Marxist teaching techniques
I found an article written by a teacher, about the real life ways you can subvert the structure of teaching, to cultivate raised self esteem in the students as well as critical thinking, whilst still remaining within the syllabus. I took a ton of notes from this, but I will only share the most important, however this will still be a lot. The link to the article is here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/29765917.pdf
Things teachers must deal with:
+ The negative feelings students have about being in school institutions + Feelings of invalidation that interfere with the ability to learn. + The painful associations students have with certain topics, such as racism.
The main techniques were taken from multiple examples:
+ Students should voice their difficulties with classes and school institutions, saying them angrily or dramatically. Every student should have an equal amount of time to do so. + Start lessons on positive notes, so that they hear what you are trying to communicate. Have the students break off in pairs and tell each other something good that happened to them recently. + Break the classroom tension by encouraging laughter and doing things to entertain one another. + Capitalism brands working together as ‘cheating’, whereas a friendly and supportive environment increases learning. Have students ask each other for help whenever is needed. + Group discussion should be conducted in a ‘Think-and-listen’ framework, where each student is given an equal amount of time to speak without interruption. The lack of interruption allows thoughts to flow. There may be complaints from students on both ends of the confidence spectrum but it will usually work quite well. + Teachers should participate in all exercises. + The destruction of self respect in a capitalist society creates lethargic and apathetic students and teachers, to teach revolutionary ideas and actions, you need to confront these problems. Do this by: Pointing out students strengths ( not in being a goody-goody, but indicating full confidence in student potential growth because criticism in a capitalist society causes the feeling of helplessness), encourage students to validate themselves and the problem of invalidation, identity ‘put-downs’ as the mechanism of those who want to control and manipulate you, and putting yourself down is doing the enemy’s work for them. + Teachers should not set an example of self-denigration to bring themselves down to the students level. + Encourage talking about personal experiences and in the world of stratification to try deal with students own false consciousness, and validate them. + Pay close attention to the class background of the students and relate examples and discussions to this.
