Process Piece

I really struggled in the brainstorming stages of this assignment. I tried to think of things that I can create, and then to think of ways that I could portray that process digitally. For a good while, all I could think of was making food or making music, but I wasn't in love with the idea of showcasing my lack of skill in either of those areas. When I finally got home and sat down, I was dismayed by the current state of my living room. It was then that I realized that I could kill to birds with one stone. ;)

I decided to use silent film for this particular assignment, specifically because of the effect I was hoping to achieve. There are a lot of sounds that are missing from this video that I could have used to instead do an audio narrative--the sound of disinfectant spray, of the vacuum cleaner, and of me hobbling around my living room, for example. However, I liked the harried vibe that a time-lapse video gave, and I felt like this depicted my typical emotions when cleaning more than just the audio would have.

When we were defining "process" in class, I was reminded of my high school physics courses. The law of Thermodynamics indicates that everything naturally moves from a state of order to a state of chaos--unless it is acted on by some force, thus consuming energy. What with my class load, work load, and the cast on my foot, my house has been in a total state of chaos lately. My sink is full of dishes. My bed is unmade. My bathroom floor is littered with loose hair. And my living room is a disarray of the pillows I've been propping my foot up on and the homework I've been frantically trying to complete. To clean everything up and move my house from chaos to order requires energy via my labor.

Everything worth creating requires energy. We saw that in class with the video depicting Jan Yager's work, and we see that each and every time we sit down to create a lesson plan that will hopefully be deliciously scintillating for our students. We spend time on these things because they are worth doing. We are willing to sacrifice time and energy--the costs of labor--in order to create. We've discussed in class the fact that creative, educational classroom activities and assignments will require more work than boring, been-done-for-the-last-twenty-years ones. Yet my understanding of the result of such labor has been enriched by this assignment, and I feel more capable of putting in that extra work.

In the reading, Mr. Baker teaches his students to engage in processes. When I hear the word "process" in relation to education, I typically think of the writing process. However, the reading has changed my understanding of texts, and I think that students need to engage in the writing process outside of just writing. Any time they engage in a process, they are writing--creating--something of value. And that should be celebrated.