Teaching the Researched Family Profile Essay as
Meaningful Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Counterstory
Amy Garrett Brown
12.1
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Methods for creating assignments that will lead to these “personally significant experiences” have been posed in depth for students who are linguistically and culturally disenfranchised. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) is one such pedagogy, defined by Alim and Paris, that “seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism” as an approach to pedagogy and praxis to create transformative educational and social outcomes. CSP is a heuristic which views intersectional awareness and flexible and reflexive self-identity as necessary and good, believes that we should be building upon our historical and powerful heritages, seen as assets rather than deficits, and rather than believing student foundations as weak or broken, we restore and sustain our knowledges. CSP asks “what would our pedagogies look like if this gaze (and the kindred patriarchal, cisheteronormative, English-monolingual, ableist, classist, xenophobic, Judeo-Christian gazes) weren’t the dominant one?” (2-3). What would stepping away from this line of sight and adjusting our lenses allow? What sorts of criteria would we use to measure success? How could we “envision new and recover community-rooted forms of teaching and learning?” (2-3). Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) “has centered implicitly or explicitly around the White-gaze-centered question: How can “we” get “these” working-class kids of color to speak/write/be more like middle-class White ones (rather than critiquing the White gaze itself that sees, hears, and frames students of color in everywhichway as marginal and deficient)?” (3). Click here to continue reading.
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On Teaching Adrienne Rich
Jessica Handler
12.1
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We are in a world right now that’s trading on lies. I often find that my students either don’t know or don’t care where their information comes from. I understand this lately, I need entire days free of the news. As I write this, I recognize the urge to put startle quotes around the word “news.” Our dignity as human beings and as allies to other human beings feels fragmented under the weight of what I perceive as a rising sea of dishonesty and demoralization from what many of us have long understood as leadership spaces. But I teach her work because, as Rich wrote in her letter to the NEA, which I will address in a moment: “I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.”
We are in a world where Adrienne Rich’s words continue to matter, where students, writers, readers, citizens in general, need to know them. This knowledge, as she concluded in her essay, “Some Notes on Lying,” can lead to “the possibility of life between us.” Click here to continue reading. |