Kelly Hunter Cornerstone Literacy Fellow

As I reflect upon our recent visit to the schools in the Tower Hamlet District of London, what stands out most to me is the respect and cohesion of cultures between students and staff. It was evident how all attended to the well being of each other: the way teachers spoke about their students, the interactions between students and teachers, student with student, and the involvement of families and community members. Difference took many shapes in their schools. At Smithy, students were proud to show me "Daniel's Garden," a specially designed location on the playground for their blind classmate. While touring Bangabandhu, our student guide pointed out that the school was designed and named by a committee of community members. The walls of Canon Barnett had notices translated into many of the languages spoken in the school. Even the food at our professional development session provided a sampling of the local cultures. However, the sense of the staff's understanding of their students' lives outside of school went much deeper than what the eye could see.

In the classrooms, student and teacher rapport was highly respectful, as teachers highlighted behaviors they wanted to see rather than yelling at students who were off track. Teachers had in-depth knowledge of the students they were teaching. The understanding of students' religions, customs, and cultural differences was also evident in the curriculum, not a superficial approach to honoring students' multicultural backgrounds a few times a year with food and festivities. The day-to-day discussions, curriculum and interactions were infused with the belief that "every child matters."

Upon returning, I was pondering the implications for lessons learned while in London. I wondered how I could take not only what I saw but what it felt like to be in a school where students and staff were taking a "critical literacy" stance to their teaching and learning. I searched for connections to share with the Cornerstone network. Then, I recalled a book I found while browsing through the bookstores in London, Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades by Mary Cowhey. This recently published book by Stenhouse follows Cowhey's first, then second grade, class as they investigate their questions, make connections between their lives, the books they read, the community leaders they meet and the larger world all in the tradition of critical literacy pedagogy. (Read Chapters from this book on Stenhouse's website)

The book opens with Cowhey's students at snack time when black ants arrive and cause a few students to stomp on them as another student, Som Jet, yells that they are living creatures that shouldn't be killed. Cowhey seizes the opportunity to stop the class so they can listen and learn from one of their classmates. Here is an excerpt of her reflection on this incident.

" I continued thinking about Som Jet and Ben throughout the day. Ben was right. It was completely acceptable in our American culture to crush ants. Should I have told Som Jet, "Buck up and get used to it. You're in America now"? I thought of a similar argument in our school around the holidays a few years back. Some more traditional teachers argued that it was fine to continue to sing Christmas carols at a concert and have Christmas parties in the classrooms and color pictures of Santa Claus, because everyone in America knows what Christmas is; and if they don't, they should learn. I thought more about what Ben had said. Not only is it culturally acceptable for Americans to crush ants, but we Americans also slap mosquitoes, bomb fleas, and swat flies. Heck, we land-mine and carpet-bomb countries. We defoliated much of Vietnam. We carry out "shock and awe" bombing campaigns in the cradle of ancient civilizations. Won't Som Jet have a tough time in America if he can't get used to a few crushed ants? Surely Som Jet will learn all this without my help, living in America and watching television, but what will we learn? I figured Som Jet felt the way he did because he is a Buddhist." p. 4

But what will we learn? Yes! I thought as I read that passage. That is what it is all about - the learning that occurs for both teacher and students when a new type of dialogue begins. Critical literacy is about looking at things differently. It asks "us," the teachers who have the power in the classroom, to take a different stance, to take ourselves out of the center, to ask different questions and look at things anew.

Critical literacy is language use that questions the social construction of the self. Shor states, "When we are critically literate, we examine our ongoing development, to reveal the subjective positions from which we make sense of the world and act in it." Adrienne Rich (1979) declared that it is language used against fitting unexceptionally into the status quo or a dream of a new society against the power now in power, as Paulo Freire proposed (Shor and Freire, 1987), or it is an attitude towards history, as Kenneth Burke (1984) might have said.

When thinking about teaching and learning through the lens of critical literacy, it is useful to understand cognitivist Lev Vygotsky's (1962, 1978) "zone of proximal development." He proposed that such zones exist "when a less-developed individual or student interacts with a more-advanced person or teacher, allowing the student to achieve things not possible when acting on her or his own. The relationship with the more-developed person pulls the less-developed forward, a dynamic similar to the way Dewey understood curriculum that began from student experience and was structured forward into organized reflective knowledge of the kind teachers have." The main differences between critical literacy and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development are that critical literacy is an activity that reconstructs and develops all parties involved, pulling teachers forward as well as students. Vygotsky only focused on student development. Another difference is that dissident politics is foregrounded in a critical literacy program, inviting democratic relations in class and democratic action outside class. Vygotsky did not center power relations as the social context for learning (Shor, 1997).

Critical teaching is not a one-way development, not "something done for students or to them" for their own good (Freire, 1989). By inviting students to develop critical thought and action on various subject matters, the teacher herself develops as a critical-democratic educator who becomes more informed of the needs, conditions, speech habits, and perceptions of the students, from which knowledge she designs activities and into which she integrates her special expertise (Shor, 1997). Freire referred to this theory-based action/action-based theorizing as "praxis" -- a close relationship between discourse and action using language as a tool to enhance our understanding.

Returning to Cowhey's book, she describes her 'praxis', and critical literacy in her classroom this way:

"Teaching critically listens to and affirms a minority voice that challenges the status quo. Instead of forcing assimilation and acceptance of dominant culture, it reexamines cultural assumptions and values and considers their larger ramifications. Every student's voice was heard in this process, through philosophical discussions, meetings with guests, reflecting on books, listening and talking with visitors, and writing to friends and elders to ask their opinions." p. 13

If you would like examples of what critical literacy and praxis look like in the classroom, I encourage you to download Mary Cowhey's book which is available as a read-only pdf document (the pdf will not print out) or purchase a copy for yourself. As Sonia Nieto wrote, "Black Ants and Buddhists describes a teacher's dedication to forging a nurturing and caring environment where children learn to become socially responsible and critical...it is about children coming to consciousness about the world around them and taking steps, to paraphrase Paulo Friere, to learn to read both the word and their world" (Cowhey, foreword).

References

Anzaldua, Gloria. 1990. Bordelands/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

Burke, Kenneth. 1984. Attitudes toward history. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cowhey, M. 2006. Black ants and Buddhists: Thinking critically and teaching differently in the primary grades. New York: Stenhouse. (Read Chapters from this book on Stenhouse's website)

Delpit, Lisa. 1995. Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: The New Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/knowledge. Ed. C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon.

Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury.
------. 1973. Education for critical consciousness. New York: Seabury.

Rich, Adrienne. 1979. On lies, secrets, and silences. New York: Norton.

Shor, Ira. 1997. What is Critical Literacy? Retrieved May 2, 2006, from http://www.lesley.edu/journals/jppp/4/shor.html

Shor, Ira, and Paulo Freire. 1987. A pedagogy for liberation. Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and literature. New York: Oxford University Press.

Vygotsky, Lev. 1962. Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
------. 1978. Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.