This post is the result of several things I’ve been reading and listening to lately, starting with Dave Truss’ recent open letter to the Fraser Institute on Pair-a-dimes.

I’ve always wished that I was more articulate and quicker at responding on my feet, but I’m learning to accept that I’m just not. Things need to stew. Dave calls writing blogs in this way “slow blogging” and I rather like that term, like cooking with a slow cooker. And often, for the very reason that I always need time to mull things over and listen to a lot of perspectives, I’ve shied away from appearing to take a political stance particularly with regard to my teaching. That isn’t to say that I haven’t taken those stances, only that my stance has usually been expressed more through my affiliations and my actions, or unfortunately most often, through my silence.

The ed tech blogging world is full of cries for change; Calls to get on board and “get with” the digital age; Advice for ways to engage this era of the digital student. I’ve often described myself as having one foot in that camp. My job involves teaching teachers to use technology, to help them learn to do this very thing. At the same time, my heart and passion is with the global education world, teaching for social justice if you will. There is always tension there for me, how much does the digital world and rapid growth in technology help us and how much is it distracting us from what we need to be paying attention to? In what ways are we making sure that the use of technology in schools is moving us towards more global perspective and a better, more socially just world. So personally my challenge becomes making the Venn Diagram in my head that is Social Justice in one circle and Teaching with Technology to engage in a digital world in the other, overlap more completely.

Then I read Claire Thompson’s latest blog post. She writes about seeing her students, good students, opting for easy courses and jumping through hoops instead of mucking about in the learning. And she says:

The system is also to blame. We often focus on “these are the courses you need to graduate”, “this is the minimum number of credits you need”, instead of “we have some wonderful courses that you’re really going to enjoy, learn a lot from, and serve you well in the future”. Maybe we need more inspiring courses.

At the end she asks what her readers think. I almost started to comment. I want to say yes, of course we need more inspiring courses. We need to not be teaching to the tests, to the FSAs or to our provincial exams. But as that comment was slowly formulating in my head I was considering all of the various confounding factors. I’m not actually anti-assessment or even anti-testing. I do understand the need and desire to have measures for comparing students particularly while we have limited spaces in our post secondary school systems. I honestly believe there is some content that must be taught. Truth be told, I’m actually a strong advocate of some form of our Planning 10 curriculum, of Physical education classes throughout high school, of Civics 11 and of Socials 11. I think Social Justice and Environmental Education courses should be mandatory or better, woven through all curriculum. Children should, I believe, be taught more than just basic skills of communicating, calculating and computing.

Yet another ingredient in the slower cooker that is my brain was the lovely, inquiring letter from a self-professed “confused and concerned new teacher” on the BCTF Social Justice list serve on February 2. She has given me permission to post it again here. She starts it with Hi Everyone,

I am not sure why the BCTF has to pass resolutions on issues such as the Palestinian situation, prostitution, or any other global issues. Is there a possibility that the BCTF is casting its nets too widely, and so concerns that are local to BC are not getting enough attention? While I am concerned about global issues and big questions like prostitution and polygamy, I am not sure I want my union dues paying for them to be debated and put forward as resolutions. Has the mandate gotten too big? Was it always this way in the BCTF or is this a recent development?

A great question I think, because as teachers we get asked some form of this question often and it is certainly one that has sparked some great explanations and further discussions on the list serve. It took courage to ask.

At the same time I’m preparing for my next class with my Learning and Teaching with Technology group and so rereading Brooksfield, S.D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco. We’re gearing up to explore what critical reflection is. Brookfield clearly defines critical reflection as being very different from the constant reflection that we teachers all do, because critical reflection is that which examines with our thinking, the power structures we operate in and the underlying assumptions we operate from. But the clincher for me, in terms of why we need to do this work comes in his argument for needing to engage in critical reflection to increase democratic trust.

What we do as teachers makes a difference in the world. In our classroom, students learn democratic or manipulative behavior. They learn whether independence of thought is really valued or whether everything depends on pleasing the teacher. They learn that success depends either on beating someone to the prize using every available advantage or on working collectively. Standing above the fray and saying that our practice is apolitical is not an option for a teacher. Even if we profess to have no political stance, and to be concerned with purely furthering inquiry into a discreet body of objective ideas or practices, what we do counts. The ways we encourage or inhibit students’ questions, the kind of reward systems we create, and the degree of concern we pay to students’ concerns all create a moral tone and a political culture. (pages 25-26)

So here I am, all these ideas poured into the stew, simmering away. Up until now I’ve cooked mostly for myself, always trying to get the right taste before I could serve it up. In this way trying to pretend that my stance appears apolitical, while knowing full well that it is not. I choose to engage with technology in my teaching because I believe in weaving social justice through the curriculum. I believe in bringing the learner’s world into the classroom and working to understand from the students’ perspectives as well as sharing my own. I choose to support our union in engaging in large global issue debates because the stances we take as individuals and as teachers as a group are what our students are really learning about. As Parker Palmer says in his 1998 book, The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of the teacher’s life (Jossey- Bass: San Francisco)

We teach who we are.

It follows then that we must strive to be the best that we can be, the most political that we can be, the most just (fair, full and open-minded), optimistic, engaged and involved that we can be. That is what our students will learn from us. That is what they will take with them into their own studies. When we see that not happening, when we see students striving for the minimum we need to turn to ourselves and ask what we are striving for ourselves.

Picture from jennifermackenziej on Flickr at http://bit.ly/zvpo