ABSTRACT
The practice of a critical pedagogy was the impetus for our involvement in an urban in-district master's program with a mission that included developing a critical praxis for all participants. Early on challenged to rethink our stance as critical educators when teachers resisted what we intended to be empowering course practices, assigning readings written by teacher researchers. Drawing our methodology from Freire's notion of generative words and Bakhtin's notion of writing the self into the text, analyzed artifacts collected from our teaching over several cycles using critical discourse analysis. Our analysis reminds us to remain vigilant. In conclusion, it also shares our imperfect attempt to challenge ourselves to create critical practice in order to shift value systems in education to acknowledge the rich knowledge developed by teachers and students. Using tools of discourse analysis helps to track reflective play with language and ideas.
