Inclusive Classrooms

         In the last few months, I have been reading articles about racial identity in the secondary classroom.  I am committed to creating an inclusive classroom where all students feel safe to develop their voice and identity.  Often, I am not sure exactly how to do it.  So I have been looking for specific examples of teachers who have put the commitment into practice.   

         Education can socialize and teach students to think critically and independently or create a dependence on authority and experts.  The process of education can be active or passive, where kids are disengaged and being told what to know.  Teaching is a political act because it involves power - the power to choose or ignore content, methods, incentives and disincentives.  In the article, “ Making a Difference: How Teachers Can Positively Affect Racial Identity and Acceptance in America,” the author, Jonathan Ryan Davis, a social studies teacher at a high school in Kentucky, makes the case that teachers can and should help students develop a positive racial identity.  In the process, Davis asserts, teachers should choose culturally relevant content and pedagogical strategies to “foster racial tolerance, understanding and respect within the classroom and for individual students.” Going a step further, Davis explains the social studies classroom is the most effective place to develop racial identity. 

         As a way to help teachers committed to examining issues of racial identity and the role of racism in American history and society today, Davis provides the reader with the Multicultural Democratic Education Framework or CMDE.  The framework  has three elements: “critical pedagogy, building of community and thorough disciplinary content.” I found the argument convincing and the strategies helpful.  I intend to use them in my classroom.  I might take the work a step further and emphasize an anti-racist teaching approach where both students and teacher consider and practice the skills for interrupting racism in the school, community and beyond.    The article reminded me of how important it is for teachers to be aware of the power dynamics in a classroom, to question one’s power as a teacher, be open to questioning and challenging and to create a classroom community  that supports power sharing as much as possible.  Davis’ other suggested strategies for teaching racial identity and acceptance seem based on real experience, although he does not discuss application in the classroom.  One of the suggested activities I plan to use is based on helping students getting to know each other at the beginning of the year.  Although I think this is not just an activity for the beginning of the year, it is extremely important for students to learn about each other if they are going to be able to have difficult conversations. At the beginning of the year, I plan to spend a few class periods defining expectations - both student and teacher - of each other.  

            Davis also suggests finding out as much as possible about who the students are racially, ethnically and culturally, which will help in the selection of historical material, but also in the application of different perspectives when evaluating the historical material.  Other suggestions include the teaching controversial issues and using film/media as an entry point for discussions about identity and racism.  One of the most important points Davis makes is that “teachers need to address the history of systematic racial oppression so white students understand that racism is a present day reality for people of color and that the Civil Rights movement did not eradicate racism” (p. 212).

Critical Literacy

About a year ago, I read an article called “A Critical Literacy Perspective for Teaching and Learning Social Studies” (see citation at the end of this entry). As a social studies teacher who believes I have the responsibility to teach reading skills, regardless of content area, and an advocate of critical pedagogy, I looked for an article that would combine the two ideas. This article was a perfect combination.

When I began my student teaching this past January, I re-read this article in the hope I could work with my cooperating teacher to figure out how to apply the suggested framework to my classroom teaching. The article’s authors explain Ciardello’s (2004) instructional model for “enlightening readers on issues of social justice.” The five themes of the framework are: 1) examining multiple perspectives; 2) finding an authentic voice; 3) recognizing social barriers; 4) finding one’s identity; and 5) call to service. Although I did not have a formal opportunity to apply the framework, I still find it helpful in making decisions about how to teach social studies to high school students in ways that would contribute to developing critical thinking, citizenship and reading skills while learning historical content. My goal is to make our classroom process also our classroom content. Students reflect on how we are learning the content and how we are interacting with each other. The article serves as a strong starting point.

The article begins with a story about a student named Amanda who is reading out loud the poem, “We Wear the Mask”, by Paul Laurence Dunbar. After another student asks her, “Is color a problem for you?,” Amanda replies, ‘it seems that I am a color first and then I am Amanda.’ After further discussion, Amanda proclaims, ‘this poem is about racism’ (p. 486). The article’s authors, Lina Bell Soares and Karen Wood, use the example to argue why it is important for teachers to deal directly with issues of race, class, gender, culture and power in and out of the classroom. Soares and Wood assert that many students, even elementary students, are aware of these issues and live them everyday. I completely agree. If we ignore these issues in the classroom, we risk losing students and losing their respect for the relevance of what happens in school to their everyday lives.

Often, Soares and Wood explain, the ways students are marginalized along lines of class, race, gender, sexual orientation and ability are invisible to teachers and administrators. In my brief experience, e are so busy moving from topic to topic, we can miss they dynamics happening right before our eyes. They argue for teachers to take up these social issues in social studies classes through a critical literacy framework. McLaughlin and DeVoogd (2004) identified the following four principles of critical literacy:

1. Critical literacy focuses on issues of power and promotes reflection, transformation, and action.
2. Critical literacy focuses on the problem and its complexity.
3. Techniques that promote critical literacy are dynamic and adapt to the contexts in which they are used.
4. Examining multiple perspectives is an important aspect of critical literacy.

Soares and Wood believe students must examine social studies material from a global perspective and read social studies texts with a “critical eye.”

It is very clear that social issues are at the forefront of the social studies curriculum. So why do so many of us see them as a distraction from the curriculum, rather than central to preparing our students for life in college, a democracy and the workplace? Teachers, according to the authors, must find ways to help students connect the past to current issues and events. They believe this is important in developing engaged citizens who care about issues of social justice. The authors believe teachers must help students learn to read “in opposition” to the text because questioning the author’s intent helps students clarify their own values, but, I would add, also contribute to their understanding of history and contemporary events from multiple perspectives.

Soares and Wood provide a powerful explanation of the purpose of critical literacy in the following passage:

“Accordingly, the goal of critical literacy is to raise students’ responsiveness toward societal problems in their world and to prompt students to ask why and for what reason are things the way they are, to question who profits the most, and then to act on making the world a better place (Beck, 2005; Comber & Nixon, 1999). Furthermore, critical literacy allows students to bring their own lived experiences into discussions, offering them opportunities for participation, engagement in higher levels of reading and discussion, and to understand the power of language” (p. 487).


They explain each theme and provide examples for how to introduce and teach the theme in elementary classrooms. In the first theme, examining multiple perspectives, the objective is to teach students how to ask questions and look for the voices that are missing in the text. The working assumption is that one text cannot tell the whole story and teachers must provide opportunities for students to read multiple texts. The authors explain their use of The Devils Arithmetic (Yolen, 1988) in a classroom literature circle. They prompt students with the question, “what does the author want you to know from reading this text?”

For the second theme, finding an authentic voice, the authors assert that “some voices are more privileged than others and it is essential that students learn to speak out against unequal power relations that exist in all forms of text” (p. 489). They introduce the concept of voice with historical examples of people speaking out individually and collectively. They ask students to read a photo-biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, examine the relationship of Native Americans and white settlers and read the text Only What We Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience (Inada, 2000) about interned Japanese Americans during World War II.

Authors introduce the third theme of recognizing social barriers by asking students to share an experience when they have been treated unfairly and felt excluded. They ask students to explain how that felt and how they should have been treated. Again, students read a story, Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez (Krull, 2003) and examine the experience of Japanese Americans during World War II to demonstrate how negative stereotypes lead to oppression.

Finding one’s identity, the fourth theme, is about teachers finding texts that reflect their students lives and experiences. The authors assert, “when students do not find themselves reflected in the texts they read, they are more likely to interpret this omission as a message that school is not for people like them” (p. 491). The authors introduce the concept with the story, Chrysanthemum (Henkes, 1991), about a small mouse that had always thought her name was perfect until she began school. Teachers ask students about the origin of their names and if they have had similar experiences.

Finally, the authors bring the fifth theme, call to service, into the classroom by introducing the concept of service learning and guide them to appropriate volunteer opportunities. They see the social studies classroom as the ideal place for students to grapple with complex social issues like freedom, citizenship, social responsibility and personal identity. In my application of this theme, I make a small change. Instead of call to service, I ask students to think about what actions they could take individually and collectively to address problems we learn about in the historical and contemporary texts we read in the classroom. In my view, a call to service often hinders critical reflection on the root causes of social problems. A call to action will require students to truly comprehend the nature of a problem and evaluate the potential efficacy of actions and solutions.

My intention is to introduce Ciardello’s framework as part of a “Building Community” unit at the beginning of the school year. The purpose of this unit will be to learn about each other, explore definitions of community, agree on expectations for each other that will guide our interactions and introduce democratic skills we will practice during the year in content-based activities. IN addition to the above-mentioned application, another way I could use the framework is to help find a selections of texts that students could choose to read and write about.

The questions I am left with are: Will this approach resonate with students? What will I do if and when I meet resistance?

REFERENCE
*Soares, L., & Wood, K. (2010). A Critical Literacy Perspective for Teaching and Learning Social Studies. Reading Teacher, 63(6), 486-494. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

Civic Empowerment Gap

School Culture and the Civic Empowerment Gap

From Obedience to Engagement

By MEIRA LEVINSON From Harvard Education Letter

Every morning as they entered the public urban middle school in which I taught in the late 1990s, students were greeted by name by Mrs. Farmer or Mr. Beeza.1 “Good morning, Keesha,” Mr. Beeza would say with a grin from his perch on the schoolhouse steps. “Good morning, DeQuin,” Mrs. Farmer would smile to another. “Glad to see you—but take off your hat, please.”

Once inside, our students lined up in front of our assistant principal. Holding a metal-detecting wand in his right hand, he would sweep it in front and back of each child before he allowed them to proceed down to the cafeteria. A number of the sixth-graders were tiny, barely 4’6” tall, and still obsessed with Pokemon cards and bathroom jokes. What did they think about as they were screened for weapons each day? What did my eighth-graders—many still on the cusp of puberty themselves—think? How did the experience shape their engagement with adults and peers or their sense of membership in the school community? In three years of teaching there, it never occurred to me to ask them.

Schools inherently shape young people’s civic experiences. Both students and adults learn “their place” and what’s expected of them in the broader public sphere by observing and participating in the limited public space we call “school.” Schools also give—or deny—students and teachers opportunities to practice a variety of civic skills and behaviors via classroom procedures and routines, curricula and pedagogies, interactions in the hallways and cafeteria, and cocurricular and extracurricular activities. This need not be intentional. Rather, all schools teach experiential lessons about civic identity, expectations, and opportunities. As civic communities, they model whether individuals matter or are seen as being interchangeable, one of a mass. They model inclusivity or exclusivity, respect for multiple voices or mistrust of diverse others. These models significantly influence students’ civic attitudes and beliefs. Students develop habits of collaboration in schools that model these norms and practices; students in other schools learn to think individualistically and focus their efforts on self-preservation. In addition to providing models of civic engagement, therefore, schools also provide students opportunities to practice empowering (or disempowering) relationships, norms, and behaviors.

Obedience vs. Engagement
Unfortunately, many schools, especially those that serve predominantly low-income children of color, model civic disrespect and demand that their students practice submissive obedience rather than empowered engagement. They enact a continuous series of civic microaggressions against their students. These regular but unacknowledged mini-invalidations of children as civic persons worthy of respect are often barely noticeable to their victims—and usually totally invisible to their perpetrators. Together, however, they can cumulatively erode the self-confidence and self-image of those at the receiving end. Urban students’ experiences of these civic microassaults may profoundly influence their civic skills and identity development.

Consider the lessons kids learn at the school door itself. On the one hand, teachers like Mrs. Farmer and Mr. Beeza teach them that they are welcome and valued members of the school community. On the other hand, when children as young as 11 are routinely screened for weapons before they are allowed to enter the school building, they are also implicitly being taught how they are viewed within the public sphere—namely, as a potential threat to public safety and security. These are not lessons that most middle-class and/or white students are learning in their schools, since they are 4–10 times less likely to be subject to such policies. But they are civic identities imposed on a significant percentage of poor youth of color growing up and attending de facto segregated schools in urban areas.

The regulation of students’ movement through space once they get into the school building has equally strong civic consequences. A few years ago, I visited a number of public and private schools in the Boston area. In the private schools, I was struck by how freely and frequently students tended to move around within the classroom and throughout the school. By contrast, at the Boston public middle school in which I was teaching at the time, we constantly strove to minimize “transition time,” the time lost to instruction due to students moving from one activity to another or one classroom to another. We lined up students and walked them from class to class, supervised locker time, escorted kids to the cafeteria, and even instructed them which table to sit at while eating lunch.

Opportunities Denied
When students move around schools more freely, they are learning both that they are trusted and responsible members of the community and how to exercise their responsibility appropriately and live up to the trust placed in them. For many kids, this learning process involves some mistakes. They whisper to friends along the way or show up late to their next class. In facing the consequences for such misdeeds, students learn to exercise better judgment in the future.

Such opportunities were rarely available to students in the urban public schools in which I taught or at those I have visited since. Our relentless monitoring of students was rational, given the circumstances. Lunch, for example, was an extraordinarily rushed affair in which 250 students had to go to their lockers, get to the cafeteria, wait in line for food, eat, clean up, and line up for their next class within a 20-minute time span. (This continues to be the case in all Boston Public Schools, in order to minimize noninstructional time.) We also had good reasons to control students’ movements in the hallways. The school bathrooms were prone to vandalism. There was the risk that an unsupervised student might falsely pull the fire alarm. And although the school was relatively safe and orderly, enough fights broke out each year that it made sense to guard against the possibility of untoward contact by lining up and supervising students in the halls.

Although the rules were rational, they were not reasonable. In controlling students’ movements and even their physical bodies in these ways, we were also teaching them about how we evaluated their potential for responsible and self-regulating behavior—poorly—and denying them opportunities to demonstrate or develop these self-regulating capacities. We were caught in a vicious cycle. Their lack of opportunities to practice responsible school-based behavior led some of them to behave irresponsibly when they did grab freedom, which reinforced our mistrust and led us to clamp down even tighter.

1. Note that these are pseudonyms.
In all these ways, we unintentionally exacerbated rather than eliminated the skill, attitude, and behavior disparities that lie at the heart of what I call the civic empowerment gap. It is common knowledge that American citizens have vastly unequal levels of civic and political power, depending on differences in race, level of education, and especially wealth. As a nation, we seem to accept such antidemocratic patterns as the natural state of affairs. Demographic differences in participation rates are explained in the same way so many did the reading or math achievement gap a decade ago: as a natural result of unequal access to resources. We are no longer publicly willing to countenance unequal academic outcomes based on students’ racial or economic backgrounds, however; nor should we be willing to countenance unequal civic outcomes on the same grounds. Public schools were founded in the United States for civic purposes. These schools—and the nation they serve—must be held to account for achieving civic outcomes for all children that are as high in quality as the academic outcomes we now claim to expect.

Transforming School Culture
School culture is one key mechanism for teaching true civic equality and empowerment. I suggest that every school must be intentional, transparent, and reflective in how it both models and enables students to practice authentically empowering civic relationships, norms, and behaviors. By doing so, schools will help students acquire essential civic skills, empowered civic attitudes, and habits of civic participation that are collectively necessary for combating the civic empowerment gap. Intentionality is necessary because otherwise schools will fall back into the inadvertent mélange of sometimes empowering, but at least as often demoralizing, practices sketched out above. Transparency is necessary so that the “sorting out” both students and adults do to make sense of their experiences becomes a shared activity and, ideally, therefore also comes to reflect shared judgments. Reflection forces educators and students alike to continue this process of checking themselves and seeking feedback over time. Finally, authenticity matters because only authentic experiences will fully convince students that they can be truly efficacious and responsible civic actors.

Consider how students’ experiences of entering school each morning might have changed if we had talked openly and reflectively as a school community about student safety. I suggest at the beginning of this essay that screening students for weapons teaches them that they are viewed by authorities as potential criminals. But maybe youth infer a different civic lesson: that their own safety and security are valued by school officials. In this respect, they may feel valued and even validated by this process. On the other hand, students at risk of getting jumped were terrified of making the journey to and from school unarmed and, hence, defenseless. Did the teachers and administrators even understand the circumstances under which they were trying to survive? Some students thought not. School stood as just one more example of a public institution that ignored their needs and concerns, imposing policy “solutions” that were out of touch with reality.

Had we been more transparent with students about our intentions and invited them to be openly reflective with us about their authentic concerns, we may have been able to construct a mutually agreed-on, safe, and empowering set of policies. We might have eliminated the weapons screening but set up other mechanisms—advisories that foster deeper and more trusting relationships among teachers and students, say, or a school safety committee to assure students they were entering a safe community every morning. Maybe we would have anticipated Chicago’s example and worked to create a “culture of calm” in our school and safe zones outside of school, with parent and other adult volunteers patrolling students’ paths to and from school as allies.

I don’t know what ideas we would have generated together. This is the point: Youth have to have the opportunities to share their insights and to hear adults’ own reasoning if we are to cocreate civically engaging and empowering school communities.

Schools can and must help students experience empowered citizenship in order to enable young people to build knowledge, skills, pro-civic attitudes, and habits of civic participation for the future. By building such experiences and norms into their everyday practices, schools can help reduce the civic empowerment gap and benefit from young people’s energy and insights to become more effective and vibrant institutions themselves.

Meira Levinson is an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and coeditor of the forthcoming Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation (Harvard Education Press). This essay is adapted from her book, No Citizen Left Behind (Harvard University Press, 2012).