Author: Kassia Nameth (Page 5 of 5)

There are so many ways to address the intrinsically homophobic, transphobic, biphobic, and oppressive behaviours in the systems we teach in. One of the first ones that comes to my mind is gender neutral bathrooms. I think back to my small town high school, where there wasn’t a single gender neutral washroom until my grade 12 year when there “became a need for one”. I put that phrase in quotes because more likely than not, there has always been a need but nobody felt comfortable enough to disrupt the “common sense.” My schools “added” gender neutral washrooms by just re-naming the staff bathrooms which happen to be on the opposite end of the school to the gendered high school bathrooms, which really creates a sense of othering. However this can be avoided, in my ECS 100 field placement all the bathrooms in the school were single stalls so that anyone could use any stall. This would also eliminate the stresses of gym class change rooms. So many people aren’t comfortable changing in front of their peers for so many reasons and by having stalls it once again eliminates the sense of othering for the people who chose to change in a stall rather than in front of everybody or the people.

When beginning to think what integrating queerness into curriculum studies means to me, I reflect on when Skyes said, “privileged voices (and violences) of White heteronormativity need to seek anticolonial, ethical encounter” (29) and “queering curriculum studies involves listening for ways I am implicit and complicit with White supremacy on theoretical, political, and personal levels” (30). These quotes stuck wit me because prior to this weeks readings, I wrongly assumed that queering the curriculum was just about gender and sexuality. However, it is much more than that and actually is more about dismantling power imbalances. I feel like one of the best ways to incorporate queerness into my classroom is to call out things such as “colonialism, white heteronormativity and capitalism” (31) everyday as I come across it. By me pointing these things out during a lessons or in a story it teaches the students to also actively pay attention to those things. To go along with this, after pointing out the problems in lessons in stories, it is also important to provide literature and lessons that provide what the problematic lessons or stories did not. This could be through books that are diverse gender, sexuality, race and family structures or having a workshop about some of these imbalances.

By maintaining a classroom free from any notion of sexuality we would just be maintaining the stigma around sexuality that we see today. Even if schools aren’t teaching anything about sexuality, that isn’t going to stop students from figuring it out on their own probably in an uneducated way and that’s the truth. So, why not properly educate students and properly fulfill the “duty of care for all students” by addressing topics such as consent, pleasure, gender spectrum, the diversity of sexualities, and the spectrum of biological sex (https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/852195850/the-biology-of-sex). We truly are doing students an injustice throwing them out in the world without a proper education on topics regarding sexuality. However, it is extremely important that these topics are address in an inclusive and supportive way. For example, resist using male or female specific pronouns and try using gender neutral pronouns (they/them) when explaining topics like sexual health for example.

You can see the idea of a “good student” very clearly in Painter’s article from 1886. Throughout the reading it is very clear that a white middle-class Christian male student was the only type of person worth educating. Therefore, any other gender, race, class, or religion was being oppressed while white middle class Christian boys were being overtly privileged. Now adays, the idea of a “good student” isn’t so explicitly advertised but it definitely still exists just in different ways. A good student seems to be a student who can sit nicely and say, do, and think exactly what or how the teacher wants them to. This concept is especially seen in Kumashiro’s article ,especially in the following quote, “ I was a teacher who wanted to have control over the classroom. For me, M’s behaviour was a sign that I was … not reaching M, and therefore that M was not learning and becoming the student that I desired” (20). In both of the texts, it appears that they both consider a “good student” to be a student who can learn through lecture teaching and doesn’t question what they are learning or why they are learning it. This advantages only one type of learner while the rest are left trying their best to learn in a way that doesn’t work for them.

Upon looking through the possible scholars and concepts I decided I would try and look for information on place-based education. I ended up finding a chapter from “The Handbook of environmental Education” by Gregory Smith that seemed interesting.

 Smith describes place-based education as “an approach to curriculum development and instruction that acknowledges and makes use of the places where students live to induct them into them into the discourses of any and all school subjects … that alerts them to the educational potential of phenomena outside the classroom” (213). Although it is not mentioned until later in the article, Smith eventually mentions that in many cases, the basis of place-base education actually stems from Indigenous values and knowledge systems (217).

The main theme Smith is conveying throughout the article is the positive impacts place-based education has on students. According to Smith, place-based education allows for “the development of more engaging forms of instruction, the cultivation of involved citizens, the development of people committed to the wise stewardship and protection of natural resources and areas” (213). He backs this theory up with various case studies that show statistics of academic success, improved engagement, enhanced school experience, and active citizenship. Perhaps the biggest outcome of place-based education is “overcoming the division between the classroom and the community” (220) which John Dewey, an educational reformer, observed was the biggest problem in public schools more than a century ago.

I am haven’t fully decided if I want to use this as my main article in my paper because since it is only a chapter of a larger text there seems to be many questions or topics addressed but then not answered. It would depend if I could find other articles that would maybe fill in those blanks. If it is getting too hard to find valid connections, my next step may be finding a new first text that I will be able to better summarize and make better connections.

Work Cited:

Smith, G. (2012). Place-Based Education: Practice and Impacts. In R. Stevenson (Ed.), International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education. (pp. 213–220). Taylor & Francis Group. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.uregina.ca/lib/uregina/detail.action?docID=1105876.

I definitely feel like my schooling reflects a lot of the Tyler rationale. For starters, the article lists one of the issues of this rationale is that it leaves students with little to no voice. I didn’t realize how true this was until grade 11 when we got a new high school English teacher and on the first day she asked for our input in what we wanted the year to look like and what our thought were about different assignments. We expressed that we’d rather have class discussions than little assignments and she actually listened and found new ways to have discussions, for example: small groups, large groups, jigsaw groups, and even by using Microsoft teams. Our class coined our grade 11 English year with the term “We went to Finland” (which we didn’t actually), because after learning about the worlds education systems in another class, we all agreed the Finland education system was superior and her teaching mimic Finland’s education system. However, that was the only time I had an experience like that because the next year she moved to a new school and it was strange going back to only having “pre-specified goals” and “being told what they [we] must learn, and how they [we] will do it.” I also feel that the Tyler rationale added a lot of stress on both teachers and students in my schooling. Almost every year we have to move at such a fast pace in order to get through all the content that the teacher was required to teach us and each year of high school we just had to move faster and faster. In my Pre-Calc 30 class, we only had one day to finish an entire unit at the end of the semester and it was so rushed through that nobody understood what was going on, and since we didn’t have time for a unit exam, that section was weighted for on the final exam, which of course everyone did poorly on that section. In the Tyler rationale this of course would be at the fault of the teacher or students. The Tyler rationale definitely has some major limitations which I highlighted within my stories, but there are also some aspects of it that I think do somewhat make sense. I understand the feeling of need for uniformity in what is being taught and think that in a sense, in order to move from what grade level to the next, that there needs to be some guidelines. However, I do not think the exact teachings need to be the same (like when Katia was referring to the scripts that teachers used to have to read), but I do that that maybe just to reach the same outcomes some unity is needed. This would give the teach flexibility of what contents needs to be taught depending on the students while still making sure the student has what they need to move onto the next grade without being behind.

This weeks reading was fairly short but raised a lot of valid points and concerns I never though about around the idea of ‘common sense.’ Kumashiro defines common sense many times throughout the reading, the most simple definition being “what everyone should know” (29). Throughout the reading Kumashiro goes onto explain why it is important to pay attention to common sense ideas. We need to pay attention to common sense ideas because they set a standard of how things ‘should’ be based of the few perspectives, experiences, and values of the privileged people in the society which marginalizes others on the basis of things like race, class, religion, and sexual orientation. This poses a problem because common sense ideas are difficult to challenge because they are hard to recognize and easy to seek comfort in. Although it is difficult to challenge, it is necessary, we need to intentionally look for common sense ideals and resist seeking comfort because as Kumashiro said, “what common sense does not often tell us is that the status quo is quite oppressive” (36).

As a prospective teacher, it is important for me to reflect on what common sense ideas I carry with me into the classroom. As previously mentioned, the problem with common sense ideas, is that you don’t really know is considered common sense until otherwise proven. A simple example of this happened to me in the winter semester in my French class when the professor was telling us about how when she came to Canada, she didn’t realize that our Calendar weeks start of Sunday and not Monday. But as she was explaining how shock she was, I experienced that same shock because I honestly didn’t know or even think that other places in the world would structure their calendars differently until she shared that story. I just assumed it was the norm or “common sense” to have the week start of Sundays. So, examining my common sense understandings of curriculum and pedagogy is tricky because I don’t know what is considered “common sense.” I believe pedagogy needs to be inclusive and include more than just notes and worksheets. However, in regard to curriculum, I view it as a legal document that limits teachers on what/how they teach in order to reach specific outcomes by the end of the year. I will probably realize that I have a lot more common sense ideas of curriculum and pedagogy than I thought as we navigate through this course.

Hello everyone! My name is Kassia Nameth and welcome to my education blog. Following along on my journey to becoming a future educator!