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We create everyday items & experiences that center the work of teaching.
About the Designs
POLICY CRITIQUE
These everyday items carry provocations to center the work you do in conversation as you labor in schools. For example, is it the teacher's job to teach the basics? If yes, what are these basics? Are they confined to reading, writing, addition, and subtraction, as NCLB states, or is there a different foundation that should be argued for--is there more? What is the educational purpose that can serve as a frame to help us identify the "basics"?
POLICY CRITIQUE, CTD.
"We cannot fail," is the explicit and implicit messaging of NCLB and ESSA. It is the messaging born of a commitment to accountability for the outcomes of children, which is not levied against the entire educational enterprise equally. Instead, it is borne chiefly by the "hands" that carry out the work of teaching. What are the consequences of this type of discourse on teachers? How does it impact them spiritually, emotionally, physically, socially, vocationally, intellectually, and financially?
This design is a found poem created in the course, “Theory and Inquiry in Curriculum and Teaching” at Teachers College, Columbia University, taught by Professor Tran Templeton, 2023. The poem was constructed against Kafele, 2016, p.55.
Kafele, B. K. (2016), The Teacher 50: critical questions for inspiring
classroom excellence. ASCD, 55.
VISONS FROM THE FIELD
These everyday items center the perspectives on teachers’ work shared by four K-12 public school teachers captured in their responses to the question, “Imagine that this is a teacher bag [holding a nondescript bag] and all the things that you believe should be connected to your work are inside. What would you put inside?”
VISIONS FROM THE FIELD, CTD.
Scale is engaged to communicate points of high resonance across their responses. These pieces invite you to think about your vision of teachers’ work, i.e., what it is/should be while considering the areas of overlap and or incongruency between teachers’ visions of their labor and the visions promoted by the United States through its major educational policies, NCLB and ESSA.
If you had a chance to pack your teacher's bag, what would you put in it? What are the spiritual, emotional, physical, social, vocational, intellectual, and financial implications of conceptualizing your work in this way?