Since March 10th, I have been out of a job and it has been difficult for me to post anything worthwhile, because after all, it is tough reflecting on teaching when you haven’t been teaching. There have been many times I have had a post brewing, but I let it slip away due to either, laziness or self-pity. Whatever the case may have been, I have a new project and I am excited to be back in the game.
Although I am not getting paid and my future is still unclear, I feel the need to be involved with my teaching network and trying to rustle up people who are interested in exchanging ideas and learning. Those are the reasons I teach anyway, not for a paycheck.
As I sat day after day, thinking about how the educational institutions of the world are mistreating me, I started to re-think what it means to teach in an institutional environment run at best by bureaucrats and at worst by corporate interests. I also began to brainstorm “perfect” classroom ideas. I have been forced to really sell myself to potential employers, and these negotiations have got me thinking about courses I would like to teach that don’t exist in most schools.
It appears that more and more people are starting to realize the fundamental flaw of teaching in a system that is based on profit. Teachers like Clay Burel and Bill Farren are asking us to rethink the very nature of how a school should function in society. As the global consumer cultures attains more and more influnce over all of our lives, should it not be the role of schools to offer young people alternatives to current systems.
Our schools should play a role in encouraging and teaching students the basic principles of activist culture. As the authority, teachers are nervous to tell an already rebellious group of adolescents to question authority, but we owe it to them to demand more of their educators.
I hope to play with some of these ideas further at the Intrepid Classroom, but I want to use this space to reflect on the reasons behind why these themes should be taught in traditional schools. I hope to create a sort of activist training school. A place where students can question the very systems they are told to worship. I would like to create a source of resources from art, to music, to web culture that helps students understand that although the mass media may try to make them believe they are powerless, there have always been people fighting for a better world, and most importantly they too can participate. Although perhaps not for much longer!
I have written in the past about my Utopian classroom, but now I want to focus on my perfect curriculum. The reoccurring themes for most of my ideas are the incorporation of Social Justice and Peace Activism into traditional curriculums. I see a series of specialized courses that deal with political, class-based issues, and artistic and philosophical themes. One such course would be an elective, probably a semester long on music as an agent of change. I hope to outline each course in depth, but for now I want to start drawing the rough sketches:
The music curriculum would study everything from sixties protest music, to the blues, to modern day singer/activists working for change. Students would not only listen to the music and examine and reflect on the lyrics, but they would also be asked to research and learn about the social problems that were the impetus of the music. As you can see there is already a Social Studies and Language Arts element to the material. They would also be asked to collaborate and create socially conscious music themselves. Using networking tools like Youtube, they would than try to promote their music to as wide an audience as possible.
I have taught a mini-music unit every year of my career, but it always seems forced, and it takes time away from the curriculum I “should” be teaching. Now that I am out of a real classroom, I hope to teach students about the power of music in a less constricting and confined environment We owe it to our students to not only study history, but learn to be a part of it.
How do you incorporate socially conscious material into your curriculum? What obstacle to you face?
I’m fortunate in that I teach in a Quaker school whose mission includes the statement “preparing students not just for the world that is but for the world that ought to be.” This mission almost directs me to include activism and social justice in my classroom. In my tenth grade world history course, we look at the wealth gaps that exist in the world today and talk about how and why they exist, as well as what could be done. I teach a class on different interpretations of the idea of the “third world” over the last 200 years. In that class, all students do a major service project about fair trade and ways that the school community can become more involved in fair trade and other more socially conscious spending habits. In my Modern Middle East class, students are all involved with two service learning projects that promote peace education in Palestine.
In terms of obstacles, the only one is time. It’s tough to get through the curriculum as well as do as much activism as I want. But by “getting through curriculum,” I mean that students need to have enough information and understanding about the issues before they can become activists.
Best of luck with your project. By incorporating social justice into the classroom, it becomes such a more rewarding place.
Jabiz, I love the idea. I only hope you have more luck than I do trying to get over-homeworked students to make the time to do anything involving learning separated from grades. That’s my devil.
Keep going on this. It’s a great idea.
Clay
There can be no denying that teaching is a political act.
Whether your politics (and the politics of the institution you’re working for) are reinforcing or challenging the status quo is the key element that divides “activist” teachers from “non-activist” teachers (don’t like that term, must work to replace it with another.) I feel, educators choose whether to teach their students the skills to succeed in the world as defined by the status quo (ie skills to get a job, communicate, etc.) or whether to teach their students the skills to see the inequities of the current status quo and give them the skills to change the status quo (ie skills to not only get a job, but also skills to look critically at the messages and power structures constantly working on them and then have the knowledge, confidence and self-empowerment to work toward changing those inequities.)
For me, teacher as change agent and this cycle of praxis (as Freire terms is) is at the heart of why I’m training to be an educator.
Great post. We need more of this critical thinking about education and teaching in the blogo/twittero/wikio/2.0/sphere. Keep it coming!
If you haven’t already, check out Mike Wesch’s stellar: Anti-teaching: confronting the crisis of significance
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=168
And all of danah boyd’s posts (though she is focused on social networking and academic research she is an activist educator)
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
My only question is how productive it is to define those who wish for change as “activist” – some have argued that we need to reframe approaches to social or cultural change along normative terms. Why should we define ourselves as OUTSIDE of anything? Why reinforce the very idea of a norm or status quo (yes, it exists – without question) but … you see what I’m talking about.
@Liam I love this line:
There can be no denying that teaching is a political act. And I may make a T-shirt out of it in the future. I agree with much of what you have to say, but my question is that even when teachers choose to be “activist” educators, how do they dealing with administrations that benefit from the status quo. The globalized big business power structure does not want the masses educated enough to overthrow it.
So even if one chooses to teach the kids how to examine the power structure they are being fed into, we must do it subversively or else face the consequences.
I guess my point is that this shouldn’t be the case. Why can’t we build schools outside of the system?
@melanie I am not tied to the term activist, but I think the very nature of the power structure forces anyone who doesn’t agree with it on the outside.
you said, “Why reinforce the very idea of a norm or status quo..” because we have no choice. It is ever present. But I like the idea of not being outside and simply teaching. that is why i am so excited about teaching kids without the structure of a “real” school.
I love the idea of 50-100 kids stopping by my Intrepid Classroom, to talk, to chat, check out the literature and go away feeling they can change the world!
Jabiz: I’m hoping that sooner than later, people like yourself, who want to teach about ideas that are not in the mainstream, will be able to do so as independents, outside of any traditional educational institution. Like I wrote about earlier on my blog, the catch right now for an independent teacher seems to be in getting some kind of accreditation/certification so that students who want to take classes from them can get school credit. I believe this is already possible for home schoolers providing they submit the appropriate paperwork. I think it may be possible for someone to make a living by courting the homeschool community and making a name for oneself. 100 students at $500 per class (with almost no expenses) would provide a decent salary, especially if one is living in a cheap country. ($500 seems cheap to me. Charging considerably more would not be out of line, especially if the class is innovative and engaging–as they should be, right?) Setting up, say, 4 classes of 25 students each would not be too difficult using tools like Moodle and other Web 2.0 tools. Not being in the classroom would be tough for me, but with decent bandwidth and things like Skype and video, genuine connections can be made betw/ students-students-teachers.
I think it’s just a matter of time before this happens. I read every day about parents that are fed up with what their children must endure in the name “of getting educated”. Students and parents want more options these days.
Cheers.