I had an interesting “racialized” moment in class yesterday. One of the students figured out that everyone in class had brown eyes except me. I have green eyes. He asked me why. How does one answer that question? I flippantly told him “magic” without thinking about the implications of the answer. He asked me to magic his eyes and make them green too. It made me reflect on issues of white privilege in a classroom of students of color. Why did I answer that way?

Teaching the children with Teach Baton Rouge this month was fun. I am not weathering this transition well though. When I first started teaching college, before learning about feminist and critical pedagogy, I was terrible. Now, I feel similarly ungrounded and uncomfortable. It will take time

So far I haven’t learned much new in TBR’s summer institute except for technical jargon. The good teaching from planning to delivery is exactly the same for college professors – in theory. Practice is different. The difficulty, predictably, is translating these aspects for a 6-8 year old audience.  The technical aspect of this job, writing lesson plans to the nth degree, is a challenge. Hopefully this will become more natural.

Tomorrow is the last day of summer school. This month in the TBR Summer Institute has been intense and intensive.

2 Comments

  1. 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!

  2. 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

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