Jennifer Tianen
Teach Blue Fellow
Throw open the classroom doors and use the entire school, campus, community, county, state, etc. as real-world experiential learning environments. Seek out community members to share stories, expertise, experiences, simulations and the like to offer all learners a wide variety of perspectives and opportunities that build relationships and create mentors. All of us benefit from breaking down the artificial walls of the classroom when we give students access to real world inquiry, ideas, and experts and challenge them in ways that worksheets and rote learning never will.
Problem of Practice
Secondary American literature courses have historically lacked diversity, including in the untold stories of their local environments. Often when districts move to diversify, they are reductive in their choices; whose stories get told? Often, tropes emerge that only showcase the pain and suffering of traditionally marginalized groups, frustrating students. Not only is there an absence of the complex representation of the lives they are living, but there is also a dearth of stories that inspire hope and joy.
About Jennifer Tianen
Jennifer Tianen is an English teacher and founder of the award-winning West Bloomfield High School Literary Garden, which showcases plants from American authors’ homes and provides a multisensory setting for student learning. She is a Narrative 4 Fellow and has presented around the country on the environment, education, and literature. Jennifer is a member of the district’s Place-Based Education Team and sponsors the Literary Garden and EARTH Clubs at WBHS.
Accounts from Jennifer Tianen
The challenge posed to students about a local island and its indigenous past is sparking a new level of student engagement and ownership of their learning. This real-life problem led to the adoption of indigenous course texts, which in turn is deepening student understanding of the original problem and beyond.
With the advent of social media, the world of our students has changed in so many ways. Rather than bemoaning that shift, let’s evolve to meet the students in front of us.
Educators often have the best of intentions when updating their materials, but we truly need to stop and dig deeper when thinking about new texts, especially when we are attempting to add diverse texts from historically marginalized groups.