I was also interested in the presentation of the “coverer” in all three readings this week. Smith and Wilhelm echo Wiggins’ and McTighe’s conception of a teacher who “acts under the illusion that textbook and test-driven instruction encourages retention and understanding” (76). All authors this week seem to agree about the coverer’s relationship to textbooks and standards. For the coverer, the textbook is a “sacred text” (77) that is beyond criticism. In comparison, Ladson-Billings writes that culturally relevant teachers “critique the knowledge represented in the textbooks… The teachers also brought in articles and papers that represented counter knowledge to help the students develop multiple perspectives on a variety of social and historical phenomena” (162). The result of this critical pedagogy is action, which is a component of student work in Smith and Wilhelm’s backwards planning pedagogy and another huge takeaway for me this week: effective education includes some level of direct action. 

       My resource links this week is to MPD150’s “Enough is Enough” report, a “150 year performance review of the Minneapolis Police Department,” as well as its complementary curriculum guide. One of the biggest questions in our local and national communities right now is what the alternatives to policing look like. The report provides wonderful information about historical alternatives and insights and would be a wonderful resource in constructing and answering  guiding questions about reform, abolition, and policing. 

       As I read Critical Encounters in Secondary English I thought a lot about my own relationship to literary theory as a high schooler and college student. While literary theory excited and interested me as a high schooler, the coverage style pedagogy of my English teachers didn’t necessarily engage that interest and desire to learn. What frustrates me is that when I entered college, there was a whole new set of obstacles to engaging with literary theory— mainly the mystification and guardianship academia exercised over ways of seeing and understanding (theory). Of course, as Appleman cites, this trickles down to how high school teachers sometimes avoid theory and how high school students are sometimes intimidated by it. This happens even as students are effectively using theoretical lens in the way they engage with reading by pointing out, criticizing, and questioning gender and class dynamics and race in the books they read. So it seems to me that the work to be done is in demystifying these powerful lenses and then engaging students when they read theoretically. A question that occurred to me as I read both texts this week is how, even as we attempt to introduce theory to our students, teachers can become the gatekeepers of knowledge rather than the co-creators of it. In Against Common Sense, Kumashiro explains how better conversations can be had about literature when students are encouraged to reflect on their own beliefs and the way they come into contact with and make sense of what they read. 

       How do we take theory further in the classroom to underscore nuance and complexity in literature and lives rather than to serve our own narrow goals for learning? In Against Common Sense, Kumashiro discusses how a book lauded by a national association for Asian American studies was criticized for its portrayal of Filipino Americans. I haven’t read the book but this debate sounds familiar to discussions I’ve had with people about what constitutes stereotyping in literature and the pressure of portrayal. How do we manage our expectations when we introduce and read texts with the faith that they will portray an experience? Is that all there is to reading? I seem to be presented with two conflicting beliefs. On one hand, I believe good pedagogy includes reading that can both connect with student experiences and suggest a depth of experience outside their own. On the other hand, there is no monolithic experience and it is naive to expect an author to portray anything in any objective way when they have their own set of biases. It reminds me of an essay by Lauren Michele Jackson about anti-racist reading lists and how they can narrow our understanding of authors and literature. For example, Toni Morrison is often on anti-racist reading lists because her work obviously explores race and the racialized experiences of its black characters— and that is important. However, these conversations neglect the other powerful aspects of Morrison’s writing and work like her gorgeous prose and the often brutal experience of being a woman. I obviously appreciate literature's value in bringing us to conversations about race and how critical it is that we have those classroom discussions, but I’m not sure there is inherent value in these conversations if we can’t be honest about ourselves and our expectations. Hopefully this makes sense and I apologize that my Gemini moon presents more questions than answers. 

       The more I think about social action as an important aspect of teaching the more I wonder what that action can look like. I’d like to discuss this more because I think interpretations of social action fall more into philanthropy than justice, and I want to understand better which actions create the most meaning and impact in our lives. For example, a friend of mine that went to Blake— a private school in Minneapolis— was telling me the other day about a volunteering event the school does every year. According to this friend, students get a full day off of school to volunteer at different locations and organizations, but usually only volunteer for a couple hours. The students then get an event at the end of the day to hear speeches and reflect on their experiences. 

       “Socializing With the Ghosts of Our Racial Past” reminded me of a tweet I’ve seen on my timeline: ”If black people epigenetically inherit trauma from slavery from our ancestors, what do the descendants of overseers and slave owners inherit?” (@allcurledup). I don’t have the answer to this question, but it’s clear that an enduring legacy and compounding symptom of the racial trauma committed by white Americans is an inability and disinterest in discussing this trauma. As a result, healing and justice are being denied to students in classrooms where teachers are not prepared for these conversations. I was interested in the advocacy for novels that present racial trauma. It was helpful to hear this because I sometimes wonder if, as a white teacher, presenting stories about racial trauma might alienate and re-traumatize students of color. I agree that “these novels by themselves will not solve all of our racial problems.” Knowing why these readings are necessary and how to facilitate rather than control the conversations about them is my responsibility as a teacher. 

        In Who’s Culture has Capital? Tara J. Yosso writes that “Looking through a CRT lens means critiquing deficit theorizing and data that may be limited by its omission of the voices of People of Color.” I wasn’t quite sure how to square this with the aspect of wealth called “navigational capital.” What does it mean to value a student of color’s ability to navigate institutions that require assimilation to white middle class norms to succeed? I understood Yosso’s  definition to emphasize student agency and access to specific culturally affirming resources outside of institutions, but the term is interesting to me. As Yosso writes— as well as Eric Toshalis in Make Me— the personal cost of navigating these institutions can be painful and incredibly stressful for students of color. Is this simply reframing the cultural marketplace? Does it serve students to applaud their ability to navigate hostile environments? Can we do more? I wonder if operating from the constructive imagination hooks writes of could open more possibilities than survival… but someone will cry “that’s unrealistic!”
       By now I’m able to identify common aspects of curriculum and teaching practices that reflect white middle class norms but of course I do not possess experiential knowledge of other cultural norms and practices. The conundrum reminds me of the critique of “culturally relevant” pedagogy that simultaneously attempts to embrace all ways of speaking/seeing/behaving while teaching students to “succeed” in the white middle class world… Who does this truly serve? This remains the dominant interpretation of culturally responsive/ relevant pedagogy— as reflected by this program’s ELA course, which has been criticized by several members of our cohort already.
         Yosso’s piece, especially the care the author took to define income versus wealth as well as the definitions of aspirational, familial and social capital, made me think of the “social justice” jerseys the NBA are wearing this year— specifically Andre Iquodala’s group economics jersey. I’m weary of forms of justice that expand rather than disrupt models of capitalism, but I understand the necessity for immediate action rather than the long game of systemic change (which feels so distant a real possibility anyway). This is also the tension between investing in charters and divesting from public schools— charter schools as an immediate action towards equity (in the best case scenario) despite public schools as a flawed but critical service increasingly endangered by privatization. I don’t know man. It’s complicated. 

Yet teaching these books rather than simply reading them recreationally is an issue I’m not sure where I stand on. I appreciated reading Lauren Porosoff’s take in “Why I’ll Never Teach this Powerful Book Again.” According to Porosoff, when her faculty found out about the allegations of First Nations women against Alexie, it was too late to completely change the curriculum that featured Alexie’s book, like they planned to do the following year. Instead, it became a “teaching moment,” more aptly described as a discussion moment. The questions Porosoff raises (“How do we respond when we discover that someone we look up to is not at all the person we thought? Is it ethical to appreciate a piece of work when the person who created it behaved wrongfully?”) are wonderful questions to discuss with a class because as a teacher, I don’t know the answers myself. Usually my philosophy with class discussion topics is that you never know what your class is capable of-- teenage idealism is not simply unrealistic fantasy but can be a bold reminder of the possibilities adults often overlook, and should be engaged and questioned rather than shut down. Additionally, as Akiea Gross says, “If we (students of color) ain’t too young for you to hate us, for you to sell us, for you to kill us, then we ain’t too young to learn how to love ourselves enough to heal, to resist, to unlearn… to get free.” Teachers are not protecting students when they refuse to discuss certain topics. They actually are just refusing to help students name issues that may be affecting their lives. So I think there is definitely space to have these conversations with students. My bottom line is that I don’t want to be the teacher who is afraid to raise these subjects and have these conversations-- if I fail or it gets messy, I can pick up the pieces and figure out what worked and what I need to work on.

If a teacher chose to continue teaching a book like The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian in order to prompt this sort of discussion afterwards, I personally don’t think that would be a bad idea. I understand Porosoff’s decision to change the curriculum in order to deplatform Alexie. She makes a good point about the news of Alexie’s behavior not being news to everyone-- many First Nations women writers were already aware of his harassment. Making a decision to replace Alexie’s book with First Nations women writers, informed by the publishing erasure of these voices, is understandable. For my part, since we control what our curriculum represents and what it doesn’t in our book choices, we inevitably limit representation of identity and experience-- so teachers need to understand the limits of what a “diverse” reading list can do for our students. I think the conversations we have are more important than checking off a list of identity. This is not a defense of an “dead white guy” curriculum but a question of the limits of a “representative” curriculum.

The Akiea Gross quote in the second paragraph comes from my resource this week, the Abolitionist Teaching Networks Teaching to Thrive podcast. 

    Appleman is primarily concerned with maintaining high expectations for her students, grounded in standards. While Christensen writes about using the same curriculum for high track and “low” track classes as well as using student experience to fulfil work that follows standards, I noticed some difference in these teachers’ ultimate goals for their students and methods to meet these goals.

    According to Chirstensen, the point of education is social action. For this to happen, students need a sense of community within the classroom so they can be in a relatively safe learning environment which allows them to critique their world. But in order for community to be established, Christensen’s particular student population needed to be engaged towards empathy for their peers. Thus, community building and developing empathy were the priorities in Christensen’s class-- her own standards. To meet these standards, Christensen relies on a reader-response lens to encourage her students to find points of similarity in their struggles and character conflicts and fellow peers struggles. 

    Although I pledge more allegiance to Christensen’s vision of an empathetic classroom community than somebody’s standards (I do not claim them), I keep going back to this quote that really struck me when I first read Appleman’s chapter: “Underlying all of these assumptions is our belief that the sharing of personal responses in the public sphere of school will bring students to a greater understanding of themselves and one another rather than underscore the depths of the chasms, or the inequality, that often divide us. This is the essence of the false promise of democracy in the literature circle.” 

       Putting this reading in conversation with the essay about Sherman Alexie and the issue of consuming/ teaching art made by abusers and Bad Guys, I want to try to articulate a reaction that has been emerging when I see other white people talk about cleansing their art diet.... Many white people are latently waking up to the fact that a lot of media is made by and for a white audience, a fact that we only have the luxury of not noticing because of white supremacy and our own consumption habits and identities as white people. So, there seems to be a naivety in the well intentioned decision to reconfigure consumption habits to a representation based algorithm. I’m not saying that it isn’t good for us to try to renegotiate our consumption and interrogate our interests, but it is a luxury to be just waking up to this fact, instead of aware of it from the beginning. 

        As I read Carey-Webb’s “Shakespeare and the New Multicultural British Literatures,” I thought about incorporating new historicism in an activity I got from Critical Encounters in Secondary English. The activity is called Theory Relay. After reading a book and learning about different critical lenses, stations are set up where students respond to discussion questions using these different lenses. More information on this activity is on page 230. 

       My CT at Sanford Middle School provides a really inspiring example of how to teach in a pandemic, and it’s basically to acknowledge that the usual standards are impossible to maintain. I would describe her approach as high care, high realism. Before this appointment, I intended to GTFO after I got my license until schools were safely back to in person instruction. I truly preferred the idea of returning to the service industry during a pandemic than being a new teacher during a pandemic. Not to connect everything with abolition, but my boyfriend was listening to a podcast the other day where activists were describing the creation of new justice systems as “building the boat while we row it,” and that seems like an accurate description of teaching in a pandemic. Yet the way so many people in the profession discuss it characterizes it more as business as usual. Somehow this seems so connected to teachers who are so beholden to standards and high expectations that they lose sight of their students' needs. I appreciated this week’s article “Redefining Rigor” for this reason— it presented a classroom that more closely aligned student interests and course standards
       One of the teacher panelists from our Culture Schools and Communities webinar mentioned freedom school, which really interested me. My resource this week is the Children’s Defense Fund, which operates freedom schools today among other services. 

           As I read about the intergenerational theories of trauma and the transhistorical model of trauma, I saw a connection between how these frameworks collapse all trauma (and even label peri-traumatic experiences as trauma) and how many people (English teachers being perhaps the chief offenders) claim that reading can instill in us special abilities to empathize and connect. What I believe intergenerational theories of trauma lack is specificity in locating trauma, disseminating variants of it, and diagnosing it. Just as we will encourage students to be specific in their analysis of texts and reading, we need to be specific about the powers fiction has, and what it does not have. We need to see the symbol for the smoke. It’s no surprise that intergenerational trauma in literary theory would combine a lack of specificity with an overestimation of what literature can do. At least, that’s my opinion until someone changes my mind. 

          Reading and engaging this article gives me an appreciation for the portrayal of Starr’s struggle with her identity as an individual and others’ perception of her as a black girl and a victim of trauma in The Hate U Give. Connected to the literary theory of intergenerational trauma, in which a character becomes a representative of “a group of people or a particular culture, race, or gender, [that] have collectively experienced massive trauma” (155), Starr is a metarepresentation of this trope as she navigates these explicit expectations from peers and teachers in her overwhelmingly white private school and the larger world when she becomes a public(ish) figure defined by the trauma that put her in the spotlight. Balaev writes that “To claim that the traumatized protagonist expresses a specific, idiosyncratic response to trauma, while also functioning as representative figure of a social group in order to relate the actions in the novel to a historical event, does not suggest that the protagonist asserts an essentialist, intergenerational identity based on a decades-old event,” which I can understand especially in books that deal with trauma as nuanced and well as The Hate U Give. Yet I see these two as separate to character and plot, respectively. Whereas portraying a protagonist’s response to trauma as idiosyncratic is connected to character development, the trauma itself as understood to be connected with historical events is connected to plot. I’m interested in seeing and discussing traumatic events in literature through their resonance with specific political events, and I don’t believe we need to interpret one character’s post traumatic trajectory as a representation of the effects of trauma for someone else. 

         I was also really interested in theories that described the “speechless terror” as “an epistemological conundrum or neurobiological fact” as opposed to Balaevs assertion that the unspoken trauma in literature usually is a result of cultural values (157). If this is true, then a way for novels to become the powerful things we so often wish and see them to be is by naming that which is socially constructed as taboo or impolite. 
          For all progressives, there is something to celebrate about Biden’s election, even if it’s just Trump losing. As we refocus our efforts, my link this week is a really helpful for those hoping to better advocate for abolition and understand the mission at the heart of abolition, which is creating better ways of taking care of each other. I think a good place to start the project of abolition is to understand how to discuss it with those who do not understand it. 

           I also really liked Larson-Billings’ comments about teachers who “rarely pushed students to consider critical perspectives on policies and practices that may  have direct impact on their lives and communities” because it resonated so much with my experiences in the licensure program. Many of our professors are not willing to extend their criticism to the elite nature of the program or their own curriculum and expectations. Every student, not just teacher candidates, has opinions about their learning experience. I also think we know ourselves as students and what we need best. In a classroom, there should be space for students and teachers to redirect and construct the direction of learning together. Curriculum should be flexible enough to incorporate students' own considerations so they can have ownership over their learning. I appreciate that some teachers give a survey during the semester to gather student input. When I was a service-learning volunteer at Avalon, a project-based charter school, I was inspired by their cooperative model of leadership, where the teachers are the administration and make all school-wide decisions