English class is a place of awakening. It is a place in which students discover who they are and how they relate to the world around them through reading, writing, and discussion. In order to cultivate such a learning environment, I engage in what Paulo Freire calls "problem posing" education (Freire, 2011, p. 79). Problem posing education centers around helping students to create meaning from their interactions with class material and fellow members of the class, including myself. With such beliefs at the heart of my pedagogy, my classroom strays from the traditional paradigm of the teacher as the knowledge authority and instead positions all members of the class as co-learners and co-constructors of knowledge.

 

As a teacher, it is my duty to help students learn how to create meaning and to create an atmosphere where they feel unafraid of failure and encouraged to take risks. In order to do this, I must provide students with opportunities to explore and expand their capabilities, introduce them to multiple perspectives, and focus my efforts around helping students meet their goals. It is important for the goal of education to be on helping students creating meaning because it is meaningful experiences that lead to profound and lasting learning. When students determine the meaning of a lesson or a work of literature, they they experience a feeling of ownership over their learning, and with such as they case, it is more likely to stick with them and help them continue to grow as learners and individuals.

 

In order to help students create meaning, it is beneficial to stray from the traditional concepts of the teacher as an all-knowing individual who transfers facts into the empty vessels that are students. Students are not empty vessels; each one enters into classroom with prior experiences that affects how they view the world and interact with the materials in class. With such as the case, it is important to connect the material to them and the world in which they live. Not only does it show how what they are learning could be of use to them, regardless of where they go in life, but it also validates their previous experiences and current perspectives. While there are a lot of ways that classics can be presented and framed that connect the stories to students lives, young adult literature has an easy access point and according to Michelle Fine, "provides a medium through which adolescents and their teachers can confront and grapple with the social contradictions and complexities that comprise adolescents’ lives” (as cited in Groeneke, Maples & Henderson, 2010, p. 29).

 

I believe that straying away from the focus of teaching facts, such as grammar, and specific "how tos," such as analyzing literature, gives a student more out of their education. If the goal is to have students understand what a theme is and how it develops throughout a book, they learn one thing, but if the goal is to have students come away from a book being able to state how the book changed or furthered their thinking, then they learn something from literature that helps them grow as an individual. Grammar, language, theme, etc. can be natural byproducts of students learning about themselves rather than the focus of their education.

 

In addition to connecting students' lives to the materials they interact with in class, we must also connect students to each other. I believe that the entire class can come together as a learning community and learn much more from each other than my students could ever learn from just me. This is idea is encapsulated in the Maori concept of "ako" which is, "a teaching and learning relationship, where the educator is also learning from the student and where educators’ practices are informed by the latest research and are both deliberate and reflective" (Ministry of Education, 2008, p. 20). In order to create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable sharing and learning from one another, I will pose myself as a fellow reader, writer, and learner, by creating a primarily dialogic classroom in which it becomes the norm for students to talk through ideas and to discover together rather than seeking to find an answer from me.

 

References

 

Freire, P. (2011). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

 

Groenke, S.L., Maples, J., & Henderson, J. (2010). Raising “hot topics” through young adult literature. Voices from the Middle, 17(4), 29-36.

 

Ministry of Education. (2008). Ka Hikitia – Managing for success: The Māori education  strategy 2008-2012. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning                 Media.