Monday Motivator #3 2024-25

 

Branching Out: Allowing New Influences on Our Pedagogy

Although educational theorists such as Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky laid the groundwork for what we know about teaching and learning, it’s important to also acknowledge their positionality as white men who were born in the 1800s and did not live past 1980. Much work has been done in the field of education since that time that shows us how teaching and learning can be more equitable for all students. 

Gholdy Muhammad: Cultivating Genius

Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Literacy framework draws on the traditions of 19th-century Black literary societies, which valued literacy as a tool for advocacy. These societies made literacy the foundation from which joy, love, and fulfillment could grow and from which people of color could be successful. Muhammad’s framework has four components: identity development, skills development, intellectual development, and criticality (Muhammad, 2020). Although these principles promote success in students who are typically marginalized in education, they are relevant and practical for students of all races and ethnicities, and in all educational contexts.  
Muhammad argues that we must honor students’ identities by engaging in activities that help students think about who they are and what they want to be. In the past, I used reflective identity activities primarily at the beginning of the school year as a way to better get to know my students, but Muhammad points out that identity is dynamic and ever-changing. Therefore, allowing students to engage in these activities throughout the whole year is important. The opening poem of Clint Smith’s Counting Descent, “Something You Should Know,” uses the metaphor of a hermit crab to show readers how uncomfortable the speaker is about showing vulnerability. While we were analyzing the poetic devices and techniques in the poem, we spent one additional class period using the poem as a mentor text to write a poem in which we used metaphor to reveal one of our traits. This one-day extension to a lesson that I was teaching allowed for powerful self-reflection. I have begun to look for places in my curriculum where I can add space for identity work throughout the year.
Another important aspect of Muhammad’s work is criticality, which she defines as “the capacity to read, write, and think in ways of understanding power, privilege, social justice, and oppression” (120). Criticality moves students from passive learners, collecting information, to active participants who question information and its source. It has only been as an adult that I have learned the skill of criticality, and I am continually pushing myself to grow and better develop my critical eye and ear, which is why I think it is so important for students to be introduced to this skill in their K–12 education.
Muhammad asks teachers to reflect on ways in which social issues can be incorporated into the curriculum. For several years, I have done a March Madness Poetry bracket in my classes. This year I made a conscious decision to find spoken-word poetry that addressed social issues such as racism, sexism, ableism, and trans rights, just to name a few. It didn’t take much extra time to ask students to reflect on the poems’ messages as they voted on their favorites. At the end of the month, I asked students to choose and do more research on a social issue that was either important to them or that they wanted to learn more about, and then write a poem of their own, demonstrating what they had learned. 

Christopher Emdin: Embracing the Chaos

Emdin began his teaching career with a focus on classroom management, thinking that a classroom of quiet, focused students was an indicator of success. But when 9/11 was unfolding right outside his school walls and he was told to keep the students working and not let them know what was going on, he felt compelled to change his idea of what education is all about. Reality pedagogy is about embracing the chaos of the outside world and allowing the world that our students live in to enter the classroom. With so much going on in the world today, Emdin argues that we can’t just ignore it and keep on teaching but should use our pedagogy as a form of protest and a way to disrupt harmful norms. When something difficult happens in the world, and it inevitably does, it’s easy to look at our lesson planners and think, We’re in the midst of a unit and we have to keep going. Emdin’s work urges us to think about how we can creatively make space in our curriculum for students to contemplate pressing issues.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, my senior English class was in the midst of reading Macbeth. And, as often happens in the spring semester, I was feeling the pressure to keep on pace and finish the play. But I had heard students chattering about the invasion and what it meant in my homeroom and in my study hall. It was clearly something that was on their minds. Although I could have kept plugging away with my original plans and relied on one of my history colleagues to discuss the issue with students, I realized that I could use my Macbeth unit as an opportunity to make the content more relevant to them.
Bringing current events into the classroom can be scary. I’ve been teaching Macbeth for 20 years and feel confident in what I’m doing. Teaching about an event that is still confusing even to me? Not so confident. Opportunities such as these require us to place trust in our students that they can be co-teachers and construct knowledge along with us. We do not always need to be the experts in the classroom, nor should we be. So, I asked each student to bring in an article about what was happening between Russia and Ukraine so that we could synthesize the information. Then I was able to make a connection back to Macbeth, comparing the title character with Putin, and having students consider the cost of power and ambition.
New voices in the field are branching out and building on the roots that early educational theorists put in place over a century ago. Although it is easy and even comforting to fall back on what we have long known, we as teachers must be willing to evolve and adapt our teaching to ensure that we are serving all of our students in an equitable way. I have found that I can look for spots in my curriculum where I can pivot my instruction or make space for some of these new ideas, and when I do, my students and I both grow.

https://choiceliteracy.com/article/branching-out-allowing-new-influences-on-our-pedagogy/