What It Is by Lynda Barry

"There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairy tale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it. I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood. They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay."

*
"Playing and fun are not the same thing, though when we grow up we may forget that, and find ourselves mixing up playing with happiness. There can be a kind of amnesia about the seriousness of playing, especially when we played by ourselves, or looked like we were playing by ourselves. I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played with, seems to play back."

*
"If playing isn't happiness or fun, if it is something which may lead to those things or to something else entirely, not being able to play is misery. No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to --- there were times when nothing played back. Writers call it 'writer's block.' For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don't usually know them."

*
"I knew who the best artist were in our class, who were the best writers. Out of 30 kids there were about ten that stood out and were good at something. The rest of us started wishing: I wish I could draw. I wish I could write. I wish I could dance. I wish I could sing. I wish I could act. I wish I could play music. I wish I could be funny. By 5th grade most of us already knew it was too late."

*
"In junior high I started drawing again one I found out I could copy other people's art and I was actually decent at it. And I'm thankful for this because I was by then completely unable to draw anything on my own that I could stand. I especially liked to copy comics."

*
"What happens when we write by hand? A body in motion is moved by... what? There is a state of mind which is not accessible by thinking. It seems to require a participation with someone. Something physical we move like a pen like a pencil. Something which is in motion. Ordinary motion like writing the alphabet."

*
"I can remember not being a teenager and then being one. Being catapulted into a new world contained by the old one, just by walking to school. Kids burn up in this atmosphere. Friendships atomize. But the teen part is smeltering itself together all along, and soon you can think of yourself no other way. Something was gone, but didn't miss it. I didn't miss it at all."

*
"What was Marilyn (my art teacher) doing when she sat there looking at my empty pictures? I don't believe it was thinking. I believe it was closer to the staring game I played in the trailer when I was little, a state of mind I had forgotten about. A different kind of looking. An ability to wait."

*
"When I was little, I noticed that making lines on paper gave me a certain floating felling. It made me feel like I was both there and not there. The lines made a picture and the picture made a story. I wasn't the only kid it happened to. Every kid I knew could do it."

*
"Before the two questions (Is this good? Does this suck?), pictures and stories happened in a way that didn't involve much thinking. One line led to another until they somehow finished. I never felt like I was trying, and the drawing itself didn't matter too me much afterward."

*
"When we remember something, do we use our imagination? When we imagine something, do we use our memory?"

*
"Stuart Dybeck wrote a book called childhood and other neighborhoods and I think this begins to describe it, the idea of our childhood as a neighborhood with something like streets and houses, school yards, and cemeteries, short cuts and long ways. It's a good way to start, by thinking of childhood as a place rather than a time. A place that already exists like an un played-with playset, needing only one thing to set all things in motion."

*
"Sometimes in order to remember we have to completely forget. Sometimes in order to forget we have to completely remember."

*
"A sentence is like an address in that way. A spoken word of thought."

*
"Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher, and found they are very much alike."

Find details here.

Mentoring: The TAO of Giving and Receiving Wisdom by Chunliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch

Encourage and appreciate other’s spontaneity, and reciprocate with trust of these genuine expressions. Let us challenge ourselves with the opportunities for improvisation, and enjoy the natural development of this immediacy and alertness in our relationships. Great things happen as they are supposed to in spite of our desire to control them according to our wishes. Yes, each of us can smile and say, “How wonderful, it just sort of happened!”

*
Mentors gently and subtly guide, rather than control, others. Encourage others to be more self-reliant and discover what is best for themselves. The exertion of control over a situation or person is emotionally expensive for all involved and exhausting to the one in control. It blocks visions and all creative possibilities. Controlling behaviors create a sea of mistrust, lack of cooperation, and a loss of faith in the mentoring process. Notice how much more powerful we feel when we choose to step subtlety out of the way and simply guide others without imposing our agendas. Only when we dare to let go of control, will we win the hearts of others and enable true learning and growth to occur.

*
Let others find their own way by using very little intervention; refrain from manipulating, imposing morality, or coercing. Shed light through suggestion. Confucius in his discourse on education, states that the “superior teacher guides students but does not pull them along; urges them to go forward by opening the way yet refrains from taking them to the place.”

*
Guiding creates an atmosphere that encourages others to think and accomplish for themselves. The Buddha says that the best way to control your cow is to not control it. Offer instead, a large, spacious meadow.

*
When we plant flower, we do not pull them up so they can grow taller and faster—we allow them to progress naturally. It is the same with mentoring. Having personal trust is gratifying; do not abandon it even if things are temporarily unclear.

*
The mentor will notice in what direction the mentoree wishes to go and gently suggestion ways to advance the goal.

*
A mentor will enthusiastically tell other’s about a mentoree’s talents, using her influence to give her partner exposure and visibility. Knowing that his mentor believes in him, his confidence level rises.

*
Mentors can excite and encourage others through example, by displaying great passion and spirit.

*
Mentors enable mentorees to safely step out and risk failure, knowing that setbacks are simply lessons that help to guide the way. Often the mentor will disclose how he or she struggled and failed in the beginning and how these setbacks were positive opportunities to learn and forge ahead.

*
The essential work of the mentor is to guide others to discovering this goodness within themselves and to help them follow their integrity as they reawaken to the inner truth of who they are and what they can do.

*
By mentoring others, we become aware of the gaps in our own knowledge. Becoming dissatisfied, we realize the problem lies within, which causes us to feel stimulated to improve once again. The dance of mentoring and learning stimulates self-expansion. When we need to learn, we become open to receiving; once we have learned, we immediately become open to giving.

*
All good mentors (giving, teaching) are continually open to being mentored (receiving, learning). To be a good teacher, one must be a good student... the crux of the Tao mentoring process, as we see it, is the Wu Dao dance between mentor and mentee, where each is involved with giving and receiving.

*
The key to success in this mentoring dance is the development of “Te.” Te requires the additional letting go of logic, of the need to pretend that we know all, and of the desire to display ourselves as sages. It asks us to admit that we “don’t know,” which creates a sense of wisdom that never relinquishes itself to be fixed, limited opinions about what should be. By acknowledging this emptiness, we enter into a communion with our partners, creating potential relationships of deep understanding and openness to vast growth and change.

*
Those who know they know not, become wise.
Those who presume they know much, stay ignorant.

*
The mentoree asks permission of the mentor to risk and to be vulnerable. If we fall down or make a mistake, it is fine simply to feel our insecurity and plunge back in, with the mentor’s help. Now, go ahead and make a huge mistake, and trust that your mentor will help. Forge ahead, knowing that you are okay, able now to teach or mentor others who have fallen themselves... mentoring frees us to pursue life’s wonderful lessons without fear of failing or being exposed.

*
Effective mentors guide with virtue, without force or effort. In an atmosphere of inspiration, trust, courage and harmony, where interdependence and personal strength are created, individuals begin to grow and become more aware, more conscious of their greater selves as well as the greatness in others.

*
To create a safe environment and encourage open conversation... mentors listen with full attentiveness, not with their ears, but with their spirit, their full heart… ready to receive without judgment

*
Persever during discouraging moments, in a deliberate, intentional manner. Confucius says that it matters not what we try to think or carry out; what matters is that once we begin we must never lose heart until the task is completed. To persevere, focus on the joy of the journey, the process rather than on the goal or destination. We need to be compassionate with ourselves when we seem not to be making progress. With all its twists and turns, its changes of direction along the way, the river eventually finds its way to the sea.


*
Remember that things occur not when we think they should but when the time is right…. Mentoring helps us to realize that we all need time and space to develop according to our natural process, to let our lives assume their own shape. Mentors are willing to repeat and recreate teaching methods and patiently allow time for ingestion and natural development. The mentor savors the eventual moment when the sparks of the mentoree’s apprehension ignite to illuminate their mutual learning.

*
Let us relinquish our attachment to outcomes; success or failure is not a barometer of self-worth. To be over-joyed at success and destroyed at failure is to become a victim of circumstances.

*
Patience—sensitivity to adapt and adjust to each other’s wishes
Trustfulness- inner sense of trust in others and in ourselves
Instinctiveness
Non-judgment
Simplicity
Humility
Mindfulness
Perseverance
Attentiveness
Decisiveness
Kindness
Self-Acceptance
Integrity
Emptiness
Detatchment
Inner stillness

*
Service
Modeling
Guidance
Empathy
Nurturance
Harmony
Viglilence
Cooperation
Interdependence
Yielding
Moderation
Enthusiasm for change
Joyful laughter
Spontaneity—to be present in the here and now
Centered Heart
Consistency


Find details here.

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks

It is crucial that we challenge any feeling of shame or embarrassment that teachers who do their job well might be tempted to indulge when praising ourselves or being praised by others for excellent teaching. For when we hide our light we collude in the overall cultural devaluation of our teaching vocation.

*
One of the dangers we face in our educational systems is the loss of a feeling of community, not just the closeness among those with whom we work and with our students, but also the loss of a feeling of connection and closeness with the world beyond the academy.

*
Thich Nhat Hanh teaches: In a true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

*
Parker Palmer believes that enlightened teaching evolves and invites community.

"This community connects us with the .. 'great things' of the world and with 'the grace of great things'... We are in community with all of these great things, and great teaching is about knowing that community, feeling that community, sensing that community, and then drawing your students into it."

*
"Teaching tugs at the heart, opens the heart, even breaks the heart - and the more one loves teaching the more heartbreaking it can be. The courage to teach is the courage to keep one's heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able so that teacher and students and subject can be woven into the fabric of community that learning, and living, require." (Palmer)

It takes courage for any teacher who teaches with gladness to accept and respond to periods of burnout, to embrace the heartache of loss and separation.

*
If disillusionment is one of life's natural forms of contemplation, the experience of dislocation is another. This happens when we are forced by circumstance to occupy a very different standpoint from our normal one, and our angle of vision suddenly changes to reveal a strange and threatening landscape.... The value of dislocation like the value of disillusionment is the way that it moves us beyond illusion, so we can see reality in the round - since what we are able to see depends entirely on where we stand." (Palmer)

*
In Pedagogy of the Heart, Paulo Freire contends that democratic educators "must do everything to ensure an atmosphere in the classroom where teaching, learning, and studying are serious acts, but also ones that generate happiness."

*
(why mentor at nua looks like hanging out)

Whereas vernacular speech may seldom be used in the classroom by teachers it may be the preferred way to share knowledge in other settings... the democratic educator values diversity in language.

*
(why our bookclub is so important:)

In our society the academic world remains the primary place where teaching and learning are valued, where reading and thinking are deemed meaningful and necessary work.

*
a false assumption that book based learning has little relevance in their new lives as workers. ... And if they read, they no longer study.

(our bookclub doesn't just read, we study)

*
My leaving a high-ranking tenured position opened up new spaces for teaching and learning that renewed and restored my spirit and enabled me to hold onto the joy in teaching that makes my heart glad.

*
He identified the 'click' between us as a combination of personal resonance and professional admiration.

*
(nua) A COMPELLING PLACE FOR LEARNING

*
We can be together, critique whiteness, dismantle structures of privilege and let love that is rooted in partnership be the tie that binds us.

*
(values to approach mentorship)

mutuality, partnership and community

generosity of spirit


*
As democratic educators we have to work to find ways to teach and share knowledge in a manner that does not reinforce existing structures of domination.

*
Committed acts of caring let all students know that the purpose of education is not to dominate, or prepare them to be dominators, but rather to create the conditions for freedom. Caring educators open the mind, allowing students to embrace a world of knowing that is always subject to change and challenge.

*
Where there is domination, there is no place for love.

*
When as teachers we teach with love, combining care, commitment, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter. That means having the clarity to know what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning. Teachers who are wedded to using the same teaching style everyday, who fear any digression from the concrete lesson plan, miss the opportunity for full engagement in the learning process. They are far more likely to have an orderly classroom where students obey authority. They are far more likely to feel satisfied because they have presented all the information that they wanted to cover. And yet they are missing the most powerful experience we can offer students, which is the opportunity to be fully and compassionately engaged with learning.

*
Through their work at making community, at creating love in the classroom, they could hear more intimately James Baldwin's declaration of love's power: "Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word 'love' here not merely in the personal sense but as a state if being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth."

*
Love will always challenge and change us.

*
When we practice interbeing in the classroom we are transformed not just by one individiual's presence but by our collective presence.



Find details here.

The Music Teaching Artist's Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator by Eric Booth

Linking the words art and learning reminds us of their fundamental connectedness. The great twentieth-century physicist David Bohm gave an instruction that I try to live by: when one is faced with seeming opposites, look for the larger truth that contains them both.

*
The philosopher John Dewey once remarked that he was unable to define the word aesthetic, but that he did know its opposite was anesthetic. That is the aesthetic development teaching artists most value - waking people up from the somnolence propagated by our aggressively anesthetizing commercial culture, to see the beauty, meaning, humanity, courage, and joy around us.

*
The most common gig I am asked to do with businesses is to teach "creativity but no art." ... How glorious will it be when we need not apologize for the word, and Americans think of art as powerful, relevant and fun.

*
(some of the) Guidelines for Teaching Artistry:

Using Engagement before Information

Turning the Responsibility for the Learning Over to the Learner

Witnessing

Staying Fresh

The Law of 80% -- 80% of what you teach is who you are

*
Your authenticity as a artist is one of your greatest strengths. Don't feel you must hide your artistic enthusiasm, your personality, your abilities, or your personal passions behind a "teacher" mask... As an artist, it is a spiritual responsibility to bring the best of ourselves to each opportunity, and not just pretend. Because they can tell.

*
Play is more than just a peppy warm up... play is an attitude you bring, an atmosphere you create, a freedom you lead participants into..

*
Deep inside, artists know that the heart of their work does not originate with the self. Rather it is an offering, a blessing. Lewis Hyde reminds us that a gift perishes unless it is moved along. We continue to receive that gift of art only when we pass it on as often, and in as many ways as we can.

*
He compared the fate of a young tree in the middle of a meadow with that of an identical sapling sprouting in a clearing in the woods. He said that a sapling in the woods would grow faster and stronger. This surprised me- wouldn't the open space without arboreal competition nurture a healthier tree? He informed me that young trees in a forest clearing have one advantage that makes all the difference. The tender roots of that tree will "find" the old roots of trees now gone, and then grow along those old roots to quickly reach deeper, richer soil. What an astonishingly apt metaphor for the power of mentoring!

*
Good mentoring is more about asking great questions than telling great stories. The mentor's crucial skill is listening.

*
Mentors model not just how to solve problems, but also how to think about problems, and how to turn them into learning.

*
Does mentoring sound like a lot of work? The only work is paying attention. The rest feels like play. Being selected, formally or informally, as a mentor is a gift - to the learner and the mentor.

*
Misconception 1: Teach means tell.

Many people think that because they said something, they have performed an act of education.

*
The school day offers few opportunities for students to consider how they feel about - and value - the information being presented to them... Consistently providing learners with opportunities to reflect builds habits of mind that students rely on throughout their lives. We cannot stint them, relegating reflection to a group discussion left for the last five minutes of class (which we often run out of time to include).

*
You can spot musicians whose learning did not contain or develop a healthy self-assessment culture. They need feedback from others to get a sense of how they did. They often overact to input because they don't know how to fit other's opinions and observations into the more important context of their own understanding. They tend to stop learning on their own, unprompted by external demand or critique. They are a lot less happy inside a life of musical learning.

*

What do you notice? Describe without judgement. ("I notice...")

What questions does this work, activity, or subject of inquiry raise for you? ("I wonder...")

*
The private lesson is an improvised teaching and learning duet, a work of art as much as of science, and it succeeds as much from the interpersonal as from the technical, just as an ensemble performance does.

*
Two ultimate goals for private lessons that always apply: nurturing motivation and developing musicality.

*
Many (students) report that their teacher is encouraging and happy only when they have practiced a lot, but they don't feel that the teacher cares about or fosters their love of music.

*
Learners like to master a technical challenge - but what they love is music.

*

To assess your teaching, ask yourself at the end of every lesson whether or not the student leaves more invested in music, hungrier to discover its mysteries and find its locations in himself.

*
I find the best teachers routinely improve technique without the learner overtly knowing it.

*
The good teacher "searches deeply to find the best way to stimulate each individual student's musical motivation." (Rachel Shapiro, a violist and faculty of the New York Philharmonic). We can compel many kinds of behavior and action, but not the action of the heart and the spirit that lead to curiosity, hunger, and dedication. There are many things teachers do to create those inner commitments.

*
Pleasure - It feels good to learn. If learning doesn't feel good, it slows or stops.

*
Don't just teach a great lesson; send the playfulness, the attention to process, the musical expressiveness home with the student.

*
Don't make assumption about practice. Experiment with it. It's interesting to note that almost all of us assume homework helps learning, although there is no evidence to support that assumption. Researchers report that students would be better off, would do better in school, if they spent the time required by homework in socializing play... Let's not let practice become like homework- tedious and probably not helpful if undertaken in a mindless way.

*
The Witness -- the capacity to recognize what is going on inside the learner (both on the surface and underneath), and mirror it back to her clearly, is the single most important thing we do.

*
Listen hard for the future you want to create; some part of it sounds in every student.

*
We must nurture the skills of inquiry and affirm the importance of curiosity.

*
... with just a few words that say, "You are on the right track. Keep going." And let your subtext say, "Keep going for the rest of your life. As I have done."

*
May we find joy in this lifetime of chances to let what we love as lifelong learners be what we do.


Find details here.

You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps Of the Imagination, Edited by Katharine Harmon

Find details here.

To Know As We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey by Parker Palmer (a master teacher offers a new model for authentic teaching and learning)

*

To Teach Is to Create a Space....


*

To learn is to face transformation.

*

To learn the truth is to enter into relationships requiring us to respond as well as initiate, to give as well as take.

*

Knowing is a profoundly communal act.

*

The conventional pedagogy is not only non-communal but anti-communal. Students are made to compete with one another... in many classrooms cooperation among students goes by the name cheating.

*

We become manipulators when education denies and destroys community... Throughout our education we learn to manipulate in order to survive, and then we carry that habit into our postgraduate lives. If we gained knowledge through collaborative, communal process, we would possess a knowledge that could be used in cooperative, not manipulative, ways.

This style of teaching persists because it gives teachers power. With power comes security: the security of controlling the classroom agenda, of avoiding serious challenges to one's authority, of evading the embarrassment of getting lost in territory where one does not know the way home. Teachers are unlikley to relinquish such power even in the face of students who hunger for another way to learn.

*

I call the pain that permeates education " the pain of disconnection."

*

Real learning does not happen until students are brought into relationship with the teacher, with each other, and with the subject.

*

The way we teach depends on the way we think people know; we cannot amend our pedagogy until our epistemology is transformed.

*

inquiry vs authority as the center of the classroom....

*

There is a knowledge that originates not in curiosity or control but compassion... A knowledge born of compassion aims not at exploiting and manipulating creation but at reconciling the world to itself. The mind motivated by compassion reaches out to know as the heart reaches out to live. Here the act of knowing is an act of love, the act of entering and embracing the reality of the other, of allowing the other to enter and embrace our own. In such knowing we known and are known as members of one community, and our knowing becomes a way of reweaving that community's bonds.

Curiosity and control create a knowledge that distances us from each other and the world, allowing us to use what we know as a plaything and to play the game by our own self-serving rules. But a knowledge that springs from live will implicate us in the web of life; it will wrap the knower and the known in compassion, in a bond of awesome responsibility as well as transforming joy; it will call us to involvement, mutuality, accountability.

*

How can the places where we learn to know become the places where we also learn to love?

*


Find details here.

Third Mind: Creative Writing Through Visual Art Edited by Tonya Foster & Kristin Prevallet

"Collaboration is a calling to work with and for others in the service of something that transcends artistic ego and, as such, has to do with love, survival, generosity, and a conversation in which the terms of language are multidimensional. I always work with people around me because it's a way to be in the world together and to make something that has intrinsic value. It is a statement of connection, camaraderie, and it also goes beyond a particular relationship or duet and becomes what William Burroughs called 'the third mind."

-Anne Waldman-

*

"Whatever the scope of your plans, the important thing, of course, is to begin."

-Susan Karwoska-

*

"A time limit encourages quick, intuitive decision making."

-Rosalind Pace & Marcia Simon-

*

"once they have discovered their theme, [students] will be amazed at how everything becomes relevant to it."

-Rosalind Pace & Marcia Simon-

*

"Establishing the conviction within a student that he or she is creative is the critical first step... In the Image-Making workshop this belief emerges in two ways: when the student sees his or her own personal style or "signature" emerge in the verbal and the visual work, and when the student sees that the work has meaning and significance to others."

-Rosalind Pace & Marcia Simon-

*

"The two of us teach after the fact, as opposed to the conventional practice that begins with the goal (or the rationale) followed by examples. The students work first so intuition can operate freely, and later learn the why. We give simple instructions that allow students to work directly with the materials. Only after the work is done do we respond to it. Our responses are always based on finding the uniqueness in each work-- not what we think it out to be, but what is there."

-Rosalind Pace & Marcia Simon-

*

"As teachers, of course, we never tell the students that they are going to do exciting work, that it will be a lot of fun and that they will learn important things about themselves. Nothing would be more intimidating... The excitement comes afterwards, when we help them to see what they have done. When students begin, on their own, to see possibilities in the material that they had not seen before, they cross the line from being doers to becoming makers."

-Rosalind Pace & Marcia Simon-

*

"In the structure of true education, creativity is the foundation, and not the ornament."

-Rosalind Pace & Marcia Simon-

*

"The William Burroughs Fold-in: Take two different pages from an outside text (magazine, article or book) and cut each in half vertically. Paste the mismatched pages together. Then create a new text."

-Anne Waldman-

*

"We have unwittingly brought the habits of channel-surfing to bear in the space of the gallery. We act as though art should strike us immediately, or not at all. We simply catch a glimpse and consume another image."

-Scott Herndon & Kristin Deombek-

*

Find details here and here.

Youth Learning on Their Own Terms: Creative Practices and Classroom Teaching by Leif Gustavson

"I have become acutely aware of the disconnect between the was in which many school districts and schools design learning environments and the ways in which youth design learning environments for themselves..."

*

"Common culture is the everyday practice of producing popular culture like graffiti murals, zines, and turntable pieces. Ian's practice of zine writing for example, is a part of his everyday life.... Ian's creative practice is part of who he is and how he understands the world around him. The way he lives his life informs his zine making and his zine making influences the way in which he lives day to day.

*

"..shifting our sense of a learning environment as an imposed structure to an infrastructure... Often when teaching and learning are considered a structure, the outcome of the learning is predetermined... Conversely, pedagogy as infrastructure is dynamic and generative. Students build off the framework of the class, utilizing tactic and conceptual knowledge to build new skills and knowledge. Pedagogy as infrastructure is designed around rituals, habits of mind and body, and criteria. The objective of learning is not for everyone to arrive at the same conclusion."

*

"Youth also constantly interpret through their creative practices. The act of interpretation enables youth to evaluate their own work as well as construct meaning out of other people's work. It is these skills of youth practice that should in part become the practice of working and learning in classrooms."

*

"How can the work of youth influence educators in designing learning environments that are rigorous, interesting, and personally meaningful for both youth and teachers?"

*

"How can we take advantage of the skills and conceptual knowledge that youth bring with them to school? Instead of viewing them as empty vessels needing to be filled or as being deficient in some way, we need to see youth as complex people with valuable life and work experiences."

*

"Moving from interpretation to appropriation: youth culture as legitimate work and learning... When students learn about poetry in schools, for example, they often talk about what a poem means. Teaching and learning as appropriation talk within the practice."

*

"How can the ways in which thee youth work in their creative practices - the intrinsic aesthetic or crafting that underlies the practices - influence the daily activity, the ways of working, in classrooms?"


*

"Placing popular culture at the center of the curriculum legitimates it and allows students to speak about their own experiences within the classroom. Nevertheless, youth do not necessarily want their cultural practices to be legitimated or co-opted by teachers or schools... If the teacher's interest in the art for is merely a tool of motivation or interpretation, students will read this as an ultimate dismissal of their interests, rather than as a 'cool' way to learn."

*

"Youth Habits of Mind and Body in Creative Practices:

- communities of practice
- experimentation
- evaluation and assessment
- interpretation
- performance
- reflection"

*

"In order to sustain their creative practices, youth are involved in making connections with groups of people who share their interests. These groups are commonly called 'communities of practice'... A community of practice is a group of people connected through a shared interest in an activity."

*

"According to Reinsmith (1997), people instinctively want to make meaning out of experience. In order for meaning to occur, people need freedom to fiddle around with new ideas and new object, to try ideas that they have, and to -- perhaps most important -- make mistakes. These mistakes are what enable people to refine ideas and attempt something else. It is in this refining and course altering that one develops understandings regarding skills or concepts."

*

"Ethnography makes visible the ordinary and taken-for-granted details of what particular people do together. It is sensitive to nuances. It identifies cultural frames for acting and making sense that vary and change as individuals and groups occupy differing positions in society.... Ethnographers approach their phenomena realizing that they know little and that people who are part of the phenomena, the "natives," know a lot. With this realization, ethnographers position themselves as the learnings and the people who are part of the phenomena as the teachers. They observe, interview and participate in order to better understand the people whom they are studying. When we make this analogus to teaching, it is our job as teachers to to figure out how our students are mathematicians, historians, writers and scientists in their lives, instead of assuming that they are not or that they need to be taught how to be."

*

"Multiple forms of performance creative authentic reasons for students to experiment further, reflect on their work, evaluate its efficacy, and interpret audience reactions."

*

"Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child's experience; cease thinking of the child's experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process." -Dewey-

*

"When educators in investigate and acknowledge the creative practices of youth within their pedagogy, opportunities for authentic learning emerge: teachers tune their teaching practices more closely to the ways in which youth learn and make meaning in their everyday lives."

*

"In classroom environments driven by prepacked curricula or standardized testing, students are figured as finite and closed systems, lacking essential skills and knowledge. These classrooms lack the open-ended fluidity of authentic, meaningful learning and fail to acknowledge the disciplinary strengths that youth bring with them, regardless of background. They make it difficult for students and teachers to develop a shares sense of how they can earn together."

*

"Inquiry based learning honors the personhood of each of our students and provides an opportunity to reframe traditional questions."

*

"Through this recasting of teacher and student roles as well as how learning looks, sounds, and feels, we transform the classroom into a youthspace where youth ways of knowing are embraced and put to work."

*

"Perhaps going to school would not be such an alienating endeavor to many youth if adults in positions of power recognized and valued the many ways youth learn on their own terms."

*

"Perhaps by recognizing the role creative practices play in how youth learn... school can be a viable and essential space through which youth and adults can learn together."

*

Chapter 1 : THE WRITING LIFE OF A ZINE MAKER
Chapter 2: THE SHIFTING CREATIVE PRACTICES OF A PUERTO-RICAN AMERICAN YOUTH
Chapter 3: SCRATCHING, CUTTING, AND JUGGLING: THE TURNTABLIST AS A 21st CENTURY SCHOLAR
Chapter 4: TEACHING AND LEARNING: A SHARED PRACTICE

Find more details here.

A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Phillips

This altered book was first published in 1970. Cross out poems, illustrations and paintings are made from W H Mallock's 1892 novel, A Human Document. The final product was a new story about Bill Toge, whose name appears when the word "together" or "altogether" appears in Mallock's original text.











The full text treatment can be seen here.

Find other details here.

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson, Ph.D.

"Businesses everywhere say they need people who are creative and can think independently. But the argument is not just about business. It's about having lives with purpose and meaning in and beyond whatever work we do."

*

"Creativity is very much like literacy."

*

"When we connect with our own energy, we're more open to the energy of other people. The more alive we feel, the more we can contribute to the lives of others."

*

Up to a point you welcome being interrupted because it is only by interacting with other people that you get anything interesting done."

*

"If I saw further it was because I stood on the shoulders on giants."
-Isaac Newton-

*

On "Flow" as Mihaly Csikszentmihaly calls it or "The Element" as Sir Ken Robinson calls it:

"Being in the zone is about using your particular kind of intelligence in an optimal way... When people are in the zone, they align themselves with a way of thinking that works best for them."

"Feeling more like myself than ever before..."

"The Element is the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion.... they are doing the thing they love and in doing it they feel like their most authentic selves. They find time passes differently and that they are more alive, more centered and more vibrant that at any other times."

"Activities we love fill us with energy even when we are physically exhausted. Activities we don't like drain us in minutes.... when people place themselves in situations that lead to their being in the zone, they tap into a primal source of energy. They are literally more alive because of it."

*

"For most people, a primary component of being in their Element is connecting with other people who share their passion and a desire to make the most of themselves through it." --- "FINDING YOUR TRIBE" as he calls it.... "tribes are circles of influence."

"THE ALCHEMY OF SYNERGY"

"What connects a tribe is a common commitment to the thing they feel born to do."

"...she finds herself with a group of people who see the world the way she does, who allow her to feel her most natural, who affirm her talents, who inspire her, influence her, and drive her to be her best. She is close to her trie self when she is among actors.....being a part of this tribe brings her to the Element."

"Tribe membership.. helps people become more themselves , leading toward a greater sense of personal identity. On the other hand, we can easily lose our identity in a crowd, including a group of fans. Being a fan is about being partisan; cheering or jeering and finding joy in victory and agony in defeat. This might be fulfilling and thrilling in many ways, but it normally it doesn't take you to the Element as a means of self-realization."

"Many people don't find their Element because they don't have the encouragement or the confidence to step outside their established circle of relationships."

"When people close to you discourage you from taking a particular path, they usually believe they are doing it for your own good... And the fact is that the average office worker probably does have more financial security that the average jazz trumpeter. But it is difficult to feel accomplished when you're not accomplishing something that matters to you. Doing something 'for your own good' is rarely for your own good if it causes you to be less than who you really are."

*

Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity. Hear him speak on TED.

Find details on the book here and here.

We Make the Road by Walking Conversations on Education and Social Change with Myles Horton and Paulo Freire

"For me there is a certain sensualism in writing and reading - and in teaching, in knowing. I cannot separate them. Knowing for me is not a neutral act, not only from the political point of view, but from the point of view of my body, my sensual body. It is full of feelings, if emotions, of tastes." (PF)

*

"I am convinced that in order for us to create something, we need to start creating." (PF)

*

"One of the tasks of the educator is also to provoke the discovering of need for knowing and never to impose the knowledge whose need was not yet perceived." (PF)

*

"Liberation and salvation are social events and not individual ones." (PF)

*
On founding the Highlander Folk School:

"I knew I was going to do something in adult education in the mountains all along, but I didn't know what form it would take, how to go about it." (MH)

"I didn't know what I knew. But I kept talking about it and thinking about it, and that experience was kind of tucked away, not right up front. It was there in my psych, always nagging at me, but I couldn't quite get at it. The reason I couldn't get at it was because I was trying to fit things into the traditional way of doing things. I couldn't see how this was a part of anything that I knew anything about and I couldn't quite bring myself to think there were ways of doing things outside the system... It didn't really ring a bell very loud. The bell was ringing but was very low, and when it would start ringing I'd kind of cover it up so I wouldn't have to listen to it, because I didn't understand it." (MH)

*

Find details here.

Learning To Love You More by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher

"Think of something encouraging you often tell yourself. For example: Everything will be ok. Or: Don't listen to them. Or: It'll blow over. Now make a banner, making sure to follow these instructions:

1. Draw each letter of the sentence on a large piece of colored construction paper or big squares of fabric. One letter per piece. Draw them blocky so you can cut them out.
2. Cut them out.
3. Glue each one onto a piece of construction paper or fabric that is a contrasting color.
4. Then glue the edges of all the pieces of paper or fabric together to make a banner.
5. Hang the banner in a place where you or someone else might need some encouragement, for example, across your bathroom. Or between two trees so that you and your neighbors can receive encouragement from it. Or in a gas station."










Find details here.

The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear by Paul Loeb

"Find people to be with who share your values and commitments, and who also have a sense of humor."
-Howard Zinn-

*

"I believe people exist to be enjoyed... as the ocean or drifting clouds might be."
-Alice Walker-

*

On how daydreaming improves efficiancy, assists creativity and regulates emotions:

"We are not computers, not machines. We have more in common with flowers than microchips."
-Rose Marie Berger-

*

"I often wondered whether it is right to scream when you are beaten and trampled underfoot... I decided that it is better to scream... It is a man's way of leaving a trace, of telling people how he lived and died. By his screams he asserts his right to live... silence is the real crime against humanity."
-Nadezhda Mandelstam-

*

"Hope is folding paper cranes even when your hands get cramped and your eyes tired, working past blisters and paper cuts, simply because something in you insists on opening its wings."
-Elizabeth Barrette-

*

A note scribbled in the margins of a line that reads "Hope is not the same as optimism."

Optimism is a perspective. Hope is a practice. Optimism as a way of seeing the world, and hope as a way of walking the world.




Find details here.

Disguised As A Poem: My Years Teaching at San Quentin by Judith Tannenbaum

"Hold onto what it is you want to do and, at the very same time, let go of all assumptions that you're going to get it done in the way you first planned."

*

"I discovered that prisoners responded as I did to poems: as though they'd received bread, actual matter with the power to nourish."

*

"In many ways, this self-doubt gave birth to me as a writer. For in writing words down on paper, or making up stories in my head, I could see what I saw without also considering someone else's point of view or having to explain myself clearly... In my imagination,. I was free from interference."

*

"...Elmo didn't mean to challenge me. I had handed him the role of censor when, in fact, what my body interpreted as attacks, Elmo intended as invitations. Elmo wanted me to respond with my truth, to do my part to bridge the gap between us... what I perceived as a roadblock, he intended as an avenue for approach."

*

Find details here.

A Simpler Way by Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers

"A french biologist describes the process of creating living things as bricolage - assembling parts and items in complicated arrangements, not because they fit some ideal design, but just because they are possible."

*

"Too often we interpret refusual as resistance. We say that people innately resist change. But the resistance we experience from others is not to change itself. It is to the particular process of change that believes in imposition rather than creation. It is the resistance of a living system to being treated as a non-living thing. It is an assertion of the system's right to create. It is life insisting on its primary responsibility to create itself."

*

"We encourage others to change only if we honor who they are now, We ourselves engage in change only as we discover that we might be more of who we are by becoming something different."

*

"How do we create organizations that stay alive?"

"Rigidly certain organizations die early. They collapse from the weight of the structures they've erected to hold themselves up. If, as individuals we rigidify ourselves, we suffer the same fate. But there are other organizations with identities that are clear but curious. They explore the world by understanding who they are but inquiring about who also they might be...Structures are more temporary; they come and go to fit the demands of the present. Clear at their core, curious about their future, these organizations develop expansionary range."

*

"We are naturally suited to be partners. The invitation to join with life will restore us to the world and evoke what is best about us."

*

"Once individuals link together they become something different... Relationships change us, reveal us, evoke more from us.

*

"The environment is invented by our presence in it."

*

"It looks like a mess. It is a mess. And from the mess, a system appears that works."

*

"Life always organizes as networks of relationships, spinning dense webs that can't be disentangled. As we organize, we keep inquiring into the quality of our relationships. How much access do we have to one another? How much truth exists among us? Who else needs to be in the room?"

*

"How many of us work in organizations that fulfill our desires? How many of us feel supported in our need to connect and create? Our organizations rarely reflect our need for meaning, connection and growth. Yet we continue to create new organizations because of our human need to be more, to do more. We notice possibilities. We notice one another, we see a need which calls us to respond, and we organize. Can organizations learn to sustain the engergy and desire that called them into being? Can organizations learn how to support us as self-organizing?

*

"People want to love their organizations. 'Love.' writes Catholic theologian David Steindl-Rast 'is saying yes to belonging'
... if we agree to belong, we will feel called to new ways of living.

*

"Here is another place from which to contemplate a simpler way. Stability is found in freedom - not in conformity or compliance. "

*

"Life organizes around identity. Every living thing acts to develop and preserve itself."

*

Find details here.

Better Together : Restoring the American Community by Robert D. Putnam

"Reweaving [social webs] will also depend on our ability to create new spaces for recognition, reconnection, conversation and debate."

*

"One often underestimated technique for creating new identities and bridging social distance, as well as for helping to create social capital in other ways, is telling stories."

*

"A community of practice-- refers to informal groups of people who share knowledge and support one another in their common work. These are relationships with a purpose."

*

"A good third place makes few demands on the people who gather there... A third place is a neutral ground where people from different walks of like in the community can meet and get to know one another, having in common perhaps only their desire to frequent this particular place."

*

"Managing the spirit of the program and the close connection and constant communication that characterize it now will become harder as the program expands."

*

A Case Study on Do Something:

"Everyone has experienced the supposedly open discussions manipulated toward a predetermined outcome, the supervisor who welcomes all ideas as long as they coincide with his own, the language of empowerment used to disguise control....

When you start coaching in Do Something you have to back off. That's the hardest part if you're a teacher and used to being in charge.... Let young people lead is the mantra repeated again and again...

adults... contribute... from the sidelines rather than from the field."

*

Find details here.

The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography by Katharine Harmon

Find details here.