This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 194 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode we'll be sharing three easy ways to add culturally responsive critical

thinking to the lessons you're already teaching, an approach called finding the funk.

One major flaw in the way many schools are set up is that critical thinking is usually

set aside just for advanced students.

If you're in a class called honors or advanced, you will be thinking about deep complex questions

and having thoughtful, engaging debates while kids in the non-honours classes are stuck

in an endless cycle of the basics with a whole lot of sit and get instruction and repetitive

drills.

This sad reality is usually justified as follows.

There's no time in lower level classes for critical thinking.

Students still don't have the basics down so it would make no sense to set aside time

for extra critical thinking activities.

My guest today, Colin Seale, would argue that this setup is doing kids a huge disservice,

that this is fundamentally an equity issue and I agree with him.

If we truly believe in making education equitable for all students and if we want to equip

all of our students to become the kind of people who make positive contributions to their

communities, then one change we need to make at the classroom level is to give all students

regular practice and critical thinking, regardless of where they are on any academic scale.

After laying out this argument in his new book, Tangeable Equity, Seale offers a framework

for providing more equitable pedagogy to all students and an early step in that framework

is something he calls finding the funk, a way of looking for places in our curriculum

...