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.

I vote to clone Sue Johanson

There was an article in the Globe and Mail a couple of weeks ago that questioned the necessity of high school sexual education classes, positing that the rise of online resources, such as Sex Etc. (sexetc.org) and sexualityandu.ca, provide ample information for those seeking to be enlightened. Just the thought of having to discuss this point makes my hands automatically form into little fists of rage. But now that I’ve managed to uncurl my fingers, I’m sitting down at the computer and writing down what I think about how we should be teaching and learning about sex.

I went to a Catholic, all-girls high school. We didn’t have sex ed classes: we had “health” classes that were lumped into our phys ed classes. Given my cloistered teenage years, I’m not really sure what the rest of the kids in the more progressive public school system were learning about sex, but, in the little nunnery that my parents forced me to go to, I learned very little. I do recall watching a video called “The Miracle of Life” in which we learned about how a baby is conceived and then watched it be born into the world. Keeping true to the subject of health, we also learned about all the symptoms of various STIs and had to memorize those for the exam later on. Too bad we were never told how to try and prevent ourselves from getting those STIs. Of course, there was no mention made of condoms, gloves or dental dams; there were no queers in the picture; and there was never any discussion of where one might get a safe abortion (because good, Catholic teenage girls aren’t supposed to be getting pregnant anyway). Classes were kind of like, “Here are the symptoms for a whole bunch of STIs, okay, girls? Now let’s go and play field hockey.”

And what can be worse than this watered down version of sex ed? Well, how about no sex ed? Yup, the province of Quebec has decided to eliminate sex ed classes altogether, working in favour of incorporating sexual education into all classes. Okay, so not to be a doubting Thomas or anything, but do they really think this is a viable way of disseminating sexual information? Other than the fact that sex ed should be taught by qualified, knowledgeable instructors, I also just can’t imagine how the subject will regularly be incorporated into other classes. “Hey, kids, have you ever noticed how a test tube sort of looks like a condom?” or, “Did anyone know that Lady Macbeth enjoyed fisting?”

Some will argue that sex ed classes aren’t all that useful to teenagers because teens are often too shy and embarrassed to ask the questions they want answered. They’d rather go to a website and get the answers they’re looking for. Sure, this is partly true. The 13-year-old boy who wants to learn about female orgasms probably isn’t going to ask the teacher while sitting amongst his friends. But does this lead us to forfeiting sexual education altogether? Not the way I see it.

Wouldn’t it be better if we had properly trained educators who facilitated sex ed classes for teens? Wouldn’t it be great if we could clone Sue Johanson and send her to every high school across the country, giving kids the lowdown on what to do down below? (By the way, and I’m totally digressing here, I have to say that I think Sue Johanson deserves to be canonized. She is the definition of amazing.) Not talking about sex doesn’t make things better. In fact, part of the reason a lot of people don’t want to talk about sex is because we never learned how to talk about it in the first place. And you’re not going to figure out how to negotiate with your sexual partner by merely looking up stuff on a website.

Don’t get me wrong: sexetc.org and sexualityandu.ca are great sites where teenagers and adults can learn a heck of a lot about sex. But I really do hope that the rest of Canada doesn’t follow Quebec’s lead and start eliminating sex ed classes or, worse yet, adopt the U.S. abstinence-only model. It’s just so important to have an arena to talk about all the fun things we can do with our bodies. And, compared with boring old chemistry or history classes, wouldn’t kids rather be in sex ed class talking about getting hot and heavy? If I were still in high school, I sure would.