December 8

I have read Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed in an EAF class here at ISU, and once getting past the very complicated language, I am struck again and again by the powerfulness of this work. Critical pedagogy may be the most important thing we learn about as teacher education majors. Oppression is really never-ending. Across time, borders, and oceans - oppression is found everywhere. One place we can vow to end it is in the classroom. Fundamental societal changes need to occur in order to end oppression anywhere, and the classroom can be a great starting point for that change. Freire quotes, " The awakening of critical consciousness leads the way to expression of social discontents precisely because these discontents are real components of an oppressive situation" (36). Critical consciousness is the way!

December 1

Kuma's chapter 13, Monitoring Teaching Acts, offers a very nice closing to this book. In ISU's Teacher Ed. Program, we are constantly taught to reflect, reflect, reflect, and Kuma is offering strategies for self-ovserving, self-analyzing, and self-evaluating ourselves as teachers. I love that Kuma expresses the need for a user-friendly system as opposed to very complicated models discussed in the beginning of the chapter. The M&M scheme was extremely detailed, and I wish I would have read it before conducting my observations! I found episode 13.1 very interesting, and the M&M scheme made it possible for the teacher to recognize the missed learning opportunities in that class discussion. I think it is very common for teachers (especially beginning teachers) to recognize learner-initiated opportunities that are in line with the lesson plan or agenda and ignore ones that are not as described on p. 301. What an interesting concept! I am very impressed with this strategy and its integration of teacher, observer, and learner experiences to truly offer useful information to the classroom teacher. The use of videotaping is obviously invaluable, and I will certainly be thinking about this in the future.