Learning to Listen

I remember student teaching. I was a senior at Olivet Nazarene University...a tiny little bubble of a community, tucked away from the rest of the world. In many ways, it was an idealistic haven. It was a world of praying problems away, worship times (mandatory--every Tuesday and Wednesday), (mostly) white skin, (mostly) middle-class, and an enthusiastic promise of changing the world.

And then there was Kennedy Jr. High.

Stepping into that room, I was the only white face besides my cooperating teacher. My students--23 fifth graders with fidgeting hands and shifting eyes--dealt with things I had never even dreamed of. They came to class after a morning break-in. They went on visits to the nearby prison to see parents or uncles or cousins. They struggled with bladder infections when their parents refused (yes...refused) to take them to the doctor. And they rolled their eyes through remedial test-taking strategies that were necessary because over half of the class had IEPs, and we didn't have enough manpower to diversify the curriculum. I can't think of a time that was more difficult in my teaching career....or a time when my struggle mattered less.

It's an experience that broke me more times than I can count, right before building me back up. I'm beyond grateful for that opportunity...and it's what sits in the back of my mind as I read things like Damian Baca's The Chicano Codex, Richard Ohmann's Reflections on Class and Language, or Jaqueline Jones Royster's When the First Voice You Hear Isn't Your Own. It's the lesson (or lessons) that linger as I wade through James Paul Gee's work on becoming a part of a discourse community. Because it's my reminder that these concepts--couched in the now-familiar jargon of pedagogy, terministic screens, rhetorical situation and sovereignty--are so much more than academic, theoretical constructs.

They are 23 faces, hungry and bored and waiting for recess because the math makes no sense to them. They're 32 middle schoolers who don't understand why "Reading Workshop" should be considered an elective and who are convinced they hate reading. And they are 30 freshman from the Chicago-land area, some of whom have only just finished the remedial CHANCE course before nervously wading into college-level English.

It would be easy for me--a white, middle class, educated woman--to make assumptions and claims about class and race and socioeconomic factors. I can talk about lenses and strategies. But I don't want to. I don't feel that I have the right. Because I've been teaching these "at-risk" students for years, now. I've been interacting with them on a daily basis. And they have shown me, first hand, that "[we] do not simply and eternally belong to [a] class. Rather, in all [our] doings from day to day, [we and everyone we are affected by] constantly create [our] class position" (Ohmann, 11). They, like bell hooks, might say "[I find it] a necessary aspect of self-affirmation not to feel compelled to choose on voice over another, not to claim one as more authentic, but rather to construct social realities that celebrate, acknowledge, and affirm differences, variety" (2). My students have their home voices. They have their street voices. They have their work voices. And they have their classroom voices. Sometimes these overlap. Sometimes they don't. But what I'm learning more and more is that I don't want to be the kind of teacher who doesn't hear what my students are saying because it doesn't fit into a specific, "accepted" discourse.

I have opinions. I can be very vocal about them. But on issues of race and class, I think I would much, much rather listen.

hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End, 1989.
Ohmann, Richard. "Reflections on Class and Language." College English,44(1), 1982. 1-17.