Random Musings

Last semester, for Eric Daigre's teaching practicum (a required course for all graduate students with TAships in the English Department), we were instructed to write 5 "journal entries" about various topics related to teaching. He supplied us with a few prompts, noting that we could write about any of them whenever we wanted to, just as long as we answered each one. As I perused the list, I knew which one I was going to have the toughest time with: "Think back to your undergraduate experience. Who was your most inspiring professor? What classroom practices did he/she enact that made him/her so inspirational?." I dreaded answering this question, because I, in fact, had not a single inspiring professor throughout my undergraduate education - something I hate to admit, given the fact that I have a lot of love and pride for my alma mater.

I wish that I had already read bell hooks' essay(s) in Teaching to Transgress before I penned my acerbic response to the aforementioned prompt, because it was comforting to hear that none of her professors had teaching styles she sought to emulate, either. Maybe I could have pinpointed the issue with my lack of amazing professors: none of them had an interest in self-actualization, and that runs completely opposite to my teaching philosophy, the cornerstone of which is making my students feel confident, prepared and supported. hooks says that teaching is a performative act, something I adamantly agree with, but I also think it should be a transformative act - not just for the students, but for the teacher, as well (I think/know she would agree with me here). I think enthusiasm is grossly underrated in higher education, so that's something I want to continue focusing on throughout the course of this semester: how can my actions, my mind/body/spirit, my politics, my knowledge(s), influence the success or failure of my students' knowledge(s) being "enriched" and/or "enhanced?"

Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, I want to begin to seriously engage the critical aspect of critical pedagogy in this class. I want to interrogate how my assumptions impact my teaching practices and classroom behaviors/environments, and how/why these might change. I want to examine how and why I have capitulated to dominant classroom practices in the past, and how I can productively disrupt such structures to benefit both my students and myself. As I said in our first class, I especially want to think about this in terms of being a TA/discussion leader, as I find this position much more difficult than teaching a stand-alone course. When the course isn't your "own," you only see your students for 50 minutes a week, and there are already so many assumed practices and power relations at work, how can we encourage self-actualization and student agency in the classroom? Is this even an appropriate space for such an act? Is any learning space not?