Reflection

While reading and reflecting upon the articles, some common threads seem to be interwoven throughout them. For me those common threads were the importance of being a critical thinker and the importance of validating people’s unique and diverse discourses. Both of these have the potential to lead to enhanced learning opportunities.
Throughout my personal school experiences, the measure of success was based on the ability to answer questions correctly, to acquire an enormous amount of information and the ability to regurgitate the information using the same paper-pencil assessment methods. Based on these measures, I was quite successful at school and I happily coasted along my educational journey. However, what eventually became interesting and extremely worrisome to me was the realization that, after having completed an exam, be it at high school or at university, the information that I had studied for endless hours, seemed to have disappeared from my memory. I often found myself wondering what would happen if I had to re-write the exam a couple of days later. Was my education real, authentic and meaningful? Obviously it was not. I indeed stored up a wealth of information but honestly speaking, I rarely saw how the information was relevant in my life. I often remember leaving my high school classes asking, “When am I going to use that information?” There was never a real need for me to be a critical thinker or to make any connections to the information presented because the curriculum as well as the teachers never demanded that of me.
However, through my professional teacher training and reading the selected articles, I have come to understand the value and necessity of being a critical thinker. Thinking critically is a challenging skill that requires being curious and open to an endless number of possibilities. Thinking critically means bringing our own discourse to new and different learning situations. Because the world is never neutral, acknowledging our own unique perspectives and biases, as well as those of others, enables us to develop a deeper understanding of the world and how we fit into it. While engaging in the readings, I am now trying, not always successfully, to reflect on them in order to make them meaningful in my life.
From my perspective, engaging in dialogue and interacting with others, has greatly benefited me in developing and enhancing my critical literacy skills. When conversing with others, we are making ourselves vulnerable by allowing others to look into our thoughts. I am learning how and why people interpret texts and/or the world differently than me. This interactive dialogue enables me to continually expand my learning, to re-evaluate my own ideas and to appreciate other points of view. My questioning skills are also developing because, through critical thinking, I’m asking more thought-provoking and open-ended questions that lead to more in depth and meaningful discussions.
Now that I’m beginning to see myself more as a critical thinker and to value all that is associated with it, I realize that I have a responsibility to share this skill with my students. As educators we are asked to take into consideration each student’s unique discourse and empower them to expand and deepen their understanding of the world. We are challenged to create a learning environment that fosters and nurtures diverse thinking and that validates differing perspectives. This atmosphere should be one of trust where students and teachers feel confident and secure about opening themselves up and sharing their ideas. An atmosphere based on mutual trust and respect, for people and their ideas, also facilitates interaction and collaboration.
At this point one has to ask, “How am I as a teacher, able to effectively program for each individual child’s unique discourse?” Indeed it is a difficult and challenging task to engage diverse students in critical literacy. It requires a great deal of time, effort and training and it must be a joint effort, both on the part of educators and students. Both must have a vested interest in attaining the goal. The students need to take initiative for their learning and become part of the decision making process. Educators have to invest the time and effort to incorporate meaningful and relevant learning opportunities so that students can make those essential connections. Educators also need the freedom to adjust and readjust their teaching based on the students they have in front of them. By doing all this, we are facilitating authentic learning so that our students don’t leave our classrooms asking, “What’s the point of that information?”