Lead
An educator’s role goes far beyond simply teaching the content of a course. An educator serves as a leader and a role model for their students. An educator who is informed by Loyola Marymount’s conceptual framework will understand that leadership in the classroom coincides with the pursuit of social justice (LMU School of Education, 2009). Teaching this young generation has helped me to understand that leadership in education is about inspiring students to pursue their passions, and to guide them towards channeling those passions into concepts or goals that will help improve the world around them. To integrate the themes of social justice into my teaching, I have drawn on Freire’s critical social theory as well as Brown and Campione’s (1995) fostering communities of learner’s theory (Leonardo, 2004).
Teaching students within the context of social justice requires the facilitation of critical thinking and awareness. A socially just education must encourage students to be critically aware of the injustices in society, empower them to discuss the issues that affect their own communities, and develop the skills that will allow them to address these issues. This concept of learning is based on the principles of critical social theory, which is defined in education as having the “power to change the pedagogical process from one of knowledge transmission to knowledge transformation,” (Leonardo, 2004, p. 11). Utilizing critical social theory in education necessitates challenging students to develop potential solutions to social issues, rather than having them critique solutions that already exist. Informed by critical social theory, students must ask questions about common questions rather than answering questions (Lenonardo, 2004). As a leader, my role is to help guide my students towards challenging themselves to generate questions and solutions to social issues. In sixth grade science, my students have been learning about river systems and the negative human impact on polluting these systems. Students researched the different components of the Santa Monica watershed and the point sources of pollution. Students discussed the ecological implications of the continued pollution of the Santa Monica Bay and were guided towards developing solutions that could address the issue. Through collaborating with each other, students decided upon mounting a social media campaign directed at their own communities that raised awareness about the proper disposal of wastes. The process that students engaged in that led to their proposed solution was achieved through the “practice of critique and a sense for alternatives, not as separate processes but dialectically constitutive of each other” (Leonardo, 2004, p. 16). Students created their own solution that would work for their community rather than adopting and critiquing a solution that was provided to them. By leading students through this process of critical inquiry, students are more aware of the social injustices that plague society and learn the skills to make personally meaningful choices that address these issues. Empowering students to make personally meaningful choices in the school environment requires the teacher to establish an atmosphere that provides agency to the students. In addressing this challenge, I have strove towards fostering a community of learners. This concept, established by Brown and Campione (1994), engages learners by following four principles. The first principle, problematizing, encourages students to take on intellectual problems. The second principle, authority, provides students with the power to address such problems. The third principle, accountability, establishes that students’ intellectual work is made accountable to others. The final principle, resources, states that students should be provided with sufficient resources to achieve the preceding principles (Engle & Conant, 2002). These four principles serve to guide my teaching practices both in the classroom and outside of it. As the director of technology of my school, one of my roles is to manage the school’s social media outreach. This year, I invited three students to formulate a team that would work in concert with myself to use the school’s social media outreach to help address issues that they are passionate about. Each week, I meet with the three students at lunchtime and we discuss issues that they believe are relevant to the student body, their communities, and the world at large. Using the school’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, the students and I collaborate to determine how we can best raise awareness about these issues. The students then work together to formulate their posts, which the team then edits. I provide them with the final confirmation before they post their messages online. Through this method, students each have “ownership” of certain forms of expertise as one student manages each of three different accounts. No one student has all the expertise. These responsible students share the expertise they have or take the responsibility for finding out about needed knowledge (Brown & Campione, 1994). They are accountable to the school, the principal, and to our own community of learners that we have established together. Being a leader for social justice in education is more of a process of guiding students towards becoming critically aware problem solvers rather than being the source of solutions to social issues. Through critical social theory and by fostering a community of learners, I have led students towards developing the skills to ask questions and create solutions that can impact the world around them. References
Brown, A., & Campione, J. (1994). Classroom Lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice. Cambridge: MIT Press. Engle, R., & Conant, F. (2002). Guiding principles for fostering productive disciplinary engagement: Explaining an emergent argument in a community of learners classroom. Cognition and Instruction, 20 (4), 399-483 Psychology in the Schools, Vol. 41(5), 2004 © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Leonardo, Z. (2004). Critical social theory and transformative knowledge: The functions of criticism in quality education. Educational Researcher, 33 (6), 11-18. LMU School of Education. (2009). Conceptual framework. Retrieved from http://soe.lmu.edu/about/mission/conceptualframework/ |
Artifact I: School Social Media Team
I work with three students who are responsible for managing and posting news and events on the school's Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages. These students learn to be responsible and accountable to each other, myself, and to the school. Artifact II: Santa Monica Bay Social Awareness
Students analyzed the causes of the pollution of the Santa Monica Bay and concluded that the point-sources of pollution could be attributed a lack of ecological awareness among Los Angeles residents. Students put together a social media awareness campaign that they could share in their communities by designing their own Instagram posts serving to educate others on how to help protect the Los Angeles environment. Artifact III: Science Projects
In order to guide students towards innovative and transformative learning, I had to help inspire them to identify their passions in order for them to channel those passions into a purpose. Students worked in groups at the beginning of the year to develop their own science projects that were of interest to them. Students had to then utilize their findings to determine real life applications that could provide a positive benefit to others. |