#curriculum reflection

My main takeaway from this article is that I am very far away from the political opinions of most (White?) teachers. Like most of these teachers, I didn't know that undocumented students were entitled to public schooling, but I sure as hell wouldn't report any students I thought or knew were undocumented. Or their families.

Questions

I'm not sure at this time.

To Do

This article focuses on a group of Black teachers at a Southern school, and how they apply pedagogies of resistance. The athors focus on resistance in three ways: authenticity and vulnerability, building anti-racism into the curriculum, fostering self-advocacy among the students.

I deeply appreciate the article's historical grounding and discussion of how Brown V Board deeply hurt Black teachers (and in lots of ways Black communities). I wish we could go back in time and keep all those educators in the field. The smarts, the experience, and the wisdom of those Black educators would bring tremendous benefit to education. God, I mean a bunch of them are still alive.

The other part of this article that felt very valuable was the discussion of the special (double?) burden dealt with by Black teachers. They have to negotiate being a minority amongst teachers (i.e. the racism) and also support their own students (of color) in dealing with racism and other oppression. Yipes that's a lot of extra emotional labor.

Questions

Is there a way to tap the wisdom of the Black teachers disenfranchised after integration?

I love the commitment to self-advocacy for students; I think all students need it. My question is: since my students are mostly privileged, do they need a sense of other advocacy? Minority advocacy? Solidarity? I don't know what the right term is there and I need to ponder how to develop it.

To Do

At lot of this article feels self evident to me. Students need some sort of down time to connect with each other. They need the connection to be able to collaborate well, take risks and grow. Joy is a key part of the connections students make with each other and the teacher. Sometimes the joy doesn't seem to go anywhere, but it still benefits student learning.

Questions

I'm not sure I have any at this time.

To Do

To me this article emphasizes the importance of down time, which is supposed to be anathema to a well run classroom. I want to have that down time though. I think to do it I need build in a transition routine that gives students a chance to have that down time and come out of it.

This matches my school. There is a shallow curriculum where race is concerned. We are not all on the same page in terms of understandings of race and power. I try to talk to my students about the historical weight of words (the N word, the R word, more). I don't feel very good at talking to them about power.

If I was teaching about the US there would be natural inroads for it. I just need to find ways to use the natural inroads about country relationships. That's what I'm working toward now.

Questions

How can I emphasize the agency of BIPOC people?

To Do

I love the idea of backstitching in a lesson. Thinking about the articles I've read, it may be more of an anti-colonial lesson format. Students definitely benefit from circling back to the ideas. I typically discuss bias, stereotypes, and prejudice with my students, but not discrimination and privilege. It would help me and them to add discrimination and privilege to the discussion.

Questions

Given that we have discussions about stereotypes at the beginning of the year, when am I integrating discussions about power and privilege?

This seems like the right structure for math. Do I already backstitch in math? If not, how can i?

To Do

Something about the format/methodology of this article speaks to me. The minority centered and collaborative nature of it, perhaps?

I want students to have complicated understandings of history and develop a critical lens for reading the world. I want to better understand and teach post-colonial history.

I do my best to teach about other countries from their first person voices. I'm thinking about how to teach about country relations grounded in a historical knowledge of colonialism.

Questions

Is there more I can do to teach post colonially? Teach them why we learn this way, I guess.

Isn't patriotism a poison pill? How can I teach 9 year olds to be proud of a country that has made so many mistakes?

To Do

I found this article very generative. While I'm not a librarian, having a diverse library and integrating diverse books into my curriculum is one of my special interests. I am jazzed about the book recommendations and happy to see that there are some I do not know!

I talk with my team a lot about books as doors and mirrors, but the reference to books as sliding glass doors from Bishop 1990 felt new to me. I often feel like my students struggle with the books I get them as windows because they lack the cultural context. I think books like Any Day With You or The First Rule of Punk are awesome, but students will engage with them as a read aloud, but not engage independently (those texts have been given back to me as "not my thing"). Maybe the books weren't the students' thing or maybe it was too unfamiliar.

Questions:

I wonder how I can use the racial literacy development model described by Sealy-Ruiz. If I understand this article it's for teacher educators to use with pre-service teachers. But, how can I help my students critically reflect on their identities or biases? How can I help them analyze power? Such big questions.

Can I some how build this power analysis into teaching the students about countries of the world? Are they old enough/do they have enough context to think about who has power and who doesn't? As well as what that might mean?

To Do:

Use the one observation (how can I explain that?!), one connection, one question one surprise

Develop discussion questions that model rethinking personal bias.

Get more of these books:

This article made me think about how teacher preparation programs often doubly fail teachers of color. Since the majority of folks in the program are white, it seems sensible for a teacher preparation program to help these white future teachers confront their whiteness and privilege. However, that doesn't support teachers of color in the program. White (future) teachers definitely need to think about the role that race and other personal identities impact their teaching and the lives of their students. I agree with the author that it doesn't make sense for everyone in a teacher program to do that, because BIPOC folks don't have that privilege to deconstruct.

I love the author's use of Bondy et al.'s social justice framework, centering "ways to transform injustice rather than just minimizing it". That seems like something every teacher should learn and learn how to APPLY.

To Do:

Think more about this. Yes this is a disgustingly vague to do.

Questions: A critical part of culturally responsive teaching, and thus social justice teaching, is affirming students' ways of knowing and valuing their culture. How can I do that and activate their prior knowledge without crossing the line into pushing them to overshare?