Do You Want to Tell Your Own Narrative?”: How One Teacher and Her Students Engage in Resistance by Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth (original) (raw)
Related papers
Bound Together: White Teachers/Latinx Students Revising Resistance
In the 30 years since Giroux (1983) named schools as a site of resistance, little has happened to sustain and embed that practice in schools. The contexts, structures, and policies in schools do not foster opportunities for resistance, and schools of education do not prepare teachers to support students' critical actions in schools, ensuring the reproduction of inequity and injustice. While this is true for all historically marginalized groups, the specific legacy of discrimination (ie: threats of deportation) faced by Latinx students and communities in the western United States often serves to silence their voices and efforts at resistance (Darder et al 2012). In this chapter, we examine data from a student voice research project, including weekly observations (n=102) for the school year across three public school classrooms, teacher reflections, and student work. This work is framed by the theory of sociopolitical development, implicating both teachers and students in the process of resistance and liberation. The data we explore captures 1) early conversations between students and teachers about issues of racial and economic injustice 2) the initial resistance of students to having those conversations 3) increasing trust between teachers and students supporting engagement with the issues 4) students' active resistance toward the issues that impacted them 5) teachers and students working together to challenge unjust policies-at the school, district, and state level.
Power, Resistance, and Literacy: Writing for Social Justice
2011
Education in the United States (US) is entangled in class politics and power, often in ways that remain invisible and ignored. Using critical ethnography to study a high school (given the pseudonym Pontiac) serving White working-class students, Gorlewski makes the pervasive visible by providing a thorough and detailed account of the way neoliberalism has contributed to the production of an educational climate that disconnects and disenfranchises students from the learning process, as well as contributes to class reproduction. While class-based discrimination in schools comes in many forms, Gorlewski focuses on writing. The US educational system relies heavily on the written word for teaching and learning. This focus on literacy shapes how curriculum is developed, implemented, and assessed. The importance of writing, however, extends beyond these technical implications. Gorlewski contends that writing shapes modes of thinking, identity formation, and the imaginings of place in the world. Thus, the ways writing is viewed, presented, and assessed form the foundations not only for how students are educated in this country, but also how they view themselves as students and as people.
Teaching Through Testimonio: Accessing Community Cultural Wealth in School
Using the concept of community cultural wealth, this article examines the ways that a group of 3rd-grade students engaged in writing testimonios, or personal narratives, to reflect on their cultural and linguistic lives in and outside of the classroom. Countering deficit notions of Latina/o students, families, and communities, this study illuminates the powerful ways that students utilize various forms of community cultural wealth. The findings indicate that testimonio can be an effective pedagogical tool to help students identify their individual and collective community cultural wealth and draw on these forms of knowledge in the elementary classroom. Key words: testimonio, bilingual education, critical race theory, Latino critical race theory, English learners, elementary, community cultural wealth, pedagogy
Narratives of Racial Reckoning: Oppression, Resistance, and Inspiration in English Classrooms
Journal of Culture and Values in Education
This narrative inquiry traces the experiences of five racially and ethnically diverse English Language Arts teachers as they move from their university coursework in a teacher education program to their student teaching and then into their first years teaching in a large urban school district in the Southeast. Through narrative inquiry, these teachers describe how language was/is used as a tool of racial oppression in their professional lives, how language served as resistance to racist discourses in their classrooms, and furthermore how language functioned to inspire through the disruption of racist discourse. These narratives illuminate the intersections of race, ethnicity, language, education, and power and how teachers can both disrupt and sustain canonical narratives and discourses.
Chang, B. (2013). Voice of the voiceless? Multiethnic student voices in critical approaches to race, pedagogy, literacy and agency. Linguistics and Education, 24(3), 348–360. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2013.03.005, 2013
Keywords: Community engagement, Literacy, Language practices, Counter-narratives, Critical race theory, Sociocultural learning, multiethnic families In this article, the author utilizes critical and sociocultural approaches to race, language and culture to examine the intersectional experiences of a multiethnic and ‘mixed race’ cohort of students in an inner-city, working-class neighborhood between their elementary and high school years. This article examines the students’ experiences in a nine-year educational process focused on critical pedagogy, sociocultural learning, and community engagement in and out of classrooms. More specifically, the article looks at interview, participant observation, and narrative data with a Latina/o and Asian American male student, and an Asian American female student, and how they made sense of their experiences over time with regards to issues of race, pedagogy, literacy, and agency.
Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy in Language Teacher Education: A collaborative case study of identity texts
In Bedrettin Yazan, Kristen Lindahl [eds.] Language Teacher Identity in TESOL Teacher Education and Practice as Identity Work, 2020
This collaborative case study examines the development of anti-oppressive pedagogies for in-/preservice language teachers. We examine oppression in our study in connection with the socio-political-historical contexts in which it operates (Liu, 2017). The conceptual framework is structured to engage with these different layers. We draw from white settler colonialism studies (Veracini, 2017) as the foundation for understanding the important roles of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 199) and anti-oppressive education (Kumashiro, 2000, 2002, 2013)—in particular critical consciousness (Gay & Kirkland, 2003) —for unpacking the complexities surrounding identity work in language teacher education. The research was conducted in two language teacher education classrooms in Iowa and North Carolina. The collaborative design, where both researchers and students interacted throughout the semester-long study, allowed for increased researcher reflexivity and critical community building across sites. Findings suggest that this intersectional identity work in language teacher education shows promise as a means of equipping in-/preservice teachers to access and implement anti-oppressive pedagogy for TESOL education.
“What are We Trying to Accomplish?”: Student Resistance as Racial Wisdom
Equity & Excellence in Education, 2019
This work analyzes a Grade 9 English Language Arts classroom discussion for moments of resistance and asks, What does student resistance accomplish when viewed as racial wisdom? Drawing from "posts" traditions, we analyzed the discussion's intra-actions or entanglements in order to more clearly understand how students draw from their "well of knowledge" to resist. Findings indicate student resistance interrupts the grammar of schooling and, at the same time, creates new openings for other ways to disrupt and resist. This work demonstrates the importance of situating resistance as counter narratives grounded in racial wisdom that work to reconfigure interpretations and definitions of personal and social identities situated more completely within embodied experiences.
Employing Critical Organic Writing for the Truth About Speaking of Critical Race Theory in the Classroom: My Narrative, 2024
This document presents an in-depth exploration of the challenges and dynamics in discussing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Texas high schools, particularly in the wake of House Bill 3979, often called the Critical Race Theory Bill. The author, a Mexican female educator, and a recent doctoral graduate, utilizes a unique narrative bridging academic research and practical teaching experiences. Through the lens of Critical Organic Writing (COW) and the theoretical framework of Nepantla, as conceptualized by Gloria Anzaldúa, the paper examines the impact of such legislation on educational discourse and practice. The study employs qualitative narrative inquiry, focusing on the author’s self-narratives and student responses to COW methodologies, to investigate the effectiveness and challenges of implementing COW as a pedagogical tool in politically sensitive environments. This work contributes to broader discussions on education policy, pedagogical innovation, and social justice, advocating for adaptable and inclusive teaching strategies that facilitate meaningful dialogues about discrimination and empower students to discover diverse truths.