Current beliefs regarding the question

One of my current beliefs is that reflection is an important aspect of human development.  To me, being reflective means thinking about the world carefully, thinking about yourself carefully, and thinking about yourself in relation to the things that you encounter.  I think there’s something awakening and emboldening in being able recognize who you are and your relationship to the world around you.  Perhaps these are ideas that we talk more about in teen years and adulthood but less so in childhood. But I think there’s a place for it in childhood.

 

I believe that young children want to be challenged and want to grapple with their real-life issues and questions.  In an assignment I completed for my Children’s Literacy course over the summer, I read a Langston Hughes picture book with a six-year old Black student who I knew from a classroom that I worked in last year.  When I showed this student the cover of the book and he right away announced to me that ‘he wished he wasn’t Black’ and that ‘he wanted to be White instead,’ I saw that this child already had a sense, at such a young age, of who has the power in our society and how he personally fits into it.  I also saw, that he really wanted to talk.

 

I believe that children who don’t have the opportunity to engage in reflection are missing out on a tool that can help them in their struggles.  In this fall’s Racial Empowerment Collaborative, a Philadelphia high school student recalled a vivid memory from childhood of a time where he had felt that his race (he’s Black) had affected and distorted other people’s understanding of him—even his family’s understanding of him.  Remarkably, he’d blocked out this stressful childhood memory, and many others like it, until being asked to recall them in our group discussion that day.  I think that it is thanks to his being in a space for reflection that prompted him to make those connections and those memories to surface.  This was important.  He expressed that having revisited these childhood memories would give him a lot to grapple with when going home later—but that he felt relieved and happy to have released the memories and shared it with our group.  He also acknowledged that he’d had plenty of misunderstandings with White teachers and had recently been working hard at navigating those situations better and learning to communicate with them on a more human, effective level.  I wondered how his teen years, and overall experience in school, might have felt different, or not at all, if he had had more opportunities to reflect on his life, and discuss his race and social positioning, with his teachers and classmates.  In a complex, racially charged world, I wonder if some of the stressful moments that the high school student experienced could be avoided in the six-year old’s life if he were encouraged in school to continually think and talk about himself and his experience and what’s going on around him in the world.

 

Some of my belief in the importance of reflection might also be inspired or supported by an important piece that we read last summer in our Children’s Literature class--The Importance of the Act of Reading by Paulo Freire.  In it, Freire talks about how he came to realize the importance of reading through reflecting on his childhood memories and realizing the unique experience and unique lens through which he sees the world.  Freire discusses how all individuals approach texts from a different cultural lens and each of our particular worlds is what we know.  He describes a dynamic process of ‘reading the world’ and ‘reading the word;’ of ideas getting re-read, reformulated, and reimagined.  It’s a ‘creative process’ and a process in personal growth.  There’s something political at the heart of Freire’s message: he says that being able to read the world and read the word is what gives people the power to transform their world. (Freire, P. 29-36)

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For me, Freire’s text is important because it supports some of the comments that I make above with regard to the high school student and the young boy.  Encountering texts, or life experiences, without further reflection is like a dead end.  If a young child is taught to revisit their experiences and to turn them over in their mind, then they are being taught that thinking doesn’t stop and alternatives can be imagined.  How you grapple with your experiences and what you do with it is how you affect change in your life and in your world.      In thinking hard about my overarching question, I’ve begun to see how teaching reflection to students can actually be considered an issue of equity.  In another article that we read in our Children’s Literature course the summer, the authors, Leland et al, speak about how crucial analytical practices and the making of personal connections can be in shaping young children into learners.  They claim that a lack of analytical practices within literacy instruction can be considered a disservice. 

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What is missing in these replication and repetition settings is the involvement of young learners in deeper processes of critique and analysis.  In contrast, children who experience a critical approach to literacy learn to ‘read between the lines’ and generate alternative explanations regarding the author’s intent.  They are encouraged to take an active role in questioning both the texts themselves and the beliefs and personal experiences they bring to them. (Leland et al, P. 259)

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In The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching, by Martin Haberman, he claims that a curriculum without an emphasis on reflection is lacking and is all too often a marker of urban schools.  In the article, Haberman places an emphasis on reflection.  He includes a point in his ‘Good Teaching’ section that says, ‘Whenever students are involved in reflecting on their own lives and how they have come to believe and feel as they do, good teaching is going on.’  He provides a visual of good teaching as ‘drawing out’ and explains that good teaching is, ‘the process of building environments, providing experiences, and then eliciting responses that can be reflected on.’  (Haberman, P. 248)

 

Haberman’s thoughts on the importance of reflection reminds me of an article we read in our School and Society course this summer, Our Schools Suck.  In it, the issue of equity is raised, as well.  The authors, Alonso et al, share the perspective of a Latino teen from the Bronx who felt that his urban schools failed him.  The teen, Jorman, expresses that he wanted something much more from his schooling than he got:  “For example, history should have been engaging and fun.’  Jorman liked to debate how history could have transpired differently, how prominent movers and shakers navigated tricky situations, or what social forces shaped society.  “I wanted challenging teachers,” he declared.  “I should have learned something, but it was really, really boring” because his teacher would pass out worksheets and then fall asleep in class.’  (Alonso et al, P. 11)  This student wanted to look at history critically and learn how people had transformed their world but was never offered the opportunity to do so due to issues of inequity in our schools.

 

I’m sensitive to the fact that there is a debate in education between ‘direct instruction’ and teaching with an ‘inquiry stance.’  In some Lisa Delpit articles that we’ve read for various courses, I’ve learned how White, progressive educators think they know what’s good for other people’s children without asking or even listening for the real answer.  As I formulate my inquiry question I keep wondering how my question—which concerns itself with the ‘soft’ sounding skills of reflection and connection making—sounds to other people.  By placing too much emphasis on reflection, would I come off as a flawed, progressive educator? 

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