Sometimes theories of critical pedagogy can be quite abstract. What does it look like to front concrete practices in our approaches to this tradition? How do those practices change in the context of community colleges? What can radical community college educators teach us about radical teaching and learning broadly?

Our July 2024 episode features three community college educators who co-edited the recent edited collection Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy: Teaching the Humanities in Community College and Beyond (Peter Lang 2024). This book is a must-read for teachers curious about the practical applications of critical pedagogy for crafting syllabi, building more democratic classroom structures, creating socially engaged classrooms, and fighting for more just and equitable educational systems.

Sujung Kim is an interdisciplinary scholar of critical pedagogy of higher education who is currently a research associate with the Futures Initiative and Humanities Alliance at CUNY Graduate Center. Leigh Garrison-Fetcher is a linguistics professor in the Education and Language Acquisition Department at LaGuardia Community College. Kaysi Holman is the Director of People and Culture at the California-based educational equity nonprofit 10,000 Degrees. Sujung, Leigh, and Kaysi met in the context of their shared work with the Mellon-funded CUNY Humanities Alliance—of which Kaysi was a key creator and leader—where they worked graduate teachers and faculty on creating social justice oriented classrooms.

CREDITS

Co-hosts: Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether

Editor and Audio Engineer: Aliyah Harris

Summer 2024 Intern: Ella Stuccio

Theme music by Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

Outro Music: “hemlock hed” by Akrasis

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Feminist Theater of the Oppressed: What is it? How can its philosophies and methods transform our approaches to critical pedagogy? How does Feminist Theater of the Oppressed help us reflect on improvisation, experimentation, and power in our teaching and organizing contexts?

Our June 2024 guest, Bárbara Santos, takes up these questions as a portal into discussion of how power shapes (and can be transformed in) our pedagogies. Barbára is an actress, performer, writer, and organizer. She is the artistic director and co-founder of KURINGA - Space for Theater of the Oppressed in Berlin, Germany. She is Founder of the Ma(g)dalena International Network, a collaborative of practitioners of Feminist Theater of the Oppressed based in Europe, Latin America, and Africa.

Bárbara’s work as a director, performer, organizer, and writer has been instrumental in disseminating Theater of the Oppressed globally, and elevating feminist critiques and methods within its praxis. Her books include Roots and Wings of Theater of the Oppressed (Portuguese 2016, Spanish 2017, Italian 2018, English 2019); Aesthetic Paths: Original Approaches on Theater of the Oppressed (Portuguese, 2018; English and Spanish forthcoming); and Theater of the Oppressed: Feminist Aesthetics for Political Poetics (Portuguese, 2019; English, 2023).

The tree of Theater of the Oppressed—images, movement, sounds, words, play—comes to life throughout Barbára’s work and, in the process, honors women’s lives through dialogue and political action.

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CREDITS:

Co-hosts: Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin

Audio Production and Music: Aliyah Harris

Intro Music: Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

What is anarchist pedagogy? What does it have to do with so-called “alternative” schools, where mainstream educational systems often send students they have expelled, suspended, or otherwise excluded? How can working at the intersection of anarchist pedagogical philosophy and marginalized educational spaces open up new layers for how we rearrange power and accountability in learning spaces?

This episode—which features teacher, educational reform leader, and principal Rodney Powell—dives into all of these questions and more.

The term “anarchist pedagogies” is not the first thing that comes to mind when we hear that someone is a high school principal. And yet this is exactly the combination at the center of this episode. Rodney Powell exposes preconceptions not only about this administrative role, but also about what “anarchy” can mean in theory and practice. Powell is the founder of EdArchy.org, described as “a youth development program committed to providing young people with the resources to imagine and create their own community-focused, authentic learning experiences.” He has his feet in two worlds: the traditional school where he pushes, when possible, for more democratic relations with his teaching staff through resistance and revolution (not reform), and the EdArchy program. Given the strictures of traditional educational systems, Powell has imagined this other space to subvert the dominant educational paradigms, where students can practice the student-centered and consented, co-designed, mutually-empowering, dream-incubating, and community-connected learning possibilities of education.

Over his twenty-four years in education, Rodney Powell has led school systems in Baltimore, Hartford, and in his current role as a principal in Danbury Public Schools in Connecticut. A 2023-24 member of the Nelle Mae Foundation Speakers Bureau on racial equity in public education, he is also pursuing his doctorate at Northeastern University. There, as in all his other work, his research focuses on partnering with youth toward greater agency, consent, and justice in learning.