Reading the "Life in Schools" chapter was a very interesting exercise because it engaged me both as a teacher and as a learner. I could definitely see myself in most of the periods discussed in the text, either as a student in the didactic "era" or as a teacher and an educator in the authentic and transformative times. Having the opportunity to reflect critically upon these paradigms has made me realize that, despite the pros and cons of each one of them, we are living in a world where unilateral and monolithic views (of language, culture, identity, race, sex, gender, religion, and so on) are not enough. The pluralism of ideas and notions is, as many people see it, one of the characteristics of this post-modern moment, and it should be reflected in education, that is, in a pedagogy that not only fosters and allows for these multiplicities to be shared, but also engages students in investigating and inquiring the reasons why these differences exist in the first place. For me, a transformative pedagogy is exactly that: one that helps students be actively involved in bringing about change, in its every possible form, in critical and ethical ways. I especially like the idea that a transformative pedagogy can give students a voice either to express their identities and their particularities as well as to criticize - through multiple modes of language - what they believe to be unfair, unequal.

So, in my classes, I like to ensure that the teaching of a language (English as a Foreign Language, in my case) does not come alone. Students should feel that they have a voice to disagree / reject / deny or agree / support practices and ideas they come up with in their day-to-day routines. And the pic I'm posting, here, is somewhat an example (a brief, yet significant, in my opinion) of what I see as "transformative".

"Culture jamming" practice, as seen from a group of EFL students in a Higher Education context in Brazil