• Pedagogy is possibility
• Reinventing the “master’s” tools

What is a story/memory that you think you need to tell at this point in the term

• When I got a skateboard and wrote Tommy on it in chalk
• When I was sitting backstage at a show and was asked to play the “penis” game with two other boys. One was shocked to learn I was a girl
• Going shopping at Target before middle school started

2010

I’m in the part of my house between the door to the outdoors and the door to the indoors. My feet are cold. Barefoot. I love to be barefoot. I feel the cool off-white linoleum tiles against my toes. To my right is all the junk we keep in this room in between the outdoors and the indoors. Umbrellas, jackets, running shoes that got destroyed in the mud, dirt, dust, my Razor scooter, a plastic bucket of chalk, and the most exciting item, my new skateboard.

It isn’t very good. Or big. Or nice. Even as the small 8-year-old I am, my skateboard is still too small. Cheap. The wheels barely work. When I take it outside to practice riding down my block, the wheels hardly move. But it’s still exciting to ride.

I hold the skateboard steady with my left hand and clench a piece of chalk with my right. I bring the chalk to the top of the skateboard—right where my right foot will end when I step on top of it—and draw out the capitalized letter T.

I keep going. Down my right hand goes as I draw an O. Then an M. Then another M. And finally, a Y.

T

O

M

M

Y

My skateboard, claimed. The name I chose to claim it with.