Author: kkruen@gmail.com

Educational practice, like our current political system, has been built upon the idea that opposing viewpoints might result in a better outcome. These sides begin to define themselves as what they stand against rather than what they stand for, and therefore cannot change their position without being called out and humiliated. Strident opposition that has been entrenched atrophies both sides.

Opposing forces in Education have been seen as Public vs Private schooling, Traditional vs Progressive Pedagogy, choice vs community schools, segregated vs integrated, inclusion vs targeted instruction…the list goes on and on. What each side has in common is that they often define themselves as the better alternative to the other, a solution to the other, and at the core, a fixing of the problem that the other model created.

What if, instead of thinking with these constrained negative definitions, we embraced the ‘And’ in education? Instead of being pitted against each other, what if we worked together as a larger coalition on behalf of what we all aspire to – the strengthening and uplifting of our society through relevant education? How might we pull back from some of our ‘non negotiables’ and see our work from another point of view? And most pointedly, can we have empathy for those who attacking our particular pedagogy, even if they cannot see us as more than the opinion we embody? Are we able to see our opposition through the lens of humanity?

How do we work within a shared understanding of our own humanity rather than work within a structure that has been built that we follow without question? How do we break from the bonds of ‘right and wrong’ that we have been brought up in and are complicit in strengthening? Can we move toward a vision of educational health for all, without falling into a crippling fear that this change will lead to just another structure that may divide us? A way I see forward is to embrace the ‘And.’

Embracing the ‘And’ is a conscious decision regarding language and stance – that one will refrain from the words “or,” “but,” “not” and “neither” and instead be open to the connection between things that appear to be opposite. What lives in the space of the ‘And’ is an openness to possibility, a way of seeing that might create a new paradigm, as well as a kind of mystery and awe-perhaps wonder-that these two ideas, concepts, ideas, and emotions can share the same space without destroying the other.

There are exceptions to the ‘And.’ These are acts and stances that are so clearly filled with evil and hate that they do harm if they are put in the same sentence with the work of schooling. For example, school shootings – horrible acts often committed by those who are mentally unstable- cannot be equated with policies such as school closings. Both are destructive – one is totally outside of what one would accept as a possibility or even endorse.

In teaching, the ‘And’ can be considered when thinking about the students in our classrooms. For example, a child is more than one word (“good”) or label (“ADHD”), and is in fact many words, visible and occurring at the same time. Thus, we can see a child as both irritable and thoughtful. By pushing our ability to observe and consider the language we use when describing children, we will be able to better see and understand our students, which may help us become better teachers of them. The ‘And’ can also be put into use when thinking of school systems and current reforms – and even pedagogies that are rooted in the varied philosophies of education. So traditional and child centered practices have the possibility of being in the same space, the same classroom, the same school.

We have become so used to defining ourselves by what we are not, reacting to what we do not like, and living our lives in opposition to what we perceive to be evil. This is a way of being that feeds many, and while it makes life clear, it also can shut off possibility. Living in the ‘And’ takes courage and risk, as the ‘And’ is not as solid as an ‘Or’ or a ‘Never’ or a ‘Not.’ ‘And’ implies an openness and vulnerability that requires a strong inner core that is rooted in values ‘and’ able to consider the others point of view. One’s values should not act as blinders-they act as roots that allow a person to bend, grow, connect and adapt to the environment one is in.

The world is moving toward the ‘And,’ and I sense that the turmoil we are experiencing is coming out of the fear of it-fear of connecting on a global level, of having one’s strong identity while accepting another’s, and of seeing one’s destiny intertwined with those on the other side of the planet who have a different, yet valued perspective. I urge you as educators and citizens to push into and embrace the And-by opening up boundaries, building community, and moving toward to a level of discussion that is real, challenging, and transformative. Our current students and future generations deserve to live in a world of the And, and together, we can build it!

A Different Call to Arms

by Kathleen K. Ruen

From calls to arm teachers in the classroom to strikes in West Virginian, Puerto Rico, and Oklahoma, teachers are once again in the spotlight. It is not coincidental that these issues come to the fore at a time when teachers in our country are under assault. Already burdened by high stakes testing, low wages, supply shortages and a growing demand to deal with complex issues from mental health to literacy, teachers are now being asked to take on even more.  Fortunately, like our students, we are resilient.  We have faced challenges before.

Teachers have been in a second class position since the creation of free public schools in our country. Our profession was and is still viewed as women’s work. In the past, without the right to vote, women accepted a lower rate of pay and conditions that men would not tolerate.  Low compensation and intolerable work conditions have not changed, even though our demographics have.  But this has not prevented teachers from doing their jobs helping young citizens of this country grow into thoughtful, educated human beings.

Here are a few of the things that teachers do that the nation may not be aware of: Teachers embody true democracy by balancing the needs of each student while making sure that the classroom community is healthy and functioning as a whole.  They navigate the mandates from above and put these often misguided directives alongside their own deep pedagogical knowledge of what works for students in order to find a way to meet the need of the state and the students.  Teachers face and take criticism, both subtle and extreme, from care givers, their principals, and from popular culture, yet keep returning to their classrooms to do the hard work of self-reflection and observing how their work really impacts their students learning and lives.  Teachers put their own physical and mental health at risk because they do not have the institutional supports in place for them to do their work-they over extend themselves in order to fill in the gaps that society and institutions have left in their students’ lives.

Teachers wages and benefits have not risen comparable to other professions, and benefits and collective bargaining rights have eroded, making it a profession that few would choose to support themselves or their families-many teachers take on additional work just to make ends meet at home, Excessive and high stakes testing and high school exit exams have made it nearly impossible for teachers to actually teach-their days are filled with either preparing for a test or monitoring assessments that the students must take-assessments that take the place of real learning.  Teachers may have contracted hours from 8:00-3:00pm, but most put in at least twice that amount of time a day, not counting their weekends grading papers, preparing for their classes, buying materials from their own wallets for their classrooms, telephoning parents and writing up observations and reports.  The work that teachers do is so demanding and unsupported that many end up leaving.  Perhaps this turnover is exactly what education reformers want, but turnover negatively affects schools and students.  The longer a teacher teaches with support and professional development, the better they will become.

Teachers are quiet heroes.  Their heroism ranges from the daily efforts of a teacher to reach one child in their classroom who needs extra care all the way to teachers putting their lives on the line-some of them sacrificing their lives-in order to protect their students from gun violence.  The health of teachers and students are intertwined, and both need society to step up and address their needs.  Educators have been calling for support of their work and of their students for decades, and no one has listened.  We have had enough,

This is a call to action and a call to arms for teachers. We need to become politically active in the systems we inhabit, from the National to the local level.  We need to stir up the structures that oppress us and the young people we care for.  We need to find common allies, build coalitions, and, as a collective, use our power to halt the destruction of schooling while at the same time build schools that are in true service to students, their families, and the communities they call home.  The arms of teachers can defend and build.

As teachers, we also need to use our powerful arms to hold, hug, and protect the students that we teach. We need to say to students that have been excluded and are now under threat that “I see you and I value you.”  We need to take time from our rigorous days to give space and time for students to express their ideas, fears, and dreams.  We need to build a classroom environment where children can thrive in order to give a counter message to a national atmosphere of negativity and hate.

Why am I calling on teachers to take on this herculean task, to make their arms almost break with effort, and to add to our already impossible, highly complicated role of educating our citizenship? Because teachers have a source of energy and inspiration that few adults do.  Teachers have their students.

Students, from age 0-100, but especially those in early childhood and elementary settings, embody hope because they are in the process of growth and are attuned to their environment in a way that most adults have lost sight of. Our students have unbounded energy, powerful feelings, and have a deep understanding of fairness and justice-perhaps because they have been living under the care/control of adults for their whole life and know what it means to be oppressed.

Our students have the capacity to change the world, shown by the surge of activism in the Black Lives Matter Movement and in the National School Walkouts on March 14^th and April 20^th. Every moment we give to our students, every word we say to encourage and inspire them, and every time we help them come to a new understanding, we can help them become more affective in their future lives.  Teachers are powerful because, as Sonia Nieto writes in her amazing book, What Keeps Teachers Going, “Teachers change lives forever.”

So teachers, we have a hard road ahead. We are despised for our assumed gender and demeaned for our work.  We are the first to be blamed, starting from well and not so well-meaning parents all the way to our past, present, and future leaders.  We cannot expect to be loved, respected, or supported by any adult, even though we work with the most precious and valuable resource of our country.  We are constantly having to work around top-down mandates and laws that prevent us from doing the work we know is the most important.  We cannot expect anyone to care or value our work, because every citizen in this country has experienced teachers, and their perception of our profession is seen though their narrow lens, rather than the complex and nuanced reality of what we do every day.

The obstacles we face as teachers are all based on lies. We can see through these lies because we see the truth every day through the eyes of the students we teach, through hearing their stories, and through witnessing the stunning ways that they are making sense of this upside-down world.  Our students deserve our arms, and they will reciprocate with their own, which we can only hope will someday build a humane nation that we can truly be proud of.

If you do not call yourself a teacher, I call on you as a citizen to use your arms to help us in our work. We need your support more than ever.

Teachers! Citizens!  To Action!  To Arms!

First image:

Yesterday I was able to participate in the National School Walkout  at my daughter’s elementary school in East Harlem.  The whole school made a large circle at 10am in the playground across the street from the school, observed a minute of silence, and sang freedom songs.

To preview this event, my daughter’s teacher sent this email to the families:

 Subject: Conversations about Parkland Florida and the Walkout

Dear Families,

 On March 6 and March 9, we had two students who had brought in current events related to “March for our Lives.” Though this was a major incident, I waited for the students to bring up the issue themselves, which was presented through their current events. During our conversation, our students raised their ideas about the effect this event, that happened in Florida, could have on us in New York City. Some of the students discussed thoughts such as

• Will we start having gun drills?
• Why do we have to be in a situation where we have to worry about guns?
• This is unfair, but being wary of guns is now our reality.
• Why do the people in the NRA even want guns?
• Why is there an amendment that lets people have guns?
• I thought they were supposed to do background checks on people before they got guns. How did the shooter at Stoneman get one with such a troubled life?
• Will they try to make it harder to get a gun?
• I heard that the government might make teachers have guns.
• I might feel safe with my teacher having guns but what if someone else took it from them?
• I would not trust my teachers with a gun. I wouldn’t trust anyone with a gun.
• I fully trust that my teachers will use the gun only to protect me.

During our first conversation, no one mentioned the march, but when another student had the same article about the march for current events, this was after our school had made the group decision to participate in the march in our own way. We will be joining the Walkout on March, 14, 2018. We discussed what our role, as 4th and 5th graders, will be during this 17 minute Walkout, where we will be silent for a minute before singing songs that we all know. The students asked questions and thought such as

• Are we allowed to have signs protesting guns?
• Why are we having a walkout?
• Will we stay silent for all 17 minutes?
• We should sing seriously to commemorate the students and educators who lost their lives.
• I think we are showing that we don’t like guns and don’t want guns in our schools.

These are confusing times for all of us, both children and adults, and it will take time, and many more conversations for us to process all that has been happening. At this point, we’ve tried to make clear that our job as the adults in your children’s lives is to listen to their concerns, and to make space for them to talk when they want to talk. We don’t have the answers, but we listen, and console.  Our message is the same in all the classes. The children’s safety is a priority for us, and we will continue to do the best we can to make sure that we continue to drive home that point.

Gabriel (the principal) recently sent a note regarding this National Day of Action taking place Wednesday at 10:00 a.m.  If you are interested in joining us, meet us in the Carver playground immediately across the street from the school yard.  We welcome your participation and support.

Thank you.

Cecilia 4/5 teacher, CPE I

Second Image:

Across the street-in front of the school building, the CPE high school was holding a rally, with teens holding up a bullhorn and giving speeches in support of the students in Parkland and also for black & brown students who have been killed by gun violence.  They had demands that they had written out on a board:

DEMANDS:

1. No arming teachers with guns
2. Decriminalization of black and brown bodies in our schools
3. That police must use de-escalation techniques
4. Schools should be safe places
5. That our voices be heard
6. More people vote
7. Be the change you want to be
8. More federal gun legislation

Third Image:

And lastly, here is an extensive article about the national walkout in the NY Times:

From The New York Times:

National School Walkout: Thousands Protest Against Gun Violence Across the U.S.

In a coordinated action, students left their classrooms and sometimes marched in the streets a month after 17 people were killed in a Florida high school.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/us/school-walkout.html

Creating and Enacting a Year-Long Curriculum-The Last Algonquin 8-26-16

Frustration

I had been teaching a class entitled “Emergent Curriculum” for over ten years at Sarah Lawrence College to Graduate Students in who wished to be certified for N-6 Early Childhood/Elementary Education, focusing on the subject matter of Social Studies and the Arts.  Two years ago I became responsible for the science aspect of the course which meant I taught Emergent Curriculum for a full year. 

Some of the big ideas I touched upon was the importance of craft in art (pottery, knitting, doll making), the unpacking of the “beginning:” of American History (A look at primary documents surrounding the Thanksgiving Holiday, including films from the PBS series “We Shall Remain,” and a day-long trip to Plimoth Plantation), and an investigation of water (participating in “The Day in the Life on the Hudson River,” asking students to bring water from where they had their winter holiday, and testing water for its salinity and Ph while also looking for organisms under a microscope).

These experiences appeared to be valuable to the students and they connected well to theoretical ideas that we were reading about in assigned articles and books.  But I was growing frustrated and stuck.  In my mind, these activities were not as connected and rooted as I would have liked.  I especially was tired of doing the Thanksgiving Study, and Plimoth Plantation appeared to be changing and becoming a place I was not sure I wanted my students to visit.  Wasn’t there a way I could stay closer to home and help students uncover the Native American presence on the soil that they walked?  Wasn’t there a way I could connect the art we were exploring to nature?  Wasn’t there a way to investigate the bodies of water that were right here in the New York and Yonkers area?  And, wasn’t there a way to create a year long study for my Graduate Education Students that would bridge all of these pieces in a way that was meaningful and holistic?

Inspiration

My husband, EJ McAdams, had shown me a book a few years ago called “The Last Algonquin” by Theodore D. Kazmiroff.  I vaguely remembered this story of a boy who met a Native American at what is now Orchard Beach.  In July, after my summer class was ended and I had some time, I pulled the book off of the shelf and brought it with me on my vacation to see family in the Mid-West.

The book was riveting, and I sped through it.  I began to see that there were several themes that ran alongside the book that connected to big ideas in Social Studies, in Environmental Science, and even in the arts.  I spoke with friends and family about the book, which helped me open up more ideas and see more connections.  I let the book come along with me, and slowly the purpose of it revealed itself.

When I returned from the long Mid-West trip, I decided it was time to get serious.  I bought a large journal to begin putting ideas in, and also colored plastic adhesive tabs to mark parts of the book that could lead to activities.  I found to my delight that most chapters in the book could be “lived through,” and experienced, albeit in a different time.  We could visit Orchard Beach, The Museum of Natural History, The Museum of the American Indian, and Historic Richmondtown in Staten Island.  I had no idea what the students and I would find in these places, but in these first strokes these trips seemed to make sense.

I also looked over the maps of Pelham Bay, and of the Islands that are featured in the beginning of the story; Hunter Island, Twin Islands, and Two Tree Island.  Figuring out where these islands are now was difficult to see on a map.  How would I be able to share them with my students if I had no grasp of the land forms, past and present?

The story of Joe Two Trees includes a mythic heroes journey away from home which ends with a return to home.  I looked at the map of Joe Two Trees Travels, and realized that the students and I could take the same journey over the entire year, beginning and ending on Hunter Island in the Bronx.  But some of the places that I wanted to experience, such as Hells Gate, or canoeing on the Hudson River, I had no idea how to set up.

I met with Victoria Garufi, the Education Director at CURB (The Center for the Urban River at Beczak) and shared my plan with her.  She immediately was able to come up with the Yonkers Rowing Club on the Hudson River, which owns a “War Canoe” which can hold up to 15 people, and a Sea Capitan who runs charter boats in and out of City Island.  Vicky also suggested that I consider working with some Nature-Based artist educators from Strawtown Studio.

From this meeting and my own brainstorming, I created a Map of trips that would follow the year, which connected directly to pages from the story, “The Last Algonquin.”  I also came up with some big questions that I felt might help ground the study for myself and for my students:

1. What is the History of the Land we stand on?

2. What was life like 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago?

3. How do we live ethically, with the knowledge that, for most of us,  our ancestors either took this land from its first inhabitants or have benefitted from that act?

4. What can we learn from hearing stories from multiple perspectives?

5. Is The Last Algonquin a true story?  (Why) Does this matter?

6.  Can a story be a structure, a start, and/or a map for a year long curriculum?

What follows is a diary of sorts, using photographs and text, in order to chart the way this curriculum unfolded over the Fall Semester of 2015, and what my students and I learned in the process:

September 4th, 2015 – Visit to the Museum of the American Indian, Battery Park City, Manhattan

I decided that the first place to visit was the Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan.  After going through security, I went to the information desk to see if I could visit the research center, which I had visited before when I had designed my Thanksgiving curriculum.  I was told that the research center was no longer there.  After explaining my reason for visiting, the Education Director was suggested and her number was given to me.  Surprisingly, I found out that the main collection in the museum was from a white collector, and there were no artifacts from the Native Americans who had once lived in Manhattan.  Disappointed, I went through the main exhibit, but was soon awed by the range and artistry of the works on display.  Perhaps this museum could be useful in order for my students to see the breath of past and present artwork of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.  On my way out I stopped in the bookstore, and found a wonderful section of books.  I bought many of them.  The Last Algonquin was not on these shelves, and this gave me pause.

The book that stood out to me, and that soon followed me back and forth to work in my bag alongside The Last Algonquin, as well as read to my students was Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York by Evan T. Pritchard.  The first three lines of the introduction touched on both the personal and the professional.

“Native New Yorkers is a book for readers who love New York.  It is also for those who posses a deep and abiding interest in Native American Tradition, whether by birthright or passion.  These two subjects seem to lie at the extreme opposite poles of the universe, yet they have co-existed for centuries.” (Pritchard, p 1, 2002)

Learning that Evan T. Pritchard was a descendant of the Micmac people (part of the Algonquian Nations), I realized that for the first time in my search that I had encountered a Native American voice.  This brought up a desire to connect with the New York American Indian community.  It also brought forward the nagging worry that my study would be seen as offensive in the eyes of Evan Pritchard and others.  My initial objective of visiting the museum was to get the museum’s take on Katzmiroff and to find a connection to the Native Americans who had resided in Manhattan through objects.  The museum did not give me any of these answers directly.  I would have to keep searching.

I visited two more places, The Bronx Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History.  At the Bronx museum I attended a lecture where a Bronx historian was presenting his book about the Bronx.  In this bookstore I was able to buy several texts that spoke to the history and population of the borough.  The historian knew Katzmiroff Sr. and said that he learned how to give tours from him.  He did not believe that The Last Algonquin was a true text, and there was a warning in his eyes when I mentioned it.  At the Museum of Natural History I visited the “Woodlands Indians” exhibit, and was similarly disappointed at the lack of artifacts that came from New York City.  The displays seemed so cold and uninviting.  Was there a place that had original artifacts from New York City that would be more inviting to children? 

September 16th, 2015 – Consultation with Mike Feller, Orchard Beach, Bronx

Early in the morning I drove, as instructed, to the ‘north east’ corner of the parking lot at Orchard Beach.  It was a warm mild morning.  A few minutes later I was met by Mike Feller, NYC naturalist extraordinare.  I had hired him as a consultant to help me understand more about the land that Joe Two Trees called home, and also to talk about the study I was undertaking.  I learned a huge amount of information in the two hours we spent together walking on the land, and I was constantly writing in my notebook and taking photos.

Mike took me on two hikes-one that went from Hunter Island to Twin Island, and another that went along the Katzmiroff Nature Trail. 

On our first hike Mike pointed out Gama grass (left) that was very likely the ancestor of present day corn.

 As we walked along the path I asked whether there might be trees that are standing now that could have been present hundreds of years ago.  This led Mike to discuss the idea of “Old Growth Forests,” which are not what they appear to be, as forests are always in the process of change.

However, Mike did point out a tree that likely had been there during Joe Two Trees lifetime, and perhaps that of his father and grandfather.

This is a Post Oak Tree, at least 250 years old, and one of the oldest native trees in New York City.

Mike pointed out the causeway between Hunter and Twin Island, mentioning that it was not walkable.  Then, due to the low tide, we were able walk on a path right to Twin Island.  There Mike noticed deer tracks.  He had not seen these in a long while.

On Twin Island, Mike pointed out two plants.  On the top are invasive fragmites behaving like native plants, due to the tide waters.  On the bottom is Jimson Weed, a hallucinogenic night shade related to the eggplant, named Jimson after the story of British Soldiers eating the plants and then behaving strangely in Jamestown, VA.

Again, because of the low tides, we were able to walk onto the other Twin Island.  The sign that Mike is standing on is not accurate, as Two Tree Island, the Island Joe was named after, is the island beyond.

It was in this spot that Mike Feller talked about the book, The Last Algonquin, and the doubts that Kazimiroff Sr. actually met an Algonquian Indian in this place.  Mike’s proof of this was that all of the scholars and friends of Kazimiroff Sr. never heard him speak of meeting Joe Two Trees.

Mike mused, “Perhaps Kazimiroff Jr. was channeling the Zeitgeist of the 1970’s” He mentioned the famous commercial of the “crying Indian,” as an example.

We walked on this small island, and at the other side had a view of the real Two Tree Island.  It was a spectacular day with quiet calm waters, and you could hear the gentle clangs of the buoys.

It was in this place that Mike gave me a short lecture on the geologic forces that formed New York City.  In this location you could see the forces of the New England schist and the Manhattan Schist banging against each other.  I was amazed to hear that New York City is the meeting place between the Northern and Southern rock formations.  No wonder New York City is such a meeting place!

We walked back over to the Twin Islands, and then out through a marsh to the Nature Center.  A walk back to the Parking lot brought us to a second hike- The Katzmiroff Nature Trail.  Mike was running out of time but agreed to show me a spot where I could bring my class on our first trip.

We walked down the path and Mike took the first right turn, and showed me a middens of shells that was most probably a refuse pile of the Native American people who had come here to fish and eat clam shells.  I made sure to mark this spot in my mind and bring my students here.

Mike also mentioned that there was professor at Brooklyn College, an Archeologist, who was leading a dig on another part of Orchard Beach.  He though that perhaps my class would like to visit this spot and meet the professor.  I found this interesting, but also a little troubling.  Katzmiroff Sr. spent a great amount of his life digging up Native American bones and gravesites.  What would present day American Indians think about this practice today?

A little further on Mike brought me to a spot on Hunter Island at the beginning of the causeway to Twin Island.  Here there was a wonderful view of the water, Twin Island, and just beyond, Two Trees Island.  I had found the place to bring my class and introduce them to The Last Algonquin.

 September 21st, 2015 – Class at Orchard Beach

The class of 9 students loaded up into a campus van, and we drove 15 minutes to arrive at the Orchard Beach Parking lot.  Vicky Garufi from CURB joined us.

We walked down the Ted Kazmiroff Sr Nature Trail, and I showed them the shell middens.  Students walked further out to the water to take pictures.

On the rocks I read some passages from Native New Yorkers and then we took turns reading the beginning of The Last Algonquin.  Students took measurements of the water & soil temperature, and looked for life in the water.

 I took a small group through the whole nature trail, which had wonderful views of the water and plant life.  When we entered the parking lot, one of my students expressed wonder that the parking lot used to be water long ago. 

As we drove back I asked the students to sketch what they had seen during the trip.  The students worked silently, and gave me their drawings as they exited.

May 4th, 2016 – Final Trip to Orchard Beach

The students and I gathered at the back of our building at 12:45pm.  It was a cold and misty afternoon, with rain threatening.  I asked the students to bring their books, and dress warm.

We arrived in the Orchard Beach Parking lot a few minutes after 1:00.  Mike Feller walked up to us from Hunter Island.  As we unloaded, Mike went to his car and brought a book for me, a memoir.  Clifton Matias then drove up in the RedHawk Council’s white 15 passenger van.  In a circle, the students introduced themselves and talked about what experience was most meaningful to them during the year.  Mike led us onto Hunter Island, which was a few steps from the parking lot.

He showed us where the real Island began, and spoke about the creation of Orchard Beach in the 1930’s, which meant filling in the large bay that was there before.  The parking lot had originally been water.  He showed us some native flowers, poison ivy that was on the ground and winding on a tree.  A student asked about some flowering plant, and Mike picked it and had the students smell its oniony scent.  Cliff began to say something, and we stopped to listen.  He said that his people would not pick something just to smell it or look at it, and would thank the plant before taking it out of the ground.

Mike moved up ahead, and I walked with Cliff explaining the book, and the tribe that Joe Two Trees had come from.  I found the chapter in the second book Ted Katzmiroff had written which included a chapter from (artist) which said that Joe Two Trees had come from the Wappinger.  Mike stopped and asked the students what a certain ground cover might be.  After some discussion it was revealed that these were daylillys, remnants of the Hunter Estate.  They rarely bloomed because of the shade of the trees above.

At the top of the hill one of the students asked about a small red building.  Mike said that this was now a Parks Department shed, but originally it had been a hot dog stand that was in operation when Orchard Beach was at its height.  I noticed a London Plane Tree, looking odd in the natural landscape, and Mike said that this was also planted during the creation of Orchard Beach-Robert Moses loved London Planes.  Some Osprey were spied flying above, and we began to walk down the hill.  There Mike stopped us to look at a huge tree-a tulip tree that was mentioned in the Last Algonquin as the tree the Joe Two Trees used to make his canoe.  Mike alluded that this large old tree perhaps was there when the Hunter plantation was created and was left alone in a field to grow.  Down the hill, a student asked about a vine winding around a tree.  Mike said that it was an invasive bittersweet vine, and that left alone it would kill the native trees in the forest.  Cliff was next to me, and I could not feel as if the metaphor of the bittersweet vine was a part of our american history, for both native people and native plants.  I shared this with Cliff.

Mike spied a bird up ahead, a red wing blackbird.  Students mused on the phenomenon of the decoration and color on Male species and the muted colors of females.  There was a discussion on the energy that it takes to produce color, and also how the brighter a robin’s blue egg, the more the male will pay attention to it.

We began to see the water ahead, and the wind kicked up.  Standing on rocks we saw Two Trees Island and Twin Island, which I pointed out.  I could see at least two small trees working their way through the soil of the island.  It was too blustery to stay too long.  Back on the trail we passed the old roadway, and Mike showed us the causeway.  Cliff and I walked in the lead and Cliff talked about water, and how Native People believe that the cleanliness of the water is directly related to the health of the women, and how women often begin water ceremonies.  The tide was receding, and the students pointed out some clumps of grass in the mud which looked like chia pets.  Mike said that seeing that in the bay was an effect of global warming, as the level of the water is increasing by 2-3cm a year, having an effect on plant life.  Then one of the students noticed a robins nest, just on the side of the path.   Inside was a blue egg.  Mike asked us to move away because it was a cold day and the robin would need to keep the egg warm.  The students took several pictures on their phones.

We walked to the beach to head onto Twin Island.

(to be continued…!)

Education and Activism: The Legacy of the Black Panthers 2-2-2016

As a part of the Art of Teaching Film Series, three events were held last week under the umbrella:

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

The film was well attended by students and faculty, and afterwards there was a great discussion between Film Professor Damani Baker and History Professor Komozi Woodard:

http://www.thirteen.org/community-relations/2016/03/28/watch-the-black-panthers-screening-at-sarah-lawrence-college/

Damani Baker and Komozi Woodard

What Would We Create at the 2015 National PEN Conference 10-11-2015

The Progressive Education Network’s National Conference was held in New York City this past weekend.  The theme of the conference was “Access, Equity and Activism: Teaching the Possible”

Todd Rolle, the Movement/Theater Teacher at Central Park East I Elementary School, and I collaborated on an arts-focused workshop that would use the central theme of the conference as a starting place for an arts exploration which could lead to curriculum development.

Before our workshop, there was an opening plenary with a panel of esteemed children’s book authors entitled “Authors as Activists and the Importance of Diverse Books.”  As the panelists spoke, I wrote down their words that connected to the three large themes of the conference.  The notion of seeing a book as a ‘Mirror’ or/and a ‘Window’ for a child was compelling intellectually, and for an artist these words had strong visual and sculptural aspects.  I brought the words to our workshop to bridge their work to ours.

Todd and I first transformed a small conference room in the Brooklyn Marriot into and open space for Movement, and then put the three words, Access, Equity and Activism on three of the walls.

When the participants entered, we invited them to tape the words that I had written down during the plenary on the walls, near one of the big themes.  We also asked them to write additional words and tape them up:

I led an circle of introductions, and on the second round each participant said their name and one of the words on the walls, and created a movement that we all mirrored back.

Todd then led a dance warm-up which explained his movement pedagogy while getting our bodies ready to work.

We all took a breath, and I asked the group to make some shapes related to the words with our eyes closed, and then asked people to form groups of three, and then find a way to express without speaking these ideas:

Door

Tunnel

Bridge

Between Two Worlds

We broke the class into two groups, and switched after 20 minutes.  Todd worked with his group on getting deeper into the word “Access” through word and movement.

I had made a long banner with the words, Equity-Access-Activism, written across.  I invited my group to draw images and use color to express these words.  The media provided was marker, colored pencil, and 3 types of cray-pa:

The banner group brought their work into the room, and taped it up under the word, Access.  We had a short conversation about the process of the workshop and what participants might bring back to their work with students.

Then we brought the banner to the main room.

And put it up in the lobby.

The Child, the Curriculum, and Patai – 11-3-14

One of the first readings I assign for my Emergent Curriculum course is John Dewey’s “The Child and the Curriculum,” which is a daunting way to enter into a conversation about teaching and learning.  To put insult upon injury, I have them read a chapter from Dewey’s book, Art as Experience, soon after to begin our focus on the role of the arts in curriculum and in children’s development.   This year some of my students’ response to Dewey’s writing style ranged from questioning the meaning of the language he used to frustration with the way he seems to return again and again to the same idea.  One student wished that there were cliff notes for Dewey, so that his ideas could be better communicated to others.  However, despite these initial comments, all found something in Dewey that speaks to our current understandings and conundrums in education today, and all were surprised to find out when these texts were written.

Every time I read Dewey I see something new, and this year I have been interested in his argument for his particular definition of progressive education, which is very much connected to providing the conditions for children to have experiences that move them forward in their development and learning.  He repeatedly warns us of the extremes of education.  On one side, children left simply to their own devices can languish.  On the other, rigid top down curriculum that determines the teacher’s planning and the child’s path stops the natural development of the child in its tracks.  In three of the texts I use in my courses, these ideas are repeated in different ways:

“It is easier to see the conditions in their separateness, to insist upon one at the expense of the other, to make antagonists of them, then to discover a reality to which each belongs.  The easy thing is to seize upon something in the nature of the child, or something in the developed consciousness of the adult, and insist upon that as the key to the whole problem.” (Dewey, 1902)

“Thus the non-esthetic lies within two limits.  At one pole is the loose succession that does not begin at any particular place that ends-in the sense of ceasing-at no particular place. At the other pole is arrest, constriction, proceeding from parts only having a mechanical connection with one another.  There exists so much of one and another of these two kinds of experiences that unconsciously they come to be taken as norms of all experience.” (Dewey, 1934)

“The history of educational theory is marked by opposition between the idea that education is development from within and that it is formation from without; that it is based upon natural endowments and that education is a process of overcoming natural inclination and substituting in its place habits acquired under external pressure.” (Dewey, 1938)

What I appreciate about Dewey, although others may find this aspect of him frustrating, is that he does not give a solid answer about how one might achieve a balance between these extremes.  My humble interpretation of Dewey’s ‘balance’ is that at times the child must lead the way, at times the subject matter, while both aspects need to be present in one form or another for learning to occur. It is, of course, much more complicated than that, if one looks closely at Dewey’s ideas.  The danger of summarizing Dewey for others is that his work is easily used to support the work of educators of widely differing beliefs.  It is best if readers could interact and engage with his primary texts in order to wrestle with his big ideas, and come to their own conclusions.  But this leads to the problem of my students’ first impressions of Dewey.  How might one present Dewey’s words in order to help readers understand his message?

I find a possible answer to this question in the work of Daphne Patai.  While taking a fantastic qualitative research course at New York University, my Professor Margot Ely suggested using the Patai form when transcribing interviews.  When one translates spoken words into prose, one often loses the intention of the speaker.  Patai, when conducting a study in Brazil, found that this was especially true with the poorer, less educated women she interviewed .  Patai found that by making the interview transcription into a kind of poem, with spaces, commas, and line breaks, “transcribing ..as literally as possible, without the streamlining which suit our expectations as a prose text,” she could better capture the depth of her participants. (Patai, 1988, p 157)  Patai found that this form forced the reader to make the same effort to understand the intention of the speaker as they might do for a more ‘respected’ text:

“We are prepared to work hard to decipher high-cultural texts-often we admire them more the more they make us work – yet we will cry out in impatience when an ‘ordinary speaker,’ a person like Marialice, requires the same of us.” (Patai, 1988, p158)

I myself found this form very helpful when transcribing interviews for my doctoral work.  The rhythm and cadence of the people I interviewed could be attended to, and I think ideas came forward that I might have missed.  My experience in transcribing mirrored Patai’s: “After this was done, the taped interview ceased to have the simplicity of a transparency and began instead to take on a certain density and appear as what it in fact is, a structured narration.” (Patai, 1988)

One person I have interviewed in the past, Storyteller Peggy Pettitt, spoke of education in a way that reminds me of Dewey’s core ideas.  I pulled this piece out of a larger Patai transcription, non-edited, attempting to capture her voice and the meaning within and surrounding her words:

but there has to be

people who are in a position

to

articulate what’s necessary

otherwise,

we have the

wrong people defining

who have no experience

defining

what it is

that’s necessary

for

what do we mean

what do we mean by the word education

and a

in a whole

in a whole sense of the word

what do you mean by that

and what do we value

is it about test scores or is it about the human being

I think it’s also about test scores

but I don’t think it’s only about that…

(Ruen, 2003, Interview transcript of Peggy Pettitt)

Just as Pettitt articulates, Dewey’s work strives to envision education as more wholistic than dualistic.  The unpacking of this idea is not easy, and communicating what might be unpacked to others is even more difficult.  Yet Peggy Pettitt’s voice is speaking toward an urgency to do both, in order to halt the ‘wrong people’ from defining, and hence, controlling, education.

This brings me back to my original question, which I answer with another: What if Patai was not only a form for respecting and communicating the words of the poor and disenfranchised, the artist and the teacher, but also a way of making texts that can be viewed as opaque and elitist easier to access?  What if the poetic form, as a translator of prose, could make ideas and texts come alive, and better reveal the intention of the speaker?

Below is my Patai interpretation of what I find to be at the heart of Dewey’s view of the Child and the Curriculum.  I have used this form with some success to help my own students find meaning within the text:

“Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something

fixed and ready-made in itself,

outside of the child’s experience;

cease thinking of the child’s experience as also something hard and fast;

see it as something fluent,

embryonic,

vital;

and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits

which define a single process.

Just as two points define a straight line,

so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of studies define instruction.

It is continuous reconstruction,

moving from the child’s present experience

out into that represented by the organized bodies of truth

that we call studies.”  (Dewey,1902)

Our work as educators is not only to operate in the space of ‘continuous reconstruction’ with the child and the curriculum, but also to make this work clear to families, colleagues, principals, policy makers, and government officials.  It is worth the effort to work through Dewey’s ideas, to realize these ideas through our practice, and to heed his warnings.

“I am not, I hope and believe, in favor of any ends or any methods simply because the name progressive may be applied to them. The basic question concerns the nature of education with no qualifying adjectives prefixed. What we want and need is education pure and simple, and we shall make surer and faster progress when we devote ourselves to finding out just what education is and what conditions have to be satisfied in order that education may be a reality and not a name or a slogan.” (Dewey, 1938)

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience.  New York: Capricorn Books.

Dewey, J. (1902). The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience & Education. New York, NY: Kappa Delta Pi.

Patai, D. (1988). ‘Constructing a Self: A Brazilian Life Story.’ Feminist Studies. 14:1

Ruen,K. (2003). Interview Transcript of Peggy Pettitt.

“I Work Like a Gardener” 8-31-14

As the new school year approaches, and I find myself filled with a familiar heady mix of excitement and fear about the upcoming year with new and familiar students, I am drawn to a reading that I often distribute at the end of  my classes.  It is a photocopy of two pages of an interview of the artist Joan Miro by Yvon Taillandier entitiled, “I Work like a Gardener.”(1959)  I first came upon this reading years ago in a chapter authored by Grace Paley, who used Miro’s thoughts to help writers in their craft.  I was so intrigued by this idea, and the potential that Miro’s words would be helpful for teachers, that I visited the Teacher’s and Writer’s Center in New York and asked if someone could find and send me the entire article.  I received the article in the mail not too long after, with a hand written response:

 2/26/03                                                                                                                                        “Dear Kathleen,

Here’s a copy of the handout that Grace used in a workshop she did here at          T & W – with the Miro piece.  Sorry – there are some lines a bit “cut off,” but the original was that way.  Perhaps this will lead you to a better version.

Nancy”

I did indeed find the text within a periodical about the working process of visual artists.  However, it was the Miro piece that continued to intrigue me.  As I was writing my dissertation I wanted my research methodology to be based entirely on Miro’s piece, drawing connections between the way I worked in my backyard Brooklyn garden and qualitative research.  My dissertation committee did not approve, and so “I work like a Gardener” inspired me from the sidelines.

After defending my dissertation and graduating, I began my work at Sarah Lawrence College in the Art of Teaching Program.  I was filled with ideas about the connections between pedagogy and the creation of artworks, and how teachers at their core were artists who worked their own craft with very special, human, materials.  I felt as if Miro’s interviews might be a helpful metaphor for my students, but I was unsure of how to give it full attention.  Instead I gave it to my students the last day of class as a ‘gift.’  We never read it aloud.

Oddly enough, Grace Paley, an alumna of Sarah Lawrence College, gave the commencement address the first year I was working there, and I was able to quickly speak to her on the Westlands porch before she was escorted away.  She remembered the reading fondly and was glad I was using it.  But was I really?

Looking back, I saw that although I believed strongly that gardening, creating art, and teaching all include processes of creation and growth, and that metaphors for each profession might help illuminate the other, I knew that these ideas would not be welcomed or understood in the educational climate of No Child Left Behind, Standardized Testing, and “Annual Yearly Progress.”  How could an Artist’s thoughts on gardening stand up to education’s giant measuring stick?  As teachers, we were all living in a world where we began to question what we felt was true about teaching and learning, where a score that was generated from a few hours of a child’s life, placed alongside thousands of other scores, somehow held more truth and more weight with politicians, administrators and families.

I sense that things are shifting, and I see an opening and tear in this landscape.  There is a potential that educators and families, as a collective, can help the larger world see not only the misdirection of the path that is being taken with our most vulnerable of citizens, but also a way of thinking and working that allows what John Dewey speaks of “Growth..”

Here are the words of Joan Miro:

“I think of my studio as a vegetable garden.  Here, there are the artichokes.  Over  there, potatoes.  The leaves have to be cut so the vegetables can grow.  At a certain moment, you must prune.

I work like a gardener or a wine grower.  Everything takes time.  My vocabulary of forms, for example, did not all come to me at once.  It formulated itself almost in spite of me.

Things follow their natural course.  They grow, they ripen.  You have to graft.  You have to water, as you do for lettuce.  Things ripen in my mind.  In addition, I always work on many things at once.  And even in different areas: painting, etching, lithography, sculpture, ceramics…..

A painting must be fertile.  It must give birth to a world.  It doesn’t matter if it depicts flowers or people or horses, as long as it reveals a world, something alive.

Two and two do not make four.  Only accountants know that.  But that is not enough: a painting must make this clear; it must fertilize the imagination.

I do not exclude the possibility that when looking at one of my paintings, a businessman might doscover a way to do business, or a scholar might be given an answer to a problem.

The answer given by a painting is a general sort of answer, and can be applied to all sorts of other answers.”  (pp 250-251, 1959)

These stunning, familiar, and visual words of Miro find a contemporary companion in a teacher, Junia Yearwood, speaking about her own practice in Sonia Nieto’s book, What Keeps Teacher’s Going? (2003).

“ Dear New Teacher,

I am a passionate gardener.  In the spring and summer, I parade around tending and enjoying my peonies, roses, and daffodils.   From September to June, I roam around my classroom and the corridors of my school making sure that Tiffany, Jose, and Rasheed grow, mature, and bloom to their full potential as students and as citizens.  I am a year round gardener.

One important discovery I have made from many years of cultivating  flowers and minds is that they all respond best to hands that tend them with faith, hope, and love.  Without these three, my seedlings wilt, my flowers droop, my students languish; and I, the gardener, fail.

When I plant my seeds, I believe without a doubt that they will grow.  I have no evidence that these particular seeds will grow, but I am firm in my belief that they will.  Without that strong conviction, my efforts would be tenuous at best.  I know they will grow because they are seeds and under the right conditions-soil, water, and sun- seeds grow.  My students grow also.  I believe that all students have the ability to grow, to learn, under the right conditions.  I know that they will rise to my expectations, just as my clematis vine sprouts and climbs to whatever height I set my trellis; or as Mike Rose so succinctly affirms in his book, Lives on the Boundary, “Students will float to whatever bar you set.” (1989)

My faith in my students is an extension of the confidence I have in myself as a person and educator.  Maintaining my sense of self and the confidence I have in my skills is a continuous and never ending process.  I work at it…..

I am not a perfect gardener.  In spite of all my faith, hope, and love, many of my plants do not thrive and flourish.  My method of gardening, my lack of skills, and the environment I create are a few of the possible reasons that some of my charges fail to respond.  However, I keep cultivating.  I am aware of my limitations, but my faith is unshaken.  I hope that at some point another gardener will succeed in bringing Rasheed, Tiffany, of Jose to life just as I’ve been known to breathe the breath of life back to the near-to-death spider plants and Boston ferns that one of my colleagues keeps sending to my classroom.

I mourn when I lose a plant.  I mourn because it was such a waste-a waste of potential, a waste of beauty, a waste of life.  My grief, however, is tempered with a sense of reality.  What’s real is that some of my plants arrive broken, damaged beyond repair by some former gardener whose afflicted injury I could not mend and whose brand of gardening I try hard not to duplicate.

Dear New Teacher, welcome to my garden.  Are you ready?

(pp50-51, Nieto, 2003)

Junia Yearwood’s comparison of her work of teaching and gardening has a realness that only comes from a seasoned educator.  I feel as if she has captured the essence and the art of teaching by using a metaphor which is almost the same as the thing she describes.  When she speaks of the children who come to her broken by others, I at first think she has given up on them, and I am uncomfortable with this idea.  However, recalling my own practice with children who may or may not have been ‘damaged,’ I remember the handful of children for whom there was little I could do alone to help them grow.  Children who are suffering need many more supports, fertilizer, and care than a single teacher can provide.

Since I worked with the whole elementary school as a movement teacher, watching 3 year olds transform into 6^th graders year by year, I witnessed incredible physical, social, and intellectual growth.   I remember singing with the entire school on Monday mornings, and knowing that I was speaking about my students when we sang the lines from “The Garden Song” made famous by singer Pete Seeger.

Inch by Inch

Row by Row

Gonna make this garden grow

All you need is a rake and a hoe

And a piece of fertile ground

Inch by Inch

Row by Row

Please bless these seeds I sow

Please keep them safe below

Till the rains come tumbling down (Mallett, 1975)

One cannot measure the care and love that a teacher feels and gives to their students.  The academics and knowledge that teachers bring to students are important to their growth as thinkers and learners, and to incite passion within children for subject matter can change the course of their lives.  But without the sense of teaching as gardening, without the teacher’s care that children can feel and see, the kind of ‘success’ that society wants for children will never come.

I’ll end here coming back to the beginning, back to Miro, and the connection between teaching and art.  One of my former students is a librarian and has a blog.  This May she sent me a poem she had written:

Poem: A Lifelong Work of Art

May14

Teaching is a lifelong work of art.

A career in education at first is a blank canvas,

But as you teach and gain knowledge from colleagues and the children,

The canvas is not blank anymore.

It begins to absorb many unique colors and forms.

Sometimes the shapes and colors overlap and new hues and figures emerge through the process.

As years progress the canvas expands and becomes a mural.

Teaching evolves into a vast and complex work of art

That encompasses a breadth and depth of knowledge of how

Children grow and learn as individuals.

By K. Fasano (http://librarianlife.edublogs.org/)

Kristy brings forward the idea that one’s life work of teaching is an art, continually developing, growing, and becoming more layered and complex over time.  She speaks to the satisfaction and pleasure that comes from this work.  I love this poem, and for me it speaks to the unspoken joy that teachers experience when they see how their work and the work of their students are interconnected.

I leave you with these images, these wonderful words, these connections that help illuminate the hard to grasp work of teaching.  I think there is much more to uncover by looking at these four voices alongside each other, and I welcome your responses and thoughts.

-Kathleen Kristin Ruen

Fasano, K. (2014).  http://librarianlife.edublogs.org/

Mallett, D. (1975). The Garden Song

Nieto, S. (2003). What Keeps Teachers Going.  New York, New York. Teachers College Press

Pete Seeger singing the Garden Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u90qRE2F7CM

Taillandier, Y. (1959). I work Like a Gardener-Interview with Joan Miro.  Paris. XXE Siecle

Curricular Ideas:

*Joan Miro’s artwork is playful and young children in particular may enjoy looking and interacting with it.  I visited Miro’s museum in Barcelona this winter and saw children talking excitedly about his paintings and sculptures.  This book may be a great entry point for your class or child to enter into Miro’s world:

Miroins: A Book for Playing and Learning with Joan Miro, by Anna Carretero, Marcela Hattmer, and Anna Purroy.  (2013)  Printed in Spain – ISBN 978-84-252-2685-4

*It can be problematic to garden with children during the school year because the major growing season is when children are out of school. However, planting spring bulbs in the fall and then watching them come up in the spring can work well.  In an upcoming blog I will describe the spring bulb work that my Emergent Curriculum class and a K/1 class at the Early Childhood Center at Sarah Lawrence College has done.

What We Would Create? 5-20-2014

When I began my practice as a teacher educator, I wanted to create an atmosphere for my students that would reflect the possibilities and potential in education.  I was drawn to Patricia Carini’s book, Starting Strong: A Different Look at Children, Schools, and Standards, which has a chapter with the same title.  This poem and chapter has acted as an invitation to my students and myself to explore how medium, inquiry and humanity intersect.

The poem that holds a central place in this chapter is by Karen Brodine:

it’s like being sick all the time, I think,
coming home from work,
sick in that low-grade continuous way
that makes you forget what it’s like to be well.

we have never in our lives known what it is to be well.

what if I were coming home, I think,
from doing work that I loved and that was for us all,

what if I looked at the houses and the air and the streets,
knowing they were in accord, not set against us,

what if we knew the powers of this country
moved to provide for us and for all people–how would that be–how would we feel and think and what would we create?

–Karen Brodine, “June 78” (Brodine, 1980, p.58)

This poem, unpacked by Patricia Carini, brings forward several powerful ideas: 

“This loved work Brodine speaks of I recognize as related to a strong recurring thread in conversations with friends and colleagues, quite a few of whom have found their jobs unsettled and unsettling.  For several, their livelihood has been, or is right now, threatened, and for others it has been necessary to lower their standards of living to match pay cuts.  Striving to make jobs more than just employment has been a preoccupation for some.

This is what Brodine is talking about.  Reflecting back on these conversations, I hear us struggling for words, searching for a vocabulary to talk about work of a kind that is loved.  Work that calls and has an answering power.  Work that has the power to delight, to satisfy, to lead on, to lend meaning to life and being, for us-and for all.

For many in this room teaching is that work, the medium that satisfies and frees and contributes.”
(Carini, 2001, p.110-111)

Carini proceeds to speak about the institutional and societal barriers that prevent many people, including teachers, from being able to fully participate in their loved work.  For those in education today, these barriers include institutional racism, a war against unions and women’s work, corporate takeovers of schools, high stakes testing, poverty, and top-down standards.  In response to the current educational environment, Carini asks us to bring forward what we value as educators:

“Collectively, as parents, teachers, citizens, we can speak out in the language of these definitions, conceptualizations, and visions.  Collectively, we can work to create classrooms that in turn create the conditions for effortful, loved work.  Collectively, we can gather the stories of these enactments and document the classrooms that create these opportunities.  Collectively, we can act and speak from these powerful premises to an enlarged vision of work, the worker, the workplace, and of schools and education in relation to them.  Collectively, we can drive a wedge in the economic wall that blocks these vitalizing visions of what society and the schools can be and do.

So I wonder to myself: What if we did chart our course by these values?  What if we did do the work of inventing classrooms and workplaces for the explicit purpose of creating space for making things and for loved work?  What if we did that, understanding that we are by that same action creating the conditions that make it possible to recognize the maker in every child, in every person?  What if we did that with the aim of carving out the space for a community of makers?  What if we did all this?  Then I wonder, indeed: “What would we create?” (Brodine, 1980, p.58)” (Carini, 2001, p. 120)

After 10 years as a teacher-educator, I am ready to share my past and ongoing work in answering the question above.  It is my hope that this blog will inspire teachers, teacher educators, principals, parents, and those involved in educational policy to ‘join with’ and, while speaking out against that in education which threatens childhood and personhood, to also speak to what can be created in its place.

Kathleen Kristin Ruen

Citations

Brodine, K. (1980). June, 78. In Illegal Assembly. New York: Hanging Loose Press.

Carini, P. (2001). Starting Strong: A Different Look at Children, Schools, and Standards. New York: Teachers College Press