Reflections: Preface

I nearly called this blog Creating Power Collaboratively, since that is the emphasis right from the start. If we change the power structure of a classroom from coercive, teacher centered, to collaborative, which draws on all the individuals in the classroom, with their various identities, then there is a power structre where all can grow, including the class as a community. Jim Cummins defines empowerment in this quote:

The term empowerment entails both sociological and psychological dimensions: to create contexts of empowerment in classroom interactions involves not only establishing the respect, trust, and affirmation required for students (and educators) to reflect critically on their own experience and identities; it also challenges explicitly the devaluation of identity that many culturally diverse students and communities still experience in the society as a whole.
(Cummins, p viii)

If a student does well in class, but then is not met with respect outside the classroom, she may find that her classroom excellence is not worth the effort. The classroom must help her build confidence in her identity, so that she can meet these challenges.

As a new teacher I need concrete suggestions for how to empower my students. There may be 35 students in my class, each with a different identity (or several different identities.) How will I be able to learn all these identities so that I can support them and empower them? I hope that the chapters of this book, and my classes, classmates and teachers at CGU will provide me with some answers and techniques.

This requires that schools respect students' language and culture, encourage community participation, promote critical literacy,and institute forms of assessment that contribute to the school as a learning community rather than pathologize culturally diverse students as scapegoats for the failure of schools and society.
(Cummins, p ix)

All of our students have their own identities. Some have more difficulty defending their identity than others. African-Americans have always born the stigma of slavery, of been a 4/5 citizen. While many have learned to develop and identity that largely ignores the stigma, as we have seen recently, even college professors discover that it is lying right under the surface under certain situations. Similarly, women in this country have had more difficult access to jobs they are qualified for, and when they get those jobs, their payscale and chances for advancement are often less than men. In some countries, women are nearly invisitble in their society. Some of our students bring their own culture's view of women with them when they come to this country. We must help the girls to find their identity, and encourage both the girls and the boys to accept each other as equally valuable individuals.