teaching and mentoring
General teaching philosophy
bell hooks: When I enter a classroom at the beginning of the semester the weight is on me to establish that our purpose is to be, for however brief a time, a community of learners together. It positions me as a learner. But I am also not suggesting that I don't have more power. And I'm not trying to say we're all equal here. I'm trying to say that we are all equal here to the extent that we are equally committed to creating a learning environment.
Ron Scapp: That's right. That returns us to the issue of respect. Sure, it's bad faith to pretend that we're all the same because the teacher's the one who ultimately is going to grade. In traditional terms that is the source of power, and judging is something we all do as students and teachers. That's not really the source of power in the successful classroom. The power of the liberatory classroom is in fact the power of the learning process, the work we do to establish a community.*
As a professor at a leading research institution, I am employed primarily for my work as a researcher. However, teaching is one of my great joys in life. I really enjoy both the theatrics and the politics of pedagogy and, to borrow the words of feminist scholar bell hooks, I like to think of my approach as 'teaching to transgress'. What this means for me is that I see it as my social and professional responsibility help create an opportunity to discover different ways of thinking and new ways of being critical. And being critical means more than simply identifying the pros and cons; it means searching for 'hidden agendas', interrogating the taken-for-granted, and doubting anyone who tells you something's good for you! My job as a teacher is therefore not to pump knowledge into you, but to challenge you and to help you challenge others. And one of the best things about this approach is that I too am challenged and that I also get to grow from the process of building our learning community together.
In 2007, I was pleased to receive the University of
Washington's Distinguished Teaching Award.
* Extract from a dialogue between professors bell hooks and Ron Scapp Source: hooks, b. In Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom (1994, p.153)