It's been awhile since I wrote here. Currently we are facing a health care bill which will negatively affect many without a public option.

The public option has disappeared from the table.

Al Franken is leading a campaign to reinstate it, we need more senators to take up the charge. Otherwise, we as a nation will be victim to the insurance companies for 1/2 a million dollars of special interest payouts. I think the bigger story is the fear many senators have to stand up and protect the American people.

It is sad such people have the right to decide for someone else to go to battle, but are unwilling to take on such risk themselves.

Yes they may lose financial support, but they would gain support from the public.

Theatre of the Oppressed

Augusto Boal's 'Theatre of the Oppressed'
'To be blunt, I am trying to seduce you into doing this work on the outside.'
By Ken Gewertz
Harvard News Office

Oppression, according to Augusto Boal, is when one person is dominated by the monologue of another and has no chance to reply. Boal's life is devoted to giving those who are in this one-down position the tools with which to express themselves and discover a way out of their powerlessness.

He does this through the medium of theater. A native of Brazil who has been jailed himself for his political activities, Boal is the founder of a movement known as "Theatre of the Oppressed." He is at Harvard Dec. 5-12 conducting a series of workshops with students, teachers, theater artists, and community members, culminating in a forum and presentation on Thursday (Dec. 11), in which members of the community will have a chance to react to work developed by Boal and the participants.

While the words "Theatre of the Oppressed" may suggest something heavy and dirge-like, Boal's presence soon dispels such preconceptions. Buoyant and encouraging, his face framed by an unruly silver mane, he quickly connects with the participants in his workshop through a series of stories whose implications seem to go beyond their apparent simplicity.


Boal (arms raised) conducts a movement exercise.

"I have taught in prisons," he said. "I worked with the guardians as well as the prisoners because the prison oppresses them, too. At the end, I asked one of the guardians, 'What did you learn about human rights?' 'Absolutely nothing,' he said. 'The only thing I learned is that the prisoners are not animals. They are human beings like myself.'"

As the founder of a movement that has become worldwide in scope, Boal is also frank about his hopes for the people who are touched by his teaching.

"To be blunt, I am trying to seduce you into doing this work on the outside. In the university, you are cut off from the outside world. I want you to take what you learn here and bring it to the outside."

The key to Boal's theater is the "spect-actor," an audience member who is invited onstage to take part in the drama. Working mostly in poor communities, Boal serves as a facilitator to help volunteers create dramas around problems that affect their lives. At the performance, audience members are free not only to comment on the action, but also to step up on stage and play roles of their choice. In doing so, they discover new ways of resolving the dilemmas that the play presents. In follow-up exercises, community members learn how to translate these insights into social action.


Yale student Lily Diamond.
"What looks like destiny turns out to be a problem with different possible outcomes. He guides frustration and despair into creative intervention and then into legislative and civic intervention," said Doris Sommer, professor of Romance languages and literatures and director of Cultural Agency, an initiative at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, one of the organizations at Harvard sponsoring Boal's residency.

The other sponsors are the Office for the Arts, the American Repertory Theatre, the Graduate School of Education's Arts in Education Program Bryant Lecture/Performance Series, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Boal's work was the inspiration for Cultural Agency, said Sommer. The initiative was launched last year as an effort to bring together artists and scholars to make positive contributions to civil society.

"Students who are interested in the humanities sometimes become discouraged because they don't see the contribution they can make," said Sommer. "We tell them, no, you are precisely what is needed to make social investments, to develop a web of cultural activities that weaves together civil society."

Cultural Agency carries out this work by hosting conferences, lectures, and workshops, and by coordinating internships, publications, and academic learning with community service. (Harvard Gazetter,2006)http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/12.11/15-boal.html

Memory of Oppression: Thomkins Square Riot 1988

Written by Holly Troy, NYC
4/8/2006 11:20 AM
[The Tomkins Square Riot as much as any other instance solidified my understanding of the world and my place in it. It highlighted how low income people were treated in the economy, and that we the people are still important.]

Randarian!

I remember the Thomkins Square Riot. I was a squatter then, living on 8th Street and Avenue C. I worked at Life Cafe, so many anarchists and artists and film makers gathered there then. Afterwards, the place was buzzing with talk--so many stories.

It was a hot hot summer. We watched the police line up, there were so many of them. Avenue B. Helmets and clubs--a sea of them. The police no longer looked human. It was hard to believe what would come next though. For a moment the air was filled with silence, and then, just horror.

It was strange, I saw so may people being hurt. PEople just trying to get home. I remember one woman pushing her baby in a stroller just trying to get home. They grabbed her away from the stroller and just started beating her while her baby sat there. Another friend, MAura, was just walking down Avenue A on her way to work. She was a bartender. The cops grabbed her and rubbed her face against the bricks of a building until her cheek was a gaping hole. She was so frightened, she hid in her apt. for days.

All of this violence going on and it was as if I was in a protective bubble, just floating through it all. I was very upset, but for some reason, in the middle of it all, I was untouched. I even spoke to the police while it was happening, and they spoke to me. We conversed calmly.

There was so much tension building up to the riot. And it got worse after the riot.

I felt so heartbroken after that night. Two weeks later I left New York, just went back home. I was 17.

Kellogg Middle School: Closure Announcement Other Schools Also Threatened

April 4, 2006


NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Sarah Carlin Ames, Portland Public Schools, sames@pps.k12.or.us503-916-3212


Portland, Ore. Superintendent Vicki Phillips today proposed a school configuration proposal that over a three or four-year period could phase out at least five current middle schools in favor of creating new kindergarten-8th grade schools in areas of North, Northeast, and Southeast Portland.



“Portland Public Schools’ new five-year strategic plan contains a promise to make sure we offer a world-class education to every single student, in every school across Portland, and to sustain hope and confidence in our public schools,” Superintendent Phillips said. “To deliver on that promise, we must face our current reality head on: Our schools have fewer students and fewer dollars than they did in the past. To provide the best possible education for our children, we must balance the budget and manage our schools more effectively.”



Superintendent Phillips made a series of proposals that she said would help PPS offer “strong and stable schools into the future,” reforming some of the city’s least successful middle schools and saving the school district millions as it serves students in as many as seven fewer school buildings.



The proposal now goes out for community review and the School Board will hold public hearings throughout the city before a decision is made in May.


Some of the Superintendent’s proposed changes would phase-in starting in the fall of 2006. For some neighborhoods, Superintendent Phillips has set clear goals but is supporting a community process to develop a specific proposal. As proposed, the changes would play out over three or four years, to allow time for thoughtful implementation. After a series of community meetings and School Board hearings throughout Portland, a vote on the proposals is planned for May 1.

Superintendent Phillips is not proposing closures or changes at the high school level, in order to allow reforms at Jefferson, Madison, Marshall and Roosevelt to take hold. If those high schools do not improve both academic achievement and enrollment in two or three years, that decision will be revisited.

Further detail on the individual proposals, their timelines and implementation, is available on the Portland Public Schools Web site on in other materials. What follows is a brief outline of the most significant changes:

. Some middle schools would phase out over the next three years, with the elementary schools that feed into them building, one grade at a time, to serve kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. In four cases, the K-8 eventually leaves its current building and moves into the middle school building (Fernwood, Gregory Heights, Binnsmead, Portsmouth). In one case the middle school phases out and its building would close (Kellogg).

· In several neighborhoods, there are fewer families than in the past and fewer students in the schools. Where enrollment and population forecasts don’t predict future increases in enrollment, the school district would close an elementary school building as the remaining schools move to K-8. (Clarendon, Hollyrood, Humboldt, Rose City Park)

· In two cases, Superintendent Phillips believes the drop in enrollment calls for a school building to close (Rieke in Southwest, and one of a group of six buildings in the Sellwood/Moreland neighborhoods), but she would like a community process to develop a proposal, with a report back to her in the fall. She will then forward her recommendation to the School Board.

· The student population is expected to grow in North Portland’s St. Johns neighborhood and in the outer Southeast neighborhoods surrounding Marshall High School. Superintendent Phillips is calling for a community process in each of those areas to explore whether a change in configuration or other effort could improve student achievement at middle school level, building stronger schools in the same number of buildings. Again, she would like the community to report back to her in the fall.

“Schools of kindergarten through eighth grade offer several advantages over traditional middle schools: Students face fewer transitions, parents stay involved in their schools, and teachers and principals have the time to really know the students and support them in their learning,” Superintendent Phillips said. “In addition, several studies indicate that for many groups of students who have not done well in traditional middle schools, K-8 schools can increase their academic success.”

---My note, they are also cheaper. Didn't we just join the small schools initiative, which is it. Seems like it changes with the weather. School changes affect children, families, and children's attitudes about the world. These are not adults and companies. There needs to be more caution used with children. Political gain does not need to be made at the sake of our children.


Portland once was a school district of K-8 schools, and many of the district’s elementary and middle school buildings were built for that configuration. Most of the new K-8 schools to be created would have between 400 and 600 students, with enough staff members to offer a stronger curriculum and stronger support from limited ESL and Special Education staff.



The school district faces upfront costs in making these changes: moving costs, professional development for teachers, and adjustments to buildings and their grounds to accommodate the new students. However, the school district would also save millions every year: reducing the numbers of principals and school secretaries; cutting maintenance, utilities and food service costs; and avoiding at least $10 million dollars in capital costs such as replacing boilers, roofs, or bringing aged buildings up to modern health, safety and accessibility code. The Superintendent’s budget does not count on savings from reconfiguration in 2006-07, but projects on-going operations savings of approximately $3 million a year starting in 2007-08.



These proposals would affect student’s elementary and middle school options next fall. After the School Board votes, Portland Public Schools will open the School Choice application for two weeks in May to allow families to revise or to file new transfer applications. Students already in a school, whether they live in the neighborhood or have transferred in, would continue in that school to the highest grade offered. Any boundary changes proposed would affect only new students at the school, most commonly incoming kindergarteners.



Over the next month, school district staff will visit each grouping of schools to present the proposals, answer questions, take suggestions and hear from those directly affected. These conversations will shape the proposals, and their implementation. The School Board also will hold four hearings, in North, Northeast, Southeast and Westside Portland to take public testimony.



Interested parties may also share comments, ideas and suggestions by writing to Superintendent and the School Board, at 501 N. Dixon Street, Portland, OR 97227 or via e-mail at Superintendent@pps.k12.or.us or SchoolBoard@pps.k12.or.us.

Before the Rain: NCLB and Kellogg Middle School Before the Closure Announcement

Half of Portland's neighborhood middle schools miss No Child Left Behind targets
Monday, July 18, 2005
By Steven Carter and Paige Parker
Four more Portland middle schools are about to go on the federal watch list for schools failing to make adequate yearly progress, meaning half the district's neighborhood middle schools face sanctions under the law.

Parents of the 2,097 students at Binnsmead, Gregory Heights, Kellogg and Portsmouth middle schools were sent letters Friday by the school district, notifying them of the schools' status.

The letters say if space is available at middle schools not on the watch list -- not all have space -- their children are eligible for free transportation to them. They can take a district school bus if the route is handy or get a free TriMet pass. The letters included school transfer applications.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools must show adequate yearly progress for all students, including those with disabilities, those who speak limited English and those from poor families.

For the 2004-05 school year, 50 percent of students in a school had to pass the state test in English, and 49 percent had to pass the math test, to make overall adequate yearly progress. Groups within a school, such as disabled students, also are subject to the standards, but their scores can be lower in some cases.

The four middle schools new to the list fell short last year for certain groups of students.

Sanctions under No Child Left Behind are progressive and apply to schools that receive federal anti-poverty money. Two years on the list triggers the transfers and free transportation requirement. Schools on the list for three years are subject to staff or curriculum replacement. By the fifth year, schools face replacement of the entire staff, conversion to a charter school or takeover by a private company.

Students from schools failing to meet federal progress standards make up an increasing majority of all transfers in Portland. This fall, 71 percent of transfers -- 773 students -- will come from schools receiving anti-poverty funds and that failed to make adequately yearly progress.

Sarah Carlin Ames, a district spokeswoman, said the status of the schools could change after test score data are rechecked this summer and fall. It's likely that the percentage of limited-English and disabled students passing state achievement tests will change in the final tally, she said.

The Oregon Department of Education will release a preliminary list of all schools failing to make adequate yearly progress Aug. 5. The state also will release test scores for all Oregon schools in mid-August.

Too Little Too Late: Kellogg Receives Grant Two Weeks Before Closure Announcement

District wins federal grant to lift middle, high school reading rates
Literacy - Nine schools will tap the $23.5 million for training, materials and staff starting this fall

Wednesday, March 15, 2006
RYAN GEDDES
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Portland Public Schools a five-year, $23.5 million grant as part of a new federal program to raise adolescent literacy rates and study ways to improve reading instruction at high schools and middle schools.

The Striving Readers program will help about 6,400 students at nine North, Northeast, and Southeast Portland schools beginning this fall, said district spokesman Bob Lawrence.

Madison, Franklin, Roosevelt and Jefferson high schools will take part in the program, as will Gregory Heights, Binnsmead, Kellogg, Portsmouth and Tubman middle schools.

The grant comes as the district faces a projected $57 million budget shortfall next year and is considering cutting school days, closing buildings and shedding programs and staff. It is strictly designated for literacy programs and cannot be used to offset other costs, district officials said.

At each of the nine schools, the district plans to train teachers, buy classroom reading materials and hire three specialists to oversee literacy efforts and run special reading intervention classes.

All students at the nine schools will benefit from the schoolwide teacher training and staff additions, administrators say, and 450 students each year in grades 7-10 will be randomly selected to participate in an intensive reading curriculum for at least a year.

The program also will provide special help to about 1,700 students in grades 6-10 who are two or more grade levels behind in reading, based on their Oregon Statewide Assessment test scores.

Portland Public Schools is one of eight districts chosen out of 148 applicants nationwide to receive the award, said Kathryn Doherty, program director for Striving Readers.

"We've made a lot of strides with early reading, but I think if you look at the research and results, we still have a big issue with adolescent kids," she said.

Districtwide, 52 percent of 10th-graders met or exceeded standardized reading test benchmarks in the 2004-05 school year, according to Portland Public Schools data. In the four high schools that will receive grant funding, an average of 29 percent met or exceeded those benchmarks.

That same school year, 68 percent of eighth-graders met or exceeded those benchmarks, compared with an average of 52 percent in the five middle schools that will benefit from the grant.

The department based its selection on need, potential impact and research methods. Other grant recipients named so far include Springfield, Mass.; Danville, Ky.; Memphis, Tenn.; and San Diego.

The instruction model for Striving Readers was developed at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning.

"We're thrilled about the whole package because it includes staff development, student resources and staff resources. None of those components by themselves ever really get the whole job done," said Sue Ann Higgens, principal of the P.O.W.E.R. Academy at Roosevelt. "It will be life-changing for our students."

Lawrence said the $23.5 million grant, along with the nearly $11 million provided to district and state school programs by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Meyer Memorial Trust in 2005, should encourage local investment in public education.

But, he added, "Grants can't substitute for the ongoing support we need."

Portland News: 503-221-8199; portland@news.oregonian.com

School Board Meeting

Went well considering all the budget cuts, people who look to such loopholes against funding schools should be ashamed of themselves.
Many children came to the meeting tonight, protesting the school closures, the budget considerations droned on and on, children tried to stay awake and held signs saying, "Go slow" or "Slow down".

The sadness of this was not lost on me, inner city children being forced to recognize that the public doesn't care about them and they are expendable, as small children they are already so awash with defeat, that the only protest they can make is, "hurt us slower."
It breaks my heart, once again, people should be ashamed of themselves. I doubt their sleepy little heads trying to listen attentively to budget considerations will make the news, but they inspired me with their doggedness, and their presence changed everything.

Peter McClaren writes in "Life in Schools"(pg. 183,1989) and with H. Giroux in "Teacher Education and the Politics of Engagement" (pg. 228,1983) that curriculum represents the introduction to a particular form of life; it serves in part to prepare students for dominat or subordinate positions in the existing society. For these children this evening the curriculum affimed the rights of due process but only in so far that their dreams were seen as not valued by the current society.

At an aparapoe moment a man from the governor's office came in with an envelope promising $6 million, but the hope of the current superintendent is to use that little bit of money to regiment curriculum so that it is consistant and lacks diversity, supposedly to better the curriculum, but the students have always done well in college placement, the schools here are still highly valued. So the main need is to take away the freedom from teachers to create curriculum, and start with social studies curriculum first.

This standarized curriculum is not even discussable as a budget item, possibly because a very powerful right wing syndicate wants to take power from the powerhouse in Portland social studies education for the nation, Rethinking Schools, by creating a standarized curriculum they take the power away from these teachers to test new curriculum in their classrooms that changes the curriculum of schools after publishing around the nation.

Background to this Site: Awakening to a Sustainable Revolutionary Pedagogy

The purpose of this site will be to critically analyze my experiences as a neophyte educator in the realm of education both in the university setting and in public schools. Also, to look at movements towards social justice on the regional, national, and international levels as examples of putting theory into action.

My purpose in posting such articles will be to analyze the praxis associated with them to see if such movements increase the awareness of others in our struggle for social justice and greater realization of what it is to be a human being with and in this world.

Also, my purpose is to look at our world and our place in it as human beings as caretakers of this planet and our role in this. We must ask ourselves,"Is this a role we are doing well?"and, "What more must we do as critical educators to ensure our students' awareness of the world and their ability to change that world for the better is increased?"

The first step, is to help students to be in the world. This is a painful proposition. Many students I have found, like myself, are caught in patterns of subtle avoidance. Our media has so sensationalized the evil that children and adults alike are unable to realize how much goodness and love exists in this world. As educators we are taught only to make sure we teach what is on the test,more and more, and to only look at learning disabilities that take away from test scores, but the greatest disability is avoidance of being in the world. This in a young person can equal lost hope, and lost hope in one so young is a dangerous thing.

As educators we can take back this hope in little ways, yes first by creating safety in the classroom and establishing a sense of ethics based on good manners, but this is only the first step. However, if we look at why consideration of others is a good idea, we get into the premise that others exist. This epistemology in itself is a shock to many young people locked in the subsystem of the imaginary audience where others exist merely as saters of needs, and as a audience by which they will be judged. Moving away from the darkness of the prisoner's cell where requests go out and food and messages are slipped under the door in itself is a brave move for most students. As educators we must see how and why this happens for our students and for ourselves.

It is not a win-win situation. With the current situation in public schools, we all begin to feel isolated from our comrades, locked in cells of doubt, afraid of the next inspection; but this is not reality. The reality is no matter how cut off we may be in our seperate classrooms there is the lifeblood of the students that carry wisdom and ignorance from classroom to classroom. Who see through our masks to our true hearts underneath. We can not hide from them our true intentions, rather we should make sure that there is hope in our hearts, and that this hope is born out in the belief that each of our students will increase the amount of goodness in the world each day they are in it.

The first thing to model is that it is okay to make mistakes as long as they do not harm others deeply, but even then we must atone for our mistakes, and that forgiveness can come easily. Once we create a classroom that allows mistakes, but based around the integrity and honesty that we can speak respectfully about ways we may be hurt by others, or when we are afraid in whatever form is appropriate for the culture of ourselves and our students, we can begin to melt the bars which prevent students from seeing each other as human beings like his or her self.

The second thing is to reduce fear of the world and the future by focusing on the good things of the world, and poetry and philosophies people have established in facing the world. The world is not the cess pool some conservative politicians would have us believe, and contrary to such hedonistic philosophy each person does have goodness in them, not everyone is out to get something at every moment in time. It is strange to have to reprove that which was secured by the Humanist Movement so long ago, but these facts bear repeating.

The evidence shows that we are surrounded by the kindness of others, the clothes we wear, the cars and roads we drive on and with, the sidewalks, the buildings, all of these things were built through the kindness of others. Many of them doing a good job past what was asked of them out of the kindness of each of their hearts in wanting to do a job well done. From the time we were in the crib, a helpless thing, we have been cared for by others; yet we are told to trust no one.

In actuality we have relied on the kindness of strangers again and again and were saved from harm. Yes there are those who perform wrong actions, and we should be alert to those who show anger or other irrational minds who can harm us at some point, but that does not mean such people are intrinsically evil, just that at that moment in time they are capable of evil and best avoided, but not permentently. We ourselves also often fall into emotions which rob us of our better sense, and can act carelessly, so it is best to avoid wrongful actions of both ourselves and others, but without permenent judgement.

Permenent Judgement is just another ring of bars which seperate us from others. Often teenagers make an opinion of another, and can not change that opinion, cliques are formed off these presumptions of others, and often such judgements against others can cause a lifetime of harm in habitual attitudes. This is where stereotypes kick-in. Bottom line, there are no absolutes, there is not an absolute wrong or right action. There is no permenent action that will always bring about wellness, and another that would bring about pain. Even a doctor may need to use a knife to bring about wellness occasionally. The skill is to know what is appropriate and when, and never to permenently judge another by one quick act alone, but to recognize the behavior patterns of another, positive and negative to see what is to be avoided and what is to be tolerated, and to apply this knowledge to our own actions so that we might be more skillful.

The last realm of this awakening is the most subtle, that is creating a new more positive reality for our planet than this industrial nightmare struggle between labor and capital, between factory smoke and withered trees, between birds and airplanes. This involves the greatest task of all, looking at our own selfish wasteful behavior, and limiting our needs, slowing our lives down, and walking away from the "jet-setter" lifestyle that makes slaves of us all in search of shiny objects like magpies, and zombies wandering in search of elusive rest.

We are entering a realm where those at the top of industry would make of the Earth a slave planet. Where immigrants to the Global North would be forced back to their home countries to labor in free trade zones for products for the Global North, and those in the Global North would exhaust their new found wealth of the last 50 years on worthless products, sure to break in a few years, only to be forced by rampant underemployment to serve again as cheap labor for the global machine.

Meanwhile, our planet grows more and more polluted, even the airwaves are crowded with business transmissions, making money clogs our rivers with slime, and the last clean water is begining to be traded on the stock market like gold, oil, or tin foil. This is the great darkness which many children see as being hopeless to combat, and it's why many of them do not want to grow up.

One can not blame them, I did not wish to grow up in a post-nuclear world in the 80's, and my fear led me new ideas and new forums of expression, whereby I met many great leaders who would speak out against oppression in this world, but a leader is only one person, and we are many. We must find small ways everyone everyday to increase goodness and wholeness in this world. We all know what is right in our hearts, good earth in our noses, growing things, birds, butterflies, reminding our children of these things and continuing to fight for their prevalence is a fight we may find many hands with.

This is why I endorse place-based education first, only by being brave enough to be in the world and with the world can children become brave enough to acknowledge that yes they are alive in history, and therefore unlike celloid are susceptible to harm and history, but there is something else, in being part of history they are capable of making history. It is my goal that the history I make with my students is that they can not only know what to strive for that is goodness and justice in this world for all beings, but they have something to hold on to, the Earth, and the belief that both in the hearts of men and women and in the Earth, Goodness will Prevail.