Culture Circles and the Three Little Pigs

“…Reading and writing are not neutral acts; rather, they are linked to cultural practices that make political, epistemic, and moral claims on our lives” (Freire, 2000, P.69). Ah, it’s good to read Freire again! It never ceases to amaze me how he can put into words exactly how I view what an ELA classroom should be. He places immense value in the reflective practices of teachers and the participation in discussion of everyone in the class. For me, reflection is key to always teaching to the best of my ability. I’ve seen teachers get stuck in a rut with their practices because “it’s worked for years, why wouldn’t it work now?” but this is a horrible attitude. In all honesty it’s incredibly lazy and ineffective. Teachers should reflect about their teaching on a daily basis, if it didn’t work today, it probably won’t work tomorrow.  There’s no reason to beat a dead horse when it comes to your pedagogy. I admire my teachers I’ve observed over the past year. They are continuously searching for ways to make their classes more meaningful and engaging for their students.

Souto-Manning’s chapters we read for this week do a wonderful job of expanding and clearly explaining Freire’s concept of culture circles and the process they enact. It is my goal to have these phases occur in my classroom. I have already started my critical inquiry unit. As my first two units have been about social issues, I’ve decided that my final unit will involve advocacy and bringing social justice to areas in need here in Austin. My goal is that my students become “critically meta-aware of larger discourse and influences shaping these issues” (Souto-Manning, p.  41). As of right now, I envision my unit using mentor texts, like newspaper editorials, for example about the same topic but with varying opinions. I want my students to think critically about the reasons behind the author’s position and I want them to decide for themselves what their position is on that issue and others they will research about during this unit of study. I want the students to see that no issue is black or white, they need to analyze the situation and problematize it to come to their own conclusions and make their decisions their own and not what someone else is telling them to believe.

It was interesting reading about the implementation of culture circles with 1^st graders. We don’t often read about younger students and when I first started reading that chapter I thought that they were young for this kind of discussion but I realized this is the perfect age to start these kinds of conversations. This age group has a great idea of what is fair and what is not and they easily get upset if fairness is not enacted. Their desire to have everything be equal is seen on the playground at the lunch table and at home when it comes to who chooses the channel and who gets the bigger dessert. By having them think about what is fair and what is not in their classroom they are prepared to discuss how they can make classroom practices equal. Using the three little pigs written by different authors is gen.i.us. Genius.

I’m honestly contemplating using Jon Scieszka’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs for my 9^th graders critical inquiry unit. I read it often last year with my elementary students and it is a clear way to understand voice and authorship of a piece. Have yall read this story? I honestly think I enjoy it more now as an adult than I did then but even when I was a child it made me reconsider who was telling the story I was hearing and why. That’s it, I’m stealing it. Thanks Souto-Manning!