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!