In paper I aim to offer a critical reflection on my teaching praxis and how transformative my experience in education has been. From the time I was a student of Philosophy and Fine Art, to the time I began my journey in education as an SEN learning assistant and care support worker, up until this point in time where I am studying on this PgCert and coming to an understanding on how I approach teaching from a critically engaged perspective.
As a muslim woman, the first to complete a university degree in my immediate family, as a critical thinker, as a working class woman, as a woman who is ‘raced’ by society. As a woman who moves through the world, who has been conditioned to take up less space and placate whiteness as the universal standard. In all of the curriculum that I was taught, any sense of who I am was not reflected. I resorted to a form of Self-configuration as a child of immigrants who’s people were formally colonised by Britain. I am in constant reflection of the ‘unfinished conversation’ that is identity. As a researcher, I am also aware of my positionality. How I operate in this world is a political matter. In my life experience, I have seen how ignorance is perpetuated through the guise of (un)conscious bias. How it has been used by white gatekeepers to explain away racism and refrain from engaging in uncomfortable conversations around race maintaining the pale, male and stale status quo in the university environment.
The personal is political and it is important to account for the ways in which I have encountered racism to demonstrate a real life example of how it manifests and how it should be challenged. A critical incident took place during group tutorial in a virtual room of white students. Before starting the class, I informally mentioned to the group that it is a ‘safe space’, where everyone’s opinions and thoughts should be respected and taken into consideration, where the learning happens in dialogue and through the exchange of ideas and discussion. The tutorial got off to a good start, each student was given an equal amount of time to share their work and time for their peers as well as myself to offer critical feedback. There was a point in the session where the conversation steered off topic and I attempted to bring it back to the student’s work but I kept getting cut off and spoken over by the white students.
To be in a position of tutorship, as a working class brown woman, in a room of middle-class white students and to have my voice negated and overlooked, felt disempowering. I realised that I could have advocated for myself by stating that it was uncalled for to speak over me instead of being passive. I realised in that moment, how a racist society has programmed me to shrink myself and placate whiteness. That I must take on a more active role to speak up and advocate against white supremacy wherever I see it manifest. Upon reflection, I believe that drawing out a clear netiquette and code of conduct at the beginning of each session would set up parameters for students on how to conduct themselves in the space. This could have potentially been avoided if I had mentioned that there would be consequences if this was breached. How else can I resist against systems of domination in my approach to teaching?
The inclusive teaching and learning unit and its focus on Critical Race Theory has been empowering for me, it has shown me how necessary it is for there to be a realignment of power in institutions founded on exclusivity and privilege. To be in a position where I claim my space in the classroom and take ownership of who I am and what I have to offer and share with my students is something that I am getting better at doing, and will only improve with more experience and practice as the years go by.
I make it a priority to embody and harness practices of care in the classroom. Practicing a language of care, open ended questions and empathetic listening strategy. A learning space can also be a space of respite, healing and emancipation from the ever pervasive system of “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” In a climate where there is a grave uncertainty about the future of the earth and where we are going as a humanity, it is all the more important to embody a ‘love ethic’ In teaching.
I am interested in introspection and shared reflection as a healing/learning technique. From this sentiment I designed a session named “The Orb” where students and I began with a word association game. We went around the rotation four times. Everyone was instructed to form a sentence out of the words that they mentioned. Somehow, poetry emerged. Everyone was asked to actively participate by reading their poems out loud. Then each person was asked to read another person’s words two times over. By reading each other’s words and amplifying one another’s voices, the words of a peer became more familiar, felt and embodied through the repeated recitation. This exchange goes back to Frerian sentiment;
“It is not our role to speak to the people about our own view of the world, nor to attempt to impose that view on them, we must realise that their view of the world, manifested variously in their action, reflects their situation in the world.”
Here, Freire accounts for intersectionality and takes into consideration that people’s lived experience of reality aids in their understanding inside and outside the classroom. That students come to the learning environment not as empty vessels to be filled with information, but with a myriad of ideas to exchange. ‘The Orb’ highlights how students built on their own understanding and lived experience by providing words and sentences of their own accord. The session involved Co-construction amongst myself and my students. I received positive, affirming feedback from one of the students;
“I enjoyed this session. That is important. I’m a fan of free association…I find it frees up rigidity, but also sparks new connections. I think, also like free association, despite the surface absurdity each of us uses it to express direct things, which happened when you prompted making sentences of our words. The initial mindfulness focus also felt good to me, partly to set a tone and atmosphere that is different, partly for calm. Generally it felt peaceful and a ‘safe’ environment. poetry emerged. gently. The second reading out of another’s words felt important, like it solidified the words and sentences, committed to them. As far as ‘learning’, i’m not sure yet, but i don’t expect learning to happen instantly anyway. Well done Alaa.”
Learning is a lifetime’s work. So the last point made about it not happening instantly, resonates. I think that the process of things coming together through chance and spontaneity makes the class more engaging and surprising. It enables students to collaborate together in real time and feel like they’re a part of something without being goal oriented. Toni Morrison advocates for a sustainable approach to learning; “Perhaps we should stand one remove from timeliness and and join the artist who encourages reflection, stokes the imagination, mindful of the long haul… to do the work of a world worthy of life” This contextualises teaching as transformative vocation which requires patience and looking at the bigger picture, that learning is not contingent on immediacy.
Moving forward, I am interested in looking at slow praxis as a sustainable approach to inclusive teaching and learning. I take heed from the omission of black scholarship, how it perpetuates and maintains a colonial culture where obedience, compliance and conformity are celebrated and rewarded. Omission involves erasure, an erasure of a multitude of knowledges, i.e embodied knowledge. The body knows, the body senses. I’m interested in exploring somatic teaching praxis further in the SIP
Bibliography
Akomfrah, J, 2012. The Unfinished Conversation, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/akomfrah-the-unfinished-conversation-t14105
Crenshaw, K, 1989. Demarginalising the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, University of Chicago Legal Forum: Issue 1, Article 8.
Hooks, B, 1994. Teaching to Transgress, Routledge.
Hooks, B, 1952. Ain’t I a Woman : Black Women and Feminism. New York :Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.
Morrison, T, 2019. The source of self-regard. Random House.
Tate, S.A, 2018 Whiteliness and institutional racism: Hiding behind unconscious bias.