Let me explain. As a white female raised in a middle-upper class family, I have been situated in a place of privilege by basic birth alone. I have been afforded all of the rights and opportunities one could hope for in terms of education, travel, food, housing, and so on. For a long time, I was protected in a way that didn't even allow me to realize that this was not every other person's reality. In high school and college, I began to ask these questions, but not nearly as much as when I began working fill time as a public school educator. My eyes were opened to the enormous disparities in opportunity for different children. Then, just as Lugg and Tooms (2010) talk about, I began to see the way certain employees within the school system were oppressed, overlooked for leadership opportunities, and made to feel "less than." Moreover, I had a supervisor who I knew to be a lesbian, but whom was not openly out in her sexual orientation. To me, it was obvious that she took great care to keep this information a secret. She lived about an hour's drive from our school district, never talked about her personal life other than talking about her involvement in her Episcopal church's community garden which was also out of town. Her position as an educational leader gained speed yet her power and freedom to be herself was lessened more and more - at least that is how it seemed to me. There is no doubt that had her sexual preference actually been confirmed she would not have climbed the ladder in that district. It was for those same reasons that when I asked questions about addressing the oppression that many employees and students in particular experienced within the school system, I was told we didn't need to "open that can of worms."
Critical research allows a space for questions that address this idea of normalization. As a middle grades English Language Arts teacher, it was apparent to me early on that many of my students were not motivated to read because they couldn't find reading material in our school library that actually reflected their interests and realities. The selection was too normal - too reflective of a white or outdated experience for many students to relate to. Without spending adequate time reading actual text, I knew my students were not going to grow as readers. Additionally, most of my students did not enjoy reading. This idea more than their test data troubled me most.
As part of an action research study to address the lack of reading motivation I saw, I surveyed my students, purchased books that reflected themes and ideas of incarcerated parents, being raised by grandparents, feeling abandoned, being rejected by a first love, grappling with emotions and identity, and so on. These were not necessarily the classics that I was told to teach within my curriculum, but these were texts that my students could read and understand not just based on a lexile level, but in a very real and personal way. While I had several parents and administrators question these texts and their literary value, I defended my choices and my students showed tremendous growth in reading on their NC End of Grade tests. I attributed their growth to the fact that they had actually spent lengthy amounts of time reading and analyzing texts that not only helped them think critically about literature, but that they were motivated to read and think about. The texts they read were not the normal texts that middle school teachers typically used, and I think that actually made all of the difference.
As an educational leader, I want to inspire pre-service teachers and other leaders to ask questions that question the normalization to which we subject students in our schools. It is clear that curriculum reform needs to happen - not just to address disability needs - but to address the personal realities students face. While there is merit in the ideas and themes present in a classical curriculum, no student will care about those ideas until they feel safe in their own identities for the duration of the school day.
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