Constructing Kasun, Educator

Avuxeni, thanks for your comments–I wrote down all the questions from yesterday’s group and asked their permission to include them in this post.  They agreed.

Here are the questions my 12 students asked yesterday about US Public Education–I was hungry to get at the answers to these questions and impressed by the teachers’ thoughtfulness:

How do we assess and evaluate students?

Do high school students experience a lot of pressure as they try to get into college (relative to the massive anxiety Korean students face)?

What kind of extracurricular activities do schools offer?

Do we censor our textbooks, and how are they controlled, in the US? (The teacher who asked this said it was only when she traveled to France and was questioned about communism from the French that she looked into different narratives about North Korea’s and communism’s histories, for example.)

How is inclusion being implemented in the U.S. for special education students in general education classrooms?

Are community college students treated differently by peers and professors when they go to four-year institutions?

What are the requirements to be a teacher?

What is the role of boarding schools in the U.S.?

Are there regulations for student appearance in schools (like the strict ones Korean students must adhere to)?

What is the role of charter schools?

Do we have tracking (”ability level” courses)?

Are teachers allowed to share their political positions as they teach (in Korea teachers must remain neutral–a seemingly objective standard but one that ultimately becomes problematic–as in the case of journalism, for example)?

How do students, especially foreign students, get scholarships to attend college?

The class is only six sessions long–I wish it were longer to be able to offer thorough attention to each of these questions.  It will be interesting to see what Korean teachers actually learn from our course at the end.  I hope they’ll be satisfied.

I’ve taught the Korean Fulbright teachers three times now (two separate groups).  I am impressed at their self-discipline and curiosity.  Despite jetlag and overall fatigue from the rigors of the program, they are in class, on-time, every day.  I find myself enjoying the teaching (and the professionalism and insights of the other staff at the institute) a lot.  

But I struggle with the classic question–what do I teach them?  Before their arrival, I wrote a set of US student identities (including immigrant students as well as black, white, Latino, and Asian students from varying social classes).  Each teacher receives an identity, and each class the teacher learns a bit more about that person’s identity.  This was to solve the question of how to help the teachers understand the diversity of students in US public education as well as the challenges we face in attempting (not so well, oftentimes) to educate all students.  So far the feedback from the teachers is that they like learning these identities; as one put it, “I feel like I’m getting to meet many Americans this way.”  I hope I have not essentialized identities based on race and class, but I have tried to create these personalities based on demographic trends I know in the US.

Yesterday we did the classic K-W-L activity (what do you “K”now about US public education, what do you “W”ant to know, and what have you “L”earned?”).  I wrote down their questions to help me guide the course–including: What is the role of unions? How is curriculum established? What and how are teachers paid, and what is their status in the US? What is homeschooling?

Nonetheless, I still wonder what kind of picture is forming in the minds’ eyes of these teachers of US Public Education.  I’ve had a lot of guidance from a former (and current) teacher of the course, but I can’t help but wonder.

Today, Saturday, I will attend a University of Texas men’s basketball game.  It’s not school pride; it’s an outing with the Korean teachers.  My husband will come along, as will a couple other staff members.  Hook ‘em Horns!

***

I spent most of yesterday morning at the middle school.  I met with those famed counselors I have previously mentioned who do such good work with kids that is empowering and relevant.  We talked about how we could use advisory around several upcoming issues–the Presidential Inauguration and President-Elect Obama’s call for community service, considering love and how we express it as Valentine’s Day approaches as well as thinking about respect (including self-respect) as state standardized tests approach, too.  Meeting with those counselors is always a sort of blessing–they bring such good energy and ideas, and they are so good at caring. 

One very cool moment during that discussion was a graduate school to middle school connection I made.  One of those counselors is developing a unit in working after school with kids in community service about violence and the outcomes of violence.  Part of that project includes having her students discuss films about genocide, including the World War II Holocaust, as well as reading a Guatemalan Civil War testimonio, the famed, “I, Rigoberta,” by Rigoberta Menchu.  Several of the students will go to Houston in March to hear this Nobel Prize winner speak.  We plan to have these kids produce some educational materials they can share during advisory.  But the graduate school connection was related to discussions I had last semester in my Narrative and Oral Traditions class where we talked about Menchu’s work several times and reflected on individual and collective memory.  I shared a bit about that discussion in light of the criticisms Menchu’s work has received.  

I’m a little worried that one of next week’s advisory activities won’t go over very well.  Each advisory is to write a collective poem, one line from each student, based on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  I’ll update later.

Today I have positive energy.  Spirit has moved me, so I’m writing again.

Students are back at the middle school.  I’m not there, but I just talked to the guidance counselor who I work closely with.  Polite as he is, I gathered in our two minutes and eight seconds of conversation that he and the guidance staff were overwhelmed.  ”Kids are showing up just now to register; we have kids coming in from the ALC (alternative learning center); the front office is swamped.”  I kind of felt bad for him, but I also enjoyed the thought of the energy of school (and I’ll be there tomorrow).  I’ve written lesson plans for the next couple of weeks–getting students to reconsider the purpose of advisory, to evaluate their own groups, and also getting them to reflect on Martin Luther King, Jr. (the holiday is coming up soon) and doing collective writing projects in poetry based on MLK’s vision and their own visions for the future.

***

All this good energy may come from meeting the Korean teachers yesterday (ok, and maybe also the days off I took).  It was so exciting to see them facing such an interesting experience.  I enjoyed meeting with several of them over lunch.  Conversations ranged from American standards of beauty (primarily whiteness) to politics in the U.S. to comparing education systems.  We also shared personal stories about marriage, social expectations regarding marriage and children, and our experiences as teachers.  Today is the first day I actually teach them.  I’m so looking forward to the feedback loop of teaching (daunting as it is).  Maybe I’ve really missed the teaching aspect of my life.  

Most of the books I ordered have arrived for my spring classes.  I’m looking forward to reading them and intend to get started now (though I can’t seem to put down the novel I’m reading in my free time–Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz).  I need to read a lot more Pierre Bourdieu–especially for a paper I’m working on… and there he is, author of “Outline of a Theory of Practice,” among the books waiting for me.  

Stings.  You scream like hell.  Call people after you google, “Austin emergency 78702.”  

What does this have to do with my program?  

It’s indicative of how life gets in the way.

I had two recording devices ready to conduct an interview for research I’m doing for a class (and may fold into dissertation work someday).  I was planning to interview a teacher at the middle school regarding his approach to critical pedagogy.  I’m not sure he calls it that, but what I’ve heard about his teaching and my brief interactions indicate he puts theory into practice toward liberatory education with his students.

I had garlic, onion, limes, mole sauce, tomatoes, and cucumbers lining the kitchen counters.  I was going to make chicken mole (a favorite Mexican dish of mine) for him.  As a small offering of my appreciation.  He said he’d be glad to come to my house for the interview.  And after a meal, we’d talk.  With recording devices rolling.

Of course that meant shopping beforehand. I finished unpacking the last of the beer, and I heard, “bzzzzzz, bzzzzzz, bzzzzzzz.”   A bee had gotten stuck inside the blinds of the back window.  I tried to gently shoo him out of the blinds, opening the door to let him free, to no avail.  And twenty minutes later, he had neatly positioned himself beneath my left foot.  I didn’t see him, of course, and he had his way with me.

I screamed.  And yelled, hollered, raised a ruckus.  Tore apart the contents of a basket of toiletries in the bathroom looking for tweezers.  Felt the venom of anger inside me, knowing I’m allergic to bees as I pulled the stinger out.  It hurt worse.  I called people.  No one answered.  One person who did answer heard me yelling because I thought my cell phone hadn’t connected yet.

I live in a new city.  Where’s the hospital?  Google it.  No luck.  Call a stranger in Austin and get advice.  My new cell phone somehow erased all my contacts (including local ones), so I was stuck.  But I have one professor’s cell phone programmed into my new list of 8 or so contacts.  No answer.  Called my mom (a nurse).  Got advice (including a gentle version of “Settle the hell down”).  Called the university nurse.  Consensus:  Go to the hospital.  Googled husband’s work colleague because husband wasn’t picking up the phone.  Colleague quickly assured me she’d find him at all costs.  Husband comes home in a rush, I have canceled my interview and left all the food on the counter, and we leave.

Big crowds. Lots of coughing.  Two separate waiting rooms.  One for the really sick and one for the moderately paranoid.  My swelling never got too bad (was it the Benadryl Mom had prescribed?).  The doctor was nice but said I need to get real allergy tests; maybe I’m not allergic after all (just hysterical?).  My last bee sting over a decade ago was ugly… there was some kind of reaction going on.

No interview.  Haven’t finished the reading I need to for tomorrow.  But my foot is fine, and I’m back at home.  I guess we’ll reschedule.  And the reading will get as finished as it can.  Goodnight. 

It went… well?  Is it safe to say that?  I asked an administrator, and his words were, “It went about as well as the first day of advisory could go.”  I waited for a shoe to fall.  It didn’t.  ”Why are you doing, this advisory work, is it related to your dissertation?”

No.  I told him I wanted to be involved in activism and in scholarship.  I am not a white savior, I told him, but I believe very much in the connection between research and being on the ground in schools.  He can relate, as he already has his PhD.  He said that sometimes it’s “too much,” inside the school building.  That statement was heavy and powerful.

But advisory.  Went. Well.  Students sat in circles.  A couple students said they thought it was fun.  Others thought it was neat they were with their friends.  Teachers thought it went well.  Some expressed good concerns.  What about the Spanish speakers?  (I’m hoping they can get fluent English/Spanish speakers to work with the non-English speaking kids to interpret, but I probably need to be more explicit.)  What about if they didn’t finish the lesson plans that already went out?

The lead guidance counselor and I sent an email to the staff.  We thanked them for expanding their comfort zones–doing something they don’t normally do–working with another adult the entire time inside their classrooms.  And also helping students feel safe, creating a community inside their unique advisory space.

Tomorrow is Day 2.  I’ll be back.  Today a few students from the leadership class and I stuffed the teacher’s boxes with large purple sheets of butcher paper so they can make a contract of norms which all students will sign in their advisories tomorrow.  The students started talking, and I got rich stories from them.  One whose siblings, like me, study at UT.  Law.  Math.  Business.  The students said they were worried about how to manage college, about how to pay for it.  One of the students told me her mom left her dad because of problems the parents were having; she was explicit.  I told her my dad died when I was seven; I was sorry.  The other one said she was teased by her brothers and sisters because she didn’t know her dad.  ”They have a different story every time I ask.”

Working so briefly with students… seeing hope.  Powerful.  I miss the classroom and am glad to have the small connection I do through advisory.

Things looked really good in terms of advisory when I wrote my last post.

And I was writing it, the principal was meeting with the lead guidance counselor here, the person who has seen to the million and one logistical considerations from devising the pairings of teachers to run advisory to making sure we had enough photocopies for the binders we distributed… And she told him that she is cutting our program from three to two times a week.  Because she needs more instructional time for the students.

Have you ever felt the way the air gets silent still before a storm?  That’s how it felt when the guidance counselor told me.  I’m not sure why the principal didn’t tell me herself.  But no matter.

I’ve thought about giving up on the project.  Why bother?  Imagine the mind of the middle schooler, doing this activity-thingie twice a week.  Three times a week is more than half the days in a week.  Twice a week is just some thing that you show up for because you have to.  I’m tired of having to fight for a program I believe will be transformative for students and staff, transformative in ways that will pay off in terms of teachers being able to get students to pass tests, as well.

I’m at the middle school waiting for staff to run “catch-up” trainings.  I’m between classes right now, looking at a prominently displayed Mexican flag and a large mariachi hat inside the library.  I guess these things are here because it’s Hispanic Heritage Month, currently.  I haven’t seen other markers that indicate the month is happening.  That doesn’t mean teachers aren’t acknowledging it in other ways.  I just might not know.  Half the student population at the middle school is Latino.

Monday after the school day ended, I met the staff to provide an hour-long training for how to run a group effectively.  We already had a during-school training to provide staff with information regarding the logistics of how advisory would be run last week.  In schools today, teachers need to know how long the period is, how the program is organized, who will participate and in what capacity.  They need to know our expectations.

But Monday was all about two things–creating safety and building relationships.  The counselors I have been working with here helped devise a strategy for how to run the trainings.  We agreed that we’d run them similarly to advisory.  So we had teacher facilitators from the staff here provide activities and reflections to the staff in small groups.  They received color-coded handouts and then had to move to different parts of the library according to one of four colors to meet with their group of teachers.  

They reflected on what makes students feel safe in an advisory and how to achieve that safety (and also how to destroy it).  They also talked about the best relationship they had with a teacher and thought about how to build strong relationships with their own students.  The teachers from this school facilitated all these discussions.  I was so impressed at their skillfulness in talking with their peers; they were respected, and the discussions were respectful and thoughtful.

I felt good about the trainings and hope the staff feel good about them, too.  It’s a strange tension that we have to think of the difference between the role of group facilitator and teacher.  The division is pretty strong for some teachers, and I can see how that would happen with the pressures of the standards and benchmarks that the state mandates these teachers teach.  

Allies

With any new program, you want to have allies so that it is successful.  I have learned that a technology instructor got some of his students to create a short and clever video which will run for students on Monday.  One of the women who has been part of the advisory planning committee is helping her students create and perform a cheer for advisory (she’s a cheerleading coach).  An assistant principal has agreed to be our administrative support member on the advisory committee, and the lead guidance counselor has written some clever announcements (such as a call-in radio show about advisory) to help get students excited about the program.  I’m thrilled at the support we’re getting so far and crossing my fingers that the program will fly next week when it starts on Tuesday.

I’ve been awfully quiet about my coursework thus far.  I’m three weeks in now, so I’d better give some impressions.  Later, a quick update on advisory.

Three great classes.  Three great professors.  My favorite is probably the most personal.  I’m taking an advanced qualitative methods course called narrative and oral traditions (in layterms, it’s a course on how people express themselves, their life stories, and how to research them through various methods like interviews, being in community among the people with you research, etc.).  We talk a lot about bridging the (artificial?) divide between the academy and daily life.  We read an great article for this week’s class (along with four others… the reading load here is intense… so much for my illusions of spending extra hours in the library doing cross-references in my reading just because I wanted to “dig deeper”).  The article was about sacred research.  The author is a Native American who researched among healers in the community where she lived for forty-two years.  She struggled about perhaps leaving the academy but learned in an intense dream that she needed to stay… and she connected to the community, was healed by the women with whom she worked, and then published her work, based upon the research questions they wanted to have answered.  Several students in the class found it difficult to imagine doing that–connecting the personal and spiritual side of self to the researcher side.  I think that if I do not attempt to do this (and, yes, it may be difficult to convince the research community that this is “valid,” and it will likely limit my possibilities in terms of where I may be able to work), I will not be able to make it as a scholar.  This author maintains her writing within the style and framework of academic writing, but she is steadfast in demonstrating the personal, spiritual, and subjective selves that are part of her work as well.  I’m also learning Chicana feminist epistemology… and it is an intense and helpful lens for me to understand experiences.  More on that, later.  Our professor is hopefully about to make tenure at UT… and I hope he does, because I need him here!

Another class in American Immigrant Experiences is taught by an anthropologist who has done a lot of research in the field.  We’ve looked at the historic policies and court cases in the US which have helped institutionalize the racializing of our country to the benefit of people who are now considered “white.”  The class members share an antipathy toward the history we’re learning–this isn’t your classroom notion of the melting pot.  It’s more about how Asians were legally considered not fit to become Americans, how Mexicans, through decades of second-class status in workers’ programs, have had to fight for legal recognition in terms of immigration and citizenship policy.

My final class just started Monday… about the cultural knowledge of teachers.  This one will be very helpful if I decide to research with teachers.  The professor knows a lot of theory, uses highly interactive methods, and is gentle in creating a safe learning environment.  She was obviously a great teacher (she used to teach fourth grade), and I’m looking forward to learning a lot more from her as well as the vast knowledge and backgrounds of students in the class.

Advisory Update

Advisory is going well.  I gave a training on the parameters of what advisory has been built to look like ten times on Wednesday (in rotating sessions).  Most teachers seem willing to try it.  Their big concern is that this will take away too much “instructional time.”  They know as well as I do that the content of advisory is also instructive, but we’ve all been disciplined into believed that only the four core disciplines taught here (math, science, language arts, and social studies) are real instruction (that’s where the testing is, after all).  I was humbled by the co-presenting that staff members who participated in the two-day planning sessions did.  They spoke with deep knowledge, ownership, and hope, about where the program is going.  I will facilitate another training on Monday after school with the staff as well.

Balance

I keep trying to balance it all, including another move with my husband which we made over the weekend. Luckily my husband in pinch-hitting in terms of unpacking, cooking, and overall patience with me (he is also still adjusting to a new job, new city).  I also keep an eye toward a hurricane that has already been devastating and will hit Texas tomorrow morning and eventually bring some of its rain toward Austin.  We have evacuees at shelters from Galveston and Houston here.  It’s a strange new phenomenon for me.