Going to Chicago has been very fascinating.
The AERA (American Educational Research Association) conference is a massive "thing" that I'm not quite sure one should just be realizing exists 25 years into being a teacher.
Not that I don't know there is research, or fail to connect this might be going on at a conference....though truthfully I'd have thought regional conferences, and totally missed this as a vision of how it all works.
But it hasn't gotten through to my peers really, either, this annual event as possible teacher destination, and I venture research points raised are undiscussed in dialogs of what we do...and how we do it. Just a disconnect to classroom teachers that we need to work on overcoming. And, in fact, much of our CA "training" and work is mandated to us. Where currently if you do express "concern about the veracity" for instance to say, what is "scientifically based and/or supported by research" and so of course their decisions remain unassailable by insignificant you....I thinkin my world to support their choices of poor materials implying empiricism.....suggesting this vague " research place" where the new truth is written. I think...they are flying pretty far off the pages of research...at least what I saw, and listened to, or read about.
I get this better.. now. It's distorted lenses.
I now, however, have formulated a new way to dialog those "scientific research based" notions.
It is important foe me always to look at exactly what science.
I've asked for the basis of many things risking insubordination in the last few years..... at least feeling that kind of stare... at times...in recent year "trainings." But it matters. Now I have a really strong desire to see where we get our primary focus "constructs" from.
Take "focus walls" this has been defended as top notch science based mandated stuff in my District, oddly through thousands of presentations of real research at AERA, wall paper remains not the hot topic in any category.
Things like this matter as they fill my day and time with nonsense.
It matters a great deal to de-construct what research, why, its theory base and ours.
We are teachers for goodness sake. We better understand these things and ask good questions.
And see if it is a fit... if not actively involved with the researchers, their intents, funders, context, those presenting the study and its intents, one wonders exactly how it connects to your world? And I suspect this is MUCH needed discussion. It seems as I experience teacher work in present restructuring, it seems this research here flies openly in the face of what I heard presented, which wants I think to be really allowed to be embedded in teacher praxis. What I see happening in my land of Goshen often feels really loose and bureaucratic, or responding to political desires. And you see that what is studied too, here, of course, deals with these same issues of funding and politics in its way as well.
It's an antithetical experience for me personally go to AERA. Rather like the old, old Star Trek when the anti matter-parallel-world had the two Jims collide. Or switch places.
For me that parallel universe was rather me in this.
Recall it was "nice Jim" that could navigate "mean Jim's" reality. Remember?
While "mean Jim" was getting crated. They had to restrain him.
I am coming out of the rough....wondering if I'll be crated. I did feel illegitimate.
And yet I teach on our front lines. That was funny.
And wonder what's up in the other world, how that Sarah faired switched into my other real world coping with the reality of what CA public school in a hood looks like. Get a good look gentle anti-matter Sarah cause you are going to remember that reality for a long while. But you'll get back to research universe..... Traded back for the one who can do this world, network, connect, build through dialogs ways to use research methods in designing better teacher work.With compassion. Too bad I'm going back into mandate universe, shove it down your throat my world. Remember how Good Jim looked getting out of that other place....real happy.
We know better times exist in academic lands. Too bad the real for me is a long far cry away.....yes this is a trumpet sounded in the desert. Yes it is.....
(I spilled a soda on my laptop and some keys are sticking....trying to write is a mess.)
My Principals response to my mentioning going here was silence- blank slate stare (a personal favorite) a kind of "go on now back to your room" .... sort of affect. Frankly I think schools need to place teachers at these conferences. For a lot of reasons. So I can't exactly think how to share out at my school as they had no interest in my going. But it should be shared. And teachers need encouragement to become teacher-researchers, to read research, connect to projects, become involved. Say some things about realities.
But I'll try at least try back in school....
It is the enormity of this conference of over 10000 presenting I find mind boggling....I would like to repeat this of course each year, maybe in every major art city in the world. Opps, in America....and I will tell you why- because Chicago was very nice to meet. A hell of a lot of fun despite my coughing and letting cold get me. I got pretty sick. Of my going to the conference pieces... I went thinking about how research connects to teachers and I return thinking about that. Albeit amazed so many work on this in empirical ways. Yet clearly so many teachers really are bridging and community building with research as a guide or piece especially out of CA, and so it seems to me time to begin to work a little in my way to see it placed into my context. Really.
What can I do? Or will I do.
Maybe first thoughts run to develop my skills to use more reflective practices about what I do and show and share this largely private piece...of course I have some need for help. For joint thinking connections to do that. Maybe I will ask Judith Green and Susan Ohanian for more thoughts. They know so much....
And maybe now, after these years recording classroom thoughts extensively, looking at that in a different way will give me some notions of what I might like to do better. So the timing is good for me in my personal teaching journal work.
The booklet of presenters is two inches thick and in 10 pt. typeface with 25 presentations or so per page, 400 pages. How you get here....besides coming....to present....I was wondering about... asking those I met learning things from visitors from around the world. But good basic info. is on their AERA website. So I mention the thought, as it surely seems jammed with those doing presentations. Many got here, many with dreams. Most not with classrooms that I met, if that means much, many academically connected to Higher Ed..There is a great deal being said on technology in the thick book looking and surprising me, social justices, community and types of literacies well represented, studied, it's heartening.. My view is away from California much good is going on, opps wrong way to say it...much is going on out of this state that is fascinating.. I actually wish I could have the papers each handed out...all of them... I'd need a suitcase but I'd read them. Oh, website, maybe.
I'm delighted I got this far to see this before leaving the field.
Here see a big boot in my tail delivered at the local level. It's hard times in teacher world at my level.
From my perspective unless I see some tuning down of the mandates, scripts, directed and controlled instruction, it would be most difficult to see how I could do any research, as I'm not doing any thinking or developing. Simply "following orders". I wanted to see if that kind of thing was studied, the shrinking of teacher autonomy, the NCLB impact. But I did not connect to that. It might have been there. I brought it into a talk or two in the bar...but it was a downer. And I'm leaving tomorrow. I feel kind of sicker so I have to go home.
Yeah I said that on several levels.
And that said, I'll dive in to say teacher researchers, or models of teachers working with this frame does exist. I hope I can use this and improve my work. If only inspirationally. I have now a core of people I respect and they do aide introspective teaching work.
So...short version... there's a mighty bunch of teaching research to present in a several day conference in Chicago. On the surface finding out it exists 25 years into teaching tells me I'm operating in a disconnect with the researchers and perhaps turning that on its ear they aren't presenting to me unless I've been missing the outreach coffee klatches on a regular basis. This time around I followed a rather interesting random chance method I guess listening and enjoying the conference as I could.
But my mind wanders tired....and I will wander back to thoughts in a bit.
There is a girl singing in Daddy-O's Piano bar behind me here later at night. I'm sitting in a walkway over a road between parts of the Hyatt looking through glass walls up at a row of skyscrapers lit to the hilt. It's marvelous. Where I am is so clean and lovely. Quite a view. She, my background singer, has wailed through Satisfaction, Proud Mary, The Lion Sings Tonight, Norwegian Wood (for personal reasons making me physically a bit nauseated and uncomfortable) hitting Billy Joel's Piano Man, Momma Can't Dance and Daddy Can't Rock and Roll, Rock Around The Clock and is currently pounding away in a kind of marathon presentation that seems to never end.Well, as if doing every piece ever written...a Custer's last stand...it will take that kind of stamina she appears to have, to get on to the next 1345...that far at least away from the end... I've sat here at least an hour and I'm saying this singer has not even a break to swallow some kind of sedative, water or perhaps to re-load that drum machine tempo. It's been a heroic effort and I didn't realize that hundreds of songs can be played in the same key, with the same tempo and sung sharp so consistently and be billed as an evening of "piano jazz". I might have called it an audition to go on the road in Florida bars. The most amazing thing is the timing was so consistent across the group. I know teachers that teach like this and with similar results, I think, as right now I'm fairly turned off to performance as an art and considering getting a drink to make it through what I think is the singing of Bess ...as in You is My Woman Now. But when she gets to I'm a Woman W-O-Man...or Boardwalk then I'll have the incentive I need to move to the lobby and meet a friend and get that slice of Key Lime Pie I think I need. At least that.
I went to the Chicago Art Institute, walked all around this area. I'm coughing constantly, breathing like a wheezing zombie but I saw so many works of art I love. And to the Contemporary Museum. If I wasn't coughing up some things you need to get attended to...well I'd go see more. But I saw what I wanted most in the world besides a face I want to hug... walking from noon til 5 through this Chicago Art Institute with a sense of wonder at how utterly amazing it's me here. I think...........it was like walking through many years of my dreams with my inner dialogs, my contexts for containing my world, managing it.... It was a very magical day. I'm avoiding the pictures...not ready to talk to this. Vollard's collection was there. That represents real luck. I saw Gauguin's that wow-ed me. Vollard was painted by these artists and he bought their work essentially-sold it, traded their talents. It's interesting to learn he invested everything risking on Cezanne....interesting to read his record of that. I knew of his role in so many artists lives, Renoir, Cezanne, Gauguin, the Nabis, .... But to see this was interesting. No... a great experience. The scale of this museum asks for greatness. In my way I'm still responding to that scale issue.
I have to go home to put up my pictures I took... borrowed on the blog for flavor. My cable isn't downloading them.
I heard Judith Green say many wonderfully insightful things but-I'm tossing around her commenting that working in situations with participants researching, pulling in teachers and students with technology for discussion, communication resulted in more challenge to basic assumptions.....as her projects became more global, aided in real time dialogs students to scientists in a project called Profiles in Science, let's say this hit something I find a kind of principle of my work...guiding uncertainty. I think this hit me as absolutely what teaching is, not answers, a way..an uncertain way.....and as it happens I see art too as this problem solving, re-solving metaphorical kind of bridge. I am happiest I sense in two states, loving another, others and in connection to making and doing. So going to this exhibit was a reminder on many levels of the importance of linking children to exploration, to solving problems, to capacity strengthening....knowing that I unlearn, relearn, learn all the time to become human.
In the museum today something like a inner-talk kept connecting me to another....it was surely a case of wanting to share the experience....and I wish I had.Dearly wish this. I wanted to know a connection to another. Maybe for that challenges of my assumptions. To learn how they saw, see, connect to this work to allow me a kind of wider lens of perception.
So...Chicago with Sarah...You would love it. And I had a desire to walk with you. We could learn much from one another.
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