Lesson Plan: En la lucha – Learning as Struggle

Imagining learning as a struggle is a way of placing collective action at the foundation of the classroom community.

This is a multilingual lesson plan for a class towards the beginning of a new year or semester. By introducing the three Spanish terms, ‘la gente,’ ‘el pueblo,’ and ‘la lucha,’ the goal of the lesson is to involve the entire classroom community in laying a justice-oriented foundation which can serve as a framework for the class in all of its endeavors–academic, social, political and beyond. By using the ideas of ‘community’ and ‘struggle’ as anchoring points, the lesson seeks to foster a learning space which looks to multiple communities for inspiration, imagines learning as a collaborative process, and which commits all members of the classroom to collective struggle. Though it is written here as one lesson, it could be broken up into several sessions, depending on the group and the amount of time needed to delve into each point:

1. Opening: Upon entering the space, three separate sheets of large paper will be hanging at the front of the room, each labeled with one of three terms: ‘la gente,’ ‘el pueblo,’ and ‘la lucha.’ For some students these words may be instantly recognizable, whereas for others they may be totally unfamiliar. Ask students to take a few moments to examine the terms, and to add them into their notebooks if they see fit.

2. La gente – Who are our people?: Ask a student who feels comfortable to define the first word in English for those who may not understand the Spanish term. Add the English definition bellow the original term, ‘la gente’: ‘the people.’ Ask the class: “Who are the people you feel a bond with? Who are your people, la gente tuya?” For some students this may bring up ideas like ‘family’ and ‘friends,’ for others it may be ‘Black people,’ ‘Latinas,’ or ‘immigrants.’ See what ideas and associations the word brings up for students, and add their answers to the poster under ‘la gente.’ As they continue, try to encourage them to broaden their definitions, and add any of your own along with theirs.

3. Reflection: “Why should we ask the question, ‘Who are our people?’ How does this question relate to the work we will be doing together in our classroom?” Let students have a few minutes to offer their own thoughts and ideas in response to these questions. Then answer in your own words: “Understanding who our people are is a way of understanding who we are, the histories and traditions that each of us come from. While we may each define ‘our people’ differently, as long as we are a part of this community, all of the people that we have written up here are our people. The roots of our collective connect many different traditions and experiences, and as we continue to work and learn together, we will all be responsible for respecting, being knowledgeable of and maintaining each of them.”

4. El pueblo – What communities do we belong to?: Ask another student who feels comfortable to define the second term in English, and add the definition bellow the original term, ‘el pueblo’: ‘the community.’ “How do you define this term for yourself? How is this term different from ‘la gente’? What are all the communities you belong to? ¿Cuales son los pueblos tuyos?” This term may be a little harder to pin down. As a place to start, ask students to think about the ways that people gather together and the spaces they gather in. This might lead to ideas like ‘my neighborhood,’ and, ‘my church.’ Add all these to the ‘pueblo’ poster, and as you continue to push for broader definitions, make sure that ‘our school’ and ‘our classroom’ make it onto the list.

5. Reflection: “Why should we ask ourselves, ‘What communities do we belong to?’ How is this question related to the work we will be doing here together?” Again, give students ample time to discuss and debate these questions together. “We each belong to multiple communities, and this classroom is one of them. We will support each other, be held accountable to one another, and learn together as one collective, and whatever is expected of one of us will be expected of all of us. As we build our classroom community, we will need to look to the other communities we are a part of to teach us how to make this one as strong as it can be. All the communities we have written up here will serve as our inspiration, and will be connected to everything we attempt together in this space.”

6. La lucha – What are our struggles?: Ask one more student to define the third and final term in English, and add the definition bellow the original term, ‘la lucha’: ‘the struggle.’ What does it mean to struggle? What struggles are we each a part of on a daily basis? ¿De qué maneras estamos luchando en nuestras vidas cada día?” Allow the class to reflect on and answer these questions for themselves, and add their responses and your own to the third poster.

7. Reflection: “How does the term ‘lucha’ relate to what we will be doing here together? What struggles will we be involved in as a community?” Let students process and discuss these questions together. “Learning is a struggle. It is a process, with lots of ups and downs, that we will be engaged in collectively when we are here together. We will be struggling to learn how to work together, how to teach and to learn from one another, how to share this space, and how to negotiate our different opinions and ideas. All of these things are struggles, but if we are committed to them, and supportive of each other in the process, they are struggles which will make our community stronger, and which will teach us how to better go about fighting all of the fights in our lives, not just the ones we engage here in the classroom.”

8: Closing: Have different members of the class hang each of the the three different posters in three different parts of the room, where they can be easily seen by all and referenced throughout the corse of the semester or year. A simple way of returning to them, as well as to train the classroom’s lens on current events and struggles in the immediate community, is to ask collectively on a daily or weekly basis: “¿Hoy quién está junto con nosotros en la lucha? ¿Quién está luchando al lado de nuestro pueblo? Today, who is with us in the struggle? Who is struggling alongside our community?”

No [Marginalized] History Month: Ethnic Studies All the Time!

Ethnic studies need to be engaged with attention and respect, and should lay at the core of our curricula, not on the margins.

Black History Month was never something which resonated with me as a student. As a young Black person, it was impossible for me to imagine that there could ever be an allotted and finite amount of time (only a month, no less) during which the struggles of Black people around the world could be appreciated, as those struggles were a part of my every day, what I faced in my family and larger community, and which defined me to the core of my personhood. As I got older, talking about Black history as distinct from women’s history, queer history, and the struggles of poor and working people became an even more ridiculous concept. As a current school employee, I am witnessing the thick of Black History Month, the myths it reinforces in the minds of students, and the way it freezes and ghettoizes narratives which ought to be taught as complex, interconnected and alive. What follows are some of the ways in which I think the histories of oppressed communities ought to be engaged every day, all the time, in every learning community. While I speak with an emphasis on the Black history which is at the fore of my own school community right now, the very point I hope to make is that all oppressed histories inform and interact with one another, should be taught in conjunction, and should serve as tools to empower students and their communities to take action in the present, not merely to scrutinize the past.

Lessons and curricula which resist the freezing of histories and strive towards empowered learning should:

Ask questions – This, I think, should go without saying, but it continues to amaze me how many of the current pushes in education place no emphasis on asking critical questions. In fact, amongst all kinds of learning institutions the subjects of history and science are being whittled down–and is some cases, removed altogether–to make space for math and literacy practice. Curricula which place focus on critical examination and problem posing are being replaced by ones which are based entirely on getting right answers and building quantifiable skills–ones which can be easily measured on tests and presented to power as proof that the workforce is making the necessary strides to maintain economic competitiveness. While history and science as they are traditionally taught may not be fields for which I feel much resonance, it is shocking to note the rate at which they are disappearing from US learning communities. For it is precisely the monolithic and unquestionable style of learning favored by these initiatives which has erased the narratives of oppressed people from formal education, and which continues to silence them as members of traditional learning communities. A critical curriculum–one which strives to give voice to oppressed people and their histories–fights measurable learning, and does so not merely by letting teachers pose critical questions, but students as well. It presents openly the myths and contradictions of traditional learning, and calls on students to break them down, to find the holes, and to determine how they wish to proceed in questioning and challenging them.

Work to make connections to the immediate community – Another issue with months or units which focus on oppressed people is that they tend to treat our histories as static, unchangeable, and long gone. They present the legacies of oppressed people as set and done, instead of allowing students to examine them as malleable, not to mention seeing themselves as part of lineages of activism and struggles for justice. Instead of talking about Black history as something that happened a long time ago, we need to imagine it as something we are still living out, and that we can each play an important role in. Examine, for example, the Highlander Folk School of Tennessee–an adult learning center for poor and working communities which became a national training ground for radical anti-racist and economic justice activism. Ask your class: What does this school and its kind of learning have to teach us about our own school? What struggles was the HFS seeking to address? How are those struggles different from or similar to those of our community? What can we do to create our classroom as one which works to actively address those struggles?

Avoid sainthood – A seductive way of addressing oppressed histories is doing so through the introduction of key figures. Whether these be from the traditional pantheon (Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, etc.) or figures with which we hope to challenge the master narratives (Audre Lorde, Roque Dalton, or other figures from our own lives and studies), I find that there are a few problems which can arise with this approach. Though using the lives and roles of specific individuals can be a great foot-in-the-door to discuss the larger movements and struggles with which they are connected, we tend to choose folks whom we admire, and whose stories we hope can serve as inspiration. The result is that we often paint them in a glowing light, only focusing on what we deem to be their successes. This is disempowering, because it teaches our communities that saints are the ones who make change in the world, as opposed to imperfect people, like ourselves. In creating all-knowledgable saints, we replace one infallible history with another, making invisible the struggles inherent in every person’s life, the processes required to bring about change. Equally, we erase the communities which have made every radical struggle for justice possible. When we hold up MLK as the leader of the Civil Right Movement, we erase the queers, women, youth, poor and working people who were the movement, and who radicalized King in ways he may never have been on his own. In other words, we teach that movements are made possible by exceptional individuals, and not by the communities–like the ones we are currently a part of–which comprise them.

Present hidden narratives – History, as we have all come to know it, is a linear series of events determined and inscribed by those who have written it. We challenge this limited and oppressive view of history whenever we attempt to introduce voices, perspectives and events which have been left out of it. Instead of mythologizing Rosa Parks as the tired old woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus, discuss her as a venerable and dedicated community organizer–who studied at the Highlander Folk School herself–and who was involved in radical struggles for sexual justice for Black women in the South long before she was recruited by the mainstream Civil Rights Movement. Instead of painting MLK as a benevolent advocate for peace, talk about how Huey P. Newton was the first major Black leader to publicly declare solidarity with the Gay Liberation Movement–something MLK never did. Better yet, talk about Black History as something which has been happening across the planet for centuries, not just in the US during the 1950s and 60s. Bring to the table the stories and ideas which have been intentionally written out of history, and allow the community to grapple with them from their own perspectives.

Focus on specifics – The exact problem with an event like Black History Month is that it tries to condense a complex and expansive set of narratives which have shaped the face of our planet and lie at the root of our hemisphere’s inception, into a series of stiff lectures and forced projects. Instead of placing the histories and perspectives of oppressed people at the foundation of a critical education, it tacks them on disjointedly, rendering their radical legacies impotent. The result is not only the insulting of these powerful histories, but also their gross simplification. When we try to talk to kids about Black History in a month, the Civil Rights Movement in one sitting, or Black Power in one speech, we inevitably end up cramming huge spans of wisdom and information into cramped lessons which do them no justice, and which often confuse and overwhelm kids rather than empowering them. Instead of trying to squeeze whole histories into windows which could never contain them, give them the time and attention they deserve. Try to teach smaller moments with specificity and complexity, rather than simplified versions of huge spans. Instead of doing a unit on the Civil Rights Movement, teach one on a specific event, like the Children’s March. Spark a conversation on the incredible power and responsibility that young people can wield, and take time to delve into that rich discussion, instead of rushing past it in an attempt to cover an entire movement in a week.

There are reasons why ethnic studies are under attack around the globe–why the powers of Arizona are slashing classes and limiting access to texts which address and empower the histories of our people. The legacies of the oppressed always shed new light on the systems which oppress them, and the very methods which they devise to survive those systems are blueprints for how to dismantle them. We fool ourselves into thinking we are doing right by these histories when we mythologize them, gloss them over, and speed through them in our learning communities. Only when these histories are allowed to speak–are treated as serious areas of study which lie at the core of the curriculum–and are let to breathe and interact with one another, and with the members of our community, can they truly begin to teach us our roles in continuing on their legacies, and of challenging power in our own historical moment.

What Tutoring Kindergarteners Has Taught Me About Public Schooling

If kindergarten marks an entrance into traditional education, what would the start of a radical one look like?

I’ve often heard it said–both inside and outside of education circles–that all the things we need to know, all the guidelines we ought to live our lives by, were learned in kindergarten. This is usually referring to ideas like, ‘share what you have,’ or ‘treat others with respect,’ ideas which I do think are powerful and that we should all be engaged around. However, in helping out in a kindergarten classroom over the past semester, I have found that these are not, in fact, the primary goals of kindergarten at all, nor are they what the majority of time in class is spent on.

Working as a bilingual tutor, supporting a group of four young girls as they begin their transition into public school lives, I have found that kindergarten is more than anything about induction. It is about learning the alphabet, how to count and to start spelling small words, for sure, but its also about learning to walk in a line, when you may speak and when you are expected to be silent. It is about how to follow directions in an appropriate manner, how to be still when it is required of you, and how to recognize adult authority. Whether you are from an immigrant background, or poor, or wealthy, or a native English speaker, or a girl, these are the primary lessons which all students are expected to graduate kindergarten with a mastery of. The pedagogical justification is that all students ought to be held to the same standards to promote equity, but the result is often universal expectations which favor certain kinds of students and force others to jump in line with them, without recognizing the cultural, economic and social factors which make their inculcation far more complicated than those of their peers.

As a tutor and young educator, navigating my roles and responsibilities in this space has been difficult, and I’ve gotten myself into trouble multiple times. When I am reprimanded by my superiors, it is rarely because I have mistaught a lesson or undermined the learning of an academic skill. Usually, it is because I let a student ask me a question who is supposed to be going to wash their hands, or because a student is speaking to me about a conflict when they are expected to be standing quietly in line. More than sharing and holding hands, more than the alphabet and word fluency, kindergarten, I have found, is about preparing students for the remainder of their journey through a system defined through hierarchy, governed by compliance, and regulated with a strict adherence to the will of the authorized. This is the case, even at the school at which I am proudly employed.

If kindergarten is the induction into a traditional form of education–one which simplifies and makes invisible oppressed histories, runs on a system of compliance and reward, and which treats its students as equivalent cogs, even as it generates a world rent with inequity–what does the beginning of journey toward radical learning look like? If kindergarten prepares students to successfully navigate an oppressive form of learning, what would an education look like which drew on young people’s creativity and inherent knowledge, and which worked to continue the learning which is already in process in children’s own minds, families and communities? Claire Potter begins to address this very subject in a recent post about creativity and public learning, in which she cites the ideas of therapist D.W. Winnicott, imagining creative learning as a process which rejects a teacher-to-student-to-economic-outcome model, and instead posits teachers and students as equal agents in a process of which they determine the outcome together, based on what needs, ideas and desires they each bring to the table:

…This may…be the best ethical basis for the political and social rehabilitation of liberal arts curricula that are being diminished and eliminated under neoliberalism. Putting student creativity at the center of our pedagogy also reveals the intellectual barrenness of current education policies, in many elite private institutions as well as in public institutions, which are thinly disguised strategies for training competent and docile workers at all levels of the economy, rather than cultivating citizen/laborers who are critically in touch with their own humanness.

One day in the class in which I tutor, the schedule was switched up due to some assembly or outside event, and we abruptly found ourselves with an entirely open half-hour block. On a whim, the classroom teacher decided that the kids could make bookmarks as gifts to give their sixth grade reading partners, who visit the class once a week to read books with them. Everyone was given a white strip of paper and allowed to decorate it with whatever implements they wanted, and with whatever designs they thought their partners would like. All the kids got to drawing quickly and earnestly, and as I looked around the room I was genuinely shocked by how skilled and stunning many of their own inner visions were. It occurred to me suddenly that I had rarely seen any of the them use a marker unless they were coloring in a new shape, use a crayon unless they were filling in the proper number of squares, use pencils unless they were practicing their handwriting. I felt ashamed that I had been working as a tutor for weeks, a part of the classroom for almost three months, and had no idea how talented the members of my community were, how clear and inspired their visions of beauty. This, I realized, is what I want to spend all of my time with students doing–being taught by their passions, incredible insights and powerful ideas, engaging with them in a process of unearthing the wisdom and creative force which we each already possess, and doing so with the goal of our collective liberation from a silencing, stratifying and dull system of economic preparation and authoritative compliance.

The End of School: Five Pieces on Youth Power and Restructured Learning

In reference to the last post on empowered youth voices, I wanted to publish a few links to some articles and resources which have been influential, thought provoking and empowering for me on this and related subjects. Please check out these articles from Cooperative Catalyst, as well as some of the other resources here:

Youth Rights, Dignity, and the Anti-Democratic Values of Pubic Schooling – A powerful article on the ways in which traditional public schooling poses an inherent threat to youth empowerment, and which also includes a free pdf link to an amazing resource called The Teenage Liberation Handbook.

Ten Reasons to Abolish Homework (and Five Alternatives) – A succinct and persuasive article which outlines the ways in which homework supports and recreates all kinds of oppressive power structures, and shows how learning can be radically reimagined when this arcane tradition is challenged.

Permission to Speak: Content Classes, Democracy, and the End of School – An honest reflection from an educator’s perspective about the ongoing process of actively stepping back to give students the space they need to step up.

And just for good measure, watch this ill video of members of FIERCE–a queer youth of color collective from NYC–mic checking members of the Obama administration at a conference. An inspiring example of what empowered and collective learning–entirely free of the classroom–can look like:

We Are the Present: Why Youth Voices are Necessary

An education which denies the voices of youth can never benefit from their wisdom as to how to restructure it.

In many of the educational and teacher training programs I have been a part of, I’ve been frustrated by the intense focus given to preparing students for their academic futures (meaning standardized testing and ultimately college) while virtually none has been placed on creativity, question asking and critical thought. Indeed, if I were to take the training I had received from these programs at face value, I would understand my only duties as a teacher to be familiarizing myself with the state’s set curriculum, leading my students through each part of it in increments, and then assuring that they could correctly recall all the information therein when required to do so. In these same programs, when I asked where students’ voices and ideas came into the curriculum, where their ability to process their own experiences and shape their own learning environment could take place, I was told there wasn’t time. There was an achievement gap to close, and our students were behind. We needed to prepare them to test well, enter into good schools, and succeed at the same levels as their wealthy, white counterparts. And besides, once they had cleared all the necessary hurtles, they would go on to college where they could engage in big picture, critical thinking. Our job was to get them there.

On the first day of school this past year, the sixth grade teacher in whose classroom I am interning sat all his students down in a circle to discuss what the goals of the year were going to be. “I don’t want anyone to ask me what they are going to need to know for seventh grade, or what they are going to need to know for high school,” he said. “My job is not to prepare you for seventh grade. My job is to help you be the best sixth graders you can be.” He went on to describe all the ways in which he hoped to build a community within his classroom, and that more than grades, more than achievement, creating a space which incorporated and supported everyone in their own learning processes was the students’ primary charge. The statement struck me as powerful at the time, but it wasn’t until very recently that I began to understand how radical it was. For imagining learning as something which is about empowering our communities in the present, not preparing individuals for the future, counters the swing of current reforms, acknowledges that critical thought should be a part of any education, and values the needs, ideas, capabilities and voices of youth in the process.

In the past week alone, I have supported students as they’ve faced deportation, domestic violence, and poverty. I’ve watched them struggle with body image, racism, and drug addiction in their families. Posing questions to them over the course of my time as an intern, I have been floored on countless occasions by their insights on gender, class, language, culture, and the educational system itself. Yet in much of my training, when I have inquired as to how we as educators can not only support students as they wrestle with these systems, but engage their insights as a means of challenging them, I have been told that youth are not ready to grapple with such heavy issues. As a young educator, but also as a young person, it perplexes me that such astronomical expectations are placed on children outside of the classroom–namely, that they single-handedly navigate the world of injustice and inequity that we have created for them–yet they are coddled and belittled in spaces dedicated to learning. Why do we think students who live in public housing are not ready to talk about class? Why do we believe students who are already working multiple jobs are not mature enough to discuss global economy, and the redistribution of its resources?

When we pretend that children are just adults in hatching, waiting to become real participants in the world, we don’t merely take away their agency and lose out on their wisdom; we deny that they are already full participants in the world, on the front lines of the most critical struggles in modern history. Moreover, we rob them of global legacies of radical activism and community organizing which have been catalyzed and led by youth, with adults following their example. Traditional education is a hierarchy, and like all such systems, it is often those placed at the bottom who have the most knowledge of how that structure denies justice, and the most insights into what is to be done to change it. A radical education seeks to give youth a real voice, the ability to critique the systems of which they are a part, and the space to teach their communities what they already know of the world, and what visions they have to bring justice to it. It imagines youth as fully-realized global citizens, and as the present–not just the future–of our struggles for equity, peace and liberation.

How Liberated Are We?: Questioning Queer Hookup Culture

Beautiful words from Yosimar Reyes, with illustration by Julio Salgado.

Recently, I’ve been more open to casual sex than I ever have been before in my life. I’ve been involved with a few different partners, building friendships while also hooking up from time to time. I’ve been learning a great deal about my desires and my limits, what makes me feel comfortable, and the ways in which I need to challenge myself to think differently about my own sexuality. This situation might sound standard to some of my peers, but it has been a big change for me, as hooking up is something that I’ve been intimidated by and cautious with for most of my life as a queer person. This has been due largely to what hooking up has entailed in the different communities I have been a part of, and what sexual options have been available to me as a young queer man of color.

In high school, hooking up was about navigating a minefield of socially unacceptable desires. As one of the only out queer men in my school, and one of an even tinier number of queer men of color, I was viewed as an obvious site upon which the desires of others could be carried out. I was solicited for sex when I was caught alone in the locker room, and harassed by guys on the weekends who then pretended not to know me when they saw me in the hallway the following week. Male peers of mine on sports teams, with girlfriends or children, and from a host of communities which did not acknowledge homosexuality, all had sex with one another regularly, but knew enough to lie about it. Since I chose not to, the conclusion was often drawn that I was easier to get with than others with more sense. As a result, I was assumed to be an open sexual outlet for an entire community of queer men, while simultaneously expected to deal with the pressures and questions of being out on my own. This was a position I was not willing to inhabit.

As a young adult, hooking up was about about experimentation. In college, I was a part of a larger queer network for the first time in my life, and while I loved my new community, I did not find the relief within it which I was hoping for. I was confronted with a scene in which casual sex was an expectation, not on option. As a queer man who had been out previous to college, I was sometimes looked to as a first opportunity, both for guys who had never messed around with other guys, and those who had never messed around with Black/Brown ones. And because hooking up was often closely accompanied by heavy alcohol and drug use, communication was blocked, bodies and their limits were regularly disregarded, and consent was a reoccurring point of contention. As someone who was hoping for consistence in sexual relationships, and looking for trustworthy and communicative partners, this was not a scene in which I felt able to comfortably participate.

Involved now in various radical communities, hookup culture is still prevalent. Feeling more supported and politically accepted, I have let some of my guard down, tried new things with new people, and attempted to be open in ways I had been afraid to in the past. Unfortunately, while I have learned a great deal and shifted many of my own beliefs, I have still been disappointed by the treatment I have received from many of my radical family. Many of the politics we spend so much of our time and effort trying to initiate in the world seem to vanish when it comes to sex. Hooking up in radical communities, I have found, is still run through with off-balance power dynamics, machismo and hierarchy. Our non-conforming relationships are still centered around ego and access, ownership and control. And lately, whereas once I wondered if my own notions of sex and desire needed to be rewritten, I now question if it isn’t the jargon and euphemisms we use to mask our normative behavior which ought to be challenged.

What troubles me about our hookup culture is that it posits freedom and liberation, yet offers us so few options for ways that we can be together, and reinforces so many remarkably un-radical behaviors between us. And given all the ways we exist–all the bodies and genders and cultures and histories we come from–shouldn’t we be able to find more varied and just ways of relating to one another? Being out is not a value I look for in all of my partners, but honesty and communication are. Monogamy is not expectation I hold in all of my relationships, but being treated as an equal partner, not an ethnic nor a sexual object, is. Moreover, when hooking up isn’t working, is not providing me with the things that I need, is getting boring, shouldn’t I be able to find support in my community for other kinds of sexual and romantic relationships which do make me happy, instead of being accused of selling out?

As a queer man with desires, I am not looking to satiate someone else’s sexual greed. I am uninterested in reinforcing a culture of mistrust, machismo and force, in which individuals strive to get theirs with little regard for the health and wellbeing of their partners and larger community. Instead, I want to be a part of a scene which loves bodies, values sex, and supports a multiplicity of sexual interactions, all of them grounded in communication, consent, and mutual care and respect. I want to be treated right be my partners, no matter our backgrounds, and no matter what our relationship is to one another. Negotiating these new desires within all the communities I claim is still something with which I am struggling, and will need to keep wrestling with as I attempt to build relationships which empower myself, my partners, and my people. And I may not always be down to hookup, but less and less am I convinced that casual sex is the only place from which a radical sexuality can take root.

First Generation Solidarity: Linking Immigration and Class Mobility

Linking the struggles of geographically mobile and economically mobile communities paints both in a whole new light.

My younger sister, a champion tennis player, was recently accepted to a college located in my father’s hometown–a development about which his whole family is ecstatic. My dad, a first generation college student, grew up poor in rural Massachusetts, and as a result has always seen formal education as the answer to the struggles of poverty. The other week, while driving home from work together, my dad told me in genuine wonder, “You know, when I was a kid we used to sneak onto those tennis courts to steal the balls that the students had left there. To us they were free toys, and it was unbelievable that someone could carelessly leave them behind. And to think that now, in just one generation, your sister is going to be playing on those same courts is astounding.” This memory, a real triumph in my father’s mind, made me sad. That our family should be celebrating a moment in which we were literally coming to occupy the position which had once stood as a symbol of excess and inequity to my young father was tragic. Yet, I had to remind myself, it is the very fact that I myself have never lived in poverty and take access to education for granted, which gives me the perspectives I have–which makes assimilation seem tragic rather than logical or necessary. Such is the nature of a mixed-class existence, and an economically mobile family.

Working for the past semester as a bilingual tutor in classrooms with a high number of Latin@ immigrant kids, I have been consistently engaged with young immigrants and their families, and have held special responsibilities in supporting and advocating for them within our larger school community. As a native English speaker and someone who has never experienced the stresses and traumas of immigration, this has often made me feel uncomfortable and unqualified. I have been at a loss on countless occasions, sometimes for necessary words and phrases, other times when my students have been battling with issues I have never had to contemplate–attempting to master a new language in addition to learning algebra, or being expected to stay on task while a parent sits in a deportation hearing. This steep learning curve has forced me to look regularly to my students, to friends, and to other members of my community to teach my more about their experiences as immigrants to the US. In these many conversations, I have been surprised to find the links between the experiences of my students and peers as first generation US residents and citizens, and my own as a first generation member of the US middle class.

At a family gathering over the recent holidays, my grandmother, aunts and uncles crowded into the kitchen, beaming at my younger sister. Each began listing off the names of friends and neighbors who were currently working at her soon-to-be college. Someone from my father’s old street was the head of sanitation, another was on cleaning staff, and another’s son was a groundskeeper. “You’re gonna be in good hands when you get up there,” one of my uncles said. “Everyone’s waiting for you, and gonna make sure that you get the best of everything.” The moment was a complex one, for while there was a real sense of pride in the room that someone from the neighborhood was about to be a student at the institution which had existed as a symbol of exclusivity for generations, it was also a grounding reminder of the huge class differences within our own family. It was a statement as to how opportunities have been inequitably distributed amongst sisters and brothers, how formal education has dismantled our community, and how each member of our family has come to read the same set of circumstances in vastly different ways. In other words, the moment was exemplary of the links between first generation experiences across geography and class.

There are a myriad of ways in which our experiences as members of geographically mobile and economically mobile communities overlap and inform one another. We are both forced to seek refuge within the very institutions which have generated the conditions from which we are escaping. As a result, we are made to act as a translators between fiercely opposing cultures. We are connected to multiple worlds, but often feel we have full citizenship in none of them. Our mobility is commonly the result of our taking advantage of available opportunities out of necessity, and not necessarily out of a desire to do so. Adjusting to our new environments, we can become products of a culture with which we do not identify, perceiving ourselves and our original communities from sharply different and sometimes disparaging vantage points. We have access to mediums and resources which others in our community do not. We experience jarring generation gaps, feeling estrangement from the very people who supported us in our mobility, and whom we are attempting to support. For me, linking the stories and perspectives of these two communities is radical, not only because it bonds two experiences which are not always understood as tied, but also because when these narratives are joined, they paint a complex portrait of struggle against institutions of cultural and economic hierarchy, rather than a benign one of uplift, promise and hope.

Needless to say, there are innumerable ways in which the experiences of economically mobile and geographically mobile communities are starkly different. Issues of language, legal status, location and culture can effect immigrant communities in ways that they never do shifting class communities, and visa versa. A family moving from Mexico City to Queens, NY may experience a downward shift in class status, even as they attempt to find consistent work to support their relatives. A middle class person from a poor background, while they may feel judged and profiled often, does not have to worry about having their status revoked for failing to produce the proper papers. Yet there are plentiful and powerful ways in which these experiences are fundamentally linked. Noting these links isn’t simply about trying to understand one another better, but about advocating and fighting for one another better. It is about recognizing that all of our experiences take on new and more radical meaning when we understand them as tied to global systems of inequity and domination, and have the ability to bind us together when many camps might hope to divide us. When we learn to view ourselves and our communities as ravaged by the same bodies and institutions which we have come to be dependent on, we see that we must challenge them instead of pledging our allegiance. With this realization, we come one step closer to devising the ways in which our many communities can learn to work in unison to dismantle empire and build up something more just in its place.

Special thanks to Aisha Jordan-Jerome and The Peace Poets.

Returning to the Root: Reflection and Collective Learning

“We must ask ourselves, ‘What is it that we are trying to do, and are we doing it as effectively as we can?’ For the answers to these questions are inherently political.” – Chinua Achebe

The wisdom needed to envision radical learning already exists in ourselves, our communities and our students.

On Monday morning of the last school week in December, my mentor teacher threw out the lesson he had originally planed for the day. It being the week before winter break and the holiday season, he himself felt preoccupied and could sense that the kids’ minds were elsewhere. Instead of sticking to the usual a.m. schedule, he asked everyone in the class to go back into the files of corrected and graded work which they’ve been saving since the start of the year, and take a look back at everything they’ve done so far. The class spent the majority of the morning crafting letters to their families, reflections in their own words on what they thought they’d learned thus far in the school year, what they’d enjoyed, what they’d struggled with, what they were proud of. “I realized this morning that we’ve just been going and going in here, and have barely taken any time to reflect on what we’ve actually learned and accomplished together,” he said to me. “And that’s my fault. I felt like we needed to do something looking back before we push forward again.”

Back in the beginning of December, on an afternoon when the class was particularly distracted, a lesson my mentor was teaching was having trouble getting off the ground. Students were obviously unfocused, uninterested in following the discussion, and kept interrupting the lesson with jokes and side conversations. After pausing to address the class several times, with increased frustration each time, my mentor teacher abruptly stopped the lesson in mid-sentence, saying, “This isn’t working.” I was expecting him to reprimand the class with even more seriousness than before, and perhaps threaten them with negative consequences. Instead, he directed the entire class over to the living room (another area of the space with rugs and pillows), away from their tables and desks. Once everyone had sat down, he spoke: “We are clearly having trouble focusing today. Everyone is goofing and joking–which I love to do–but not when it is keeping us from learning. I’m a little distracted today myself, and I want to ask you all what it is that is making it so hard for us all to focus. Is it because we’re tired? Because we just came in from recess? Why are we all having such a hard time staying on top of it today?” We went around in a circle, and students expressed what it was that was distracting them–what occurrences that day or that week were keeping their minds off the tasks at hand–and what it might take to get back into what we were doing in class. After a thoughtful and informative discussion, we had come up with a few strategies for staying focused even with everything else that was going on, and moved back to the seats at the front of the room to start the lesson fresh.

In a moment when a preoccupation with achievement and productivity are dominating every aspect of the field of education–in correspondence with the powerful businesses and individuals in whose interests such a focus works–honest reflection of any kind can be rare. Reflection that happens not as a form of professional development or statistical analysis, but as an earnest and critical discussion between and amongst all community members is even more rare. What both of these moments with my mentor hold in common for me is that they start with an educator pausing in the midst of their hectic and demanding work to reflect on the effectiveness of their own means of communicating, structuring and guiding their community. Equally, they engage the larger community–teachers, students and staff–as intellectual partners in the conversation. The question or problem that the educator began by identifying in themselves is posed to the entire learning community, relying on its many perspectives and experiences as a reservoir of knowledge. By pausing to examine the bigger picture of the classroom–differentiating between what it was set up to do and what new purposes the educator hopes to bring to it, asking whether that new vision is being honored, and allowing for all members of the community to have voice in answering that question–the educator becomes not a leader of but a facilitator for the learning process, incorporating their and others’ wisdom into the structure of the classroom, engaging students in the process of reflection, and creating room for them to question and critique the space just as the teacher is trying to.

A close friend of mine once said to me that the most revolutionary ideas are not new ones at all, but ones that have been around for centuries, maybe millennia, maybe forever. The most radical ways of defining our communities, of sharing our resources, of working and learning together, are not solely hovering in the ether, waiting to be articulated. They are just as much present in our traditions as devalued populations, our lives as marginal communities, and our sensibilities as oppressed people. In this sense, radical learning is not solely about uprooting systems of domination and gross inequity, but is equally about returning to the roots of our own histories, experiences and wisdoms as poor and working folks, queers, people of color, disabled, immigrant, and traditionally voiceless people. It is about listening over the din of reform and achievement, the barked orders of private and conservative bodies, to the knowledge and brilliance which already exist in ourselves, our peers, our families and our students. If, as educators, we are genuine about our commitment to learning as a collective and liberatory process, we must learn to honor our own instincts, trust in our own relationship to the communities of which we are a part, and to treat them as the spaces of inquiry and critical thought which they are constantly revealing themselves to be. We must learn to take the issues with which we are struggling as educators and pose them to our larger learning communities, holding them up for collective scrutiny, and giving every voice the chance to share its wisdom in addressing them.

Lesson Plan: Introducing Radical Feminism and Making Feminist Critiques*

Introducing radical feminism to the classroom can be a great way to begin questioning hierarchy on small and large scales.

1. Freewrite: At the start of the lesson, the symbol for radical feminism (a fist inside the female sign) will be drawn up on the board. Ask students to take five minutes and do a freewrite response to what they see: Do you recognize this symbol? What does this symbol represent to you? How would you describe or define it in your own words? (5 mins)

2. Share Out: Let students know that today we will be talking about radical feminism, a political philosophy for which the drawing on the board is one symbol. Ask a few students to go around and share what they wrote for their freewrite responses, and gauge where the class is at in terms of familiarity and comfort with what may be a new subject. You may also want to take this time to answer collectively any questions about the symbol itself. (3 mins)

3. Introduction/Vocab Check: “‘Radical Feminism’ is a way of thinking, living and acting which is about fighting systems which oppress people through separation and hierarchy. ‘Hierarchy’ means a system or an order which is based on placing persons or groups of people on a higher level, with more rights and powers than other people. Though radical feminism was born from various struggles led by women, it is a philosophy which seeks to challenge all systems of oppressive hierarchy, not just gender.” Write brief definitions both for “Radical Feminism” and “Hierarchy” on the board, and feel free to define any other words with which students are struggling or need more clarity on. Have everyone add all of these definitions to guided notes, or into their notebooks. (10 mins)

4. Brainstorm: “To make what we are talking about more concrete, let’s come up with some examples of systems of separation and hierarchy together. Gender is one example which radical feminism points out. How is gender an example of a system of separation? How is it one of hierarchy?” Start the list off with gender, and give students a few minutes to think together about how it is a reflection of hierarchy. Then go around and see what other examples can be added to the list. If student are having trouble coming up with ideas, point to the immediate environment as inspiration:

- gender

- race

- housing

- school

- sexuality

- the classroom

- a job

- government

See what ideas students can generate on their own, but this may be an area in which suggestions and guidance from the teacher may be helpful. (12 mins)

5. With a Partner: Ask students to work in pairs, with each group selecting one of the items from the brainstorm–or adding their own–and breaking it down in the same way the large group did with gender: How is this item an example of separation? How is it an example of hierarchy? Who does it place on top of who? Why? Ask students to write as many notes on their item as they can. (8 mins)

6. Closing/React: Bring the collective back to the board, and ask: “Now that we have identified some examples of hierarchy in our everyday lives, how do we begin to challenge them? As feminists, what steps or action can we take to fight the ways these hierarchies show up around us?” Return to one of the items on the list (gender may be a good one since it was already discussed, but focusing on the classroom as an immediate example may also be powerful) and quickly brainstorm some concrete actions that can be taken to start breaking down the hierarchies of that system in everyday interactions. “Using language which respects all gender and sexual identities”, or “Letting students decide homework policies” might be some examples. (12 mins)

7. Homework: Ask students to come up with at least five different ways that the example they broke down with their partner can be challenged. Encourage them to come up with concrete actions that can be taken, just as was done at the end of class, and to be ready to share some of those ideas when they come back to class the next day.

Ideas for later lessons returning to radical feminism:

Radical Black feminist Audre Lorde once said: “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” What does this quote mean to you? What do you think Lorde was speaking to, or trying to say with this quote? Knowing what we know about radical feminism, how does this quote relate to that philosophy?

We have now made feminist critiques of our classroom, and of our school. Now that we have generated possible ways of challenging hierarchies in our classroom and school, how can we go about initiating those changes together? How can we start to break down hierarchy in our classroom today? What actions can we take to begin challenging them in the larger school structure?

*While this lesson probably makes most sense with middle or high school age students, it could be adjusted to fit the needs of a younger group.

Schooling the World: Native Power in Response to Neoliberal Reform

The film Schooling the World explores neoliberal education reform in Central and South Asia from the radical perspectives of the targeted communities.

Lois Wiener, among many other progressive educators and scholars, has written extensively about the neoliberal reforms which are overwhelming current models for education in the US–particularly in oppressed communities. The charter school movement, the de-unionizing of school staff and the vast privatization of public institutions are the most visible examples of these reforms in the United States, but what Wiener notes is that these conservative shifts are not occurring in the US alone. The neoliberal revising of education is a global project, one led by corporate power, hedge fund managers and other ultra-wealthy benefactors. It can be characterized as a charitable missionary campaign, which touts a rhetoric of “college readiness” and “the ending of poverty,” but which is at its foundation about creating a transnational core of workers prepared to generate wealth for a new generation of global elite in an age of information. The most necessary prerequisite for creating such a global form of vocational training is the systematic standardizing of all learning communities into a model which supports labor in the fields of technology and information.

Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden, a 2010 documentary which examines the modern push for western schooling models in Central and South Asia from the radical perspectives of the communities which are being subjected to these reforms, helps to illustrate all of these global shifts concretely. Through a lens of Native People power, class consciousness and holistic learning, the film explores not only the cultural erasure initiated by western educational and economic institutions, but the methods through which poor and brown people around the planet structure and educate their own communities–methods which are universally discredited and consciously destroyed through traditional models of Eurocentric learning. Whether you are a member of traditional institution of learning or not, this documentary is a must-see for anyone who wants to better understand not only how to challenge the cultural and economic hegemony inherent in western education, but what alternative models for radical learning already exist in the global community, and in our own traditions as oppressed people. Check out the amazing videos, resources, topics of discussion and thoughtful responses at the Schooling the World homepage.