Currently I am in the middle of constructing a new syllabus for a new group of students. Yes, I am the type to change my syllabus every academic year, sometimes even each semester. I guess I am a "reflective practitioner" or I simply realize that once again I set out to accomplish too much. Nevertheless, I needed to blog today, because I have so much anxiety about approaching another school year, with a new group of students. I can't help but reflect back on an article that I co-authored with Dawn Williams (Howard University) titled The burden of teaching teachers. In brief, in the article we discussed the challenges we faced teaching young majority white female pre-service teachers, whom were mostly from suburban communities. In the article we also traced our own experiences as young Black women growing up in majority diverse, and sometimes segregated, communities. We celebrated in that article the woes of teaching pre-service teachers and the burdens that came along with that task. But, also we discussed that for us and our families education represented all the possibilities in the world that was open to us as young women of color. 

We had to admit that school was our home away from home, a site of refuge, a site of tension, and a place to grow---a room of our own. Nevertheless, with all of the racial politics of the day, we both have been thrusted into academic positions where our race consciousness is forefronted, for better or for worse. In the article, we admit to be outsiders within the academy. Often we are marginalized not only within our departments, but also within our own classrooms. This reflection brings me back to today. I am sitting here blogging, because I get nervous as I think about the upcoming resistance that I have come to expect from a new group of students. The smugged looks when I mention the "R" word (shh...that stands for "race"). In the multicultural era, we are all the same and "R" doesn't matter. Or, in culturally-aware teachers words, "I treat all kids the same. I don't see color." By the way, color=the "R" word.

Okay, that makes me want to holler, "Do you see my race? Do you see my gender? Do you see my youthfulness? Do you hear my Black English accent? Are you deaf and mute? No, you are only pretending not to see and hear me, because you don't want to feel me." The best part of white privilege is being able to choose when to see race, class and gender. According to McLaren, "Critical theorists begin with the premise that men and women are essentially unfree and inhabit a world rife with contradictions and asymmetries of power and privilege." For me, each time we meet and attempt to FEEL each other (meaning here to engage all 5 senses), then my White students and I will not only have the opportunity to expose our own set of privileges, but we also take advantage of every opportunity to contradict power relations in society. 

Therefore, each semester I approach a new group of students with the premise that at the same time my students whole power (e.g. white privilege), I too hold power within our classroom space. To quote spider-man (sorry), we have to choose to use our power for good. In other words, I am not nervous because I am approaching a new group of White students who may resist my pedagogy. I am nervous because each semester I set out to engage my students emotionally, physically and spiritually; thus, we all can grow to learn to share the burden of exposing and eradicating the status quo through our own set of privileges. In our classroom setting, our privileges/power is flipped on its head. My blackness/womanness/urbanness/youthfulness in front of a college classroom is a testimony to McLaren's observation of "a world rife with contradictions and asymmetries." In a classroom, I don't see it as "me" against "them" (not anymore, anyway) or "them" against "me." Instead, I view it as "us" against "them." 

My intent is to recruit my students into this movement to free minds and bodies that are being intellectually and spiritually crushed by asymmetrical power relations. In closing, I get nervous each semester with a new group of students, because I really really hope/wish/pray that they FEEL ME. ALL OF ME.