Kimberly Hirsh

introducing the panel "The New Bedroom Cultures"

“The Growth of Fangirls and Fanfiction During the COVID-19 Lockdown” "A bit of an accidental autoethnographic activity"
Dissertation focused on Harley Quinn and her relationship with her fangirls. Argued that Harley moved from sexualized object of the male gaze to reclaimed character, and credits fanfiction with this move.
Interested in the transition of fans from producers to consumers.
Fell down a fanfiction rabbithole on TikTok.
Sociology theory about bedroom culture highlights bedroom as a sacred space for adolescent girls, originally considered bedroom as consumer space but more recent scholarship argues that bedroom culture includes production
The transition from consumer to producer was pressurized during lockdown, which led to a boom of fan engagement.

Léa Andolfi:

Discusses fannish bedroom cultures during the lockdown, fanfiction as a bedroom ritual. Presentation draws on interviews conducted during Master's.
Title of talk is “A Fandom of One’s Own: Fanfiction as a Bedroom Ritual During COVID-19”
Fanfiction is defined by intimacy, both in its topics and in the spaces it exists in.
Participants could personalize emotion via tags: hurt/comfort, enemies-to-loves, fluff...
"reception on a loop" You experience the original media, seek out fan-created media, engage in fan practices regularly, which drives you to seek out the next piece of new media.
Reading fanfiction is a personal ritual, "alone time"
Socialization in digital spaces allowed fans to maintain kinship and community.

notes that @andolfi_lea mentioned parasocial relationships which probably all of them have something to say about
Dr. Welsh-Burke's talk is “‘I Am on My KNEES’: TikTok as a New Site of Adolescent Sexual Desire”
looking at experience of female fans as producers and fans
Noticed enthusiastic display of sexual desire in caption of fan vid on TikTok, liked it and started to get more recs for things where people have "extreme affective responses"
This content on TikTok was a positive reclamation of the stereotype of fangirls as only interested in certain topics (e.g. sexy topics)
TikTok is an especially bedroom-y media space in terms of both creation and consumption.

DeanLeetal:

presenting “Bedroom Cultures but Make It Enby Cottage Core: Reading Shakespeare as a Disabled Trans Fan”
warning: going to discuss bigotry, esp. transphobia, and safety
Discussing reading Shakespeare's "As You Like It" as a trans text. Rosalind & Celia live a queer-utopian cottagecore life in the Forest of Arden.
IRL when marginalized people meet each other it's not always self. There's bigotry related to different combos of marginalization.
In The Forest of Arden, it feels as if everyone is safe.
"If all those queer people running around in the forest are the monsters, then we have nothing to fear. Everyone is safe."
In the Forest of Arden, "everyone is always possibly polyamorous." It's bittersweet to contrast this with spaces in real life.
This contrast is more pronounced when the person doing the looking/reading is trans & disabled.
Anecdote about harassment at a coffee shop that ended with Dean feeling the owners of the shop would blame Dean for being a magnet for harassment if a similar incident happened again.
The "depressing, gray" bedroom experience is attractive because there aren't a lot of people that can harass you there.
There's an interesting relationship between trans' people's experience of being expected not to even exist outside and these fantasies of the cottagecore forest (and other safe spaces) inside.

Dr. Kimberly Hirsh at #FSNNA22:

In some fandoms, e.g. superhero and Star Wars, other people in fandoms perceive the source material as "serious" and were worried fangirls would "drag it down" because fangirls are interested in "silly things"

The discussion is getting really good but I'm struggling to keep up with tweets, sorry!

Saw Twitter thread about how there used to be no women in nerdy spaces and, of course, there were and many people argued against OP but sadly lots of people were also agreeing.

DeanLeetal:

There's a similar phenomenon where people claim there weren't trans people in fan spaces in the past, which is patently untrue.

"It's interesting to think about the multiplicities of bedroom cultures that are getting made" - referring to a statement @DeanLeetal made about how different people need different forms of escape.
We need art of everyone in their own bedrooms engaging with their own bedroom cultures.
Creator of that original video on TikTok shut down their account. This leads to loss of a lot of born-digital stuff that it would be good to capture for methodology. (Come to our #FanLIS session and talk to us about born-digital preservation!)

Léa Andolfi:

As fans we have to do that work of archiving. ([@KimberlyHirsh](https://micro.blog/KimberlyHirsh): shout-out to @De_Kosnik's book Rogue Archives)
It's also an ethical question - if we've preserved something, do we keep studying it even after the creator has taken it down?

When fanfiction is brought up to creators/actors, it's often in a degrading way.

There's also an issue of consent with actors, who might not want to hear about what their characters get up to in fanfiction.
In chat, Erin Lee Mock points out "For many people, COVID lockdown was not an experience of isolation, but of greater carework obligations, etc. Is there space within discussion of "bedroom cultures" for these individuals, especially as relates to fan production?"

Léa Andolfi:

Talking about how even as teens, girls often have more caregiving responsibilities so in that sense bedroom cultures still works.

DeanLeetal:

Points out that home is not always a safe space, especially for multiply marginalized people.

Luisa de Mesquita asks "I was wondering if there are any significant differences in engagement with fandom and fannish practices between those who were already 'established' fans and those who became fans during the pandemic?"

speculating that it will vary - some people will have come to fandom during the pandemic and stay in it for life, but others as they are less isolated will engage with fandom less
Kirsten Crowe asks "I wonder about the experience of college aged people returning to their childhood bedrooms and how that shaped fannish experiences in terms of bedroom culture during the pandemic"

Yes, thanks to pandemic I finished my MSc in my childhood bedroom, will finish my PhD in childhood bedroom, doing this from childhood bedroom 😄

That last tweet should've been from @SandbachElise.

It's really interesting to return to your childhood bedroom and engage with fandom on a new platform when you engaged with fandom there years ago.

It's interesting to note that we're in our bedrooms studying other people in their bedrooms.

Aug 17, 2022 ∞

Coburn, C. E., & Penuel, W. R. (2016). Research-practice partnerships in education: Outcomes, dynamics, and open questions. Educational Researcher, 45(1), 48.

Coburn and Penuel review evidence of the outcomes and dynamics of research-practice partnerships in a variety of fields and then articulate a research agenda for exploring these outcomes and dynamics in the field of education.

Research-practice partnerships “are long -term collaborations between practitioners and researchers that are organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving schools and school districts” (p. 1). “…research on the impact of RPPs in education is sparse and focused on a narrow range of outcomes” (p. 2).

Extant research focuses on the challenges of RPPs, not on the designs or strategies participants in the partnerships use to address those challenges.

Key characteristics of research-practice partnerships: they are long-term, involving a shared, “open-ended commitment to build and sustain a working collaboration over multiple projects” (p. 3) “they focus on problems of practice: key dilemmas and challenges that practitioners face” (p. 3) they are mutualistic, with researchers and practitioners sharing authority and jointly negotiating the direction of the work “they involve original analysis of data,” in which participants collect and analyze their own data along with analyzing existing administrative data, answering key questions (in the case of education, these are usually questions posed by the school district)

Outcomes

Most research in a variety of fields focuses on the impact of interventions that are themselves outcomes of RPPs, rather than on the impact of the RPPs themselves.

Much research points to positive outcomes from RPP-developed interventions, but a lot of RPPs are not subject to any systematic inquiry and thus it isn’t apparent whether or not the success of the interventions is due to their creation as part of an RPP. “…these studies do not address the value of the partnerships themselves, above and beyond the particular innovations they produce” (p. 7)

Evidence suggests that participation in research-practice partnerships leads to greater access to research, but mixed evidence suggests that it is not clear whether greater access to research necessarily leads to greater use of research in decision-making.

Little systematic research investigates the influence of co-design on intervention uptake, or whether participating in RPPs “builds a deeper understanding of the research process or research findings, an appreciation for the value of research to inform decision-making, or capacity to engage in research-informed practices and policies or use research as part of continuous improvement efforts” (p. 8). There is also scant research about unintended outcomes of RPPs.

Dynamics

Most research on the dynamics of RPPs, “how they actually work and the mechanisms by which they foster educational improvement,” relies on first-person reflections of researchers involved in the work written after-the-fact, rather than systematic inquiry conducted simultaneously with RPPs themselves by outside investigators.

What research there is conducted by outside investigators focuses primarily on the challenges participants in RPPs face, including difficulties in communication and expectations, limitations imposed by the organizational realities of school systems, and the politicized environment present in educational organizations.

This research rarely illuminates strategies RPPs use to address these challenges, and almost never addresses both dynamics and outcomes simultaneously.

Research Agenda

Coburn and Penuel suggest the following elements of a research agenda for studying RPPs in education:

Outcomes: consequences of RPPs for students, individual & organizational change, use of research, spread & scale of innovation, negative/unintended outcomes, whether RPPS influence the wider field, failed partnerships
Comparative studies: how varying designs & contexts impact outcomes
Targeted studies of specific strategies: tools, strategies, and routines for addressing challenges
Political dimensions of partnerships: whether politics gets in the way of research use, strategies for navigating politicized environments

“With a broader evidence base in both the dynamics and outcomes of RPPs, we can develop a better sense of whether, when, and how RPPs are a viable and effective way for research to support broad and sustainable improvements to educational systems.” (p. 15)

Jul 28, 2022 ∞

#CLS2022: Creating Equitable and Inclusive Library Spaces in the Face of Obstacles

I didn’t get to liveblog/tweet this session because I was co-facilitating it, but I’m jotting down a few takeaways and a list of resources/links in hopes they will be of use to folks.

Our panelists were:

Julie Stivers, middle school librarian at Mt. Vernon Middle School in Raleigh, NC
Miles, a rising high school junior and former student of Julie’s
Kym Powe, Children and YA Consultant, Connecticut State Library
Juan Rubio, Digital Media and Learning Program Manager, Seattle Public Library
Sandra Hughes-Hassell, Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science

We opened by asking the panelists to share their broad perspectives on creating equitable and inclusive library perspectives.

Connected Learning Lab Senior Research Manager Amanda Wortman took awesome notes on these. Here are some big ideas:

Hold onto why you do the work.
Recognize structural aspects of fostering equity and inclusion and simultaneously equip library staff to take individual action.
Center the voices and experiences of youth themselves.

We then launched into some questions based on our work in the Transforming Teen Services for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion project. I basically acted as a clueless, well-intentioned librarian asking for help.

How do I know if I’m actually creating an inclusive space?

You might not be able to tell, but if your love for the work shines through, you’re moving in the right direction. When your space starts to feel like a living room and a community hub, keep doing what you’re doing and grow more in the same vein. Look at yourself and your colleagues; what unstated or invisible expectations are you communicating? They might be making the space less inclusive.

I think I’m creating inclusive spaces but people aren’t actually coming into them. What should I do?

LEAVE THE BUILDING. There are a lot of reasons people might not come. Go to where they already are. Consider not just your own actions, but those of your colleagues. Are other people in the space making it less equitable and inclusive? Build authentic relationships, in or out of the library. The relationship with the person is more important than the presence of the physical space. Change the power structures in the space; design with youth rather than for them.

I know I need to leave the building but I’m overwhelmed. How do I start?

You start by starting. Team up with a friend. Build on the work of a colleague near or far who has already gone out; learn from their experiences. Don’t stop going out after one attempt doesn’t work. Move on to the next potential place or partner. Keep trying. You’ll eventually find the right fit.

Okay I’m ready! But I talked to my supervisor and they said I can’t leave the building. What’s my next step?

Relationships are important here, too. Build a relationship with your supervisor. Help them understand the value of the work you’re doing and why it’s important to go into the community. Write a formal proposal for the supervisor. Include outcomes and impact. Make it clear it won’t take you out of the building for a whole day at a time.

How can school and public librarians think beyond just going into each others’ spaces? How can we get to places that don’t have library or school vibes?

Go to where they spend time outside of school. If you’re partnering with a school, think about going to extracurricular events that don’t feel so formal and school-y. Recognize that what matters most is that youth get what they need, not who provides it or where.

I want to learn more! What should I do next?

Attend events like the Connected Learning Summit.
Look for free professional development like Project READY.
Talk to your state library.

Links

Jul 28, 2022 ∞

My Notes from #CLS2022: OPENING PLENARY - Staying Connected, Fueling Innovation, Affirming Core Values: Three Learning Organizations Carrying Lessons Forward from the Twin Pandemics

Scot Osterweil:

Getting today's plenary started - Staying Connected, Fueling Innovation, Affirming Core Values: Three Learning Organizations Carrying Lessons Forward from the Twin Pandemics

is moderator, beginning the panel. Talking about carrying forward lessons from pandemic crisis into "neverending pandemic."
invites attendees to share something good that came out of the pandemic for them. There are too many to share all here! But big themes are family time, taking breaks, conversations about accessibility.
Jessica, let's start with you. We think of a library as a physical space where people go. What happened with your library during the pandemic? What can other people, in a library or otherwise, learn from your experiences?

works with Cloud901, a teen learning lab in Memphis Public Libraries, work with STEM/STEAM, project-based learning, and connected learning.
Closed for about a month, partnered with other city divisions & community organizations. Metropolitan Interfaith Association - library staff boxed food, were drivers, were able to get into community with access to library materials, worked with p
Worked with Parks & Rec and other divisions to disseminate information about social services. A great opportunity to get out and reach out to communities who were underserved or couldn't readily come to the library.
Previously divisions were siloed but now they can connect to serve the community.
Shifted to online programming. With that program, they touched people in communities across the country, not just Memphis.
Able to work with people who wouldn't normally come to the library for a myriad of reasons - anxiety in social settings, other reasons - able to access library programming at a comfort level that worked best for them.
A lot more families at online programming. A lot of parents working alongside kids during camps. Opportunity for family to get together & bond and parents became library advocates.
Understanding & seeing that library staff need to recognize in every aspect where barriers are, even when we don't readily see them.
Online programming was wonderful, but what about people without home internet? What about requiring supplies for a program?
What barriers are out there? How can we break those down? Wifi hot spots, takeaway supplies. Producing programs that only use things readily available at home or brick & mortar store.
With population 30-40% below the poverty line, people have to choose - do they send their kids to an enrichment opportunity, or do they feed them?

Really promising: holistic vision of youth & families & what they need. Intersection of innovation and equity. "We can't do this for everybody, so we're not going to do it at all." So iterate to make it accessible for more people.

runs a clubhouse that had to move online. It was a challenge. Hearing some commonalities between ListoAmerica, an afterschool program that serves primarily Mexican community, and library already.
ListoAmerica is part of The Computer Clubhouse, a network. Had to shut down physical space, but within about 2 - 3 weeks, UCI PhDs were able to support creating the clubhouse online for the same hours online.
Tried to replicate as much as possible the pre-pandemic experience but had to be innovative. Started member-to-member meetups because new members would be isolated.
Members are youth. Usually middle school & high school. Connected new members with mentors.
Created hybrid programs. Created pick-up point for materials to pick up at one time and conduct sessions later on.
People would make themselves available in online community at specific time so other people could come discuss with them.
Temptation is to just learn the technology and gain skills, but goal of ListoAmerica is to support creation, not just skill building. Connect people with interests - for example music-interested youth and video-interested youth collaborate on music video.
Mexican culture is important. Mentors were almost all Mexican. Mexican American members often had parents who were undocumented and thus didn't want to come in. Mentor created entire Discord channel in Spanish and invite family members in.

works in Tacoma school district in Washington State. Fortunate to have a school board and superintendent who embraced pandemic as a community with grace and empathy.
In March 2020 decided to be as pro-active as possible. Set up design around an online school that they expected to have about 400 kids, ended up with about 5000 out of 30000 who wanted an online experience.
over 250 staff members, community eager to keep students safe in the online world. Quickly shifted gears into evolving into high quality. It was difficult because staff hadn't been trained in online teaching.
Grace for staff and students formed a community. While other districts are sprinting back to "normal," Tacoma has moved toward redefining and reimagining new normal.
Online school is now a fully-functional school with about 2000 students. Tacoma is also introducing a flex program to allow students to experience both face-to-face and online learning, which allows flexibility in their schedules.

Hearing vision and leadership from Tacoma superintendent and board.

Tacoma's been working on a whole student initiative and this moved them toward a whole community perspective.

When is an online environment better than an in-person environment? When is it a weak facsimile of a personal environment?

Didn't think online clubhouse would work, for example "creative collision" in small space where people would bump into each other and notice each others' work and ask about it.
Somehow, with the hybrid model, it worked. Occasionally, we would get together in very careful (socially distanced, masked) groups, and were able to go global. Connected with clubhouse in Mexico City. Never were able to do that before.
That enhanced the cultural background, that it's okay to be Mexican in the United States, it's something to be proud of. Opened Mexican American citizens' eyes to what it's like to be in Mexico and what technology is like there.

Able to connect online with people from all over. Were able to ask colleges to send virtual tours for them to share with people who couldn't travel to visit.
This summer, they started back in person with summer camp. Every camp this year people have come back with people they met in camp and they've continued to work together. This didn't happen before.

It's a "Yes, and." Redefined understanding of connected. Multitiered opportunities to connect with adult learners, assessing online experiences combined with occasional face-to-face meetings led to some simple tech innovation.
Kindergarteners took a field trip to the zoo, some in person, but many remotely who were working in teams and engaging during chat because the schools had taught that school. Recorded the session and now it can be reused with different groups.
Online learning is not the best path for every kid, but it very well could be for some.
Teachers were not only livecasting, but were interacting with students online. Students could see their own teacher.

Was the number of participants the same, larger, smaller, different people in online programs versus face to face?

Old members already had established connections. New members would introduce themselves and old members would connect with them.
Scale expanded going remotely. The question now is should we go back to some form of physical?

It depended on the program. Camps were larger than we anticipated. Some other programs like college virtual tours were huge numbers. Some programs just had 2 to 3 people in them. We counted it as a win whatever it was.

Club and extended learning opportunities tended to grow online.

Transitioning to online was already a struggle, so any number of kids we counted as a win.
We've gone back to in-person but there will always be some kind of hybrid component to a good bit of our programs.
We didn't have multiple-hour programs. They were very short, intensive. We would talk, but the staff made a lot of video work that youth could not only watch, but reference.
Having videos to reference helped kids who fell behind or missed sessions. We shared it with other library systems in Tennessee.

Have there been opportunities to connect and collaborate with parents and other community organizations?

We had existing partnerships and it was exciting to see those partners pivot with us.

One thing that's worked for us is other non-profit engagement. We got a call from an organization in another county that wants to open up a clubhouse and a remote clubhouse working with us.

Final thoughts?

What we have found is that for us, there's no "getting back to normal." There's working to address the shift in our youth. We've seen a number of youth ask for programming and services around mental health, being engaged with social & economic issues.
We're shifting and rebuilding in some areas with how we continue to service our youth. What we did before for branding & strategic planning can stay in place but we recognize that the way we were doing it needs to shift.

A young lady who started with us in middle school and is now at Cal State University Fullerton, whose world was a 2-mile radius when she started with us, now has a global perspective and spent a semester in South Korea.

It's a vulnerable celebration of acknowledging that we don't know what we don't know. Adam Grant: "We live in a rapidly changing world where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking."

Jul 28, 2022 ∞

Deciding when to drop a paper: Rethinking my lit review about tabletop RPGs and identity development

I’ve been sitting on a paper that was “accepted with revisions” for more than 3 years. I have poked at it sometimes and worked hard on it others, sometimes hated the revision process and sometimes enjoyed it.

The purpose of submitting this paper was not actually to get it published. It was to get it submitted so I met the requirement of having submitted 2 items for peer review before my comps. Also, it’s not original research. It’s a literature review.

My assistantships in my first 4 years of the PhD put me in a situation where my colleagues and I weren’t publishing much in scholarly journals. The first year, I helped with a lit review that I think was for a popular publication. The next three years, I worked on an immense professional development project. I’m very proud of the curriculum we created and did get some trade publication out of that but again, not scholarly publication.

So it wasn’t until my last 2 years of my PhD that I was working with other scholars on papers, most of which are currently in submission or revision. All my work for scholarly publication before that had to be solo-authored and, quite frankly, what I wrote was Not Good. It wasn’t BAD but it needed so much revision.

By the time this accepted-with-revisions lit review came back to me from the journal (it had gone to a third reviewer because one reviewer was like “Accept! Minimal revisions!” and one was like “R&R… Maybe.” Reviewer 3 basically said “Accept but with heavy revision”), I was 3 years out from the original class paper it was based on. I had barely rewritten it from that for submission because, again, I just needed to move past a PhD milestone.

I was very excited when it came back accepted with revisions, but I was also in the middle of a very stressful house-buying process, writing my comps, and only had half-time childcare, so I couldn’t make it a priority.

Also I was, understandably, hurt by some of Reviewer 2’s pointed and accurate statements, so I set it aside for a while.

I picked it back up and made a revision plan, drawing on Wendy Belcher and Raul Pacheco-Vega’s advice on how to deal with revisions but as I sorted through these changes, I began to realize that NONE of them were small. They were all large changes. Here’s the kind of thing I mean:

Elaborate on places where I cited multiple sources and be more explicit about what they say and how they’re in conversation with one another. (This is a very reasonable suggestion, and the one I’ve been working on this whole time.)
Completely re-organize the literature review based on insights hinted at in the conclusion.
VAGUELY CONTRADICTORY SUGGESTIONS FROM THE SAME REVIEWER: broaden the scope to include more scholarly research; narrow the scope to focus on only one of three areas addressed in the lit review.
Find criticism that contrasted with the positive sources cited and described in the paper. (There wasn’t enough literature for that to really be a thing.)
Completely restructure the paper based on one of the developmental frameworks I drew on.

This is daunting as all get out, especially alone, especially when dissertating AND working (because I didn’t have a dissertation fellowship, I was also conducting research and writing as part of an assistantship my final year), and there’s a pandemic on (that wasn’t until a year after the paper was “accepted” but still) and you’re a parent of a young child and you have limited childcare.

But y’all, the shame I placed on myself for not revising this paper.

I’m absolutely still excited by the central ideas of this paper:

Teen library programming should support teens’ identity development.
Teen library programming around TRPGs should go beyond the idea of engagement and actually reach a level of impact where teens get to try on new personas, take imaginary risks, and figure out their own moral beliefs through pretending to be other people.

But oh my goodness I do not want to work on this paper anymore. This iteration of this set of ideas does not bring me joy.

And after yesterday’s Connected Learning Summit panel on post-pandemic burnout with multiple panelists talking about the importance of centering work that feeds and serves you, I am ready to let go of tinkering with this six-year-old literature review for publication in a journal that honestly deserves a more insightful set of arguments around these ideas.

On the other hand, I’ve worked hard on this thing for a few years and don’t want it to sit in my Google Drive collecting dust and being of no use to other people. And my colleague Maria Alberto said it was “absolutely interesting and useful.”

So I’m going to read through it one more time and make sure it makes sense, and then I’m going to publish it effectively as a pre-print/author paper here on my website and in a couple of pre-print archives as well, so it can get out there as it is.

THEN I’m going to do two more things with it:

Use it as the foundation for some public writing. If you know of an outlet where a paper about how TRPGs support identity development would be a good fit, please let me know.
I’m going to pocket it to support some original research, if I end up in a situation to actually collect data on the relationship between TRPGs and identity development.

Huge thanks to Sandra Hughes-Hassell for her feedback on this, the folks at JRLYA who gave me feedback, and Maria for validating me. Also to Katy Rose Guest Pryal for her advice on how to deal with research in The Freelance Academic, and yesterday’s panelists for talking about doing research that resonates with your soul.

Jul 27, 2022 ∞

My Notes from #CLS2022: Rising Scholars - Post-Pandemic Life: Recovering From Burnout and Finding Motivation

Introducing the next Rising Scholars session: Post-Pandemic Life: Recovering From Burnout and Finding Motivation

About to start as Asst Prof of learning sciences @ Univ of Buffalo, working on the ways crafting/art-making/design activities can interact with & enhance learning equity in both formal & informal spaces.
Spending a few weeks with family moving into the new position has been a good boost at this point in the pandemic.

Dr. Mackey is a postdoc scholar w/Equitable Futures Innovation Network @ Rutgers but is based in Colorado (hello fellow remote postdoc), co-founder & ED of Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Action. Mother & partner.
Whatever I'm engaging in & whoever I'm engaging with must honor that my soul has to be connected to the work.
My wellness matters, especially for me to be a mom, which is my legacy, my most important work. (Dr. Mackey is speaking to my heart.) Putting transition time in between meetings. Doing phone calls instead of Zoom in order to b
Doing phone calls instead of Zoom in order to move away from the desk. Quoting Toni Morrison: "The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work." Dr. Mackey is refuting whiteness and focusing on Black fine

Dr. Kimberly Hirsh (she/her):

Dr. Tanksley is an Asst Prof at UC Boulder & also faculty fellow at UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, working on critical race in education, sociotechnical infrastructure impacting youth.
Dr. Tanksley lives in LA and works digitally, always working with Youth of Color in urban settings.
Dr. Tanksley builds a schedule based on healing: sleeping in, daily getting an "overpriced, decadent-ass coffee" at a BIPOC, queer coffee shop and writing there. Nap, administrative work in the evening.
This is how Dr. Tanksley deals with the multiple pandemics and "the constant fuckery of the US." Asks: what can I do to make my life joyful?
Working with Black youth laughing and cutting up is healing, too.

BTW if you're near me in Durham, NC check out Rofhiwa Book Café for your own decadent-ass BIPOC queer coffee shop coffee. (I have bought books from them but haven't been in yet.)

What are some other things the panelists are doing like Dr. Tanksley talked about?

Reading for pleasure.

Being careful about who I work with, what contracts I take.

Eased into reading for pleasure with audiobooks.
Returning to things I loved.

It doesn't seem like there's an end in sight but we'll make it.
Mentor said "You're not going to be able to read for pleasure in grad school" but I do it just to prove her wrong. Peloton has gotten me through a lot of this.
How have you maintained community during the pandemic?

My group chats flourished.
Virtual game nights didn't work for me - we were using the same platform I was using for work. Some of my friends have developed a really helpful way of saying what we need in a moment. "I need to vent. I'm not looking for solutions."

I have so many chats. Also Netflix. We were watching shows together and would pause and reflect on certain episodes, epiphanies, hot messes that happened. Collaborative healing sessions. Created in a digital space for youth after the killing of George Floy
Collaborative healing sessions. Created in a digital space for youth after the killing of George Floyd. Not for consumption; anyone in the space, including adults, had to be there for healing, not observing.
Building community for the purpose of connecting and healing.

It sounds like we're engaging in a lot of the same healing practices and communal practices.
Extraverted friends adopt me. These two colleagues with me at Boulder, we FaceTime almost every night. We'll call because something devastating happened and within ten minutes we'll be cracking up.
There's the healing you do in therapy, the healing you do on your own, and the healing you do with your friends. Sharing memes, talking shit.
Re: a paper that grew out of racism: "We're here because of sisterhood."

Laughing is a strategy we can use to get us centered.
I joined a virtual writing group specifically for Black women and that has been my saving grace.
How do you maintain motivation to push through your work during the pandemic?

I'm on leave right now. It's my second year on the tenure track. There was a lot of talk like "You don't need to take a break right now. You just started." In order for me to continue this abolitionist project, because it is a lifelong project, I
In order for me to continue this abolitionist project, because it is a lifelong project, I needed to take a break from the institution.
It's actually very common for people to take breaks in those first six years before tenure. They won't tell you that, but you're well within your rights to do that.
My work is soul work. It is tied to my community. It is tied to my deep-set dreams for emancipation. There's always motivation to do the work. It's about finding time to do the different pieces of the work. Every day is not. writing day.
Sometimes I read Twitter threads and that's my contribution for the day. There are pieces that we don't consider the work that are very important.
You have to think through "What am I motivated to do today?" even if it's taking a nap. That's part of the work, too. We're already talking about rest is resistance.

The faculty & institution are often going to make you feel like you don't have time for breaks, it's not possible, but it's important to stand firm in what you need.
It's okay to reconsider, make sure you see a path forward. Sometimes it's finish this dissertation and then figure out what's after that. Sometimes it's take a break from this dissertation.
I defended on March 12, 2020. I was anxious about the world and I had revisions. I took a break. I took a couple months.
The feeling is valid and whatever ways you need to manage that are also valid.

When I came into grad school, it was already a lot of unhealthy hustle culture. I'm going into tech. I don't have to hustle during a pandemic to write all these papers. I don't have the energy to think beyond this coursework and my research.
My energy tanks at certain parts, have some things that are research tasks, even if they're small, where I'm moving this thing forward even if it doesn't feel like a huge chunk of work.
If any of the panelists want to share how therapy have helped them manage anxiety, stress, all the things that have come up during the pandemic.

I have a life coach. He is always like, "What is going to make Janiece well?"
My life coach walks me through the saboteur voice, because I have assumptions. I'll say, "So and so might think this," and he'll say, "Okay, well even if they think that, why do YOU think that?" Being able to identify, name, & pivot away from that voice.
Also to delegate, because I tend to hold on to things that I shouldn't.

Mindfulness and yoga have helped me be mindful of what I'm holding onto physically.

I have been to therapy and I thought that it was helpful. In all kinds of communities, we don't talk about mental health.
Sometimes we get these messages that something has to be terribly wrong to go to therapy, and that might be true, but it also might not be.
Sometimes it takes time to find the right kind of therapy or the right kind of therapist.

There are resources online for folks who have had trouble finding a therapist. Finding a good therapist is hard.

If you feel at the end of the day you didn't do enough writing, rethink what writing looks like.

How do you all deal with pushback when taking breaks and doing things to help with burnout?
I tell people I can't pour from an empty cup. Either way the work isn't gonna get done, so I might as well pour into myself.

I go to therapy. I'm the caretaker of my family. I financially support multiple people, I caretake for my father who has a mental disability, I'm constantly the Strong Black Woman and I feel very uncomfortable unloading onto other folks who I caretake for s
I'm constantly the Strong Black Woman and I feel very uncomfortable unloading onto other folks who I caretake for because then I end up caretaking again. It's good to have somebody who it's low risk for me to give everything to.
I check my therapist sometimes because sometimes she'll say stuff and I'll say "What you're saying is wild and here's how you need to be caretaking for me."
When I say I need a break, I'm telling you. I'm not asking for a break. "You can tell me all the reasons it's not poppin', and I'm gonna say that sounds like a personal problem. Respectfully, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna take this motherfuckin' break."
It's not a common practice for them to just fire you because you want to take a break.

If I don't break, I'm going to break.
Any last thoughts or pieces of advice you have for people who are trying to recover from and/or manage their pandemic burnout?

Where is pushback coming from? Make sure it's not yourself. Find spaces and sources that replenish you. For me it was the water. I play my cello. Just to replenish my soul.

Say no a lot.
Not "No, because x, y, and z" but "No. Because I said so." We hear it all the time, but then it's really hard to do.
I haven't had repercussions for saying no beyond the awkwardness of saying no.
If you want to say yes but you don't have the capacity, find another way or delegate to someone who does. Be unapologetic. You know your limitations.

A helpful podcast for sleep: https://www.nothingmuchhappens.com/

Self-care has been commercialized, but I really Dr. Tanksley's approach around finding little moments of joy. I want to echo that. My last apartment had a beautiful tub and I started taking baths, I was like, "This is a mood."
We have to rethink these norms that we've put around things around taking care of ourselves and finding joy.
Don't overthink self-care.

Not feeling pressured to answer a text or a message if you're up and on your phone.

Jul 27, 2022 ∞

My Notes from #CLS2022: Rising Scholars - Exploring Pathways: Finding Your Place of Impact

introducing the panel Exploring Pathways: Finding Your Place of Impact
is a UX researcher at Google, place of impact with users in studies at work

UX researcher at Duolingo with ABC app focused on kids' reading in their native language, impact is with learners, kids, families, parents, teachers, and the product itself

works for Utah State University but lives in Long Beach, CA, does curriculum design, teacher education, and research, always exploring new pathways for impact

based in Bogota, Colombia, Associate Professor at Universidad Javeriana, research center in Colombia, and Berkman at Harvard. Impact follows a winding and networked pathway. Part of the Digital Media & Learning Initiative since the beginning.
I (Kimberly) love hearing how varied Andres's pathway has been! Focuses on projects & collaborations as much as positions/institutions. <3!

UX Researcher at YouTube working on fan-funding, also instructor and affiliated researcher at universities

What strategies/values/criteria did you use to navigate your own process of finding your place of impact? What helped ground you? What did you prioritize?

Find the heart of who you are and what you want to do and keep it at the center as you try a bunch of different things.
is knitting right now. I'm (Kimberly) crocheting right now!
goal was to support youth across their lives & now does so through curriculum design, teacher education, research.
Be open to relationships and opportunities. Sometimes you feel like you're pushing against a wall. Take a break from pushing against the wall and look for what's already open.
Making connections across spaces (eg families & institutions, communities & workspace) is the heart of Debbie's work. Allowing parts of life outside research to come through in research life.

Impact is a moving target in the face of change. Be attuned to your context. Grasp opportunities as they appear.
Pay attention to communities and mentors who give you space to join your interests.
It takes energy to keep finding projects, grow, connect, build communities.

Searching for the intersections where your impact will be takes time and work. Think about the types of impact you want your work to have, what outcomes do you want your work to have? Who do you want to be affected? In what ways?
YouTube team leveraged specific work from Jen's dissertation to impact product development and that was really exciting.

tried a lot of things out in grad school. Academic research, contributing to academic community & body of knowledge, direct impact on kids in classrooms, volunteered at conferences, TAed, volunteered in early childhood classroom, internships.
Applied to lots of different jobs, teaching postdocs at liberal arts, faculty at R1, UX at big tech company, research scientist at non-profit. Paid attention to what held a draw.
Started @ Joan Ganz Cooney Center impacting policy from 30,000 feet view, wanted next to get experience working on a specific project. Important to recognize that whatever you're trying now isn't something your locked into forever.

Any standout moments that led to the work you're doing now?

The interview process gave specific signal into whether community was energizing.

Unsuccessful job search led to postdoc with mentor Yasmin Kafai on e-textiles grants. Didn't get job at Cooney Center that Kiley did but DID get work from them doing a lit review with a colleague from a different grad school.

Sometimes saying NO is what leads you to your impact.

Echoes Wendy's point. Saying no clarifies priorities: I want to live in a particular place, I don't want to live away from my partner. Also echoes Kiley's point about gut checks.

How would you suggest going about finding opportunities to explore places of potential impact?

Try & apply to different things. Doing an internship during PhD program in a crisis led to connecting with a community of mentors and peers encouraging a networked, omnivorous mindset.
You need a lot of luck. The more that you try, the more opportunities you'll be able to grasp.

Sometimes the closed doors are powerful in opening up new opportunities.

Apply to jobs in places you might not have thought you would end up.
You might need to be more assertive than you would normally be, introduce yourself to people whose work you admire.

Relationships are important even if you have to foster them yourself.

Academic mentors are good at academia but you might have to look outside academia for people who can mentor you in other areas.
If you're following up on a connection, you may need to remind them how you connected before. You don't know where relationships will lead.

It might not be someone who is already in a position more advanced than yours. Might be another student or someone you met when you were both students.

How important were relationships to finding your opportunities? How did you navigate the awkwardness of asking for referrals or help finding positions? How did someone else extend an opportunity for you in a way that felt graceful?

Make connections BEFORE the exact opportunity is available. Don't wait until you see a particular job. Build relationships with people who are making the kind of impact you want. That feels more genuine.

Relationships start early and you don't know where they will lead.
Maintain connections with people mentors introduce you to.
Sometimes you connect over hobbies - people just approach me because I knit publicly.
Approach people with deep respect.

For Andres: How do you make an impact in the diverse Colombian context? How do you meet the expectations of your boss and your own expectations?
There is a shortage of resources in Colombia. It can be difficult to find research funding. At universities you need to start negotiating your agenda as a researcher and balance it with the teaching aspects. The emphasis here is more on teaching.
If you can create your own non-profit/institution, you will have more control over your own priorities because there's not a boss to tell you no.

What last thoughts or pieces of advice do you have for people wanting to find their place of impact?

Be open to new opportunities. Find ways to blend and combine your multiple interests. Carve out space to have more exploratory or informational conversations with people.
Reaching out early sets you up for having relationships and networks later.

Find the heart that keeps you going. You will have to do things that aren't part of your passion. You will find places where your passion stretches out beyond your job. You can't predict where things will happen.
Protect that heart. Find ways that feel authentic to you. Be open to places that will connect with it that you didn't expect.

Find communities whose interests and heart resonate with yours. As you join them and exchange ideas, you may find the pathway that connects your personal interests with the places that you can have an impact.

Be open to learning through the experience. Through the experience of getting somewhere you might find what fulfills you in an unexpected way.
Things will change and that's okay.

What's one thing you're looking forward to continuing or trying new as you navigate your path?

Supporting and studying K-12 computer science teachers without having prior experience in K-12. Advocating for them through publications and academia. Find ways to support them, their creativity & impact on students.

Jul 27, 2022 ∞

My Notes from #CLS2022: Rising Scholars - Sharing Work Beyond Academic Publishing

Alexis worked on hackathons including the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck hackathon (love it!) and others to bring people together to hack policy, services, & norms related to postpartum experience.

loves Alexis's work. Breast pumps are awful! Jean is director of CompSci equity project at UCLA. Jean taught high school & middle school English and social studies and got excited about critical pedagogy & addressing systemic issues.
Jean's research focuses on equity issues in computer science education.
Jean's recent research tries to elevate the voices of youth who have been pushed out of the world of computing and are experiencing their first computing class in high school.
How can we push the tech industry to recognize that they are responsible for the ethical implications of what they create? How can we get involved in changing this? Jean wrote a graphic novel called Power On about teens + CS & CS heroes addressing inequity.

Cliff works in teacher education and the same project as Jean, also with YR Media where youth produce and create media.

Cliff's work is at the intersection of computational thinking, critical pedagogy, and creative arts expression.

Marisa shares about porous authorship structures as opposed to the black box model of academic publishing.
Co-design process is reciprocal, traditional publishing is extractive.
Takeaways: Who are you trying to reach? Why now? Who is the right person to distribute the info? What kind of media does your audience consume? When?

Santiago Ojeda-Ramirez:

Santiago asks what resources were helpful to panelists in beginning sharing beyond academia.

All the work from YR media is meant to be shared with the public. Research focuses on pedagogy, curriculum, and process.
Cliff makes it a point to present to educators, publish op eds, trade pubs.
It's important to consider the writing style in trade publishing & for non-academic audiences to make it readable, break the mold grad school may have pushed you into.
Have conversations about your work with people outside of your work and relationships and partnerships can develop. "Academia's not necessarily meant to get you to be a public intellectual." Read more journalistic writing, academics who write trade books
"Academia's not necessarily meant to get you to be a public intellectual." Read more journalistic writing, academics who write trade books.

Think about who surrounds you. Are you only talking to other academics? Don't drop your non-academic friends & family. Meet people outside academia.
Jean was an avid reader of graphic novels & manga but hadn't written one before and had to learn to write a comic script instead of description.
"Graphic Novel Writing for Dummies"-type resources can be helpful to learn how experts in the medium work (like Neil Gaiman or Superman writers).

Academic publishers often do a small run like 400 copies. Other outlets have wider reach.
Popular media is a lot of eyes if the people who you're trying to reach consume that outlet. "Where are people's eyeballs?"
There's value in directly impacting fewer people, too.
There's the question of impact and the question of scale and how you should negotiate that depends on the project and your goals.

For the Breast Pump hackathon, the goal was to change the narrative of breastfeeding from personal choice to structural one (importance of employment policies, healthcare) and prepped for communicating with the media.
https://makethebreastpumpnotsuck.com/research
Another goal was to change the culture of the media lab because the breastpump project wasn't future-focused enough or was too weird; deliberately targeted academic publishing as well to push back against that perception.

Santiago Ojeda-Ramirez:

How do you balance the output demands & needs of academia/academic publishing with these non-traditional forms of sharing your work? How do you communicate the impact and value of this work within the academic context? How do we move past the h-index?

Why should I spend so much time on the peer review process? How deep is that impact? It can feel hard to justify but toggling or balancing and using academic vocabulary with peers can sharpen our thinking about those issues.
You can increase citations to underrepresented scholars and include voices from outside academia when you author academic work.

"Balance doesn't exist in my life right now... COVID has made things work."
Jean has an academic position as a researcher but steps of advancement aren't tied to tenure because the work is grant-based. Getting academic AND non-academic audiences excited about a graphic novel because it's based on research & translating research is important.
Getting academic AND non-academic audiences excited about a graphic novel because it's based on research & translating research is important.
I'm excited that my first, maybe only book, is a graphic novel because the kids in my family are reading it.
It's a graphic novel published by an academic publisher (MIT press).

We need to speak to academic audiences AND other audiences. Be intentional and strategic.
Being at a liberal arts institution is different than being at an R1. What department, school, or college you're in will affect what kind of output is considered as impact.
Some institutions will value podcasts and other media.

published an academic paper about the breastpump hackathon and followed that with a toolkit for people who want to host hackathons. It can be helpful to think through things as you write academic work and then leverage that thought process when writing popular work.
It can be helpful to think through things as you write academic work and then leverage that thought process when writing popular work.

Santiago Ojeda-Ramirez:

What advice would you give to early career scholars who want to pursue academic careers and also sharpen their skills for creating art/writing outside academia?
You panelists are inspiring. Who inspired you?

Mike Rose from UCLA. Both Cliff & Jean had him as a professor. He translated academic knowledge to a mainstream audience. Cliff learned about the writing process from him.
How do I convey through storytelling the same message as research, but in a powerful, motivating, engaging way?

Mike was always practicing the art of beautiful writing. Every day he was writing on a yellow notepad with a pencil. It wasn't an egotistical, egocentric practice. He was thinking deeply about the people he had met & trying to convey their stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Rose_(educator)
Artists we enjoy like David Bowie, Yayoi Kusama. Re-read books like you want to write - Jean re-read the March trilogy. Be inspired by the different ways a story can be told.

Catherine D'Ignazio (<3 Data Feminism)
Mitch Resnick & Natalie Rusk

Get in the habit of doing primary ethnography, engage with real people in real life that you're accountable to, transcribe your conversations with them, it's transformative for you as a speaker & them as a listener.
The Shakers thought about rendering their own religious views through arts, which is close to the practice of making public scholarship.

Ethan Zuckerman had students practice non-academic writing