What is the biggest thing the authors from the articles we read want us as future teachers to do and instruct? - To have a voice. Although it’s not that easy to accomplish, as we probably know. I think there is a big conflict, like we read in Karen Wink’s article with teaching in a Military school, when the men and women are told to cooperate as a group and abide by order – as they have done from boot camp onwards. And then in a classroom setting, Professor Wink wants her students to have an active voice rather than being passive. Going off Pavlov’s theories, these students were conditioned to be the recipients of orders from months on end, and now they are told to have an individual voice – can you imagine the conflict occurring in these students’ minds?
Like Wink referenced to in her article, these students don’t want to speak up for fear of compromising the group – whatever that may be, I don’t know. But if we apply this to a broader scale, people’s social stigma can easily influence how we are going to act in certain situations, whether they are active or passive. For example: You witness police brutality of an innocent man, and the cops know you saw the incident and they say, “If you report any of this, you better get used to living the rest of your life in a wheelchair.” So what would you do? Speak up and risk your physical well-being even though injustice will stand uncontested? I use an extreme example because these situations do arise, obviously. “’First, they came for the Jews / and I did not speak out / because I was not a Jew. . . . Then they came for me / and there was no one left / to speak out for me,’” and here we discover why being a passive participant can have implications, too (85). Would we rather die having a voice possibly making an influence, or die for the same reason, anyway, without one? Change will never occur if these systems aren’t challenged. Back to Wink’s classroom when the one student, Derek, spoke out on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” essay about promoting individualism when he was taught to perform collectively for the past however many months. Derek was simply “generalizing” that because he obeyed orders in boot camp and held the belief the group dictates the response given, then, he could not have an individual voice of his own, now. A lot of people apply this concept today based off past experiences. Since I did so-and-so and was passive then, I may as well continue that pattern now because I got by that way before. Hopefully we can encourage students to realize they have a voice of their own and that it matters, without having the fear of compromising their social standing in whatever little “clique” they are in at the time.
I thought about how we could apply a lot of what was detailed in these articles, and I was especially fond of Raquel Cook’s idea of having a bunch of posters on the walls that can get students thinking. When our words drop on deaf ears, these posters will always be where the students can see them day-to-day and sit there and contemplate their meanings. Cook also made herself available as a great facilitator of knowledge as well. Rather than telling her students what they should believe, she would provide impartial material such as photographs or stories that the students could then ponder over and develop their own interpretations. Was the American media feeding us lies about the events that occurred? - “’I don’t know . . . I wasn’t there,’” Mrs. Cook would state (20). I like this way of teaching, because we are never imposing information on our students, but instead letting them construe their own meaning from the text or photographs. Also, her promotion of having an active voice, like Wink argued for, is important because this knowledge is too important to keep silenced and must be transmitted to others, or else they fall in the same trap of inaccuracies, contradictions, and stereotypes like some of Cook’s students were exposed to before taking her class.
I think it is really important for teachers to be able to give their students vocies in the classroom. I agree with you that teachers we need to provide material for students to be able discuss their own thoughts and beliefs.
ReplyDeleteHow do you plan on having students using active voices in the classrooms?
"Going off Pavlov’s theories, these students were conditioned to be the recipients of orders from months on end, and now they are told to have an individual voice – can you imagine the conflict occurring in these students’ minds?"
ReplyDeleteThis made me think of a class that I am helping out with. I taught a lesson that revolved around questions such as "how does that make you feel?" and "how do you interpret that," without telling the students what my opinions and my interpretation was about the literature that we had read.
So, as I was teaching this lesson I noticed that two, in particular, students who ALWAYS participate A LOT where not raising their hands and participating as much they normally do. (The regular professor teaches and she takes a different approach (not asking these types of questions)).
Anyways, what my point is, is that these two students may have been trained to approach texts at a distance (not forming an emotional connection) or they may have not been encouraged to have an individual voice... Like them, if this is the case, I was trained to find the similes, metaphors, and take apart the sentence structure. I was trained to go with the teacher's opinion and interpretation of a text, never straying from theirs.
I thought that it was so interesting that the "brightest," most participating students were silent (more so than normal). They may not have known how to or be used to doing what I was now asking them to do....
As aspiring teachers it is really easy for us to relate with the idea that students should have their own voice, because we are still students ourselves. So don't ever forget that idea! As a lot of teachers that have been in the field for a long time have forgotten that students should be able to express themselves. Thankfully, as English teachers we will have PLENTY of opportunities to allow our students to express themselves.
ReplyDelete"When our words drop on deaf ears, these posters will always be where the students can see them day-to-day and sit there and contemplate their meanings."
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of forcing our students to be active, don't you think? I like this idea. It throws something explicit in their faces and strikes curiousity. I think this is a good way to get students to be active in finding the answer to questions on their own, and wanting to know more about the world around them.