Performances

So I thought that class was pretty intense, and it made me think of one storythat I carry around and think about on a not infrequent basis.

When I was just out of grad school, I got my first professional position as a college administrator and my supervisor was a women of color. I loved this woman; she was brilliant and beautiful and the kind of colleague I aspired to be. One day during a 1:1 supervision meeting she confronted me about my work performance, and in particular, about time i had taken to support some family members through a tough time. She talked about how important it was for me to be committed, and to be an adult now, and that as an adult, I needed to prioritize my professional commitments sometimes over my need to be present for my family. This was after a conversation about how a colleague whose contract had been started at a higher pay rate had a family, children that she needed to support, but the fact that I financially supported my grandparents and the children of one of my younger teenage cousins didn't merit a similar increase.
She was really well-intended, but so firmly steeped in her own definitions of what constituted family, what it meant to be an "adult," what is professional or not professional, that my definitions weren't allowed equal status. They weren't culturally situated, they were less than: un-professional, un-adult, un-committed, un-familied. (okay, that last one i made up, but the language isn't working for me here.)
Alongside all of that: I really would have preferred her to be White. I would have been more prepared, less surprised by her perception. And quite frankly, I would have felt comfortable confronting her. Probably not effectively, but nonetheless...As a woman of color, though, I thought about the sacrifices that I KNEW she had made in the course of making her journey up the administrative ranks, and I was familiar with the fact that she had made sense of those in the same terms she had used with me. When she didn't make it home to her family's celebration of the Easter Holiday, she comforted herself with the fact that she made the "right" professional decision. The hard decision. And then she confronted me in our 1:1, lovingly, compassionately, thinking only about how to prepare me for professional culture and its obstacles, wanting me to learn and to do well, and believing that her experience and her choices were right not just for her but for anyone/everyone.
I wonder about the damage I have inflicted when I have been convinced that my experience is a universal one, that my learnings have meaning for others, and that I knew exactly what their right answer was, rather than some ways they might go about discovering it for themselves.

Whiteness Discussion Questions

Hiya!

Thought I'd post a discussion question from the whiteness readings. I thought this one might spark some discussion since we've talked about it in class some:



I was fascinated by the discussion of white, female students crying in the classroom in “(Un)hinging Whiteness.” I’ve heard of this phenomenon before, but I’d never considered the way that it functions to re-center whiteness in discussions of racism. Rowe and Malhotra talk about the role that guilt plays in this phenomenon and express their disdain for guilt because of its inherent stagnation (when they are interested in movement). How does guilt differ from shame? When is crying a move to bring embodied grief into the classroom, and when is it a stagnating cry for affirmation? When is it both or neither? What other roles does or can crying in the classroom play?

Shara

Racism, Colonialism & Sesame Street

Hi Crit Ped Pals,

This is not directly critical pedagogy material, but it's related for sure! I came across this YouTube clip and thought some of you might be interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOP0U03BdSg

It's a clip of a Sesame Street segment from the early 70s called "Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School". Roosevelt Franklin is considered the first black muppet to appear as a main character on Sesame Street.

If you're interested in how racism and colonialism as ideologies are taught through children's t.v.--and yes, even the beloved Sesame Street--I bet you'll find the clip fascinating. And horrifying. Or maybe you have an alternative reading to share? I'm curious to hear what you think.

Snowed in and YouTubing,
Shara

Hi everyone,

I'm finally on! Just finish reading Leda and Rachel's posts and found them to be very moving. I just flashed on the irony of talking about the body in the classroom in this unembodied way. But I must admit it's where I'm most comfortable talking about this subject.

Oh yes, lots of hang-ups about body and emotion and grief. For my family grief is a very private thing. Not to be displayed in public. When my father died my mother asked that friends (we had no nearby family) not visit. It was awkward having folks show up with food (the custom where we lived for those very social wakes) and then hastily leave to respect my mother's wishes. We had tons of food and no one to feed (-: All this has little to do with the classroom except it's what comes up for me when I think about the place of grief in the classroom (I realize I'm being very literal with the term). And my family history/culture influences the things I'm willing/able to tolerate in the classroom.

I've also been present (as student and teacher) when strong emotion was expressed in the classroom. Nope, didn't handle it well. Tears are less threatening than anger (I always have tissues handy). Once a student of color stormed out of the room in response to another student's comments. How do we go on from there? How do we talk about the conflict in the absence of the aggrieved student?

Wish I could write more about this, but I urgently need to get back to reading, reading, reading. But I did want to at least sign on. I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Ellen

On being a "good" student

Doesn't the focus on the paradox of being the "good"student and the "good" teacher in/of critical pedagogy make you just want to be bad? It's interesting to me (and narcissistic of course) that as a student I was both good and bad. I think that I started early on as a good student because I was uinspired by learning and by good teachers who helped me along. After third grade though thing sbegan to go downhill, until I dropped out my Junior year of high school. So I was "bad" I guess at that point--or was I really "good" for refusing the institution? I got by continuing to be my "bad" self through college but then became inspired again in grad school. What inspired me--and seemed to be similar for others in the class--probably had something to do with wanting to "be" the teacher I most admired, but had more to do with wanting to do more to educate others than had been done for me. To provide the context that we were talking about. I never have seen myself as the center but rather the person who sets the scene.

And although I dislike the centrality that Amirault puts on himself as the teacher, I still find this useful to contemplate. . .and so, since it's a blog, that's what I intend to do.

Leda

Grief, multiculturalism and the body

Does grief, or any emotional break from the norm, have a place in the classroom? If so, how do we acknowledge it--even more so learn from it?

How might we use grief--and other forms of emotion that call attention to teachers (and students) as bodies) as a site for examining the construction of bodies as well as their physicality? Can both happen?

Can the physicality of bodies provide a place for intersubjectivity? Or is physicality to closely tied to other ways that the body is always-already marked?

Critical Pedagogy?

Hi all--

I have decided to go ahead and start a blog for the class. it seemed like the best way to post thoughts--even if they're only mine---without burdening everyone's inboxes.

After last week's class, I kept thinking about the idea posed by Rachel of envisioning critical pedagogy. What are the potentials as well as the dilemmas that imagining poses? I spoke a bit to this in the first class, but the the presentation led me to ask:
Can we identify critical pedagogy "in the moment"? Is there something about the modifier "critical" that implies a looking back--reaction, reflexivity, reflection and presents a contradiction for embodiment or performance?

Other questions that arose for me:
What is liberatory education? Seems much easier (in situations that are not overtly oppressive) to identify what is not? Is liberation in the process or in what we do with what we learn?--although that implies a separation of the two which may or may not be there.

As far as the dynamics of the class, I felt some discomfort around the ideas expressed that we should all "respect" each other's ideas, comments, etc. but that "conflict" was welcomed, indeed needed. It seemed obvious to me that it's hard to assume that conflict won't be taken personally by some--and then have we violated their need for respect and validation?

enough for now. hope to hear from some of you--respectfully, of course . :0)

take care,

Leda