Writing Pedagogy:

Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

In chapter 2 of Freire’s book, he proposes the idea of a more interactive approach to the education world. His idea is that teachers now dump a boatload of information into students without even realizing or allowing them to understand the content. Teachers often teach how the book tells us to teach. A lot of teachers’ manuals nowadays have scripts that teachers use and give them word for word what to say and how to teach the material. Freire does not believe in this though, he explains how teachers should think of themselves as the students and how they would benefit from learning specific content. We have to use interactiveness within our lessons to fully explain and teach the content to hit a variety of different learners. Teachers have to put themselves in the student’s shoes and think about what would the students need to fully grasp the content.

Engaged Pedagogy:

bell hooks’ idea tags along with Freire’s approach from the chapter I just read about. hooks’ idea shows value in the actual student and not just treating them as a robot or a product rather than a person. It shows value in the emotional and psychological part of students which I think is a very crucial part of learning in early education; SEL learning. Another important factor is inclusivity. hooks’ mentions how we should be teaching things such as women’s history, black history, and Hispanic history, and incorporating important people who are valued in each of those groups. This will also help students from other cultures as well feel more welcomed and comfortable when they are part of the cultures that you mention in the class. An example would be talking about Ramadan and the importance of it when you have a student who participates in it, or having books in Spanish or another student’s home language to make them feel better about reading something in their home language if English is not their first language. Small things that might not seem to matter to most, will make a huge difference to the people actually going through it.

The Web We Need to Give Students:

Audrey Watters does a great job of speaking out for others in the teaching community and offers many great ideas digitally. With how technology is now, and from an early childhood standpoint, these kids were practically born with iPhones and iPads since birth. Watters offers the idea of giving each student their own domain and even though I feel as if this idea pertains to a more older group of students, I still find myself relating it back to the elementary grades.

Let me relate it to me and my college experience: So, I do agree with Watters and when she talks about how when a college course is completed, the student’s work is either forgotten about or deleted. I totally agree with this statement because for the majority of my classes, not even just this semester, but from all 4 years at Kean I have never gone back to look at old work I’ve submitted from other classes (nor do I have access to it anymore). Additionally, the majority of the time as well, the professor would teach a subject or certain criteria for the week, then the next week it would shift and we would learn a whole new lesson about something different, forgetting about what we learning prior and not finding a way to relate it back. See, I feel with this class or just the way Prof. Friend designs his lessons, they always relate to one another, there’s always some type of correlation. I’m sure what we work on in weeks 10 and 11 will somehow relate to what we learned in week 1 one way or another.

Relating this to early childhood: I feel as if this is also similar because there is no way for students to access their work. I would guess about 95% of the graded/completed work I send back home just ends up in the trash. There are specific things I am required to hold onto such as published writing pieces and tests/quizzes, but even that it’s me, or the teacher, who has access to it, not the student.

So, creating these domains for students may help organize thoughts better not only from a college-level perspective but also elementary. Being able to be in control of your work and being able to reflect back on past work is such a great thing because it may benefit you in future assignments. Again, from an early childhood standpoint, when learning about adverbs and adjectives, and when we do independent work on them, having their writing accessible to them so they can easily find what an adverb is and how to use it in a sentence may help them in future assignments when they need to add adverbs into their writing stories.

Rhizomatic Education:

First off, the word “rhizomatic” sounds pretty cool to say and I’ve never heard of that term before. Next, I like the idea of a “community-driven curriculum”. The curriculum my school uses is all about community learning and collaborative learning. Although it is not in a sense where it seems to have “unpredictable” outcomes, it does have a lot of peer learning and collaboration within it. Now that I think about it, this is kind of like what Prof. Friend does. You let the students take control of the class rather than just a boring lecture. There is more peer collaboration and feedback and it is more student based. Even when creating the rules/policies for the class, it was all student-led. Doing this creates not only a good classroom community but also shows us how you’re not here to “abuse your power” and you’re not here to prove a point. To me, it shows equality. Even when you choose to not sit at your desk, but sit in the same seats we’re sitting in, it shows equality. Cormier proposes the idea that knowledge isn’t purely based on teacher to student, but it can also be vice versa. Heck, my second graders even tell me things that I never knew before. So the idea of creating a “community-driven curriculum” may be beneficial in the long run.