Reflections: Fall 2024

I developed a self-reflection worksheet as a part of an “Antiracist Teaching” collaborative workshop that I co-led with classmates in Composition Pedagogy.  I initially intended to use it in a more private way. However, I think that this may be a meaningful piece to use as my inaugural blog post.

We are allowed to fail: 

“This work is not instant. There is no quick path to success. Things won’t always go well the first (or second or ninth time. We are allowed to fail, reflect, improve, and try again. This is the only way” (Minor, p. 4)  

1. As I think about the structure of the course, I really wish that I had more time to read the text, and that I had more time to become familiar with the course shell and the digital text. I wasn’t able to successfully incorporate the readings. It took a while for students to access the text, and ultimately many never purchased it. I had a hard time navigating the text too. I hope that next semester, I will be able to review the text a few weeks before courses start. I know that I would do a much better job of integrating the text into the lesson planning. 

We must continuously reflect:  

“Education [...] is the process by which students are given access to the tools and opportunities to transform their lives and communities. It is what Freire refers to as a problem-posing education, where the purpose of study is social justice through the development of personal agency that contributes to community actualization and cultural perpetuity” (Duncan-Andrade p. 67-68).   

2. What have I done (today...this week...this unit....this semester...) to give students access to tools and opportunities? This semester has been particularly stressful for me, but every Monday and Wednesday morning, I am reminded with clarity and certainty that I am exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I love to do.  This week, I gave students who were behind on assignments an opportunity to present their recomposition pieces to the class for a replacement grade. I asked students to come during our scheduled exam time, which was at 8:00, and several did. They read poems, shared videos, gave PowerPoint presentations, and displayed infographics and posters. And with confidence, they answered questions that I asked them about audience and purpose and argument. I wish I had recorded it. It was an incredible way to end the semester, and I am especially grateful that several of the students who showed up to present did so. When I emailed them about my concern for their grades, I asked them not to give up.  They didn’t, and I am grateful that in a (small) public way, they were able to see the impact of their work. 

We can improve 

3. In the archival research she conducted to explore 19th century Black literary societies in order to learn how Black readers and writers practiced literacy in urban contexts of the United States, Gholdi Muhammad relied on the following questions to drive her inquiry: • How did these groups define literacy? • What types of literacy practices existed in the groups? • What types of text did they read? • What were their literary pursuits? • What were their purposes of literary engagement? • What were their goals of learning when they came together to read, write, talk, and think? (Muhammad, p. 20) What are my driving antiracist pedagogy questions? What resources will I seek? How can I use Muhammad’s questions to better understand my course (syllabus, curriculum, assessments, lesson plans, _______)?  

As part of the final assignment, I asked students to complete a short questionnaire.  

REFLECTION PIECE: 

1. Describe something from this course that you believe will have a positive impact on your writing in the future 

2. What are the aspects of this course that you would change if you had the opportunity to design this course yourself? 

3. Describe how you have used elements from this course in writing you have done outside of the course 

4. What additional thoughts can you share about your experience in this course? 

I am still analyzing the results, but there are some common threads: an interest in journaling and/or reflective writing, a desire to write about their personal interests, and recognition of the ways that work from our class has helped them approach writing in other classes.  

I am particularly interested in following up with the students who remarked that they wish they could have picked their own topics. This is confusing to me, as they definitely had choice in the subject matter. I wonder if they are referring to the prompts. And I also wonder if they are referring to the genres. I hope to have some answers to these questions when I write my reflection for the Spring 2025.  

We shall keep trying: 

4. As I continue to reflect, what will I do differently next time? How will I measure the success, or the failure, of my efforts? 

I hope that before the start of Spring 2025, I will have more opportunity to prepare for the class. And, I will definitely use the course reflection survey again. 

Teaching and learning are inextricably intertwined:  

5. What have my students taught me about _________ (today, this unit, this semester...)? 

I had a bit of an epiphany today, as I work to complete my grading for the semester. This summer, I wanted to make sure that I was in tip top shape before I returned to school. What started out as a suspected compressed sciatic nerve turned into a series of referrals from specialist to specialist. In mid-October I was diagnosed with transverse myelitis and referred for one more MRI of my spine and my brain. At the end of October, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. At the beginning of December, I had my first appointment at the Shepherd Multiple Sclerosis Institute. The physician who evaluated me in the office, after looking at the imaging from the last several months, ordered a neuropsych evaluation.  The earliest available appointment is at the end of April.   The epiphany I had today was that this is, in some bizarre way, a metaphor for the student experience – specifically when waiting for feedback.  It is hard to keep pushing forward when there are so many unanswered questions.  I don’t ever want to make students in my class wait for information they need to take the next steps.  

Annotated Bibliography

Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M.R. Equality or Equity: Toward a Model of Community-Responsive Education. Harvard Education Press, 2022.  Duncan-Andrade's text, which is one of twenty-four texts from Harvard’s Race and Education series, challenges educators and leaders in education to reflect on the practices in their institutions and classrooms. Do students have equal access to education in our classrooms, or do our students have equitable access to education? Duncan-Andrade, through a brief examination of the history of public education in the US, demonstrates the inequalities that continue to exist in classrooms across the country, arguing that with few exceptions, inequalities are practically legislated into public education to this day. He argues that the data continue to show that “we have built a national public system under the guise of equality where the children who can least afford to fail in school are failing at catastrophic rates” (21). Duncan-Andrade calls for educators to use the data, read the numbers, and make immediate changes, asserting that, as illustrated in the title to chapter 3, “Equity is the Superior Growth Model.” 

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2014. A seminal work often cited, which argues that the oppressed must participate in critical reflection and engagement, not be passively “filled” with knowledge. Freire likens the control instructors exert over student work, requiring too much formulaic product, to death. Instructors and students should both participate in the process of discovering the effects of dehumanization on both.

Minor, Cornelius. We Got This.: Equity, Access, and the Quest to be Who Our Students Need Us to Be. Heinemann, 2019. In this engaging and urgent call to action, presented in the style of a graphic novel, Minor describes the role that teachers must assume in order to create equity in our classrooms for all students. Minor directs teachers to “do the homework” needed to disrupt the status quo of performance in our classrooms. He also provides a framework for analyzing our assignments and for reducing unintended roadblocks of exclusion by making time to compare the task to the expected outcome. Minor provides language to use to both document and speak about observations we make in our classrooms, with those who wield decision making power about our texts and curricula. He also urges educators to start by listening to our students, because our students can articulate much of what we need to know to teach them successfully. 

Muhammad, Gholdy. Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy. Scholastic, Inc., 2020 In this text, Mohammad presents a plan to restore equity in classrooms, resulting in excellent outcomes for all students. Mohammad first presents artifacts from 19th century black literary societies as a model for the framework teachers must use to engage all students in the classroom community. She then presents the four components of the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework (HRL) which include identity development, skills development, intellectual development, and criticality – demonstrating how this framework brings students into academic conversation about all courses by creating instructional approaches that aim to make students’ cultural ways of knowing and understanding the world an essential part of students’ understanding of course content.