Mon+2-20

What can we learn from the educators before us?

Before Class:

1.) Read this! 

What ideas are you having about creating "spaces" in your classroom for marginalized voices to be heard?

2.) During Class

The next sections are snapshots of my classroom practices that tell of a classroom where a newly feminist teacher embraced critical pedagogy to open a space where students could question power and disrupt some of the normative discourses shaping them. In this article, discourse means more than spoken or written language; it is a term to describe how reading, writing, speech, action, and even silence construct people’s beliefs and actions (Bove 1990). Additionally, I reveal my background and classroom practices not to create the notion that other teachers must be like me or do exactly as I do to engage students in critical pedagogy, but to show how discourses shaped me, and how I was able to question them. This notion of critically reflecting on who we are and how we came to be that way I hope will spark ideas for other teachers to use in the classroom to open spaces where their students can also engage in critical talk and action.


 * Why am I using the term discourse?
 * What does discourse mean to you?

I did not understand that she and I lived in a world divided through discourses. She attempted to question this divide, which upset those who were on the other side of it, but I never questioned oppressive beliefs. However, now I look back on a classroom where my students, who also came from marginalized positions, shouted against their oppression, and I wonder what made them shout back at such an early age?


 * What were you taught about people who "shout back"?
 * What does it mean to be divided in discourses?

By recognizing the existence of these dangerous ideas in and around me, it allowed me to act against oppression and actively try to disrupt these ideas in the classroom. I transferred this critique of my own life into classroom practice by using journaling, circle time, disconnections, and a year-end social justice action research project to allow students to do some “shouting back” of their own.


 * What does dangerous mean here?
 * How is my circle time different than what you know as "circle time?"
 * What do disconnections allow for in the classroom?

For instance, one student’s father had been arrested at a raid at his work, a raid that targeted those with brown skin. Now, he did not know where his dad was but, last he heard, he was somewhere in Florida, awaiting deportation; he had not heard from him in months. This story disrupted my own racist beliefs, even though I knew that anti-immigrant discourses were growing stronger. I felt ashamed to realize that it was really happening to my students, and their family members were literally disappearing. He shared this with the entire class, and we responded with outrage at the arrest and sadness about the separation. It led us into a discussion of why skin color does matter.

> — Yehuda Bauer
 * How was I racist in this moment?
 * What made me aware of my racism?
 * "Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander."

I suggest that this motherly responsibility that Angelica and I felt are what Judith Butler (1993) called being “girled” (7) by those around us and even ourselves. The language we use and the people we know tell us what women should be like: women who take care of others, women who either take care of families or take care of a career, women who must be good girls to get by.


 * How have you been girled?
 * How does being "girled" affect the teaching profession which is majority female?

Classroom Connections
 * http://www.childrensbookpress.org/
 * [|Interview]
 * [[file:My_Diary_from_Here_to_There_Mi_diario_de_aqu_hasta_all.pdf]]
 * [|Audible]
 * [|Freire Project]
 * Ticket out the door