Fearless Teaching

I just finished the first week of my six week summer course, dear readers, and let me tell you, I am living the dream of teaching without consequences.  That's right - no consequences.  So what if my course evaluations are terrible...my career doesn't currently depend on them.  So what if I say something that makes them uncomfortable.  So what if they complain to the department chair.  So what if they all suspect that I'm a lesbo commie.  I mean, really, what can my department do?  Fire me?  I've already given up my stipend.  My health insurance is set to expire in about three weeks.  I've even finalized a clean break on my lease.  In five weeks, I'm walking out of the last class session onto a plane to Baltimore.  I'm a free woman, Big Bad University!  You got nothing on me!

I'm pretty sure this is what tenure feels like.  Except probably with more meetings.

Fearless Teaching.  That's what I'm calling it - that is what teaching without consequences enables me to do.  If I were to write a handbook to a brave pedagogy such as this, I would outline the following necessary components:

1) No pressure.  This might be the last class I'll ever teach, and instead of feeling the overwhelming pressure of wanting to make it the best class ever, I only feel a huge release of pressure to give a crap about all the obstacles that get in the way of actual learning.  I am not governed by the looming bureaucratic expectations for what I ought to do, and instead just do what I want to do.  This means a release of control - I feel less of a need to 'control' my students, or 'control' how they perceive me and my course, or 'control' how rigid my policies are.  For example, I just took in a student one week late - sure, she missed one-sixth of the whole class (and probably the most important sixth, as we laid the groundwork for the next month).  But a little exposure to radical theories is better than no exposure radical theories.  Such an approach takes a lot of the internal pressure I put on myself for things to be perfect - liberation is messy, as they say, so when I allow for my teaching to focus on liberation, I allow for myself (and others, and life in general) to be imperfect, too.

2) Shift from testing to engagement and application.  For an educator, it's ironic that I greatly dislike most of what are considered to be necessary course components.  Like tests.  Or quizzes.  Or grades, for that matter.  So I cut them out.  Now, I still grade things, but I've set up the class so that everyone can get an A.  Unfortunately, I have to have some accountability measures or else they won't do the readings, but a large part of their grade is made up of activities where they apply what we're learning in their everyday lives.  Is this harder to grade?  Probably - there are fewer 'right' answers in applied learning, and mostly I just grade them based on the degree of effort and reflection they put into the activity.  But they are DOING things, and that is beautiful.  They have to think beyond multiple choice answers, and the class experience is carried over into their everyday lives.  My goal is not for them to understand everything or memorize it or be able to parrot it back to me, but to engage it, to apply it, to immerse themselves in a critical, liberatory framework.  You can't grade that, and, frankly, I'm not really trying to.

3) Tell it like it is.  This is probably the best part of Fearless Teaching.  In the past, even during my class last summer, I tried very hard to be a Good Instructor, to be Fair and Balanced, to be Open-Minded.  I would ask things like, "Why might this be considered oppressive?" or, "Do you think the birdcage theory reflects women's experiences?"  But trying to toe the line didn't spare me course evaluations that wrote me off as "biased" simply because I was a woman teaching the sociology of gender.  So now, I don't try to be Fair and Balanced.  I was called biased even when I was trying very hard not to be; now, I am completely unapologetic about my agenda.  Now I ask, "Why is this oppressive?" or "How does the birdcage define the lives of other groups at the bottom of hierarchies?"  I don't ask, "do you think the model minority stereotype is true?"  I say, "It's a myth, and it's a myth because of these three reasons."  I am more forceful, certain, unambiguous.  I don't offer room for interpretation.  I provide no space for capitalism, patriarchy, sexism, or heterosexism.  Instead I'm just embracing the flame-spitting prophetic Voice of Truth.

In that respect, this is one aspect that makes my Fearless Teaching not so grassrootsy radical.  It's lecture-heavy, and I don't allow much room for exploration.  I don't really lead them along into some of the main ideas, letting them work their way through the murky waters, slowly unpacking their privilege, slowly decolonizing their viewpoints.  There is some exploration, but mostly I just tell them.  There just isn't enough time.  They aren't here to come exploring with me - they didn't sign up for a six week workshop on self-decolonization.  They are here because it counts toward their major, or they need a general education credit, or they failed out of another major and need to finish a sociology major in six months.  They have no idea what ride they signed up for, and if there is a ride, most of them would rather not go on it, thank you very much.  So I am rolling with their interpretation that this class is like other classes, and not really an extended radical workshop thinly veiled by seemingly legitimate class things like a syllabus and a Blackboard account.

The way I see it, I got six weeks, and I will tell them as much as I can in that six weeks.  A few of them are hungry for these theories now - I can see them make connections and their minds expand as they realize how to reinterpret their own experiences of marginalization or privilege.  A few others think I'm a lesbo commie, and they are wishing they signed up for something less infuriating, like introduction to theory.  But for now, most of them are pleasantly noncommittal - they stare at me with an indifferent smile on their faces and take down notes as they see fit.  They still see it as a regular class.

Soon, they may come to realize its not.  Or it might take a year, or three years, or seven.  Or never.  But I will finish this class knowing that at least I didn't hold back.