“I am left
bereft of both pleasure and satisfaction, and yet I cannot stop trying to
figure it all out. Jouissance works in a similar way. It is a driving force
that brings with it regret and pain even as one seeks for more. Jouissance
maintains an illusion of mastery. If I keep writing, if I keep studying, if I
keep researching, I will somehow beat racism. ”
––Tapo Chimbganda, The Classroom as
Privileged Space: Psychoanalytical Paradigms for Social Justice in Pedagogy
Thank
God, I had the opportunity to teach a stand-alone reading class last semester. It
seems it’s only when we teach something we truly learn it. Somehow I’d
completed college and two graduate programs without the reading strategies
necessary to integrate what I’ve been learning during my sabbatical project,
which you can learn more about here.
Reading
texts thick with unfamiliar concepts and fresh ideas has become an almost
physical experience. I open these books, pencil in hand, pacing my reading rate
by the marks it makes. As I go, the pencil underlines, questions, and fills
margins with stars, exclamation points, and connecting thoughts and comments. Rather
than merely listening to an author, the experience is akin to having a conversation
with them. They make statements, and my pencil offers its emoji-like responses.
Each writer’s
words flow through and across my own consciousness triggering subtle
neurological responses. A brain cell alights and suddenly an idea on one page
connects to another in a novel way. Like a magic-trick, terms I’d never come
across suddenly describe things I’ve often seen in my own world but had left
unnamed. Therefore, what had only moments before been nearly invisible to me
crystalizes into a tangible and meaningful shape. It’s humbling, enlivening,
and thrilling all at once to experience this sensation page after
page––concepts that explain learning conditions I’ve worked within for all my
professional life, but have never been able to truly understand, come fully and
freshly into view.
Without
sabbatical, I’m not sure I could expand my thinking with such freedom and
abandon. Had my sabbatical not been granted, I would have had to cram this kind
of intense study into a semester break (which are longer than most
professionals’ and for which I remain ever grateful).
But unbeknownst
to me, such cramming narrows what I’d be able to take from what I read.
With one
eye on the calendar, I would feel pressure to pull out only those ideas that
applied directly to what I’d be teaching next. Even more limiting, I think I’d unconsciously
reject ideas counter to what I was already doing in my classrooms. Taking in a
radically new perspective is almost impossible if one lacks the time and space necessary
for the reinvention and integration that are a meaningful idea’s natural
consequence.
And because
much of what I’m reading describes system-wide structural phenomena that hurts
students (and by extension society), it will ultimately, require collective
degrees of change to ameliorate, meaning it requires changes in my classrooms,
yes, but far beyond it as well. When I return to campus, I will need to attend
to both, which means I must be in community with others to create
transformation.
A
sabbatical framework means I’m meant to think this broadly. Certainly keeping
in mind my campus, a rural community college on the southern end of the Silicon
Valley, and my role on it but also education as a whole and its larger purposes,
imagining alongside others what it might be and become.
Surprisingly,
I’m finding this expansiveness invites greater clarity and precision instead of
less. I find I see both a general context and a particular place with greater
distinction. I now recognize there are patterns in the ways educators are being
pushed to name problems and solutions on our campus. It isn’t that California has
suddenly and magically aligned with the top-down reforms also happening in
other states. Rather, my college like every other campus in the US, and maybe
even all over the developed world, is being pushed toward certain types of educational
solutions because global business and political interests want it that way and
not because that is what is best or most humane for students and workers alike.
The
thinkers I’m now engaging offer alternative perspectives and a critique of solutions
being promoted across the nation and on my home campus as well. However, I find
my brain isn’t as nimble or as masterful as it once was at retaining new ideas.
That’s where last term’s reading class also comes into play. I know what needs
to happen in order to integrate the thoughts of writers and scholars as varied
as Chimbganda (quoted above) George Yancy, and Gilda Ochoa. It’s all in the
reading strategies I taught last term.
Here’s
what I’m doing to make it most likely that what I’m reading won’t disappear
into a gaseous vagueness once I put a book down.
As
described above, I read with pencil in hand. I mark key ideas and anything that
excites me (only sometimes ever the same thing) by using explanation points, stars,
or simply a check mark in the margin between paragraph and page’s edge.
Sometimes, if I’m unfamiliar with a term, introduced to a person I don’t know,
or a new concept I circle it. Often by page’s end, these have become clearer
and are already entering my own vocabulary. Sometimes not. Nevertheless, I
carry on, reading at a pace slightly quicker than feels entirely comfortable.
Counter intuitively, that’s what makes it most likely I’ll be able to makes
sense of what I read.
Occasionally,
I slow down enough to make a small comment about what I’ve read, noting how one
idea relates to another in a different text or even something I’ve experienced
or heard first-hand.
Often,
I underline something in order not to lose it, sometimes half a paragraph or
more at a time. What I really want to hold close, I box up with my pencil, so
it sits on the page bounded on all sides. Sometimes a portion of the page is
boxed and dancing with explanation points and also stars because for me the
words are burning with power. They’ve become precious to me, and my marks
signify their vibrant energy and make it easier to find when I need to share them
with a friend.
And
then there are those ideas that seem so vital, so important, so filled with a
potential to make education better, to free not only students but teachers too,
that I mark them with a heart––a heart to signify what I hope stays with me for
decades of teaching to come.
One
text, then another. A new dialogue between writer and reader arises. A fresh voice
enters my conscious, and I sense the old author’s voice drifting away––still a
part of a background melody, perhaps, but the lyrics no longer as fierce as
they had been only hours ago. I know I’m in danger of being unable to share
what I’ve learned with the integrity required. For this there is only one
solution––the annotated bibliography.
I’ve
adapted this old composition classroom form in the following way: I write an
overview of the text, then talk about how it applies to the sabbatical project
as a whole. Next, I pull out important points in ways that follow the path of
the book. Finally, I include the quotes and ideas that meant most to me. In
typing these out, word-for-word, I find the author’s voice becomes distinct and
sticky once again.
I wish
I could say this was a quick process. But hours of work go into these
bibliographies. Some are only a page or two, but a dense text like Charles Mann’s 1491, with its dozens of facts
per paragraph, grew to 20 pages.
To
complete an annotated bibliography, it’s not enough to read the text once
marking as I go. I have to skim each book a second time, sometimes even a
third, reframing each page in one or two key phrases that chart an author’s
line of thinking across sections and chapters. This is what allows me to
retranslate their ideas it into my own words. It is in this way, that these finally
and thoroughly integrate into my consciousness, and I see more clearly how they
relate to other parts of the sabbatical project.
It’s
tedious. It’s time-consuming. It’s delicious. And I very much look forward with
sharing the results of this labor with you.
