13 Workshop Ten: Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
TOTAL WORKSHOP TIME:
1 hour 55 minutes. Please note your start and end time here:
Start time: ____ End time: ____
This Workshop was created by Sarah Grade, Alissa Martinez, and Chris Meng (April 2021).
PART 1: Getting settled (10 minutes).
Take some time to get acquainted with your workshop group. Check in with each other for a bit. Maybe reflect on something that brought you joy recently, or made you laugh 🙂
PART 2: Passion in teaching (45 minutes)
bell hooks discusses a lot about passion and excitement in the classroom throughout Teaching to Transgress. Specifically, in Chapters 13 and 14, she explores the importance of Eros. Let’s dive into what that means and what it might look like.
- “Professors rarely speak of the place of Eros or the erotic in our classrooms.” (191) Before we talk about the implications of this, it’s important to consider and understand what Eros even is. Reflect and discuss what “Eros or the erotic” means to you. (5 minutes)
- In exploring Eros, bell hooks begins with an anecdote about being “erotically drawn” to a student in her first semester of teaching. Why does she open with this? What purpose does it serve (if any)? (10 minutes)
- Now that we have some understanding of the place of Eros in the classroom, we should consider the fact that the space we occupy as we do this workshop is also a classroom setting. bell hooks acknowledges the importance of recognizing your own relationship to Eros as she did. (10 minutes)
- Do you have any physical reactions to this concept?
- To this reading as a whole?
- To the people you are discussing this with?
- How does acknowledging those reactions affect how you experience this class and this workshop? How could this help (or hurt) future learning experiences? (10 minutes)
- One of those values that bell hooks expresses in the introduction is excitement or joy in the classroom. She says that the “capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another” (8). This community, created of different perspectives and life experiences, is both created by and fed into this excitement. What does this look like? What would get someone to be excited in a classroom and why? Why is this important? How is excitement related to Eros? (10 minutes)
Please take a 10-minute break here.
When you come back, you will be invited to share and discuss personal experiences. Be open to yourself and each other. *sparkles*
PART 3: The ideal classroom (20 minutes)
In order to accomplish the goals of education as the practice of freedom, bell hooks suggests that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Each classroom is defined by its community. She elaborates on this here:
“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy… Urging all of us to open our minds and hearts so that we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions…” (12)
We (Chris, Alissa, and Sarah) have come to understand this in terms of an “ideal classroom.” An ideal classroom is one that provides an educational experience that takes advantage of this radical space.
- Close your eyes. Ground yourself in the space. Take some time for yourself to reflect on and imagine your ideal classroom. Feel free to draw, think, or express your thoughts in whichever way is best for you. (5 minutes)
- Now that you have pictured yours, discuss. What does it look like? How do you feel? Notice any common themes between the group’s classrooms and any significant differences. (10 minutes)
- What values about the classroom emerge from this discussion? How do they relate to or differ from bell hooks’ values (e.g. healing, community, excitement)? (5 minutes)
PART 4: Healing from past experiences (30 minutes)
bell hooks says “it is not easy to name our pain,” (74) but it is helpful so that we can identify what we are healing from.
- Imagine a time that education has been harmful to you. Try to name the various causes of that harm. This can be purely a self-reflection, or it can be a group discussion, or both. Please do whatever is most comfortable for everyone.
- Recall some of the facets of your ideal classroom. How does this experience contrast with those values? What would need to be done in order for that experience to not be harmful and more in line with the ideal classroom values?
- Now that you are separated from this experience and have had a chance to reflect on it (and maybe come up with some solutions), how does this experience of reflection impact you? How does it make you feel to think about these situations and solutions? Does it allow you to heal from them? Or does it just reinforce the harm?
bell hooks defines “self-actualization” to be this process of constant reflection on and acknowledgement of feelings and experiences. If we are “s[eeking] to be whole,” (16) and aiming to bring mind, body, and spirit to the educational space, self-actualization is a necessary step.
4. What is the value of this process of self-actualization that you’ve just gone through in the previous questions?