Finding a voice for Youth

            After reading the introduction to “Beyond Resistance!” it is amazing that we still marginalize youth in so many ways. The opening chapter discusses the ways in which youth have been making strides in getting a voice in such a political world. Though we live in society that tries to view itself above the degradation of age, sex, race, gender, ethnicity our politics speak otherwise. As mentioned in the book laws are put into act that further punish youth for stepping over the line and act disobedient. This has caused a increases in drop-out rates, arrests, trying adolescents as adults and has even pushed students onto the streets in cities like New York. It comes as a shock to think that people view children as our future but continue to push their interest aside to better their own position. In thinking about the fight for youth to reduce the voting age to 20, it’s amazing that there hasn’t been a bush to further reduce the age to 16. Youth tend to be ignored and their interests are viewed as disobedient and unruly. But in a world where adolescents are not given political voice what other options are afforded to them to gain a voice. While politics are heavily invested in money and personal gain, youth are left with minimal options to have a voice heard. Though there are more and more organizations like InnerCity Struggle and FIERCE which are giving a voice to adolescents there seems to be so much more that we can do.

            While my project does not look directly at the marginalization of youth, I hope that it gives them a voice to discuss their own concerns with the environment. I will be making a curriculum to help students understand and appreciate the natural world and the environment and become readers of issues regarding these topics. I intend to have students begin to look critically at the issues revolving around the world in regards to environmental concerns. Through this understanding and critical approach, I hope to motivate students into becoming activists to help make a better future for themselves. It is apparent that as adults we have lost the relation that the world belongs to everybody and not just the ones in power or at least the voice to vote. Hopefully a project that gives youth that want to become environmental activists comes from my curriculum as I begin to implement it. This would give power to youth and one more voice to defend the environment. 

Peeking Into My Research and PAR

            As the past week has been filled with writing for my research I have been fully engrossed in outdoor education pedagogy and John Dewey’s philosophy of experience. It is not to say that I discredit the importance of Participatory Action Research (PAR), but my focus has been else ware in my writing this week. Instead of writing in response to this form of research I am sharing the preliminary introduction to my research

              Take me to the river where I can learn all day; with seemingly endless miles of river to explore to fill the day with learning and fishing. The journey starts hours before getting to the river, reading river flows, lunar phases and hatch patterns. These events and experiences build upon one another to reach the ultimate experience of catching a fish. On the river a fisherman must take from previous experiences and apply it to the current to catch the elusive species. Reading the water, looking for fish lies and a ripple on the water to indicate where a fish may be hiding become the literacy of the fisherman as they connect and become one with their natural surroundings. The goal is to feel the experience of a fish at the end of the line and to see the beauty of nature, and when the fish has been landed the fisherman can reflect on the previous experiences to understand the true joy of fishing. A fisherman will never forget that feeling of a fish taking the fly and the line run through their fingers until the hook is set as this experience is part of a succession of experiences before. Philosopher John Dewey would attribute this as a quality experience through the line of experiences that reflect towards one another as they “live on in future experiences” (1938, 27). Stepping out of the world of fishing and into the traditional classroom, differences are apparent: trees have been chopped down to frame walls, the leaves have been milled into posters and papers, the rich topsoil is mirrored in the blackboard, while large boulders scattered across the river and neatly ordered into desks as fish have gone through years of evolution to sit at the desks as students. The world that the fisherman sees has become a controlled environment that can be seen as political and students come with the expectation to learn. What has come of the experience? Do the lessons and learning from the day of fishing get turned into lessons that reflect the same quality of experience or do they become single experiences with the intention of a single result? This project looks to utilize the philosophy of experience in pedagogy outside of the normal classroom.

            As I am beginning the writing process with continual research it is interesting to think of the ways in which PAR can play a role in what I am doing. It would not be until I put a curriculum into practices that I could fully engage in PAR, though I am totally open to the idea of this. I think that there is a lot that can be understood in this research and that it would pair well in outdoor education. As students tend to lose voice in research, response towards involvement of outdoor education would offer great insights to the impact that it has. Within marginalized groups, outdoor education could play an important role in student’s lives, giving value to their education as they interact with the natural world.  

Trying to humanize my research

            

           Considering the importance of my research and who am I doing the research for brings up a lot of questions. In particular, will I go through the IRB process and also what is the importance of my research. Outside of my personal interests in outdoor education, my research acts in response to David Louv’s book calling attention to the necessity of engaging children with the wilderness and as an act of ecocriticism, hoping to engage children, particularly teens, in the natural world and greater concerns for the environment. For concerns of IRB and conducting human research I am still trying to figure out what level of human research is needed. At the moment I would only be involving interviews of educators involved in outdoor and experiential education. The question that I am facing is including my projected target audience. If I am doing research directing a curriculum at high school teens, isn’t it more important to have their voices heard instead of teachers or should I let the IRB complications influence the silence of that research group based on difficulty of proper approval for minors to participate in research?

 My next question involves the importance of the research. I understand the calling for more youth being engaged in the natural world, but what is the importance of this research and will it better the world by conducting the research. So far I have found a limited selection in this field which gives power to my research. On the other hand am I just pushing against the norms of traditional education in response to many political changes in the current educational process? I do not have any answers to these questions at the moment but as I continue my research I hope to have a better understanding of the importance and for who I am doing this research. 

Thinking About Natural Critical Literacies

Thinking about how critical literacies can be a major impact on all students and can play an even bigger role for marginalized youth, it is becoming more and more apparent that these need to be practiced in schools. In thinking about my own research, the critical literacy that I am focusing on is nature. David Louv talks about a nature deficit disorder which he defines as “the human cost[s] of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illness” (34). My interest in outdoor education and experiential education hope to better understand the ways in which students can engage in a natural world and make stronger and lasting connections to their own education. I understand that being outdoors is not for everyone, but there is still an element of connecting to the natural world that can help each person in some way or another.

There are many ways in which we can become critically literate of the natural world, some of those ways may not involve physical presence in an outdoor setting. Reading ecorcitical texts is one way in which students can become more aware of the natural world without having to step foot outside. Though this type of reading allows for students to become more aware of the natural world in which they live, it is only the first step towards placing students thinking about being critically literate of their natural surroundings. The second step would need to involve interaction and physical presence in nature. A nature hike with reflection is a possible step towards this but this is too simple of an answer to be effective or cause change. I guess I haven’t come to a complete answer in how to make students more critically aware of their natural surroundings yet, but I hope to find an engaging way in which students are aware of their surroundings, engage with the natural world and take a step towards making change.

Louv, David. (2006). Last Child in the Woods. New York. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Teaching Critical Literacy With The Consideration of Privilege

                Ernest Morell spells out the many ways in which he has practiced using critical literacy in his classrooms and seminars which have been helpful in the instruction of urban youth. He systematically goes through a wide range of traditional schools of thought and give power to how they are effective, with the intention to give the reader insight to how he has used these schools of thought in his own practices. By laying out the framework for the multiple ways to utilize critical literacies in the classroom, Morell’s focused classrooms were in Los Angeles in which two schools had varying demographics, though the classrooms he worked in act as a representation of lower class demographics that traditionally have lower grades, graduation rates and college acceptance. The practices he uses allow for students to become more connected with the educational process to better their understanding of the importance of critical literacies. Similarly, Patrick Camangian uses critical literacies to teach autoethnography to urban youth.

                Camangian’s teaching engages students through the teaching of autoethnography to develop compassionate classrooms, and promote self and social reflection (179). This form of pedagogy allows his students to build projects that are not only self-reflective and exemplary of issues in their personal society, but also show that these urban youth are able to produce written work and express critical literacy at the college level. This teaching not only empowers the students, but opens up multiple avenues for the students to realize their potential. This pedagogy becomes more experiential as the students become more involved with the research that they do and conduct interviews and work outside of the classroom, allowing students the opportunity to become more critical in the process in which they take while they conduct research. Outside of the research the students conduct, they spend time on reflection to examine how these things have been working to affect them personally in their own lives. This self-reflection allows for the students to take on a more personal approach to think critically and analyze the work that they are doing. This reflection allows for deeper critical literacies on socioeconomic, racial, and class differences that are working with and against the students. Peggy McIntosh writes and essay that follows a similar way of thinking as she unpacks white privilege.

                Though McIntosh studies feminism, she makes a great comparative analysis to the unconscious thinking between men’s privilege and white privilege. This thinking allows her to become critical towards the way in which men think about their own privilege and unconsciously oppress women by means of not giving up privilege but attempting to allow more openness to women in a patriarchal society. She explains that this form of though is unconscious thinking towards the privilege that men have and not realizing the affordances that being male allows. Similarly, she acknowledges that being white leads to this unconscious thinking. McIntosh lists 26 statements that bring attention to the reader of the many affordances they have being white or if they were white. On a macro level she realizes that racism still exists in our society and that we are not all free yet alone treated equally. McIntosh does not give any answer to these problems but offers ideas to restructure thinking towards how we think as a society to make changes. This way of thinking relates to Morell’s thoughts on critical literacy and Camangian’s practices in teaching autoethnography in that we need to think critically about our own affordances as an individual and try to work out how we can make social change for the better. 

Trello in the Classrom

Trello is a great productivity tool that can be integrated into your classroom and your students life. This is an app that allows you to access from any internet connectivity device. Students can be invited to a specific board and have access to content that will be in the classroom and can monitor things that are moved into the done pile as tasks are completed. This will allow for students to stay on task and build their own boards for individual tasks and projects that they are working on themselves. This is a great Web 2.0 tool that allows for interaction and collaboration using technology in the classroom. Trello is a free tool that anyone can easily sign up for using a Google account or making an account after downloading the app. As an educator this can be used to monitor the progress of the semester, individual classes and projects. This will be useful in the future as students and teachers become more connected with technology. students and teachers can both use the app which will allow teachers to remotely know when individual students are complete with a task allowing for a better flow of instruction in future classrooms. 

Working With a Flipped Classroom

Working With a Flipped Classroom Lesson

The Lesson:

This flipped classroom lesson walks students through the process of writing a story in a sentence. The students are responsible for viewing the lecture at home on their own time and reading through the links provided. Once complete students should be prepared to come to class and work through the writing process. In class students should work on writing a rough draft of a long story and then work on summary of each sentence. As students complete the summary of the paragraph, they will have a list of the subjects involved in the sentence, verbs used and objects acted upon. Before breaking the story down students should look for any modifiers, adjectives etc. that they may want to include and write them down. Now students will have all of the necessary parts needed to write the sentence conveying a story and should work on making their own story long sentence. 

Looking Back:

The lesson objectives were achieved easily and having an assessment before writing the sentence made this possible. After my students completed the assessment I was able to verify what parts of the lesson were not understood and make sure that all of the students were comfortable with the concepts to be used in the lesson. After checking in with the students the writing process could begin. As students started writing, I was able to assist with the brainstorming and flushing out ideas. This allowed for a lot more one on one contact with students which I would not have been able to do if I was focused on the lesson in general or if this part of the writing process had to be done at home. As for the summary process this was the same. Students were able to ask for assistance on finding the right words to make a summary and get assistance from the instructor. Finally the whole sentence could come together and I was there as the instructor to help guide questions about the writing process and assist with more complex punctuation as needed.

In the future it would be nice to include the links within the presentation to make sure that students actually look at the links provided. This would allow for the quiz assessment to have a better inclusion of what was offered in the links. This would be a bit more challenging to do via Power Point so using a Smart Board would be a better option for this which would allow for more hands on instruction with the whole process.

 Future lessons can be build off this which would allow for a lot more hands on instruction in the writing process. Flipping the classroom for research, writing annotated bibliographies, and even constructing a research paper would be a great resource for students. So much of writing is centered outside of the classroom when students are writing for an audience that is not present. Having the instructor there would allow for students to ask questions, bounce off ideas between one another and simply verify that they are heading in the right direction when writing.