Angel seemed angry. She looked at me without looking at me - more through than at - patient but wishing she didn’t have to be. Maybe something happened that morning, a slight by a friend on Instagram, or maybe she was just coping with me, another teacher from whom she had no reason to expect Love and acceptance.
Angel seemed angry so I said, "Good morning", introduced myself and welcomed her into our classroom. We’re still getting to know each other. I’ve seen her smile a few times. I’ve texted with her dad a few times.
There are Steves and Andrews in our classroom that I know before I meet them. Because our lived experience is so similar, we can begin a conversation in the middle. Angel and I are still agreeing on the language to use to build our relationship.
Paolo Freire describes my relationship with Angel like this:
The oppressor is solidary with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor—when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love.
And this is where I will lose some of you. I am the oppressor. Though I work hard not to be, that intention does not revoke my ancestry nor does it reallocate the unearned benefit I receive from the history of acts of oppression by white, cis gender men like me. There are a million caveats competing in my head as I say this. I hear my people taking offense at things I didn’t say and things I did say and what do I mean by “my people” anyway?
Through this noise cuts the uncomplicated truth that I am a teacher. To be a good teacher I need to inhabit my identity. It is a conceit of privilege to think I could do otherwise, that I could somehow be intellectually neutral or culturally agnostic. No, I have to create a place that is both effective and affective, a place tangible and intangible, where I can be, as Freire said, "solidary with the oppressed" and, whenever possible, "risk an act of [L]ove.”
Love opposes oppression but Love is not transitive. I can't wield Love. An act of Love is one where Love is accessed, not given or received. Love is not a pedagogical choice. Love is not tough. Love is neither carrot nor stick. As Freire describes, Love requires risk which might be rewarded with connection. Like anything valuable, Love has a cost and a return. Unlike anything owned, Love only exists between us, coloring place and the people within, nurturing fertility. This is the seed from which my understandings have germinated.
Like Love, learning can’t be given. There is nothing I can give to a student that will do learning but I can cultivate a place, a garden, where learning is likely.
Angel sits at the end of a table across the room and turns her chair so that her back is facing me. It’s a common contortion that makes it easier for her to hide her phone in her lap but harder for her to do the work that is sitting on the table.
School is a collective hallucination, a projection that obscures reality. School is a pastel mirage, manifested daily for nearly 200 years, where students are compliant, grades are sacred and teachers are benevolent and wise. School is a suspect institution where we are usually not nurtured and are frequently conformed into derelict shapes.
Angel turned in very little work and at both of the first two Marking Periods I gave her a “C” because honey tastes better than vinegar. Four months into the school year, Angel asked me for help. I sat with her for 20 minutes as the familiar chaos that is our class surrounded us. I sat with her for 20 minutes and did most of the assignment while she told me how to do it. I got up to let her finish it alone and watched from across the room as she smiled and showed her work to a friend. This was my favorite moment of the year, her engagement an unambiguous success. Her final exam will be to do the exact same assignment in a new context. She told me that she is confident she can do it well. Then she went back to scrolling Instagram on her phone.
Teaching is patient, selfless, introspective and turbulent work. Telling a student that they do or don't belong is futile and antithetical. Instead we listen, notice and harrow a place where belonging is likely.
Steve fights windmills. Steve is a writer. Steve is just a teacher. Steve lives in Oakland, CA. He’s 58 years old. He thinks he got the math right. Steve has been a high school teacher on and off for 17 yrs and worked odd jobs behind computers for another 15. Steve is writing a book about teaching and learning; part catharsis, part pedagogical sacrilege, some other parts too.
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