What sort of “teacher” role do you assume most often in the classroom? A coach, guide, mentor, ghost, anonymous autonomous dictator, demagogue, dialectician, wizard, guerrilla pedagogue, trifling pedant, or….?
Last semester I think I attempted the role of guide. This meant that I would usually lead a class with a brief introduction to the general topic of the class, if we had readings we would discuss them, and although for discussions I’d have planned questions for groups or individuals to answer, I’d let conversation take several tangents if students were interested in leading them. Then, as a voyeur-guide, I’d sit on the sidelines and let students TALK to each other, get comfortable with each other, and maybe even laugh. (Laughter in a class room is worth 5x its weight in teaching gold, I think.)
The Land of Student-lead Conversations was a place I enjoyed classes ending up. However, it was an uncertain terrain, and I often questioned the productivity of such a land. For instance, when dealing with ideas of racial and ethnic identities we often traversed some questionable ground. Most of my classes were predominantly white, and this wasn’t necessarily any detractor from the discussions of difference we were having, but at times it seemed suspect at the lack of difference we actually had participating in the discussion. The uncertain terrain we encountered was when I, as guide, remained on the sidelines of student-lead conversations, and students began to voice ideas in discussion that I would find to be highly problematic, if not racially-stereotyping, or just plain ignorant–but in nearly all cases, these ideas/statements were meant with complete constructive expressiveness.
Discussions that dealt with LGBT issues seemed to take the wildest tangents though–for better or worse. Being a gay teacher, of course, I have my own bias on these issues, but in class we’re not here to talk about me, so I am going to let the democracy of the class take its course…
…Which meant having to wade through a lot of considerably homophobic statements. But I felt this was important, because it was the students engaging and counterarguing with each other. If I had been at the helm bludgeoning them with pronouncements of the PC way to think I think that would have been much more authoritarian and aggressive, and students would likely feel antagonistic towards these topics.
And so on. More next time on being a white male teacher and trying to discuss multiculturalism in the classroom!
