Instructionism vs. Constructionism: Learning From the Perspective of the “Ghetto Nerd”

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS ENTRY IS A WORK IN PROGRESS.

(I found this video while I was searching the key terms “Ghetto Nerd” on google and thought it was a nice visual metaphor for the ideas of “Hard Fun” and “Standing On the Shoulders of Giants”. It’s a commercial created by a production house called the GhettoNerd Company)

This Learning Creative Learning reflection series is turning out to be quite the adventure in personal creativity and intellectual development. Check out some more of the connections made this week in exploring the course offerings and the connections that others are making in the Google+ community.

Also, check out the links at the bottom of the page for the readings and the MIT video lecture on Powerful Ideas.

REFLECTIONS ON THE HUMAN RE-MIX

Rosa Alemán

I don’t know what other people mean when they use the term “ghetto-nerd”, but for this entry– lets just say it’s someone who operates outside of the prescribed culture of the “hood”–an oddball, outlier, “freak”, an eccentric human being–male or female or both or none of the above…

The ghetto nerd fits in NOWHERE in America.

There’s ONE real place where the Ghetto Nerd may find community in the US– in a space that is no literal space– but a POWERFUL IDEA, a web of beautiful chaos.

The ghetto nerd thrives immensely on the internet. How do I know this? Well… the truth is– I don’t.

But I have some ideas about it, mainly because I live in the cultural borderlands between what can be called “Street Smart” and “Ghetto Nerdism.”

Culturally speaking, I’ve essentially grown up in between “worlds”–split, divided, watching always from the borderlands.

What do I mean by borderlands? Here’s a reflection I made to share with the MIT Media Lab’s Learning Creative Learning (course)/ Google+ community.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSONAL VALUES & IDENTITY

Exploring Identity Creation (through the lens of “instructionism” vs. “constructionism “ as introduced by Seymour Papert in The Children’s Machine)

Stories can be like Swiss Army knives for thinking. Extremely useful and versatile forms for extracting meaning and carving deeper understanding of the many dimensions and eco-systems of realities that seem to co-exist, sometimes just a few blocks or a few train stops apart.

From my vantage point, this world is filled with wonder, possibility and mystery. One easy way for me to tap into the adventures represented in the questions that haunt me is to produce something like what Alan Kay called workable “microworlds” to “tinker” in.

I play to learn and because play is not often an option in “professional” environments I’ve made much of my art about modifying, or hacking the real world to align myself with the type of work that requires me to take the position of learner and gives me the responsibility and flexibility to define the elements and flow of my own work and learning environments– in other words, work that gives me the freedom to operate as a multimedia storyteller and artist. (Check out the term Bricolage for some interesting information on alternative learning styles.)

I THINK while in motion or with something in hand– whether it’s a pen, a mouse, a camera, a tape-recorder, an ipad or a good old fashioned notebook all depends on the nature of the project. What I REALLY need most in order to succeed is TIME and SPACE to do what I do best– imagine and create learning projects to try out in the world. This brings me great joy. It’s the best kind of work I’ve done since finishing undergrad.

“Nothing happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.” -Gloria Anzaldúa

Sometimes when I’m REALLY interested in a topic, I draw in through my readings– some very helpful and powerful language to speak about past experiences.

As a 31 year old Nuyorican artist from a split family divided between my dad’s Afro-Taino roots and my mom’s Spanish-Taino lineage– which is to say to some degree divided between order and chaos, discipline and disorganization, secretiveness and openness, seriousness and laughter– I grew up in a kind of in-between world akin to what Gloria Anzaldua calls the “Cultural Borderlands” of the “New Mestiza“

I, along with others who identify with this idea have been employing technology to reflect, organize, experiment with and present the little discoveries along the way that add up to a more empowered and meaningfully rooted concept of History, community and self.

I started using technology to learn and express things when I was very young- and have in this way connected with opportunities and ideas that would have otherwise been unavailable to me.

Some really incredible people have also come into my life in the same sort of random way and have become mentors and role-models– or what I sometimes like to call my “Education God-parents”. They lead me to interesting places where it’s easier to make personal connections to the larger concepts, the whole picture, the big questions pondered throughout history.

I’ve come to trust going with the flow (as much as possible) and observing the elements at play as a practice for personal growth and development.

Right now I’m working on co-producing a “Raw/Vegan/Cooked” educational web program with a friend in Rhode Island to launch from The Rockshelf and currently dividing time, traveling between a temporary work space in Providence and my grandparents place in the Bronx.

I signed-in to the course today from a “tree-house” kitchen studio— this is what we call my friends attic apartment.

Working from her space I’ve been surrounded by a ton of new books and random papers on youth development studies (she’s currently working on a PhD thesis in Policy with a focus on youth work and youth workers– developing health and wellness pathways and programs.)

Today after the LCL class I just happen to open to a page in one of her books called “Qualitative Research Design” (page 19) and here’s what I read:

Title: “The Importance of Personal Values and Identity”

“Alan Peshkin’s personal goals, rooted in his own values and identity, profoundly influenced several ethnographic studies he did of schools and their communities. In his first study, in a rural town he called Mansfield, he liked the community and felt protective toward it. This shaped the kind of story that he told, a story about the importance of community and its preservation. In contrast, in his second study, an ethnography of a fundamentalist Christian school (which he called Bethany Baptist Academy, BBA) and its community, he felt alienated, as a Jew, from a community that attempted to proselytize him:

When I began to write… I knew I was annoyed by my personal (as opposed to research) experience at BBA. I soon became sharply aware that my annoyance was pervasively present, that I was writing out of a pique and vexation. Accordingly, I was not celebrating community at Bethany, and community prevailed there no less robustly than it had at Mansfield. Why not? I was more than annoyed in Bethany, my ox had been gored. The consequence was that the story I was feeling drawn to tell had its origins in my personal sense of threat. I was not at Bethany as a cool, dispassionate observer (are there any?); I was there as a Jew whose otherness was dramatized directly and indirectly during eighteen months of fieldwork.”

There’s a lot more to this text– but… I found that particular bit of the narrative very interesting. It kind of speaks to the experiences I’ve had working and pursuing educational opportunities in traditional school and university settings.

I’ve always felt like an alien-freak in the traditional classroom and office “work space” but I enjoy learning at my own pace and have made a way for myself to do so confidently.

Since I often learn from observing the work and interactions of mentors and teachers—some of the things I learn indirectly or passively from people in positions of power about the types of value placed on my personal identity are not always helpful.

(i.e. this concept of a person, of people, being dramatized and “marketed” like objects)–I’m still working to undo and remove some of the false notions of self that came from over-emotionalized relationships and interactions in the school and work environment related to this very issue.

It has been through reading, writing and public speaking that I have begun to overcome many of the negative feelings associated with the frustration of embodying something considered “new” or “other” in standardized and traditional education, social and work settings.

“I was there as a Jew whose otherness was dramatized directly and indirectly”"

I can relate to that statement in the same way that I sometimes am able to look at historical horrors such as the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and many other forms of genocide and brutality in the world– and from study and reflection, make useful and meaningful connections to my own daily reality. I make strides toward understanding the systemic conditions and “programs” perpetuating the struggles and limitations of growth– of spiritual and intellectual development presently and over time in the places I grew up in, the cities my nieces and nephews, cousins and younger siblings are currently growing up in– hubs of systemic chaos– where the good things are often overshadowed by images and narratives of drug abuse, crime, violence, diseases and blind ignorance.

Life growing up between the South Bronx, Barrio Obrero, North Philly, Lawrence Ma. and several other poor and underserved communities in the US & Puerto Rico as well as my experiences traveling, teaching, collaborating with diverse groups and learning in both traditional and non-traditional environments has shaped the pathways I’ve taken through the years. My aim in over a decade of experiencing some of the moments I’m sharing here has been to meaningfully share the qualities and ideas I have to offer as MYSELF, and through the best forms I can imagine and create in peaceful, harmonic, and balanced collaboration (inside and out).

I have countless stories of situations and moments where my frustration won and emotions took over the internal steering wheel, tossing rational thinking into the back seat. But I don’t really want that to be the focus or the only types of observations I make in my work. I still have much to understand and process in these areas, and much language to find for this particular body of experience and all of the parts that encompass it.

HOWEVER, I do want to acknowledge these types of experiences publically and in general in case it’s helpful for people to think about–especially educators and thought leaders out there trying to offer a useful and meaningful education to urban youth.

All of my personal education experiences (both good and bad/ positive and negative) have served to help me learn how to (better) learn and communicate ideas more effectively.

I still struggle and fall into the cultural tug of wars from time to time if I’m feeling divided and stretched too thin between places, identities, ideas and projects.

But I now know how to bounce back and find the language and mediums to help me explore and advance my goals. I know how to create structures and scaffolds to help integrate my interests and unique, remixed and often (historically) misunderstood cultural background and identity into my daily practices out in the world.

I live with the constant hope that all of the parts of my life will someday fall into place so that I may transcend some of the more significant limitations of life “underground”– and the disjointedness of the “nomadic tendencies” of my “tribe” or better yet, the fusion of my immediate community and family.

I very much want to have a REAL place in the world where I can do the kind of work I’m able to do when I can carve out a slice of silence and space for deliberation wherever I can afford to make and keep a studio or writing space.

Here’s a thoughtful and reflective student project on the concept of “living in the borderlands” as described in Gloria Anzaldúa’s texts and as shared in the narrative above.

I am not Mexican or Chicana— In fact, I’m still figuring a lot of these things out. For now I’m choosing very carefully the elements and ideas I would like to re-mix into my day-to-day experience.

I believe that I am prone to re-mix because I am a human remix to a large extent– “a mystery unto myself.” And I am enjoying learning and finding new and unique ideas to connect and build processes for understanding, for attempting to fully articulate the power of personal identity creation.

Anzaldúa’s texts offer a rich language with new, interesting and diverse ideas to incorporate into my perspective of the history and cultural values I’ve inherited from the mix of the Taino people of the Caribbean, the Spaniards and the African Diasporas associated with Borinquen and what has become known as the “Puerto Rican” people.

The course readings last week made me think of this fusion of IDENTITY CONSTRUCTIONISM vs. IDENTITY INSTRUCTIONISM and I felt compelled to share some ideas on this topic and perhaps begin some new conversations on the Rockshelf.

I’d like to share some media reflections and observations I’ve attempted over the past 15 years:

I was kind of a socially awkward kid growing up– and as an adult I’m still trying to evolve beyond some of the limitations of that…so it’s a little embarrassing to share this video— but for the sake of learning and growing in this course with all of you— below is a retro video time capsule I made with an old hi8 camera my dad gave me when I was 16.

I lived in Lawrence, Ma. at the time and was attending an unaccredited high school where state-wide standardized testing was quickly becoming the focal point of education.

Most of my actual day to day learning took place in spaces that my mom let me build or carve out for myself– places I called my “studios” or “studies”– which I put together with earnings from an after-school job at Walgreens 1 hour photo and with interest based Christmas and birthday presents from my grandparents.

The idea for making these spaces most likely came from things I learned through all of the imaginary play I did as a kid, the worlds I saw in movies, TV shows and the fiction and fantasy novels I read in high school. I also brought home ideas that some of my Art, Science and English teachers offered at school… I explored them on my own time, in my own space through my own creative lens.

As a teen I lived on the border of different cultural ideas and pieced together a kind of re-mixed identity– the closest I’ve come to language describing this sort of thing is Junot Díaz’ concept of the “ghetto nerd”. Painfully awkward and always out of place but curious and passionate about learning, understanding and communicating the world beyond everyday appearances—(and unlike Diaz’ “cursed” ghetto nerd) wanting always to inspire change by embodying it through re-invention and re-imagination or just plain ole playing with “alien otherness”.

I am and have always been a very curious human being and mostly I’ve just begun scratching the surface of deep learning which has made it possible for a more well-rounded understanding of myself and the world around me.

I created this video time capsule in 1998 (way before vlogs were a thing or youtube for that matter) as a message to some future audience. The video kind of documents some of the tools, technologies and systems I employed as a kid to enhance my learning.

I found the reading about instructionism vs. constructionism relevant and filled with good language to describe my personal learning style and experience with learning at home (on my own)– versus how I was learning at school. This is where much of my “experimental play” was happening. And technology seemed always in the mix as you can see in the tour of the space.

I have lots to say about each individual piece of technology I’ve used in my learning activities over the years– maybe I’ll do some more exploratory writing about these things in the months to come, but for now– here’s the video I produced in 1998 and edited down in 2009. It was pieced in with a larger project to reflect on where I’ve been and how I’ve developed with language and learning style & pace over time.

PLAYING WITH A CAMCORDER: ROSA AGE 16 (May 1998)