"Teach Them Well and Let Them Lead the Way"
For many years, my school district hosted an annual Academic Diversity Institute prior to the start of the new school year. At this institute, teachers had the opportunity to hear speakers and attend seminars that taught about and encouraged the implementation of new teaching strategies and methods in the classroom. The theme of the 2012 institute was "Reaching All: Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century." The keynote speaker at the 2012 institute reinforced many of the concepts and arguments that I had studied in my graduate school cohort program, from which I had graduated just three months earlier. As I listened to the keynote speaker, her words really resonated with me, further confirming my belief that the integration of technology in the 21st century classroom is critical to helping students to be academically successful, both in the present and in the future.
The keynote speaker tugged at my heartstrings through her incorporation of Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All". It is the song that my dad and I had danced to for our Father/Daughter dance at my wedding a year earlier. Although there is a very personal reason why my dad and I chose this song for our special dance, much of the meaning that he and I both share in connection with this song also carries over into my beliefs as a classroom teacher. My own analysis of Houston's lyrics further supports my belief about the importance of technology in the classroom.
"I believe the children are our future," as past and current generations have shown that they will be who shapes the workplace environment once they become the majority of the population. "Teach them well and let them lead the way" in how they will acquire, master, and utilize knowledge. "Show them all the beauty they possess inside" in order to intrinsically motivate them to want to learn. "Give them a sense of pride to make it easier" for them to find their own meaning in the standards that they must master in order to pass a particular course. "Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be" when we ourselves were students (Whitney Houston, "Greatest Love of All").
That last line in particular reminds me of how excited I was to use Ask Jeeves for the first time in my 9th grade Regional World Studies class in order to do research on the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. At the time, Ask Jeeves was a newly developed research tool on the Internet. My own memory of this experience reinforces the need for teachers to not only continuously learn about and incorporate new learning strategies and methods, but to also serve as a guide on the side of student learning and to let students find meaning in their own learning.
Whitney Houston
"Greatest Love of All"
August 2012
Kathryn Thayer, Social Studies Teacher
teach-them-well-let-them-lead
Do Migratory Birds Also Have to Leave Their Friends Behind?
This is an image drawn by an unschooled refugee child living in a camp in the outskirts of Chtoura, Lebanon. She is from Syria but has lived in Lebanon her whole life. In this image, we see "the human" in the form of the home/structure she herself has had to leave behind, as well as in the figure of the bombs/chemicals that caused her home to no longer be inhabitable. Like the migratory birds of our lesson -- the White Crane Syrians call Abu Sa'ad (the Father of Joy) -- she views the past not as something that has been lost to her forever, but as something that returns, in cycles. Whereas for the Abu Sa'ad of Syria's skies, the trees of Ghouta return in cyclical patterns according to the season of their flight, the children of Syria return to their homes in the cyclical patterns of their dreams. Scents also evoke memories of return, which the painter here evokes with her finger prints. I was moved by the child's use of her own hands and fingers to evoke scent and affect -- of roses, bombs, fear, and hope.
<em>Ein is for Nest</em> by Nour AlBrzwy and Tory Brykalski
Monday, June 28th, 2021
Tory Brykalski, 34, gradate student and anthropologist of emergency eduction
migratory-birds-friends
Naughty Kitty
My humanities moment comes from a cartoon by American B. Kliban. My mother had a kitchen towel with the image on it, and it had been in my kitchen for as long as I could remember. When I was young, pre-kindergarten, it was one of my favorite things in the house. The image on the towel is a cartoon: a single panel image of a fat, black-and-grey tabby cat sitting on a barstool playing a guitar, singing a song about how much he loves to eat “mousies.” The cartoon feline resembled our real-life cat, Max, and I was astonished how these two cats, who looked almost exactly alike, ended up in the same house - what were the odds??
Besides the cat itself, the cartoon has four lines of song. I had my mother sing the kitty song approximately 500 million times, as young children do when they have a favorite song. The best part was the last two lines, which went into thrillingly graphic detail about how, exactly, this cat eats the mice, including which body parts to start with. When I heard the song, I felt both shock and like I was getting away with something - children are not supposed to learn about things like this! I was both delighted and horrified that my mother, who was a VERY nice lady and very good at all the things mothers are supposed to do, would intentionally expose me to such violence.
Singing the song on this towel was the first time I ever remember being conflicted about something. It forced me to grapple with what I perceived to be an inconsistency. To me, the following sentences by themselves were all true, but when you line them up, they couldn’t possibly all be true at the same time:
My mother was a good mother.
Good mothers didn’t talk about nibbling on small animal’s feet.
My mother repeatedly sang me my favorite song about nibbling on small animal’s feet.
To make matters even worse, polite girls did not sing about gruesome things, yet here I was, continually requesting it! What did that say about me? Eventually, I would learn that there are many different ideas about what “good” mothers and “polite” girls do. I learned that even if you were labeled one thing, it was ok to act in ways that might be unexpected, and that it was sometimes ok to transgress the limits I thought were there.
American B. Kliban
a Kliban cat cartoon
mid-1980's
Brandy, Graduate student
naughty-kitty
Quotidian moments
A note I wrote from April 16, 2020
From my dining room table: My two children, ages four and six, have now been at home for 35 days. Aside from waving to neighbors from our driveway and driving by a friend’s house to shout “Happy Birthday!” from the car window, they have not seen or spent time with family members, teachers, or friends.
As I write this reflection, thinking about the intersections of parenting, research, and what I would write about for this first humanities moment, I look back through photos of all of the art work my children and I made together this past year. Photos of drawings, yard signs, letters, and baby chickens in the skirts we made and decorated for them using cupcake holders (yes, that’s a thing). I have been thinking for a long time about how parenting and research are integrated together, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, and now sitting here looking at these photos of fairy houses, sun prints, and posters we made for neighbors, it seems more relevant and prescient than ever.
Madeleine Grumet (1988) posits, “Theory grows where it is planted, soaking up the nutrients in the local soil, turning to the local light” (p. 14). For myself, theory and research are planted in the intersections of motherhood, teaching, artistry, and care. They overlap and intertwine until one cannot be understood without the other. My research can not help but turn towards my children, as well as young learners in my community, especially during this uncertain time in which we’ve found ourselves. As a researcher and parent, my biggest fear is that in this wait for the return to “normalcy” we will miss the quotidian happenings that are packed with nutrients for growth and light.
In my mind, the quotidian moments of this past year, specifically the sharpened memories of making art with my kids at home, is one great, big humanities moment- a pause to refocus on what matters. I do not wish to glorify any parts of this horrible pandemic, which has affected so many and changed lives forever. However the pause, quite literally from my dining room table, and the experience of making intentional art with my kids on a daily basis was something that had been missing for quite some time. Grumet explains, “The dining room table became the locus of this research not because its design was conducive to meditations on eidetic form but because of its proximity to the lifeworld being carried on in the adjoining kitchen” (p. 5). During my time as a doctoral student, I felt that success in my academic career came with the price of failing as a mother. Although I’ve been writing and teaching about the importance of art education for many years, it was quite often neglected at home. Before the pandemic, there were many days my dining room table was (hypothetically) empty, our lives too busy to come together in this space to sit, talk, learn. But, during the days of shelter-in-place, my table truly became the locus of my life, my heart, my research. It was covered in books, art supplies, worksheets, Play-Doh, lunch: the materials of our lives. I found myself trying to be fully present to these lifeworlds, to both the human and non-human things we are surrounded by. What lessons were learned from our time making art together around our table, and how are we changed from these experiences?
Nel Noddings (2013) argues that “It is important for the young, in addition to being cared for, to see and assist in the genuine caring done by adults” (p. xiv). The more practice we all have in caregiving, the more likely it is for us to not only develop a method of caring and empathy but to also transfer this care to others. I found that intentional art-making, together, can be an act of care and empathy. I understand more fully how art-making can give young learners a language to express themselves during uncertain times, and how making art together opens up space for relationships to grow and conversations to be had.
Navigating the intersections of parenting and doctoral research is hard work and not without its share of failure. However, I feel challenged to continue to centralize myself to the lifeworlds carrying on around me, even as we move towards a return to “normal”. My hope for myself, and the reader, is that we take note of and show care for these quotidian moments we may have been overlooking for so long, even if it is something as simple as making a portrait out of leaves and flowers. These opportunities can be rich with opportunities for building relationships and finding beauty in the everyday.
References:
Grumet, M. (1988). Bitter milk: Women and teaching. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Noddings, N. (2013). Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
2020
Amber Pitt, 35, Ph.D. Candidate in Art Education, University of Georgia
quotidian-moments
Reading and its Superpowers
I cannot remember who first introduced me to the work of Roald Dahl, but it is his books that sparked a lifelong love of reading for me. I grew up as the only girl between two brothers and our house was peppered with sports equipment; our calendar was controlled by games, practices, and tournaments. We all played sports, and I was frequently the only girl on the boys’ baseball teams, in the age division, and for a long time, in the league. Off the field, I loved school, reading, and arts & crafts. So, at times, I felt a little different or out of place. Like most kids, I often wondered how to act or how to be. <br /><br />I can’t remember now exactly when I read Dahl’s <em>Matilda</em>, but I remember identifying with the storyline about a young girl who felt out of place and who found comfort in stories. She was young, but was smart; she was independent and self-sufficient. She read books far beyond her age. Eventually, she learned she could control objects with her mind and she used these powers to outsmart the terrible people around her. In short, she became a hero. <br /><br />It wasn’t that our situations were the same that I felt an affinity with Matilda – I certainly wasn’t surrounded by terrible people as she was – but I think it was because she, too, felt a little different and she too, liked to read. I loved reading before <em>Matilda</em>, but I think that story made me feel like reading could lead to superpowers. She wasn’t a boy with a cape; she couldn’t scale buildings or fly; she didn’t have some extraordinary strength (and to be fair, it wasn’t the reading that gave her her superpowers, but that is what stuck with me). Rather, she had a library card and some quiet time and a few people that believed in her. So, it was also <em>Matilda</em> that made me feel that reading curled up in the back of the school bus or sitting out recess to finish a book wasn’t something to be embarrassed of, because that’s what she did. I wanted to have the mountains of books she did; I wanted to read everything she had. <br /><br />Now, I am sure I haven’t read everything Matilda did and I have been privileged to have had no real terrible things or people to overcome personally, but one part of her story did resonate. I did stumble into some superpowers. From reading stories, I learned empathy and kindness, connection and perspective, humility and humanity. I could hear stories from other people who were not me, who did not grow up in the world I did, who did not express their stories in the same ways as I would. It isn’t only children’s books that did this and continue to do this for me, but back then, Roald Dahl and so many others started it. <br /><br />These days, I mainly read and write nonfiction. I love how language creates moments and images; I love how writers make words live together on the page. I now study essays & poems, but sometimes I still think of them as kinds of stories. And I still think reading them (or listening to them) leads to those superpowers of connection, compassion, and humanity. <br /><br />But my connection with this children’s book goes beyond that, because it has also taught me why representation is so important. All young people should be able to see themselves in a story, to have that moment of realization, identification, and inspiration. Everyone deserves to see themselves as the hero, no matter their age, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, or disability. No matter if they read themselves in a book, hear themselves in a song, or find themselves in dance, theater, or the fine arts. The ability to see glimpses of our own stories in others is important, because I think it prepares us to be open to other stories completely different than ours. For me, it started with <em>Matilda</em>. And as an adult now, I am still a woman who loves to read and who still believes in its superpowers.
Roald Dahl
<em>Matilda</em>
Bailey Boyd, 32, Ph.D Candidate
reading-superpowers