Freire and Escamilla

Earlier this fall, my colleagues and I attended the Texas Association of Bilingual Educator’s Conference.  TABE is a place that I love to go to.  I hang out with well known and  influential professors and teachers; I hang out with teachers who are influential and not well known. I learn so much from everyone.  I add to my list of books I need to read and add to my bag of tricks for the classroom. I eat.  It is great to go with people from my school so that we can build those congenial ties that are crucial to collegiate ties.

I also present.  This year, thankfully, I presented with one of my best friends and a great teacher.

Presenting at a conference like this is nerve-wracking and I have to ignore that feeling in order to be successful. I present often and I don’t take the experience for granted. This time I was presenting on immigrant parents’ views of reading comprehension and of the TAKS test, which is Texas’ answer to high stakes testing. Rigor, High Stakes Testing and Comprehension make up my very own Axis of Evil. 

For my students and myself, it isn’t so much that the test is unfair or unflattering, although in  many instances it is; it is that it is completely unknown.  Their parents haven’t lived it, their older siblings haven’t lived it and it is a terrifying, do or die test.  The presentation was about how to “bridge the gap” between the experience of everyone involved and the test.  Specifically, we looked at how everyday activities support true reading comprehension regardless of the level of the student.

I always arrive at the conference thinking that someone, at some point before I present, will say something that I can refer to in my opening. I haven’t been disappointed yet. This habit of picking up other people’s words helps to keep me focused in sessions and, I think, honors other presenters as well.  I always give the original speaker credit. 

This time it was Kathy Escamilla referring to Paolo Freire and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  She spoke as a keynote the opening morning of the conference and by the end of her talk, it was everything I could do not to jump up and down while shouting “Say it, sista!”.  I have heard her speak before, but each time I find something new to inspire me.

She spoke at length about how decision makers who are nervous because the status quo  is changing (aka oppressors) use language that at first startles those with a different view (aka the oppressed or those who speak on their behalf).  After listening to the language for months or even years, those oppressed individuals adopt the same language and use it for themselves. This is done without any rancor or malice on anyone’s part.  I read Freire in college and have carried his writings with me ever since and the idea of education for social change is what gets me up in the morning.  His books spend chapters explaining how language is used by individuals to wield power, or to strip it from others. 

The phrase that Kathy used over and over again that has stuck with me over a month later was, “Good teaching is good teaching.”  It is such a benign phrase.  The implication is that if you are teaching well, everyone in your class should be learning and if they aren’t, it isn’t because of your teaching methods.  Unfortunately, many teachers and principals who use the phrase haven’t looked at their teaching methods critically in several years.  It worries me that as the jargon around Best Practices and Rigor weaves an even stronger net cookie cutter methods will continue to be used under those guises.

How often have I used that phrase myself, always in an attempt to persuade someone to change the way that they are approaching a “problem child”.  Looking back on it, it seems apologetic.  I wonder if it was or if it only seems that way after having heard her speak.  The conversation usually started with an appeal from the other teacher and I would dutifully create a laundry list of suggestions, only to be speared with a scathing look or the phrase, “What am I supposed to do with the other students while this one receives special treatment?”  To which I would reply, “Good teaching is good teaching and it can only benefit the other students in your room.”  As if doing it for the benefit of one child wasn’t enough.

I did incorporate that phrase into my opening and borrowed another from Susan Ohanian, “One size does not fit all.”  We have to teach the kids the way that they learn, and that sometimes means that good teaching is good teaching, even if it is a phrase borrowed from the oppressors.