Grace Louie

I am responding to Priscilla Hsiung's post, where they provide an insightful discussion about the "American Dream" and growing up being pushed towards reaching it. Priscilla begins by talking about her time between Taiwan and the U.S., and being raised in the U.S. as the only American-born relative and American citizen in her family. 

A simultaneous window and mirror I see is our parental upbringing and view on education. My father was born in America as the son of Chinese immigrants, and my mother immigrated and got her citizenship as a young adult. Even though my entire family has American citizenship, I still felt residual pressure to obtain the American Dream as well. For a lot of immigrant parents, or children of immigrant parents, it is ingrained in you that getting a proper education is the key to becoming successful and obtaining the "carrot," as Priscilla writes. It is hard to prioritize certain parts of your life when there's other needs that are more present and urgent.

When it comes to that mentality with our education, I found myself resonating with Priscilla as they wrote about how instead of truly ingraining information, they were memorizing and focusing on grades and outcomes. School no longer felt like a place to learn, but a place to pass tests. There was no joy in learning if I did not get above a 90%, if I did not earn arbitrary values like A's or 4.0's. Taking a step back made me see how I was caught in the system's trap. I agree with Priscilla's statements that we can slow down and accept failure not as something negative, but as something necessary to grow. And that we, as future educators, can share that sentiment with our students.

An aspect I feel is important to mention when talking about the themes of Priscilla’s post is the battle between choosing personal dreams versus the “American Dream” while growing up in a culture heavily focused on community, family, and escaping cycles. Success is survival, or perhaps it is the other way around. It is one of the reasons it is difficult for students to stop thinking about competition, and why it can be hard for students to slow down and accept failure. They have to juggle having their own dreams with also needing to support the people around them presently and in the future. I think this is important to consider because sometimes these situations are or do feel inescapable for students. They may not have the choice to put their dreams first at the moment, and I think it is also important for teachers to be able to navigate these discussions. I am not sure what the best way to navigate it is, and I do hope that is something we can learn together, but I want to keep this perspective in mind while we move forward to better classrooms and learning.

I have enjoyed reading the theories of Bell Hooks for a few years now. Most of the time, I read about her perspective on linguistics and language in the classroom. In Chapter 1 of Bell Hooks' Teaching to Transgress, "Engaged Pedagogy," Bell Hooks discusses the importance of teachers creating classrooms that are engaging and progressively open, but also telling students to be able to critically think beyond themselves. Overall, the chapter felt that it was a message to all people finding themselves in classrooms to release their egos and opinions of authority, and prioritize "self-actualization" according to Hooks.

In the passage, Hooks discusses her own experience going through higher education as both a student and professor, and how she feels about classrooms in those times. She writes about how going into university, she expected to find professors who were more determined to grow alongside their students, but instead found professors that "seemed enthralled by the exercise of power and authority within their mini-kingdom, the classroom" (17) whose teaching styles she adamantly did not want to imitate. Context is no doubt very important when acknowledging Hooks' writing. Hooks entered university as an undergraduate, like many or all of us, in the early 1970's and had taught for twenty years by the time she wrote this book in 1994. For example, she described Women’s Studies as "just finding a place in the academy" (15) when she was an undergraduate, which is definitely not translative to our current institution(s). Because of this, although I relate to some of Hooks' perspectives, a present-day perspective like mine will contain differences. 

When reflecting on my positionally with respect to this reading, I realized how thirty years feels simultaneously so far yet so recent. I am still able to resonate with Hooks' perspectives regarding the need for teachers to let go of their feelings of authority and make accessible, safe spaces for students to learn. In my opinion, this is because positions of authority are timeless, and it takes a great effort for people in those positions to free themselves from the automatic power dynamic between teachers and students. After my experiences with competitive schooling that was only encouraged by teachers, I do not believe growth should stop when someone becomes a teacher. Classrooms and education would exponentially thrive if both students and teachers were in a constant state of learning from each other. This position is highlighted when Hooks states: "When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students" (21). I understand Hooks' feelings towards teachers needing to "self-actualize" as a requirement towards successfully engaged pedagogy. However, reading this thirty years later, I wonder how achievable "self-actualization" is for both students and teachers.

On a very psychological standpoint, self-actualization is theorized to come after all the other needs a person has is covered including basic physical needs for survival and mental needs such as love and self-esteem. In response to Hooks, I worry that self-actualization would be difficult for teachers and students in the current education system to focus on, if they are worried about other physical and mental needs. Like mentioned earlier, context is very important to consider. With the current state of economy, as well as the social aspect of the classroom (such as social media, chronic absentism, etc.), being able to self-actualizing can be difficult for students and/or teachers. I think this is important to acknowledge present-day situations when talking about theory, and be able to change and navigate these ideas to fit the contexts. Hooks does not specifically describe her definition of self-actualization either, which furthers blurs the ability for teachers to reach one of these "requirements" for engaged pedagogy. Even so, I believe Hooks theory regarding engaged pedagogy is still extremely relevant towards modern classrooms.