Children teaching future teachers: A civic literacy project on the Border Wall during the Trump regime

Abstract

The Civic Literacy Project (CLP) was created, by colleagues and me, out of a concern for how future teachers learn to teach in field-based experiences. In this article I describe the CLP curriculum-making experiences of two future teachers, one Somali-American and one white, with a small group of 5^th graders who wanted to learn about the Border Wall during the Trump Regime. I examine how the future teachers’ conception of teaching and curriculum was crucially informed by listening to and working with their young students. Too often, as teacher educators, we create and sanction field experiences for future teachers that teach compliance to failing systems where children are seen as passive recipients of prepackaged curriculum. CLP was grounded in pedagogies of progressive, critical, and inquiry learning traditions which take children’s topics of concern as the basis of curriculum making. I argue for transformative change in teacher education’s approach to field experiences for future teachers—including collaboration instead of surveillance and co-inquiry instead of allegiance to scripted curriculum.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 This is a pseudonym. The actual names of my colleagues and the future teachers were used at their request.

2 In 2021, Sadiq has graduated with a Master’s degree in Education and holds a Minnesota K-12 special education license. He has been hired as a classroom teacher in a public school in the local community.

3 He was not referring to all Somali immigrants—who are highly diverse in terms of ethnicity, religious observance and practices, place of origin, migration experiences, and the like. Given my experience with Sadiq and his brother a few years prior, I understood why Sadiq said it was “because of culture” and questioned it too. I know other local teachers of Somali descent who talk openly with their children about topics that might be considered for adults only in other Somali families.