Ask More Questions?

Abstract

ast year I had a real spitfire in my eleventhgrade English class. He was the most ready to challenge majority views, push his classmates to support their ideas with credible facts, or listen seriously about the need to tackle clichés in his writing.Then, in January, I made a critical mistake that cost me the vitality of this student.The class writes research papers in January, and I wanted to invite the students to research a social justice issue they knew nearly nothing about. We watched TED talks and read articles on the failings of abstinence-only education, plastic in the ocean's gyres, the Bechdel test, and the crushing standardization of public schools. Their assignment was to research a problem and then argue for a solution or a set of solutions to fix the problem. I wanted my student to knowwhat was happening to his community. In an informal poll at the beginning of the year, I found out that only two students in all my classes knew what Fracking was --which is a desperate situation considering people in the county, their parents, are leasing their land left and right to the gas companies.What I didn't want was another pro-life diatribe, antimarriage equality tirade, or pro-assault weapon essay that, although properly reflecting the majority beliefs of the community, would not allow enough serious inquiry into the unknown.To facilitate the choosing of a topic, I assigned the students the task of randomly selecting three TED talks or articles and using those texts to generate questions for further research. As each student brought their three texts to me and we discussed their questions and potential for research papers, I made suggestions, offering what I knew on the topic with the intention that the students would have somewhere to start.

The consequences of heroization for exploitation.

“…There are likely other positive and negative consequences of heroization, and this line of research is still in its infancy. Relatedly, while many who work in heroized professions have written about potential problems with the hero label (e.g., Cox, 2020; Ricket, 2013), we do not yet have a good sense for how most people in heroized professions react to the hero label. Their voice is essential in determining policy.…”

“…Some teachers have also written about the possible negative implications of heroizing their profession. Allison Ricket, a high school English teacher in Ohio, wrote that heroizing teachers “leads attention away from the real changes that are needed in policy and wider social structures” (Ricket, 2013). Similarly, Ed Boland, who wrote a memoire about his experiences as a ninth-grade history teacher in New York City, described how the “hero teacher myth” places undue responsibility on individual teachers instead of larger social and economic issues.…”