Pure Manaʻo

We are living in new realities. I am caged on a dining room table where Zoom classes and meetings take up so much of my time that I have difficulty being present, sitting down, staying focused. Still, my job is to take this new normal, create a hybrid of synchronous and asynchronous content to engage students in learning through relevant grappling, deep dive discussions and minds on - hands on practice. The article Open Pedagogy by DeRosa & Jhangiani guides me to the intentional transformation of content to distance education (our new normal). "Open Pedagogy," as we engage with it, is a site of praxis, a place where theories about learning, teaching, technology, and social justice enter into a conversation with each other and inform the development of educational practices and structures. A site of praxis! When the public schools shut down in Hawaiʻi, thus shutting out our over 100 teacher candidates out of their practicums, what we missed most was our site of praxis. Th...

When I have a draft in my post box with just this title, reality check, and I have no idea what I was trying to say, then yes, √, understood. The reality is that I am drifting but really I think I am too focused. Then I found this and it is all the guidance and reminder I need to continue on.  I am off to find some secret notebooks, except that this probably is my secret notebook.  I am off to pay attention to dreams because the best ideas are the ones I haven't thought of yet. 

For the past two years I have been trying to write about creating a space on the University of Hawai'i West Oʻahu campus - what Bhabha calls Third Space and Anzaldua calls Borderland spaces. From my 2017 article on carving out Indigenous spaces:   Consciousness-raising happens in both a metaphoric as well as a physical space. Third space theorists (Anzaldua 1999, 2000; Irving and Young 2002, 2004) suggest that the creation of "third" or "borderland" spaces can provide the opportunity for creative, novel, and respectful interpersonal relationship dynamics. Anzaldua addresses issues of power and identity in colonized areas, and conceptualizes third or borderland spaces as places or states of ambiguity, of being in-between different "realities" (2000).  What these spaces offer are ways for Indigenous me, one of the  2-7% of  Indigenous faculty members in the University of Hawaiʻi system, to create a safe space to have conversations and le...