us visited last week), buildings that were designed to look like actual palaces.

The building of the high school I went to was only five years old when I began, a new CPS school. It is an incredibly beautiful building, there are huge atriums on each floor filling the school with light and overlooking the Chicago River. I really think the building itself had a huge affect on the culture of the school. While Northside College Prep wasn't built in a community with particular need (actually the politics of how the school got built are pretty messed up- not much of a surprise), I think this project is declaring that grand beautiful spaces to house the community's public institutions, has the potential to affect culture, put power into the hands of those who need it and that the design of public institutions really does matter.

Boy Meets Painting. Painting Grabs Boy. Boy Mystified.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/03/07/285967872/boy-meets-painting-painting-grabs-boy-boy-mystified?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=share&utm_medium=facebook

Such a beautiful essay by Robert Krulwich. I love how he puts into words that feeling of being totally grabbed by something. That feeling is exactly what makes me so excited by being in art classrooms, when students access that making sense space between themselves and a piece of art. It's so exciting!

Good Discussion of Saucedo Opt Out

http://www.wbez.org/news/saucedo-teachers-spend-day-1-isat-teaching-concerns-raised-about-intimidation-109815

This was the best thing I read/heard about the ISAT opt out of many Saucedo Elementary teachers and students. The intimidation methods going down on all sides, against teachers, parents, and students are pretty crazy. I also thought that the Illinois State Superintendent of Education wasn't presenting the best argument, if I were a parent I definitely don't think I would buy it. As for the teachers who opted out of giving the test, I have so much respect for them. What a scary leap of faith to take. 

The Box

I found this story linked to WBEZ's website, it's a visual accompaniment to an episode of Reveal Radio which is a PRX program. I clicked on it because of the topic, I work with teenagers so I was curious. When watched the piece, I was really moved by both the story and the haunting animated prints. I think it's a really good example of mixed media story telling and the possibilities available with just a little bit of technological know how.

Repeat After Me

CPS Teacher Professional Development From CEO'S Network

Posted on ChiEd Justice's youtube channel, this is the video's caption: "This presenter was one of several consultants flown in from California and the United Kingdom for the Chicago Public Schools' Office of Strategic School Support Services' special network. This is a professional development for teachers of Saturday ISAT preparation classes."

I don't know where exactly this came from (I saw it on Facebook), or how legit it actually is, but it's both pretty unsettling to watch and also not totally surprising. Of course how to teach test prep is much like test prep itself, it's the repeat after me kind of learning. When I watch this video, my first thoughts are, how does this promote critical thinking again? But after taking Adam's Histories, Theories, and Philosophies of the American Education System course last semester, I've thought a lot more about how different people in different times in the history of this country have answered the question, what is the purpose of education? For instance, during the industrial revolution, a big motive of the American education system was teaching people the skills needed to keep up with the new pace of production, math, science, being able to read diagrams, etc. If this video is a small snapshot of where American education is today, and I think it is, it makes me wonder, on a larger historical scale, what this obsession with measurement really about? What will it say about this point in history?

Happy teaching moment

I was in class the other day at Gallery 37 and one of my high school students came up to my co-teacher and I and asked if we were feminists. She went on to describe to us some intense high school mean girl drama that she had been dealing with at school. "YES WE ARE!", we both answered. And then my co-teacher put on this video. The three of us watched it together beaming big time. It was great.

This is the city we live in

Chicago Reader: Chicago, the city that works- just ignore the poverty


I don't even really know what to say about this. It's terrible and upsetting and really important information that every Chicagoan should know. And if you don't live in one of the ten communities in Chicago that has poverty rates of at least 40%, all of which are 92 to 99% African American, it's likely that you don't know. I didn't know until I read this extremely alarming piece. It's not just the statistics that are alarming, it's the narrative that our Mayor and yes, our President use to characterize this city. I really recommend reading this full piece, below is an excerpt:

"In 2000, nearly one in five Chicagoans—19.6 percent, or more than 556,000 people—were living in poverty. That's not a statistic any major city could be proud of. A decade later, our poverty rate has increased, to 22.1 percent. (The poverty line for a single adult younger than 65 is $11,344.)

In 2000, 10.1 percent of Chicagoans were living in extreme poverty—their incomes were below half of the poverty line. Today, in revamped Chicago, the proportion of residents in extreme poverty is—still 10.1 percent.

Those figures are from a new report by the Social IMPACT Research Center of the Heartland Alliance. Each year, the center analyzes census numbers and tabulates the socioeconomic status of Chicago's 77 community areas. The citywide poverty numbers aren't new, but the figures on the community areas are—and they show that the city that’s "obviously" getting things done isn't getting them done in the neighborhoods desperate for help.

Ten community areas have poverty rates of at least 40 percent: Englewood, West Englewood, Washington Park, Oakland, Fuller Park, Burnside, and Riverdale on the south side, and West Garfield Park, East Garfield Park, and North Lawndale on the west side. You might expect that a revamped Chicago would no longer be hypersegregated—but these ten communities are 92 to 99 percent African-American.

Seven of these ten communities also lead the city in extreme poverty, with at least 20 percent of their residents below half the poverty line. That's an extraordinary rate, given that people in extreme poverty are often living in shelters or squatting in abandoned buildings."

Winter Pick Me Up

This is old, and I can't remember exactly where I came across it. But, it's something I turn to when things are getting me down, which is how I'm feeling about the snow and winter in general today. It's a good reminder that the world is a very beautiful place even when it's utterly gray and slushy outside and that collaboration and art can be an incredibly magical thing. I love this.

Words that are Transphobic and Why

I think this is a really helpful and simple (but powerful) flyer from the LGBTQIA Center at UC Davis, I found it on Everyday Feminism's Facebook page. It's also a good follow up to the book, Normal Life by Dean Spade that the MATs read in our Doing Democracy class last semester. I really think this should be hung up in classrooms everywhere.

What is the Ven Diagram for Creativity Studies and Art Ed?

NYT Article: "Creativity becomes and academic discipline"

 "The point of creative studies, says Roger L. Firestien, a Buffalo State professor and author of several books on creativity, is to learn techniques “to make creativity happen instead of waiting for it to bubble up. A muse doesn’t have to hit you.”

The idea of creative studies is really interesting to me and kind of exciting. The idea that we should re-think how much value creative thought has in society is really great and I think could have big implications for the way we think about art education in this country. HOWEVER, what is kind of disturbing to me about this description of creative studies is its primary focus on the market value of creativity. This is a really different conversation than thinking of creativity and arts education as integral to a democratic society, which is the conversation that we generally gravitate towards in this department. After reading this, I also feel kind of confused about whether creativity studies is meant to push up against the standardized test movement of measurement, which this article implies, or does it in a sense also try to standardize a thought process? I'm not sure, but I'm curious about what other people think about it and what that ven diagram might look like.

Oh No!

CPS changing assessment test for selective enrollment high schools

WAH! I have so many feelings about this. First of course is complete sadness and frustration, under no circumstances should it become harder to get into the selective enrollment magnet schools in this city. The admittance system for these schools has been a mess years, creating incredibly unequal high school experiences in Chicago. I have direct experience with this. I was lucky enough to attend a selective enrollment magnet school between 2002 and 2006, Northside College Prep. However, my younger brother was not a very good tester and did not get into a selective enrollment high school. He went to Mather High School, just a few blocks away from Northside. We had drastically different high school experiences, I can't even tell you. From the physical spaces that we were in, to the amount of security around us, to individual freedoms I had access to and he did not, too different for words. And it all came down to an arbitrary combination of academic statistics deciding who was better qualified for a magnet school. I'm certain that if my brother had had access to Northside, he would have done just as well academically as I did. Our different high school experiences have had lasting affects on our lives. So now, the use of a completely new test to decide the academic fate of 7th graders, one that has so many potential new problems (the article discusses a range of problems including the fact that the new test is administered on a computer with no ability to go back and review your answers), it just feels like we're digging ourselves into a deeper, messed up hole of education inequality in Chicago.

P. S.

I didn't expect to feel emotional at all about Pete Seeger's passing the other day. He was 94 years old and though I grew up listening to his music, I don't feel particularly nostalgic about it. In fact, I've sort of always thought of him as making children's music which I generally find kind of annoying. I started my day on Tuesday rolling my eyes at Facebook friends' RIP posts, until I watched this video. It's from Obama's inauguration celebration in 2009 and I found myself almost moved to tears watching it. There's something really moving in thinking about someone's whole life and career being spearheaded by the true belief that getting groups of people to sing together can lead to action. Also, seeing Pete perform this song with Bruce Springsteen, it really made me feel no matter how insane and messed up this country is, a song like this, a song that often moves large groups to sing out loud and feel some sort of connection to this strange often times upsetting country, is powerful. And it's especially powerful for me that the two people leading the group in song are people like Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen, people who stand for something different than the usual god bless America anthems. Look out for a dancing George Lucas and Melanie Hobson in the audience, they just donated $25 million to After School Matters, where I work!

This Kid

Wow. I stumbled across this video on a a friend's Facebook page. This kid is incredible. When I think about the times that I've been at a protest and wondered if I would be able to eloquently, quickly, and easily explain my position or how I feel about the situation on the spot, I always get nervous. There is not hesitation in this kid's on point analysis. Where does this come from? Is this something that we can think about in the realm of education? Is this something that can be taught? Or is this just one very, very special kid?