Teaching Restorative Justice
 

Winn, M. T. (2020). Justice on both sides: Transforming education through restorative justice. Harvard Education Press.

While I have had a lot of opportunities to think about my racial identity as an Asian American throughout college and previous job experiences, I am continually questioning and expanding on why justice matters to me as an educator. How do I leverage my insight and experience as an educator of color as valuable to students of all backgrounds? In what ways can I make sure students feel safe and heard in their learning environment? Inspired by Dr. Maisha Winn’s framework in how “History Matters”, “Race Matters”, “Justice Matters”, “Language Matters”, and “Futures Matter”(Winn, 2020), my goal is to validate each of my students’ identities and cultures to position them as leaders of their future, drawing from history to inform their questions about the world and pushing them to think critically about the problems they see in society.

Culturally Responsive Science
 

Bang, M. (2016). Towards an ethic of decolonial trans-ontologies in sociocultural theories of learning and development. Power and privilege in the learning sciences: Critical and sociocultural theories of learning, 115-138.

As an environmental educator who hopes for her students to understand their positionality in relationship to their environment, I am studying the ways I can intentionally challenge dominant narratives originating from a Western history of nature-culture relations (Bang, 2016). It is insightful to be able to engage in critical discussions about Western culture and philosophy and analyze how these views became ingrained in me over time. Through this work and learning from my students, I myself am going through a process of unlearning dominant narratives that separated me from deeply connecting to my environment.  Reading into scholars such as Dr. Megan Bang has renewed my interest in the field of science by learning about Indigenous ways of knowing. I aim to expand on students’ understanding of what science can be and encourage them to see their sense-making of the world is valid.

Representation in Teacher Workforce
 

Tran, D., & Hodgson, B. R. (2015). Meeting the Needs of Refugee and Immigrant Students and Families in a Culturally Responsive Way. Voices in urban education, 41, 7-15.

Throughout my teaching experiences, I have noticed how the lack of representation of Asian American educators within my life has limited my ability to see myself as a capable educator and an individual whose thoughts about education are of value to the field. When I first read an article written by Dahvy Tran from an issue of Voices in Urban Education, I immediately resonated with his work. Hearing him speak to the effort that goes into involving the families of students from immigrant backgrounds reminded me of how little my parents were involved in my schooling. Without the countless phone calls that Tran made to parents, they might not have otherwise shown up to see their children at school. He was able to coordinate between the community, the school, and his organization to plan an event where the students’ parents showed up in significant numbers to watch their children perform (Tran & Hodgson, 2015). This story exemplifies why diversity in educators of different backgrounds matters and impacts students’ lives beyond their academic success at school.

Justice-oriented Education

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Noguera, P. (2008). What discipline is for: Connecting students to the benefits of learning. Everyday antiracism: Getting real about race in schools, 132-138.

As someone who has worked as an informal educator, I used to perceive that the learning environment within a physical school building, with core curricula and formal educators, is where students spend the most time learning. Upon critical reflection into how my own extracurricular experiences were core to my intellectual pursuits in my schooling, I am interested in what makes afterschool programming just as significant and transformative for learning. Pedro A. Noguera’s argument for how schools should respond to students’ needs rather than discipline them into harmful systems (Noguera, 2008) pushed me to think about how students can be more thoughtfully involved in the co-creation of their learning environment. Where and when are young people’s voices valued and heard alongside adults in the school system?