A drive towards reconciliation

“I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love.”  (Freire’s footnote on p. 89)

I know that we’ve read a chapter out of Pedagogy of the Oppressed before, but I think that we should have already read the entire book—I feel like Freire’s work should be the bible of urban teaching/culturally relevant pedagogy.  I mean, I’m sure that it kind of is already, but I feel like it should be given out at the beginning of our coursework.  Its philosophy provides the foundation of so much of why we teach the way that we want to teach.  Honestly, I want to make time to return to it every year to kind of ground myself in what I’m doing.  As Freire points out, unless you’re constantly reflecting on what you’re doing, you could fall prey to going back to a position of the oppressed, wherein you “talk about the people, but [the teacher] does not trust them.”  In the Texas public educational system, I think that you constantly have to be at that work of praxis, of action and reflection, because so much of what you have to deal with in order to remain hired as a teacher is the enforced pedagogy of the oppressor.  It’s funny to think that the American public education system wants students to become critical thinkers, but the restrictions that are imposed upon the classroom create the opposite environment for that work to be done. 

At the heart of Pedagogy, Freire emphasizes that teachers/revolutionaries (I kind of just want to call myself a revolutionary from now on) have to be thinkers and doers—he likens praxis to the word, in that there must be both action and reflection.  It’s almost like Freire is talking about that educational term “best practice”; in order for the best practice to occur (and by “best practice,” he means transformation of the world order), teachers have to act and reflect on those actions.  In addition, they must charge their students to be involved in the same praxis through dialogue.  When Freire expounds on what he means by dialogue, I was pretty much swooning.  The language gets pretty New Testament biblical, I think, since he says that dialogue can only exist through love, humility, faith, and hope.  That’s some real talk.  Honestly, I think that we tend to think of those who love and have faith in others and have true hope for change as weaklings, in that they’re not strong enough to face the bleakness of reality.  No.  Freire points out that “love is an act of courage” (89), an act of bravery, and an act of freedom.  Control and manipulation in the classroom, and on an administrational level, is not an act of tough love.  That is no love at all, and when this kind of love becomes acceptable in urban schools, it is no wonder that the schools fail.  The students are still oppressed.

One issue that Freire brings up about the oppressed is the oppressor’s consciousness that they have internalized.  Because the oppressor views the world and those operating in the world as things to be possessed, the oppressed also begins to think of “being” as “having.”  My ELA IV students defined success in a warm-up at the beginning of the year, and most of them explained that success involved monetary comfort.  They may not have said that they wanted to be outrageously rich, but they all mentioned having things as being a measure of whether or not they’ve “made it.”  It’s difficult to work beyond this conception of success because, to some degree, they do need things, and I understand why they want more.  Who am I, a person from a mostly middle-class family, to be the person to tell them that success doesn’t have to be defined through accumulation of wealth?  I’d really want to have a year-long discussion on this idea, and return to it at the end of the year.  (Although, according to Freire, I’d need to make sure that they want to talk about this issue.)  Still, to get there, I need to make sure that I’m being a model of praxis and true dialogue, working with my students side by side.  Sometimes I find it difficult to cede control to others, but my resistance to working with would only mean that I, too, have played into the oppressor’s game where I am more concerned with a love of death rather than a love of life.

Dewey, the Prophet

It’s crazy to realize (or reflectively think about) that John Dewey published How We Think over a century ago, because a lot of his cautions about the way that school can harm rather than help students are still very real issues in public education.  I feel like this quote could be taken from an editorial on teaching on this very day: “The large number of pupils to be dealt with, and the tendency of parents and school authorities to demand speedy and tangible evidence of progress conspire to give it [giving the correct answers rather than reflective thought] currency.”  If anything, this sentiment is heightened, since we have added the correct way to think to the correct answers problem.

Dewey’s points are some that we continue to emphasize as methods of good teaching—prior knowledge is very important, students who don’t answer a question immediately aren’t dumb, and there are many different kinds of intelligence.  He recognizes that all children are naturally curious, and our job isn’t to create that thirst for knowledge; instead, our role as teachers is to (and this is one of my favorite quotes) “protect the spirit of inquiry, to keep it from becoming blasé from overexcitement, wooden from routine, fossilized through dogmatic instruction, or dissipated by random exercise upon trivial things.”  As high school teachers, I think that we definitely get the short end of this stick on this ability to protect the spirit of inquiry because so many of our students have been forced into a school environment where their natural curiosities have been forcibly shoved into the recesses of their minds.  Standardized testing and harmful accountability measures have guided their previous teachers to focus on following formulas with a sprinkling of incontestable facts. 

Instead of the true reflective thought that Dewey explains, our students come to high school, ready to escape because the work of school has become drudgery.  Personally, I think that the students sometimes think that all of life is drudgery, especially since we present a college education as a means to getting a job where they can make more money than their parents.  We (and I don’t necessarily mean only teachers) have taught students to define success as monetarily outdoing the generation who has gone before.  There is no spark of excitement in this definition; there is only the drive to finish.  And what happens when students get to the point where they think that they can’t properly mimic what is wanted by a test?  They drop out, trying to get a head start on the money-making necessary for the rest of their lives.  Students tell me all the time that they could make it if they drop out of school, citing the example of Bill Gates.  I have to explain that Gates dropped out of college, not high school.  Also, their example is telling, too; they don’t mention scientists or artists or others who have dropped out.  They talk about a man who has made lots of money.  Now, I know this is a function of the economic situation that they have experienced, and I don’t think anything is wrong with wanting to succeed in an economic sense.  However, I do think that by playing into this function of education, we are reinforcing the dominant powers of the society and ultimately supporting drudgery for all.  I think Dewey would be very disappointed in this brutishness.

Also, on Dewey’s statements about Columbus:  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

Just food for thought!  (I’m mostly posting this in reference to Dewey’s statements about Columbus’s brave thoughts on the world being round.)

The October Slump, or Why I Sound So Negative

(Apparently it’s getting to that point in the semester where teachers get really frustrated and lose all hope of a positive tomorrow.  Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m hopeless, but I did let loose a good stress cry yesterday.)

The Dreamkeepers is kind of the perfect text to read while student teaching, but it’s also a little daunting and frustrating.  (I’m kinda pointing to the example of the bad student teacher.  I know Ladson-Billings says that she doesn’t want to compare him with the teachers highlighted in her study, but in showing all the things he does incorrectly, isn’t she still doing that?)  Although I know that “teaching isn’t telling,” I think that questioning aspect of good teaching requires building relationships with students first.  Otherwise, they’ll be resistant to want to think for themselves.  I think that I am lucky in my student teaching position because I have the space to be able to create these relationships and try to avoid telling; however, in previous teaching internships, this rut would have been hard to avoid.  I’ve also noticed in some forms of academic writing (like rhetorical analyses and certain aspects of mechanics in writing), it would be difficult to avoid telling.

One part that I really appreciated is the idea that students who are treated as competent will demonstrate competence.  I’ve already witnessed this in action with the classes that I’m teaching.  One of my best students (“best” in the sense that he always works hard on both reading and writing tasks during class) is an honest writer who carefully crafts all of his notebook entries and essays, and I’ve told him that I appreciate him being in my class several times. He told me last week that his senior English class was probably the first language arts class he’d actually enjoyed, because he felt like he was doing good work and that he belonged.  I think that my encouragement of his competence (as well as the “caring” part, too—for me, these facets of teaching go hand in hand) caused him to want to keep writing and try new things, which, in turn, allowed his competence in writing to shine.  I wasn’t the person who taught him these writing skills.  I mean, really, I’ve only been with him six weeks.  But I am attempting to create an environment that is conducive for his success.

The last part of The Dreamkeepers with which Ladson-Billings really challenged me is the political nature of the work of culturally relevant teaching.  That seemed to be one part of teaching that all of the teachers commented on: “I do what I want.”  And that’s the ultimate issue in teaching in public schools, especially urban schools, who are sometimes reliant on test scores just to stay open.  Administrators want to see that you’re preparing students for the test, and it can be difficult to obtain tangible data from culturally relevant teaching.  I think that this will be especially hard when we first get teaching jobs, because we will likely have the more difficult assignments, the classes who have to take these standardized tests, and it’s likely that we’ll be required to perform “benchmark” tests on them every few weeks.  So how do you get to be one of these venerated teachers from the beginning?  Is that even a possibility?

Competition and Caring

Probably the one concept that really struck me so far in The Dreamkeepers is the negative depiction of competition.  I’m not saying that I don’t think competition is negative, but it’s just that competition has always been such a huge part of my “schooled” life that I’ve never even stopped to think about its drawbacks.  Even the institutions that I was a part of outside of school encouraged competition—I was a key player in the Bible sword drill as well as church-related crafting competitions.  I honestly think that the church hosted these events to get younger people involved, so do we just automatically assume that young people need to compete and have the opportunity to “win” something so that they care? 

Of course, the institutions that I’m talking about were all white-run and primarily involved white people; Ladson-Billings seems to imply that competition is mostly a white American preference.  I definitely don’t think that we can limit competition to one group of people, but it makes me think about the practices that I support (or don’t support) in the classroom as a white person attempting to utilize culturally relevant teaching.  Ladson-Billings states that group work doesn’t necessarily equate with cooperative learning, and I’ve noticed this discrepancy when I’ve been teaching.  We have a table set up so that students are naturally in groups already, but they really resist true cooperative learning.  They’ll end up chatting with each other and they rarely get a lot of good stuff done until they’re under the wire with like five minutes left.  I began the year talking about the classroom community and it being a trusting, safe environment.  I almost wish that I had set up that family atmosphere, like Patricia Hilliard.  It sounds cheesy, but I think that a lot of my students are actively looking for family.  They consider their friends their family, and if their classmates are positioned as family too, they might be more motivated to do truly cooperative work.  There are lots of other strategies that I need to learn as well, but it seems to set a good tone for the year to start out this way.

I do think that one of the ways I try to contribute to this cooperative relationship in the classroom is being a real person with my students.  I have book talks with them outside of class instead of during class time so that I have time to ask them more personal questions and just talk with them instead of it being a structured interview.  I have also made sure to chat with my female students picking their children up from daycare.  I try to learn their kids’ names so that they know that I care about their success in the classroom as well as with their many other responsibilities.  I’ve noticed that many teachers don’t really talk to their students when they see them in the hallways, which sets up the teacher like this force who is untouchable outside of the classroom.  Instead, my CT constantly greets current and previous students whenever he walks through the halls, and they come to visit his classroom on a regular basis.  And it seems that this is where the real caring occurs: a good teacher doesn’t just care about his students while they’re in his class.  A good teacher wants his students to move upwards and onwards, and he is there to congratulate them along the way.

Choice Fonts

When I looked at the cover of Johnston’s Choice Words, I’ll admit that I dismissed it a bit just because of the font.  (I’m prone to font-critiquing on occasion.  I feel that it’s an allowable form of snobbery.)  I’m sure that the Curlz font is a product of its time, but I was looking for a book cover with a bit more heft.  So, I was pleasantly surprised when I got a few chapters into the book and realized that really, Johnston is focusing on student agency.  He’s mostly honing in on the words teachers use in order to foster their students’ sense of self and agency in order to guide students to become their most empowered selves within a democratic system.  I’m all in, of course.  The main question that I am left with is how to accomplish this task while being inundated with mandates that tell teachers to remove student agency with preparation for standardized tests.

Johnston points out that some students may be uncomfortable with a sense of agency in the classroom—the students know how school is supposed to be done, and it’s easier to stay in that role of receiver of knowledge rather than constructer of knowledge.  I’ve already seen this some while working on writing a memoir piece with my juniors.  They want really explicit instructions for things to include in their drafts.  While I try to make the strategies that I’m modeling very explicit, I also explain that they might not need to use a specific strategy.  And then the confusion sets in.  “You’re saying that this is required, or it isn’t?”  The interesting part of this question is that I mostly get it from my best students, which makes sense, really—they’ve been the ones who have learned to thrive under a system of rules and regulations.

I was also struck by Johnston’s statement that education is not just about knowledge, but about teaching problem-solving—helping students help themselves.  I think that when we don’t do this, we are essentially creating helpless citizens who can fill in bubbles with an answer that someone else has given them.  But boy, do they fill in those bubbles well.  This method of teaching problem solving seems really difficult, not only because of testing, but also because it takes a lot more planning and patience.  I’m learning that the planning and patience seem all good and well in the summer, but once the mad rush of school starts in August, a lot of that goes out the window (since there’s no room in the classroom for anything else other than the 40 bodies crammed in there).  

So, really, it seems to come back to another part of Johnston’s argument—teaching has to be conscious.  I know that I’m not naturally a person who is constantly encouraging and always on the lookout for opportunities to build student agency; I’m just not wired like that.  But I don’t think that means I’m not naturally a good teacher.  I think it just means that I am the kind of teacher who must be ever reflective in her daily life and activities.