PSL700
The Communal Classroom
1
Time
2 to 3 hours (Time varies depending on levels of engagement)
2
Skill Reinforcement
classroom management, interclass room communication and flow, parent guardian communication, collaborative learning and socialization, discipline, contextual content focus
3
Utilization
Service Teachers, Teachers, Administrators
4
Education Levels
4th - High School
5
Description
The power to re-imagine one’s condition is innate, as primal as species reproduction or the quest for liberty. Communal capacity is a classroom of dreams. In the Communal Classroom, we paint those dreams into a new cultural formation, onto a self-determined canvas, into expository writing, subject verb agreement, research papers, narrative analysis, a poem, or any focused content. It is much more than classroom management. It is realignment of thought, principles, and actions related to discipline and learning. It is the dissolving of obsolete practices, the ones that haven’t worked in a long time, and establishing new realities of wholeness for an often beleaguered learning population of teachers, students, parents/guardians, and administrators. We ask the hierarchical probe; how did we get here? Where is here? And we craft an educational plan of extrication.
Nine reflexive frameworks and principles from the pedagogy, PSL/POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD™ sync and deliver a humanizing educational design for the Communal Classroom that transforms the educational atmosphere.
“The proponents of ubuntu… African philosophy based on the maxim, ‘a person is a person through other persons,’ whereby the community prevails over individual considerations. From the ubuntu perspective, it is arguably not an empty claim that our survival or well-being is causally dependent on others.” -Bishop Tutu
6
Insight
According to Mattern, (Carrie Mattern, then President of Michigan Council of Teachers of English), “Brown’s keynote address was a vision. It was one of what education could be-and should be-in a just world that is equitable, diverse, and inclusive. She fused science, art, storytelling and language into a tapestry for everyone in that room to discover. I think this is what led to her standing ovation: the perfectly articulated, intentional way that Semaj connected with every educator in the space in such a small timeframe.” -From Flint Courier News, 2022, Tanya Terry, Editor