Synopsis

Teachers must be aware and critical of four borderlands that make up education:
1. Institutional (universities/practicum schools)
2. Sociocultural (pathological construction/marginalization of the poor)
3. Ethno-racial (homophily/ethnic encapsulation)
4. Moral-political (charity and altruism)
 Professional development schools (PDS) should be implemented to get rid of borders and to
prepare teachers in a cross-institutional approach. To help develop communities TC’s must
envision their roles as political ones and must negotiate across borders to gather the
resources necessary to make a change.
 TC’s can cross ethno-racial borders as long as they confront their own racial identity
formation and only then can they overcome the obstacles associated with racial privileges
and stigmatizations. TC’s have to be critical of how most schools are filled with middle-class
ideologies and curriculum even though those same schools are surrounded by working class
communities. TC’s must also not see volunteer or community service merely as giving back
to the community but also see the activities critically as they help shape urban areas and
politics.
 The Urban Diversity program (part of the education here at York University) involves several
pedagogical practices that (combined) facilitate the ability to identify, negotiate, and
straddle the different borderlands and to analyze schools as sites of political, social, and
ideological obstacles. TC’s are enrolled in community placements which help them
understand how the “act of naming defines what is named, but also how the act of naming
as difference making impacts on different forms of cultural productions” (Solomon 75). TC’s
reflect on their experiences involving borderlands, by saying things like “students come to
school with baggage that must be unburdened before they can be free to learn” (Solomon
77). The TC’s refer to how institutional borderlands often ignore the fact that schools are a
part of a much larger community and not separate from it.
 Border pedagogy helps students to embrace counter-narratives that recognize the limits of
institutional walls and move beyond them to incorporate democratic modes of teaching.
TC’s must become aware of the power they hold if they are in a position of power, and by
helping out in their communities they discover the racial imbalances and those shifts in
hierarchy affect the classroom they hope to teach in. TC’s must extend their vision of
education beyond the walls of the classroom if they are to ever understand how poverty,
socioeconomic conditions, and how relationships with their students outside the classroom
have huge impacts on how they behave in class. TC’s must be critical about charities or
giving to lower-class communities, some could argue that charities are given to urban areas
instead of negotiated with them, thus enforcing more borders and a sort of anti-democratic
governance over those poorer areas.
 TC’s must be aware of how their role can help create a sociopolitical transformation, as their
role of an educator is an extremely political one and can give voice to many issues in urban
areas and beyond. TC’s will be met with many obstacles regarding border pedagogy, one of
which will be convincing those who believe teachers’ roles only exist within the school that
community-service will contribute to the development of culturally relevant pedagogy. One
other obstacle to border pedagogy is that teachers will have to confront hierarchies and
institutions that have privileged or racially skewed biases in place. Teachers must become
transformative intellectuals, as well as cultural workers and teacher education itself must
become a political project if border pedagogy is to work.
Question #1: If you were to start implementing border pedagogy in your community placements, what
would be your first step and what resistance would you be met with? What does this say about your
community?

Question #2: In terms of race and ethnicity what are the systems that are in place that either influence
or control your students? Do you find that your community is brought together or comprised of one
social category such as race? If so, why do you think that is?

My community placement is in the Jane and Finch area with WADOKA, which is a program based on
martial arts that also focuses on tutoring those enrolled as well. As I am assigned to some administration
work until December, I have not had a chance to go to their program yet. From what the coordinator
was saying about the program and those who enroll, the parents play a large part on controlling the
students as well as the discipline and respect aspect of martial arts. Student’s behaviours change when
they understand that in order for the instructors to acknowledge their needs, they have to show the
instructors respect. From the information the coordinator was telling us, the students enrolled into the
program are brought together through their enjoyment of learning martial arts and the feeling of being
supported by the instructors.

Question #3: As a future educator, what are the pros and cons of involving your students in community
activities at the cost of class time? How you plan on balancing institutional learning with community
experience?

I feel that there should not be pros or cons in involving students in community activities. As future
educators, we should try our best to incorporate our curriculums to interact with the community. For
language classes, there could be a couple trips to the local library, science classes could visit sites like the
Evergreen Brickworks, Science Centre or even planting a garden on school grounds. The cost of being
able to explore the community in such a way would be the factor of time. Field trips would definitely
take time out of day from other classes and lessons from those classes would have to be made up in
other ways.

Question #4: Do you think that Ontario’s community service mandatory hours should be increased from
forty hours? If so, then to how many and why?

I think Ontario’s community service hours should definitely be increased. Involvement in the community
is important as it allows the youth to understand how their community functions or potentially other
communities. Students always try to finish these hours as quickly as possible just to get it over without
ever learning about the community. Sometimes I also feel the establishments providing these hours are
simply using students as workers instead of being a part of the community. I feel that schools should
explain what the hours are for as well as make the 40 hours yearly instead of throughout high school. It
would also help the student understand the purpose of the community service hours as well if they
write a short reflection about what was learned at every establishment they collect hours from.