The Rose That Grew From Concrete: Teaching and Learning with Disenfranchised Youth by Diane Wishart

In his essay Challenges Bequeathed, first published in 1996, long-time educator and curriculum scholar Huebner (2009) writes eloquently about the need to speak up for children and youth.He argues that "teachers have become increasingly removed from concern for the uniqueness and individuality of the student qua person" (p.10) and that children and youth remain relatively voiceless in our society.He worries that educators are too busy trying to "understand the educational process" and because of this, they may "fail to hear and respond to the muffled sounds of those caught in the system" (p.11). Diane Wishart's bookThe Rose that Grew From Concrete: Teaching and Learning with Disenfranchised Youth does precisely what Huebner has challenged educators to do: it speaks up for vulnerable young people who have been failed by mainstream education.It attempts genuinely to hear and respond to the experiences of disenfranchised, largely Aboriginal students in an inner-city high school that she refers to as Wild Rose School, in Edmonton, Alberta.Using a case study approach, Wishart talks with staff and students at the school in an effort to raise consciousness about inequitable educational practices.She calls educators to account for how they are complicit in perpetuating conditions of oppression in education that further devalue and marginalize particular groups of students who stand outside the norms of who and what we expect our students to be.What I appreciate about Wishart's approach to writing this book is her willingness to examine critically her own pedagogy in the light of her privileged social location.She does so genuinely that it opens spaces for readers to do the same.There were many moments reading the book that I found myself stopping to consider what I had read in relation to my own experiences as an educator.At times, I felt discomfort as I became more fully aware of my own complicity in reproducing an educational system that marginalizes many young people because of their social locations.However, as Wishart notes, discomfort is a necessary precondition for change.Early in the book, Wishart asks the questions "How do we see students as specific individuals rather than as abstractions?How do we begin a conversation with youth about meeting their needs while we are already engaged, implicated, and consumed by an educational system that doesn't meet their needs?"(p.3).These questions frame the discussion that follows of Wishart's own experiences working alongside disenfranchised youth, her descriptions of these young people, her efforts to grapple with the complexities and messiness of their everyday lives,

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