multimediaresponsejournal-blog

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This article discusses a group of 11th and 12th grade students at Alfred E. Beach High School as they confront violence in their school and community. After reading Dr. Schultz’s book, I found myself looking at the way this article was written through a very critical lens. In the book, Schultz talked about how media coverage would sometimes twist the story away from the student-centered nature of the class’s efforts. I think that this article takes away some of the students’ hard work and agency. At the same time, this is a pretty neat story.

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As I was reading Dr. Brian D. Schultz's book, Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way, I couldn't help but draw parallels between his social justice, student-centered pedagogy and that of Freedom School. In training for the Children's Defense Fund's Freedom School, classroom interns are taught to problem-pose when facilitating scholar exploration of material. For example, a new lesson might begin with a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. Let's use his statement "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" as an example. After providing scholars with the quote, we would then discuss what meaning the statement holds to each of them. In my classroom, these conversations would often result in the scholars listing off problems that they see in their neighborhood (similar to what room 405 did)! Next, we would read the prescribed novel. After reading, scholars then have an opportunity to respond to the problems that they identified as they relate to the books content and generate social justice initiatives to combat these issues. Like Dr. Schultz's methodology, an interns' job is to put the scholar in charge of their learning and allow each of them to develop his or her voice.

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[Image source: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTrscUaNxtrLy_ehE5hu7NsWFrSyOg78x7aspnYCATQBPIR_jjQ]  In class, we had the opportunity to work in groups by content area in order to make applicable meaning out of some of Freire’s critical pedagogy quotations. Upon further reflection, I have identified several of these quotes which I hope to hold central to my principles as a teacher. Perhaps my favorite is: “Authentic liberation— the process of humanization— is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.” I love that Freire sees education as coexisting with world change. I hope that my classroom is a place that encourages students to think critically about their lives and to attack problems that they encounter directly with original, innovative thought and authentic approaches. This quote prompted me to think about how to teach democratic participation to my students through the constraints of curriculum, allowing them to become confident in their opinions. I hope that I can hold this quote central throughout my entire teaching career.

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[Image Source: http://i1.wp.com/werehistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Sam.jpg?resize=700%2C467] In my first multimedia response journal, I discussed problems of whitewashed English/ Language Arts curricula in secondary classrooms. Specifically, I focused on the idea that these sanitized narratives allow for the perpetuation of bias. As our class has proceeded through the semester, I have repeatedly reflected on this concept. Sanitized histories are not only found in English curricula. They are also found permeating many aspects of American life, including American arts and memory. By only remembering dominant or specific parts of history, societies open themselves up to fall victim to cultural amnesia. By visiting the Ackland Art Museum and in analyzing the Silent Sam statue on UNC Chapel Hill’s campus, we had an experiential opportunity to engage in discourse surrounding memory. These experiences are invaluable, in that they modeled how students should be encouraged to approach constructed historical accounts in the classroom. I read a New York Times article a couple of weeks ago that spoke to President Trump’s historical memory (or lack thereof): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/arts/design/trump-robert-e-lee-george-washington-thomas-jefferson.html Ira Shor, in his article Education is Politics: Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy, writes that “Schools construct people year by year, developing the way they think about the world and act in it. Traditional education orients students to conform, to accept inequality and their places in the status quo, to follow authority. Freirean critical education invites students to question the system they live in and the knowledge being offered them, to discuss what kind of future they want, including their right to elect authority and to remake the school and society they find” (28). This observation highlights the intersections between historical memory, critical pedagogy and its ability to created liberated classrooms that focus on dialogue, problem-posing, and knowledge as a transformational agent.

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I think the different pedagogical elements and approaches that we have covered so far in class each create space to address issues of race in the classroom. The Washington Post article that we read for class titled Facing racism is a part of life in St. Louis. Now it’s part of my classroom, too. discussed navigating difficult conversations about harsh realities that minority students face in the midst of a world of violence toward nonwhite bodies. In class, after reading the article, we discussed what teachers are and aren’t allowed to talk about in the classroom. We inquired about the limits that control teachers bringing seemingly politically charged conversations into the learning environment. This got me thinking about other “political” (in my opinion human rights) issues that I think are essential for students to learn-- namely privilege. When browsing the internet, I came across this video (click here) and I thought it was an innovative way to break barriers and teach the concept, but I hope that everyone consented beforehand. I can’t speak for minorities or the people in the video, but I think I would have felt uncomfortable as a minority or “less privileged” individual in this scenario. I do think this simulation would be a great way to begin conversations about race, class, and the disadvantages that come with different existences. 

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Throughout the last few weeks, this class has pushed me to think more critically about my own education. For elementary school, I went to a public school in rural North Carolina. I remember one Thanksgiving, we reenacted a sanitized version of American colonization. Each student was assigned to a group of four or five other students which became your “family”. You then dressed in stereotypical time period clothing and posed for pictures together as pilgrims. These pictures were used as our yearbook photos for that school year. We had a feast with different foods that the pilgrims would have eaten. We had to research the hardships that the pilgrims faced. At the feast, the teachers talked about the Native Americans, but in a belittling way. They ignored the genocide that colonization effectively turned out to be. In class, we looked at different children’s books and the different, largely problematic ways that they portrayed the “first Thanksgiving.” We also read multiple opinion articles on American conceptualization of Thanksgiving, how it is remembered, and how it is taught. Out of curiosity, after class, I searched on Pinterest for “Thanksgiving school crafts.” The accompanying picture is a screenshot of some of the search results. Many of the educators that I know use Pinterest for fun classroom ideas. It is concerning to me that so many of the search results centered around the problematic portrayal of “Indians” (Native Americans) and Pilgrims.  This demonstrates that there is a lot of work still to be done in debunking sanitized histories that perpetuate American schools and, as a result, American society.

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From fifth grade to high school graduation, I attended an extremely small, rural charter school. While I have parents that pushed (and continue to push) me to question the world, I think that a large portion of the student body did/do not. As I get older and still follow my old classmates and teachers on social media, I have come to realize that many of them are unwilling to engage in discussions that expand their thinking or expose themselves to diverse others. Freire says, “Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education.” Facebook has become an avenue in today’s world where people post monologues of opinion without entertaining other possible ways of thought. This screenshot is of a post that one of my fellow classmates posted a few days ago. While he is indeed correct that using news and other potentially biased media is not appropriate in academic scholarship, he is also incorrect. In viewing this post alongside his other recent posts, it can be reasoned that while he thinks CNN is inappropriate for academia, he thinks Fox News is appropriate. He sees his extremely conservative, often racist, views as fact and he isn’t willing to be exposed to other perspectives. I was personally upset to see that the final comment on this post was made by a former English teacher of mine. This prompted me to add her as a friend and in doing so, I saw that the majority of her posts focus on defending Donald Trump’s blunders and demanding that #blacklivesmatter is a terrible organization. I couldn’t help but generate a couple of questions and make a couple of observations: How could a black student ever feel comfortable in a learning environment where a teacher is quick to say #bluelivesmatter but refuses to say #blacklivesmatter? How did we read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man my senior year, but manage to avoid central discussions of race and double consciousness? When a student placed a drawing of KKK paraphernalia in a black student’s locker, why did the white perpetrator receive no consequences and the black victim get in trouble? In all of this, I am not trying to say that teachers should teach politically left views. However, I think teachers should model an attitude of openness and willingness to create two-way dialogue with people whose opinions are different than their own. I see critical pedagogy as essential.

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I think that this image of teaching from William Ayers’ book, To Teach: The Journey, in Comics, demonstrates the problem-posing that is so quintessential to critical pedagogy. Freire says, “Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total context, not as a theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed.” The teacher in Ayers’ book is creating a classroom space where students are just beginning to have the curiosity so essential to problem-posing. As they learn from an early age to be ever-curious, they are being prepared to hold a sense of constant inquiry in regard to the world around them. This questioning allows people to explore topics and issues that they individually find most interesting, prompting them to be more invested agents in their own education. In this way, critical pedagogy is quite different from banking education. Banking education doesn’t leave room for deviating from a scripted set of content. I love how the teacher in Ayers’ book says, “I want my classroom to be unsettled in this way.”