NWP continues to walkabout — visit nwpwalkabout.posterous.com!

Thank you for visiting the archive of the NWP Walkabout wordpress blog. We are continuing to blog, however, at a new posterous blog — come visit us now at nwpwalkabout.posterous.com.

 

Powerful Voices for Kids Teacher Institute

In connection to a Powerful Voices for Kids Summer camp for students at the Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia, several writing project teachers are attending the Powerful Voices Teacher Institute from July 6-10, 2009. Check out their evolving wiki and stay tuned here to learn more from them as they move through the week!

 

Class War in the Classroom: A Critical Pedagogy Experiment for Working Class Students

Ira Shor’s session was a workshop, so he demonstrated for us HOW he teaches working class students and had us try some of the techniques. Shor, I hope all NWP readers know, teaches at both City U of NY and Rhetoric classes for graduate students as well. He uses methods tried by Paolo Friere, and in fact authored a book in which the two (Shor & Friere) dialogue. To develop a 3rd idion, one “speakable” to the working class student to draw her or him into academia and to show working class students how to approach research (methodology) are among his interests, and we looked at the terms: observation, interpretation and hypothesis among others. Ira Shor emphasized for us that the teacher’s role is epistemic — to ask questions in order to get class members to engage in dialogue… I can send you my 6 – 8 pages of notes if you e-mail me at cwolfe@pitt.edu, better yet either go to an IRA SHOR session anywhere, or read any of his fascinating books. This session ended the conference for me, had to get back home to Mom-care. It was fab.

 

Quotes from the CLASS MATTERS conference

Some of the many snippets I heard from presenters at the conference. This conference meets every 2 years, why doesn’t my program book tell where it will be in 2011? Meanwhile, in 2010, Stony Brook SUNY is hosting a conference called “How Class Works.” You may submit a proposal to present until December 14, 2009. Here are the quotes. Enjoy!

Quotes from Conference Presenters:

“… worked on the Erie Lackawanna trains and in a town in New York famous for IBM & Florsheim shoes…”

“… my friend John Sullivan would not ‘get out of town’ though he hated the bottling factory.” Gerald says of himself, “Me? I got out of town. ”

“Jill tries to act middle class in high school, to have boyfriends (no sweater sets); in college (by contrast) she finds working class colleagues unlike the h.s. working class girls: We’re on scholarship, poor, we take the hard courses; we come from the wrong cities… she wants to pass, but at the same time she does not wish to be labeled with any class identifying name…” commenting on Braided Lives by Marge Piercy

“Esperanza has a mother who helps her negotiate her middle class leap as only part of who she is and only part of the actual experience. Her mother tells her that her life is a circle which transcends class-straddling, ‘You will always be Esperanza.’ ” commenting on The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

“William Titus’s play Sit Down! came from interviews with strikers; i.e. the Flint autoworkers strikers vs. GM. The play was often performed by workers themselves in order to inform and persuade other workers. These Chautauqua performances stirred other workers. “

“Neruda and Garcia-Lorca are the writers I look to. They wrote to the audience who understood what they said and who lived the life they were writing about. ”

“I struggled. I wanted to educate the middle class, putting in footnotes about educational context and taking footnotes out again. Then again, I wanted to write a book accessible to my relatives, but they told me not to worry; it would never be accessible. And then I stopped worrying. Hey! My family is not the audience to whom I am writing. I am both an academic & the tough kid from Fridley, and that’s what I’ll write about…”

“… the old definition – the violence of classism borne by the worker vs. green jobs, the new kind such as computer jobs. Students boast that the green jobs benefit both worker and owner alike. Can there be a coalition of classes toward finding solutions for society? So, what is class analysis? A study of class struggle, therefore class matters because class struggle matters.”

“… unions had changed. Members moved out to the suburbs, the brothers weren’t all living in the same neighborhood, their wives were not stay-at-home wives, and I began to see that the union members did not socialize with each other outside of work as they had when I was an apprentice and a young journeyman…”

“They forgot why they were in a union (to help each other). They didn’t help new workers, they bickered about overtime and criticized each other… In a phrase, they got greedy. In 1974, that was not the case. The bus garage then was 75% African American, 25% white; and the company that hired them treated them all in an ignorant fashion. Black workers were called the N-word and white ones were called white trash. ”

“… a final quote from Milton Rogovin, photographer and poet, self-identified as The Picture Man:
‘Anna & I were determined that we would go back and back and show that these were regular people like the rest of us. And we must not abandon them.’ ”

from Jan Beatty’s poem: A Waitress’ Instructions on Tipping or Get the Cash Up & Don’t Waste My Time
20% minimum as long as the waitress doesn’t inflict bodily harm
If you’re two people at a four top, tip extra //If you sit a long time, pay rent…”

“And I invite everyone here at open mike to come on downtown to Sen. Spector’s office tomorrow to help persuade him that you don’t accept union money and then turn around and screw the unions…”

“The teacher’s role is epistemic = to ask questions … not a Declarative role, an Interrogative one. It may be useful to say, ‘Would you repeat what you just said?’ This puts students into a dialogue with one another, not into a session where they’ve gotta prove themselves right to the teacher … If there are repressed responses, those who can’t speak can listen and be the audience …”

the ghostly Cathedral
of Learning triumphing over the Mellon Institute
it will be in

 

CLASS MATTERS opens with “The Point of Pittsburgh”

There is no way to describe this interactive event other than to tell you to see it somewhere. Based on a book by Charles McCollester, illustrations by Bill Yund and music available on a CD by Mike Stout, it is a slide show with local celebs in front of the scenes: reading quotes from miners, capitalists, workers for workers, etc etc. The program book conclused by saying the show tell Pittsburgh story in a new way, focusing on its people, its sense of justice and its hard-working spirit. Amen. The conference was coordinated by Nick Coles and Charles McCollester, and brought together academics and workers who all want to share what they know about working class history, spirit, people.

 

Labor Uses Literature: Workers’ Movements in TV, Poetry & Theatre

Ah, some young people, probably getting their doctorates. Good to see them in a group of us old farts (hey, I included meself!). Anyway, as usual, you can see lovely photos only if you e-mail me for the long version which I will send you on attachment. These 3 were:
1) Tim Fowler, the redhead, talking about union issues on 3 episodes of Star Trek, and I learned that the sci-fi TV series are more fair to unions than the other dramas, et al. Not much of a TV buff, but Tim did say that capitalism prevails even on the Star Trek series. He gave the 3 episodes he rated varying degrees of sympathy toward unions and toward strikes; it was interesting.
2) John March, the brunette (See? Young people get a fashion review, sort of like mainstream writers do for women… from U. Illinois at Urbana Champaign: Workers poetry from the famous Detroit strikes of the United Auto Workers (when they were just forming between 1936 and 1940). The examples he gave (including a handout, which I typed onto my notes section) were all from the earliest “sit-down,” the GM one. Interesting.
3) Tiffany Knight Raymond, the carmelhaired from U. Southern Cal – She turned out to be the darling of all the history-of-unions buffs in the audience because she talked about Depression Era theatre, especially versions of “Sit-Down!” (Auto Workers) by Wm Titus including a hilarious sounding one about Woolworth women striking called “Million Dollar Baby” that mocked Bing Crosby’s song about finding such a babe working in a Woolworth, also mocked the heiress of Wooworth’s Barbara Hutton, a globetrotter by making the main character, a Woolworth clerk named Barbara Nothing (pronounced Nutton). Tiffancy got MOST of the Q & A attention. Her work does sound fascinating, and I know that it is for her PhD because I met her in another session. Want a little more information and the photos? e-mail me at that same address, cwolfe@pitt.edu

 

Session #G2 Pgh Poets in Performance

I tried to attend a session on how working class students (at community colleges) were not allowed to read working class lit (because they have to skill & drill, I have taught Developmental Reading)… but the presenters did a “no show,” so this audience went across the hall in the Student Union (Dining Room A — B) and heard Jan Beatty, Judith Vollmer and Peter Oresick read. Hilarious and really sad, just go buy their books. But for a glowing picture of Jan and a rather poor one of Judith and Peter, you can have my notes session if you email me at cwolfe@pitt.edu The wonderful Terrance Hayes was to have been there too, but he was at another conference in NYC and could not get the connecting flight back. It was okay, Peter read from his latest Wahrhola-a-mania. YOU WILL WANT TO BUY IT!

 

working people take their elder mothers to the hair dresser

Hi! I had to miss the #F session to take my mom to the hairdresser. I feel very working class these days… Flannery O’Connor described herself as her mother’s “gardening boy.” Oh, yeah.

 

On Both Sides of the Lens: Workers Photography

Hello CLASS MATTERS conference fans. If, like me, you are a fan of Maureen Greenwald at Pitt (one of the best historians out there) then you would know when you walked in that this would be a good session. Presenters:
1) Erin Shannon, a photography instructor who worked through the Bread & Roses collective under Union #1199, SEIU (Cultural Workers) in Western New York. The project brings working class adults to centers to take a photography class and assemble their own show about their own lives. It is called “Unseen America” and I bet you could google it. TRY!
2) a session that confused me because the professor had a legitimate gripe: most inde photo/journalists are middle class or well-to-do and some who are professors are getting big grants by saying that they are “grassroots;” whereas she felt that photo-journalists are trained workers. But the point was lost as the politics of major capitalist presses has subverted the work of what she called the professionals. Only at the end did I get her point, and one of the questioners referred to “Z Magazine,” something that sounded so worthwhile.
3) Janet Zandy, who with Nick Coles co-authored the book AMERICAN WORKING CLASS LITERATURE, referred to in many other session…. (long intgro) presented a video about the work of Milton Rogovin. Rogovin and his wife Annie traveled around to take photographs of ordinary poor people, people who Rogovin felt needed an audience. He thought of the people as abandoned people: miners, Italian immigrants in New York City, W. Va jobless people, etc etc and wanted to find his fellow citizens a sympathetic audience. Again, you could and PROBABLY want to google him. Lots of classroom useful stuff here… (Now there is an all-inclusive noun, “stuff.” An honor for me to meet Janet Zandy after the session! If you want pix, including Nick’s as he asked a question, this session was thought provoking. My email is cwolfe@pitt.edu Please be specific about the session(s) you request. Thanks.

 

Spoken Word: Readings from their Books

Ava Cipri, Pgh Ballet Dancer read from her book of poetry
Katy Rank Lev, Pitt, read from a memoir “Factory Girl”
Barbara Jensen, Psychologist, read the intro to her book READING CLASSES. The intro was about working class suburbs in the St. Paul / Minneapolis area and is called “What Part of Fridley are You from?”
Gerald McCarthy, St. Thomas Aquinas College, read from his poetry books about blue collar jobs, going to Vietnam and teaching writing at Attica prison, where he was dismayed to find many fellow Vietnam bets from his own unit: a company of (mainly Black) engineers. Get more details from me if you like, and pix of presenters at cwolfe@pitt.edu