01/23 Blog Post

In Real Life is about social inequities illustrated through a story about Anda, a teenage gamer, and her experience connecting with other gamers in an online multilevel role-playing game.  She joins the game as part of a group supporting female gamers as they are poorly represented in the gaming world.  As she progresses successfully through different levels she encounters a player from China, Raymond, and finds out he is playing the game as a job and oppressed by his employer.  Anda tries to help him but with many misunderstandings her initial efforts are thwarted.  Anda eventually finds a way back in the game and helps with improving the working conditions by spreading information.  The Kraehe and Brown essay is also about social inequities but from the perspective of preservice teacher education, and how art-based inquiry is a useful means for learning how to inculcate social justice-oriented teaching.  The writing examines a study of grad students and shows how art-based projects allow a more holistic experience when exploring daily, often more subtle influences of social inequalities, offering valuable learning opportunities.  Writing about it in text does not allow for a fully embodied analysis, whereas utilizing artistic medium provides opportunity for a more insightful experience and enables a more critical analysis.

My experience with social inequities during K-12 consisted mainly of gender bias.  It was never addressed in any class assignments.  It was mostly implicit bias in the classroom, with teachers making assumptions that boys and girls had certain distinct and different characteristics.  For example, in my calculus class there were only 2 girls, including me, out of the 15 students.  Girls and boys were treated differently in math. But since math came easy for me I was encouraged to pursue an engineering career path except when I told my high school counselor I was interested in aerospace he discouraged me because it was a male dominant industry.  

It is important that teacher training programs include social justice oriented programs, but what about credentialed teachers who have already completed training but might not have received socially just or cultural responsive education?  How do we hold current K-12 teachers accountable for social justice learning in the classroom and help facilitate more equitable learning?