10: Spin and Whisper

The stories in this book and the meaning that these young people and I have made challenge the dominant narrative of schooling. According to the dominant narrative, “subjects and methods” and “facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves” (Dewey, 1938, p. 46). In this narrative, learning is reduced to acquiring ready-made knowledge. In this narrative, teaching is reduced to impersonalized, standardized methods of knowledge delivery. In juxtaposition, our narrative reveals the student—Iris, Adel, Isabel, Ivan—at the center of the educational process, “a full human being, complex and dynamic, a three-dimensional creature with a heart, a spirit, an active meaning making mind, with hopes and aspirations that must be taken into account” (Ayers, 2001, p. 136). Our narrative denies that knowledge is knowable in advance, and separate from the student’s biography and experiences. Our narrative insists, rather, that knowledge “emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry [human beings] pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other” (Freire, 1970, p. 58). Our narrative is Adel’s story of slow and gentle classrooms where students have time to make meaning together, classrooms where students’ experiences and voices are honored for the powerful teaching and learning they produce.