The readings of Gallagher, Christensen, and Emdin all addressed one central theme: empowering students in the classroom to take agency over the learning environment. Both Christensen and Emdin specifically touch on teachers’ inclinations to feel restricted by required curriculum, and how “co-teaching” with students engages students on a level unattainable in a scholar-academic ideology. Emdin specifically uses his experiences in predominantly African-American classrooms as evidence that when done effectively, this method gives the learners some control over their education. Despite not being in a traditional educational environment, I have seen this hold true in my own experiences. As a camp counselor working at a summer camp that serves a predominantly indigenous population, it was often difficult for me to overcome my status as an outsider to engage effectively with my campers. I found that it was often effective for me to delegate certain responsibilities to our Leaders-in-Training, who were our teenage campers. Providing campers the opportunity to share their knowledge about boating, hiking, etc. with other campers not only strengthened their own confidence and autonomy, but engaged the younger campers far more than us counselors ever could.

Christensen makes a point about wanting her students to consider their classmates as fellow teachers, and I believe this lends itself to the topic at hand well. I believe that many teachers attempt this: whether it’s through Socratic seminars or peer-review for assignments. Both of these practices lack one of the main points that lead to effective student involvement: student choice. Gallagher’s focus on student choice as a cornerstone of effective teaching is one that I most definitely agree with, and one that isn’t implemented enough in current classrooms. Student choice is threatening to a teacher who has been dictated a mandatory curriculum, as they want to direct students as much as possible. 

Both Paul Gorski and Evie Blad address the need for a change in socioeconomic ideology concerning student achievement, and their ideas very much overlap each other. Both Gorski and Blad demonize the use of deficit ideology, the belief system which asserts that poverty is a result of laziness and/or other deficits in the individual.  The differences in the two articles come from the explorations of both grit ideology and growth mindset, two educational belief systems that attribute academic failure to the impoverished party. It is the exploration of these two ideologies that I found most interesting. The growth mindset referenced in Blad’s article very much seems like Gorski’s grit ideology, inferring the same beliefs while using positive language instead of negative. The term “growth” can be applied universally; it is the goal of all educators for their students to grow. It is language that people want to more readily accept than a seemingly negative term like “grit”. Despite the positive language, both ideologies do not address the systemic inconsistencies in our society that lead to poverty. The main point of both articles seem to be that without an ideological mindset that acknowledges the true nature of poverty, educators cannot effectively attempt to address the gaps that exist in their classroom. Deficit ideologies are always an attempt to justify the status quo, and thus take the responsibility for social inequalities away from those in power. Teachers can use their subscription to a deficit ideology to rationalize not attempting to coordinate with local social services, or otherwise attempt to alter their practice to address the reality of low-S.E.S. life.

Paul Thomas’ open letter to future English teachers is both to the point and full of heart. Speaking as an experienced English teacher, he addresses the bureaucratic and social stigmas that English teachers must both face and overcome in order to effectively do their jobs. The part of his publication that I found most interesting was the bullet about “deficit views of language and students”, and how language evolves over time. Having a lot of experience working in culturally varied areas with adolescents, I’ve always been interested by how slang becomes a word in common usage, followed by resistance from the students’ teachers. Thomas states “claims about ‘correctness’ are always more about power than either language development or literacy,”. I have not had a lot of struggles with use of proper language in my writing, but the fine line between slang and common language has always seemed blurry to me. When regional dialects come into play as well, the subjectivity of the situation really seems to surface.