Queering Critical Literacy and Numeracy for Social Justice

Navigating the Course

Summer Melody Pennell

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030115845
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Currículos educativos

This volume explores the value of using queer pedagogy in an interdisciplinary middle school classroom to promote a better understanding of social justice and the social construction of knowledge among students. In the course of the study, which combined student-centered literacy and mathematical inquiries through a social justice lens, students used critical literacy skills to research social justice topics, learned to read numerical data like traditional print text, and created and solved their own math problems. In bringing together critical mathematics and critical literacy through a queer lens, the author offers new ways of thinking that challenges norms and helps students embrace new concepts of learning for the modern era.

© The Author(s) 2019

Summer Melody PennellQueering Critical Literacy and Numeracy for Social JusticeQueer Studies and Educationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11584-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Learning in Motion: Kayaking Lessons

Summer Melody Pennell¹

(1)

Truman State University, Kirksville, MO, USA

Summer Melody Pennell

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

When I was a kid, I often went canoeing or kayaking with my dad. He taught my sister and I how to hold and maneuver the kayak paddle with the proper technique. A kayak paddle has blades on both ends, so that you can easily paddle on each side of the boat. To begin your stroke, you hold the paddle with both hands, with the arms at shoulder width. The driving arm, or the arm that moves down toward the water, is held straight at head height. This arm moves forward, as you use your torso to twist your body while reaching forward. The back arm now reaches higher than your front arm, and the paddle enters the water vertically, as close to the boat as possible, while still leaning forward as far as the kayaker can manage. While many beginners’ first instinct is to use the force of their bottom arm (the one closest to the water) to move the paddle, it is the rotation of the torso that causes the motion. The lower arm does not do much work at all. The top arm keeps the paddle vertical. As the paddle moves through the water, it moves out from the boat in a diagonal, and when the bottom hand is at the hip, the kayaker flips the paddle out of the water, moving it up and continuing the diagonal motion. These paddling motions are then repeated on the other side. From the front, it looks like the paddle moves in constant diagonal arcs, almost creating a figure eight in the air (e.g., see Marketingreinforceme, 2010).

Unlike a canoe, which sits more on top of the water and allows the paddler to sit at bench-height with their feet on the floor of the boat, a kayak and the kayaker are both closer to the water. A kayaker sits on a seat that is only slightly above the bottom of the kayak, with their legs pointed forward, slightly bent at the knee with their feet braced on footrests. This allows the kayaker, more directly than a canoeist, to guide the boat using their whole body. Leaning to the left, for example, moves most kayaks in that direction. ¹ Because part of the kayakers’ body is below the surface of the water, rather than above the surface as in a canoe, kayakers can generally lean (or edge, in kayaking terms) farther to the side than canoers can without tipping completely over.

The first few times I went kayaking I felt vulnerable, as I was not used to my boat and body feeling so connected to the water. I felt nervous paddling the kayak, as every movement I made influenced the boat, and so I feared falling over. As a stubborn preteen, I also did not always listen that well to my dad and found myself working against the boat and the paddle. Instead of letting my body guide the kayak and using the twisting of my torso to paddle it forward, I would grip the paddle harder and use the force of my arms in an attempt to direct the kayak where I wanted. I did not notice that as I paddled harder with my arms, my whole body moved more too, causing the boat to shift back and forth, which did not help it steer forward as I intended. When the wind was blowing against me, I would end up spinning in circles and felt frustrated. I am still not a skilled kayaker by any means, but I am more patient now and better at listening to my dad’s lectures (or as he would say his “sage advice”). I have learned to work with the kayak and the water rather than against it (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

My dad gives a kayaking lesson

1.1 Kayaking as a Metaphor for Learning

These childhood experiences came to mind a few decades later when I was working with middle school students in a social justice class that combined critical literacy (Luke, 2012) and critical mathematics (Gutstein, 2003) under a framework of queer ² pedagogy (Britzman, 1995). As I analyzed how my students were learning, memories of kayaking lessons kept surfacing. My dad has remained an avid kayaker, and he was surprised to hear that the lessons he gave me throughout my childhood transformed into a way to conceptualize learning. Kayaking as a metaphor allows us to look at the action of learning: How students move in, around, and through the curriculum using tools from their teachers as well as ones they discover on their own. As students and learning are not static, the idea of a kayaker moving along a river is a way to imagine students working through curricular material and concepts. Curriculum (or a class) in which students feel confident can be thought of as a calm river with few or smaller rapids that any kayaker can confidently paddle. More difficult curriculum can be conceptualized as a challenging river that causes a kayaker to strategize as they paddle through rapids and around obstacles in the water. In this metaphor, then, students are the kayaker moving through the curriculum. Their learning mindset is the kayak, as to move through a class (or down a river), students need a positive learning mindset (a kayak) to stay afloat. It helps them feel motivated and engaged. One could swim in a river and abandon your kayak, but the average swimmer will not be able to travel as far (or learn as much curriculum) without tiring themselves to the point of exhaustion. A kayak supports the paddler and allows them to rest when needed. Students can also get out of their kayak, or learning mindset, when they need a longer break.

A student who is struggling with curriculum will look similar to me during my first times kayaking as a preteen. In times of frustration when a student abandons their task, they get out of their kayak temporarily, abandoning their learning mindset. A teacher can help such a student get back in a learning mindset by reminding them how to paddle correctly, thus reminding them how to use their learning tools and materials. Wearing protective gear, such as a personal flotation device (PDF) or a helmet in rough waters can further protect the kayaker from danger. So, too, can our students feel protected when their teachers provide support in the form of practice, scaffolding , and other teaching and learning strategies. Hopefully, when they have regained their confidence, the student will become immersed in the river (the course) to engage in their learning. By leaning their body and moving their kayak, they can be ready to lean into the curriculum as they navigate through curricular concepts.

The kayak itself is also particular to the type of water: Kayaks are not built to be one size fits all, just as students need to shift their mindsets as they encounter different learning situations. When in still water with little current or rapids, kayakers prefer a boat that is long and tapers to a point at each end so that it can slice smoothly through the water with less effort. In a river with heavy rapids, often called whitewater for the color of the foaming water on the rapids’ surface, they use a shorter boat that is easier to control in these conditions. You do not want your boat getting carried away with you into a dangerous spot before you have had time to plan your route. Students also need to plan their routes through a course and figure out if they can move through the curriculum relatively easily or if they will need to paddle with more concentration. When curriculum is easy for students, they can choose a flatwater kayak that will allow them to steadily continue through the concepts. For other courses, students may need to navigate larger obstacles and need a white-water kayak so they can better concentrate on the difficult learning tasks. As teachers, we must prepare our students so that they can learn in all kinds of situations (or types of water) and choose the right learning mindset (kayak) for the situation in tandem with the appropriate learning tools and strategies (kayaking gear).

The students described in this book all kayaked down the same river or a course called Math for a Cause. Their learning tools, or kayaking gear, included using critical literacy to read news articles and critical mathematics to create mathematical questions. Group work was also key to their success, and the students supported each other as they worked through texts on difficult social justice topics, which also caused them to shift their mindsets as needed. They learned to look for textual elements such as who or what had the power as described in a news article (such as the police officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri , or the system of policing itself) or what the author believed (e.g., that Brown was the embodiment of the harmful stereotype of a dangerous Black man or that he was an innocent teenager) and how these impacted the text’s meaning. The teaching team, described in more detail in Chapter 2, also offered extra support for students in the form of scaffolding or modifying lessons for individual needs.

1.2 The Body, the Boat, and the Blade: Kayaking and Queer Pedagogy

As my dad described to me, the most important things in kayaking, in descending order, are the body, the boat, and the blade (meaning the wide end of the paddle). The movement of the body is the first thing that influences the motion of the boat. The body and the boat are in a reciprocal relationship during kayaking: The body needs the boat to kayak; the kayak needs the body in order to move with purpose in the water. So, too, are the student and their learning mindset in a reciprocal relationship in a classroom or other learning situation. A student can be in class without a learning mindset, but as all teachers know, mere presence does not result in learning gains. When a student is willing, motivated, and ready to learn, this mindset (the kayak) helps propel them forward in the course. The boundaries between the body and the boat or the student and a learning mindset can feel blurred, as in ideal situations they move as one. This blurring relates the kayaking metaphor used in this book not only to learning but also to queer pedagogy , in particular, as one of queer pedagogy’s tenets—which are explained in more detail in Chapter 3—is to blur and question boundaries and limits (Britzman, 1995). Kayaking also works as a queer metaphor because it is a verb, and so a kayaker’s focus is on the action. Queer pedagogy’s roots are in queer theory which serves as a way to explore queer sexualities, but it also uses queer as a verb, meaning to question norms. To queer something is to explore its unexpected possibilities, and queer pedagogy seeks ways to create liberatory educational experiences.

These boundaries continue to ebb and flow as the body uses the blade to further maneuver the boat through the water. Working together, the body, the boat, and the blade are a trio that can move with, against, and/or through water. This interdependent trio has a collective agency , just as a student, their learning mindset, and their learning tools can work together. The tools and mindset can perhaps have their own agency , as tools have a material affect on the user and so create change. As Barad (2012) stated, humans are seen as the only beings or objects that can have agency , which is tied up in a binary of nature and culture. Humans assume that our morality, a large part of our cultures, gives us superiority over other beings (such as animals) and use this idea of cultural superiority to punish those who commit “crimes against nature,” which historically has included queer sex acts. This wrongly assumes that everything in nature falls in line with human normative ideas and practices about heterosexuality. This feeling of s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Learning in Motion: Kayaking Lessons
• 2. School, Community, and Students: The River
• 3. Math for a Cause: Preparation for the Journey
• 4. Students Moving Out of Their Comfort Zones: Primary and Secondary Stability
• 5. Moments of Active Reflection: Eddies
• 6. Going Around Learning Obstacles: Portages
• 7. Moving Forward When Faced with Learning Difficulties: Rolling a Kayak
• 8. Conclusions and Implications: The Take Out
• Back Matter