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Jennifer Gonzalez: Cult of Pedagogy- How Ordinary Teachers Become Activists- February 27, 2018

This week Jennifer focused on teachers becoming activists in a time when our nation is leaving teachers feeling "hopeless or frustrated."  Jennifer stated that many teachers are feeling very frustrated with all of the demands placed on them, while also feeling frustrated with various policies that are being passed by lawmakers, but often in conversations teachers state they don't know how to fix it or where to start. 

In order for teachers to begin to make changes, they must become an activist.  Becoming an activist doesn't mean we need a political background, but instead we can get started by using technology to follow education activist bloggers and to inform ourselves.  Anthony Cody is an education activist and also blogs about education and independent issues.  He is a co-founder of Network for Public Education.  Anthony met with Jennifer for this blog post and offered suggestions for teachers wanting to become involved in changing education policy.  His suggestions follow:
1) Learn about the issues at hand through using technology (Anthony listed specific sites on Jennifer's blog post if you want more information).
2) Find a network- Anthony states that there are groups everywhere trying to make change.
3) Gather support from members of your school.

I highly encourage anyone wanting to become an education activist to check out this blog post as there is a PDF that you can download called "The Education Activist's Starter Kit."  I also think that as we have learned in this class, technology is a great way to become involved with education policies as we can follow Anthony Cody's blog or begin to research the issues at hand to find where we stand.  I know that personally in my school, no one knows where to start making change so I think that this is a great blog to read with the current issues at hand. 

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