Memories of Social Class and How They Matter to Teaching Economic Inequality in Elementary Schools

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Revolutionary Pedagogies for Equity and Social Change in K–12 Classrooms (Table 17)

Abstract

This study draws from a larger project and focuses specifically on a smaller subset of data that links 57 New York City elementary school teachers’ own experiences of social class with their commitments to addressing economic inequality through the teaching. Centering the position of the teacher, I use a phenomenological subjectivist approach to examine how teachers articulate their own classed childhoods and how such memories are tied to new meanings and insights as they grapple with social class division in their classrooms and schools. How do elementary school teachers’ own experiences with social class hook into their current teaching practices? How do they describe their responsibility to addressing economic inequality when it surfaces in their work with children?

Author

• Debbie Sonu, Hunter College - CUNY