Lived Reality

I’m writing this knowing that my recent history about being consistent with blogs will indicate that any time I “recommit” to writing it inevitably ends with me disappearing from cyberspace for a while. In all honesty, I can’t do this by myself, and yet I’m nervous to ask others to write with me. Regardless, I feel the need to at least try to write more. To write about news, about my teaching, about my research, about conversations teachers are having, and about anything that fits within the purview of a blog written for radical educators.

Ideally, I want this site to be a site for all the teachers, educators and researchers who have felt their schools, departments, or administrators infringe on what they know to be the right and worthy thing to do. To those who refuse to teach in fear, who embrace the consequences that may or may not come based on teaching and being in classrooms in a worthy humanizing way: I hope this blog will remind you that you are not alone. The struggle for schools is at the center of both state hegemonic-capitalist-patriarchal-white supremacy as well as those committed to social justice. It is for this reason that we can never relinquish schools and classrooms. The fight for freedom, for radical love, must be on going. I hope I can help you do your part.

While my aim is for this blog to become a joint effort, including many voices from colleagues, friends, and students, for now this blog is the work of Zachary Casey, a PhD student in Culture and Teaching at the University of Minnesota.

The name stems from many progressive and critical educators’ insistence on education that takes both students’ and teachers’ lived realities as its starting place.  The vision put forward by this website, through the analysis of education news, policy, practice, and theory, centers on the notion that self-appropriated knowledge is most valuable.  Further, this site is dedicated to advancing the work of critical educators at every level.

To borrow from Henry Giroux, the aim of this blog is to advance a

Pedagogy that demonstrates its commitment to engaging the views and problems that deeply concern students in their everyday lives. Equally important is the need for schools to cultivate a spirit of critique and respect for human dignity that will be capable of linking personal and social issues around the pedagogical project of helping students become active citizens.

It is to this task that I begin this work here on livedreality.org. I hope that this work will grow to include many and serve as a site for conversation, reflection and growth, as we continue to struggle for a more fully democratic society.