Joelle

Identity, Feminism, and Restorative Justice- Oh My! Teaching English Secondary Education

Quick Summary

Jiménez dicusses the importance of intersectionality and introducting feminism into the classroom, citing feminist authors as "finally giv[ing] students the language to describe their everyday lives, making this important tenet of feminism suddenly indispensable.” She also advocates for the creation of women lead organizations within schools.

Implementation in the Classroom

Jiménez recommended having students read Patricia Hill Collins, the Combahee River Collective, Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Cherríe Moraga and do close readings on their various papers. She also encouraged her students to join/start feminist organizations at their school and in the surrounding community. In the classroom, this idea could incorporated both as an exercise in close reading but also as a themed unit. 

Implementation in the Classroom

Winn discussed the concepts of Circle Processes and the idea of Power Writing within her article discussing Restoarative English Education. The Circle process allows students to "find their 'sacred center' ", a part of themselves that recognizes their place in the world. Winn also suggested Power Writing, a modification to the Circle Process, that "invite[s] youth into a writing community where they could foster identities without fear, limitations, or judgement" (4). By allowing students to be vulnerable, and recruting all types of students, classrooms create a space of exposure.

Quick Summary

Evans, Lester, and Afara discuss some of the principles of restorative justice, research, challenges of Restorative Justice and finally strategies for successful implementation in a classroom in environment. 

Implementation in the Classroom

They suggest starting a grassroots organization of like-minded teachers to begin practicing restorative justice within the school system. This group can then spread to the entire faculty. With this support Evans, Lester, and Afara advocate from a system "wrought with an emphasis on managing students' behavior...[to] one of social engagement that promotes collaboration, mutual respect, accountability, and growth" (7).  In addition, beginning with a group of volunteers intent on reform helps to create "buy-in", both with the students and the faculty. 

Implementation in the Classroom

Ohman argues that class must be addressed in the classroom. To him "living in a classless world is, paradoxically, a manifestation of class privilege”, especially since students rarely discuss their social class (Ohman 3). To combat this, Ohman offered a few suggests: have students interview inviduals from different classes (usually lower to middle and middle to upper) to discover their similarities, imagine the best and worst type of jobs (and the people that work in them), ask their classmates their views on a college education (lower to middle class viewed it as "escape hatch" while middle to upper class students saw it as "a sense of choice for their birthright, but also...an ethos of obligation or even guilt") (Ohman 4). He argues that while "We can draw out and structure that knowledge... understanding why class won't go away if people just stop being snobs” is an obligation teachers have (Ohman 4).

Quick Summary

Krzeni goes over the concept of identity, how educators can incorporate these ideas in the classroom, and the problem of minority Role Models. He argues that the “Pedagogy of identity aims to be no more or less relevant for whites than for People of Color, or for heteronormative students than for queer students, or any other binary pairing of dominant and marginalized identities” but encompassing for all (Krzeni 14). 

Implementation in the Classroom

Krenzi suggests that educators bring their own individual experiences and interests into the classroom to connect with students beyond the text. He offers the suggestion of Hip Hop. According to him, Hip Hop (and other examples of pop culture) are already present in the classroom. Hip Hop offers a "deeply and necessarily contradictory, complex, nuanced,...because it is reflective of the contradictions  of the society in which it exists" and moves students in a way that Shakespeare does not (Kresni 12). In the case of Shakespeare, Kresni suggests the analysis of Tupac alongside or instead of (if it is more relevant to the students). On the whole, Kresni presents the interpretation that popular culture should be taught into the classroom to visualize students who feel left out, but also because it gives students the foundation to understand academic concepts.