Speaking Truth to Power P. L. Thomas and Christian Z. Goering, Column Editors 129 English Journal 105.2 (2015): 129–132 Caring Critical Literacy: The Most Radical Pedagogy You Can Offer Your Students Susan Cridland-Hughes Clemson University scridla@clemson.edu As a first-year teacher in Bal- timore City in 2001, I heard stories from my students that overwhelmed me. Care was often sidelined in their personal lives even as external and structural fac- tors placed them in the position of care-giving for others. Many of my students juggled child-care responsibilities for younger broth- ers and sisters as their parents worked two and three shifts; my students navigated unstable home and family situations, violence in the streets, police brutality, and the complications that came from being raised in the heart of the drug trade in Baltimore City. As I found myself buckling under the weight of students’ challenges, a veteran teacher told me that the most important thing I could do for my students was to teach them as if their lives depended on it. After that conversation, I started fighting back against the challenges my students faced through my pedagogy, mak- ing transparent the externally imposed hierarchies through “creating habits of inquiry, a sense of criticalness, and a moral edit among students to care for self and others” (Gay 52). Caring, in this context, becomes the foundation upon which learning builds and through which interactions flow. In Gay’s perspective, caring is not added to a class or discipline; rather, caring is the nexus of edu- cation. This reconceptualization of the classroom is infinitely big- ger than shifting who determines the focus of education. Instead, this shifts the “why” of education. If not to support the development of whole people, then why do we teach? Shifting attention to research in critical literacy, definitions of the term often revolve around the notion of critical literacy as action. One of the commonly cited defi- nitions of critical literacy describes it as “habits of thought, reading, writing and speaking which go beneath surface meaning . . . to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideol- ogy, and personal consequences of any action” (Shor, Empowering 129). In this understanding of critical literacy, Ira Shor empha- sizes the act of engaging critically with not only the act of interpret- ing but also with the active impli- cations of that interpretation. Critical literacy has primarily critical engagement with text and big ideas. What my veteran teacher friend did not tell me, however, was that the teaching of critical thought and reflec- tion had to come from a place of care—I learned that the hard way. Although I taught my students as if their lives depended on it, it was not until I centered care in my curriculum and teaching that they flourished as intellectuals. Because I cared for my students and wanted to honor their experi- ences, I taught with passion, with analytical thought, and with a focus on critical literacy. Care and Critical Literacy as Joint Pillars of Classroom Communities In her 2010 book, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice, Geneva Gay argues for the concept of multicultural teaching as “caring-in-action” (51). Caring-in-action is an artic- ulation of care that highlights the act of engaging with another human being around the idea of learning and making meaning through activism. Among other things, the recommendations for a mode of teaching that centers care include “being academically demanding but personally sup- portive and encouraging” and Copyright © 2015 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.