Education Commons^™

Teaching For Social Justice Through Critical Mathematical Inquiry, Steven Greenstein, Mark Russo

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Patriotism? No Thanks!, Madhu Suri Prakash

Occasional Paper Series

Patriotic fever reigned supreme in my son’s fifth grade classroom in the public elementary school he had attended since kindergarten. It was in a middle-sized university town in the United States.

Framed photos of each student flouting the flag with patriotic pride announced his teacher’s curriculum and pedagogy. Mrs. ABZ’s message, at least as experienced by my son and me, was “Do or die!” You either subscribe to her patriotic philosophy of education, or you die as a legitimate and valued member of the class.

The school principal accepted that this was unpalatable, undemocratic, inappropriate, unjust and mis-educative—to say the …

A Love-Hate Relationship: Personal Narratives Of Pride And Shame As Patriotic Affects, Mark E. Helmsing

Occasional Paper Series

The Office of Alumni Relations for George Mason University—in Fairfax, Virginia, where I teach—is located centrally on the campus. The exterior of the building faces a busy walkway, displaying in vinyl lettering the official slogan of the university’s alumni association: “once a Patriot, always a Patriot.” This motto refers to the university’s Patriot mascot and implies that once a person joins the university as a student, that person becomes a Patriot and will forever remain a Patriot, which, the alumni office presumably hopes, will result in feelings of goodwill that prompt generous financial contributions from alumni donors.

In considering the …

Patriotism To People In Diaspora Is Love Of Humanity, Ming Fang He

Occasional Paper Series

Patriotism is always contested. It is even more contested for people in diaspora. Diaspora (in Greek, διασπορά – “a scattering [of seeds]”) refers to the movement of a population sharing common ethnic identity who are either forced to leave or voluntarily leave their indigenous or ancestral lands and become residents in areas often far removed from their former homes (He, 2010).

In a broader sense, diaspora refers to the situations when indigenous peoples, immigrants, and emigrants are forced to leave or voluntarily leave their tribes, native lands, territories, communities, or countries due to such reasons as imperialism, colonialism, political persecution, …

Constructed Patriotism; Shifting (Re)Presentations And Performances Of Patriotism Through Curriculum Materials, Nina Hood, Marek Tesar

Occasional Paper Series

What does it mean to be patriotic? How are notions of patriotism (re)presented and performed in curriculum materials? In attempting to answer these questions, we contend that it is necessary to move beyond the word patriotic as an isolated concept to explore it in relation to specific temporal, geographic, political, economic, and institutional contexts. Patriotism, or to be patriotic, is conceptualized and means something quite different—and manifests differently—in different eras and in different countries.

We utilize curriculum materials and documents as a lens through which to explore different conceptions and manifestations of patriotism as they pertain to the education of …

Patriotism, Race, And The Militarization Of Citizenship, Jenna Christian

Occasional Paper Series

The visual essay emerges from 2.5 years of ethnographic and arts-based research on the politics of race, citizenship, and military recruiting among Latinx youth in Texas. The essay juxtaposes two examples of how the military intersects with racialized constructions of a patriotic citizen: 1) the case of Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem at NFL football games, and 2) the role of military-run Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs in teaching citizenship. Through the two cases, the essay challenges readers—and educators—to attend to how patriotism is linked to both white supremacy and militarization within the United States.

This Is About Us: Drama Workshop As Patriotic Education, Samuel J. Tanner

Occasional Paper Series

For 15 years, I was a drama teacher in two large urban high schools in Minnesota. My classes were designed with the belief that theatre requires the downplaying or even sacrifice of the individual for the success of the collective. Yes, these classes involved practices that helped students rehearse basic tools of performance but, more importantly, they required participants to work together as a group. Each semester-long class ended with a theatrical production written, produced, and performed by the students for audiences of their peers. Careful not to impose my vision on the content of their productions, I worked to …

On Patriotism, William Ayers

Occasional Paper Series

What’s so great about America?

Near the top of my list is sweet home Chicago—a mesmerizing metropolis, once home to generations of Illini, Winnebago, and Miami peoples, rising along the shore of that immense inland sea and sweeping toward the dazzling prairie just beyond.

There’s Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, and Richard Wright’s Native Son. There’s Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm and Studs Terkel’s Division Street, Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.

So …

Fostering Democratic Patriotism Through Critical Pedagogy, Hillary Parkhouse

Occasional Paper Series

When I was a high school US history teacher in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, I sometimes wondered about the relationship between patriotism and critique of one’s nation. Specifically, I questioned just how critical students could be without becoming disaffected toward the United States. I tried to be honest with my students about the nation’s mixed record of democracy—how the country was founded on ideals of equality and yet stole land from Native Americans, kidnapped millions of Africans as part of a massive system of chattel slavery, and denied the vote to women until 1920. But I …

Patriotism And Dual Citizenship, Patricia Gándara

Occasional Paper Series

I am a citizen of two countries—the United States and Mexico—and I have a deep love of both, for different reasons. I believe that being a citizen of two countries allows me to be a partial outsider in each, which perhaps gives me an uncommon perspective on both. I know that there are those who argue that it’s impossible to be truly loyal to one country if one is also a citizen of another, and there are those for whom any criticism of one’s country is tantamount to treason. I reject both of those positions.

First, I believe that a …

Loving America With Open Eyes: A Student-Driven Study Of U.S. Rights In The Age Of Trump, Margaret N. Becker 9828901

Occasional Paper Series

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, the students of my 4^th grade classroom in a public school in East Harlem had lots of questions about our country. Over and over they wondered: What is a right? How can we protect ourselves when we disagree with the government? This paper stories the year-long study of rights in the United States that grew out of these questions and the learning that came out of this curriculum, as well as works to define what patriotism means to me as an educator and a citizen.

“That's Quite A Tune”: An Interview With Bruce Springsteen, Mark T. Kissling

Occasional Paper Series

Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania.

My name is Mark Kissling. I am an assistant professor of education at Penn State University. I’m also the guest editor of the Bank Street Occasional Papers Series issue #40 titled, “Am I Patriotic?” The purpose of the issue is to complicate how we think about and enact patriotism, with a particular focus on how teachers teach and students learn about patriotism.

So how does this relate to Bruce Springsteen and the interview that you’re about to hear?

In mid-December of 2008, I spent two days at the Woody Guthrie Archives—then in New York City, …

A Note From The New Editor-In-Chief, Gail M. Boldt

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Learning And Teaching The Complexities Of Patriotism Here And Now, Mark T. Kissling

Occasional Paper Series

Last June, the day before the Philadelphia Eagles franchise was scheduled to celebrate its Super Bowl victory at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump revoked the invitation.

The majority of the players had made clear that they would skip the event. Instead of attending the presidential spectacle, they planned to celebrate elsewhere in Washington, D.C., including by touring the nearby National Museum of African American History and Culture (Nakamura & Lowery, 2018). In place of the event, the President led a ten-minute “Celebration of America” on the White House lawn that featured the playing and singing of the national …

Experiential Knowledge And Project-Based Learning In Bilingual Classrooms, Adriana Alvarez

Occasional Paper Series

Culturally and linguistically diverse children deserve sophisticated and dynamic biliterate learning opportunities that integrate the children’s life experiences and keen intellects. Dynamic learning in early childhood classrooms, including progressivist pedagogical approaches like project-based learning, has been shown to facilitate academic achievement as well as high-level learning capabilities including critical thinking, agency, problem solving, and negotiation (Adair, 2014; Bell, 2010; Hyson, 2008; Katz & Chard, 2000). Too often, culturally and linguistically diverse children are offered learning opportunities that fall short of helping students achieve their potential or of validating their life experiences (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Nieto & Bode, 2008; …

Administrators’ Roles In Offering Dynamic Early Learning Experiences To Children Of Latinx Immigrants, Alejandra Barraza, Pedro Martinez

Occasional Paper Series

Principals and school administrators play a critical role in creating learning environments that are sensitive to the needs of students from immigrant families. School administrators, particularly principals, are tasked with making decisions that directly and indirectly impact what happens in a classroom. They act as instructional and visionary leaders as well as resource managers and so they determine both the culture and pedagogy of the school. They determine whether the main focus of the early learning classrooms will be academic skill development (literacy, numeracy), cognitive skill development (social competence, behavioral self-regulation, problem-solving, and decision-making), socio-emotional processing (helping others, empathy, sharing), …

No Room For Silence: The Impact Of The 2016 Presidential Race On A Second-Grade Dual-Language (Spanish-English) Classroom, Sandra L. Osorio

Occasional Paper Series

“¡Quiere sacar a todos los suramericanos! Quiere quedarse con solo los blancos,¹ shouted second grader Salvador² to his classmate Victor. They were supposed to be reading Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, but somehow the conversation had turned to the then presidential candidate for the Republican Party, Donald Trump. That was how Trump and his rhetoric entered our dual language classroom.

Far too often, the voices of students of color, their experiences, and their lives are not validated in the classroom. When Salvador and Victor’s conversation about Trump erupted, the teacher and I—the teacher …

Intersectionality And Possibility In The Lives Of Latina/O/X Children Of Immigrants: Imagining Pedagogies Beyond The Politics Of Hate, Ramon Antonio Martinez

Occasional Paper Series

I first met Alma¹ when she was five years old and a kindergarten student in a multi-age Spanish-English dual language classroom in southern California. Alma is the child of immigrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Somewhat shy and soft spoken, she nonetheless had many friends and seemed eager to engage with her peers in class. In interviews with me over the first few years of a longitudinal study that I was conducting at her school, she spent a great deal of time sharing the details of her rich literate life. Among other things, Alma loved poetry. In addition …

Introduction: A Vision For Transforming Early Childhood Research And Practice For Young Children Of Immigrants And Their Families, Fabienne Doucet, Jennifer Adair

Occasional Paper Series

This special issue of the Occasional Paper Series describes practices and policies that can positively impact the early schooling of children of immigrants in the United States. We consider the intersectionality of young children’s lives and what needs to change in order to ensure that race, class, immigration status, gender, and dis/ability can effectively contribute to children’s experiences at school and in other instructional contexts, rather than prevent them from getting the learning experiences they need and deserve.

Editor's Note, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Principal In School Reform, Michael Fullan

Occasional Paper Series

Fullan examines the principal's role in school improvement and reform. He describes where principals are and what they do and don't do in relation to change. He then talks about the complexity of leadership and offers guidelines for how principals might lead change more effectively.

Introduction: A Principaled Approach, Patricia A. Wasley, Judith Rizzo

Occasional Paper Series

This introduction highlights the collaboration between Bank Street College and the New York City Board of Education who developed an approach to preparing principals that has proved highly effective. Wasley and Rizzo briefly describe the program's history and its evolution, and concludes by analyzing why it has worked so well and what they would do to further strengthen the approach.

Small Schools And The Issue Of Race, Linda C. Powell

Occasional Paper Series

Bank Street College of Education, in conjunction with the Consortium on Chicago School Research did a study of small schools in Chicago. This paper examines one element of the findings in depth - the interaction of race and school size. Powell argues that small schools are by their very nature an anti-racist intervention.

Walking The Tightrope Of Visibility, Leigh Patel

Occasional Paper Series

This essay cautions projects of visibility that are twinned with intersectional analyses. Arguing for a deliberate rupture in schooling’s categorical logics and a historical analysis of the cultural force of individual identity, I caution that the individual identity tendencies of modernity hold some risks for the substantial and long-standing imperatives of intersectional analysis. I ground this argument in Audre Lorde’s work and how it is often sampled insufficiently.

Black Girls Are More Than Magic, Gloria J. Ladson-Billings

Occasional Paper Series

Despite the current interest in "Black Girl Magic" this essay argues that what Black women have accomplished and endured is more than mere magic. Instead, they reflect a dogged determinism to work toward liberation of all people. That determination has been in the forefront of human liberation for centuries.

Untying The Knot, Charisse Jones

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Where Our Girls At? The Misrecognition Of Black And Brown Girls In Schools, Amanda E. Lewis, Deana G. Lewis

Occasional Paper Series

Black and brown girls remain too often at the margins not only in society at large and in our schools but also in our research and writing about schools. Herein we argue for careful consideration of the specific ways that their raced and gendered identities render these girls vulnerable and put them in jeopardy so that educators and scholars do not become complicit in their marginalization. We focus on dynamics of invisibility and hypervisibility. While these dynamics may seem to be diametrically opposite, both involve the process of what scholar Nancy Fraser (2000) calls “misrecognition” (p. 113).

Not Only A Pipeline: Schools As Carceral Sites, Connie Wun

Occasional Paper Series

Conversations surrounding school discipline have largely focused on the ways that schools and their punitive policies have funneled students into the criminal justice system through the school to prison pipeline. Recently, there has been an increase in scholarship from scholars who argue that schools are not only funneling students into prisons, but that schools and prisons operate as a nexus – the two working symbiotically to discipline and punish students of color, predominantly Black male students (Meiners, 2010; Sojoyner, 2013). Drawing from these analyses, I argue that schools are characterized by multi-layered disciplinary landscapes that operate as carceral sites onto …

Introduction: Reading And Writing The T/Terror Narratives Of Black And Brown Girls And Women: Storying Lived Experiences To Inform And Advance Early Childhood Through Higher Education, Jeannine Staples, Uma M. Jayakumar

Occasional Paper Series

Staples and Jayakumar introduce this issue of the Occasional Paper Series that speaks to the #SayHerName social justice initiative. The movement aims to expose the experiences of Black and Brown girls and women who are subject to police violence in society and various violences in schools. In response to this movement, this issue includes stories of Black and Brown women from early childhood education through higher education.

What Should We Make Of Standards?: Barbara Biber Lecture, Vito Perrone

Occasional Paper Series

In a lecture dedicated to Barbara Biber, Perrone offers a brief perspective on her work and then discusses the Standards movement at the time - 1999. This essay offers a criticism of the movement and how it is far removed from the individual learning experience. Standardization dominated educational discourse at the time and continues to do so now.