Moving Through Anger To Action: Why My Teaching Philosophy Centers Social Justice
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Reflecting on over a decade of teaching, I’m using this episode of Design Decisions to talk about my teaching philosophy and why it centers critical self and systems reflection, education as a path to liberation in collaboration and community.
I reflect on the significance of social justice education, which not only provided me with language to express myself and describe the experiences, and inequitable patterns I was recognizing but didn’t yet have the words for, but also with practical skills necessary to act, intervene, and confront systemic inequity wherever I can.
Key things to consider:
- Education as a tool and pathway for liberation and way to understand systemic inequities and systemic interventions.
- The importance of critical reflection on our roles within larger systems and power dynamics.
- Engaging with lived experiences creates space for deeper understanding of how oppression is perpetuated, and how we can play a role in designing better ways of being in relationship with ourselves, with each other and the world around us.
Everyone has a role to play, and we need as many people as possible our there working to create change however we can, with whatever we have. Storytelling and story sharing are necessary vehicles on the journey of discovery.
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Social Justice Origin Stories is produced, edited, and hosted by Relando Thompkins-Jones
Rough Ideas I’m bookmarking to revisit later:
It’s still incredibly hard out here for those of us who are committed to working for justice and equity. We are in a deep period of racial retrenchment and backlash against any semblance of gains for social progress, and I’m implicating anti-Blackness as a function of white supremacy as a critical driver of this continued assault.
Although it’s an important outcome, I also don’t see the sole purpose of higher education being to get a job. Getting a job is a major one for sure, but I also see it as a place to hone critical thinking skills, pattern recognition, emotional intelligence, and a variety of other skills that come with forming relationships with people who are different from you in some ways. Developing the kind of understanding that might lead students to challenge notions that uphold inequity because they’ll have had enough lived experiences with people whose very existence challenged those notions. I believe some of the attacks on higher education are designed specifically to prevent students from accessing campuses, resources, experiences, relationships, etc because of their likelihood to have those experiences and how that’ll change their participation in society.
The adjunctification of higher education (lot’s to say there)