when you looked at the shiny, black surface from an off-angle, one could almost make out their likeness reflected via the glaring fluorescent bulbs humming softly overhead. walking to class, walking to lunch, walking in and out of the building, students, staff, and faculty passed many of these sable mirrors which crinkled softly due to the breeze that the human traffic kicked up. “so, why are the water fountains covered with trash bags?”, one of my students asked me that day.
unknown intruders had blocked off our access to earth’s lifeblood, water, giving no prior warning.
reflecting now on the events that occurred over those past few days, it’s pretty apparent that the activities that the class performed did not investigate thoroughly enough. where i thought we were being critical, we weren’t being critical enough. it would have been worthwhile to guess reasons why students had no forewarning about their access to potable water being discontinued. on similar grounds, i could have directed their discussions towards examination of the hierarchy of power and access to information in Washington, DC and what that hierarchy represented.
during class, the few activities and conversations that we got to only scratched the surface of critical literacy. the first task was to investigate what lead was. on a pre-reading assessment, students answered several questions concerning the identity and traits of lead. most students had never heard of lead, let alone knew that that it was dangerous. after reading an article, students had to answer and discuss some post-reading questions. these led to class conversations not about their own safety, but rather the safety of members of their household, pregnant students, and the children in the school's daycare. my students vowed to go home and warn their household about what they had learned. this response definitely showed that students understood the element’s dangers; as a result they selflessly thought of other people in danger first. unfortunately, we never moved towards any other social justice actions, mainly due to nil teacher prodding.
to provide some background, neither the students nor the faculty had advance notice that all water fountains in the building would be closed for almost a week so that they could be tested for lead contamination. on (approximately) the second day of “The Thirst”, students were given ½ pint-sized bottles of water… for the day. whether working up a sweat busting your butt studying after school or via being outside and running the bases, the ½ pint-sized bottle was supposed to sustain us for the entire day. of course, students resorted to filling up their water bottles with sink water, which may or may not possess the filter that the water fountains certainly do. faculty, teachers, and students knew that faucet water was filling the tiny bottles, but everyone was thirsty, so what could we do?
we could have spoken up.
links:
1) a quiet publication from the superintendent concerning the water testing
http://www.k12.dc.us/dcps/frontpagepdfs/response-to-high-lead-levels.pdf
2) school board reaction to lead testing
http://www.examiner.com/a-576838~School_board_head_criticizes_handling_of_lead_findings.html?cid=rss-Washington_DC
1 comment:
I like how you could connect the water fountains being closed to literacy. This semester we have seen how so much can be connected to thinking criticaly about literacy in our worlds. Inequity is a big part of how our world runs so teaching students to see this can help them learn to about how to make things more equal for the future.
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