We Speak People

Social change is painfully, glacially, frustratingly slow.

Tracking the tweets related to social change from #NCTE17, I am drawn back to my notebook. The ideas in the image above are from Ursula M. Franklin's The Real World of Technology (1999)--a brilliant book on processing the slowly-evolving role technology plays (or doesn't play) in education.

However, social change in school is more than technology.

Social change comes one "thing" at a time. One blog post. One more "just right" book in the classroom. One more club leader unafraid of facilitating social change conversations with students. Hats off to my friend (first) and colleague (@Owsley_Lauren) for sharing her passion for social change through books and conversation. Lauren mentors her students in speaking "people" for sure.

Anything can be a Notebook

In my twenties, I carried On the Road with me to a lot of places. I read passages from it repeatedly and then wrote my thinking on blank pages and in the margins. At the time, I hadn't realized that On the Road was serving as a mentor text. I didn't even know the term mentor text. I didn't know that my trying to copy Kerouac's rhythms and structures would prove to be a good thing--and that this type of practice would go on to serve me as a writer (and teacher) throughout my life.

Anything can be a notebook. We write our ideas on scraps on thought and only a small percentage of those ideas ever make it to a scrap of paper.

Meme as Philosophy

As I mined for an idea (in my digital daybook) to write about, I wondered if it wouldn't be an interesting experiment to ask teachers to capture their teaching philosophy in a meme. It would make for an interesting hashtag stream, wouldn't it?

My memes above are inspired by Don Graves.

When I look at those memes above, I see the technical discipline that the studio encourages. I see the space to experiment with something technical. The difference, I think, between the modern classroom mindset and the studio mindset is forward-looking. The studio isn't in a hurry. The studio slows the student down.

To me, Writing is a craft, our classroom a studio says "Let's think small. Focus on what you can do, and let's work from there."