IP Meets the Board of Trustees

On Friday, April 17th, the IP community celebrated an unprecedented event.  Four students - Tim, Trey, Khaled, and Bull - organized a presentation for Kildonan's Board of Trustees.  Led by Tim, this panel sought to share their projects and request funding for the program.  Their primary reason for the presentation, however, was to educate.  They wished to discuss schooling more generally and to tout the powerful self-directed learning that occurs within IP.

The presentation was a hit for both students and trustees alike.  Equipped with talking points as well as images of students at-work, the IPians spoke eloquently about IP.  They each shared their stories in the program and disclosed the particular benefits that they continue to reap from the IP community.  The Board, in turn, provided inquiries that launched an engaging Q&​A session.  During this time, the students were able to speak more specifically to the logistics of the program, sharpen their pedagogical comments, and meditate on IP's structure for the 2015-2016 academic year.  Once the meeting broke up, too, the board members convened with individual students to engage in one-on-one discussions that proved enthusiastic and supportive.

Thank you, fellow IPians, for supporting these four students as they designed and executed this presentation.  Thank you, Tim, Trey, Khaled, and Bull, for representing your community members and for facilitating a thought-provoking, professional discussion.  Thank you, Mr. Pendergast, for scheduling IP into the Board's agenda.  Last but not least, thank you, Trustees, for proving a receptive audience and for supporting the program as it looks to the future.

Have something to share? Please post in the comments section below.

Description of images:  IP student panel, top right.  Board members listening to presentation, bottom left.  Photos taken by IP faculty.

Khaled: Alisa Kwitney &​ Graphic Novel Writing

To hone his writing abilities as he generates content for his graphic novel, Khaled (known as "K.") has enlisted Kildonan's Literature teacher Alisa Kwitney (@akwitney) as his advisor.  Kwitney is no newcomer to the genre.  Author of more than six books, former full editor at Vertigo (@vertigo_comics), and former editor at DC Comics (@DCComics), Kwitney continues to maintain an active presence in the world of comics and graphic novels even today.  She approaches her professional relationship with K. with an indefatigable sense of humor and a stress upon endurance.  No less importantly, she has given K. a new framework in which to write.  Below she discusses the mindset with which a writer must approach that structure:

When you're writing a comic book script, you're writing with a very specific reader in mind -- the artist. The artist is your first and probably your most careful reader, because she or he will have to go back over your panel descriptions again and again. Your artist will have to study your words until he or she sees them from all angles and can draw them on the page. So, in order to write well for the artist, the writer has to become the artist.

Before his advisorship with Ms. Kwitney, K. composed his graphic novel using typical prose.  His narrative consisted of long, descriptive paragraphs that encouraged the reader to generate, in his/​her mind's eye, every image.  Since his working relationship with Ms. Kwitney, however, K. has learned that images place certain constraints upon his writing, for better and for worse.  He has abandoned his uninterrupted prose for an organizer that allows him to think in shots, in panels, and in pages (not unlike a cinematographer).

Those panels that an audience finds visually stimulating are quite surprising.  A panel in which a character walks down the street or engages in a prolonged car chase is frozen (unlike in a movie).  The image, despite its narrative potential, is unexciting for its repetitious visuals.  A panel in which a character busts through a wall executes an abrupt action that does not repeat.  The image is exciting AND possesses narrative potential.  Ultimately, K. continues to experiment with this "visual writing" by playing with silences.  He is starting to explore what an image can say without the accompaniment of words.

What do you think? Do you have a suggestion or question for K.? Please post in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  Alisa Kwitney, pictured.  Image located at www.alisakwitney.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above photo.

Description of 2nd image:  A draft of a comic book in-progress.  Image located at www.wikihow.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the above photo.

"The Radicalism of Conversation," by Jonathan Bisson

Let's begin on Friday, December 5th.  Ms. Charlap, myself, and Khaled (affectionately known as K.) had just settled down in the IP office to one of our formal meetings.  K. had just told us that he was researching children's literature a la J.R.R. Tolkien.  He had explained, like Tolkien, that there was no definable entity known as "children's literature."  All literature, he posited, possesses merit (even if certain stories, he went on to say, lack a certain sophistication that might relegate them to a sphere for children).  * To learn more about K.'s explorations in this area, please click here. *

All of a sudden, when I asked “why,” something erupted.  K. answered.  I, feeling dissatisfied, parried his argument.  He - looking positively ravenous - pulled up a chair, issuing forth a torrent of qualifications.  As we locked horns, I had the distinct impression of something irrevocable and fundamental shifting.  Fundamental to my expectations for the meeting, certainly, but to something else too.  Fundamental to education.  Fundamental to the behavioral expectations set forth in schools for decades.

Something died.  And we - student and educator - were to blame.  What happened?

On one hand, K. was still being “taught” at this moment.  He was gradually narrowing his conception of childishness to produce a specific definition of children’s literature and to explain how it might differ from “adult” literature.

On the other hand, however, he was coming to understand the radical notion that he could challenge conventional forms of authority.  And the source in this scenario? His teacher.  Me.  When he and I began our verbal battle, the traditional educational roles, that hierarchy between teacher and student, those weighted identities for which I had prepared myself at the beginning of the year as an educator new to the field…they proved untenable. 

I realized that I simply could not teach him. I began to understand that, at that moment and perhaps at every other moment before, K. and I did not occupy a space in which the roles of teacher and student made any sense.

So...where was the teacher at this moment?

Perhaps the question defies a single response.  Realistically, it seems rather silly, too, in its infantile grasping for some authority figure that can contextualize the situation. 
So...why not abandon that need altogether? Why not consider that the true authority of this moment rests with the act of #conversation itself?
Sure, it would be rash to say that “talking” is somehow innovative.  Having spent the last twenty years in various education systems myself, I remember receiving feedback on countless occasions.

But let me explain.

There is a distinct difference between talking to and talking with someone.  Students are often talked to in education; teachers do not advise but tell them, unequivocally, what opinions they should form, what questions they must consider, and what their learning objectives are.  Now, only now, are teachers beginning to alter that practice by talking with their pupils.  Only now are they beginning to allow their agendas to breathe, to speak not to dominate learners' arguments but out of a genuine interest in the ideas that they are formulating.

It is that domain, among others, that holds particular promise for the future of education.  As I walked away from that conversation with K., I felt consumed by the burning desire to know, to create more of those scenarios so that I could begin not only to understand my students on a "whole child" level but also to collaborate with my colleagues more meaningfully.  I left, too, with the enduring impression that conversation, real conversation, gloriously begins to separate "learning" from "schooling."  It begins to build that supreme level of engagement so sought after in classrooms; it works to instill personal passion.

Conversation, when distilled to its quintessence, builds stronger relationships.  To accomplish this, it cannot function divisively; it cannot preserve the traditional roles of "teacher" and "student."  Instead, it can only equalize.  Rapturously, it must only create "learners."

---

For more reading on the power of dialogue in learning, please explore Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) and his two blog posts:  "Learning as dialogue" and "Teaching and learning through dialogue."

Description of 1st image:  A shot of the conversation between K., at left, and myself.  Photo taken by Ms. Charlap.

Description of 2nd image:  A roundtable consisting of teachers and students.  Photo located at www.vicsrc.org.au.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over this picture.

Khaled: Graphic Novels & Fantasy

Khaled: J.R.R. Tolkien and Children's Literature

In addition to producing content for his graphic novel and collaborating with Shane, Khaled has been exploring the theory behind fantasy, mythology and fairy tales.  This search has led him, inevitably, to English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor J. R. R. Tolkien.  K. did not jump into a re-reading of The Lord of the Rings, however.  Instead, he began researching an article by Maria Popova (@brainpicker) and a lesser-known work called Tales from the Perilous Realm, a collection of short pieces, fairy tales, and an essay called "On Fairy-Stories."

In this latter piece, Tolkien argues that there is no such thing as "children's literature" as we know it.  He writes:

Among those who still have enough wisdom not to think fairy-stories pernicious, the common opinion seems to be that there is a natural connexion between the minds of children and fairy-stories, of the same order as the connexion between children’s bodies and milk. I think this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than as normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large. (347)

Though he finds this sentiment stimulating, K. disagrees.  He presents his position by arguing that a certain dream logic is bastardized in children's literature.  According to him, other branches of literature honor this logic while that directed toward children distort it, introduce it haphazardly, and never explain its functioning.

What do you think? Do you side with Tolkien, with K., or with a position in-between? Please leave a comment below.  For your enjoyment, enjoy the following trailer to Tolkien's own fairy-story:  The Hobbit (The Battle of the Five Armies).

Khaled: OCPD

As he progresses further and further into his graphic novel, Khaled (affectionately known as "K.") has begun to refine the characterization of his protagonist, Desmond.  Possessing both the spirits of Order and Chaos, this man is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and oscillates between stoicism and wildness.  He also happens to possess OCPD:  Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.

OCPD is NOT to be confused with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).  Whereas OCD is specifically an anxiety disorder, OCPD is a personality disorder marked by an overwhelming desire to control one's own environment.  As defined on psychology.com, it is "characterized by a preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency."

K. found OCPD through a humorous song produced by the YouTube channel Rhett and Link (@rhettandlink).  As they go on to explain in the following video, however, neither OCPD or OCD are a laughing matter.  And this pain is EXACTLY what K. intends to bring out in his graphic novel.  How he will do so remains to be seen...

Khaled: The Hero's Journey

"The Hero's Journey," pictured above.  Photo located at lincoln.debbieyoon.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership of this graphic.

Ever the fantasy and graphic novel aficionado, Khaled (affectionately known as "K.") has been researching American mythologist, lecturer, and writer Joseph Cambell (@jcf_org).  Until his death in 1987, Campbell explored comparative mythology and comparative religion in such works as The Masks of God, The Power of Myth, and The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  K. found the latter particularly fascinating in that Campbell proposes a sort of pattern according to which, hypothetically, all fantasy narratives unfold.  He termed this form "the hero's journey" or "the monomyth"; this second term is especially meaningful in that it imbues this structure with progenitive power as a sort of "parent" to all fantasy stories across the world. 

Theoretically, "the monomyth" holds that fantasy narratives consist of twelve to seventeen steps:  (1) the call to action, (2) refusal of the call, (3) supernatural aid, (4) crossing the threshold, (5) belly of the whale, (6) the road of trials, (7) the meeting with the goddess, (8) woman as temptress, (9) atonement with the father, (10) apotheosis, (11) ultimate boon, (12) refusal of the return, (13) the magic flight, (14) rescue from without, (15) the crossing of the return threshold, (16) master of two worlds, and (17) freedom to live.  As the following graphic shows, this journey occurs between two worlds:  the "known," or ordinary, world and the "unknown," or supernatural, world.  Though various scholars and writers warn that "the hero's journey" can act as a catch-all that prevents genuine literary analysis, "the monomyth" does seem to support such well-known narratives as George Lucas's Star Wars and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

"The Hero's Journey," pictured above.  Image located at en.wikipedia.org.  Kildonan and its IP program do not claim any ownership of the graphic above.

How will K. incorporate this structure into his own evolving fantastical narrative? Any questions or recommendations for K.? Please post in the comments below.

For an "IPian"-esque graphic of "the hero's journey" resembling an octopus, please see below.  Picture located on thethinkingbusiness.com.

Khaled: "The Observer Effect" and "The Double-Slit Experiment"

 

Khaled (a.k.a. "K.") is currently characterizing his graphic novel's protagonist according to "the observer effect."

Many scientists and laypersons know this theory through the double-slit experiment, an investigation in which electrons are fired at a wall through a plate containing two slits.  In the following educational video, physicist Fred Alan Wolf (a.k.a. Dr. Quantum) (@Doctor_Quantum) gives a user-friendly overview of the experiment and its implications.

As one faculty member of the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says, "The act of making a measurement of the electrons path [involved in the experiment] fundamentally changes the outcome of the experiment."  The IP faculty remains excited to see how K. will integrate this idea into his project.