I look at the cover and along the top, see the blue sky-my favorite colour. Well that’s a good start. In the concrete wall I see a cross in the grout of blocks-another good sign. “The rose that grew from concrete.” Okay roses. Another great omen as I have four pots of glorious tea roses newly blooming extravagantly in my garden. The garden has always had been one of my best metaphors for school. It is 8:55 pm and I open the cover...don’t know Wishart but I see she has referenced many of the same researchers that I used in my master’s project. How is it that I have never come across her?
As the sun starts its western dip, a glow of pink and gold is hinting at what might be a glorious end to a rather overcast day. I scan the footnotes, like a miner seeking specks of gold in the fine grains of river sand, and am rewarded by the glimmer of Brokenleg, Mike Apple, and Paulo. Funny - ending right where I started on this journey of graduate work. This will be my final course perhaps forever at the U of A, and I here I return to the hearts of MES and Jim Parsons, the two Kens, then Liddell, and finally Joanne and Jennifer at the School of Library and Information Sciences. Back to critical pedagogy, back to the foundation but in a brand new vessel. I have never taken an elementary course before let alone a literacy course. I have absolutely no concept of the framework of “knowledge systems and literacy? And “What does it mean to be multiliterate?”
I have however, some deep and broadly lived experience of “facilitating the empowerment of our students given their multiple and complex literate lives.”
After 12 years in Outreach Education, I do understand and admire and practice to some extent (within the constraints of Alberta Public Education) democratic education and I do get:
What does critical and emancipatory literacy education look like?
So from this perspective I approach this course with anticipation, and even joy as I do love the journey of learning and knowing and being. I think Wishart will be an inviting guide with whom I can journey freely and look forward to sharing her lived experience of an outreach school. Yet I also approach the journey with some trepidation as I have not framed outreach education within a critical literacy perspective, or considered my “responsibility as (a) teacher(s) to understand which knowledge and literacy practices are validated or not in our society and schools”.
It’s now 9:10 pm, I am into Chapter One and Tess is still inside visiting. While the shadows lengthen, I look up at the white flakes fluttering in the sky and wonder if they are snow or May Day blossoms drifting in the milky grey sky...hard to tell-could be either/and.
From Wishart’s first few pages, the following questions and observations have fluttered into my mind. What does “disenfranchised” mean? The term implies that something once was, and then was lost…hmmm..
Wishart notes that there is lots of qualitative research on the problems of at-risk students, but little work done on solution. So true, my experience has been that my curriculum and strategy is indeed informed by the context of each student who walks through my door on any given day. Wishart further notes that while definitions can become labels, we need terms for dialogue.
Now this next statement I really like: “Alberta Schools provide choice but you still need money, education and social standing to exercise that choice.”
Outreach educators live in that purgatory of addressing AB Ed academic standards while needing flexibility for meeting students’ immediate needs. Wishart suggests we educators need not only responsive approaches to at-risk students, but also flexible topics of study. The problem however, lies in an education system that assumes a certain type of ideal student who will be responsive to curricula, displays common values, and will seek reward for certain skills. Wishart’s school therefore, attempts to bridge critical pedagogy within the constraints of formal education in Alberta - street values vs. academic values.
Okay…but I need to know what is meant by critical pedagogy here. I am not sure I have a common understanding. She says, quoting Freire (p. 34), critical pedagogy allows ways to view the social realities of those on the margins...hmmmm
Wishart also warns that our own values will be challenged as we examine them against the lived values of our students i.e.: teen parenting=bad option. Today one of my parenting students told me how much she wanted to have another baby next year. She sees baby= fabulous option! Wishart’s caution about our values challenge reminds me of a school values artifacts search I completed for my leadership class this winter. It was an amazingly enlightening exercise that I would highly recommend.
Next Wishart addresses the difficulties of teaching and learning with at-risk students: (This next part I could write with my eyes closed..) They include:
• Challenge of teachers being flexible to student needs without being manipulated
• Students seeing themselves as survivors not victims
• Not doing school the same way when it isn’t working
• Sharing our personal stories too
• Revealing, labelling and valuing other literacies
As Wishart discusses the value of allowing students to examine through visual media their community context without personal risk, I found this great article on the front page of yesterday’s journal about the Hobbema photography students’ book! (See article - two postings back on this blog.)
Finally, the key of this chapter is:
“Teachers must understand that culture, race, gender, sexual orientation and geographic location all inform these youth and as such must inform considerations for teaching (p.40).”
The guiding question for her thesis then becomes:
Whose knowledge is being taught and valued in schools?
9:35 pm…It is now getting too dark to read and Tess is finally back from her birthday catch up at the coffee shop at church. She opens the car door smiling and holding up a cute birthday card with a Starbucks gift card that her friend has given her. She is so beautiful and fun and educated and travelled and fashionable and generous and kind and oh, so privileged. Tess has lived in New Zealand, attended private and public universities, travelled on her own to Australia (twice) Germany, and Mexico, been in and out of love once, has friends on four continents, will be living/learning on a ship in Greece next year, has an RRSP account, a dermatologist, chiropractor, doctor, dentist, optometrist, pastor, personal trainer, stylist, a loving Grandma and a boss who dotes on her and has offered her a career when she is finished university. Now that’s one hell of a village!
Did I mention she is now 21? I envy her life, her faith and her future. One of my students is exactly the same age as Tess and these two were even in the same grade at school for a few years. Meg will be also be 21 next month. She has 3 kids under 4 years of age. She got her diploma last year and her husband now has a job. Yesterday she stopped by the outreach school and offered to help with my cooking class next year because she “knows the kinds of meals that young moms are able to cook…” On her best days she is awesome. Her 3 year old girl is obviously gifted. While she too has faith and a future, I don’t envy her life.
By articulating this contrast might I see how my values are being revealed? And in what ways are these values being challenged?
For example, do I have “power” as a Mom for both of these girls?
As a teacher?
As a fellow learner?
I look forward to seeing how the conversation within this course may shed some light on these questions.
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