Last Class

Teaching this summer has been exhausting.

Exhausting because so many of the students are taking themselves, and each other, seriously.

Today was the last scheduled class for Service Learning--we dedicated the entire day, as well as Monday, for presentations. The presentations were heady, thick, intelligent, open-minded. I thought we were really becoming co-learners.

In the past I have asked students to follow the same structure as they present: agency, placement assignment and duties, mission, significant moment, connections. That structure gets old quick and seems to get in the way of more self-directed thinking and inquiry.

So this summer I suggested to students that they could shape their presentations any way that they want: they could follow the model just described; or they could invent their own model, perhaps thinking about how they will complete Project #3.

The students presented critical insights of their experiences. They managed to find complicated moments, or frustrations, or moments of contraries. By the end of class, a spontaneous discussion broke out about the state of the world right now, the great chaallenges we currrently face, the growing pressures to become cynical or to doubt that massive revolutionary change will occur.

I listened for 30 minutes at the end, resisting the temptation to provide my limited insight or my teacher's answers.

Finally I spoke. The discussion had been so heady and so rich, so informed an d so right, I didn't want it to end. Neither did they.

We had been discussing the role of hope in a world that seems hopeless, that seems bent on careening into disaster before any meaningful change could possibly occcur.

1.) I noted that one of the most powerful ideas for me this semester had come from Sarah B, who used the word "attentiveness." While admitting that she was overwhelmed by the world and its needs, she also grounded her beliefs in the need to be increasingly "attentive." I like that. It suggests that change can come through increased attentiveness. I think she's right.

2.) I asked students to read Julia S's last 2 forum posts. There she goes beyond her decription of what happened that day and begins to understand the HFH's role in a neighborhood, in a city, for a family, that is not covered with gooey icing. She began to see the complications in these people's lives, the challenges that they face daily. A moment of thick understanding.

3.) I noted that educator Paulo Freire requires that education foicus on transformation, that we change our lives in-the-world. The students this semester have begun that shift.

4.) I thanked the students for their efforts and their energy--that it was and is a privilege to be their teacher. They are leaders.

5.) I noted agaain that awareness and action have been the twin threads of the course. Awreness builds action. I reminded them of Zinn's comment eartlier in the semester, that in the face of continual historical challenges, unexpected change DOES happen.

6.) Alice Walker, James Baldwin and Howard Zinn all mention that we need to love each other. Not The Beatles' kind of love, but a revolutionary love. A deep, fierce love.

7.) The course is just now beginning ! We need to become agents of change, we need to "speak truth to power," we need to carry our growing awareness and attentiveness with us in the world and share it, we nned to discover how to translate that awareness and attentiveness into action.

I thought the students were at their best today.