Hello all:

I got confused on my dates. Maya Pindyck is not going to be with us next week; she will be with us the following week, May 2nd. Please look at her website (on syllabus) before our get together with her. I will be speaking with Maya on Monday when she may also suggest some other relevant readings.

Next week, then, we will have our working/discussion session. It’s a bit of an experiment, but this is what I have in mind, riffing a bit off of Amanda’s suggestion a number of weeks ago. You should bring in with you some of the work you’ve been doing (collages, sketches, images etc) and actually think about doing work while we’re in the space together. I thought you could spend the first 45 minutes to an hour actually working on your projects and discussing aspects of those projects with others as the need arises. Then, for the second half of the class, we will meet in small rotating groups of twos and threes to discuss the projects.

How does that sound?

Then Maya will join us on May 2nd. Much like our session with Victoria last Wednesday, Maya will present about her own work during the first 45 min – 1 hour, and then you will discuss your work with her. I hope we can start with those class members who didn’t have a chance to share their work with Victoria.

On May 9th, I will share some of my work with you for the first half of our class, and then we will discuss your projects. On the 16th and the 23rd, we will present our final projects so far, evaluate our course together, and make plans to continue our discussions over the summer and make concrete our plans for our exhibition in the fall.

I wanted to share a few images from my school. Several artist volunteered time to create a mini 5 pointz

school. Enjoy.

Professor Fellner
Arts-based Research
Shawn Brown
4/16/18

Hear Me, See Me, Feel Me
By Shawn Brown
This article brought me to a place of clarity regarding my work. Previously, Professor Fellner made a passing statement saying that “I should think about including art into my dissertation.” After reading this article, it’s imperative that I include the arts into my research interests. In fact, the absence of the arts would be a disservice when sharing counter-narratives of Black males in education. Victoria Restler individualizes the importance and influence of art-based research. She states, “Alongside traditional methods of qualitative research analysis, I created four “bodies of (art)work” as part of making and making sense of my dissertation data and research.” Restler posits that art-based research demands equity within the realm of research methodologies/paradigms. The infusion of art-based research is a core value I have started to develop in my practice. Art was/is considered a less substantive discipline throughout my schooling. I had a hierarchical subconscious valuation of art. My insecurity about this conduit of expression and exploration halted my pursuit of art at a young age. I presently contend with having time for inner reflection and artistic expression. Restler makes a poignant statement that art should “count” just like any other form of research. I must become intentional about the way I structure my research to give voice in different modalities. Regarding my interested in telling counter-narratives of Balck males in education, I consider the stories that I have already heard. I think about how our voices whether through speech or written word have been devalued and created the need for creative alternatives. As Restler states, there are many messages that we must share that are “seeable but not sayable.” Art has a distinct way of giving a person voice power like no other medium. I think of hip-hop and how this genre which now saturates the world was created. It stems from young men of color wanted to share their stories passionately using their own vernacular. They reported the happenings of their time with rhythm and cadence. Within hip-hop culture are the MC (Master of Ceremonies), DJ (Disc Jockey), B-boy (dancer) and Graffiti artist. These are the main components, but there are others. I fell within the artistic component of graffiti art, tagging my name to get a reputation and obtain respect from my peers. Later on becoming intrigued with deejaying, cutting, mixing, and scratching. Each component of hip-hop has a specific job to do regarding conveying a message. Restler speaks of the artwork not explaining the text or vice versa, but having a “job to do.” This task is to evoke, create, or express or subdue something. As I look at the pieces or art and the teacher ratings I am forced to see the humanity in the teachers. I am forced to see them as something more than people with ratings. In my position, I can become consumed with the numerical value that is placed on people and forget their humanity. Stories of teachers struggling with identity, death, and the burdens of life make me consider their humanity before their performance. This verbiage and frame of mind have less value than traditional models of leadership. As much as I would like to assume that I see people first and not numbers, this is not true. The pressures of leadership, especially in a time of privatized schooling, makes this endeavor almost impossible. Public school reductions and the growth of charter schools conflates the pressures a leader must navigate.
I face the daunting task of career ascension or valuing human life. Being seen as a strong leader or being perceived as over-sensitive. I remember a first-year teacher on the brink of imploding. He had left his classroom to cry on a nearby staircase because students had stolen a couple of laptops from his room and he was being held accountable. I was at a crossroads, do I give him a break or write him up for leaving the classroom unattended. Human life or write a disciplinary letter. I had to write it up, but the letter never made it to his file. I never want to be the reason a person takes their life or causes harm to others. The article spoke of a “Teacher, Rigoberto Ruelas who committed suicide following the publication of teachers’ value-added scores in the L.A Times where he was graded, “below average.” Teachers internalize ratings as their entire identity. This gentleman believed this person’s criticisms to be final and true. This is the human side of education that isn’t taught in leadership programs throughout the USA. The soft skills of knowing when feedback may need to be held back. The importance of grace, forgiveness, and unconditional positive reinforcement of teachers. I am not perfect at this, but I understand the place and importance of such training. Though it is 2018, a person’s sexual preference is still used to define a person’s character. Teachers must deal with such challenges in real time, in front of children. Restler recall when, “Kirk, a 30ish straight white male teacher roamed the halls and entered each classroom with tears in his eyes reporting on the supreme court decision, “marriage is legal.” If his students were to ask him why he was so emotional, could he share why? Openly? If he did, would there be any repercussions in the court of public opinion? Narratives like the two previously mentioned are all too common and listening to these stories through written word will never suffice. The rubbing creates a texture that tells a much stronger story. Restler gives clear expectations about the process and goal of these vignettes. She states, “These phrases of recorded dialogue, like the rubbings, are textured and bumpy, and in particular and evocative ways, they shape the stakes of my multimodal data.” As researchers and educators, we must be willing to deal with the smooth and rough surfaces within education.

I found Victoria Restler’s dissertation and accompanying website incredibly informative and inspiring. I found myself reading her dissertation with fervor because it was so interesting and relevant to me; I was about seventy or eighty pages in before I remembered that I should be exploring the website she created while taking this class last semester.  Obviously, the subject matter of her research resonates with me personally as I am a teacher whose care-work frequently goes unnoticed.

What felt so compelling about Restler’s writing was how personal it felt.  Usually academic writing feels distant and unrelatable.  Hers was honest, understandable, and even creative.  My favorite parts were in “The Digital Assemblage”, the first few paragraphs of each page.  They feel like memoir or even poetry.  For example, the beginning of the “research in helvetica” page is so beautiful and evocative:

The pale gray surface like molded glass, tight cross-hatches and the vaguest sense of a prism—pale pinks and blues if you let your eyes soften. The vertical “I” of the cursor blinking in time, waiting as if tapping toes, and then almost at once—sounds and letters. The soundtrack of fingers on keys, the emphatic note of the space bar. Words seem to appear magically on the screen, and as I watch, I find myself keeping pace, willing the type to keep up with the sound. A sense of relief in the moments where the visual and aural words are in sync—so many, perspectives, study, and a bit of agitation when the cursor falls behind or when the red underline announces a typo—gflancing, direcytions, obliques, extanding. There’s a game in the watching, a competition between eye and ear. My two pointer fingers hunting and pecking for the keys, not quite fast enough.

This type of writing does not just exist in Restler’s website–it is also sprinkled throughout her dissertation. (Specifically it can be seen on pages 24 – 26 when she describes “some of the perspectives and experiences that orient [her] to this work”.) I find this procedural, experiential type of reflection very inspiring, in that I wonder how I could apply it to my own work for this class.  I have been filming myself making collages, but I wonder if I could “transcribe” what I “see” in those videos as a method of reflection on the creation process.  Restler even used this description technique when the piece wasn’t a video. She described (and coded/catalogued) what she saw in each art piece to find overarching themes.  That is also something I could try with my project–describe what I see in each of my collages.  I like the idea of presenting my work (and writing?) in website format, as well.

Overall, the biggest source of inspiration I took from Restler’s work wasn’t methodological, but conceptual.  In the first chapter of her dissertation she laid out every aspect of her project, her conceptual frameworks, and her research questions. And while I assume this is a specific requirement for the dissertation, I do think knowing those things are important. For instance, have I really asked myself why I am doing this collage project? What do I hope to accomplish? What are my specific research methods? What frameworks am I using?  What questions am I hoping to answer?

And the last, most important, question of all: Is this project about Jack, or is it about me?

I found Victoria Restler’s work incredibly helpful – I loved how she made connections between care, space and tacticile interaction. There’s something very deep there about how we bond with each other- we bond with each other in spaces and in our bodies. In my life experiences, this connection came to the surface in a powerful way through the ways in which physical acts of care were so connected to me with emotional processing of what was happening. There’s a Jewish saying that being a caregiver is the greatest mitzvah (honor) you can give- I think the mitzvah of being a caregiver is so bound up in the way that in each daily act lies the essence of the experience. What I mean is that Victoria’s images capture those daily moments of care in how they influence the space. That’s so powerful because if you zoomed in on one of those care moments in that, you could understand so much of what it means to be a teacher. For my own experience, I felt in general our culture really abstracts death and makes it something we should fear. But if you are caring for a loved one who is dying, you understand death in a different way. It’s not abstract, it’s not scary in the same way. If you don’t die suddenly, death is a set of steps- steps that exist in your body but also exist in the interaction between your body and the person’s body caring for you. What Victoria helped me think about further is how these tacticle moments show themselves in what a space is like. She helped me think about rubbings as a tool for capturing the physical elements in a space that reflect the physical movement of bodies which reflects the way people are being and acting towards one another out of which identity (ie what it means to be a teacher or a student or a caregiver) grows.

The work that Victoria Restler has created, through her websites “Those who can” and “Re-visualizing care: the digital assemblage” seek to explore and showcase teacher stories, evoke their “care spaces” in a non-conventional manner, and to challenge the perception of what it means to in/visibly educate in individual and unique places.

Through her rubbing of the classroom space, Restler reimagines the classroom space in an abstract but strikingly literal way. In her field notes Restler writes, “I am making these drawings to show that schools and classrooms are real places with real people in a human scale as opposed number or letter scores, which are abstract, sanitized, and identical, one to the next” (rubbing every object and surface in betty’s math classroom, 2017). The rubbings are tactile, varied, confusing, yet organized. They are one piece of evidence of the complicated and layered life of a classroom/school environment. Bearing witness(!) as she writes.

There is a NEED for a multimodality approach to convey the thorniness of the school environment and all that goes with it. Restler speaks of these rubbings as adding shade, depth, and texture to teacher stories and lived experiences in the classroom (witnessing/ evidence, 2017). They are nuancing the story to challenge the narrative gleaned directly from a sanitized evaluation dispossessed from the subtleties of teaching. I am thinking of Pink and her paper on Multimodality, multisensoriality and ethnographic knowing and how it allowed me to open my mind to the limits of traditional senses (Pink, 2011). Restler’s work affords opportunity to become attuned to the living/breathing aspect of a situation in ways that text does not. Restler views her field notes, interviews, and the rubbings as being “textured and bumpy, and in particular and evocative ways, they shape the stakes of my multimodal data” (witnessing/ evidence, 2017). This is an amazing interpretation of her many modes of collecting and conveying information. The rubbings also speak to the impossibility of representation and subjectivity, the “irreducibility of teaching” as she puts is, but adds necessary context and nuance in a meaningful way. Most poignantly, in my opinion, is Restler’s ability to reveal that which was obscured, overlooked, and invisible, in service to the wholly incomplete narrative of what a classroom is and what teachers are.

I have recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s book (2005) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, in which Gladwell argues that rapid cognition takes place in a matter of seconds, in a blink of an eye, where we draw conclusion without awareness, unconsciously. Gladwell (2005) states that we live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it, however, learning to understand what happens in those few seconds is very important, according to Gladwell. He calls it “adaptive unconscious,” which is a mental process that works rapidly and automatically from relatively little information. Gladwell (2005) considers both the strengths of the adaptive unconscious, for example in expert judgment, and its pitfalls, such as stereotypes. Among many examples he uses in the book to explore the phenomena of making such snap judgments, he looks at the idea of memory and verbal representation of memories, which was very interesting to me. For example, he states that recognizing someone’s face is a classic example of unconscious cognition. We don’t have to think about it. Faces just pop into our minds. But, he proposes that, if we were asked to take a pen and paper and write down in as much detail as we can what a person looks like (for example a person who sat next to us on the train this morning), describing their face, describing the color of their hair, what were they wearing, etc., we will do a lot worse at picking that face out of a lineup. This is, Gladwell argues (2005), because the act of describing a face has the effect of impairing your otherwise effortless ability to subsequently recognize that face. This is what her writes:

“The psychologist Jonathan W. Schooler, who pioneered research on this effect, calls it verbal overshadowing. Your brain has a part (the left hemisphere) that thinks in words, and a part (the right hemisphere) that thinks in pictures, and what happened when you described the face in words was that your actual visual memory was displaced… Your thinking was bumped from the right to the left hemisphere” (Gladwell, 2005, p. 55).

I suppose that this is what I was trying to say when I told you in class that our memories are destroyed when we use words to describe them. I have moved to a much happier place thinking about memories since then, as I now look more at transformation of memories and creation of new memories, new images in our minds. However, I think, it applies to many of us as we try to get the pictures out of minds and create art, often supplemented with some verbal representation. In turn, we try to appeal, I think, to the right hemisphere of those who are looking at our art, who will interpret our work by experiencing the art, the images, and only then trying to verbalize what they see by bumping the impressions about art to the left hemisphere. For example, in our last class, I was very moved by Amanda’s presentation of her work in progress. I feel that the etchings of her house resonated in my right hemisphere, which was followed by strong emotional reaction. I was in tears even when I was trying to tell my husband about it later that evening. I couldn’t quiet explain it in words though.

Now, I don’t think that there is a clear dichotomy between words and pictures, the same way that there is no clear separation between the two hemispheres in our brain, information is constantly exchanged, but it is still interesting to contemplate these ideas.

Update:

I have printed the images on fabric. Thank you, Lauren, for your wonderful suggestion. I have also recorded another conversation between my children about them images. They felt obligated to participate in my project, so I don’t know how useful it is. I also asked them to paint a picture. I left the video running as my daughter was painting and left the room (had to transfer laundry to the drier). The conversation that took place between them as I left the room was a lot more interesting than the one forced by me. Time will tell what this sums up to.

Oh, and I took one picture of them walking. 🙂

We were walking my son to the train, as he went back to college on Sunday.

Kahlo’s Demons Reinterpreted

In preparing for my presentation this coming week, I have questioned what made me use Frida Kahlo’s Two Fridas (1939) as my inspiration. When I saw this work of art for the first time, I deeply related to what I perceived as an identity struggle at the time, the identity struggle that Latin Americans and Latin America as a whole have been burdened with for centuries. Maybe Kahlo’s artwork was meant to exorcise the demons of physical and emotional pain inflicted on her by her experiences and by Diego Rivera, her former husband at the time. However, the Two Fridas for me is about how an entire culture keeps trudging along trying to find its own identity. I may have derived a meaning from this artwork that was not intended but I guess this is how art works. Patricia Levy (2017) states that to art “[o]ur response may be visceral, emotional, and psychological, before it is intellectual.”

I had lived in Colombia my entire childhood and part of my adolescence, and while living there, I never questioned the inclusiveness of the Latin American culture. If you had asked me about racism, I would have told you that we, Latin Americans do not suffer from this ailment. It was only when I went back for a visit about five years ago when I realized how wrong I was and that this ailment was of the worst kind. Its main symptom was self-hatred. It wasn’t been easy to delve into Latin American commercials, mainly Colombian, and find beauty products that people buy in large quantities in their quest to become more attractive (read more European looking). The main beauty products are those that promise straight hair and lighter skin. I also noticed that most of the people on Colombian television do not truly represent the typical Colombian. Most of the time they have lighter skin and are quite young, but for a few exceptions in which they present the stereotypical Afro-Colombian women dressed as maids and talking in a certain uneducated manner. I was surprised to find that a cousin of mine, who has a typical indigenous nose, had plastic surgery to look more attractive (meaning more European), and that another cousin who has beautiful dark skin like my mom’s burned her face while trying to lighten it with a cream that has hydroquinone, a depigmenting agent. Latin American politics reflect this self-hatred as well. Time and time again many Latin Americans vote against their self-interests. I have had many conversations with Colombian compatriots who support policies that belittle people of color as well as their culture. In the words of Freire (2000), “for them, to be [human] is to be oppressors.”

My project may not accomplish in others that awakening and recognition of self-hatred that Kahlo’s Two Fridas had for me. However, exorcising my demons, as Kahlo did through her art, may be good enough for now.

When I went to the American Art Museum in Washington, DC, I saw this huge art piece of a map that I think about every time I hear about your project.

Here is an article about it.

Here is a video about it.

Professor G. Fellner
Arts-based Research
Shawn Brown
3/27/18

Border Patrol
By Shawn Brown

Reading borders reminded me of my students. My student population is 90% Latino. I had a conversation yesterday with my staff about considering new ways to engage our students. We looked at data that addressed innovative teaching strategies and culturally responsive pedagogy. Within the research, there was minimal mention of using arts. The use of visual arts as a conduit for improved student outcomes was an afterthought for myself also. Having the students share their experiences in America and their views about their home country was fascinating. As Americans we can believe that we reside in the best country on earth. Regardless of poverty and lack of employment migrants have an affinity to their homes that America can never eliminate. My mother still speaks of moving back to Panama. She visits often and gathers as many embroidered leather key chains as possible. She’s especially in love with the specific hue of gold that is produced from her home country. The proportion of space equally distributed to both countries with the artwork drew my attention. The article states, “The page in half, intimating that half of the self is in one country and half in another.” I remember Dubois speaking of this dual-existence/consciousness. Feeling that you are are in “two places at once.” The project seemed to create a safe environment for students to share their issues, concerns, and challenges in navigating a new land. While charting these unfamiliar waters, students are whisked away by currents of cultural assimilation and isolation from family. Students have to choose between their family’s and America’s culture. Shreefter speaks of, “The painful distance that grows between parents and children as children speak more English and become less Mexican.” This transition is painful but necessary for the students to be successful inherently racist society. Most parents I encounter are happy that their children can speak a different language, but they also do not want them to be engulfed in an American culture that does not have certain Latino family values. Students and parents desire equity when in school. Rocio Alaniz (Student) states, “I want school to be even and equal, for students, and teachers to respect us and our language and culture.” Schools have become battlegrounds of culture. Linguistic aptitudes have been associated with intellect. Speaking Spanish is seen as a deficit. E.L.L (English Language Learners) is a demeaning title given to students in schools. The categorization assumes that the priority is to learn English, the best language. As students learn English and American culture, they move away from their families. Similarly, to Native American assimilation, they lose their cultural identity. Many students are wedged between academia, language, and culture.

As I read the students’ articles and look at their artwork, I think of the rhetoric of walls/borders that is presently taking place in politics. Walls that will push others out and somehow strengthen a nation. The absurdity of such a notion is counter-intuitive. A nation that was made strong by adding migrants to its numbers will continue to do so by pushing them out is nonsensical. The symbolism of borders transcends physicality. Internally we are socialized to have borders of color, gender, and sexuality. Our civility is stripped bare each time a sitcom airs, the news is reported, and the national anthem is played. The student’s artwork speaks louder than essays and standardized exams. I am tasked with rating how teachers assess students. In this position, I am prone to value written words over visual representation. This article altered my perception of assessing students. I look forward to using this strategy, specifically in my humanities courses. I must first assure staff members that they have the freedom and autonomy to be creative pedagogues. I have to remove portions of the box that was created around their instruction. One side is Danielson’s framework, the other standardized testing, the other administrative bias, and on the other their realistic understanding of what is best for students.
I must consciously patrol the borders of my heart and the educational system in which I am stationed for duty. As I stand guard, I must be willing allow those seeking refuge to roam free. I must keep an eye on the curriculum and ensure that there is room for creativity, leaving entry points for all students. I must monitor classrooms that can be sources of hope or the academic burial grounds of those that didn’t entirely adhere to hegemonic beliefs of the dominant culture.