Journal #8: The Necessity of Social Justice in the Classroom

In my personal exploration of the Social Justice subject, I stumbled upon an Article on JSTOR entitled Do Educators Have a Responsibility to Raise Social Justice Issues in the Classroom? This seemed I was looking for and dove into it. It discussed the imperative of addressing Social Justice, but being sensitive to the groups with which you are discussing the topics. It is not to say you need to change your opinions for the groups you’re talking to, but to be aware of how certain subjects will affect your students, and how these subjects will be handled and viewed by different groups of people. 

From what I’ve gathered reading the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom, education is trying to do what it was said to do. Education is trying to become the great equalizer. It is our goal to empower our youth for enacting change, making them feel like they can make a difference, and ultimately making the world a better place for all people. Certainly, through education we can introduce students to the realities of social injustice, but are all teachers equipped fully to handle the sort of turbulence the discussions of these subjects cause? 

I fully agree that discussions of social justice in the classroom are important. We need to be able to discuss inequality and aim to rectify it. We need to address racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, body autonomy, bigotry, and so on if we hope to create equality for the future. English and Social Studies classes are the most suited for these types of discussion, because these two subjects often bring up civil/human rights. In addition, students need to feel like they can communicate their opinions in a safe place, and school should be one of those safe places. They need environments that nurture discussion on these topics, because without them they may feel like they have no hope to change the system if no one is willing to listen. In addition, students with privilege should be subject to the opinions of others. Seeing different viewpoints and understanding why other people hold these viewpoints is key in thoroughly developing one’s own opinions.

The article I found:

Kohli, Wendy et al.. “Do Educators Have a Responsibility to Raise Social Justice Issues in the Classroom?”. Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy 14.1 (2003): 137–146. Web.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/43587172

Journal #7: Utilizing Culture to Make Literature Relevant

In reading Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom, I found the ways that they chose to welcome diversity and culture into the classroom to be particularly interesting. Primarily, I found the push for use of pop-culture to be both expected and a strange mixture of exciting and disheartening. Drawing parallels between Hip-Hop and classical poetry isn’t a new concept, necessarily, but while I’m not against it I feel a little sad that students just don’t have natural interest in classic literature. It’s likely due to the fact that, as the handout said, the time periods from which they came are dismissible by modern standards. They just don’t see the modern applications without the pop-culture nudges.

I always have found that, to me, the older literature is more exciting to read. It’s a gateway to the struggles and concerns of the past, and it’s culturally different from what I’m used to in modern times. While the struggles are similar, the values are slightly shifted in one direction or another. This causes readers to think about what social constraints dictated people of the past. That all being said, social constraints affect modern people just as much, which leaves much more room for discussion because the modern issues are going on as we speak. It’s reasonable to assume that students aren’t going to have the same passion for the past as I do, and I have to mold my curriculum around my students and not my own likes.

The important thing to take away is that discussing modern issues is imperative if we seek to enact change. Many of the issues of the past have either been resolved, or have changed in some way that make them less relevant to the modern references. Utilizing modern references as a lens to see older texts can frame them in ways that make them relevant to modern issues. Ultimately, it isn’t about simply enjoying the books, but having an interaction with them that is valuable to in some way. If pop culture is required for students to have a meaningful connection with the past, then that’s what must be done.

Journal #6: The Common Sense of Teaching

Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire was striking, and I can easily imagine why it took the world by storm when it was published. Education has always been posed as “the great equalizer,” an assumption that education is what drives off oppression and lifts the oppressed out from underfoot. Education has been framed as the path out of poverty as well. The truth as Freire explained it is that education is simply not enough, because depending on the type of education it may very well perpetuate oppression. I’ve certainly been in lecture courses where teachers utilized the “banking” method of teaching. Critical thinking is lacking in this method, and I’m pleased that Common Core is stepping up to try to fix this problem.

                I was reminded of the famous Common Sense by Thomas Payne while reading this. Freire used a lot of the same shocking methods to ‘jolt’ readers awake. Comparing the banking concept of education to necrophilia, for instance, is on par with the sort of comparisons made in Common Sense. You come away with the same feelings reading both texts, the sense of enlightenment and the desire to act. Freire’s answer, of course, is problem-posing education. Education that promotes discourse, and teachers learning from students just as students should learn from teachers. The environment promoted in this work is one where we as humans acknowledge that we are incomplete animals and that our common goal should be to advance ourselves. I love this, I love everything about teachers being willing to admit that they don’t have all the answers. I agree that students and teachers should all be working together to achieve betterment.

                Discussion classroom models are a very easy way to implement this kind of teaching. Instead of presentation and lecture, teachers need the input an answers from students. Students need to be engaged in their learning. Most importantly, students are not objects, they are not receptacles for meaningless facts. If a student memorizes a fact without understanding why things are that way, they are not truly knowledgeable. If students do not question facts, they are not likely to question authority either. If they do not question facts, they cannot hope to problem solve on their own.

                

Journal #5: Assessing Critical Thinking and Hiding Zeroes

Student growth is important, but how we assess that growth when working with teaching literature is a bit tough. It isn’t like math and science, where concepts are relatively concrete and either you know how to apply them or you don’t. Learning literature is about reading and comprehension, and assessing it is done by observing how students apply what they’ve read in various different ways. In Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?, we’re confronted with different ways of assessing students’ learning of literature, and the most obvious take-away is that tests that assess critical thinking are better for students than simply memorizing facts for a summative test in the written work.

This made me feel particularly good, because I carried my experience with discussions/essay tests over into my Three Week Lesson Plan. From personal experience, I always learned literature the best through class discussion and being assured that no wrong answers exist if you can find support for your claim in the text. It helps students maintain their uniqueness, it allows students to apply critical thinking and their own experiences to the text. After all, any one book can be read thousands of different ways based on who’s reading it. Expecting students to think there’s only one right answer is unfair to them and literature as a whole.

I was also greatly struck by the Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook. Primarily the way it talked about motivating students by lifting out zeroes in cumulative scores. Zeroes are devastating to grades, and morale if those zeroes are left in when showing students their progress. Missed tests and assignments do still keep their zeroes, but letting students know where they’d be without them is a good way to let them get a sense of their actual grades and progress. Demotivation leads to students dropping out, and not being conscious of zeroes could inadvertently make students feel like they aren’t smart or good enough to keep working hard in academics.

It seemed like they were proposing ungraded homework to potentially help with the zeroes issue, which I think could prove to be a double-edged sword. On one hand students who struggle getting homework done and turned in (I forgot homework often in High School) would have better grades without all the zeroes. On the other hand, we can’t guarantee that students will do the homework that’s given to them if they aren’t given incentive to through grading. I’m still not sure how a teacher would motivate students to do something they don’t have to do when most kids in secondary school are more concerned with extra-curricular activities or spending time with friends.

Journal #4: The Handy-Dandy California State Universities ERWC Assignment Template

I am both disappointed and amused about my thought processes while reading about the California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template. Part of me wishes I had read it before I wrote my course introduction draft, but the other part of me is pleased to know that I followed the majority of the ideas listed in the template. It gave me further inspiration for my project, however, making me all the more eager to work on it.

That all being said, the way the Assignment Template was laid out was extremely helpful, including a lot of information in the margins about Common Core prerequisites and how these different activities help students learn. While it was about Informational Text, it could easily be applied to literature, primarily young-adult novels. Due to the fact that young-adult novels try to make a point, inform, or convince readers to think about the answers to hard questions, many of these guidelines can be used. So much of these assignments involve critical thinking as well, which is so important for our young people to know how to do. Not only does it prepare them for college, but it also prepares them for life. After all, thinking critically helps keep people from being taken advantage of.

The outlines for writing were also very helpful because they make sure students are considering the content of their work while revising, not just their surface grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation errors. When I was in school, teachers didn’t really have us consider our content problems, they simply had students peer review for technical errors. In the case of these assignment templates, they ask the students to ask themselves about who their audience is and what the purpose of their writing is. It also attempts to move us away from the standard “one and done” draft process that we see so often in Middle to High School classrooms. Students need to feel comfortable writing multiple drafts, because that’s how real writers do it.

Journal #3: Team Teaching: Apprehension and Consideration

I am probably the only one who feels this way, but after reading both Leavitt’s “Team Teaching: Benefits and Challenges” and Friend and Cook’s “Some Approaches to Team Teaching,” Team Teaching feels like it would be a chore. I enjoy doing group projects, but doing a group project every day for a whole quarter seems like too much extra frustration. In the case of student-teaching and apprenticeship, it makes sense that student teachers must test-run their skills and actually practice good teaching in the classroom. Team Teaching is necessary in these cases to allow for the student teacher to get the most out of their mentor teacher’s experience while also getting direct experience themselves. However, in the case of two professors Team Teaching a college course: it sounds like it would be weird for both the teachers and the students who are used to a lecture style course with one professor. However, this is only my point of view, and it’s clear that those who are participating in this kind of Team Teaching are having a ball doing it. There must be something I’m missing.

Among the things I did like about the concept of Team Teaching in a college setting was the modeling of polite debate and/or playing devil’s advocate with the lecturer as outlined in “Benefits and Challenges.” I’m sure it’s quite indulgent for the two experts in the room, but it is also a great way for students to see more than one side of an argument while witnessing a live formal debate between two respected teachers. Scholars often disagree on the details, and being able to witness the back-and-forth between them live would be invaluable as a student. I worry that students may need a lot of encouragement to join in, however, because the show alone would be just too interesting to interrupt.

Further, of the types of Team Teaching that made the most sense, this made the most sense to me as being the most beneficial. Teachers with different expertise, different understanding, and different backgrounds bringing their varied points of view to the table is a great way to promote discussion. If teachers have differing opinions, then it makes students more comfortable in their own differing opinions. Perhaps even the teachers will learn a thing or two. I know that, as a teacher, I don’t ever want to stop learning.

Journal #2: Blind Fear and Common Core

Common Core Standards had always been a subject of fear for me, mostly because of all the strange myths that circulated when states first began adopting it. It was around the time I had fully decided I was going to become a teacher, and this sudden shake-up of the system was unnerving. I had no experience with Common Core, I graduated right before any sort of measures were taken to change curriculum. The word “Standards” made me think of standardized testing, something I had been very familiar with. I started having visions of cardboard cut-out lesson plans, robotic teaching, and the shriveling of my creative spirit. I would be struck with occasional thrills of terror at the thought of not being able to use my creativity in my lesson plans. After all, my favorite teachers had always been those who deviated from the norm, who were less strict and chose learning activities which were creative and fun. Things went grey, but I was holding out that Common Core would just be a fad and somehow another change was quick on its heels.
After having read “The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12: Origins, Goals, and Challenges” and previous articles like it, I have far less fear than before. I’ve come to understand that the standards are a benchmark, not some prescribed curriculum that is entirely uniform across the country. I love how this specific article addressed the fact that all students are different, and that a standardized form of teaching is detrimental to students of different cultural background or different interest levels in subjects. It addresses the need for creativity, and nurturing teachers’ love of teaching as much as nurturing students’ love of learning. I’ve been soothed, I feel comfortable and even excited about Common Core because it offers meaningful goals for teachers and students to reach together that will have them prepared for their academic future.
Recently, I’ve heard a lot of non-teachers, typically political pundits discussing Common Core. They’ve been saying a lot of the same things I’ve heard over the last several years and it brings up the need for adults to self-educate when they don’t know or understand something. As much as I disagreed with the pundits on most things they manage to put the fear in people who don’t understand. I’ve been asked about my feelings on Common Core, being a future teacher, and my answer is always, “Students need goals and so do teachers.”

Journal #1 on "Discussion in a Democratic Society Chapter 1"

While reading the first chapter of Discussion in a Democratic Society, it brought to mind a lot of my own memories of class discussions in High School, College, and University. My experiences have been varied and invaluable in the sense that, in their variance, I can see what has been done right by my fellow students, and what went terribly wrong. This chapter brings up the need for students to feel comfortable expressing their opinions and experiences. The kinds of environments that helped students in my classes feel this way are always more relaxed, and often had amiable teachers with good senses of humor. Having been in classrooms that both excel and fail in these key areas highlight the importance of knowing how to encourage conversation and pointed discussion.

Fear of judgment has always been something that held me back, and in High School I was much less concerned about the judgment of my teachers than I was of the judgment of other students. Building an environment that enthusiastically supports the opinions and discussions of everyone in a classroom while also encouraging students to broaden their horizons and consider other points of view is no easy feat. It should, however, be the goal of every teacher. Open-door policies where students can feel comfortable discussing ideas further after class or via email are also very good ideas for encouraging students and making their ideas seem valued.

Happily, the difficulties of discussion were not ignored in the chapter. Discussions get heated, and sometimes they turn into arguments which leave a teacher to moderate or play devil’s advocate. It is likely, however, that a comforting environment where everyone’s opinion is appreciated will help to quell the distress and upset that comes from the debate environment. In my experience, I always found class debate fruitful, even when assigned to positions I did not personally hold. Learning about the reasons for why people feel the way they do encourages respect and understanding of different ideals and cultures. Exposure to the multiplicity of the world and its lack of clear-cut answers is daunting, but also comforting in its own way. It prepares students for the real world where gray-areas and openness to change of opinion are more visible.