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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Revolutionize the way you negotiate the realities of childhood education In Teaching Fiercely: Spreading Joy and Justice in Our Schools, accomplished educator Kass Minor delivers an inspiring and practical exploration of what it means to be a just teacher in a system that actively incentivizes injustice. The author explains how to build joyful experiences even in the face of inevitable injustice and demonstrates how to accept the seemingly conflicting experience of joy in the face of heartbreak. In the book, you'll learn to be a catalyst for change, unlearning the patterns of school that have marginalized children while becoming aware of tenets of justice as they manifest in educational spaces. You'll also discover: * Strategies for creating human-centered care and joy, in which thoughts, actions, and decisions are drawn from within the school community * Techniques for creating student-centered experiences within standards-based classrooms * How to raise the level of family involvement in your students' education and improve communication between family and staff An essential blueprint for K-12 educators, school support staff, and school administrators, Teaching Fiercely will also earn a place on the bookshelves of education policymakers, researchers, and students.
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Seitenzahl: 502
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Additional Praise for
Teaching Fiercely
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Work Alongs and Reflections
Author's Note
Foreword
Introduction
Early 2000s
What This Book Is About
How This Book Is Different
How to Traverse This Book
Social Justice Work Illuminated: The Work Is Multifaceted
Notes
Acknowledgments
Thank you …
Prologue: Anthem for a Teacher
Chapter 1: Building the Foundation: A Structured Generator of Hope for More Joyful and Just Schools
A Structured Generator of Hope
The Pedagogy of Justice
What Is Justice?
Justice for Whom? (In the Realm of School Integration)
Where Is Joy Located in the Pursuit Toward Justice?
Dreams, Nourishment, Rituals: Toward Future Goodness
Historical Underpinnings: Exploring the Roots of Schooling
Notes
Chapter 2: Seeing and Feeling the Pressure of Injustice: Perspective Changes Everything
Dominant Culture: Perspective Changes Everything
Catalyst for Change: Knowing How to See and Feel the Pressure of Injustice
Identifying Layers of Perspective
Tools for Perspective Analysis: More than a Decade Later
Timeline Pedagogy: To Move Forward, We Must Look Back
Notes
Chapter 3: A Framework for Social Justice Work in Schools and Gentle Notes on Learning
Collaborate
Nurture
Build
Reflect
Connecting the Collaborate, Nurture, Build, and Reflect Framework
Gentle Notes on Learning: Rituals and the Beginnings of Our Thought Sanctuary
Somatic Literacy
Notes
Chapter 4: Pursue Joy by Thwarting Injustice: Develop Teacher Agency Through Reflective Practice and Collaboration
Points of Reflection
The Nature of a Curriculum‐Making Journey
Embracing Teacher Intellect: Changing the Narrative About Teachers
Notes
Chapter 5: Moving Toward Joy: Student‐Centered Experiences in Standards‐Based Classrooms
To Teach Fiercely Requires Teacher Agency
Four Methods of Instructional Delivery
Curriculum‐Making: Frameworks and Foundational Understandings
Notes
Chapter 6: The Joyful Work of Building Imaginative Capacities Matters: Know that Learning Predates School
“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”
Working Toward Justice: The Continued Conversation on Student Centeredness
Notes
Chapter 7: Beyond the Protest March: How to Design Justice‐Oriented Learning Spaces, Experiences, and Curriculum That Is Immersed in Joy for Kids
Designing Justice‐Oriented Learning Spaces
The Nuts and Bolts of Justice Designs
What Matters to Children
Notes
Chapter 8: Negotiating the Curriculum for Your Current Students in Today's World
Three Paths for Considering Kids, Justice, and Curriculum Design
Note
Epilogue: Redefining Ferocity
My Edu‐Credo
Works Cited
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
TABLE 1.1 Lady Justice's symbols.
TABLE 1.2 Iterations of Justice: imagery and explanations.
Chapter 3
TABLE 3.1 Spaces for spreading joy and justice in schools.
Chapter 4
TABLE 4.1 Values‐Practice Connection examples.
Chapter 5
TABLE 5.1 Unpacking levels of teacher agency.
TABLE 5.2 Examples of culturally relevant‐sustaining pedagogies in schools....
TABLE 5.3 Characteristics of quantitative and qualitative data.
Chapter 7
TABLE 7.1 Ways of responding to kids' wonderings.
TABLE 7.2 The difference between appropriate and innocence.
Chapter 8
TABLE 8.1 Template for making curriculum relevant through negotiation.
TABLE 8.2 Planning for your current students in today's world.
TABLE 8.3 Corresponding approaches to learning designs and curriculum‐making...
TABLE 8.4 Morning workstations revised to create space for kids' lived exper...
TABLE 8.5 The dangers of not talking about it with corresponding research.
TABLE 8.6 Designing for justice do's and don'ts.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
FIGURE 1.1 Structured generator of hope.
FIGURE 1.2 Pedagogy unpacked.
FIGURE 1.3 Visual grid example.
FIGURE 1.4 Scales of justice.
FIGURE 1.5 Upper elementary student vision board example.
FIGURE 1.6 Lower elementary school student vision board example.
FIGURE 1.7 Teacher demonstration vision board.
Chapter 3
FIGURE 3.1 Body sensations list (Meenadchi 2020).
Chapter 4
FIGURE 4.1 Letters to Your Future Self, featuring the work of undergraduate ...
FIGURE 4.2 Tell the story.
FIGURE 4.3 Shared Vision planning template, adapted from Elevating Co‐teachi...
FIGURE 4.4 Chart displaying teacher's shared co‐constructed vision on their ...
FIGURE 4.5 Chart displaying teacher's shared co‐constructed vision on their ...
FIGURE 4.6 Co‐planning routine for teacher partnerships.
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5.1 Levels of teacher agency scale.
FIGURE 5.2 Community connections: the cylinder vs. the triangle.
FIGURE 5.3 Community Connections: The Cylinder vs. The Triangle.
Chapter 6
FIGURE 6.1 Super solvers poster.
FIGURE 6.2 Sample Super Solver schedule.
FIGURE 6.3 Template used to support students in writing ‘thank yous” in Rach...
FIGURES 6.4 AND 6.5 Templates used to support students in writing affirmatio...
FIGURE 6.6 Sample from emotional literacy progression (Sharpstein 2017).
FIGURE 6.7 Station schedule.
FIGURE 6.8 Journal jots sample A.
FIGURE 6.9 Journal jots sample B.
FIGURE 6.10 Kindness conductors student instructions.
FIGURE 6.11 Kindness conductors teaching chart.
FIGURE 6.12 Emotion illustrators station.
FIGURE 6.13 Appreciation station.
Guide
Cover Page
Additional Praise for Teaching Fiercely
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Work Alongs and Reflections
Author's Note
Foreword
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Anthem for a Teacher
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Epilogue: Redefining Ferocity
Works Cited
About the Author
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
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Additional Praise for Teaching Fiercely
“Teaching Fiercely is a joyful, collegial invitation to incorporate our whole powerful selves into teaching for justice so that we may invite students to engage and learn with their whole powerful selves. As a most beautiful bonus, this invitation comes with guidance for teaching for justice in meaningful, transformative ways from an author who is known to walk her justice talk.”
Paul Gorski,Founder of the Equity Literacy Institute
“Kass Minor has crafted a glorious literacy love letter to all educators committed to bringing ‘joy and justice’ to life in the company of children. Her words are the gentle nudge we need to envision the HOW so that we may assume an active role toward the diverse, equitable, and inclusive schools our children deserve.”
Dr. Mary Howard,Literacy Consultant and Author
“In a landscape heavy with the weight of increasing WHYs about the urgency for remedying injustices, Kass Minor provides a wise, insightful, and joyful guide for educators about HOW to move forward day to day in the work of justice with a ferocious heart.”
Ashley Lamb‐Sinclair,Author, Educator & National Geographic Explorer
“For educators who are striving to engage in justice‐centered work and align values to equitable classroom practices, this book will nourish your soul and well‐being during these complex times in education. Kass Minor beautifully blends scholarship, teacher activism, and her wealth of educational experiences to emphasize how we build and sustain a sense of connection and belonging in school communities out of love for youth and humanity.”
Erica Buchanan‐Rivera,Educator and Author of Identity Affirming Classrooms: Spaces that Center Humanity
“Teaching Fiercely is exactly what you need right now whether you are a new or veteran teacher. Kass Minor's voice is strong and clear – teaching must be joyful and just. At the heart of this book is love and respect for children, families, communities, and teaching as an art. This book will be your anchor to living a teaching life in which you bring your whole self, and which is steeped in reflection and action.
Dr. Laura Ascenzi‐Moreno,Professor of Bilingual Education, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Teaching Fiercely
Spreading Joy and Justice in Our Schools
Kass Minor
Copyright © 2023 by Jossey‐Bass Publishing. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Control Number is Available:
ISBN 9781119867678 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781119867692 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119867685 (epub)
Cover Art and Design: Leuyen Pham
The longest road you will ever walk is the journey from your head to your heart.
—Phil Lane
Work Alongs and Reflections
For an active reading experience, Work Alongs and Reflections are placed at several junctures throughout the text. Readers may wish to refer to these activities directly as they are working in school communities, participating in study groups, and/or other types of professional learning.
Chapter 1
Reflection: Unpacking the Term “Pedagogy”
Work Along: What Do We Mean When We Say “Justice”?
Work Along: Whose Vision Will Guide Racial Justice in Schools?
Work Along: Vision Boarding Toward Future Goodness
Chapter 2
Work Along: Designing Group Work in Your Lesson Plan
Work Along: The Choosing Change Tool55Reflection: Your Early Years in School
Reflection: Making Time and Space for Learning that Sticks
Chapter 3
Reflection: Unpacking Collaboration Journaling
Reflection: Envisioning Your Thought Sanctuary
Reflection: What Have You Built?
Work Along: Generating Joy and Justice within the Collaborate‐Nature‐Build‐Reflect Framework
Work Along: Somatic Literacy Body Inventory
Chapter 4
Work Along: Writing a Letter to Yourself
Work Along: Trying out Lean Coffee
Work Along: In‐House Comparisons on Justices and Injustices
Chapter 5
Reflection: Developing and Exploring Teacher Agency
Work Along: Considering the “Community Up” Model For Your Community
Work Along: Finding CR‐SP in Your Practice
Work Along: Strength‐Based Student Talk “Taboo” Game
Chapter 6
Work Along: Summoning Your Inner Child
Work Along: Wait, What Is It I am Supposed to Teach?
Chapter 7
Work Along: What’s My Purpose?
Reflection: Documenting Kids’ Questions, Ideas, and/or Wonderings
Reflection: Protecting Your Childhood Self at Your Current School
Reflection: Naming Credentials That Matter
Chapter 8
Work Along: Generating Issues Relevant Within Your Community
Reflection: How Are You Feeling Right Now?
Epilogue: Redefining Ferocity
Work Along: Developing a Personal Edu‐Credo
Author's Note
Ten percent of the author's royalties from this book will be donated to organizations that work toward the healing of Indigenous peoples within the United States, and BIPOC‐owned organizations that work to strategize for equitable, inclusive futures.
Foreword
To know Kass Minor is to have lived experiences where you simultaneously feel a bolt of the universe's energy enter your mind, body, and soul. A connector of hearts, a creator, a community organizer, and really, just such a rad human.
To be a reader of professional texts—of this professional text—is to sit between words and lines and pages, in conversation. In conversation with the author, with far‐away and close‐by readers reading in the exact moment you are, and, most importantly, in conversation with yourself. This book kindly hands you a mirror to hold up to an evolving you: illuminating reflections of validation, observation, interrogation, and that nudge to try something new. It brings back old‐school professional text vibes of deep research, and deep knowledge, requiring the reader to think acutely about their practice. The mirror‐holding Kass models for us is honest and steady, as she claims she has specific identity markers and doesn't have all the answers, but does have community and conviction. And we all need those things: community, conviction, and a healthy nudge toward continuing to construct justice for kids. And not for the future, for right now.
So, Kass's nudge is loving and fierce, with a sense of urgency. Just like Kass.
Teaching Fiercely is designed to match the demands of today's educators. Though it is highly comprehensive, Kass mentions early on to engage with the chapters the way we coach kid‐inquirers to find what they are researching for—read with your questions and identity markers in mind, clear eyes, and your heart wide open. I tried it this way and went down an empowered and individualized pathway—curated by Kass, but created by me—and found myself making lists of new‐to‐me scholars in the field, creatively responding to her Work Alongs like vision boarding, doing mini‐inquiries into Folk Schools, interrogating both my individual and our community goals (do they really bend toward belonging and justice?), reflecting hard on the teacher agency scale, and truly revising my own approaches to learning design guided by all the historical and cultural models Kass generously offers us. My educator efficacy soared reading this book, at a time when it is so needed.
To be an educator is to understand that, universally, education has always been and always will be the most powerful reciprocal tool individuals, gatherings, and communities can both receive and contribute to society. It is critical to breaking cycles of crises: illiteracy, poverty, hunger, violence in all forms, armed conflict, and large‐scale environmental and human tragedy. It is both the foundation and pillar of human sustainability. Educators also painfully understand that level of progress is not universally welcomed. I've had the good fortune of being in a community with educators around the country and around the world. This positionality only raises my awareness of patterns of systemic inequities that play out on the backs of kids and caregivers everywhere. With this lens, I am certain Teaching Fiercely is a book that can be used around the world, because personhood and joy are carefully held at the center. I applaud Kass Minor for modeling the level of learning in public we all must do in our collective commitment to disrupting these cycles on our pathway to justice.
Welcome to the world, Teaching Fiercely. We are better with you here.
Sara K. AhmedEducator and author of Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension
Introduction
Early 2000s
When I began teaching in the early 2000s, “social justice,” “equity,” “ABAR,”1 and “CR‐SE”2 were not buzzwords floating around in public rhetoric, and most certainly were not featured on television or other media channels. Conversations about the “science of reading” had not yet hit public airwaves. The heat behind schools' choices for literacy curriculum took place mostly within academic circles working at universities, not so much between those who worked at schools, with children. If you saw something on TV about reading, or about how children should act, at least in my fledgling teacher world, you were most likely catching a rerun of Levar Burton's Reading Rainbow3or maybe listening to Prince Tuesday from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood4 say a thing or two about how children should behave.
In the early 2000s, MySpace was still a thing, Facebook had just opened up to the community at large, and Twitter and Instagram didn't yet exist. In short, spreading information about what was really going on in schools—i.e., what kids were experiencing, how teachers were teaching, what parents and caregivers were saying—was much harder to access. As classroom teachers who remembered the strange undercurrent of both fear and jubilation during Y2K,5 my colleagues and I were teaching our hearts out—and, honestly, there weren't a lot of people around us who had “boo” to say about it, let alone comment on what books were in our classroom libraries.
My partner, Cornelius, and I joke about how in those first few years of teaching life we were feral teachers, teachers who were given so much freedom in the name of kids' best interests that putting parameters around our work would have inhibited our ability to activate our instinctual knowing, our innate calling, that is, to teach. I'm talking about the kind of teaching that has limited support these days: the kind of teaching that is raw and gritty yet playful and effective. The kind of teaching that is labored, almost subconsciously, by a teacher's work with the kids and families and colleagues that surround her, through trial and error, love and rejection.
Sigh.
People often give the word “feral” a bad rap, a negative connotation. But I think there's a really beautiful association with it. For example, at the Brooklyn Public Library down the street from where I live, a perhaps feral cat has built a home, or at least, has insisted upon its housing. It (he? she? they? not sure of the gender) can be seen in the front garden of the library, nestled in a cinder block with a scrap of wood over it, surrounded by three bowls of food that are always full. I imagine it comes and goes as it pleases. When we see it, its needs are met, belly full, with access to the world, unfettered. Our children have named it Mr. Books. Every time I visit the library with my daughters, books in hand, my heart skips a beat when we near the entrance. I worry Mr. Books will be gone, that his scruffy self will be absent amongst the flowers. And yet, we haven't missed him yet. He continues to survive.
I often think about who I would be had I begun my career in the climate educators currently experience, a climate that is defined by relevant truths, ahistoricism, and a new, post‐2020 reality. How would I be me? Would I still be as curious or loving or connected?
During those early days in my teacherhood, I felt a great sense of freedom. In retrospect, I also realize that maybe to be free requires us to be somewhat feral. But to be free also means to struggle to survive—and as much as I felt that freedom, I felt that struggle, too. I felt it then, and I feel it now, albeit differently. Lots of things have happened to me, to you, to all of us working in schools, in education, within the past 20 years. As a profession, as a people, we're all over the place. Who are we? What is it that we do? Where are we going? Where have we … been?
In the beginning of my career as a new teacher, like Mr. Books, I was cared for by others, particularly, by the immediate community of teachers surrounding me on a daily basis—and also the progressive school reforms that had been implemented within my school. We were included in the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES), an endeavor built by contemporary progressives like Ted Sizer and Debbie Meier to reinforce John Dewey's foundational concept of Democracy in Education: fundamentally, that kids learn best by doing, interacting, and experiencing. They believed schools should foster those elements within their curriculum and for their students. Many of my colleagues shared that belief, and so did I.
We were also part of the New York State Performance Standards Consortium, lovingly dubbed the Consortium by those who were a part of it, a group of secondary schools that replaced high stakes testing with performance assessments for graduation requirements, teacher‐led and state‐approved. Most CES schools in New York City were part of the Consortium. In short, during those first few years of my teaching, my colleagues and I were blessed with a freedom and flexibility that many teachers were not then, and most certainly are not now: project‐based learning was the norm, and standardized tests were the exception. We were lovingly engaged in a world of curriculum that we innovated, created, and adapted.
With students, we teachers created project‐based learning that was directly connected to the students' personhood and their place‐based experiences. Teachers worked hard to design project‐based learning with the rigorthey were implored to demonstrate, building deep literacy and numerical reasoning with the students in their classroom communities. I took my first (of what would soon be many) walking trips to explore Times Square in Manhattan with students and their ELA (English‐language arts) teachers. Students captured comparisons of the real‐life media feeds displayed on 42nd Street to the media displayed in dystopian novels Feed by M. T. Anderson and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
Rigor was one of the hottest edu‐buzzwords of the early 2000s, and over time it's been grossly inflated. It's often associated with academically advanced material, or super‐challenging instructional experiences. But rigor simply means to operate closely within a child's zone of proximal development so as to improve the likelihood that learning will stick and their ideas about new information will grow.
Another time, within the history department, we worked to capture the impact of a newly built IKEA in nearby Red Hook, Brooklyn. Students interviewed passersby, and created photo essays with shots fastidiously snapped from their Sidekicks—the popular cell phone of the time, pre‐smartphone. They were able to demonstrate longitudinal shifts on their blocks; visual reflections regarding the impact of rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn on their families.
We even had students research one of the most polluted waterways in the world, the famed Gowanus Canal, a Superfund site6 (epa.gov), to find out exactly which contaminants surrounded some of their homes.
One of my first independently designed projects was called America Speaks, an exploration of the history of school in the United States, exposing students to the Civil Rights Movement, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), and the very relevant question on whether or not racial school integration made a difference for Black and Brown students. Out of the approximately 500 students who attended our school, fewer than 1% identified as white. Decentering my teacher self as the knower in the room, students and I grappled with questions like: If America could speak, what would she say? Has integration “worked”? What are different ways people make change? What do we want our society to be like?
I was deeply invested in all of it. My students, the teachers I cotaught and created with. The families who patiently waited for me to do better, to get better at teaching their children. Student government, the curriculum, the basketball games, the skateboarders, Brooklyn, I loved them. I loved all of it. It was a beautiful time for me; I felt like I had figured out what I had been put on this Earth to do.
But there was an ugliness to all the deliciousness in that work. David Chang, renowned chef and restaurant mogul, has a beautiful food docuseries on Netflix called Ugly Delicious, an homage to the food your grandmother might make, heap on your plate, and insist that you eat at least two servings of. It tastes absolutely divine, and you and your family agree on the delightful exchange between your tastebuds and said food. But for others, those who don't know the recipe, who weren't part of cooking it, rather than looking divine, the food looks questionable. Unappetizing. Different.
Chang says this kind of food is the “ugly deliciousness” that restaurateurs enjoy eating at home, or that chefs and line cooks and waitstaff enjoy eating before their dining rooms open. No matter how delicious, for diners in restaurants, those dishes are really hard to appreciate. Maybe they don't know what they're eating, maybe it's something they've not seen before … whatever the case may be, chefs have a hard time selling the food that comes from the deepest parts of their hearts.
This was the case of my school and our work: we were ugly delicious. As much as our students were learning, as seen as they may have felt, and as hard as we were working, the people who evaluated schools didn't have a metric to gauge what we were doing. They could not see the value of our work; even though it was from the deepest parts of our hearts. They didn't have the recipes for the projects, the alternate assessments, the anachronistic schedules, the communal cross‐grade advisories we built: those ideas and programs didn't come from their kitchen.
I've condensed the 500‐page story that paused our freedom into just a few sentences:
We were categorized as a “failing school” by New York City's Mayoral Office.
The visionary principal who led the school abruptly took leave, and later quit.
A new principal took their place, and the city went through another iteration of school reform underneath former Chancellor Joel Klein and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's leadership.
The school withdrew from the Coalition of Essential Schools and the Consortium.
It later turned into something entirely different, so I left and began working at an elementary school in a different part of Brooklyn.
For me, and many of my colleagues, “failing” wasn't something we thought a lot about. We were deep in the struggle. We were too busy figuring out how to teach, trying to understand what our students needed, and working to develop connections between the projects we were designing to the new Common Core State Standards7 that had just been introduced. Most of all, we were doing our best to stay in community with our students' families. I'll speak for myself here: I felt like I was doing the Work, capital W. Many of us, including myself, identified our teaching work as social justice.
We were partnering with the immediate communities surrounding us, centering our students, and using what we knew about how learning works to bridge more opportunities within their lived experience. Most of all, we operated through a lens of honesty.
While there were certainly a great many things my school could have improved on, that I could have improved on (the school's uniform policy and restrictive rubrics are among the top practices that, to this day, make me cringe), I know a lot of what was happening there was special, unique, just—joyful. However, those positioned to oversee the best interests of students and their families in school communities weren't able to see what I saw. Instead of growth, innovation, and opportunity, they saw failure, the need for new curriculum, students who needed to be fixed, and teachers who needed to be replaced.
It pained me then, much like it pains me now, to witness such limited vision.
It pains me to see school closures touted as school reform.
It pains me to see teachers' methodologies boxed into categories like highly effective or in need of development8 based on tiny experiences parsed from enormous years.
It pains me to see the same cycle of data sets in the same geographical spaces show the same outcomes for the same group of people decade after decade after decade.
It pains me to see robust inquiry‐based learning replaced with a prescription for learning as a remedy for low test scores, reading levels, or graduation rates.
And you want to know what's most painful? When I see educators, especially teachers, leaving their schools, or sometimes this profession forever, because the “why” behind their teaching is no longer reflected in the job they've been assigned, or the rules they're told to follow.
More than anything, the continued witnessing of impaired vision warrants a thoughtful quest to introduce not just new equipment or resources to manage the work of creating the rich, full, learning experiences in school that few of us have experienced ourselves, but rather, a thoughtful exploration of who we are—who we want to be, and to develop, build, and enact; something different, something better, something from our grandmother's kitchens.
Those early experiences in my teaching life were a collection of tensions that marked the shape of my work as an educator for years to come. The undercurrent of heartbreak in the realm of joy: former students who've died while the others got married, built companies, or had babies. The kids who love you the most, from the families who rejected you the hardest. The curriculum that fostered the deepest engagement from the otherwise disenchanted child deemed inappropriate, unnecessary, and/or irrelevant by a concerned parent and spineless school board.
These days, when I'm working in schools and partnering with teachers to develop justice‐oriented learning spaces, things feel very different. Most teachers I know live somewhere between the space of restriction, negotiation, and a careful restoration of self. Any one decision a teacher makes about their curriculum can initiate an email thread from a concerned parent so long, so potent, that an entire summer's worth of planning can be thrown in the garbage, and a month's worth of sleep is lost from everybody involved.
And things don't just feel different, they are different: at the time of this writing, half of the states within the United States are working to pass legislation that inhibit the teaching of whole truths, and have already moved to ban books that have previously been chosen to be read by entire school communities. The National Book Award–winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, by MacArthur Genius Grantee Jaqueline Woodson, has recently been banned in some school districts. I Dissent, a picture book written by Debbie Levy, demonstrating the life and impact of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has also been banned in some school districts. Books that document the lives of persons who have impacted our society in important ways are now seen as radical, controversial, and inappropriate by some communities.
Almost every day, I look into the eyes of teachers and educators and children and their caregivers, and I search for the antidote to build the kinds of learning that feel joyous—not necessarily comfortable, but joyous. The kind of learning that is driven by reverence for one's community, a deep connection to the people who surround us. The kind of learning that is fueled by deep conviction and stance, a belief so central to one's teaching that any given mandate or new politicized element of school rolls off an educator's shoulders and yields no traction within a classroom.
A kind of learning that, like Mr. Books, is unfettered; and maybe not necessarily feral, but free.
What This Book Is About
Teaching Fiercely: Spreading Joy and Justice in Our Schools offers educators important, practical antidotes to remedy injustices experienced by kids, teachers, and families in schools everywhere, every day, all the time. It also offers a treatment plan immersed in care and community, and poses that connectedness as a sustainable way to move forward. While many bodies of thought exist on social justice curriculum, culturally responsive and sustaining education, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, few resources offer a place for educators to carefully reflect on their past experiences with school; to thoughtfully analyze and train their eyes to see rampant injustices in the everyday practice of school. Few spaces are held for teachers to reflect, to consider how they matter … to, essentially, be heard. Here, educators will find space to plan, apply, and activate justice‐oriented learning through reflection, radical listening, collaboration, instructional practice, and community‐based school experiences.
This book focuses on the how more than the what. While content‐oriented justice is important—that is, teaching diversity and inclusivity beyond a multicultural potluck or holiday—there are incredible resources for that work already, which I'll reference throughout this book.
This book is multifaceted. It calls upon educators to ask, to study, and to develop a practice in response to essential questions I've sought to answer, name, and apply throughout my entire career in education:
What is the pedagogy of justice? How is joy implicated in that pursuit? What does it mean to teach with our whole selves, fiercely?
One thing I know for sure—the pedagogy of justice is expansive. We use the term “pedagogy” to describe all the acts, experiences, philosophies, curricular choices, instructional moves, communication styles, classroom environments, project plans, and community collaborations that serve our purpose for teaching the humans in front of us. This book acknowledges that expansiveness, acknowledges that teaching through the lens of justice is more than a read aloud, a diversity workshop, or a social studies unit. It also acknowledges that working toward justice is not sustainable if we don't experience joy within that pursuit.
Driven by the possibility of building more just and joyful learning in schools for youth, teachers, and families everywhere, teachers will journey through this book by starting with a generalized understanding of justice, and then work toward building a more specific sense of justice in schools through their own pedagogy. Readers will relive their own experiences along with my own, and various partners along their personal journey in school, as well as connections in their outer communities. They will reflect on multiple relationships and roles within a school community—some of which they've held in the past or currently experience as student, teacher, teacher‐educator, parent/caregiver, administrator, and, most of all, learner.
More than anything, teaching through the lens of justice requires our whole self; it is a lifelong commitment, and it is a consideration of all that we are and everything we do within the ecosystem of school.
Like I said, it's expansive! How, then, do we commit without becoming overwhelmed? How do we reflect without walking away? How do we shift beyond just surviving? How do we transform in ways that are more than doable—that are just and joyful for kids and their families, for yourself, and your colleagues? How is any of this even possible in a time when the very idea of justice is riddled with tension, anxiety, and harm? How do we teach not just with our hearts and minds, but our instincts, too? How do we teach fiercely?
While we search for definitive answers to those questions, our work will inevitably serve us nebulous answers. It is up to us to conjure meaning, and make learning joyful and just for the communities we serve. This work doesn't have to be done alone, nor should it be! Together, we uplift teacher agency to make this work doable. This book honors both the urgency and fullness of teaching through justice in an applied sense by activating instructional practice through the lens of justice and joy. This book is also more than doing; it is a treatment plan for unjust practices.
This book acknowledges:
The importance of reflective practice.
Historically and culturally responsive teaching.
Theoretical foundations of teaching and learning.
Examination of the self in connection to community to cultivate real and sustainable transformative teaching practices that center humanity, particularly for the learners we teach.
As I write, I am surrounded by (I just counted) 18 books, all of which I am reading, none of which I have read. What I mean by that is that rarely do educators who work daily in classrooms sit down and read books about teaching from front to back—or, honestly, even chapter by chapter. It can be a wonderful experience when a book's author unpacks ideas for the reader's consumption, especially if a nagging question gets answered, or an inspired solution to a tricky situation presents itself, providing fodder for trying something new. But a book of only that could also feel like a 75‐minute lecture that's a struggle to get through.
So I offer what I'm calling work alongs: spots to provide an impetus, a little motor for cultivating your thinking, capturing your experiences, developing your agency—perhaps now, perhaps later, or not. So, in between my ideas and experiences, and the research‐backed practices and frameworks, throughout there will also be many opportunities for you to reflect, generate, and document the pieces of you that make your teaching unique. There isn't necessarily an expectation to finish this book; one's personal development of teaching can never really be complete. In fact, that's what makes this work‐along experience so beautiful: it's an authentic representation of how personal growth works. It's cyclical, iterative, and—usually—done in small bites.
Read a little bit, reflect and write, try out some new things with your peers and/or partners, and definitely experiment some instructional strategies with the kids in your classroom. Interacting with this book is meant to catalyze our ferocity and activate our best selves in the learning spaces we occupy.
By reviewing the experience of school and the relationships we have to it, I hope that you as readers will learn to train your eyes to see everyday injustices. With that more clear‐eyed vision we will also take frequent, deep dives to learn more about the historical, institutional underpinnings of unjust practices in schools. Most importantly, you'll be able to cultivate your own pedagogy of justice by bridging history, personal reflection, and instructional practice.
Together, we cultivate our fierceness in the classroom. We root ourselves in justice, and we experience joy along the way.
How This Book Is Different
There are many powerful books out there about equity literacy and social justice and ABAR (Anti‐Bias, Anti‐Racist) teaching. While there is a place for many of those books in our pursuit toward justice, this one is a little different.
This book works to recognize a teacher's reality; the ideas and experiences documented here have been created and told by witnessing teachers who, on a daily basis, are working within a school ecosystem. Within this text, we grapple with multiple truths. Particularly, these two:
Truth 1:
Now, more than ever, teachers have limited bandwidth to engage with the idea of re‐existing in the world—soaking their pedagogy in justice while working in schools that have been, by design, oppressive, insular, and exclusive for both the teaching profession and the student body.
Truth 2:
Now, more than ever, changing the school experience for kids who are learning within that institution requires labor, instincts, and collaborative, creative, critical thinking from those who are most proximate to their experience. This means those same teachers who are working in oppressive systems—who are working incredibly hard, who are probably the
most
tired—must reengage or continue on as change agents for sustainable, child‐centered shifts rooted in justice to take hold.
The acknowledgement of these truths requires us to grow in both intentional and strategic ways. In this text, I'll introduce frameworks that allow us to recognize both personal and systemic multitudes, while cultivating a sense of joy and justice in our work as educators.
Reading path.
How to Traverse This Book
The landscape of this book is designed to support your individual needs as well as the collective needs of your community. I encourage you to journey through the text as you see fit. Alluding to those aforementioned teacher truths, we all know that time is precious. That said, it isn't necessary to read this book from start to finish.
However, I will say there are some ideas that start in Chapter 1 that grow throughout the text, tethering some of the concepts woven throughout the book. Specifically, Chapters 1 and 2 set the tone for activating social justice education in a way that underscores shared understanding around important terminology like “justice,” “joy,” and “pedagogy.” The Structured Generator of Hope is foundational to this text, shaping several ideas and activities throughout. As you read, it can serve as a point of reference for envisioning how the pieces of social justice work together.
If you're planning a workshop for your school community, consider using some of the work alongs provided to grapple with justice and how it operates in your community.
At the end of Chapter 1 you'll find the beginning of a recurring section called Historical Underpinnings, which explores the roots of the U.S. public school system to both help readers unpack the legacy of injustice in schools and also expose brighter moments of education that have been built outside dominant culture. (That journey continues online at https://www.kassandcorn.com/teachingfiercely/.)
Chapter 2 situates perspective as a key component for treating social injustice, and helps to surface and identify rampant injustices in schools through a series of anecdotes and activities. These are places in the text that will land differently depending on readers' identity markers. For example, there is an aside that discusses anti‐Black racism. If this is a term you've never thought about before, consider discussing it with others who also haven't thought about it before. I say this because it can take some time to fully comprehend how this racism operates—so we can show additional respect to the Black folx who experience anti‐Black racism by striving to understand it before discussing the concept with them to learn what their experience has been.
If you are reading as an individual, note spaces that may require more energy for you to unpack. For example, if you are someone who experienced high levels of trauma within your schooling, the reflective components woven throughout the text may be something you choose to do when you have time and space to process on your own before you reflect and share with others.
If you are reading with a partner or group at school, take notice of the various identity markers and experiences of the participants. In addition to considering your own challenges, anticipate what others may find challenging. Consider the different kinds of experiences people have had in their teaching lives; some folx might be brand‐new teachers, while others may have taught for over a decade. Some material in Chapter 4—like Understanding by Design, Universal Design for Learning, and Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Pedagogies—might be very new for some teachers regardless of how many years they've been teaching, while those concepts might be a complete review for others.
Teacher agency is also another really big idea present throughout the text, but especially in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 denotes the curriculum‐making journey underscored in teacher agency, while Chapter 5 demonstrates the meaningfulness of centering students in curriculum making. There is a special emphasis on joyful learning in Chapter 6, and a teacher I partnered with features her work. Real‐life artifacts are shown. Note the curricular examples are from a kindergarten classroom, but the foundational ideas could be applied to upper grades.
If you are reading sections in Chapter 3, you'll be introduced to the Collaborate‐Build‐Nurture‐Reflect Framework that highlights the potentiality for embedding care and community within the structure of school. Later on, in Chapters 7 and 8, you'll read about “negotiating the curriculum.” Both ideas are quite different than what exists in many current educational paradigms. Some people might be immediately on board; for others, it will take some time to process and shift. To that end, be mindful of people's zone of proximal development if you are reading in community.
Also, consider priorities that feel engaging and exciting to focus on. Maybe you are excited to start building curriculum right away—head on over to Chapter 4! Want to embark upon a more personal, reflective journey—spend some time digging into Chapters 1 through 3, paired with dedicated writing time. Are you planning a workshop for your grade team? Chapter 5 lends itself to deep conversations on teacher agency, and Chapter 8 includes possibilities for justice‐oriented learning designs. Is it a whole school workshop? Unpack justice with everyone in Chapter 1. Maybe you're planning out a few conversations with families; if so, begin with Chapter 6 or 7 to center kids. In any case, there's a little something for everyone.
Social Justice Work Illuminated: The Work Is Multifaceted
Social justice work in schools, generally speaking, has ignored the multifacetedness of listening to and honoring the communities educators serve, and has a tendency to skirt the surface of literacy practices that are nuanced enough to reach myriad learners. It is usually pawned off as a curriculum in and of itself, as opposed to a stance, or a way of being. Anti‐Bias, Anti‐Racist (ABAR) work, which is in fact an infusion of the soul, is often treated as “sit and get” professional development by school districts.
Equity Professional Development (PD), federally funded, has caused a race to the RFPs9 and complete 360s from testing corporations and curricular juggernauts that have formerly only ever produced literacy assessments or word study PD. After both attending and teaching at research universities, I understand the headiness, the esoteric visions of just schools that academia professes to be true, but rarely lives within their own teaching experience.
For many, many people working toward justice in schools, the urgency is there, the fidelity is not.
So, what does that mean for us?
It means we have a lot of work to do. Important note: the work is not a special march or singular protest—it is the seconds we live and the air we breathe with the students we teach that creates pathways to joyful, just, and humane schools.
Like many of you, for my whole career, with numerous communities, I've worked to build, restore, and teach the kind of justices I'm talking about in this book. Just about every single school day, I meet with teachers, students, principals, superintendents, and/or caregivers and participate in the sojourn for more just schools. I live it, I breathe it. It is me. It is my life.
This book is an attempt to surface all the unjust practices in schools that I witness on a daily basis and that others communicate to me regularly. Moreover, it is written to help more people develop their lenses in which they, too, are able to see, name, and undo injustice by working toward—and, ultimately, activating—justice.
I do not have all the answers. I am only but one person, with a specific set of identity markers and unique personhood. But I have community, I have partners, and I have a very deep conviction that we can figure this out if we do it together.
So, let's highlight potential antidotes, and give all the people access to tools, resources, and community for a different kind of pedagogy; to help more folx see that justice work is not only an everyday practice, it is a joyful pursuit. This, readers, is what it means to teach fiercely.
Notes
1
ABAR (Anti‐Bias, Anti‐Racist) is a popular acronym to describe the framework used for cultivating an ABAR stance within school communities.
2
CR‐SE (Culturally Responsive‐Sustaining Education) is an iteration of Dr. Gloria Ladson Billing's Culturally Responsive Pedagogy framework, coined by Dr. Django Paris.
3
Popular children's show featuring children's books that aired from 1983–2009 on PBS.
4
Popular children's show featuring “The Neighborhood of Make Believe,” supporting children's social literacy that aired on PBS from 1968–2001 in the United States.
5
Y2K alludes to the global fear that spread about what would happen to people's livelihoods when 1999 turned to the year 2000. Computers were not originally programmed for the year 2000 and there was public paranoia that chaos would break out at the turn of the century.
6
Superfund sites are areas of land or water that have been heavily contaminated by humans. Highly toxic areas are identified, and monies are directed from responsible parties, as well as other funding sources, to the Environmental Protection Agency for cleanup.
7
Common Core State Standards officially rolled out on a federal level in the United States in 2009, but schools were encouraged to begin utilizing the standards in beta form several years prior.
8
In the mid‐2000s in New York City, a value‐added model was put in place to rate teachers; the base evaluation was adapted from Charlotte Danielson's framework, often heard in edu‐circles as “the Danielson.”
9
Request for Proposals (RFPs) are solicitations from school districts and other groups that seek specific work; for example, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) workshops, workshops to develop adolescent literacy, etc.
Acknowledgments
Thank you …
to the foremothers, the matriarchs, the women in my family and outside of it, who have led their lives through an ethic of care before concepts like “ethics of care” were said out loud in educational and/or academic spaces.
to those who were with me from the very beginning: Mom, Dad, Kyle, and Shaun, you were the first to nourish my inquisitive spirit, and helped me shape it into one that remains joyful and curious. Mom and Dad, thank you for having me last; the independence you've gifted me from “being the youngest” initiated an effervescent pursuit toward justice that has never left me.
to the other side of my beating heart: Cornelius. The one who always holds my hand, keeps me centered, and stands beside me as I journey the longer distances from my head back to my heart.
to Soleil, your spirited inquiry and present love has been one of my best teachers.
to Indira, your strength and search toward goodness sustains my belief in better futures.
to Hawa, Cornelius I, Zoe, and Tino: the communal love you have shown me helps me negotiate this world through a clarified sense of family, and I continue to be in awe of your gifts.
to my 6th Street Family: Melissa, Robin, Simone, Jeff, Annie, Michael, and Laura, your presence in my life helped me build upon the idea that joy can be found even in the smallest moments.
to those communities and individuals who permeate/d my life in schools, vacillating on both sides of the personal and professional: The Neighborhood Schools Program, where I was first exposed to the impact of policy‐making and instructional stance on classroom life; The Brooklyn School for Global Studies, where I began my teacherhood and learned to activate love in schools; PS 503, where my teacher agency fully blossomed because of community values placed on educator intellect; the Teachers College Inclusive Classrooms Project, one of the most powerful intellectual homes for me, where I learned to explore the nuances of relationship in schools and inclusivity and the impact of inquiry as stance (Celia, Britt, Kara, Erika, and Anne—I'll always be your fangirl). To all those schools and people I've partnered with through The Minor Collective—thank you for continuing to invite me into your spaces in the quest to find and build future goodness. To Breaths Together for a Change, I'm still developing words to describe the felt knowledge this community of people facilitated!
to Phil Bildner, Arlène Casimir, Sara K. Ahmed, LeUyen Pham, Amy Fandrei, and Kirsten Janene‐Nelson, all of whom meaningfully connected with me throughout the development of this book.
to Brooklyn, the city I call home, to NYC educators, for providing the foundational community I've always sought.
to teachers everywhere. I am in awe of you. I see you, I appreciate you, and most of all, I believe in you.
Prologue: Anthem for a Teacher
We often ask what makes a good teacher. We study those who are deemed effective, and do our best to replicate what we see and memorialize it so we can do it again on Day 3 Lesson 5 Syllabus X.
Most educators explain a defining moment in their careers that helped them crossover the imaginary but perfunctory line of “I don't know what the heck I'm doing/The kids are eating me alive” to … “I got this.” It can be sudden, powerful, decisive.
I argue that a teacher's defining moment is the one where they not only find themselves in their classrooms, see themselves in their classrooms—but they are in their classrooms. The entirety of the imperfect, bodacious, let‐me‐learn‐it‐and‐I‐will‐teach‐it whole self finally, finally is present, and it works. Your kids are finally listening and learning from you, and you can feel it.
Because you're not hiding those bits of your authentic self that are stolen away from the regime of Extreme Standardized Testing, the paper version of American Ninja Warrior. Your whole self has surfaced, it has reemerged, and it's here to stay. It happened because maybe you're older, maybe you've fallen more in love with your students, maybe you've just said “F%*$ it!” to yourself, or even out loud, and you just want your students to learn and walk away from school equipped with a moral complexity that will allow them to deal with the world.
There is no metric for this feeling, and once you feel the ferocity of I got this you're no longer waiting for anyone's permission on how to be or what to teach in your classroom.
To teach fiercely is to be in community with your students and yourself; it's stepping outside yourself and looking into your soul. And not just your teaching soul, but your soul soul, because those two things aren't separate.
Chapter 1Building the Foundation: A Structured Generator of Hope for More Joyful and Just Schools
A Structured Generator of Hope
We begin with building a structure that allows us to create more joyful and just communities that we belong to, that we are in partnership with—whether they be young people or adults. This is our radical hope work. How can hope be radical? Let me explain what I mean.
Recently, I was invited to participate in a year‐long excavation and reflection for white people to develop racial reckoning with their ancestral past and present, specifically the harm in which their ancestors spread amongst Black, Indigenous, and other persons of color; and also, to create open awareness for moving forward in the field of social justice and decolonizing practices in many different realms, not just education. The group was rooted in Indigenous knowledge and was created by an organization called Breaths Together for Change, codeveloped by author, documentary filmmaker, and traditional beadworker Cinnamon Kills First; founder of Good Medicine Woman LLC and integrative researcher Aminah Ghaffar; and diversity dean, meditation teacher, and Healing the Future by Design mentor Tommy Woon.
