Meet Elesha West, she’s a recent grad of Baylor University in Waco,Texas. During her undergraduate career she studied Medical Humanities and Religion. Over the years she has been actively involved in outreach and evangelism ministry in the capacity of running a summer outreach program for the south suburbs of Chicago for six consecutive years. She did Mission Work in Haiti, Croatia, Washington, D.C. , and Detroit and worked as Assistant Director for Chicago Urban Outreach.
Elesha is currently a first semester grad student in the dual Master of Divinity/ Master of Pastoral Counseling Programs.
I am so excited to start this new journey with the Loyola community. While in undergrad I was enrolled Church History and Old Testament. So, I have some knowledge of the history and the Bible, but I am eager to learn more on a greater level.
What do you do outside of class?
I love traveling, going to plays and culture events, and anything to do with water (I love the beach!).
Any spots on campus or in Chicago that you like the most?
If I had to pick a spot in Chicago I like the most is anywhere sitting in front of the lakefront. Often times I will go up north and sit by the water for hours.
A favorite book, or one that impacted you and why?
The Healers Calling- Daniel Sulmasy- focuses on professionals administering healthcare from a holistic perspective . I enjoy topics such as health care from a Christian perspective, end of life care, suffering, and medical ethics.
Any advice you would give students about how to get the most out of their education?
Ask a lot of questions and submit yourself to someone bigger and better to you! Learn from those who are doing what you would like to do.
What do you do outside of school?
I currently work part-time at Arrupe College of Loyola University and Cornerstone Christian Center.
What is your favorite quote?
Proverbs 31: 17-18 – She equips herself with strength [spiritual, mental, and physical fitness for her God-given task] And makes her arms strong.18 She sees that her gain is good; Her lamp does not go out, but it burns continually through the night [she is prepared for whatever lies ahead].
What are your plans for after graduation?
When my program is over, I aspire to open up my own counseling practice focusing on family counseling and adolescents. My desire is to see other young people lay their life down for the church, unashamed, unhindered, and free to do what God has called them to do. Also, to be on pastoral staff at a local church as an evangelism/teaching pastor.
Victor Hugo once wrote that “contemplating shadows is a serious thing.” And to a large degree, I think that’s what this panel is an effort to do, to fix our collective gazes upon marginalized communities who are living at the existential peripheries of an interconnected and interdependent world. That is to say, to those dwelling in the shadows.
Hopefully, we all likely realize that this panel and the Jesuit Refugee Services concert series with which it is connected are intentionally tied to Lampedusa for a very specific reason: It was there that in the pope’s first official visit outside of Rome, he lamented the “globalization of indifference” which continues to fail to turn its sights upon the countless refugees and displaced persons around the world in search of security, opportunity, and dignity.
In case some people here are not aware, the tiny island off the coast of Sicily is an entry point for the desperate and destitute to gain a first foothold into Europe. People living on the precipitous edge of subsistence existence with nothing more than they can carry are common images from this rocky outcrop in the Mediterranean, as are rows of coffins of recovered bodies, and the wreckage of any kind of floating vessel you can imagine littering the tiny island. The highlight of the trip was the pope’s memorial and comments given in a makeshift “boat cemetery.” The destabilization of places like Libya and Tunisia, as well as further south in Africa and east towards Egypt and Syria have led tens of thousands of people to risk what is now the deadliest migratory route in the world across the waves, where hundreds die at a time. And yet, so many in the world react as if this is not of their concern….. there is, as the pope put it, a “globalization of indifference.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” they seem to echo Cain in callously asking.
Their ambivalence is now being superseded in many quarters by outright hostility.
That day the pope made clear:
“The blood of the lifeless cries out to me, says the Lord. What have you done?
This is not a question directed to others; it is a question directed to me, to you, to each of us. These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God!”
What then, if any, is the responsibility of a Jesuit, Catholic institution of higher ed, such as Loyola, to address this “indifference”? Are we called to “contemplate these shadows” of their difficult plight, and if so, what resources, whether intellectual, theological, or material do we have to respond?
First, Christians are given an unambiguous mandate to care for the widow, oppressed, and exile in their scriptures. The xenophobia (fear of foreigners, strangers, aliens, travelers) that is bandied about in our political discourse is rarely counterbalanced by the antidote put forward in the Old and New Testaments. There we find the explicit call to “philoxenia” (love of foreigners, strangers, aliens, travelers). In fact, the entire Christian experience is one of pilgrimage-movement-exile, the first Christians were called practitioners of The Way, all of religious life can in some sense be seen, as Thomas Tweed has put it, as the sort of complementary mutually-informing experiences of crossing and dwelling. We move from darkness toward light, from sin toward redemption, from history toward eternity, a process of unfolding, migration, movement. And in so doing we find resettlement, home, community, “our true native land to be” as the English translation of St. Thomas’s O Salutaris Hostia puts it. So we, as the inheritors of the Christian and Ignatian tradition, are in fact a people of exile, a people received and interwoven into and in solidarity with: a wider vista of community than the provincial and nativist among us would like us to admit. We are all refugees, who seek shelter in the transcendent and in the experience of authentic humanity. Whoever receives you, receives me, says Christ. And Matthew’s gospel makes clear that on the Last Day we will be judged according to how we treat the exile. How prophetic do Jesus’s words ring out when read metaphorically with the rise of today’s majority world: “At the judgment, the queen of the south will rise up against this current generation and condemn it.”
In addition to these biblical mandates, the whole history of Catholic Social Teaching prioritizes the necessity of working for justice, peace, and the common good, with a preferential option for the poor. Theologians like Gutierrez and Boff have consistently argued that the primary issues of our day for all men and women of good will do not revolve around those described as “non-believers” so much as those who societal forces name as “non-persons.” Chief among these are the staggering number of refugees and displaced persons, who the powers that be continue to insist are invisible, irredeemable, and thus, inadmissible (anywhere).
Our commitment cannot stem from a patronizing sense of charity, drawn from privileged largesse, but as the Arrupe College initiative here at Loyola makes clear, it is a moral imperative that all in our community work with, learn from, and better understand ourselves through solidarity with marginalized communities…much more than simply a mandate to “help” the disadvantaged.
However, in this vein, I may surprise some of you here, because I do in fact think we need a wall. A “big, beautiful, powerful” wall. Completely impenetrable. It’s the only way we can make our people great again, recover our true patrimony and protect our historic culture. And, I agree that we ought not be the ones responsible for its construction, someone else ultimately will be the one underwriting it, and be willing to do so to boot.
“For the Lord said to Jeremiah: If you utter what is worthwhile and not what is vile then I will make you unto this people into a fortified wall of bronze; they shall fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you. For I am with you, to save you and deliver you, says the Lord. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.” (Jeremiah 15).
Thus we are called, as both Christian and Americans, to serve as a prophetic “wall of bronze” against hatred, racism, fear of the unknown or protectionism. Hardness of heart and narrowness of mind are not excuses for putting polic
ies ahead of people.
We must stand firm against those who tell us to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, to the myopia infecting a world that wants desperately to somehow un-remember or rationalize away those troublesome words on the statue of liberty, forged in the crucible of a world torn asunder by hatred and division:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Do we have the courage to stand as a brass wall against those intellectual vandals who rush headlong toward this New Colossus with pitchforks and crowbars to deface our national identity? Is America (in relationship with her allies around the world) still “the mother of exiles”? How do we balance legitimate concerns about national
security and internal peacekeeping with those “tired and poor, homeless and tempest-tossed” we pledged to welcome, without fear-mongering allegations that they could not be properly “vetted?” The answer lies in speaking what is worthwhile and not what is vile.
As members of the Loyola community we are called to recognize the value and dignity of all God’s people, especially the most vulnerable, the “bruised hurting and dirty” — the same adjectives Pope Francis uses to describe the church as a “field hospital” can be seen in the faces of Syrian children in shelters and ambulances. We must offer our time, talent, and treasure in support of those in the shadows of death. We cannot fall prey to false narratives where all victims of war and systems of violence are equal, but some victims are more equal than others, to borrow an Orwellian phrase.Can Christians see in the church and its partners like Loyola (of course enthusiastically open to people of all faiths and none) a reflection of those divine attributes we acknowledge with all children of Abraham: a defense for the defenseless, a refuge in the day of distress, a fortress, a shield and a stronghold? For the breath of the ruthless, as Isaiah puts it, is no more than “rain against a wall.”
Let us always remember that we are that wall, and thus Make Christian Witness Great Again.
-Dr. Michael Canaris | Profesor at Loyola University Chicago, Institute of Pastoral Studies | Theologian
A university as a straight line from the Jesuits must point to a global formation, not only intellectual, a formation of the whole human person. In fact if the university becomes simply an academy of ideas or a «factory» of professionals or a mentality centered on business prevails in its structure then it is truly off the path. We have the [Spiritual] Exercises in hand. Here’s the challenge: take the university on the path of the Exercises. This means risking on the truth, and not on the «closed truth» that no one discusses. The truth of the encounter with people is open and requires that we let ourselves make enquiries truly from reality. And the Jesuit university must be involved with the real life of the Church and the Nation: also this is reality, in fact. A particular attention must be always be given to the marginalized, to the defense of those have more need of being protected. And this—it is clear—is not being a Communist: it is simply being truly involved with reality. In this case, in particular a Jesuit university must be fully involved with reality expressing the social thought of the Church. The free-market thought that removes man and woman from the center and puts money at the center is not ours. The doctrine of the Church is clear and it must move forward in this sense. – Pope Francis
This was drawn from a recent conversation with Pope Francis. With the Jesuits now gathered in their General Congregation to elect a new superior and to map out the future initiatives and strategies of the Society of Jesus, and the nation involved in an obviously polemical presidential campaign, join the whole community of IPS – students, faculty, staff, and alumni – in praying that the Holy Spirit guide us toward fulfilling this mandate.Let us follow our individual vocation to work for the in-breaking reign of God and to share our particular and collective charisms, thus playing our part in living the witness to which each of us is called.Let us never abandon our role to serve as prophets, ministers, educators, and disciples, or forsake the gospel for comfort, pride, wealth, or power. Let us live lives of justice, peace, solidarity, and holiness, realizing always that “Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
Dr. Michael Canaris
10-12-2016|Comments Off on What is the role of the Jesuit universities?
Grace Girardot is a current student in the MA in Social Justice program. When she is not busy working in Water Tower Campus Ministry as a Grad Assistant or doing her school work, you can find her doing yoga, cooking, being outside, attempting to play piano or guitar, knitting and trolling used book and record stores for hidden treasures. To learn more about Grace and her experience as a student, please continue to read below.
What is a little of your background?
I am a Chicago area native, hailing from the western suburbs. When I was 18, I was transplanted to South Bend, IN, where I attended the University of Notre Dame for my undergraduate years. Although I am a die-hard Fighting Irish fan, I got a lot more out my time in South Bend than simply the football seasons. I studied Spanish, Latino Studies and Poverty Studies. During this time I developed a deep love of Latin American Literature and music, which forced me to examine themes of marginality and otherness. Through service learning experiences abroad as well as in South Bend, I was able to deepen my interest in these topics, which has eventually led me to pursue the MA in Social Justice at IPS.
Why Loyola?
I chose to pursue the MA in Social Justice at Loyola due to the unique emphasis on faith as being the foundation upon which we understand the work of social justice. As an undergraduate leading service learning immersion seminars, I had relied on the tools and language that Catholic social teaching provided to help students (and myself) name the sensations that we were experiencing. Just as on an airplane you must secure your own oxygen mask before helping those around you, I wanted to continue to build up my own lens of CST, so that I would better be able to help others to identify their experiences through that same lens.
What have you learned by studying at IPS?
By studying at IPS, I have learned how to reimagine the world. I continue to learn about the complexity of the interconnectedness of our relationships with our environment, others, God and ourselves, and how these complexities relate to certain themes and events that we experience in the world today.
What is your favourite quote?
I am torn between two. Both are relatively short. “Thou mayest.” –John Steinbeck, East of Eden “The strength of a tree lies in its ability to bend.” –Zen Proverb
Tell us one fun fact about you.
I know how to hula dance.
What is the best compliment that someone has given you?
I think the best compliment that someone has given me is not necessarily something they have stated verbally but through their actions. I feel most humbled and flattered when friends, students, or family members show their trust in me by asking for help, advice, or coming to me to chat about their innermost ponderings.
IPS students are uniting to create change for a health issue that is affecting millions of families and children across the country and they are asking you to support the mission too. Among them is Emily Benfer (IPS social justice certificate student, clinical professor of law, and the director of the Health Justice Project) who wrote a piece about this issue that was recently published in the New York Times. In addition, there is Alicia Crosby (MASJ ’16) who recently drafted an email, making the points below.
Children across the country are developing lead poisoning and suffering from the devastating and permanent harm it causes. Over 1.6 million families with children in federally assisted housing across America are at risk of exposure to lead hazards because outdated federal policies, in place since the 1990’s, fail to protect them. It’s clear that we must call this crisis what it is – a lead epidemic. The lead present in these homes, as well as in pipes and soil, creates environments in which Black children are nearly 3x more likely than their white peers to have elevated blood lead levels. The crises we see in Flint, Michigan as well as those emerging in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other locales are just the tip of the iceberg. Join the Health Justice Project at Loyola University Chicago and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law as they work to elevate public awareness and mobilize communities to take action to alleviate this epidemic’s irreversible effects.
You can help end the lead epidemic and protect our children’s futures. There are a number of ways you can connect to this movement for change.
Inform yourself and others on the root causes of and solutions to the lead epidemic by reading and sharing these articles:
Sign the petitions! The Health Justice Project is working with ColorofChange.org and Groundswell to raise public consciousness about this and encourage civic engagement.
Contact your Congresspeople and remind them of their duty to protect children from harm and to end the lead epidemic! Millions of children have endured irreparable brain damage as a result of lead poisoning. We need to say to Congress “No more; not one more child!” The Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act of 2016 (HR4694/S2631) will make critical changes to federal policy and better prevent lead poisoning. Encourage your elected officials to join Sen. Durbin (D-IL), Sen. Menendez (D-NJ), Rep. Quigley (D-IL), Rep. Ellison (D-MN), and the growing number of Congressional leaders who support the end of the lead epidemic.
Get your community involved! Your organization or congregation can endorse the effort to end lead poisoning in federally assisted housing. Join the Health Justice Project and the 30+ groups who have committed to supporting the push for lead safe housing.
Join in for digital action during key points in the campaign! Email healthjustice@luc.edu if you want to participate in social media storms making policymakers as well as civic and faith leaders aware of the need for lead safe housing and other measures to address this lead crisis affecting so many. Feel free to join in at any time or to tweet at/tag people when using the following hashtags: #LeadEpidemic #PoisonInOurWalls #LeadSafeHousing.
Get updates via social media! This movement can be followed on Twitter (@LeadSafeHousing & @e_catalyst) and at this Facebook page.
By drawing attention to this issue, the Health Justice Project hopes to inspire people to pursue justice within their own communities so that our most vulnerable, our children, can live healthy lives and reach their fullest potentials. No family should have to choose between having a home or protecting a child’s health.
James Mastaler, a PhD candidate here at Loyola University Chicago and a graduate of the MA in Social Justice program, recently submitted an article to the Catholic Theological Union’s request for proposals to a special edition on “Ecology & Religion” in New Theology Review: A Catholic Journal of Theology and Ministry. The article was accepted and has now been published. Jim is also chair of the alumni committee for the IPS Advisory Council. Great work, Jim!
To read the article, please click here:
“The Role of Christian Ethics, Religious Leaders, and People of Faith at a Time of Ecological and Climate Crisis”
This semester in the IPS Foundations of Social Justice course, students began the semester by thinking about what it means to teach and learn. They were challenged to not only think of themselves as students or learners, but also as teachers who will share the knowledge they learn as they practice social justice in their communities. This week we’re featuring some of their reflections on teaching and learning at IPS.
As part of the Masters of Divinity program, students participate in a Field Education experience. This experience is comprised of a yearlong internship and weekly group gatherings in which members of the group present case studies that are then discussed by the whole group. It is within this context that I experienced education as a transformational, liberating, empowering, communal, engaging, and curiosity-filled process. It is also within this context that I experienced teachers as learners and learners as teachers. The leadership roles were fluid and the group engaged in a common purpose that moved and motivated our reflection. This common purpose was one of awareness, understanding, learning, and growing.
bell hooks (1994) in her book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom writes so much of education as a practice and process that frees, liberates, empowers, excites/enthuses, and engages.
hooks writes of education as a communal effort when writing, “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interests in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence” (p 8). In reflection, the field education group was not trying to transfer knowledge. Rather, they were walking with me, in community, to help me see and discover those things that were otherwise hidden to me. The communal activity of sharing and engaging story helped me to work through my own story, be present with it, engage it, look at its various dimensions, interact with it, allow it to speak to me and me to it, and then work towards some sort of resolution.
When preparing a case study, we were asked to look for moments in our experience of ministry that challenged us, made us uncomfortable, brought us joy, and, essentially, left us thinking, “What the heck is this all about?”
The case studies began with experience and curiosity. I had many, many cases that brought me right up against fear, uncertainty, and confusion. Often my identity as a person and as a minister was brought under the microscope and, always, I was being asked to take a critical look at myself.
Paulo Freire (1998) beautifully writes about curiosity in his book, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, saying,
“Curiosity as restless questioning, as movement toward the revelation of something hidden, as question verbalized or not, as a search for clarity, as moment of attention, suggestion, and vigilance, constitutes an integral part of the phenomenon of being alive. There could be no creativity without curiosity that moves us and set us patiently impatient before a world that we did not make, to add to it something of our making” (p 37-38).
This beautifully written statement was true of my experience of field education. The curiosity embedded in the very process of the work of field education, of critically examining cases in ministry, led to a sense of wonder and awe that resulted from the sharing of story and communal learning that took place. The type of questioning the took place “forced” us, in a way, to be very honest with ourselves and with one another as we, together, searched for the hidden treasures, questioned, and noticed the movements at play.
More than anything, though, this process gave my classmates and me a passion for curiosity. To be curious is to know, and to have a passion for knowing, that the world is full of things yet to be seen, grasped, explored, learned, and understood. As Freire suggests, this process is never quite done.
Thank goodness for that, too! The business of curiosity is the business of passion. It is what moves and motivates, it is what yearns, it is what makes us alive, and it is what grants us the hope that anything is possible.
—
Abby Gapinski is a Master of Divinity student in her third year of the program. She currently works at St. Gertrude parish as a youth minister.
11-01-2013|Comments Off on Teaching and Learning: Field Education and the Business of Curiosity
This semester in the IPS Foundations of Social Justice course, students began the semester by thinking about what it means to teach and learn. They were challenged to not only think of themselves as students or learners, but also as teachers who will share the knowledge they learn as they practice social justice in their communities. This week we’re featuring some of their reflections on teaching and learning at IPS.
I cannot believe that I am starting this blog post with a confession, but here goes nothing. I’m an over-achieving perfectionist. Why would I start with such a confession? Well, after reading the progressive works of Pablo Freire, Sarah Amsler, bell hooks and Sharon Welch, I realized that while perfectionism could be sometimes seen as such a desirable character trait in academic settings, and in fact it has pushed me in many ways, it has actually been my greatest stumbling block.
In my high school classes and my early years of undergraduate work, I saw the classroom as yet another way to prove, mostly to my insecure self, that I was excellent, hard-working, and, if I applied myself enough, maybe even close to perfect. With this mindset, though, I also thought I would eventually learn something along the way, but the goal of learning never took precedent over the most important goal: the good grade. If I got a good enough grade, then that meant I must have learned something, right? After reading Freire, I realized that, pushed by my perfectionistic tendencies, I lived within, what he calls, the “banking system” of education but had no personal stake or interest in actually being “engaged in a continuous transform,” which Freire claims is “true learning” (33). Who knew that my own fear of failure had kept me from transformation?
Just like for hooks, who speaks of educators in her early educational life that “were on a mission” and impacted how she thought about learning, I feel like I had such encounter once I attended Georgetown. Andria Wisler, my sophomore year Justice and Peace Studies professor, revolutionized my previously held thoughts and feelings toward the goals of a formal education. Operating from a largely Freirian, non-violent educational pedagogy, Andria forced me to fail and be uncomfortable, which was all I needed to actually begin to learn. Hooks claims, “any radical pedagogy must insist that everyone’s presence is acknowledged.” Andria firmly practiced such pedagogy, to my own dismay. My perfectionism, up until this point in the classroom, expressed itself as hiding, keeping my head down, and memorizing in order to regurgitate exactly what the professor emptied into my consciousness, because in previous classes that would give me the best grade. I would never want to participate out of fear that what I had to say would not sound enlightened or would basically be wrong. Well, Andria decided to do things differently. She created a classroom environment in which everyone’s voices were expected to be heard and valued. Essentially, this course began as my worst nightmare but ended as the mark of my first real educational experience.
I did not have to know the ‘right’ answer or any answer at all to have my voice heard. The classroom became a place for me that was defined by failing, or what I began to understand as experimenting, more than it was about achieving unattainable perfection. I fully understand Freire’s claim that “the necessary requirements for correct thinking is a capacity for not being overly convinced of one’s own certitudes.” Through this conversion and transformation process within my education, I now understand the need for people that want to be involved in communal or society change to be open to failing and changing within their own lives. My short time within the MA in Social Justice and Community Development program at Loyola University of Chicago has continued this educational transformation and reinforced my beliefs that hands-on experience and the willingness to fail are the marks of a genuine and committed learner. Welch concludes her first chapter in After the Empire with a quote that speaks to the importance in life and in social justice work of recognizing our own and others’ capacities for being wrong, which I will try to remember during any experience or even the courses I take at Loyola. Welch writes, “I and every person, movement, group and institution that I trust can be deeply, profoundly, tragically wrong.” Through accepting that notion, I am able to think critically and deeply allowing the information I encounter to transform me personally. Freire would probably say that I have finally begun to really learn.
— Mackensey Carter is a first year dual degree (MSW/ MASJCD) student at Loyola University Chicago. After completing her BA in Theology at Georgetown University, she moved to Chicago to participate in a year of post-grad service through a faith-based program called Amate House. During this year, she worked at parish’s after school program for middle school and high school students in the Mckinley Park neighborhood. She hopes to work specifically with social justice issues relating to racial reconciliation and the prevention of youth violence in the city of Chicago.
10-31-2013|Comments Off on Teaching and Learning: “I’m an Over-Achieving Perfectionist”
This semester in the IPS Foundations of Social Justice course, students began the semester by thinking about what it means to teach and learn. They were challenged to not only think of themselves as students or learners, but also as teachers who will share the knowledge they learn as they practice social justice in their communities. This week we’re featuring some of their reflections on teaching and learning at IPS.
It was a typical Tuesday morning. My 20 teammates and I had awoken before the sun and stumbled our way over to the weight room, using our cold breath as a guide. Many of us had been up late the night before (reading, writing papers, catching up with friends and family). As a result, when we spotted each other during bench presses, it wasn’t uncommon to see “crusties“ in each other’s eyes, or toothpaste smudged across our chins from a quick morning brush.
Most mornings I could go back to my room after these crack of dawn workouts. Change my clothes, wash my face, and give my teeth a proper brushing – maybe even fit in a solid 30-minute mid-morning nap before enjoying a buffet breakfast in the Wege cafeteria.
Not on Tuesdays, however: there was something better in store.
Tuesdays were a rush. Just as the sun started to rise, I would power walk out of the weight room to the main Academic Building. My peers (much like myself a couple hours earlier) would be groggily climbing the stairs to the ivy covered building, wondering, begrudgingly, why on earth they signed up for an 8am class.
My clothes still sweaty and hair damp, tightly twisted into a bun on top of my head, I made my way up to our second floor classroom. The chairs were arranged in a circle. Sometimes it was hard to find an opening and we acrobatically threw our book bags into the middle and jumped our way into a seat. There was no teacher desk – it was not needed. The professor, Dr. Jennifer Dawson, joined right in.
Before reading Friere, Amsler, and Welch, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I’d been blessed from kindergarten through undergraduate studies with passionate teachers. Educators who were experts in their fields, whether it be teaching multiplication tables or dissecting “The Wasteland.” Many seemed to genuinely love their jobs, and equally so, were invested in educating their students. There was something about Dr. Dawson, however, that made her stand out from the rest. In Friere’s words, she lived out his belief that, “Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.” Her mind was brilliant, but so was her heart. Because of this, she had the ability to educate my mind as a teacher, and educated my heart in her ability to be a student.
Dr. Dawson’s class was a seminar on Margaret Atwood. I had previously read only some of Atwood’s poetry, and I came into the class with no real expectations.
Each week became a spiritual experience. We came into class, formed our circle, and with an opening sentence, “So what did you guys think?” our class would begin. When I or a classmate shared a comment, Dr. Dawson would look them intensely in the eye. Not the eye of an examining authority, but the eyes like that of a mother. One who has absolutely every intention on hearing what you have to say. If your comments offered a genuine insight that clearly reflected your time and effort spent digging into the words, it wasn’t uncommon for Dr. Dawson to respond, “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!”
She allowed her emotions to shine through. She told us sections of books that always made her cry. Themes that left her up at night, worrying about the future of her children. Certain quotations and threaded motifs that identified what she considered the mark of a genius writer. She shared her intellectual mastery, but also her intimate vulnerability. In response, my classmates and I took on the individual challenge to do the same.
For all intents and purposes, this class could be considered an accelerated book club. Dr. Dawson would provide historical and literary tidbits to provide a deeper context, but the majority of our classes were group discussions of the book at hand. As Amsler and Welch suggest, she was radical in her trust and willingness to allow us, the students, guide the flow of the class. One person would offer up a quotation of interest, and others would start uncovering another piece, another connection. The purpose of this class was not to “transfer knowledge” but to embrace “creating possibilities” (Friere).
This to me was perhaps the most meaningful of educational experiences. Because my voice was valued, I felt a responsibility to dive into our class materials, to make connections that could be offered in class and see if anyone else made the same connection. After all, we were the teachers just as much as Dr. Dawson (something I have only recently come to understand).
As a result, the themes, topics, and questions we discussed in this class nearly four years ago are still among the freshest in mind. They stuck. Not simply because I felt my voice was valued, but also as Welch suggests, I was diving into the social awareness of the themes at hand. Hearing how they were played out in my classmates and how they play out in our society at large.
Needless to say, it was worth every smudge of toothpaste left on my face.
— Monica Rischiotto is originally from Portland, OR and just finished up a year in Detroit as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corp where she worked with school gardening programs in Detroit Public Schools. She studied English and Community Leadership at Aquinas College (Grand Rapids, MI) and feels extremely honored and privileged to continue her studies at the graduate level through LUC’s Social Justice & Community Development program.
10-30-2013|Comments Off on Teaching and Learning: Discussing Poetry at the Crack of Dawn
This semester in the IPS Foundations of Social Justice course, students began the semester by thinking about what it means to teach and learn. They were challenged to not only think of themselves as students or learners, but also as teachers who will share the knowledge they learn as they practice social justice in their communities. This week we’re featuring some of their reflections on teaching and learning at IPS.
Many people praise the unique capability of the parrot to reproduce faithfully different sound, even of human beings. My education, in most cases, expected me to memorize and repeat information uploaded into my head by the teacher. In general the pedagogy applied by my schools system did not instill personal and social transformation. I deal here with a rare occasion that transformed me and how it is relates to our course readings.
The image of parrot is a good symbol of for my education as a “recording machine”. Most of the time in primary, high school and at university in DR Congo, a student is required to read, memorize, and reproduce – without mistake – volumes of books, which often are dated from the last half of the last century. This education is a colonial heritage, and it has never undergone any major change since it was designed. The system never intended to form independent persons capable of transforming society. The intention of the designers of the educational system to which I was exposed was not to foster a critical mind but to prepare people who will fill the gap in the colonial administration.
In this regard, my experience in this area is similar to bell hooks’ experience after the racial integration period: ‘The banking system of education (based on the assumption that memorizing information and regurgitating it represented gaining knowledge that could be deposited, stored and used at a later date) did not interest me’ (bell hooks 1994, 5).
The learning experience that deeply transformed me happened in a workshop prior to an internship experience in South Africa. During this meeting, I was expecting the speaker to lecture us on a set of methods, attitudes, and formulas to say to people, much likemy previous educational experiences. On the contrary, he talked only for fifteen minutes, and what did he say? “You are all that these people out there need. They need your compassion, your energy, your creativity, your intelligence – and your silence, if words are not enough or if you don’t understand the local language (this was my case). After these few words, the group was set to start the experience.
I was shocked and disappointed with the speaker. I asked many people wondering if that is all that he had to tell us. I became very insecure because he shared so little information. But when I arrived in the terrain, people didn’t come with problems related to philosophy or highly disputed theological topics. They came with daily living situations: unemployment, hunger, and sickness; the stigma of HIV/AIDS, of having been raped, of drug addiction. Confronted by these existential problems, neither words nor theory was enough. What was most important was simply being present. It is then that I understood the relevance of the speaker’s words, his simplicity and lack of an authoritative tune. I understood that I am the first asset needed in that context – not an encyclopedic knowledge, but my wholeness. This experience changed my view on what the world is expecting from me: to be present not only with my head but my whole person. I related this newfound understanding with my faith experience. This is exactly what Jesus professed in coming to stay with us:
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, my God’ (Hebrew 10:5-7).
God made me in His image with freedom and free will. Why then should I be imprisoned by a ‘banking system’ education? These readings made me aware of the disastrous effects education based only on memorization has had on my life. It prevented me from believing in myself. Instead I trusted more in the “information” received. Now I was beginning to understand my discomfort with the shortness of the instructor’s presentation. My reaction was the consequence of my education background which Paulo Freire called “banking system”. This system produces:
Intellectuals who memorize everything, reading for hours on end, slaves to the text, fearful of taking a risk, speaking as if they were reciting from memory, fail to make any concrete connections between what they have read and what is happening in the world, the country, or the local community”(Freire 1998, 34).
I want to regain my dignity, the right of being the primary agent of my formation and transformation. God does not desire sacrifice or burnt offerings. He desires me. He desires a human being, He gave me a body. Through critical pedagogy, I am empowered, my capacities are valued, and I am challenged to challenge the world where I live. I fulfill my destiny, which in St Iranaeus’ words is God’s glory.
The parrot is admired for its capacity of reproducing sound and its place apart from the forest is in the cage. But I am a free man. Not made to live in a cage. My place is in the heart of human failures, struggles and conquests. That is why I would like to forgive my previous school systems, which caged me and made me a dominated person who is ‘crushed, diminished, and converted into a spectator, [maneuvered] by myths which powerful social forces have created’ (Amsler 2013, 70). I ought to follow the example of bell hooks and Sharon D. Welch, who have constantly reflected on their educational heritage and have found creative ways to make difference in history.
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Gauthier Buyidi, SCJ is a first-year MASJCD student from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who seeks to place faith, poverty, justice, peace, development, reconciliation, and conflict resolution in dialogue with one another, particularly in the context of his home country.
10-29-2013|Comments Off on Teaching and Learning: Not a Parrot in a Cage