A Libel on Myself

My good friend and I made a pact several years ago, that we would never be like the barfy expats who tell anything that breathes every single one of their semi-unique experiences to prove to the breathing listener that they are very special, almost definitely more special than the listener whose hopefully still breathing.  Turns out, that isn't usually a problem for me, to the point, I think it might be a problem.  I, like everyone breathing, have been given some absolutely wonderful experiences, I mean wonderful in that even if they were horrible bad bad awful, I learned a lot, and I should probably share.  I want to hear everyone else's experiences and at the same time see if mine might fit in a little with theirs in our funny little attempts to make sense of our lives in the world.

Its feels like if I don't share the experiences and ideas other people have given to me I am somehow letting them down, and letting the world down because what they contributed to me is so great I really think that it could somehow fit into the world picture even more if I just did my fair part in spreading out their greatness.  But it's hard for me to share.  Sometimes I feel like because its coming from me, I myself am not that special and can't have that much greatness to contribute even if I am the messenger of something great.  It's like I am an old-timey kingdom's messenger, the king gave me a super important great message to run and give to the other kingdom across the way and once I get there I feel like I'm not a king so what kind of crummy quality message do I have to share with another kingdom?

Or, sometimes I get to the next kingdom and I see a few of the people act a little disrespectful towards another messenger, a messenger I hold in higher esteem than myself, and it either freaks me out or I decide I don't want to share my message with them if these are the kind of people they are.  Kind of like when you're at a Sounders game and everyone stands up to cheer and a few people start doing a mean cheer, I just want to sit down.  I don't want to share my cheering with them if they are going to act that way.  But then!  Then, I am furious with myself for sitting down, I should have worked up the courage to ask them to stop and then shared my positive cheering.  Though, that never seems fair to me, I'm not the one making things crummy why should I have to be brave?  So, like someone great shared with me, life isn't fair, so I have to be brave.

I have to be brave because a lot of wonderful people have given to a me a lot of wonderful things to share, even to share with people who's actions bother me, and I owe it to the wonderful people.  Writing makes it easier to share.  Especially because there's space to allow all the awful thoughts to come out first with everything else, in a shitty first draft like Lamott describes, you can let everything spill out and then give yourself a minute to make sense of it.  The bad stuff is really needed to fully make sense of everything.   Then you can take another minute to delete or change the super-highly offensive parts, which aids in sharing with everyone, even those people who inspired the highly-offensive parts, so that even without having to think about sharing with them, you can do so productively.  Like using Lamott's advice in avoiding defamation without avoiding the consciousness and meaning making writing and reading can assist with.

Blogging is an interesting experience.  Partially because I know I have to be extra careful about what I share.  I'm filtering a little more to share with potentially lots more people.  At the same time this makes it so much easier for me to share.  My mouth is untrustworthy and so is my mind but given the space and time to be careful enough to actually post and share my words makes me braver.  It's as if I'm at a Sounders game and everyone just pauses for me to organize and feel good about my words and then I can feel confident enough to help stop the mean cheering and add more of myself to the positive cheering.  Blogging Bravery I hope leads to Copious Courage Everywhere.

No Time For Disrespect

"We can give you some respect, because we know what it takes" (Lamott, 153).  Lamott said it here, and that is what I view as Routman's point in ch. 9's Conference with Students, "When I confer with you about your writing, you are more important than the writing - Don Graves" (205).  This is also what I took to be Fox's main point in ch. 7's Teaching English Language Learners and Children at Risk, that teachers must learn from students what valuable knowledge they already have as individuals and build new literacy learning directly on that.  Maybe I just had respect on the brain, but it is very logical that respect is necessary for effective communication (literacy) to happen.  Just as in when I respect a speaker or a writer I will better understand what they are trying to communicate to me, similarly, if I respect my listener or reader they will better understand the meaning I am attempting to convey to them.

Plus, really, we don't have the time to waste on not being respectful.  Lamott says, "And I don't think you have that kind of time either.  I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good enough at it, and I don't think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect" (170).  Routman, again absolutely supports this by demonstrating "teacher talk" that invariably is focused on supporting the writer by assisting them communicate their message and in not wasting time or disrespecting a student's capabilities by doing editing that they are capable of themselves.  Fox, as well, emphasizes that the most plausible way to help any student advance their literacy skills is to teach letter-sound recognition and understanding as well as word identification strategies,  that there isn't the time to waste in skipping over these basic structures in literacy and there isn't the time to waste in not respecting each student enough to make sure this learning happens.

Because literacy is meaningful communication, it inherently necessitates respect, with no time to lose.

Sesame Street for Me

Trying to come up with the first vignette was hard.  Coming up with the second vignette was too easy, I had lots of ideas then.  One big vignette idea I had was the huge impact Sesame Street had on my literacy development.  “C is for Cookie and that’s good enough for me” is the best song in the universe.  I witnessed foam puppet letter Bs and bs dancing and singing.  I learned how to count to 10 in English and Spanish along with the Spanish words for closed and open.  Valuing diversity was obvious to the little kid me on Sesame Street.  Just the other day I heard about some research that showed the kind of counting the Count did was perfect for developing mathematical sense.  Then, to my pleasant surprise, I found loads of the old school Sesame Street segments can be found on YouTube.  I think this offers possibilities that could be really helpful to lots of kids.  I clearly remember in first grade when the teacher asked our class how many of us watched Sesame Street, only two of us raised our hands, and I know that we were a couple of the more solid readers.  How much of this I can attribute directly to Sesame Street, I don't know.  And I definitely know that the majority of my knowledge came from everywhere but Sesame Street.  But, I also know that when I look back at the times I spent watching t.v., Sesame Street time was probably the least wasteful, right up there with Mr. Rogers and Reading Rainbow.

Basket Weaving Respect

"Reality is unforgivingly complex" (Lamott, p. 104), and I find strength in this truth, because like dried reeds, when they all lay the same way there's not much to them, but, when intricately woven together, why, you've got an absolutely fantastic (water-proof even) basket.  I feel the support of complexity while reading Fox and the different strategies students can use and build upon in their literacy development, that there are many different strategies and when woven together they make for strong readers and writers.  Especially wonderful is when the readers and writers are given to space to weave together the taught strategies themselves, constructing their own understandings in their own ways to make individually unique, awesome and every-bit as strong baskets.

An environment of respect must be the context for our complex reality to occur as well as the way to work towards an even more respectful environment for everyone.  Good basket weaving learning and action cannot happen in an environment lacking respect for all of it's elements.  The teacher and student must respect one another, themselves, the materials, the process, and its product.  Many of the thoughts about writing Lamott shares support this emphasis on respect, for example, "you have to respect the qualities that make them [your characters] who they are" (p. 108).

Respect for the present is awe in presence.  This would be a weaver's respect for everything all combined together into what they are doing, one another, the materials, the process, etc.  Lamott effectively describes this as a way to deal with reality that is one of the greatest, most helpful experiential skills I want to help share with others.  On page 102 Lamott says this:

To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass - seeing things in a such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.

When I am feeling beaten-up and no good, to look at something like the squirrel Lamott did or a crow or whatever, and when I really consider it as a respectable fellow being, I feel more grounded in reality and more open to hope.  This is something I do want to share with others, especially young people.

Singapore is Super Neato

Singapore is super neato.  In 2006 I stepped into that country as I entered Asia and had my mind totally blown.  This week's social studies method's reading reminded me of my short-circuited nerve synapses, especially in the Parker text's printing of the Singapore pledge of allegiance (p. 3-c):

We, the citizens of Singapore, 

pledge ourselves as one united people, 

regardless of race, language or religion, 

to build a democratic society based on justice and equality 

so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.

No wonder they have the best firework shows on earth!  Plus, the reading included how students there are guided to learning about all of the cultural groups that make-up their unique country in a way that cultivates with and unifies under respect while valuing diversity.  

It hasn't been until recently that I have really put lots of thought into how it is every teacher's responsibility to help students learn democratic values.  Also, in the social studies text, the incredible writer, James Baldwin, said that "if children are not educated to live democratically, they may well become apathetic or worse: They could become the next generation of people to commit a Holocaust such as the one in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s... Baldwin observed that the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity were very well educated and knew a great deal about reading, writing, literature, math and science, but in spite of their education, they could not live democratically" (p.62).

Although I feel like my own school education lacked way too much consideration of democratic values and thinking, I still was fortunate enough to have parents who modeled and discussed democratic values with me.  It baffles me when the people around me are less than passionate about what is happening in our society.  Because I didn't experience very much democracy in my schooling I am somewhat intimidated about teaching it myself, but I understand, intimidated or not, it is my responsibility because I know the importance of it.  I will do my best to help.  It helps me to know there is a lot out there, including people, that will support teaching democratic values, and, that I am so right, "Idiots were (are) citizens who paid no attention to the common good...They placed personal concerns far out in front of community concerns and, in this lethal act of imbalance, threatened the freedoms and rights they were so eager to enjoy" (p. 61).  I am excited to try to help catch-up to super neato Singapore.