More from Dos Vatos

Global Voices: Beyond the Border

From the makers of Beautiful Knowledge, a new documentary on PBS worth checking out. When I heard the production duo Dos Vatos speak, they said that it was surprising easier to find funding for documentaries and grants for the arts when dealing with issues of race in Kentucky than in Arizona. Just another example of proving stereotypes wrong.

http://www.pbs.org/itvs/globalvoices/beyondtheborder.html

New Precious Knowledge Trailer!

A Great Documentary about the Tucson Unified School District

Precious Knowledge Trailer from Ari Palos on Vimeo.

Writing Less Badly

Tips for Writing

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael C. Munger writes an interesting article that I'm posting the link to as a reminder to myself to think about when writing and re-writing.

http://chronicle.com/article/10-Tips-on-How-to-Write-Less/124268/

His #1 tip is that "writing is an exercise," which is important to remember when setting out to write after not having written and maybe even a good incentive for updating this here blog.

Tip number five: "Everyone's unwritten work is brilliant" also made me chuckle, but that might come as a result of my creative writing experience, or experience with creative writing students who enjoyed talking about their writing more than they seemed to write.

Warren Buffet: 'Make Private Schools Illegal'

Will Throwing Money at Schools Really Help?

The answer to this question is a resounding 'yes,' but it's not just education researchers who are pointing out the common sense behind the economic segregation that has children living in the same neighborhood attending drastically different educational institutions, namely public and private.

I had heard someone discuss Warren Buffet's solution to raising the quality of our public schools and I found it in an article on Spotlightonpoverty.org. In the article, Buffet's comments enunciate what many fiscally conservatives who educate their children in private institutions already know, but choose to ignore:

"“Make private schools illegal,” he said, “and assign every child to a public school by random lottery.” Think about what this would mean. CEOs’ children, diplomats’ children, many would be going to schools in Anacostia and east of the river, where most of our schools are. I guarantee we would never see a faster moving of resources from one end of the city to the other. I also guarantee we would soon have a system of high-quality schools."

Inagural Issue of Present Tense

A Journal of Rhetoric in Society

According to editor Alexandra Hidalgo:
"Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society is proud to announce its inaugural issue at http://www.presenttensejournal.org/. Present Tense is dedicated to exploring contemporary social, cultural, political and economic issues through a rhetorical lens. The articles presented in Volume 1, Issue 1 include a diversity of current topics, of no more than 2,000 words, ranging from disciplinarity and sovereign power, to Google bombing, to race and the new equality. We hope you find the articles engaging and we encourage you to continue the conversation by commenting on the articles online.

Volume 1, Issue 1:

Turning Composition toward Sovereignty- John Schilb
Momma’s Memories and the New Equality- Vershawn Ashanti Young
I’ll Google It!: How Collective Wisdom in Search Engines Alters the Rhetorical Canons- Jill M. Parrott
Making Rhetoric Visible: Re-visioning a Capstone Civic Writing Seminar- Heather Lettner-RustCooking Codes: Cookbook Discourses as Women’s Rhetorical Practices- Elizabeth Fleitz

Program Review: The Land-Grant Way – Connected Knowing and the Call of Service- James M. Dubinsky

Book Review: Scott’s Dangerous Writing- Sheri Rysdam"

Submissions Information: http://www.presenttensejournal.org/submissions/
http://www.presenttensejournal.org/

Writing and Working for Change

A Digital Archive of Social Activism by Teachers of NCTE/CCCC

It's always encouraging to see when NCTE/CCCC actively participates in fostering diversity and the work of their diverse membership and past members.

From the website below:
"In conjunction with efforts to chronicle historical moments for NCTE’s Centennial Celebration, this project specifically celebrates the collective work of teachers within and across diverse identities to insure the field recognize and respect the language, educational, political, and social rights of all students and teachers."

http://www.ncte.org/centennial/change

Teaching Matters

In class, I've been reading "Coming into Language" by Jimmy Santiago Baca, addressing themes of literacy, and the redemptive power of self expression. However, it seems as though it's hard for students who have been in good educational systems to imagine how much of an impact under-trained and inexperienced teachers can have. In "Coming into Language," Baca mentions how his teacher made him stand with his nose against the chalkboard when Baca did something incorrectly as a student. As I was re-reading a counterstory by Tara j. Yosso, the impact of bad teaching came to a finer point when a composite character recalls that a substitute teacher once said to the class, "I don't care if you don't do this assignment. You don't have to be here at all. Within a few years, most of you will either be pregnant, in prison, or dead because you're in a gang" ("Students on the Move" 80).

Even though this character is a composite, the sentiment expressed by the substitute seems to echo arguments heard in the public discourse when it comes to deficiency rhetorics used to describe Latinos/as and education. At the same time, it's reaffirming of my own teaching philosophy that comes from a place of concern and encouragement.

Pass the Torch

(Re)presenting for the Next Generation

I was recently in contact with Robert Garcia, Outreach and Teams Coordinator for Pass the Torch, and I was pleased to learn about their one-on-one study team model that serves underrepresented student populations. Garcia is also the artist whose Chavez portrait I posted a few months back, and I was glad to hear about the Pass the Torch program because it reminds me of the New Start program at the U of A that is near and dear to me.
From the Pass the Torch website:
"Pass The Torch respects each student’s individuality. Our students come from a wide variety of economic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. They work together in teams to strive for the highest possible grade for each individual member. Our primary goals are to see that every student in Pass The Torch has the opportunity of success regardless of his or her past educational experiences."

Issues of representation and identity come to mind because role models are important for students to help them envision success in school. If there aren't people with whom they can identify, and who have shared culture and experience, then it's much easier for a student to believe in negative discourses that portray minority students in unflattering lights. The metaphor of passing the torch is especially profound given that knowledge has been represented by fire, bringing enlightenment, perhaps as far back as Plato's allegory of the cave. The symbolism of passing knowledge within diverse ethnic communities, who can feel marginalized by large institutions, is also poignant in re-presenting not only a concern for education within these communities, but also an emphasis on individuals giving back to the community.


You can see more from Robert Garcia at http://www.bavigarcia.com/

Musicians, Activism & SB 1070

Lady Gaga vs. Rage Against the Machine

On William Nericcio's Tex[t]-Mex Blog, there's a thought-provoking post on Lady Gaga's recent entrance into the conversation on SB 1070.
What I noted in the video from her concert in Phoenix was her dismissal of what she could do as a pop musician, ignoring the pleas of other musicians to participate in the boycott of Arizona. Taking an all-too-literal interpretation of the boycott, Gaga comments that her concert, and the concerts of other musicians, will not economically break Arizona. As a performer who is very conscious of the images she steals and allusions she makes to other musicians (mainly Madonna), Gaga seems to be playing a bit obtuse, implying that the boycott is purely financial and not about anything more.

Notice in the video below, from the concert Rage Against the Machine put on in Los Angeles with Conor Oberst and other musicians, the performers are clear about their message of the concert that they held outside of Arizona, in conjunction with the boycott.

Summer Nonsense

Monty Python & the Ad hoc, non-sequitor logical fallacy
There's something very summery about Monty Python--before TiVo and On-Demand TV, you had to fill summer TV watching with either strange movie recommendations from friends or settle with Golden Girls, Cheers and other re-runs. So it also happened to coincide that the summer between freshmen and sophomore year when I was exposed to the learned, and/or acquired taste of Monty Python.

I was thinking that I some how wanted to work Monty Python in as an example of ad hoc that which does not follow logically after one another. The Deus ex machina of the foot coming out of the sky provides its own kind of non-sequencial logic; yet, the ending of Holy Grail came to mind because of the anachronistic, meta conscious recognition of the film at the end of the film.

Latina/o Caucus Newsletter Article

Cross-Promotion Sin Verguenza
I was speaking with a colleague and friend of mine the other day and she mentioned that she'd seen the article I wrote in the most recent NCTE Latina/o Caucus Newsletter. It occurred to me that I had yet to post a link from my very own blog.
It's a really great issue, and I'm not just saying that because I'm in it. The editors Janie Jaramillo Santoy and Alexandra Hidalgo did an amazing job of working with the contributors and putting out a professionally crafted product.

A Student Favorite

Over the summer, the topic of SB 1070 arose in my rhetorical analysis course because of our geographic context, the student population and the numerous discourses that frame both sides of the issue.
When it came to the issue of 'how do you tell who's illegal' without racial profiling, this Daily Show clip seemed to be an effective point of departure. Many of the white collar New Yorkers in the clip demonstrate the logistical issues related to proving citizenship. The humor of course derives from the fact that none of these people of privilege would ever really experience the legitimacy of their citizenship.
The Anthropologist DeGenova at Columbia makes an important point about the issue of immigration when he says that we need to pay attention to how legality is addressed because it shows us the uncertain state of our own citizenship and rights.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Suspicious Behavior on Cinco de Mayo
www.thedailyshow.com
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