What Makes Great Teaching?

 

    To be a great teacher you must be consciously aware of the impact you have on others. This is not only limited to our identity as teachers, but it must transfer to all aspects of our lives. In other words, it doesn't make sense to be a teacher without also fighting for social justice. The problems of our children are the problems of our communities. We cannot serve our students until we wrap our arms around the greater struggles of society, such as poverty, racism, and sexism just to name a few. In order to be adequate teachers for these kids we must construct culturally responsive pedagogy, and serve them lessons that not only take their history into account, but place it at the forefront of what is important. We have to find ways to reflect on the ingrained ideologies that have constructed the triggers that we act on within our classrooms, and our social lives. This class has offered a myriad of assignments that helped me accomplish deep reflection on my own predispositions and how to work past these triggers as I aim to help my students be culturally competent and accepting of differences. 

    The first assignment that helped me gain a deeper insight on my own ingrained ideologies was the text-to-world connections with Empathy Limiting Mistakes.  We all have to realize we are guilty of each of the mistakes that were discussed throughout the semester. This activity forced us to come to terms with that by identifying a specific event in our lives where we made empathy-limiting mistakes. We had to be critical of our past behaviors and reflect how we have changed from them. If we can’t be critical of ourselves, we will never listen when others try to give us constructive feedback.

    The following week we completed the Golden Lines Found Poem. To complete this assignment, we had to critically examine a collection of texts and employ our note taking skills to decipher which lines were the most important ones to be recorded. From there we had to deduce the overall meaning of the texts as a whole entity and exercise our creativity to assemble the most important lines into a poem with as many highlighted/omitted terms as we pleased. The powerful lines that were created as a result of this poem served as a personal reminder that we all are suffering through some sort of battle. It reinforced the previous week's lesson about having empathy, instead of judging people for struggles you can't relate to.

    An assignment that we completed much later in the semester was very similar to the found poem discussed in the previous passage, known as the Blackout Poem. We had to draw relations from a small passage of text to connect back to the overall nuances of the module assignments by highlighting and omitting pieces of a text to create a poem. Where this task varied from the prior is that the poem had to be constructed from a pre-selected passage rather than quotes that we chose and arranged ourselves. This required a greater level of creativity as we had to draw connections from texts that were already written, and cross analyze separate materials.

    My favorite assignment from the semester was the One Pager. For this task we were allowed to select a few items from a list of tiny projects to construct a one-page artwork which reflects the overall module. I accidentally did all of the tiny projects because I did not carefully read the instructions. I thought this was beneficial nonetheless because we had to look at the texts from a different perspective depending on the project. After I reviewed the text in about 6 different ways, I had a much deeper understanding of the module and how it can be applied to my career. Portions of the texts that were analyzed also brought back vivid memories from my childhood and the ideas that were pushed on to me as elements of my own culture which were actually ripped off from some one else's. 

    The longest spanning project that we completed, which I found the utmost beneficial for the goal of reaching an understanding of people who aren't the exact same as ourselves was the social media assignment. We were required to create and post on blog pages throughout the semester. We had to learn how to engage in effective and productive discourse with our peers while maintaining dignity and respect. I think this task was also beneficial to us because it can be seen by future employers and peers, like a portfolio. We may also choose to continue posting on it, and hosting discussions to further our understanding of unfamiliar topics and issues.

What is Worth Learning?

 

    Before our students can learn anything from us, we have to make them feel safe and heard. Moreover, we have to empathize with their strife when they bring problems to our attention, and we must bring those issues to the forefront of our lessons. 

    To restructure our curriculum in a nature that places our student's issues as top priority, we have to critically examine our teaching of the past and discern whether it has had negative implications for communities within our nation. We cannot erase what has happened in the past, nor should we try to forget about it. We must feel the pain and bear it with us as a constant reminder to fight for our students until each one has the education best fit for their cultural needs. 

    As we frame the new curriculum, one which is pedagogically reflective and responsive to each community within our social schema, we have to center our discussions around the groups we have marginalized for decades, centuries even. More than just teaching our kids to be tolerant, we must teach them to be anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-oppression. 

    Let us not forget through the strife to guide our students to exploring their heritage for all its joyous wonders. We can help our students imagine themselves in roles of success by expanding their access to role models who represent pieces of their own personal identities. The local town where our students reside is rich with living resources, people who grew up within the communities and can recall how much things have changed. We have to share their stories with our class too. 

    Lessons based in fear lead to deficit-thinking which furthers the educational disparities in minority populations. If we allow the divide between classes to grow any stronger we are perpetuating violence. 

    However, this does not mean we should omit topics that make people feel uncomfortable because it disregards the comfort we have thus far felt at the expense of the safety of our neighbors. If we ignore their struggles they will not just stay silent. They will likewise come together to put an end to it. 

    We have so much to learn from our students. Until we show them that our classrooms are a space where they are open to criticize our methods, we will fail to obtain the funds of knowledge that each of them has to offer. We have to reframe our mindsets to be open to this feedback, rather than rejecting it as many of us have been conditioned to do. 

    The impact of how we adjust our curriculum to fit the needs of the children within our spaces is dependent on our ability to get in tune with the influences that have socialized their attitudes and beliefs. We have the power to break our student's self-esteem and self-concept if we don't make the effort to understand how they view the world and teach from a perspective that's compatible with their understanding. 

    We can never truly make it up to the people who we have silenced in the past. We cannot erase the generational trauma that has bled over from years of abuse and inhumanity, but we can start repairing it by giving future generations the tools they need to succeed through reconstructing our curriculum to include the nullified curriculum of our past. 

What Does Money Really Have To Do With It?

When I first moved to Texas and became a registered voter here, it was at the peak of the 2016 election season. One day, someone campaigning for a republican state senate candidate knocked on my door. I was entirely unaware of her political party affiliation at the start of the conversation, but it wasn't hard to catch on as the interaction progressed. Her hook line was that she wanted to inform me of the terrors that are happening in our public school systems her in Texas. Generally I would turn away these political volunteers, but she intrigued me so I took the bait. I listened as she ranted and raved about how hard our local school districts worked to earn the funding that they have, and now its being stolen and given to less deserving districts. She emphasized that these districts are less deserving because they did not work for the funding, and that voting for the state senator she was endorsing would help end these practices. 

This volunteer didn't understand the implications she was making, but the way I see it she was imposing her capitalistic views on beings who aren't even participants in this money making hell-scape yet. It  contributes to why poor kids are forced to 'mature up' faster than their wealthier peers. They are expected to show they are deserving of help, and then help is instead granted based on the performance of the administration in their communities. When she says that certain districts worked harder than others to raise money, does she mean that the children within those schools worked harder, or the adults who service them? We know that the children rely on us for success, and any shortfalls are our responsibility to attend to. It is never the child's fault. So then how come it's okay in some people's minds to hold children accountable for the shortfalls of the adult systems working around them by refusing them adequate funding? 

As I previously stated, we live in a capitalist hell-scape. Money is what makes our world go around. The people who have amassed the greatest amount of wealth in the world had to exploit others in order to gain that position. Now they are asking us to exploit our children so that they can hold on to their treasure; Educate their own children; Build their empire. By pushing for the removal of programs like The Robinhood Acts, you are holding children accountable for the adult systems failing around them, all whilst yelling at them to pull their selves up by their bootstraps and show they deserve better. Their performance can't improve until we do something to help them first, and it won't matter until we do. With the current education funding system in place in our capitalist society, it doesn't matter how hard they work because the rewards aren't granted in such a manor. The implications that certain districts are less deserving of money than others is equivocal to the thought process that the children inside of those schools are less deserving, and that's not very 'equal-rights' of us. Money has everything to do with it, but nothing our children do can get them the funding they need. That's on us.