more on brizard

got home and saw this article.  a little more on his past relationships with teacher's unions.

Walker Art Center

It took me a minute to figure out how to navigate the Walker Art Center's blog...my brain is getting a little tired and overwhelmed.

But, once I did, I immediately came across an entry regarding John Waters' project, and it sounds hilariously awesome.  Waters' is reimagining the center's current exhibition, Event Horizon- creating a "curatorial intervention".  He will be "Imagining the galleries as rental apartments, Waters sets up relationships among nearly 80 “roommate” artworks that may be friendly or belligerent, unruly or reserved, supportive or indifferent. In exploring the tensions and connections among disparate works in the Walker’s wide-ranging collection..." (from here).  


In addition:

• He will also be creating a sound installation in the art center's parking lot, featuring sounds of crashing cars and squealing tires.  
• Will document and display every financial transaction associated with his curatorial intervention.
• And he will be selling limited edition photographs of food scraps from the art center's cafe.

I love the idea of the art pieces being tenants in the museum.  Considering the work as being roommates allows for a whole new conversation about what work can be shown together.  Instead of arranging work by time period, medium, style, or regional qualities, Waters has created a way of imagining a dialogue between pieces that may not ordinarily be place together.  

You can read Waters' own description here. 

 

I would love to make the trip to Minneapolis to see this.  Who's down?  Road trip!

i started looking through the carrot revolution blog, and i didn't get far (yet) because i got totally sidetracked by an entry about an art show celebrating the 20th anniversary of twin peaks!  and i got very distracted.

now i want to spend the rest of the night re-watching that series, as it has been a long time since i last watched it.

awesomeeeeee

the dangers of cell phone use on the CTA

today we were talking about sitting on the train messing around with our phones, or observing everyone else messing around with their phones.

i have heard numerous stories of people getting their phones, ipods, ipads, iwhatevers stolen right out of their hands on the train.  you're distracted and people seize the opportunity.

then i came home and read this article.  it really is a very sad story or wrong place wrong time- but definitely puts a stolen cell phone into perspective...

"Achievement"

Thanks Sarah for sharing this article on Bill Gates and his foundation's work on education reform.

Here, in this article, and in the op ed piece Gates wrote for the Washington Post, we are hearing a lot of the same talk in regards to teachers and student achievement.  Gates is making the argument that neither seniority nor advanced degrees warrant increases in teacher salary- rather, we should focus on finding successful teachers (and by his definition, this would be teachers of students who show the most "achievement"), see what they are doing right, give them "four or five more students", and reward them with merit based pay that will come as a result of eliminating unsuccessful teachers.  Done.  Problem solved.

I can only assume that student achievement in this sense is measurable achievement, a.k.a. good standardized test scores.  So the next obvious assumption, then, is good teachers help students achieve measurable success- high test scores.  So we should find the teachers that teach to the test the best, give them even more students, and get rid of the underperforming teachers.

At this point, I don't even know what to say about all this anymore.  Yes, there are bad teachers.  I have had some of them.  There are also teachers who are really good at taking a prepackaged curriculum and making students memorize a bunch of stuff and score really well on a test that only has meaning because someone else says it's important.  There are teachers who, despite the discourse that says what they do each day is an easy part-time job, despite a staggering lack of resources, actually try and teach something beyond filling in stupid answer bubbles.

Definitely check out the comments that follow the Washington Post piece-

AREA Chicago

I spent a lot of time clicking around on this site- there's so much to read...  I really liked the City as Lab issue- there are some interesting articles in this issue.  Therese wrote a concise history of CPS as well as an article on the proliferation of military schools in Chicago.

I also really liked this- interesting stories from people who have watched the city change over the years.

Also, there is an illustration section, and this particular illustration, unfortunately, hits way too close to home...yuck.

“We like teenagers, even though they have big backpacks and are always hungry.”

Thanks Lindsay for sharing this article!

This sounds like such a cool program- not only does it get kids involved in the museum, but it provides them with an opportunity to interact with contemporary art and artists, AND they get a stipend for their participation.  On the surface, it sounds much like an ASM program, but it seems to go in a totally different direction.  The students are serving as youth coordinators in the museum, creating events, learning situations, and interactions for other teens.

They also have their own website, where the Teen Arts Council members have their own profiles and can showcase their work.

I wanna join.