Teaching Students to Intervene in Their Own Realities

As many of my peers have stated before me, Professor Wallowitz discusses in great detail many ways in which we can teach our students to "intervene within their realities." One of the major ways Professor Wallowitz mentions is through critical literacy.  Wallowitz states that "Critical literacy aims to challenge the status quo by disrupting commonplace notions of socially constructed concepts such as race, class, gender, and sexuality." A great way to get  students involved is to use critical literacy in modern day texts, whether it is through lyrics in a song, advertisements, the internet, ect. Once students are taught to question what kind of audiences these items are directed towards, or hidden agendas/messages, this can really get students thinking and more involved in what is going on around them. As a science teacher, I feel that I can really use this in my teaching. There are always various articles regarding current events in science, whether it is political stances or agendas or simply new scientific articles. By having my students use critical literacy while reading these, not only will they learn something new and maybe even change their views on some things.  This will also allow them to make their own opinions on different issues and hopefully even want to get involved with some of them! (SL)