Please don't despair; I have an absolutely charming "Historias del Juego" in the works, as well as a fun reflection on preschool level informational texts. However, I'm also taking a Critical Pedagogy course as part of my Masters on Bilingual Education. We have to write weekly mini-analyses, and I thought, "Why not double dip?" So I may be posting more asides... but I thought it best to begin with this one, as it seems particularly currently relevant. Also, the culturally-responsive pedagogy references are EXCELLENT.
As noted by Fullan
(2015), teachers engage in “thousands of small innovations” every single day
based upon our contexts and the needs of our students. What began as collaborative
reshaping of curricula in concert with our peers, however, has become a
money-driven enterprise known variously as educational reform, the innovation
paradigm, or yet another influence of corporate neoliberalism. The emphasis of
program over professional, argues Giroux, means that teachers are increasingly
identified as skilled technicians of marketable product rather than as
“transformative intellectuals” (2009). Rather than focusing efforts and capital
on teacher-driven research specific to our communities, or to debugging
national programs to fit our specific needs (Fullan, 2015), “neoliberal reforms
that purport to address
racialized
achievement gaps treat racism and culture as if they do not exist” (Sleeter,
2011, p. 8).
Baker’s “Overcome the
Four Barriers to Change” (2008) is a manifesto of such corporate ideology. What
looks like cheery self help on the surface has damaging ramifications. To
become the “CEO of your life,” for instance, he argues you have only to
disregard your “labels.” This is erasure of identity and negates the fact that
people are labeled and discriminated against regardless of how they personally
choose to identify. His opening thesis is that the opposite of growth is death
– if you aren’t growing and changing, you’re dying! In order for success, find
the good in every new change! This sort of mentality creates passive and
obedient workers – rather than critical thinkers – and it presupposes that
those in positions of decision-making are changing things for the better. We
have only to change ourselves to fit their structure of power.
Whether we’re
teachers or students, that mentality is very dangerous. Instead of being
trained to obey prescriptive, market-driven mandates, we must assume our own
autonomy and value as described by Giroux’s vision for critical pedagogy.
Critical pedagogy “reinforces the notion that public schools are democratic
public spheres, education is the foundation for any working democracy, and
teachers are the most responsible agents for fostering that education” (Giroux,
2011, pg. 495).
All this is not to
say that reform is bad. Change is essential to every environment. The changes,
however, in order to have efficacy and power in the long-term, must be specific
to and driven from within the community. As noted by Sleeter, utilizing
culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) – which is closely tied with critical
pedagogy – is a reform that both honors student identities and yields higher
standardized achievement (2011). Morrison, Robbins, and Rose (2008) outline
twelve actions (or “reforms”) that are encompassed by culturally responsive
pedagogy. (As a side note, only one of these actions includes the cultural
celebrations that so frequently stand in as the entirety of CRP.)
None of these actions,
nor those suggested by Giroux, have marketable, “teacher-proof” curricula
attached to them – they rely on educator knowledge, collaboration, and care. As
Fullan (2015) notes, “controversial material, which might form the very basis
of addressing some of the social goals of education (e.g., in social studies
curriculum), is less likely to be developed.” It is therefore our job to
research and create curricula, and enact reforms that are appropriate to our
context. Given the current institutional climate, it is also imperative for us to
demand the autonomy to be allowed to do so in the public schools.
In order to enact
such reforms, we must utilize a “combination of tightly coupled culture, ‘around
clear and explicit themes representing the core of the school's culture,’ and of
loosely coupled structure” (Boyd, 1992). In this way, teachers can address
themes that we have determined to be important to our mission – but we can do
so in ways that make sense to us. As well as having richer results, the buy-in
is exponentially higher. Unfortunately, it is currently the norm to impose generic
reforms upon a staff. Even if the concept of such a program is good, it will
need to have the approval of and adaptation by educators; otherwise, it will
fail.
Any successful reform
must also take time. A reform developed by staff must be continually examined
and altered for efficacy and relevance; one proposed by an administrator or
district must be vetted, adapted, and approved by the staff. Boyd notes that
any change-maker, such as an administrator, must also take time and care to
learn the mythology and social history of the school. What is the informal
network like; what are the legends of the school and who are its gossips,
spies, and soothsayers (1992)?
This speaks
intimately to my experience at my school this year. We have a new administrator
and a state-mandated program that have instituted many reforms to our practice.
These include a STEM curriculum, a state-wide verification process, a
streamlined approach to scheduling and conducting IEPs, and daily phonics
drills with “Fundations.” None of these changes are bad in that all have
positive aspects. However, many of our staff members, myself included, have
suffered substantial feelings of disillusionment and inefficacy. I posit that
these feelings are not what Baker (2008) would call being “narrow and
self-centered victims of change,” though those accusations have been leveled at
us. Instead, I believe these reforms, though inherently positive, have been
inappropriately instituted.
The administrator and
state program both have been negligent on the accounts of time and of honoring
our school’s informal networks. Changes are told to us, rather than our staff
collaborating to create them, and they are expected to be instituted
immediately; rather than our staff collaborating to modify and better the
programs together, any alterations to the reform must be done “under the
table.” My one small victory was that I flat-out refused to implement an
English language letter-sound correspondence program (Fundations) with my
Spanish-speaking three-year-olds. By standing my ground, I am able to use a
self-adapted version of Estrellita instead (the Spanish language equivalent).
Our former administrator
was exemplary at knowing and participating in our school’s “mythology,” and the
reforms she proposed were bound by slow, collaborative timelines that ensured
success and staff approval. The fact that she was removed by the district after
a (literal) 100% approval rating from school staff, and replaced by a former
district supervisor, is important to know. The fact that the administrator
before her was incompetent and racist, meaning that we were used to essentially
running the school, is important to know. The times we have rallied around our
students, staff, and community when they were in times of crisis are of vital
importance to know. I doubt our current administrator knows all of this; she
didn’t take the time to find out, and certainly does not honor our experiences and
informal networks as a school community. As a result, programs meant to better
our school, through lack of time and care and shared governance, have fractured
its culture.
To heal these wounds,
we do not need to conform to a structure created without our input. We must eschew
the blind adoption of market-driven reforms and continue to research,
implement, and better our own reforms that work for our own specific contexts. We,
as teachers and students, need to demand a systems restructuring around our ideas,
histories, and identities – and we need to do it on every level of education.
Resources
Baker, J. (2008).
“Overcome the Four Barriers to Change.” RIS
Media. Retrieved from
Boyd, V. (1992).
“Creating a Context for Change.” Issues…
About Change 2(2). Retrieved from
Fullan, M. (2015). The New Meaning of Educational Change (Fifth
Edition). United States: Teachers
College Press.
Giroux, H. (2014).
“When Schools Become Dead Zones of the Imagination: a critical pedagogy
manifesto.” Policy
Futures in Education 12(4). Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/pfie.2014.12.4.491.
Giroux, H. (2011).
“Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals.” Kaleidoscope:
Contemporary and Classic
Readings in Education, ed. Ryan, K., and Cooper, J.
Morrison, K.,
Robbins, H., and Rose, D. (2008). “Operationalizing Culturally Relevant
Pedagogy: A
Synthesis of Classroom-Based Research.” Equity & Excellence in Education 41 (4), 433-452.
Sleeter, C. (2011).
“An agenda to strengthen culturally responsive pedagogy.” English Teaching: Practice
and Critique 10(2). Retrieved from http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/files/etpc/files/
2011v10n2art1.pdf.
Thanks for reading! Here's a fabulous watercolor portrait done by one of my students to thank you for your attention.
Hasta pronto ~
