Teaching
Enable Universal and Equitable Participation in Commerce and Governance
The guiding philosophy in my classroom will be to instill in students, our successors, the desire to provide a secure environment for all and knowledge of the means to provide that environment. The means include the transformation of global culture to enable equitable participation in all levels of commerce and government. This teaching philosophy follows from the philosophy that guides my life, namely the creation of a global culture that universally values, rather than desecrates, every human being and every treasure of creation.
Schools provide many opportunities to promote this philosophy of universal and equitable participation in commerce and governance. Employers, media and a multitude of corporate bodies and families all rely on schools to impart the attitudes and skills to students that are their life blood. All such social units require skilled students to survive and prosper in the world as it is, or to transform the world into what they envision it could be.
Inspire Students to Control Their Environment and Change the World
My classroom environment will be built on “critical hope, which rejects the despair of hopelessness and the false hopes of ‘cheap American’ optimism,’ (West, 2008 pg. 41).” For all students, especially troubled students, critical hope “demands a committed and active struggle ‘against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair’ (West, 2008, pp. 296-97).”
To inspire my students to seize control of their environment and to change the world, I will nurture the three elements of critical hope within them. These elements are material, Socratic and audacious hope. Together we will nurture material hope, the “ability to control, in a material way, the litany of social stressors” (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, pg. 5) that both students and teachers live with. When these stressors lead to student outbursts that many classify as disruptive behavior, students and I will respond by working together to develop options for reducing the stress, thus inspiring material hope.
For example, one student’s comment implied that I, a white male, must abhor Malcolm X. The student regarded me as just another ignorant white person who couldn’t possibly understand or help them. I immediately responded that I admired Malcolm X., especially his views on “Socratic sensibility”, or Socratic hope.
The essence of Socratic hope is Socrates’ statement “that the unexamined life is not worth living” and Malcolm X’s own statement that the only alternative, an “examined life,” is painful (West, 2001). I will also point out that when whites who looked like me imprisoned Malcolm X, he channeled his rage by using the prison library to painstakingly educate himself (Perry, 2004, pp. 19-25). Then, after he was released, he honed the legal and oratorical skills he acquired in prison to demonstrate how Socratic hope, in the words of Jeffery Duncan-Andrade (2009, pg. 7), enables one to vent “rage constructively and make sure that it will have an impact.”
Audacious hope sustains both my students and me as we painstakingly coordinate with caregivers, school staff, and other teachers to develop the potential of every individual in, or associated with, our classroom. Such audacious hope has already inspired me, as a community activist, to proceed again and again down the painful path to relieving many forms of oppression (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, pg. 10). My experiences model audacious hope for my students, especially those living in lower income communities.
My teaching connects both elements of critical hope and the academic rigor of content areas with students’ lives (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, pg. 6). For more than two decades, an audacious hope that my community could build housing for all has inspired me to seek changes to the City of Alameda’s housing policies. Since 1973 existing policies have discriminated against low income citizens, especially those who are black, like many of my students. For more than four decades, these policies banned the construction of the most economical housing, condominiums and apartments, collectively referred to as multi-family housing.
Finally, in 2012, after decades of working in solidarity with housing and community groups throughout the East Bay, we used State housing law to compel the City to allow the construction of hundreds of new, and more affordable, multi-family homes. Hundreds of these homes have been built since 2012 with permits for hundreds more issued every year. At least 15 percent of new housing must be affordable to low-income families, including those of my students.
Connect Academic Rigor and Conflict Resolution to Student’s Lives
A discussion I led in an 8th grade science class illustrates my approach to connecting academic rigor to students’ lives. The students were studying chemical reactions, and the teacher invited me to describe my work. I pointed out that rigorous quality control was the primary difference between the chemistry of metal plating operations and the chemistry of many household chores. Stimulated by my comparison of the operations I support in the metal plating shop to common household tasks, students enthusiastically discussed the underlying chemistry of both.
The experiences of students in neighboring classrooms will influence their behavior in my classroom. Rather than reflexively hide inconsistencies in teaching methods and attitudes between different classrooms, I view the inevitable inconsistencies as an opportunity to teach students methods for resolving problems and conflicts.
Areas critical for student development in which I expect conflicts between school staff to arise include identity and gender. For instance, regarding identity, I, and a black,Hispanic colleague in my teacher’s credential cohort, stated that it was important to interview the black men who hauled an Asian man out of the cab of a truck and beat him senseless. Our opinion was opposed by white members from homogeneous areas represented within the cohort. After hearing the vehemence with which they repeatedly presented their views, my colleague and I silently agreed to wait for other opportunities to promote our view. In our view, interviews of these men could provide useful insights into the societal stressors and culture that led to their barbaric beating of an Asian man and possibly contribute to social reforms that would prevent other beatings.
I expect gender and sexuality to be rich sources of opportunities for my students to use for developing the skills needed to manage conflicts. Many in my teacher’s credential cohort, especially we males, were either uncomfortable with C.J. Pascoe’s “Becoming Mr. Cougar: Institutionalizing Heterosexuality and Masculinity at River High” (Pascoe 2006) or viewed it as an unrealistic personal vendetta tearing down vital American traditions that have contributed to the shaping of healthy school communities for over a century. Others in our cohort, though, found that Ms. Pascoe’s descriptions of institutionalized gender identity formation within a high school was consistent with their own experience. These differing opinions on the accuracy of Ms. Pascoe’s account and the difficulties I had in 2013 persuading a coordinator of Catholic Faith Formation to include any discussion of sexuality in the 7th and 8th grade Sunday school class I taught, both indicate that in our society civil discussions of many issues involving gender and sexuality are difficult to engender.
Inspire Audacious Hope to Change the World
After they leave my classroom, students will have the hope and knowledge needed to transform our global culture. Students will have learned how to imbue themselves with audacious hope and engage in both the rigorous academic training and the conflict resolution required to transform the world into one that insures everyone breathes healthy air, drinks safe water, eats nutritious food, and is fully empowered to participate in the governance of all organizations that impact our global community.
Works Cited
Enable Universal and Equitable Participation in Commerce and Governance
The guiding philosophy in my classroom will be to instill in students, our successors, the desire to provide a secure environment for all and knowledge of the means to provide that environment. The means include the transformation of global culture to enable equitable participation in all levels of commerce and government. This teaching philosophy follows from the philosophy that guides my life, namely the creation of a global culture that universally values, rather than desecrates, every human being and every treasure of creation.
Schools provide many opportunities to promote this philosophy of universal and equitable participation in commerce and governance. Employers, media and a multitude of corporate bodies and families all rely on schools to impart the attitudes and skills to students that are their life blood. All such social units require skilled students to survive and prosper in the world as it is, or to transform the world into what they envision it could be.
Inspire Students to Control Their Environment and Change the World
My classroom environment will be built on “critical hope, which rejects the despair of hopelessness and the false hopes of ‘cheap American’ optimism,’ (West, 2008 pg. 41).” For all students, especially troubled students, critical hope “demands a committed and active struggle ‘against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair’ (West, 2008, pp. 296-97).”
To inspire my students to seize control of their environment and to change the world, I will nurture the three elements of critical hope within them. These elements are material, Socratic and audacious hope. Together we will nurture material hope, the “ability to control, in a material way, the litany of social stressors” (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, pg. 5) that both students and teachers live with. When these stressors lead to student outbursts that many classify as disruptive behavior, students and I will respond by working together to develop options for reducing the stress, thus inspiring material hope.
For example, one student’s comment implied that I, a white male, must abhor Malcolm X. The student regarded me as just another ignorant white person who couldn’t possibly understand or help them. I immediately responded that I admired Malcolm X., especially his views on “Socratic sensibility”, or Socratic hope.
The essence of Socratic hope is Socrates’ statement “that the unexamined life is not worth living” and Malcolm X’s own statement that the only alternative, an “examined life,” is painful (West, 2001). I will also point out that when whites who looked like me imprisoned Malcolm X, he channeled his rage by using the prison library to painstakingly educate himself (Perry, 2004, pp. 19-25). Then, after he was released, he honed the legal and oratorical skills he acquired in prison to demonstrate how Socratic hope, in the words of Jeffery Duncan-Andrade (2009, pg. 7), enables one to vent “rage constructively and make sure that it will have an impact.”
Audacious hope sustains both my students and me as we painstakingly coordinate with caregivers, school staff, and other teachers to develop the potential of every individual in, or associated with, our classroom. Such audacious hope has already inspired me, as a community activist, to proceed again and again down the painful path to relieving many forms of oppression (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, pg. 10). My experiences model audacious hope for my students, especially those living in lower income communities.
My teaching connects both elements of critical hope and the academic rigor of content areas with students’ lives (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, pg. 6). For more than two decades, an audacious hope that my community could build housing for all has inspired me to seek changes to the City of Alameda’s housing policies. Since 1973 existing policies have discriminated against low income citizens, especially those who are black, like many of my students. For more than four decades, these policies banned the construction of the most economical housing, condominiums and apartments, collectively referred to as multi-family housing.
Finally, in 2012, after decades of working in solidarity with housing and community groups throughout the East Bay, we used State housing law to compel the City to allow the construction of hundreds of new, and more affordable, multi-family homes. Hundreds of these homes have been built since 2012 with permits for hundreds more issued every year. At least 15 percent of new housing must be affordable to low-income families, including those of my students.
Connect Academic Rigor and Conflict Resolution to Student’s Lives
A discussion I led in an 8th grade science class illustrates my approach to connecting academic rigor to students’ lives. The students were studying chemical reactions, and the teacher invited me to describe my work. I pointed out that rigorous quality control was the primary difference between the chemistry of metal plating operations and the chemistry of many household chores. Stimulated by my comparison of the operations I support in the metal plating shop to common household tasks, students enthusiastically discussed the underlying chemistry of both.
The experiences of students in neighboring classrooms will influence their behavior in my classroom. Rather than reflexively hide inconsistencies in teaching methods and attitudes between different classrooms, I view the inevitable inconsistencies as an opportunity to teach students methods for resolving problems and conflicts.
Areas critical for student development in which I expect conflicts between school staff to arise include identity and gender. For instance, regarding identity, I, and a black,Hispanic colleague in my teacher’s credential cohort, stated that it was important to interview the black men who hauled an Asian man out of the cab of a truck and beat him senseless. Our opinion was opposed by white members from homogeneous areas represented within the cohort. After hearing the vehemence with which they repeatedly presented their views, my colleague and I silently agreed to wait for other opportunities to promote our view. In our view, interviews of these men could provide useful insights into the societal stressors and culture that led to their barbaric beating of an Asian man and possibly contribute to social reforms that would prevent other beatings.
I expect gender and sexuality to be rich sources of opportunities for my students to use for developing the skills needed to manage conflicts. Many in my teacher’s credential cohort, especially we males, were either uncomfortable with C.J. Pascoe’s “Becoming Mr. Cougar: Institutionalizing Heterosexuality and Masculinity at River High” (Pascoe 2006) or viewed it as an unrealistic personal vendetta tearing down vital American traditions that have contributed to the shaping of healthy school communities for over a century. Others in our cohort, though, found that Ms. Pascoe’s descriptions of institutionalized gender identity formation within a high school was consistent with their own experience. These differing opinions on the accuracy of Ms. Pascoe’s account and the difficulties I had in 2013 persuading a coordinator of Catholic Faith Formation to include any discussion of sexuality in the 7th and 8th grade Sunday school class I taught, both indicate that in our society civil discussions of many issues involving gender and sexuality are difficult to engender.
Inspire Audacious Hope to Change the World
After they leave my classroom, students will have the hope and knowledge needed to transform our global culture. Students will have learned how to imbue themselves with audacious hope and engage in both the rigorous academic training and the conflict resolution required to transform the world into one that insures everyone breathes healthy air, drinks safe water, eats nutritious food, and is fully empowered to participate in the governance of all organizations that impact our global community.
Works Cited
- Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M. R. (2009). “Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete.” Harvard Educational Review, 79(2).
- (2008). As cited in Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M. R. (2009), pg. 5.
- (2001) as cited in Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M. R. (2009), pg. 7.
- Perry, Theresa, (2004). “Freedom for Literacy and Literacy for Freedom: The African-American Philosophy of Education,” pp. 11-51. In Perry, Theresa, Claude Steele and Asa G. Hilliard III, (2004). Young Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African American Students.
- Pascoe, C. J. (2006). “Becoming Mr. Cougar: Institutionalizing Heterosexuality and Masculinity at River High” (pp. 25-51). In Dude, You’re a Fag, Berkeley, University of California Press.