Authentic Doing in Education

I posted some images from today along with a couple snippets from the hand-held camera at:

http://web.me.com/howlevin11

This is just a quick “hack” to make this available.

The day started with the students all dressed in their “Sunday best.” I met the students in Vickie’s classroom and their excitement and nervousness was palpable. I was thrilled to see that Phylicia was there, dressed and ready to go. There was some strong resistance from some of her teachers since she has fallen far behind in school but I encouraged Vickie to let her go as this could be a pivotal experience for her. Vickie held this open only if Phylicia self-advocated for herself. She did. She came and I believe she thrived.

We arrived at Mrs. Butler’s home and Sarah, Phylicia and I set up the equipment while the rest of the group was “chatting ‘em up” in the other room with Mrs. Butler. After about 30 minutes, all was ready (lights, camera, mic, and other studio equipment) and the kids took their positions around Mrs. Butler’s kitchen table. Sarah, Rebecca and Keveyotta all took turns running the camera. Victoria took the lead with well organized questions with Ricky and Byron handling the key follow-up roles, but in reality, the whole class stepped up and asked questions throughout. This represents what we hope will be just the first in a long series of oral histories conducted by McComb students – I felt so damn proud of the kids and of Vickie for pulling this off. This was a moment of history in the making. I won’t go into the interview – this will speak for itself in the coming weeks when it is published at www.tellingstories.org, but suffice it to say that both the kids and Mrs. Patsy Ruth Butler shined bright.