Educational Adventurism: My Quest towards Liberating Education

As all teachers know, education has a special magic. We have felt this truth deep in our bones on too many occasions to deny its existence. I have always longed to capture this magic in my hands like a lightning bug, to feel its warm glow and discover the exact size and shape of its light. Then, perhaps, I could gain a true understanding of education's electrifying power, once and for all.

For I have seen how this magic fuels the fire in the eyes of enlightened students, but also how it lures me back to this work with its siren song when I feel I have nothing left to give. This power twinkles with a special beauty, but if you can see beyond the shimmer, you'll notice a danger lurking there. A power with a current this great must be wielded responsibly...or else. When I first made eye contact with this danger, it was just as shapeless as the magic. But in that moment, two urgent questions rose to the top of my consciousness—

What is the power within the heart of education?

And how can we guarantee it is wielded for good?

As a classroom teacher, I was particularly interested in the second question because nothing drives an educator like our shared urge for doing the most good we can, in every moment we have, with each one of our students. But the first question speaks to the curiosity I felt after my semester as a student-teacher, the curiosity that changed my life.

I was drawn to education as a major in college because I was able to translate the powerful magic surrounding it into a simple idea: this career path has world-changing potential. Like all of us, I had heard that call to make the world a better place resounding in my heart, and as an undergraduate, I was excited how education shimmered with that possibility. But then, I entered the classroom.

Teacher education suffocated me, though, at the time I was not aware it was because the program did not engage with the big questions at the heart of the work, focusing instead on the mechanics. What once seemed like magic was just a machine, and I was uninterested in being a cog. I figured I would just power through, graduate, and apply for jobs in other fields. But then, I entered the classroom.

Student-teaching was the last requirement before graduation, and as the semester went on, I found that, much to my surprise, the magic had returned! Those elementary students led me, past all my technical training, back to where I had felt its power in the first place— my heart. This work was so much more than mechanics, I knew it! The lightning bugs were dancing all around me; I could not wait to have a space to explore this new world of possibility. But then, I entered the classroom.

Of course, there were moments of pure magic during my five years teaching, but much of the work I was doing was the type of mechanical education my undergraduate program prepared me for, the work I had wanted to walk away from. And while I was angry that the institution was forcing me to be yet another cog, the fact that accountability measures were slowly grinding down my spirit was not ultimately my greatest motivator; once that anger faded, I realized it was easily eclipsed by my anger that our students' spirits are being crushed.

Between the incessant standardized tests, intensive behavior management techniques, and curriculum that does not acknowledge their humanity, the school experience can be constraining and harmful for students. This was the danger I had been unable to name— education's power can move in ways that hurt our students. But it wasn't until I took a break from teaching and started graduate classes that I had the space to pick up those big questions back up.

The power at the heart of education and wielding it for good had mattered to me while I taught, but the institutional focus on mechanics had driven these priorities to the back of my mind. But once again, the magic of education brought me back to the heart of what really matters.

A weight lifted off my heart when I began exploring the ideas of critical pedagogy. Finally I had found a group of scholars who have grasped the magic of education and are committed to using it to transform our world into one of justice. With this transformative pedagogy at my side, my search for answers shifted into a quest, a quest to bring about a critical vision of what education can be, one that liberates each and every student.

Critical scholars are working to transform education into an institution that has humanity at its center and develops within students the ability to both critique and remake the world.

When I first got my hands on a book on critical pedagogy, I kept falling asleep with it by my side, and these powerful ideas danced through my dreams all night. Somehow, these thinkers had managed to get their hands on a bit of educational magic and were thankfully sharing their understandings with me. Finally, I was beginning to develop a language to address my experience in the public school system, and the air was crackling with possibility. Scholar Joe Kincheloe speaks to how this passion is central to a critical approach--

Critical pedagogy wants to connect education to that feeling, to embolden teachers and students to act in ways that make a difference, and to push humans to new levels of social and cognitive achievement previously deemed impossible. Critical pedagogy is an ambitious entity that seeks nothing less than a form of educational adventurism that takes us where nobody’s gone before.

Damn, that is just the Gandalfian kick in the pants I need to get my little hobbit tush on the road. The energy these sentences give me should be the same energy I feel walking into my classroom each day. But we've got some work to do before we get there.

Thanks to critical pedagogy, my relationship to those two questions at the front of my consciousness began to change. These scholars did not offer me exact answers, but instead a security that these questions matter and should be constantly fueling our actions every day. They recognize and prioritize the transformative power of education for both good and ill, and are committed to wielding it only for justice and equality.

So where does this conviction take us? We must remember that since we're on a quest to go where nobody's gone before, the road ahead is not certain. But this does not mean we just give up and allow education to function in its current form indefinitely. We must push ahead, knowing that we will unwittingly make some wrong steps along the way, even with the highest level of preparedness and good intentions. To avoid these missteps to the best of our ability will require the democratic inclusion of people from the entire spectrum of humanity-- a fellowship, if you will.

With the companionship of this fellowship at my side and spurred on by the wisdom and the impassioned spirit of critical pedagogues before me, I am ready to begin taking the first steps on this path towards liberating education.

You can be part of my fellowship!

Want to sneak a peek at my roadmap?

My quest involves a two-pronged approach. First, I want to fill harmful curriculum gaps and silences in elementary classrooms by creating learning resources that confront the realities of our past and present and teach students how to approach and dismantle injustice. (Check out my store if you haven't!) But just putting knowledge in front of students is not enough to spark transformative change; that's where you come in.

The second part of my mission is happening right now-- classroom teachers need to be involved in this process in order to bring about democratic transformation. I need your help in facilitating important conversations about justice in your classroom, to make sure we stay on this path towards liberation. But in the same way that our students do not immediately take knowledge and turn it into action, neither do we.

We all will require guidance in this unfamiliar realm, and I want this site to be a resource for you to turn to in times of such need. This site is meant to bridge the gap between knowledge and action because as Kincheloe notes, theory does not serve as a "direct guide to practice."

Both this site and my curriculum will not be platforms where information is just slapped down and left. All the knowledge is meant to be dynamic, constantly evolving to better liberate the students who pick it up. I cannot do this work alone-- I need to be in dialogue with you, all of you. If my language is not inclusive enough, if I have completely overlooked the perspective of a marginalized group, or if my tone does not do history justice, I need you to guide me. You have a unique view of the world that can connect to students in a way I never could, and if you share your knowledge with me, my curriculum has a greater chance of making those important connections.

My hope is that this dialogue between us can develop into a relationship, and these relationships can blossom into a community, one that is devoted to the ideals of critical thinking and transformative possibility. We can be held accountable here, share our wisdom, support one another, and learn from our mistakes to become the most liberating educators we can be. We can brainstorm how to enact such knowledge in elementary spaces and how our unique position as primary educators can be used to its fullest potential.

And we will certainly need each other because the road ahead is not an easy one. You see, it is not easy to open your eyes to the imperfections of our nation's schools. For that acknowledges that the very system we participate in hurts the students we love because of the injustice embedded within them. People will resist this truth, and they will become barriers in our way.

Scholar Joe Kincheloe shares some wisdom for how to prepare for the trials and tribulations ahead:

We will have to stay sane as we are attacked, and we will have to know more about history, philosophy, social theory, cognition, and pedagogy... Hell yes, critical pedagogy involves a lifetime of rigorous and too often unappreciated work. Nevertheless, I believe with every fiber of my being, it is worth the effort. What else are you going to do with your life? Be a cog in the engine of the mechanisms of dominant power that harm people in all of our communities and around the world. I hope not.

If your heart is a beating a little louder after reading those words, welcome to the club. Seriously, welcome! Explore the site for ideas and the language to shape your journey. I urge you to read more than the couple blog posts that catch your fancy-- push yourself outside your comfort zone, you may learn something that surprises you.