Zdravo da Ste Weekend

December 29, 2011

I returned from Serbia a few weeks ago, energized from six very performatory days with friends old and new. Nearly every year since 1997 as winter begins I’ve made the journey to work and play with the extraordinary people of Zdravo da Ste (“Hi Neighbor”). They’re a group of psychologists, educators, social and youth workers who’ve created a Vygotskian-influenced approach to performance and group creativity, and take it into collective centers, schools and cultural institutions in villages, towns and cities across the country. Above all, they are developmentalists. They’ve devised elegantly simple ways to engage children, youth and adults in creating common joint activity—whether that takes a musical, artistic, poetic, dance, performance or conversational form, there is no goal external to the activity. Such a non-instrumental, tool-and-result method is dear to my heart.

So are the hundred or so people of Zdravo da Ste that I have come to know through the common joint activity we create one weekend a year. We have great love for each other as both comrades and family members can—love grown from mutual passion for a better world, fierce commitment to each other, and ever-growing understanding of and respect for each other’s uniqueness born of historical and cultural difference.

This year, we spent the weekend Vrnjacka Banja—a small town in the south known for its healing mineral waters—in workshops creating performances around the topic of identity as an individual and collective process. On Monday, workshop leaders (myself, Lina Kostarova-Unkovska, Paul Murray and Tim Prentki) brought the topic and conversation to Belgrade, as panelists hosted by psychologist Bojana Skorc at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Belgrade.

In 2009 Zdravo da Ste and publisher Dragan Stojkovic of MOSTART released the Serbian edition of Fred Newman’s Let’s Develop! A Guide to Continuous Personal Growth (translated by Bojana and Zdravo da Ste founder psychologist Vesna Ogjenovic). Social workers, psychologists, youth workers and educators in Serbia and other countries of the former Yugoslavia have a way to be introduced to Newman, social therapeutics, the performatory approach developed and practiced at the Institute, and to Zdravo da Ste’s unique way of generating development.

While in Serbia, I also led two workshops, one in Belgrade and the other in Novi Sad, organized by 2010 graduates of the Institute’s International Class Tamara Borovica, Bojan Drmonjic, Tamara Maksic and Milovan Savic. It was fun and challenging and especially rewarding to spend several hours creating with nearly 60 new performance playmates. I hope to see many of them, along with my old Zdravo da Ste friends, in New York City in October at Performing the World 2012: Can Performance Save the World?

Regarding the topic of identity, I invited those in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Vrnjacka Banja to challenge the hold our societal identities have on us by embracing (or, at a minimum, considering) our historical “identity” as creators and transformers of how things happen to be at any given societal place and time. It’s a common joint activity the world needs very much right now.

Part of a Performance in Nov Sad

New Performers in Belgrade

I’m currently leading the second phase of my ongoing series, “The Thought Leadership of Fred Newman,” at the East Side Institute. For this coming Monday’s session we’re going to play around with two of Newman’s “Psychology Plays”—written expressly for performance at APA (American Psychological Association) annual conventions during the 1990s. Titled “The Myth of Psychology”, the play consists of two acts, each one a therapy session with Lev Vygotsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein and a social therapist.

I love these plays! They are delightfully comic and educative, no matter whether you are familiar with the characters or get the many, many in jokes or not. Of course I’m rereading the text of the play in preparation for my class and thought I’d share a favorite section from Act 2.

Vygotsky and Wittgenstein are now the best of friends and have come to understand each other well except on one issue: they can’t understand how the other is (in Vygotsky’s case) and is not (in Wittgenstein’s case) a revolutionary. We pick up at the point in the session where they ask the therapist Bette what she means by being a revolutionary.

BETTE: To me, being a revolutionary has more to do with how you believe or understand than with what you believe. Now, of course, the two are connected in complex and ever-changing ways. Still, how you connect or relate your subjective life with the world determines what I mean by being a revolutionary.

WITTGENSTEIN: So revolutionary refers then to a way of looking at things?

BETTE: Yes, you might put it that way, Dr. Wittgenstein.

VYGOTSKY: But doesn’t how we look at things depend at least to some extent on how those things are?

BETTE: Yes, Lev. But how those things are also depends on how they are looked at.

WITTGENSTEIN: So you’re saying that things — or whatever — have no objective nature independent of their being related to by conscious beings? Doesn’t that simply raise the old idealistic philosophical saw about whether the tree falls in the forest if no one sees or hears it?

BETTE: Well, Dr. Wittgenstein, I’m not saying that things — or whatever — have no objective nature independent of their being related to by conscious human beings. I’m saying — following your work on these matters — that the language game of objective-subjective can be and often is a no-win game — a metaphysical confusion.

WITTGENSTEIN: Well, tell that to your comrade — and my friend — Vygotsky over here. Because he believes in some Marxian notion of objective historical laws.

VYGOTSKY: I do, Bette. He’s right. I cannot accept that everything is subjective.

BETTE: Nor can I, Lev. Nor can I. But I also cannot accept that everything is objective. Indeed, I can’t even accept that everything is. And no one has made that clearer than Karl Marx and … Lev Vygotsky. Psychology, you insisted — if I understand you correctly — is a cultural understanding of becoming, not a pseudo-scientific understanding of what is.

WITTGENSTEIN: So the puzzle, if you will, has to do with that funny little verb “to be.” “To be or not to be, that is the question.”

BETTE: I think not, Dr. Wittgenstein. That is the problem. Shakespeare’s Hamlet gives us, perhaps, the purest expression of modernist alienation when he says, “To be or not to be.” For if we are, like everything else, becoming, then “to be or not to be” denies what we are by apparently exhausting all the possibilities (being or not being) without realizing that we are both — and neither — namely, we are all forever becoming.

I’m eager to see what I and 30 ordinary people from many different walks of life—all “non-philosophers”—make out of this.

I was delighted to come across this Amazon reader review of my book Vygotsky at Work and Play. The author is David R. Cross, Ph.D.

Thanks, David!

 A Transformative Book Reflecting on a Transformative Life, July 2, 2011

Every now and then you get lucky, and find the book that is just the book you need at that point in your career to take the next step forward. (I used “book” in this opening sentence, but the same could be said for “article” or “presentation,” but here we are concerned with books.) Lois Holzman’s Vygotsky at Work and Play is just that sort of book. Up until reading it, I had been unaware of Lois Holzman’s work, and this book is a great introduction. It is a kind of intellectual autobiography, a conceptual reflection on her several decades of good work. The book is short, well-written, and a great lead-in to the work Holzman has done, mostly in partnership with Fred Newman. Their work is both multifaceted and highly innovative, and it challenges some traditional conceptions about how science is done. Their work is multifaceted because they have made significant contributions to therapy (social therapy), schooling, out-of-school (youth) programs, and the workplace (organizations). The same conceptual principles underly all of this work, which derive mainly from Vygotsky and Wittgenstein. Their work is innovative for a number of reasons, not the least of which is their methodology. Part of their innovation is their (re)conceptualization of Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development,” and another part is their emphasis on performance, both as a product and a process of development in context. This is a book worth reading.

October 3, 2012

Here’s a more graphic rendition of the Performing the World invitation and call for proposals.

October 2, 2011

I’m thrilled to announce the next Performing the World (PTW) conference/festival, “Can Performance Change Save the World?” to take place in New York City October 4-7, 2012. Proposals are due March 1, 2012.

The theme of the last PTW, held in 2010 and attended by over 500 people from dozens of countries, was, “Can Performance Change the World?” The depth of the challenges facing humanity two short years later have led the conveners of Performing the World to recast the question for the 2012 conference as, “Can Performance Save the World?”

Performing the World (PTW) was born in a conversation between East Side Institute co-founder, the late Fred Newman, and me at the end of the summer of 2000. We had already “discovered” performance, and its essential role in human development and learning was key to the therapeutic, educational and community-organizing work of the East Side Institute and its broader community. At the same time, Newman and I were also having conversations with Ken and Mary Gergen, leading social-constructionist psychologists who themselves were turning toward performance, particularly by experimenting with new performatory modes of presenting research and scholarship. During the 1990s at annual meetings of the American Psychological Association, we and the Gergens did some joint performatory symposia and Newman’s original “psychology plays” were performed—all to great enthusiasm. We were encouraged, and wanted to do something bigger and of our own structure.

My international travels had introduced me to many different performatory practices initiated at both the grassroots and from within the universities. I met dozens of people and heard of hundreds more who were using performance to help people and communities grow and create positive social change. We decided to reach out to those doing this work/play—from community organizers to business people, from artists to social workers, from therapists to teachers.

The first Performing the World conference was held in October 2001, just a few weeks after 9/11. Hundreds from all over the world showed up at the beautiful ocean side village of Montauk, 120 miles from New York City, as if this kind of gathering was what they and their communities needed at such a moment.

There have been five PTWs since then. The last two—in 2008 and 2010—were held in New York City, bringing the conference to one of the most vibrant and diverse cultural centers of the world and partnering with the All Stars Project as co-sponsor. PTW has been greatly enriched by having the All Stars’ performing arts and development center on 42 Street near Times Square as the conference’s home base and by the inclusion of hundreds of young people and adults who participate in its programs. Additionally, both the Institute and the All Stars reach out to friends across New York City’s many communities to provide housing for PTW participants and broaden the “performance space.” I am inspired by the growth of the global performance movement and the role that PTW is playing in it, as not only a conference/performance festival but also a unique community event bringing people together to perform a new world.

I’ve written before about the All Stars Project’s unique and fabulous UX, a free, open-to-all, university-style development center, but it’s worth mentioning over and over. This new project creates its curriculum from suggestions for courses from those who want to learn and ideas from those who want to teach something. Dean Lenora Fulani and Associate Dean Dan Friedman lead and coordinate this new initiative—a truly postmodern Zone of Proximal Development.

Here’s this week’s e-newsletter.

Here’s some advice. When you’re feeling hopeless about human beings ever learning/deciding to live together peacefully on this planet, watch a TED talk. When you’re feeling alone in your work to make a better world, watch a TED talk. When you’re bored with the same old same old, watch a TED talk. It takes less than 20 minutes and costs nothing.  And with over 800 of them currently online and new ones added daily, you can be inspired or learn something new as often as you need or want to.

Two weeks ago I was one of five researchers invited to participate in a “Fireside Chat” sponsored by graduate student members of the American Educational Research Association at the organization’s annual meeting in New Orleans (see my post of April 4). We were asked to address the topic, “(Re)Imagining Interdisciplinary Research Methodologies.”  I think the graduate student leaders who organized this, Cecilia Henriquez and LaGarrett Jarriel King, did a good job of it. The five of us “senior researchers” (James D. Anderson, Patricia C. Gandara, Nailah Suad Nasir, Lalitha M. Vasudevan, and me) used our diverse histories to complement each other, as the gathering of 40-50 pursued us with questions for 90 minutes non-stop.

One thread of the conversation had to do with the intensity of conducting dissertation research and writing one’s thesis and articles for publication—how to make it less stressful, not overwhelmingly all-consuming, is it possible to have some balance? My suggestion: Get out of your head and into the world. The process of becoming an academic makes you narrower and narrower; you’re becoming an expert on what is, when you think about it, a tiny aspect of the world. For PhD students this is most intense, even when their advisors tell them to “expand their literature review,” because that typically involves a relatively small step “outside” the dissertation research question proper.

When I’ve advised graduate students and new professors just starting out, I urge them to explore fields outside their own, including ones they know nothing about, to find out what’s happening—what kinds of questions are being asked, methods being developed, rules being broken,  impact on the field and on policy. People tell me this helps them; not only do they get new ideas but it grounds them as human beings connected to others.

Within the Fireside Chat grouping I was set apart in this way. In response to how we understand being interdisciplinary and face the challenges of being so, I ventured that I was not so much interdisciplinary as adisciplinary and even antidisciplinary. I recommended that they watch a TED talk a day.

You don’t have to be an academic or becoming one to need to be stimulated to being curious and open. We all do.

April 20, 2011

One evening while studying in England, a young Ugandan man named Peter Nsubuga watched a BBC documentary in the home he was staying. The program was “Children of Africa.” Peter was no stranger to the scenes he watched, having grown up in the very conditions shown on the screen. He felt deeply moved by the film, so much so that he returned home “to give my heart”—he says—to help children and youth from his home village. Peter talked to local community leaders and officials about his desire to inspire, support, and promote youth engagement and the role of young people as leaders of positive social change. In 2007, he got just enough support to found Hope for Youth-Uganda and supply food, clothing and education to a small number of children.

In 2008, Peter learned of the training opportunity in the social therapeutic approach to learning, development and community building provided by the East Side Institute. He applied, I interviewed him (on Skype), and he arrived in NYC in October to begin the program’s first residency. During 2008-2009 (and three visits to NYC for the program’s residency periods), Peter advanced his vision to include therapeutic and cultural developmental activities. He thought that social therapy would greatly help build community and give emotional support to families, most of which have been fragmented by the death of one or both parents from AIDS. He also was eager to bring the All Stars Project performance-based development approach to the young people to help them grow.

So, over the next two years, Peter began educational and therapeutic groups for women and for the grandparents and other guardians of children orphaned by AIDS as well as  “You Matter” support groups for girls. Hope for Youth-Uganda also built a school, installed a new water tank to insure safe drinking water; planted an orange grove, and acquired donated school supplies.

Last month, on the afternoon of March 26, Hope for Youth-Uganda held its first All Stars Talent Show. Peter told me that the show began in a large field, with children, many orphaned by AIDS, “telling stories—which were so emotional that many could not hold their tears back. Later we marched around the surrounding communities with the teens singing songs and ended in the sports field where they moved around to form a star.”

It thrills me that Peter and his organization are creating conditions for Ugandan youth to create their own cultural development. He joins the growing ranks of educational innovators—those who know the importance and value of in-school education in underdeveloped and developing societies but who, at the same time, recognize the transformative power of informal learning environments that engage and empower. Watch videos of Sugata Mitra and Charles Leadbeater to learn more.

At the end of the week I travel to New Orleans for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), a huge gathering (probably 14,000!) of mostly PhDs and graduate students involved in studying teaching and learning. Over five days, there will be many hundreds of presentations and, sadly, only a fraction of them will report on the learning lives of school-aged children outisde of school. This is in spite of the fact that school hours take up only about 25% of kids’ lives. Speaking as a researcher, that’s some oversight! Also, the American obsession with researching schooling (not to mention schooling, period) is, I think, terribly misguided because outside of school learning environments are exactly those that foster the very skills and abilities that educational reformers say are essential for a productive life: creativity, critical thinking, building positive relationships, confidence, risk-taking, etc. There’s plenty of research showing this, but it’s fragmented and marginalized and, consequently, not within the common knowledge base of most scholars and teacher educators.

In New Orleans I’ll be presenting at some of the sessions and attending others that address non-school settings. I hope to learn some things and,  more important, find among the thousands attending those who want to be educated and educate their colleagues to look outside of school for some answers to America’s “educational crisis.” Beyond the AERA conference, I have hopes of organizing a much smaller gathering, sometime this year or next, of educational researchers and practitioners to discuss efforts to bring developmental learning to the learning lives of those whom the current schools are failing.

“Here is an idea for solving the education crisis in America. What if all the kids currently failing in school pretended to be good learners? What if all the adults – teachers, principals, administrators, parents – played along and pretended that the kids were school achievers, heading for college? What if this national “ensemble” pretended this was the case day after day, classroom after classroom, school district after school district?”

So begins “Let’s Pretend,” a special report on “Solving the Education Crisis is America” written by Lenora Fulani and Fred Newman, co-founders of the All Stars Project (which released the report) and long-time friends, colleagues and mentors of mine. The three of us have written thousands of words (and spoken millions more) on play, performance, pretence, creative imitation and their critical role in learning and development for people of all ages, but especially for those whom schools have failed/who failed school. All of our words grow out of the complicated interplay of carrying out on-the-ground performance-based development work and dialoguing with scholars, practitioners and policy makers. In “Let’s Pretend,” Fulani and Newman  say it as they see it in a mere six pages. In the time it takes to make a cup of coffee you can read it and see if you see it their way or if they’ve helped you see in a new way.