It is the tension of the opposing forces that permits all of us the stability we need to operate while also granting the fl uidity to personalize and improvise our transactions with our worlds.
An interesting perspective and one that I hadn't really thought of before. Tension of opposing forces that ultimately helps to center us and provide stability.
A critical literacy means that students probe who benefits and who suffers, how did it come to be this way, what are the alternatives, and how can we make things more just?
Simple questions that challenge students as readers and thinkers, often leading to complex and difficult answers.
still hadn’t created classrooms that matched the classroom in my imagination, where students read, argued, and wrote passionately. I moved in the right direction when I stopped believing that I was the one who knew and they were the ones who needed to know. I became curious about what I didn’t know:
I think this is the struggle for so many teachers. Figuring out how to move beyond this idea of being the "one who knows" requires a lot of work on the part of the teacher. And yet are we actually allowing this kind of work and reflection to take place in our schools? How can we better support our teachers?
My students’ voices and lives didn’t need “housekeeping”; they didn’t need to be told to “hush.” They needed a teacher who could unleash their beauty on the page and their capacity to discuss and argue in the classroom. When I stopped attending to test scores and started listening to the music of my students’ voices and seeing them as “more than a score,” I increased my capacity to engage them. I knew what didn’t work, but I still didn’t know what did work.
Connecting with students, listening to them, attempting to understand their lives and outlook it at the heart of what we do as teachers, and yet for many administrators the focus is still solely on test scores.
The children worked this out for themselves with the actual material, aided by questions and suggestions from the teacher.
Hands-on experiences, exploring curiosities, developing questions that will drive their explorations while the teacher supports and coaches this is what I am trying to do with PBL in my classroom.
the school itself shall be made a genuine form of active community life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons.
This made me reflect on the work that we did in my school last year. The question posed to us by our principal was this, "If we are not a school, what are we?" This question stemmed from the children's book, Not a Box. How can we as teachers work not just with our students but collaboratively with one another to create an environment of student driven learning?
with real things and materials, with the actual processes of their manipulation, and the knowledge of their social necessities and uses.
Authentic learning experiences!
The children, as they gained in strength and capacity, were gradually initiated into the mysteries of the several processes. It was a matter of immediate and personal concern, even to the point of actual participation.
I read and reread these sentences several times. How often are children actually connected and participating in their own learning to this extent? How can we get there in education?
Yet the range of the outlook needs to be enlarged.
This is the challenge that presents itself to teachers. How do expand our outlook beyond the traditional confines of the classroom, curriculum, standardized testing?