Transformative Education...
We, educators, enter education in most instances with the expectation to be able to “change the World” through the “education” we provide the next generation. We dream that we could be the teacher/s that influenced us to be the educators. Through our education programs we are given the theory, tools, and resources to be able to engage the politics of education but it does not prepare us for it. We cannot be prepared for the politics of education until we experience it. We all want to be RIDAS, as Jeff Duncan-Andrade once wrote, yet we are dealt with the question of how are we going to reach that personal expectation of being the legit teacher we once dreamed of being when we entered the politics of education.
Now, this enters a discourse of recognizing the politics of the school that you are in. Are you in a charter, public or private school? What is the education model and its: mission, objective, message, motto, targets? What is the administration all about? What are other teachers all about? What are you all about? We are taught to be critical of ourselves as educators and question what our ideals are but when we enter our schools we find the question turn to a question of how are we going to fit the politics of the school. There are a number of options to this but ultimately we are searching for ourselves within the politics of the school in that first year. We shift our position within the politics of the school as we begin to transform. As we experience the school and its politics, we begin to transform into teachers that are antagonized, marginalized, befriended, or accepted. These are not the only options but the idea is that we become transformed by the experienced.
We earn a better sense of ourselves as we relate to the school. The young people, they become our source of energy; we become their source of energy as well. We reciprocate our relationship with our school upon our young people whether it is intentional or not. We reciprocate our alienation, our frustration, our hopelessness, as well as our dreams and expectations. We are authentic with our young people even without us knowing it because they feel us. They sense us and we sense them but in most of our schools we choose to negate this feeling and try to push through it without reflecting upon what is going on. For those who have felt this pain before, we suddenly have a flashback to those days of endless struggle as we tried to navigate the politics of education as young people. For those who have never had this feeling, we try to rationalize what is going on as a phase but the reality is that you are slowly (or quickly) burning out, set ablaze, giving up, or trying to find a way out of this maze of emotions. Even those who have experienced this in their childhood, are caught up in the trauma of the past and question whether they are creating the conditions of the past in the present that might effect the future of their pupils.
We have been institutionalized to perceive that education is a right that is granted to us but we negate the long struggle to be able to provide a sort of egalitarian education. Education is a revolutionary act. Based on the politics of your school, of education, and your positionality this enters another discourse of the value of education and what are its means to our society. Education has long been a limited practice in most societies that only those given the privilege have been granted the opportunity. We are living in an age where we have the opportunity to empower all of our population through education yet the education we are providing has become standardized and limited of its authenticity. Transformative education is not standardized nor does it have a formula, it is an ideal that requires engagement in action.
I laugh when people talk or write about transformative education because the ways it is written about it seems so step by step. They make it seem that you can accomplish these possibilities in any academic space no matter the politics of the school or of education. They negate the process that requires critical praxis and a constant internal and external reflection of one’s positionality not only with the aforementioned but also our students. We must include them in this process as we seek to grow and cultivate this transformative education practice at our schools and within our academic spaces. We must be willing to engage our students critically in creating the capacity to transform the World we live in. The teachers who made an impact on us when we were younger were ones who navigate the politics’ and did everything in their power to empower us to create the change they wanted to see in the World. Their teachings made an impact on us and it is that same impact we seek to provide our students. We find our position within the politics’ and work to create the change we want to see in the World.
Education is a revolutionary act. It is a practice that requires the skills of an organizer, counselor, actor, dancer, writer, reader, narrator, CEO, CFO, lawyer, secretary, entrepreneur, assistant, director, producer etc. It is practice that requires plenty to do and accomplish and when we find our way through the politics’, we can finally provide the RIDA education we once dreamed of providing....
Please push back against my narrative since this is the only way we can continue to grow.
