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This is a reflection on my third English paper for Anne, which took the form of a comic book and was never fully completed. I will be attaching scans of the pieces that had been completed SOON and using this space to outline where the comic will continue to go.

 

I chose to write a comic book for several reasons. The first reason was that I am interested in experimenting with forms of academic work that diverge from conventional assignments, such as essays and exams. In doing so, I hope to challenge the notion that these conventional assignments are the most adequate methods of measuring student growth and learning inside the classroom. By expanding our understanding of what a “paper” looks like, we can better serve the needs and strengths of diverse learning styles.

Emily Crispell

Multicultural Education

Final Field Paper

May 8, 2014

 

Understanding Identity and the Latino Diaspora in Middle School

 

“In their occluded waters light loses its directionality within a few inches of the surface. Beneath this lies a flowing stream of suspended matter in which visibility does not extend beyond an arm’s length. With no lighted portal to point the way, top and bottom and up and down become very quickly confused” (Ghosh 46).

 Having spent so much time this semester in and outside of our 360 contemplating connectedness, barriers, intersectionality, and porosity, I am finding myself in a sort of ‘flowing stream of suspended matter’ – very close to accepting the possibility that I will never truly find the right direction with which to ask the right questions and find the right answers to understand the world. There is a false sense of closure associated with our 360 coming to an end, yet I know that my life as a student and as an ecologically minded person is much more in the beginning stages. I am in a stream of questions and answers (that are never truly answers) that circle me back to discover that indeed, the same problems still exists in our world. Everything, for me, comes back to the relationship between being an individual and belonging as part of a group or society. I want to break out of this whirlpool. I have been having trouble understanding why I am so transfixed on this “me/us/them” theme, seeing as we are an eco-literacy 360 and this topic does not feel pointedly ecological. Exploring the connections we have with one another is important, but does not fully consider our connections to earth and the environment.

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

-Nelson Mandela

 

There are two definitions to language, one is for lenguaje and the other is for idioma. One is the branch of communication, whether it is verbal, visual, or gestural. The other branch stretches out to dialect, tongue, accents, and our way of oral speech. Regardless of each definition, we ultimately use it all for the same objective, to communicate. We use language as means of connection, to convey and diffuse our experiences as close as we can get to sharing and describing without the other person actually being there. We give language the power of translating our experiences into words.

Dear Anne and Jody,

Almost a year and a half ago now, I wrote another reflection letter to the both of you. The first paragraph of that paper ended with this sentence: “Everything has changed now and I can't wait to see what's next.” I didn’t have to wait very long. This year has truly been that “what’s next” for me.

    Small groups of people gather at the large coffee chain on the second floor of a Texas shopping center.1 Some are made up of teens and college students, some of older individuals, maybe groups of friends or coworkers, but no group seems to acknowledge the presence of any other. All of a sudden, twenty or so phones buzz or ring or chime and like clockwork, small groups of teens or students or coworkers all rise, make for the escalators, and walk quickly toward the corporate business interior of the complex. Someone gives a signal and the chanting begins: “No pipelines! No tar sands! No destruction of indigenous lands!” “Jobs at the [pipeline]? No lets can it! There are no jobs on a dead planet!” “What’s insane? This is insane! No eminent domain for private gain!” (Tar Sands Blockade). Within minutes protestors invade the offices of a corporate conglomerate working to construct a pipeline to carry tar sands oil from Alberta to Houston, a project that could and most likely will have devastating effects upon the natural environment not to mention the exacerbation of global climate change from increased anthropogenic carbon production–yet none of the messaging focuses on protecting “nature.” Rather, all of the chants engage with social issues: ignoring the land rights of first nation peoples, placing profit margins and the bottom line above health and safety, forcibly taking the property of people whose only crimes were living in an area a corporation suddenly decided in needs to own.

           The first time our Ecoliteracy 360 met was in December, in the English House lecture hall, where we talked about ourselves and our homes and where we were going to go throughout the next semester.  The second time we met, we piled into two blue Bryn Mawr vans and drove 30 minutes and what might have seemed a world to Camden, where we spent the first half of the day gardening and the second half touring Camden’s water treatment facility and some of Camden’s streets and ending in one of Camden’s parks, where our guide, Michael, pointed out the environmental threats and innovations that surrounded us.  This was our first 360 field trip, designed to help us learn about ecoliteracy, but even now I am hard pressed to say exactly what I learned that day.  I came in from the outside and began to reevaluate my assumptions about a city I’d only ever heard talked about as poor and crime-ridden but, even though I did learn some things about Camden that I hadn’t known before, I think that day really started my semester-long process of changing the way I see the world.  Perhaps the poet Rilke was describing something like this when he wrote:

And we: spectators, always, everywhere,

looking at everything and never from!

It floods us. We arrange it.  It decays.

We arrange it again, and we decay.

Sara, Hayley and Sasha--
please write a self-evaluation of your prison work this semester.
General guidelines can be found in the self-evaluation that you did for
WWC 1 1/2 years ago: /exchange/courses/360/silence/f12/portfolio
--but here's the current version we'd like you to respond to:

This process invites you to "diffract" on all the work you have done in
our prison group and to contribute to and assist us with the evaluation of your work.  

In order to do this, be specific and descriptive, but also evaluative:
Review your participation in our group work before, during and after the sessions
we spend inside.  How present-and-contributing have you been during our preparation,
in our discussions inside, and during our debriefing sessions?

* Describe how you prepared for, and reflected on, the prison environment
and classroom experience outside of class.  In what ways did you push yourself
outside your comfort zone?

* Describe your critical, active engagement during our sessions in RCF:
How did you actively engage women in conversation and relationship?
Did you initiate or wait for someone to talk to you? To what degree
did you push yourself outside your comfort zone?

* Reflect, too, on your engagement with the reading and writing we assigned.

as we finish out the year, i find myself wanting an archive of the lesson plans

and homework we assigned. so: find attached.