Although teaching two sections of freshman English means grading twice as many essays, it’s more than compensated by the opportunity to get a second crack at teaching the day’s lesson. After I kick of the rust and get warmed up 3rd period, I have a few hours to reflect on the lesson, take notes, make revisions if necessary, and by the time 8th period comes in, I’m ready to roll. I know what will need extra explanation, I know how long it takes a particular group work activity to become group chatting about the weekend, and I know which jokes will kill and which will bomb (though I still tell the ones that bomb because those belong in an English classroom too).
On Donald Trump's Persistent Intrusions into my ClassroomMy students love to talk about Donald Trump. I encourage them to draw connections between what we're reading and what's going on in the world, and many students' news cycle is dominated by the ever-escalating insanity of Trump soundbites. Most of my students go through cycles of outrage and ridicule; they make jokes, call him an idiot, express exasperation that someone could be saying such hateful things, and, even more troublingly, at the strange, unseen masses that seem to flock to him. Occasionally, the grim possibility of his success settles upon them, "He can't really become president, can he?" And I tell them he cannot, an assurance more informed by my (oft-betrayed, but consistent) hope in the American public than the polls, which remain discouraging.
But these familiar cycles of outrage and ridicule are actually symptomatic of a privileged distance from these toxic, racist attacks. That grim fear that settles on us all is a constant reality for those directly and persistently targeted by the rising tide of xenophobic, especially islamophobic, rhetoric, for which Trump is merely a figurehead. We don't tend to associate this virulent, even violent, islamophobia with places like Philadelphia, a large, progressive, East Coast city with a substantial and vibrant Muslim population, but when racism is validated and normalized in the national discourse, it can embolden individuals to act on their prejudice (like this vandalizing of a North Philly mosque), making an otherwise tolerant community feel unsafe for entire populations. |
Louis FantiniLongtime Student,
First Time Teacher. Archives
March 2016
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