Designing Their Own Curriculum: How Youth Co-Constructed a Dance Team That Opposed Traditional Student-School Relationships

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: The Coloniality of Curriculum: Critiques, Critical Perspectives, and Creative Strategies

Abstract

In this paper, that draws from a two-year ethnography at a nascent urban public high school, I trace students’ experiences as they co-constructed a student dance team, in response to not having any artistic extra-curricular activities. In doing so, students usurped traditional student-school dynamics that often silence youth of color (Fine, 1991; Nieto, 1999) and limit how they engage in meaning making (Hull & Schultz, 2001) within school. Dance facilitated the students who forged the team -- two Black girls and one Black boy who were freshman in high school -- in bringing their own epistemologies, meaning making and literacy practices, and community and cultural knowledge into school. Youth of color live rich literate and culturally productive lives that are often obscured by their school experiences (Levinson & Holland, 1999; Mahiri, 2004) but through the examination of the youth-led dance team, this paper offers insight into how schools can center marginalized voices.

Author

• Veena Vasudevan, University of Pittsburgh