White Supremacy and Methods Texts

Ok, so we're at week eight of this semester.  Most of us are ready to student teach and graduate (finally, for me).  And I think, after however long I've been in school, learning about how to teach other people, (most of my learning has been done from texts other educators have created), I am a little nervous about student teaching.  So, I think, reflecting on Sarah's question: What am I really taking from the texts up to this point?

I responded to Alex's post earlier and confessed my platonic love for Smago, Cooper, and Romano.  My love for these men really stems from the possibilities they sort of lay out for anyone.  I think back to this week's class when Nancy said something along the lines of having some sort of text that would outline a lesson, and Sarah responded with, "The problem with that is that it becomes a prescription."  This is why I like the ideas from these three different texts. You can make them your own, mold them to fit your class and your kids.  It's not prescribed at all, and I love that.  So, that's what I choose to take away from the readings at this point.  More specifically, I choose to take these men's ideas, reflect on how they can work for me, and think of ways to make them work in my classroom, for my different types of kids.

Aside from them, I want to elaborate on Alex's comment about forcing oneself to read methods texts.  I confess I absolutely hate reading Beach (most days) and the Ed330 text (always). Sorry.  My "hate" or discomfort, really, stems from this little sixteen-year old girl who sometimes lives in my head.  She asks, rather passionately, "what world are they teaching in?!"  I think about my experiences in CPS.  I am a product of Chicago Public Schools, and I lived half my live in Humboldt Park, and the other half in Brighton Park, both neighborhoods infested with drug and gang violence.  I also grew up very poor and with heavy drugs and alcohol around my home.  This isn't  a pity fest though, let me go on.  My little story is just one of many.  There's a ton of kids whose daily lives are just like how my live was.  So, my issue with these texts is how do we teach them? How do we use these ideas in ways where they will work in urban schools, in "ghetto-living"? (And I don't mean ghetto in a derogatory manner, for I am proud to have come from ghetto living, or "hood" life).  It just seems, to me, that a lot of these ideas will work in suburban schools, where resources are actually found in the school, where teachers don't worry about attendance as much as CPS teachers, where parents are involved.  I ask myself, as I read these texts, "how am I going to do it?"  The texts I force myself to read somehow fall short for me.  Here is where I think, "why don't urban teachers write more methods books?"  Am I being a pest?  I'm sorry, but I worry about this because I want to be part of CPS, and aside from just going to observations for my classes, I'd like to read about urban experiences.  

Further, I think about so many problems.  Here is where you might not want to read on, unless you absolutely love Junot Diaz.  Last weekend, Diaz was a speaker for the Chicago Humanities Festival.  I HAD to see him (even though my legs were cramped from running the Chicago Marathon.  I would have crawled all the way to Evanston, but instead, my husband drove me).  His set was awesome, but what moved me the most was his response to the audience questions.  His responses played in my head as I read Smago.  On page 132, Smagorinsky provides an anecdote in reference to how "understanding cultural differences can be both illuminating and dangerous."  He explains how the belief that African Americans come from an oral culture can result in limiting stereotypes.  "Often, white teachers believe  that because African American students come from an oral culture, they should not be expected to read and write with the same fluency as white students . . .  (this) results in  a very limiting set of expectations that underestimates the potential of African American students," (132).  

I don't think that this is necessarily an issue about race, but rather something else.  This, Junot Diaz refers to as, "white supremacy" and "anti-intellectualism."  Sure, understanding culture is important, but what's most important is understanding our kids' everyday living, which is something we don't often do.  Aaron often talks about how to integrate pop culture (Chief Keefe, Lil Wayne, and the likes) into his classroom.  I think, yeah.  I mean, look at the shit these guys rap about?  Diaz talks about the idea of "white supremacy, anti-intellectualism, and simplified masculinity."  You don't have to read up on the history of Latin American immigrants in the U.S. or African American vernaculars, or whatever.  You need to look, listen, and try to understand the lives of your kids.  Junot later gives advice to a young aspiring author and I really like what he tells her: "What needs to be pursued in our culture, which does everything to discourage us, is a passion and engagement with the world."  

Further, an argument against the idea of "white teachers" mistakenly doing whatever: "Ya'll don't need white people for this to be a profoundly racist society.  If you took all the white people and sent them to middle Earth for a year, they would come back and this shit would be exactly the same, except that the lightest members of us would be like, 'Ah!' . . .   We're not even talking about white folks. White supremacy is a system . . . Systems have to be confronted."

So, I ask myself, "how do I confront these systems?"