While a lot of my time is lost wandering aimlessly through the digital bowels of Facebook, this article sparked my attention:
http://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=11863
First off, I think this is great. A website called “A Mighty Girl”? I am already sold. The gender divide still exists and the combination of the adjective “mighty” with “girl” sounds both empowering and downright boss. This list of “Guardians of the Planet”, acknowledging these wonderful people who achieved and continue to achieve so much, reminds us of the power, we as individuals, have. These women had/have very different backgrounds, faced/still face different challenges and barricades of gender, race and religion, were/are interested in different problems in their communities or in the greater planet and have worked/are working on different solutions to them. They all brought attention to these issues, gained massive following and support and have made the world a better place by their past and continued actions.
Wow, right? Sounds pretty good.
Our students are future activists.
So what does that mean? Should we plant the idea in their heads that the world is a horrible place, on the brink of a dystopian chaos and that it is up to them to save it, one protest/angry letter/novel about the upheaval of the whole system at a time? Sounds very “Kill the Beast” doesn’t it?
In my humble, humble opinion how our students feel about the world and what they will do for it is entirely up to them. I don’t think anything needs to ever be planted in our students’ heads. I don’t think we need or should coax them to do or think anything. But, we can get them to think ABOUT things. We can ask them questions. They can ask questions. We can have dialogues. Before any dialogue, I provide my students with an opportunity to find information about the subject we will be discussing as scaffolding (support). I also provide several different forms of information from different mediums with differing opinions and biases, to show the range of what other people think about the specific topic. This is all take it or leave it information, meaning that my students can either consider it or not. Prior to all of this and something that I don’t want to get into too much detail now, but with my class, we explore the concepts of unfounded and well-founded information, what goes into differentiating the two and the different mediums they are presented in. Different mediums also give give different learners something to connect to. There is no golden rule to define the legitimacy or worth of the presented information. All is up for debate, all can be questioned many different ways. “Why is this unfounded?” and away we go into another dialogue. I can also be wrong. I can also not know something. It’s a powerful thing to be wrong and/or not know something as a teacher. Another topic for another blog.
As a classroom community, we create a safe forum for questions and discussions by making sure that all voices are heard and are engaged with. Dialogue allows students to further engage in real-to-life critical thinking. And for some, this type of thinking is the start to something bigger. Every activist has that critical eye and has decided to take the next step. I want my students to be empowered by this ability to be critical and having the freedom to decide what to do with their opinions and that there are places, forums and spaces to do so in freely.
In a Utopian classroom a dialogue would jump into full swing by a simple prompt, with the teacher there to simply further prompt and facilitate. And that generally doesn’t just happen OR it does and it becomes a discussion with only a few students in the classroom, the students who are the loudest and most vocal with their opinions. In my classroom, which is still a work in progress, and is only possessively referred to as “my classroom” to evade saying the lengthy “in the classroom I am teaching in”…. in my classroom I break the class into small groups, so that the discussions are more intimate and the quieter students have the opportunity to feel heard. I circulate around the classroom, engaging with the groups, to make sure that everyone is allowed to speak and that the students are on task. Sometimes I will present them with different bits of information that they will have to dissect and present to the class. Each group is given the opportunity to teach the class about their topic, give their thoughts on it and take the lead, facilitating further, full class discussions.
We also do community projects as a class. Again, that isn’t telling my students that it’s their job to fix the world. In fact, I don’t know why that sentiment is still echoed. Until you are dead, whatever responsibilities are the next generation are yours as well. Community projects are, at their most basic, an involved presentation of something, making them aware of a place, a person, an issue and/or an organization in their community that they may have never known about or considered before and how, if they choose, they can get involved with it.
Am I promoting activism in the classroom? I wouldn’t call it that. I am promoting exploration, curiosity, critical thinking and empowerment. My students are promoting it as well in their school and daily lives. And there aren’t always answers, black and whites, yeses or nos. There are spectrums, unknowns, differing angles and Catch-22s. My students backgrounds, who they are, feed this and are fed by this. We all continue to grow. We are all teachers and learners, in and out of academia. It’s a team effort. Am I aware that these ingredients are the recipe for future rebels with causes? Yup. And that’s okay as well. They are also the ingredients for positive global citizens and are just great practical skills that are needed for the many spheres of being my students are currently in and will be apart of later in their lives.
It is important to me that I continue to work on integrating dialogue into my classroom. I want to entice young thinkers to open their minds, not brainwash them with what I think is right and wrong. I want them to entice and surprise me. And they do. My students are too smart, too aware and too well schooled in the art of school to provide my talking head with nothing more than a doe-eyed gaze, the bare minimum of something like engagement. Blah, blah, blah to them. Jump hoops, get marks. No curiosity, just call and response. And it’s a LOT MORE WORK to approach teaching like that. So I don’t. And it seems to work out wonderful. And like that list, activism works in different ways and at different levels. In that sense, all my students are activists already, changing, expanding and engaging with problems on personal and global scales.
What do you think? Activism in the classroom? More? Less?
