Teacher Agency for Equity

A Framework for Conscientious Engagement

Raquel Ríos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351713979
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides educators with a conceptual framework to explore and develop authenticity and agency for equity. In response to growing cynicism within the field of education, Raquel Ríos argues that in order to become authentic agents of change, teachers must take a stance of mindful inquiry and examine the role of a teacher within the broader socio-political context. By utilizing the six principles of Conscientious Engagement, teachers can expand their awareness of the power of language and thought, the complex nature our professional relationships, and how we channel energy in ways that can impede or strengthen our work for equity. Full of real-world stories and input from practitioners in the field, this book helps teachers of all levels develop the skills and confidence to grapple with tough philosophical and ethical questions related to social justice and equity, such as:

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• What is poverty consciousness and what responsibility do we owe students who come from poorer communities?

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• How does racist ideology impact our thinking and practice in education?

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• How can we tap into an evolutionary consciousness and collective purpose in order to transform how we advocate for equity?

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• How can we expand our professional network for the integration of new ideas?

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• How can teachers really make a difference that matters, a difference that extends beyond the four walls of the classroom?

I

Why Conscientious Engagement?

1

Introduction: Reclaiming Your Purpose in Education

If you are deeply dissatisfied with what is going on in education, how decisions are made, how things are organized, how media and business interests have skewed our understanding of the purpose of education and muddled our sense of self, especially as teachers—then this book is for you. Deep dissatisfaction with the current reality of schooling, one that breeds fear, hate, powerlessness and despair (all of which I know intimately) can have a profound impact on our physical, emotional, social and spiritual well-being as teachers and as human beings—all of which cripples our capacity to think freely and engage conscientiously in society.

Within every new theory in education there is a prediction. If you have the courage to challenge yourself and the world around you for a better future, you will find in these pages a theory and practice that will help you reclaim your purpose in education and reimagine teaching as a vocation that can lead us to a more humane, egalitarian future. Within these pages, you will find enduring questions that I hope will take hold of you with a passion. They have accompanied me over a lifetime as a teacher and as a teacher educator without respite. The more I learn and know, the more I realize that we do not have the answers to these enduring questions but directing our energy to them should be our primary task; for grappling with the right questions can take us one step closer to understanding this human dilemma we find ourselves in.

The Evolution of Teaching for Equity

One of the primary purposes for writing this book is to share some simple truths about teaching and learning for equity. For some readers, I imagine, there might be difficulty accepting the simplicity of the truths presented here, because simplicity implies that we must do something about it. Often I have worried that our level of consciousness is that of a spectator and we are stuck, paralyzed. I have watched many brilliant minds in education discuss and debate the issue of equity as if the notion of equity were debatable or some exotic artifact needing a new frame. The fact of the matter is that the very nature of equity, like truth itself, only exists in action. It is not static. The words equity and truth are filled with motion, and only in movement do these two things exist. According to Freire, to speak a true word is to transform the world and within the true word, there are always two dimensions, reflection and action.¹ The debate that exists today about education for equity, or the lack thereof, is simply that of static, false words: they are devoid of action and therefore we are left only with an illusion.

Over the course of my career as a teacher and teacher educator, I have observed teachers and those who support them becoming increasingly anxious about the emptiness of equity initiatives in education and their ability as teachers to effect any real change. As a consequence of Trump’s shocking election to president, our fears and anxiety about diversity in America and our failure to approach equity initiatives in any meaningful way are now taking center stage. I don’t like to talk about silver linings in the midst of real danger, but this recent political debacle has the potential to draw the type of attention to critical issues in our society that is desperately needed. If you are reading this book, you are part of an emerging consciousness that has grown out of this uncertainty, a cognitive dissonance between what we believe as educators to be our true purpose and the reality of how we are being positioned in schools and society. This heightening of awareness and anxiety is palpable—in faculty rooms, in classrooms, in meeting centers and at national conferences. There is apprehension, yes, but there is also willingness and a desire to engage in an honest conversation—to critically examine the role of a teacher in an increasingly inequitable school system and ask ourselves if in some way we have been implicated in the very problems we wish to ameliorate.

Perhaps you are socially, emotionally and spiritually exhausted and so there is nothing left but to consider a new pathway. The evolutionary teacher must activate the mind, body and spirit in everything they do. They also need to situate themselves and their practice within the broader, socio-political context in order to have an impact that matters. This is what it means to be an authentic teacher for equity. If you are not willing to critically examine yourself and the conditions of the world we live in, you will never be a great teacher. When I say a great teacher, I mean someone who can nurture and guide others to reach their true potential, who can perform alchemy with knowledge, who can transmit the deep joy of self-love, inner peace and agency and who can offer compassion and healing for our imperfect humanity.

The evolutionary teacher must activate the mind, body and spirit in everything they do. They also need to situate themselves and their practice within the broader, socio-political context in order to have an impact that matters. This is what it means to be an authentic teacher for equity.

Teaching and learning is an act of truth and authenticity in relationships is required for it to work. It is ritualistic and ceremonial at times but it is also organic and improvised. It is a skill and also an art. It is a science and an act of faith. To achieve this state of being and doing with equity in mind, we must activate our whole selves—our mind, our body and our Spirit Consciousness. This includes a commitment to Mindful Inquiry as a way to get deep understanding of our collective consciousness, which includes examining the language we use that may limit or expand our practice for equity, the nature of our personal and professional relationships and how we channel our energy in ways that are sure to impact the lives of teachers, children and families. This is the practice I call Conscientious Engagement. It is the only sustainable future I foresee for education.

Where Education Reform Falls Short

Over the last two decades, I have found that we are wrongly obsessed with how to reform teaching and learning with a narrow focus on fixing some people in society. Often in education circles, the question arises: Who are we talking about exactly? The answer is inevitably poor children, children of color, American Indians, blacks, Native Hawaiians, Latinos, Asians, at-risk youth, English Language Learners, immigrants, urban youth, and so on. I have often wondered how even in our free and democratic American society that privileges whiteness, there are still a significant number of whites who are poor and disenfranchised. Are we referring to these children as well when we discuss how we have to change our approach to teaching and learning?

Social-emotional learning or SEL and learner variability have become faddish these days. They have trumped all conversations about equity at the high level. When we talk about Social Emotional Learning, we are talking about the personal regulation of emotions in order to improve how we engage and work with others in society. When we talk about Learner Variability, we are talking about how each child is unique with distinct learning dispositions. Both of these topics are important as we consider how to differentiate and balance our teaching and learning, but neither directly addresses equity and racism. Equity refers to the distribution of resources, competing interests and the abuse of power and racism is the belief that some human beings are inferior. Neither of these important issues is addressed sufficiently, if at all in some cases, in social-emotional learning and learner variability.

For example, I wonder when we talk about social-emotional learning and learner variability, are we thinking about how we should address the needs of the group of white children who grow up armed with hate, believe in guns and will at a very early age come to rationalize the killing of black and brown people to defend their race? When we consider social-emotional learning and learner variability, are we talking about the needs of children who are born into privilege, who attend a good school and are educated in the dominant culture, who are being groomed to emulate parents who often sit in comfortable leadership positions and design policies that perpetuate inequity and institutionalize racism? I am also wondering about the children of academics and pundits who certainly contribute to our knowledge base but who never really seem to touch the ground, engage with the common folks, or take a stand on issues that matter the most to the majority of children and families.

As a conscientious educator who has spent many years supporting public school teachers and administrators, I think a lot about the impact of poverty and the growing economic insecurity on our behavior. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 15 million children or 21% of all children live in poverty. This number is based on an income that many argue is half of what families really need to cover basic expenses. As of 2013, nearly twenty million people lived in a state of destitution, which is an increase of about eight million since 2000.² Not surprisingly, poverty rates are highest among black, Latino and American Indian children, which is why discussions about equity also require an examination of racist ideology. As a parent and teacher, I am deeply concerned about poor children and families who characterize many of our communities but I am also worried about the mindset of our teachers and school leaders who, like all of us, have absorbed the fear of economic insecurity and who may have adopted attitudes towards the poor that Tim Wise describes as increasingly vicious, hostile or contemptuous. In his recent book, Under the Affluence, Wise asserts that because economic inequities are in some ways more deeply entrenched than ever, we need to challenge the false assumption made by many that vast inequalities are natural and inevitable rather than that they exist because of decisions we have made within political and civil society, decisions that can be just as readily undone through collective action once we recognize the source of the trouble.³ Adam Haslett, who wrote a provocative article in The Nation released in October 2016, also makes reference to this phenomenon, but he takes on a slightly different angle. He writes, “we are living a time of gaping inequality and an ever-more-freelance labor market making economic insecurity—absolute or relative—a general condition for the vast majority of the population.” Haslettt goes on to explain that this economic insecurity is one of the main reasons why Trump has gotten so much attention. It is because he is surfacing a “pervasive feeling of shame that has always accompanied poverty, or not being able to provide all you want for your children, or enjoying less than you see others enjoying, or—in this second Gilded Age—simply not being rich.”⁴

Understanding Poverty Consciousness

Raising poverty consciousness is at the heart of working towards and for equity. It is about challenging this pervasive attitude that stigmatizes poor people as misfit objects unenlightened about the ways of the world, a population that is lazy and/or who devalues the promise of education and who is part of a “culture of poverty” that is dependent and accustomed to taking, rather than giving. Our American tradition enforces the notion that individuals have the power to change their own fates if only they put their minds and hard work to it. This is the pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps ideology. American media hosts like Rush Limbaugh asks listeners, as if the answer were self-evidently negative, if they “know any low income people who actually want to get a better job?” and wonders, “Do they even want to work?”⁵ As a consequence of my own humble beginnings (my grandparents benefitted from public assistance) and policies that helped me access education opportunities, plus like so many Americans, I lost property and income in the economic collapse of 2008, I have spent a lot of time wondering about the character of the poor as compared to the character of the rich. Sadly, in doing this, something tells me that even in this wondering I am doing something terribly wrong, like I too have succumbed to the invasiveness of a predatory-like public narrative. Yet, I wonder and question. I need to examine these things because if I truly believe the purpose of education is about academics and character, then I want to know what kind of character we are building in our country.

As educators, we tell ourselves that if you are born poor, like my grandmother, who had absolutely nothing (may she rest in peace), then you must require a distinct set of educational ingredients in order to grow into a healthy, mindful, intelligent, responsible human being. Strangely, we don’t spend much time thinking about how we can make healthy food, water, a home, a safe and beautiful community, appropriate clothing and health care accessible to all human beings. Instead, we deliberate over the best evidenced-based approach to teaching poor children who, by our scientific observations continuously demonstrate failure in spite of our great efforts and therefore should be perceived as ‘intellectually deficient’ and treated as a social liability.

Well-intentioned educators sit perplexed and frustrated by their inability to solve this thorny problem of poor children who just won’t achieve in school. It’s as if we refuse to consider the possibility that the answers are indeed so simple and continue to probe the wrong questions over and over again thinking that poor folks are the misfits; rather our questions are misfit questions, and really what we do is pass our time entertaining questions in service to our insatiable academic, egotistical minds. Meanwhile, the world around us seems to be crumbling.

We talk a lot about lit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Meet the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I. Why Conscientious Engagement?
• Part II. Six Principles for Teacher Agency for Equity