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Using the Master’s Tools

Posted on Nov 01, 2009 - 06:47 PM by Ammerah Saidi in The Learning Curve

My first week into teaching after my year in graduate school, I was filled with grand ideas and ideals as to what I would do in my classroom to help my students liberate themselves from the intellectual shackles of US public education. I entered my classroom and my school with the belief that my students and I would revolutionize the educational experience in Detroit forever--no hyperbole intended. This is how deeply I believed in my students and their potential to be positive change agents in a world which deemed them failures or equally insulting, average at best.

Critical pedagogy was my tool of choice: an educational philosophy accredited to the late Paolo Freire, which...

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Don’t Call it a Comeback

Posted on Dec 21, 2009 - 10:47 PM by Ammerah Saidi in The Learning Curve

I've been gone a while--I know. But such is the nature of democratic education. Let me explain.

If you've read my previous entries, I hope it was clear that I had a vision for my classroom and I was going to strive to make this vision a reality. The path had been set and the last time we communicated, I believed that I needed to condition my students to be unconditionable. I quoted Audre Lorde and questioned her belief that we could not use the master's tools to dismantle the master's home.

So several weeks later and after lots of reflecting, I'm totally retracting my statements. As adamant as I was that my students needed to be conditioned through the use of grades and external...

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