Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change
By: Ira Shor

EXTENDED COMMENTS

I have decided to base my blog this week on the blog that was written by Wesley because I enjoyed his comparisons he used and the points he picked from the article were the same points I enjoyed reading as well. He posted a very interesting Ted Talk about critical thinking and how that is the way teachers should teach their students and how anybody should teach. I loved how the speaker, Steve Joordens mentioned that anybody can be a teacher, not just the adults in classrooms with an attendance sheet.
There was a point made in the video about being slaves to society and slaves to certain systems and slaves to conformity, I found this interesting because it made me think about how sometimes I choose not to speak up about certain topics because it is not the most popular opinion I have. Joordens then continues to talk about people with different opinions; he called these people opinion odd balls and he said he loved them. I think everybody is an opinioned odd ball but sometimes people don't like to show that.
Also, In Wesley's blog he discusses points made in the article. In particular I love his topics...in his words called PAPSMDDDRIA but this means 

• Participatory

• Affective

• Problem-posing

• Situated

• Multicultural

• Dialogic

• Desocializing

• Democratic

• Researching

• Interdisciplinary

• Activist 

I really enjoy how he emphasized how important these roles play in every day life as well as in the classroom. As future teachers we have to acknowldge that we will run into issues with politics and there are no ways to avoid running into these issues but there are ways in solving them and dealing with them appropriately. 

Points to bring up in class: Although my post is late and we already discussed the article I would have loved to touched upon this video and what other classmates thought of the speakers points on critical thinking and the difference it makes in classrooms when teachers think outside the box and outside the curriculum.

 

http://www.accessexcellence.org/LC/TL/buchanan/