Project South Interactive Workshop
The Critical Classroom: Education for Liberation & Movement Building

We live in a critical “teachable moment” – the catastrophic aftermath of Katrina, rising immigrant struggles, the war at home and abroad, deepening economic and ecological/environmental crises, and renewed activism, organizing and movement building. The challenge to scholar activists and educators is to understand this moment and to create critical classrooms that transform curriculum, prepare students as activists, and are part of social struggles and the movement building process.

Goals & Guidelines
∑ To examine and reframe assumptions found in traditional scholarship and teaching and those found in scholarship and teaching for social justice and fundamental social change
∑ To discuss popular education as a pedagogical strategy for creating a community of learners with a vision of social justice and social change in the context of today’s movement building moment
∑ To share two teaching and learning tools we use as activists and educators that look at social history, social movements and lessons learned for building today’s bottom-up social justice movement
∑ To explore next steps in classroom and curriculum transformation.

“Aha” Moment & Social History Timeline
“When did you decide to teach for social justice & social change? What was the struggle/issue & what was the year?”
Sum-up: What pushes us forward? What moves us to transform our classrooms and curriculum, to be scholar activists?

Reflection – What has your classroom practice been and vision what it could be? (small groups & sharing)
What are the obstacles and challenges we face? What’s working & what are our “best practices”?

Brainstorm
What are the assumptions about society, history, social problems and solutions, and social change and social movements found in traditional scholarship and teaching and what are the assumptions found in scholarship and teaching for social justice and fundamental social change? How are these assumptions expressed in the answers to “reflection” questions?
Think about:
∑ Which assumptions address the structural root causes of problems, the essential participation of those most adversely affected in being agents in a collective process of social change, and the dynamics of the movement building process for fundamental systemic social transformation?
∑ How do scholar activists & educators de-center traditional assumptions about social change and re-center around assumptions of bottom-up social struggle and movement building?

The Critical Classroom – Creating a community of learners & using popular education as a strategy
∑ What do knowledge, power and agency look like in traditional education? In the critical classroom?
∑ What is popular education? How is it connected to the critical classroom, social struggle & leadership development?
∑ How are popular education & the critical classroom connected to movement building for justice & social change?

Teaching & Learning Tools for Classroom & Curriculum Transformation
Project South has created over the last 10 years two essential teaching and learning tools for curriculum transformation for classroom and community that re-centers our thinking and practice around bottom-up movement building for fundamental social change – the social history timeline & the CVS model of bottom-up movement building.
∑ Social history timeline and the revolutionary process
∑ CVS model of movement building process – consciousness, vision & strategy

Taking it home
How do you imagine using this workshop in transforming your classroom practice – course curriculum/syllabus and teaching, and political practice in connecting to today’s movement building process and US Social Forum?

Evaluation