The Classroom: An Invisible Line Meant to Be Crossed

This week’s readings hit me the way rain hits the north coast’s concrete floors. It’s starts subtly, quickly picks up, then slows to a drizzle - only to bring more rain. My eyes literally watered up during what author bell hooks described as the conflux of educators and students during difficult, err - defining-moments of life in and out of the “traditional” classroom setting. The class discussion that followed our readings only reinforced what I felt. Classmates talked about positive past experiences and how teachers helped foster passions in what they do now; and why they continue to do it today. 

The central theme in our dialogue oscillated from one side of the room to the other with encouraging stories of “creating awareness,” “changing the story,” and “higher education.”

A Pedagogy of Hope recalled me of working with incarcerated youth during my service as an English tutor with the AmeriCorps National Service Program. I walked into that time of my life unaware of how to work with “at-risk” youth - let alone know to change how I approached the situation. But somehow it worked. I was “myself,” I listened, and I was what someone might call “nice.” And the tough young adults I worked with somehow connected with that. Were they expecting every adult to enter their life with attitude and judgment? Maybe. In fact, I’m almost sure they did, but I didn’t want to be another authority figure in their life. It didn’t happen over night (trust me, it took months) but somehow, something between us clicked. I have literally taken that experience and apply it to almost every aspect of my life. Be yourself, listen sincerely to what other people have to say, and be nice. To me, hooks described that when she wrote of “…becoming more emotionally aware of psychological conflicts within a student blocking the student’s capacity to learn.” Checking-in with someone before you start working with them can make a huge difference. It can help both people get through tasks while both being mentally there to tackle the problems. I would often ask how my former students were doing before trying to jump into writing exercises with them. I often found that those were the moments when they actually wanted to work. Slowing down and being considerate goes a long way when working with youth and hooks describes that as “conscious teaching.” 

To this day, I couldn’t imagine not considering my students or classmates lives outside of the “classroom” before working on what goes on inside of it. The classroom is all around us - on campus, at home, on the streets, and anywhere else we interact with one another. hooks helps interrupt that invisible line that is all too often drawn between the classroom and the world outside. My pedagogy of hope will continue to envelop the two before being sent out to the people I get to work with. 

Consider that concept of a ”classroom” when you enter your next class. Does it end when you step outside of the room's four wall? Is it all around you? 

Message received? Loud and clear. 

Teaching to Save the World

Coming of age in a society like the one in which we currently live can be dejectedly traumatic and disempowering; especially once one arrives at the nitty gritty of what capitalism really entails, or when it dawns on one the stipulations behind climate change and how humans may have been able to prevent it had they been slightly less careless. 

Today, young people grow in a world wherein it's almost faddish to be a cynic, wherein mockery involving the unlikelihood of one's success compared to another's unlikelihood of success is considered humorous, wherein hopelessness is nearly the only option. 

We place insurmountable standards of success on our kids and when they don't rise to the occasion, we chastise them and assume "kids these days" don't care. With those sorts of assumptions, it's no wonder young people have become complacent with cynicism, with self-deprecation, with hopelessness.

To save the world, we must break out of this cycle and begin to empower young people by standing in solidarity with their ideas. We must create environments in which kids are encouraged to prosper and think "outside of the box." We must celebrate every small victory as if it's the last. 

Future educators can help to ease the load of this process. Educators must deliberately nurture students, colleagues, and themselves through adversity in the form of cracks, knowing they must sustain the trauma of damaged petals along the way. Anger, stubbornness, or recklessness due to outside influences are merely reactions to adversity and must not condemn educators themselves hopeless in the pursuit of saving the world because hope in our kids and ourselves is required when growing roses in concrete. 

If we lose hope in ourselves, how on earth are kids going to muster empowerment and hope within themselves when the very people who are meant to teach them are only capable of teaching hopelessness in the first place?

The Essence of Love in Teaching

As we go about our lives, the one thing that makes us feel whole, makes us feel as if we have a purpose in life is love. It gives us the strength and motivation to finish what we started and continue fighting whatever may stand in our way. Love, being an intense feeling of deep affection can take our minds and souls and open them up to changes we would have never imagined.

When we say, “love is in the air,” there is a connection that is established between individuals and this sense of community begins to develop. Rather than creating conflict, we start to feel more comfortable around one another, which lead to more open-minded and passionate interactions and communication.  

           

In Bell Hooks, “A Pedagogy of Hope,” she quotes Parker Palmer as saying, “The origin of knowledge is love…the goal of a knowledge arising from life is the reunification and reconstruction of broken selves and worlds.” This pertains particularly in the classroom when it comes to learning and understanding new or different concepts. She further states that, “the act of knowing is an act of love, the act of entering and embracing the reality of the other, of allowing the other to enter and embrace our own. In such knowing we know and are known as members of one community.” When love is involved with teaching it makes teachers less objective and gets rid of this “dominator culture” that is promoting dehumanization and forms a connection between teacher and student.  

Essentially, love is the binding agent that keeps communities together where open minds and hearts are welcomed. It causes us to be challenged, to rethink the status quo and can even change us as individuals for the better. Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust that work interdependently of each other. By including love, we are able to have a deeper more meaningful understanding of various concepts while allowing us to get to the heart of the matter constructively leading to a more hopeful future.   

The Power of Hope

Hope is the essence of believing things will get better. This idea that no matter what the odds, there is still something worth fighting for. Even through the most despairing of situations, hope can be your guide. Like the north star is to someone lost at sea. It's when you discover hope, your real journey begins.

Hope is one of the underlining factors that produces social change. The ability to look at a specific situation and tell yourself “I'm not going to give up”. Granted, this is something that is not easy. It takes real strength to stare a horrible, gigantic problem straight in the eyes and say, “I'm going to defeat you, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday because of people like me  your existence will end”. This is the sort of thinking that separates the forlorn from the sanguine.

Heroic figures of social change like Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King all had something in common and that was their hope. They had hope in people, hope in their movements, and most importantly hope in themselves. These legends used their ambitions to transform unjust systems and will forever be remembered for it. Hope isn't only a characteristic but also a tool. Those who use hope, use it to defy the odds.  

Without hope there would never be progression. People would conform to whatever depressing norm suppresses them and never break free. Having hope is the first step to standing against everything that is wrong and taking a step towards what is right. My bottom line is to be hopeful. I implore you try it, use it , and see the sort of changes you make in your own life. Like Aristotle once said, "Hope is a waking dream".