For the last year or so, many educators have logged on each morning to a classroom screen full of black squares on mute, leading to questions and debates about how to increase student engagement remotely. Of course, there are reasons beyond disengagement that explain , such as privacy concerns, a lack of intellectual or physical safety, and technology issues and access (Will, 2020). But closures were not solely responsible for an engagement crisis. Students have metaphorically had cameras off and voices muted in classrooms for decades.
Though most schools are returning to in-person learning this fall, a lack of reflection on what we learned about students’ role in the virtual classroom only perpetuates oppressive pedagogies and hierarchical student-teacher dynamics. Equity-driven materials for educators often address curriculum (what students are taught) without addressing pedagogy (how students are taught). Too often, student engagement is conflated with compliance; did the students finish the task or get the question right?
Even classrooms that have an equity-driven curriculum can undermine student voice by restricting text choice, leveling student groups, and mediating conversations with prompts, group roles, and sentence starters. For antiracist curriculum to work, it must be coupled with antiracist pedagogy that is driven by the very students the curriculum is meant to reflect.
If educators are serious about achieving equity beyond using it as a buzzword, then addressing tough questions about pedagogy in all kinds of learning environments must be the priority. The following questions are ones we should all be asking to get to the core of valuable school experiences.
Ensuring student freedom does not mean students ‘do whatever they want.’ Rather, freedom ensures students are respected learners with their own intentions, which means they need direct access to materials, a variety of texts, and each other.
Whose voice drives learning in the classroom?
In the brick-and-mortar classroom, if teachers dominate the dialogue, then they are driving the thinking and undermining authentic collaboration. Learners who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), students with disabilities, and multilingual learners are disproportionately subjected to teacher-driven instruction because these learners are often taught from a deficit model (i.e. assuming that the child is lacking language, ability, or experience to drive their own learning) (Roberts-Miller, 2019). This undermines students’ Theory of Mind, meaning their inherent ability to generate and articulate full thoughts that deserve reaction (Rutishauser, 2020).
Instead, we should empower students to have control over what and how they learn by opening the curriculum to more student voices:
● Teach students to ask questions of the curriculum material and standards directly. This eliminates teacher interpretation of the content, encourages student curiosity, and puts student perspectives and experiences first. Students can read the standards of the unit or class and develop their own guiding questions to explore. For concrete ideas on student-driven pedagogy for these processes, try resources like Empowered Students: Educating Flexible Minds for a Flexible Future by Kerry Decker Rutishauser.
● Give students time to get comfortable sharing with classmates. Often, adults will stay off camera and mute when they feel they don’t know enough about a topic, are confused, or don’t feel welcome in the conversation. All of these are valid concerns that students have as well. Consider supplementing whole-class instruction with virtual social events, small groups, and 1:1 opportunities to help students get to know a few others before engaging with a larger group.
● Allow students to choose digital and print texts that address their questions. This eliminates teacher censorship of what is worth reading and is the most authentic way for students to bring their culture and interests directly into the classroom. Then, give students ample opportunity to interact with each other around their chosen texts with a reading routine like my school’s Cooperative Unison Reading, which helps students practice mindfulness around others’ perspectives. Notice and record student thoughts rather than designing questions. This should yield enough dialogic data to map standards and outcomes onto student actions.
● Work to create opportunities for student-to-student collaboration. Students should have an authentic opportunity to articulate their own unique ideas, defend them in the face of peer criticism, exchange feedback, engage with multiple perspectives, and seek peer support to achieve learning goals. Ditch graphic organizers and worksheets that mediate the conversation in the absence of a physically present teacher. Instead, reserve time for students to share perspectives and feedback with peers before turning in a product to the teacher for feedback. The more that students see that they need to collaborate to understand something, the more it will become an essential part of learning.
How free are students to move and make choices in the classroom?
Expectations such as assigned seats, assigned groupings, leveled groups, hidden classroom materials, barter rules to use materials (like turning in a student ID to use a computer), or other limits on student movement can center rules that benefit the teacher. It’s these kinds of policies that have made independent learning in a remote setting so hard. This type of pedagogy, which polices student bodies, is steeped in racism. Dictating where, when, how, and with whom students interact are unfortunate remnants of Jim Crow laws that restricted social interaction. Similarly, Native American boarding schools sought to assimilate indiginous children by controlling their behavior.
Ensuring student freedom does not mean students ‘do whatever they want.’ Rather, freedom ensures students are respected learners with their own intentions, which means they need direct access to materials, a variety of texts, and each other.
● Center student inquiry with materials they can explore at their own pace. In addition to the texts students choose themselves, teachers should provide access to a wide array of books, websites, journals, magazines, videos, and multimedia resources that address each topic in the curriculum from multiple perspectives. One student may read a graphic novel about a historical event, another may listen to firsthand narratives, another may read articles and secondary sources. Teachers can maintain a digital library of materials that students can add to as they discover texts. Students can in turn create digital portfolios that highlight their own questions and demonstrate which texts and perspectives they’ve explored and how that has influenced their own understanding.
● Be sure students know their responsibilities to the classroom and to each other. Set classroom norms that align to a social contract around what students need to learn and how to learn with each other. Spend time contracting ideas like how to manage a conversation as a whole class: Will students raise hands, pass a talking piece, sit in a circle or small groups? Each norm should be directly related to promoting student agency in a responsible manner. For an example, see the NYC Student Rights and Responsibilities (New York City Department of Education, 2020). In a model like this, you might spend some of the first weeks of class collectively creating a whole-class document that outlines student rights and responsibilities. Each student and staff member can participate in the discussion by agreeing to the social contract and what happens when someone breaches it. For example, if someone in the classroom disrupts learning by making excessive noise, what will be the response? How can the student be brought back into the learning and better understand their responsibility to other students?
What are the classroom expectations around productivity?
A toxic culture of capitalist grind has created workplaces that do not fully respect or accommodate people’s responsibilities at home, especially for women (Taub, 2020). Instead of creating the same culture for our kids, educators can model classrooms that respect students' full humanity and their time and value learning over task completion. For classrooms that honor learning as an arc and not a linear process, consider:
● Create open-ended assignments and tasks. Even for young students, having something to grapple with over time allows student energy to refocus on the ideas and not the immediate task. If there is nothing due each day, there is less of a need to devote precious planning time tallying task completion and more time for meaningful feedback. Ditch daily worksheets and instead ask students to submit a portfolio that demonstrates their thinking for a unit or topic. Then, provide space for students to show their research and inquiry process. The teacher can meet regularly with students 1:1 or in small group to assess the learning, not the task: What skills have they demonstrated? What feedback did you provide throughout the process?
● Check in on students regularly. Make sure you are aware of the responsibilities they have beyond the classroom. Teachers can greet students at the door as a quick way to do a wellness check. If a student needs support to help them manage time, prioritize and communicate that to all stakeholders. This must be the role of the teacher, not the guidance counselor.
A classroom that is driven by students means access to authentic collaboration, student text choice, mastery-based assessment, and the ability to move freely and directly access learning materials. In the midst of this collective crisis, educators can focus on undoing oppressive teaching practices in ways that will make both remote and in-person learning more meaningful.