I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate||Spoken Word

There has been a common thread I have been seeing in our blogs that is woven into our readings, our conversations that deal with the Common Core Standards, the way we test our students and the statements that revolve around the questions if we are failing our students when it comes to literacy in our schools. Even in the book that I'm reading is asking "How do we make reading more visible?" How do we engage our students and make the learning relevant to their lives now and to the life they are going to live?

I love this Video. Check it out.

Mostly Outside, Never Inside

For the most part, the book has dealt a lot of the background research around literacy in the lives of young men, how relates to gender, social-economic, ethnic and racial backgrounds. They have looked at what boys like to do and why they do it. Wilhelm and Smith have taken us through the work of Csikzimihalyi on "flow" and human happiness and its importance to their research. They have introduced us to the boys in their study and have painted a picture of who they are and their individual character traits. Through the interviews with these boys we have learned that almost every single one of then see the value of school, even though that are not that engaged. The boys in the study are engaged in literacy, its just a matter of defining what that looks like. And what Wilhelm and Smith are looking very closely at the situations that promote literacy in the daily lives of these boys. "We take a close look at how school and life literacies are perceived and practiced in mostly different ways, how our boys valued and devalued certain kinds of literate activity, and the connections of these attitudes to specific ideas about how people should be and behave" (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002). They do this by having the boys in the study keep a reading log throughout their day, from the time they wake up to the time they go to sleep. The authors focus in on the first three characteristics of Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow" experience and it directly relates to Literate Activity.

1. A Senses of Control and Confidence
2. A Challenge that Requires an Appropriate Level of Skill
3. Clear Goals and Feedback

Through their study it was clear that the boys wanted to engage in reading activities that fed their interest. And these activities that involved reading were very broad and open-ended. The boys embraced the freedom of choice in the type of literate activities they engaged in. Most of the reading that they did enjoy was the reading that was done outside of school. The reading that they engaged in almost always had a purpose, it usually informed the things that they enjoyed. Now, in looking at how the boys in the study used reading and other literate activity, both in and out of school, how do we engage their in school reading and learning while providing a sense of control. As teachers we need to make the reading in our curriculum more visible. We need to be able to relate it to their lives. They talk about (in a round about way) using inquiry bases learning as a model. They also talk about Willhelms' use of drama to engage students like we are seeing from other blogs of our classmates that are reading Wilhelm's Action Strategies for Deepening Comprehension.

Jeffrey Wilhelm on: Inquiry-based learning

Do The Right Thing

One thing about "Reading Don't Fix No Chevys" that I have grown to really enjoy is that the authors begin each chapter with a personal view that leads you into their work. In chapter two it was Michael's experience of being woken by the boys in his neighborhood skating in the street, he drops a Tony Hawk reference which dates him (and me too) and then leads into the discussion about the concept of "Flow". In the next chapter, where they take a look at the instrumental value of school and reading, they begin as follows--"Every night, both of us engage in the same ritual with our daughters. 'So, how was school today?' we'll ask. And the wealth of information we hope for never materializes. To find out about our kids' experience in school, we have to piece together an understanding from a variety of sources: watching them do homework, looking over the assignment, reading with them, talking to them about their report cards, going to Parents' Night, and looking for patterns in the very short answers we typically receive from them when we ask them about school directly." (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002) They go on to relate the boys that they have taught and the boys in their study to being like their daughters. They wanted to find out more about boys feelings about school. In order to get an understanding they created a series of fictitious profiles and then worked with the boys individually and posed three questions.

1. What, if anything do you admire about the character in the profile?
2. What, if anything don't you admire about the character in the profile?
3. Where, if anywhere do you see yourself in the profile.

They divided this study into three focus areas.

1. The Instrumental verses the immediate.
2.What is the price of success? The conflict between being competent and being social.
3. The Impact of Race and Class.

There was a lot of information packed in these three sections of this chapter, not to mention the fictitious profiles that the created played an important role but what was so surprising to me was the fact nearly all of the boys in the interview believed in the instrumental value of school. When it came to the first of the three focus areas, instrumental v. immediate the majority of the boys saw school and reading as future-directed. More or less as a means to an end, but they recognized the necessity of it. When they addressed the second focus area, the boys again pointed out that, yes school is important but there was a focus on well-roundedness. There needed to be balance. And when they addressed race, none of the boys really saw race as an issue, class on the other hand was a bit different. The wealthier kids in the study that came from more educated families seemed to have a sense of entitlement. Wilhelm and Smith say it best--

"In summary, like the activity interviews, the profile interviews offer both hope and a challenge. The boys' profound believe in the importance of school is something that we ought to be able to tap, as is their recognition of the importance of reading. The fact that they did not see reading as a feminized activity is encouraging. But their view of reading as schoolish appears to have negative consequences. And it poses a dilemma: How can schools make reading seem less schoolish?" (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002)
 
 

Going With The Flow

This part of the book focuses on what boys like to do and why they do it.  The fact that boys are getting a bit of negative attention for falling short in school (this being a generalization) is a narrow view, they are in fact succeeding in other aspects of their lives. "If boys are successful outside of school, then it raises the question of whether it's the context or the kids that are to blame for their problems in school." (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002). They set out to develop a study; to have the boys that they were working with to rank the activities they most enjoyed and explain why. They then interviewed the boys one on one. Excerpts from the interviews are used to re-enforce the concepts that they addressed in the rest of the book. For the sake of this section, they focus on the activities that the boys enjoy doing. What they found was that the boys that the were working with did not fall in line with some of the defined generalizations of other studies. Rather then looking toward gender oriented studies, Wilhelm and Smith look to the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist that researches a concept central to some of the ideas in this book which he calls "flow".

"Flow" according to Csikszentmihalyi is "joy, creativity, the process of total involvement in life" and his research is based on the simple premise that "more than anything else, men and women seek happiness". Wilhelm and Smith narrow down the flow experience into four main characteristics

1. A sense of control and competence:  The consensus among the boys interviewed was that they liked to engage in activities that they enjoyed doing and were good at. The feel ing of cotrol and competence in an activity was important to them

2. A challenge that requires an appropriate level of skill: Being challenged was an important factor in the level of engagement. If the boys weren't challenged in a particular activity, they would likely lose interest. The same was true if the challenge was beyond their achievement, they would likely avoid the effort. Self-efficacy was important. With regards to the reading in school, some of the boys felt overmatch or had a hard time getting into the reading, particularly the more aesthetic texts like novels and plays.

3. Clear goals and feedback: This relates to being challenged, overcoming that challenge and gaining a sense of competence and having immediate feedback was important. For example, reading a novel does not provide an immediate feedback like more efferent instructional text do. The same is true of magazines and newspapers.

4. A focus on the immediate experience: "To these boys, the immediate experience was key" (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002).

These elements of "flow" are re-enforced and supported by the Vygotskian theory of ZPD (zone of proximal development) referenced by the authors on pages 37 and 40 "which stresses that learning can only occur when the learners are challenged and is able to perform with assistance what he or she would not be able to do alone". With that being said,  there is a social aspect of which is very important.  as was mentioned before, it's always better with friends.

Meet The Crew

As much as Wilhelm and Smith take into account much of the research and data that was already available to them and giving us the reader a comprehensive review of how they used that data, they also worked directly with a fairly large group of boys to supplement their study. At the end of each chapter they introduce us to four of the boys in their study.  One great thing that I have picked up through these "interchapters" is that Wilhelm and Smith worked with a wide variety of boys.

Out of the fifty boys that they had at the beginning of their study, the boys varied in age and school level, anywhere from 7th grade to 12th grade. Not only that, they had boys from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. 32 of the boys were European-American, 10 were African-American, 5 were Puerto Rican and 2 Asian-Americans. The boys also came from different school setting, for example, about 25% were from private schools, 25% from urban public schools, 25% from suburban public schools and 25% from rural schools.  The boys in the study also had a wide variety of interest. As I am reading the research the these guys are reviewing and applying, I am seeing how they filling some of the holes in the research and data that is out there.

 Early on in the book they refer to the "boy code". The concept behind the "boy code" comes from the book Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood by William Pollack, where Pollack describes young men as being victims of this "boy code" and that problems with boys in schools stems from this code that endorses self-relience and action and precludes intimate relationships among young men (Newkirk, 2002). According to Pollack and as cited by Smith & Wilhelm, this "boy code" "governs male behavior through culturally created and perpetuated 'myths' of masculinity. This socially constructed code, according to Pollack, harms boys, so society, which defines and enforces social definitions of manhood, must actively interrogate and redefine masculinity" (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002). The boys in Wilhelm and Smith's study did not fit within these perimeters. The boys in their study almost unanimously said that interacting with their friends allowed them to be themselves. That they could talk more intimately with their friends. "The 'boy code' that Pollack (1999) describes as making intimate relationships taboo was not supported by the evidence in our Interviews" (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002).

Reading the short bios on the boys and then reading their transactions with Smith and Wilhelm as the book progresses, You can start seeing that some of the preconceived generalizations don't always hold true. In some ways, it is how they are engaged by their teachers in school. Some of the these boys love to read. In the Forward to the book, Thomas Newkirk mentions that "literacy grows out of relationships" and as I read about these boys and their relationships, when it comes to literacy there is indeed a social component.

My next post will introduce the concept of "Flow" and engageing in the things that brings us joy.

What's Going Down

In their first chapter, Smith and Wilhelm review much of the research that raises concerns regarding boys and literacy, and lets face much of it is true. Boys do very often fall below the the mark when it comes to reading and writing and there are a lot of studies that back it up. I, myself was one of those boys.

They bring up a study that was done during the late 1980's by the IEA that involved 32 nations and in that study, girls performed better in literacy task and boys did better in math and sciences. I remember this study happening and I'll get to that in a minute. First, boys problem with literacy task isn't unique to the U.S.  and  Second, when that study concluded schools started began to adjust the way math and science were being taught. Of course years later that gap between boys and girls in the math/science are closed but in the literacy area the gap between boys and girls stayed the same , maybe even grew. Why? I remember that study, because when I was in Mid-School going into High-School and our schools faculty was actively engaged in a conversation with us the students on how to level that field as it were. It was a 6-12 independent school. by the time I graduated a lot of the curriculum around math and science had changed. For the most part English classes didn't change to much, they did approach them more like they were college courses in the way that they were taught in semester blocks so we had a choice in what we wanted to take. I was lucky, I was a disengaged student at a private school.

The point is that boys and girls are different and learn differently and there is a lot of research and studies that back it up. Teachers seemed to find it easy to relate to gender differences. "We've been fascinated to see teachers who would never link a troubled classroom to their students' racial, ethnic or social class background feel comfortable linking the problems to the relative proportions of boys and girls" (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002). The fact is, schools, for whatever reason are failing boys. And Standardize Testing may not be an accurate means of assessment. Smith & Wilhelm believe is some way the methods of assessment maybe or are bias as well as the data that has measured literacy in boys.  The research that these men are doing with this book hopes to fill some of the holes in the existing data and research and change the way we teach our students reading and writing.

A lot of this first chapter might be considered "inconsiderate text", even Smith & Wilhelm suggest skipping it; the authors presents the research that has been done in the past that helped them scaffold their own research. Still I thought there was a lot of note worthy parts.  Two major parts stuck out to me, Shannon Trujillo, in her blog covered the "What This Makes Us Think About: Getting to Know Our Students" in which the lay out a method for figuring out who your students really are so that you can approach the teaching to fit the students needs. They give us 4 tips-- 1. Personality Profiles, 2. Information Exchange: Inventories, Surveys and Letters, 3. Daily Student Officer, and 4. Sharing Their Music. Check out her Blog, she does a great job expressing their points. The other part that grabbed me was the section that preceded the part about "getting to know your students" entitled "Three Worries". In this section Smith and Wilhelm confront the concerns that they have over the existing research and how that research and data has informed their thinking and how they are going to address these issues in their work with this book.   

Three Worries

1. Essentializing and Oversimplifying Our Students: Much of the research seems to believe that gender has an impact. They make the point to not lock kids into generalizations or stereotypes.

2. Losing Sight of Individuals: That by grouping or generalizing the students and not embracing them as individuals, we as teachers might not meet their needs.

3. Narrow Visions of Success: That literacy assessment is done entirely through their success at school and not seeing what is going on in other parts of their lives.

Reflecting on Jimmy Santiago Baca

Well, the book finally arrived!

As a reader, especially of academic and more efferent text, I tend to read all of the preceding material. I carefully read the Forward, Acknowledgements, Preface and Introduction in order to get perspective and establish a firm foundation in which to build on as I get into the meat of the text. Of course this was not always the way for me, in my younger years these were the parts of the book that were immediately dismissed followed of course by the rest of the the text that I would usually not retained due to my lack of engagement and interest. As I have matured I have learned that when dealing with what might be perceived as inconsiderate, efferent text, these are the parts of the book that are the most important. They enlighten me, the reader to the purpose and the reasoning behind the book; the why and how it came into being.

I chose the book "Reading Don't Fix No Chevys" Literacy in the Lives of Young Men by Michael Smith and Jeffery Welhelm because the title captured my attention. I have always been a nuts and bolts, mechanically inclined person and as a young person I had very similar feelings and opinions about reading. Actually, when I was getting out of high school I had little desire in attending college, my plan was to move to our famZen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig and Martin and Meditations on the South Vally by Jimmy Santiago Baca. That Professor and reading those two books changed my life. Learning about Jimmy Santiago Baca changed my perceptions about so many things, reading and writing being among them. 

ily ranch outside of Las Vegas, NM and build something, anything. My father suggested that I take a look at Highlands University and maybe give it a try.  I mention this because at that point in my life I did not believe that education was going to do anything to better my life, I felt that knowing how to build and fix things was the way to go. In the Preface of this book Welhelm and Smith  talk about the title of the book and where it came from. They wrote the book in hopes to understand and help the young men that they taught and the importance of focusing on individuals was solidified when they heard an interview that Bill Moyers did with Jimmy Santiago Baca, an native New Mexican, chicano poet. The title of the book came from an excerpt from that interview. That rocked me. In my first year of college at NMHU, I had an English Professor, Eddie Tafoya that had us read two books in our English Composition class. The first was

"The title of our book is an allusion to Baca's story because in it we see many of the themes we will be exploring. We see a young man at risk, in part because he cannot read. We see reading dismissed by other young men. We see those young men valuing immediate practical results that the do not see literacy providing. But we see also the potential power of reading and literacy to transform a life and to fight stereotypes and generalizations-- a kind of transformative work that Baca does now with his poetry. And we see a young man who defies easy generalizations, a young man whose potential was not tapped by school. He typifies in many ways our concern about the unactualized literate potential of boys across America" (Smith & Welhelm, 2002).

This book was born out of the notion that boys don't perform as well as girls when it comes to reading and writing, but through their research, they have come to believe that we cannot submit to these types of generalizations and that we as teachers need to approach teaching young men as individuals (and all students for that matter regardless of gender, race, economics or schooling) and engage them in their passions and interest. The authors also aim to tare down the belief that boy are subject to what William Pollack, author of Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myth of Boyhood calls the "boy code" which only generalizes young men. 

If you don't know the work of Jimmy Santiago Baca, check him out. His work is an inspiration, no matter what your background is or where you come from. www.jimmysantiagobaca.com 

A Little More About Me

I have said quite a bit about my life as an artist. My personal life is filled with a lot of joy. I am married and have two wonderful kids. I recently celebrated my 12th wedding anniversary to my with Kate, who I have known since middle school. Over this past weekend my youngest, Madeline celebrated her 4th birthday, It was quite the party. I'm still picking up half finished juice boxes that were scattered across the yard. My son Aidan is seven and is all boy. His favorite pastime is gettin' down and dirty with some Lightsabers and having a good ol' fashioned Jedi Battle. They both attend Montessori of the Rio Grande Charter School.

My early teaching career was at the university level. I taught design foundations, sculpture and lithography. When my wife got pregnant with our son we moved home to New Mexico to start our family. Teaching jobs at the University were scarce, so I made the decision to go to work as a welder. It wasn't long before I went into business for myself. I was the owner and operator of a fairly successful architectural metal fabrication company that did custom metal work for commercial and residential construction for about 6 years until I came to the realization that I wasn't happy doing what I was doing. I missed making art and most of all I missed teaching. When my wife finished Law School, we decided it was my turn to go back to school, I wanted to teach young people, so I made the decision to come into the Art Education program and work towards a K-12 License.

It is a pleasure to be in this class. I am getting more out of this online course than I ever thought I would. As an art teacher it is a challenge and a necessity to incorporate reading and writing. When I was teaching at the college level, I would conceive of the basic elements and principals taught in the Art Studio classes as being analogous to grammar and punctuation rules for a students of rhetoric and composition. One must first understand the elements of a sentence in order to construct a well-crafted statement before the medium can be appropriated and the sentence's structure subverted to create a new language in which to communicate. For the purpose of visual arts education, students need to understand the various formal elements that cohere in a work of art, as well as how the conceptual content proceeds from its composition. With that being said, as go through my graduate program I am also seeing the need to bridge those ideas of teaching art with use reflective writing to engage students in their learning and understanding of what art is and can be.

My next blog post will focus on the book I chose "Reading Don't Fix No Chevys"- Reading in the Lives of Young Men by Michael Smith and Jeffery Wilhelm. Due to an ordering SNAFU with Amazon.com I am hoping to get the book today. I originally placed my order on the 15th of June and received my order last Thursday, but when I opened my package, the wrong book was sent. Very frustrating and for me a needed exercise in patience. My hope is the right book will show up this afternoon and I will begin making post that relate to my reading beginning tomorrow. Till then, I'm signing off.

           

Blogging Bliss

OK, after seeing some of the others getting their blogs started and coming to the realization that there is more to our first post than just saying "hi", so I am making a more formal second, first introduction. In reading some of the other feeds and comments made on our wiki site, it became clear to me that we were to follow the assignment that was originally posted on the Blackboard site-- Blogging about Blogs. Looking at the Wikipedia page about "blogs", the term "blog" comes from "weblog", which was coined in the late 90's by John Barger. From there, a gentleman by the name of Peter Merholz shortened weblog to "blog" when he jokingly wrote in his sidebar "we blog" rather than "weblog" from there the term "blog" stuck. Looking at several blogs,  many of them seem to come from a very personal point of view and are often opinionated as well.  So with that being said, I an going to start over.

After reading through the other blog sites and given the nature of the web based classroom, I think it very important to give a little background about myself and my life journey that has brought me to this point of my life. I am an artist, and I am currently working on my second Masters degree in Art Education because I want to work with young people.    

I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and attended New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking and Sculpture. While studying etching and lithography, I was encouraged to make use of Highlands University’s Art Foundry in order to further develop my concepts and imagery through the casting process.

I soon discovered the similarity of the processes inherent in the mediums and began to translate ideas I had previously been unable to express in printed form into sculpture. Through a direct process similar to making a monotype at a printing press, I drew lines in the sand around steel forms of various shapes and sizes. By pouring melted aluminum into the lines, I was able to make a “print,” as well as connect the steel elements. The skewed geometry of smooth steel forms juxtaposed with the natural flow of metal were complete and spontaneous compositions of an organic quality. However, in contrast to a two-dimensional print, the metal casting that resulted from the dirt etching produced richer, more enhanced surface textures. I continued working with this non-traditional approach until I developed a cohesive portfolio of work that would eventually lead me to graduate studies at Georgia State University’s Sculpture Program.

After completing my Bachelor of Fine Arts I was accepted into The Tamarind Institute of Lithography at The College of Fine Arts of the University of New Mexico, where I received my Professional Printers Certificate. During my studies at Tamarind, I learned all aspects of the lithographic medium, both traditional and experimental. I also had the opportunity to work with other student printers from around the world, as well as established, professional artists. My experience at Tamarind was both enriching and rewarding. A great deal of the imagery I created while at Tamarind related back to my initial ideas of iron casting and the concepts that I dealt with in my sculptures. In the free time I found from printing, I continued to develop my sculptural work, built an iron foundry and established a studio, ultimately leading me to become a cast iron artist.

I studied sculpture under George Beasley at Georgia State University. Beasley is known for his cast iron performance work, as well as his more formal object works in cast iron. His work, which deals with issues of sociology as molded by immigration patterns of the iron industry and the traditions of foundry, is what brought me to study sculpture at the graduate level.

Through my studies of art and working with cast iron, I was able to travel around the country to work with other artist working in the same medium. I was quickly introduced to a group of artists at Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham, Alabama. Sloss is a decommissioned iron foundry that produced the majority of the iron for the production of steel for this nation from the 1880's to the 1970's. It is the largest intact Blast Furnace facility in the country and has since become a museum. Working in the shadow of these sleeping giants has been the inspiration for my work as an artist, and has encouraged me to research the history of the industries that carried our society into modernity.

Using a machine aesthetic, industrial icons and railroad imagery, my most recent work reflects the shift to industry in the late 19th century. This short-lived, progressive movement has irrevocably transformed our post-industrial existence to one radically divorced from the environment ruthlessly exploited during the industrial era, where information technologies and plastics are the current, dominating forces.  The images that I create serve to invoke and reinforce the sculptural properties of architecture as "anonymous sculptures.” By juxtaposing unicycles and carts with these industrial icons, I want to bring a sense of humor and irony to my work as well as reference the relentless order of industrial production. Using industrial imagery combined with temples and ruins I have explored ideas pertinent to the industrial age and its subsequent lapse into obsolescence. My work can be interpreted as rumination's of a lost era. I consider myself to be an artist attached to the cast iron movement in America, as the medium of cast iron is the vehicle for the concepts behind my work.

   

Intro Blog Post

Greetings Friends and Colleagues

Welcome to my BlogSpot! I chose the book "Reading Don't Fix No Chevys": Literacy in the Lives of Young Men by Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm.
 The title suited my personality. This is my first Blogging Site, so we will see where it takes us!