"What does it mean to be human together?": Learning with Week 3 Authors in EDUTL 7025

1. Central Themes

1.1. Responsibility as Educators

1.1.1. Patti: As educators, whether in the classroom or in a research setting, we have a responsibility to the student and their learning needs. It is also is the responsibility of the educator to be self aware of power and position.

1.1.2. Andrew: “… since education is by nature social, historical, and political, there is no way we can talk about some universal, unchanging role for the teacher” (Freire, 1987, p. 211).

1.1.3. Allison: learning derives from a basis of strength and capability, not weakness and failure” (Gay, 2000, p. 24).

1.2. Emotion+Caring=Humanizing Relationships

1.2.1. Sarah F.: In helping students to see and then think clearly and critically, teachers are caring for the student as person in what will help them in settings outside school and allowing them to become critically seeing and thinking adults.

1.2.2. Sarah J.: By acknowledging the relational aspect of teaching and learning, we must necessarily also consider emotion, especially when attempting to adopt a culturally relevant approach.

1.2.3. Andrew: Building a trusting environment that is safe to share stories of who we are – and, just as importantly, listening to each other – can serve not only to improve our understandings of each other, but the ways in which we learn moving forward.

1.2.3.1. Kim: I believe that while it is liberating and encouraging to tell our own stories, it is of utmost importance to be heard.

1.2.4. Allison: “stories, according to Denman (1991), are the 'lenses through which we view and review all of human experience... They have the power to reach deep inside us and command our most ardent attention. Through stories we see ourselves...” (Gay, p. 2).

1.3. Centrality of Teacher Caring of students as people

1.3.1. Sarah J.: Caring is invisible, however, in the sense that we do not often discuss its role in teaching. "“[c]aring has elements of both reciprocity and community because the ‘caring process . . . confronts the person cared for, calling out to him or her to reciprocate . . . [and is] an acknowledgement of and respect for the meaning of the group’” (p. 49).

1.3.2. Sean in response to Caitlin: ultimately, it is our interpersonal interactions, trust as you indicate, that invite us as humans to be vulnerable, to question and explore, and to feel supported in that endeavor.

1.3.3. Shaimaa: “Narratives encompass both the modes of thought and text of discourse that give shape to the realities they convey” (Gay, 2000, p.2)

1.3.4. Allison: We engage in art making with the perspective that art is communication about what counts, or in other words art is a tool for communicating what is valued and meaningful across time and cultures. An asset-based mindset allows us to engage in the vulnerability and trust that is part of collaborative storytelling and engaged listening.

1.4. Curriculum Development

1.4.1. Kim: ...education goes beyond policy makers and administrators and as such curricular planning and implementation should begin from the bottom up.

1.4.2. Sean: By integrating the narratives and stories, the histories, the ways in which one views the world, and the similarities and differences into one’s learning experience, we are emancipating the individual and the diversity that is often accompanied by oppression.

1.4.2.1. Ryan: What [does] it [look] like to integrate rather than invite diversity into learning. Is integration a curricular matter? Pedagogical? Relational? Epistemological? Ontological? (What does it mean to be responsive to culture?)

1.4.2.1.1. Marla: how does a culturally-responsive teacher not only ‘bring’ her or his students ‘into’ a specific education, but also teach from the very epistemologies of her students? [Further,] I ask how the actual epistemologies of students can be responded to and enacted by teachers in order to effectively revolutionize teaching.

1.4.2.1.2. Shaimaa: “How do teachers actually teach their students, and how might students be taught better?” (Sleeter & Grant, p.2)

1.4.2.1.3. Erica: How do we create a space that is sensitive, realistic, helpful, reassuring, and educational for students from all backgrounds and histories?

1.4.3. Erica: I didn’t know anyone like me in school, and felt like my cultural history wasn’t important and that there was no one else like me in the world.

2. Emerging Questions

2.1. What (and perhaps who) do we value in schooling spaces?

2.1.1. Patti: Why do we as a nation put more emphasis on test scores than seeing if students are able to think critically about issues?

2.1.1.1. Kim: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy teachers must be willing to not only deliver required content as established by those in charge, but to also acknowledge the value in the voices and the stories of their students (Kinloch & San Pedro, 2014).

2.1.1.2. Andrew: creates scenarios where true backward design can quickly become unrealistic, and teachers simply find ways to do the best they can within the system they must adhere to, until possibly burning out.

2.1.1.3. Kristen: What frustrates me the most, however, is the false neutrality that these test scores represent. ...it obscures the inequitable sociohistorical contexts behind low test scores. ...Policies of standardization and accountability pay lip service to improving education for all students, while in fact maintaining the status quo or even exacerbating inequities.

2.1.2. Maretha: I used to acknowledge that teacher was the most knowledgable person so that students had to follow what she instructs and agreed to whatever she said. In other words, I rarely position students as capable learners who had ability to do something.

2.1.3. Kristen: It’s unreasonable to expect that the educators working within them can or should have full control over the pedagogies they enact.

2.1.3.1. Dr. SP: Any teacher who rigidly adheres to the routines set forth in teaching manuals is exercising authority in a way that inhibits the freedom of students, the freedom they need to exercise critical intelligence through which they appropriate the subject matter. (Friere, 1987, p. 214).

2.2. Marla: Can an institution ... be revolutionized from within? Further, "I ask, ‘can a revolution from within, disembody the institution to then build one which is inherently distinct from that which was there before?’

2.2.1. Marla: I correlate any and all phenomena—those directly manifesting within education institutions and otherwise—which emerge from within a socio-political institution (i.e. nation-state), to be the product of the very oppressive and dehumanizing ontologies which of the sociopolitical nation-state from which all institutions (which are in-turn interrelated) we discern, derive.

2.2.2. Marla: discourse control is at the heart of oppression and its persistence.

2.2.3. Dr. SP: When the teacher is seen as a political person, then the political nature of education requires that the teacher serve whoever is in power or present options to those in power (Friere, 1987, p. 212).

2.3. What is the significance of relationships in teaching and research?

2.3.1. Sarah J. What kind of relationship do the researcher and the teacher have? How do children seem to respond to the presence of the researcher in the classroom?

2.3.1.1. Caitlin: “ what is most valuable to us is engaging in authentic human interactions that can mold, shape, and teach us how to be ourselves in various special-temporal contexts” (Kinloch & San Pedro, p. 41).

2.3.2. Sarah J.: What do we mean in social justice and equity pedagogy when we use the word "humanity"? In other words, “What does it mean to be human together?” Further, "What do we mean when we say we want to honor the humanity of every student?"

2.3.2.1. Should an emphasis on caring change depending on the grade level and subject area one teaches?

2.3.2.1.1. Caitlin: I would say there definitely some areas where it is more difficult to implement [CRT] than others. For example, an English classroom is going to be able to incorporate a student’s narrative, story, or journey easier—through personal writing opportunities or discussions of text-- than a science classroom might be able to.

2.3.2.2. Andrew: Virtually everyone hopes to be valued for something.

2.3.2.3. Ryan: I find assertions regarding authenticity to be deeply troubling. My struggle is in how they seem to be founded in some sort of idea that there exists some sort of stable, coherent, isolated sense of self or subject that has some essential internal core. To express this core or self accurately comes to be called authentic while a failure or inability to express it becomes inauthentic.

2.3.3. Sean: the most valuable asset in the epistemic function of learning is the narrative, story, and journey of which the individual possess.

2.3.3.1. Sean: If it is the work of a clinician, we are often great at recognizing the diversity within our clients, in what ways they are different or the same and how those differences impact their identity, but we are less great at our ability to integrate those differences, those core characteristics that construct the way we know and how we view the world.

2.4. Laura: What kind of systematic inequalities perpetuate [educational] issues?

2.4.1. Erni: sources of knowledge which predominantly derive from white authors, educators and researchers may still become the reason that teaching and learning in some predominantly white countries such as US have the same benchmarks over the time.

2.4.1.1. Laura: It's almost as if we all know that multicultural education is beneficial, but educators and policy makers are rarely willing to commit themselves to truly implementing an impactful multicultural curriculum.

2.4.2. Kim: Historically, it seems, that linguistic imperialism has come through brute force, where language policies have been pushed involuntarily upon minorities. My point is that, yes, there is a partiality towards the teaching and adoption of English and this ultimately goes hand in hand with the assumption that minority cultures don't matter. Hence, the teaching and adoption of Eurocentric ways of being.

2.4.3. Erni: school standards, systems and school policy makers’ statement, “that is how we do it” have become a block for some teachers who have the heart to embrace and willingly contribute to the diversities in their classrooms.

2.4.4. Kristen: Schools operate within a larger context, and we cannot ignore this fact. Ultimately, public schools are public institutions. [Further], we see increasing references to failing schools, bad teachers and underachieving students. But these stories rarely examine the underlying problems in public education- the impact of poverty, inequitable access to resources, culturally irrelevant teaching.

2.4.5. Shaimaa: During my school years, I noticed that the minority, non-Saudi students ( most of them being Arabs) were always left behind in any cultural event. They were discouraged to speak with their accent because the other students would make fun of them. They were not allowed to celebrate the national day of their countries, or wear anything that represented their culture.