What teacher does not want to be excellent?
In my teaching experience, I often receive teacher candidates who are eager to be educators who make a difference but think the path to excellence can be summarized in a few key points or steps to be followed. Some of them get frustrated with me when I do not give them the answers they were hoping to get. But the truth is that hospitable education has no predetermined shape or aspect.
Just like having a rainbow flag displayed in the classroom does not necessarily make it a safe environment for LGBTQ students, having refugee students enrolled in the school system of a “safe country” does not necessarily mean they feel welcome in their new context. Although every minority and segregated group deserves attention, my particular focus on refugee students stems from a pervasive “helping imperative” (Heron, 2007) among Whites (educators not exempted) when encountering those who are not “as white,” “as wealthy,” “as Western-minded,” “as native English-speaking,” or “as Canadian” as they are.
The pursuit of social justice in the form of hospitable education requires stepping out of one’s comfort zone. And if you think you already have mastered this step, I am sorry to inform you otherwise: Hospitable education means that this box will never be checked—at least, not by you, the teacher. Simple catchphrases such as “celebrate diversity” or holding a “multicultural potluck” do no service to racially diverse students such as Black refugees if they find themselves confined in White structures.
There is no easy way around. Hospitable education requires ongoing tact, sensitivity, and reflexivity from the teacher. It requires the constant deconstructing of our own choices. What are we explicitly teaching? What are we implicitly teaching? What are we not teaching? What knowledge is considered valid and valuable? Whose knowledge is invalidated? There is no neutrality in education. The answers to these questions reveal our choices, which will inevitably have consequences for the students we receive.
As Maslow’s hierarchy of needs illustrates, shelter and food are certainly some of the basic human needs. However, belonginess, feelings of accomplishment, and self-actualization require more than being physically present in a classroom without the wars or natural disasters that the student might once have experienced.
One may argue that a teacher can do only so much while having to fulfill national and provincial (White) mandates and expectations, but I argue that the role played by the teacher is of utmost importance. Regardless of the subject taught, every teacher–student encounter is an opportunity to foster students’ subjectification (Biesta, 2009), an opportunity to respond to the uniqueness of the Other and to make room for the whole student to flourish.
Today’s blogger is Rebeca Heringer, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and Sessional Instructor at the University of Winnipeg, as well as author of the article “Inhospitable Education in a (Not So) Welcoming Country,” which appears in the October 2021 issue of the Kappa Delta Pi Record. Get free access to the article through the month of January.
References
Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9
Heron, B. (2007). Desire for development: Whiteness, gender, and the helping imperative. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.