Imagine celebrating diversity
If music, art, and divergent thinking (all encompassed in the word, imagination) were emphasized to a greater extent in our school system, would today’s learning disabled become the enabled? Also, can we use imagination as a powerful tool to encourage the celebration of diversity and the making of more tolerant citizens?
Share your strategies
As teachers we are faced with children of multitude diversities, including those with learning disabilities +/- behavioural challenges. What strategies have we used to manage children in our classroom with learning difficulties, and how effective were these strategies? What seems to be missing from these strategies? What strategies have we used to cope with our own reactions to having these children disrupting our class?
Let's undertake a collaborative search
What did you think of “Imagination, Breakthroughs, and the Unexpected”? Share your likes, dislikes, favourite quotes, concerns, etc. Proclaim your excitement or use this space to problematize and be provocative.
Greene has concerns - do you?
a.) Do you agree with Greene’s concerns over the push for i.) the first place ranking of “academic” students in math and science achievement and ii.) the demonstration of competency over “challenging subject matter” using a national assessment – why or why not?
b.) Can arts/imagination and the above education goals exist in the same space? Why or why not?
b.) Can arts/imagination and the above education goals exist in the same space? Why or why not?
Art as central in the curriculum
How could we position “art” as central in the school curriculum and avoid using it simply as motivation for more “rigorous” disciplines? (Art is pleasurable, “but that pleasurableness does not mean the arts are to be used simply to ‘balance’ what is thought of as the cognitively rigorous, the analytical, the rational, and the serious. Nor should the arts be used as motivation – Green, p. 25)
Will you allow yourself to have a "voice"?
How can we move away from conventional reverence of art, and encourage distinct points of view, when technologies of the self (as I see it) support self-censorship?
Imagine the tension
How do we assuage the unease of those who, a.) want to recover a simpler world of a time long past (Greene – p. 18)
or b.) have real concerns about demands of the world beyond school or the inequities their children must overcome? (Greene – p. 18)
or b.) have real concerns about demands of the world beyond school or the inequities their children must overcome? (Greene – p. 18)
The value of imagination
a.) Does the world beyond high school value what Greene advocates?
b.) Is the idea of school as a place to release the imagination an idealistic middle class view and does it do a disservice to our students who need “practical” vocational training to get a job?
b.) Is the idea of school as a place to release the imagination an idealistic middle class view and does it do a disservice to our students who need “practical” vocational training to get a job?
Finding a way out of oppression
Can a student truly be free of oppression (in Canada) if they are unable to read and write (in French or English) at a “high school level”? Should mastery of this medium be required for graduation (i.e. a literacy test) or do other mediums have equal value?
Summary of I got a D in Salami
“How you learn does not define how unbelievably brilliant you are as a human being on this earth.” - Henry Winkler
This book opens with Hank in grade 4, trying to learn his spelling homework, but being completely distracted and unable to concentrate. Similarly, in school, despite his obvious efforts and time spent trying to learn, he does poorly. As well, despite his trying hard to “behave” he frequently will “wind up doing face time with Principal Love” (p.29), and getting in trouble repeatedly with his teacher. From the first person point of view, it is clear that Hank wants to do his best. “You can do it, Zip. Just breathe,” he coaches himself (p. 24), and “I try to behave in school... I try hard.” (p.29). He maintains this hope that his efforts will finally pay off. “If people had mottos, I think I’d pick ‘Hope’ for mine. I sure do hope a lot.” (p.20).
Despite his hope, he is faced with a report card that confirms his fear that, “Let’s face it... I’m a school flop.” (p. 36). When the big brown envelope was passed to him and the other kids laughed, his worst fears were to be made reality... D’s in almost everything. The note accompanying the report card confirmed that he “Doesn’t follow directions...,” and has “sloppy work,” with “below average performance.” (p.46). Poor Hank was devastated. Imagining all the horrible things that would befall him as a result of bring this report card home, and terrified to show the report card to his parents, he and his friends managed to feed his report card to the meat grinder in his Mother’s deli, hence explaining how the D got in the salami!
When Hank and his friends learn that the contaminated salami was en route to an important taste testing meeting to promote his Mom’s business, they concocted an elaborate plan to replace it with a paperless version. What follows is a harrowing and hilarious sequence of events involving the kids and overly-excited dogs that culminates in the meeting falling apart, the salami being eaten by the dogs, and Hank in trouble again.
Here is where the turning point occurs, when the businessman working with his Mom suggests that Hank get tested for a learning disability. This eventually confirms that Hank does, indeed, have a learning disability, and finally he will receive the help that he needs. (And Mom gets the salami deal, so all’s well in the end!)
Teaching of children with learning disabilities has often followed a framework of deficit based education. For example, children with reading difficulties find themselves in special classes for reading, and receive tutoring after class etc. This makes sense given that the current curriculum requires a certain degree of linguistic competence, the ability to read and write. However, it is unlikely to encourage the full expression of the right brained skills of children with learning deficits. When these skills can be allowed to blossom, they produce very creative, brilliant, successful people (who were originally thought to be “stupid”), as we will see in class on Thursday. Einstein, himself, who probably had a learning disability and ADD, admittedly used creativity and imagination more than knowledge to do the work for which he is so famous.
According to Gardner’s theory that all persons possess seven intelligences (linguistic, logico-mathematical, musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal), it stands to reason that schooling that is more responsive to these intelligences will better cater to students’ individual learning needs. However, “At first blush, this diagnosis would appear to sound a death knell for formal education. It is hard to teach one intelligence; what if there are seven? It is hard to enough to teach even when anything can be taught; what to do if there are distinct limits and strong constraints on human cognition and learning?” (Gardner, 1993: xxiii)
Given that art and imagination – based curricula can draw on multiple intelligences, how can they enable children with learning disabilities to be successful? Art can improve fine motor skills, cognitive skills and problem solving, social integration, confidence, self-discipline, and expression. Music can be used to teach math concepts (multiplication song); art to teach history (famous battles etc depicted in art); contrast of cartoons and paintings to stimulate critical thinking etc., etc. We are only limited by our own imagination.
The arts have been called the great equalizer in education (Gregoire & Lupinetti, 2005). Regardless of language, ability, disability, culture, or race, the arts are relevant. Does it not stand to reason that the arts may be the basis to teach the right brained amongst us, but also the bridge to teaching tolerance, and the appreciation of the beauty and wisdom in all cultures.
References:
Gardner, Howard (1993. Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Britain: Fontana Press.
Gregoire, M.A., & Lupinetti, J. (2005). Supporting diversity through the arts. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 41(4), 159-163.
Winkler, H., & Oliver, Lin. (2003). I got a D in salami. New York: Gossett & Dunlap.
This book opens with Hank in grade 4, trying to learn his spelling homework, but being completely distracted and unable to concentrate. Similarly, in school, despite his obvious efforts and time spent trying to learn, he does poorly. As well, despite his trying hard to “behave” he frequently will “wind up doing face time with Principal Love” (p.29), and getting in trouble repeatedly with his teacher. From the first person point of view, it is clear that Hank wants to do his best. “You can do it, Zip. Just breathe,” he coaches himself (p. 24), and “I try to behave in school... I try hard.” (p.29). He maintains this hope that his efforts will finally pay off. “If people had mottos, I think I’d pick ‘Hope’ for mine. I sure do hope a lot.” (p.20).
Despite his hope, he is faced with a report card that confirms his fear that, “Let’s face it... I’m a school flop.” (p. 36). When the big brown envelope was passed to him and the other kids laughed, his worst fears were to be made reality... D’s in almost everything. The note accompanying the report card confirmed that he “Doesn’t follow directions...,” and has “sloppy work,” with “below average performance.” (p.46). Poor Hank was devastated. Imagining all the horrible things that would befall him as a result of bring this report card home, and terrified to show the report card to his parents, he and his friends managed to feed his report card to the meat grinder in his Mother’s deli, hence explaining how the D got in the salami!
When Hank and his friends learn that the contaminated salami was en route to an important taste testing meeting to promote his Mom’s business, they concocted an elaborate plan to replace it with a paperless version. What follows is a harrowing and hilarious sequence of events involving the kids and overly-excited dogs that culminates in the meeting falling apart, the salami being eaten by the dogs, and Hank in trouble again.
Here is where the turning point occurs, when the businessman working with his Mom suggests that Hank get tested for a learning disability. This eventually confirms that Hank does, indeed, have a learning disability, and finally he will receive the help that he needs. (And Mom gets the salami deal, so all’s well in the end!)
Teaching of children with learning disabilities has often followed a framework of deficit based education. For example, children with reading difficulties find themselves in special classes for reading, and receive tutoring after class etc. This makes sense given that the current curriculum requires a certain degree of linguistic competence, the ability to read and write. However, it is unlikely to encourage the full expression of the right brained skills of children with learning deficits. When these skills can be allowed to blossom, they produce very creative, brilliant, successful people (who were originally thought to be “stupid”), as we will see in class on Thursday. Einstein, himself, who probably had a learning disability and ADD, admittedly used creativity and imagination more than knowledge to do the work for which he is so famous.
According to Gardner’s theory that all persons possess seven intelligences (linguistic, logico-mathematical, musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal), it stands to reason that schooling that is more responsive to these intelligences will better cater to students’ individual learning needs. However, “At first blush, this diagnosis would appear to sound a death knell for formal education. It is hard to teach one intelligence; what if there are seven? It is hard to enough to teach even when anything can be taught; what to do if there are distinct limits and strong constraints on human cognition and learning?” (Gardner, 1993: xxiii)
Given that art and imagination – based curricula can draw on multiple intelligences, how can they enable children with learning disabilities to be successful? Art can improve fine motor skills, cognitive skills and problem solving, social integration, confidence, self-discipline, and expression. Music can be used to teach math concepts (multiplication song); art to teach history (famous battles etc depicted in art); contrast of cartoons and paintings to stimulate critical thinking etc., etc. We are only limited by our own imagination.
The arts have been called the great equalizer in education (Gregoire & Lupinetti, 2005). Regardless of language, ability, disability, culture, or race, the arts are relevant. Does it not stand to reason that the arts may be the basis to teach the right brained amongst us, but also the bridge to teaching tolerance, and the appreciation of the beauty and wisdom in all cultures.
References:
Gardner, Howard (1993. Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Britain: Fontana Press.
Gregoire, M.A., & Lupinetti, J. (2005). Supporting diversity through the arts. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 41(4), 159-163.
Winkler, H., & Oliver, Lin. (2003). I got a D in salami. New York: Gossett & Dunlap.
Summary of Imagination, Breakthroughs and the Unexpected
“A primary purpose of education to deny people the opportunity for succumbing to a feeling of futility or the belief that they have come to an end of what is worth having.” - Maxine Greene
This chapter is, in part, a reaction to two main concerns Greene has stemming from the Goals 2000: The Educate America Act. The first of her concerns surrounds the goal that students in ‘academic’ disciplines should “rank first in the world in science and math achievement” (p.17). The second concern involves the creation of a national assessment to ensure that students can demonstrate competency over this “challenging subject matter” (p.17). Green finds these goals problematic for 2 reasons – the implication that standards can simply be imposed and the fact that many diverse talents/energies of students lay undefined, only to be found only through differentiated modes of expression.
Greene puts forth imagination as a means to explore new perspectives, and she makes the case for its great value in the realm of education. However, in order to realize this value a break must be made with old quantitative models and “the quest for certainty” (p.18) should be abandoned. This may prove to be difficult, as economic uncertainties, challenge to traditional authorities, parental desires for assurance, technological demands, and also a longing to recover “the simpler world of a time long past” (p.18) lead to anxiety surrounding alternative lenses.
Greene acknowledges that “some students face fearful obstacles due to inequities” (p.18) but “that a general inability to conceive a better order of things can give rise to a resignation that paralyzes and prevents people from acting to bring about change” (p. 19). It is emphasized, on a number of occasions, that each person’s reality is an interpreted experience depending on her or his situation in the world. But this is not a bad thing, on the contrary, if we are able to live truthfully we may then engage in difference. “It comes along with hearing different words and music, seeing from unaccustomed angles, realizing the world perceived from one place is not the world” (p.20). We have all thought, at one time or another, that “normal” people must live like us, but we must come to realize that there is enormous variety in human lives. If the young can experience imagination, they will be able to interpret events of their own lives and ultimately see their existence as “carrying out the possible (among numerous possibilities), rather than the necessary” (p.21).
Without these realizations one may become trapped in recurrence, uniformity, mechanical routines, and inertia of habits. This leads to a “sense of repetitiveness and uniformity to discourage active learning” (p.21). To see students simply as a series of trends, and to believe there are automatic processes at work, lends to the idea that alternatives are impossible. But our schools, our students and humans in general, are more than trends, and more than inevitable outcomes. We must view ourselves as explorers so that we realize the possible which can open the door for empowerment and self-advocacy. Greene quotes Mary Warnock as saying “there is more in our experience of the world than can possible meet the unreflecting eye, our experience is significant for us, and worth the attempt to understand it” (p.22).
Greene also quotes Warnock as saying a primary purpose of education is to prevent people from “succumbing to a feeling of futility, or to the belief that they have come to the end of what is worth having” (p.23). To translate this into classroom practice calls for both teachers and students to undergo a collaborative search, each coming from the vantage point of their own unique lived experiences. For we all live in a kind of incompleteness; there is always more to see. We must question our daily lives so that the world does not become predefined; we must lead our students to ask why so that everything that was once coloured with weariness can be seen with amazement. But how do we, as educators help students move away from the ordinary to the unexplored?
In terms of literacy, many students who are labeled as illiterate, should be made aware of how “reality” is constructed, and then encouraged to name their world, and through this naming, transform it. For as Freire states “hopelessness is a form of silence, of denying the world, of fleeing from it” (p. 24). Literacy should be associated with a yearning to make sense of the world, and a yearning to leave one’s mark on it. If we can encourage imagination students may be able to find their voice and their way out of oppression.
To find one’s voice, and to undertake a search, involves arousing a type of consciousness. “If teaching can be thought of as an address to others’ consciousness, it may be a summons on the part of one incomplete person to other incomplete persons to reach out for wholeness” (p.26). This may arise through dialogue in the class, the ability to relate literature to contemporary life, or aiming to breaking the bonds of reverence students may have for so-called ‘high’ art.
Greene argues that to accomplish the above, requires a CENTRALITY of the arts in school curriculum because the arts have a unique way to release imagination. Although the arts can be pleasurable, Greene offers us a caution; “that pleasurableness does not mean the arts are to be used simply to ‘balance’ what is thought of as the cognitively rigorous, the analytical, the rational, and the serious. Nor should the arts be used as motivation” (p.27). The arts can demand as much cognitive rigor and analysis as the more traditional ‘academic’ subjects. In terms of how to engage with the arts, we must move beyond beneficent examples, and also allow for soul-chilling and challenging pieces to find their way into the classroom. “The role of the arts is not to resolve, not to point the way, not to improve. It is to awaken, to disclose the ordinarily unseen, unheard and unexpected” (p. 28). The arts should lie at the margin of the respectable, the ordinary, and/or the constrained. To do so, to allow for art to be more than the “carriers of message from men in power and norms of the majority” (p.28), can pave the way for a different lens to be used on cultures, languages, religions and on countless other human differences, so that students will come to realize there are variously lived worlds, and various perspectives.
But this does not happen automatically or naturally. It is not enough to simply label or recognize art, instead there needs to be a living of reflective transactions to reach consciousness. Art should not be revered, but instead approached from individual vantage points and distinct points of view. Hopefully this will also allow us to develop empathy and understanding of difference. Imagination can allow us to break out of the “confinements of privatism and self-regard into a space where we can come face to face with others and call out, Here we are” (p.31)
References:
Greene, Maxine. (1995). Imagination, breakthroughs, and the unexpected. In Releasing the Imagination (pp. 17-31). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
This chapter is, in part, a reaction to two main concerns Greene has stemming from the Goals 2000: The Educate America Act. The first of her concerns surrounds the goal that students in ‘academic’ disciplines should “rank first in the world in science and math achievement” (p.17). The second concern involves the creation of a national assessment to ensure that students can demonstrate competency over this “challenging subject matter” (p.17). Green finds these goals problematic for 2 reasons – the implication that standards can simply be imposed and the fact that many diverse talents/energies of students lay undefined, only to be found only through differentiated modes of expression.
Greene puts forth imagination as a means to explore new perspectives, and she makes the case for its great value in the realm of education. However, in order to realize this value a break must be made with old quantitative models and “the quest for certainty” (p.18) should be abandoned. This may prove to be difficult, as economic uncertainties, challenge to traditional authorities, parental desires for assurance, technological demands, and also a longing to recover “the simpler world of a time long past” (p.18) lead to anxiety surrounding alternative lenses.
Greene acknowledges that “some students face fearful obstacles due to inequities” (p.18) but “that a general inability to conceive a better order of things can give rise to a resignation that paralyzes and prevents people from acting to bring about change” (p. 19). It is emphasized, on a number of occasions, that each person’s reality is an interpreted experience depending on her or his situation in the world. But this is not a bad thing, on the contrary, if we are able to live truthfully we may then engage in difference. “It comes along with hearing different words and music, seeing from unaccustomed angles, realizing the world perceived from one place is not the world” (p.20). We have all thought, at one time or another, that “normal” people must live like us, but we must come to realize that there is enormous variety in human lives. If the young can experience imagination, they will be able to interpret events of their own lives and ultimately see their existence as “carrying out the possible (among numerous possibilities), rather than the necessary” (p.21).
Without these realizations one may become trapped in recurrence, uniformity, mechanical routines, and inertia of habits. This leads to a “sense of repetitiveness and uniformity to discourage active learning” (p.21). To see students simply as a series of trends, and to believe there are automatic processes at work, lends to the idea that alternatives are impossible. But our schools, our students and humans in general, are more than trends, and more than inevitable outcomes. We must view ourselves as explorers so that we realize the possible which can open the door for empowerment and self-advocacy. Greene quotes Mary Warnock as saying “there is more in our experience of the world than can possible meet the unreflecting eye, our experience is significant for us, and worth the attempt to understand it” (p.22).
Greene also quotes Warnock as saying a primary purpose of education is to prevent people from “succumbing to a feeling of futility, or to the belief that they have come to the end of what is worth having” (p.23). To translate this into classroom practice calls for both teachers and students to undergo a collaborative search, each coming from the vantage point of their own unique lived experiences. For we all live in a kind of incompleteness; there is always more to see. We must question our daily lives so that the world does not become predefined; we must lead our students to ask why so that everything that was once coloured with weariness can be seen with amazement. But how do we, as educators help students move away from the ordinary to the unexplored?
In terms of literacy, many students who are labeled as illiterate, should be made aware of how “reality” is constructed, and then encouraged to name their world, and through this naming, transform it. For as Freire states “hopelessness is a form of silence, of denying the world, of fleeing from it” (p. 24). Literacy should be associated with a yearning to make sense of the world, and a yearning to leave one’s mark on it. If we can encourage imagination students may be able to find their voice and their way out of oppression.
To find one’s voice, and to undertake a search, involves arousing a type of consciousness. “If teaching can be thought of as an address to others’ consciousness, it may be a summons on the part of one incomplete person to other incomplete persons to reach out for wholeness” (p.26). This may arise through dialogue in the class, the ability to relate literature to contemporary life, or aiming to breaking the bonds of reverence students may have for so-called ‘high’ art.
Greene argues that to accomplish the above, requires a CENTRALITY of the arts in school curriculum because the arts have a unique way to release imagination. Although the arts can be pleasurable, Greene offers us a caution; “that pleasurableness does not mean the arts are to be used simply to ‘balance’ what is thought of as the cognitively rigorous, the analytical, the rational, and the serious. Nor should the arts be used as motivation” (p.27). The arts can demand as much cognitive rigor and analysis as the more traditional ‘academic’ subjects. In terms of how to engage with the arts, we must move beyond beneficent examples, and also allow for soul-chilling and challenging pieces to find their way into the classroom. “The role of the arts is not to resolve, not to point the way, not to improve. It is to awaken, to disclose the ordinarily unseen, unheard and unexpected” (p. 28). The arts should lie at the margin of the respectable, the ordinary, and/or the constrained. To do so, to allow for art to be more than the “carriers of message from men in power and norms of the majority” (p.28), can pave the way for a different lens to be used on cultures, languages, religions and on countless other human differences, so that students will come to realize there are variously lived worlds, and various perspectives.
But this does not happen automatically or naturally. It is not enough to simply label or recognize art, instead there needs to be a living of reflective transactions to reach consciousness. Art should not be revered, but instead approached from individual vantage points and distinct points of view. Hopefully this will also allow us to develop empathy and understanding of difference. Imagination can allow us to break out of the “confinements of privatism and self-regard into a space where we can come face to face with others and call out, Here we are” (p.31)
References:
Greene, Maxine. (1995). Imagination, breakthroughs, and the unexpected. In Releasing the Imagination (pp. 17-31). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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