Chapter 3: ”Removing The Stranglehold”: Reshaping Encounters with Poetry Through Participatory Observation in Action Research

As a Caribbean English Literature Educator, I have often felt that I have had to function in a paradoxical role when participating in the process of training secondary school teachers of English or working with secondary school students in the English classroom. On the one hand, there is the thrill of being able to contribute to a significant act of what Ngugi (1986) described as “decolonising the mind” (p. 384), where I attempt to take Caribbean literary thought, merged with critical pedagogy, into the various Literature classroom spaces into which I am invited. On the other hand, there is the struggle to ensure that what I am providing for teachers and students at all levels is realistic, relevant, contextual and transformative. Significantly too, is the need to ensure that what I offer conceptually and practically to these teachers and students is uniquely connected to their own identities and experiences (personally, academically and professionally). At no point do I desire to be viewed as the outsider looking in nor do I desire to be a mere symbolic representative of an elitist group of educators from an establishment that might very well be viewed as oppressive and perhaps discriminatory.