¹⁾ [Deepening the Discussion]: How might we begin to address the ways in which the systems that we teach our curriculum in are intrinsically homophonic, transphobic, biphobic and oppressive towards queer and trans people?
²⁾ [Queering Curriculum Studies]: What does integrating queerness into curriculum studies mean to you? What will it look like, sound like, feel like in your classroom?
³⁾ [Queering Classrooms, Curricula, and Care: Stories From Those Who Dare]: Which rule/discourse should the teacher follow: providing the duty of care for all students, or maintaining a classroom free from any notion of sexuality?

¹⁾ I think one way for us to address the homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, and queer and trans oppression imbedded into curriculum is to actively think through these aspects of individual lessons as we are creating them. In my EMTH 300 class we have to create a lesson plan. The prof for that class has added a section to the standard template for us to put in “culturally responsive and appropriate adaptations”. The goal of this addition is to force us to think through ways that we could include multiple ways of knowing into our lessons. I think if we were to do something like this, but on the subject of queering education, then it would at least force you to address the issue, and be more aware of it. This action is very individual though, and really wouldn’t create a change at a school wide level, let alone at the level that it needs to be changed. If change is to made at a province wide, or country wide level than I think we need to start calling out curriculum developers for making claims that they don’t back up. For example, In the Deepening the Discussion document it is stated that “the government of Saskatchewan is committed to the creation and implementation of inclusive curricula that provide all children and youth with equal opportunities to develop the knowledge, Abigail ties and confidence to pursue their life goals” (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2015, p. 22). If this truly is something that the curriculum supports, then why is it only being addressed in this add-on paper, and why is it not included with the other curriculum documents?
²⁾ Like I mentioned above, I think that the first step to integrating queerness into curriculum is just making yourself aware of its importance while building lessons. If you have some way to remind yourself of the importance of queering curriculum then it will come more naturally and hopefully never leave your thoughts. I also think that we as teachers need to confront out own biases and at least be aware of them. Preferably we would work through them and work to drop the ones that we cannot justify. I think that just like creating multicultural lessons we need to make sure that we don’t reduce the subject of LGBTQ+ experiences to tokenism. In my own classroom I plan on making sure that when I introduce myself at the beginning of the year I also explain what my pronouns are, and ask for my students preferred pronouns. As far as other specific things I would do though, I am honestly at a bit of a loss. I have never been in a position where I sought out the support that I am trying to provide and so I really am not sure how I would do so other than to say I would be understanding and accepting of any students, and hope that I would be able to respond appropriately to students who are within the LGBTQ+ community. This is definitely something that I will have to think about, and reflect back on in the future.
³⁾ I feel that while it may make some individuals uncomfortable, the need for care is much more important than the need to remove all sexuality from a classroom. If it is within a teachers legal obligation to make sure that all students feel safe, then stopping a lesson — or even planning an extra lesson — to confront issues of homophobia or the like is really what should be done. I also feel like there are ways to address this issue without making it overtly sexual. Teachers are able to have open conversations with students about relationships, marriage, and their life outside of the classroom without it becoming sexual. Why should it have to become sexual the moment you address the need to accept someone’s queer relationship? Why does it need to become sexual for you to address a student’s homophobia? I feel like the thought of needing to protect students from sexual conversations stems more from the fact that a lot of people want to stifle open conversations about LGBTQ+ individuals altogether.

References:

Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. (2015) Deepening the Discussion: Gender and Sexual Diversity. Retrieved from: https://pubsaskdev.blob.core.windows.net/pubsask-prod/84995/84995-Deepening_the_Discussion_Saskatchewan_Ministry_of_Education_Oct_2015_FINAL.pdf

Prompt:
¹⁾ What does it mean to be a “good” student according to common sense?
²⁾ Which students are privileged by this definition of the good student?
³⁾ How is the “good” student shaped by historical factors?

¹⁾ Although Painter definitely relays this message with unsavoury undertones, both Painter and Kumashiro imply that a “good” student is one that is able to keep up with the class and is willing to participate fully in lessons. Painter assesses this through the lens of historical cultural biases, equating all students from a given region to Western perceptions of those cultures. Our assigned reading of his text didn’t reach his assessment of Western schools, but I have no doubt that the best of the “good” students would be found in that section of Painter’s book. Kumashiro doesn’t use this grouped method when talking about students. He speaks to the individuality that all students have, while still acknowledging that students (and people in general) are a product of the environment they were raised in. One interesting point that Kumashiro makes through his anecdotes is that even though he has had challenging students, they are not “bad” students. Where Kumashiro sees a student that is struggling to learn, Painter seems to see an opportunity to “other” that student.

²⁾ The students that end up getting privileged by this definition of “good” are the ones who; don’t have an issue sitting for long periods of time, are engaged with every activity, and conform to the cultural norms of the community surrounding the school. I think a bigger point to be made is the flip side of this coin though. You can’t have a privileged group of people without also having another group that is being put at a disadvantage. This definition of the “good” student ends up putting a lot of students into that disadvantaged category. The spectrum runs from serious situations involving students with less than ideal home lives all the way to students that just happen to have a hard time maintaining concentration.

³⁾ The few pages of Painter’s text that we read go a long way in showing how “good” students were historically viewed. One of the things that I had in the back of my mind while reading his descriptions of Chinese and Indian schools was the little bit I know of the history of colonization in those areas. When the British tried to colonize China they were met with steep resistance that eventually led to the Opium Wars and partial colonization. In India on the other hand the British were able to push their way further into the country and completely colonize it. I feel like these situations played a role in the different feelings that Painter had for these two nations. Fast-forwarding to Kumashiro’s paper you can see how different students are thought of. Kumashiro doesn’t make any mention of socioeconomic standing when talking about students, let alone race. It seems that between the two papers there has been a paradigm shift from looking at students as a group, to viewing students as individuals. There are no specific historical factors that I can attribute Kumashiro’s understanding to, but I feel like it is just the change in times, and subsequent change in understanding that is at play.

References:

Painter, F.V.N. (1886). A History of Education. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/historyofeducati00painiala/mode/2up

Kumashiro, K. (2010). Against Common Sense. Routledge.

Prompt:
Curriculum development from a traditionalist perspective is widely used across schools in canada and other countries. Think about:
¹⁾ The ways in which you may have experienced the Tyler rationale in your own schooling
²⁾ What are the major limitations of the Tyler rational/what does it make impossible
³⁾ What are some potential benefits/what is made possible
Be sure to refer to the assigned article in you post; you may also include information from the lecture if you wish.

¹⁾ I feel like almost every science class I experienced, as well as every math class I have ever taken (including university level classes) make sure of the Tyler Rational fairly explicitly. The truly unfortunate thing is that for the most part my high school teachers really were trying their best to stay away from this. I my high school had a really good group of science teachers, unfortunately none of them were accredited, which meant that I spent the end of every semester writing departmentals. The fact that we had these provincial exams looming over our heads definitely put added stress on our teachers and affected the way that they were able to teach. It would be really interesting to see if any of my past teachers have since been accredited and see if that has affected the way they they teach.

²⁾ They Tyler Rational really limits a teachers ability to manage their classroom. They are left with a method of organizing lessons, but one that does not allow for deep conversations that could foster better understanding of a subject by students. As pointed out by Smith (2000) the Tyler Rational “lead[s] to a focus… on the parts rather than the whole [and] on the trivial rather than the significant” (p. 5). This pressure put on trivial and parted-out knowledge makes it tough for teachers to challenge students to think critically about the subject they are learning. This lack of critical thinking is something that students will end up taking with them after they leave the classroom. This could likely lead to the unfortunate understanding of knowledge as a static one-and-done type of thing, when really the ability to continually analyze and interpret new data while engaging with your previous understanding is the true benchmark of knowledge.
The Tyler Rational also removes a teacher’s ability to differentiate lessons and account for cultural differences they experience within their classroom. This lack of differentiation and the built-in belief that all students are the same and can learn from the same prescribed lessons is faulty at its core. Arguably the best part of working with students is being able to make the lesson something they can completely engage with and being able to see them learning at their full potential. The issues with a lack of differentiation also rear their head when you look into the issue of cultural differences. Being able to alter lessons to make them more locally informed not only creates a lesson that makes more sense to your students but is also a lot more engaging.

³⁾ Engaging with this part of the prompt has actually been very challenging for me. The truth is, the benefits that I have been able to identify are really just problems in disguise. The truth is the Tyler Rational is easy. It’s easy to follow, and makes it very easy to create a lesson. This makes it both appealing to new teachers who are not 100% confident in their lesson making abilities, as well as seasoned teachers who have gotten used to it. Unfortunately easy doesn’t necessarily mean good. I feel that if we truly care about the education we are doling out then stopping at the easiest method isn’t in anyone’s best interest. It could also be argued that the Tyler Rational’s ability to “make the student experience teacher proof” (Smith 2000, p. 4) is a good thing. It could be argued that using the Tyler Rational protects students from misleading lessons given by inexperienced or uneducated teachers. Once again though, I would argue that this benefit isn’t all that straight forward. I feel that this point, wile being important, isn’t actually engaging with the core of the issue. What if, instead of teacher proofing our lessons we instead made sure that teachers were educated well enough to teach any lesson at a deep level.

References:
Smith, M. (2000). Curriculum Theory and Pratice . Retrieved from https://infed.org/mobi/curriculum-theory-and-practice/

Prompt:
¹⁾How does Kumashiro define ‘common sense?’ ²⁾Why is it so important to pay attention to the ‘common sense’? ³⁾What common sense understandings of curriculum and pedagogy do you bring with you into this course?

¹⁾ Although Kumashiro dose not define common sense outright, a definite definition is eluded to throughout this piece. Common sense is understood to be a collection of beliefs and ideals surrounding a subject that have been held long enough to become viewed as traditional and unquestionable. Kumashiro also goes on to explain that the common sense held by and individual or society is tied to the expectaitons, assumptions, and beliefs of that individual or society.
Immediately after expressing their beliefs about what common sense is, and how different it can look when going from one area of the world to another, Kumashiro moves on to explain how damaging common sense can be. Nothing brings this point to light better than when Kumoshiro (2009) states “oppression is masked by or couched in concepts that make us think that this is the way things are supposed to be.” (p. XXVIII)

²⁾ One of the major themes, and a compelling reason to pay attention to common sense, that gleaned from this article was that ultimately common sense is a gateway to complacency. If we go our entire carreers striving to stay within the bounds of common sense then we are doomed to remain ignorant to changes happening around us. This doesnt neccesarily have to be negative though. If you use this as an opportunity to reflect, common sense ideals give you a way of guaging whether you are being complacent, or challenging that status quo.
Common sense also offers up questions that we have to ask ourselves. When we encounter something that is common sense, being aware of that allows us the opportuity to ask ourselves “why?”, and “to what advatage?”. As educators we have to not only be able to answer these questions but justify our answers to ourselves and others.
Lastly I feel that common sense can be extremely useful. If we look at it as a starting point, and something to try improving, common sense can be the starting point to build from. As stated by Kumashiro (2009) this “does not mean that we regect everything” (p. XXXIX) but instead I feel this offers educators a starting point that can be evaluated and built off of or changed if need be.

³⁾ My common sense understanding of curriculum and pedagogy is something that has been in a constant state of change since I started university. Before I started studying education I honestly had no idea what pedagogy meant, and the only idea I had of curriculum was the thick stack of pages that instruct teachers on areas of study. At that time, some of the beliefs I held were: teaching is simply following the prescribed instructions laid out by the Ministry of Education, all teachers have the same end goal in mind for students, as well as a general lack of knowledge when it comes to anything other that written curriculum. I have since realized that my common sense understanding was way off base.
After two full years of study, as well as two years working as a math and science tutor, I have come to understand what the meaning of pedagogy is, but also how integral the less talked about parts of curriculum are. At the moment I would say that I am carrying common sense narratives such as: students are on average less excited about subjects than the teacher (making it the teacher’s job to create that excitement), a teacher’s role is to prepare their students for the next step in life (regardless of what that next step may be), and teachers need to both maintain an unbiased atmosphere while still providing equitable opportunities to all students.

References
Kumushiro, K. (2009). Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice. Taylor and Francis.