My observation is at John Marshall Metropolitan High School.  It’s a very steep learning curve for me (like most observations), and it has been informing the way I interpret our classroom activities and texts very much.  One thing I’ve been interested in during my observations is the structure of the fish bowl activity and its underlying reinforcements of white normative group speech.  I mean…it seems to me that white normative group speech generally involves a small number of people engaging in a discussion (sometimes even only one person giving a lecture).  That small group is watched by the large group.  We see this in political debates and talk shows, panels and conference presentations everyday.  The foundation of this structure seems to me to be a hegemonic conditioning: that the small group members (generally people of privilege) have more interesting, pertinent and/or entertaining things to say than the large group members.  I have sympathy of Bill Maher during his outburst against conspiracy theorist hecklers, but the outburst is a great example of how ingrained the structure is.  When a member of the crowd asserts their voice, the small-important group does not take to it kindly.

“This isn’t the Iowa Caucus!” Maher shouts into the audience.  “This isn’t a debate!  It’s a debate between us.”  Here he gestures to himself and the other members of his panel.  “You’re in the audience.  Audience comes from the Latin ‘to listen.’” 

It seems to me (and of course here I’m painting with dangerously broad stokes—but Chicago is a historically segregated city that has now reached staggering levels of contemporary de facto segregation, and as an aspiring white educator standing in front of an 100% African American classroom, I feel my students deserve such considerations about the implications of race and associated norms to optimize their education) the black normative group communication often involves more interaction.  Paul Gilroy mentions in The Black Atlantic audience reciprocity in African Diaspora (hip hop specifically).  We see this in churches across America.  Even Kings iconic “I Have A Dream,” speech was partially improvised, as King responded to the responsive audience.  (See link below.)

Mahalia Jackson, and King’s Improvisation

Here I find myself being critical of a technique when Sarah asked us to focus on positivity and learning.  I’ll end with a positive note.  I very much appreciate learning this tool, and I think it can be successfully used in classes with very different norms.  I only mean to say that, as it currently exists, it privileges white normative communication dynamics.  That fact doesn’t help us much, especially since the groupings that this very reflection relies on are founded on a false dichotomy of two highly overlapping (culturally, if—at least in Chicago—not always literally), interconnected phenotypical student groups—both with many outliers. 

My takeaway is that urban educators might be well advised to take a play from Peter Smagorinsky’s Teaching English by Design.  In Chapter 4, Smagorinsky suggests teahcers, “dedicate class time toward the end of the course to having students generate tasks and questions through which their engagement with the course can be evaluated” [Loc 1562].  He’s specifically addressing assessments, but I think the dynamic can be appropriately applied here, insofar as students can help determine how their participation grade will be evaluated regarding a pro-responsive outer circle versus a pro-reserved outer circle.