My teaching philosophy

What is learning?

Learning takes place in the body, both among individuals and communities. Contrary to Western epistemological commitments to deny the body and favor the mind in the learning process, I uphold what Freire suggests about learning in saying, “It is my entire body that socially knows. I cannot, in the name of exactness and rigor, negate my body, my emotions, and my feelings.”[1] I believe in creating learning spaces that affirm embodied and experiential knowledge in ways that connect us to those around us while forming critical consciousness.

What is the goal of learning?

As I have come to understand critical consciousness and liberation as primary goals of education, I want to be the kind of educator who is open to seeking the longing and being more. I hope I can create spaces where others are invited into that as well. Therefore, I am deeply committed to learning as a journey of ongoing personal and communal transformation. One of the examples that sticks with me continually is the friendship between Paulo Freire and bell hooks. Through hooks’ experience, we can see Freire’s commitment to change in his own life as well as to changes in his idea of critical pedagogy. Freire, an experienced educator was willing to be open to a new thinker’s challenge to his ways of knowing. Similarly, as an educator, my task is to responsibly blur the lines between who is informed and who informs.

What kind of atmosphere of learning do I want to inspire? 

I was first introduced to Freire as a student, in my senior year of college. Up until that point, I understood myself as a problem student because I did not have many teachers and professors who encouraged and created space for my questioning. From that point on, Freire’s problem-posing education drastically shaped my understanding of myself as a learner. It was also in that class that I had one of my first classes that asked us to submit questions for in-class discussions as part of our homework. I did not know it at the time, but our class was modeled on critical pedagogy. Since then, when I consider the kinds of learning environments I want to create, it is one that does not suppress or perceive threats from imaginative and curious learners. Instead, through dialogue, I hope to facilitate spaces that encourage socially-engaged curiosity that continues beyond the classroom.

What about Content Mastery?

I cannot dislodge my understanding of the word “mastery” from the legacy of colonial violence, slavery and the ongoing oppressions that continue as a result. For me, the inheritance of mastery as a goal for education is seen throughout the Western world in the hidden curriculum that seeks to form us all into what Willie J. Jennings calls the “self-sufficient white man.” Right now, in my current work,  I consider how knowledge is produced from the experience of fugitivity.[2] Fugitivity shaped by an understanding of freedom as an inherent value and considers questions of survival in the present and true liberation in a possible future. As I seek out an understanding of fugitivity, particularly among the oppressed (specifically those with immigrant and migrant stories like myself), I wonder: How does the existence of fugitivity point to the failure of systems of power? What do the bodies of those who seek refuge from places of harm know? What kind of knowledge is produced from the resistance of mastery and surveillance?

What other learning commitments do you have?

 In my own teaching experiences, I have incorporated lament into my praxis. I found it helpful for multiple reasons. First, I engaged the understanding of lament cutting against the triumphalism embraced in American culture. Lament also makes space for the grief our bodies know. Lament holds space for the unfinished and the verbally unintelligible. Lament also decenters dominant narratives. Lament also allows space to engage in a prophetic call out against oppression and injustice. One of the commitments across all the work I do is to help people learn to lament or release their shame and confusion around engaging in lament. As I would finish dialogues where it was clear the conversation did not reach a resolve, a praxis of lament allowed me to encourage students not to seek a simple closure. I challenged students to allow their righteous anger, pain, and sadness to motivate further conversations and actions. As I consider Freire’s critical pedagogy, a praxis of lament is important to carry into the hope of utopia, as we imagine a better world we are endlessly approaching.

[1] Pedagogy of Hope, 193, p. 105. Mentioned in Antonia Darder’s Reinventing Paulo Freire.

[2] See Jarvis R. Givens’ Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching.