Blog Wed june12
Our visit to Wanuskewin
Life is about cycles
The day
seasons
growth
elements
What can we learn from Wanuskewin? It has to go beyond just bringing a class here. How can the learning that can come from
here be made meaningful? How do we
find that deeper meaning? What
crisis may arise from that deeper meaning?
Kumashiro - Chapter 2 - Preparing Teachers for a crisis
In the education system we have a prescribed way in which we
are told that students learn.
Why do we thing they should learn and behave in the way that we think
they should?
Our perceived success is based on their actions
When we teach students, we are really only teaching them
only certain select things, there is a tendency to resist knowledge that
challenges the status quo.
Challenging oppression requires a broader social context in which we
live.
Using the Medicine wheel, how can we find different anchors
to define us in society?
Can we choose to be defined by our connection to the
elements? Our connection to our
own growth? Our connection to life
cycles and systems? Our connection
to Social Justice Systems?
Learning Through Crisis
When students are forced to address change it can be
emotional, disorientating, frustrating, confusing. The discomfort calls on the students to make that
change.
Crisis is the emotional discomfort requiring someone to make
a change. They need the time to
work through their discomfort and disorientation. It is a double edged sword in that it can lead the student
to either desire or resist change.
What triggers crisis and the path that is taken to move past crisis will
not be the same for everyone.
Crisis ultimately means that the students are learning
knowledge that challenges the status quo.
I keep thinking about "American History X" and the
change Edward Norton's Character goes through. It was uncomfortable to watch the frustration and confusion
he faced as he tries to leave the skin head society.
I would love to show the film in a class some day, but there
are way too many graphic violence/sexual violent scenes for that to ever
realistically happen. I know that
it had a profound effect on me when I first saw it. I think because his ability to argue for the skinhead values
scared me. It scared me because I
didn't have the language to counter it.
This video gives me hope and is a reminder of what racism and oppression has cost us
Kumashiro - Chapter 3 - Preparing teachers for uncertainty
must address the way that we teach, not only what we
teach.
what we do and do not do
what we say and do not say
what we include and what we exclude
how we interact and how we do not interact.
We think we are opening minds, but we do not know how or
what a student will learn.
Depending on their prior learning students will see things through
different lenses.
There is an impossibility to teach everything
perfectly. The goal should be to
acknowledge the hidden curriculum and make it visible, to point out the various
lenses. Teachers need to model the
behaviour they want to teach, so teachers need to go through the process of
being uncomfortable in crisis and working through it in a visible way.
I think the most important thing is for a teacher to admit
they don't know everything and that we are only human.
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