Sarah Lloyd
Educational Philosophy April 13, 2018 Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable: Asking and Answering Difficult Questions in an History Class On a recent student perspective survey given to my class of 9th graders at Gilman, one student said “this is a history class unlike any I’ve ever taken before.” He continued to explain that my class challenges him to think outside of the “facts” of history and look at the different perspectives that exist in any given historical event—how history can be changed based on who is telling the story and when it is being told. Another student explained that he feels “very comfortable” asking hard, perhaps controversial questions in my class because he knows it is a “safe space” to do so. Yet another student’s response explained how “history is not dead anymore” in my class because our class discusses how historical events are intertwined with current events. My classroom is designed to do each of these things—I am constantly striving to bring history back to life for students by making them uncomfortable with the process of asking and answering difficult questions while adhering to Gilman Headmaster Henry Smyth’s charge to “know and love each boy” in my classroom. Being able to ask and attempt to answer difficult questions in an history class begins with fostering an inclusive, safe, and inviting environment where all points of view and knowledge levels are welcome and accepted as valid. Each of my students must know that they are in a space where their views, questions, and concerns are valued and welcomed before we can even begin to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Teachers play an integral role in creating an inviting and safe classroom and according to Nakkula and Toshalis’ Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators, students are more likely to take risks when they believe that they are not going to experience negative consequences afterwards.[1] The risks I encourage my students to take are ideological and intellectual instead of physical or social and I ease them into these risks, scaffolding the class so that they slowly begin to recognize what kinds of risks they should be taking in order to get the most out of our class.[2] The content which I teach necessitates that students take risks. I have made a conscious decision to teach the contentious side of history to my 9th graders, from the realities of European colonialism and invasion to the influence of religion in politics on a global scale. These are not easy topics to cover—I am asking a lot of my students, but I firmly believe that tackling the uncomfortable subjects is necessary to the development of good global citizens. And, much like bell hooks, I believe that I must be the one to model that risk-taking in order for my students to do the same. “When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess,” she explains in Teaching to Transgress.[3] There must be a certain amount of trust between myself and my students. I cannot ask any student to do what I myself will not do and I must make it clear to my students that this is the case, so I scaffold the risk-taking by taking risks myself. I trust my students to take these same risks because I have modeled it for them. I allow myself to be vulnerable in the hopes that they might be vulnerable with me. As well as modeling responsible risk-taking in my classroom, I also strive to model excitement. I make efforts to allow my excitement for subjects that I believe are worthwhile to show through in my teaching. I have taken Kelley Dawson Salas’ theory—that excitement adds discipline to the classroom because it further engages students in the material—to heart.[4] Students, I believe, are able to tell when their teacher is truly passionate about the material, which allows them to take the risk of caring about the material as well. A teacher’s passion can profoundly influence the passion of the students and I strive to let my students see my passion for history so that they will also feel comfortable investing themselves in a subject that has great implications for their everyday lives. hooks’ theory of engaged pedagogy—the fact that education cannot and is not politically neutral—has profoundly influenced the way that I teach my class.[5] hooks emphasizes the need for well-being woven in with education. While hooks’ theory is derived from her educational experience as an African-American student and then teacher, I believe that engaged pedagogy can be applied more broadly to an history classroom in order to expand excitement and engagement in the study of history, while also ensuring that all of my students are represented fairly and sensitively. This is not to say that I believe it works equally well for all types of inequality—racial disparity in history classes is by far the most prominent forms of silencing that occurs—but I am choosing to expand the difficult questions in my classroom beyond race and ethnicity to other preconceived notions of superiority and inferiority that seep into cultures and education, including class, gender, and religion. hooks’ engaged pedagogy approach is supported by claims by Parker Palmer, who writes that the “[t]he more familiar we are with our inner terrain, the more surefooted our teaching—and living—becomes.”[6] What hooks describes as self-actualization[7] Palmer reiterates as familiarity with the self in order to authentically teach students. I am not always comfortable in my class and neither are my students. Difficult topics arise and students sometimes ask off-color, insensitive, and sometimes offensive questions, but the class culture is to lean into that discomfort. I firmly believe that we have learned to get comfortable being uncomfortable because we have established rules for engagement that allow us to dig into difficult topics while maintaining a safe, inclusive space. We tackle inclusion, equity, and injustice in order to become more responsible citizens of the world and we cannot do that without feeling uncomfortable. References hooks, bell. Teachign to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Nakkula, Michael J. and Eric Toshalis. Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2015. Palmer, Parker. The Courage To Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher Life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Watson, Marilyn and Laura Ecken, ed. Learning to Trust: Transforming Difficult Elementary Classrooms Through Developmental Discipline. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003. [1] Michael J. Nakkula and Eric Toshalis, Understanding Youth: Adolescent Development for Educators (Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 2015): 54-55. [2] Nakkula and Toshalis, 54. [3] bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994): 21. [4] Marilyn Watson and Laura Ecken, ed. Learning to Trust: Transforming Difficult Elementary Classrooms Through Developmental Discipline (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003): 185-188. [5] hooks, 13-22. [6] Parker Palmer, The Courage To Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007): 6. [7] hooks, 15.
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