Entry #35: What is it that distinguishes
teacher voice from teacher talk?

Issues of voice and democracy have been front and center all week. On Monday, I raised the the issue of student voice in my Critical Friends Group. I posed the possibility that much of the negative behavior we struggle with is a result of the disempowerment of our students.

No one felt the students were being heard, but they raised the fact that teachers are without voice too. We wondered where to begin, recognizing that teachers as a group either aren't given, or don't raise their own voices. We wondered aloud whether people who are basically "followers," albeit frustrated followers, know how to give voice to others.

Our discussion moved into the whole question of freedom and responsibility as flip sides of the same coin. We eventually had to stop because our time was running short, but I think our conversation was a good beginning.

I really valued the opportunity to have this talk with colleagues because I tend to want to change everything yesterday and sometimes move too quickly, then wonder why things didn't work. My CFG usually has a sobering yet constructive effect on me.

Instead of just going out and recommending more student voice in school decisions, we will now take the tack of focusing on improving our advisory and student council programs. We will make these proposals in tandem with an increased focus on teacher and parent empowerment.

I don't feel like we solved the problem, but I do feel as though we've turned a corner or at least scratched the surface.

Now the question is: how do we empower the teachers? Perhaps even more to the point is the question of why people aren't actively demanding their own voice and power...?

What distinguishes voice from talk?

It occurs to me that this is essentially the same question I posed a few weeks ago about why more people don't join networks. Why is it more acceptable to be frustrated and tired than to try and change things?

We all know we can hear plenty of teachers' voices on any given day in the faculty lounge or halls. Just mention kids or discipline or any of a hundred or so topics and just about any educator will vent, myself included.

So what is it that distinguishes voice from talk? Does the difference lie in whether your voice is connected to others and to proposals for change, or is that just my personal bias?

While raising me, my mother passed on lots of little sayings that made their mark, things like, "put up or shut up" and "talk is cheap." Is that where the the rub lies? Are folks actually giving up their voice because they don't want the responsibility of fixing or changing the status quo?

If people give up their voice on a regular basis is it because they've been taught that "you can't fight city hall?" My mother didn't put stock in that one, and neither do I.

Then again, maybe people aren't giving up their voice, maybe some of them haven't really found it yet.

I wonder why I was taught to raise my voice. My family certainly wasn't used to being in power. We listened to each other, but there didn't seem to be a lot of other people taking notice. So how does finding one's voice become a goal? Is it a result of nurture, nature, circumstance or some combination of them all?

Can our students truly become lifelong learners or critical thinkers without first finding and using their voices? If you've never exercised your own voice, can you help others to find their's?

If you've given up and become cynical about the crushing control of the bureaucarcy or if you've decided to just close your door and be master/mistress of your own domain/classroom, is that viable, is that a voice, is that empowerment? Are we simultaneously, victims and messengers of a tsunami of powerlessness? Yuck!

Back to the shelf -- and the Web

As usual, my own stream of questions has sent me to the shelf and the Web. In my meanderings I've come repeatedly across the linking of literacy, democracy and equity. This linkage has set my thoughts racing again.

I've read about the "Declaration on Rights and Responsibilities of the Global Citizen." I downloaded the Horace dealing with the CES 10th common principle of democracy and equity. I read a short abstract by Ted Glickman about the way we hear some of the same voices over and over again. I even read a paper about effective schools in Western, rural Australia. The paper dealt with the role of teacher morale and self-concept vis a vis school effectiveness.

Unfortunately, after all my searching, instead of answers, I have still more questions.

Is the right to education in our society taken for granted, and devalued in the process? Is it because the practice of literacy is taught in an often sterile and mechanical way that it is rejected rather than embraced and mastered? Is sterile too kind a euphemism? Are our curriculum and methods so rife with cultural chauvinism that our students feel shut out?

If literacy, in all its facets -- oral, aural and written -- is so strong a link to equity and the exercise of democracy, why isn't there a palpable hunger for these skills among the disenfranchised?

I think of stories of individuals and groups fighting and dying for their right to a meaningful, equitable education. I think of the children of Soweto, the slaves in this country, the women writing with male pseudonyms, and their legacies inspire me.

Does their message speak to other educators? Do kids believe these narratives or have they become "stories"? Are their struggles dismissed as too alien to bear connection with our/their own?

I have to stop writing now, my weekend is filled with graduation celebrations for my cousin and youngest daughter. As I listen to yet another set of commencement speakers my thoughts will be drawn back to the questions I've surfaced here.

I am proud of my daughter and my cousin and I will join them in the spirit of celebration, but my heart and head feel heavy with the sense of so many others still left in the shadows, others, who should be standing by their side as they step forward "to make their mark" on the world.


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