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.