Constructing Kasun, Educator

I’m at Mozart’s Coffee Roasters.  Jazz in the background.  Laptops are open–”Let’s focus on me,” beckons one of the stickers at my coffemate’s table.  Lots of people from all over the world–accents, flourish of dress.  To my right percolate the calm waves of Lake Austin.  Sun is coming down, and it’s a bit hazy.

I’m hard at work on the student advisory program I’m managing.  Toiling away at the design of the two-day training I’ll be running (with the lead guidance counselor’s help) at the middle school which wants to turn its failing test scores around (I understand they got the lowest test score in Austin–not good for No Child Left Behind).

Ok, the last paragraph isn’t exactly true.  But I’ve wanted to say that for a few days.  I’m not really working right now at all.  It’s hard.  I’m distracted.  New town.  Flying ants.  Thoughtful people.  People who, according to another Austinite, look like they’re homeless but really aren’t–just choose to look that way.  The gray-haired guy who works in the kitchen here sings, “Wasting Away in Margaritaville,” as he restocks the serve-yourself coffee.  And I… procrastinate?

This isn’t my normal style.  Typically I can crank out the work.  But.  I. Am. Losing. Focus. YES, I am supposed to work 20 hours a week in the fall at the institute with the advisory program.  YES, I will take classes.  But right now I am NOT WORKING.  My old school district might as well be on Uranus.  Though I’ll admit to missing some great colleagues and beautiful students. But I want to go to author’s readings, swim laps by the pool.  Finish reading The Shock Doctrine.

Another bite of chocolate cheesecake. Another sip of coffee.  Inspiration.

***

I spent all day Thursday in meetings related to my institute work with the university.  My colleagues at the institute (slave graduate laborers like I’m becoming) are smart, kind, thoughtful.  I’m already learning from them, and I feel welcomed.

Our director is whip-smart and took me to a meeting with very talented, mostly professors from UT who are designing the UT Middle School.  It will probably be a charter school run within the Austin public school system, a continuation of the already functioning UT elementary school.  I was supposed to present what UT’s advisory program would look like.  I had two sheets of bulleted notes and one academic quotation to support me.

These folks had packages.  Multiple academic citations.  Super-duper advanced degrees.  Familiarity with talking a lot because they are the authority.  I reminded myself that my unique strength was my real and valid experience from several US public school contexts.  Nonetheless, I was relieved when the meeting had already gone on for too long and the director and didn’t have time to present.  We (I) will buff up the bulleted pages into real texts with academic citations.  You don’t dare build the university middle school without them.

What are my research questions?  Where did I put them?  Maybe they’ll be back in the next post.

Today I learned that many students who could choose to move from a No Child Left Behind-deemed “failling” high school will return to that unnamed high school this fall.  The school used to be Johnston High School, but it has been failing for four years, and now is being completely restructured as per the regulations of No Child Left Behind (including the name change, according to the Austin Statesman).  I hadn’t seen this firsthand in the DC area, so it’s a little strange to me here.  I wonder what the community feels about it, and the teachers who have been displaced, and the children.

***

Look very hard for tahini at the swanky non-Whole Foods grocery store if you want it.  Go way past the vast aisle of barbecue sauces, boutique salsas, and dry rubs.  Go to the hokie little “Middle East” brand of instant couscous, and pick beneath it from four nondescript brands of tahini in efforts to make your own baba ganouj or hommous.

Wait until noon on Sundays if you want to buy beer.  Honestly, I wasn’t going to drink it this morning.  I had finished a workout at the university gym and then went to the grocery store.  The checkout woman was taken aback, “Really, you don’t know you can’t buy this for another four minutes?”  So we stalled and talked casually about her son, the New York stockbroker, son of immigrant parents from Southeast Asia… who lives in a city that she thinks moves too fast.  The woman behind us tolerated it really well–no large city harumphing or anxiety attacks.  “Welcome to Austin, I hope you enjoy it here,” the cashier smiled. I loved her in that moment for her Texas-size hospitality.

It goes without saying that you must pull out of parking spaces with extra caution if you are among the non-truck, non-SUV persuasion.  Good luck.  And good luck getting your four cylinders to pull you into highspeed traffic.

Why are black and brown the terms used commonly for African Americans and Latinos here?  To me it suggests polarity, but it could also be proximity to solidarity, depending on how you see color.  I’m wrapping my mind around it as far as my white eyes let me.

***

I met with the principal at the middle school where I’ll be setting up a three times a week advisory program as part of my graduate work at the university.  This is the first year this school will implement it, and I’m the consultant at the school.  It was strange to meet with the principal and know that she didn’t have true authority over me–that is to say, my livelihood, my reputation don’t depend on her estimation of my skills.  Something felt off in our meeting.  Was it the non-power imbalance?  Is it that she is inheriting a failing school and desperate to turn it around–is her career on the line here?  Does advisory seem like some sort of cutesy, touchy-feely bandaid for major ailments that are almost beyond repair?  Frankly, shouldn’t education be built around the intent of advisory–that all children develop healthy, meaningful relationships at school, especially with adults–anyway?  More later on advisory and my coursework.

The journey began a week ago.  My dog and I got into my Honda Civic, packed full except for the passenger seat so my 13-pound pup could ride shotgun.  We drove for two days straight–she post-surgery, me, post-Northern Virginia, post-job, post-notions of comfort and predictability of life.

We pulled into my Austin neighborhood at 8 pm.  I unloaded; my dog sniffed.  She liked the place; to me it smelled musty.  That’s ok–the place had been empty for months.  Just waiting, perhaps.

I’m switching (mostly starting) a PhD program at the University of Texas.  I’ve moved 1500 miles from what used to be “home” (I keep making references to it and catching myself).  What was a fairly promising career in a well-regarded school district is behind me, and the circle of possibilities has suddenly grown.  I don’t reinvent–I evolve.

The program I’m beginning is Cultural Studies in Education.  I want to use anthropological tools to poke, dissect, slice at questions of power.  What do people do with their power?  Do they recognize it?  Do they chew on it like morning toast without realizing they’re devouring it?  Do they scrape with their nails and climb up flesh to approach it?

With these questions I will connect to larger constructs–race, privilege, gender, class.  I hope to connect these umbrella issues to the cellular level of individuals’ narratives.  Narratives in some ways are so small but also seem to be the most elemental units of truth we can know.  I’m always compelled more by the individual’s story and hope to find collective truths from them.

I’m here in a space larger than I need to live in, more calories in my stomach than many people throughout the world will have consumed in a day, and I’ve only taken my breakfast.  I have these unearned privileges, and I hope to be both aware of them and use them for some greater good–a greater good I hope to enrich through this program of study.  

And, also, in the meantime before my program begins, I explore the local context and feeling my identity shifting, growing.  Evolving.