Telling Our Stories: Navigating Social JUSTICE-ORIENTED Teaching on the Ground

Abstract

This chapter weaves together the voices of five teachers and teacher educators (two first-year classroom teachers and three teacher education faculty) collaborating to better understand socially just outcomes in the field of English language arts teacher preparation. Building from the premise that it is the seeking of multiple perspectives and the notion of voice that lie at the heart of socially just pedagogy, this collaboration aims to tell one story – a research narrative – through many voices. As White, female educator-researchers who experience privilege along a multitude of dimensions (e.g., socioeconomic status, language, race, ability, sexual orientation), the authors embrace activist-ally identities that seek to understand systemic injustices; act with an empowered and critically self-reflective sense of agency; and mobilize their resources in concert with others. This chapter narrates the authors’ learning of how activist-oriented teaching and research is (and might be) conceptualized and realized in the contexts of their work in one public high school, one K-12 charter school, and one teacher education program. Each author will share the inspirations, successes, and barriers she encountered while purposefully eliciting the perspectives, questions, and voices of multiple stakeholders, including K-12 students, cooperating school personnel, families, and other community members. Through the telling of this story as a collage of many voices, the authors hope to encourage others to act as allies for social justice on the ground – that is, in the teacher education and K-12 classrooms where we learn to teach as we consider how that learning impacts those it most directly affects.

Citation

Rodriguez, T.L., Bohn-Gettler, C.(.M., Israelson, M.(.H., O’Brien, M.(.A. and Thoma, L. (2017), "Telling Our Stories: Navigating Social JUSTICE-ORIENTED Teaching on the Ground", Innovations in English Language Arts Teacher Education (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 203-223. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720170000027010