Decision #1: I am going to NZ February 1-June 30. I feel like I need to take advantage of the opportunity I’ve been given. I also feel like I am going to miss the teacher hiring window regardless of whether I come back mid-June or mid-July. And the deciding factor? Jane Goodall. She came to our school today and I was in awe (or wehe, as they say in Maori). She told her story, which included waitressing in order to earn enough money to take a boat to Kenya, on the hope that she might get to observe animals. She spoke about hard work + taking advantage of every opportunity that arises. After that, how can I possibly not stay in NZ as long as possible?
Decision #2: My attempt at a project description. (below it are all the words, phrases, and questions I brainstormed ahead of time)
Project title: Building Historical Memory and Cultural Identity in Schools
Lisa is interested in the role of schools, and history classrooms in particular, in shaping historical memory and cultural identity. She hopes to learn how New Zealand schools are empowering students through a recognition, analysis, and critique of history. Her underlying belief is that building historical memory is an empowering project and an educational debt owed to students historically marginalized in schools.
While in New Zealand, Lisa hopes to visit different types schools, to observe how history content, pedagogy, and institutional structures are being used to address achievement gaps among Pākehā, Māori, and Pasifika students. She plans to observe and interview teachers and curriculum writers, hold focus groups with students, and meet with educational policy makers working to eliminate cultural background as a predictor of academic success.
Upon returning to the U.S., Lisa plans to write history curriculum incorporating the content and pedagogy observed in New Zealand schools. Her goal is to make classrooms student-centered and inclusive of all students’ histories, in an effort to improve educational outcomes and to craft a collective narrative that reconciles competing histories.
My brainstorming, which probably actually says more than the words above:
Decision #2: My attempt at a project description. (below it are all the words, phrases, and questions I brainstormed ahead of time)
Project title: Building Historical Memory and Cultural Identity in Schools
Lisa is interested in the role of schools, and history classrooms in particular, in shaping historical memory and cultural identity. She hopes to learn how New Zealand schools are empowering students through a recognition, analysis, and critique of history. Her underlying belief is that building historical memory is an empowering project and an educational debt owed to students historically marginalized in schools.
While in New Zealand, Lisa hopes to visit different types schools, to observe how history content, pedagogy, and institutional structures are being used to address achievement gaps among Pākehā, Māori, and Pasifika students. She plans to observe and interview teachers and curriculum writers, hold focus groups with students, and meet with educational policy makers working to eliminate cultural background as a predictor of academic success.
Upon returning to the U.S., Lisa plans to write history curriculum incorporating the content and pedagogy observed in New Zealand schools. Her goal is to make classrooms student-centered and inclusive of all students’ histories, in an effort to improve educational outcomes and to craft a collective narrative that reconciles competing histories.
My brainstorming, which probably actually says more than the words above:
- Loss of “Historical memory” is precondition for oppression-Freire and Giroux [H. Giroux and P. Freire, ‘Series introduction’, in D. Livingstone and contributors, Critical Pedagogy and Cultural Power (Hampshire, 1987), xi-xvi.]
- How are schools structured to break down barriers? Or do they build them?
- How are history classes inclusive of the histories of students present in the room?
- Content and pedagogy that is inclusive of students who are present in history classrooms?
- Schools and history classrooms in particular shape the collective memory of a society, so how do we build schools and history classrooms that take this role seriously and intentionally help reconcile society, as opposed to keeping it divided? Or misguided in its approach?
- How do we make history classrooms inclusive of all students?
- Title: Addressing Achievement Gaps Through Culture-First Content and Pedagogy
- Title: Schools (and history classrooms) as Sites of Reconciliation between Māori and Pākehā communities
- How teachers use history class as a way to talk about cultural identity and collective memory in an empowering way
- Schools shape collective memory
- Collective memory vs. historical memory
- Anticanonical in focus
- Student-centered classroom=inclusion of student knowledge and experience (Shor)
- Empowering education (Shor)
- Preserve and validate identity
- Create space and voice for…
- Promotion of historical memory in history classrooms
- to promote historical memory in efforts to empower youth
- Contructions of national narratives
- Writing curriculum that honors contributions from…
- Impacts students and the larger school community in which they are located
- Multiethnic vs bicultural: How do Pasifika students fit in a system so focused on creating a bi-cultural curriculum/society?
- Collective memory, collective consciousness, and cultural identity
- Historical and ideological construction of ethnic identity
- Political consciousness
- Recognize, navigate, and critique
- Maori renaissance
- kaupapa Māori
- multicultural in content and pedagogy
- Cultural identity
- Anti-racist education
- Bi-cultural is term for maori pakeha relations and equality