I want to continue to blog my reading of this book. I think that every three chapters, I will take a step back to reflect on the readings and think about how to use them in my own pedagogy.

Chapter One: Engaged Pedagogy

In order to teach as a practice of freedom, we need to believe that anyone can learn. We also need to believe that teaching is sacred, of sharing intellectual and spiritual growth. This act starts with acknowledging that our students are complete individuals with pasts, experiences, lives, and conflicts outside of the classroom, and that those experiences provide them each with unique knowledge that they can bring to the classroom.

We have to asks ourselves, how do we allow our students to bring and share that knowledge and how can we help them expand it?

Our first step is the total rejection of the banking system of teaching. hooks says “it was Freire’s insistence that education could be the practice of freedom that encouraged me to create strategies for what he called ‘conscientization’ in the classroom. Translating that term to critical awareness and engagement, I entered the classrooms with conviction that it was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer” (14).

Too many of my students find themselves completely lost when I do not provide them easy answers. They have forgotten that they must create the knowledge that they feel is important, instead of passively consume knowledge that I “bank” into them. As hooks reminds us, the idea of education as a practice of freedom gets undermined by the teacher-centered classroom that discourages active and critical participation (14). hooks goes on to connect this idea to Thich Nhat Hanh, who also believe students need to be active participants in the classroom.

We need to see students as entire being—mind, body, soul—not just as students in seek of knowledge. For hooks, she found that space in the women studies’ classroom, where she managed to connect ideas learned in the university to ideas learned in living life (15).

This kind of teaching is more demanding that regular, or even feminist or critical pedagogy because it centers well-being. The teacher, then, must seek self-actualization (and how many smart teachers do we see who hold atrocious beliefs about their students or politics or teaching? Martin Heidegger was a Nazi who fell in love with his student, a Jew. Buddhist monks, enlightened, who advocate for killing without thinking. John Paul Sartre. . .  See: Albert Camus’s rejection of his friend). We need happy teachers in order to help student reach happiness—teacher who have social skills, not just book smarts.

We need to deconstruct (and when I say deconstruct, I mean it the way Derrida meant it: we need to look at how the binary definitions fall apart because the privileged position is always-already infected by the lower position). When we think of trying to separate mind/body, inner/outer, (to an extent: student in the classroom/person outside of the classroom), we see how much the binary falls apart. Part of affect studies shows this distinction falls apart. We cannot think of a sound mind without a strong body free of stressors. A student in our classroom comes into it with all the cultural, societal, and personal history.

Professors can follow this model (try to follow this model) and still perpetuate dictatorships in the classroom the replicate structures of domination. How then can we check to make sure that we do not fall into this trap.

[I think of Derrida and deconstructive ethics here: the emotion we should follow is one of [existential] anxiety. To always be questioning, nervous, hesitant that we are doing enough for our students, that we are challenging power structures enough, that we are being ethical enough. We can never relax and say we got it right because that attitude leads to falling back on perpetuating power structures.]

Professors do not have to be dictators (18).

Students increasingly “feel that there are no clear ethical guidelines shaping actions” and they want education to be liberatory (19). I say, it’s good there are no clear ethical guidelines. Guidelines, strict definitions, have us falsely believe that if we follow them, we are doing the right thing. Instead, we should always question.

One question we should ask is how will what we teach students—really, what students learn—will help them have a more fulfilling life? (19).

We then read about one of hooks’ students and the tensions that this kind of teaching can have.

“When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are sked to share, to confess” Engaged pedagogy involves allowing one’s self to be vulnerable in the classroom, teachers and students. Engaged pedagogy asks for teachers to grow as well. As hooks puts it “In my classroom, I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way that I woud not share” (19).

As a professor, I need to think more critically about how I can break down dominant power structures in the classroom. I have started by rethinking the way I grade students, the way I engage with students, what I share with students. And I look forward to the rest of this book for more strategies.