Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Be Happy About '08 Resolutions
I've been running faithfully and working out since August, and I know January first is the day to commit to new habits. I'd like to say I will eat better and exercise more, but I know that I do as much as I can to fight my genetics. The rest is history. So, this year, I want to celebrate the good things in life AND this includes a love for being fat and on a perpetual diet. Always battling weight has become a part of who I am and now I wish to give it a shout out. If it wasn't for being fat, I wouldn't run as many miles a week as I do, nor push weights. If it wasn't for being fat, I wouldn't have my whacky sense of humor. If it wasn't for being fat, my personal history would have been on a completely different path. So, here's to girth, 2008, and the symbolic, Sisyphus battle of getting rid of it unsuccessfully. In reality, it is not a bad thing. It is the thing that it is and I wish to rate it as my number one celebration for 2008. ~ Bry
Oof. I left K-12 classrooms in the spring of 2007 to earn a doctorate at Syracuse University. Although I experienced pagers, blue & green iMacs, the introduction to YouTube, and ways to connect my own laptop to a TV that was not large enough for all to see (we still used chalk and chalkboards...whiteboards weren't even a thing), I never had to teach high school in the age of cellphones. I remember when I got my first MacBook laptop, too, how students took turns doing their work for State portfolio system on my personal device. I wondered then, "How will schools ever be able to keep up with all the technology financially?" Bring-your-own-devices helped for some schools and computer labs became a thing in others. It is/was inevitable, digital literacy was destined to be a thing.
I actually began a doctorate enthused about digital literacy, because at the time I left everyday, K-12 teaching, I was somewhat ahead of the game. My first publication, in fact, was about the digital projects my students did with senior research and culminating projects. It is probably why when I chose to leave, the class of 2008 suggested I begin blogging. I never heard of such a thing, although I dappled in LiveJournal as a classroom teacher. I've kept notebooks, daily, since I was 19 (that's what writers do, no?) but the introduction of blogging made me think, "Crandall, if you are going to write daily, why not make it available for others to read?" That way students who wanted could keep up with me. They only could, though, when they had the link. Sometimes what I write in the morning gets 1,000s of readers. Most of the time it's smaller...a crew of 12-13 who are regulars.
This is year 18, and I'm thinking that writing every day is simply who I am (it's how I process my world). When I first began, I only did a paragraph or two, but then -- it took me a very long time to convert -- I finally gave in to Twitter. I even found a website that would Tweet my first 140 character every day when I wrote. I enjoyed (still do) to know others are reading my daily thoughts. Playing the Twitter game (although resistant) picked up many connections around the world. Of course, Facebook, too, became a place to share knowledge, thoughts, life, etc...and it's been especially good for running a National Writing Project site. All of it has been extremely productive because, well, the community of writers and teachers of writers was growing. Humans found humans. It was good. There was joy.
Then, it started getting wonky. Political. A war zone of sick and demented ideologies...so bad that scrolling was like, "What the heck is going on?"
I'm now wondering if social media and digital connection has really been an undoing of cultural norms and values, because arm-chair sabotaging has few to no consequences. Rather than professionals who share resources to build community, the daily scroll turned into doomsday conspiracies, hatred, and pure ugliness. It transitioned to a space of attack and inane opinions...not a productive network of like-minded individuals working towards a better world. It's sort of like any classroom...you can have a room full of young people seeking to move forward in their lives, but then there are those knuckleheads - usually insecure kids who are projecting their insecurities onto others, that sabotage spaces for all. Twitter became a home for that.
I'm now wondering if it is ever good (or safe) for anyone to share anything online, because such tools are not used for healthy and productive means when those at the top would rather they be set for profit and power. I mean, I used to scroll Facebook once a day for joy (awwww, I didn't know they had a cute dog or, wow, there kids are growing so fast). Now it's a location for triggering anxiety, hate, opinions (whether warranted or not)...with the occasional kitty cat. I'm allergic to them, but still love videos of them hopping around like maniacs.
And it brings me back to hubris. The art of research is to always piece together meaning through quantitative and qualitative methodologies that are peer-reviewed, challenged, and discussed in democratic, professional ways to move knowledge forward. That's how I have used digital tools (and shoot, it's why I've even won literacy awards for the work that occurs in digital spaces). Now, I'm wondering why...to prove myself? To build community? To share what is possible?
The truth is, I write for me because that is how I make sense of the world. I know from workshops that shared writing connects individuals in amazing ways and, up until recent years, I've found social media to do the same. I'm not so sure anymore.....like will future species with glowing fingers and large eyes one day send their version of archaeologists to dig through digital memories on the electronic devices left behind from humans that once were. Is that why I write online? To historicize our precious, egotistic brief time upon the stage?
I really don't know. And I am wondering about theyears of making memories via Facebook photos and sharing with others. We used to do that with shoe boxes and albums, and only scrummaged through them on slow days, weekends, and maybe holidays. Fancier people did it with VHS recorders and a VCR. I, myself, have a good six years of mini-DVs....capturing time, making movies, sharing with my students. But then....it all moves on...to something else...and in the process...it trickles down to not mattering at all.
Which is true. And also not true.
But I do know, I'm likely to continue writing daily in whatever way I can, whether digitally or not digitally. It's just how I've always been. And I began with pencil. Then pen. There was cursive. Then the every-other-line essays to be turned in, then a typewriter, then an electronic typewriter, then a Word Processor (I learned quickly in my freshman year of college, professors did not smile at papers written by me skipping every other line), finally a computer (that first one must have weight 140 pounds), then to a luxurious life with Apple products, then to text, then to FaceTime, then to voice translators such as Otter (and even Siri). It's really an amazing thing to think about how FAST it's changed and how quickly it's also changed communication. Once upon a time, my favorite thing to do was to write letters and wait a couple weeks for one to be returned. Now, in a given day, I might get several of these in emails or messages or texts. There's a lot to take in on the busier days.
Perhaps our abilities to communicate are way too fast for us now to process and actually be rationale. Perhaps the next wave will be all AI, and they'll laugh at how much time we wasted thinking about silly things that technology can do so much faster than us. (I'm thinking about clothing here, and a click of a button to approve a credit card can bring a wardrobe from Amazon. Once upon a time, such garments needed to be made at home).
I still think, however, that reflecting, taking notes, recording, and wondering about the way the world is (if it is) is exactly what it means to be human. Recording our own lil' realities as they happen, and trying to piece it together with histories is how life is lived. For some, it's about expanding good and helping our species to realize the joy of humanity. For others, it's about tearing down, destroying, and making others feel all the ugly they feel inside.
This is just my morning rambling as I wake up, wondering if I should go back to pen and book, and remove my digital footprint. But then I think about how much faster it is to type and get things done in digital spaces. Perhaps in five years or so, I won't type anything at all because I'll just talk out loud and let AI manipulate it (or none of this exist because societal infrastructures will collapse). After all, people once had to wait for someone on a horse to share what's up or they had to learn from elders from the words passed down mouth to ear.
Perhaps we simply have way too many narratives competing at once and that is the problem. I'm returning to the root of why I chose to be an educator...to teach kids to ask questions, to wonder, to problem solve, to think critically, and find the best means to share what they know with others. That happens classroom space to classroom space and doesn't necessarily need a national landscape where the cacophony has grown to outrageous.
Oh, snap. Look at the time. I need to warm up my car and get going.
