 Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks
Reflection Finding bell hooks as allowed me to continue to learn at the intersections of antiracism, feminism, justice, education as a political act, and love. I need to keep the Habits of the Heart and Mind in the forefront of my mind as I attempt to develop community both within and outside of the classroom. I still have a lot to learn and will be seeking other books by bell hooks. Below are quotes that I found meaningful as I read. Pg 42-43 “The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails...Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Parker Palmer in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King Pg. 73 “To successfully do the work of unlearning domination, a democratic educator has to cultivate a spirit of hopefulness about the capacity of individuals to change.” bell hooks Pg. 91 “The teacher who serves continually affirms by his or her practice that educating students is really the primary agenda, not self-aggrandizement or assertion of personal power.” bell hooks Pg. 92 “Committed acts of caring lets all students know that the purpose of education is not to dominate, or prepare them to be dominators, but rather create the conditions for freedom. Caring educators open the mind, allowing students to embrace a world of knowing that is always subject to change and challenge.” bell hooks Pg. 111 “This is why progressive educators, democratic educators, must be consistently vigilant about voicing hope and promise as well as opposition to those dominating forces that close off free speech and diminish the power of dialogue.” Ron Scapp Pg. 136 “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in the personal sense not as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring growth.” James Baldwin Pg. 137 “Love will always move us away from domination in all its forms. Love will always challenge and change us. This is the heart of the matter.” bell hooks Pg. 167 “Yet today’s frantic need to push towards deadlines, covering set amounts of material, allows very little room, if any, for silence, for free-flowing work. Most of us teach and are taught that it is only the future that really matters.” bell hooks Pg. 173-174 “Thay describes being in touch as being ‘aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind.’ This state evokes in us an awareness of interbeing. When we practice interbeing in the classroom we are transformed not just by one individuals’s presence but by our collective presence. Experiencing the world of learning we can make together in community is the ecstatic moment that makes us come and come again to the present, to the now, to the place where we are real.” Thích Nhất Hạnh (Thay) and bell hooks Ann Petry - The Street - protest novel June Jordan Parker Palmer’s essay “The Grace of Great Things: Reclaiming the Sacred in Knowing, Teaching and Learning.” Pg. 179 “He [Palmer] explains that education, teaching, and learning, is about more than gathering information or getting a job: ‘Education is about healing and wholeness. It is about empowerment, liberation, transcendence, about renewing the vitality of life. It is about finding and claiming ourselves and our place in the world. . . . I want to explore what it might mean to reclaim the sacred at the heart of knowing, teaching and learning—to reclaim it from an essentially depressive mode of knowing that honors only data, logic, analysis, and a systematic disconnection of self from the world, self from others.’ Many students come to schools and colleges already feeling a profound sense of disconnection. Schooling that does not honor the needs of the spirit intensifies that sense of being lost, of being unable to connect.” Parker Palmer and bell hooks Pg. 181 “The assumption seems to be that if the heart is closed, the mind will open even wider. In actuality, it is the failure to achieve harmony of mind, body, and spirit that has furthered anti-intellectualism in our culture and made our schools mere factories.” bell hooks Rachel Naomi Remen’s essay “Educating for Mission, Meaning, and Compassion” Pg. 197 The Habits is Heart and Mind, essential for creating and maintaining community
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