This class can… um…

Maybe at its best, it teaches students a method of interaction. A way of being. Maybe it empowers them to speak and write in their own voice. To pursue what they care about. These are good things.

It’s also a place for students to get personal attention they may need. Many of my students tell me this is the only class they have under 50 people. One of my students is struggling with anxiety, and may never have sought help on his own had I not reached out to Student Health. Now he’s seen a counselor and is getting medication. He’s in class every day, back on track (for the moment). So just me being there and paying attention was helpful.

I think sometimes we overplay the importance of classroom education though. The most valuable parts of college to me were outside, on my own, performing my own experiments in embodied cognition. One of the most popular professors in my college was a real asshole who cultivated a cult of personality predicated on being smarter than everyone else.

At my best, maybe I occupy a sort of antithesis to this rockstar professor archetype, taking power away from the top, God the Father, and disseminating it out to the people. I break my students of their dependence on received institutional wisdom. They learn to think and write for themselves. They begin (or continue) a process of self-actualization which helps them pursue what they love, do good in the world, maybe even save our species from self-inflicted annihilation.

How’s that for a best case scenario?