hooks and Scapp

“Building a Teaching Community: A Dialogue”

My mind is (I originally mistyped “is” as “id”!) swirling with notions of bodies and classrooms, of erasure and assertion, of power implied and realized…and I’ve been wanting to start writing as I’ve read this dialogue but have found the…reminder… that hooks/Scapp continue to see “university settings as sites for the reproduction of a privileged class of values, of elitism” (140) as a provocative (or not really provocative enough) place to insert my voice.

It is their emphasis on “practicing teaching” that I find refreshing and challenging (but that also makes me skeptical) -- how we use our bodies, how we actually move around the room, ‘embody’ the knowledge and traditions we consider as our expertise, what we ask of students (and how we ask it of them). hooks mentions “tone of voice,” for example. Does my tone of voice really have that much impact on how I insist that the writers in my classes participate rather than observe and be passive (though observation can be a part of a process of activity, right?)?

I can’t help but hear echoes of my work with colleagues struggling to incorporate writing assignments – how students suddenly become visible and that the language of the class suddenly becomes much more negotiable in ways that it wasn’t previously when students were not asked to write out their thinking (instead, for example, only taking scantron exams). When we talk about language we can’t not talk about race and class and even gender. What language(s) do we end up privileging? I encounter this in my own poetry class – even this semester, seeing in myself a preference in my commentary and grading for certain kinds of language over others, even when students consciously locate themselves in a specific tradition of poetry writing (and it happens to be one that I don’t necessarily value as they do…).

[I know I’m kind of spinning out my thinking about my specific class, but, well, I’m asking that you accept my contribution here as including this kind of thinking – even if you don’t recognize it as relevant to your own specific case…]

Ok, let me jump a bit to this quote: “I think our fear of losing students’ respect has discouraged many professors from trying new teaching practices”(145). Something like this idea came up with some graduate students I’m working with recently (with Belle) – it was fear but in terms of trying something that might “fail”. Our suggestion was to be upfront with the students involved, to let them know you are trying something new and are not sure how it will work, but to explain why you are trying it….

So let me link that idea to something that happened in my class: throughout the semester I have told my students to push back on assignments that I give if they just don’t work, but that in doing so they must be willing to have thought carefully about why they are choosing an alternative to my assignment and be willing to defend it. I had (gasp!)(the nerve!) several students actually push back, but not on specific assignments. It was on midterm grades. I asked the class, after handing back their midterm portfolios, how they were doing, what they were feeling after getting their grades (they were very quiet for a while, so I rode out their silence). Finally one student burst: she was pissed, frustrated, wanted to know why she got the grade she did, whether anyone else received better grades and wanted to know why.

So there I was, all eyes on me, called upon to justify to the whole class both individual grades and the collective feeling of frustration about their grades. Lots of nodding heads to the question, “Anyone else feel this frustrated?” So I talked about how I graded and why I graded. I was felt a bit defensive (do I deserve this?! I’m a good teacher! I thought they liked me, got me.). At the same time I recognized and valued that they were willing to take the chance, express their anger and make it a part of our ongoing conversation.

Then I found myself conflicted, or not conflicted but pushed to reflect in a serious way about their response (which was quite angry) and to seriously reexamine my own grading process and how I was complicit in provoking such emotion. It made me uncomfortable. I told them so. But I also told them that they did exactly what they should have done- approach me, confront me in a respectful way, address the issue and find a solution. I don’t know that what ended up happening was my “affirm[ation of] the value of student voices” (149) – of taking students seriously in a way that is negotiated and that attends to the many complex and overlapping contexts we live in our classrooms. But I think it was. It felt like it to me at the time and upon further reflection.

Pete

Comments

[Peter]

Rethinking:

I'm just rereading parts of "Keepers of Hope" and find myself stumbling over the call to "disrupt and challenge simple acts of privilege." Scapp offers one strategy of "sharing stories as a gesture of intimacy" in order to "acknowledging moments in [his] teaching and administrative work where [he] had to engage in critical vigilance" (107). The goal in promoting real dialogue, I think that is what they call it, is to "establish a genuine sense of community based on trust" (109). I want to think about this more, esp. in the context of our own community: are we working toward a community of trust and if now, what is hindering it? Have we begun to name "what separates us and makes us different"(109)? Have we begun to really name the different ideological, personal, social, class-based, raced ways that create unproductive difference in our group? Do we have to? Is this an important part of our goal here?

Pete