My Future Classroom

For each class concept, centering practice, and core commitment, there is a searchable tag under each post that indicate which elements are being explored in the post! 

For ease of access, I’ve compiled a list of links here for my posts by all the concepts, practices, and commitments I’ve explored throughout my project. All you have to do is click and explore!

Commonly Explored Class Concepts:

Language Ideologies

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

Translanguaging

Homework Hotline

Funds of Knowledge

Additional Class Concepts Explored:

Anti-Black linguistic racism

Anti-Racist Pedagogy

Third Space

Deficit Theory

Positioning Theory

Black Language

Anti-Banking Pedagogy

Reality Pedagogy

Discourse Communities

Intersectionality

Diversity in Texts

Representation

Settler Schools

Autobiography Assignment

Bilingual Education Programs

Cultural Studies Courses

Precious Knowledge (documentary)

All Centering Practices Explored:

Historicizing

Interrogating Power

Radical Imagination

Commonly Explored Core Commitments:

Identity as Teachers

Identity in our Practice

Identity to Radically Imagine

Inquiry as Teachers

Inquiry to Children and Youth

Inquiry in our Practice

Advocacy & Activism as Teachers

Advocacy & Activism in our Practice

Communities to Children and Youth

Communities to Radically Imagine

Additional Core Commitments Explored:

Identity to Children and Youth

Inquiry to Radically Imagine

Although this resource is one I’ve collected from a different class this semester, I feel as though it fits in to how I’m radically imagining my future classroom as a result of all the learning I’ve done in this course, so I wanted to include it!

As the graphic explains, diversity in children's books in 2018 pulled in some alarming numbers. The pedagogical approach of “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” advocates for the inclusion of texts that represent ALL students, not just the dominant majority. 

I think this ties in closely with many of the things we learned this semester about how it’s important for students to have a safe, engaging learning environment that also supports their authentic selves. From language, to cultural influence, to other forms of background knowledge, students deserve to see themselves within the books they read.

Since I will be an English Language Arts teacher at the high school level, I am going to advocate for the inclusion of an immense amount of diverse texts. From the observations I did this semester within an AP English IV classroom, I saw first-hand how much the student body was not represented within their own classroom. Only male, white, European authors were featured on the walls of the classroom and in the books they read. And while it’s possible for students to still make personal connections to Shakespeare and Dickens, they deserve more!

I have already begun to curate a long, diverse text set that I hope I can implement into my teaching (here’s to praying for a district that will let me!). And when it comes down to it, I will be more than willing to attend every school board meeting to fight for my students’ rights to representation in our curriculum. 

I wanted to post this video we watched this semester because it was extremely impactful as I reflected on my own experiences with language in education. When I was writing my autobiography, I felt stuck, at first, because I only speak English and could recall being very catered to in the classroom. I had a lot of privilege. 

But when we watched this video, it made me remember several things. 

First, it reminded me of the “Kill the Indian, save the man” mentality that colonizers used to justify their bigotry, hatred, and abuse towards Indigenous peoples in America. Stereotypes and bigoted judgments against BIPOC and people who speak languages other than English have permeated the history of our education system, and I saw how that mentality easily transformed into bigotry against Latinx people specifically in my elementary school. 

That was the second thing this video reminded me of — how Spanish was replaced in our curriculum when I was in elementary school for an additional science class instead. I talked about this in my autobiography, and how my best friend who was an emergent bilingual student felt a real lack of representation when that class was removed. 

Espinosa & Ascenzi-Moreno, 2021

Reflecting on the sessions I did for the Homework Hotline this semester, I recognized one overarching thought that I had after every session:

Students deserve an educator who can meet them where they are, no matter what.

I did a lot of great work with students over these sessions — helped with lots of math, taught a student how to identify tone, and in some cases I just sat with a student while they worked through the problems because they just needed some company. All of the sessions, however, inspired me to put this reality pedagogy into real action. They inspired me to learn Spanish.

For context, I am a native English speaker and only really know English. I’ve taken French classes since I was 14 years old, and even now am only conversationally fluent in it. I often found myself regretting that decision during the hotline sessions, because I felt I should’ve invested all those years of learning into Spanish rather than French. But, it’s never too late to learn!

Although I never had a student complain about my monolingualism, I couldn’t help but feel like I was doing them a disservice every time I had to be paired with a Spanish-speaking helper during a session. I felt like these students were going to great lengths to get their work done, and I couldn’t be bothered to help them in their language? It just didn’t feel fair, especially when I know that I have the resources to learn.

Following up on my previous post, a big way in which I’m radically imagining my future classroom is through the vast implementation of translanguaging. Although we talked about translanguaging several times throughout the semester with different resources, I wanted to share this video I found as a more simple, quick reference to the concept.

Because I did my “We’ll Take The Lead” project over Black Language and critical language pedagogy, I felt a deep resonance to the idea explored in the “’Make Sure You See This’” article about how translanguaging “frames multilingual Black girls as language architects,” (Presiado & Frieson 2021). This technically also goes back to anti-banking education and the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy, both things that I subscribe to and hope to implement in my classroom/lesson design. 

Not only will I encourage my students to share their authentic voice in their writing (as I explained in my previous post) but I will also encourage students to provide recommendations for class readings. Although I’ll do my part to research and provide a vast and diverse text set for my class, I want my students to feel like the classroom is just as much theirs as it is mine — and asking them for suggestions is just one way I can make that happen! 

Here is a list of book recommendations that was included in my “We’ll Take The Lead” project earlier this semester, just to get the suggestions started! https://www.bu-ceed.org/uploads/1/3/3/0/133043669/ceed__aave_book_list_2021__2_.pdf

---

Early in the semester, we read two articles that jumpstarted a huge ideological change in my teaching philosophy. “Not mere abstractions” by Malathi Michelle Iyengar and “Positioning teachers, positioning learners” by Michaela Colombo et al. (full citations at bottom of post) both touched on the ways that language ideologies have been used throughout U.S. history to uphold systemic racism against BIPOC. 

Colombo et al. made a point that really stuck with me about how language = power, and multicultural/multilingual students, spanning across time, have recognized that speaking English is imbued with so much power that some view it as synonymous with “being American,” (Colombo et al. 2018).

Now, I completely agree with the original context that we read these articles in: advocating for equitable, bilingual education programs in schools. However, when I think about how I’ll implement the values of interrogating power in conjunction with language ideologies within my English Language Arts classroom, I feel a strong pull towards a somewhat controversial method of teaching and grading writing assignments.

I plan to focus much of my writing lessons (or at least the preliminary ones) with the idea that one’s audience is just as important as one’s message, for the purpose of allowing my students to write essays in their authentic voice. What I mean by this is that I will not “take off points” for students who translanguage, use slang, or use “improper” grammar in their essays — as long as I’m in the intended audience. I feel there is no reason to assert the ideology of “academic English” (as we learned about in Week 10, the April Baker-Bell article “Dismantling anti-black linguistic racism in English language arts classrooms”) on my students as I see it as antithetical to the creative process that should be supported in language arts! 

I say this is controversial because oftentimes people take issue with not “correcting” or editing a student’s paper for “proper grammar.” That is where I believe that my teachings on audience would come into play. If a student is writing a college admissions essay, then I will teach them how to best prepare for that audience — which is likely going to require them to use “proper grammar” for their best shot at admission. But if I am asking a student to write an expository essay to be read by me, their teacher, I want them to know that my primary goal (apart from meeting state standards, of course) is hearing their voice! I don’t want to receive a paper that reads as if it were written by a robot, or a paper that is “messy” by academic English standards because a student is bilingual. I want to hear my students. I want to see what they have to say, and I don’t want them to feel restricted by arbitrary rules about how one should speak, write, talk, or all three. 

This is just one of the ways that I hope to practice anti-bias/anti-black pedagogy, and interrogate power as an educator. 

---

Baker-Bell, A., (2020). Dismantling anti-black linguistic racism in English language arts classrooms: Toward an anti-racist black language pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 59(1), 8-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2019.1665415

Colombo, M., Leider, C. M., & Tigert, J. M., (2018). Positioning teachers, positioning learners: Why we should stop using the term English learners. TESOL, 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.432

This course introduced me to the concept of Third Space which encompasses many pedagogical approaches that I’ve already assimilated into my future plans as a teacher (such as deficit theory, positioning theory, and culturally sustaining pedagogy). I feel like it is of the upmost importance to not just support our culturally and linguistically diverse students, but also facilitate opportunities for them to lead the classroom. I radically imagine doing this in my future English Language Arts classroom in many ways, one of which being lessons designed to call upon students to enter their own Third Space.