Ahhh, PhDness smells of the sweet, pollen-filled summer air. The ants are on their way to invade my house, only to join the ladybugs up on the guest room ceiling; people are outdoors all day while they can be in this nice mid-80s heat before we hit the standard 95-100 degree days; it’s all here. Summer in Athens, GA is much different for an undergraduate student than a PhD student, of course, but at least there are only a few thousand bodies on campus and around town, rather than the 35,000 bodies who regularly take up 2 parking spaces with their Georgia lottery-funded-Hope-Scholarship-SUVs; those bodies who over-populate study rooms at the student learning center for 10 hours at a time so they can post fabulous “guess what I’m doing now” messages and (future) incriminating photos to Facebook while cramming for chemistry exams; and there are a few less bodies flailing around the bars downtown demonstrating their professionalism as under-aged drinkers who are consistently over-served.
I love summer. My 4th summer in PhDness. I can’t believe it. How time flies when you’re slowly chipping away at a deliberate and painful death via a doctoral degree. Summer doesn’t make PhDness any easier, (well, it does for those who totally disassociate themselves from PhDness in order to travel…as if they aren’t living on government loans like the rest of us), but it is more giving of time, let’s say. No classes to teach, no student teachers to supervise/observe, no classes to take as a PhD student anymore. (That was summers 1 and 2) Nope. Just a few 60 hour assistantships, working for and with professors to make some extra money, and my own dissertation work to attend to. Which, now that I think about it, is so much more than I’d like to be doing during a summer’s “rest;” but alas, I am engulfed in PhDness. Near the end of PhDness, mind you, with only one more school year left. Whew. What a ride it’s been thus far.
I liken my current PhDness to those moments when I lose my car in a parking lot (which I do more often now than I ever have for some reason). I use this analogy because I know I drove my car to that parking lot, and I know I parked it and left it in a certain spot, and I know it will still be there when I find it. But I wonder around aimlessly questioning what in the hell I could have been doing when I drove into the lot so that I, at the present moment, have no recollection what-so-ever as to where it could have ended up, as if it drove itself—all while acting like I know where my stupid car is so no one will think me odd to have lost my car in a parking lot of only 50 cars. You’ve done that, right?
Just like my current stage of PhDness.
I know I’ve been here doing a lot of challenging work for four years; I know that I have defended and “passed” my comprehensive exams as well as my prospectus (my dissertation proposal); and I know I spent a year “collecting data” for my dissertation research. I met with a group of 7th grade girls every week, talked about bodies in various ways, wrote about bodies, read about bodies, recorded it, transcribed those recordings, took lots of notes about what took place around “bodily enoughness,” and read a lot of philosophy during that whole process.
I know all of these things took place, just as I know I parked my car “somewhere.” But as I wonder aimlessly to find that cute little Subaru, I also wonder aimlessly in PhDness. I know I have to “analyze my data” and write a dissertation (maybe a few hundred pages?), but every time I think about it, I just look around and go….Hmmm, I wonder where I am. See? Just like losing your car.
My other interesting thought about PhDness is people’s continued reaction to an advanced degree in education, and more specifically, middle grades education. Anywhere outside of PhDness (meaning, anywhere outside of a circle of professors or PhD students IN education), when people ask me what I’m studying and I tell them I’m “working on a PhD in Middle Grades Education,” the first question is… can you guess? “Oh, so do you want to be an administrator?” (Nope.) “Oh, do you want to be a teacher?” (Already did that.) And the still-always-fascinating, most popular comment that I just got again at the eye doctor this morning from some of the office girls, “Oh, middle school. That is a challenging age, isn’t it.” (Not any more challenging than the high-maintenance 30 and 40-year-olds I know, sister.)
When I do give my canned response, “I actually want to do research concerning 10-to-14-year-olds, and I want to teach at a large university so I can work with people who want to teach middle schoolers.” I get the, “Oh yes, that’s important” Or the “Yes, we need that.” Which probably means, “Oh, she’s going to be a principal.”
But I’m not going to be a principal, people (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with that). And I’m not going to be a teacher of middle schoolers again (as far as I know right now…because it’s too much work). [Insert metaphorical soap box here] I am going to continue working with middle school girls and boys so we can talk and write about bodies. It is fascinating how much we as a culture affect those little bodies. They can be poor bodies, rich bodies, black bodies, brown bodies, white bodies, fat bodies, skinny bodies, short or tall. They are girls and boys, straight and gay, religious and searching. And they are affected by what our society does TO their bodies; so much so that it manifests itself in their bodies, on their bodies, and through their body movements and actions on a daily basis. And here we are—any of us—what are WE doing to help them? Some of us can’t even talk about bodies in a way that we feel comfortable (i.e., sex, sexual orientation, body image), so how can we help those little bodies re-define what “normal” bodies are “supposed to be” or “can be” when we have such skewed perceptions of what “normal” is ourselves? That’s my car in a parking lot right now. I know it’s there; I’m just having a hard time finding its exact location. But when I do it will be a joyful event!
So go talk about bodies, people. Be aware of your body and be willing to talk about it anyway you can. Push yourself. Be uncomfortable. Challenge your perceptions about what can be a “normal” body because what is “normal” now is NOT OKAY. And for the millions of us who don’t have those “normal” body-markers ( the thin, toned, blemish-free, white, middle-class, heterosexual bodies mostly represented in popular culture stuff), we spend much of life trying to make our bodies fit into those “normal” markers…even if we don’t know it….[OK, stepping off the soap box now]
Off to work on a “body” article I’m writing with a professor. (A professor who had her undergraduate students stand together in a circle during class last year, hold hands, and chant “penis” and “vagina” because it was so torturous for them to say those two words as future elementary education teachers.) Priceless.
Hope all is well with everyone! I get married in less than 5 months. Holy crap. I LOVE me some Thomas!
HEH
May 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Social Studies Lessons of Life, 101: Some Teachers are Stupid
Background context: middle school in rural area of Georgia, historically known as a place where some of Sherman’s officers swung by with their troops on the way to Savannah to have a bon fire, but they thought the town was too pretty to burn so they just beat up some people, stole some stuff, and rested a bit. Good, rich history in this place. Beautiful antebellum homes located in the Historic District; lots of families who have been there for generations, both black and white. I’m visiting a classroom of 20 8th grade students, about 9 whom are African American and the rest are white.
So there I was standing in the 8th grade social studies classroom observing one of my student-teachers deliver a lesson on Reconstruction after the Civil War. The date today was (supposedly) February 9, 2010. The day I felt I was in when I left: February 9, 1953.
I am minding my own white business, glancing over an African American male 8th grade student’s shoulder to skim the article he is reading on the internet about Henry McNeal, an African American preacher/politician who did a lot of cool stuff during the Civil War and after (to sum it up). The students are in centers today, which I like, learning about lots of different and interesting things pertaining to Reconstruction in the US and Georgia: amendments 13, 14, & 15 in one center; analyzing a political cartoon which included a KKK member shaking a white government official’s hand, some black folks who look sad, schools burning, etc. in another center; reading about good ol’ Abe in another….you get the drift. And I am wondering to myself, does this kid think it’s cool that he’s learning about an African American political and spiritual leader during the Civil War? Because I’m glad he’s not reading about one of the plethora of white guys during the Civil War. How refreshing…(and I really was thinking this…I didn’t just add it for re-telling affect of the story)
The (white) classroom mentor teacher (not my student teacher) comes up behind me while I’m minding my own white business reading the article about Henry McNeal and begins whispering in my ear. She laments her frustrations about social studies standards and pauses for my response. Still looking at the computer, I agree with her thinking we’re about to have one of those “our hands are tied as educators by standardized tests” exchanges; instead, she begins to tell me how “random” these standards can be and how she just doesn’t understand how some of them even get included. I diplomatically agree and add how nice it is, though, that they don’t tell us HOW to teach them, just what they want covered, and how we can add whatever we want and teach it however we want. I feel pleased enough with my response until I soon realize this 8th grade social studies teacher and I are not having the same conversation about “standards.”
“Yes, but they’re just so random,” she continues,” I mean, take Henry McNeal for instance. He did nothing that was significant during this time period and we still have to teach him. Just because he was one of the only black men, we have to teach the kids about him and he didn’t even do anything.” I lift my head up from reading the internet article and stare at the wall as if someone has just poked me in the back with a gun. She continues, assuming I am member of her secret club. “I mean, what about the really important men like Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee? Men who actually did something significant during the Civil War. Or what about Jefferson Davis? He was the president of the confederacy and he’s not even in the standards. All of these men did something” she says with conviction in her hushed voice, “and this, this Henry McNeal is only in there because he’s black. You know?”
No. No I don’t know.
Hours upon hours I spend talking to my preservice students about helping middle school students feel included in their history: don’t let the standards rule your life, I plead. If there are “important people” you have to teach who are in the standards and they do not resemble the children who sit in your classroom, then either teach through a critical lens (e.g., Why do you think all of the people included on this list are all white and all men? Or ask who is not being represented on this list of “important people.”) Or I tell them to teach the “important people AND the others who are often left out of the texts---women and people of color. Multiple perspectives of history. Why not? Why not teach students to question and think and want to learn as much as they can?
(I guess this teacher was absent during those lessons in her education program at UGA 15 years earlier.)
It was one of those moments. Those knife-in-the-gut, missed-opportunity moments that keep my head spinning when I go to bed.
My response to the disgruntled social studies teacher? “Well, I guess someone thought Henry McNeal was important enough to put on this list, so he must have done something to deserve it other than being black.”
Lame. Copout!
What kind of social justice model am I being for my preservice students if I can’t even call a cracker a cracker?
What I wanted to say but instead wrote down in my observation notes one minute later:
Please don’t mistake me.
I may look like you
but I am not you.
We share a history:
a history of violence, inequity, and oppression.
But I am not you.
Don’t mistake me as part of the club,
the secret club to which you belong.
Because I am not you.
I believe in justice
and equality
and civil rights.
You?
You believe the battle is not over—
and you wage this secret war in your classrooms—
implicitly and explicitly through biased texts and silence,
you reinforce the institution of our shared history
which I am trying to disrupt.
You, a recycler of our unjust past,
Me, a hopeful disrupter of the present.
I am a liberator of oppression; you, simply a perpetrator of regression.
So please don’t mistake me,
because I am not you.
My whiteness may imply
some shared connectedness,
but my skin is off-white;
while yours resembles those to which you refer:
cloaks of stark white,
oppressive skin.
Anxious because “important men” aren’t included on some bullshit
Your men
Your leaders. Not mine.
You lament your bigoted discontent in my ear
as if I should be of the same mind as you
because my cause is masked by the white layers of southern skin,
unlike yours which you wear proudly.
But we are not having the same conversation, you and I.
Our unhappiness with how history is preserved
in a book—
yours longing for a war lost long ago,
mine longing to wage an intellectual war with those like you.
Your whispers echo in my ear,
your truth
your oppressive truth
assuming I am like you.
But I am not you.
So please don’t mistake me.
I guess I could email it to her later.
So there I was standing in the 8th grade social studies classroom observing one of my student-teachers deliver a lesson on Reconstruction after the Civil War. The date today was (supposedly) February 9, 2010. The day I felt I was in when I left: February 9, 1953.
I am minding my own white business, glancing over an African American male 8th grade student’s shoulder to skim the article he is reading on the internet about Henry McNeal, an African American preacher/politician who did a lot of cool stuff during the Civil War and after (to sum it up). The students are in centers today, which I like, learning about lots of different and interesting things pertaining to Reconstruction in the US and Georgia: amendments 13, 14, & 15 in one center; analyzing a political cartoon which included a KKK member shaking a white government official’s hand, some black folks who look sad, schools burning, etc. in another center; reading about good ol’ Abe in another….you get the drift. And I am wondering to myself, does this kid think it’s cool that he’s learning about an African American political and spiritual leader during the Civil War? Because I’m glad he’s not reading about one of the plethora of white guys during the Civil War. How refreshing…(and I really was thinking this…I didn’t just add it for re-telling affect of the story)
The (white) classroom mentor teacher (not my student teacher) comes up behind me while I’m minding my own white business reading the article about Henry McNeal and begins whispering in my ear. She laments her frustrations about social studies standards and pauses for my response. Still looking at the computer, I agree with her thinking we’re about to have one of those “our hands are tied as educators by standardized tests” exchanges; instead, she begins to tell me how “random” these standards can be and how she just doesn’t understand how some of them even get included. I diplomatically agree and add how nice it is, though, that they don’t tell us HOW to teach them, just what they want covered, and how we can add whatever we want and teach it however we want. I feel pleased enough with my response until I soon realize this 8th grade social studies teacher and I are not having the same conversation about “standards.”
“Yes, but they’re just so random,” she continues,” I mean, take Henry McNeal for instance. He did nothing that was significant during this time period and we still have to teach him. Just because he was one of the only black men, we have to teach the kids about him and he didn’t even do anything.” I lift my head up from reading the internet article and stare at the wall as if someone has just poked me in the back with a gun. She continues, assuming I am member of her secret club. “I mean, what about the really important men like Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee? Men who actually did something significant during the Civil War. Or what about Jefferson Davis? He was the president of the confederacy and he’s not even in the standards. All of these men did something” she says with conviction in her hushed voice, “and this, this Henry McNeal is only in there because he’s black. You know?”
No. No I don’t know.
Hours upon hours I spend talking to my preservice students about helping middle school students feel included in their history: don’t let the standards rule your life, I plead. If there are “important people” you have to teach who are in the standards and they do not resemble the children who sit in your classroom, then either teach through a critical lens (e.g., Why do you think all of the people included on this list are all white and all men? Or ask who is not being represented on this list of “important people.”) Or I tell them to teach the “important people AND the others who are often left out of the texts---women and people of color. Multiple perspectives of history. Why not? Why not teach students to question and think and want to learn as much as they can?
(I guess this teacher was absent during those lessons in her education program at UGA 15 years earlier.)
It was one of those moments. Those knife-in-the-gut, missed-opportunity moments that keep my head spinning when I go to bed.
My response to the disgruntled social studies teacher? “Well, I guess someone thought Henry McNeal was important enough to put on this list, so he must have done something to deserve it other than being black.”
Lame. Copout!
What kind of social justice model am I being for my preservice students if I can’t even call a cracker a cracker?
What I wanted to say but instead wrote down in my observation notes one minute later:
Please don’t mistake me.
I may look like you
but I am not you.
We share a history:
a history of violence, inequity, and oppression.
But I am not you.
Don’t mistake me as part of the club,
the secret club to which you belong.
Because I am not you.
I believe in justice
and equality
and civil rights.
You?
You believe the battle is not over—
and you wage this secret war in your classrooms—
implicitly and explicitly through biased texts and silence,
you reinforce the institution of our shared history
which I am trying to disrupt.
You, a recycler of our unjust past,
Me, a hopeful disrupter of the present.
I am a liberator of oppression; you, simply a perpetrator of regression.
So please don’t mistake me,
because I am not you.
My whiteness may imply
some shared connectedness,
but my skin is off-white;
while yours resembles those to which you refer:
cloaks of stark white,
oppressive skin.
Anxious because “important men” aren’t included on some bullshit
Your men
Your leaders. Not mine.
You lament your bigoted discontent in my ear
as if I should be of the same mind as you
because my cause is masked by the white layers of southern skin,
unlike yours which you wear proudly.
But we are not having the same conversation, you and I.
Our unhappiness with how history is preserved
in a book—
yours longing for a war lost long ago,
mine longing to wage an intellectual war with those like you.
Your whispers echo in my ear,
your truth
your oppressive truth
assuming I am like you.
But I am not you.
So please don’t mistake me.
I guess I could email it to her later.
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