Creating the "Instadiss"
One creative learning activity in the workshop involved translating ethnohistorical data to a familiar medium: Instagram. Workshop participants chose artifacts, imagery, hashtags, codes, and memos from their data and analysis in order to visually depict their work in a recognizable and accessible format.
Digital image from Dream Defenders culture jamming campaign entitled #NEVERLOVEDUS
– from Dr. Davis’ Instadiss image
“Knob Creek School, Lauderdale County, TN. I chose this photo as an example of triangulation. The Black Ripley website lists this as a Rosewald school, and a commenter gives an account of their attendance at that school.”
– From Crystal Zander’s Instadiss image
This yearbook is from the 1968-1969, John Hay Elementary School in North Minneapolis, where the previous summer there was civil unrest. This is also the school year after Dr. King was assassinated.
– from Dr. Wise’s Instadiss image
“While I was coding my data, I realized that instead of using the terms ‘fugitive pedagogies’ or ‘hidden curriculum’ I wanted to talk about ‘subversive survival’ As I coded, it kind of shifted the way that I look at the teacher practices. My respondent used phrases like “They did the best they could” and, as I was thinking about those phrases, it occurred to me that I had been envisioning this, almost secret-agent, good vs. evil anti-racist pedagogy when in fact, it was a lot of folks doing ‘the best they could with what they had’, which wasn’t much. So, shifting the narrative to survival helps me contextualize what was really happening. I want to be careful though, because you go too far back, and you are in ‘inadequacy’ territory. How did these teachers educate for survival? Where does language intersect with survival? What compromises did they make? What did they refuse to compromise on?”
– Crystal Zanders, Doctoral Student, School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
