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A Legacy of Empowerment and Love Liz Vera, Ph.D. I first was blessed to discover the wisdom of bell hooks shortly after I finished my doctoral education and was trying to decide what kind of a career I wanted to pursue. After completing a traditional training program at a well-respected university, I was very intimidated by the thought of entering the academy. Why wouldn’t I have been intimidated? I never saw myself having anything in common with the “sage on the stage” models of professors that were in university classrooms. I also never learned anything about how to teach—until I read Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Reading hooks’ Teaching to Transgress was life-altering for me. In hooks’ writings, I began to re-evaluate all my years as a student with fresh eyes. I gained a framework for critiquing higher education, and education in general, for its role in protecting the status quo of White supremacy. I understood that there was not a single standard of so-called excellence and that the scholarship I read was missing the voices of people like myself. Perhaps most importantly, I realized that I had a lot to unlearn. This realization also enabled me to see my worth as a potential educator and see more clearly how education informed by emancipatory pedagogy could be a means of liberation. I began to see the value of trying to change the system from inside the system. I wanted to be a part of the movement to build a more inclusive community through my role as an educator. I had no idea what this set of goals would demand of me. According to hooks, teaching to transgress would require a willingness to be my authentic self, to be vulnerable, to say “I don’t know” in response to students’ queries, to invite students to work together to answer our fields’ most compelling questions. I also would need to name and redefine the role of power in the academy. I had to tell myself that I did not have to show up needing or pretending to be the smartest person in the room. As a Mexican American, cisgender woman, first generation college student, I also had to unpack my imposter syndrome. I had to find peers who could become my sources of mentorship, support, and validation. I am blessed that I have my professional family who holds me accountable, shares in my successes and failures, and serves as my truth north. I wish I could say that after almost 30 years as an academic that my commitment to unlearning, building community, and attempts at teaching to transgress have been wildly successful. Alas, changing higher education systems is a marathon, a multi-generational relay race. As hooks tells us in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, true transformation demands that I continue to confront the remnants of my own socialization and to anticipate how the socialization of my students will set expectations that will be at odds with my end goal of redefining the process of learning. She reminds us, “to build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination” (hooks, 2003, p. 36). hooks’ writings on teaching serve as an especially powerful invitation at this moment in time. Our world needs the next generation of emancipated thinkers and doers to take the baton from visionary leaders like hooks and form that beloved community that allows us to heal this broken society. In our role as educators, we must be willing to guide our student in their journeys, without the barriers of identity hierarchies and an artificial overemphasis on a single standard of excellence. Transgressive education demands humility and humanity from those of us blessed to be teachers. One passage that reminds me of this demand is: “Engaged pedagogy not only compels me to be constantly creative in the classroom, it also sanctions involvement with students beyond that setting, to journey with students as they progress in their lives beyond our classroom experience. In many ways, I continue to teach them even as they become more capable of teaching me. The important lesson that we learn together, the lesson that allows us to move together within and beyond the classroom, is one of mutual engagement.” (hooks, 1993, p. 205) Thank you bell hooks for being one of my sheroes and for helping me become the person I am today. While your passing has made me incredibly sad, I remain profoundly grateful to what you have taught me about myself, teaching, being vulnerable, the power of community, and the potential for education to be liberation. References hooks, b. (1981). “Ain’t I a woman? Black women and feminism. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory from margin to center. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (1993). Sisters of the Yam. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (2006). Outlaw culture: Resisting representations. NY: Routledge. Tags: bell hooks; counseling; leadership; reflections |
