Teaching Narrative
I think about teaching as an ever-fluid process, like a river that has flowed around many bends and glided over infinite pebbles and stones. With each serendipitous turn on my teaching journey, I have begun to feel warm and soft around the idea that my teaching is comfortably based in the deliberate acknowledgement of each person’s humanity, and to teach is to honor that humanity. Teaching another person ought to begin with a settling-in to that person’s way of being, while also allowing oneself to be curious about their talents and personality.
Since I entered the teaching profession in 1999, I have seen teaching play out as a deeply personal, and at the same time, a nakedly public and political endeavor. The parts of my teaching philosophy of teaching as human-ness that come to life in the classroom are my commitment to building relationships through enacting critical pedagogy (Alarcón & Bellows, 2018), and the use of testimonio as praxis (Alemán et al., 2009). These two elements of the way I philosophize about teaching as a collective endeavor have remained steadfast.
Viewing education and curriculum development as an agent for social change, I teach not to transmit, but to transform (Butler et al., 2015). Transformative teaching in teacher education uses contemporary issues to examine power dynamics that are enacted in schools and broader institutional spaces. Teaching in public schools for the aim of the common good (see Barton, 2004), requires that students think critically about the institution of public schooling and the world around them, not as emerging citizens, but as active citizens in their communities. Moving toward imaginings about what schooling could look like calls for teaching about social issues and the enactment of critical pedagogical methods. To engage in this work requires a rethinking of our own methods (Freire, 1998; hooks, 1994; Nieto, 2000).
After redesigning my course in 2015, and after earning tenure and promotion in 2018, it was once again time to revisit my curriculum through the lenses of critical pedagogies and the use of testimonio. I embarked on a redesign of CI 3110-Social Studies in the Elementary School to align with a new book in our field that promotes critical pedagogies and identity work. Changing the course again through a critical revisioning has reignited my passion for teaching the social studies methods course. Approaching the teaching of social studies by engaging in recurring class meetings provides a space for me to centralize mutual understandings when problems arise, as opposed to finding a solution of forcing consensus, which might happen in a deliberative process (Enslin, et al., 2001).
Using testimonio in my teaching allows stories to emerge from my own experiences and provide scenarios for students to consider. In a forthcoming edited book, I showcase how creating scenarios for students to discuss in small groups can allow them to begin freedom dreaming (Love, 2019) and imagining what schooling could look like.
The guidelines for promotion in the department of curriculum and instruction note five knowledge bases from which we teacher scholars draw: professional experiences in the field of education; immersion in the literature and research base through ongoing scholarship; facility with developing standards-based curricula/assessments; continued interaction with students as a mentor and advisor; and the use of professional reflection to improve one’s own teaching. These five elements are woven throughout the three notable indicators discussed below that showcase growth in these areas: a commitment to enacting critical pedagogies, collaborative freedom dreaming, and curriculum development.
Notable Indicators Quality Teaching
Notable Indicator 1: Commitment to Enacting Critical Pedagogies
The ways in which public schooling has set up a large number of standards for students to meet is directly preventing them from liberating their bodies, daydreaming about a different world, and allowing themselves to notice their own freedom. To this end, larger goals of my teaching are to operationalize and promote anti-oppressive teaching practices through inviting preservice teachers to notice and reflect on their own identities before thinking through the process of becoming a teacher. Through my own testimonio I try to connect to our preservice teachers who are on the “traditional” four-year plan, and always saw themselves as teachers. We all explore why that might be the case for so many of us, which opens us up for honoring different perspectives.
The enactment of critical pedagogy and relationship building play out in my courses in a number of ways, most notably, through the incorporation of class meetings. Class meetings encourage democratic dialogue and provide a powerful space for creating trust by questioning various points of view that are often taken-for-granted. Through a deliberate incorporation of class meetings, we can provide space to create empathy for different points of view and address complex social issues (Alarcón & Bellows, 2018). This type of teaching celebrates diverse thought, use of democratic processes, and discussion of controversial social issues, but can be met with resistance. Students in my classes have reported being challenged, and can sometimes feel uncomfortable when confronted with unexpected realities about multicultural histories, and the struggles we face in the field of social studies education.
After publishing about the use of class meeting in my courses, I see student resistance as a clue that changing pedagogical methods is difficult on students, and obtaining favorable evaluations from my students cannot be the only criteria on which enacting the teaching of critical pedagogies can be measured. I have found that sometimes students do not realize the importance or effectiveness of a particular instructional strategy, theoretical idea, or teaching philosophy until they move on to their student teaching semester, or later in their career. Many times former students have reached out to me through my ASU email, they have stopped by my office when they were in town. They’ve sent me pictures of their weddings, babies. Each time the course comes up, because the course is where our community still resides. When students reach out to extend or ask questions about all the things we experienced together in Block Two, or to share how what we talked about in class “actually happened” I think we’re doing a kind of liberatory freedom dreaming.
Notable Indicator 2: Collaborative Freedom Dreaming
I recognize in these 24 years of serving as an educator, that the underpinnings of my undergraduate education taught me how to work (teach public school) within the systems of capitalism and White Supremacy. When I left the classroom in 2008, I was discouraged at the lack of humanity our public schooling systems were enacting in the endeavor of teaching and learning. I want to see the sickness of individualism avert public schools and school board meetings, and instead, witness a collective centering of the humanity of our youngest learners as a community effort. I agree with Kumashiro (2005) that profound learning happens in the midst of discomfort, and that epistemological shifts are necessary for learning. Freedom dreaming (Love, 2020) requires a pause in thinking about the way things have always been structured, and a reimagining of the commonsensical notions we have built around the public schooling experience.
To freedom dream is to advocate for marginalized students, both in the public schools and in our Educator Preparation Programs. I have included in this portfolio three examples of ways that I have advocated for students in the Reich College of Education both in the university as well as in the public schools where they serve. The first example describes Caterina’s struggles in her student teaching placement, hiding her identity and not knowing how to advocate for herself or a student she was concerned about. Second, I collaborated with other faculty to advocate for two students during their student teaching semesters who were experiencing racial bias and mistreatment in their classrooms. The last example describes pieces of my seven-year relationship with a former elementary education student, now teaching at Berryhill School.
As a teacher scholar, I work under the umbrella of critical social studies education research which has allowed me to elicit collaboration with other social studies methods professors in our department, state, and across the country who are working towards similar aims with their students. Engaging in spontaneous collaborative meetings around the overlapping work of teaching and scholarship with other elementary social studies methods instructors inspired a group of us to found the Elementary Social Studies Education Summit, an annual meeting and conference space where deliberate connections and collaboration take place. Through these meetings (which have been virtual since 2021), we have reflected on the ways in which we can freedom dream collaboratively, by sharing our research with each other, serving as guest speakers in each other’s classes, and model for our students what a community of teacher scholars looks like when they can imagine together.
Notable Indicator 3: Curriculum Development
Another notable aspect of my teaching involves broader curriculum development, outside of teacher education. In 2018 I joined the Inclusive Excellence team in the Center for Academic Excellence. Through my engagement with this group, I was able to work with Dr. Susan Colby on developing the Appalachian State University Inclusive Excellence Syllabus Design Framework. This framework was shared with all the Inclusive Excellence Liaisons, at multiple syllabus workshops, and at new faculty orientation. In addition to the framework, teaching in the Center for Academic Excellence allowed me to connect with other faculty across the university and reflect deeply on the ways in which the framework was useful and not useful.
At the end of 2020, the Co-Directors of the Inclusive Excellence team asked if I would lead a team of folks to develop what became called the Inclusive Teaching Lab, to be housed in the CAE, and serve as a place faculty could come for teaching and pedagogical tools, or to request the ITL team members to consult with entire departments to improve inclusive teaching efforts. The Inclusive Lab team ended up working with 15 different departments across campus to improve department inclusive teaching efforts and support IE liaisons and department chairs in this work. Currently, I am consulting with the Doctoral Program as they engage in an extensive curriculum mapping and development process.
Finally, to our good fortune, Dr. Christina Tschida joined the C&I Department in the fall of 2020. Having worked with Christina before as a co-editor of our book, (Re)Imagining Elementary Social Studies: A Critical Reader (Shear, et al., 2018), weI began talking about the highly anticipated text, Social Studies for a Better World (Rodriguez & Swalwell, 2021). When the book came out in the fall of 2021, we worked over the break to redesign our course to align with the new text. This collaboration has led to a Controversial Issues Dialogue session at the annual CUFA conference in Philadelphia this November, 2022.
References
Alarcón, J. & Bellows, E. (2018). Class Meeting as Critical Pedagogy: Addressing Controversial Topics and Enacting Shared Responsibility in Elementary Social Studies Education. In Shear, S., Tschida, C., Bellows, E., Buchanan, L.B., & Saylor, E., Eds., (Re)Imagining Elementary Social Studies: A controversial issues reader. Information Age Publishing.
Alemán, S., Delgado Bernal, D., Flores Carmona, J., Galas, L. and Garza, M. (2009). Latinas telling testimonios. Unidas we heal: Testimonios of mind/body/soul, Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah.
Barton K. C. & Levstik L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Butler, B. M. , Su, Y., & Scott, W. (2015). Knowledge transmission versus social transformation: A critical analysis of purpose in elementary social studies methods textbooks. Theory and Research in Social Education, 43, 102-134.
Enslin, P., Pendlebury, S., & Tijattas, M. (2001). Deliberative democracy, diversity and the challenges of citizenship education. Journal of philosophy of education 35(1), 115-130.
Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.
hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. London, UK: Routledge.
Kumashiro K. K. (2015). Against common sense: teaching and learning toward social justice (Third). Routledge.
Love B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.
Nieto, S. (2000). Placing equity front and center some throughs on transforming teacher education for a new century. Journal of teacher education, 51(3), 180-187.
Rodríguez Noreen Naseem & Swalwell K. M. (2022). Social studies for a better world: an anti-oppressive approach for elementary educators (First). W. W. Norton & Company.
Shear S. B. Tschida C. M. Bellows E. Buchanan L. B. & Saylor E. E. (2018). (Re)imagining elementary social studies : a controversial issues reader. Information Age Publishing.
