Utilizing Metaphor to Cultivate Consequential Writing Curriculum for Black Male Secondary Students

• In Event: 54.059 - Moving From Knowledge to Action Through Humanizing Literacy Curricula

Abstract

Objectives
Black male secondary students from urban contexts know that society has low expectations for them, even if they are academically high achieving Black male students. As such, one’s entry points into researching with and teaching Black male students are significant. In my writing course, which functioned in many ways like a doctoral seminar, we engaged critical theories in education through reading, dialoging, and writing. At the end of the course, the students had a project where they (1) developed metaphors about their educational experiences and explained the significance of their metaphors through narrative essays and (2) constructed artifacts to accompany their metaphors. Additionally, I interviewed my Black male students about their projects, providing a platform for them to reflect on the content and process of their work. I offer a theoretical framework for researching with and teaching secondary Black male students. This theoretical framework illuminates how metaphors are a powerful pedagogical tool for teaching writing in humanizing ways.

Theoretical framework
Metaphors, according to Lakoff & Johnson's (2011), not only structure our thoughts, but they also structure our actions; they help to organize for us (conceptually) what we believe to be possible. I became critically conscious of my daily thoughts and how I employed metaphors to “create new realities” (Lakoff & Johnson, 2011), so I included it in the curriculum I developed for the scholars in my writing course. My high school scholars read Lakoff & Johnson’s text for themselves. They also wrote critical reflections about the text and dialogued about the texts in class. By doing this, I wanted to see if and how a re-examination of metaphor with the scholars could create new ways of effectively educating Black males.

Methods
I developed a curricular innovation within the context of a summer enrichment writing course where Black male high school students read Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Lakoff & Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By, among other texts. After reading the texts, writing critical reflections about the texts, and engaging in critical dialogues about the texts, the students developed extended metaphors (e.g. “banking concept”) of their own. These extended metaphors also included “three dimensional artifacts” (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010), which were presented to the class. Each student was interviewed about their projects. The writing, artifacts, and interviews presented triangulated opportunities to understand and analyze the development of critical consciousness.

Results
The students did not realize their creativity and the demonstration of intellectual depth. Engaging in the content and process of project offered a transformative pedagogical tool for producing substantial writing among young Black men.

Scholarly significance of the study or work
This research considered that the writing needs of Black male students are not monolithic. Nevertheless, I emphasize that providing all Black male students access to scholarly readings and projects with theoretically rich content brings educators closer to creating humanizing writing curriculum.

Author

• Sakeena Everett, University of Illinois at Chicago