##Reading

I’ve been reading some under-the-radar pieces related to Jimmy and Grace Lee Boggs, including:

“A Lifelong Search for Real Education,” where Detroit educator Julia Putnam reflects on how the Boggs shaped her ideas about education. This is a tender, moving piece because of excerpts like this, when Julia tells how it felt as a teenager to know that Jimmy was proud of her.

I was moved, touched that this man who knew nothing about me was proud of me. Had I been that starved for this kind of praise? I think so. My family praised me, but it was for things I was supposed to do—I was obedient, didn’t cause trouble, and my grades were fine. For that, my family was proud, appreciative. Jimmy was proud of me for going beyond that. He was proud because I cared about something other than myself. I’d never even thought to give myself credit for that. I was ready to put my time and energy toward a Detroit that I could be proud to live in.

Then there is “Another Education is Happening” from 2011 where Julia tells the story of how she was shaped as a teenager by Detroit Summer, the youth program organized by the Boggs. She drops this gem:

I had not even known that I craved being asked to do something important until I was actually asked.

I’ve been thinking about that sentence – and even its verb tenses – and texting it to people all week.

##Writing

I’m still moving forward, with frequent steps back, on an essay about theories of change in activist education scholarship. Here is how the focus is shaping up:

This essay, I reassert the importance of theories of change, and their ontologies and epistemologies, for contemporary scholar activism in education. For this task, I draw especially from decolonizing and Indigenous approaches to participatory action methodologies, for they have a great deal to teach us about this topic. While these ideas have long been central to scholar activism, I offer that these considerations are especially important in the early 21st century as scholar activists extend traditions and invent new formations to carry out their activist work, especially outside state-related, settler colonial institutions.

##Listening

• Incredible head-nodding in the clouds soul from Goiânia, Brazil. It’s Corpo Possível by Bruna Mendez.

• Conclave by Conclave, a group of rotating musicians “inextricably woven around the living, breathing rhythm.”

• The group we don’t deserve is back with an album we didn’t know we needed. The group is SAULT. The album is NINE. And you should press play.