The Critical Pedagogy Reader

The idea that the constructs that we'll be teaching in or that the subject matter that we'll be teaching could be oppressive to students is a scary thought.  I understand the concerns that McLaren brings to light about being critical of what everything we do in the classroom as that input is part of what shapes our student's futures.  The hidden curriculum as he puts it, that what we choose not to teach in our classroom and all of the subtleties that form the overall environment of our school, influence students as well as the actual curriculum is an important point to reflect on as we think about setting up our own classrooms in the future. The idea that boys are taught independence while girls are taught dependence is not something I would ever want to participate in, nor would most teachers, which to me validates the idea that we need to be more critical of our teaching practices so that we aren't unknowingly perpetuating that.

The conversation about the language of hope or possibility and empowering students is why so many of us choose to teach.  It's a daunting task to think about all the sensitivities that we need to have to so many different subsets in any given class of students.  We won't always know the background of all of our students and it's important to not just differentiate a lesson to make it accessible to students, but to find creative ways to make it accessible to our students.  He talks about the "great books" and how some people want to push for those to be the basis of our curriculum.  It seems like we may not always be able to immediately change what we're expected to teach, but I think that we can find ways to approach the material in a new way to make it interesting and applicable to our classrooms.