Tag Archives: teachers

After reading Bell Hooks’s Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, I couldn’t help but say this woman is on fire. In this week’s reading, I was able to acknowledge not only a teacher, writer, and intellectual scholar, but also a woman anchored in justice and deeply committed to the healing power of education. Hooks is so real. So raw. Her voice is like a flame that refuses to go out. She leaves you wanting to read more. She writes with such sharpness. As I was reading, I felt the urgency in her voice, the urgency of someone who refuses to accept a world where learning is anything less than liberating. More than just an academic force, education became a weapon for Hooks—one she used to trespass the oppression of a white‑dominated society and transgress not only intellectually, but emotionally, mentally, and socially.

One of the sentences that struck me was: “School was still a political place, since we were always having to counter white racist assumptions that we were genetically inferior, never as capable as white peers, even unable to learn.” This line captures Hooks’s political and emotional truth about her learning experience. At the beginning of her academic journey, she lost her love for school because of discrimination and marginalization. As Hooks explains, obedience to a white‑dominated system was expected from Black students, limiting their practice of freedom. How could a Black student learn if the system had already decided their place within white society? Regardless of the opposition, hooks was relentless and kept pressing forward.

Education was a political struggle for Hooks. But I also feel that her struggle ignited an unstoppable fire inside her, leading her to view learning as a form of liberation. Even though she had painful experiences with marginalization, she believed that education was enabling. Focusing on the academic aspect, Hooks also didn’t have the best pedagogical experiences in some of her classes. She said she felt bored and that the banking system didn’t interest her. Her experiences led her to dissect different ways for students to experience learning as liberatory.

The brilliance of Hooks’s article is in the blueprint she developed for her own pedagogical practice. Her negative experiences didn’t stop her from pursuing education. Quite the opposite: her experiences led her to realize she didn’t want to be the kind of professor students dreaded. Hooks mentions that Paulo Freire became her mentor in radical pedagogy, inspiring her to teach differently than she was taught. Another important figure who influenced her was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who emphasized the teacher as healer. I had never in my life heard of such a thing, or of a pedagogy that emphasizes wholeness. This made me realize that I had experienced this type of learning back in high school. For all four years, I had the same science teacher who regarded his students as whole humans. And now that I think about it thoroughly, I see him through the lens of “the teacher as healer.”

I will never forget him—Mr. Randle. He was my teacher, but he was also a mentor for many students. Mr. Randle supported my mental health throughout high school. I looked forward to his class because I knew it wouldn’t be just a lecture. I knew his class would be filled with life lessons and words of wisdom. As a class, we all felt like we were his children. Someone we could really count on. He even helped one classmate who became homeless get out of that situation.

(Science labs were never boring in Mr. Randles’s class)

The reason I’m mentioning my former science teacher is that I can relate to how Hooks envisioned a practice of radical pedagogy, which is exactly how I felt in Mr. Randle’s class. Classrooms should be places where professors and students have collaborative relationships with one another.

-ME VISITING MR. RANDLE YEARS LATER AFTER HS GRADUATION BECAUSE I NEEDED HIS MENTORING

Hooks argues that we need an education that heals an uninformed, unknowing spirit. Many of us have had classes in the past with no excitement—just boring lecturing—and the banking system was implemented (and most of the time, we don’t even remember the teacher’s name). The concept of self‑actualization is very relevant because teachers and students must understand that learning is not just in the mind. As Hooks explains, self‑actualization is the process of becoming fully alive, a learning process that requires all aspects of a whole person, not just the intellectual. Hooks’s writing is always a self‑reflective practice that enlightens me not only intellectually, but spiritually and mentally. My biggest reflection from Hooks is that education is a form of liberation. Education is transformative. Learning is blooming and evolving.

Murray’s article, “Teach Writing as a Process, Not a Product,” leans more toward the pedagogical aspect of writing. I really like his idea of teaching the writer instead of correcting the writing. His argument is that students need to be taught writing as a process, rather than through the usual methods some English teachers use, such as grading grammar, focusing on errors, and critiquing structure. Sometimes it almost feels like teachers compare students’ writing to professional literature. I reflect that teachers shouldn’t respond as judges; instead, they should respond as readers to help students (the writers) clarify meaning. Murray’s argument is very relevant because it inspires students to develop their own writing process and voice. Hooks’s and Murray’s ideas connect because they both view learning as a living process. They both believe it’s a process that involves humanity, discovering our voice, and growing not only academically, but mentally as well. Hooks and Murray reflect on the complexity of being a student in a world where learning is shaped by expectations rather than a process to find one’s voice.

Student Blogs

the one in which i forget (and rediscover) common sense

September 23, 2026 bacaya

I must admit: when initially looking at the titles of our readings this week, I was under the impression that their content would not mesh. It was not like the pairing was an issue to me; I had faith that there was a reason we were reading them now. It was just a small act of noticing. Perhaps I had this idea that the teaching of craft would stay focused on just that—craft—and that the idea of liberation and social justice in the classroom were separate issues. I cannot tell you why I thought that. In hindsight, I was wrong.

First, though, I would like to examine Murray’s idea of the writing process as “discovery through language”. For most of my life, I was under the impression that we should only write what we know. It was advice I had heard both online and in creative writing classrooms—how could you write about what you don’t know? Oddly enough, the time I learned to do the opposite lines up with the time I really began to learn how to write. In a class with my mentor, Edi Giunta (there will be no shortage of her appearances in my blog posts, I apologize in advance), I was told to write what I don’t know. It was an idea I struggled with at first. It feels shameful to have to admit you don’t know something. For a while, I resisted this advice, and came into class with the idea that I knew what I wanted to write about, and that I would not stray from it. I told myself that I had been wanting to tell that story for so long, and I would tell it, memoir best practices be damned. In reality, that piece of writing had already been turned over in my head over and over again. The narrative was set in stone, so to say. I now know I had to dip into the unknown to be able to come back and tell the story as faithfully as I could.

Even in non-academic writing, the process of discovery is irreplaceable. While reading, I was reminded that the course titles for English 101 and 102 at NJCU were not just titled something along the lines of “English Composition”, but rather “Critical Reading and Writing”—emphasis on the critical. I look back on those classrooms now and see Murray’s implications of teaching process all throughout them. I think about the ways I’ve encouraged my students to just write—to not worry about the assignment, to just get their thoughts on paper. The way I’ve been taught to let them grapple with not knowing. To not jump in and try to guide them a certain way. To, as Murray so eloquently puts it, just shut up. It is beautiful when it works.

However, I am cognizant that this ideal practice might not be realistic—at least, not yet, and maybe not for a long time. While reading bell hooks, I thought about the kinds of students and classmates I had. On one end, I think about my high school classmates. Many of my classmates, including myself, were the top achievers during our middle and elementary school years. Many of them came from families who could afford to put money into education and extracurriculars. If we committed ourselves to education, we were all but guaranteed placements in Ivy Leagues and prestigious internships. School was a chance at power. This, however, meant a suffocating school environment. Advanced placement was expected, not exceptional. If you were not staying after school for extra classes or resume-ready extracurriculars, you were falling behind. You did not, could not, think of school as a place where it was safe to discover.

On the other end of the spectrum are the peers I had in undergraduate. I think it is safe to say that college was also their chance at power, albeit of a different kind. If my high school classmates had the privilege of time to dedicate to their studies, in college, time was a resource often stretched too thin. I am cognizant of the fact that NJCU was seen as a “safety school” to many. Most of our students attended because it was cheap, or the school was nearby. Our demographic is very different from the kinds of people I knew in high school. I had many students who believed they had to conform to the traditional path: go to college, get a degree, get a high paying job. However, many of these students also faced additional outside pressures. They were the breadwinners of their family. They had siblings or parents to tend to. They were the first to attend college. Because of this, school was just something they had to do. Their focus was the degree at the end of it all. I had many conversations with students who wished they could take the time to sit down and do the kind of learning that would help them, but more often than not, schoolwork—and discovery through writing—was last on their list of priorities.

In class, we talked about new writing technologies—generative artificial intelligence. Generative AI allows learners to skip the process, the most liberating part of education, in favor of the product. What is so disappointing is that I can see students from both ends of the spectrum falling victim to this. When you have been told your entire life that you must go to school to better your social standing rather than to learn, it is easy to justify cutting out the parts of the journey that don’t seem to support that goal. The unfamiliar is scary. Why should I risk being vulnerable when I can just plug in a prompt into AI and go? It gives me my time back. It ensures I turn something in rather than nothing. It is safe.

In an ideal world, everyone has experienced the joy that I’ve been able to experience in the classroom. Everyone has the resources to go to school for the love of learning, rather than out of necessity. Everyone is free of pressure, free of fear of vulnerability. At the beginning of my reflection, I wrote about my initial confusion about the two articles. I now assume I must have known somewhere in my subconscious how they were connected: through the idea that the ability to deeply pursue the craft of writing is intrinsically tied to the state of the human being.

Student Blogs

Rhetoric and the Engfish

September 17, 2026 Zach Martin

So this week’s read was quite the mixed bag, Dear Reader. On one hand, it was really enlightening because it was so relevant to my career field. On the other hand, it was painful because it was so relevant to my career field.

Now it goes without saying that there are a lot of issues with the way that we teach, because I want to be as broad as humanly possible, English. Despite the fact that this piece was written in 2006, it aged startlingly well. While there would have been no possible way for McComiskey to have known the absolutely earth shattering, pedagogically shifting, classroom breaking, shifts that we would face in the forms of: the rise of social media, the fall in media literacy, and the utter monstrosity that is Artificial Intelligence. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

There were a couple things that definitely stood out to me.

Issue #1: Teachers don’t know the content

While, I do think that it is pretty funny that they say it so bluntly, there is a really depressing truth to it. In all of the classes I have taken, both while I was majoring in education and my alt route courses, they never really focused on rhetoric. If I am being completely honest, those classes only really focused on lesson plans and Danielson. It is expected/implied that we will learn rhetoric in our content specific class, it rarely happens like that. It’s one of those things that sounds really good on paper or at a board meeting but it doesn’t happen like that in life.

Education majors are still people.

If it is easier to pass a children’s lit class than a rhetoric class, 9 times out of 10 *Not actual statistics* the educator to be will take the easier class. I have coworkers that never needed to study rhetoric, despite its relevance to the curriculum.

It’s a sad truth of the profession; due to complacency, many teachers can’t provide the instruction they should.

Issue #2: Grammatical correctness and grades

So I’m going to expose myself a bit. I used to be one of those “Erm actually…” grammar police people. Now, I did it because I was a know-it-all brat; however, now that I’m a teacher, I see the real time impact of enforcing grammatical correctness.

I’ve had plenty of students who can convey their thoughts and ideas verbally. They don’t care about following norms. They don’t care about punctuation (mainly because they aren’t writing). They don’t care about any of that.

The only thing that matters is getting their point across.

One of my best/most verbal students was one of my lowest scoring students. While she struggled with certain aspects of writing, she could convey her thought like no joke. She would also pick up on themes and ideas unlike anybody else’s business.

I think that by focusing on grammatical correctness, we deter students from interacting with not only the text, but also with their classmates.

There is also the issue of grades.

I hate grades, and I hate grading. Point blank, period.

Whenever I give an assignment that will be graded, students will do whatever they can to find the straightest path to 100. They don’t feel a need to go above and beyond. They don’t think outside the rubric. They just check boxes. The amount of times I’ve heard, “Mr. Martin, I wrote [X] words but my story isn’t done, what do I do?”

What do you mean, what do you do?

Keep writing.

But it is easier to squeeze blood from a stone, than to get a student to complete more work than the rubric asks.

And, again, one of my best students, pretty regularly, scored low. A lot of students, had they been in her spot, would have just given up on themselves. Why put in effort if I am only going to fail?

Again, I hate grades.

Both of these also tie into academic writing, which clashes with the student’s normal voice.

Issue #3: Engfish