do no harm:


idit dobb-weinstein: "teaching is action and thinking at once. What I try to guard against most when I teach is not speaking as if my answer were conclusive, so as to avoid (to the extent possible) any kind of dogmatic appropriation. It is understandable why students might wish to imitate their teachers, but there are different modes of imitation. I try very hard to avoid the mimetic appropriation that is immediate, passive, and occludes thinking. One other reason is that if I made clear what my views were, and my views appeared as if they were final, it would preclude the possibility of first, students challenging me and second, learning from my students. The relation between the student and teacher is, to me, a dynamic relationship . . . Teaching and learning is a movement that occurs between. In other words, we are at once both agent and patient, both teacher and learner. If we are not very careful, we can do a great deal of harm. And that, too, I have learned from my teachers, Maimonides especially.

I believe my task is to provoke students to think and to engage them in genuine dialogue and questioning. To paraphrase a rabbinic saying, 'I have learned from my teachers, and I have learned from my peers, but I have learned most from my students.' And that is a continuous process of learning."

Wednesday 7 April 2010

fantastic times at LACC!!!!

love my classes!!!!!

sheila and i went to the lawyers guild last night and had a blast learning about the budget crisis and protest arrests and police involvement.

LACC is a beautiful spartan campus nestled in the interstices between koreatown and hollywood.
there are such lovely people there and such a wealth of diversity!!!!  i will never have such a good time!!!

but i wish my professors were more respectful, or modern, or tech savy, or that teachers cared about equality. equality is a joke.

my favorite professors made jokes yesterday about prostitution and margaret thatcher being a man.
i found it tasteless and unfunny.
but at least we know what their obsessions are.

these are the good teachers, the excellent ones, comparatively.
i like them in spite of everything.

ms. matranga in OSS really tried to put out my passion over disability rights.
all this tech stuff is confusing i know!!!!
equality stuff!
out of the stone ages stuff!!!

lawyers are the best!!!!
i think eric kim rules for getting LACC the best price on incompetance.
he wouldn't tell me how much LACC had to settle for, but i am sure he worked hard to cover for the lazy administrations failure to prevent lawsuits.

gene little said that some students allege racism when they get bad grades.
cool thing about me is i don't give a flip about grades!!!!!

so my motives are a little more pure.
i care about respect, and getting my grants and loans, and getting to a better school, and a better city.
but if the old mavens think i will not talk back when they spew misogyny all over the class, they are wrong.
in titus andronicus, the maimers of lavinia cut out her tongue so she could not speak.
that won't be me.
i will not have my mouth taped, veiled, muffled, silenced.
my favorite professor of all time had to sue regarding discriminatory tenuring policies.
the fight is not over, for respect.

give a little, and they will take a lot.
better to be on the offense, and let them know, we have higher standards, academically and otherwise.
okay we don't have a big budget.
but plenty of people with lots of money have no class, and plenty of poor people have tons of class.
so LACC has to act all shady and hateful and cover their tracks and insult people at every turn like its not the internet age.
like we won't video it, tape it, blog it, remember it, sue over it.
haha.
they are so funny.
they come from innocent times, when you could get away with murder.
true equality and true respect are just around the corner.
but the pompous fools with big egos and outdated worldviews have to divest of their hatred, and look critically at their own creepiness, before the future can happen.
it is not cool to cut the disability services budget.
its not cool to block the technology that would bring the school up-to-date.
it is not cool to keep calling women prostitues and cheesecakes in class.
its LAME.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)