Social Imagination in School

Students can show their capacity to imagine as they craft visions and take actions toward social change

. First, adolescents can develop visions of a society less directed by unfair hierarchies, challenging social arrangements (Fine and Weis). Discussions and research opportunities can air "disruptive knowledge," or stories that provoke students to question accepted beliefs and recognize alternative possibilities for the less privileged (Oakes and Rogers 41). In these contexts, students may grapple with issues including racial profiling or the overuse of standardized testing and consider how race and assessment could be reconceived. Second, students can propose and take action steps advocating for more just ways of being. They may organize MBT Chapa their community around a particular goal or distribute texts with social messages to their classmates, the media, and political figures. Such service work can promote a rich form of citizenship, particularly if enacted in light of students' critical awareness of the problems at hand. When visioning and acting for change, students engage in praxis; they analyze their own situations and speak out in reference to the injustices that shape their lives (Freire).

Students may gravitate toward literacy projects that offer opportunities to address real-life social issues (Bomer). Indeed, adolescents living in both urban and rural areas prefer writing topics that involve current events, teen issues, and politics (Ship-pen et al.). This suggests that they are inclined to confront social injustices. Their social critique can then stimulate their "social imaginations," or capacities to picture their streets, schools, and communities as different (Greene 5). For these reasons, teachers enact social action literacy projects that ask students to research social problems and create texts that highlight students' civic voices.

Despite the value of this work, it is not systemically supported in American schools. The role of schooling to prepare students for civic participation has been overshadowed by the emphasis on standards, testing, and accountability (Cochran-Smith and Lytle). Teachers and students, particularly those in low-income communities, are placed under close scrutiny to ensure that they are preparing for standardized testsa process that inherently ignores students' lived experiences (Lipman). As a result, teachers struggle to see a place for civic projects, and students' opportunities to exercise their social imaginations are limited. These conditions highlight the importance of this research that illuminates how teachers can enact a social action curriculum during an era of accountability.

Scott Rosner was one such teacher. I met him when he responded to a listserv announcement I posted advertising my interest in social action in middle schools. At the time Scott, a white fifth-year English teacher, was working primarily with Latino/ Latina youth in an urban school. His vision for an MBT Lami eighth-grade social action literacy project was loosely based on the framework in For a Better World: Reading and Writing for Social Action (Bomer and Bomer) and included students writing for social change. I was intrigued by his commitment to civic work within the English curriculum and began to study the project.

Social Imagination in School

By: FIRELEAVES

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