CAT | books

I am so glad that we have the opportunity to read and examine Linda Christensen’s Teaching for Joy and Justice throughout our summer institute. While reading this book, I have come across many ideas that I hope to implement in my classroom next year. The value of her work comes not only from practical ideas to model writing but more importantly from the reaffirming of the fact that our students come to us with a rich heritage and if we value their voice in the classroom, we can build a true classroom community.

One of the first writing ideas that I’d like to try with my students would be the model poem For My People. I am lucky to work at a school where we have a racial and socio-economic diversity within our classrooms. I believe that I can get to know my students well at the beginning of the school year by using this as a model to encourage writing poems in the classroom. It will also let me in on the student’s perspective of how they view their racial/ethnic identity. As an Indian, I want to share my “For My People” poem with them to help them learn about my ethnic heritage. I am hoping that my students will eventually come to see our classroom as a safe place to discussion things like identity, labels, stereotypes and social justice. Having students reflect on what they value about their own identity may be the first step towards that goal. I can see a possible challenge with this assignment where my Caucasian students may struggle to find distinct traits or factors that they can write about. I will have to think of a way for them to trace their heritage further back to seek out a place where their identity is rooted.

Second idea that I would like to try is changing the way I implement essay writing in my classroom. Often, I have been frustrated with the quality of essays my students produce but I have slowly come to realize that I have not done enough to prepare them to write. I want to try the ideas of having Cornell note structure in place from the very beginning of the year so that my students can collect evidence on a text as they read it. I also like creating character silhouettes to prepare students to deeply examine characters and motives.

Lastly, I have found this text to help me formulate and process ideas on how to bring social justice issues and related discussion into my classroom. Up until now, as a class, we have only stumbled upon these issues, as I grow as an educator, I want to improve as a facilitator of classroom dialogue, instead of leading Socratic seminars, I want my students to interact and challenge one and another.

I am looking forward to hearing from others about what they plan to implement from this text and what changes they hope to see in their classrooms.

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Jul/10