Critical Self-Reflection - St. Mark Project

ANTISEMITISM - BOMBING - WHO? WHY? 

  

        
        We worked with the Grade 5 students at St. Mark School on an event called Voices for Change - speaking out against many forms of oppression. The students shared what they learned about different historical events (both long ago and recent events) - why things happened and how we can prevent these types of events from happening in the future. These students were VERY responsive to this type of anti oppressive education and showed their knowledge through various art forms. 

        I found it a very interesting experience working with the two grade five students in our group for the Voices for Change project. We were discussing the bombing of Montreal's United Talmud Torah School that happened in April of 2004. At our first meeting with the class we had all read an article and were working on coming up with questions. The why, the who were the major questions that the students as and they worked at figuring out the major details of the event. Each of the girls surprised me as they are only in grade five and they were able to think of all the major questions that I also would have had about the event. I don't think that I ever attempted to protect whiteness throughout this project, we were always very open with addressing the antisemitism that happened in this event. I definitely thought of the connections to our course and the topics that we had been discussing - I do not think that topics like this one were lost on these students, even though they were only in grade five. It was important to go in with an open mind and to not underestimate what the students could accomplish through this project. They developed thoughtful questions and figured out the answers while discussing the type of oppression this was
        Through our research we found that this event happened because the bomber blamed Jewish people for the killing of a leader in his home country (this was his reasoning for committing this awful act). After finding this in one of the articles that we read the students started asking questions and we worked together as co-learners to research and find the answers that they needed. We aided in helping them find the answers and find the discourse that was being used within the articles to describe the event. We had both challenges and successes during the time we were working with the students. It was hard to keep the students on task because they were so excited to be working with us. Also, because of this, we were able to have good conversations with the students about these types of issues. It was an excellent environment for talking about these types of oppression. My worldview definitely shaped how I viewed this event and talking about it with the students. I can't  think of one specific example but I don't think that you can possible talk about these issues without your worldview somewhat affecting how you view it. As much as you can try to teach these things without bringing your worldview into play, it will somehow be there and you must acknowledge this in your classroom - everyone has a worldview that will come into play.

Assist teachers in understanding how all students benefit from integrating Indigenous knowledge and anti-colonial/oppressive content

Engaged Citizens

(Related to the following Goals of Education: Career and Consumer Decisions, Membership in Society, and Growing with Change)

Students demonstrate confidence, courage, and commitment in shaping positive change for the benefit of all. They contribute to the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of local and global communities. Their informed life, career, and consumer decisions support positive actions that recognize a broader relationship with, and responsibility for, natural and constructed environments. Along with this responsibility, students recognize and respect the mutual benefits of Charter, Treaty, and other constitutional rights and relationships. Through this recognition, students advocate for self and others, and act for the common good as engaged citizens.

How does the incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge and Anti-oppressive teaching encourage the development of engaged citizens?

By both looking at Indigenous knowledge and through anti-oppressive teaching, students can better understand the world around them and work to make a positive change to benefit all people, including themselves. Becoming engaged citizens by trying to shape a positive change can start right in the classroom – if our students are taught about Indigenous knowledge they will better understand current events, for example news surrounding the treaties and treaty rights. Giving our students opportunities to become involved in the changing of the cycle of structural determinism can be a major benefit, giving them the chance to become responsible citizens and allowing them to share their learnings. Through learning about historical oppression of all kinds the students can better make informed decisions throughout their life to change this cycle. Giving our students the chance to make changes in their communities (locally and globally) has numerous benefits but I think a big one is giving them a chance to better understand themselves, their classmates, and society. For example: by learning about racism and discrimination students can reflect on their own knowledge and beliefs as well as the beliefs of others and of society and if they see something that is wrong and reaffirming the cycle of structural determinism they will have the tools and knowledge to step forth and make a change.

Thank you Carmen!

Shout out to an excellent teacher who made me question a lot of what I thought I knew every Monday afternoon for the last 10 weeks. Through reading these articles and reflecting on my personal opinions I have been able to broaden by perspectives and hear other peoples viewpoints. I hope to take lessons that I've learned in this class through into my teaching career and make my future classroom a safer place for students to voice their opinions - just like you let us all voice ours!

Journal Part Three - March 16th

Challenging Views Towards Inclusive Education of Disabled Students (Horn - 2009)

"What we let happen to our most vulnerable citizens speaks to our moral fibre as a society. Whether we mean to teach them or not, our children absorb those lessons and carry them into subsequent generations."

        I struggled with this reading because inclusive education is something that I am passionate about and I can't imagine a school like this. I chose this quote to start with because I think that it encapsulates the essence of the article. This article is centered around the controversy of the Woodlands School which was exclusively for students with exceptionalities. This school was overcrowded and under-resourced, which bread chronic neglect and abuse of the students that went there. The school was eventually closed down in 1996 due to all of these terrible problems and with the help of a small persistent group of families advocating for their children. I believe that this quote sums up what a school like this is teaching children - that it is okay to "shove" the students who have exceptionalities to the outside and not have them participate in mainstream schooling. I hold the belief that students with exceptionalities should be included in schools with their peers because we can all learn from each other. They have the right to learn from their peers just like their peers should learn from them. Incorporating students with exceptionalities may be a challenge for classroom teachers with 30 other students but it allows for expansion of your own knowledge and helps facilitate student success.

        I have had a lot of experience with the two different sides of inclusive education. My brother being a student with a TBI [traumatic brain injury] I have seen him be a victim of both sides. Throughout his schooling he tended to be shipped off somewhere new and NEVER had an IIP in place. I know that these types of documents existed throughout his time so I now wonder why one was never in place. When my he was in younger grades only one single teacher (from when he was in K-6) acknowledged that he had different needs than his peers and actively tried to help differentiate her instruction. This is where I saw him fall victim to the inclusion side of this articles argument. Once he reached the middle years (7/8) he was essentially shipped off to another school where he was placed in a special needs class. This school was not anywhere near to our home and was the only place in Prince Albert at the time that had any specialized programming. This is where the exclusive education started and his teacher obviously held preconceived notions about their students. I had mentioned in class that one of his teachers had told my parents that he would never be able to drive. It was his teacher in grade 7/8 that said this (be reminded that this teacher had special training for classes like this). This reading just reminded me that students, like my brother, have been somewhat (or extremely) neglected by the education system because it was "too hard" or "too much work" to deal with. I do not believe that students with exceptionalities should be shoved to the margins because other students see that and subliminally take that message that doing so is okay. If we as teachers push these students with exceptionalities to the margins of our classroom and our schools and then eventually out of our schools (for example schools like the Woodlands School) the other students will see this and think that it is acceptable. Having students with exceptionalities in our classrooms can help us learn about different learning styles and how to adapt to individual students needs. Having a variety of levels and needs in the classroom allows students to learn form one another and you are more prepared to encounter people of varying abilities and personalities outside of the classroom. This type of thinking reminds me of our EDUC 302 class where we discussed inclusion and its advantages. I (fairly obviously) have strong feelings about these types of schools because of my experiences and it blows me away that in this day and age there is any movement for anything other than inclusion. It really shocked me that there is another push in BC to have a school just for autistic children - I do not agree and think that there is a place for every child in mainstream schools.
         Obviously, this article hit close to home with me and topics like these have a strong impact on my teaching practice. I believe that all students in the classroom can learn from each other and if a student does not absolutely need to be taken out for special assistance they should not be. I do understand that there are cases where students need to get caught up and need the extra help but students should spend most their of their time in the home classroom. There obviously has to be a happy medium that is best for the student - somewhere between being in a school like Woodlands and being in the home classroom 100% of the time. Children can learn so much from one another and I think that this is something that I will be addressing in my future classrooms. I always try to get students of different levels working together and students of the same level working together: all expanding their knowledge. This will all be simultaneous with teaching about the discrimination of people who are not the "normal" - no matter what age a student is at, they can understand that everyone is different and has different skills.

 Seeing, Hearing, and Talking Race: Lessons for White Teachers from Four Teachers of Color (Michie - 2007) 

 

 "As a White person and a recent transplant from the South, I had just as much, if not more, to learn about the context of my teaching: the lived experiences of my students and their families, the social and economic landscape of the school's neighborhood, and the ways my work with urban kids would be impacted by issues of culture, language, class, and race."

        This reading helped me to understand what I still need to learn because it brought up many issues that I am still uncomfortable with myself. This article discusses the story of a White male teacher who teaches on the south side of Chicago and his struggles with addressing the affects of race in the classroom, school, and community. The quote above outlines what he knew he had to try and understand. I think that he knew, as a knew new White teacher, in a school with many different races represented he would have some gaps in knowledge but I don't think it was until he started that he knew how large the gap would be. Instead of teaching being all lesson planning and only addressing the bare minimum he had to delve deeper into the issues of race with his students. He states that there are several lessons that you can learn from teachers of color if you listen to the vast knowledge that they have to offer. They suggest things such as - examine whiteness, be honest about your gaps and commit to learning more, clarify your purposes for teaching, challenge your students and don't pity them, and (I think) most importantly: be resilient. Changes in regards to teaching within a community that you are unfamiliar with will not and cannot happen overnight. If, like me, you want to try to address the issue of race in the classroom, it is important to be resilient and keep learning because there will always be new ways to address and combat the issues that race present to your students.

        When this article mentioned examining whiteness as a way to further your own knowledge it made me reflect on the whiteness I see in my own life, specifically in the school I am student teaching in. Upon reading this article and having the discussion of examples of whiteness in class, I realized that I cannot think of one teacher at my school that is not white (one student teacher but of the paid teachers... none). There are EAs at my school that are of color but none of the teachers... this surprised me because the school that I am at has so many different cultures represented in the students, yet, not a lot of diversity among staff. Just like we said in class - this is not a bad OR a good thing but it is just something to note. This is not to say that I have not had a good learning experience student teaching - quite the opposite. I have learned a lot about different cultures through my time student teaching that I was not aware of or exposed to before. I also really liked that being resilient was one of the lessons that they thought teachers of color should know. This was one of the points that really resonated with me. As someone who is becoming a teacher, I think that I can sometimes have unrealistic expectations of the changes that I want to make in the futures of my students. Even though I know that no change in the classroom (realistically) can happen overnight this is a point that I need to remind myself of. Learning about all these ways that teachers have incorporated social justice into their classroom is fantastic but whether or not I can actually do this in the long run... sometimes I am not sure. I know there are many tools out there to help teachers do so and a wealth of resources out there but this can all be overwhelming - especially to a new teacher like me. I know that this kind of change can't just happen overnight but as a new teacher I don't know where to start. I don't want to be "one of those teachers" that says "I'm colour blind" but I also don't know how long it will take me to become someone who does take those extra steps to teach the effects of racism and doesn't just try to get through the curriculum.
        I know that this kind of thing takes time and it will take a while to get to a place where social justice can be a main focus but I think that just opening a dialogue can be a good starting point for teachers who are just starting out. I would like to think of myself as a very open minded person - so incorporating different opinions into classroom discussions seems like a good place to start. Starting by just addressing the issues that come up within your classroom (I think) is a reasonable place to start for a beginner teacher. Asking the questions like "why do you think that?" and "do you know that to be true?" can be good places to get a discussion going with students about the issues that race present in the classroom, school as a whole, and the community. Obviously the issue of addressing whiteness will come up at the forefront of my teaching being a white person but addressing that can also open up that dialogue. Due to this whiteness though, I have experienced privilege and may not be able to connect to some students and their experiences. I hope, that in my teaching practice I can find common ground and try to understand any type of oppression or discrimination that my students may have experienced and keep an open mind throughout the process. If I am not able to connect experiences to my own I fear that I won't be able to properly discuss or even facilitate discussions on the topic at hand. Addressing the issue of race is fairly daunting and overwhelming to a beginner like me but hopefully with time it will become a somewhat comfortable issue to address.

500 Feet of Respect - Queering a study of the criminal justice system (Kelley - 2014) 

"After many contemplative subway rides, I decided to create a course that would allow kids like Ty and Stormy to hear one another and take action against their common experience: entrapment, disenfranchisement, and targeted criminalization."

"The act of making the choices and seeing the consequences allowed the students to see the workings of a system. [...] As we debriefed the activity, students confronted a chilling truth: No matter what you do, chances are you'll end up in the same place."

        I felt empowered by this reading mainly because this teacher addressed the link between school and students feeling misunderstood and oppressed, and gave some of the practical ideas he used to help his students understand each other. This teacher thought that he was nurturing an accepting environment in the classroom but after an incident of two students fighting, his opinion changed. These students were fighting (as I see it) mainly because they did not understand each other, though they both experienced discrimination and oppression in previous schools they did not see how they were similar, just how they were different. This article gave some practical ideas on how to bring the issue of race into the classroom and help students relate to each other. It also really shed light on how you can tie different types of experiences together. I really liked that this particular teacher used a negative event within the school and tried to help the students learn from it. I think that this is something that can be done within the school instead of just blind punishment or counseling that goes nowhere. I found it interesting that this specific fight caused the teacher to reflect what he was actually presenting in the class and he took the steps to make the changes necessary to help the problems. This is an example of breaking the cycle of telling these students that they are "bad" because they are in a transfer school and have done bad things - just because they made bad choices when they were young doesn't mean that they've given up on education altogether. This author in particular did an amazing job with his class bringing people from different backgrounds together to help understand each other by addressing both sexual orientation and race simultaneously was truly impressive.

        Although I did like the content of this article, I did find it hard to relate to because I have never been in any situation like the students or the teacher in this article. I have noticed that (like in this article) it seems that the minority makes up the majority of people who are incarcerated. Only through hearing news stories and reading have I found this out though. These statistics are astounding to me, and it is crazy that it has been like this for so long. The closest experience that I can think of that relates to this is seeing people get in trouble in elementary school. In this article it touched on when certain students in school get branded as "bad kids" it is hard to get out of that cycle. I saw this type of thing happening throughout elementary school (even though these students were not coming from juvenile detention centers). Once my fellow students were branded as those students that got in trouble (I was never that student - so I only saw this happening from the outside) they seemed to keep getting in trouble. Throughout elementary school there were always the same kids getting in trouble and it really never seemed to change. I wonder if this is the same cycle that the story refers to or like the other article discusses - this could be the pipeline and the type of cycle that is landing certain kids in trouble - and that there is a connection between these cycles of structural determinism and incarceration rates. When students are told their over and over that they are not good kids and no matter what they do they can't seem to break the cycle they may give up and like the quote I picked out says - no matter what you do you'll always end up in the same place, so why try?

        I think that this article and my experiences can help inform my practice as a teacher. Thinking about students getting so much flack at school that they kind of give up on education makes me incredibly sad and frustrated that this can happen to oppressed groups. Students of any race, of any ability, of any sexual orientation, and of any religion deserve to be in a place where they get the education they need - whatever their goals may be in life. Like I discussed in my first entry, I am a big advocate for inclusion and I am always interested in learning about new perspectives so hopefully through these views that have been shaped by my experience I can provide a safe place for my students to grow and succeed as learners. Making a place that students feel safe and can share will take time and a lot of effort but committing to create a place like this (like the author did) will pay off for students in the long run and engage them to get an education that they value.

Journal Part Two - February 23rd

The F-Word - An Introduction (Megan Seely - 2007) 

        This reading suggests that there are many stereotypes surrounding feminism and this supports my own knowledge because I have seen many depicted in everyday life. The article states that feminism simply means that women are equal to men. The article mentions many stereotypes that feminist are depicted as such as man haters, ugly, and angry which I see in the media being shown as “true”. They also mention the protest at the 1968 Miss America pageant where feminists were branded as bra burners and that term is still used to describe them now, almost fifty years later. I think these stereotypes explained in the reading are important because I have heard feminists wrongly referred to as angry ugly bra burning man haters and these stereotypes need to stop. Throughout my schooling I have never been taught a lot about gender equality – which is simply what feminism is – and now with the negative connotation with the word, people shy away from addressing the subject. I think that there are steps that can be taken in my teaching practice that could help deter these myths from being portrayed. We can help negate the amount of people who use the phrase “I’m a feminist but…” – there should be no shame in proclaiming feminism because it is not a negative thing.
        I personally reject these stereotypes about feminism but I know that these are the ideas I have been taught to believe through the media and through some of the people in my life. In grade three we had a supervisor at our school that very obviously didn’t believe in equality for women and girls, although I may have not overtly known this then. He refused to let the girls play floor hockey on the playground because he said it was a “boys” sport – whatever that means. Back then, we did protest that we were not being allowed the same opportunities as the boys – most likely the beginning of my feminist beliefs. I personally had no interest in playing hockey with the rest of them but if I wanted to, I wanted to know that there would be no objections. I can relate to the article saying that many people think that being a feminist can be thought of as a negative thing, proclaiming to the world that I possess feminist beliefs is not something that I do often because of what people think the meaning of the word is – to rephrase: if everyone knew the true meaning of feminism (men and women are equal) then I would have no problem proclaiming my beliefs – it is the negative connotation of the word that holds be back.

        These beliefs that I hold and personal experiences I have had with misogyny (discrimination due to gender) that eventually lead to fighting for equality and inadvertently, my feminist beliefs definitely inform how I go about teaching. Sometimes I am afraid that I somewhat overcompensate for what I experienced as a child – meaning I am afraid that sometimes without thinking I favor the girls in the class so they don’t feel the same discrimination. This could end up reaffirming the stereotypes that this article discusses because I may come across as a “man hater” even if it is without thinking about it. The few times that I have noticed this happening I obviously felt terrible for imposing something that happened to me on other people and I try to correct the behaviour – it is just hard to find a balance between the two where there is no favoring and everyone has equal opportunities. I think that is why we need to open up a dialogue about this with our students because there are still issues that need to be addressed when it comes to feminism. Teaching feminism to our students doesn’t mean teaching them to be man haters or angry women, it’s simply teaching them to be informed about their actions and like me – to hope that you can one day treat everyone as equal without having to constantly have equality in the back of your mind.

The Myth of the "Culture of Poverty" (Paul Gorski - 2008)

        This reading made me feel terrible because I know that I have been guilty of attributing these myths, I myself have thought these at one time or another. This reading suggest that there are several myths that are associated with students and parents living in poverty such as: they are unmotivated and have poor work ethics, they are uninvolved and uninterested in education, they are linguistically deficient, and that they tend to abuse drugs and alcohol. The reading also offers some things that we can do to help disband these myths and one that I found the most interesting and perhaps most difficult is to respond when colleagues stereotype poor students or parents. This solution could open discussions in schools on what we are doing to attribute to the stereotypes surrounding poverty.

        Throughout my elementary years I went to a community school not in the greatest part of town – but it by far wasn’t in the worst, but through this experience I definitely noticed some things and saw some myths being depicted. My school had a large First Nations population and at the time it seemed that a lot of their parents were not very involved in their education – at least from what I could see. It was not until I was older that I considered what other facts I could be missing but by this time I already had these myths ingrained in my mind. From my point of view it just seemed that it was just my group of three or four good friends whose parents were involved in our extra-curricular activities and consistently showed up around the school when needed. I now know that many parents of my classmates could have been unable to get out of work for class activities and could have perhaps been working more than one job to support their family (they didn't have flexible schedules as my parents had some of the time). Of course this may not have been the case all the time but I do not know what was going on in their lives. Later on, in high school when there was usually less need for parental volunteers I started to notice that people that I perceived as “poor” did exhibit some of the qualities that were talked about in this article, mostly that they were unmotivated when it came to school work and they tended to be the ones who were the “party crowd” that drank a lot. I did go to a very large high school (my graduating class being just over 400 students) so what I experienced was a small fraction of what was going on at our school. Thinking about it now, I barely knew anything about most of the people that I may perceive as “poor” because we didn’t have the same circle of friends – even if we did have a class together once in a while. These experiences I had did contribute to my thinking about the culture of poverty, and definitely contributed to me thinking that some of these myths were "always" true.

        I know that these associations between what I see and what the culture of poverty looks like came together in my head and I definitely am guilty of making assumptions. I hope that all these myths that I am guilty of thinking at one time or another do not have an effect on how I teach. Considering I have not been in schools long I have not had much chance to interact with parents but from what I have seen there are many people that just blame the myths and do not look for the deeper problem. It may just be easier to blame the fact that the parents aren’t as involved in their child’s education on the fact that they are poor and unmotivated people but this is most likely not the case. There are many extenuating factors that may be at play in families lives that we as teachers may not know about. This is where the solution that Gorski offers comes into play - speaking up when it comes to these stereotypes being portrayed. It could be a very helpful strategy is ending the myth of the culture of poverty but it also puts the group involved in an uncomfortable situation. It goes back to knowing when to fight your battles and approaching the question in a non-threatening way. I think because I am now on the other side of seeing these myths (being a student vs. being a teachers) I will be more aware of what is going on and be able to see that the myth of the "culture of poverty" is what it is - a myth and not the whole story.

Reading, Writing, and Race: Literacy Practices of Teachers in Diverse Classrooms (Gloria Ladson-Billings - 2006) 

        This reading invites me to rethink subtle racism in the classroom because it is obviously having an effect on student performance, weather we are aware of the connection or not. I find it interesting that in this study the teachers know that they are labeling mostly the African American, Native American, and Latino children as “students of concern” but none of them thought that it was an issue of race that they were dealing with - they treated it simply as an issue of literacy. They also address that these students being pulled out of the classroom takes away from their time in other subjects. The one teacher in the group that was willing to kind of address race as a possible contributing factor was the one who had taught in an all African American classroom. She saw results from her students just like she did from her students in her current classroom because her methods were effective. This teacher was criticized for being old school, but she saw results from the students (no matter what their race) so she stuck to what worked. The other teachers in the school had classes divided – the students that were struggling with reading were generally the African American children. 

        In schools I have seen comparable examples of this – through working in the schools I have noticed that the children in the specialized reading programs tend to be the First Nations students as well at the EAL students. The example we talked about in class where the teacher just placed the First Nations child in math help got me thinking about his prevalence. It gets me wondering if students just get placed in these programs without a second thought or without background information. This again goes back to questioning other colleagues about what the students actually need and fighting the myth that ALL the First Nations students will need extra help when they are switching schools. I have also noticed that these students that are receiving extra help in the area of reading, writing, and other language arts are missing out on other parts of the curriculum. This is something that may have happened when I was going to elementary school but I never noticed it until I was student teaching and saw the children leaving consistently during a certain subject. This is definitely problematic as a teacher because you want your students to be up to speed with reading because it of course helps with all other subjects but you also want your students to be able to experience all subjects. I believe that the students should be able to take part in all subjects but it is hard to have them participating if they can't understand or comprehend what I am saying. I don't know that this specific experience has been a result of race being an issue but it could be. I mean, all the EAL students in my classroom are different races - most coming from Pakistan and India. The First Nation students are the ones in the read to succeed program, I don't know that it is a matter of race but I am aware that it may be. Unlike the teachers in the reading I am aware of race being a factor in the classroom and children from different culture may relate to different types of material. If you try to be a "colour blind" teacher you are completely ignoring that part of their life and therefore diminishing them further - ignoring their race and culture as a factor can hurt their ability to learn and share about their culture.

          Things that I have seen in student teaching will definitely inform my teaching practice. I have been shown in my partner school that literacy and spoken English comes first and all other subjects kind of take a back seat in a way. I agree with this to an extent but my opinions contradict themselves - I want students to be involved in all subject areas but I also want them to be at the appropriate grade level in regards to reading. I find it hard to have both of these things - their reading may suffer if they are placed in the classroom for all subject areas but their achievement across subject areas may suffer if they are taken out of the classroom for extra reading and writing help. I feel like you should be able to have both - but so far I don't see a way that you can have one with the other and that makes me feel frustrated. I don't think that students should be profiled because of their race but I know race exists and is a factor in students lives. I do not think of myself as a "colour blind" teacher but I know that I have never addressed race in the classroom and don't exactly know how to go about it. It is a tricky subject to address but it does need to be addressed... but how? I am still trying to figure that out.