Senior Program Director Megan Ave’Lallemant has written a compelling piece for The Current, the blog of the National Writing Project‘s Educator Innovator site, about Deep Center’s extended programming at Chatham County’s Hubert Middle School. The post describes the power of our pedagogy, which is intentionally responsive to culture, trauma, and current events.
I realized our group had a lot of learning, and unlearning, to do. Learning about how handguns are responsible for far more deaths than assault rifles, one death at a time. How the communities our youth live in, communities that are last in line to receive resources and opportunities, are disproportionately affected by gun violence. How one life lost in a neighborhood is one too many, and how it matters that this feels boring and normal. How we don’t have to live like this; how the world is bigger than these streets; how there are young people pushing for policy change and reform; how our youth could add their voices to the battle cry.
I saw glimmers of this, the wisps of a beginning, when we challenged the youth to think more broadly and examine problems beyond gun violence. What other problems exist in your lives? What’s happening at the same time?
Read the full blog post here: “How a Strong Pedagogy Allows for Improvisation and Teaching to What’s Real in Young People’s Lives.”