Pedagogy & Praxis

In which a young leftist flounders in grad school and beyond.

[pedagogyandpraxis]

More Setbacks

So, I had a minor stroke which has diminished my ability to read. Basically, I have a visual field cut in the upper right quadrant of both of my eyes. This makes focusing on the page difficult. Quite a blow for any student, especially in the humanities. Lately, this new disability has only inspired me to laze around, play video games, and just not care. 

I now have the assistance of student disability services, which are frankly quite scant; however, my profs have been very understanding and patient. I hope this lasts. I don’t know how much longer I will. I’ve been considering withdrawing unit I feel I am up to the task of serious study again, but I’m not sure when that will be. Perhaps when my health issues seem more clearly in order...but on the other hand I feel I should not abandon my cohort of capable, supportive peers. I’m just feeling quite lost and directionless after major, traumatic health problems that may require more soul searching than I had expected. 

I only know that teaching is the most fulfilling occupation I’ve had the privilege to have. Otherwise, Battlefield 1 seems to be the only thing that is keeping my interest currently. Cheers. 

[pedagogyandpraxis]

Semester 2

Well, didn’t do so well with the updates on the teaching life. To put simply, I couldn’t have been employed in a more fulfilling or exciting position. Challenging, engaging, and inspiring, I feel like I at least made a cursory impact on a group of bright, engaged freshman students. By the end of the semester, most of my students had become personally and politically invested in current events, and controversies including DAPL, Edward Snowden, BLM, and the fight for Planned Parenthood. The resistance I faced from one student was an ongoing battle that would involve the sanity and patience of all of his classmates, but regardless, his strong writing and tact kept him in check, regardless of his (perhaps) misinformed views on women’s rights (among other things).  Unfortunately. I had to take two incompletes for Fall 2016 after becoming deathly ill and being hospitalized for 12 days with extremely high blood pressure, and kidney bleeding. I’m dong fine now, but there was a real scare and the threat of lupus loomed. Now, a full time grad student, unemployed (my second semester of the teaching gig was nixed by low enrollment) with a massive incomplete paper on queer pedagogy left to finish atop all other course work...I guess I’ve got my work cut out for me, as they say. Here’s to a healthy and productive semester, I guess. 

[daisycomedaisygo]

Today, in Arcata, CA. Arcatans protesting the president elect. (featuring therapy dogs brought along)

People walking together. People holding eachother, together. We are the other - we are one, together.

[the-new-montagnards-blog]

A manifesto for the Leftism of the future

[xx-eugenedebs420-xx]

Woody Guthrie - All You Fascists Bound To Lose

[pedagogyandpraxis]

November 12, 2016

I’m still too distracted and despondent to work on school (both my assignments and communicating with my students or thinking about their work).

My professors have given me some leniency, considering all that’s happened. On one hand, I feel like my academic work and burgeoning as an educator is more important than ever, but on the other, I feel like I’m romanticizing my privileged position and potential influence. However, the compassion and political engagement of my students (Especially concerning DAPL and BLM) is moving.

I was sitting at my desk on Thursday, weeping, wondering how the hell I will continue on, both as student and teacher for the rest of the semester. I feel like everything we’ve discussed in class (rhetoric, democracy, resistance) has been pathetically deflated in our hands like a punctured black balloon.

Despite my feelings of immobility and paralysis…I’m beginning to feel the creative, burning itch. I only hope I can get through this semester.

I ask now, the eternal question, “What is to be done?”

[drunp-archive-deactivated201711]

[spongebob-daily]

[pedagogyandpraxis]

Grad school life

[grahamjoncas]

When one evening the linguistic philosopher Noam Chomsky remarked at dinner in Trinity College that the foundations of his theory of language were «fundamentally unknowable aspects of the mind,» Sraffa commented sharply: «Then how can you talk about it?»

John Eatwell, “Piero Sraffa: Seminal Economic Theorist 1898-1983,” Science & Society, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), pp. 211-216 (via fuckyeahpierosraffa)

[class-struggle-anarchism]

Anarchism and Multiculturalism

Uri Gordon

This chapter examines anarchist approaches to ethno-cultural difference , offering three main arguments. The first is that anarchists were early and consistent opponents of racism and imperialism, both in advanced capitalist countries and in the colonial and post-colonial world, reflecting the movement’s transnational connections and internationalist outlook. While anarchists remain at the front lines of anti-racist and anti-colonial politics worldwide, the universalist terms in which their predecessors constructed their cosmopolitanism have come into question, as anarchists increasingly express intersectionalist critiques of domination with distinct post-colonial and poststructuralist resonances.

In L. Cordeiro-Rodrigues and M. Simendic, eds. 2015. Philosophies of Multiculturalism: Beyond liberalism, London: Routledge

[fullpraxisnow]

“Hard work causes stress, poor health and early death – above all, it has never solved poverty. We work longer hours now than we’ve done for fifty years, yet the gap between the rich and poor has never been wider. Working hard cannot solve an economic crisis. The fact we are all expected to work so hard is in fact a result of economic crisis: a crisis that did not appear in 2008, but has been with us far longer. This is the crisis at the heart of capitalism: a tension between the 1 percent who control the economy, and want to continually increase their wealth, and the rest of us, who are expected to work ever harder, in order to generate profit and to keep us from occupying our time in meaningful ways like questioning or challenging the status quo.”

– Selina Todd | Strike! Magazine: Fuck Your Hard Work

[dailymarx]

people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act.

Marx - The German Ideology 1845 (via dailymarx)

[pedagogyandpraxis]

My cat is also feeling overwhelmed

[public-rhetoric]

the language varieties deemed inferior in the United States (so much so that they are often dismissed not simply as inferior varieties but not as varieties at all–just as conglomerations of slang, street talk, or poor English) tend to be the languages whose origins can be traced to periods in American history when communities of racially oppressed people used these languages to enact agency. It is no coincidence that the languages spoken by racially oppressed people are considered to be inferior in every respect to the languages spoken predominantly by those who wield systemic power: namely, middle- and upper-class white people.

Laura Greenfield, “The ‘Standard English’ Fairy Tale: A Rhetorical Analysis of Racist Pedagogies and Commonplace Assumptions about Language Diversity” (via public-rhetoric)

[pedagogyandpraxis]

As much as I attempt to refrain from exposing my social/political views in the classroom, it seems students want to know. I guess that's what office hours are for.

[continuums]

Central, too, is the recognition that politics cannot be separated from the pedagogical force of culture. Pedagogy should provide the theoretical tools and resources necessary for understanding how culture works as an educational force, how public education connects to other sites of pedagogy, and how identity, citizenship, and agency are organized through pedagogical relations and practices. Rather than being viewed as a technical method, pedagogy must be understood as a moral and political practice that always presupposes particular renditions of what constitutes legitimate knowledge, values, citizenship, modes of understanding, and views of the future.

Henry Giroux and Susan Searls Giroux, “Corporate Culture versus Public Education and Democracy: A Call for Critical Pedagogy”

In other words: teaching is important. How you teach and what you teach are both important. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in response to the recent violence our nation has seen and what my role ought to be in responding to it. I hope to have some more concrete ideas to implement in my classroom this fall and to write about in my dissertation. If nothing else, as a teacher of writing, I’m encouraged by how much good writing – professional, personal, informal, well-researched, all of it – I’ve seen in recent weeks. 

(via continuums)

[pedagogyandpraxis]

Fall Semester: Week 1

After a week of instruction, I am pleased to report that I suffered 0 on-the-job anxiety attacks and have a renewed feeling of confidence for this semester as an over-encumbered grad student (and Assistant Teacher). I am also more pleased to have a classroom of 24 students who are at least functional and engaged enough at 8 in the morning to keep me on my toes. I treated myself to a fancy double-insulated coffee mug to 

Monday played out like the usual first-day scenario. Introductions, distribution of syllabi and what I consider a sweet bribe in the form of two dozen donuts. The students seem friendly enough, and only a handful of bulky athlete types who insisted on firm, masculine handshakes. Two or three students seem to have begun nuzzling their way to my favor...and much to my delighted surprise have discussed pronouns with me. I attempted to make abundantly clear that identification/identity politics/social justice is seriously important to me and this course, and will do whatever I can to ensure a sustainably safe, yet coalition-style classroom. After briefly covering what was on the syllabus and receiving frightened-freshman questions concerning textbooks, I let them out 25 minutes shy of the class’s scheduled end. 

On Wednesday, things got good. I showed a School of Life video from Youtube on the topic of personal identity, after which requested an informal in-class writing on students’ thoughts of the video and subject matter. After writing, a productive group discussion followed (after some gentle nudging for participation) went smoothly. Personal, relevant stories of family and difficulties navigating the world, paired with existential pontifications on identity after death were stimulating for me to hear, even as a minimally-involved facilitator. I could tell that the same students willing (and ready) to speak up on Monday would likely become the ones I’d soon depend on to encourage their peers to participate in large class discussions. I was surprised that we were nearing the 50 minute mark on the clock, and prompted a conclusion, and that the students were free to go, only after turning in their in-class writings. 

By Friday, I could tell a feeling of mutual exhaustion pervaded the classroom, but was committed to continue the conversation of identity--this time, complicating things with the ideas of intersectionality and privilege. After watching 2 short Buzzfeed videos, I asked the class to write in response to three questions: 

What is Privilege?

Why is Privilege relevant in our discussion of identity?

Why is Privilege important to think about or discuss at all?

After writing for ten minutes or so, I divided students into groups and asked them to review their peers’ writing and to begin the process of peer revision. Well, it was a good idea, but what actually happened were about 6 conversations about privilege within the small groups. I didn’t see much text-tweaking, but felt their discussions were on topic and resisted intervening. I guess we’ll get to the nitty gritty on writing soon enough...