Climbing Walls: Attempting Critical Pedagogy as a 21st-Century Preservice Teacher

A preservice teacher wants to teach for social justice, but faces challenges effectively engaging in critical pedagogy. Her class of sixth-grade students wants to examine more closely the issues around immigration, and the author is eager to disrupt any one-dimensional stereotypes of immigrants that the students might have picked up from popular culture. Together, they craft a unit of language arts study based upon students’ inquiry. Now a few years into her teaching practice, the author reflects on what worked and what could have gone differently.