Making Space for Subjectivities in a Writing Methods Course in Teacher Education

• In Event: How to Live Teacher Education: Reparative Perspectives From the Pacific

Abstract

As a language arts faculty member, in the College of Education, at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and a supervisor of teacher candidates in their field experiences, I have become increasingly disturbed by the mind-numbing, pre-packaged, scripted curricula I often see being implemented in many public schools. With ever-increasing time and attention being paid to testing, accountability and a narrowing of the curriculum, literacy instruction has been reduced to a market-driven focus on college and career readiness, beginning with our youngest students. The Common Core State Standards, adopted by the majority of states in the country, including Hawaii, further this effort by focusing almost exclusively on informational and expository texts and depersonalized, decontextualized, and disembodied reading and writing experiences. In the process, important areas of living and learning in the classroom are cast aside, including the need and desire for passion, relationship, intimacy, and engagement.
In this paper, I discuss my attempts to employ socially and affectively rich learning experiences in the undergraduate course on methods of writing instruction that I teach. This effort takes into account both student and teacher subjectivities, and strives to reduce the boundaries between self and Other. Although time is spent on preparing teacher candidates with the knowledge and skills they need to survive and succeed in today’s standards and data-driven classrooms, time is also devoted to raising questions about practices and policies, and considering other ways of knowing and being in relation to one another. To this end, as Aparna Tarc (2005) urges, we must ask ourselves, as educators, who sits before me? Who are my students? With whom do we share the world?
Through narrative writing and poetry, my students and I explore these questions in ways that seek to mediate the distance and blur the boundaries between us. Yes, these teacher candidates need to know how to read, write and teach informational and expository texts, and these matters are addressed. But I also want them to see literacy as more than a set of skills and strategies designed to meet prescriptive, one-size-fits-all standards. My hope is that through writing about and sharing our lived experiences, and things that matter to us, they will realize the value and importance of a responsive pedagogy that makes possible connections between self and other in a passionate and intimate undertaking of learning. As will be discussed through examples of student and teacher writings and reflections, such pedagogies open up safe, supportive and responsive spaces where pleasure and pain, playfulness and pathos are created, encountered, and explored. In this process, new relations emerge.

Author

• Donna J. Grace, University of Hawaii