Big Day Today, & More Than Happy to Hear The Wisdom of Sonia Nieto Once Again.

Last night, my graduates read two short stories, one by Ursulla Leguin and another by Margaret Atwood, as we worked through Gender Theory as presented by Deborah Appleman in Critical Encounters and applied to other conversations we've had about developing readers in secondary schools.

Toward the end of the night, we discussed a couple of articles that tonight's presenter, Sonia Nieto, wrote when she revolutionized conversations about culture in education with her writing and academic career.

Interestingly, the conversation tweaked a bit when we paired the fluidity of gender with a challenge I have for today: writing with 7th graders about ecosystems (and interestingly, although I hadn't planned on it, I watched the new Roseanne and the same conversation was presented). Where do the biological and natural fit in to the ways our ecosystems sustain and rebuild themselves?

We discussed different ecosystems and I kept coming back to the ways our cultural systems are built. It seems to me that in human ecosystems, diversity has always existed and yet has had walls built to keep it from persisting. An episode like Roseanne last night, or Blackish that followed, would not have occurred 20 years ago. Society has changed.

Or has it? Is it more the fact that society has become more accepting of the diversity that exists within it? Are more people willing to be who they are without have to pose as someone they are not?

This, of course, is dynamic, multifaceted, contextual, influenced, constructed, learned and dialectic, which is what Nieto has always expressed.

I am thinking, however, more systemically (and nationally). There's a tremendous backlash to an America that never was, but always socially imagined in the minds of many who, well, benefited from it. It was their history, their traditions, their definitions, and their laws. That, though, was not representative of all people that make up the American ecosystem. Rather, in the last 20 years, the American ecosystem - which is a continued experiment in human phenomena - has grown closer to the voices and perspectives of a multicultural society in recent years. This, I am thinking, might be what is causing all the controversies of the last few years.

Attitudes and acceptance has changed to embrace more pluralism and this....well, this upsets the balance of what some perceive is normal for a society.

The whole dialogue has me thinking about ecological theory as presented by Urie Bronfenbrenner, which also is critiqued for not accounting for the biological or psychological (the complexities of Phaedrus's horses, I suppose). Anyway, I'm thrilled to see Nieto in action once again tonight and holding my breath that my students and I pull of a phenomenal morning with 7th graders. I can't wait.