Teacher Education with an Attitude: Preparing Teachers to Educate Working-Class Students in Their Collective Self-Interest

8. The Journey to Justice: Inquiry as a Framework for Teaching Powerful Literacy

8 The Journey to Justice: Inquiry as a Framework for Teaching Powerful Literacy Diane Zigo DIANE ZIGO, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LITERACY Education at LeMoyne College , traces the development of the English education courses that she taught through a framework of inquiry.The inquiry framework is designed to move students through three stages of growth in becoming teachers for justice: increasing awareness of justice issues that are related to teaching contexts, becoming advocates for justice in education, and developing strategies for implementing education for justice in their own classrooms and schools settings . Students are profiled who were initially resistant, confused, or frustrated and who now have moved into or chosen to remain in the profession with new hope and energy for teaching that promotes deep critical thinking in students normally denied such experiences. ❖ I have been a language arts teacher educator for the past six years, following fourteen years as a middle and secondary school English teacher. I pursued advanced graduate studies in English education because of my inadequacies in providing access to what Finn (1999) calls “powerful literacy” (p. 124) to my students who were experiencing difficulties in reading and writing as they entered high school.As I worked with increasing numbers of students identified as having learning disabilities, who came from households facing downward economic mobility, or who were English language learners trying to fit into an unfamiliar environment, my repertoire of teaching strategies was only intermittently effective. Unfortunately, struggling students tend to receive approaches to literacy education that emphasize the “performative level” of sounding out words and constructing simple written sentences, the “functional level” of meeting the narrow literacy demands of entry-level working life, or at best, the “informational level” of comprehending and producing the kinds of limited factual knowledge expected in standard school assignments and assessments (Finn, 1999; Wells, 1987). In contrast, Finn explains, “Powerful literacy involves creativity and reason—the ability to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize what is read” (p. 124). Students apprenticed into powerful literacies are consciously able to 127 128 TEACHER EDUCATION WITH AN ATTITUDE understand, create, critique, and control information in ways that give them agency within their sociopolitical worlds. Even though I did not yet have a clear professional understanding of the distinctions among levels of literacy, I knew that providing students with only functional or informational literacies was not good enough. I am a member of a Catholic women’s religious community, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. As Kathleen Casey (1993) observes in her research on women teachers working for social change, religious women tend to organize their beliefs, behaviors, and uses of language around particular, commonly understood discourses and practices . Membership involves years of socialization into the history, documents, and “charism” or “spirit” of an order. For service-oriented apostolic communities, that often includes both a strong identification with the poor and an imperative to act on behalf of the poor, either in providing direct assistance as needed or in promoting systemic change that addresses the economic, political, and social conditions that create and sustain inequities and injustices. Such a stance can manifest itself as charity—an individual or collective “doing for” that sustains power differentials—or it can lead to inner transformation and commitment to systemic action such as that undertaken by Dorothy Day (1952), founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, after she came to recognize how traditional Catholic institutional systems promoted “plenty of charity but too little justice” (p. 150). As a teacher, then, how could I move beyond giving my students the educational equivalent of charity—skills that would allow them to graduate and enter the work force—to promoting educational justice and critical literacy by providing them with the tools and experiences for understanding and using information in ways that would give them access to greater sociopolitical power (Shor, 1999)? My studies led to the professional development I sought; instead of returning to my ninth-grade classroom, however, I entered the field of teacher education.While undertaking research in urban schools, I became even more convinced that one committed teacher in one classroom can make a significant contribution to a child’s opportunities for meaningful learning. As an instructor in courses for preservice and early career teachers, I also recognized the challenges these students were facing, and perceived an urgent need to support them during their first critical classroom experiences. They wanted to be effective teachers who could make a difference, especially within schools challenged by socioeconomic inequities...