Final Narrative

My experiences

    After receiving a grand total of three Valentine’s Day Candy Grams during homeroom, I came home ecstatic. Fueled by highschool lovesick daydreaming, I went on autopilot while I unpacked my bookbag, put away my empty lunchbox, and prepared to half-ass my Algebra II homework.

    “I wonder who sent me a Candy Gram. Could it be a secret admission of love by Cole?” my overdramatic mind raced as I absentmindedly turned on the news channel. “Or maybe just a friendly gesture from Kiana? Or it could’ve been —”

    “At least 17 people killed in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida,” the news anchor cut off my meaningless thoughts as he divulged the details of the latest school shooting — the latest colloquial tragedy in this country. As I listened, breathless and shaking, the dreadful thought festered in my mind that my friends and I could experience the same thing tomorrow. Gunned down in the hallways. Gunned down under a system that favors the pockets of Wayne LaPierre and the NRA over the lives of children. 

    I realized then, eyes still locked on the suburban warzone on my TV screen, that neither the U.S. government nor the nonprofit industrial complex cared about my safety as a student. Of course, I didn’t have that kind of language, but through the use of technology and social media, I began to raise conscientiousness. Paulo Freire, a touchstone thinker of my identity as a teacher, explains that conscientization is the process through which people begin to critically understand their social reality under capitalism, bureaucracy, and imperialism. To know that the system elites will crush you — or at the very least, let you get gunned down in History class — to further their marginal gains. This was the moment I began to understand my place in capitalism as a student. As Parkland students flooded from the high school. As police sirens wailed, and as news vans descended on the shellshocked survivors. As political pundits bark stupid quips of “guns don’t kill people; people kill people!”. That’s when I knew I had to act. 

    Following the leadership of the Parkland survivors, my friends and I organized a protest at our school. We began texting, whipping up Canva designs at the speed of light, connecting with other organizers across the country, using technology to spread the message that students are exhausted by the U.S. government’s consistent devaluing of student life. As digital natives, we used technology to contact our representatives (something we had never done before), and we used social media to shame our Republican Senator for accepting thousands of dollars from the NRA.

    In the small conservative town of Batavia, Ohio, my friends and I used technology to build a network of protestors. We overcame the violently-white backlash from the community by using social media to connect with other like-minded activists. As the date of our protest inched nearer, we gave a heads-up to her office. 

    The principal barely let us sit down, before she spoke, “I want to be very clear with you all,” a note of condescension lined her voice, “I am strongly opposed to almost every aspect of your idea.” 

    I glanced at Madilyn sitting to my right. Her fingertips laced together in her lap. I’d known her my whole life; her posture screamed silently that anger simmered behind her cool gaze. Fury, too, bubbled up in me. Our principal — a figurehead of the institution — watched the same news broadcasts as us. How could she not be outraged? How could she not be steeped in anguish like the students who sat across from her in her cushy office? And most importantly: how could she not want to facilitate her students’ first foray in civic engagement?  

    “I understand you have a right to protest,” she continued, “but if you go through with this, then I have no option but to discipline you through in-school detention or suspension.” 

    "So clearly you don’t understand that we have a right to protest if you’re going to use the shred of institutional power you have to try to stop us." I thought to myself. 

    We did the only logical thing: we ignored her, and on March 14, 2018, thirty-seven of us joined thousands of students nationwide in walking out of schools — in demanding that the U.S. government hear our outrage at their complacency and tacit endorsement of violence in our schools.

    As stated earlier, this protest was my first formative experience with democracy, civic engagement, and civil disobedience. Because of it, I decided to pursue educational and professional paths in social justice, activism, and politics. The use of digital technology was crucial to our organizing efforts; the experience would not have been as effective if not for the connections forged through the use of social media and technology.

My beliefs and the problem

    As students of color with multiple marginalities, my students --- who are much younger than sixteen --- have already been exposed to the cruelties of an oppressive system. Some of my students don't hold a single dominant identity within Leslie Grinner's adapted S.C.W.A.A.M.P. model. Because of this, they have already had harmful interactions with the systems of capitalism and imperialism at such a young age. They deserve an outlet in which they can openly critique that system.

    Even now, my high school experience colors my beliefs and actions as a new teacher. I believe that all students are inherent and capable leaders, but they need formative experiences that instill confidence, conscience, and the desire to be advocates for themselves and their communities. I also believe that institutions are not suitable places for students to cultivate their leadership identities. A third belief of mine is that middle and elementary school students are less likely to have formative leadership opportunities than high schoolers. Why is that? Would I have formed my identity as an activist or advocate earlier in middle school if I was equipped with the right language, opportunities, and experiences? Why do we wait until high school to provide students with these kinds of opportunities? What does that tell us about how we view learning amongst middle and elementary schoolers? 

    These beliefs address the following problem: Education institutions dampen students leadership skills by implementing politically-apathetic curriculum and dissuading students from exercising their civil rights. Due to the absence of leadership opportunities within the curriculum and the lack of school funding, students must sacrifice classroom instruction if they want to develop their leadership skills. For example, a handful of civic leadership opportunities exist at my school — but every single one of them happens in an after-school program or  they conflict with instructional time. What does this say to the students who have to take care of their baby cousins after school? What’s the takeaway for students who don’t want to miss out on English class because it’s the only time they get to see their best friend? Why can’t we find a way to combine in-class instruction with leadership and advocacy skill-building? We know that students — especially students in Rhode Island — seek leadership and advocacy opportunities, so we should solve this problem by adopting a techno-constructivist view of teaching in order to connect younger students to their innate leadership capabilities.

My action

    Based on my beliefs, my final project is to develop an in-class project that allow my 6th grade ELA students to explore their leadership identities. I want to facilitate these experiences through the use of Zoom. Zoom can be a powerful tool used to connect my students to nonprofits and advocacy groups from across Providence — or even the globe! I plan on using technology to form seamless connections between my classroom, which is firmly situated in an oppressive system, and advocacy groups that seek to solve social issues by centering students in their activism.  I even have an exemplar model of how a teacher could use technology to provide their students with formative advocacy and global problem-solving experiences.

    My project has three parts:

    1) Students will attend in-class Zoom sessions with local nonprofits or environmental education groups. Students will reflect through writing on their experiences using technology to connect to global leaders. 

    I have begun to form relationships with local and national nonprofits already:

•     SafeBAE, a gender equity nonprofit that focuses on student safety, education, and engagement.
•     Save the Bay, an environmental advocacy group with the mission to protect wildlife in the Narragansett Bay.

    2) Students will then research a social issue that is important to them. This step demonstrates that younger students are attuned to the problems in their community, and they crave being able to critically and creatively address those problems. Students will be asked to reflect on what they believe about their communities, and what actions can be done to improve them. Through this research and writing, students will learn that advocacy is just one viable educational and professional path that they could pursue.

    3) Working together, we will use Zoom to connect to local nonprofits that align with the students’ beliefs and we will forge a deep and formative connection with the advocates and activists with whom my students share a community.

  Conclusion 

    In her books, Cultivating Genius and Unearthing Joy, Gholdy Muhammad argues that educators must not focus solely on their students' content knowledge; rather, they must target the holistic growth of their students. Muhammad argues that we fail students when we don't give them ample time to explore their joy, spirituality, or criticality. As stated before, my students are already intimately familiar with the social issues that affect their identities. By failing to provide them with leadership opportunitites where they get to explore the ways to address these problems, educators ignore their students' senses of self-efficacy and identity-development, and, in turn, miss out on crucial leadership development. Because of this, my final project centers the students' explorations of their innate leadership and advocacy capabilities.