Though, as Melissa said, reading Ira Shor's Empowering Education: Teaching for Social Change is somewhat of a "Yeah, of course. This is what good teachers today do" experience, it was awesome to have so much of what I hope for my classroom in one spot.
I hadn't necessarily known it before, but his ideas, culled from other monumental thinkers like Piaget, Dewey, and Freire, make up my quite a bit of my philosophy of teaching. I absolutely start from the belief that education is always political. Every decision we make - from the way we arrange our rooms, to the texts we choose to read (or not read), and the language we use to describe the humans we teach (children, kids, students, scholars, etc.) - matters and has meaning.
We (teachers, students, administrators, parents) aren't always conscious of the meaning of those decisions. We don't always know how our actions are impacting others. Just one example is our conversation from last week about curriculum that might trigger strong emotional reactions from students. And, sometimes, we don't even realize that there are decisions that could be made. Thinking back, as a kid, I had a one-track view of education - do what the teacher says, get the best grades possible, get the job I want, and live a comfortable life. I wanted to be a nice person, but I don't think I had a conception that "education is more than facts and skills. It is a socializing experience that helps make the people who make society" (p. 15). I didn't think of school as a way to "develop people as citizens who think critically and act democratically" (p. 15). I was never pushed to question. I was totally comfortable with the status quo. It favored me.
So, now as a teacher, I am committed to doing the best I can to facilitate this participatory and problem posing experience that I never had for my own students. I guess I stole the words right from Shor when I wrote my own objective for my immigration unit: "to connect student individuality to larger historical and social issues; to encourage students to examine how their experience relates to academic knowledge, to power, and to inequality in society" (p. 17).
The question I have now is how well am I doing at this stuff? Yes, administrators have and will continue to evaluate me. I receive feedback from them and I genuinely do respect their opinions. However, what would Shor or Piaget or Dewey or Freire say if they walked into my classroom? How would they rate me on the agenda of values for empowering pedagogy (p. 17). The evaluation rubric from RIDE, though elaborate, makes every attempt it can to seem neutral. But from Shor, we know it is not...
Gah. What do we do with this?!
I loved that you pulled out this quote: "Education is more than facts and skills. It is a socializing experience that helps make the people who make society" (p. 15). I think it is a shame that non-teachers think that we teach out of textbook while following and reading a standard curriculum full of prefabricated lesson plans. When I tell people I am a teacher, they automatically think, sitting in rows, teacher talks/student listens, and no collaboration with others when they do individual classwork. I think I understand where they get this from... They get this from the facts, drills, and other mindless attempts as they got when they were in school. It does not seem far off, but I think the generation before me had an ultimately boring experience based on the facts and drills.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that education did change 20-30 years ago based on when the article was written. I think we are slowly starting to see students who were raised with great experiences and critical thinking strategies, are better equipped to become better thinkers and better teachers. Education is starting to make a shift in the way we teach our children, maybe that is why the information in this article did not seem foreign to me at all (the "duh" factor).
While I agree with both of you, that the information in the article seemed to make me want to shrug my shoulders and say, "duh," I don't think enough of a shift has been made everywhere. Of course, we exemplify these empowering pedagogies in our classrooms, but how many teachers don't? How many students sit in classrooms and think the same way that Brittany did and I did: do as the teacher says, get really good grades, go to college and do the same thing over again so I can graduate and live a happy life. Worse yet, how many students are completely turned off to education because of classrooms that are not driven by an empowering pedagogy? How many of them will want to continue in education if they feel that it does nothing for them?
ReplyDeleteBrittany, I was never forced to question either...until I had to question my own students. I had to make them realize that education did not stop once they got that A, or if they weren't getting A's at all. That's when my teacher identity really started to form. That's when I decided that although not every student would like school, I would do my best to provide a classroom for them in which they could explore real issues, be curious and thoughtful, share their opinions freely, work together, and (most importantly)a classroom they would want to come back to. As a young, first-year teacher, that's really hard some days. You've got me thinking the same thing...if Dewey or Shor (or Kozol!!!) was to walk into my classroom, how would they evaluate me on the values of empowering education? Truly, I don't think it would look like a rubric at all, so maybe that's where we need to start with our own students.
Brittany,
ReplyDeleteI loved your statement "I was never pushed to question. I was totally comfortable with the status quo. It favored me." I think that I also feel the same way. I never thought to question what teachers were teaching me, because it probably favored me too. But as a teacher I have really been pushing my students to be able to answer the question WHY and to think about why we learn what we learn and how they know what they know. I think that humanities classes are more open to these questions, but I am not trying to think about how to bring these types of questions into math. I also agree that school is more than "facts and skills. It is a socializing experience that helps make the people who make society" (p. 15). The previous school that I worked at really push the socializing component of our education. I think that schools are really working toward this with advisory programs and more mentoring. As the saying goes it takes a village to raise a child so we all need to do our part to educate.
Brittany,
ReplyDeleteYou make so many interesting points. I grew up K-12 in classrooms that were autocratic, bordering on dictatorships (think angry nuns with rulers). Almost without exception, my education was centered around rote memorization, note-taking, and comprehension exams. There were however a few teachers who slipped me a great novel (I'm thinking Call of the Wild, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Great Gatsby) and stayed out of the way so we could make our own meaning, and for that I am eternally grateful. I have tried to lead a democratic, teacher-as-problem-poser type of classroom since my first year, largely because of the few teachers who inspired me along the way. That being said, I still think it's ok for kids to learn their multiplication tables, how to do simple math in their head, and a general idea of spelling. I also am not sure that a little competition is unhealthy, because I feel that kids measure themselves against each other regardless of what teachers do to try to avoid it. I feel like a healthy amount of competition is part of the socializing of a classroom, and part of the teacher's role is to not add to that, and make sure it stays healthy. As far as the DOE evaluation, I have found that the perspective with which you look at it is decidedly important. I try to be honest in my approach to teaching, and use the eval as an opportunity to get feedback on my craft. This has helped me look for areas of improvement without feeling like the critique has to be negative.