This is (also) a playful dialogue between myself, Kirsi M., and my writing voice, Kirsi “I’m So Completley Awesome” M., affording me the intimacy to speak on the readings of bell hooks.
KM: What parts of this reading did you find most revolutionary?
K(ISCA)M: Interesting question. In the first chapter, hooks says that she arrived at much of her teaching philosophy from encountering two important sources, Thich Nhat Hanh and Paulo Freire. She explains that through Thich Nhat Hanh’s approach of holistic learning which includes s spiritual practice, she came to the conclusion that the classrooms should strive to incorporate the “whole” human being, “not just knowledge in books, but knowledge about how to live in the world.” For me this idea is a little problematic because I can’t help but wonder how the spiritual development of students would be brought into the classroom. When it comes to spirituality, I believe that Edmund Gosse (Father and Son) said it best, “It is the privilege of every human being to fashion one’s inner life for themselves.” I think there is a real breakdown between ideally what we’d like education to be, and what it reasonable to expect it to be without infringing on student’s inner lives.
I like the solution that hooks offers about confession. She encourages educators to be vulnerable and bring in the narratives of their own lives, thereby encouraging students to make connections between academic discourse and their own confessional narratives (21). I think this can feel very revolutionary to the student.
KM: Interesting point, but what do you mean that students should go blabbing about their problems in the classroom—doesn’t that seem counterproductive?
K(ISCA)M: No. Hooks addresses this when she writes, “It is utterly unreasonable for students to expect classrooms to be therapy sessions, but it is appropriate for them to hope that the knowledge received in these settings will enrich and enhance them” (19). There is a definitely a difference between an anything-goes therapy session, and being appropriately confessional as a way to connect learning and living on the part of the student. Let me give an example.
KM: Great!
K(ISCA)M: When I first transferred to the University of Iowa I was determined to be a good student. I was in a literature class on racism where we were asked to write a series of reading reflections, and I kept turning in these polished, wordy, academic, researched, thesis-driven one-paged response essays. On everyone my teacher wrote, “Good, but I can’t tell what you’re thinking.” And I kept thinking, But I wrote what I was thinking! It’s right there, all my thoughts. I kept getting the same sorts of feedback. Then finally I got it, OH! She can’t tell what I’m thinking. Which led to a whole spiral of thoughts and confusions, but why does she care what I think, I’m not smart, I don’t have anything better to say than these scholars…
We were reading a book on the Japanese American Internment and the paper assignment was similar to the PAA in that we were asked to make a personal connection to the story. At the time I was dating someone who was and 1/8 Japanese and also, I wound up pregnant. It happens. Anyway, it was a very shocking thing to discover that during the internment, the government was locking people up who were as little as 1/16 Japanese. That would mean that in another parallel universe, 70 some years in the past, and with this same child, the two of us were being thrown into a camp and locked away, right now! Stranger still, my Grandfather had been stationed in San Louis Obispo at that time and was very likely one of the people running around collecting Japanese American citizens and locking them away. This became a real personal and academic crisis for me, and I wrote my paper about it.
I felt so rebellious and liberated; I was turning in a college paper that had references to my deeply personal life, “I kept thinking, she wants personal? I’ll show her! I didn’t expect that this was exactly what my teacher wanted of me.
When hooks argues for a revolution of values, she essentially is saying: stop playing it safe. “If we fear mistakes, doing things wrongly, constantly evaluating ourselves, we will never make the curricula address every dimension of that difference (multiculturalism).” But I think we can extend this further to say that constantly fearing mistakes and evaluating ourselves can’t possibly help us make the classroom a safe environment where students feel that they can bring in their whole-selves. I think we have to take risks if we want our students too, and I think that the best learning comes when risks are taken.
I think this concept of risk is an important one. hooks talks about the fear she felt, coming out from behind the desk/podium at the front of the classroom. She reveals that in her relative naivete she assumed that there was no power, or that to stay behind the podium wasn't to wield that power; however, she acknowledges that in either case there is a power involved/instantiated by her position up front. In her discussion with Ron Schapp hooks talks about 'practicing teaching' and this I think is where the greatest risk comes in. We must, as young student-teachers, be willing to go out on a limb, to try new things and open ourselves up to new 'ways of being' in the classroom. If we simply stand up front and lecture, which I know can often simply be a matter of comfort (a way to guarantee that the lesson plan gets worked through in its entirety), we will also risk something, and that thing is the possibility of greater connection with our students and a chance at a more meaningful "learning community." I think the fact that both hooks and Schapp acknowledge that learning is going to happen in either environment, the standard conservative one and the room where liberatory pedagogy is practiced, is a good way to assure yourself that if you earnestly come to teach, then you will; but there is often much more that can be taught than simply what is on your little lesson plan sheet.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I wanted to commend Kirsi for her self-revelatory post: This practice is one way to come out from behind the podium, to open up and connect with your students, to let them see you as a person, or as Schapp says it is to "recognize that being a teacher is being with people."
I really appreciate bell hooks' ideas about the need for professors to strive for wholeness and self-actualization, and the ways that this humanity (humility? vulnerability? honesty?) can manifest in the classroom. While lecture often has its place - some of the best classes I took in college were entirely lecture-based - even in these situations there is room for student involvement, that allows everyone to shift out of the "banking" system of education, and into a holistic way of being that emulates, as hooks suggest, a better way of being in the world. (I do get a little squeamish about this idea of teaching "students how to live in the world" (15), but I think if we approach it instead with a goal of teaching student how to think critically about their place in the world, those potentially messy overtones are avoided. I think this is actually what hooks is suggesting, so my issue is mostly one of semantics.)
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, I had a really interesting interaction with one of my students yesterday, which pulled all of this theory off the page and into the classroom. I had talked about Cartesian dualism in class (in reference to Thayer), and as class was letting out, this one student came up to ask me some more questions about Descartes (he was homeschooled, and is really bright), and how he somewhat disagreed with my take on the philosopher. Earlier in class, the same student had commented on how he disagreed with the whole premise of Thayer's article, which prompted a small amount of debate and discussion among the students. After talking a bit about bioregionalism and dualism, I told him how glad I was that he disagreed - with both me and the reading - and that he brought it up in class in a critical, thoughtful way. I also said that I wished we had more folks in class who were willing to question and debate and discuss. He replied that he did too, but understood why it doesn't happen: "People are taught not to question things, in school or in society," he said. "I think the only way people would even think about doing that in our class would be if you put your own opinions out there and called people out on theirs, but you can't do that. You're the teacher, you're not supposed to. You'd get in trouble."
And I thought, "Huh. That's really interesting."
This led me to ponder again an issue that I have pondered for years, namely, does it help or harm the classroom to have the professor's opinions/beliefs/politics unveiled? bell hooks would seem to see this as a benefit - full disclosure, wholeness, humanness. But on the other hand, is it problematic for a teacher to have an "agenda'? Conversely, is it disingenuous to pretend that the professor doesn't have a set of beliefs that influence his or her teaching?
I recall a few years ago, there was some grumbling and agitation (maybe a bill was introduced? I don't remember how far it got) that essentially said there aren't enough Republican professors. We need more conservatives in higher education, there are too many liberal professors. And I thought - should it matter? Should politics enter into it? Should applicants for higher ed jobs be required to disclose their political leanings? What do you think?
This idea of coming out from behind the podium had always seemed a relatively terrifying one to me as a new instructor. I had never thought of it in those terms, never been aware of Bell Hooks's arguments, but the fear of losing "control" by opening up to the class has been there since day one of this teaching enterprise. It wasn't until Friday, when I observed Mackenzie's class, that I saw how one might begin to do that. Even though Mackenzie and I teach basically the same thing, have similar lesson plans, and know generally about the same amount when it comes to WRIT 101, I discovered that our approaches to how we inhabit the classroom are completely different. In my class all the students are in rows and I stand at the front, sometimes breaking them into groups or pairs, and sometimes walking around. But most of the time I stick to the front of the class. That is where I'm most comfortable, where I feel the most like a teacher. Mackenzie, on the other hand, has his students arranged in a circle. He sits at the "front" of the circle, sure, but he is sitting. He is at-ease with his students, and I think the result is his students feel much more like partial "owners" of the classroom. A community is created that I envy in many ways. He also engages them before class, revealing a side of himself that I tend not to. When I enter my class it's all business, no banter, and I think I'm losing out on a really good opportunity to engage the class fully. Hooks discusses that no class should be "boring", and I fear my class often is. It is nice to know that, as John pointed out, learning will happen in both kinds of environments as long as an earnest effort is made to educate, but I really want to be the cool teacher, like Mackenzie. He's cool.
ReplyDeleteI thought these readinsg and the subsequent posts were interesting in light of the fact that I was observed twice in the past week, and like Jeff also had a chance to observe a classmate/colleague (Kirsi). It's funny how an "outsider's" eyes upon you can make you cognizant of your own actions/movements in a way that you never realize on your own. I teach in LA 102 and take for granted the small, semi-circle intimacy afforded by that space -- Kirsi teaches in a big, booming room with tiny wooden desks in a row before one big huge desk and a big huge blackboard. Just the set-up of the space grants Kirsi an immediate authority that I don't have, since although my desk is bigger I've always felt myself to be just one part of the circle. This could be for the best -- but Kirsi and I both noticed that she has a much harder time coming out from behind her desk than I do, in part because of this immediate dichotomy between teacher and student that my classroom enables less of. I do a whole lot of walking around, and I have my students move around quite a lot, too -- and a lot of my comfort with that comes from the immediate permissions of my small, circular classroom.
ReplyDeleteI strive always in my classes for a balance of authority and personality, and I do try to share with my students of myself, in hopes that they will give back -- and it was gratifying to see this strategy supported by bell hooks. The more comfortable we become with each other, the better my students' papers are, and the better I teach -- this is the truth.
Melissa went into the "openness" issue a bit, specifically in terms of political beliefs, etc., and I remember a moment in TA bootcamp when Kate Ryan said that once, when teaching at a more conservative university, a student came up to her and told her how much he appreciated that he could never discern her politics. My students could DEFINITELY tell you whether I lean left or right, and who I'm likely to vote for, and what I might think about abortion or the legalization of marijuana. I am very open with them about how I feel -- and I believe I agree with bell hooks that this openness, this humanness, allows them to feel open with me, as well. I am HOPING, in an idea situation, that my oppenness about my beliefs allows them to be open in turn, and to express their beliefs... but it is also imperitive to take into account the fact that, whether I like it or not, whether I play to it or not, I really AM the authority for them. So there's always the possibility that by stating my beliefs, I make it HARDER for them to vocalize theirs, since they've been taught not to criticize or critique authority. Finding a balance between inhabiting this position of authority while also teaching them to question me and other authorities is very difficult... because of course, I do want and need them to view me as an authority at the same time that I don't. It's a conondrum for me daily.
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ReplyDelete1. If your students give you something true, you can teach them.
ReplyDelete2. By being wholly present and aware in the classroom, you have done half the work of teaching your students how to write the lifeplace essay.
3. Peer observation really does focus awareness on the positional aspect of how we inhabit the classroom space, as many of us are noting. I teach in the same room as Kirsi. The room is wide enough that I experience different weather conditions crossing from one side to the other. I find that on days I do not ask my students to form a circle, I exhaust myself in the bodily experience of listening to them. Positioning oneself as a lightning rod can be a powerful way to approach certain activities, but unless I am seated I always find myself moving between desks.
Perhaps my students do know how I smell; they see that I dress more neatly when I am ill. But physically occupying the classroom means a dance of different ways of engagement. While I conclude that moving among the desks disrupts the idea that the area in front of the blackboard holds authority, I still crouch when near my students.
4. On the first day, I remember remarking to the class that the room was "rich in technological deficits" and (less cheekily), that it was "oppressively empty." Since then I have invited my students to bring pictures into the classroom--of Missoula, of their homes outside of Missoula. It was a bit traumatic for all of us to see them removed last Friday. My students have stood up to embody the mountains surrounding Missoula when I marked compass directions on the walls, we've moved desks into every configuration imaginable. To see bare walls once again, it felt like a reminder that our classroom space is not ours to direct.
Different weather conditions, haha.
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