Empowering Education

            The reading Empowering Education by Ira Shor talks about what an empowered student really is. In many classrooms that I have been in, the teacher stands up in front of the classroom and talks for the good majority of the class, not engaging the students at all, most of them not even paying attention to what the teacher is saying. I personally cannot classify this as learning, if a teacher really wants to make the class understand a subject, it is important for students to be able to make real life connections to the things that they are learning in school in order for them to really retain information. “…A curriculum that does not challenge the standard syllabus and conditions in society informs students that knowledge and the world are fixed and are find the way they are, with no role for students to play in transforming them, and no need for change.” This quote really stuck out to me, because it is completely true. If students are learning things in the classroom, and having no chance to voice their opinions, they may think that it is never necessary to voice their opinions, which in turn would allow for change to never occur in society.                                                           

           In the classes I attend where I sit and listen to the professor talk at me for an hour and fifty minutes, I dread going. “Students learn to be passive or cynical in classes that transfer facts, skills, or values without meaningful connection to their needs, interest, or community cultures.” I think that this relates to The Freedom Writers, when the students first entered Mrs. G’s classroom, they had only been talked to all their life. No personal connections were ever made in any of the things that they were learning, until Mrs. G changed this for them. All of the students were able to excel when the work they were doing actually had meaning to them, allowing them to become successful and have a chance to make something out of themselves. 

          The author talks about one of his own classroom experiences, he was teaching a freshmen English class about mass media. He had the students write down their definition of what mass media was and then he gave them his own rendition of mass media. He allowed for the students to compare thoughts and ideas in small groups and then they would discuss their thoughts as a whole class. The teacher states that “the students in that mass media class learned subject matter through student-centered problem-posing in a critical dialogue, not through my lecturing them in a banking fashion.” This completely relates to our FNED class, we always have the ability to talk in small groups to get our thoughts together and then come together as a class and bounce different ideas off of each other gaining different knowledge and ideas. We do not sit through the whole class and get told what we are supposed to think and believe, there is a chance for us to pose our own ideas and thoughts which is very important for students to be able to do.

          I chose a video of a fourth and fifth grade teacher explaining that she gives her students individual time to think through problems, then gives them a chance to discuss with their peers how to think through problems. This allows for children to get their own idea together, and then build off of other thoughts as well: https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/independent-and-group-work