Naming With Maxine Greene: A Teacher's Becoming

• In Event: 47.015 - Biographical and Documentary Research SIG Business Meeting: Imagining an Activist Future for a Blue Guitar

Abstract

This paper describes a K-12 teacher’s encounter with the Dialectic of Freedom, her exploration and explication of Maxine Greene’s notion of Naming, and her subsequent Naming praxis as she considered her own teaching experiences in an existential move to choose herself within schooling contexts toward her own freedom and Becoming as a teacher. By attending to her own Becoming through Naming, she finds strengthened 1) the will to imagine herself, her students, and teaching-learning alternately and 2) the will to act upon her ethical inklings which before were silenced or paralyzed by normalized assumptions about being an American Teacher. This paper suggests that Naming as a praxis offers K-12 teachers a mindset of wide-awakeness, which assumes disquietude will arise and yet prompts actions of critical reflection, dialogue and articulation to open spaces of freedom for the Becoming of each of the individuals involved in pedagogical relationships, students and teachers alike.

Author

• Christine Neider, Birchwood School