Equity.
“If a man pretending to be me could do it well, then, logically, the real me must be far more qualified.”
Today is the last day of my Great Experiment in Vacationing. I have to officially report tomorrow. There were forms, government IDs, and drug tests involved. People are expecting me. I have to sign in.
I’ll be back in the classroom with a tried & true syllabus--Pound, Williams, cummings. Lots of Shakespeare. Whitman and Sandburg. Dead white men. But I figure, since no one in the class will be a dead white man, we’re all starting on the same line, right?
The college where I am teaching has invested a lot of resources in helping me learn about their approach to bringing equity to the classroom through culturally, ethnically, and situationally diverse literature and assignments. I’ve received 5.5 hours of training of which 4 was about classroom equity, but I don’t yet have access to my email account.
Honestly, I am impressed that they have given so much time and effort to support new faculty. And the ideas about equity they shared do show up in my syllabus. I’ve consciously organized the dead white men into a unit about (subverting) poetic traditions. I’ve made sure to include Caucasian, Latinx, African-American, Asian-American, gay, straight, male, female, and unknown authors in my reading selections all while making it look like I was thinking of none of these things but being acutely aware of all of these things. Well-scripted improv.
But I find myself in a bit of a teaching wardrobe crisis. Though I’m confident in my academic and teaching abilities, I haven’t been in the classroom for quite some time. I picked the tried & true texts because I figured I would be able to pull those lessons out of the same hat I’ve pulled them from so many times before. But that was a lot of hats ago. It’s not an issue of being rusty. It is, ironically, an issue of being new.
18 years in one place creates an identity. But now I know, that, in leaving that place, the identity I lost was the false one they gave me. Am I going to teach Hamlet with the same materials I always have or will I start all over again because that old stuff will no longer make sense to this new me?
Will I be able to forgive Gertrude? Is Hamlet still petulant? Can I find strength in the short-suffering Ophelia?
I don’t get a dress rehearsal for tomorrow. If I have to--get to--approach these old-to-me-and-to-everyone-else texts like I’ve never taught them before, I can take the risk to champion texts that I really haven’t taught before. Gwendolyn Brooks. Cool. Billy Collins? Okay. Pat Mora? Who? Junot Diaz. Of course. A rose by any other name….
