Research Goal:How can we help students employ language to challenge and counter systems of oppression?
Theory of Action: If we as teachers model awareness through stories (fiction and nonfiction) and provide opportunities for students to learn from each other’s lived experiences, then students will develop critical action by witnessing, processing, and responding to microaggressions.
Equity goal: Students will understand examples of microaggressions and be able to use perspective taking, non-judgment, recognition of emotions, and communication of emotionsto respond and act when being called in.
Click on the links below to view the lesson plan and my reflections!
Developing deep understanding in order to apply knowledge and create change in communities are essential goals as we center critical consciousness in our practices. We focused our study around how we might help 8th grade students move from understanding to applying their criticality. This group of students learned about microaggressions: what they are, how to identify them, and how they impact others. Our research for our lesson focused on developing understanding of best practices to encourage critical consciousness in our students, understanding the complexities of microaggressions and their impacts, and finally classroom strategies to help students realize our goals. Critical Consciousness Critical consciousness is broken down into 3 essential ideas: social analysis, political agency, and social action (Smith, 2020). Social analysis refers to recognizing inequities in society. In the context of our study, this looks like students examining intersectional identities and the ways people with different identities experience the world differently. Political agency is an urgency and empowerment to create change. For our 8th graders, this empowerment is embedded in helping students access the language to respond. Finally, social action is the range of ways that students participate in social movements, or, for our purposes, the repeated practice of responding to microaggressions with empathy. Cultivating Critical Consciousness in the Classroom (2009) discusses insights from two psychologists whose work is in helping communities navigate racial injustice. One of the psychologists, Dr. Graves, draws on Freire to define schooling as "a means to become... change agents over their own condition and transform their own communities" (Smith, 2020). This definition connects to the empathy interviews we conducted in our study, in which we asked students what they think should be the purpose of school. One of my students responded, "[the purpose is] to learn so you can get a job when you’re older, and to learn how to work... That should be the purpose.” The student went on to claim that teachers should be more punitive toward students who don’t complete their work. This response struck me because this student holds the perception that teachers ought to "make" students do work, a bootstraps fallacy that minimizes intersectional identity and unique needs of each student.
Microaggressions and Identity Microaggressions are defined in Teaching Microaggressions, Identity, and Social Justice as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults a form of oppression that harm students from marginalized groups (Kwong 2020). In our study, students learned that microaggressions always start with an assumption about a person’s identity. Our students reflected on times they have experienced microaggressions, either inflicted upon themselves or witnessed in others, in order to bring relevance to their own lives and practice empathetic recognition. Kwong (2020) documented experiences with teaching adults to navigate issues with microaggressions, identity, and social justice in the social work field.The purpose of this course is similar to the current themes in our 8th grade humanities class, in which students are learning about microaggressions and practicing dialogue that leads to action. Another important goal is for students to develop an understanding of history first, so that they can build a foundation from which to understand and contextualize. Students study history and experiences, reflect and engage in self-awareness, discuss and learn about peers' experiences to develop their own unique critical consciousness based on their co-constructed understanding. Finally, our students practiced hypothetical responses to a microaggression through draft, revision with empathetic criteria as a guide, and an impromptu role play that broke out during the lesson. Dialogue among students of diverse backgrounds is critical in developing consciousness and an urgency to act. Only when pupils grow conscious of the inequitable historical, social, political, and economic policies, norms, and values that have shaped and determined their place in society can they truly be in an empowered position to be agents of change in their community (Lac 2017).
Classroom Strategies In “What are We Listening For?”, Krueger-Henry (2016) argues that listening is the most important and perhaps most undervalued tool to understanding and combating anti-Black racism. Their work outlines two different examples of students attempting to make change in their communities through speaking out; however, the oppressive act of non-listening hindered them from making any actual progress. In our study, students practiced the skill of listening as a tool for change. They listened in order to identify an example of a microaggression, listened to each others’ responses, and listened to each others’ analysis of what took place. This simple skill, emphasized by Kruger-Henry, is a call to action; it instills mobility and urgency in the young communities we are working with (2016). This was helpful for framing our study goal: How can we help students employ language to challenge and counter systems of oppression? We were able to revise and add a goal of helping students take the tools they're learning beyond the walls of the classroom.
Reference List
Lac, V. T. (2017). In Real Time: From Theory to Practice in a Critical Race Pedagogy Classroom. I.e.: Inquiry in Education, 9(1).
Krueger-Henry, P. (2016). What are we listening for? International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 7(3), 49-66. Ebsco. 21571074
Kwong, K. (2020, June 17). Teaching Microaggressions, Identity, and Social Justice: A Reflective, Experiential and Collaborative Pedagogical Approach. International Journal of Higher Education, 9(9), 184-196. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v9n4p184
Mosley, D.V., Hargons, C., Meiller, C., Angyal, B., Wheeler, P., Davis, C., & Stevens-Watkins, D. (2020). Critical consciousness of anti-Black racism: A practical model to prevent and resist racial trauma. Journal of counseling psychology.
Nojan, S. (2020). Why Ethnic Studies? Building Critical Consciousness Among Middle School Students. Middle School Journal, 51(2), 25–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/00940771.2019.1709259