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Breaking the Ties That Bind; Beyond imagination and memory in an at-risk youth literacy program
Theory, examples, and discussion led by Dr. Andrew Schofield of the Newton Learning Center School District 36, Surrey, BC
At what point is imagination and memory a hindrance to education and learning?
In the second IERG Colloquium of the fall, we were introduced to a Youth Literacy Program located in a Surrey alternate secondary school. Engagement with the literacies of student lives is shown to be a viable, necessary, yet insufficient response to the challenges facing inner city youth. Two examples demonstrate how "at risk" students may change their lives through classwork: their acts are found to be liberatory and, in the contexts of student lives, revolutionary. The talk also raises questions regarding the dialectics of freedom, agency, and pedagogy within Surrey classrooms.