Extraordinary Pedagogies

This book presents a curriculum model for preparing white preservice teachers to be successful in urban contexts. It is based on more than 15 years of ethnographic teacher research generated within an intensive immersion course designed by the author, called the Philadelphia Urban Seminar. Specifically, the model shows how to complicate white preservice teachers’ awareness of identity and foster teachers' understanding of their own identity and positionality. Readers will learn how to develop teachers’ capacities to respond to diverse students’ situatedness; to navigate stressful relational and institutional dynamics in which race and gender injuries are involved; to evolve as leaders who take a stand for social and emotional justice; and to cultivate respect for new literacies and logics. This resource shows how to generate this complex consciousness meaningfully and quickly by integrating pedagogical shock, an ontological framework for personhood, extraordinary literacies, and direct inquiry into a white supremacist patriarchal ideology that pervades teaching and learning in the United States.

Book Features:

• Research and practice that empower teachers committed to transformative existential education (i.e., antiracist, antisexist, and antiphobic praxis for all people).
• A cutting-edge curriculum framework with clear and transferable principles, practices, lesson plans, assignments, and readings.
• Support structures for teacher educators focused on personal and professional expansion, including chapter summaries, strategic lists, analytic memos, insightful transcripts, poetic interludes, and more.
• An experiential curriculum that teacher educators can adapt to their context as either a two-week immersion or a full-semester existential education course.
• Exemplar transcripts featuring teacher educators, advanced graduate students, and pre-service teachers with action-oriented tools and materials to aid the reader in implementation.
• A companion website with video and audio recordings featuring the author leading class sessions and workshops, context images that provide necessary visuals, and documents for use in implementation.

Jeanine M. Staples-Dixon is a professor of literacy and language, African American studies, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at The Pennsylvania State University.

“Through her experience, Staples-Dixon has created a solutions-based playbook for other teacher educators looking to be, and train, critical educators for K–12 classrooms. Extraordinary Pedagogies includes activities and assessments with QR codes and clear directives making this an essential handbook and must-have for all teacher educators’ libraries.”
—Lynnette Mawhinney, professor of urban education and senior associate dean, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University–Newark

“It’s extraordinarily difficult to share extraordinary pedagogy. I use the word extraordinary twice (now three times) to emphasize that this is an extraordinary book that captures the urgently needed, existential work of engaging white people in teaching and learning that heals in order to cultivate humanizing futures for the benefit of all people.”
—Samuel Jaye Tanner, associate professor of English education at the University of Iowa

"Masterfully addresses the problems with and solutions to deeply held practices and beliefs that impede learning for historically and systematically marginalized youth. An indispensable guide for all who care about bridging humanity and education for our collective good."
—Talia Carroll, vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion, Oklahoma City University

"One of the largest challenges to doing effective and efficient social consciousness-raising work in teacher education is how to move beyond and improve upon hackneyed, top-down approaches that abstract matters of life and death. How does one make social consciousness-raising around racism and other social evils personal and relevant to teachers and the diverse contexts in which they work? In this volume, Dr. Staples-Dixon shares her wealth of insight and experience, offering extraordinary personally and professionally meaningful pedagogies able to recondition and energize the bodies, souls, and spirits of both aspiring teachers and teacher educators. 'First, decolonize your soul,' she encourages, 'then, focus on your school.'"
—Pauli Badenhorst, associate professor, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

“In a moment that calls on us to be brave and steadfast, Extraordinary Pedagogies offers concrete steps to achieve soul-changing work. This is a must-read for those training new teachers towards equity and justice.”
—Wideline Seraphin, assistant professor of literacy studies, University of Texas at Arlington

Contents

Preface  ix

Acknowledgments  xi

Introduction  1
The Goal: Revolutionizing Teacher Consciousness  3
The Path: Dismantling the Patriarchy, One Teacher at a Time, Through Extraordinary Pedagogies  5
How the Course Works  6
Methods and Evidence  13
How to Read This Book  14
The Chapters  17
Welcome In: A Call to Action  22

1.  It’s Very Important to Do Impossible Things: Addressing Bumpy Beginnings and the Problem of Innocence With Pedagogical Shock  23
Problems: Beginnings and Innocence  24
Solution: Pedagogical Shock  32
The Framework of the Four Agreements  45
Possibilities: A Highly Ordered Teaching/Learning Context and Surprisingly Aligned Constituents  49

2.  The white Supremacist Patriarchy Is Spectacular: Here’s a Simple Framework Teachers Can Use to Dismantle It (+ Enact Methods of Engagement to Counter Its Effects)  51
Problem: Lack  51
Solution: A Framework for Noticing, Naming, and Dissolving white Supremacist Patriarchal Ideology  57
Possibilities: Antiracist Mindfulness Methods for Dismantling the Tenets of the WSP in Yourself, Your School, and Our Society  65

3.  Working on Weakness: Using an Ontological Framework for Personhood to Create Strength and Stamina in Existential Education  71
Problem: Weakness  71
Solution: An Ontological Framework for Personhood, a Sociospiritual Scaffold  74
Possibilities  80

4.  Who In the World Are You Talking About?: Dissolving Labels With Experiential Embodied Practice  90
Problem: Labels and Avoidance  91
Solution: Notice and Name Labels  92
Solution: Experiential Embodied Practice  93
Possibilities: Increased Self-Awareness, Self-Direction, and the Beginnings of Experiential Embodied Practice  97
An Introduction to Final Projects  101

5.  Asking Existential Questions of Self and Other: Unpacking Positionality and the Nature of Privilege by Sharing Gender Stories and Strengthening Empathetic Core  103
Problem: Privilege  105
Solution: Intersectional Review of Microaggressions, Macroaggressions, and Systemic Aggressions Through the Line of Sight  108
Solution: Producing Gender Stories and Public/Private Shares  110
Possibilities: Emerging Ability to Dynamically See Self and Other and Say Who Is Who  113

6.  Catching the Seeds of Contempt and Colonization: Spatial Liberation and Freedom of the Black Image in white Imaginations Through Conscious Capacious Service  117
Problem: Contempt and Colonization  118
Solution: Conscious Capacious Service  121

7.  #WeWillRest: Repairing Existential Exhaustion With Intentional, Decolonizing Rest to Recoup Power, Perspective, and Passion for Personhood  126
Problem: Existential Exhaustion  128
Solution: Intentional, Decolonizing Rest  130

8.  How Much Stuff Is in One Person and How Do I Make My Eyes See?: From Lacking to Enlightened Lenses for Looking at the Social and Academic Experiences of Self and Others  135
Problem: Overwhelm  136
Solution: Enlightened Lenses for Looking at the Overwhelming Social and Academic Experiences of Self and Others  139
Possibilities: Increased Capacity for Working With Overwhelm Using the Lenses of Intersectionality (and Other Enlightened Lenses for Seeing the Identities and Experiences of Every Person)  143

9.  I Have No Words, Help Me Speak: Presenting Tools for Talking About the Dynamics of Visibility, Erasure, Humanization, and Dehumanization  147
Problem: Voicelessness  147
Solution: Introduction to a Language of Thriving (Along With a Language of Oppression)  149
Possibilities: Final Projects That Present Powerful Voices and Critique the Dynamics of Visibility, Erasure, Humanization, and Dehumanization  154
A Word on the Syntax of Supremacy  158

10.  What If Nobody’s Broken?: Regarding Disability Through New Soulful and Somatic Methods of Visibilizing, Affirming, and Validating “Self” and “Other”  159
Problem: Brokenness  159
Solution: New Soulful and Somatic Contemplation and Movement Within and Across Spaces  164
Possibilities: A “How to See/What to Do” Exercise Toward Methods of Visibilizing, Affirming, and Validating “Self” and “Other”  166

11.  What Do I Focus on First and How Do We Create Closure?: Exemplifying Ways to Support Exterior Life Equity Through Interior Life Health, Order, and Membership  171
Problem: Focus  171
Solution: Ways to Support Exterior Life Equity Through Interior Life Health, Order, and Membership, or How Do We Release Them?: Regarding Supreme Love  174
Possibilities: Introduction to Personal Liberation Projects  177
Toward Personal Liberation  179

12.  Who Am I Really, and Where Do We Go From Here?: Identifying Changemakers, Doing Harambe, Taking the Pledge, and Presenting the Tribute (or Provoking Soul and Soma to Breakdowns for the Actualizations of Breakthroughs)  182
Problem: Closure  183
Solution: Identifying Changemakers, Doing Harambe, Taking The Pledge, and Presenting the Tribute (or Provoking Soul and Soma to Breakdowns for the Actualizations of Breakthroughs)  183
Possibilities: The Spark of Extraordinary Pedagogies  187
Possibilities: Rapid Transformation and Revolutionized Teacher Consciousness (i.e., Extraordinary Pedagogies)  188

Notes  191

References  197

Index  203

About the Author  211