Improvisation Over Planning: Examining How a Lack of Improvisation Impedes Critical Conversations in an Elementary Classroom

• In Event: Teachers Accepting Educational Responsibility by Foregrounding Humanizing Critical Sociocultural Knowledge Across K–16 Classrooms

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on Brown’s (2013) third tenet of HCSK: improvisation. Brown argues that educators must improvise in the moment in order to counter dehumanizing discourses. We examine one fourth grade teacher’s struggle to improvise as she engages her students in discussions of race, racism, and poverty

Ms. Barker -- a bi-racial (Persian and White) teacher in a predominately white, affluent suburban public school -- chose to read Jason Reynold’s award-winning novel Ghost (2016) because it offered her students counter-narratives of race, family structure, and socioeconomic stability. Ms. Barker explained,

The kids can relate to [Ghost] because it's modern day... But there's also that difference of perspective. Thinking from Ghost’s point of view, thinking about like when he went to that other neighborhood where his teammate lived - talking about how they have a front and a back yard and a driveway and two cars and like those are things that these kids [students] have...I feel like it's eye opening for them because then they're like, “Oh, like what we do have - we are really privileged. …” [Interview]

However, the students’ in Ms. Barker’s class often (re)constructed dominant discourses of racism, poverty, and morality during discussions on Ghost. Drawn from a larger study of critical conversations across three elementary classrooms, sources for this focal case study included field notes, video-recordings, and transcriptions of 11 interactive read alouds of Ghost; 4 interviews with Ms. Barker; and classroom artifacts, including lesson plans. We drew on qualitative (thematic) and discourse analytic methods to analyze these data, focusing on how Ms. Barker drew upon her sociocultural knowledge as well as upon dominant discourses.

Our findings center on Ms. Barker’s struggles to respond to students when they (re)produced dominant discourses. Throughout the text, but especially in response to Ghost’s decision to “swipe” a pair or running shoes from a store, students voiced reactions that normalized juvenile incarceration. Rather than challenge these ideas, Ms. Barker often validated them (e.g., “I see what you’re saying.”). This is unsurprising given Ms. Barker’s and her students’ positionality within capitalist white supremacy. Yet, we argue it is significant, as it contradicts Ms. Barker’s own critical reading of the text (as voiced in interviews) in which she effectively challenged such dominant discourses.

We theorize this failure to critically challenge as caused, at least in part, by an inability to improvise. After completing Ghost, Ms. Barker reflected, “So, yeah, I think it's, it's hard because I don't feel like I'm quick to really think on my feet about things.” Although Mrs. Barker voiced more critical stances in subsequent discussions, her students did not take up those stances, suggesting that such “after the fact” usage of sociocultural knowledge was not effective in growing her students’ HCSK. In this analysis, we demonstrate that a lack of improvisation can result in a teacher’s repetition (Kumashiro, 2001) and perpetuation of oppressive discourses.

Authors

• Laura A Taylor, Rhodes College

• Saba Khan Vlach, The University of Iowa