As I prepared for this series I engrossed myself in Friere, hooks, Ladson-Billings, Crenshaw, Bell, Anzaldúa, Valenzuela, Duncan-Andrade, Paris & Alim because as an AntiRacist educator I’m reading and rereading them all the time. These are just a few of the names that I was introduced to in almost 25 years as an educator. They are the critical theorists, critical practitioners, the critical race theorists politicized and villainized in 2020 by the leader of the free world because they speak truth to power and critique the political structures that keep the marginalizing world in place.
Pedagogy has to do with the implementation of practice in classrooms and the larger decision-making body for schools. Pedagogy is not just what you do, it is the how and why behind the what. You enact a certain pedagogy when you decide to offer all students in the school district one curriculum that centers white people in history as benevolent victors and provide no opportunity for teachers and students to critique that curricular choice in the context of the lesson cycle. You enact a certain pedagogy when music, movement and dialogue is removed from or not considered relevant in the delivery of the English language arts curriculum (elementary, middle and high). You enact a certain pedagogy in the professional learning space when adults are only expected to show up to “PD” for compliance to check off an attendance box with no time provided or room given to critical reflection on how their background and beliefs impact student success. When educators fail to enact what Freire calls a problem-posing pedagogy they rob students of what Duncan-Andrade calls critical hope.
What makes pedagogy critical is when you decide that what you know and believe is not the only way to know and believe. Upon knowing, you then engage in practice and reflection to expand your knowledge and interactions with those who are more than likely experiencing the world in different ways than you. A critical pedagogy centers curiosity, creativity and the co-construction of knowledge with students and colleagues. This critical pedagogy has no checklist, no textbook, no step by step guide. The teacher becomes the student, the Board member becomes the student, the superintendent becomes the student, the C-suite becomes the students. The "traditional" student is seen not only as a learner, but a teacher of adults. To co-create with students is to decenter adults, own that adults do not have all the answers, and that to truly expand the knowledge of the students in our care we must take a learner stance.
No, I’m not saying you give all authority over to students, yet I am saying that you should critique what authority you are holding over students and how that authority is advancing their self-efficacy and agency in school and their lives outside of school.
The purpose of critical pedagogy is to provide the students in your care with a liberatory education. As an Antiracist educator I see the value in #ATXStudentEquity to decenter the adults in our system and create the learning space for students to advance their self-efficacy and agency.
#AntiRacistEd Reflection/Action:
Our ways of knowing and existing are being challenged in very real ways through the pandemic, #BlackLivesMatter Movement focused on stopping the dehumanization and brutalization of black bodies, Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the polarizing rhetoric in society. Tomorrow the U.S. will inaugurate the forty-sixth President and the first Black/South Asian/Female Vice President in U.S. History. What critical pedagogy will drive how you engage students, your colleagues, your family, your friends? If you have been with us in this learning community a while you know #AntiRacistEd is enacted within and outside self and within and outside the school and workplace. You cannot be an AntiRacist educator and take the antiracist hat off when you go home. What personal commitment will you make to engage in the critical self-reflection required to nurture liberating education?
