Children's collaborations in art

My creative identity began to change as I entered middle school, and the change was even more apparent as I entered high school. This resulted from painful criticism from outsiders and desire to assimilate, to make friends and to be liked. I remember, on several occasions, when my dad erased something I drew, and redrew it “correctly.” I wish that he would have drawn what he was talking about separately, instead of erasing my picture, even if my version was terrible according to his standards. This quickly squelched a good deal of my artistic expression. I transformed from an uninhibited, unabashed creator into an introverted, self-conscious observer. Rhoda Kellogg’s words resonate with me:
The prejudice against child art is part of the prejudice against the mind of the child. Each adult can recall his own schooling, when he was made aware of his inadequate (though potentially adequate) physical and mental capacities. In later years, it is difficult for him to respect the activities or art of child. (p. 68)
I am grateful for my experiences/opportunities growing up, and for my
parents. Reflecting on my artistic experiences in childhood helps me to be aware of the power I have over students, and my children. I am surprised at how passionately I feel as I recall these memories. Art was a very important part of my life for a long time, and I hope it will become even more important. I married an art teacher/artist because I never wanted to let go of that part of my life. Kevin’s positive, supportive attitude helps me to reconsider what I feel I am capable of doing, and to reevaluate when I thought I knew. I believe that art has important implications on children’s literacy learning, and that it rarely is credited for its benefits in learning. I am excited to learn more about the marriage between arts and literacy.

Moral Panics in panicky times

Moral Panics in panicky times
Although the term ‘moral panic’ was coined in 1972, the idea behind moral panics has been around for hundreds of years- the idea of challenging traditional values. Moral panics are related to power struggles, in a Foucaultian sense. A moral panic is something that society is concerned about, and feels a need for protection of children exposed to some kind of threat. Society then takes divided, polarized sides for and against the threat. “Folk devils” are a threat, and the general consensus must oppose the ‘threat.’ Action against the ‘folk devils’ is often extreme, but the general interest in each moral panic is usually fleeting, (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994).

These moral panics are driven by fear, which compares to the fear that many Americans feel about different ways to die. For example, even though heart disease is the number one killer in the US, people are often more fearful of other ways to die.

Girls’ agency in South Africa: Photovoice
What did these girls find dangerous?
The girls took a photograph of the football players’ lodgings and explained that the football players could abuse girls. The social media used football players as voices against rape, but in fact, many of them were the perpetrators. Some of the girls took pictures of toilets because that could be a place where they could be raped both because it is a public and a private place. The girls wanted to create videos about gender harassment and violence.
Aboriginal youth in Canada created an empowering video that also sent the message that one out of four Aboriginal people have HIV.

Gender and children’s production preferences

Kid play not-quite-museum David Sirota Back to our future, play matters meditations on the history of neuroscience of play What is play?
Pleasure- poise, surprise, strength, anticipation, understanding

Gender and children’s production preferences
When I offered the specials class, “Beaded narrative,” I expected to see mainly girls enroll in the class. I imagined that girls would encourage their friends to sign up together so that they could make jewelry and talk about “girl issues.” To my surprise, more boys enrolled for the class than girls, probably because these kids are just much more creative thinkers than I am. They are creating headbands, small toys, as well as jewelry; rings, earrings, necklaces, etc. The work that students are doing to create their own unique projects often has a problem solving nature. I am interested in learning from the students how they navigate the “gender-playing field,” since they are working with volatile materials- mostly shiny glass seed beads. There are also large glass beads, some that look like gemstones, but so far, only a few girls have attempted to work with these materials.
Zach- first, hacky sack, then became unhappy with it after a mistake, then began a different patterned project
Jeff- multicolored loom work, all different colors of beads, even big pink beads
Mike- blue and green “v/x” pattern, that represents his time at CLC so that he will remember certain things once he is in high school
Lily- star rings for herself and her sister, where star represents the North star that guided Harriet Tubman to lead people to freedom
Greg- loomwork
Brian- blue/silver patterned loomwork
Madison- chain earrings, necklaces
Chris- duct tape bowties, domino crown & necklace,
Miranda- loomwork
Christina- pink & purple right angle weave
Alice- metal chain necklaces with large glass beads
Colin- New York Yankees logo loomwork

children, play and learning

children, play and learning

I am curious about how children’s consumption practices relate to children’s learning. Marketers put a great deal of money, time and effort into market research with children-as-consumers, although they may argue that they do too little. In schools, administration often mandates a great deal of testing of a very different nature. A minimal amount of advertising appears in school curricula, but that is beside the point. Even though academic early childhood programs key in on play as a step toward active learning, students in most general public schools arguably have few opportunities to play while they are learning, and these playful opportunities tend to diminish as students age. In a materialist culture, companies begin to commodify learning through high-end learning-playthings. Does the high cost of these learning playthings widen the performance gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots?” Schools that have access to parent-support groups with higher socio-economic statuses (SES) will undoubtedly have an advantage over families with lower SES through better materials, superior building structures, lower student-teacher ratios, and likely, more access to play places and manipulatives (Kozol, 2005). Of course, many teachers who work in low SES schools work hard to provide play spaces and materials in learning activities, but are often limited by inferior physical environments and materials. While there is a great deal of academic research on play in early childhood, why is play missing from school programs, when it is something that kids really need? By rejecting naptime and playtime in schools, are institutions ‘rejecting’ the child’s body, and instead, only focusing on the child’s head?

The discursive politics of consumer socialization

The work that I intend to do in the classroom represents an attempt to bring children away from consumer culture, and to present them with an opportunity to act as producers. Of course, I realize that we are using commercially produced, imported glass beads, thread and beading needles, but I see these materials as media for the students to use to create their own original art. So far, I have seen an interesting mix of influences on students’ artwork. Many works contain students’ original design ideas, while a few works contain elements of popular culture icons, like the New York Yankees’ logo. Another student has a plan to make a beaded hacky sack by weaving beads into a warp of embroidery floss, because he wants to have his own hacky sack. I have yet to see fully (if there is ever a possibility to see anything fully!) how consumption of advertised products affects students’ creativity in production.
What does discretionary consumption, or teaching children to want something that parents or teachers want for them, have to do with my work? How are the tasks that I am asking students to do affecting their autonomy over their own ideas for their projects? How does the presentation of materials affect what ideas they conceive? How does this project facilitate, or not facilitate learning, socialization, self-expression or natural pleasure in the classroom?

Beats, bad girls and rock and roll

I found myself relating to the ideas presented in the Breines article, The other fifties: Beats, bad girls and rock and roll. The women in my family had consistently bought into the quintessential stay-at-home-mom role, and those who went on to higher education worked for a short time as teachers, and later, as substitute teachers or paraprofessional teachers. The male influences in my family worked mainly in the military in some capacity, and my dad dabbled in art, which was always one of my intense interests. Rock music, particularly alternative rock music, was a major influence beginning in my pre-teen and teenage years. Breines highlighted many reasons why music with “black” R&B influences impacted young beatnik women’s choices in music, fashion and romantic interests. These girls’ interests and choices seem to parallel my own music and fashion preferences as a young teen. Alternative rock music offered access to important issues affecting humanity that I craved, illustrated with such a range of emotion that I identified with. The musicians behind the music represented potentials dangerous, grown men, who actually posed no threat to me in reality. These musicians, however, represented the kinds of men that my father rejected, especially as the sorts of men that I should look toward as examples. Breines identifies the complicated reasons why teens of the 1950s looked up to musicians of their time for reasons of independence, rebellion, and to learn about serious issues, and these reasons do not seem so different from the reasons why I had such an insatiable thirst for alternative rock of the 1990s.

Spatial practices in “the century of the child”

The integration of outdoor school seemed to diminish over time, from my public school experience, and even more into my public school teaching experiences. In Elementary school, I remember visiting “Camp Schmidt,” an outdoor school owned and run by Prince George’s County Public Schools in mid/southern Maryland. In fifth grade, all PG County students looked forward to an extended stay at Camp Schmidt for about a week of ecological education, team building, and most of all, running through the “Confidence Course,” a challenging obstacle course that ended in a zipline. Boys and girls stayed overnight for several nights in separate lodgings. In high school, my older brother’s freshman class visited Camp Schmidt in 1996 for an overnight stay, but after some of the boys snuck over to the girls’ bunks, our school cancelled all further trips to Camp Schmidt. Was this decision due to behavior that had never happened before? In the history of Camp Schmidt, had no campers ever tried to visit campers of the opposite gender? Was it due in part to race, as students from our high school were generally non-white?
This year, the PG County school system has closed Camp Schmidt, allegedly due to budgetary constraints, however, I wonder if this decision was politically driven. In the last 30-40 years, PG county has undergone “white flight,” moving from a generally white population to 90% non-white today. Do the privileges or expectations of/for non-white students, particularly males, differ from those expectations for whites? Why was it important for students to experience outdoor, camp-like education 30 years ago, but today it is so unimportant that it has to be cut from a school’s budget? Is the current school culture so different from past school cultures, that outdoor school is no longer for these students?