On Pedagogical Manipulation

This is one of those articles that caught my attention for mysterious reasons. I decided to put it aside and look for other articles of interest that I could see myself responding to, and while they were there, I came back. Maybe it’s the discussion of manipulation, or the idea that there are teachers out there who are introverted like me. That the writer had to “trick” himself into being more outgoing for the sake of a successful classroom. That, like I do all the time with my kids, you have to kinda manipulate the students too. It works! But it’s not easy. These are things I think about all the time.

He also speaks of the merits of intrinsic motivation but that it’s not necessarily something that happens right away. I’ve read some Alfie Kohn and he preaches with fervor against the carrot and stick method. I can’t help but agree with him, but I’m no student whisperer.  How do you do that? I’m not sure I have enough faith. I’ve been through enough crises of faith. I’ve lost my faith–but I’ve gained it back, too. And that in myself.

This faith thing–it’s pretty central here. Faith enough to walk into a classroom under-prepared. Faith enough to assign a book you’ve never read before. I’ve read similar edicts recently: “make sure you don’t ignore the lines of a poem you don’t understand. Learn it with your students.” There are few things scarier, but again it makes sense.

Consider this:

“I might, for example, sit cross-legged on the desk at the front of the room or take off my shoes while scrawling notes on the chalkboard, not to be comfortable but to convey something to my students about the need for making the classroom a comfortable space.”

This is how I see myself. I see myself sitting comfortably on a chair (one leg tucked beneath the other) while talking with the class. I see myself without shoes on. I see moon chairs and old, raggedy lazy boys and couches in the room to create a comfortable space for reading and group activities. I’ve never been one for formal wear, though I will when it’s necessary. Like before I’m tenured, ha!

I want to be willing to learn with them, to not be the expert (though that’s because I certainly do not feel like one–and that frightens me). I want us to be on a more equal level. I want to be the authority figure in the room, but not the dictator. I won’t be the asshole who won’t move on deadlines or refuses to listen to the student even if they’ve done this a million times before (easier said than done, eh?) because what about when these kids get a job, huh?! I refuse, right now, to believe that I’m there to ready these kids for “the real world.” That’s not my job as I see it.

This manipulation called for here also demands a teacher’s honesty if there is to be communication and a relationship. An investment that will have a return. It calls for welcoming the kind of critical thinking not necessarily taught or accepted anymore. It calls for an admittance, a vulnerability found in not always being the expert. I mean, besides not knowing everything about English or teaching, I grew up with the Internet, I’ve watched it expand–yes, but I don’t keep up with it to the extent that these kids will or do. They will have ideas. They will know more about me in some areas. I will need to trust them as I need them to trust me. There is a relationship to build. It’s the students’ classroom, too. They need to know that.

For introverted people like me, the digital world is often a far, far more comfortable place to negotiate and communicate. I can see how it would open up many doors for students and teachers alike. To remind us of the quote above, Jesse writes that the classroom ought to be a comfortable space, a place that embraces change, and further that “we should be reflective about how that change occurs.” In no other place does change occur so rapidly than in digital space.

That said, how do you take your shoes off and sit in a relaxed manner in front of the students, or even dress casually when they cannot see you (I guess I’m thinking of a MOOC, here)? A lot of that would have to be expressed through text and through other methods. It’s not impossible, and I’m sure it could be just as influential. There are always ways to chill.  There’s always a way to mess with the binary that is forever present that will invite students into a space where their motivation will be more apt to “mature” or “migrate” itself from extrinsic to intrinsic.

This is what I hope to do. All of it. I guess it was an inspirational kind of read. That’s reason enough, yes?

First, I need to apologize. I was gross and germy and basically 99% out of commission this weekend.

And I forgot. Heh.

So, adolescents, identities, and literacies. It’s everywhere. It’s in the magazines they read, the bands they listen to (and advertise on their cars, their backpacks, their binder covers). It’s in the shirts they wear, the way they wear their hair. It’s in the television shows they watch, the extra-curricular activities they’re involved in. It’s in their Facebook account.

Basically, how they relate to and respond to pop culture. For many kids, I’d feel safe to assume this also included things of a more serious nature, such as politics and social issues. Not to minimize such things, but it does play a part.

Bronwyn Williams’s article “What South Park Character are You?” (I think I was Stan–snooore) brought a lot of this home, though he does unwittingly date himself with his focus on MySpace.

Please, Mr. Williams, that’s so seven years ago.

He discusses how pop culture has found itself in technology–the Internet, specifically–almost transcribing itself from the paper of magazines and books and even brick and mortar stores of yesteryear. They create ways for adolescents to create symbols of their identity, often intertextual–amalgamating images, music, words to create multi-layered messages of who we are–messages that reach audiences both intended and unintended, and are thus interpreted in a number of ways. This includes the issue of geography on social media sites, such as My Space but to a lesser degree, Facebook. For those on Pinterest: which boards are displayed at the top? Which at the bottom? Why “like” a pin but not repin it? And so on.

I thought of memes during the entire article, during all of my group’s discussions because, truly, this is the way to express identity in an almost safe environment. How else could we admit to our socially awkward crimes unless there are a ton of other people who are just as awkward as we are? And, ohmygod, there are other short people out there experiencing the same bullshit I am? Amazing!

What do our favorite memes say about us? Do we understand all of the layers of references within them, and how much does it matter if we do or don’t?

But the real question: to what degree do the kids understand this? Williams seems to think that they are–until you reach the point of geography. Did they mean to put that quote next to that image? It’s not just with Pinterest, either, but even on Facebook–which quote do I put first? The funny Gilmore Girls one (“Well you don’t want a communal naked guy nowadays, you know. It’s too sketchy”) or the thought-provoking Alfie Kohn quote about the concern we ought to have when we no longer have an idea but the idea has us? On Twitter–what do we tweet about? What don’t we tweet about? WHO IS MY AUDIENCE?! Public versus private identities. Who do I want them to think I am? Is it okay for these people to know I have the mouth of a sailor?

Further, these ideas of organization and consideration of placement and logistics and rhetoric and audiences all relate to English, to writing. The understanding of intertextual references inherent in things such as memes, understanding the implications of quote or picture placement is all about how we read, the intricacies within, the depth and richness of everything.

There’s absolutely a way to connect it all. I hadn’t thought of that yet. Perhaps an assignment or project based on identity could be an incognito lesson in writing well.

 

 

<fangirl>

It just occurred to me that someone–gasp!–might not know who John Green is  (you need to know. He’s a best-selling YA author who has written Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines and his latest book that WILL WRECK YOU and have you coming back for more, The Fault in Our Stars). That’s right, I put a link to every one of those books. That’s because you need to go read. Now. He has the most beautiful lines. “I fell in love the way you fall asleep. Slowly, and then all at once.”

Right? That one’s from Fault. Then, from Paper Towns, “What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”

To the original intent of this post: NCTE’s English Journal published an interview with John Green. (if the person who posted this first on Dr. Kittle’s class site is also in our class, thanks!) While the whole interview is not on literacy, a question on the whole “literacy crisis” issue does come up. I’m falling in love with this man. Just the other day, a teacher in the school I’m observing at dismissed the idea that teens are reading nearly as much as they ought to be. Maybe there’s some truth to what she said, but the dismissal kind of bothered me. I hear it all the time. It’s that whole thing–what you expect tends to come true.

ANYWAY, the question is at the bottom left on page 69: “What do you feel are the greatest challenges that stand in the way of increasing readership among young adults? How do you feel that everyone in the educational community (writers, teachers, parents, and so forth) can encourage young adults to read nowadays?”

I don’t know to what degree I can quote, but he basically states “Actually I think teens read a lot more than they did even ten years ago. They’re always on the internet reading statuses, websites, etc. I also think the pidgin stuff they write is language/real writing. The problem is that they’re not reading critically.”

Seriously, go read if you get the chance. If you aren’t a member of NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), you can access the article through the school’s computers. “Literature is Not a Cold, Dead Place: An Interview with John Green.”

</fangirl>

I’m not a gamer. I admit it. But I’m hearing more and more how important and beneficial video games can be academically and personally, and I’ve been interested in how (mostly because I’m not a gamer, ha). It’s not a shocker to hear that video games are a very large part of so many lives. It’s not a stretch to think that video games, in whatever form, is already a part of education and will increasingly be a part of education.

So I’m reading James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy.

Our group took the eight chapters and broke them up amongst our group (skipping the second chapter, on recommendation), having everyone also read chapters 1 and 8. The chapters I took a look at were 3 (“Learning and Identity: What does it mean to be a half-elf?”) and 4 (“Situated Meaning and Learning: What should you do after you have destroyed the global conspiracy?”).

This book immediately presents itself to me—not directly, but obvious still—as a pedagogical book. But I’m an education student, and I find myself seeing everything as pedagogical lately. So that’s the lens I’m reading this through. That said, it takes a bit of effort to take his application to video games and derive a more general application to literacy. In short: so what for non-gamers in school? It’s not as if we’re going to make school itself a video game (yet). I don’t know how much fun that’d be for me and others like me.

Who knows, though.

…I just deleted a ton of stuff. It was way sleepy.

Basically, to keep my readers awake, I’ll just say this: we need to learn how to appreciate/read video games to learn more ways to be better teachers.

Gee reads video games in ways many of us do not. He sees identity. He sees the real potential for the (re)appropriation of literacy and learning–or that it could be to the classroom if we did more than dismiss it.

Especially for those of us who don’t really get it, we need to know what keeps kids playing. And while there are girls who play, most players are boys and boys can be the most difficult to keep seated and engaged. So we need to know what it is about video games that keeps this kids engaged and what we can take and apply to how we think about them and teach them.

I have two boys. All they do is move—except when they’re playing.

Give them choices. Let them make mistakes and try again, to be better. Let them have a sense of pride of who they are and the work they do. Give them “levels” of achievement from beginner to master. Encourage intrinsic awards (holla, Alfie Kohn!)

Make it seem real. Gee talks about a game, Deus Ex (which sounds awesome), that really encourages choice and personal responsibility and, at the same time, just sounds awesome. Your choices have consequences, but once and if you fail, you can go back and try the other way. Isn’t that what life is? Isn’t that what we want as teachers—a kind of reflection? It’s not as if, when we fail in real life, we actually die. Usually. Isn’t that critical thinking? We learn from our mistakes, or so I’ve heard (don’t tell a perfectionist that).

When we give ourselves or our students something to read, shouldn’t they have some understanding of what they’re reading first before they read them? Maybe a walk-through? I can’t understand manuals until I have the vernacular down, and I’m generally uninterested until I know what I’m getting into. Until then my brain goes into shock and I call my husband or the handyman. Nobody got time for dat.

Background, intertextual knowledge, yo. Like he says, “Academic language, like the language in the Deus Ex booklet, is not really lucid or meaningful if one has no embodied experiences within which to situate its meanings in specific ways” (103).

To bring that home, I’ll bet many of you don’t know what he means by “embodied experiences.” If that’s the case, I’ll bet that sentence doesn’t make as much sense, and you might have just tossed it. Whatever, right? What he means is that you have to have context, background knowledge, to really understand what the hell you’re reading. And typically—this is just me—giving a kid a straight up definition doesn’t do it. It doesn’t matter. He says that generalized meanings aren’t productive. I still struggle with what he means by “embodied.” I keep thinking “disembodied” and then I’m thinking of ghosts and voices.

Teach the kids to act and talk like knowers, Gee recommends. Build up their knowledge and meanings of things through multimodal ways. Give things and technologies and tools a way to “store” knowledge. Let them practice—but, and this is just me and my friends speaking, that rote stuff ain’t practice. It’s frustratingly boring.

Seriously, this sounds more exciting writing about it (not that it wasn’t cool reading about it, but processing it this way is helpful).