Students’ Experiences in Appreciative Interviews for Quality Education in Liberia

Between September 2017 and August 2018, the author of this article applied the theory of appreciative inquiry in teaching at a faith based institution in Liberia. Appreciative Inquiry was popularized by Cooperrider in 1986. It has to do with asking positive questions following the 5Ds namely Definition, Description, Dream, Design and Destiny. This article highlighted the experiences of students who used appreciative interviews in a course Principles and Practices of Education taught at a faith based institution located in Liberia. The course was offered thrice to three different sets of students at the same university by the author of this article. While the first class had four students, the second had thirteen students and the third had eight students. Each student was asked to make use of appreciative inquiry questions to interview two veteran educators from other educational institutions in Liberia. The findings reinforced the need for the practices of quality education within and without the walls of classrooms in Liberia. The paper recommended that educators should employ the appreciative inquiry in their teaching. Hence, the combination of appreciative inquiry with cooperative learning and the integration of faith and learning could be one of alternatives in tackling the many educational challenges in the classrooms.

“Doing diversity”: a narrative examination of veteran teachers’ renewed agency through intersectional teaching

Purpose This paper aims to examine how two White teachers, experienced and award-winning veteran educators, navigated issues of race, class and privilege in their instruction, and ways that their efforts and shortcomings shaped both teacher agency and classroom spaces. Design/methodology/approach This study’s methodology centers participants’ experiences and understandings over the course of two years of interviews, classroom observations and discussion groups. The study is conceptually informed by Sara Ahmed’s argument that social justice is often approached as something that education “can do,” which is problematic because it assumes that successful enactment is “intrinsic to the term.” Discussing and/or intending social justice replaces real change, and those leading the conversations believe that they have made meaningful differences. Instead, true shifts in thinking and action are “dependent on forms of institutional commitment […and] how it [diversity/social justice] gets taken up” (p. 241). Findings Using an in vivo coding approach – i.e. using direct quotations of participants’ words to name the new codes – the authors organized their findings into two discussions: “Damn – Every Time I’m with the Kids, I Just End Up Feeling Frozen”; and “Maybe I’m Just Not Giving These Kids a Fair Shake – Maybe I’m the Problem”. Originality/value The participants centered a participatory examination of intersectionality, rather than the previous teacher-mandated one. They “put into action” -xplorations of intersectionality that were predicated on students’ identities and experiences, thus making intersectionality a lived concept, rather than an intellectual one, and transforming students’ and their own engagement.

Understanding Extension #2: Utilizing Extension Services in School-Based Agricultural Education

The services that Extension offers can supplement lesson plans in the classroom, can help to provide training and support for educators, and can help to build the toolbox of both first-year educators and the veteran educators that want to expand on their current lesson plans and resources. This new 4-page publication of the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication helps to describe how UF/IFAS Extension can be utilized in agricultural education. Written by Debra Barry, John Diaz, Alyssa Shepherd, Jennifer Patton, and Stephen Gran.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/wc367

Remembering an Apocalyptic Education: Revealing Life Beneath the Waves of Black Being

We write, individually and collectively, as Black educators attempting to survive the ravages of schooling. Along with a host of Black people, we too believed our schooling was a means toward liberation – a saving grace and way to honor the resilience of our people and their resistance to national investment in their undoing. We conflated our humanization with matriculation in schools. We now recognize the inextricable link between our social death and the function of schools. We have witnessed and experienced the social reproduction of Black death that schools rely upon for national order. As survivors, we lay to rest the schooling project, engaging Christina Sharpe’s (2016) mournful meditation on the Wake to exhume how even critical education work can reinforce the very projects it seeks to fight against. We hold ceremonial space for prospective and veteran educators across the K-20 continuum to re-conceptualize their curricular posture and join us in a final farewell to schools. From Shujaa (1993), we distinguish schooling from education and propose the Root Work of Apocalyptic Education, a meditation, a posture, an epistemological stance rooted in African ancestral ways of knowing (Ani, 1994; Fu- Kiau, 2014) to help us make sense of our loss and usher us into new ways of existing and being beyond the afterlife of schooling. *Both authors contributed equally to the preparation of this manuscript. Their names are listed alphabetically. This piece was crafted in September of 2019. The authors submitted this work, as it was originally rendered, in alignment with the aims of Root Work Journal.

Learning to “brave up”: Collaboration, agency, and authority in multicultural, multilingual, and radically inclusive classrooms

The Summer Language Academy (SLA) is an innovative and intensive summer program for high-school aged newcomers/new Americans, English learners, and emergent bilinguals, as well as for teachers working with them. In the SLA, students and educators collaboratively explore questions of identity, language, and culture through high-interest texts, arts-based curriculum, and redefinition of teaching and learning as reciprocally shared endeavors. In this article, we examine SLA implementation and impact in two neighboring districts, focusing on the opportunities and tensions that arise when new and veteran educators are challenged to increase their consciousness and capacity regarding multicultural, multilingual, and radically inclusive teaching.

Computational Thinking in Sound

With Computational Thinking in Sound, veteran educators Gena R. Greher and Jesse M. Heines provide the first book ever written for music fundamentals educators that is devoted specifically to music, sound, and technology. Using a student-centered approach that emphasizes project-based experiences, the book provides music educators with multiple strategies to explore, create, and solve problems with music and technology in equal parts. It also provides examples of hands-on activities that encourage students, alone and in groups, to explore the basic principles that underlie today's music technology and freely available multimedia creation tools. Computational Thinking in Sound is an effective tool for educators to introduce students to the complex process of computational thinking in the context of the creative arts through the more accessible medium of music.

Supporting and Educating Traumatized Students

Combining knowledge of the cognitive and behavioral effects of trauma, evidence-based interventions, educational best practices, and the experiences of veteran educators, this online resource presents a new framework for assisting students with a history of trauma. Designed specifically for busy educators who work with traumatized students daily, it brings together practitioners, researchers, and other experts with backgrounds in education, school psychology, school nursing, school social work, school counseling, school administration, clinical psychology, resilience, and trauma studies to examine the impacts of numerous traumatic experiences on school-aged children and youth. It provides practical, effective, and implementable strategies and resources for adapting and differentiating instruction, modifying the classroom and school environments, and building competency for students affected by trauma, and chapters offer techniques and strategies designed for all types of educational environments and in the context of multiple potential sources of trauma.