4 Teacher Eyes
This is an exercise we often do on the first day of class with pre-service teachers. We simply ask them to look around the room we are in, and pick three to five things that they could use to teach a lesson that in some way incorporates social justice awareness, or enhances critical thinking processes, and then to write down one or two lines about how they could do this lesson. It is often a slow start, so we come to this class with a plastic, disposable water bottle. Using it as an example, we ask how this water bottle could be used to start a discussion with students about some aspect of social awareness or social justice. Usually, someone comes up with the idea that teachers could talk about recycling, something as basic as reminding students in their class that the disposable bottles can be recycled, and telling them where the bins are located. Then someone comes up with an add-on – the disposable bottle could lead to a discussion of using disposable versus more permanent water bottles that can be refilled. Or perhaps a discussion about how plastic bottles are produced (and of course this applies to both disposable and many re-usable bottles). Once the ideas begin, a myriad of lesson plan ideas start coming forward: where does the water come from that goes into disposable bottles; what effect on local communities is there when water is being diverted to bottling factories; who makes a profit from companies bottling and selling water; what parts of the world have the privilege of being able to bottle and sell water, versus parts of the world where there is little to no (clean) water available; who has access to indoor plumbing and water that is available at the turn of a tap, versus countries/places where people have to walk for hours for water, or find some other means to transport water home. This last turn in the conversation usually leads to someone bringing up that we are not necessarily talking about other countries – there are places, communities in Canada where residents do not have access to clean, safe drinking water, or sometimes to indoor plumbing. And then this conversation goes off in its own directions. And all from one disposable water bottle!
The point of this exercise is two-fold: first, it starts the critical thinking about social awareness conversation on day one, in an easy manner; and, secondly, it is a quick demonstration that to be a teacher who does this kind of work doesn’t require flashy supplies – it only needs whatever objects you can pick up, an inquiring, curious mind, and a willingness to seek out information.
Your turn: what lessons can you come up with using the following common items: a banana (hint: do bananas grow in Canada? Ever? Think about transportation); a shoe or sneaker (we have had some spirited conversations about child-labour in lesser-industrialized countries when certain brands have been brought into the discussion); and of course, our electronic devices, of which nearly every adult student in our room has between one and several (everything from the environmental impact of building them to the financial status attached to them).
