Becoming Community-Engaged Educators: Engaging Students Within and Beyond the Classroom Walls (SpringerBriefs in Education) [1st ed. 2022] 9811686440, 9789811686443

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
References
Tackling Poverty
1 Writing for the Media
2 Projects at Schools in Rural Parts of Indonesia
References
To Kill a Mockingbird is a Racist Book
1 Definitions
2 Language
3 Hurdles
4 Professional Community
5 How I Began This Work
6 Classroom Community
7 How to Get Started
Authenticity as Activism
1 The Best Teachers are Authentic
2 The Classroom is the World
2.1 The Real World
2.2 Deconstructing Gender in the Classroom
2.3 Un-gender Your Classroom
2.4 Diversify Materials
2.5 Create a Diversity-Positive Culture
3 Teaching is Political Act
References
Promoting Religious Tolerance
Humanising the Other: How Teachers Can Help Refugees
1 The Jungle
2 How I Got Involved
3 What Can We Do?
4 Teaching Under Trees
5 Working with Root Causes of Migration
6 Humanising the ‘Other’
References
Language Teaching, Environmental Education, and Community Engagement
1 Introduction
2 Formative Influences
3 Becoming an English Language Teacher
4 Becoming an Environmental Educator
5 Engagement in the Classroom
6 Beyond the Classroom
7 Reflections
8 Building Coalitions
9 Teacher Training
10 Conclusion
References
Community-Engaged Educator for Kindness Toward Farmed Animals
1 Food and Me
2 Language Use in Regard to Animals
3 Language Learning Pedagogy and Pedagogy for the Animals
4 Intersectionality
5 Dilemmas
6 Using Teaching Skills Outside the Classroom
7 The Future
References
Conclusion
1 Some Simple Generalizations About Our Group of Authors
1.1 Working Conditions and Institutions
1.2 Language
1.3 Race and Class
1.4 Network and Visibility
2 The Academic Literatures We Are Leaving for Another Occasion
3 Some More Obvious Implications
3.1 Get Involved
3.2 Though don’t Get Fired
3.3 Small is Possible
3.4 Talk or Write About It
References

Citation preview

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION

George M. Jacobs Graham V. Crookes   Editors

Becoming Community-Engaged Educators Engaging Students Within and Beyond the Classroom Walls 123

SpringerBriefs in Education

We are delighted to announce SpringerBriefs in Education, an innovative product type that combines elements of both journals and books. Briefs present concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical applications in education. Featuring compact volumes of 50 to 125 pages, the SpringerBriefs in Education allow authors to present their ideas and readers to absorb them with a minimal time investment. Briefs are published as part of Springer’s eBook Collection. In addition, Briefs are available for individual print and electronic purchase. SpringerBriefs in Education cover a broad range of educational fields such as: Science Education, Higher Education, Educational Psychology, Assessment & Evaluation, Language Education, Mathematics Education, Educational Technology, Medical Education and Educational Policy. SpringerBriefs typically offer an outlet for: • An introduction to a (sub)field in education summarizing and giving an overview of theories, issues, core concepts and/or key literature in a particular field • A timely report of state-of-the art analytical techniques and instruments in the field of educational research • A presentation of core educational concepts • An overview of a testing and evaluation method • A snapshot of a hot or emerging topic or policy change • An in-depth case study • A literature review • A report/review study of a survey • An elaborated thesis Both solicited and unsolicited manuscripts are considered for publication in the SpringerBriefs in Education series. Potential authors are warmly invited to complete and submit the Briefs Author Proposal form. All projects will be submitted to editorial review by editorial advisors. SpringerBriefs are characterized by expedited production schedules with the aim for publication 8 to 12 weeks after acceptance and fast, global electronic dissemination through our online platform SpringerLink. The standard concise author contracts guarantee that: • an individual ISBN is assigned to each manuscript • each manuscript is copyrighted in the name of the author • the author retains the right to post the pre-publication version on his/her website or that of his/her institution

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/8914

George M. Jacobs · Graham V. Crookes Editors

Becoming Community-Engaged Educators Engaging Students Within and Beyond the Classroom Walls

Editors George M. Jacobs Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation Singapore, Singapore

Graham V. Crookes University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI, USA

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISBN 978-981-16-8644-3 ISBN 978-981-16-8645-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

We begin by thanking our families. They are the mini-community which with we are most intimately engaged. Next, we thank the chapter authors. We continue to be inspired by their deeds on behalf of their students, colleagues, and the world. Expanding to a wider circle, our own students and colleagues, and the broader communities, we have experienced over the years give us hope that the ideas in this book are indeed achievable. Finally, we want to thank Grace Ma, her team at Springer, and the anonymous reviewers of our manuscript.

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George M. Jacobs and Graham V. Crookes

1

Tackling Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anita Lie

7

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Racist Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Joel Jablon Authenticity as Activism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Yoshi Joanna Grote Promoting Religious Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Lisa L. Liss Humanising the Other: How Teachers Can Help Refugees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Linda Ruas Language Teaching, Environmental Education, and Community Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Kip Cates Community-Engaged Educator for Kindness Toward Farmed Animals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 George M. Jacobs Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 George M. Jacobs

vii

Introduction George M. Jacobs and Graham V. Crookes

Abstract This chapter prepares readers for the seven teacher stories that form the book’s core. First, the concept of community-engaged educators is introduced as using a sociological lens to understand education. Similarly, being communityengaged involves looking not only at students’ lives in classrooms, but also at their lives outside of classrooms and the larger impact of society on students, teachers, and their families. Community-engaged education has roots in earlier movements in education such as social reconstructivism from the early twentieth century and the more recent critical pedagogy, championed by scholars such as Paulo Freire, who taught literacy in Brazil in a way in which his students learned to “read the word by reading the world”. Other concepts brought out in the Introduction are the idea of teachers as writers and how we need more spaces for teachers to share with colleagues and the general public. This sharing is facilitated by teachers’ participation in organizations such as International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language and Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. These organizations allow teachers access to new ideas and provide the power to implement those ideas. Sometimes “radical openness” is needed to accept different ideas, and “teacher authenticity” is needed for teachers to share their actions in implementing these ideas with their students and others. The book’s subsequent chapters offer real-life examples of all these concepts. Keywords Community-engaged education · Sociological lens · Critical pedagogy · Teachers as writers · Radical openness · Teacher authenticity This book is about action. It proclaims that teaching needs to connect with students’ lives and the lives of others in and out of school. We are proud to bring you seven accounts, in the personal voices of seven dedicated and exceptional language teachers, who tell us how they facilitate their students’ language learning at the same time that G. M. Jacobs (B) Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation, Singapore, Singapore G. V. Crookes Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawai’i at M¯anoa, Honolulu, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_1

1

2

G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes

students learn about the power of language and use language and other means to make the world a better place. We use the term “community-engaged education” to signal the connection and the location for action but besides that, we leave the term open. Indeed, we note a recent wider use of a sociological lens in understanding what teachers should do as we carry out our professional roles (e.g., Farrell, 2021; Ortega, 2019). We think that readers of this book are already teachers, particularly language teachers, who do engage or would like to engage with the wider world outside their classroom, with the intention of improving it, and who may be looking for accounts of others like themselves. Or, more importantly perhaps, readers of this book will be people who have picked up this slim volume because they are searching… looking for examples of lives they could emulate, or professional practices they could learn from. Just possibly, some will be looking for key factors: what makes community engagement possible, what sacrifices or strategies does a teacher need to make or engage in in order to build a community-engaged professional life. Before we provide, in this introductory chapter, brief previews of each of the seven chapters, we would like to share with you more details as to why this collection is an important (if small) contribution to the literature. Perhaps the matter is quite simple. Only in a small segment of the professional literature on teaching do we find the position that education should lead to social change and societal improvement. As a result, most teachers are socialized to focus their professional energies only on the classroom and their students’ lives in the classroom. Within this, there may be a general hope that what is taught will be of use, and that society as a whole will benefit from educated citizens (or consumers, or subjects, in less favorable circumstances), but this is unlikely to be fully spelled out or extensively discussed and exemplified. One tradition, an educational philosophy that puts most emphasis on social change through teachers and students being active in the world outside the classroom, is “critical pedagogy,” which historically is sometimes considered the inheritor of the older social reconstructionist tradition. More generally, we can say that progressive education does hope for social change, though mainly through the development of the individual student rather than more direct community engagement. At the same time, critical pedagogy is not the default setting or mainstream or dominant tradition in education. Given the power of the mainstream, of mainstream expectations of teachers and their own internalization of such pressures, and given typical working conditions for teachers as well, the kind of active community engagement that we might wish for is rare. Then there is the question of how such actions are made known. If we want others (and we do want others) to engage in the kind of action that is reported in this collection, someone must do something to gather the details and write them up. Active, community-engaged teachers are often too busy to do this themselves. Most teachers do not get any particular recognition for “writing”. It is people in the academic sector of education who have job descriptions that foster or indeed require written reports of practice. But here too, the mainstream is somehow against us. Professors write reports of educational practices for other professors to read. Real-world practices

Introduction

3

are subjected to academic lenses and validated; analyzed, weighed, extrapolated, connected to existing evidence, judged, parsed out, and heavily theorized; the end product of course while valuable in many ways is not likely to be a simple or inspiring read! Of the two of us, it is George Jacobs who first had the strong desire to surface the lives and works of what we have (he has) decided here to call “community-engaged” educators. In the course of several months, in the depths of the still-ongoing pandemic (of 2019), he was determined to find a form of action that could be undertaken during a lockdown. He reached out to people and organizations he knew or had seen in various publications. It was not easy. The zoonotic pandemic made the lives of teachers even more stressful. For example, chapter topics, such as a chapter about socioeconomic class, had to be abandoned or modified. Diversity among chapter authors was not what we had hoped for. At the same time, we found teachers with wonderful stories to tell and wonderful skill at telling them. Since how the work of teachers gets reported to other teachers (and, we hope, read by them) is important for this collection, let us take a moment to acknowledge the slightly unusual category of publication this is. Our publishers, Springer, have explored the options that exist and have realized that it is possible to more swiftly produce smaller works that are both somewhat academic but also reader-friendly, putting them into formats that can appear, at comparatively low cost, with greater speed than conventional academic publications. We are here, in this book, avoiding the conventional academic journal, to which few teachers in any case subscribe, but we are not simply putting the pieces on a personal website somewhere in hopes that mere googling will help a teacher find them. We do want the power of the press behind us and behind the voices of these teachers, so that other interested teachers may be enabled to spot this small gem in the vast universe of text that surrounds us in the internet era. There are just a few other things to be mentioned before you set out on the voyage of discovery that awaits you in the words of these caring, brilliant teachers. As editors we would like to suggest to you some ways in which you might approach these reports or the work as a whole: in a word, reflectively. Please open yourself to these accounts and be willing to be moved by them. Pause, as you read, for thought. We have placed a few questions for you in the body of the texts. From time to time, as you encounter these questions or questions generated by your own reflections, stop and allow yourself to think how the lives of these teachers, or their actions, relate to your own. Perhaps there are some changes in your own teaching lives you would like to make, and some aspects of your teaching that will feel validated, as you see the differences or similarities to your own. Although these are quite polished accounts, they are, we believe, quite direct and straightforward. You will note that there is a range of personal styles; and certainly, there is a range of experience—some of our respondents are veterans with decades of vision and perspective, and a couple are still flush with the energy of youth. Some have themselves also made contributions to the professional literature, or have placed their work on the Internet, and for others this may be their first foray into conventional publishing. There is (deliberately) a range of sociopolitical, cultural, personal, and

4

G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes

religious or philosophical positions represented, though obviously what holds them all together is their desire and actual considerable achievement of action toward social improvement in broadly democratic directions. We will not frame the contributions further now (except to summarize briefly below) but we will return, after the seven chapters, to think with you about the implications of this small collection. There are important themes which we believe deserve exploration but which will be more salient after you have read the accounts. Below please find brief previews of each of the seven chapters. Anita Lie’s chapter offers ideas for what community-engaged educators can do to address poverty. Anita attended an urban primary school in Indonesia with classmates from families of varied social classes. The bonds of empathy she formed in those years remain in her heart and guide her actions to this day. Education reform has been the focus of her anti-poverty efforts, reaching out not just to teachers but also to people in the education bureaucracy via appearances in the national media, such as newspapers, and at public forums. Anita also travels to many parts of her vast country to work on professional development projects for teachers in under-served communities, to learn from their experiences, and to establish virtual communities of practice. Joel Jablon’s chapter looks at the ongoing journey of a white upper-middle class person in the USA coming to recognize the privileges he has received and how he continues that journey as a teacher, both with his students and colleagues, as well as in his neighborhood. A highlight of Joel’s chapter is how he came to re-evaluate a favorite book of his, To Kill A Mockingbird, a book he had taught with. Joel had long seen the book as an overwhelmingly positive account of how a white lawyer had stepped forward to protect a Black client from racism. By being what Joel calls “radically open,” he was willing to listen to others with different views about the book. The chapter offers other examples of Joel’s radical openness. Yoshi Grote’s story begins with stories about teachers whom she had admired in her childhood. Of the many lessons she learned from those teachers and their lessons she is just understanding are three: “The best teachers are authentic. The classroom is the world. Teaching is political.” A standout point in the chapter was when Yoshi decided that the inauthenticity of hiding her personal life as a lesbian from her students was no longer tenable. She quotes Paulo Freire who stated that “I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.” By being authentic with her students, Yoshi was supporting students dealing with their own sexuality and gender identity, as well as making herself a resource for curious students. Additionally, she became a role model for anyone who in whatever way felt different from the norm. Lisa Liss’ background seemed custom-made for generating intolerance, growing up in a small town in rural Texas, USA, a place where everyone was the same religion. Plus, Lisa’s dad espoused a harsh form of intolerance. However, while still in primary school, Lisa’s family moved to a big city. There, Lisa met people from many backgrounds in person, and in the school library, she read voraciously about different religions and cultures. One book in particular, The Diary of Anne Frank, made a special impression on Lisa, as it has on so many other children. “Anne felt like my best friend, and I knew somehow, some way, I had to help people respect

Introduction

5

others no matter how different their beliefs might be. How would I be able to achieve this? That required another 15 years.” Lisa and her students have undertaken many pro-tolerance activities, the most incredible of which was the 11 year-long Bandage Project to collect 1.5 million bandages to commemorate the 1.5 million children of various religions killed in the Holocaust, and they reached their goal on what would have been Anne’s 90th birthday. Linda Ruas plays an active role in a leading organization of language teachers, International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). She started her career teaching students from fortunate backgrounds and with strong academic preparation. As Linda puts it, “Most of them could have learnt English by themselves.” Linda’s career hit an unexpected bump, and she ended up teaching refugees in the UK. These students had much less fortunate backgrounds and much weaker preparation, as well as having to face issues caused by their uncertain visa status. Even more challenging was when Linda taught in refugee camps in Greece and France. What became clear to her was something that motivates all the authors of this book’s chapters: There is only so much we can do in our classrooms; we must also look to make more system-wide changes. This is where Linda’s work in IATEFL becomes so enriching. Another driving force in organizations of language teachers has been Kip Cates, who has been engaged internationally in Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and more locally in the Japan Association for Language Teaching. Kip’s path toward including environmental education in his language teaching seemed set early, as, in his childhood, his family lived next to a forest in western Canada, and he and his siblings took every opportunity to enjoy nature. A role model for Kip’s future was his physics teacher who in and out of school was an unstinting advocate for the environment, often appearing in newspapers and elsewhere in the media. Early in Kip’s teaching career, the institution where he taught demanded conformity, but fortunately, the large majority of his career has been spent at a very different institution, one that treats teachers as professionals and affords them freedom to design their own teaching. Kip has made wide use of that freedom by employing content-based language teaching to inject environmental topics and other global issues into his classes. In addition, Kip generously shares resources with fellow teachers via an e-newsletter, as well as a graduate teacher education class. George Jacobs recounts how he went from being a quiet vegetarian who did not bring up his diet unless people asked to being someone who used their teaching skills in and out of the classroom to advocate for farmed animals, e.g., chickens, fishes, and cows. Among the highlights of George’s chapter is how he implemented intersectionality, i.e., linking issues, e.g., connecting farmed animal issues to LGBTQ? issues, environmental issues, women’s issues, and the treatment of poor people. Perhaps, advocates linking various progressive issues via intersectionality have something in common with how student-centered language teachers link various student-centered methods, e.g., extensive reading and cooperative learning.

6

G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes

References Farrell, T. S. C. (2021). Reflective language teaching. Cambridge University Press. Ortega, L. (2019). SLA and the study of equitable multilingualism. The Modern Language Journal, 103, 23–38.

Tackling Poverty Anita Lie

Abstract Anita Lie’s chapter provides ideas for tackling poverty. Anita grew up in urban Indonesia and attended elementary school with lower-income classmates, as well as tutoring some of them at no charge after school. As she went on to higher SES schools and to a career as a teacher and then as a professor, these classmates stayed in her mind, and she dedicated herself to inclusive education enhancement. Anita’s efforts included writing for the media, liaising with people in the education bureaucracy, doing teacher development programs in distant parts of her country, and establishing virtual communities of practice. Keywords Overcoming poverty · Indonesian education · Writing for the media · Rural schools · Starting small · Virtual communities of practice This chapter describes my efforts to use education to overcome poverty in Indonesia. For those readers who are not very familiar with Indonesia, here is some background. Indonesia is an archipelago of 17,000 islands, forming the world’s fourth largest country by population, third biggest democracy, and most populous Muslimmajority nation, with more than 300 ethnic groups. In the past two decades, Indonesia has successfully halved its poverty rate from 19.1 to 9.8%. I live in Surabaya, my country’s second largest city, located on the island of Java, the country’s most populated island. I had wanted to become a teacher since I was young. When I was an elementary school student in the late 1960s, neighborhoods in Indonesia were less segregated by SES and race than they are now. I grew up in a middle-class family of Chinese descent in a neighborhood with people of different races and SES backgrounds. Many of my childhood friends were children of pedicab (becak) drivers and low-income workers. It was extremely hard for them to break the vicious cycle of poverty. I went to a public elementary school in the neighborhood. It was an impoverished school; we did not even have a schoolyard and had to walk 3 km to have our P.E. class in a field next to a railway track. I was blessed that my father enrolled me in an after-school A. Lie (B) Surabaya, Indonesia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_2

7

8

A. Lie

English course. At that time, English was not taught until secondary school; so, it was a luxury that I was exposed to English earlier than most of my peers. When I was finishing the 6th grade, one of my father’s friends advised my parents to send me to a “better” school. So, I went to a Catholic junior high school with a different type of schoolmates, higher academic standards, and different future expectations. That was really a turning point in my life. Looking back, I feel a surge of empathy for my childhood friends who did not receive the same opportunities I did. Many of them ended up in the same cycle of poverty their parents had suffered. A key reason I went into teaching is that I believed then and still believe that education is a powerful tool to break the chains of inter-generational poverty. I actually started to teach when I was in Grade 8. My after-school lessons in English from my elementary school days enabled me to teach the neighborhood children some of whom were my age or even older than me. My first group of students were four sisters. Gradually, I had more and more students, and my afternoons/evenings were fully occupied. I charged a very small fee and even waived the fee for many of my neighbors. On some afternoons and evenings, I gave the lessons in the living room of my parents’ home. On others, I went to my neighbors’ houses. Those home teaching experiences marked the beginning of my 10,000+ hours (Gladwell, 2008) of hard work and practice in teaching. After that early beginning, the rest of my career in Education has been similar to that of other teachers at university level—college education, teaching at the undergraduate level, further education at graduate level, back to teaching at the university, and climbing the academic ladder including research. The main difference between me and my university colleagues has been that a large focus was my many hours devoted to community-engaged education. Whether or not they explicitly participate in community-engaged education, most teachers I know see their profession as a calling to make a difference for their students and the world. We teachers seek to have a multiplier effect through the outcomes of our teaching, hoping that our students use the knowledge, skills, and value we teach to make a difference for their families and others in their lives. As enthusiastic as I have been about this calling, over the years I have questioned my effectiveness in making that difference. For example, I presume that I have treated all my students fairly and given the same opportunities to all my students to learn and grow. Yet, I see that my teaching has had different impacts on different students. After many years, some former students make the effort to visit me, pay their respects, and report on their various accomplishments. This, of course, elates me and makes me think that what I’m doing is worthwhile. Yet, most other students just “vanish.” Through social media, sometimes I learn that former students are struggling with their lives—failing in business or making the wrong career and life choices. Of course, I do not presume to have sole responsibility for every student’s successes and failures. But the different paths of different students make me question the roles of different variables in the so-called societal enterprise to use schooling to engineer progress in human civilization. Those many other variables, I found, are largely beyond any one teacher’s control. An important variable is that individual students do not start on level ground. Some

Tackling Poverty

9

are blessed to have support from family, friends, and other sources, while others are deprived of such support. Indonesian society is supposed to be a meritocracy, but as in other countries, the meritocracy has flaws. Factors impacting the support available to students include public policies in and out of the education sector, social and political forces, cultural values and norms, and individual propensities. These are extremely hard to change, but perhaps the least hard might be public policies. Furthermore, policies play a strategic role in transforming the other variables. Over the years, I have sought to play a role as a community-engaged educator by altering government policies. I have done this by writing articles on education for the media and making myself available for interviews. In this way, I attempt to exert my influence as a citizen as well as an engaged educator.

1 Writing for the Media I started writing because as a university academic, I am compelled to publish, but I have not been as productive as some of my colleagues in terms of publishing in scholarly journals. Ironically, my newspaper articles, although lower in academic status, are much more widely read than my journal articles. Furthermore, at public seminars, I occasionally meet policymakers and bureaucrats from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology as well as parliament members who tell me that they have read and appreciated my articles. It is uplifting when they acknowledge reading my articles and using insights from them in their work. Some of the topics of my articles that I believe have made some impact deal with teacher professional development, national standardized exams (Au, 2016), and the decisions about which schools students attend (Sulistyosari et al., 2020). People unfamiliar with Indonesia may be surprised to hear that other government critics and I get invited to different forums in the Ministry and other government bodies to speak or to give input. Sometimes, we critics meet at these events to share information and discuss what’s best for the education system for the nation. I know that my insights are not always used or may also be used in the wrong way to justify a certain political agenda. Yet, I also believe that the political realities should not stop me from voicing my concerns and engaging in social projects. A community-engaged educator’s role is to be a conscience to the society. I criticize the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture fairly frequently, though not in a harsh manner. The Indonesian bureaucrats are usually okay about hearing public criticisms, as long as we do not accuse them personally and directly of any criminal wrongdoings (let’s say corruption accusations, which I cannot make, either because I do not have any evidence and it is not my cup of tea to dig into corruption cases).

10

A. Lie

Have you had opportunities to interact with members of education bureaucracies? If not, could you have such opportunities? I also know that my actions do not have impact overnight. For instance, in 2013, I wrote articles that criticized the faulty administration of the national standardized exam, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology finally abolished it in 2020. Points of my criticism included the mushrooming of cram courses to drill students to pass the exam. A few schools even sub-contracted the service and invited those cram courses into the schools to prepare their students for the exam. Families living in poverty cannot afford to send their children for such courses, to buy them supplementary exam prep materials, or to buy the hardware, software, and Internet access needed to study online (Dawson, 2010). I was not the only one criticizing the national exam. Many other community-engaged intellectuals and teachers expressed the same concerns. Indeed, it takes a collective effort to transform a society. While people at universities can impact education in various ways, K-12 teachers also can offer powerful testimony about the inequalities resulting from poverty. For example, SMA Kolese de Brito, a Catholic senior high school in the city of Yogyakarta, has a community of teachers-writers. Some of the community members that I have read and met personally are St. Kartono and Y. Sumardiyanto. I find teacher-writers very inspiring because they write out of their own experiences in the classrooms and relate more strongly with their fellow teachers. I began writing for the media when I was working on my Masters in the USA. A colleague from Indonesia visited my university as part of his own research. He wrote for one of the mainstream newspapers and encouraged me to do so as well. My first article was published in a local newspaper, Surabaya Post, and that inspired me. My articles mostly focus on education issues and are now mostly published in two national newspapers, Kompas and The Jakarta Post (www.kompas.com and www. thejakartapost.com). Kompas is the leading national newspaper written in Bahasa Indonesia, the national language. Indonesian policymakers and bureaucrats read it. The Jakarta Post targets English-speaking readers. Its readership is not as wide as Kompas, but it is read by officers of international organizations with a special interest in Indonesia. Two of my 2020 articles in the Jakarta Post deal with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education: (1) Covid-19 Disruption and the Widening Digital Divide https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2020/05/02/covid-19-disruptionand-the-widening-digital-divide.html and (2) The New Normal in Education https:// www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2020/06/20/the-new-normal-in-education.html.

Do you have opportunities to write on education issues? Opportunities can include online

Tackling Poverty

11

In 2018, I received an award as a Dedicated Intellectual from Kompas. (https:// megapolitan.kompas.com/read/2018/06/28/20034401/kompas-beri-penghargaan2-cendikiawan-yang-berdedikasi-untuk-negeri?page=all). This is an annual award by Kompas presented to two scholars who write in Kompas about public issues discussed through their discipline perspectives.

2 Projects at Schools in Rural Parts of Indonesia In addition to utilizing the media as part of my efforts to use education to alleviate poverty, I have also been involved in projects to enhance education in rural Indonesia. Approximately 45% of Indonesians live in rural areas, and poverty is greater there. When I visit these areas, recollections of my poverty-stricken childhood friends are always on my mind—the kampong games we played, the chit-chats we enjoyed, and even the fights we sometimes engaged in. Our paths have never crossed since we became adults, and I don’t know what has happened to them, but my heart still goes out to them. Whenever I visit impoverished regions on projects, I see my childhood friends’ faces there.

What do you do to remind yourself about less privileged individuals? You choose your path and on the other hand, your path also chooses you. At one time, I was in between university positions for a couple of years. I kept myself busy by doing freelance work for small organizations working in education. Then, two large organizations, Tanoto Foundation and Lembaga Pengembangan Masyarakat Amungme dan Kamoro, asked me to do consulting and teacher development in their education programs. Tanoto Foundation works to improve lives through quality education, while the latter is a Civil Society Organization working with the indigenous Amungme and Kamoro peoples in Indonesia’s Papua province. The work in Papua is supported by PT Freeport Indonesia, a large multinational mining company. Such organizations have been heavily criticized for their natural resources exploitation. Worse, in the past, there were indications of negligence of the local people’s welfare and sustainable development that have resulted in current stark inequalities. Indonesia’s 2009 Law on Mineral and Coal Mining dictates that corporations involved in mining are obligated to exercise social responsibility and conduct community development projects. However, major inadequacies remain. I have met in person with people from the indigenous groups directly impacted by the irresponsible business practices of PT Freeport and others, and I have seen how they suffer from deprivation of opportunities. While the more idealist activists would not want to have any dealings with such corporations and would campaign to expel these corporations from our country, I have chosen a different path. While I wish success to any initiative to push for responsible and fair corporate practices

12

A. Lie

and sustainable development, I am not in a position to join the cause directly and am better trained to work in the education sector. For any noble cause to make sustainable progress, an educated citizenry is a prerequisite.

What do you think of Anita’s decision to work with PT Freeport? In my work outside of Java, I have done projects with schools in remote places in Indonesia’s provinces of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Papua, East Nusa Tenggara, and Maluku. The schools involved in these projects are usually hours away from the district capitals; many of them are accessible only by off-road trips. In the projects, I always work through local individuals and institutions, as I believe that the most effective and sustainable change initiatives are driven by the local people. Thus, my involvement is very limited and usually aims to prompt the local actors to take charge of their societal change agenda. What I usually do is to identify potential local actors and encourage them to form a small community of practice. Afterward, I maintain contact with these individuals through social media and WhatsApp. My indicator of success in such projects is that when I leave them, they can continue the program on their own. Obstacles I face in these rural anti-poverty efforts include time management, frequent travel, and scholarship–activism balance. The next paragraphs examine how I have addressed these three obstacles. In education, our work is so much more than teaching. In particular, we face an overwhelming amount of administrative work, some of which is very mundane and irrelevant to our role as educators. As a result, I see that most of my colleagues cannot devote as much time as they would wish to being community-engaged educators. I love being engaged in projects outside campus. So, I have made decisions to support my passion. For example, I served a four-year term as director of the graduate school at my university, but when my term ended, I opted not to take on any more administrative positions. Furthermore, I settled on a part-time position and thus enjoy the freedom not to carry out the administrative responsibilities that my colleagues are obligated to take on. The second obstacle in carrying out projects in remote regions involves not only frequent travel and arduous off-road trips, but also tolerance for very simple living conditions. Luckily, I have the capability to stay (usually for a few days) in modest places where there is no electricity and running water. Honestly, there’s always a reluctance to be in such places. But once I’m there, I manage to live well under such circumstances. The local friends who usually go with me teach me the wisdom of not choosing a life but of living one. Balancing scholarship and community engagement is the third obstacle. It takes a special ability to make the two paths enrich each other. I’m still struggling to develop this ability. To be a good scholar, you need to focus and to read the literature extensively. But when you are in the field, you seem to be doing a lot of mundane things that may make you forget the academic goals of your projects, for example, taking care of

Tackling Poverty

13

your transportation to reach those far-away places, preparing the logistics you need to bring there, figuring out how to clean yourself in such places without offending the people or resorting to your spoiled urban habits, and learning to communicate with the local people as effectively as you possibly can. All this makes it easy to forget what you learned in graduate school about how to conduct research. I’m still learning how to make my two paths augment each other. When I started school improvement projects with Tanoto Foundation in 2006, we involved only a few batches of 30 educators in each of three provinces. My team organized a series of workshops that included school visits for teacher–principal pairs on school-action research projects. What we learned and did in the workshops involved cultivating context-specific methods and media that were relevant and accessible to the people on site. We did not bring and introduce cutting-edge technology (at that time, a laptop seemed like an object from outer space). We advised them to use whatever they were able to find nearby as teaching media. We introduced cooperative learning (Johnson et al., 2013), which was a hit because the values of cooperation and communal living were inherent in the local cultures. It was a breakthrough when the teachers and principals came to appreciate that cooperative learning and related student-centered methods were realistic alternatives to the conventional teacher-centered classroom. Those were small-scale pilot projects which were then expanded to 300 schools. Currently, I’m not directly involved in the projects, but I feel a lot of satisfaction that this student-centered pedagogy, coupled with appropriate technology, has been introduced in approximately 250,000 schools nationwide. I have done program evaluation at some of these schools, and it delighted me to see traces of student-centeredness through more varied seating arrangements and classroom displays (Harjanto et al., 2018). For instance, in most schools across Indonesia, there are hardly any classroom displays of students’ work. The classroom walls are mostly decorated with mandatory photographs of the Indonesian President and the Vice President and the national emblem, the Garuda Pancasila (Bahasa Kita, 2020). When teachers become more empowered through professional development sessions, their classrooms turn more lively with displays of students’ works and learning media and so serve as richer learning environments (Clayton, 2001). Recently, the Tanoto Foundation PINTAR Program won the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture competition for Leading Organizations to drive education improvement initiatives. Being a community-engaged educator can be a lonely path. Teachers need to have a strong vision of community development and an enduring commitment to work toward that vision despite all the challenges. In addition, teachers need to be prepared that members of the team may eventually not share the same vision or demonstrate the same level of commitment. For instance, I once had a team of three young people who were assigned to live in Papua and work closely with the people there for a contract period of one year. However, after a few months, one of them demonstrated an attitude that did not respect the people there or their culture. This condescending attitude was certainly detrimental to our project. Advice for improvement did not work, and we terminated his contract.

14

A. Lie

Sometimes I feel frustrated when our projects do not reach our expected level of progress. At such low times, I just tell myself that although we don’t always reap what we sow, we should continue to plant seeds for others. Many teachers may feel that the obstacles are too big for them to carry out tasks beyond their primary teaching and administrative responsibilities. Everyone needs to sort through their choices and explore ways to be engaged educators. They can start small and do little projects within their realistic reach. Then, maybe they can scale up their projects. For example, during the pandemic, I started an online community of eighteen teachers from Palembang, Surabaya, Ruteng, and Ambon. With their informed consent, we collected data about their online teaching during the school suspension. When our data collection was completed, we also gave back by sharing insight through our WhatsApp groups and mobile applications. We continue to maintain the communication channels. In this way, we can share tips and tricks of online learning and provide online workshops. I’m hoping this community grows not only in size but also in quality.

Have you ever implemented Anita’s advice to start small? How did you/could you do that? One thing for sure, teachers who are engaged in projects beyond their own classroom engage in their regular teaching with more real-life materials that can serve as bridges between the standard curriculum and real life. In the future, I would like to start and develop more virtual communities of practice (Peñarroja et al., 2019) for teachers along the lines of the one in Yogyakarta. The sheltering in place and learning from home mode due to the Covid-19 pandemic has shed light on the widening digital divide across Indonesia. At best, a few teachers manage to execute effective online learning by engaging students in different learning management systems (LMSs). At worst, however, learning simply does not take place for many students. These students and their teachers lack resources to engage in online learning. In response, my team has just developed a simple mobile app as a resource for teachers in our research project. I hope we will have opportunities to develop and scale up this app to reach a wider circle of teachers. I am also currently involved in a research project that interrogates how faithful Indonesian education is to the cornerstones of meritocracy (Sandel, 2020), i.e., the idea that success in education, careers, and other aspects of life should be determined by how hard someone tries, not by other factors, such as family wealth or connections. The idea of meritocracy is embodied in the phrase, “You can do anything if you set your mind to it.” More than 250 teachers participated in the research, and we hope to navigate the uncertain seas of academic publishing in order to share our findings and recommendations. Indeed, researchers in three other Asian countries have already begun to adapt our research questions, methods, and instrument to their own contexts. In conclusion, I am inspired by Jane Goodall who gave up a comfortable life to devote herself to helping others (Goodall, 2001; Harjanto et al., 2018). In her case,

Tackling Poverty

15

the others were of another species, but the point applies to humans as well. Indeed, her Jane Goodall Institute (https://www.janegoodall.org) is involved in schools and communities worldwide, seeking to make the world a better place for humans and others. Now, even in her ninth decade on earth, Dr. Goodall continues to tirelessly pursue this noble quest.

References Au, W. (2016). Meritocracy 2.0: High-stakes, standardized testing as a racial project of neoliberal multiculturalism. Educational Policy, 30(1), 39–62. Bahasa Kita. (2020). Bahasa Indonesia: Online resources for learners and teachers. Retrieved from https://www.bahasakita.com/ Clayton, M. K. (2001). Classroom spaces that work. Strategies for teachers series. Northeast Foundation for Children. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No ED452990. Dawson, W. (2010). Private tutoring and mass schooling in East Asia: Reflections of inequality in Japan, South Korea, and Cambodia. Asia Pacific Education Review, 11(1), 14–24. Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Little, Brown. Goodall, J. (2001). Africa in my blood: An autobiography in letters, the early years. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Harjanto, I., Lie, A., Wihardini, D., Pryor, L., & Wilson, M. (2018). Community-based teacher professional development in remote areas in Indonesia. Journal of Education for Teaching: International Research and Pedagogy, 44 (2), 212–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2017.141 5515 Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Holubec, E. (2013). Cooperation in the classroom (8th ed.). Interaction Book Company. Peñarroja, V., Sánchez, J., Gamero, N., Orengo, V., & Zornoza, A. M. (2019). The influence of organisational facilitating conditions and technology acceptance factors on the effectiveness of virtual communities of practice. Behaviour and Information Technology, 38(8), 845–857. Sandel, M. J. (2020). The tyranny of merit: What’s become of the common good. Farrer, Straus and Giroux. Sulistyosari, Y., Dwiningrum, S. I. A., Zummi, N. Q. A., Tomo, S. W., & Indrahadi, D. (2020, February). Examining the basic educational rights in the newly-implemented school zoning policy in Indonesia. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Social Science and Character Educations (ICoSSCE 2019). Retrieved from https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/ icossce-19/125933395

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Racist Book Joel Jablon

Abstract Joel Jablon’s chapter looks at the ongoing journey of a white upper-middle class person in the USA coming to recognize the privileges they enjoy. Joel describes how he continues that journey in his teaching and in his neighborhood. A highlight of Joel’s chapter is how he came to re-evaluate a favorite book of his, To Kill A Mockingbird, a book he has taught. Joel had long seen the book as an overwhelmingly positive account of how a white lawyer had stepped forward to protect a Black client from racism. By being what Joel calls “radically open,” he was willing to listen to others with different views about the book. The chapter offers other examples of Joel’s radical openness. Keywords Radical openness · To Kill a Mockingbird · Antiracist education · Abolitionist education · Invisible gifts · White privilege · Neighborhood antiracist class

1 Definitions I am a cisgendered, straight, white male. I am also Jewish and I am upper-middle class. I am from Washington DC. I am still by most standards young, 36 years old. I am an English Language Arts and ESOL teacher at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon. I have an individual perspective and a worldview shaped by all of these identities. I have privileges associated with these identities. The advantages from my parents’ wealth intersected with those of my race and gender, providing me with early education, multiple chances to try and fail, access to small private schools throughout my entire student life, a feeling of safety and assuredness, among countless other obvious and invisible gifts to facilitate my success. This is not to say that all aspects of my life were easy; I had an emotional childhood, struggled to make friends, and underperformed in elementary and middle school. Thinking, writing, and considering these identities are at the heart of my educational philosophy drawn from writers and

J. Jablon (B) Portland, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_3

17

18

J. Jablon

speakers associated with Antiracist Education, Global Teaching, and Abolitionist Education. What do I mean by “invisible gifts”? There are too many examples of my privilege to include, moments large and small that I assumed existed for everyone. I remember being sixteen years old, going to a party shortly after receiving my driver’s license. After having 1–2 beers, I drove myself and a friend home, and for the first time in my life saw the ever-common blue and red flashing lights outside my rearview window. I still remember the tension, the immediate stiffening in my body, the assumption that my life was “ruined.” The officer tapped on the window, smiled when he realized our terror. He knew we had been drinking, knew we were underage, even said so. “I’m not going to write y’all a DUI (driving under the influence), just be careful getting home.” I thought this was how all young people were treated, that everyone got that kind of break. I did not know that our skin color and the car we drove likely had a great impact on the officer’s assumptions that we were not a threat. I did not understand that young Black men and women would likely not have received this pass. This was not the first time I was pulled over, and I even developed a self-assuredness, easily able to laugh and chat with police every time, like it was nothing, like I knew without a doubt that I would be just fine.

Have you had any experiences like Joel’s experience with the police officer? These could be ones that showed privilege or lack of privilege. I have borrowed the term “Abolitionist Teaching” from Betina Love, established in her book, We Want To Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and The Pursuit of Educational Freedom. I have defined the term for myself as a pedagogy rooted in self-reflection, listening, centering students’ experiences, and a radical openness to challenging my own assumptions about education as well as my understanding of the world. It means openly discussing race in my classroom, tracing the history of racism in America to the present, separating the difference between individual acts of discrimination, like a racial slur, from institutional racism, for example the denial of equal educational opportunities to Black and Brown people in America. It means teaching from the perspective of indigenous peoples, from the colonized instead of the colonizers. It means teaching my students to be activists, to fight for their rights and the rights of the oppressed. Probably most importantly, it means as a white, American male, to recognize my own narrow view, and to enter a daily practice of self-reflection and learning, identifying and rejecting my own bias and racism.

2 Language Shuffling in between desks of my chatting, laughing 4th period Freshman English class, I began handing out copies of a poem by the widely taught Sherman Alexie,

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Racist Book

19

Native American author and filmmaker of the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene tribes. Many of the students reacted with bursts of excited whispers having read his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in middle school. Although this was my first year teaching freshmen, still early into my teaching career, I had an impressive amount of confidence. Alexie was one of my personal favorite writers from when I attended high school, and I already had experience teaching his novels. Returning to the front of the classroom, I pulled up my presentation on the projector, offering a short biography of the author and some information about the Spokane Reservation in Idaho where he grew up. I had already taught this author to two other groups of students, so went through a practiced speech about the slides, easily outlined the instructions for analyzing the poem, and had different colored highlighters ready for a close reading of the poem. When we were ready to discuss, I knew to ask students about the allusion to Buffalo Bill, the word choice of “pawn shop,” then knew to draw students’ attention to its comparison to a museum at the end. I knew the timing of the lesson; my last sentence came right before the bell rang. The students packed away the poems, returned the highlighters to their trays, and disappeared out the doors to their next class. My star student lingered behind, waiting patiently for everyone to exit before speaking to me. “Hey,” I said smiling. “What’s going on?” “Mr. Jablon,” she said with seriousness and concern. “May I ask you a favor?” Admittedly, with some nervousness, I replied, “Of course.” Mr. Jablon. Could you please not use the phrase ‘American Indian?’ I would prefer it if you used ‘Native American.’ I am Native American and do not like hearing ‘Indian.’

My initial thoughts were defensive. I began thinking that this student didn’t actually understand my careful choice about language, the fact that I had been reading Alexie for ages and that he called himself an “American Indian,” that my choices were actually a sign of respect. I almost told her all of this nonsense, told her that she had misinterpreted the lesson when I realized that I was the one who did not understand. I did not understand that just because Alexie uses this term, it does not mean it’s appropriate for a white person to use it. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t about being right (which I wasn’t), but being sure that in every decision and action as a teacher, I have a responsibility to listen to my students, to show them the same respect and reverence that is every person’s right. I did not understand that it wasn’t about me. The next time this class met, this student gave a presentation to the class about the problems with the language I had used, explained its impact on her and her community, and requested that students use the term “Native American.”

Do you have any of your own stories about listening to your students (or maybe not listening to them)? Joel has mentioned radical openness, and later in the chapter gives an example? It’s not easy to be radically open.

20

J. Jablon

I often reminisce about this moment, a reminder to listen to my students, to the communities I plan to discuss when choosing what language I use in my classroom. I use the acronym BIPOC, short for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, because my BIPOC students ask me to use the term. I name my pronouns (he, him, and his) at the beginning of class, and ask students in a survey for their pronouns because my students who are non-gender conforming or transgender tell me that when I do, they feel safe in my classroom. I do not believe I can effectively teach if my students do not feel safe and heard, respected, and loved. Ultimately, I try to make choices in my classroom that my students will see as acts of love. There has existed for me a fear of “getting it wrong,” making a racist statement or argument by accident. I understand that living as a white person and living in majority white communities does not provide me the knowledge or context to be seen as an expert. As a white person, I do not think I can ever be an “expert” on racism or antiracism; however, I also do not think that I must present myself as all-knowing to engage in this work. As a white educator, my real strength is the ability to be a member of a learning community, willing to listen, admit fault, and point to my own past as an example of privilege, of not seeing.

3 Hurdles September 2020. “To Kill a Mockingbird is a racist book.” I found myself tense when she spoke these words. A Portland State University student and organizer had invited me to join an antiracist seminar for educators put together by a student group at the college. For those not familiar, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an American classic often held up as the epitome of stories that combat injustice and racism. In truth, I have a particular fondness for the book. I have taught Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to classes of mostly BIPOC students. It was one of the main texts as part of the Lewis and Clark Graduate School for Education and Counseling, the progressive institution that helped set the foundations for the way I currently think about education. The year before I had even traveled to New York to see a new stage production of the book! To Kill a Mockingbird is the very definition of a white savior narrative. The story immortalizes Atticus Finch, a reluctant white hero, for answering the call to do all the right things in all the right ways. At the same time, it gives absolutely no real voice or agency to black characters. It perpetuates the idea the black people were afforded freedom because of morally decent white men, even arguing that the individual actions of black people are childish and short-sighted. “She’s right,” I thought.

My reaction to hearing this statement revealed an attachment I still retained to early, easy-to-digest definitions of “racism.” It belied a belief in racism as about intention rather than impact, as individualistic, rather than institutional. To call To Kill a Mockingbird racist is not to say that it has no inherent value; I think it’s pretty

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Racist Book

21

clear that Lee’s intentions were to write a book that helped white Americans see the prejudice prevalent in our laws and in our courts. It is to say that the book does present to its readers a racist narrative about the history of change in our country. I am called to Ibram X Kendi’s How To Be An Antiracist, his definition of a racist idea, “any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way” (p. 20). I think it’s fairly obvious that this book, with its characterization of black people as passive, with its main black character Jim portrayed as slow, shortsighted, and mostly voiceless, perpetuates racist ideas. For all its worth, it is a racist book. If it’s a racist book, then should it be taught in middle or high schools at all, regardless of the value it might hold? I still have so much more to learn, so much more work to do.

What’s your answer to Joel’s question about whether To Kill a Mockingbird should be taught? The same issues arise with other famous books, such as Huckleberry Finn. These moments of discomfort are the key to embracing antiracist teaching and abolitionist education. Unfortunately, they can also be what for many educators derails this work. I have noticed that many teachers, especially white teachers like myself, become nervous or frustrated early on, and pull away from it. Sometimes, they experience discomfort arising from a situation like the example above, having a strong connection to a text or teaching style, feeling offended or even confused as to how to proceed. Similarly, this example points to another major area of discomfort for white educators, not knowing what to do with disagreement between BIPOC authors, philosophers, politicians, or even students. I am sure that there are people of color who very much love To Kill a Mockingbird and do not see it as a racist book. I think that these moments pose such a problem for white people because we often like to see black people as monolithic, ironic considering our own resistance to being seen as anything other than individuals. It has taken me much time to accept that being white, living in communities almost entirely composed of other white people, attending institutions that accepted almost entirely white people, has had a profound impact on the ways I see, and don’t see, the world around me.

4 Professional Community In the moments that will arise, those of discomfort and challenge, questions about your own pedagogy, doubting your direction or daily practice in the classroom, I implore you to build and lean on a community of educators to rely on for advice and guidance. I also encourage building communities outside of the workplace. In the summer of 2020, inspired by the global Black Lives Matter protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, I felt like I needed to take abolitionist teaching out of

22

J. Jablon

the classroom and into my community. I developed a curriculum for a neighborhood antiracist class, not knowing if there would be any interest. I made a long post on Nextdoor, a platform for local neighborhoods, created a group page, and began to host online sessions three times a week examining an article, podcast, and reading entire books broken up into weekly discussions on each chapter. Although there was a ton of interest, I immediately found myself deep in uncertainty, juggling my lesson plans, ideas to use new technologies, and so many differing opinions from the participants. I had never actually taught adults; I felt much more comfortable teaching adolescents. Upon introducing the first book, a focus text in one of our monthly equity trainings, I was met with a flurry of unexpected criticism. One woman in the group thought the author was condescending. Several more people in the group had discovered recent critiques of the work that I had not seen. Feeling frozen, not sure how to respond to the group, I called up a colleague on our Lincoln staff equity team, a person who knew the text, and I asked for help. Yes. There are a number of critics, and many of them make some good points. I have found that the book’s analysis of liberal white racism rings pretty true, while in some parts, the argument can be a bit narrow. That said, it helped me see my privilege, blindspots, and racism at various stages in my life.

It didn’t take long to get on the right track. We read a few of the critiques, discussed them, and pretty much unanimously decided that text had value, continuing to think about and discuss critiques. The group continues to meet each week, and I have grown so much closer to my own community, changed so much from their wisdom, and formed many friendships along the way. This has been the way forward from the beginning. I understand that this point might feel obvious to some readers; of course, all texts have critiques, disagreements between scholars. Yet, I have found time and again, that educators are derailed by these conflicts. These disagreements do not diminish any one thinker, but are part of any mass expression, growing, transforming, and realizing itself through the contribution of infinite voices.

5 How I Began This Work I began small. I started by revising my curriculum, rethinking the poetry and prose introduced in my class, reconsidering the literary canon. The administration at Lincoln High School set aside time for monthly equity training along with funds for other professional development opportunities. I taught novels and narratives from a wider variety of authors and genres, developing curriculum not only steeped in my activism, but that elicited joy and excitement in the class. “This is the best book I have ever read in an English class,” I heard from so many students after teaching an Afrofuturism unit based on Octavia Butler’s Kindred, about a Black woman thrust back in time again and again to the American South in the years before the Civil War (1861–1865). I know that my students loved my choice,

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Racist Book

23

but I also know that my own giddy excitement about time travel and science fiction came through to my students. “Why didn’t we read this at the beginning of the year?” my students collectively yelled as we began our final unit of the year with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ groundbreaking work Between the World and Me. I drew from my students’ own passions, beginning this unit with a thematically connected music video from the artist Childish Gambino, This is America. The song and film together make a poignant critique of the way we frame race and gun violence. As I pressed pause on the video, hands shot up across the room before I could even ask a question; students started answering before I had a chance to call their names. The man in the beginning is a reference to Jim Crow. Look how he carefully wraps the gun in velvet. He cares more about it than people. Do you all notice the kids are taking pictures with their cell phone cameras?

It was clear that students knew more about it than I did! This excitement from my students fueled my decision to choose different texts, those written, filmed, recorded, or drawn. While professional development gave me a new foundation, my students’ reactions pushed me to change my outlook on lessons and activities, even my role as a teacher. It became more than simply choosing different authors, a performative demonstration of diversity. I would realize so many of my own blind spots, my own racism, and recognize the need for much more; my work needed to be connected to the activism of my students. In every class, I had students talk about the Black Lives Matter movement, Feminist philosophies, the successes and struggles of the LGTBQ+ movement, environmental justice, animal rights, and economic justice. While we always talk about making material relevant to students, I felt like I needed more, needed students to feel that their education prepared them to explore these topics into adulthood. I realized that teaching from an antiracist lens meant giving students agency to define the trajectory of their own learning. I introduced a poetry unit that used the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a starting point for students to each write a book of poetry based on a topic that deeply and personally affected them. When I first explained the project, I heard the expected groans from the mention of poetry. Later that same day, teachers told me they heard students complaining about writing poetry, “the worst thing Mr. Jablon could ask us to do!” They took particular offense to the final piece, a call to action. “After you all complete this work, you must find a way to affect change with your writing, such as organizing a rally in which you read your poetry in support of a cause. You can take an individual action or come together collectively as a class.” Maybe it was a lot to ask my students to organize an entire rally, but I believe in encouraging my students to go big! Despite all the trepidation, even having to complete the assignment online due to the global COVID pandemic, students produced the best writing I had ever seen, made hand-drawn illustrations for every single piece, and shared the poetry on social media as a demonstration of care and support for their global causes.

24

J. Jablon

6 Classroom Community In 2020, I returned to English Language Development or English For Speakers of Other Languages (ELD or ESOL), which I had not taught since my first year at Lincoln. I was thrilled to be working with students from a variety of countries, but worried about all the time spent away. I began my first class with a story about my time learning Spanish, explaining the many struggles along the way, the struggles I still have today as I try to fit practice and classes into my packed schedule. The students immediately wanted to share their own stories, not only about learning English, but experiences learning 3rd and 4th languages. “I’m also learning Spanish right now, Mr. Jablon. We can practice together!” From that point on, my students continued to help me with my language learning, all of them more open to making mistakes, especially when they watched me stop and stutter with grammar and pronunciation. When later that year I discovered my Fulbright assignment would be to Morocco, my students from Yemen and Pakistan hurriedly attempted to help me learn some Arabic and Darji before the trip. My classroom soon became a close community of learners, students playing music on ukuleles, arguing over rules for board games during breaks, asking each other questions about navigating American school, and discussing current events in and outside of the USA. Students also began coming up with ideas for units, asking for lessons on music, art, and games. These requests quickly moved into the antiracist, abolitionist teaching that was my personal passion, units on food deserts, American communities that lack grocery stores or any way of purchasing fresh food, Western misconceptions about the continent of Africa, and bias in the media. I remember so many questions from this class: Why does America have so many people living without homes? Why do many Americans call Africa a country? How do I know what I can trust on television?

As much as I often want to begin with this type of relevant content, I am conscious that for authentic teaching, my students must have a voice, must know that they are part of a caring community. If I want my students to be invested in my class, I must be invested in their lives.

7 How to Get Started As explained, moving toward an abolitionist model of education can be quite challenging, especially trying to figure out where to begin. I believe this work to be vital, that as I heard Bettina Love say in a seminar, “If you cannot say the words “Black Lives Matter,” you cannot teach Black children.” That said, it is just as vital when approaching this work that we do it with care and with our students in mind. Here are a few final ideas to help you begin this journey:

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Racist Book

1.

2.

25

Start Small. I began thinking about the representation of authors and characters in the books I choose for class. This small step led to an explosion of learning and reimagining of my classroom. In fact, one of the first changes came when my father sent me Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. I managed to get a class set and now teach it every year. I encourage you to begin with a small change and see where it leads. Many of the books I teach are available in multiple languages along with graded readers, such as Monster by Walter Dean Myers and The Diary of Anne Frank. Read. If you are interested in participating in antiracist pedagogy, it’s important to do the work. Here are some authors to help begin your journey: Beverley Tatum, Bettina Love, Gholdy Muhammed, Paolo Friere, Jonathan Kozol, Howard Zinn, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Demetrius Noble, Ibram X Kendi, and Jesse Hagopain at Rethinking Schools. I also lean on digital resources such as the Zinn Education Project and Educators for Antiracism website.

The situation in regard to racism and other global issues differs not just between countries but also within countries. What about where you teach? Are Joel’s ideas and experiences relevant to you, even if your situation is different?

3.

4.

5.

Engage in Professional Development. While it took many years to be able to openly talk about race and racism in my own life, not to mention leading discussions in a classroom of adolescents, I can say that the most profound shifts came from attending Lewis and Clark, regular equity trainings, Restorative Justice and Collaborative Problem Solving, the NorthWest Conference for Teaching Social Justice, and other enriching courses. I am hoping to enroll in a facilitator program at the Center for Equity and Inclusion in Portland, Oregon. I encourage you to find opportunities to learn and engage before beginning and while doing this work. Engage with Self-reflection. I have found that in order for my best engagement in antiracist teaching, I have needed to write about my own growth and development from my childhood. I have kept a running document along with multiple individual pieces examining racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and many other prejudices in my life and thinking. I have posted a version of one of these reflections on my website, which I hope you’ll use as a model to think about race and racism in your own life. This work necessitates honesty about ourselves, a willingness to experience discomfort that we too often brush away to get on with our daily lives. Create a Community. I would not have been able to push through my own difficulties without the support of other teachers who acted as mentors and teachers traveling the same journey. I would try to find like-minded colleagues at various stages of this work to discuss issues and feelings that come up, fostering each other’s daily progress.

26

J. Jablon

6.

Calling In Is Better than Calling Out. This work leads to mistakes. As you learn, you will notice statements, ideas, and beliefs from friends, families, and colleagues that will make you upset. You will likely notice a shift in your own beliefs, and feel guilty. Remember: this work is not about calling people out for being racist, it’s about developing a pedagogy that honors and celebrates all our students; it’s about growing and learning as an educator and a person. Always be kind, both to yourself and others by calling them in, by welcoming them to join you in whatever ways are comfortable for them, while you progress in abolitionist teaching.

For more tips, resources, lesson examples, or to follow my current thinking, please visit my website: https://jjablon.wixsite.com/mrjablonteaching.

Authenticity as Activism Yoshi Joanna Grote

Abstract Yoshi Grote presents a powerful story of how teachers need to be authentic with their students. Of the many lessons Yoshi learned from her early teachers, she highlights three: “The best teachers are authentic. The classroom is the world. Teaching is political.” A standout point in the chapter was when Yoshi decided that the inauthenticity of hiding her personal life as a lesbian from her students was no longer tenable. She quotes Paulo Freire who stated that “I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.” By being authentic with her students, Yoshi was supporting students dealing with their own sexuality and gender identity, as well as making herself a resource for curious students. Additionally, she became a role model for anyone who in whatever way felt different from the norm. Keywords Teacher authenticity · Sexuality · Gender identity · LGBTQIA+ · Teaching is political · Tertiary education in Japan · Teachers as role models · Paolo Freire I am gay. I am a gay teacher. One of these statements has always been true yet the other has not. In this chapter, I would like to share the story of how I learnt to bring my authentic self into the classroom and the profound effect that has had on my students and my career. To do so, I have to start with my own teachers. Many of us become teachers because of teachers. Many of us also don’t become teachers because of teachers, but that is another story. I became a teacher because of Ms. Clarke, who let me hang back after the bell had rung and shift my weight back and forth over the creaky floorboard in her 8th grade classroom while talking my way through growing up. I became a teacher because of Mr. Newman, who taught me that stories exist not only between the pages of books but within us and can tumble in paragraphs onto paper napkins and become something of value, and because of Mr. Anderson, who strung me up to the ceiling on a pully to demonstrate mechanical advantage. I do what I do because of the teacher who let me put a blanket on the floor for my imaginary dog, the teacher who took us outside to make us notice that Y. J. Grote (B) Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_4

27

28

Y. J. Grote

the classroom walls could extend into the world, the teacher who let me walk when I just couldn’t sit anymore, and the teacher who gave me hugs in the corridors. Those teachers lived deeply in their classrooms and showed us their humanity. It would be the greatest achievement to one day become a patchwork of all those teachers. Yet becoming a teacher is a lifelong process of learning, and the greatest things those teachers taught me are lessons I am only just beginning to understand. I will share them in the order I have been learning them and in doing so, I hope to illustrate not only how I support diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom but also how all teachers can make their classrooms more authentic, by modeling a comfort with difference. Here are the lessons: The best teachers are authentic. The classroom is the world. Teaching is political.

Yoshi says “the greatest things those teachers taught me are lessons I am only just beginning to understand.” Is that true for you, too?

1 The Best Teachers are Authentic “I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.” Paulo Freire

When I started teaching in my early 20s, I looked to those around me for guidance. In Tanzania, I wore a skirt as I assumed that to be a bona fide teacher, you had to look like one, and a skirt, though I hated them, seemed to be an essential part of the costume. In my first weeks teaching at a high school in Japan, I heard that another foreign teacher had been asked not to skateboard to school as it was unprofessional. I quickly took note of how other teachers commuted, ascertained that the majority cycled and swiftly followed suit. Fitting the image of a professional teacher was paramount when this was what I was trying to become. I was young, inexperienced, and struggling to maintain enough of a divide between myself and my students. I was less than five years older than some of them, only a little taller, and they asked me questions about my perfume choices, my love life, and whether I would add them on social media. I quickly determined that the fastest way to professionalism was a hefty wall between myself as an individual and my identity as a teacher in the classroom. Personal questions were met with the smiling response, “It’s a secret” and I let very few stories of my life outside the classroom slip into my pedagogical choices.

Authenticity as Activism

29

Do you know teachers, perhaps yourself, who believe that “the fastest way to professionalism was a hefty wall between myself as an individual and my identity as a teacher in the classroom?” This is how I taught for the first decade of my career: at a language school, a high school, and at a university. I was a popular and effective language teacher, but that is all. I was no Ms. Clarke, Mr. Newman, or Mr. Anderson. Then one day, after a university class I was teaching about the different forms of discrimination present in the film, Bend it Like Beckham (Nayar et al., 2003), a student stayed back and told me she was gay. I was a little taken aback. Why had she chosen me to trust? Had I given her any reason to? Perhaps it was simply because I spoke openly about controversial topics in the classroom? She spoke to me for a couple of hours, and I could tell she was relieved to have shared her story, but while I listened, I kept up that wall. At that point in my career, I was older and more experienced as a teacher, but still felt my personal life was not relevant to my students, and therefore, I let her share her story with me but left her that afternoon without sharing mine. That night, I went home and thought a lot about the visibility of my own personal life in my classroom. I came to the conclusion that by coming out to my students in the classroom I could better support those struggling with their own sexuality or gender identity, while simultaneously giving a resource to my other students who were curious and needed someone to ask questions to. Perhaps by doing so, I could also model a comfort with standing-out, supporting those struggling with other ways of being different. In other words, from the following day, the wall dividing my professional and personal lives began to crumble, and a new, more authentic part of me started to venture into the classroom. The day the student had told me her story was a Monday, and on Tuesday, I did not arrive at work waving a gay pride flag, but I did stop avoiding very basic questions about my daily life. “What did you do on the weekend?,” for example, is a question many teachers receive from their students. Many may not consider it to be too private to divulge, “My husband and I went to see a movie” but when you’re gay, this mundanity is outing yourself. Thus, my first step was to accept that sharing the simplest truths with my students would necessarily expose my sexuality. At first, this was tough. I would answer what I did on the weekend almost hoping my students would miss the “she” in my answer, or I would be nonchalant while turning red in the face. Yet, as with everything, with time and practice, I got better and more controlled and more confident. These days, in my gender studies and identity courses, I schedule time to come out to my students. I plan it, I brace myself, I breathe and feel controlled, and I no longer blush. I don’t want my students to see me as nervous or uncomfortable in who I am, I want to model pride and courage. I give them time to talk in pairs and come up with questions. In these two courses, I recognized my identity could be used as an interactive resource. In other classes, who I am is not as relevant. Nonetheless, when questions come up, I fight the urge to answer quickly,

30

Y. J. Grote

change the topic, and move on. Instead, after an initial answer, I sit in the silence in case there are further questions.

Do you try to be authentic with your students? Why or why not? If you do try to be authentic, what please is an example? Do you ever feel uncomfortable while being authentic? The knock-on effect of being authentic with my students has been humbling. The LGBTQIA+ community suddently started to become more visible to me. Weeks after coming out in the classroom, a student would appear at my office door, often one I didn’t even know, a friend of a friend of a student in one of my classes who had a story to share. With students’ permission, I started collecting these stories, engaging in dialogue, and asking these students about their own visibility and sense of belonging in society, and with this, a body of research was built. Colleagues also took note and suddenly, I was being approached with questions about how they could better support their own LGBTQIA+ students or address this topic in their own classrooms. On an institutional level, I was asked to help revise documentation for incoming exchange students to better meet the needs of gender non-confirming or trans students. In addition, our university diversity committee reached out to me to hear what I had learnt from student voices. I realized that by coming out in the classroom, I had started to fill a void that had been present in our university—that of visible LGBTQIA+ support. I also realized that sharing the voices of this unheard, invisible community could benefit more than just our university. I started to present about this topic at national teacher conferences and connect to local LGBTQIA+ support groups (though there are few in Japan). A few LGBTQIA+ teachers from other universities reached out, and we have collaborated on a few research projects. I even started my own conference, the Living on the Edge Conference https://differ enceconference.weebly.com/, which had the stated aim of celebrating difference and sharing stories of diversity, and encouraged students to attend. In terms of the core of my job, in the classroom, this entire journey began to teach me about the pedagogical value of authenticity and self-disclosure. As far back as 40 years ago, Beck (1983, as quoted by Goldstein & Benassi, 1994, p. 212) reported that “her students thought her self-disclosure humanized the classroom, encouraged openness in students, brought unity to the group, validated diversity, and made the class more meaningful,” but only now was I experiencing this firsthand. At the time of writing, I am convinced of two things: (1) we all have the capacity and means to be authentic; (2) we can actively encourage self-disclosure from our students to help build a cohesive classroom culture which is conducive to deeper learning.

Authenticity as Activism

31

2 The Classroom is the World Being gay, for some people, can be about more than simply who you are attracted to. For me, it has shaped my understanding of gender and made me acutely interested in how we are all subject to certain pressures from society regarding expectations for behavior, roles, and expression. Because I find the world much more binary than the people within it, and the expectations for performance exhausting, I feel it is my responsibility to deconstruct gender as much as possible in my classroom, not just for my LGBTQIA+ students but for all my students, as none of us escapes the forces of gender. Before I explain how, let me briefly outline why.

2.1 The Real World The real world we live in is gender binary. One of poodles and rottweilers, steak and salad, ballet and rugby, logic and emotion, beer and cocktails. Regardless of your own gender identity or sexuality, if your life depended on assigning the term “male” or “female” to each of the words I listed above, while matching responses given by the majority of society, you could do it: female, male, male, female, female, male, male, female, male, female. It is not just pets, food and drink, sports, and thinking patterns that are divided but also expectations in terms of behavior, education, career, expression, parenting, and other relationship roles, language usage and institutions, to name just a few. We live in a world that separates humans into gender categories from before they are even born: “You’re pregnant? Congratulations! Boy or girl?” How is this relevant to the classroom? As you read the above, I am sure you came to the same conclusion: you are not gender binary. You may be a sensitive man, one who cares deeply for his family, or a woman who enjoys fixing cars; you may be agender or non-binary, you may be an ambitious woman or a man who enjoys a long bubble bath. None of us fit the mold cut out for us by society and that includes our students. Trying to fit can be exhausting. However, the hugely exciting point for me is that as teachers, we have the opportunity to craft our own societies within our classrooms. We can make a place for our students which is more comfortable than the real world, a unique culture with its own rules, a safe space, a vantage point to see the invisible forces at play. For me, it is a place to engage students in questioning gender in the world outside and a space to practice voice for change, if they wish. Although gender happens to be a particular area of interest for me, I do also believe that it is the responsibility of all teachers to support their students, including those who are LGBTQIA+, in the classroom and for that reason, I’m an advocate of deconstructing the gender binary in class, where possible.

32

Y. J. Grote

2.2 Deconstructing Gender in the Classroom In my mind, there are at least three steps to deconstructing gender in the classroom: un-gender language and be conscious of your own bias, diversify materials, and create a diversity-positive culture. Let me first explain these three in a little more depth.

2.3 Un-gender Your Classroom In my opinion, there is no reason to divide students by gender in the classroom. Equally, in any language, I don’t think there is any need to ask students to read dialogues in a way that matches their supposed gender expression or to pair or group students based on their gender expression. Another thing we can do is to become more aware of the language we use in the classroom. It is very common for us to teach the language we grew up with. For example, only last year I discovered that in my debate materials, I was asking students to use the phrase, “Ladies and Gentlemen” to address the audience and judges at the start of a debate. In creating the materials, I was drawing upon my own bank of “formal language.” However, language is continually evolving, and one direction it is moving toward is gender neutrality. In 2017, the London Underground (Lees, 2017) made headlines when it decided to replace this phrase with the more inclusive, “Hello everyone.” In the following years, many other industries and companies, such as Japan Airlines (Thompson Reuters, 2020) and Air Canada (Ma, 2019), have followed suit; so, it stands to reason that teachers should adapt too. In a similar vein, although some textbooks still teach outdated vocational terms, such as policeman, fireman, waitress and waiter, actor and actress, we can seize this as an opportunity to not only update these terms for our students but also discuss the impact language has on thought and consider how words and ideas may be gendered in other languages as well. In Japan, I ask students to come up with examples of gendered kanji, and students often come up with the older words for nurse and birth attendant. Both of these have now removed the kanji for “woman” to create more gender-neutral terms. As well as our language usage, we should also be conscious of the ways we unwittingly uphold the binary. It is tempting, after all, to say you would like to hear a “male perspective” after hearing several female students voice their opinions on a particular issue. However, by doing this, we are signaling that we think someone’s sex may be a reason for them to think differently. In addition, can we be sure that whoever we select to share this “male perspective” actually identifies as male? If not, wouldn’t it simply be better to ask someone who has yet to speak, “What do you think?” and leave it at that?

Authenticity as Activism

33

2.4 Diversify Materials For students to engage with learning materials, it is vitally important for them to feel recognized and represented. The language that they are learning should be language they can use in their daily lives. For this reason, it is important for us to diversify materials as much as possible. Sometimes, we may be asked to use a textbook we are not comfortable with. Gendered texts are not completely a thing of the past. Cook’s (2015) study of the four skills university English language textbook “Stretch” found that males were depicted more often than females, females were often behind men, especially in sports, and females were often in situations asking for help. In addition, in two chapters entitled, “People we admire” and “Music” women were significantly under-represented. Yet even in this kind of situation, not all is lost. When faced with teaching such a textbook, the important thing is to highlight these issues to students and use these gendered aspects as a springboard for discussion. We often have the opportunity to select at least a bit of our own teaching materials. At these times, I think it is important to choose thoughtfully. We can choose TedTalks, readings, films, and other materials which lead to further discussions of gender topics or provide representations of individuals along the gender spectrum. When students’ productive language ability is not enough to engage them in a deep discussion of gender issues, we can still make an impact, and one of the most powerful ways to deconstruct stereotypes is through image. Images are powerful; we use them in our PowerPoint slides, often to teach vocabulary, but they are also a very simple way to challenge fixed ideas. For example, when teaching the noun, “parent,” we can show an image of a man caring for his child rather than a woman, when teaching the verb, “knit,” we can display a man creating something rather than a woman, and when teaching the adjective, “affectionate,” we can present a same-sex couple instead of a heterosexual one. When I Googled, “fast athlete” the first three lines of hits that appeared featured 17 images of men, and four of either a woman alone or a woman with a man. It makes sense, therefore, that if we select at random, we will perpetuate stereotypes, but I encourage teachers to take the extra minute to challenge them. It’s important that your students feel they belong to the culture you have collectively created.

2.5 Create a Diversity-Positive Culture Most educators want their classrooms to be places where students feel safe and accepted. This is especially important if the content you are using in the language classroom would benefit from students sharing their personal experiences. Many of us start creating such an environment by having a list of collectively created rules. I do this in several of my classes, and the resulting discussion rules tend to look something like this:

34

Y. J. Grote

1. 2.

Talk about yourself but try not to assume about others. Give people the benefit of the doubt. We are speaking in our second or third languages. (although we may say something that sounds offensive, this may be a linguistic issue rather than one of malicious intent). Share as much as you feel comfortable with. Listen respectfully. Don’t judge others. Be brave and curious. (It can be hard to share your own stories or ask others about theirs, but doing so can deepen our understanding of the content, and each other). Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t want to answer”/“I don’t want to talk about it.”

3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

I would like to emphasize that in any situation where we encourage students to share their stories, we should also teach them the language to assert their boundaries. We all need to be empowered and able to say, “I don’t want to talk about that right now” to feel truly safe. The LGBTQIA+ students that I have interviewed over the years have often said that visible support would help them feel comfortable. As one of my students stated, “Something that would have helped me in my most insecure times is a series of posters hung up on campus that, for example, by educating on LGBTQIA+ issues, show not only the university’s recognition of the community but also its acceptance.” We do not always have the power to make our educational institutions take this step, but as teachers we may do so as individuals. I have a “safe space” sticker on my office door and a rainbow strap on my classroom keys but perhaps more powerful is the tiny pride sticker one of my heterosexual colleagues has stuck on his laptop. This colleague is an ex-rugby player and someone who may initially feel intimidating to students who don’t know him. In the years that I have been interviewing LGBTQIA+ students, almost all of them have mentioned this sticker, and most of them have never taken this teacher’s classes. To me, this illustrates how such a small gesture can make a huge impact. I believe this is one way that teachers can show their support in unspoken ways. Other teachers have shared other methods for doing this, including having specific anti-discrimination, pro-diversity policies in place on their syllabi or PowerPoint slides. A final thing we can all do to support diversity in the classroom is to call people what they want to be called. This starts with names. Instead of defaulting at the name we see on the register, we can ask our students what they would like to be called. Most of us have a sense of how our names are connected to our identity. There are Sarahs who hate to be called Sally and Richards who hate to be called Dick. If the name on your register is your deadname, connected to a gender you don’t identify as, this disconnect will be much greater. Although teachers may find it troublesome to cross-reference, this surely pales in comparison with a feeling of having your identity negated. As for pronouns, I think it is important to teach “they” as a singular pronoun and make it clear you are open to students sharing what they are comfortable with. I recently heard a story about a coworker’s young trans friend feeling supported when receiving an email from someone who listed their pronouns in their email signature.

Authenticity as Activism

35

My coworker immediately added pronouns to her own email signature, and after hearing the story, I did the same. After all, if we all use the gender-neutral bathroom (and such bathrooms are starting to become available in Japan), it destigmatizes the usage. If we all declare our pronouns, perhaps it will have the same effect. I do not claim to know. I think it is an important teacher trait to be able to live somewhere between what you have learnt and what you have yet to know, to own your mistakes and to change your mind and actions when necessary. This is why I think it is so important to make your learning environment a safe space to ask questions and make mistakes, for teachers too, as I think the best teachers are in a constant state of discovery.

In what ways is your classroom a “unique culture?” How do you attempt to make your class feel like a safe space?

3 Teaching is Political Act When I look back at those teachers who made me a teacher, a common theme runs through them all—care. They cared. They were passionate about their subject areas but even more than that, they were enthused about life and their position within the world, and they allowed those values to soak in through the walls of their classrooms to the students they visibly cared deeply about. I am still engaged beyond my 8th grade classroom walls in the lessons I learned from my teachers. Teachers are gay, of color, poets, environmentalists, differently-abled, parents, and rich in experience. They are human and the best ones bring that humanity to their students.

References Cook, M. (2015). Gender bias in ESL/EFL textbooks: 10 years later. Between the Keys, 3(3), 4–7. [JALT Materials SIG newsletter]. Goldstein, G. S., & Benassi, V. A. (1994). The relation between teacher self-disclosure and student classroom participation. Teaching of Psychology, 21(4), 212–217. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328 023top2104_2 Lees, P. (n.d.). TfL scrapping ‘ladies and gentlemen’ isn’t about trying to abolish gender. Retrieved December 23, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/14/all Ma, A. (2019, October 15). Air Canada will no longer call passengers ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and will use the gender-neutral term ‘everybody’ instead. Retrieved December 23, 2020, from https://www.businessinsider.com/air-canada-stop-ladies-and-gentlemen-replace-gen der-neutral-everybody-2019-10

36

Y. J. Grote

Nayar, D., Chadha, G., Bindra, G., Berges, P. M., Nagra, P., Knightley, K., & Rhys-Meyers, J. (2003) Twentieth century fox home entertainment, Inc. (2003). Bend It Like Beckham. Beverly Hills, Calif: 20th Century Fox. Thompson Reuters Foundation. (2020, September 29). Japan Airlines ditches ‘ladies and gentlemen’ for gender-neutral greetings. Retrieved December 23, 2020, from https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ news/2020/09/29/business/corporate-business/japan-airlines-jal-gender-neutral-greetings/

Promoting Religious Tolerance Lisa L. Liss

Abstract Lisa Liss’ background seemed custom-made for generating religious and other forms of intolerance, growing up in a small town in rural Texas, USA, a place where everyone was the same religion. Plus, Lisa’s dad espoused a harsh form of intolerance. However, in primary school, Lisa became an avid reader. The Diary of Anne Frank made a special impression on her. Since Lisa has become a teacher, she and her students have undertaken many pro-tolerance activities, the most incredible of which was the 11 year-long Bandage Project to collect and write names on 1.5 million bandages to commemorate the 1.5 million children of various religions killed in the Holocaust. Keywords Religious tolerance · Anne Frank · Holocaust · Elementary school · The power of books · Guest speakers · Tolerance kids Born in Honolulu, Hawai’i but growing up in South Texas, my experience with religion as a child was mainly Protestant Christianity. I remember attending a tiny church in an even smaller town of Hope, Texas. My mother’s family, many of her thirteen siblings, comprised more than half of Hope church. Most of my aunts and uncles were in the choir and my grandmother sang her heart out inside the walls of that tiny church. What I wouldn’t give to hear her off key loud singing today! Many of my relatives still live within driving distance of Hope. While living in Hope, I attended a tiny two-room school housing grades 1–4 in one room and grades 5–8 in the other. Three of my aunts and uncles, as well as my brother and sister all attended this school at the same time. To say that it was totally a white Christian school would be an understatement. From Hope, we moved to the huge metropolis of Houston. As a shy, small town girl, I was overwhelmed by the big city. Houston however, was my first experience with other religions and other races. Having an ultra-racist “father” didn’t prepare me for the fact that people are people no matter their religious beliefs. During my 6th grade Language Arts block, I was put at the back of the room to work a designated reading kit by myself and ignored by the teacher. After a few weeks, I completed the L. L. Liss (B) Carnelian Bay, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_5

37

38

L. L. Liss

kit. When I asked the teacher if I could have the next one, she looked shocked and said, “Go to the library!” When asked for how long, she responded “The rest of the year!” Gifted and Talented wasn’t a title when I was growing up; we were considered “trouble” kids, especially ones who were as poor as I. Inside the library, I “met” all religions, races, and types of people. I read every book about the US presidents, famous people like Walt Disney, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, and Frederick Douglas. Reading took me out of South Texas and across the world. Luckily, I was an avid reader. I “met” Anne Frank when I was thrown away to “go to the library!” One of the first books that I picked up was The Diary of a Young Girl. The only book read across the world more is the Bible. Anne’s words inspired me to promise to teach her story to any children I would meet in my future. Becoming a teacher, I fulfilled that promise. “He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery,” Anne Frank’s words have guided me every step. Judaism was something I had no experience with at that time. It overwhelmed me to read that Anne’s family and millions of others were persecuted simply because of their religion! Anne felt like my best friend, and I knew somehow, some way, I had to help people respect others no matter how different their beliefs might be. How would I be able to achieve this? That took another 15 years to figure out what to do. A couple years later, we moved again, this time from Houston back to Hope. Hope didn’t have a high school so I was bussed into Yoakum. Yoakum, like Hope, was predominantly a white, Christian town. Nonetheless, my first best friend was a Mexican boy named Paul. He and I remained friends until his death in 2015. Paul taught me about Catholicism, what a family really should be, what a true friend should be, and how to love unconditionally. My eyes were opened to various religions and I wanted to know more. Thinking about Anne Frank, I knew that somehow, one day I would teach students about the Holocaust. In my heart I promised Anne that I would try to make a difference in this world and do my small part of never allowing another Holocaust to happen.

What about your own experience with diversity of any kind in your family, school, and neighborhood? What about in the smaller circle of people with whom you spent the most time as a child/youth? I started university back in Houston, at the University of Houston. Initially I majored in Child Psychology. I also studied about other religions and made friends from many different religions and was fascinated with the cultures and traditions that make up each religion. I was able to visit a temple, a mosque, a synagogue, even a monastery. This fed my desire to learn more and to one day teach my own children about religions. Child Psychology as my major changed when I became a mother to twin sons. I wanted something that I could use with a Bachelor’s degree right away. At first, I thought that teaching would be a steppingstone to something else. Little did I realize

Promoting Religious Tolerance

39

that teaching is my calling; it’s where I belong. My teaching career started in a small country school in Placedo, Texas. Teaching in Texas taught me how to speak up when a parent didn’t agree with my teaching their child about something other than Christianity. I had to explain personally to many parents that Christianity wasn’t the only religion. I believe that once their children came home and eagerly told them about the stories we were reading, they came to realize the importance of looking beyond their limited beliefs. God was a part of daily teaching and Bible study was encouraged. However, I knew how important bringing the world into my classroom was as my students and I researched religions and invited guests in to talk to us. After 10 years teaching in Texas, life handed me another curve as I moved to Northern California. Unfortunately, my moving coincided with the horrible killing by white supremists of James Bryd, Jr., an African-American, in 1998 in Texas. With my Texas accent fully intact at that time, I had several parents request that their child be moved out of my classroom. In fact, one parent took great pride in interrupting my classroom to call me a “racist bitch” from Texas. Through shaking hands, I quietly asked him to leave my room and called my principal. My principal came to my room and I walked outside the room to discuss this with the parent. At first, he continued to scream and cuss at me. Finally I was able to explain to him that judging me based on the fact that I came from Texas was just as bad as judging someone based on race or religion. Luckily for me, the man’s son didn’t seem to have the same prejudices that his father had. His father’s actions became a great time to talk about Hitler and how he judged people strictly on their race, sexuality, but mostly on their religion. My students were more diverse than my students in Texas. Teacher friends warned me not to mention God in my classroom as easily as I did in Texas. I wanted my students to have access to other religions than their own, so I researched the laws about religion in schools in California. According to the 1962 case of Engle vs. Vitale, “If a school has a ‘minute of silence’ or other quiet periods during the school day, students are free to pray silently, or not to pray, during these periods of time. Teachers and other school employees may neither encourage nor discourage students from praying during such time periods.” My interpretation of this law is that I am able to mention God, as long as I do not encourage or discourage my students to believe the same thing as I do. President Kennedy, a staunch Catholic, also had strong religious beliefs, yet he was able to see that all religions are worthy of respect. “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials—and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

40

L. L. Liss

Lisa had various resources, such as her school principal and a law, when criticized by someone, e.g., parents, from outside of her students. What about you? Who or what can you call on if you are criticized for being a community-engaged educator? Across the world, there are different rules and regulations about teaching religion. Research your country’s rules and do what you can. Speak up and work to change laws that are unjust. I consider myself an “Omnist.” I do not formally claim to be any one particular religion, but I find truth in all of them. Due to my student’s father’s prejudices, this was one key time that I knew I had to teach more about tolerance and acceptance. Through the years, I kept my promise to Anne and taught about the Holocaust. A few years later, I taught a group of 4th graders who questioned why particularly Jews were targeted and wanted to know who Jews were. We had Muslim, Jehovah’s Witness, Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants and Atheists; not one of my students had ever met a Jewish person (that they knew of anyway). The students were interested in finding out more. What better way than to meet real survivors of the Holocaust? My students and I discussed why Jews in particular were targeted. As we learned more, we decided that we wanted to become a club who encouraged others to accept all religions; thus, we became known as “The Tolerance Kids.” As a self-contained classroom teacher, I am able to teach all subjects to my students. In 2008, we decided that we needed to become a group that people in our city and even around the world could look up to and respect. Though it took us years, there are people all over the world who have heard our Tolerance Kids name. A friend of mine, who is gay, was totally against us saying that we should tolerate other viewpoints. He said that we should accept everyone, not tolerate everyone. Acceptance would mean that we agreed and accepted different lifestyles. Tolerance meant more to him than we were simply tolerating him, but not really accepting him. Listening to his side, my students and I agreed, but felt that tolerance was the first step. Until we learn to tolerate the differences in each other, we will never learn to accept everyone. The name stuck! My Tolerance Kids have a saying, “Once a Tolerance Kid, Always a Tolerance Kid!” They take this seriously. (Almost 20 years later, our Tolerance Kids are still making the world a better place.) I hear from former students often about how they have taken our messages to their community and college campuses and have created their own tolerance groups. The greatest gift a teacher can receive is when a former student, like Yareli, a former 4th grader of mine, writes: “Mrs. Liss, I am a teacher now, because of you! I remember the lessons you taught us, particularly the ones about tolerance. I chose to teach to promote tolerance and respect for all people. Thank you!” My Tolerance students have participated in worldwide projects like helping bring water to a town in Africa, to local projects like providing blankets and socks to our homeless. Looking outside their own narrow communities and offering hope to those

Promoting Religious Tolerance

41

who really need it promotes tolerance. Too often my students felt that people in other countries needed to pull themselves up and out of their situations. Those who are Christians felt they needed to turn more to God and their problems would be rectified. Our lessons about providing water for those in Africa showed my students that they needed to have compassion and help others regardless of their religion or place of residence. Recently my students gathered 50 blankets, 20 sets of sheets and 100 pairs of socks and took them to a local church who supplies needed items for our homeless. Many of my students walk past homeless camps on their way to and from school daily. Several children each year are themselves homeless. Many attitudes were mostly of disgust until we started these projects. I hear from many parents that their children now want to drop off food and supplies for the homeless. They created and filled 45 backpacks with hygiene supplies, books and toys for a children’s home. We twisted and tied 30 blankets for our local teen homeless center. They cooked and prepared strawberry and grape jam to give to a shelter. Our peach salsa made with ingredients from our school Tolerance Garden even won a local award. We add more yearly to our Tolerance garden and more students are a part. No matter what country you are in, your students will want to help others. Even though my students are often the ones in the shelters, they are still proud to help prepare and distribute these care packages. Given the chance, it is a rare student who does not want to change the world for the better. Another pivotal moment in my teaching happened a couple of years after coming to California, when Cameron and Simon entered my room. Cameron, a white Mormon boy from Utah joined my 4th grade class. It was the same year that Simon, a black Buddhist boy from Kenya moved to the neighborhood near our school. Simon was able to teach us first hand about his Buddhist beliefs, as Cameron taught us about Mormonism. As the year passed, I watched the two boys quickly become best friends. I never saw one without the other. One day, Robert, a student I had 7 years prior came in to tell me hi. As we spoke, it became clear that something wasn’t right. Finally, Robert told me that he and his best friends weren’t friends anymore because, “Gangs aren’t multicultural!” This made me realize that he not only was in a gang, but was now a racist. I had to teach more about Tolerance than ever and include as many experiences with other religions as I possibly could. If people can be tolerant of other religions, chances are they will be more tolerant of other races. Thankfully, my class that year was extremely interested in learning more and more about the Holocaust. They wanted to learn not only about the Jews, but the Polish Christians, Jehovah Witnesses, political prisoners, homosexuals, Gypsies, and anyone involved. Students who never wanted to listen to a teacher, listened. Those who never participated in projects, participated. Slowly day-by-day, my students began to turn themselves around and became Tolerance Kids. No matter what I have done over the years though, the 11 million people killed during the Holocaust was too big for any of us to imagine. My students couldn’t grasp the enormity of what 6 million Jewish people and 5 million Jehovah’s Witnesses, Polish Christians, political prisoners, and others were either. They were especially

42

L. L. Liss

affected by the fact that over 1.5 million children were killed. Even though it has been over 75 years since the end of WWII, meeting survivors makes it relevant to my students. We met a soldier who helped liberate the concentration camps in Europe. His tales shocked us into wanting to know more. Recently, we met Chelly, a survivor who was hidden by a Catholic family. Chelly shared her amazing story of thinking she was Catholic and then finding out she was in fact Jewish. Chelly reunited after about 40 years with the woman who treated her as her own child and saved her life. This Christian family didn’t care that Chelly was a little Jewish girl; they simply did the right thing. There was not a dry eye in my class as we listened to Chelly.

Do you ever have guest speakers, maybe even other teachers, in your class, either in person of virtually? Although nowadays survivor numbers are rapidly decreasing, we wanted to be able to do something to show the world it’s never too late to honor and respect those who never had a chance. We met survivors who had lost their entire families. The stories of their siblings and own children who were killed made the biggest impressions on my students. Many of my students live in government housing projects (areas where high poverty is the norm) and homeless shelters. Too often they live in areas plagued by violence, albeit on a smaller scale than in the war zones of the 1940’s Europe. They know what it is like to be persecuted because of their economic and racial standings in the community. My students can empathize with Holocaust victims. They were eager to create a project to honor those killed. We decided we needed to collect something to make the 1.5 million number real. We knew that a school in Tennessee had collected paperclips to represent the silent protest of the Danish. Danes wore paperclips on their lapel to show they disagreed with the Nazi requirement to wear the star of David in varying colors dependent on the “crime” it was determined they had. What could we collect? We sat in a circle and once again brainstormed! I wrote down all their ideas: pennies, feathers, toothpicks, marbles, crayons, buttons, the list continued… I promised my students that I would stare at their list until something made sense to me. Nothing was making sense. My 15 year-old daughter April and I sat around the table, we kept tossing each item back and forth. April cut her finger cutting paper out for an art assignment. “Mom, Where’s a bandage?” she asked. All of the sudden, I shouted… “BANDAGES!!!” That’s it April!!

They come in all shapes, colors and sizes… But most of all, they heal pain! April and I were so excited! Since bandages are a universal symbol of healing, we knew that we needed to get the universe to help! This began our 11 year quest to collect 1.5 million bandages to honor the children killed during the Holocaust. Anne Frank’s 90th birthday would have been June 12, 2019. This became our goal target date. We

Promoting Religious Tolerance

43

actually received our 1.5 millionth bandage on June 4, 2019. For over 11 years, my non-Jewish students felt this has been their project. They wrote tens of thousands of letters requesting bandages. They counted each and every bandage. On each bandage, the students wrote the name of a child who had died in the Holocaust or another tragedy we were contacted about. Bandages were sent with names of the Columbine shooting in Colorado, as well as Sandy Hook victims, the victims in the Parkland Florida shootings and many personal names in tribute of those family members lost in other tragedies. Bandages were their passion and they loved telling the story to the world. One of the directors of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, suggested that we send the 1.5 million unopened bandages to an immigration camp when finished so that they can be used. However, my students would not agree to this. They had spent years writing a child’s name on each bandage and did not want them opened. Each of these bandages truly honors a person who was killed through hatred. They felt a personal responsibility and duty to protect the names they wrote on each bandage. How do we let someone open them and then throw away the wrapper? Their names are important, we can’t throw them away! They were already thrown away, we can’t do it too!

These are some of their reasons not to give the bandages to a refugee camp. Instead, every single bandage is inside the container. The names of each child involved in our Bandage Project are written on the back side of the container in which all the bandages are stored. Many former students came to watch as the final 1.5 millionth bandage was dropped into the container. Jessica, a former student, was the one to realize why it was significant that it took 11 years to achieve. There were over 11 million people killed; so, it took one year for every million people. Aslan recognized that 1.5 million also stood for Anne’s age, 15, when she died. As human beings, three things make up our identity the most: our names, our hair, and our clothing. Names were stripped from concentration camp victims and replaced by numbers. Hair was shaved from each “inmate.” Clothing was replaced by rags and striped pajamas. Our bandages have given identity to 1.5 million of those murdered. Living now are not just survivors but millions of ancestors of the Holocaust. Our Bandage Project cannot heal all the pain, but the fact that children worked hard to honor the children killed is a great start. It is a story that the world needs to hear! Through our Bandage Project, we received bandages from people in all 50 states in the USA, 23 additional countries, and religions of all kinds! Our project touched thousands of lives. My Tolerance Kids met Jan Eric, the director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in my classroom in Sacramento. We were able to bring the worldwide Anne Frank project to many schools and community members along with our Bandage Project. California’s governor sent his secretary to hear the students’ story! One of the newscasters who came to interview us after the completion had been searching for years for information about her grandmother who was killed during the Holocaust. One of my students found her name through the Israel Holocaust registry. Having Internet available has given the world a way to share amazing stories, like our Bandage Project. Having Internet gave us more ways to research religion and

44

L. L. Liss

prejudices. We were able to meet people and actually talk to people from many other countries and religions using Zoom or other platforms. However, it is often also a way to quickly spread hatred. Mass shootings like those in Columbine, Colorado in 1999, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Florida of 2018, the Christchurch mosque in New Zealand of 2019 and more seem to intensify due to the internet. Bandages were sent to us with Columbine victim names; Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High students sent bandages with those victims names as well as many other victims all across the world. Unfortunately, since Columbine, school shootings have gone through the roof. According to John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security, “…law enforcement has observed that individuals tend to study past mass shootings.” Access to the internet feeds fuel to hate crimes. Speaking to my teacher friend, Meredith Akuhata-Brown, from New Zealand about the mosque shootings, she said that they are still sorting out what happened. “I believe that the internet has definitely been a tool that has been used to ignite hatred, influence copy cats, and inject unhelpful or incorrect information about events happening around the world.” She agrees with promoting “courageous conversations” as a way to unpack the fire of why there are so many racist views, especially against the Tangata Whenua Maori people. Due to more immigrants moving into New Zealand, Meredith felt that racial biases and religious profiling grew. In the USA, many more immigrants are moving in as well. Unfortunately because of years of forcing Mexican children into shelters and encampments, the USA is becoming more divided too. Listening to your language arts students and allowing them to question their beliefs and their actions is one important way that teachers can help unite religions instead of dividing them. A teacher must keep his/her own political and religious views out of the conversations. Be a guide, let the kids decide the path the conversations will take. The biggest thing I’ve learned about teaching and religion is to have those challenging conversations. Through my life I have found that it isn’t the person’s religion that proves their character as much as it is their actions. I’ve had students who were the kindest, gentlest students who may have been Muslim, Atheist, Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, etc. Many times, people seem to focus on one thing and then they “forget” what happened to others. Challenges swing back and forth. In 2020 while many students are distance learning, school shootings have disappeared. Once Black Lives Matter hit, people forgot about the mass shootings at synagogues and churches across the world. People tended to forget about their fears and hatred of Muslims from 911 and focused more on issues not having to do with religion. America was founded on being the melting pot of the world and as such, religion should not be the determining factor. A highly religious Catholic 5th grader didn’t understand why everyone didn’t believe as he does. Through conversations with a Muslim student, he was made aware of how our fundamental beliefs are the same. He believes in God and Karanjit believes in Allah, yet they both believe in treating people kindly and not disrespecting other religions. Take the risk, talk to your students. Find literature that interests your students. Ahmad and Aabhar, a 5th and 6th grader of mine, wanted me to read a book about Muslims in Asia. This was when I found many books like these: Amal

Promoting Religious Tolerance

45

Unbound, A Long Walk to Water, He Named Me Malala, and more that are set in other countries. They were enthralled with the books as were we all. In this way, tolerance toward other religions intersects with concerns about poverty, racism, and other issues. Luckily as an elementary teacher, we read books together and discuss them together. I find that passion is contagious. Enjoying literature is the biggest mark of success with language arts. Those who read, write more and usually do better across curriculum studies. Education does truly start in the younger years. As I am passionate about religious tolerance, my students become passionate and more tolerant as well. Thirty four years later and I am proud to say I still hear from a student from my very first class ever. I have received messages from my first California class of students as well. Everything that your students find a passion for, will boost their language skills, as well as skills in compassion and empathy which always has a great chance of making our world a better place.

Do your students have daily opportunities to express themselves in writing or otherwise? How can teachers and other respond in a way that promotes tolerance? Always, always listen to your students. They will certainly tell you what they are thinking if they feel heard. Purchase diaries even if they are simply black lined notebooks! Students’ language arts skills rise the more they read and write. Give your students a daily place to have freedom of speech. Read and respond non-judgmentally daily. I do not leave each day until I can respond. You will be amazed and shocked at what they have to say once they freely start to write. No one religion has all the answers, we all need to work together and make this world a place where everyone can get along no matter their race or religion. As my Tolerance Kids say, “Hate Hurts, Tolerance Heals.” Please visit our website: www.bandageproject.com.

Humanising the Other: How Teachers Can Help Refugees Linda Ruas

Abstract Linda Ruas introduces us to teaching for refugees. She started her career teaching students from fortunate backgrounds and with strong academic preparation. Linda’s career hit an unexpected bump, and she ended up teaching refugees in the UK. Even more challenging was when Linda taught in refugee camps in Greece and France. What became clear to her was something that motivates all the authors of this book’s chapters: there is only so much we can do in our classrooms; we must also look to make more system-wide changes. This is where Linda’s work in International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) becomes so enriching. Keywords Refugees · IATEFL · Refugee camps · Career changes · Intercultural communication · Translanguaging · Easier English new internationalist wiki

1 The Jungle I was sitting around an old wooden table with six young Afghani and Iraqi teenagers, getting them to practise asking for various tools—a hammer to bang in a nail, a socket to charge a phone, a piece of wood to start a fire. A strange vinegary smell wafted in through the open door, and the teens automatically pulled their T-shirts up over their noses. ‘Tear gas’, said one. ‘The police—to control us’. I’d come to the refugee camp—also known as the Jungle—in Calais, France, with a carload of teacher friends for our week half-term break in February. Half the camp had been burned down and destroyed by the French government two weeks before, the remnants of old toys and clothes still strewn all over the ground. The boys all turned up in the ‘school’ hut every morning, with the hope that there might be a few volunteer teachers there, who’d sit and talk to, or teach, them in small groups. As soon as we turned up, each of us was surrounded and ushered over to a group of chairs. I took out the piles of flashcards, they took out their notebooks L. Ruas (B) Bromley, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_6

47

48

L. Ruas

and pens, desperate to learn. Five hours later, we got up to leave, and they looked so disappointed.

What could you teach with a group of students and a few flashcards in a refugee camp? What language is relevant to teach? And how could you get students actively involved? I’ve never seen a group of learners learn so well or so quickly. They noted down all the vocabulary and phrases and learnt them all perfectly overnight. They’d also been to the port for hours, as they did every night, to see if there was any way to sneak onto a ferry to the UK, or squeeze up on a parked lorry between the cabin and the cargo part, or hang from underneath. Desperate, telling stories of their journeys and stories of why they had to leave, resilient and strong, they thanked us politely for the teaching, wished we could stay longer than a week. Some of the Sudanese invited a few of us to their tent for a cup of tea. We trudged through the mud and puddles, past the makeshift mosque tent and church tent, along the ‘main street’ with all sorts of mini shops, caravans for legal advice, a massive vat of hot food being served out into bowls, to their tarpaulin, and bought them a new canister of gas for their gas ring. But the Jungle was tough, cold, muddy and all about survival. There were stories every day of refugees from camp run over on the main road by the camp that led to the Calais port, trying to stop the lorries or get across barriers. One group of men shouted out as we walked past to the school: ‘Why they only send old women to teach here? We want pretty, young girls!’ The only tactics we saw from the French armed police, who kept their distance but always had their guns trained on the camp, was to lob canisters of tear gas whenever groups of refugees gathered. One of my friends assumed that we, as volunteers, would be allowed to walk out of the front entrance of camp, during one of these regular tear gas stand-offs, but no, the tear gas stopped for no-one, and we had to walk 5 miles round the back to get to the rooms above a bar where we were staying. By the third day, word had got round that a friend and I were teacher trainers, and we had a simple way of teaching that could work with untrained teachers, so we agreed to do a training session in the warehouse for the more permanent volunteers. Sitting in a circle on the floor and on the huge bags of donated clothes, we started with a checklist of ‘dos and don’ts’, then presented a simple structure of how to get students actively involved and using the language: words, phrases, task, with examples (Ruas 2017a).

Humanising the Other: How Teachers Can Help Refugees

49

2 How I Got Involved I went to Calais because, after more than 30 years of teaching and training teachers in several different countries and contexts, I think I can do it reasonably well without too much thought and preparation, and I felt the time had come to share my skills more widely. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been involved with different types of activism: local politics, awareness raising and running for charities, Amnesty International school-speaking, and organising sustainability focus groups at college through my teaching union. I’m lucky to have a regular income from my college teaching and training job, and more holidays than some. And luck, as we often read on social media, is the only thing that separates many of us from refugees. I’m going to write here about three different ways we, as English teachers, can try to help refugees. Going to the various refugee camps is one way, but we can also teach and support refugees in the countries they settle in, or remotely as they move around. Finally, we can work to raise awareness about refugees and their difficulties, and to counter the anti-refugee rhetoric that so many governments and newspapers support and spread. I started as an EFL teacher in London, then Brazil, teaching mainly students who had a good educational background and high level of analytical ability. Most of them could have learnt English by themselves, but preferred to pay someone else to make it more fun and less effort, and ensure they’d pass the array of external exams they had lined up. I loved the wonderful mix of nationalities, the intercultural communication, the freedom to take almost anything I wanted into the classroom and get students to discuss. I started taking politics, religion, sexism and racism into class—just to see what would happen—and develop students’ abilities to challenge inequality and social injustice. Students seemed to love it; the management of the private language school I was teaching at in Brazil would have preferred me to focus on castles, teapots and the Royal Family. A big change happened when, after suddenly being made redundant from a private language school in London, I started teaching ESOL in a College of Further Education. ESOL students are the longer-term migrants to the UK, including many refugees, who often missed out on a lot of basic education in their home countries, many with learning difficulties or an array of socio-economic and health problems. These adults and teenagers, from Somalia, Sudan and Iraq, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iran, Kosovo, Bangladesh and Turkey, really need English, and maths, and a job and help with family and health problems. They mostly have little idea how to learn, often coming from traditional education systems where the teacher wrote on the blackboard and the students repeated and copied. I wanted them to have the same opportunities as the EFL students I’d been teaching before and, the more I learnt from them about the horrific treatment of Kurdish refugees, about the war in Afghanistan and the famine in Eritrea, the more I wanted to do something about it.

50

L. Ruas

Have you ever felt that you really want to do something about a local or global problem? What was the issue you wanted to address? And what did you do about it, in or out of school?

3 What Can We Do? The system in the UK is that refugees are taught in ESOL classes in Further Education college, or charities, together with other long-term migrants. Asylum-seekers have no recourse to public funds; so, they are not allowed to come to regular classes. Claiming asylum can be a very long, worrying process, as after the initial claim, they have to wait several months for a review appointment to discuss their case, living in a crowded hostel on very little money (Sandhu, 2020). There is always some luck involved with how cases are presented, as we often hear from students, with sometimes arbitrary ages imposed where no passport exists. ESOL teachers are often involved in these cases as students have no-one else to turn to for support. And our department knows that we lose several teenage students every year when they then turn eighteen and often choose to ‘disappear’ rather than face the possibility of being sent back to their country. Whereas the tabloid news and other media often call anyone entering the UK a refugee, the legal definition is someone ‘who has fled war, violence, conflict or persecution’ (UNHCR, 2016). Proving this persecution is almost impossible in many cases, and international law might well need to change soon to include the increasing numbers of ‘climate refugees’ and ‘food refugees’, at present excluded (The Othering and Belonging Institute, 2019). ESOL teachers need, therefore, to be very sensitive with mixed classes of economic migrants from Eastern Europe, many countries in Africa, Asia and South America, together with refugees. Many have suffered trauma and may need ‘positive psychology’ to work towards ‘post-traumatic growth’ (Palanac, 2018). It seems like a good suggestion to never get refugees to tell any personal stories until they’re ready, giving the option of speaking or writing about a fictional family instead of their own. It is very important to work on boosting the resilience of refugees, whether in a camp or when settled in a new country, through teaching language. The British Council’s Language for Resilience project looked at various aspects of this (Delaney, 2016). Classrooms should be a safe space and be inclusive (Furneaux, 2016). One practical way of doing this is to welcome students’ first languages in class, in pair and group work. Recent research into translanguaging has shown this to be very effective (Baytas, 2019), but the idea is not new (Auerbach, 1993). Auerbach also wrote, decades ago, about Writing for Affirmation, Writing for Access to Powerful Discourses and Writing for Social Change (Auerbach, 1999), which can empower students, especially refugees, to find they have a voice.

Humanising the Other: How Teachers Can Help Refugees

51

Do you encourage learners to use their first languages in class? How can this boost their confidence, value their home language and help learning? Have you tried Auerbach’s ideas of ‘Writing for Social Change?’ If so, how did it work? My first foray into trying to make a difference, for my classes and other general EFL groups, was in voluntarily setting up a free-to-access website (Ruas, 2012) based on the articles about global justice in the monthly New Internationalist magazines. This started as simplified articles to give my students access to the complex ideas and has developed over the years into a resource bank for lessons for teachers too, together with many teaching ideas. This gave me a feeling of satisfaction that what I did could help change what people think around the world. It was in order to promote this Easier English New Internationalist wiki that I started presenting at ELT conferences and came across the IATEFL Global Issues SIG. Global issues are a strange thing, as most teachers I’ve come across in Europe feel it’s not part of their job to bring global issues into class—they are there just to teach the language, and need to make that fun. Only a small proportion, maybe 25%, are interested in teaching the ‘PARSNIP’ topics (Meddings, 2006), taboo issues that coursebook publishers refuse to include so they can sell more widely internationally. Most of my work colleagues are in the second group, with no spare energy or time, with ever-increasing demands and teaching hours, and the constant fight for higher pay. So, it was wonderful to meet like-minded teachers in GISIG, and I soon joined the committee, which opened the door to organising and presenting at various international conferences and has been brilliant for networking.

Do you bring the ‘taboo’ ‘PARSNIP’s (Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, -isms and Pork) into class? How?

4 Teaching Under Trees It was at a conference that I met my next contact that would take me to another refugee camp. I met a lovely young woman, Eliza, who had started up an organisation, We Are Here, in the Nea Kavala refugee camp in northern Greece, in May 2016. The stream of refugees moving up through Europe had been blocked at Greece’s northern border with Macedonia (Macedonia, Slovenia and Croatia closed their borders completely to refugees), and so many people needed help and support. After a year, Eliza knew the intensity of work and life in the refugee camp and the value of short breaks, insisting that all the volunteers took breaks too. On this break, she had come to the IATEFL conference, to be inspired about training her mostly untrained volunteer teachers.

52

L. Ruas

Our GISIG pre-conference day was all about refugees and migration, teaching and learning in refugee camps, and resilience training. Over coffee afterwards, Eliza was asking about how GISIG could help her teachers, and, as I love spontaneity and immediate action, I offered to go there the following month. Nea Kavala was completely different from Calais. For a start, it was hot. Very hot. Some of the shipping containers the families lived in, all laid out in rows in a disused aerodrome, even had basic air con and heating. Some of them had beautiful artwork painted on the sides, apparently done by the Get Shit Done team, who mostly do essential construction work in refugee camps. People mainly stayed in their containers, with nothing to do but worry and think about possible futures. Everything was very well organised and managed by the Greek military. Unlike Calais, where there was no control over either refugees or volunteers, in Nea Kavala, only people with approved applications, submitted in advance, were allowed in during working hours. Volunteers rented local houses, mostly funded by friends and family via crowdfunding. Refugees were all registered with the authorities, their children were about to start school in the nearby town, and they were waiting to hear where they might be accepted. I spent the week running training sessions in Thessaloniki and Polycastro, and sitting in on classes. We discussed problems and solutions, materials and simple lesson structures, lesson planning and longer-term course planning, teaching basic literacy and using stories, and saved resources online (Ruas, 2017b). One issue that arose was that many of the volunteers felt quite alone, for example, as the only volunteer in a camp or organisation, and they needed more individual support. So, I posted a request on Facebook for any friends and colleagues who would like to support one volunteer in Greece remotely via email or WhatsApp, and managed to get enough for all 20 who requested this in only one day. It seemed that many of my teaching colleagues wanted to do something to help too. In Serres, where the camp housed Yazigi refugees, mostly fleeing persecution and genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan, We Are Here could not get their contract renewed to teach inside the camp itself, so the lessons were held under trees in the nearby park. Rachel, one of the long-term volunteers, spread out a large tarpaulin on the ground and students sat around her. She’d had no training in teaching at all, and lacked confidence with grammar, so she used very traditional teaching methods, chanting, repetitions and decontextualised verb tables. We talked about how a bank of survival phrases would probably be more useful than the verb ‘to be’, and ways to get the students actively participating, for example, with simple role-plays in pairs, asking for directions and explaining health problems. Jill, one of the few teachers with an initial teaching qualification, was more worried about developing a curriculum to link lessons together and recycle language for new arrivals. Groups of refugees were often moved on to other camps or countries, and new groups arrived from the islands in the south of Greece every week, so they needed some sort of continuity to build on what students were learning. We decided on an order for topics and went through lesson sequences, all related to the basic language needs of these refugees who had no idea which country they might be given asylum in, just that they would probably need English. The lessons also needed to

Humanising the Other: How Teachers Can Help Refugees

53

be motivating and interesting, often the only event in an everlasting series of days, waiting to hear about settlement. Chrissie ran the women’s centre in the Nea Kavala camp, to help support women with English classes, yoga and knitting, food-sharing, beauty and art sessions. The volunteers had noticed that men usually controlled all interaction in the families and among the groups, so it was vital that women had a space to relax in, away from this. They had also suffered trauma, rape, witnessing so much destruction and killing, and needed people to care for them. They often came alive here, used to suffering in silence in mixed gender settings, and mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted from providing most of the care for the rest of the family.

5 Working with Root Causes of Migration I am still working with volunteers remotely, but haven’t been back since 2017. It felt very fulfilling to be involved so directly and to see how useful my involvement was. But there were downsides. I was reading so much about refugees and their stories that I often couldn’t sleep. I often felt terrified that there were no boundaries, and felt I would end up, like several volunteers I met, giving up everything and living in one of the camps on a permanent basis, or smuggling some refugee children back to the UK. Over the past few years I have been working with several groups of teachers in sub-Saharan Africa, helping to work with some of the root causes of migration. In countries such as Guinea Bissau, where teachers mainly use second-hand ELT materials that often present a very shiny, materialistic image of life in the UK and USA, many students are tempted to leave their country and make the perilous journey via boat from Senegal to Europe. We are trying to counter this image by developing simple, local ELT materials that value African and Bissau Guinean culture, and discuss solutions to local, social issues.

What image of life in the English native speaker countries is presented by the teaching materials you use? What can you do to add extra dimensions to or challenge this?

6 Humanising the ‘Other’ I am also still very much involved with refugees in the UK. I meet refugees every day in my adult and teen classes at college, where the refugees are with ESL students who are not refugees. I try to involve as much of their personal experience as possible, so

54

L. Ruas

learners learn about each others’ history and parts of the world. There are tensions at times, especially with very low level teenage groups, where students misunderstand or get frustrated if they can’t communicate. However, we do a lot of work on tolerance and respect with all classes, the UK ‘British Values’ introduced in 2014. And it was through this approach that I started planning a series of awareness-raising lessons about refugees for my Easier English New Internationalist wiki. I knew I needed to create more materials to discuss refugees in class when one learner, a Brazilian women, shockingly stated: ‘But all refugees are Muslims and all Muslims are terrorists’. After discussing why she said this, we found out that her husband’s friends had said it in a pub. But it was a clear reflection of the anti-refugee rhetoric being flung around in the media. We talked about the Muslim students and refugees in class and in college, and multicultural London and we looked at comic strip stories and animations, which can create a little distance, compared to live videos or harrowing news reports (Dix, 2019). It was emotional watching the hardhitting open-source educational materials produced by PositiveNegatives, inspired by true stories, especially the beautiful animation North Star Fading (PositiveNegatives, 2018) about the journey of four Eritrean refugees. Several students and teachers at our neighbouring college had complained to management about not feeling safe in their college, due to the ‘groups of teenage refugees hanging around in corridors’. So the Head of ESOL had to talk to all the ESOL groups and, with clear embarrassment, tell them that many people in the UK are afraid of people speaking other languages, and that a solution may be to smile and stand back politely for others to walk past. As the media, especially certain extreme right-wing newspapers, stoked the fear of the ‘other’, so the protests grew. ‘Say it loud, say it clear: Refugees are welcome here!’ I chanted with family and friends through the streets of London on several ‘Refugees Welcome’ protest marches. I showed my students that these were peaceful, safe protests that they could take their families to, with no danger of being arrested or shot at like in the countries they’d come from. Some came and discovered their protest voice. We started doing ‘Radical Phonology’ (Ruas, 2015a) in class, students writing protest banners about many things they cared about, including refugees, and even went on a protest march with a big drum against the cuts to ESOL classes around the college, the students improving their confidence and pronunciation of intensely meaningful sounds and stress, and other students paying attention. For example, our protest chant at the march: ‘Say it loud, say it clear: Refugees are welcome here!’ can practise rhythm and utterance stress, weak forms and individual sounds. Or ‘Girls can save the world’ to practise consonant clusters and the notoriously difficult /z:/ sound. We used participatory tools and materials from English for Action, a wonderful voluntary organisation in London that runs training courses for both teachers and migrant students to encourage action. EfA teach classes using community organising and the very practical participatory approaches, linked to Paolo Freire’s participatory methodologies, all explained in Reflect for ESOL Resource Pack. We talked about migrant rights, health and legal issues, and what action they themselves can take to improve these. All ESOL students need support to counter discrimination and the

Humanising the Other: How Teachers Can Help Refugees

55

hostile environment to all immigrants, especially in healthcare services. With these visual tools, icebergs, trees and onion rings, students can develop awareness of power structures, discuss solutions to practical problems, or unwrap issues to discover what is at the centre. We did quizzes, with students checking the answers on an infographic (Ruas, 2016a), lessons about the situations in Syria and in Lesbos, Greece (Ruas, 2015b), and positive stories about people helping refugees (Ruas, 2016b), to help us all understand more about what was going on. And not only about refugees going to Europe, but also about the Rohingya in Asia and the hundreds of thousands of Saharawi refugees from Western Sahara. And finally, at the end of term, the same Brazilian woman came up to me at the end of class and asked where she could find out about volunteering to help with refugees on the Greek islands. We teachers are in a privileged position to help the people caught up, through no fault of their own, in conflict or war. I will never forget a Kurdish woman student telling the class, most of them in tears, about how she had watched her village burn and her family die. Or my ex-student from Yemen, a victim of domestic abuse who obtained asylum in the UK, and then finally moved with her children to a safe home thanks to a local charity. Or my 19 year-old Afghani student who desperately wanted to be a doctor, to please his mother who’d sent him to the UK in the back of a lorry, but who could barely stay awake for his 2 h of ESOL classes per day due to medication he was on for PTSD. I have always brought the topic of refugees into teaching training courses too, but feel now I need to formalise this, and my next project with GISIG will be to produce materials for teacher trainers on pre-and -in-service training courses involving global issues, including the topic of refugees. I know many teachers will simply not be interested in this deeper dimension to many of our students. But I also know that many will be, and the more teachers we have who are actively committed to helping to improve the life of refugees around the world, the better. Elif Shafak, a writer activist I very much admire, wrote that we need to ‘tell different stories to humanise the other’ (Shafak, 2020). As teachers, I feel we need to use and teach language to humanise the other.

References Auerbach, E. (1993). Reexamining English only in the ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 27. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3586949?seq=1 Auerbach, E. (1999). NCSALL the power of writing, the writing of power. Retrieved from https:// lincs.ed.gov/professional-development/resource-collections/profile-426 Baytas, M. O. (2019). AAAL. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330 144924_Translanguaging_as_a_Pedagogical_Approach_with_Syrian_Refugee_Learners_in_T urkey_Lessons_Learned_from_a_Collaborative_Inquiry British Values. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/news/guidance-on-promot ing-british-values-in-schools-published

56

L. Ruas

Delaney, M. (2016). British council voices. Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org/voicesmagazine/can-learning-languages-help-refugees-cope Dix, B. (2019). The conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/graphic-violencean-innovative-way-of-representing-the-war-in-sri-lanka-128820?utm_medium=Social&utm_ source=Twitter#Echobox=1576765727 English for Action. Retrieved from https://efalondon.org/ Furneaux, C. (2016). British council teaching English. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/ developing-teachers-refugees IATEFL Global Issues SIG. Retrieved from https://gisig.iatefl.org/ Meddings, L. (2006). The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2006/ jan/20/tefl4 Palanac, A. (2018). Trauma in the classroom: ELT for refugees. Retrieved from https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=kSD23XnyJ6s PositiveNegatives. (2018). Retrieved from https://positivenegatives.org/story/north-star-fading/ Reflect for ESOL Resource Pack. Retrieved from https://www.skillsforlifenetwork.com/attach ments/pages/964/Reflect%20for%20ESOL%20Resource%20Pack.pdf Ruas, L. (2012). New Internationalist Easier English wiki. Retrieved from https://eewiki.newint. org/ Ruas, L. (2015a). Radical Phonology (New Internationalist). Retrieved from https://eewiki.newint. org/index.php?title=%22Radical_phonology%22 Ruas, L. (2015b). Lesson: Refugees in Lesbos. Retrieved from https://eewiki.newint.org/index.php? title=READY_LESSON_(for_Pre-Intermediate_learners)_:_REFUGEES_IN_LESBOS Ruas, L. (2016a). Quiz and infographic. Retrieved from https://eewiki.newint.org/index.php?title= QUIZ_-_WORLD_REFUGEE_CRISIS Ruas, L. (2016b). Lesson: Stories—Helping refugees. Retrieved from https://eewiki.newint. org/index.php?title=READY_LESSON_(for_Pre-intermediate_learners)_:_STORIES_-_HEL PING_REFUGEES Ruas, L. (2017a). Easy lesson planning (New Internationalist). Retrieved from https://eewiki.new int.org/index.php?title=Easy_lesson_planning Ruas, L. (2017b). For volunteer teachers of refugees (New Internationalist). Retrieved from https:// eewiki.newint.org/index.php?title=For_volunteer_teachers_of_refugees Sandhu, S. (2020). The i newspaper. Retrieved from https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/migrants-whathappens-reach-uk-asylum-seekers-build-new-life-575690 Shafak, E. (2020). The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/ aug/13/elif-shafak-we-need-to-tell-different-stories-to-humanise-the-other The Othering and Belonging Institute. (2019). Retrieved from https://belonging.berkeley.edu/cli materefugees UNHCR. (2016). Refugees and migrants. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/ 2016/3/56e95c676/refuhtmlgees-migrants-frequently-asked-questions-faqs. We Are Here. Retrieved from http://weareherecentre.org/

Language Teaching, Environmental Education, and Community Engagement Kip Cates

Abstract Kip Cates has long been a leader in language teachers’ involvement in environmental education and other global issues. A key role model for Kip was his high school physics teacher who, in and out of school, was an unstinting advocate for the environment, often appearing in newspapers and elsewhere in the media. Early in Kip’s teaching career, the first institution where he taught demanded conformity. Fortunately, the large majority of his career has been spent at a very different institution, one that treats teachers as professionals and affords them freedom to design their own teaching. Kip has made wide use of that freedom by employing contentbased language teaching to infuse environmental topics and other global issues into his classes. In addition, Kip generously shares resources with fellow teachers via an e-newsletter, as well as teacher development workshops and seminars. Keywords Environmental education · Advocate for the environment · Global issues · Content-based teaching · Treating teachers as professionals · Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) · Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT)

1 Introduction For the past 30 years, I’ve been actively involved in promoting environmental awareness, social responsibility, and world citizenship through content-based language teaching on global issue themes. This chapter describes my career as a language teacher and environmental educator, and outlines the ways I have engaged my English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students and teacher trainees with their local communities and the wider world.

K. Cates (B) Tottori University, Tottori, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_7

57

58

K. Cates

2 Formative Influences All of us are influenced, consciously and unconsciously, by our environment—especially by where we’re born and where we grow up. I was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada. Vancouver is a beautiful port city located in a spectacular natural setting and is ranked among the world’s top five cities for quality of life. It’s set on a scenic peninsula beside the Fraser River at the foot of the North Shore mountains and is home to Stanley Park—a vast natural forest of hiking trails, seaside walkways and totem poles located right beside the downtown area. I grew up next to a forest where my siblings and I played hide-and-seek, built tree forts and picked wild berries that my mother made into pies. I still remember the excitement I felt one day at school when our lesson was interrupted by the sight of a wild deer that emerged from the woods just 100 meters from our classroom window. I first realized the size and natural beauty of Canada when our family took a cross-country trip to attend the Montreal World’s Fair in 1967. As a young boy, it was impressive to experience the majestic beauty of the Rocky Mountains, the endless expanse of the Canadian prairies and the power of Niagara Falls. My physical environment helped to shape me as a person and as an educator. The sociopolitical environment had an equally large impact. I came of age in the 1960s, a tumultuous time of anti-war protests, civil rights demonstrations, and growing calls to protect the environment. The first-ever Earth Day in April 1970 was a global event that inspired people worldwide to act for the planet. Environmental action groups arose such as Greenpeace, formed in 1971 in Vancouver, that fought against toxic waste, whaling, and nuclear testing. Movie theaters began to feature environmental films (Silent Running, The China Syndrome) while radios broadcast pop songs like Rocky Mountain High (John Denver) and Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell) with its classic line “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” In the vanguard of all these movements were young people who took to the streets to promote peace, justice, and a world free of pollution. It was an inspiring time to grow up and an era that spotlighted the power of youth. I had good teachers at high school, but the one I respected most was my physics instructor. At school, he taught physics. But outside class, he was a tireless advocate for the environment, working for clean air and water for our community. In our morning newspapers, we’d read articles about him collecting signatures for a new anti-pollution law or announcing a nature conservation campaign. On the weekends, we’d see him on TV picking up litter from a local beach or protesting toxic waste. He was a teacher who cared about our local environment and all of us knew it. The actions he took for our community left a strong impact on my classmates and me.

Did you have any teachers who can serve as models of engaged educators?

Language Teaching, Environmental Education, and Community …

59

3 Becoming an English Language Teacher Canada is a bilingual country, so it was natural for me to develop an interest in languages. In college, I majored in French and German and desperately wanted to speak these languages fluently. Unfortunately, the language curricula in the 1970s focused on grammar, translation, and literature, with little time for communication. As a result, I decided to drop out of university. If school couldn’t teach me to communicate, I’d go to France and Germany and acquire these languages on my own. This rash decision, born from my frustrations with language learning, led to a three-year journey around the world. I lived in Paris until I’d mastered French, worked at a ski hotel in the Alps until my German was functional, then set off on a backpacking trip across Asia through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong. During my round-the-globe trip, I was struck by the cultural diversity and natural beauty of our world yet shocked at the litter, pollution and environmental destruction I saw everywhere. I also realized how little my schooling had prepared me to understand the world’s peoples, countries, and problems, and felt the need for a new kind of “global education” suitable to the global age. Back in Canada, I completed a degree in modern languages (French, German, and Japanese) and, by chance, took an “Introduction to TEFL” course. This enabled me to get a job in Japan where I spent two years teaching English. The more I taught, however, the more I realized how little I knew about foreign language education. To remedy this, I flew to the UK and did a one-year MA in Applied Linguistics course at a British university. It was an intense experience but a privilege to study under professors who were pioneering the new field of “communicative language teaching.” After graduation, I honed my skills by teaching English for two years at an Arab university, then took up a post at a national university in Japan.

4 Becoming an Environmental Educator In the Middle East, I was part of a tightly organized EFL program that required teachers to use the same text and turn the same page at the same time. In contrast, at my new Japanese university, I was trusted as a professional educator and given total freedom to design and teach my own courses. I quickly took advantage of this freedom and began creating and test-driving content-based EFL lessons on “global issue” themes. Part of my motivation was my shock at how little my students knew about the wider world. It was a challenge to draw up effective English lessons on topics such as “world hunger,” “human rights,” and “garbage and recycling.” Each class was 90 minutes long; so, I needed a rich variety of activities to keep students active and engaged.

60

K. Cates

Is your current teaching situation more like Kip’s first teaching experience in the Middle East or more like his second experience in Japan? Should teachers have “total freedom”? I quickly realized that, if I wanted to get serious about teaching environmental themes, I’d have to explore the field of environmental education. To do this, I decided on a programmed plan of reading and travel. As a university lecturer, I had a book budget and quickly started stocking up on publications. Texts such as The Green Classroom (Mason, 1991) and Environmental Education (Wilke, 1993) helped me understand the field, while The Blue Peter Green Book (Bronze et al., 1990) and Student Environmental Action Guide (Earthworks, 1990) demonstrated ways to engage young people. More provocative titles—If You Love This Planet (Caldicott, 1992) and Earthrights: Education As If the Planet Really Mattered (Greig et al., 1987)—stressed the mission of schools and outlined the role teachers can play. I also began attending environmental conferences and seminars—in Japan and overseas—to learn more, meet the experts, and find activities and resources I could bring back to my language classroom. It was exciting to engage with environmental educators in Tokyo, New York, and Toronto and to meet representatives of NGOs such as WWF and the Sierra Club. My presence at these events as a language teacher led to new contacts and opportunities. An environmental expert in Tokyo was tasked with organizing UNESCO workshops for environmental educators in the Asia–Pacific and invited me to join his staff as a coordinator and interpreter. For five years, I had the privilege of working with environmental educators from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, and India to explore best practices in curriculum, pedagogy and materials writing. I took copious notes. As my knowledge of environmental education deepened, I grew more confident in devising creative ways to integrate environmental themes into my teaching. The UK professors on my MA in Applied Linguistics course had stressed that our job as Applied Linguists was to apply knowledge from specialized fields (phonology, semantics, discourse analysis…) to real-world challenges in areas such as translation, speech therapy, and language teaching. My work in “applying” ideas, activities, and materials from environmental education to foreign language teaching fit in naturally with the training I had received.

5 Engagement in the Classroom Devising EFL units on environmental themes is an exciting challenge. When I first started, back in the 1980s, students would arrive to class expecting lessons on English grammar, daily conversation, American culture, or TOEFL test prep. What they got instead was 90 minutes each week of student-centered activities designed to promote environmental awareness, English proficiency, and communication skills. Our classes

Language Teaching, Environmental Education, and Community …

61

featured topics such as air pollution, toxic waste, tropical rainforests, and recycling studied via lectures, readings, card games, quizzes, videos (Earth Day Special), and music clips (Michael Jackson’s Earth Song).

Teachers need to factor in student expectations. Global issues was not what Kip’s students were expecting. What can you do if how and what you want to teach does not match students’ expectations? I devoted part of each class to role models such as Wangari Maathai (Green Belt Movement), Greta Thunberg (climate change), and Ken Noguchi (the Japanese mountaineer who organized the first-ever garbage pick-up on Mount Everest). It was great to see students engage with the content and dive into the activities I had prepared. Course feedback showed they felt challenged by the class, were excited to deal with real-world content, developed strong language skills and felt a strong sense of relevance as the issues we studied appeared each day in newspapers and on TV. I also began experimenting with homework that engaged students with the wider world. One of these initiatives goes as follows:

Final Assignment: Action Homework (1)

(2)

(3)

(4) (5)

Research a global issue: Choose one global issue to research. Explain the problem, its causes and history as well as what’s being done to solve it. Profile an NGO: Profile one organization that’s working to solve the global issue you chose. Explain the aims of this NGO, its history, the campaigns it runs and the impact it’s had. Donate money: Raise money and donate this to the NGO you chose that’s working to solve your global issue. Explain how you raised your money and attach a copy of your payment receipt to your written report. Bibliography: List the books and Internet websites that you used to research your issue and your NGO. Reflection: Explain what you learned from this homework.

Each year, I introduce this with the following remarks: • Our final assignment is a research-and-action task. We’ve been studying environmental problems and other global issues throughout the semester. Now is your chance to get involved and make a difference. • This assignment asks you to research a global issue you care about, then profile and support an NGO working to solve it.

62

K. Cates

• The assignment also requires that you raise money and donate it to an NGO. Be creative in your fundraising and try to raise as much money as you can. This is your chance to contribute to solving an issue that you care about! Your grade, however, will be based on your research and written report, not on the amount of money you raise. I will also donate money ($100) to a global issue NGO, so this will be a class project with all of us contributing, both teacher and students. • This assignment will be an important educational experience for you. But it’s also an ethical duty. It would be irresponsible of us to just study global issues in class, then do nothing to help solve them. Our responsibility as university students and teachers is to both learn about the world, then take action to make it better. Good luck!

What if your students choose an NGO that you do not support? What will you do? It’s always exciting to collect students’ reports, see what issues they have chosen, read how they raised their money, and learn which NGOs they donated to. The environmental issues that students research include desertification, global warming, deforestation, and garbage. The groups they donate to include Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth as well as Japanese NGOs such as the Japan Environmental Action Network (JEAN). The methods students use to raise money for their NGOs are also varied: some donate a percentage of their salary from part-time jobs, others explain their issue to family, friends, and relatives, then collect money from them, while yet others skip lunch for a week and donate the money they would have spent to the NGO they chose. I’m always curious to find out what students learn from this assignment. Most appreciate the way it allows them to draw on their idealism, use English for a meaningful purpose, and make a difference in the world. Typical comments include: • I was really nervous when you announced this assignment since I’d never taken action or donated money to an NGO. But through this report, I realized how easy it was and hope to raise funds for global issue groups in future. • Before this assignment, I’d often heard about WWF but never had a chance to find out what it does. This homework gave me an opportunity to learn about—and support—this NGO and its work to protect wildlife. • From this homework, I realized that individuals—even college students like me— can take action to help solve global and environmental issues. Thank you for giving me this chance! After I receive students’ reports, I create a master chart of the issues they researched, the NGOs they chose, and the money they raised. For our final class, I give students copies of this to summarize what they did and to give them a record— a souvenir—of our class contributions to making a better world. I have assigned

Language Teaching, Environmental Education, and Community …

63

this task to hundreds of students for over 15 years. During this time, my students and I have raised over US $5,000 to support NGOs working to solve environmental and other global issues. The chart below shows the kinds of issues and groups that students choose. Name

Issue

Organization

Funds raised

Aiko

Global warming

Japan Green Fund

1,000 yen

Airi

The water crisis

Earth Village

1,000 yen

Haruka

Ocean garbage

Japan Environmental Action Network (JEAN)

1,000 yen

Hebateer

Water pollution

Japan Fund for Global Environment

1,000 yen

Hina

Wildlife extinction

WWF Japan (World Wildlife Fund)

1,000 yen

Jiyeong

Plastic garbage

Greenpeace Japan

1,400 yen

Miyu

World water shortage

Water Aid Japan

1,000 yen

Shiori

Desertification

Friends of the Earth Japan (FOE)

1,000 yen

Sumire

Deforestation

JICA Environment Conservation Program

1,000 yen

Takuro

Endangered species

Nature Conservation Society of Japan (NACS-J)

500 yen

6 Beyond the Classroom Environmental educators stress the importance of teaching about the environment (imparting knowledge), teaching for the environment (empowering students with skills), and teaching in the environment (taking students out into the world). For teachers who see themselves as educators in the broad sense, learning doesn’t stop when the bell rings. Education beyond the classroom means giving students opportunities to build language skills, increase motivation and raise awareness through real-world experiences. My efforts to take students from the classroom into the world have centered around local, national, and international events. Local: As soon as I started teaching environmental themes, I began searching for opportunities to get students engaged in the local community. My first step was to contact a local citizens’ organization and have my students join—and design— community events with them. One of these events was a local beach clean-up. Another gave students the chance to organize a public seminar on environmental pollution and sustainable lifestyles.

64

K. Cates

Are there any organizations locally, nationally, or internationally that you and/or your students might be able to work with, not just raise funds for? National: My next step was to initiate an excursion to Global Festa in Tokyo. This two-day national NGO festival is Japan’s largest gathering of civic organizations and government agencies involved with global issues. Attending this annual event has been a big adventure for my students. Just to get to Tokyo from our town takes an allnight 12 hour bus ride. At the festival, students visit information booths run by groups working to fight pollution and recycle waste, meet staff from NGOs such as WWF and JATAN (Japan Tropical Forest Action Network), and talk to Japan Peace Corps volunteers about environmental projects in Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Algeria. To help cover students’ travel expenses, I solicit funds from local organizations and get students to write reports on their visit for our campus magazine and community newsletters. International: In addition to local and national events, I was eager to take students overseas. To do so, I created an Asian Youth Forum (AYF) in 1999. This annual event, which I organize with EFL colleagues, brings together college students from across Asia for an exciting week of seminars, workshops, and social events aimed at promoting international understanding, cross-cultural communication, and leadership skills through the medium of English as a global language. Each AYF event is held in a different Asian city and brings together 40–80 students from 10–15 countries such as Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. At each event, students participate in seminars on topics such as “environmental problems in my country.” The students who take part not only improve their English but also broaden their horizons, deepen their understanding of global issues, and begin to see themselves as Asian citizens with a role to play in working for a better future.

7 Reflections So, what happens when you engage students at a national Japanese university in beach clean-ups, take them to NGO festivals, fly them off to overseas youth forums, or require them to donate money to global issue organizations? Students who join my out-of-class excursions are greatly transformed by the chance to engage with the wider world, encounter new people and experiences, and use their language skills in real-world situations. My colleagues were genuinely interested to learn about my initiatives and impressed by the enthusiasm, motivation, and improved language skills that students brought back from our trips. Support sometimes came from surprising places. A senior professor in the Faculty of Agriculture, who I expected to criticize my work, revealed that he owed his career to his high school English teacher who had assigned the classic nature conservation book “Walden” for English reading practice.

Language Teaching, Environmental Education, and Community …

65

At the beginning, I worked hard to publicize my projects in our campus magazine, local newspapers, and academic journals. I then shared the press clippings, media coverage, and photos with my colleagues and the administration. They quickly realized that my work was giving our university a reputation as a globally active, socially responsible institution which led to greater funding, higher status, and increased student applications.

8 Building Coalitions Building coalitions is a key step in promoting any new field. I began giving talks on “teaching global issues” in the late 1980s and quickly encountered like-minded teachers who were experimenting with global and environmental issues in their classes. We realized we were all working with content-based language teaching aimed at promoting global awareness, social responsibility, and community engagement. As our numbers grew, we decided to organize and, in 1991, founded the world’s first Global Issues in Language Education Special Interest Group (GILE SIG) within the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT). Our group was covered by the media and attracted attention to our work. Our official status as part of a national language teaching organization provided us with an administrative structure, conference time, financial support, and legitimacy within the EFL profession. We took advantage of this to hold presentations, organize events, and publish newsletters, articles, and journals. Setting up this SIG enabled us to stress the value of social engagement and highlight the work of EFL instructors doing out-of-class projects. To encourage teachers to address environmental issues, we organized workshops on “TEFL: Teaching Environmentally Friendly Language,” issued guidelines to help schools become environmentally-friendly, set up a “JALT Environmental Committee,” and promoted events such as Earth Day. We were ambitious and eager to bring language teachers into contact with environmental educators. One year, we took a risk and invited a North American expert—the editor of Green Teacher magazine—to fly to Asia and give environmental education workshops in Japan and Korea. Amazingly, he accepted! His two-week tour was a great success and inspired language teachers in both countries to start experimenting with environmental topics, activities, and materials.

Kip has been very involved in working in teachers organizations to highlight the teaching of global issues. Do you / could you belong to any teachers organizations?

66

K. Cates

9 Teacher Training Should community engagement be included in the curricula of teacher education institutions? My answer is a resounding Yes! If we want new members of our profession to engage with their communities and the wider world, this dimension must be included in teacher training programs. I began my work as a teacher trainer early in my career. In the early 1990s, as I began speaking and writing publicly on ways to integrate global issues into EFL, a new MA-in-TESOL program was set up in Japan by Columbia University. Seeing a chance, I invited the director to join a panel on “teaching global issues” that I had arranged for a national EFL conference. Soon after, he invited me to design and teach a graduate course for his program entitled “Global Issues and Cooperative Learning.” This course, which I taught for 17 years, introduced TESOL students to fields such as global education, peace education, environmental education, and human rights education. For our unit on environmental education, I had my MA students read key books, try out activities, and explore creative ways to integrate environmental themes into their classes. In addition to classroom study, I was eager to get my teacher trainees out into the local community. To do so, I set them a task that required them to visit the offices of global issue organizations and research the educational materials these organizations offered to teachers and schools. My students were always excited to report back and show the variety of resources they had found. These included posters, fact sheets, teaching packs, and DVDs produced by NGOs such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Japan Rainforest Foundation on topics such as climate change, air pollution, and endangered species. Many of my teachers went on to test-drive these resources in their classes and to design EFL activities, lessons, and courses aimed at promoting environmental awareness. I was especially pleased that this task helped my MA students begin to see the local community as a rich source of teaching materials.

10 Conclusion I’ve been lucky in pioneering the teaching of global issues through EFL by virtue of the institution where I work. At national universities in Japan, professors are accorded respect and autonomy, which meant I was given the freedom to design and teach my own courses, and do research in the field of my choice. When I was first hired as a “foreign instructor,” the university president requested me to “teach students to speak English” and “help them become international.” These orders “from the top” gave me official authorization to bring environmental issues into my classroom and take students out into the world. At my university, I belong to a Faculty of Regional Sciences and have benefited from its goal of taking students outside the campus and engaging them with local communities.

Language Teaching, Environmental Education, and Community …

67

Looking back on my three decades of work in language teaching and environmental education, I can point to a number of lessons learnt that may benefit teachers interested in becoming community-engaged educators: • Do your homework: research, study, and explore new fields through reading, workshops, and conferences • Reach out: make contact with relevant experts and organizations in the local community and the wider world • Experiment: take a risk and try new activities, tasks, projects, and assignments that take students out of the classroom • Build good relations: cultivate allies in school and the community, strive to be seen as an “asset” not a “troublemaker” • Speak out: share your knowledge, learnings, and experience with others via presentations, articles, and talks • Use publicity: use the media to publicize your successes to your colleagues, your school, and the local community • Build coalitions: join with others to create and strengthen educational organizations that can further your goals. Language teachers engaged in environmental education face major challenges. Climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, air pollution—all too often the problems seem overwhelming. Yes, it’s depressing to see our global environment being damaged by irresponsible politicians, profit-hungry corporations, poverty-stricken peasants, and “throwaway” lifestyles that consume vital resources, produce mountains of garbage, and poison our air and water. Yet, all problems have solutions, all solutions result from action, and all actions arise from knowledge, inspiration, and experience. If the current generation of young people is to successfully tackle these problems, it is us—their teachers—who can educate them about solutions and inspire them to engage with their communities to work for a better future. Education is a powerful factor in building the knowledge, skills, and commitment needed to solve environmental problems. Community engaged instructors have a key role to play in saving the planet. A simple environmental education formula runs as follows: “to know + to care = to act.” May the knowledge we impart and the commitment we inspire encourage our students to engage with their communities to protect this fragile planet that we all share.

References Publications Bronze et al., 1990.Bronze, et al. (1990). The blue peter green book. BBC. Caldicott, H. (1992). If You Love This Planet. Norton. Earthworks. (1990). The student environmental action guide. Earthworks Press. Greig, S., et al. (Eds.). (1987). Earthrights: education as if the planet really mattered. WWF.

68

K. Cates

Mason, A. (1991). The green classroom. Pembroke Publishers. Wilke, R. (1993). Environmental education. Kraus International.

Websites Asian Youth Forum (AYF). Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jvV1inmJ8nYykaIHo NqoPXgodHQ3ycnN/view Global Festa Japan. Retrieved from https://www.tokyo-icc.jp/english/lespace/one/one_1409.html Green Teacher Magazine. Retrieved from https://greenteacher.com/ JALT Global Issues SIG. Retrieved from http://www.gilesig.org/ The Earth Day Special. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Earth_Day_Special UNESCO/Japan Seminar on Environmental Education. Retrieved from http://archive.criced.tsu kuba.ac.jp/data/doc/pdf/2004/06/The%202nd%20UNESCO%20EE-Seminar.pdf

Community-Engaged Educator for Kindness Toward Farmed Animals George M. Jacobs

Abstract George Jacobs describes how a quiet person went on to be an activist for moving food production away from animal agriculture and toward alternative protein foods. From someone who did not mention his plant-based diet unless asked to someone who uses his teaching skills in and out of the classroom to advocate for farmed animals, e.g., chickens, fishes, and cows. Among the highlights of George’s chapter is how he works in community organizations and uses his academic writing to implement intersectionality, i.e., linking issues, e.g., connecting farmed animal issues to LGBTQ? issues, environmental issues, women’s issues, and the treatment of poor people. Perhaps, advocates linking various progressive issues via intersectionality have something in common with how student-centered language teachers link various student-centered methods, e.g., extensive reading and cooperative learning. Keywords Animal agriculture · Alternative protein · Intersectionality · Student-centered learning · Diet for a small planet

1 Food and Me I’m not the type of person you would expect to engage in activism on behalf of farmed animals—the animals whom humans raise for food, clothing, and other needs. First of all, I don’t have a stereotypical activist personality. I’m mostly an introvert who doesn’t like to stand out, who is shy about disagreeing with others. Second, I know activists for farmed animals who while still in primary school figured out that the delicious meat on their plates used to be cute animals. These precocious children then announced to their families that they were no longer going to eat meat. That wasn’t me. Growing up in the USA, I enjoyed what I now call the Standard American Diet (SAD), which consists of animal-based foods at every meal. For my brothers and me, the week’s big treat was a visit to McDonald’s for burgers and fries, or to a Chinese restaurant for spare ribs. The irony escaped me that from the pigs’ perspective, they had no ribs to spare. G. M. Jacobs (B) Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation, Singapore, Singapore © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_8

69

70

G. M. Jacobs

The only sign of my future community engagement could be seen in the fact that I enjoyed eating veggies. My parents never needed to shame me with tales of starving kids in poor countries or bribe me with desserts to get me to eat my greens. Not only did I polish off all the vegetables on my plate, I even ate the iceberg lettuce side salads my mother lovingly prepared for us. At school, I don’t remember hearing about the sad roots of the food we ate, but I do remember a time in high school biology class when I declined a chance to stand up for animals. I was in a dissection trio with one of the less popular female students in our grade and the quarterback of the football team. Donating their life to further our scientific knowledge that day was an anonymous frog. Our less popular but academically more successful classmate expressed sadness at the plight of the frog, to which our groupmate replied that since she ate meat, she should not say anything about frogs. Rather than pointing out that it’s better to do something for animals, even if we are not perfect, I sheepishly (actually, sheep aren’t necessarily shy—https://animalstudie srepository.org/animsent/vol4/iss25/15/) said nothing about frogs or anything else. More than ten years later, at age 28, two things led me to go vegetarian. One, I had a vegetarian cousin, born five days before me. He was a vegetarian, a yoga teacher, walked around barefoot, more or less the stereotypical hippy. He was a vocal advocate for his lifestyle, and it certainly seemed to work for him. More academically than my cousin’s pronouncements and example, I read Diet for a Small Planet (Moore Lappe & Collins, 1971). The book focuses on the inefficiency of meat production, e.g., cows need to be fed 17 kg of plant food to produce just 1 kg of meat. That was talking about my McD’s burgers. The authors asked how we could countenance this waste of food when hundreds of millions of our fellow humans lacked food, with thousands dying daily? [Note: I wasn’t fully aware at the time, but the key cause of World Hunger is not a shortage of food (in fact, humans were and are producing enough food), but the distribution system that allocates food resources to the highest paying customers. That said, meat’s inefficiency exacerbates World Hunger.]

Have you experienced situations similar to George and the causes of World Hunger, realizing that an issue was more complicated that you initially thought it was? Even after reading the book and listening to my cousin, I still took a slow approach to diet change. I should have read more, and even in the late 1970s, there were books and magazines to read and people to contact, although there was no internet and no activists in my area. Nonetheless, I did become a vegetarian. Soon afterward, I began studying to become a teacher. I was the only vegetarian in my program, the only one at the first, second, etc. school where I taught, and, as became my pattern, I was a quiet vegetarian, only talking about my diet if people asked and sitting there saying nothing while people consumed animal flesh all around me. Most of my engagement on behalf of farmed animals (animals raised to produce food for humans) and other animals has taken place outside the classroom. For

Community-Engaged Educator for Kindness Toward Farmed Animals

71

instance, since 2003, I’ve been a leader of Vegetarian Society (Singapore), now called Center for a Responsible Future. However, I’ll focus in this chapter mostly on the classroom, looking at the following topics: how we use language to talk about animals, student-centered instruction and teaching for animals, how animal issues intersect with other social issues, dilemmas I faced as a community-engaged educator, how I used my teaching skills to help the general public learn about animals, and my future plans.

2 Language Use in Regard to Animals As a language teacher (mostly ESL but also English as a first language), I think about the language my students, colleagues, and I use. Just as language plays a role in combatting sexism, so too can language counter speciesism, i.e., bias against other species (Jacobs, 2006). For example, I avoid anti-animal idioms, such as “more than one way to skin a cat” or “kill two birds with a stone.” Instead, I sometimes make up new idioms, such as “feed two birds with one bowl.” However, unless I’m working with advanced students, my new idiom will probably not be understood, nor will it increase students’ useful vocabulary. A more useful strategy may be to avoid any idiom, such as instead using, “achieve two goals with the same action” or instead of skinning cats, I could talk about there being “more than one way to achieve a goal.” Similarly, just as pronoun use in English has been a ground for conflict in the movement against sexism and prejudice against transgender people, with “they” sometimes used instead of ‘generic he’ or gendered pronouns (Foertsch & Gernsbacher, 1997; McGlashan & Fitzpatrick, 2018), conflict over pronouns also arises as a sign of human treatment of our fellow animals. For instance, I was involved in a study (Gilquin & Jacobs, 2006) in which we explored whether people use the relative pronoun who with nonhuman animals. Fortunately, my co-author, unlike me, was good at linguistics, especially corpus linguistics. In the study, our data consisted of: (1) what dictionaries, an encyclopedia, grammars, publication manuals, newspapers, and news agencies said and did regarding who; and (2) a 100-million-word collection (corpus) of spoken and written English. We found that opinions and use were divided, with a trend toward use of who when humans felt close to the nonhuman animals being discussed. In the article’s conclusion, we advocated greater use of who to express and advocate for kinder human treatment of other Earthlings. Continuing with this discussion of the politics of language use, sometimes when I publish various works, I have to inform the editors that the who I have used is there intentionally, and I ask, not always successfully, that it remain. This reminds me of the time that I had co-authored a children’s book about food and, upon receiving the page proofs, was shocked to see a ham sandwich on the cover. Fortunately, my meateating co-author stood by me when I gently suggested that the cover be changed. This was the 1990s, and the editor didn’t think a change was worth the bother, until I told her we couldn’t have a ham sandwich because I’m Jewish.

72

G. M. Jacobs

Another polite run-in over what some would call political correctness came when I politely wrote to the editor of The Straits Times, Singapore’s leading newspaper, to suggest the daily rethink their use of generic he. I noted that I was a Language Specialist at a center run by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization. His response was that the newspaper would not change their policy (20+ years later, the policy still has not changed) and that advocacy of nonsexist language was a “silly Americanism.” I do appreciate that whereas I, as a native speaker with a graduate degree, can get away with what some might see as an unusual variation in English, most people will assume that my students’ use of nonsexist and nonspeciesist language will be viewed as another sign of their lack of language proficiency. Thus, when I tell students about changes in language usage, I also explain to them about the general concept of language change, the conflicting forces that affect change, and the fact that change may be slow and uneven.

What is your opinion? Is it worth striving for language that reflects the kind of world we want to live in, or are we wasting students’ time, imposing our values, and setting up students to do badly on assessments of their language proficiency?

3 Language Learning Pedagogy and Pedagogy for the Animals There seems to be an overlap between using student-centered, communicative language teaching and being able to integrate content relevant to my concerns about human treatment of other animals. Yes, even if I am using a textbook to lead a fairly rote, teacher-directed grammar lesson, e.g., on the difference between present tense and past tense, I can seed my explanations and exercises with content, such as (1) “Yesterday, he ________ (buy) tomatoes.” (2) Rosalita often _________ (enjoy) tomatoes and other veggies with noodles. However, when the lesson rises above worksheets and rote learning, students have more opportunities to connect their learning to the real world, to maybe even impact that world. One tool I find to be useful in formulating such lessons are the six Environmental Education objectives (UNESCO–UNEP, 1976): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Awareness of environmental problems. Basic understanding of the environment and its problems, and human beings’ roles in relation to the environment. An attitude of concern for environmental problems. Skills needed to overcome environmental problems.

Community-Engaged Educator for Kindness Toward Farmed Animals

5. 6.

73

Evaluation of the quality of proposed solutions to environmental problems. Participation in solving environmental problems.

Regardless of whether the issue(s) involved deals with the environment, animals, or whatever, I try to include one or more of the objectives, usually with an eye to eventually include the sixth objective; participation. However, I make it clear to students that they have the freedom to choose the issue, how they will participate or whether they will participate at all. Once, another Singapore teacher and I joined a team of about ten Indonesian EFL teachers to prepare a book of what we called EEE (English for Environmental Education) lessons for non-English majors at Indonesia universities (Jacobs et al., 2006; Lie et al., 2002). All the lessons included some form of participation in environmental protection and a couple also covered animal protection. We defined actual participation in protecting the environment in three categories: a.

b. c.

Educational: Students act to educate peers and others about environmental issues, such as students posting on social media about how taking public transport, walking, or bicycle riding reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Behavioral: Students themselves take action to help the environment, such as they reduce their consumption of animal-based foods. Exerting influence: Students can send email, launch petitions, use social media, etc. to attempt to influence companies, governments, their own schools, etc. to have more environmentally friendly policies.

What is your opinion? What would you do if students wanted to engage in participation that conflicts with your beliefs? In regard to participation, I once helped with a study analyzing 17 ESL textbooks for the presence of lessons related to environmental education and of these Environmental Education Objective 6, participation, in those lessons (Jacobs & Goatly, 2000). This time, my co-author brought with him expertise in critical reading. We found that of the 6,167 activities in the 17 textbooks, 134 (2%) had environmental content, with four of the books containing an entire unit or lesson on environmental issues. As to the UN’s 6th environmental education objective, participation in protecting the environment, 76 (57%) of the activities with environmental content were rated as not involving any type of participation on behalf of the environment, 3 (2%) asked about students’ own or classmates’ participation, 3 (2%) questioned students about participation by others besides themselves and their classmates, 22 (16%) asked students to read or listen to accounts of participation by others, 8 (6%) involved reading about or listening to someone urge participation, 8 (6%) asked students to simulate participation, 12 (9%) called on students to describe how they could or would participate, but only 2 (1%) asked for actual participation in environmental protection.

74

G. M. Jacobs

4 Intersectionality Intersectionality (Collins, 2019) looks at how various factors, such as race and class, overlap in society, and how activists in various areas might collaborate. Chen (2012) explained that those with less power tend to be seen as unworthy, less deserving of fair treatment. Activism for animals intersects with so many other areas of activism. For instance, in Singapore, every year since 2009, people have held a Pink Dot event to promote awareness of LGBTQ? issues, and in more recent years, the vegan organization I belong to has participated, and we often give away food to attract people to our booth. One year, at Pink Dot, we handed out big pink cookies. The welfare of poor and working class people intersects with animal welfare in several ways. First, the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) where farmed animals, such as chickens (approximately 44 billion chickens are slaughtered annually worldwide, usually before the age of six weeks), are often sited near where low-income people live. These CAFOs generate large amounts of air and water pollution, just as other companies locate their polluting factories near lowincome neighborhoods. Second, most slaughterhouse jobs are relatively lower paid and dangerous, often taken by migrant workers and refugees (Grabell, 2017). Third, while advocating for avoiding foods from animals fits with advocating for whole (less processed) plant-based foods, a major study in the USA (Holben & Marshall, 2017) found that poor people tended to eat less fresh fruits and vegetables and more processed foods, such as French fries. The rights of females also intersect with the rights of nonhuman animals (Adams, 2000). The hens and the cows, from whom we take their eggs, milk, and calves, live lives almost devoid of opportunities for natural behaviors in environments alien to those in which their species lived before the advent of the Anthropocene. One of my favorite smiling questions to ask people is, “What do you think happens to hens and cows once their egg or milk productivity goes down, just as human females stop producing eggs and milk? Are the hens and cows sent to a field somewhere to live out their retirement at leisure, or do they get a free, all-expenses-paid, one-way short holiday to Kentucky or McDonald’s? With less than a second’s thought, most people know what happens.

5 Dilemmas As a community-engaged educator advocating for animal welfare concerns, a plethora of issues arise regardless of the concerns community-engaged educators advocate for. Let me deal with some of these issues briefly. 1. Should Language Learning Be Fun? Would second language students rather talk about visiting a beach in some third world country or would they prefer to discuss and perhaps participate in helping

Community-Engaged Educator for Kindness Toward Farmed Animals

75

children in that country who are dying or having their physical and cognitive growth permanently stunted due to malnutrition, while the food the children so desperately need is fed to animals being raised for meat, eggs, and dairy? Or maybe the two can be combined via eco-tourism, e.g., at one seaside resort in Indonesia which offers vegan dishes, visitors can donate a small amount and spend a morning building sanitation facilities in nearby villages. However, is eco-tourism just greenwashing (Mikono & Hughes, 2020)? 2. How to Fit In, Even When You Are Different? Food is a great force for bringing people together, e.g., the food associated with a holiday, a cake for someone’s birthday, or food given as a gift. But I do not eat much of what my students and colleagues eat, partly because I am vegan, and partly because I take matters a step or two further by eating a whole food, plant-based diet (Storz, 2019), thereby putting even some vegan foods off limit. How do I deal with that potential isolating force? First, I let people know what I eat, so that I am less likely to be at an event where no food in my diet is available. When possible, I take the opportunity to explain why I only eat plant-based foods. Similarly, I attempt to create a culture of attention to people’s culinary restrictions, e.g., checking for halal food at school events. Second, I offer to bring whole plantbased dishes to events, e.g., such as a birthday cake made entirely from fruits (https:// www.lifeloveandsugar.com/how-to-make-all-fruit-party-cake/). Third, I emphasize that being together is about people, not about the food that we are eating. 3. Do You Have to Choose Sides in Divisions in Your Movement? Most social justice movements have their divisions, many of which can become quite heated. For example, I prefer the term “animal welfare,” whereas others feel that term maintains and reinforces anthropocentrism, the view that humans have the right to be the planet’s dominant species. These people highlight all the destruction anthropocentrism has caused. Indeed, some scientists term the current geologic era the Anthropocene, the era in which the planet is dominated, often for the worse— climate change and mass species extinction being the extreme examples—by the actions of humans. I prefer “animal welfare,” not to defend anthropocentrism, but because I hope it enables animal advocates to unite with a broader range of people. 4. By Advocating Not Eating Animal-Based Foods, Will You Appear to Be “Holier Than Thou”? Food is very personal. Furthermore, data suggest that many people describe themselves as animal lovers, particularly people who live with companion animals. Thus, I tread carefully not to seem to be accusing them of murdering animals. How do I try for that? First, I remind myself that while I may be better than most of my fellow humans in terms of not using nonhuman animals for food, I’m far from perfect, e.g., a.

Some people I know, including meat-eating fellow teachers, dedicate incredible amounts of time and energy to helping others, such as people with disabilities or

76

b.

c.

d.

G. M. Jacobs

abandoned companion animals, and such kindness goes on for years and years. I cannot hold a candle to them. Obtaining one’s food without killing other animals at all is largely impossible, e.g., animals are killed as tractors plow fields and warehouse staff kill rats. Even roads, plastic bags, and currency can contain ingredients made from animals, and that does not include the vast number of insects killed to promote plant growth and as a regular part of “civilized” living. A long checklist must be gone through before food can qualify as beyond reproach. Some of the items on that checklist include the treatment of the workers who produce the food and bring it my point of purchase, whether the food is organically grown, and how the food is packaged. Most of the food I eat leaves many boxes unchecked. I spent the first 28 years of my life as a typical meat eater, and then it was another 25+ years before I started moving away from animal-based foods for which the animals are not killed immediately, e.g., eggs and dairy.

6 Using Teaching Skills Outside the Classroom Activism of all kinds involves education. Thus, the background of myself and fellow community-engaged educators can be put to good use, including our knowledge of how people learn, how to create effective learning materials, and of new trends in education. For instance, gamification (Sailer & Homner, 2020), the use of games for teaching, is a trend that has received renewed attention of late. A fellow teacher in the same animal advocacy organization to which I belong came up with the idea of developing games for use in the outreach we do at public events. These games can also be used by our own students. One of the games the organization developed, the Lifespan Game, asks participants to guess how long farmed animals might live in nature and then to guess how long the same species live in the factory farming system. For instance, chickens can live about six-eight years in nature, but are sent to the slaughterhouse after only six weeks. We as teachers, following Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development, know that people usually do not like too much of a challenge. Thus, we give many hints when people are guessing, and if people’s guesses are far off, we tell them (honestly) that we also were far off in our initial guesses. Another example of community-engaged educators putting their teaching knowledge and skills to use in and out of their own classrooms is making activities. I have made writing activities for facilitating students’ learning of text types (Teaching Tolerance, 2020), such as instructions, recounts, and expository texts. I could use these activities in my own classroom and then offer them to other teachers in my school and elsewhere, with possible adjustments for language proficiency levels and background knowledge.

Community-Engaged Educator for Kindness Toward Farmed Animals

77

7 The Future As I’m writing this in mid-2020, I’m 68 years old, and I hope to continue my teaching and activism for many more years. Following a whole food plant-based diet should help me achieve that goal. Fingers crossed. I try a two-hat approach. One hat is as an activist with community organizations. The other hat is as an educator. Sometimes, my educator work seems to have little directly to do with my other hat, but I explain to colleagues in both the community organizations and in the education institutions that just as what we teach sends a message, so too does how we teach. This link between the what and the how of teaching may be best understood as part of an overall paradigm shift in society that is reflected in education (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001). In the emerging paradigm, the emphasis is on bottom-up power, on the importance of context and how the specifics fit into the bigger picture, on the value of diversity, and on cooperation and empathy, rather than on competition. Studentcentered learning, which I try to always use, represents a prime manifestation of this paradigm.

References Adams, C. J. (2000). The sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory (10th anniversary ed.). Continuum. Chen, J. (2012, June 19). LGBT rights and animal rights: How are they connected? Veg News. Retrieved from https://vegnews.com/2012/6/lgbt-rights-and-animal-rights-how-are-theyconnected Collins, P. H. (2019). Intersectionality as critical social theory. Duke University Press. Foertsch, J., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (1997). In search of gender neutrality: Is singular they a cognitively efficient substitute for generic he? Psychological Science, 8(2), 106–111. Gilquin, G., & Jacobs, G. (2006). Elephants who marry mice are very unusual: The use of the relative pronoun who with nonhuman animals. Society and Animals, 14(1), 79–105. Grabell, M. (2017, December 28). Would you pay $26,000 to work at a chicken plant. ProPublica. Retrieved from https://www.propublica.org/article/who-would-pay-26000-to-work-in-a-chi cken-plant Holben, D. H., & Marshall, M. B. (2017). Position of the academy of nutrition and dietetics: Food insecurity in the United States. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 117(12), 1991–2002. Jacobs, G. M., & Farrell, T. S. C. (2001). Paradigm shift: Understanding and implementing change in second language education. TESL-EJ, 5(1). Retrieved from http://www.cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp/inf ormation/tesl-ej/ej17/toc.html Jacobs, G. M. (2006). Bias against other animals: A language awareness issue? Singapore. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service Number: ED 574 097) Jacobs, G. M., & Goatly, A. (2000). The treatment of ecological issues in ELT coursebooks. ELT Journal, 54, 256–264. Jacobs, G. M., Lie, A., & Amy, S. (2006). An Indonesia example of teaching English via environmental education. In S. Mayer & G. Wilson (Eds.), Ecodidactic perspectives on English language, literatures and cultures (pp. 45–62). Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Lie, A., Jacobs, G. M., & Amy, S. (Eds.). (2002). English via environmental education. Grasindo.

78

G. M. Jacobs

McGlashan, H., & Fitzpatrick, K. (2018). ‘I use any pronouns, and I’m questioning everything else’: Transgender youth and the issue of gender pronouns. Sex Education, 18(3), 239–252. Mikono, M., & Hughes, K. (2020). Eco-guilt and eco-shame in tourism consumption contexts: Understanding the triggers and responses. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 28(8), 1223–1244. Moore Lappe, F., & Collins, J. (1971). Diet for a small planet. Ballantine. Sailer, M., & Homner, L. (2020). The gamification of learning: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 32, 77–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09498-w Storz, M. A. (2019). Is there a lack of support for whole-food, plant-based diets in the medical community? The Permanente Journal, 23. https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/18-068 Teaching Tolerance. (2020). Exploring texts through read alouds. Retrieved from https://www.tol erance.org/classroom-resources/teaching-strategies/exploring-texts-through-read-alouds/unders tanding-text UNESCO–UNEP. (1976). The Belgrade Charter: A global framework for environmental education. Connect, 1(1), 1–9. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.) Mind in society. Harvard University Press.

Conclusion George M. Jacobs

Abstract This conclusion chapter offers advice for readers already active as community-engaged educators and to those who wish to become so involved. This advice includes (a) get involved, even with very small actions, rather than waiting for others to take action in your stead; (b) do not minimize the potential of taking small steps; (c) individual actions, such as turning off lights, have value, but also think of the big picture, such as advocating for alternative energy; (d) understand what are the "out-of-bounds" markers in your context and consider carefully if your actions may endanger your job and the situations of others; (e) share your experiences with other teachers in informal and formal ways, including conferences, publications, and social media; (f) avoid burnout by going for life–work balance, as this increases your longevity; and (g) be open-minded by listening to students, colleagues, and people in the community, including those who may have contrasting views. Keyword Community-engaged educators · Life–work balance · Contrasting views · Getting fired The title of this book is Becoming Community-Engaged Educators. We imagine that many of you already are engaged, in your teaching and beyond, in seeking not only to facilitate your students’ learning and involvement in whatever your assigned curriculum niche is, but in, building on that, to develop further ways to make the world a better place. And for those in particular who are just thinking about altering your teaching practices and orientation toward making change, we hope the authors’ stories told in the chapters of this book have supplied you with additional inspiration and ideas. Perhaps there are some tentative generalizations to be made, or at least some themes to be noted, as we look across these seven cases. Perhaps there are some obvious limitations. Now that you have read all of these accounts, let us look across them to see. And then, after we have attempted to identify and present those themes and limitations here, we will go on to offer some suggestions as we conclude the book. G. M. Jacobs (B) Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation, Singapore, Singapore © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 G. M. Jacobs and G. V. Crookes (eds.), Becoming Community-Engaged Educators, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8645-0_9

79

80

G. M. Jacobs

1 Some Simple Generalizations About Our Group of Authors 1.1 Working Conditions and Institutions One of our group is an elementary teacher; one teaches high school; and the rest are in post-secondary and adult education. Most report better than average working conditions. In some cases, we can see that they have high degrees of professional or curricular autonomy. In two cases, their personal circumstances sometimes allowed them to choose part-time or non-continuous paid employment. In at least two cases, they have consistently and actively sought out opportunities to engage with the most in-need student populations, in connection with which, informal forms of education (e.g., refugee education) allow very action-oriented forms of language teaching (for immediate survival, or for rural community development).

1.2 Language All of the chapter authors are mainly teaching English. Despite changes coming in the twenty-first century, English is still the power language of the world, with English proficiency actively desired by many who do not have it, often needed for international mobility and communication, and a characteristic of many educated elites. So, if we are teaching English, we may have advantages over those who teach other languages. Most of our group are in fact “native speakers” of this power language.

1.3 Race and Class Only one of our group is clearly “not white.” Most are white middle-class people and all but one come from the developed world—North America and the UK. None are people of poverty nor were they born into poverty.

1.4 Network and Visibility Perhaps it is not surprising that many have what we believe are above-average levels of engagement with their professional organizations, and much greater, indeed exceptional, amounts of engagement with other relevant organizations, such as NGOs. Or, by contrast, in the case of our high school teacher (perhaps the youngest member of the group), an unhesitating uptake and use of an Internet community engagement

Conclusion

81

app (Nextdoor). All are writing and publishing, in various ways, although with the exception of some of the older and most established chapter authors, none of them are regularly publishing in conventional academic outlets.

2 The Academic Literatures We Are Leaving for Another Occasion The seven stories told in this book’s chapters lie in an established domain of educational literature that is sometimes referred to as “teachers’ lives.” Exactly how such accounts can or should be gathered, and what their status is, is itself the domain of specialist analysis and recommendation. When people tell their life story, or part of it, even though the overt purpose is to state the facts of the matter, the resulting stories are social events. Omission, forgetting, the desire to tell a story that makes sense, the relationship to the soliciting editor, all will affect what eventually appears on the page. Thus, it should be recognized that all text is constructed; it has commissions and it has omissions. In particular, we note, for the interested reader and for further reference, that there is a literature of lives of activists, and one or more collections of lives of activist teachers. For reasons of time and expediency, we are not here, today, making explicit connections to, for example, Downton and Wehr (1997), Fillieule and Neveu (2019), or Marshall and Anderson (2009), among others. Other related literatures concern how teachers, despite appropriate training, do not always take up an action orientation (e.g., Picower, 2012), and the whole matter of how language classroom practices themselves can have a social issues orientation that might eventually lead to action (e.g., Crookes, 2013). This is another way of saying that this could have been a very different book. We have deliberately not engaged with what could have been a full armamentarium of academic theories and methodological concerns. But then this would not have been a quick and (we hope!) inspiring read. And it would have taken a year or two more. If action is the objective, we cannot always wait for the full duration of academic cogitation. We feel a strong urge and sense of responsibility to get this into the hands of people who could use it. Indeed, with Springer Briefs, we are deliberately choosing to call into question the conventional academic monograph as not the most obvious vehicle for swift and motivating form of professional communication.

82

G. M. Jacobs

3 Some More Obvious Implications 3.1 Get Involved One thing we don’t see in these accounts is people waiting for much guidance. It is true that some of them show a relatively slow move to action; sometimes personal change happens first. But at some point, not only did our respondents “do it”—they also went on to talk or write about doing it. Perhaps some version of the phrase attributed to Rabbi Hillel is relevant (if not now, when? if not me, who?). Certainly, we, this book’s editors, have sometimes looked around ourselves for someone else to do something, and do it quickly; and found only ourselves. Thus, eventually one is forced oneself to take action, and to go ahead and do it without necessarily feeling that all possible alternatives have been covered and all precautions taken.

3.2 Though don’t Get Fired Having said the above, I (Graham) note that our respondents did often report, as we have already mentioned, favorable circumstances both personal and institutional. I regularly say, of social justice-oriented action by language teachers, don’t do it if you are going to get fired. That is to say, consider doing it later, by all means. George and I, like the respondents in this book, have relatively favorable life circumstances and employment. It would be immoral of us to suggest to readers in more precarious situations to blindly go out and make a bit of noise about a sensitive issue in conditions which are dangerous, to the teacher’s work, to their students for that matter, and to their employment or worse. Readers will note that we do not have in this book, accounts of language teaching activism from… Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, or Xinjiang. We could perhaps have solicited them from Colombia, Iran, and Pakistan, but they might have been printed under pseudonyms.

3.3 Small is Possible Several of our respondents briefly mention simply choosing different words to use in otherwise mundane or regimented forms of language practice. George has offered not “skinning” cats. Feminist pedagogy suggests, among other things, choosing womenpositive terms when one can. Part of the simple options (though these are indeed not available in all circumstances, far from it) is to make supplementary material available that highlights matters that need action (the New Internationalist articles put on a website by Ruas, for example).

Conclusion

83

3.4 Talk or Write About It Teachers can and do have positive classrooms and good student–teacher relationships even when other parts of the school or their lives outside school are not favorable. We can often take some comfort from feeling that, after some months or years of establishing rapport, we can close the door and do some things the way we would want to (in some circumstances). Stepping back out of the door and talking about this is more scary. But other teachers exist who need to know what we have done. Local conferences and their organizers are often desperate for contributors as are the editors of local newsletters. If you think you have hostile teacher colleagues, they may well not be the ones who bother to attend such conferences! But first, if possible, work informally to build your support network. And then, you may be surprised at the support you get when you speak up. Do please try it. That is what this book is trying to do—we will feel more able to do this when we have heard about others doing it. This conclusion to the book provides us, the editors, with an opportunity to offer five suggestions that stand out for us. 1. Seek and Nourish Community We believe that this is a hopeful book, as the authors, their students, and colleagues have enjoyed some success as they engaged in school and beyond to address worthy issues. On a larger scale, Kristof (2019) reported that progress has been made worldwide on a number of fronts (although the effects of the COVID zoonotic pandemic may have led to reverses), e.g., more children, including girls, now attend school; world hunger, while still warping the lives of hundreds of millions, has decreased; and access to electricity, Internet, and clean water has expanded. Additionally, Pinker (2011) presented impressive evidence that violence has declined worldwide. How can we continue this progress? Just as students need to cooperate to learn and band members need to mesh their sounds, community engaged educators need to (a) find like-minded souls, (b) figure out how to work together, and (c) maintain and grow the resulting communities. All three are difficult tasks. Sometimes, it can seem that more energy goes into internal community matters than is generated by the community to attain its goals. Sometimes, we seem to feel more antagonism toward our allies than we do toward the problems we together seek to overcome. 2. Find a Balance Engagement in social issues is meant to be a lifelong commitment, a life spent thrilling to the prospect and sometimes the realization of change for what we hope is the better. However, we already have our plates full as educators. Yes, we can “feed two birds with one bowl,” e.g., students acquire language proficiency (bird #1) as they read, write, listen, and speak, regardless of whether the topic is trends in fashionable diamonds or environmentally friendly fashion (bird #2). Thus, when we infuse our teaching with social issues, we do not necessarily add to our teaching hours, although we might need to add to our preparation time. But then, when we

84

G. M. Jacobs

are supposed to be sitting snugly at home reviewing our students’ work, community engaged educators may instead be attending a meeting or interacting virtually with colleagues in other time zones, thereby postponing till deep in our sleeping time any supportive feedback on our students’ work. As can be seen, all this effort on global issues takes away from time with family and friends, and from time for exercising, eating healthy food, and relaxing in other ways. That is not to mention the stress that can develop when we are outliers struggling to change norms on various issues. Living in this way does not provide the balance needed to achieve the kind of healthy lifestyle that can make it possible for us to fulfill a lifelong commitment to helping others. Yes, our lives, even our stressed, overworked lives, are so much better than those of refugees dislodged by war, religious or ethnic hatred, or climate change catastrophe. We can imagine what hens in battery cages experience and feel so fortunate with the piddling sacrifices we make to support them. Nonetheless, we can help the less fortunate better and longer by finding a balance in our lives. 3. Take Chances Although in the previous suggestion, we urged community engaged educators to balance work and stress, on one hand, with attention to physical and mental health, on the other hand, chances often need to be taken to achieve progress. The status quo presents as an immovable object. In response, to create change, we need to gather an unstoppable force. The literature on change in education, as well as in other elements of society, describes a depressing tableau of reforms that have too often failed to take hold (Fullan, 1993). So many ideas for educational reform go back hundreds of years, e.g., Johnson and Johnson (2017) trace the roots of cooperative learning back many centuries, yet so many classrooms remain dominated by teacher talk. The saying, “Teachers teach the way that they were taught” provides just one reason why change in education can be so difficult. In society, vested interests often resist change while continuing to promote an old paradigm view of the world. The good news lies in the fact that continuing the old paradigm benefits only a minority, while moving to the paradigm of a more equal society benefits so many more. Therefore, we have many possible allies, especially when we think intersectionally. 4. Continue Learning In his chapter, Joel Jablon used the term “radical openness” to characterize a willingness to engage open-mindedly with ideas that challenge our current views. Indeed, a willingness to learn from our students and to perhaps change what we think and do based on what our students teach us represents a key tenet of being student-centered teachers. As actor and science educator Alan Alda (Alda & Tyson, 2017) put it, “You’re not really listening unless you’re willing to be changed by the other person.” This applies not only to learning from students but also learning from people on other sides of various issues that are close to our hearts. Learning also takes place in more conventional ways, e.g., taking courses, attending webinars, and even reading books, such as this one. This learning can focus on the subjects we teach and the issues we care about. Sometimes, we might

Conclusion

85

also want to step outside our comfort zones for learning, what Covey (1989) called “sharpening the saw,” e.g., a science teacher who is also engaged in promoting religious tolerance decides to learn to play guitar, thereby expanding their vistas, as well as interacting with new people. Another key area for learning embraces the Internet and related technology, including the many tools needed to utilize Internet affordances. Last but not least, regardless of what we learn, by sharing with colleagues and students, we can deepen this learning. 5. Don’t Forget Big Changes Many change efforts focus on small, individual changes. For example, to address environmental issues, classrooms often have signs urging that lights be turned off when not in use. More generally, students, teachers, and the general public are urged to walk, bike, or take public transport instead of going from place to place by car. These are useful individual actions, small changes. However, even better would be to move away from fossil fuels to generate electricity and to power vehicles, and instead to use alternative energy sources. This would be a system-wide action, a big change. Small changes certainly can be made more easily and quickly, as well as less controversially, than big ones. Students and teachers can just act individually, alone, no need to convince anyone else, no need to pressure anyone or any organization, such as a government body. Sadly, individual actions, despite their usefulness, have much less impact. They can also inadvertently feed a spirit of victim blaming (Fast & Kinewesquao, 2019), i.e., the people who suffer the most receive the blame for the problems they face. For instance, with climate change, poor people have fewer resources to escape rising temperatures, major weather events, and rising sea levels. Yet, they are blamed for inefficient energy use. The powerful in society often place the blame for climate change, racial discrimination, religious intolerance, poverty, speciesism, and discrimination on anyone who is different from them: immigrants, LGBTQ?IA people, refugees, lower social classes, differently abled people, and others who are in fact the main victims of these afflictions. In contrast, focusing on big changes, advocating for system-wide actions, tends to look at the major sources of the problems. For instance, climate change is generating millions of refugees, and their numbers will only rise. Slowing climate change, if that is even possible at this late date (Routledge et al., 2018), requires changes by individuals but mainly by the big energy companies, the big users of energy, agribusiness, and governments.

References Alda, A., & Tyson, N. D. (2017). Science and communication: Alan Alda in conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syIb73RQqVU Covey, S. (1989). Seven habits of highly effective people. Free Press. Crookes, G. V. (2013). Critical ELT for action. Routledge. Downton, J., Jr., & Wehr, P. (1997). The persistent activist: How peace commitment develops and survives. Westview Press.

86

G. M. Jacobs

Fast, E., & Kinewesquao, C. R. (2019). Victim-blaming and the crisis of representation in the violence prevention field. International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 10(1), 3–25. https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs101201918804 Fillieule, O., & Neveu, E. (2019). Activists forever? Cambridge University Press. Fullan, M. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform. Routledge. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2017). Cooperative learning. Paper presented at the Innovation in Education conference, Zaragoza, Spain. Retrieved from http://ecoasturias.com/images/PDF/ ponencia_zaragoza_David_Johnson.pdf Kristof, N. (2019, December 28). This has been the best year ever. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/opinion/sunday/2019-best-year-poverty.html Marshall, C., & Anderson, A. L. (Eds.). (2009). Activist educators: Breaking past limits. Routledge. Picower, B. (2012). Teacher activism: Enacting a vision for social justice. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(4), 561–574. Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature. Viking. Routledge, P., Cumbers, A., & Derickson, K. D. (2018). States of just transition: Realising climate justice through and against the state. Geoforum, 88, 78–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum. 2017.11.015