Kate Johnson recently published a book chapter titled “Eternal Graffiti: Using Poetry to Develop Social Justice Educators in Integrating Social Justice Education in Teacher Preparation Programs”.
Who were your co-authors on this chapter?
I wrote this chapter myself.
Who would you say is the target audience for this chapter?
This chapter is in a book called, “Integrating Social Justice Education in Teacher Preparation Programs.” The target audience for this chapter is teacher educators who are working with prospective teachers. The book is not limited to mathematics education and my chapter, while it talks about my work with prospective mathematics teachers, is not geared toward only mathematics teacher educators.
What is the big problem you hoped to address with this chapter?
I hoped to explain how using poetry in teacher education can challenge White prospective teachers to interrupt their tendencies to be silent during conversations about race, particularly, and other social justice topics, more broadly.
What are some of the key ideas in the chapter?
There are many different ways in which White people can be silent around social justice discussions. Some of these silences are unproductive in that they serve to perpetuate oppression or harm on others. Some of these silences are important component to healing and allying with People of Color or other marginalized people.
Poetry is useful for beginning discussion about social justice topics with White people because it is accessible to White people with varying experiences and backgrounds, is evocative, and promotes discussion.
Poetry serves at least three purposes in social justice education: 1) it provides opportunities to illuminate and reflect on “invisible beliefs” — the kinds of things we believe that are so deeply a part of who we are that they are difficult to name or see; 2) it brings other voices or people’s perspectives to a space that otherwise aren’t present — such as the voices of People of Color in a class with only White students; 3) it provides people with opportunities to write about their own learning experiences because writing poetry is not as rigid as writing in traditional narrative ways.
What else would you like to say about this chapter?
The chapter is written using both poetry and prose. The chapter also includes specific recommendations and resources for other teacher educators to use if they want to use poetry in their classes.
Abstract:
This chapter will rely on both poetry and prose to communicate the ideas I teach prospective teachers about social justice and develop their social awareness. I use qualitative methods developed from performative autoethnography (Spry, 2011), poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2020; Faulkner & Cloud, 2019; McCulliss, 2013), and poetic-narrative autoethnography (Hanauer, 2012) to accomplish three goals: (1) describe my definition of social justice education; (2) articulate the experiences that led me to use poetry in class; and (3) expand on the ways I use poetry with prospective teachers. Further, I explore how different kinds of silence are a necessary component to developing social awareness and how poetry can foster these productive silences and allow students to break through unproductive silences.