04. Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)
The Grad School Question(s), teaching in Spain, and imagining different ways of learning.
Hello and welcome to issue 04 š This is the first half of what has turned into quite a long piece on education. Itās the first time Iāve tried to synthesize a lot of new thoughts on learning and teaching, so it might be kind of rambling but Iāve tried to keep it organized! Part 2 will come out in issue 05.
1. The Grad School Question(s)
I have always loved school. I loved the structure, I loved textbooks, I loved new school supplies, I loved learning, I loved following all the rules and doing everything perfectly. I loved befriending teachers and being in classrooms and organizing my books in my locker. To sum it all up, my email address in 6th grade was skoolgrrl55@yahoo.com.
Questions of grad school (do I go? if so, when? and for what, exactly?) have hovered around me since I finished undergrad in the spring of 2015. Iāve spent the past five years working a variety of temporary or part time jobs and obsessively researching graduate programs every few months when I hit a wall of despair about the precarity of my post-undergrad life. In these moments, all I want is to return to the old comfort and structure of institutional education, to have my time divided between classes and coffee shops and the library, reading and writing and discussing (an easy, romantic vision that strays pretty far from the reality of school). Iāve made spreadsheets in order to compare creative writing programs, studio art programs, and library science programs and have researched many more programs that fall somewhere in the humanities category.
Every few months I feel like Iāve finally found āthe right program,ā the one that will allow me to explore all the things I want to explore, the one that will provide me with the best connections and opportunities, the one that has some unique curriculum focus or feature. Maybe I even start an application, or think about possible references. This usually happens when I canāt stand the thought of another mindless day at whatever job Iām working at the time, and when I look at job postings, I donāt have the required education or experience for the positions Iām interested in.
Then a week passes and I realize I canāt even think of three references for any of these programs. I realize I donāt have a strong portfolio of anything. Doubts creep ināI get nervous about the idea of committing to any one program or career path. I remember that grad school costs money and Iām more or less living paycheck to paycheck. I convince myself that being an artist involves making art, and being a writer involves writing, and I can do those things my entire life without ever going to grad school. I try to convince myself that there must be ways forward that donāt require grad school, that I could get all the education and experience I need in my own ways, on my own time. Eventually, buying a cheap one way ticket to Spain seems like a better way to escape these questions (and my shitty jobs) altogether.
In Spain, Iāve entered schools as a teacher for the first time (or teaching assistant, technically) and my experiences in the classrooms of public bilingual primary and secondary schools here have significantly changed my understanding of education. My time in Spain has not provided an escape from the Grad School Questions; in fact, questions about what it means to learn, to teach, and to participate in traditional systems of education have become more present and complicated than ever.
2. ISO: Creativity and Critical Thinking
Iām pretty sure one of the first rules of teaching is ādonāt have favorite students,ā but considering that I showed up at the front of these classrooms without any prior teacher training or experience, I developed favorites pretty quickly. Over time I realized that my favorites were not the teachersā favorites, nor were they anything like me when I was a student. I actually found myself deeply suspicious of the students who were like me as a young student, those who were so eager to please, who strove to do everything perfectly, who raised their hands constantly.
My favorite students were the underdogs, the class clowns, those who didnāt speak English well or didnāt care to try, those who were too loud or too ācoolā (read: insecure) to say anything at all, those who came up to me during recess to show me their in-process graphic novels or drawings. I favored these students because I realized they were, in different ways, existing in a system that was not built for them, a system that either made them feel inferior or did not challenge them at all.
Failure is not a word we should use to describe a student, and itās not a word that students should ever associate with themselves. Failure is something that is experienced, something that happens. Students are never failures. They may experience failure, learn from failure, and grow from failure, but they should never be defined by failure. ā Andy McNair, A Meaningful Mess
The Spanish public school system emphasizes discipline, following the rules, memorizing facts and figures, passing classes, and moving on. Iām sure this is similar to many Western public school systems. Under late capitalism, school is essentially a means to an end, a way to condition people to be laborers for the work force. We see this in the way that humanities and arts budgets are continually slashed, or departments decimated, in higher education and even in primary and secondary schools. Creativity and critical thinking are continually being edged out by skills and knowledge deemed āpracticalā (although now that creativity is something that can be capitalized on, people brand themselves as Creatives in an appeal to millennial entrepreneurs and advertising execs).
Last year I would become so frustrated with my secondary school students because Iād try to introduce an activity or project that allowed them to be creative or critical or reflective. Theyāll love this, I thought to myself. A chance to do something different, something fun! Most students moaned and groaned. If they couldnāt flip through their textbook to find the answer, they resisted the work. It was like the part of their brain that thinks creatively or critically had been turned off. This past year I worked with first and second graders, lively students at the beginning of their educational journeys, and I was able to connect their experience with the behavior I witnessed in the secondary school. Suddenly, I could see the entire system clearly.
My beloved first and second graders were constantly being yelled at and disciplined by the teachers: you can only talk if you raise your hand, sit down properly, donāt talk when the teacher is talking, sit down properly, open your books to this page, use this color crayonānot marker!!! crayon!, sit down properly, pay attention, pass out these books, all of you put your heads on your desks and be silent for five minutes because youāre talking too much, oh did you say something? one more minute, sit down properly. In a second grade art class, the teacher yelled at a student for not coloring an image of the moon and the sun with the prescribed colors. There was no room for the messiness and disorder of creativity or criticality. By the time most of these students arrive at secondary school, the capacity for these ways of thinking has effectively been shut down or forgotten about after six formative years of discipline in the classroom.
My favorite students stood out to me because I saw in them sparks of revolt, undercurrents of creativity, a refusal to just sit still and listen. I felt frustrated with the school system they were trapped in and started thinking that there must be better, different ways of learning.
3. Return of the Grad School Question(s)
After spending two years in the Spanish school system and working as a teacher-counselor at the UVA Young Writers Workshop the summer in between, Iāve realized that I do enjoy teachingāor maybe more accurately, working with young people and trying to figure out the world together.
This is where the Grad School Questions loom up again: if I want to be a teacher, what do I have to do to become one? What education do I need? What qualifications do I need? Is this when I go to grad school?
But I have a hard time imagining myself as a formal Teacher In A Classroom, whether public or private, primary or secondary, college or university. I like the idea of working in education but canāt figure out in what context I could be the teacher I want to be (which is to say, not really a teacher but more like a facilitator?). Iām convinced that most children have an innate curiosity and desire to learn about the world, and that any meaningful learning should be driven by this curiosity. In doing a little research I learned that āstudent-drivenā or āstudent-ledā pedagogy is (of course) already a concept and a practice, and I started to think about libraries as places where self-motivated learning happens organically, outside the traditional classroom setting (or, in the case of school or academic libraries, in relationship to the classroom). Sometimes I think I have it all figured out: I could work in a library and help guide people to the information and resources they need to learn about all the things they want!
The Grad School Questions again: what do I have to do to become a librarian? Can I become a librarian just by working in a library? Or is this when I go to grad school?
Or is there a way to do all of this outside of any kind of traditional, institutional structure?
Cliff hanger!!! To be continuedā¦
In the meantime, you can consider these questions:
If we could practice any kind of education we want, of what activities would it consist and why? What can these educational spaces do? Who is it for? How was it developed? How is it gendered, classed, raced, colonial, or epistemologically exclusive? Whose expression does it wear, in whose voice does it speak? What is its relationship to traditional, or even neoliberal, education? Are there spaces and cracks to work within and are they enough? How are the roles of student and teacher defined, if at all? What is to be done with intractable reproductions of power? How shall we subsist? Who is affected by our commitments? What are we willing to give, and to lose?
ā Sarah Amsler, āWhat Do We Mean When We Say āDemocracyā? Learning Towards a Common Future through Popular Higher Education,ā Chapter 6 of Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces
4. Related Resources
A lot of my thinking about education has been influenced thus far by the following:
Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces
A Meaningful Mess: A Teacher's Guide to Student-Driven Classrooms
I have yet to read these classics but theyāre at the top of my list: Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom and Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks.
If you have any favorite resources on critical pedagogy / radical education, please share :)
5. Six Things
Donate: RadLAM Covid19 Relief Fund for Library, Archive, and Museum Workers
If you study or teach photography and/or visual culture, check out this alternative canon compiled by the Strange Fire Collective.
Best music video of 2020, by Chloe x Halle.
Thinking about new futures and possibilities for artist residencies and cooperatives after reading this article about Activation Residency.
Idk about yāall but I miss the CLUB! Whenever I need to dance in my room I listen to an NTS episode by Zernell or Sofie K or a Discwoman mix.
6. A Painting Iāve Seen Recently On Instagram
Speaking of the clubā¦
Jonny Negron, Disc Woman, 2020, acrylic on linen, 40 x 32 inches
If youāve made it this farāthank you for reading, thank you for being here. Iād love to hear about your experiences or thoughts regarding learning, teaching, education, school systems, etc, etc. Respond to this email or leave a comment to share. ā”