My name is Catherine Haslag (pronounced Haus log) and I am excited to have you all in my class this semester. Before introducing yourself to the class, I would like to tell you a little about me. I am from a little town in Missouri called Bonnots Mill. I completed my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from Missouri State University. After graduating, I worked for about 6 years as an environmental consultant. The work was interesting, but I really missed teaching. I taught several classes while I was in graduate school at Missouri State. I also taught an intro chemistry class at the local community college in Springfield, MO for 4 semesters. I loved teaching and wanted a career change, so in January 2011, I moved to Minnesota and started working at Riverland. I love Minnesota and I enjoy teaching at Riverland. I have a passion for chemistry and education that I hope you will see as you proceed through this course.
I enjoy biking, camping, crocheting, reading, yoga, cross-country skiing, kayaking, traveling, hiking, and listening to music. I am also a podcast addict. If you are looking for a good podcast, I recommend Now and Then, The Anthropocene Reviewed, The Memory Palace, and Revisionist History. I have traveled to 36 US states and 15 countries. I have participated in RAGBRAI twice, and in the Fall of 2018, I bike-camped the Paul Bunyan Trail from Crow Wing State Park to Lake Bemidji State Park (approximately 120 miles total). Currently, I am reading Maus by Art Spiegelman, The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, and Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann.
Something that brings me joy is my cats, Piney and Goldie. They bring a sense of playfulness and presence to my life. They are always in the moment.
Goldie (orange Tabby) and Piney (sitting by the window).
When you communicate with me, please call me Catherine or Ms. Haslag, whichever you feel most comfortable using.
I look forward to working with you this semester. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice was first published in 2004. A second edition was released in 2009. The third edition (summarized here) was published in 2015. It contains updated resources for further reading and reflection questions at the end of each chapter.
This image obtained from Amazon.com
The author is Kevin K. Kumashiro. He is the former Dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco and has published dozens of articles and essays on education and social justice and has presented all over the world regarding equity, educational reform, and social justice. Against Common Sense is one of six books he has penned. In this book, Kumashiro outlines issues in the educational system, specifically with teacher education at the K-12 level. Because teacher education programs and even educational standards are prescribed in what knowledge is valued and what manners to teach students are acceptable, only certain perspectives are shared and the ideals valued by privileged groups are reinforced. He introduces the term troubling knowledge which is defined as “to complicate knowledge, to make knowledge problematic” and “knowledge that is disruptive, discomforting, and problematic.” (Kumashiro 8-9) He argues that being a “good” teacher isn’t a lack of knowledge because oftentimes, teaching and research into teaching perpetuate oppressive ways. Rather than emphasizing “good” teaching, educators should work towards being “anti-oppressive teachers.”
The first half of the book outlines was anti-oppressive teaching is and how to work towards the goal of being an anti-oppressive teacher. The second part of the book examines ways to prepare anti-oppressive teachers in six disciplines: social studies, English literature, music, “foreign” languages, the natural sciences, and mathematics.
Part 1: Movements Towards Anti-Oppressive Teacher Education
An anti-oppressive teacher is always working to become anti-oppressive, but never completely reaching this goal. This is much like an asymptotic line that approaches zero but never reaches it. Since the core of anti-oppressive teaching is to constantly examine the motives, the emotions, and the implications of a topic – to examine from as many perspectives as possible – there is always more work to do. Engaging in anti-oppressive teaching is a life-long goal.
Based on my understanding of what the author outlines in the text, I have noted the differences between Traditional (or common sense) teaching and anti-oppressive teaching below:
Traditional Teaching
Comfortable
Covers a set of standards that everyone should know as if that’s all there is to learn
Student learns the “right things”
Looking at what is known and only that
Outcomes are predictable/known in advance
Learning often stops once the standard is met
Accepting what we learn as it is
Anti-Oppressive Teaching
Uncomfortable
Challenges the partial nature of the student/school’s knowledge
Learned what matters to school/society and critically examined the what, why, and how it was brought learned
Looking beyond what is known
Outcomes are not predictable
Creates a desire to do more work
Challenging the larger social context
This type of learning (and teaching) is challenging. It is uncomfortable to learn that you have doing a process incorrectly, that your understanding of themes in a story didn’t take into account gender discrimination, or that your knowledge of a society issue negates the needs of an entire segment of the population. Humans don’t like to learn that they are wrong or to have their world-view challenged. This situation can cause a learner to enter a state of crisis, which causes emotional distress and asks for change on the part of the learner. In order to work through crisis, students need support. Without this support, they are less likely to learn from the experience and change from it. A student who isn’t supported could resist changing and become even more resistant to adjusting their view on the situation.
For example, I have been reading a lot on racism in our society and recently finished a book titled Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen. In this book, the author outlines how towns, cities, and suburbs across the US have systematically kept out non-white populations, such as black, Chinese, and Latinx people since the late 1800s. This was accomplished through violence, discriminatory laws, and restrictive covenants on properties in these communities. I discovered that the county I grew up in, Osage County, Missouri, was likely sundown and purposefully keep black people from settling there. I was challenged to look at my family (who immigrated to this area during the 1860s and 1870s) and consider that they may have contributed to keeping the area very predominantly white people. According to the latest US census data, Osage County is still 98.2% white. I never considered that some of my ancestors could have been racist because my mother didn’t raise me to engage in racist activity. I was always under the impression that since that area of the country was settled mostly by the German and French, there just weren’t many black people living there. This is most likely not the reason behind the lack of diversity in this area. Thankfully, because I have friends who support and listen to me, I am able to work through my own emotional discomfort and cognitive dissonance to develop a more accurate view of where I grew up and the reason the population there is comprised of nearly all white people. I don’t have to engage in a false narrative to explain why there is no diversity in my home county.
Oppressive elements are present throughout teaching and it is impossible to get rid of the all; however, it is possible to constantly be addressing ways teachers communicate unintentional lessons by examining how we teach and raise questions about it. These questions are often the ones we don’t want to talk about but most need to. To complicate the matter more, each student comes to class with their own lens to view the world through. They receive messages all the time, some which we don’t mean to communicate. For example, when I was in elementary school, we had two reading groups – the “slow” reading group and the “fast” reading group. These terms were meant to reflect the speed at which each group moved through the material. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized the lesson that my classmates in the “slow” group had received (and probably others in the class) because of the way these groups were named. I am sure it didn’t help those students strengthen their reading skills and become more confident students.
Buddhism may offer some insight into how to help teachers adjust their thinking/teaching to be more anit-oppressive. Socially-engaged Buddhism applies Buddhist principles to address social, political, economic, and ecological problems, so it makes sense that these ideas could be extended to explain why relying totally on teaching knowledge doesn’t work.
Knowledge is centered on binaries that allow for only black and white; however, the world is full of shades of grey. By focusing on binaries, we exclude anything that doesn’t fit into one of those two categories. For example, by allowing only for male and female excludes any person who doesn’t identify as one of these two genders.
Knowledge perpetuates the belief that the world is unchanging and independent. The reality is that the world is always changing and that everything in it is interconnected. This negates that things can have different meanings in different situations to different people. It also ignores that those many differences are still interconnected to each other.
We cling to knowledge because it makes life feel comfortable. Humans don’t like uncertainty and knowledge provides certainty. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who teaches on socially-engaged Buddhism believes that teaching and learning is about realizing the limitations knowledge can provide and releasing our dependence on a specific knowledge-base. Knowledge is to be used in ways to improve our lives; however, we must also constantly examine how we learn and what we think to understand how it can cause us suffering. When teachers are able to do this, they can help their students who suffer in their lives too. This is why Thich Nhat Hanh often uses the words teacher and healer as synonyms.
The author explains his type of activism: queer activism. The term queer isn’t used as a slur or reference to members of the LGBTQ community, but rather to notate “not normal.” He wants the the teaching of social justice to be uncomfortable to ensure that oppression and the queer is constantly being challenged in our learning. We should be constantly asking ourselves “What is problematic with the norm?” (Kumashiro pg 53). When a lesson is comfortable, doable, follow institutional practices and are examples of “good” teaching, Kumashiro asserts that the teacher and students are not working towards the goal of anti-oppressive teaching.
He goes on to postulate that “good” teaching actually creates queerness, meaning that because something is defined as the right, or “normal”, way to teach/act/be, we are actually creating a category where the not normal (queer) is lumped together. By constantly examining what isn’t normal, we bring it into the light, work through our emotions/thoughts/questions, and make it normal. Below are examples of questions that represent queer activism:
Why does gender depend on genitalia? Why does there need to be gender at all?
Why does gender dictate what we are allowed to wear? Why can’t people wear whatever they want regardless of gender?
Discussing these questions would produce struggle and discomfort (what the author refers to as working through crisis) in many, many people. However, by bringing these types of questions into the open, we are able to discuss the things that make people uncomfortable, hear new perspectives from others, and normalize that there is a whole gradient of gender beyond just the accepted male and female.
Part 2: Preparing Anti-Oppressive Teachers in Six Disciplines
The second section of this book applies the ideas Kumashiro explains in the first portion of the book to six disciplines. He provides specifics and examples of how to apply anti-oppressive teaching to each subject. I have indicated each of the disciplines and listed major points the author presented for each.
Social Studies
The author points out areas in the standard curriculum for social studies where anti-oppressive teaching can be applied these include:
Teach about how genocides were performed because a group of people were different or deemed “undesirable.”
Explain/explor more about the contribution of women to the workforce during wartime.
Discuss the relocation of Japanese American’s during World War II.
Examine the textbook for bias in the way it tells the story of history. Does it paint one group of people as the heroes? Are there groups of people excluded from the narrative?
Discuss the actions, beliefs, look, and feel of what it means to “be an American” or “be a good citizen.”
Explore racial and religious differences and challenging stereotypes when encountered.
Critically analyze news stories for what is reported, how it is report, and what is not reported.
Question and discuss the motivations behind the actions of a government, country or group when studying history.
English Literature
The teaching of English literature using anti-oppressive methods includes reading the classics as well as works by other non-white groups to allow for an exploration of perspective and experiences different from their own. Educators need to not only change what students read but also how they read it, encouraging students to ask different types of questions so as not to analyze the literature from a fixed “good” perspective.
Incorporate readings about racism in the classroom and teaching against racism illustrated in literature.
Read a wide range of stories from many different groups of people.
Ask questions of the students that encourage them to explore the social justice topics discussed in the story and their application to the student’s own life.
Analyze literature for the voices/perspectives that are included and excluded from it.
Examine how different stories have different implications.
The author also indicated that teachers should not assume they know everything about their students’ experiences. They will be challenging their own privilege while they teach students. They should be prepared to do their homework as a result.
Music
The study of music can be made more multi-cultural through the following anti-oppressive teaching strategies:
Examine the historical and contextual influences present when a piece of music was created.
Explore how different types/pieces of music allow us to express ourselves in different way.
Discuss the background of artists, groups, and cultures who created the music. How was the music influenced by these factors?
List and discuss the images that come to mind when a piece of music is performed.
Compare and contract emotional reactions to different styles of music.
Discuss the hidden messages a songwriter/singer could be trying to communicate in a piece of music.
“Foreign” Languages
Learning a different language isn’t just about learning new words to communicate with, it’s also about learning about the culture and how another group of people operate, think, and live. It’s a great way to learn about social difference between a student’s native culture and the culture of the language being studied.
Since teaching another language easily lends itself to teaching social justice, the author instead addresses more about his concerns about teaching another culture. First, it’s easy to oversimplify a culture and thus reinforce stereotypes. Since it is difficult to cover all the complex nuances and details of a different culture in the normal span of a classroom period, it is easy to generalize to make the lesson fit into the available time. Be careful to recognize the limits of the lesson to student and identify the partial nature of the information provided. Focus on helping students examine the story being told about a culture critically and help them recognize this partialness.
Second, it’s easy to focus on the “other” when teaching about another culture. While it’s important to teach about the differences in a culture, also teach about the similarities. The author states that the goal is to “change how I see and feel about others.” (Kumashiro pg 110) Focus on that during the lesson.
Natural Sciences
The natural sciences use information to develop stories about how the world works and increase our understanding of scientific phenomenon. Framed in this context, Kumashiro encourages teachers to help their students examine these stories for any underlying information, messages, political implications, or stories not being told.
The example the author provided regarded examining how reproduction is taught for limitations. For this particular lesson, this would include:
Identify if all forms of fertilization were discussed (i.e. heterosexual, surrogateship, lab fertilization, etc).
Examine how much of the fertilization and development process was taught.
Discuss gender and the continuum of possibilities beyond just male and female.
Analyze the social and political reasons why some of the above topics aren’t discussed.
Examine the implied feminine and masculine assumptions and roles that appear in gender.
Assess why students are open to learning about some scientific theories and law, but not others.
Mathematics
While the answers to math problems may not change based on social justice issues, how math is taught is influenced by social factors. It is important to examine these oppressive teaching practices. Some examples of these instances are listed below:
Problems that are worded to reinforce traditional racial or gender roles.
Students can get the idea that the methods taught in the math classroom are the only or best methods when there are many other ways to approach and solve a problem.
The theorems, formulas, and type of math that will be taught in a classroom can be oppressive because of the context, order, or manner they are covered.
The partial nature of math itself isn’t addressed in the classroom.
Failure to connect math to a student’s real life.
It is important to examine the bias and partial nature of math just as it is for any other subject. There are political, social, and cultural issues that influence math just like any of the other subjects the author discusses.
The process for developing and applying anti-oppressive teaching methods in the classroom is a career-long goal; however, it provides the critical thinking and examination skills our students need to succeed in the world. It is a momentous challenge, but it is the work that will bring about changes at all levels of society.
References
Author. (Year of publication). Title of webpage. Website Name. https://xxx
The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity by George Couros is an easy to read and inspiring look at how to innovate in the classroom to engage and empower students to be partners in their own learning. Couros has experience teaching in the K-12 system, as a technology facilitator, and as an administrator at the school and district levels. He has created ConnectedPrincipals.com to bring educators and leaders together in a space to learn from each other and develop new opportunities for students. He also developed a blog as a way to teach himself how to blog and create a portfolio for use in his classrooms. He published The Innovator’s Mindset in 2015 and followed it with Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator’s Mindset in 2019.
Couros breaks The Innovator’s Mindset into three sections:
In the first section, he discusses what innovation is and isn’t and explains the innovator’s mindset.
In the second section, he outlines the basic requirements for innovative teaching to be effective.
Finally, he discusses the importance of focusing on people’s strengths, using a learner-centered focus on where and how we innovate, and creating a community to support innovation and unleash the talent of students and educators.
In the summary that follows, I have tried to highlight what I feel are the most important points and nuggets from this book. This is by no means an exhaustive review of all of the wealth of knowledge provided in this book. I hope what I have written here encourages you to read this book. You may find some points of inspiration in its pages that I did not include here.
Innovation is a way of thinking that allows for the creation of better learning opportunities for students. It is a way of taking the growth mindset a step further. The growth mindset was developed by Carol Dweck more than 35 years ago. She outlined this in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. While the growth mindset is a belief that you have the ability to learn and do better, the innovator’s mindset is “the belief that the abilities, intelligence, and talents are developed so that they lead to the creation of new and better ideas.” (Couros pg 33) It’s not just about learning and growing, it’s also about being able to synthesize the material and create from it. The innovator’s mindset isn’t about educators finding ways to help their students meet the standards, it’s about finding ways for students to engage with the material and empower them to make it their own and build on it and create with it. There is no need to change everything to innovate. Sometimes, just one change is necessary for innovation to occur. Rather than having students write a book report, perhaps they create a diorama of a scene in the book and explain it to the class. Rather than having each student write a research paper, perhaps the whole class could group-research it and each student is responsible for a different aspect of the information. All of these are examples of innovation in the classroom.
“Would you want to be a learner in your own classroom?”
– The Innovator’s Mindset, pg 49
Couros identified 8 characteristics that innovative educators possess. These are the same characteristics that innovative educators will use to help their students develop as they learn. The 8 characteristics of the innovator’s mindset include:
Empathic – the ability to see the classroom from the perspective of the student, not the teacher.
Problem finders/solvers – guiding students in how to find problems to solve rather than giving them questions to answer.
Risk-Taker – finding a way to balance trying new things (taking risks) while drawing on experience.
Networked – collaborating with other educators and exchanging ideas allows for innovation.
Observant – watching what is going on with other educators and leaders and making connections between their content and how it can be applied in the classroom.
Creators – don’t just consume information, create something new from it.
Resilient – Keep moving forward, even when criticized or rejected. Innovation means bringing something new to the surface and it isn’t always appreciated or understood by others.
Reflective – looking at what we have done and questioning every level of it for continued improvement.
Couros emphasizes that reflection is one of the most important aspects to an innovator’s mindset because it allows for connection so the learning continues to deepen. Couros regularly states in the book that educators are learners too and that they need time to learn, reflect and develop if they are to be innovators.
“Alone we are smart, together we are brilliant.”
– Steven Anderson
The second section of the book outlines the foundation for innovation in education to be effective. Couros argues that relationships, being a constant learner, empowering students, and creating a shared vision are the basis for creating innovative spaces.
Foundation 1: Relationships
Educators are leaders. Some are the leaders of other educators, but all are leaders of the students they serve. Education is a job of service that is grounded in building relationships. It is our job to build trusting relationships with our students and colleagues to create a culture of innovation. There is so much vulnerability and risk in innovating. Without trust, educators won’t open themselves to the potential failure that can accompany innovation. If we don’t create safe, trusting spaces in our classrooms, students won’t take the risk to learn.
Foundation 2: Constant Learning
Learning leads to innovation. One way to learn and innovate is to disrupt the routine. Disrupting a routine facilitates new ideas and causes teachers to look at what they do from a different perspective. One story Couros shares is of a principal who shadowed two students for a day each to see how the schools she was newly assigned to ran. She wanted to see the school from the perspective of a student. She discovered students were sitting most of the time and passively listening during classes. This exercise allowed her to understand the student’s experience rather than what she thought their experience was. Currently, COVID-19 is a big disruption to our lives. Do you navigate life the same way you did in January and February? I doubt it. You have likely developed new habits and routines that you had never considered before because your life was disrupted. You had to innovate because of the change in perspective the disruption COVID-19 caused.
Foundation 3: Engaging vs Empowering
Innovative educators need to do more than engage their students in learning, they also need to empower students to pursue their own learning, passion, and interests. The goal of empowering students is to bring out the best in them and create an experience that will follow them beyond the end of the class period or assignment due date. When students are empowered, they create with what they have learned rather than regurgitate information. Students ask their own questions and then look for the answers, even if the answer is something they have to make for themselves. It’s about creating a culture of innovation with students that will travel with them as they create their futures.
Foundation 4: Creating a Shared Vision
For a community of innovation to exist, all members of the community need to share the same vision for the group. This means allowing all stakeholders a voice in developing the group’s vision. Those who have a voice in developing the vision for a community are most likely to embrace it, increasing the likelihood the vision will be successful. Couros observed through his years of working in education that there are 8 things to look for in today’s classroom that inspire innovative thinking.
Allow students to use their own voice and teaching them to do so effectively.
Give students choices in learning so they can build on their strengths and pursue their own interests.
Provide students time for reflection to integrate what they have learned.
Create opportunities for innovation for students to participate in.
Provide time for students to ask questions and challenge the ideas of others to develop them as critical thinkers.
Develop student opportunities to find and solve problems.
Plan time for student self-assessment of strengths, skills, and areas for improvement.
Create an opportunity for connected learning from experts in various fields.
Creating a learning environment using these characteristics allows students to explore possibilities and make them reality.
“Learning is messy, and we need to be comfortable with risk, failure, growth, and revision.”
– The Innovator’s Mindset, pg 131
In the final section of the book, Couros outlines the importance of focusing on people’s strengths, using a learner-centered focus on where and how we innovate, and creating a community of educators to support innovation and unleash the talent of students and educators.
Educators are helping students go from their point A to their point B not the point A and B defined by the educator. Students are most likely to learn the most when they are encouraged to use their strengths. This sets students up for success and helps to build their confidence. Rather than using a student’s interest as a reward for doing something they dislike, use it as a way to help them learn from the start. Additionally, as a student builds confidence, they are more likely to take on challenges that develop their weaknesses because they have been successful in the past. This emboldens students to take risks in their learning and helps to build a positive relationship between educator and student. In the end, this process encourages students to unleash their talents and sets them up to be innovative.
Technology is a great tool that can be used to innovate in the classroom; however, it is important to not just implement technology for technology’s sake. You can give 25 kids iPads, but if you don’t have a plan for how to best use them with your students in a way that encourages them to innovate, then you just have a really expensive toy for them to play with. You must first look at it from the perspective of how it will improve the learning experience for the students (i.e. a learner-centered focus) and then develop a plan to implement. This will mean teaching the students (and educators) how to use the technology (make them literate in the technology), provide them with opportunities to use the technology to complete normal classroom tasks (help them adapt the technology for other uses), and then finally design assignments that encourages them to use the device as they hadn’t before, such as create a blog post, setup a website, or create a podcast or video (encourage them to use the device in a transformative way). Students also need time to work through this learning process and then finally to innovate. Innovation takes time, trial and error, and possibly some failures to be fruitful. Allow all of these options for your students and support them on the journey. Innovating is a vulnerable process and it is our responsibility as educators to provide students the safe space to do this work. Couros also encourages focused initiatives when it comes to innovation to prevent overwhelm on the part of educators, which can make even the most brilliant of projects ineffective.
Finally, Couros discusses the importance of being part of a creative community for support, feedback and growth. This allows for group collaboration, learning, and growth and creates meaningful learning opportunities for educators. This could include creating common hashtags amongst educators for sharing thoughts and resources on social media, developing a blog for educators at a school to participate in, or finding an online community of educators to engage with. The exchange of ideas and perspectives pushes us to be better educators, leaders, and innovators.
Throughout the book, one thing that I heard Couros indicate over and over again is that in education, “we are all learners.” (pg 149) Not just the students, but also the educators and administration as well. The 8 things that inspire innovation in students also work for inspiring innovation in educators. We are learning constantly and identifying new ways to apply that knowledge. Teachers are in essence life-long learners. Every day, they are learning right along with their students. Even if they have taught a lesson 100 times, they will learn something new about their students each time. Innovative educators are constant learners, thinkers, creators, and leaders. To be anything else means to stop innovating.
References
Couros, G. (2015). The innovator’s mindset : empower learning, unleash talent, and lead a culture of creativity . Dave Burgess Consulting.
