How can we teach students to "intervene in their realities" and become "active subjects in their own lives"?

How can we teach students to "intervene in their realities" and become "active subjects in their own lives" as Wallowitz (2008, p.3) suggests in Critical Literacy as Resistance?



Wallowitz suggests that once students recognize reality as a social construction, and is undergoing constant transformation, then they would learn to live fully and be able to intervene in their realities.  As educators we can help to make our students aware of how each of our prospective fields are advancing and changing over time and then point out that it is perfectly within reason for any one person to instill change in their reality.  For example, we can show the history of mathematics as an ever changing and evolving entity which expands with each year.  We can train our students to explore the world around them and note the never ending changes that occur, and encourage them to get actively engaged in the different aspects of the world where they have interest.  Students that are interested in journalism could become knowledgeable in different the different fields and types of journalism and get experience in participating in those fields.  Promoting students to take action and make attempts to change their worlds is the best thing that we can do to promote that they become active subjects in their own lives and begin to intervene in the different realities that they live in.
(MD)

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)

Teaching students to "intervene in their own reality".

I believe that teaching students to think in such a critical way about what it is they are being taught and reading, is something that will extend far beyond the classroom and can be a powerful and necessary tool for bringing about productive social change. The type of thinking that Wallowitz suggests is that which begs to question inherent biases and assumptions based on power. Many people of all ages, but especially our younger students, are inclined to believe that when they are reading literature and research done by specialists or established people within a given field, that the information and assumptions are undeniable and therefore need not be questioned. This type of thinking is natural, which is exactly why we must be teaching our students to challenge assumptions and the power structures that be. By achieving this, the existing structures, which tend to be inefficient, will be brought into question, and eventually changed. We are washing away the original ignorance that people are born with. (AI)

In Wallowitz's explanation, she did a great job of linking critical literacy to self development, as well as encompassing knowledge based reasoning to shape the thinking of students and raises awareness about what is going on around them at any given time. Using the ideas proposed in the article, she talked about critical literacy as a liberating tool that selects facts from fiction and also filters facts from facts. I particularly like freire's theory of a bank education system where knowledge is simply deposited in the head of the student where it is never questioned but wholly accepted without criticism. There is a need to remove the veil from the eyes of our students to enable them think critically about what applies to them in different situations and how they would handle it differently. We need to talk about the expectations of the society but also allow them to be literate enough to make decisions based on their own analysis of the situation. The essence of social justice is to create a level playing field for all irrespective of certain characteristic differences, critical literacy helps students to right wrongs and read deep between the lines and filter out sugar coated stereotypes that may obstruct justice in a particular context. Freire also proposed a solution to this problem of banking system of education by introducing the "problem posing" concept, this is a concept that raises student cautiousness and a way to reveal real life situations that do not necessarily reflect their belief and expectation but help them to identify problems they never know existed and present them with the tools to deal with it effectively.  In conclusion, being critically literate is the first step towards social justice, which is then followed by a resistance to the norm, but rather view things with a different literate  perspective therefore making a decision for change. (oo)           

How can we teach students to "intervene in their realities" and become "active subjects in their own lives" as Wallowitz (2008, p.3) suggests in Critical Literacy as Resistance?

In order for us to teach students to intervene in their realities and become active subjects in their own lives, we must first set the stage for the classroom environment.  We as teachers need to connect personally with our students and with the different literacies of their lives.  Understanding how to communicate with our students on these different levels of literacy will help cultivate the relationship and trust between student and teacher.  As we continue building this relationship we must not position ourselves “opposite” the student where it is perceived as a lecture type environment in which information is conveyed by the teacher and simply accepted by the student.  Rather, we should position ourselves “next to” our students so that we can question, analyze, and understand the material together.  Questioning and analyzing the material together as a team will help build the foundation of critical literacy in our students thereby opening the students to different views and allowing them to question bigger concepts than that of the content itself.  By approaching each subject this way, the students will liberate their thinking and expand their views on society as well as their own lives and position in society.  This will also help the students to address the hegemony that exists in our schools and society which brings us one step closer in our journey toward social justice.  (KL)

Stereotype Threat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjn6ZSU_zS0 - link to news exerpt

http://www.hepg.org/her/booknote/356 - link about Claude Steele's research (CC)

Teaching our Students to be Active Members in Society

 We need to teach our students to "intervene in their realities" and become "active subjects in their own lives" through teaching them critical literacy strategies. We need to teach them to constantly question what they are seeing around them and what they are reading. We need to make sure they understand when certain stereotypes are being expressed in texts they read, as well as any biases. It is important to incorporate questioning techniques into any classroom. I am constantly researching ways to incorporate these social justice topics into my mathematics classroom, and it is actually much easier than it sounds. In math, we can incorporate these topics into multi-part word problems that involve mathematics and then talk about the social inequalities represented in the question and discover the multiple viewpoints of the students in the classroom. We need to teach our students to notice injustices and to go out and support their peers and promote whatever areas in social justice that they are passionate about outside of the classroom. As a teacher, however, we must also live the lifestyle that we are preaching. I will make sure that I am just as active in my community and in my school as I would love for my students to be. Teachers are role models and need to act upon what they expect from their students. (AM)