"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude
to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw
material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul
of the child."--Carl Jung

I am teaching again this semester- even though daunted by the fact that I will again have to teach to absurdly large classes, I am at once filled with fascinations and drive to push the limits of my teaching skills and to learn from others as well. I think that is how I have come to fall into the folds of my latest read: Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks. The challenge of making the classroom a place of social practicing seems to escape the curriculum - how can we nurture our students without coddling them? teach them the necessary skill that the world requires of them and, simultaneously, give them courage to break those constraints and limitations. Is being 'real' with my students, distracting them from the seriousness of their goals? I am teaching english composition one and two again, in a place where the majority speak spanish for business and life. The most difficult stride has been getting students passed the idea that being able to write well and being able to articulate one's ideas and understanding is optional in a world that seems so hungry from change and bravery. This book is a step in that direaction.no doubt and I am trying out many of the concepts that hooks has that long on.

This is an excerpt I found online from her book in relation to her teaching philosophy:

"...No education is politically neutral...

We must combine theory and affirm and demonstrate pedagogical practices engaged in creating a new language, rupturing disciplinary boundaries, decentering authority, and rewriting the institutional and discursive borderlands in which politics becomes a condition for reasserting the relationship between agency, power, and struggle...

By recognizing subjectivity and the limits of identity, we disrupt that objectification that is so necessary in a culture of domination...

We must insist that students participate in education and not be passive consumers...

I tell students not to confuse informality with a lack of seriousness,

to respect the process...

In principle, the classroom ought to be a place where things are said seriously -

not without pleasure, not without joy -

but seriously, and for serious consideration..."

-bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress -Education as the Practice of Freedom

7 am classes are great! Building F, Miami Dade College- Homestead 2006 Spring