[This semester went fast, felt slightly more familiar than the very strange last couple years, and featured some wonderful individual moments that exemplified why I do what I do. So this week I’ll highlight one such moment from each class—share your own Fall moments in comments, please!]
On two important
types of challenging questions that will help push my ideas forward.
There are
lots of reasons why I love teaching in adult learning programs—so much so that
I’ve remained connected to four such programs over the last decade, teaching
consistently in two (ALFA
and WISE)
and always looking for further opportunities to work with the other two (BOLLI
and Beacon
Hill Seminars)—but if I had to boil it down, I would definitely emphasize
the incredible perspectives, experiences, voices, knowledge and ideas that
adult ed students bring to our conversations together. That includes them
offering something I understandably don’t get quite as often from undergraduate
students but always appreciate whenever and however I get it: direct, probing
challenges to my own ideas, and even to the frames for the classes themselves. As
I wrote in this
Fall semester preview post, I decided to focus my WISE and ALFA classes
this semester on a preliminary idea for a future book project; and as a result,
the students’ challenging questions will be even more helpful as I continue to
think through these ideas and that potential future project.
As I wrote
in that preview post, the basic (but somewhat complicated) idea for this
project is that while white supremacist voices and forces have consistently
claimed to love and uphold various American ideals, in truth they have worked
to undermine those ideals, not only for other American communities but
ultimately for all of us and the nation as a whole. Some of the challenging
questions I got in these courses came from those who disagreed with my ideas,
including for example the self-identified “one conservative plant” in my WISE
course who made the case both for the American ideals themselves and for my
arguments as comprising the true underminings of those ideals; those
perspectives are very important for me to recognize and engage, not least as
potential future readers and audiences. But to my mind the most important challenging
questions I got were those which offered complications to my overarching frame,
such as the students who questioned whether the American ideals are worth
working to uphold at all (or, alternatively, if they have always been limiting
and/or exclusionary). If I’m going to keep developing my critical
patriotism and critical
optimism, I’ll have to do so in direct conversation with perspectives like
that one, and as ever these adult learning classes will be a vital resource as
I work to complicate, refine, and strengthen my own ideas and voice.
Weekend
post on what’s next drops tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Fall
moments you’d share?
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