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One of the lines in the readings in 'A Pedagogy for Liberation' that stuck to me was "the right to have a small discussion begins as a class privilege". It took me back to high school where all of my friends were scrambling to get into a large universities and I was the only one who was applying to small liberal arts colleges. My peers and the school administration did not understand why I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college and have undermined my decision to attend Bryn Mawr College. However, when I shared my classroom experiences to my friends over facebook, they expressed a hint of jealousy because they never had an opportunity in class to speak up or have a dialogue with the professor. Their voices would get lost in the crowd and they never had an opportunity to build a relationship with the professor whereas at Bryn Mawr, I could engage with professors easily inside and outside of the classroom. Though my peers were at big name colleges and were lauded for their decisions, I now understand that I am privileged to have the opportunity to engage with my professors. Friere stresses that education is not simply the relaying of information from the teacher to a student, it is the level exchange between the teacher and the student that makes education an art form and a learning opportunity for both parties. 

 Shor and Freire’s piece on dialogical method of teaching was a very different format than what I am used to reading. They were having a dialogue about dialogue! I enjoyed the unpacking of their conversation though. There were three points that were made that stood out to me the most. Two of those points, I found slightly controversial and I had to read and understand to clear my way of thinking up. The last point I totally agreed with.

            First, Ira states, “the right to have a small discussion begins as a class privilege.” At first, I found this point troubling. I thought, “Just because someone is in a lower class does not mean that he or she does not have the right to engage in a small discussion.” However, as I continued to read, I understood Ira to mean that the higher the status, the more likely they are to enroll their child in school with an intimate environment because they can afford to do so. In contrast, lower status people enroll their child in bigger schools, with more people in the classroom. As a result, it is harder for these teachers to gain control of the crowded classrooms, so they are more likely to resort to “monologue or teacher talk, in the transfer of knowledge approach” because it would be harder for the teacher to engage every single student in dialogue.

I’m coming away from reading Friere’s and Shor’s A Pedagogy for Liberation with three central themes I’d like to discuss further:

1)      I thought the acknowledgement that “The right to have a small discussion begins as a class privilege” (p. 98) was really interesting, and sadly often true. The authors discussed this reality in terms of resources, ability to have small class sizes, etc. but I think this pedagogical reality is also a function of the false (or what I view to be false) notion that students have to “learn the basics first,” before they can converse and have rich, meaningful dialogues. I’d like to further discuss how this emphasis on promoting dialogue in the classroom can be used draw students in and engage them while also learning content and skills, as opposed to only coming as a privilege, after the fact.

2)      I appreciated the concept that dialogue prompts the teacher to also engage in continuous learning: “Dialogue is the sealing together of the teacher and the student in the joint act of knowing and re-knowing the object of study” (p. 100). I agree that through dialogue, the teacher can learn just as much from as they teach to students—if done well. But I do wonder, is this a guarantee? Can a teacher successfully promote dialogue without being open to learning themselves? What are the implications of this?

At a general, my-personal-values level, I think that I believe in Levinson’s point that the “civic empowerment gap” is a big issue. In a country where we put democracy on a pedestal and where the structures, policies, etc. of our country are decided by a so-called democratic process, it really doesn’t work if huge groups of people simply aren’t being heard.

In light of the Boler chapter on teaching socio-emotional skills and subsequent class discussion about the problems with teaching “universal” values and skills, however, I found this chapter more troubling and confusing. I think that there is a lot of potential for undermining the lived experiences of students, for undermining the action that they do take in their lives, and teaching them to incorporate themselves and work within a structure that is actually really detrimental to them (and is, in fact, a reason why they are less civically engaged).

In the conversation between Ira Shor and Paulo Friere, Ira brings up the point that in most college classes, teachers "didactically lecture" to students, a "'cost effective' education" with "minimum personal contact between professors and students". She goes on to day that professor-contact and dialogue is reserved "for students at the most costly universities, where money is invested in small classes for the elite." When reading this, I immediately thought of the small classes at Haverford and Bryn Mawr. I always thought of this as a perk of going to a smaller college, but after reading this, I realized that it is a privilege that few students get to experience.

Many of my friends from high school went to UMass Amherst, the flagship MA state school. Though they are still recieving a quality education, I was shocked when they told me about their lectures, which could be as big as 400 people. They can't really ask questions, have no class discussion, and their professor doesn't know their name. They were equally surprised when I told them about my 15-30 person classes, where the professor knows each person individually, classes are discussion-based, and there are no TA's. UMass is a much more affordable option for some people than an elite private school. I am lucky to be able to afford to go to a small liberal arts school, and I have taken the advantages of small classes for granted. 

Although I am physically unable to attend class, I wanted to share my opinions on the reading and the thoughts it sparked. 

"Language choices and practices determine who has access to resources, power, and control and who does not. Foreing language alienates children." Again, we talk in terms of accessibility and how important of a role in plays into individual's choices to be aware of their environment before they can even become a part of it. This reading brings up an important issue, how do we wish to spread environmental awareness and knowledge if we can't expand our ways of doing so? A lot of the times people underestimate the abilties and knowledge capabilties of minorities because they don't believe WE are able to obtain the importance of issues like environmental studies. WILD, a program dedicated to reaching out to those who aren't as accessible to educational resources, is a program that all other organizations and programs should learn from.

Heartbeat, a novel written by Sharon Creech is a book unlike any other that I read growing up. I was never really the kind of child to read books outside of class and my parents never really encouraged the importance of books. It wasn’t until middle school, at age twelve that I came across Heartbeat and since then I’ve been in love with Sharon Creech’s work.

Heartbeat is a novel written in verse. It’s a short poetic novel narrated by twelve-year-old Annie about the changes happening around her environment and how she finds running to be an outlet to handle it all. The free verse written style in the novel is a reflection of Annie’s mood and how everything in her mind flows when she’s running and thinking.

Annie is a twelve-year-old girl trying to understand herself and her emotions, but at the same time the many different things changing around her life. In the beginning of the novel, she has no stability and is overwhelmed by the things in life she can’t seem to understand or control, like that of her grandfather developing dementia and growing old while her mother is expecting a new born child which seems completely bizarre to Annie because she’s an only child. Then there’s also the relationship with her best friend, Max who makes Annie question why she runs and explores the role that running plays into Annie’s life.

Curious George is a series of children’s picture books written by H. A. Rey. I will be writing about the first book of the series, titled, Curious George. The events of the book can be summarized as such: A curious monkey is kidnapped from Africa by a man with a yellow hat and is taken to a big city. Being curious and wanting to imitate the man using the telephone, George unintentionally telephones the fire station, prompting the firefighters’ swift arrival to find no fire, but only a troublesome monkey. They take him to prison, from which George manages to escape, take flight with a bunch of balloons, serendipitously land next to the man with the yellow hat, who then accordingly delivers George to his new home that is the city zoo.

The book I chose to analyze is called Miss Rumphius written by Barbara Cooney. A summary of the story is about a little girl named Alice and her grandfather would tell her stories about living in faraway places. She tells him that when she grows older she would like to travel to faraway places and live by the sea. But her grandfather tells her that she must also make the world more beautiful. The story continues when she is all grown up and begins traveling to faraway places such as tropical islands, mountains, jungles, and deserts. Then after her travels she finds a little house by the sea to live in and she plants flowers in her garden. After she plants the flowers she becomes ill and stays in her home for most of spring. When she was well enough the next time spring came in she had lupines in her garden. She realizes that in order to make the world more beautiful she will plant lupine seeds everywhere so that they will bloom the following spring. When spring came around there were lupines everywhere and everyone called her The Lupine Lady. At the end of the book she tells her niece that she must also do something to make the world more beautiful.