Devon Lee

560 McBryde Hall

225 Stanger
Blacksburg, VA 24061
devonlee@vt.edu


Africana Learning Teaching Philosophy

There is a saying in the Black community that reads each one teach one. That statement
advocates that everyone is responsible for community uplift through education. More
importantly, it argues that everyone has something to offer. In that regard community centered
learning has been at the base of the Africana experience. From slaves learning to read so that
they can interpret the bible, to the survival tactics of covert (and overt) subversion and
submission being passed down from generation to generation, to public schools being the
number one drive next to voting after emancipation, collective and experiential learning has been
at the center of Africana pedagogical practices. Africana studies was born out of an activist
tradition, being a seed of the Black Power Movement, and as such, trains intellectuals to be
activist-scholars. Pedagogy through the Africana paradigm should, therefore, be liberating.
Students of color find deficit theorizing disempowering. Historically, studies on people of
color have typically treated the Black and Brown experience (in particular) as a problem.
Teaching from a Eurocentric framework has also done the same, by positioning all non-Euro
peoples as receptors (rather than cultivators) of all things civilized. From the relationship that the
social sciences has with Social Darwinism and Eugenics, one researchers objectivity has
research subjects voicelessness. Given the Africana classroom experience, my pedagogical
practices revolve around the notion that academia should be emancipatory. I have chosen a
profession in teaching, because I come from the perspective of an activist-scholar that seeks to
empower through scholarship. In my effort to engage and produce empowering literature, I also
have a responsibility to teach empowerment. I am a firm believer in each one teach one.
The Africana Paradigm is an important pedagogical tool because it assumes
empowerment rather than the banking model of pedagogy. Rather than read and regurgitate, the
Africana Paradigm pressures students to receive knowledge and appropriate it for use and/or
enrichment. My teaching philosophy combines the Africana Paradigmatic idea of each one
teach one with the Fredrick Douglass concept Power does not concede without a demand.
Through this notion, I engage my students with the power imbedded in literature, scholarship and
history in a way that their personal experiences can be related to scholarship, lecture and relevant
experiences. In this regard, I employ an empirical technique employed by W.E.B. DuBois in The
Philadelphia Negro called triangulation whereby multiple methods are use to study a single
phenomenon, with the desire to empower. In the case of pedagogical practices, I use multiple
fields of engagement for my students to both understand and apply knowledge. Scholarship is
weighed against common discourse, social events, personal opinions and history. Thereby, the
classroom is a multi-pronged dialectical experiment.
As an instructor, I am given the opportunity to engage students with material that not
only shapes their understanding but also themselves as individuals. Through this task, I attempt
to create an environment where I am a proxy for students to access information that they would
otherwise not be exposed to. It is through this relationship that I have with my students that I
create a learning environment that seeks to cultivate minds in a organic, kinetic and safe
environment. As such, I market myself as someone with expertise, but not an expert; while
attempting to engage in a mutual learning experience where everyones knowledge is respected.
Each one teach one seeks to value everyones knowledge, while, at the same time, attempting
to add to that.
Although all material is not exciting, it can be related to something that is, something that
actively engages students imagination. No student enters the classroom a blank slate. They all
have knowledge bases, experiences, skill sets that add to the diversity of information floating
around the nebulous of intellectual inquiry that is the classroom. In the actual and virtual
classroom, I both predict and influence the intellectual climate by borrowing from and adding to
personal knowledge bases, experiences and skillsets as they relate to the scholarship. Not every
student learns the same, so I use a dynamic that uses the personal experience with the scholarship
that allows multiple access points and avenues to the same sources of information contained in
the text so that all students are able to get the most out of their learning experience.
Students are assessed with the expectation that they are engaged. As such, all media
material used in class, along with discussions, and scholarship are all information sources that
students are tested on. Because I am a firm believer in making learning personal, one method that
I use to assess my students is what I call an Learning Audit Trail, where students record all of
their learning experiences in and outside the classroom as it relates to course material. My
secondary device is an organized discussion forum that seeks to do the same through a structured
virtual platform. Students are also encouraged to discuss the given (traditional) tests,
performance, and methods for improvement in their Learning Audit and forum discussions.
Students are also graded for participation in terms of how often they engage in in-class
discussion along with discussion forums.
I attempt to make all information both intellectually and personally relevant to all
students as a source of empowerment. In this personalization of the material, I seek to challenge
students to engage the material. Questions like, what do you think, how does this make you feel,
can you give an example of this or situations from popular media outlets are all used to engage
students with the material by relating the known and unknown. In finding students interests or
what they are interested in, in relation to the material, the paradigm shifts from students
passively receiving to actively engaging in the material. Through that activation, students
implicitly demand knowledge. That knowledge then becomes a part of their personal knowledge
base, skill setbecomes a source of power to used, manipulated, taken advantage of, exploited
and cherished.