What would bell hooks do?

In what feels like a Christmas miracle in August, I have been offered a college English class to teach this fall. Although only finding this out about 3 weeks ago and being faced with a course that in some ways is a little daunting, I’m feeling remarkably sane and calm about it all. Maybe I’m completely deluded, but I actually believe that I’m good at teaching.

And yet, there is always that little bit of lingering doubt. I’ve never taught at a community college before. I’ve been a university T.A., I’ve taught ESL classes at private schools in Montreal, and I’m currently a volunteer literacy tutor, but actually being responsible for a real college class that people need to pass in order to move forward with their career goals—I really need to not make a big mess of this.

I think the real worry is attached to my pedagogical approach. A few days ago, I was looking over bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, which I’d read a couple of years ago, and I realized that this is it. It’s time to put all that theory into practice. It’s time to walk the walk. And I am so scared. I have to admit that most of my own experiences as a student can best be described as traditional. Despite my damnedest efforts to resist the sometimes suffocating strictures of academia, in the end, I studied a heck of a lot of the English literary canon and sat through countless classes where the professor, voice of authority, talked while the rest of us listened and madly jotted down nuggets of wisdom. In my fourth year as an undergraduate, I had one professor who really shook things up by forcing us to actively participate in our education. And while it made some of us feel uneasy at times because we were being dragged out of the comfortable little nooks we’d carved out for ourselves in every other classroom we’d ever sat in, it sure did work. I learned a ton in that class and I really enjoyed the work I did.

I wonder too whether all of this traditional authoritarianism in the classroom is rooted in the teacher’s fear of losing control of what’s going on, as though allowing your learners to play an active role in how things happen and to speak up about what they really think and feel is going to ultimately lead to pandemonium. And then I suppose there is also the novice professor’s fear of having to dejectedly confront the seasoned professors’ I-told-you-so faces, as though one should never have even considered going against the grain.

But even though entering the terrain of transformative pedagogy is a little bit frightening, I do actually believe that it’s what will work best for me and for my learners. I do think that I need to allow my learners to see me as a person, to share my personal narratives just as I expect them to share theirs, and to let them really work at learning rather than just sitting and trying to absorb through osmosis.

I guess we’ll see on Tuesday how I feel after I’ve met these 27 fresh faces. I know I have a lot to learn about this whole teaching business, but I figure that if I don’t ever take the risk and do things that are scary but potentially and incredibly transformative, then I’ll just never know. And so, as best I can, I’m going to find out.