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PS.294 The Walton Avenue School

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In what ways does the classroom/ mentor teacher embody a culture of love, joy and care in their interactions and advocacy for students?

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In what ways does the classroom/ mentor teacher embody a culture of love, joy and care in their interactions and advocacy for students?

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Each table accommodates 3 students. Students are allowed to sit with their friends. Sometimes Ms. Son arranges specific seating arrangements based on a students accommodation or a potential miss behavior. Ms. Son ensures that students feel safe and wants students to have a great time in her class

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Students have the freedom to change seats if they ask. If a student wants to sit by themselves they also have a chance.

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In the summer, the visual arts classroom was moved to a new classroom. Ms. Son planned a few lessons dedicated to change the atmosphere of the classroom. The art work created by students were placed around the classroom. This made students feel cared for because they would see their own work and also see the joy of their classmates which greatly impacted the energy in the classroom.

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Share outs occur after students finish their final projects. All student work is presented. Students are encouraged to talk about their work whenever their work is presented on the projector. Ms. Son encourages students to snap their fingers or hand gesture to praise all student work. Sometimes students yell in excitement which is always funny when it unfolds.

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What does "trouble making" look like in the classroom? 

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What does "trouble making" look like in the classroom? 

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In certain classes there are students who bring their built up emotions from other classes/home into the visual arts class. 9/10 times these students explode and cause the class to be interrupted. Ms. Son asks the student to step outside for a mew minutes so she can speak with them. In other cases, if the student goes a step further (either hits a student, or curses at someone, throws things) Ms Son calls administration or a counselor to the room.

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It is normal for students to engage with their classmates during work time. Sometimes it can lead to the whole class speaking loudly. Students having conversations 1-2 tables away from them can lead into the class being louder. When students argue with each other it can lead to the whole class reacting and instigating. Transitions can lead to students yelling of excitement. Ms. Son has a bell she uses to signify lowering the voices of the room.

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After the teacher resolves the situation in the class. Students understand the teachers feelings and drop the situation. In other cases students may continue to fool around due to their high energy.

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Our Everyday Interactions in Classrooms are layered with histories, perspectives, identities. How we treat our trouble makers is a question of freedom. 

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Our Everyday Interactions in Classrooms are layered with histories, perspectives, identities. How we treat our trouble makers is a question of freedom. 

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A letter to teachers pg 172

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A letter to teachers pg 173.

In the ESL i will be teaching there are many racist remarks against each other. Something I have to address with them in class.

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Teachers are in the front lines trying to make things right

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Teachers are in the front lines trying to make things right

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A letter to teachers pg 181.

Be in the moment, sometimes i try to block small interactions while teaching. these students want to be heard.

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Children are learning that only some lives matter.

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Children are learning that only some lives matter.

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Preface Shalaby Trouble Makers.

This is a quote that has hit me hard. A lot of students pick on each other based on disabilities, personality, race. Something that must be addressed.

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Many people feel unable to love either themselves or others because they do not know what love is. 

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Many people feel unable to love either themselves or others because they do not know what love is. 

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bell hooks. love as a practice.

this a powerful quote because it can be seen in classrooms when students pick on each other or when the use of nasty language on the daily.. How do we change this? through community agreements....the way the teacher speaks to students...student empowerment...

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Pickower 6 elements of social justice curriculum 

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Pickower 6 elements of social justice curriculum 

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Love as the practice of freedom - bell hooks

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Love as the practice of freedom - bell hooks

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By the editors of Rethinking Schools

Illustrator: Sophia Foster-Dimino

The world is broken. But instead of giving up, instead of resigning, teachers need to pivot to make teaching an act of defiance, a declaration that the only way forward is through lessons that teach students to remember joy, to activate their muscles of imagination, kindness, laughter, playfulness, and solidarity.

The fear that the world cannot be mended is a story told by those who benefit from today's distorted relationships of wealth and power, and thus have an interest in keeping us docile. So instead of surrendering to despair, let us choose to create a different path.

We must reject district initiatives that begin from a narrative of "learning loss," echoing the tired lines used over the decades to track students by their test scores with problematic and inaccurate assessments tied to ineffective and deadening teaching. What our youth don't need is another year of a fact-packing, harried pace of "catching up" because they are "behind." They need lessons that intimately link the struggles of their families and communities to past and present struggles for justice around the world. They need a curriculum that teaches them to unravel the causes of racism, our climate crisis, the vast and growing economic inequality, houselessness, and war. They need to probe social reality through activities that can simultaneously build their literacy and numeracy skills and their capacity to imagine a different world - and, at the same time, fire them to life. They need a steady diet of narrative and poetry writing about their lives that tethers them back to joyful moments of their childhood, memories of standing with others, hilarious stories that remind them of laughing big, belly laughs as well as weeping collectively at shared tragedy. We need to reject the supposed need to be "efficient" in the classroom and instead take the time required to restore young people's fractured relationships with others. What may be efficient at racing another few pages through the textbook may be decidedly inefficient at building community and a love of learning. Our students need to pause to share their work in read-arounds, even when these take "valuable" class time, because sharing their writing and their stories connects young people and nurtures friendship as well as academic skills.

Instead of surrendering to despair, let us choose to create a different path.

In We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, Bettina Love argues that joy is a product of the Black freedom struggle - and has animated that struggle; it renounces alienation, oppression, exploitation:

Simply put, many of our schools function as spaces of dark suffering. . . . What is astonishing is that through all the suffering the dark body endures, there is joy, Black joy. I do not mean the type of fabricated and forced joy found in a Pepsi commercial; I am talking about joy that originates in resistance, joy that is discovered in making a way out of no way, joy that is uncovered when you know how to love yourself and others, joy that comes from releasing pain, joy that is generated in music and art that puts words and/or images to your life's greatest challenges and pleasures, and joy in teaching from a place of resistance, agitation, purpose, justice, love, and mattering.

Our students need this pedagogy of joy, and we educators need it as well. As Rosa Parks said, "There were times when it would have been easy to fall apart or to go in the opposite direction, but somehow I felt that if I took one more step, someone would come along to join me." We need to be there to join each other. A failure to believe that change is possible is a miserable lesson and one that is as contagious as all the COVID variants worming our way.

Joy is not a synonym for happy. Our students - and we educators - can be joyful even when we engage in some of the harshest topics in the world. Think of lessons described in Rethinking Schools articles in recent years: Rachel Hanes' 2nd graders learning about oil pipeline pollution and joining together in their Storyline enactments to resist company enticements to accept pipelines through their community; Martin Urbach's New York City high school music students creating their "Song for Tamir Rice" to commemorate the 12-year-old Tamir Elijah Rice, murdered by a white Cleveland police officer; Erin Green's 5th graders "meeting" and surfacing the struggles and courage of Civil Rights Movement activists in a mixer activity; Moé Yonamine's students writing and performing their "1.5 Because" poem to denounce climate policies that put their Pacific Island homes at risk: "We are not drowning, we are fighting"; Cierra Kaler-Jones' Black Girls S.O.A.R "co-researchers" in Washington, D.C. and South Carolina, who used oral histories to explore how racism, and resistance to racism, shaped the lives of their loved ones.

Joy is not an escape from the hard realities of our world, but a dive into them.

These and so many other teaching stories demonstrate how joy and academics go hand in hand. Joy is not an escape from the hard realities of our world, but a dive into them. Students experience joy from their connection with one another, how we invite their lives into the curriculum, the new insights sparked from their studies, their engagement in things that matter. Joy is the product of our respect for our students as intellectuals, writers, artists, and activists.

Yes, we know this is a hard, hard time. It is why we so desperately need to insist that our classrooms and schools be sites of joy, of imagination, of humanity. It is why we need to resist the narrative that after two and a half years of the pandemic, schools should be hurry-up sites where we single-mindedly address "learning loss." Joy and academic achievement are partners, not enemies. Social justice educators should recommit to the vision of classrooms and schools that blend our commitment to building a better world with our love for the children in our care. Joy should be central to everything we do in schools.

Want more content like this? Subscribe now to Rethinking Schools! A one-year subscription is just $24.95 and helps support our efforts to provide antiracist and social justice curriculum and articles for educators everywhere.

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Joy is not an escape from the hard realities of our world, but a dive into them.

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Instead of surrendering to despair, let us choose to create a different path. 

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Instead of surrendering to despair, let us choose to create a different path. 

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instead of ignoring or shying away from difficulties (misbehavior) there is a way to turn the space into a space of trust and love.