Bearded Lady Meets Ring Master

Just when I thought that I ran out of things to blog about (a slow week in the classroom...low attendance due to illness, pro-d Day...etc), Erik and I are in the middle of what is for us, a significant 'misunderstanding.'

As per usual (and anyone who has ever lived with me for an extended length of time will know this)... when left to my own devices, my bedroom looks like a shit storm blew through (pardon the expletive, but it needed saying).

So, the normally tidy and compartmentalized Erik, was kindly explaining to me the stress that my errant ways has upon his inner chi. I internalize the sentiments, and counter with a series of damning accusations regarding his kitchen shit storms (and for everyone's sake, let's not even get to the bathroom). Naturally, a volley of civilized tit for tat 'dialogue' is passed back and forth until my darling Erik begins demonstratively prancing about the room, pointing out the various objects in question that I have failed to put away properly throughout the week. Finally, he reaches the carton of Mr. Sketch Smelly Felts that are lying in his most loathed location (behind his rolly desk chair...yes, I admit, they must be quite a drag to roll over). Presenting them to me, he opens the box, gazes inquisitively at the contents, asks how long it took to me to arrange the offending markers in such an order, then procedes to ask "is this one black licorice?"

"Why, yes it is," I reply reticently. "Black licorice is divine, let me smell it," I insolently demand.

Before I know it, I am sporting a 'stash that would make Herr Hitler weak at the knees. I cannot help but laugh.

I demand mutton chops.

Darling Erik eagerly complies.

Soon, we have forgotten all about who wiped the stove last and who left the smelly felts where. Erik becomes the most handsome, gender confused, circus ring leader I have ever met, and I become his sinister side show bearded lady, with whom he has a sordid, secret, but passionate affair behind the Rhino cage.

A handsome, tragic couple, indeed.

Zodiac Killer: Pig vs. Bear

The classroom is buzzing with excitement. This week is jam packed full of activities and theme days: Valentine’s Day, VSO field trip, and Chinese New Year! The morning bell rings and the children meander toward their seats. I am trying to get the attendance done and I can’t figure out what to mark down where. I keep getting irritated little notes on the attendance from the secretary of the school because I am not paying close enough attention to the little slashes and crosses and dashes that I am supposed to use. Children are chattering, a tray of gold glitter perched precariously on the edge of the reading/craft table teeters as a student bumps into it. I want to get over there and move it out of harm’s way but I am trapped by ‘Mother Bear’, the well-meaning parent who feels the need to stay in the class to talk with the teacher every morning about her many concerns regarding ‘Baby Bear’s’ education. Phew! I glance over to the table; the glitter tray didn’t fall after all. Mama Bear is still hovering in my space, instructing me for the umpteenth time on making sure her daughter’s coat is done up all the way to the top before she goes outside, and how she needs harder spelling words, and by the way, just how much experience do I have with children and education? Ahhh! I am so flustered; I wish this mom would just leave me alone in the mornings so I can figure out this stupid attendance sheet!

BAM…WHOOSH…

A wave of horrified gasps from the children in the back row earns my full attention. Like a tragic hang gliding accident, the kamikaze glitter inevitably sails off the edge of the table and then swirls downward dispersing itself as widely as possible. Mother Bear leaves, but only after promising to return at recess. I clip my attendance sheet outside the classroom and focus the class to the over head for Daily Oral Language. While the students are correcting the sentences with proper grammar and punctuation, I survey the scope of our glitter debacle. Upon closer inspection, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that an entire flock of fairies had been brutally massacred at the back of our classroom. The entire table, carpet, and bookshelf sported a garish, gilded gleam reminiscent of a Christmas window display planned by primary students from the Ivana Trump School of Design.

On with the day…

Just prior to recess, Mama Bear returns. We are discussing Chinese New Year in class and talking about the different years in the Chinese zodiac. The kids are dismissed just after I tell them that this year is special for me because I was born in the year of the pig, and that it won’t come around for another 12 years etc. The children get their coats on and go outside. Mama Bear zips up her daughter’s coat, while mentioning to me that her husband is also born in the year of the pig “…So you must be born in 1971, too, eh?”

Flash to the inner me: my jaw drops to the floor and I gasp internally, mouth agape “Or 1983!” my internal monologue corrects.

Flash to outer me “Hahaha…yesss, oh hahaha, how did you know?” (uncomfortable laughing accompanied by a little white lie…), “Well, haha, I have to run to a staff meeting… see ya tomorrow”. I boot it down the hall and hide in the staff room.

I am a Walrus...goo goo g'joob

I allow myself only 5 indulgent minutes of wallowing before the morning bell rings. It is my first experience teaching with a head cold. I sit at the desk and hold my head in my hands, clammy fingers massaging my sinuses and temples. Both areas pulse unpleasantly. I let out a low, raspy sigh, followed by a teachery, “there, there,” said to console myself. Mucus or not, the show must go on. I stand up, give my nose a decisive honk, straighten my jacket and sleeves, and make my way to the door to warmly greet the waiting children. The students are bundled in their brightly coloured, puffy coats; they jostle each other, nylon on nylon, while runners and boots scuff along the damp concrete and into the warm, dry classroom. Today will be “100th Day” for the kids, and they are pumped.

“When is the party?” they all want to know. I do not know where they got the idea that there would be a party today, but thank goodness Mrs. Pugliese brought mini cupcakes and popcorn for the end of the day.

“Later” I answer decisively (or so I thought). “But, first we have to get through our spelling test”.

Despite all my efforts to appear healthy and in ship shape for the students, it turns out that children are unable to understand some of the words I am enunciating for them during the test. Accordingly, the word ‘marble’ was printed by 9 out of 24 students as ‘barble’. I had to laugh about that, and ‘mommy’ turned out to be ‘bubby’ 7 out of 24 times. In good spirits, I scrapped the words from the test and marked it out of 10 instead of 12.

For the remainder of the day, I learned the hard way the reasons why ill-defined answers to children’s questions is never a good idea. Unfortunately, the entire day and all my lessons were interrupted by “when are we having the party?” Nobody was able to focus and the class was chatty and dancing on the line of off task and mayhem. In retrospect, I really should have given them a proper shape of the day, with a clear expectation of what was going to happen, and exactly when the ‘party’ was going to be.

Finally 2:00pm rolls around, and Mrs. Pugliese and I hand out the popcorn and cupcakes to the class. “Should we put on a video for them?” I ask Mrs. Pugliese. “Yeah, what about that arctic documentary that we started watching last week?” she suggested. “Ah, good idea, at least it is educational and related to our science unit” I agree.

I push the tape into the VCR and hit the play button.

A giant, white polar bear begins mauling a walrus. Apparently it hasn’t eaten in months and is weak. According to the narrator, if it doesn’t kill now, the polar bear will lose its strength and die. In a strange parallel, as if it was mirroring exactly how I was feeling on the inside, the polar bear walks in a circle, and thuds to the ground, presumably dead or dying.

For the first time all day, the class is silent. Behold, the magic of nature!

Outsider Art and Hegelian Aesthetic

I posted the following blog entry on my dear friend Bethany's blog (http://bethanypearce.blogspot.com) at the end of January, and I spent so long typing it that I thought I would post it here too.


Like Bethany, I have a distinct fascination and appreciation for a rapidly growing movement in the art world known as 'outsider art'. Bethany had posted some art by Jesse Reno (whose art is also featured on this blog), and claims that her husband cannot stand it, yet she adores it. Thus, the dichotomy of opposition in taste inspired me to ponder the purpose and direction of art in our supposedly post-(post?)modern society.

Just what is the art world these days? Because of the increasing triviality, everyday life has gradually become our central preoccupation. No illusion or art form can hide the poverty of our daily actions any longer. Thus, I say that outsider art is the aesthetic reaction to the inane and banal focus that our society (and I would argue that this applies to the rest of the capitalist world, and to every country affected by the long and destructively greedy fingers of this economic regime…think 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th world nations) places on art that means nothing. Flashback to Britney Spears, how important the debauchery of Paris Hilton seems to all those bent on supporting it, etc. The art world of today, or should I say insider art is completely focused on lulling us into a state of such passivity and boredom (think hotel art, landscape art, wild life art…when was the last time you were out and a piece of art made you think? Rarely happens) that we no longer feel any personal agency to act critically or independently against issues that are so much more important and humanizing and pressing.

Since our society has come to this place of obedience and immobilization, creativity of artists from all media is diminished to alienating themselves, and they end up expressing themselves according to the dominant imagery of their time. In submissing like this, the artist’s expressiveness ends up re-presenting the everyday, which makes weak statements about how individuals must react to inequality, injustices, greed, and dehumanization.

Now, some people might read this and think “whoa….wait a second here, Vanessa, I know that there are things out there that need to change, I know of artists who aren’t dulled into conformity”. Yes, I am sure that is true, but immediately, I think about the Belgian philosopher Raoul Vaneigem’s condemnation of the institutional and informal left (the commies, the Happy Planet guzzlers, the people who spend time picking out organic food from grocery stores that are multinational corporations…the people participating in the increasing triviality of everyday life (myself). Vaneigem is quoted saying “People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have corpses in their mouths” (1967:25).

So, how are you relating this to outsider art, you might be tempted to ask me. Outsider art is disruptive to what everyday life has become, to how it consumes our focus (media, appearance, brands, status, etc), how it takes up our time (hair straightening, choosing a pair of jeans, applying makeup, desiring a certain job, house, vehicle) etc, without considering how such actions translate into the perpetuation of local and global inequality and dehumanization. Accordingly, then, outsider art stands in complete antithesis to what the triviality of everyday life has deemed “aesthetically pleasing”. It is raw, it is ugly, it makes us feel bad, it seems crude, lacking in the finesse and skill of form, angsty.

Some of you may know my affinity for Hegel’s theory of the aesthetic, and I apologize for ranting on this subject again, but it warrants further inquiry. In a nutshell, Hegel believes that to be art in its highest form, art must be a reflection of the mind of the artist. You must be able to look at a piece of art, listen to a piece of music, hear a poem, watch a dance or theatre performance and you must be able to become so engulfed by the piece that your experience of it is a cerebral and visceral connection to the inside of the artists mind. What are they thinking, saying, feeling, hating, loving, consuming, opening, exploring, confusing, experiencing. To examine art aesthetically, one should feel as if he/she is engaging in a dialogue with the artist; a connection between the hearts and minds must take place for a piece of art to truly be beautiful.

If we are choosing art for our homes because we like how it looks, the colours, the size, the subject, the composition, the contrast (it is generally chosen because it doesn’t force us to think about how complicit our lives are in the suffering and perpetuation of the capitalist agenda). Hence, many people do not want outsider art present in their homes. It laughs in our faces, it forces us to recognize how we are subscribers to the triviality of the everyday, it grosses us out, it doesn’t blend in well, it might disturb the children, it grates us.

This conversation has dealt primarily with half of the theory of the aesthetic, content (the dialogue between minds and hearts). In the previous paragraph I alluded to the second aspect, form. I don’t have time to get into a detailed investigation of form and aesthetic, but there is a wealth of discussion that should happen around history, society, and artistic form, especially pertaining to outsider art. This is an interesting trend in art that repeats itself at times when the world stands in particular violence and turmoil (remember Dadaism, anyone?). At these times, form (technique) really takes a dive to reflect the chaos and loss of humanity in our lived realities. Such degradation to the planet and to us does not deserve realism; consequently, the disruption of the relationship between form and content manifests itself in cacophony and dissonance (outsider art).

Overall, then, outsider art forces us to hold up a mirror to insider art, and the experience of such an experiment results, in my opinion, in the psychic disequilibrium of looking in a mirror at yourself and seeing no reflection at all. Personally, I do not think that insider art reflects a dialogue of heart and mind with its creator. Yes, there are very many talented people who can carefully and accurately depict a landscape, an animal, or a scene of people in object realism; however, simply copying a meadow to exact detail (though an impressive relationship between hand and eye coordination) lacks creativity, dialogue, motion, or energy of space and place.

By a strange oversight, few artists go to the trouble of studying how people actually lived during the most extreme revolutionary moments and the effects of mundane everyday life on the perpetuation of local and global inequality. This is the gift of outsider art. Shake, rattle, and roll!

The New Kid

Tears and sobbing. A new student loses his brave face on the last day of his first week in a new school. His mother tries to leave the classroom, but he hangs on to her body with all his strength. I stand at the door with her; she is outside, and I am inside. She looks at me for some hope and magic distraction to get her son inside so she can be on time for her Ph.D seminar at SFU. I have no experience in these matters, and the inner me is shrugging, while the outer me is trying to maintain a sense of control. I can’t think of anything to say that will help –drawing a blank. The children are starting to wonder what is going on. Then the magic words come to me (I can’t believe that I said this, in retrospect), “Do you want to bring him back after lunch?” I cringe at this response immediately, knowing that this will not help at all, but that I just said something for the sake of saying something.

The situation was becoming an uncomfortable imbalance of power, with most of it being exercised by a child of a mere 45lbs. A look of despair flashes across the mother’s face, and a more experienced teacher steps in to the rescue. Her years of teaching come through and she handles the situation beautifully, transferring the ownership of the little boy’s feelings into his own hands, and empowering him to decide to be a part of the class. Instead of two adults telling him that he should want to be in the class and to just think about all the intangible fun he would be missing out on if he went home, the boy was now enabled to decide what he wanted to do on his own terms. Mrs. Pugliese had certainly dealt with this situation before, and transferring the power to the child instead of him having to fight for it was an inclusive and pedagogically informed way to achieve the desired result. I am just thankful that I didn’t end up in tears after all was said and done. There is much to be said about experience!

Does Whale Poo Steam?

Pictures: A whale pooing and a sample of whale poo in the lab (both photos are taken by Australian researchers...curiously, all whale poo research is done by Australians...I'm just saying...)

“I have a question,” a second grade boy announces seriously at carpet time. “Does whale poo steam?” he poses to the group and to me specifically. A roar of chirpy laughter erupts in the amoebic ring of seated children. The tips of my ears are burning. This is why I really shouldn’t have started ‘the question of the day’, I think to myself.

“That is an interesting question, Lionel; I don’t think I have heard somebody ask that before. How did you think of that?” I ask, probingly. “Simple,” he replies, “my dog pooped in the snow on the way to school with me and my mom and my brother and Sarah, and it steamed”.

Logical, I think to myself. “And why do you think whale poo might steam?” I ask back. “I don’t know, but we are studying the Arctic and it is cold there and things might steam” Lionel supposes. “Like poo” says another little boy –more giggles from the children in the circle. “Ok, I have to be honest, I don’t know the answer to this question, but I will go home to research it this afternoon and I will tell you what I find out tomorrow”. Am I setting a dangerous precedent, I wonder?
Needless to say, there is surprisingly sparse data on the internet pertaining to whale poo in general, and to whether or not it steams, in particular. Apparently, whale poo is somewhat difficult for researchers to come across in the field, and specimens are quite highly cherished by marine biologists. Evidently, however, the consistency of faecal matter varies between species of whales; baleen whales have loose, watery discharge, whereas toothed whales have more solid waste that can (depending on composition) float to the surface. Consequently, I am inferring that if such a specimen were to be released from the warm body of the mammal and float up to the surface, it is marginally possible for it to steam once it reaches the cold Arctic air.

At carpet time the next day, I report my findings to the squirming amoeba shaped ring of children and to Lionel in particular. He sits quietly for a moment, deep in thought, and resolutely replies, “I thought so”.

In reflection of this occurrence during my teaching time, I realized that a seemingly puerile and inane question from a child is something that can be so easily dismissed with a laugh, or by a perplexed facial expression followed by the oft used phrase “ok, and moving on now…” spoken in a indifferent teacher voice. What message does it send to children when we do not value their questions, or bother to find out why they might be asking such a query? In other words, how often do educators fail to recognize the experiential knowledge of children as legitimate and worthy of investigation? When a more experienced teacher told me not to bother wasting my time at home because they won’t even remember the question the next day, I realized that this type of knowledge, children’s experiential knowledge is both undervalued and underrepresented in mainstream curricular discourse.