Learning-- A Brainstorming exercise

First a Weight Watchers update-- I weigh in tomorrow, and I have officially annihilated my flex points. I was given 35 and I have used 38 (give or take 5 or 6 points). Elastic waist pants, here I come!!

Zit update-- The twins by my mouth are almost gone, and the one on my cheek is healing. The one on my jawline has absolutely exploded; I think it was a pregnant zit and now it has had little baby zits all around it (they are so ugly they are cute!). I also have a new one between my eyes. I blame Weight Watchers!

_____________________________________________________________
You are now cordially invited to wander into another aspect of my life. Enter at your own risk. This is an exercise, an experiment if you will. I am going to brainstorm right before your very eyes for my grad. school paper. You see, I have realized something. It is nearly effortless for me to write a blog; however, I have been working (i.e. sitting at the computer and reading others' blogs, fixing myself coffee, eating up my Weight Watchers points) on this essay for three days now, and I literally have cr_p. The question I am answering is "What is learning from a discourse perspective?" Feel free to give me constructive criticism. So here goes. . .

The more I read in education journals and books, the more I realize that education is and always has been incredibly political, incredibly controlled by context, and incredibly reticent to change (Rymes). Kumaravadivelu addresses this reticence to change when he says, "Discursive formations make it difficult for individuals to think outside of them; hence they are also exercises in power and control. A discursive change, whether social, political, or cultural, can therefore be effected only when an entire community, not just an individual, changes its ways of thinking and knowing, speaking and doing" (460). Education can be seen as one of these "discursive formations." It can be an exercise in power and control, rather than an exercise in learning and growth. What we choose to teach, are forced to teach, and choose not to teach are not neutral decisions. Each addition and subtraction has long reaching and important ramifications. Because of education is political nature, it is important that we as teachers examine what we are doing in the classroom: what we are teaching, why we are teaching it, and how and why it is being learned (or not learned) by our students (Friere). In essence, while we are teaching, we must also be actively and passionately involved in learning, not only about our students, but about the world that we inhabit and ourselves. We must do this learning because the growth that occurs in the classroom is a collaboration between student and teacher. Unless teacher and student collaborate and create a community the "discursive change" of learning can not occur.

The first collaboration students and teachers must make in the process of learning is to choose to allow learning to take place. Baker expounds upon the importance of this choice in her article "Trilingualism." In this article, she states that students must feel their home language (whether is Spanish or Black American English) is valued before they will allow themselves to learn a new language. She says, "In fact, I find that students can learn formal grammar, complex sentence structure, scientific jargon, and many other aspects of the various forms of language, quite fast once they discover that they can have control over the choices they make: to learn, or not learn, the languages associated with cultures in which they may decide to participate" (52). Kumaravadivelu also speaks about the importance of having control over learning choices in his article "Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis." He, however, talks about a different type of learning that occurs when a students home language and culture is not valued. In this context, student s learn to subvert the system.

O.K.-- I have my direction now-- I'll let you know how it goes-- I think I'll put the Friere quote in the first paragraph.