Teaching Philosophy - the Principle of Empowerment in Action

One assignment I give midway through a course is “Why and How Do You Care?” For an introductory course, this means researching an aspect of a topic that they find particularly compelling or troubling: the pandemic, gun violence, corporate corruption, immigration policies, etc. They must find three sources that support the view they already hold and three sources that offer a different view, with one of the sources coming from their own community (say, an elder, community leader, or local journalist), and at least one international source (in English translation or in another language they happen to read). After reading each carefully, students give presentations on their sources, including why they find them credible and how their thinking has evolved. Finally, students craft a creative piece reflecting on their research. Say, a personal essay or a narrative poem.

At an advanced or graduate level, students are expected to go further—one poetry prompt, for example, asks students to “translate” the research they have conducted into two pieces: one that is a radically lyric work and one that sticks closer to the facts and events in the vein of documentary poetics. At the graduate level, students write a reflective essay that thinks through ongoing discourse regarding documentary poetics and poetry of witness in relation to their own poetics. 

These activities immerse students in considering why they have become invested in a topic, how they are learning about it, and how they might articulate their learning in different forms. I take care to emphasize that any view that dehumanizes people (by race, class, gender…) is not a legitimate perspective, so that as a class we can focus our time and effort on real engagement with social issues. At no point during a course do I want students to be passively taking in information; always I want empowered participation in the making of scholarship and art.