“Student Learning & Critical Pedagogy”
As the Upward Bounds Math & Science program summer term came to a close for 2013, my class had the opportunity to watch a movie during their last science class of the summer. However, the teacher did not choose just any movie. The teacher chose to show the first hour of the 2011 American documentary film “Forks Over Knives.” This documentary examines the following hypothesis: many diseases afflicting Western civilizations (including coronary heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer) can be linked to the Western diet of processed, animal-based foods. While I previously had the privilege of watching the movie in its entirety, reflecting on it, and incorporating many of the themes into my own life, my students had yet to see it. In fact, not one student had even heard of it before.
I found the teachers choice of movie intriguing. Before beginning, the teacher provided a general synopsis of the movie and instructed the students to find connections between the data presented (especially the studies linking coronary heart disease with diet) and their previous study of the circulatory system. The students were required to write down as many different diseases referenced during the movie as possible and to turn in their paper at the end for a participation grade (a behavioral method of learning to keep the students accountable for paying attention). As the movie progressed, the teacher occasionally stopped to discuss certain topics more in depth with the students. I noted that the conversation eventually turned towards a discussion about the cost of healthy foods and the location of grocery stores as reflected in different Philadelphia neighborhoods like West Philadelphia. Some of the students personally opened up to discuss the lack of healthy foods at their local bodegas, the distance they needed to travel from their homes to reach a grocery store, and the culture of food in their families. While most of the students joked that there was no way they would change the way they ate, they did at least acknowledge the validity of the movies message linking vegetarian food choices with better health.
I found the teachers choice of movie intriguing. Before beginning, the teacher provided a general synopsis of the movie and instructed the students to find connections between the data presented (especially the studies linking coronary heart disease with diet) and their previous study of the circulatory system. The students were required to write down as many different diseases referenced during the movie as possible and to turn in their paper at the end for a participation grade (a behavioral method of learning to keep the students accountable for paying attention). As the movie progressed, the teacher occasionally stopped to discuss certain topics more in depth with the students. I noted that the conversation eventually turned towards a discussion about the cost of healthy foods and the location of grocery stores as reflected in different Philadelphia neighborhoods like West Philadelphia. Some of the students personally opened up to discuss the lack of healthy foods at their local bodegas, the distance they needed to travel from their homes to reach a grocery store, and the culture of food in their families. While most of the students joked that there was no way they would change the way they ate, they did at least acknowledge the validity of the movies message linking vegetarian food choices with better health.
I believe this lesson, whether intentional or not, had a critical pedagogy character to it. The teacher presented the material in an interesting fashion (a movie), and the teacher guided teacher/student dialogue so as to lead the students to reflect critically on the material presented. In this way, the students could see the relevance in their own lives. In particular, the students learned about an injustice that potentially affects them daily: the lack of access to healthy foods because of cost and access constraints in their communities. The teacher could have taken the lesson one step further and had the students take some action in their own lives to implement the lessons they learned (such as make a list of healthy foods to bring home, make a list of health screening tests each family member should have, etc.) I would like to one-day use a similar lesson in my own classroom; I believe the lesson could be extended over the course of a few weeks to encompass much more material, both content wise and contextually (obviously, the UBMS classes have time constraints because of the short length of their summer program.) However, thinking about using a critical pedagogical approach to teaching leaves me with many questions. Is it possible to cover enough content material while keeping a social justice focus? How comfortable do I need to be with the students to make the conversation around social injustices productive rather than provocative? How do I become comfortable enough with my students and with myself as a teacher to even reach this point in my lesson planning? What if the students do not like or cannot work with this style of teaching? Can a classroom be run completely using a critical pedagogical method, or does lesson planning work best when heterogeneous in nature?