11
I recognise now that my favourite teachers throughout my education were those who I trusted, I respected and I found passionate- and that’s what I aim to bring to my classroom. This is reinforced by Oakes and Lipman who suggest that trusting relationships and cooperation are the foundation of a good classroom aiming to produce good learning (2007, p253). Although relationships are a main focus of mine in the classroom, critical pedagogy is important too. Critical pedagogy involves critical thought considering the way you teach and how you adapt your teaching to individual learners in your classroom. Freire’s “Banking System” is relevant with critical pedagogy as teachers need to not see the student as an empty “account” to be filled. This is a challenge that I need to keep working on in the english classroom. On placement I would sometimes find myself stepping over that line of ‘facilitator’ into simply giving the answers to students in discussions. This permissive approach to teaching is detrimental to student learning. Smith suggests that without critical pedagogy “teaching can quickly descend into treating learners like objects, things to be acted upon rather than people to be related to” (2012).