Critical literacy is a response to...

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to... Well, what exactly?
 
That is a seriously tough question to come up with only one anwer to. But maybe one answer isn't enough and shouldn't be enough. Because what is it that teachers really should be doing? It isn't what Paulo Freire considers "banking" knowledge into students. Teachers do have a gift, it is less about "filling the students with useless information and more about challenging them to see beyond the problems they have to relate to. Teachers should be guides and supports to their students. They should open up dialogues that students then continue with each other that allow them to work out the problems that they face both in the classroom academically and outside the classroom socially. 
 "Students are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge" (Freire, 1997). 
Freire goes on to say "Education as the practice of freedom-as opposed to education the practice of domination-denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people" (1997).  

Some of the ways I think the sentence should read are as follows:

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to problem solve.

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to create a safe environment for students.

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to help students define their own destinies.

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to break the cycle of illiteracy.

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to end the culture of power.

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to open the dialogue between students and the world around them.

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to allow teachers to reach at risk students.

Critical literacy is a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy in which students and teachers work together to help teachers be more open and understanding of the culture of their students.

I feel that based on the reading from this past week as well as throughout the course would allow me to complete that sentence in an infinite number of way. Now I need to focus on how I will follow through with them.

As I think about the reading from this past couple of weeks I find that I drawn to Lynn Astarita Gatto and her determination to make teaching about supporting the critical learning of her students. She plans an outline of how she wants her themetic units to go, but it is all based on how her students react, the questions they ask, the things they want to know, to do. It is just so amazing to me that other teachers are resistant to what she is doing. I think more educators and administrators should embace this. Hearing Gatto's ideas just makes me that much more enthusiastic to teach, to open the world to my students. It makes me want to find my own way to do what Gatto has done.