Putting it Together and Teaching OUT

Analyzing what I have taken from this course and wrestling with this information through blog posts and discussions, I felt that coming back to empathy was key in making these topics tangible and actionable for myself and my students. I chose to create a lesson in which students investigate empathy through art and will make this part of my curriculum and ongoing conversations with students in my classroom. You can read more about it in this anticipatory paper that I wrote and investigate the Canva slides and worksheet linked in this post!

All the best to everyone and congrats to all of us in completing the course!

Abi

Anticipatory Paper Link Here

Canva Slides Link Here

Canva Worshkeet Link Here 

Let them Speak

I vividly remember living in Africa and the multitude of times I felt stupid not because I was, but because I couldn't communicate. I worked hard to learn French and local languages, and this helped immensely as I eventually was able to communicate just about anything I wanted, but even then, I was only able to communicate at the level of a young child. I remember leaving meetings with government officials and feeling that I had successfully translated for our non-profit's team only to have my German best friend giggling about how well I had been able to have a discussion while sounding like a four-year-old. I felt accomplished: I came across as barely competent. Which was fine. But I wanted more for my communicative capabilities and was struggling to get out of my limited language bubble.

While this bubble was frustrating, it was also humorous. I'll never forget that I told two bus fare collectors who were fighting for who's bus my friend and I would get on "softly" instead of "knock it off." I was working on it, but I still giggle thinking about a 19 year old, 5'3" white girl going up to two 6' men pushing each other and sternly telling them to do it "softly." The same best friend won't let me live that one down.

While my best friend was "tough" on me and my language development, she was also supportive as I grew. My local friends were guides who helped me learn what to say and what to avoid saying (the French word for "butt" sounds pretty close to the English word for "face," a difference my friend Hawa preventatively pantomimed for me multiple times to make sure I would never make this mistake). And in the middle of it all, even when I felt incompetent, I was surrounded by cheerleaders who would tell me how clever I was for combining English and French to be understood, even if it wasn't "correct" by my standards. 

This experience gives me additional empathy for multilingual students in American schools who are facing the ups and downs of language learning. It is difficult to learn a language to begin with, never mind trying to keep up in school, navigate a new environment, and form new relationships. These students need additional supports as they find their way, encouragement as they make progress, and challenges that keep them invested in learning not just language, but academic content.

In Aria, an essay by Richard Rodriguez, he describes his experience as a multilingual learner in the United States. While he was born in the States, his family's home language was Spanish. He struggled to learn English and felt that this cost him accessibility to a public identity, yet when his family switched to speaking English at the request of his teachers, he felt the loss of his home identity as Spanish left. He was caught in a false dichotomy: English or Spanish. And English won. The nuns who taught him had good intentions, but lacked knowledge that a home language is a powerful, beautiful cornerstone of identity.

Research shows that this dichotomy is harmful. His teachers did not know better, but we do. Multilingual learners do not need to, and should not be forced to, lose their home language to thrive while learning a dominant language. They are best served when both languages, and the cultures associated, are present in the classroom. This is clearly demonstrated in Collier's essay Teaching Multilingual Children. Collier outlines clear approaches and strategies to support multilingual learners by encouraging them to leverage their home language as they learn additional languages. By using their home language, they are able to continue in content, expression, and cognition, maintaining the skills they need to be successful in all areas of life. As they are exposed to more English and gain proficiency, these skills transfer to their academic learning in English. They do not need to face the "either/or" Rodriguez faced - they can truly have the best of both worlds, and teachers and students can mutually benefit from the presence of multiple languages in the classroom.

Making space for students to use their home language and a hybrid of English is a process termed Translanguaging. This approach is powerful. It maintains student voices, that they have value in all languages, and makes room for students to expand their voices into English without shutting down their original languages. It allows students to keep up with grade level expectations while adjusting to a new language, new norms, and new relationships and environments. Students who are free to utilize translanguaging learn more and develop greater freedom in education and society. Everyone benefits.

What is interesting to see is that this is the norm in so many other areas of the world, but so slow to gain traction in America. Where I lived in Djibouti, there was a melting pot of languages. French was the dominant language due to colonization, Arabic was present due to proximity to Arab nations as well as the prevalence of Islam, Somali was spoken by the dominant people group in their homes and on the streets, Afar was spoken in Afar neighborhoods, Amharic was the language of the lower class guards and day laborers from Ethiopia, and so many other languages seemed to just find their way in. You could blend five languages into one sentence and no one would bat an eye. You could pantomime an entire conversation and be termed clever, rather than ridiculous. (If you want a fun experiment, find a way to pantomime "yeast" for bread - that took us a few rounds to figure out at our local corner store.)

There definitely were cases where I still felt stupid for not being able to communicate eloquently, but overall, translanguaging was a norm, and multilingualism was celebrated as the mark of the clever.  Communication mattered more than perfection, and this provided so many safe spaces for me to give speaking in French a chance. We need to learn from this. We need to make space for our students to learn and struggle and say things that sound funny, and we need to make that space sacred and celebrated. We need to value communication, not English. We need to give English as a key to empower better public communication while celebrating home languages and the cleverness it takes to learn in a language that is not from the heart. Instead of being forced between two identities like Rodriguez, lets give our students the gift of wholeness, of knowing who they are and how to authentically connect across languages and cultures. Let's let them speak: they know which language will work best for what they want to say.

My best friend Hemeda, who taught me so much about language and culture!

 

We focused on sharing a love of reading as a foundation for literacy - the smiles show we made an impact.

Looking Further:

For stories of multilingual learners in America, the following two books can't be beat. Funny in Farsi by Faroozah Dumas and Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeria are powerful memoirs that give incredible insight. Both will have you laughing at crying at the wonderful, beautiful, messy process that is making a life and learning a language while you are still young.

Here's a link to a video my friend made about the work my team did in Africa. Not every day was going out to villages like this one, but it definitely was part of what we did! Click Here 

 

Summary/Artist Statement for Teach Out Project

One of the best ways we can make the world a better place is to stay committed to seeing the humanity of every person we encounter. There is always some kind of connection point, a way that we can see how their life and experience connects with our own. Every person hungers and thirsts, every person wants a "good life" (even if our definitions of that are different), every person wants connection and sympathy. Knowing this, we can always see something of our own humanity in every person we meet. Armstrong and Wildman write about this and call it "seeing the Me" in someone - that point of connection that reminds you both that you are beautifully human, no matter what differences you may have. They wrote about this in an article called Colorblindess is the new Racism to encourage people to look differently to see the experiences of others better instead of ignoring it and only looking at their own experience.

 This connects to the idea of empathy, of entering in to someone else's experience by imagining what it would be like if you were them. How would you handle their situation? What kinds of feelings would run through your body? How would you make it through their challenges and celebrate their wins? Linda Christensen writes about this in an article called Other People's Lives where she describes students writing poetry about other people's experiences as a way to experience empathy.

 As you look at this painting, what do you think it has to say about these ideas? How does it show you "seeing the me" in another person? How does it connect to empathy and the ability to understand someone else's experience? If you made an artwork about this topic, what symbols and/or images would you use to help someone understand you?

Protection and Connection

 I feel like most of my blog posts exist in the tension of "what do we do in the in-between?" This one isn't going to be different.

We are in a world where LGBTQIA+ kids are at risk of harm, homelessness, and harshness when they come out to their communities. We have a responsibility as teachers to protect the children we teach to the best of our ability. These are our realities. But do they have to be? My tension point on this topic is: how do we create a new way to handle protecting our kids that does not involve alienating them from their families and communities? How do we make these communities a safe place where they can receive support instead of discrimination?

Kids need support. They are learning how to be humans from scratch and it isn't easy. They need guidance, they need to be affirmed, they need to be strengthened to be ready for a world that is full of hard things, and they need to be surrounded by beauty to see that this hard world is still a good one. In an ideal world, this support comes from families and is supported by the school environment. But especially with this issue, it seems like schools are participating in severing these ties instead of strengthening them, reversing the roles that best benefit children and perpetuating the struggles these children face instead of resolving them.

This makes sense in some ways, especially since Rhode Island law demands that teachers respect the privacy of students. It requires teachers to let students take the lead on coming out to their communities. But is also expects teachers not to communicate with families that their child is going through what can be a difficult process, and I have to wonder if this really is in the best interests of children. It seems to keep them from the support their families can provide should their families be informed of what their children are exploring.

It is definitely true that not all families are supportive and that this law has the intention of protecting children from families that will respond to their child coming out by beating them or kicking them out. Still, I have to wonder if this is the majority of families and if we might be participating in this response by facilitating secrecy instead of communication and connection. When secrets are leaked, there are explosions. Parents taken by surprise lash out instead of connecting because they feel betrayed. This worsens the problem, it doesn't make it better. What if schools took the lead on facilitating conversations and minimizing the shock factor for families and providing external accountability that would limit a parent's ability to harm their child? What if we believed in our families and held them to a higher standard instead of withholding the opportunity for them to support their children?

There is growing tolerance, even if the growth is slow, but are our methods of handling these situations matching this growth or remaining in the past? How can schools be proactive instead of reactive to culture, facilitating the strengthening of bonds to increase the safety of kids who come out? How can we facilitate spaces where families can be more comfortable with accepting their children and supporting them?

As I mentioned, we are in the "in-between." These kids aren't accepted quite yet, although that is becoming more normal. We can't just "out" them and expect that to be ok - there are real dangers involved. But is it actually ok to also facilitate secrecy between students and what should be their strongest support in life? How can we can get ahead of this issue instead of running behind and trying to pick up broken pieces as they appear? How do we facilitate wholeness to support students and their families and provide a new way for safety that isn't secrecy?

 

 

 

 

Good Trouble

 This reading created an absolute tug-of-war inside of me.

Shalaby discusses Troublemakers in a book of the same name. Learning from students who are labeled "defiant," who are the "tough kids," Shalaby seeks to change how teachers see these students from a deficit- to an asset-based lens. Instead of problems, Shalaby asks that we see leaders.

This rings true for me, but with access only to the preface and introduction, I feel lost on how to negotiate this concept within my practice. I agree with the perspective, but I do not understand the practice within the limitations of the current schooling system. How can you have 25+ troublemaker/leaders in a room and not end up with fist fights? How do you channel that energy into productive struggle instead of violence (speaking from experience running true choice based art classes)? How do you teach and encourage "good trouble?" What do you do when students don't rise to the challenges associated with autonomy?

While Shalaby argues that power needs to be handed to students, I think back to Delpit's conversations with learners who felt that teachers needed to use their power more to develop students. These learners talked about teachers who couldn't control their classrooms and who left students disadvantaged due to lack of direct instruction, a style of teaching that relies on the teacher exerting explicit power as the authority of the topic and the primary voice for the lesson. Students felt their learning was disrupted by teachers who were trying to distance themselves from power (even though they never truly did, as we discussed in class). These are contrasting voices with the same goal. Both authors argue for changing the system, with Shalaby seeming to advocate for an immediate change while Delpit seems more pragmatic about equipping students within the system as it exists and changes occur over time. 

The system really is heartbreaking, however. How do we address that school really is not about learning? I grew up homeschooled and I constantly struggle with this as a teacher. School absolutely is about sitting in one spot for 8 hours, listening to someone else talk, and obeying. I did my work in 3-4 hours and graduated high school while carrying a large amount of responsibility for younger siblings, went on to be a founding member of a non-profit in Africa, then returned to get a double major and a minor in undergrad with a 3.95 GPA, and am getting good grades in my graduate studies. My alternative schooling pre-K through high school is a major factor in my successes in formal education and the long list of things I have achieved in my career and personal life. I did not have to sit still for 18 years. I could take breaks. I managed my own time. I could include my own interests. I could spend time with siblings, friends, and an extended community network of all ages, backgrounds, and interests. I regularly spent 3-4 hours a day hanging out with friends online from around the world. I had the freedom Shalaby advocates for and the intrinsic motivation to make the most out of it. But I'm not an amazing outlier - I'm proof there are better systems.

But this can't be provided in a traditional school setting. Behavior has to be managed because every student deserves to be safe from verbal and physical violence, and the social-emotional skills gap that makes it likely that freedom will cause broken bones is real. Kids are sardines in a factory and can't get out and this pressure absolutely has a negative influence, but we also can't let them out because then what? Homeschooling is clearly not an option for most when households already can't survive on two incomes. Adding more SEL is important, but does it really resonate with students? Smaller classrooms sounds great, but it's still mandatory and highly controlled, meaning that there will still be "problem" students causing real problems as they resist systems that are not designed for them to thrive.

Some kind of hybrid is needed that does meet the needs of the population for childcare, that allows parents to work, that provides students with autonomy and safety, and that gives them authentic learning opportunities. Unfortunately, I feel like this blog post is something more like a rant than an answer to this puzzle, but it's what I have for today.

I will say, I have come across some resources that are helping me tease apart different viewpoints to try and get closer to an ideal system where students want to learn, want to lead, can authentically exercise autonomy, and surpass expectations. I'm just still in the process of internalizing it and applying it to my context. Still, I can highly recommend @teachingtoariot and @aishforashlyn on Instagram for helping me branch out in my thinking and explore new ways to approach my practice.

For now, however, I'm going to keep trying Delpit's approach. I'm going to pragmatically work within the current schooling system while giving students all the tools I can to learn, grow, and develop mature autonomy so that they can use freedom for causing "good trouble." I'll definitely have some students calling me a dictator while others think I'm too soft. But for today, it's what I have to offer my students, and I have faith that it is enough to show up while in the process of learning, unlearning, and growing.

Teaching Empathy

Going through the Rethinking Schools archive, I came across an article called Other People's Lives by Linda Christensen. Christensen shares about her practice of writing persona poems with students and guiding them through the process of entering into the world of another person and giving them a voice. Teaching not only writing techniques, but empathy, drives Christensen's approach. You can read the article here.

I found this interesting as I have spent my first year of teaching grappling with how to approach empathy. I have found myself frequently discouraged as I ask students about the feelings of others and have been met often with frustration and "how would I know?!" What makes this intimidating to me is not that it seems like students don't care enough to try to figure out the other person's feelings, but the sense in my gut that they actually feel like they cannot enter that person's experience and are genuinely frustrated that I would ask them to do what they see as the impossible. I am learning to readjust my expectations as to the social emotional baseline my students have to work with, while simultaneously pulling my hair out trying to find a way to integrate essential social skills into my classroom so that my students will be able to function in the world when they graduate in four short years. I hoped to find some keys to use in Christensen's article.

Poetry is a key Christensen has to offer, a writing style that is driven by emotion. Christensen says "I want my students to use poetry to cross the boundaries of race, nationality, class, and gender to find their common humanity with people whose history and literature we study." Students experience emotions every day: making space using poetry for them to understand their own emotions and then find the common humanity in people who are "other" is a powerful way for them to build the capacity for empathy. 

History offers many opportunities for students to form these connections. Most have felt grief, or joy, or confusion, emotions people have felt for all of human history. Christensen soaks students in historical context, having them generate a detailed analysis of texts to understand what it was like to live during different events. She tells students to "Lift off from the writer's words and details to fuel your poem." To do this, students have to notice and authentically connect with the person who will be the voice of their poem. 

To inspire quality work, Christensen provides examples done by previous students. Over the course of time, this has meant that family members are teaching the students, leaving a "legacy" of learning in the classroom that is powerful and accessible to students. Students know the work can be done, that they can empathize and then write something worth reading.

Dissection of the poems is left to the students. In Christensen's words, 'There's no better way to kill poetry than to tell someone else what it means." This was powerful to me as I have often found myself explaining artworks to students and watched them tune out completely. I know better - but I need to do better in my art classroom/studio to put students' learning back into their own hands, to give them experiences instead of lectures, to give them doorways instead of windows.

After dissecting poems, immersing themselves in context, and reviewing expectations, students in Christensen's classroom get to work writing persona poems. They have to take on the persona of the person they are writing about, whether that's an Asian-American immigrant burning possessions for fear of being sent to an internment camp or an urban community member being displaced for the sake of development. The poems included in the article are powerful. They are short, but pack a punch, leaving the reader with a chance to practice empathy the way the author needed to in order to write the poem.

I found this powerful and beautiful, but also complicated. Students need these opportunities to experience empathy and express what it means to understand someone else's experience. However, they cannot truly speak for someone else, and I'd love to ask Christensen if she has had any issues with students appropriating or wildly misconstruing someone else's experience. I think about the underlying social skills needed to engage in this activity and I wonder if her students are just more mature than mine, or if survival mode had truly limited the capacity of my students who are coming from hard situations. My students are hungry and exhausted: can they really be expected to reach the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs before these basic needs are met? If so, how do I do my part to get them there?

Image from this website that explains Maslow's Pyramid: Click Here

Additionally, as I translate Christensen's work into the context of my art room, I think of the deep history of cultural appropriation in art that was normalized until recently. Artists have historically taken the work of other cultures and claimed it as their own without understanding its significance, creating harmful narratives that have aided in the dehumanization and "othering" of other cultures. This is especially true in "primitive" style artworks. While incorporating other cultures into my curriculum, my students and I have  discussions about what it means to appropriate vs. draw inspiration from cultures that are not our own. This is centered in understanding but not stealing someone else's culture and experience. Below is an example of how one of my high achieving students demonstrated this understanding:

Wrestling with how to use this understanding of inspiration, but not appropriating, in art while introducing empathy and connecting with a deep understanding of someone else's experience, my partner reminded me of a documentary showing we attended together about a public art program called Mending Walls. This project by Hamilton Glass saw 16 murals created in one summer in the city of Richmond, Virginia were actually inspired by Robert Frost's poem of the same name. Centered around the discussion of race after the death of George Floyd, these collaborative works required artists from multiple ethnicity to discuss their backgrounds and use their empathetic understandings to create public artworks that authentically shared an experience. Inspiration came from authentic conversation. These powerful works endure today and will be a testimony in the city of Richmond to the power of empathy for years to come. 

This approach stops to truly listen and amplify voices, not just to guess what they may or may not be trying to say. It could be utilized in my art room to help students understand each other and create rich artworks based off of mutual understandings and amplified voices. It would support Christensen's core value of empathy while avoiding many of the struggles that come from trying to tell the story of someone who is not present to speak for themself. While I have many questions about how to make these concepts truly tangible to students who are struggling so much in this area, these conversations where they explore their own experience and learn from their peers may be a powerful way for my classroom to create authentic empathetic experiences in the future.

If you are interested in watching the documentary about Mending Walls, it is truly inspirational and worth the time! You can watch it for free here! And you can check out their website here.

Teach Out Proposal

 As an art teacher, I want to bring my strengths into this project. My artworks typically center around communication and story telling, and I feel that this aligns well with a project designed to take what I am learning from this class and present it to the rest of the world. I want to ground this artwork in not just presenting social justice in my classroom, but also social-emotional learning. Many students who have acted poorly in my classroom are taken aback when I speak with them about the impact of their actions on others. I'm hoping that this painting will become a focal point in my classroom for the ways empathy empowers better relationships. Many of these conversations aren't tangible to my students, but something they can look at is. A painting can be a space where they can slow down long enough with just enough stimuli to engage deeper reflection.