Off the Sidelines and Onto the Playing Field

The Pro’s and Con’s

University of Minnesota education researchers Roger and David Johnson have pioneered in teaching and exploring the ways cooperation in the classroom yields different results than regular, individual, and competitive kinds of learning.

The philosophy, in a nut-shell, is “we are all in this together,” or “four heads are better than one.”  This I can attest is true in the field of mass communication, where documentaries, television programs of all kinds and advertising is a group effort; so I’m dyed-in-the-wool believer in cooperative learning.

The Pro and Con activity in my Introduction to Mass Communication class is modeled after the Creative Controversy exercise we studied and actively played out in Minnesota in our training with the Johnson brothers.

This activity has, over the years, become part of our faculty training at Northwest Vista College, and I invariably volunteer to teach it. I confess I do it to inspire myself to lift my britches and gather my energies to do it each semester in each of my five sections: It is exhausting, and I don’t even do any work!

The effort is always worth it: It is exciting to see the engagement as students stand and speak in their "big boy and big girl voices" putting forth well-researched positions pro and con on a topic in their group. The groups in the class create a happy cacophony that is music to my ears.

They are encouraged to use passion and force as they speak, yet they follow the rules and protocols that remind us of respecting people with whom we don’t agree, and generally remembering “This is Me” and “This is My Idea” are, importantly and indeed, different.

Student groups have been preparing group media presentations on topics they have selected about the Internet and its impact on people. They have researched in the college library’s collections and databases the pro’s and con’s of their topic. Some examples are digital piracy, whether or not cyber-bullying is a true problem or not, if technology helps or hurts intimate, personal relationships.

The Pro and Con activity is a part of the staggered, worth-30 % -of -the -entire -course -grade-media presentation project. The project requires students to steep themselves in both sides of the topic, and to argue strongly both sides, using no opinions or personal experiences, but only material from their research. They are also required to attribute the sources of the facts or data they use in their pro or con arguments, as in “According to a 2011 study of 3,000 students at Harvard University who participated in a study about texting, researchers there found that their grades were/were not affected by use of texting.”

The whole process is about four weeks worth of classes and assignments, including working with the databases to locate and examine articles selected by using the 5 w’s and h (who, what, where, when, why and how), and working on the technical side of the media presentation by creating a Prezi or PowerPoint, a film, and an Infographic to display data.

The addition to the activity this semester was asking the students to consider their “debate” presentation portions as the prologue to the actual “hard” work, which in fact it is: The last part of the activity is the group’s “creative” contribution to the topic they are examining. First, the group finishes 16 minutes of controlled, timed presentations in their groups with students taking first the pro then the con side, then swapping sides to present the opposite position. This alone is a stretch for many of us, who, naturally, are often wedded to a point of view.

What this swapping of sides teaches is that there is value to listening to and even speaking with our own voices the ideas of the people with whom we do not agree. It can be surprising that we start finally to see “the other side” when we spend enough time examining those ideas we don’t start out believing or agreeing with, much less understanding.

The “hard” work is the creativity required to create a list of options and alternatives to the extremes of “pro” and “con”, “yes” and “no”, “I’m right” and “You’re Wrong”. I added a brief but most important part to my usual activity by requiring the groups to present their alternatives and options to the entire class. Some students had topics which were easier than others to find options for. A group of students exploring cyber-bullying  suggested before children are allowed to use social media they first be taught to report to their parents any signs of cyber-bullying, and one way to ensure that was by keeping the family’s computer in the open living/ family room where children would be comfortable and used to sharing their cyber experiences with their families.

Another group examining YouTube and copyright abuse suggested YouTube ask its users to view a short video explaining the problems with piracy before being allowed to open an account on YouTube.

One way that I can improve the activity for next semester is to make the last part more concrete, with examples that this semester’s students used, and to offer suggestions such as to think about alternatives and options that could be undertaken by someone “at the level of the home and family” or at the other extreme, if you prefer, “at the level of governmental policy-making.”

It’s hard to know, but I wonder if this was the first time that some of my college students ever entered the arena of a problem, and saw themselves as agents of change, idea-makers and problem-solvers whose insights and experiences count. The side-lines is where all of us start out, but if we are to create more problem-solvers, educators need to provide skills in getting off the sidelines and onto the playing field.

Whether it’s the first time to be in the arena of making a difference for some of the students or not, these close encounters with thorny issues, controversial topics are exactly what changes a student from one whose learning is at arm’s length and not yet their own, to one who is in full possession of the important and necessary notion that their ideas and experiences do matter.

Pre and Post Dia de los Muertos or the Signing of the Will

When I go
I don’t care if I’m wearing a tu-tu and a
Woolen sweater or a flowered flannel gown,
Jeans and a headdress of feathers
When I go
I’ll be somewhere else
Before the ceremony or the service begins.


I’m seeing the attorney tomorrow
For the signing over of the property, the items
To set my departure in the right lane
Past the velvet curtain
To the pulsing red sign that's been blinking
Its ‘exit here’ announcement
From the deepest corner 
Of my memory.

These papers that we’re signing
Will clear the way for singing, for the raising of glasses
Pray to Guadalupe, that she finds me.
Remember me as I’d wish you to, hugging me near.
Me, who will be someone else,
Somehow knowing where to go.

When I go
I’ll be empty as an overturned vase
Dry and safe for a family of spiders
May they mate and multiply inside of me
I’ll be gone before the mood turns to lunch or to the next thing,
Gone before I know it.

Thoughts on drawing

"Did you draw as a child?" A better question might be, "Besides drawing, what else did you do as a child?"

I was asked that question at a workshop this weekend here at a drawing workshop at El Cielo Studio, and I was surprised to learn that drawing is a lot like bicycle riding, you kind of pick up where you left off--45 years ago.

Thanks to Susie Monday and Sara Jones for leading us in our amazing journey wherein we explored our drawing skills, some rusty like mine, and some new ones, such as drawing with our non dominant hand.

We watched on Netflix the remarkable documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams,
by Werner Herzog about the 33,000 year old drawings made by the people who lived in a rich river valley along with bears, big cats and horses, which they drew deep inside a cave that was recently discovered. Little is known about the people who were our first artists, but here are some ideas, if not facts:

--they did not leave traces of living or cooking in the cave, only the images they painted of the large animals

--Some of the animals were shown with multiple legs to show movement, a type of 'proto cinema' according to Herzog, who is himself a trailblazer in his own right.

I spent hours upon hours this weekend with a pencil, charcoal or crayon in my hands. When I watched the documentary and saw the cave paintings our ancestors drew 33,000 years ago, I felt a connection to them.

I know as little about my "intentions" as I do of the cave artists, and maybe that's OK. Drawing may be to humans as running up a tree for fun is to a kitten or even a bear.

Miss Bala, Fried Green Marijuana, and more

Some questions after "Miss Bala".
1. Will I live to see Mexico change and become safe enough for me to travel in again?
2. When did 'senorita' lose its crown in the language of Mexico to the English word "miss"?

3. Why do I start out loving "Weeds" and "Breaking Bad" but end up dropping those series when they become too honest and savage for me in their depictions of the border?
4.  Why are women's roles and positions so frighteningly depicted as tools, pawns, weapons but never as people who resist or opt out of the economy of drugs?
5. Why is it hard to remember that a movie about a group of women studying to become scientists, engineers and doctors would sell fewer tickets than one about a girl trying out for a beauty contest who is used by drug gangs to trap a corrupt army general?
6. Why aren't there more roles like Mary Louise Parker played in "Fried Green Tomatoes" and less like the ones in "Weeds" and "Miss Bala"?

Guerrero Then and Now (part one)

One
Three girls, two of them twins the age of eleven, the other, only ten, are cousins. They sleep on a wide canvas cot stretched on a frame with tall wooden legs under a thin cotton sheet. The summer stars stand guard over them on the path behind the kitchen between their grandmother's sugar cane patch and her orchard of peaches, fig and orange trees.
Next door the neighbor's radio plays ranchera music on the station from Monterrey, 150 miles to the north. Ranchera music is the exact opposite of American pop, whether you like it or not. The twins, Artie and Alice, show their younger cousin Linda how to play loteria earlier that evening, sharing their bottle cap collection with her, and chuckling to themselves about when long ago, last summer, they used to play the game using dried up pinto beans instead of bottle caps. "It is and it isn't like bingo," they explained to Linda as she scooted forward to see better on the chair around the neighbor's kitchen table.

After loteria and before their showers and brushing their teeth, the girls crouch under a street lamp in front of their grandmother's house. The cement under their feet is still warm from the baking summer sun. The concrete has a shiny surface laced with curly imprints made from shells as tiny as the nails on the little toes of the girls' feet. At the base of the lamppost mounds of sand rise to make a home for ants and other insects drawn to the light in the night sky. That night as the cousins quiet down and stop giggling and gossiping, Linda dreams she and her twin cousins are giants hovering over their circus-animal sand lions, poking at their hill top homes with thin blades of grass to get them to come out and perform.

The world the cousin live in is invisible to the old people, their parents, aunts and uncles and grandmother. The girls speak tomeach other in pig Latin English and also the very different Spanish variety of pig Latin. They talk endlessly about boyfriends and music that is on the car radio.  When the cousins arrived to Texas, after the uncomfortable hellos and hugs were over, Linda would ask her uncle to let her listen to the radio in his station wagon so she could hear the songs they brought from the Arizona radio stations.

The adults are necessary nuisances. They are bossy and always right, and that is only the beginning. They talk all the time and about the most boring things no one cares about like old times at the ranch and the old Guerrero that was flooded over for the new lake and the dam. That is boring and meaningless to the cousins, but it gets worse. There is Tia Marta.

Guerrero Then and Now (part two)

Two
Tia Marta is on the warpath. You can see that by the way her eyes turn into little slits when she sees us as she walks on the sidewalk toward Nana's house. Her two girls are too young to play with us. We are relieved, mostly because they act like babies and we are tired of their forever bringing up how Texas was stolen from Mexico. "They study history like they mean it here in Guerrero," says Artie to Linda. Alice stayed to help her mother with getting supper started. Alice is like that and Artie isn't. "Who cares about the Alamo anymore, that happened, what, a hundred years ago, right?" Tia Marta acts like we aren't even there when we catch up behind her on the sidewalk. Her two little girls stayed at home where she has a beauty shop.
Artie is the first to guess why Tia Marta is acting colder than normal. "She heard." "She heard what?" asks Linda.
"Pues," she says  like people from Arizona do every ten seconds, "She heard about our going riding with the boys last Sunday night." "Get out. How do you figure she heard?" "Somebody had to have seen the gringas going riding with the boys, pues in the convertible." "Do you think they also told her that we went 100 miles an hour in that car with those boys on the road over the dam?" "Pues I don't know about that, prima. Just in case, don't say anything about that, OK? I have to tell you how to do everything!" "No way, man. No way."

Guerrero Then and Now (part three)

Three
Artie and Alice live with their husbands and children in Arizona. Their cousins Linda and the two little sister cousins, Maricela and Martita, all live in Texas now. This despite the little sister cousins' ideas about whether Texas is Mexico's or not. 

Most of the old people are gone, along with some of the younger ones who died from drink, violence and ALS, like my brother Chai.

Tia Marta also lives in Texas now with her daughters. The girls grew up to marry two brothers from Guerrero. They taught school there for many years. They were forced to abandon their homes and jobs there two years ago when men in expensive SUVs and trucks began to use their town to run their new businesses. These are dirty businesses that bring lots of new money and gunfights day and night in  all corners of the village.

Tia Marta's family is one of hundreds who have left. Even the priest left Guerrero. The school where my cousins once taught was forced to close because parents wouldn't let their children leave home to go to school, fearing for their safety. This is from what I've been told and read, since I don't dare to drive down to Guerrero anymore. Even at a 100 miles per hour, I wouldn't dare to cross the road over the dam to revisit my family's home. My brother's ashes wait to be dispersed over the ruins of Guerrero Viejo. Thankfully where he sits, time is not an important matter.