Videotaping the Critical Inquiry Group

12-4-08

Kimball Hall-NYU

Emily, Lexi and I videotaped the Critical Inquiry group present on the basics of SJE for freshman and transfers in to Steinhardt for Teaching and Learning.  The group is made up of about ten or so recent graduates of our department and are currently SJE's in the field, including Dan and Emily that we met, and meet with Professor Picour twice a month to plan, discuss, and seek support for lessons in social justice.

It was nice to see this presentation because I think the three of us could align ourselves more in terms of the purpose for our being educators with the graduates than the freshman. The presentation given was kind of like the first part of this course crammed in two hours,  but I thought it was great that the new students got exposure to this type of teaching , whereas most of us had to wait until we were seniors.  Even so, being at this presentation was exciting, because we got to see where we came from and how close we are to getting where we want to go, and confirmed that teaching with a SJ mindset is the way to go for some of us, for it gives us purpose.

One of the activities they conducted was the "Human barometer," in which the group presented a topic, such as the war or gay families, and asked if the students would teach that in their classrooms.  They then had to move to an area of the room designated to their response, which ranged from yes to maybe to no way.  While most people seemed to be pretty open to teaching SJE topics, I am not quite sure if they understood how to.  I think, judging from their responses, that most thought that teaching about these subjects would be done in isolation, without any integration in to other subjects or action-oriented purpose, or even with critical thinking.  I think they thought that teaching these subjects would be teaching only "truths" for the sole purpose of superficial, factual knowledge, which is something we learned at the beginning of this class in definitely not the way to go.

Just by being behind the camera and not part of the audience, I knew that at this point we are not just students of SJE but also practitioners.  We always have so much to learn, thus the purpose of the Critical Inquiry group, but we have also come a long way since September, and especially since our own New Student Seminar.