Week 2 Response (Allen): 2023 Summer - GED 8210-1 - Investigating Contemporary and Critical Issues in Education

 “Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.”

 ― Paulo Freire

The class text reminds me of Herbert Kohl’s I Won’t Learn From You: and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustments as it pertains to exemplars of learning scenarios tied to family status and in-school academic performance; see the story about “Barry” (Kohl, 1995, p. 8).  Although not assigned this week, I liked Chapter One because it explores the importance of culturally responsive teaching practices in promoting student engagement and success; the authors highlight the need for an education system that recognizes the interconnectedness of social justice and environmental sustainability. They argue that traditional approaches to environmental education often ignore issues of power and privilege, perpetuating systems of oppression. In Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, Chapter 2, You Ain't Making Me Write (Paris, 2012), explores the importance of culturally responsive teaching practices in promoting student engagement and success. The authors argue that traditional approaches to writing instruction often need to account for students' diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, leading to disengagement and disinterest in writing. Instead, they advocate for a pedagogy that values students' cultural identities and experiences, incorporating them into the writing process. Teaching 6-12 undergraduate students to write better is a grueling and rewarding process. Sometimes, especially in secondary, the bar is moved, lowered if you will, into an ideology that takes away competition in favor of feelings or an ‘I can’t or don’t want to write that much.’ The chapter clearly defines and focuses on a student's writing process but also explains cultural editing and emotional rationales of student pushback in the case of Derek (p.33-38) and how social and family background noise like difficult home life, in-school social silos, and identity isolation and development might produce a blank stare from some students, but also produce agency for letting students tell their stories. In Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, Chapter 2, You Ain't Making Me Write, Paris (2012) deconstructs the trope of students acting out but somehow still delivering, citing that “Derek admits his ‘disrespect’ is because he has no father in the home” (#7, p. 40), which is part of a dominant norm or assumed identity when it comes to children of color, especially non-white male secondary scholars who are socially and academically underperforming.  As a higher ed teacher and 5-12 English Language Art (ELA) teacher, I feel that teaching students to write falls under each student’s lived experiences and life-learned discernment, and personal cognitive.  This clearly falls into the realm of and can be compared to the cognitive medical model of Zeretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain, more so, chapter eight: Information Processing to Build Intellectual Capacity (Hammond, 2014). Like Paris in Ch. 2, what Hammond does in Chapter 8 is to unfold questioning about how we use information processing to build intellectual capacity and the necessary questions we need to ask ourselves, which make sense to ask: “How do you incorporate information processing into your lessons currently?; How often do students have a chance to actively work through the elaboration stage of processing?; How explicitly have you taught students about using a set of cognitive routines to process content? Do you check to ensure they have internalized the routines? Where do you see an opportunity for incorporating more information-processing activities in your instruction?” (Hammond, 2014). 

Simply stated, each student should have the opportunity to achieve mastery through blended learning, self-paced structures, and mastery-based grading (not everything is graded, but everything graded is mastered). If we can send NBA players into space with Elon Musk, we should be able to teach K-12 scholars to write (I apologize in advance).

I see it like this: An education system that recognizes the interconnectedness of social justice and the environment is one that acknowledges the impact of environmental issues on marginalized communities. Such a system understands that climate change, pollution, and other environmental problems disproportionately affect low-income individuals, people of color, and indigenous communities. It also recognizes that these groups are often excluded from decision-making processes related to environmental policies. In contrast, an education system that does not recognize this interconnectedness may prioritize traditional academic subjects over topics related to social justice and the environment. This can lead to a lack of awareness among students about the ways in which environmental issues intersect with social justice concerns. A socially just education system would prioritize teaching students about the connections between environmental issues and social inequality. It would also incorporate diverse perspectives into its curriculum, including those from marginalized communities who are most affected by these issues. Doing so would equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to address these complex challenges in their future careers and personal lives.

Reference 

Hammond, Z. L. (2014). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic   

    engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. SAGE          

    Publications. Link to PDF of Chapter 8:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w7vwT4bPle00bxYH8lb96BdznPWKmQPE/view?usp=copy

Kohl, Herbert R. "I Won't Learn from You": and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment. New York: New Press: Distributed by Perseus Distribution, 1995.

Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X12441244