blog post 1-- maythe
One theme that kept popping up throughout all of the readings and the podcast was that students know more than what they lead on, and we must not try to be apolitical, because life is not apolitical. Society is built on racism, segregation, violence, and it should not be something that is danced around in the classroom.
Students, kids and teenagers, are observant and curious. They, especially now with social media, are aware of the world around us, and ignoring that fact only hurts us as a society than helps us. How do we expect the future generations to change the world if in the classroom we refuse to acknowledge what's wrong? Like Baldwin mentioned, school is when many kids discover what oppression is, so why do we not teach them about it?
When the Capitol Building was stormed in 2021, some of my high school teachers completely ignored the subject, choosing to focus on lesson with distracted students. Other teachers opened the floor to any questions or concerns we may have had or gave us the option to stay behind and speak our fears privately. I was very confused and scared, along with many of my other classmates. These teachers are those I was grateful for, they knew that we were up to date on what was happening and chose to validate our feelings.
Of course, there is a curriculum that must follow, so while many teachers want to speak up, sometimes that is just not feasible. So my question is, how can we as teachers approach this? Everything is measured through test scores, so sometimes there is just no time to go "off track". And how do we manage the frustration that is only natural for students to feel after learning about oppression and injustice? Is this something that we can apply for every subject, not just limit it to social studies or English?
For me, not just as a future history teacher, but as a minority, this is such an important topic to me. I am not sure when exactly I discovered systemic oppression and marginalization, but having teacher support and encouragement helped me process those feelings of disappointment and hatred of the system. With so many laws trying to restrict what we learn/teach, such as the restrictions of culture studies and critical. race theory, I am unsure of what we will be able to even speak about in class, but I hope that others take these readings to heart and understand the importance of being honest with our students about the world.
I really liked your point that students are often more aware of what is happening in society than adults may assume. I agree that completely ignoring difficult events or issues can make students feel that their questions and emotions are not important. Your experience with teachers who gave students space to talk shows how meaningful teacher support can be during uncertain situations. At the same time, I understand the challenge of balancing these conversations with curriculum requirements and testing. I think teachers in every subject can create appropriate opportunities for discussion while helping students connect social issues to what they are learning.
ReplyDeleteHey Maythe!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post and I also feel like I have had these same thoughts on anything in general that may not seem like it's a part of our discipline or theme/unit to teach. A book im reading in another class classed "the vulnerable heart" written by Elizabeth Dutro is great so far. We are on chapter four but I feel like it gives great insight on practices that help invite these emotions, feelings, and heavier on topic subjects/conversations when we dont feel like we can or should it can happen naturally.
I’m also grateful for teachers who allow us to explore the world around us and question it. I remember in high school my global politics teacher frequently had us learn about new topics from around the world and write about it. That was when I first learned about the systematic persecution and displacement of the Rohingyas from Myanmar. It’s embarrassing to say, but at that time I didn’t know such things were so recent and still happening in the world.
ReplyDeleteI think lessons or discussions about injustice and political topics can definitely be worked into every subject. I still remember when Professor Saltman talked about how we could use resources like the Stanford Open Policing Project (https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/), which collects data on people of color being stopped by police compared to white people. The site visualizes the data into graphs, and there is so much for students to learn, such as analyzing and interpreting the graphs while simultaneously learning about systemic racism.
Hi Maythe!
ReplyDeleteI really liked your reflection on this blog!
I also think about how teachers can contribute to the oppression by "maintaining neutral." How are we supposed to help student broaden their minds and be critical if we are limited to containing our opinions about real things that happen?
This made me think about some of my observations this week and how a world history teacher was teaching about Christianity on the religions unit and in order to dismiss the topic of the territorial dispute between Palestine and Israel, she said, "Palestine, Israel whatever you want to call it" and I was like ????? I was questioning gin my head if she thought that perhaps teachers think students dont see/ aren't aware of the Free Palestine movement on their lives, BUT I am more than sure that because students live their live in social media a lot, they are aware and it seems kind of careless to just throw it in the table but sweeping it away in the same breath. It made me think about Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the banking system where the teacher acts as the sole authority and active participant, holding all power and knowledge and students are passive receivers who are expected to patiently receive, memorize, and repeat information on command without critical analysis. like what??? why are we teaching conditioning for passivity and to simply accept oppression and not contesting for challenging something that impacts people so much that they are dying
teachers can make a big difference by acknowledging what students are feeling. I also think it is important to be honest about oppression and inequality instead of avoiding these topics because they are uncomfortable. As future teachers, we need to help students understand these issues while also giving them hope that they can make a difference in society.
ReplyDelete