Boldly Braiding

Lavie looks at a ‘classroom’ and asks himself the question: What are their societal concerns and how can use these to inform my content decisions?

The readings this week seemed to be primarily aimed at teaching in the most traditional definition of ‘classroom’ and at this point in time I don’t see that in my future. I took this opportunity to ask myself how these readings pertained to me, someone hoping to educate at a more adult level, where, I believe, the issues can be more societally sensitive. I identify as a working-class, Irish Catholic but find the most happiness in learning-about/educating-in practically every other culture or scenario. I’m left wrestling with feelings of inferiority or guilt at what I cannot always offer a ‘classroom’. That’s why I picked up on the above question.

Societal concerns are largely on my mind as I look at ways of teaching in a universe, world, country, city, neighborhood that has a tradition that isn’t necessarily mine.

In Bell’s “Knowing Ourselves as Instructors” I immediately connected to the experiences of discomfort in discussion that the interviewees referenced. When it comes to adult education you’re working with fully formed individuals and these humans can come from all backgrounds. So how do you prepare yourself to field questions from people that exist in space you’ve never participated in? If the most effective education is one built on a community’s tradition then does it mean any hopeful educators need to ‘return home’ to make a difference?

This week’s readings present social justice in education from two perspectives. Bell, Washington, Weinstein, and Love’s, “Knowing Ourselves as Instructors”, argue for the introspection of educators, while “The Mystery of Teaching”, focuses on pedagogy through the educator and institution.

In Bell, Washington, Weinstein, and Love’s, “Knowing Ourselves as Instructors” the authors argue that to be an effective educator of social justice, one must continuously and actively practice self-reflection. Through self-reflection, an educator recognizes and responds to his or her own biases, triggers, and challenges. The authors present these ideas through examples and suggest some approaches an educator can take in order to combat some challenges they may face. I believe a challenge central to all educators (or maybe it should be?) is how to present lessons without also presenting his or her biases. However, I think the authors were arguing that it is almost impossible to leave biases out of the classroom. Because individuals carry with them their own set of experiences and beliefs, an educator should be self-aware about how biases affect lesson planning and classroom discussion.

In the reading, the authors ask a vital question: “’Who are the students I am imagining as I do this planning?’ and ‘Who might I be leaving out?’“ (p. 467) This question asks educators to think about student-centered approaches when developing their lesson around sensitive topics. While the authors do not propose a clear plan, they advocate for an open-floor format, which creates a safe place for discourse. I believe the reading was successful in discussing the importance of self-reflection in education. In accepting our limitations we can simultaneously recognize the value of other perspectives. Educators are asked to emancipate themselves as the sole holders of knowledge and become “facilitators of process” (p.475). Another point I thought was interesting was on pages 473 and 474, in discussing an educator’s emotional response in the classroom. I believe when an educator allows themselves to be vulnerable, a student may feel safer to express their opinions about difficult topics. While I’m not advocating an emotional reaction during every class period, if an educator is asking students to openly discuss difficult topics, with a consequence being an emotional response, I don’t think reacting with emotion to a difficult topic damages the educator’s ability to facilitate conversation. Self-reflection itself, is a vulnerable process, and should be constantly practiced, to maintain a conscious environment for learning.

One question I would pose is, how would an educator outside of the classroom be able to use these tools in their own sector?

In the “Mystery of Teaching,” through the format of a graphic novel, Ayers and Alexander-Tanner argue for a pedagogical approach based on creativity, consciousness, and choice. They present principles for becoming a successful teacher and use Lawndale Little Village High School as an example that embodies all the core values of an effective student-centered high school. In speaking about teaching, I appreciated the quote, “greatness in teaching is always in pursuit of the next challenge, the next encounter…greatness demands openness to the new and unique…” (p. 97). Educators and pedagogy should respond to cultural climates and should not be considered stagnant entities.

This article presented ideas and approaches to teaching, both through the educator and institution. I did not see it as an instructional tool, or a how-to. Especially when speaking about the institution, the reading asks for schools to parallel the same philosophies. I don’t believe it asks for an exact replica of Lawndale Little Village High School, rather to see it as a pedagogical aim. To replicate the structure exactly at a nationwide scale would be asking to restructure the entire public school system. It is unrealistic to think every school would have the necessary resources to completely imitate the Lawndale Little Village structure.

One limitation I found in Lawndale Little Village High School was the 4 categories within the school. Once a student chooses a “school” how flexible is it for them to move around the categories? Is the format interdisciplinary, beyond the curriculum in the respective schools?

Yingyue Yu

Knowing Ourselves as Instructors
It is never an easy task to be a teacher, and this article is especially talking about the difficulties and pressure for teachers who set their mind on teaching social justice courses.

The difficulties come from all different aspects, such as the difficulties for teachers to identify themselves during the class; the pressure for teachers to disclose themselves especially the one who is under the target group; and the isolate and helpless feeling once they cannot get support from the institution. It is a dilemma for lot of instructors of the class about the choices between protecting themselves or instructing students with their personal experience and beliefs. On the one hand, the traditional teaching strategies for teachers prefer to teach the classes without any personal viewpoints, so that topics would be more objective when students express their opinions. But this emotionless way of teaching has disadvantages which made the class less powerful and also reduced the connection between students and professors. On the other hand, lots of professors put their own personal ideas and life experiences in the classes which do bring a more strong relation with students and make the classes more heart shaking, but also sometime the sharing of their own personal life can put their career and even self-identity in a very risky position. Therefore teaching social justice classes is more complicated than we think, not only because instructors need to put an effort on self-identify but also about how much instructors share themselves with students and how strong the trustworthy relationships between students and professors are; also professors with the institutions.

However, all those fears and concerns cannot stop instructors seeking their teaching strategies on social justice classes. On the contrary, all the difficulties we meet indicated that both the institutions, colleagues and students need to be more supportive and hortative to encourage intruders to face the practical world.

Yingyue yu

Beginners’ Guide
As we all know that there are all kinds of difficult social issues which cause lots of efforts to overcome, and art can be a helpful way to make a better society and educate citizens to be better human beings. Thus, I realized the important role which artists are playing in the whole society.

There are multiple ways to express your art works no matter it is painting, dancing, performing or documenting. The crucial spirit within the art works for me is that all the projects you create art include both your own life interests and can also benefit your community. By connecting, researching and putting them into action, the create of art works help people to identify themselves and their communities, evoke their self-esteem, expose the conflicts and diverse of opinions from different groups, influence their lifestyle, tighten the community as a whole and improve the quality of both the communities and individual’s life awareness. All of them make the communities more strong and helpful which in the end nourishes individuals.

Opening the Classroom Door
It is a great responsibility for teachers to think deeply about how they would like to instruct the next generation. This article raised a series of questions like how teachers build the environment for learning, how they create a democratic culture in their classroom while they are teaching and how they find the wisdom in the room.

It is a paradox for all the teachers to balance the discipline and the freedom within the classroom. Because we need some discipline to maintain the basic line about the request to show respect to other and other’s work, to protect each individual’s right, to provide a wide stage for every student to show his or her own idea and own life. On the other hand freedom is the soul for education, that nothing is worthy of the soul of democracy. With the freedom and democracy, students can express their own mind freely without any concerned for safety, then the classroom will be a place to embrace different thinking ,divergent political believe, independent thought and all kinds of experience, which will nourish both the students and the teachers.

But it is not a easy job to build a democratic classroom, it asks the teacher to try his or her absolutely best to see his or her students as three-dimensional creatures, and to push against the hard reality to seek the wisdom in the room. It ask the teachers to have faith in people, to let everyone get involved in the class and to participate together.


The mystery of teaching
Being a teacher is far more than just spreading the knowledge you have, additionally, being a teacher asks you to not only have the strategies to teach different children properly but also to have multiple abilities to face the everyday life in your teaching career.
Being a teacher is like being an actor which asks you to devote yourself in the right position and to communicate with people which include children, parents, and colleagues. Being a teacher also means you will never stop your personal seeking and improvement. As a teacher, we need creative insubordination, co-operation with all kinds of groups, we need to be critical and self-critical; we need to learn from our own experience, to show authentic friendship, to link consciousness to conduct and to find the core values that define classroom life.

Question:
As we all know that there is no such thing called pure freedom, so in order to build a democracy classroom, how are we balancing the relationship between rules and freedom?

All of these thoughts and analyses of the readinbgs are greastly appeciated...
A couple of the reflective questions touch on cross-applying the references to educational/school spaces to other venues where practitioners serve a different client set/participant community, or are working in a completely different discipline/institutional space than a 'teacher.' With our diverse group we can share out how we might take certain pieces from the reading into our practice, and how our multiple sets of practices will easily widen beyond the readings.

And in response to balancing discipline/guidance/expertise with democracy/voice/freedom in a classroom environment--a true and real balance that we all must strike in our own ways. My mother taught high school for seventeen eyars adn she would always say, "My classroom is not a democracy--I am a ebenevolent despot." Although it seened to me that a lot of free thought and creativity was happening in her math classes, the students desired the loving general that she represented. The majority of us have been socialized in spheres of schooling whereby there is an instructor who leads us,. who we respond to, and who dictates the majority of curriculum. And being products of such systems, we in fact thrive off of such social frameworks--we need it to survive, and it is our normative way of seeing instruction happen. I remember trying to teach an a fter-school program with a 'freedom school' philosophy, adn my children from the east side had great difficulty flipping from a controlled environment in the school day to a self-generative space after school. After watching the social environment crumble, my co-teacher and I embedded socratic discussions and free choice time in a set of topics, an timely agenda, and reading and writing exercises. As the system mimicked students' daytime experiences they fell right into it, but then were able to tackle social justice topics that we addressed in very structured conversations.

Since systems of leader/teacher on class/group are the norm, I think we can learn more from those groups outside the norm...

1) Why are radically democratic or freer choice schools primarily in upper class communities? (i.e. Brooklyn Freedom School, Parker, ULab)
2) How does a child from an impoverished/marginalized background find voice in institutionalized "Rabbit Proof" schools?
3) What does a radically democratic school in the hood look like?

Or...
1) How does an instructor/leader/guide lead into inquiry, and then find a role as a fellow inquirer along the way? Then to return to that place of guiding, and back to participant, and so forth?

From Sonja...

I think the questions you have listed below belong to a professional self critic+ reflection and knowledge of each mentor and teacher. What I felt as a very instructive part of the reading was this paragraph at page 474:

'Who we are affects student perceptions of the issues we raise. In some respects ee are both the messenger and message. And further, "... one of the most powerful ways of teaching is through modeling the behavior we hope to encourage in others."

If I am, as a teacher, don't allow myself/my role to be seen as a human how I can expect my opponent- the student- to open up with personal thoughts. If I am able to reflect my actions and my way of communicating it is possible at any moment to revise, to apologize and I think to still be a teacher in the very moment.

Would I, imaging being a student not wanting to experience a space in which I am allowed to make mistakes? Doesn't it feel like a relief to discover that adults getting sometimes lost too? I imagine this space arouses more vitality and humanity than a classroom where mediating knowledge seems the only task at the agenda.