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Laura H,

This is a rich classroom example of how Freire's notion of curriculum as emergent from and reflecting back onto learners might actually play out in pulic schools.  I'm interested in the way you talk about the use of the text Passing in terms of not only content (which, as you say, might apply more to some than others -- and given its historical setting, might in a literal sense not apply) but also the way the teacher framed and interrogated content in relation to his students.  Part of what I find striking here is the sense I get that this was a kind of negotiation among teacher and students, with the text as the mediating force.  This can be powerful as teaching and learning!  and yet too it seems like a continual challenge for the teacher not to overstep and assume knowledge about and of the students...