Why do I have green eyes?
Tomorrow is the last day of summer school. This month in the TBR Summer Institute has been intense and intensive.
I had an interesting racialized moment in class yesterday. One of the students, Benjamin, figured out that everyone in class had brown eyes except me. I have green eyes. He asked me why I had green eyes. How do I answer that question? I told him I was magic, just being flippant about it, without really thinking about the implications of what I said. I lost a teachable moment, there. He asked me to magic his eyes and make them green too.
I’ve had fun teaching the children this month. It’s been quite a learning experience. I am not weathering this transition as well as I hoped. I remember when I first started teaching, before I learned about feminist and critical pedagogy. I was a terrible teacher. I feel frustrated because I feel like I did in the beginning. It is going to take some time for me to get comfortable and be relaxed.
So far I haven’t really learned anything new in TBR’s summer institute except for a bunch of technical jargon. The good teaching from planning to delivery is stuff I did as a professor. My difficulty, predictably, is translating these skills and experiences to a 6-8 year old audience. That has been a struggle. But I’m learning. The technical aspect of this job, writing lesson plans to the nth degree, is trying. Hopefully this will become more natural to me.
Anyway, this is the second post I’ve written today. I lost the first one. So I’m going to post this now in case I lose it.
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Hey Ms./Dr. Sells! Glad to see your blog is back! It seemed to disappear for a few days . . . .
Sounds like the new teaching is keeping you busy! Lesson plans: what is that, and how does one do such a thing? Goodness . . . I wonder if they make you turn those in or something.
Keep on keepin’ on!
congrats on the new gig. it sounds tough but good. i talk a lot with people at work about race and power and affirmative action etc, and your class gave me a model for how to explain and discuss those things with people who have never thought about systemic/structural inequality.
thanks!
colleen