C5.3
From The Eco-STEM Wiki
Climate C5.3: Acknowledges and supports student resilience in the face of difficulties
- Resistant capital is one of the six forms of asset-based capital described in the Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) framework by Yosso (2005). CCW is possessed in abundance by students from marginalized backgrounds.
- Personally acknowledge and provide opportunities for students to discuss hardships as experienced within the community, including those due to systemic realities (e.g. poverty), traumatic periods (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic), and community-based and/or nationally significant events (e.g. George Floyd’s murder). These occurrences all have detrimental effects on student learning, especially for marginalized students. Ignoring these effects further reinforces the technocratic myth of meritocracy (Cech 2013). Alternatively, bringing the context of systems of oppression – and celebrating student resilience in the face of them – into the classroom creates opportunities to expand students’ critical consciousness and build solidarity (Freire, 2013). Critical consciousness (or conscientização), a concept first defined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, is the ability to perceive injustices within existing social systems (CITE PotO). Freire argued that the process of education should not serve to teach students to “simply adapt to the world as it is” (PotO, p. 46) but instead should empower “transformers of that world” (PotO, p. 46).