This book presents a curriculum model for preparing white preservice teachers to be successful in urban contexts. It is based on more than 15 years of ethnographic teacher research generated within an intensive immersion course designed by the author, called the Philadelphia Urban Seminar. Specifically, the model shows how to complicate white preservice teachers' awareness of identity and foster teachers' understanding of their own identity and positionality. Readers will learn how to develop teachers' capacities to respond to diverse students' situatedness; to navigate stressful relational and institutional dynamics in which race and gender injuries are involved; to evolve as leaders who take a stand for social and emotional justice; and to cultivate respect for new literacies and logics. This resource shows how to generate this complex consciousness meaningfully and quickly by integrating pedagogical shock, an ontological framework for personhood, extraordinary literacies, and direct inquiry into a white supremacist patriarchal ideology that pervades teaching and learning in the United States. Book Features: Research and practice that empower teachers committed to transformative existential education (i.e., antiracist, antisexist, and antiphobic praxis for all people). A cutting-edge curriculum framework with clear and transferable principles, practices, lesson plans, assignments, and readings. Support structures for teacher educators focused on personal and professional expansion, including chapter summaries, strategic lists, analytic memos, insightful transcripts, poetic interludes, and more. An experiential curriculum that teacher educators can adapt to their context as either a two-week immersion or a full-semester existential education course. Exemplar transcripts featuring teacher educators, advanced graduate students, and pre-service teachers with action-oriented tools and materials to aid the reader in implementation. A companion website with video and audio recordings featuring the author leading class sessions and workshops, context images that provide necessary visuals, and documents for use in implementation.
Jeanine M. Staples-Dixon is a professor of literacy and language, African American studies, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at The Pennsylvania State University.
Contents Preface ?ix Acknowledgments ?xi Introduction ?1 The Goal: Revolutionizing Teacher Consciousness ?3 The Path: Dismantling the Patriarchy, One Teacher at a Time, Through Extraordinary Pedagogies ?5 How the Course Works ?6 Methods and Evidence ?13 How to Read This Book ?14 The Chapters ?17 Welcome In: A Call to Action ?22 1. ?It's Very Important to Do Impossible Things: Addressing Bumpy Beginnings and the Problem of Innocence With Pedagogical Shock ?23 Problems: Beginnings and Innocence ?24 Solution: Pedagogical Shock ?32 The Framework of the Four Agreements ?45 Possibilities: A Highly Ordered Teaching/Learning Context and Surprisingly Aligned Constituents ?49 2. ?The white Supremacist Patriarchy Is Spectacular: Here's a Simple Framework Teachers Can Use to Dismantle It (+ Enact Methods of Engagement to Counter Its Effects) ?51 Problem: Lack ?51 Solution: A Framework for Noticing, Naming, and Dissolving white Supremacist Patriarchal Ideology ?57 Possibilities: Antiracist Mindfulness Methods for Dismantling the Tenets of the WSP in Yourself, Your School, and Our Society ?65 3. ?Working on Weakness: Using an Ontological Framework for Personhood to Create Strength and Stamina in Existential Education ?71 Problem: Weakness ?71 Solution: An Ontological Framework for Personhood, a Sociospiritual Scaffold ?74 Possibilities ?80 4. ?Who In the World Are You Talking About?: Dissolving Labels With Experiential Embodied Practice ?90 Problem: Labels and Avoidance ?91 Solution: Notice and Name Labels ?92 Solution: Experiential Embodied Practice ?93 Possibilities: Increased Self-Awareness, Self-Direction, and the Beginnings of Experiential Embodied Practice ?97 An Introduction to Final Projects ?101 5. ?Asking Existential Questions of Self and Other: Unpacking Positionality and the Nature of Privilege by Sharing Gender Stories and Strengthening Empathetic Core ?103 Problem: Privilege ?105 Solution: Intersectional Review of Microaggressions, Macroaggressions, and Systemic Aggressions Through the Line of Sight ?108 Solution: Producing Gender Stories and Public/Private Shares ?110 Possibilities: Emerging Ability to Dynamically See Self and Other and Say Who Is Who ?113 6. ?Catching the Seeds of Contempt and Colonization: Spatial Liberation and Freedom of the Black Image in white Imaginations Through Conscious Capacious Service ?117 Problem: Contempt and Colonization ?118 Solution: Conscious Capacious Service ?121 7. ?#WeWillRest: Repairing Existential Exhaustion With Intentional, Decolonizing Rest to Recoup Power, Perspective, and Passion for Personhood ?126 Problem: Existential Exhaustion ?128 Solution: Intentional, Decolonizing Rest ?130 8. ?How Much Stuff Is in One Person and How Do I Make My Eyes See?: From Lacking to Enlightened Lenses for Looking at the Social and Academic Experiences of Self and Others ?135 Problem: Overwhelm ?136 Solution: Enlightened Lenses for Looking at the Overwhelming Social and Academic Experiences of Self and Others ?139 Possibilities: Increased Capacity for Working With Overwhelm Using the Lenses of Intersectionality (and Other Enlightened Lenses for Seeing the Identities and Experiences of Every Person) ?143 9. ?I Have No Words, Help Me Speak: Presenting Tools for Talking About the Dynamics of Visibility, Erasure, Humanization, and Dehumanization ?147 Problem: Voicelessness ?147 Solution: Introduction to a Language of Thriving (Along With a Language of Oppression) ?149 Possibilities: Final Projects That Present Powerful Voices and Critique the Dynamics of Visibility, Erasure, Humanization, and Dehumanization ?154 A Word on the Syntax of Supremacy ?158 10. ?What If Nobody's Broken?: Regarding Disability Through New Soulful and Somatic Methods of Visibilizing, Affirming, and Validating "Self" and "Other" ?159 Problem: Brokenness ?159 Solution: New Soulful and Somatic Contemplation and Movement Within and Across Spaces ?164 Possibilities: A "How to See/What to Do" Exercise Toward Methods of Visibilizing, Affirming, and Validating "Self" and "Other" ?166 11. ?What Do I Focus on First and How Do We Create Closure?: Exemplifying Ways to Support Exterior Life Equity Through Interior Life Health, Order, and Membership ?171 Problem: Focus ?171 Solution: Ways to Support Exterior Life Equity Through Interior Life Health, Order, and Membership, or How Do We Release Them?: Regarding Supreme Love ?174 Possibilities: Introduction to Personal Liberation Projects ?177 Toward Personal Liberation ?179 12. ?Who Am I Really, and Where Do We Go From Here?: Identifying Changemakers, Doing Harambe, Taking the Pledge, and Presenting the Tribute (or Provoking Soul and Soma to Breakdowns for the Actualizations of Breakthroughs) ?182 Problem: Closure ?183 Solution: Identifying Changemakers, Doing Harambe, Taking The Pledge, and Presenting the Tribute (or Provoking Soul and Soma to Breakdowns for the Actualizations of Breakthroughs) ?183 Possibilities: The Spark of Extraordinary Pedagogies ?187 Possibilities: Rapid Transformation and Revolutionized Teacher Consciousness (i.e., Extraordinary Pedagogies) ?188 Notes ?191 References ?197 Index ?203 About the Author ?211
