Life IS (a) Contact Sport; Lens; Improvisation; Sheet; Network

Oh my! Gaughan wisely uses a combination of sequencing and pacing -- the balance of kinds of activity -- to help his students move from one stage or "rung" to the next: up and moving (like 4-Square), writing a reflection, a short whole class reading, quick-write reflective/mess-it-up activity (like responsing to The Language of Sex: The Heterosexual Questionnaire, Rochlin, 1992, on p.115), small groups in Lit Circles, etc. to help his students with energy and focus. He is creating a situation in the Deweyian sense of the word, anchored by theme...in which the students can transact (ok, Rosenblatt-ian) with various texts (in the Friere-ian sense).
While I don't agree with everything he says (I think he's a bit male-centric on p. 137, top; and loses his vision of what he's really doing in the whole "am I destroying her faith?" [pp.125-129+/-] thicket he's machete-ing his way around in), I do heartily admire him for asking the tough questions of himself and his teaching. He includes plenty of disconfirming or at least disconcerting evidence in the form of letters from parents and students, and excerpts from papers that keep the Teacher-As-Hero myth at bay. A big take-away for me is that learning to think critically is a messy, uncomfortable, potentially scary business. Not the least of the risks is that the Guide/Facilitator/Teacher will "see red" and go "off" on a student with whom he or she doesn't agree. Gives a whole new meaning to the word "safe". But, complacency, a binary world view, and mis-placed trust in toxic narratives are far more terrifying. Reading "Reinventing English -- Teaching in the Contact Zone" has gotten me thinking about how I might structure a learning experience for pre-service teachers to (1) begin to ask questions (if they don't already) using thematic units that follow a similar structure to what (I'd hope) they would use in schools; (2) put the ladder model out there and even construct it with them (like if Love is the top or near the top of the Sexuality "ladder" -- or murder at the top of the Discrimination Ladder --then what's at the bottom?, one up from there?, approaching the top? etc.) (3) Engage them in the practice of the reading/thinking/questioning/discussing/writing/ cycle and (4) apprentice them into a more critical world view. Just as we recognize that it's silly to expect novice teachers to be as up-to-speed as their 20-year veteran neighbors down the hall, I think it's just as silly to expect that these young people have deeply (and independently, somehow) examined their own (pre-) conceptions.