This post has four
reasons for being:
1)
its
an act of desperation
2)
to
remind those who would like to be reminded
3)
to
remind those who would like NOT to be reminded
4)
to
inform those who might not know.
^^from one of my
favorite poems of all time and also might serve as my new year’s resolution
Lately, I have been
gearing up to write my final paper for the semester. It’s a 15-20 page paper
for EDUC 723: Multicultural Issues in Education. It’s a research paper in which the topic for
myself keeps fluidly changing as I navigate the texts available regarding the interrelatedness
between critical race theory and education. There’s the general critical
literature review that I could do right….but that’s just too easy.
Funny how I asked
for an extension just so I can have the opportunity to get my thoughts right on
this one—like Christmas isn’t next week.
One part of my mind says nothing would give more pleasure than to be
able to return to my borrowed NetFlix on-demand IPad app.
But the other side…the
deeper, darker side is perplexed. I’m
finishing up my first semester at Penn GSE.
For all intents and purposes, its been a great ride. I’m over-satisfied with the direction of the
RWL program and overjoyed at the faculty connections I have made. My advisor is Dr. Gadsden—don’t let me forget
that I owe her this 15-20 page monster paper.
Why the
build-up? While working on my final
class portfolios, I realized something about my work at Penn. I was doing the assignments. I handed them in
on time with proper citations and all the academic jargon that you need. However, I totally forgot about pleasing the
most significant portion of this entire experience—myself.
All these things
that I have written, did I write them for me?
At the end of the day, what did I get out of it? What did I learn? Most times I have no idea. Of course, I retain some information. I can spit a couple quotes from Lisa Delpit,
I understand New Literacy Studies as formulated by James Gee, but what about my
own theories, have I challenged them?
It all started when
I found this document that I created two years ago to begin this journey into
literacy. Program Proposal for Chester
Community Publishing. Coming off of a
solid year where I founded and administered the Chester High Entrepreneurship
Club, Chester Community Publishing would be the next step. As formulated, Chester Community Publishing
sought to incentivize reading and writing in Chester, Pennsylvania by creating
a community-owned publishing house where profits were split 50/50 between the
program and the author. What is a book
anyway? Just a couple of PDF’s and maybe some scanned artwork. I could do that. Next thing you know, I had an entire proposal
written. Awesome period in time. Sadly, I
can’t remember the feeling that compelled me to do it and that’s what caused me
to begin the internal conversation of where my current motivations and passions
lie.
Jump back to paper
preparation. Now I’m trying to find articles that will work for this
paper. I come across this monster effort
by Charles Lawrence: The Word and the River: Pedagogy as Scholarship as
Struggle. Man, I was in church when I read
this—check it:
“I press on,
despite my fears, with the sense of exhilaration and fatalism that one
experiences in battle. Perhaps I have
the skill to walk the tightrope, to tell just enough of the truth to be bought
out instead of wiped out….”
“It is the work of
those [scholars] who remain cool and distant in the face of suffering because
it is not their liberation, their humanity which is at stake…”
“Even when I
managed to remain true to my convictions, professional pressures required that
I employ language and references that threatened to make my work inaccessible
to a large part of the audience I hoped to reach.”
“The disguises of
abstract argument, hypothetical case, theoretical construct, and polite form
have been removed. The full force of my feelings has been recaptured and
expressed”
…
…And there’s more.
There’s just so
much to this picture. In many ways, I
have been avoiding my own voice to embrace the so called academic cocktail
party. Cite this here. Include a quote from this. The word “capitulation” comes
to mind. I feel lost at times. I don’t
have that feeling that I started with. I’m here to uncover some truth and bring
it back to Chester. So I ask myself
again…what did you learn?
The great part
about it is now I’m beginning to have that real conversation with myself about
exactly what do I want and I’m seeing that critical race theorists are bringing
in what I’m searching by the truckload.
I then read more unassigned articles in the past week than the rest of
the semester. I have no idea what I am
doing—well, actually I do—but I need to get writing on this paper. You can’t be having life realizations during
finals season. But yo…Check this jawn out from Charles Lawrence:
1. Speak simple truths to power.
2. Making our own communities our first audience.
3. Creating a homeplace for refuge and hard conversations.
4. Defining boundaries (knowing who is us and who is them).
5. Starting small (knowing that small is important and good).
6. Remembering that we are beautiful and that we are bad (or "the bomb").
2. Making our own communities our first audience.
3. Creating a homeplace for refuge and hard conversations.
4. Defining boundaries (knowing who is us and who is them).
5. Starting small (knowing that small is important and good).
6. Remembering that we are beautiful and that we are bad (or "the bomb").
I’m on this new
mission to really embrace the ME first in my education.
Enjoy the Christmas break everyone and look forward to returning next semester ready to dig in.
