The Daily Discomfort: Still Selfie Conscious

Tags

Community, Connections, Selfie

Last week, I wrote about my selfie consciousness.  This week, I’m reporting on my plan to ask a stranger to take my photo and see what happens.  I went into the Middle School to conduct a workshop on building effective sentences last Friday, and the first thing I did was look for a student.  While they were checking my driver’s license to make sure I was not a criminal, I spied two children sitting on the bench next to the attendance office.  I said, “Would one of you do me a favor?  I need you to take my picture.”  They were both more than willing, and I thought I might have to rescue my phone when they briefly wrestled with it before Jose, a sixth grader who was waiting to see the principal, took the picture.  They smiled and laughed when I explained that I was writing about selfies.   They were friendly and open, even though they were both evidently in some kind of trouble.  After our brief conversation, I thought, “That was easy enough.  What’s the big deal about asking someone to take your picture?”

When I left the campus to eat lunch, I decided that asking an eleven year old to take my picture was too comfortable.  I needed to make the experience more of a risk.  So I waited until I had placed my order with the twenty-something young gentlemen at the restaurant, and then I said, “This is kind of embarrassing, but can I get you to take my picture?”

He agreed, but the ten years he had on my friend Jose changed his perspective about a total stranger asking you to take their picture.  I believe he indulged me because I was an older person and because he was not in a position to say no since he was waiting on me at the time.  He did, however, take a much better picture.

This experiment is not over.  I’m going to continue to ask people to take my picture, and look for opportunities to engage in what I called micro-connections last week.  I have to continue because I haven’t made sense of why people are so obsessed with selfies and why I’m so resistant to taking one myself.  The whole point of this blog is to learn about the world that evolved into being while I was raising my children and working.

In the meantime, I’ve been doing some interesting reading about selfies.  The Times article  http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/06/why-selfies-matter/  presents information from the perspective of a concerned society.  Jerry Salz’s article http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/history-of-the-selfie.htmlselfie helped me take a longer view.  Selfies, like Elvis, like hip-hop, have changed and will continue to change our conceptions of art and of communication and beauty.  Finally, Matthew Frost’s video, starring Kirsten Dunst, affirms that I’m not alone in feeling that we’re giving up a sense of community and connection in exchange for the ease of taking a fast photo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwDbOmPQNx0

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The Daily Discomfort: Why I’m Selfie-Conscious

Tags

Selfie

Last May my daughter sent me a beautiful scarf for Mother’s Day.  I texted her the next morning and told her I was going to be wearing the scarf to work.  She replied, “That’s great!  Take a selfie and send it so I can see it.”

I’m being honest when I say that I’d never considered taking a picture of myself before this moment.  Sure, when I was a teenager, I spent my fair share of time staring at my own pouting face in the mirror.  But I’d never taken a selfie.

About halfway through this process, I discovered that button that turns the camera toward your face.  Although that made it easier, I was appalled at how these pictures turned out.  I was in a hurry to go to work, though, so I sent her the least offensive one, and spent the day trying to shake the willies off every time I thought about taking a selfie.

See what I mean?

Okay, I’ve never been enamored of my own picture.   I can sing or speak in front of a thousand people, but when the camera comes out, I’m a thirteen year old with a bad case of acne and a terrible haircut.  My shoulders are crooked, my face looks like a squirrel who’s gathering nuts for the winter, and one eye squints more than the other one when I smile.  Och, I don’t think I’m terribly ugly, but I can’t hide my quirks in the eye of the camera.  So naturally, I’m also selfie-conscious.  As far as taking a picture of myself, I am happy to tick that experience off my list and never attend the Kim Kardashian School of Butt Crack Self Photography.

But there’s got to be a deeper message here, right?  After all, I’m an adult, so I need to walk away from this essay with something more meaningful to say than I’ll never take another selfie.

You know, if my daughter had asked for a picture even two years ago, my husband would have taken it.  He and I would have collaborated on the picture, and he would have told me ways to stand or how to put my face to the light.  It would have then been a shared experience. And that’s what really bugs me about selfies.  A selfie has no second eye. A selfie is insular.

My husband was recently in the airport in Paris.  He watched as a family of four attached a long arm to their camera so they could take better group selfies.  While I think using our cameras for the purpose of taking family or friend photos is pretty benign, isn’t it also a little bit sad?  The last time I visited Paris with my husband, we asked a stranger to take a photo of us on the steps of the Sacre Coeur.  Part of the expression on my face was related to the joy I shared with the stranger taking our photo.  That photo says to me, “Here we all are, on this planet together, sharing this beautiful day in this beautiful place.”  Have we lost that?  Are we too afraid to let people into our lives for long enough to release the private experience for a more planetary one?

So I have a plan.  Tomorrow I’m leading a workshop at a middle school.  I’m going to walk up to the first child I see, hand them my phone, and ask them to take my picture.  I’ll thank them, look them straight in the eye, and introduce myself. It will be a micro-connection with another human being, the kind of interaction we used to take for granted.  It’s a micro risk that our children are no longer taking, and I’m afraid of what the consequences will be if we grown-ups let our kids silently slide into the false sense of community that the selfie phenomenon perpetuates.  It’s a start.

Wednesday’s Education Post: Let the Sloppy Copy be your guide.

To write my Daily Discomfort piece about Selfies this week, I am using Kelly Gallagher’s wonderful text, Write Like This, to guide my thinking.  I have an idea about what I would like to write about, but I’ve decided to let my pre-writing help me decide what purpose and perspective my writing will take.  Gallagher tells his students that if they have one topic, they have 18.   He asks them to brainstorm 3 possible directions writing could take from the topic for each of six different purposes.  He then has students free write for 5 minutes for one of each the ideas from each purpose.  So first, I’m going to take my selfie topic and turn it into 18 possible pieces and then I’m going to brainstorm for five minutes on one of the topics from each purpose.  My sloppy copy is posted on the paus(ed) page, along with my reflection on how this activity could work with students.

Gallagher has a wonderful website:  www.kellygallagher.org

pau(ed): If you have 1 you have 18 brainstorming for Why I’m Selfie-Conscious

Tags

Brainstorming, Selfies, writing, Writing Process

I  used Kelly Gallagher’s   1 topic = 18 topic brainstorming technique to think on paper before writing, “Why I’m Selfie-Conscious.”  Gallagher’s book, Write Like This, has been absolutely instrumental to the work I’m doing with the Write for Texas initiative.

My 1=18 Pre-Write
Express and Reflect: How does this topic affect my own life and experiences? How does the topic speak to my past?
• I do not like to take selfies, and what this says about me and my place in society.
• How I feel about the attachment to the phone that the selfie-selfish implies
• My thinking about how selfies have affected the learning environment
Inform and Explain: What’s my main point? How can I present this information in a surprising way? What is unexplored about this topic? What new take can I give it?
• The etymology of the word “selfie.”
• The history of the “selfie.” Is this really new? Or maybe the historical roots of it?
• Story of Myselfie- a biography the selfie. ( Maybe personify it- what would its personality be like?)
Evaluate and Judge: Is this good for me? For my family? For society? How do I judge whether this is good or bad? What is my criteria?
• The Kim Kardasian model: Selfies are sooo bad
• The Parisian family model: Selfies are benign, and sort of sad
• The 13 year old One Direction fan model: Selfies are good and fun.
Inquire and Explore: What’s the question? What’s the problem? How should it be handled?
• How far should parents go to monitor their children’s use of and receipt of selfies?
• Why do celebrities feel the need to take embarrassing selfies and then publish them to the world? Do they not feel any responsibility to be role models?
• Or what happened to the concept of role models?
Analyze and Interpret: Why is this so difficult to understand or explain? What makes it so complex?
• Why do I hate taking selfies so much? Why am I selfie-conscious?
• What’s the big uproar? Isn’t this kind of like Elvis or the Beatles?
• Why has the selfie phenomenon reached critical mass now?
Take a Stand/Propose a Solution: What should we do about this issue? Why should you (the audience) do what I want you to do?
• Proposal: Improved parental controls on children’s phones(i.e. a “kill” button to use during school hours, a parental approval of all outgoing materials on your child’s phone.)
• On why Kim Kardashian should never ever take a picture of herself again.
• Why old folks like me need to get with the program and start taking selfies so that the young folks will go off of them like they did with Facebook.
My 5 Minute Brainstorms
Express and Reflect
On Mother’s day this year, my daughter sent me a beautiful scarf. I texted her to let her know that I had gotten it and was wearing it to work that day. She texted back and said, “That’s great. Take a selfie so I can see it.” This was the first time I had even considered taking a picture of myself. I had to find the button on the phone that turned the camera around to my face, and no matter how many times I tried to take the picture, I looked awful. No I mean it. I’ll show you the picture. There was something very different about taking my own picture. It’s hard enough to make my face and body look acceptable to me when I’m getting my picture taken. Now there’s the added disappointment that I can’t make myself look like my mind’s eye view when I’m taking my own picture. I am selfie- conscious and I wonder why. It could have something to do with my age, but maybe it’s also about the world I grew up in. I could probably find a way to blame my mother for this. That would be convenient.

Inform and Explain
As long as there have been little girls, selfies have existed. I think my mother used to call it “mooning.” The British would call it swanning I think. When I was 8 or 9 I vividly remember looking at my reflection in the picture window at my grandmother’s house and taking note of the expressions on my face as I sang “Autumn Leaves,” a very contemplative piece that was too deep to belong to my childish repertoire. My daughter went through a phase (several times) in which she took pictures of herself with a camera. We’d go to the Walmart and pick up the pictures thinking they were of our latest vacation to Old Faithful or whatever and there’d be a whole roll of pics featuring the 100 faces of Amy. So I don’t think selfies are new. Only now two things are happening: these ad hoc representations of id get posted to the whole world before id has had a chance to formulate, and people don’t seem to be growing out of the fascination with their own faces. Maybe that’s why I don’t like taking selfies; it’s been years since I admired my own face freshly cleansed by intense emotion in the mirror.
Evaluate and Judge
My husband was recently in the airport in Paris. He watched as a family of four took out a device that looked like a long arm and attached their camera to it so that they could take better group selfies of themselves. While I think using our cameras for the purpose of taking family or friend photos is pretty benign, isn’t it also a little bit sad? The last time I visited Paris with my husband, we asked a stranger to take a photo of us on the steps of the Sacre Couer. Part of the expression on my face was related to the joy I shared with the stranger taking our photo. That photo says to me, “Here we all are, on this planet together, sharing this beautiful day in this beautiful place.” Have we lost that? Are we too afraid to let strangers into our lives for long enough to release the private experience for a more planetary one? This makes me feel sad.
Inquire and Explore
What happened to the idea of being a role model? My theory is that reality television has created so many celebrities that have no talent, no purpose, no ambition, that the idea of being a role model has been pushed aside for the idea of playing a role. Even though folks with notoriety are starting to reap some of what they’ve sown (Ray Rice) it seems like the only thing that is really expected of those who make a lot of money as athletes, actors and actresses, or celebrities is that they not get caught doing anything too bad. I deplore the idea that celebrities think it is okay to take naked pics of themselves and then protest when they are publicized.
Analyze and Interpret
Why has the selfie phenomenon reached critical mass right now? Or maybe it’s just that I started contemplating it just now. Maybe that is the definition of reaching critical mass and moving over into the cannon of what is a real cultural thing. Somewhere in a small town, a middle aged woman recognizes a cultural idea for the first time. Maybe that’s the tipping point. Or maybe it’s when a writer pitches a show about a selfish girl who alienates all her friends with her irresponsible use of social media and says the show will be called “selfie,” maybe that’s when we know we’ve started to reach critical mass with a new cultural thing. Of course, when it becomes a real thing, and not just something the teenagers are doing, the teenagers will find a new “thing,” that isn’t part of the mass consciousness.
But Hip-Hop is still around so who knows?
Take a Stand/Propose a Solution
From what we know about brain research, children’s brains don’t really fully develop for a long time. Some people are 24 or 25 when their brain becomes a full blown adult brain. And the last center to develop? Judgment. That’s only one of the reasons why it’s important for parents to protect their children from the Carnation Instant Breakfast philosophy. To a child, snapping a picture of yourself with your cell phone and sending it to your friends or posting it on Facebook is just something you do without thinking about the possible future consequences. Children don’t think about things like consequences, because they lack judgment. This is why I love my father’s saying: “The most amazing thing in the world is a grown man.”
________________________________________
This tool has been very helpful for me, because it gives me the freedom to explore the topic fully. Now I know that when I sit down to write about selfies, I will not only have a choice about the purpose I want the article to achieve, I will have other ideas I might not have thought of had I just started writing cold.
If I was asking students to try the “If you have one, you have 18,” activity, I would stand in the room and show them my own writing as I was doing the writing. Gallagher says that modeling has the most impact on the quality of student writing of anything that he has ever done in his classroom, and I agree. I also agree with him that it’s important to show students polished writing doesn’t come from anyone’s first draft. The sloppy copy is where all the ideas (and all the learning) reside, and students need to see sloppy

Friday Fiction: Just About Midnight

Tags

Dialogue, Hunting, Marriage

I plan to post some of my fiction here on Fridays.  Since the fellas are going dove hunting in the morning, I thought I’d post a completely made up, fictional piece I wrote for the Bartleby Snopes All Dialogue Contest (http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/contests.htm).  It was fun to try and write dialogue without any attributions.  Why don’t you try and post as the reply?  The rules are on the link above.

Just About Midnight

By Joni Koehler

I can’t sleep.  I need to talk.

About what babe?

Just, you know, stuff.

Nothing in particular?

I need to hear another adult voice.  Why don’t you tell me a story?

Okay.  Once upon a time there was a man and he was out hunting and he sat silently in the woods for a long time and then he saw a deer and then he zeroed in on the deer and took a shot.

Tell a different one.

Don’t you want to know what happened?  To the hunter?

I’m not sympathetic to either character at this point.

The deer is not a character.  He’s just a deer.

Yes he is.  He’s a character.  He could even be the protagonist.  After all, no one is trying to kill the hunter.

What?

Just finish the story.

Alright.  The shot hit the deer, but the hunter’s trajectory was off a hare and he just got the flank.  The buck took off running into thick brush.

Trajectory?

Yeah, the scope needed a minor adjustment.

When you shoot a deer, where are you supposed to hit it?

In the forelock.

Huh?

That’s the front of the chest, near the neck.  The bullet usually enters the jugular or the heart, and the animal dies quickly.

So the aim is for the animal to die quickly.

No one wants to see the deer suffer.

This is really a story about you, isn’t it?

Yes, let me finish.  I have to work in the morning.

If you must.

So the hunter goes after the buck, and is pushing his way through the brush, checking for snakes as he goes.

Snakes?

Rattlesnakes that time of year.  And he comes to this clearing in the brush, and he sees the strangest thing.

Yeah?

Yes.  He sees two great big turtles in this clearing.  And they’re having sex, and it seems like they’re stuck, because they are just scrabbling around in a circle, kicking up dust.

That did not happen.

I swear.

When did this happen?

I was about sixteen.  Greg was with me.  He’ll tell you it’s true. We watched for like an hour and when we left, they were still going around in circles, stuck together like that.

Can we talk about our relationship now?

And then the hunter found the buck, and he carried it to the truck over his shoulders, and he brought it home to his family, who were grateful for the meat.  The end.

Are you trying to say I should be grateful because you work and “bring home the meat,” and all I do is stay home and take care of your needy little babies?

I am tired, and I need to get some sleep.  I love you, but I’m going to bed.

You suck. I’m still not sleepy. Are we stuck together, just like those turtles?

I wish.

Oh, so now you think I don’t give you enough sex?   Now, I get to feel guilty about that too?

Do you want me to go in the other room?

Would you?  I need the whole bed tonight.  I don’t want to keep you awake.  Tell me how much you love me.  In your own words.

I love you so much, there are no words.

That was pretty good.  I’ll write you a couple of scenes tomorrow so you can practice your rhetorical skills.

You are so full of it.  I’ll see you in the morning.

I might be sleeping in the morning, but wake me up.

I will do that.  Good night.

The Thursday Stretch

Tags

Cooking, Food Processor

On Thursdays, I plan to write about the personal.   I’ll write about what makes me happy, what makes me sad, things I like, etcetera, etcetera, and so forth.

This week, my new food processor is making me  a very happy girl.  It’s an Oster, and it has attachments for a blender and smoothies as well.  It has 1100 watts of power.  Some of you may be aware of Bloody Monday, in which I attempted to make beet hummus without a proper blender.  This time, I think my broccoli dip looked pretty much like the picture in my September Cooking Light magazine. You be the judge.  Just don’t tell me if I’m wrong.  We all need our illusions.

The mag pic.

My rendition! It was good, too. No cook- taster this week!

My super duper Blender!

Wednesday’s Education Post.

On Wednesdays, I plan to post to the paus(ed) page, the page I’ve created for the teachers, parents, and deep thinkers in the crowd.  I’ll write about how the brain works when it learns (I’ve called this Brainy Stuff), trends in education or education research, writing processes, and activities my students have enjoyed through the years I’ve been in the classroom.

Today I proudly make my first post to the paus(ed) page.  It’s about procedural and conceptual thinking, and why we need to be able to do both in order to truly learn.  For those who haven’t died of boredom from the explanation, I invite you to join me for today’s Brainy Stuff convo on the paus(ed) page.

The National Anthem – Should we even sing it?

Tags

National Anthem

Who can possibly sing along with this rendition?  Sorry, Mariah.  I could also pick on any number of other super stars who have performed the National Anthem over the years.

I’m sure there are many people out there who disagree with me.  Here’s one of them.  He’s not even sure we should bother to sing the national anthem at all.  In addition, some of his favorite performances are by the lickers and runners that I would like to dial down a notch or ten.

http://butattheendoftheday.com/2012/04/04/is-it-necessary-to-sing-the-national-anthem-before-every-sporting-event/

In my opinion, if we can all stand up and sing, “Take me out to the Ballgame,” we should also be able to sing the National Anthem.  What do you think?

The Daily Discomfort: Honoring the 200th Anniversary of our National Anthem

Tags

American flag, Baltimore, George Armistead, National Anthem

Oh, say can you see,

By the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed,

at the twilight’s last gleaming.

When the sun went down on the night of September 13, 1814, all of the Americans in and near Baltimore harbor knew they were in the fight of their lives.  The British, who had already sacked the capital city and burned down the White House, had arrived in numbers to invade Baltimore with land troops and bombard the harbor night and day with heavy artillery. Many expected that by the morning, the British would overtake Fort McHenry and the city of Baltimore.  The British certainly expected to replace the American flag that flew over the fort with the Union Jack that day.  However, when the sun came up on the morning of September 14, the American flag still flew.

 Whose broad stripes and bright stars,

Through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched,

Were so gallantly streaming.

The Americans had prepared for this day.  The military and the citizens of Baltimore banded together to make the fort ready for the British bombardment they knew was sure to come.  They knew that the British bombs had a longer range than the cannons at the Fort.  They were ready to hunker down and outlast the British, saving energy and resources for those rare times when the British did come within shooting range.  The fort’s commander, Major George Armistead, also prepared a symbolic representation for the British.  He had a seamstress make a giant American flag, and this is what he flew on the morning of September 14, after the British had spent the night trying to break the will of the Americans quartered there. Major George Armistead understood the flag as a symbol of hope and determination.

And the rockets’ red glare,

The bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night,

That our flag was still there.

 When the sun came up and the Fort was not only still visible, but essentially whole, the British must have been stunned.  They had just thrown the might of a great empire at a young and fledgling nation and been defeated by….perseverance, by…commitment, by… collaboration.   The sight of the flag flying over Fort McHenry ended their hopes of winning the both the Battle and the War. They turned around and went home.

Oh, say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave,

O’er the land of the free,

And the home of the brave.

 We sing the National Anthem at almost every event where people gather.  Many times, we ask a popular artist to sing it.  The artist performs this song with multiple licks, veering off the path of the main melody so that sometimes the National Anthem as we know it is unrecognizable.  At times, a singer gets to a certain point, like “the land of the free-eeee,” and they sing the high-high note that brings dogs running.   People cheer at certain points when the singer performs vocal acrobatics. There’s a production quality to the song; special lighting, pre-recorded orchestration, interpretive dancing, confetti cannons, and elaborate costuming.

If I had my way, we’d change the way we approach the National Anthem.  The producers of the Super Bowl would go into the audience before the game starts and find a first grader who just cut his or her own bangs, an auto mechanic, a single mom who can barely pay the electric bill, a cancer patient, a great-grandfather.  When it’s time for the song, these ordinary folks, who may or may not be able to sing a lick, would stand on the field with nothing to prop them up but Old Glory.  They would sing our National Anthem and every person in the audience would sing along with them.

Because this is a song about how a group of people got together and won a war by the sheer power of their will not to lose.  These people were ordinary, and they were responsible for keeping the country we now live in intact.  Let’s give this song back to the same kind of every man who makes the wheels of this country turn.  Let’s give this song to members of our military who have been our country’s skeletal system, preserving the same rights that the defenders of Baltimore risked their lives to maintain.  Don’t turn it into a circus.  Don’t lick it to death and fill it with runs, just sing it, so that everyone can sing it with you.

 

paus(ed): No Pain, No Brain

Tags

Conceptual Learning, Education, Learning Theories, Procedural Learning, scaffolded learning

Do you remember when you first learned how to hit a baseball?  The first time you held a bat in your hand, you were probably six or seven.  Unless you were a kinesthetic genius, you didn’t hold the bat the correct way the first time you tried to use it.  Remember how frustrated you felt when someone tried to take the bat away from you to show you what you were doing wrong? What you wanted was time to learn how to do it yourself.  Any number of people could have told you the procedure to use in order to hit a ball with a bat.  However, the only way to learn to hit a ball was to try, again and again.

In order to hit a ball with a bat, a person has to know more than procedure.  They have to understand the concept of how to hold the bat, how to swing the bat, the plane that the bat comes across, and how fast to swing the bat in order to make contact.  In order to build that conceptual knowledge, you have to take what you’ve been told about procedure and practice it until the concepts behind hitting a ball take hold in your brain.  Once you have conceptual knowledge, you can hit a baseball with a baseball bat repeatedly, for your whole life.  Without conceptual knowledge, you have to re-learn the procedures of hitting every time you pick up a bat.

In his book, Concept Rich Mathematics Instruction, author Meir Ben Hur states that when we build conceptual knowledge we actually adjust our schema, creating physical changes in our brains!    Here is a link you can follow to read more of what he says about this.   http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/106008/chapters/Conceptual-Understanding.aspx  

I’m still in the pre-amoebic phase of learning about social media.  I have a cursory procedural knowledge of the buttons to push to make pictures or video appear, but I don’t know why I’m pushing those buttons.  I don’t know how portions of the internet, like facebook and pinterest, relate to one another.  And forget html.  What’s that?  Somebody poked me the other day and I had a serious moment.  Am I supposed to poke back or what?  In order to change my brain, I have to keep trying new applications related to social media.  I have to think about how those applications relate to one another. I want that new brain, because I know that without sufficient conceptual knowledge, I won’t be able to grow this blog, or sustain it as social media changes.

It took time for me to learn how to hit a baseball, and learning how to blog will take time as well. Teachers have students forty-eight minutes a day, five days a week for nine months.  We have a mountain of objectives that our States expect us to teach.  However, my teacher buds, try to remember that the only way to learn how to hit a baseball is to hold the bat yourself, miss the ball multiple times, and continually try until the process becomes automatic.  Ask yourself this question: Who is holding the bat in my classroom?