Introduction

INTRODUCTION

This blog was created to share ideas, experiences and practices having to do with pedagogy in the classroom.  I will be sharing teaching experiences where I have applied methods and philosophies by Paulo Freire such as Liberation Pedagogy and other alternative methods of education. Feel free to share an experience or make comments. I will occasionally copy quotes and share online articles with a reflection. 

I am not an expert on Liberation methods, and technically, the space of a public school system is not a liberated space, but I work around these things until we are able to determine a liberated space to fully practice Liberation pedagogy. I am merely introducing students to another way of teaching where they are also teachers and I learn with them.

I am an Elementary school bilingual teacher in Texas who is fed up with the current way that children are being taught and treated in schools. I have been a teacher for 5 years now, and I must say I love being a teacher It gives me purpose and direction in life. I feel that as a teacher I have a direct impact on the future of our society. 
That is why I'm still here after national devastation of public school system: education budget cuts and charter school absorption of public educational funds, with extreme data driven curriculum and prison-to-pipeline programs in place. I cannot see a bright future ahead for our children with this current educational system and neither do they.  Drop out rates are getting higher and higher in our district, and laws are only getting more stringent. Education has become a product and students have become clients. Not all children have the same opportunities. Project based learning and exploratory models such as Montessori, are being taught in private schools, or schools that cater to a specific racial or social class. Children in bilingual classrooms are no longer receiving the education that Lau vs. Nichols defended for them.

Therefore, I decided to help them build character, learn to develop their own morality and norms, teach them to develop an opinion, learning to make decisions and standing up for them, and learning to think for themselves without being told what to think; becoming problem solvers and analytic thinkers.

  All these things they teach themselves, while I am more of a mediator and a coach. I use a liberated method where I do not preach directions on how to do these things. Instead, the children come to these understandings themselves. I am still understanding how to teach in alternative ways other than direct instruction, and this blog marks the trajectory of my practice and growth towards a more loving and equal educational system.