Matthew Hurwitz

ED 330C
5/28/14
Philosophy of Education

Teaching is an opportunity. An opportunity not to give students facts or to
make them read, but an opportunity to get them to think about people, societies, and
cultures in a new way. Its an opportunity to look at the achievements of the past as
well as the failures, and a chance to analyze ways that the present can be changed to
avoid similar failures in the future. Above all, its an opportunity for students to
critically examine themselves and the world that they live in , and come up with
proactive solutions to make it better. As a social justice educator, I see my role as
one in which I give students the tools they need to analyze and dissect, the
confidence to work independently and learn from mistakes, and the space to work
out their ideas and opinions in a safe space. Although tempting, my role is not to go
too far and make my students become activists in a way that poses an obstacles to
their education, just as my job cannot consist of merely showing my students that
there are problems around them that need to be fixed. As Kevin Kumashiro points
out in the book Queer Education: awareness does not necessarily lead to action
and transformation. A student may learn all the knowledge and skills theoretically
needed to engage in subversive political action, but may not choose to act any
differently than before
1
My goals as a social justice educator are to get students to
both become aware of concepts like multiple perspective and bias, and to give them
the encouragement and tools they need to use that information in their own positive

1
Kumashiro, Kevin. Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Anti-Oppressive
Pedagogy. Routledge, 2012. 48
way. Id like to be a teacher who changes lives and makes a difference, but the
differences I make will not, and should not, always be direct, but should consist in
supporting students in making their own differences in the world.
When thinking about how I could engage students in trying to change the
world, one of the first things I had to do, and have to continue to do, is convince my
students that they are all equally capable of excelling and coming up with amazing
ideas and answers. Many of my struggling students will raise their hand when I ask
a question aimed at getting the class to think, only to look embarrassed and not
want to answer when I call on them for fear that their answer is stupid. Many
students have been told throughout their school life that their ability to do well in
certain subjects in lacking, and many students believe that. And who wouldnt, after
getting report card after report card with Cs or Ds on it? I hold that although these
students who are struggling or academically underachieving may lack skills, they do
not lack ability. All students have the same ability to do well, the only individual
difference is the level of scaffolding and support that is required for them to achieve
the same objective. I had a student in my class who couldnt figure out why Ft.
Sumter was so important in the war, and became really frustrated with her own lack
of understanding. When I asked her why she was upset, she said that she just
wasnt good at history which explained why she was having a hard time. However,
upon giving her a map and a sentence starter, she began making the connections
between geography and politics, politics and conflict, and causes with effects. After
making all these connections I could see a light bulb go off over her head, and she
seemed surprised that she had gotten it. One of the things that I plan on doing in my
classroom is focus on creating a class environment where all students feel like they
can achieve and learn the material. Providing supports graphic organizers, sentence
starters, visuals, and assignments that give students choices in how they
demonstrate their mastery, as well as showing students that Im committed to
helping them succeed in my class are ways that Im planning on reinforcing student
self worth and belief.
A number of theories on education have influenced my vision for what a
social justice educator is, with three standing out in particular: the Socio-cultural
learning theory, Post-structuralism, and Problem-posing. The socio-cultural
learning theory is a theory that underlies almost every aspect of being a teacher,
since its general enough that it can be easily applied in both the classroom and in
my teaching pedagogy. The idea that integrating students cultural backgrounds and
experiences into teaching is a great one, and one that is incredibly useful in engaging
students in learning while keeping them interested. Doing so allows students to
compare and contrast new material with older, familiar material in way that deepen
understanding in a context that puts students more at ease. However, simply adding
socially relevant material to lesson plans is not enough. As Kumashiro points out,
the expectation that information about the Other leads to empathy is often based
on the assumption that learning about them helps students see that they are like
us, and therefore does not disrupt ways that students see themselves.
2
The socio-
cultural learning theory does a lot of good, but it doesnt force students who are not

2
Ibid. 43
in a minority group to really question their positions of privilege, or make students
uncomfortable enough that they see a reason to change the status quo.
Post-structuralism is a theory that holds that applying a single educational
theory of learning onto teaching and learning is going to limit and leave someone
out every time, while framing the problem and words like oppression and
education in strict terms. Instead of thinking that the socio-cultural learning
theory, or the social practice theory, or the constructivist theory is the answer to the
problem of creating inclusive school spaces that make students question and
analyze, post-structuralism holds that a combination of theories is needed, so that
teachers can create a workspace that includes students prior cultural knowledge,
while also tackling the systemic nature of oppression in our current society and the
problems that various other theories say is the issue to be resolved in good
education. For good education is not simply a learning experience where students
learn about, and learn to empathize with, the traditional other, with the other
being people who have traditionally been oppressed, but is an education where
students learn about themselves as well, and their own roles in the systemic
oppression of others. Above all, post-structuralism challenges teachers and
educators to look at what is not being included in the solutions that various
educational learning theories put forward. When I use the socio-cultural theory,
what am I leaving out, and what am I not addressing? I think that good social justice
educators combine some traditional learning frameworks, like the socio-cultural
learning theory, while also using post-structuralism as a tool to critically examine
what theyre teaching and what theyre not teaching. Using both will hopefully help
me create a class where all students voices can be heard, while also helping students
see that in every kind of history, something is being left out, and that this concept
applies not only to history but to their own lives.
The final theory that I rely on in my teaching pedagogy is the theory of
problem- posing put forward by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In the
book, Freire talks about how many teachers and educators inadvertently reinforce
traditional power structures by using a banking method of instruction that
discourages creative thought or questioning of either the teacher or the material
being taught. Students are instead expected to simply absorb the information, which
is to then be regurgitated at the appropriate testing time. Instead of this, Freire
proposes a problem-posing method of teaching which tries to make students more
active participants in learning. Similar to how teachers using post-structuralism
have to look at what theyre teaching or not teaching, students in problem-posing
classrooms are encouraged to research and analyze what theyre being taught or not
taught. Students are no simply receptacles to be filled with knowledge, but are
forced to question themselves and the world around them through questions and
high-level thinking. Part of this theory also involves giving students choice, which I
was able to give my own students in their Civil War unit. Students had to make a
poster advocating for or against secession, and were able to choose what state they
wanted to represent, what their slogan would be, and how they would create their
poster, while being asked to think about the question of how secession could be a
form of resistance. Asking students to consider a broader question instead of simply
making a poster, and giving them choice and creative freedom allowed students to
learn a lot both from their research, and from the information that their team
members provided from their own prior knowledge.
Over the course of the year, Ive tried to incorporate these theories into my
teaching pedagogy and my lesson plans, with all being successful in one degree or
another. The inclusion of problem-posing went well, and resulted in a great project
that students enjoyed but also learned from. In the other parts of my Civil War unit,
my philosophy has been most evident in the concept of multiple perspectives,
through which Ive been trying to get students to see that for every fact they learn,
there are multiple viewpoints. As a class, weve looked at the different names for the
Civil War, why they get their names, and what power names have. Ive also tried to
make our Union vs. Confederacy lessons have less of an us vs. them or good vs.
bad feeling to them by challenging the one idea that my students seem to have
learned over the years about the two sides, which is that the South equals slavery
and evil, and the North equals freedom and good. While I need my students to see
that the ideals the Confederacy was founded on were racist and misguided, I dont
want the fact that the people in power in the South were white plantation owners to
be an excuse to avoid a close reading or analysis of their motivations simply because
they were evil. Instead, I want my students to see and understand that even
horrible actions and events have historical context, and that its important to know
not just the what, but also the why behind history. Confederate support of
slavery among the upper classes was evil, but looking beyond the surface into why
they supported slavery provides insight into not just the causes and outcome of the
Civil War, but also into the failure of Reconstruction and issues surrounding slavery
that still linger today. Incorporating problem-posing, post-structuralism, and the
social cultural learning theory allows me to effectively engage students in learning
and maximize student comfort and student thinking in a classroom environment
that is comfortable for all.
With the other unit I taught, on Totalitarianism, I attempted to bring in
students prior knowledge by giving students assignments that asked them to
compare and contrast their own lives with the lives of people in history. While I
think Ive been pretty successful in getting students to see problems, question their
own preconceptions, and come up with some solutions, I dont think Ive been as
successful at critically reflecting and realizing what perspectives Ive left out in some
of my lessons. As I move forward and become more experienced, Ill be able to use
post-structuralism more and rely a little less on one or two particular learning
theories that are hard to break out of as a student teacher, even as they provide a
comforting framework through to teach. As a first year teacher, what I want most of
order ,structure, and a clear way of tackling problems like multiculturalism in the
classroom. Many theories have a clear set of principles that, if followed, should lead
to a better classroom. As I teach for longer periods of time though, Ill gradually
become able to apply theories that dont provide such clear cut answers, and that
require that more than one theory be applied at once.
The parent letter that I will send home will hopefully convey my desire to
have students study history in a way that challenges and pushes them to do things
and see things in ways that they havent before. Given that using prior cultural
knowledge is important, I included a section on the parent letter encouraging
parents to talk to me or contact me if they have any questions, through email, at
school either before the days starts or after school ends, or through parent
conferences that they can sign up for at any time. Ive also tried to account for the
fact that some students will have circumstances that will make it hard for them to
follow all the rules and policies, and so have included some notes indicating that
although the rules are clear, that parents should contact me if their student will have
trouble meeting the class standards for some reason. Hopefully parents will get the
impression that Im a teacher who has a clear and consistent vision about the kind of
learning environment that will be created and how students will learn and behave,
but also a teacher who cares a lot about student success, and parent/teacher
communication. I recognize that all students have different needs, and that part of
my job as a social justice educator is to work with them and their family to ensure
that their needs are met and that they have a fun, productive, and successful year
which ends with them being fully prepared and ready to be successful in 11
th
grade
the next year.