Looking back on myself in the beginning of 2018, when I was first navigating my praxis project, I reflected on my goals and hopes for when I am a teacher. I reflected on my wishes for students to be able to afford things and “… a way for children to be able to be treated equally and with understanding by both other students and their teachers,” (Richard 2018). In relation, my goals for my praxis project were to have students be comfortable speaking in front of their peers and teacher. Wanting to learn how to get more students to participate in discussions was another goal of mine moving into this project.
I discussed my own place in the world, being a female as an influence on my own shyness when I was in school, feeling intimidated by my male classmates. I understood why some students did not want to participate in class because of not wanting to be wrong and be made fun of by classmates. I also mentioned students may not participating because some of them may be English Language Learners and may not have the skills to participate in English. Reading into Freire’s We Make the Road by Walking, I connected my personal experiences of what type of participation I was experiencing in school and what I was seeing among students while observing classrooms. I then shifted into looking at participation through a teacher lens, and “…as educators want to see this change among these students in the classroom,” (Richard 2018). I also ask the question of whether adding a participation grade to helps when aiming more participation in the classroom.
Moving forward, I describe ways in which, “In the first stages of my research, I plan to observe the classroom culture and the student-teacher relationship which has been set in place,” (Richard 2018). I then go into detail about the types of methods I planned to use from Michaels and O’Connor from their Talk Science Primer. I reflect on these methods and how I hoped they would create more participation among the students who I would work with.
Now, looking back at my experiences before and after my project, my understanding of social change has grown. Looking at social change, it can start out as a micro level change, such as my praxis project within Mrs. Karpowicz’s classroom. This reason for change was developed out of my own personal experience in school, urging for students with similar experiences to break out of this stigma and feel comfortable speaking in front of others. The work produced from my praxis project can then potentially shift into a macro level change, such as Mrs. Karpowicz continuing to use the curriculum or guiding questions, which could move into different teachers’ curriculums. With this, this could inspire other teachers to want to push for curriculum that pushes for deeper thinking and more equitable participation. This does not mean that these teachers have to use the same methods as I did, but it still gets other teachers to push for curriculum that involves deeper thinking and produces equitability. I hope this work produces more curriculum that is developed through other teachers’ work by sharing these ideas, creating a larger macro level change.