Reflections on my Journey to Becoming an Educator: An Ethnographic Narrative
type: CreativeWork
description: This ethnographic narrative documents my first year of teaching and journey towards becoming a critical social justice educator. The first section addresses my own positionality and motivation to become a critical social justice educator. From there, I address questions of educational equity and access in my class by focusing on three students who have been identified as having an IEP, 504, or Gate Plan; one English language learner and one student with significant life experience. This section includes interviews with the students and their families in their homes about their experience both in my classroom and with Public Education in the State of California. This paper highlights community demographics and community resources and it analyzes their bearing on education at our school site.This paper also documents my perspective on the community, classroom, and individual responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent closure of public schools across the United States. In the final section of this project, I reflect through video format and digital storytelling on my personal growth and continued challenges with implementing critical social justice competencies and restorative justice practices into my pedagogy.
abstract: This ethnographic narrative documents my first year of teaching and journey towards becoming a critical social justice educator. The first section addresses my own positionality and motivation to become a critical social justice educator. From there, I address questions of educational equity and access in my class by focusing on three students who have been identified as having an IEP, 504, or Gate Plan; one English language learner and one student with significant life experience. This section includes interviews with the students and their families in their homes about their experience both in my classroom and with Public Education in the State of California. This paper highlights community demographics and community resources and it analyzes their bearing on education at our school site.This paper also documents my perspective on the community, classroom, and individual responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent closure of public schools across the United States. In the final section of this project, I reflect through video format and digital storytelling on my personal growth and continued challenges with implementing critical social justice competencies and restorative justice practices into my pedagogy.
author: Kamkoff, Nathan
keywords: Education, Teaching, Pedagogy, Socio-emotional Learning, Ethnography, Accessibility, Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum and Social Inquiry, Disability and Equity in Education, Indigenous Education
date published: 2020-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:40:49Z
provider: Claremont Graduate University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Claremont Graduate University