Anti-adultist Teaching and Learning: The Classroom as a Site of Action View Digital Media

Workshop Presentation
Rye Ellis Katz  

This research supports the use of abolitionist pedagogies to empower young people to begin participating in organizing through the political imaginary cultivated in the online classroom. Through anti-adultist teaching and learning practices, we begin to see youth leadership emerge through self-directed collaborative online learning, peer-to-peer discourse and support systems, and political identity formation and performance. A teacher takes on the role of facilitator, not only in the platonic sense, but also in the sense of adult allyship to youth-led movements. This research explores the potential for the classroom to genuinely serve as a safer space for young people to grow and learn as political actors through culturally responsive curriculum as well as prioritizing the value of experiential knowledge as expertise.