Disrupting Hierarchy in Education

This timely book features rich examples of students and teachers, defined as learning partners, disrupting hierarchy in education by collaborating on social change projects. At the book’s core is Paulo Freire’s theorization of students and teachers working together toward co-liberation. Co-written by learning partners, each chapter in this collection highlights a social change project that puts Freire’s theories into action. Projects span a range of academic disciplines and geographical locations from K–12, university/college, and nonformal educational contexts. Appropriate as both a textbook and a primer on collaborative social change-making, Disrupting Hierarchy in Education offers inspiration and models of community-engaged learning programs from across the globe. Topics include community education, public writing, using media for popular education, adolescent and youth development, climate change education, peace and justice leadership development, revolutionary nonviolence, literacy teacher education, citizenship education, development of Latin American studies, palliative care, reflections on identity and subjectivity, antiracism education, trauma-informed pedagogy, wellness, and art curation.

Book Features:

• ● Real-world examples of teaching and learning for social justice in ways that disrupt traditional educational hierarchy.
• ● Chapters co-written by diverse learning partners: educators (e.g. elementary school teachers and professors), undergraduate and graduate students, youth advocates, artists, curators, and founders and leaders of NGOs.
• ● Projects that cover a wide terrain, including K–12 settings, university/college, wellness, arts, media, and popular education.
• ● Examples from across the globe, including the United States, Brazil, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Jamaica.
• ● Discussion questions and/or suggested activities at the end of each chapter.

Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams is the Daria L. and Eric J. Wallach Professor of Peace and Justice Studies and associate professor of Africana studies at Gettysburg College. Hana Huskić graduated from Gettysburg College with a BA in anthropology and lives and works in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Christina M. Noto graduated from Gettysburg College with a BA in history and currently lives in Denver, CO.

“Guided by Paulo Freire’s classic book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (this book) turns many of our traditional ways of thinking on their heads…. For teachers reading the book, there are discussion questions and activities at the end of each chapter, making it a book that can be actionable and put into ‘praxis’ as the authors suggest.”

—Forbes

“For veteran educators and activists in the struggle for liberation, who are watching with much frustration at our past gains in educational, labor, and women’s rights being undone by the proponents of dehumanizing neoliberal policies, Disrupting Hierarchy in Education is a much-appreciated endeavor that reignites radical hope. . . . The chapters in this book signal a powerful decolonializing praxis to dismantle the debilitating relationships and practices of education that disrespect our differences and diminish our humanity.”
—From the Foreword by Antonia Darder, Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership in the School of Education, Loyola Marymount University

“A handbook for educators in K–12, community, and university settings for how to use education as a tool for liberation.”
—From the Afterword by Monisha Bajaj, professor of international and multicultural education, University of San Francisco

“At a time when critical and empowering forms of education are under siege by far-right extremists, it is crucial that educators make visible the nature of this threat and how to deal with it. Disrupting Hierarchy in Education is exactly the book educators need for taking on this challenge. It not only embraces a language of critique and possibility but relies on the narratives of teachers who are working together to reclaim schools as sites of struggle and empowerment. Disrupting Hierarchy in Education embraces pedagogy as a practice that disturbs, troubles, and unsettles hierarchical formations rooted in colonial forms of oppression. It is a book that every educator should read if they believe that critical education is fundamental to creating engaged, socially responsible students.”
—Henry Giroux, Chair Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest, McMaster University

“Disrupting Hierarchy in Education is a manual for those who seek to challenge the invisible structures that perpetuate the status quo in our schools, colleges, and universities. The collection of chapters in this book have been written by some of the most insightful authors in education today, and the analysis presented is incisive and illuminating. For students and others who seek to use education as a tool for building a more just and equitable society, this book will serve as a go-to guide for what must be done.”
—Pedro Noguera, Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, USC Rossier School of Education

“Disrupting Hierarchy in Education, edited by Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, Hana Huskić, and Christina M. Noto, is a bold, unique and inspiring text that shows the power of learning partnerships, comprising students and teachers working in collaboration, to advance social change and bring about co-liberation. Critically engaged and spanning a range of disciplines, the projects in this book point the way to more just schooling and communities the world over. A must read.”
—Peter T. Coleman, professor of psychology and education, Teachers College, Columbia University

Contents

Foreword: Decolonizing Hierarchy as a Revolutionary Act  Antonia Darder  xi

Acknowledgments  xiii

Introduction: Modeling Prefigurative Praxes: Disruption for Social Change Christina M. Noto, Hana Huski´c, and Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams  1

Part I: Engaging Different Publics For Social Change

1.  “Our Ideas Were Welcomed”: Disrupting the Teacher/ Student Binary in a Collaborative Writing Project With High School Students in South Africa  13
Ashley Visagie, Helene Rousseau, Taahirah Hoosain, Imaan Adams, Jason Cloete, and Thea Mennas

2.  The Black Panthers, Multicultural Peace Education, and Power Sharing in a New York City Alternative High School  29
Krista Ambats and Matt Meyer

3.  Disrupting Hierarchies for New Landscapes of Learning by Action: Experiences and Reflections from a Climate Change Course  43
Jing Lin, Virginia Gomes, Joey Haavik, Maha Malik, Shue-kei Joanna Mok, Jordan Scanlon, Emmanuel Wanjala, and Anna Grigoryeva

4.  Cala-Boca Já Morreu: Education Through Media  59
Grácia Lopes Lima, Mariana Casellato, and Milena Klinke

Part II: Institutionalizing Social Change: SKILLS AND PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

5.  Education for Revolutionary Nonviolence: Enacting Decolonial Praxis  75
Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, Christina M. Noto, and Daniel Jones

6.  From Transformative Pedagogy to Transforming Collegiate Spaces: Creating a Network for Multicultural Scholars  93
Roberto Garcia, Paulina S. Lim, Jacqueline Nguyen, and Natalie M. Schneider

7.  A Trio of Co-Conspirators: Teacher Educators, (Preservice) Teachers, and Elementary Students Working Together as Activist Researchers for Social Change  107
Katie Allison, Jessica Barnett, Vickie Godfrey, Jasmine Hashemi, James Hoffman, Beatrice Kyle, Catherine Lammert, Julie Mazur, and Theresa Nguyen

8.  Brooklyn Arts Council’s Wellness Studio: Educational Praxis in Slow Curating for Social Change  121
Chief Baba Neil Clarke, Daniela Fifi, Desiree Gordon, David Gumbs, Miguelina Rodriguez, Griselda Rodriguez-Solomon, and Zane Rodulfo

9.  Everybody Teach! Upending Traditional Disciplinary Curriculum to Create Co-Taught, Praxis-Based, Higher Education Courses  135
Alexander Fink, Bemnet Habtamu, Angela Kunkel-Linares, Morgan Pence, Kaiya Woller, and Ilene Dawn Alexander

10.  To Be “In and Not Of” the University, but Beyond: Estudios Rebeldes as Relational Disrupting for Change  151
Agustin “Tino” Diaz, Hannah Filizola Ruiz, Leandra Hernandez, Jose Coreas, Lydia Kerr, Jorge Garcia, Carlos Alarco, and Mari Claudia Linares

Part III: Reflexivity And Conscientization For Social Change

11.  “Uncertaining” the Teacher and Student: Reflections Between a Professor and a Medical Doctor  167
Nyna Amin and Laura Campbell

12.  Working Toward Trauma-Informed Praxis: Reflections on a Shared Learning Process  181
Juleus Ghunta and Ute Kelly

Editors’ Reflection: We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For: Justice-Grounded Leadership Hana Huski´c, Christina M. Noto, and Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams  195

Afterword Monisha Bajaj  205

About the Editors and Contributors  209

Index  217