As stated in the introductory passage to this portfolio, when I first arrived to the Bryn Mawr Department of Education, I believed myself to already be oriented toward the concept of change and growth. What I discovered, however, through the lessons I hope to have encapsulated in this portfolio, is that my very understanding of intentional progress or transformation — whether personal, institutional, or societal — had to be uprooted, questioned, and reworked in order for me to (even begin to) truly understand the complex and ever-changing nature of education in the United States. I am now better able to note the myopic nature of my original perspective on the purpose of education: this being that I believed education to be of capital importance for its capacity to promote equality and opportunity to students of marginalized backgrounds and communities. It is fascination, however, in continuing to trace the theme of change, to note that, while my original perspective needed to be significantly troubled and reexamined, I believe myself to have ultimately returned to a reworked version of this original notion.
Through the course of my classes, I was able to see that my original perspective, while well-intentioned, did nothing to trouble or disrupt the imbalance of power and privilege found at the cornerstone of the current American system of education. While I vehemently believed (and still do believe) that education could help uplift those who had been marginalized and oppressed by other overarching structures of authority and societal control, I failed to see that the process of uplifting only maintains the unequal, institutionally supported structure that originally rendered individuals unequal. Now, after having come to this realization, my original perspective has metamorphosed, despite remaining fixed on the pursuit of equity.
I am now able to see that true equality in the United States will require a complete reworking of our societal structures, means of thought, and institutions that perpetuate inequality and oppression — one of these being the system of education. In order to do this, I now recognize that teachers must be oriented toward a collective upheaval and reinvention of educational equity efforts. Rather than working and striving hopelessly toward some sort of balance within the current system, we must teach with our eyes fixed on the goal of liberation, decidedly rejecting and attempting to undermine the perpetuation of existing, and often unnoticed injustice.
As Baldwin states in his “Talk to Teachers,” this can only be accomplished by radically pursuing the truth, which is a hidden truth, no matter the resistance that faces you; when our pedagogies and core principles are constructed around this goal, we are naturally positioned to teach students how to see the truth of their lives, the oppression they have been forced to face, and the real nature of American society. Teaching with this aim does, as I originally believed, help to promote equality and opportunity, but it does so by continually exposing, chipping away at, and subverting systems of marginalization and injustice.
This is what I now believe to be the radical task teachers are charged with: creating change in a resistant society through daily acts of undermining oppressive structures and powers and teaching students with the goal of helping their liberation from said structures.
Though I do not yet know what my personal path through the field of education will look like, I know that this core principle will help guide me as I seek to affect change and trouble unjust systems of power in educational environments. I am also left with the certainty that, because of the critical method of challenge and growth necessitated by the Education Department's course of study, I will be ready and able to confront future experiences that trouble my perspectives, positionally, and understanding of the deep "truth" I believe I must pursue. I have learned to challenge and to push back, but I have also learned the important lesson of being challenged and being pushed back on. In short, this course of study has empowered me; I am therefore left with the impossible, though inspiring task of attempting to teach my own, future students in a manner that helps them to grow, as the Education Department so helped and changed me.