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Intellectual Journey Reflection

As a future teacher, my Susquehanna education has definitely prepared me logistically for

what I will be expected of in the workplace. However, even more so I feel I have been prepared

to be a more complete person in my role as an educator. I have been exposed to perspectives and

histories that will strengthen my ability to teach in an ever-diversifying classroom environment.

Especially as I would like to find myself teaching English Language Learners this has been one

of the most impactful aspects of my learning the past four years. Some of my non-education, and

even my non-English courses, here have contributed much to this end. I have taken a Latin

America History course and am currently in an Early Modern Africa course that have exposed

me to histories that are often ignored in high school level education, not to mention that some are

not exposed to even as part of their university experience. Learning a broader history of our

world is so important and I believe increasingly so. At a time when our country’s global relations

and even our news reels include politics from these regions it is necessary to have this

knowledge. If a U.S. citizen sees news, for example, of this year’s events in Venezuela and our

country’s aid being refused by their government leader, it is utterly impossible to have a valid

opinion on the situation without being informed about how our country has intervened in the past

not only in that nation but in other Latin American nations throughout history, and how that

informs current events and policy-making in the present. To do any less makes our perception

damagingly reductive and very difficult to start to interpret the situation for what it is in reality

and make judgements.

I also was able to enroll for this semester in a Philosophy of race course called Race and

Reality, where we are not only looking at race theory and race as a concept, but how the concept

has formed, developed, and changed throughout history and through different lenses. This class
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in conjunction with these history courses forces one to challenge conceptions of big social and

political concepts that are often taken as fact. One of my favorite and most personally impactful

courses was my African American Literature class. I think when we discuss the canon, especially

those pieces from the canon that are traditionally included in high school classrooms, these

pieces are not involved in the reading done by high school. This leads to obvious issues of

representation, but also a lack of credit that is well due to these writers. This class led me to a lot

of self-discovery for me as I got to explore the works of writers such as Audre Lorde and even

make comparisons to similar contemporary figures such as Ntozake Shange. The social

implications and demands carried within these pieces along with, quite frankly the incredibly

beautiful language, introduced me to new types of writing that I find myself tracking down more

of to delve into during my free time. Similarly to the perspective altering power of the history

courses I mentioned, I found that a class like this is just as important to allow us to hear a larger

variety of voices. As an English teacher, this has made me question a lot of why the canon exists

in the rigid form it does in curriculums for high school. I think it is so important for students to

have access to these types of work and it does a disservice to the students to not expose them to a

diverse set of literature.

It not only has been of great value to simply be exposed to and be able to participate in

these types of courses during my liberal arts education, but also in courses like Aesthetics and

Interpretation, we are given the opportunity to take theories of privilege and readings on gender.

However, after reading these theories coming from important writers such as Roxanne Gay and

Gloria Anzaldua, we added another layer in which we drew a thread through a selection of the

readings. In doing so I was able to examine Cultural and Linguistic Privilege in Education. In my

responses to their works I was able to use or respond to them by recognizing their work’s
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importance for teachers in gaining insight on ways privilege can be present in language and

education but also how they can use these same works to guide them in what they can and should

do with this knowledge of privilege in society and in their classroom. This was a highly

reflective work for me to complete as through the ways in which I personally was impacted as a

future teacher I was then taken to argue that these readings and theorists were essential for

teachers of culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. One would hope you can take

something from every class into your future workplace or to impact your world view, but this

type of reflection with a concrete defense and laid out groundwork makes for a highly intentional

practice more than your average reflection paper type assignment.

This type of intentionality is very important in a liberal arts education. This is because

while your classes may not all have an explicit connection to your major, they can all be taken to

have rather direct connections if you look in the right places. It is the nature of this type of

education that you have to make the best out of what you receive in that it is on you to make

some courses meaningful for your future. I think this is an important skill to draw value out of all

of your experiences, and that is both an academic skill as well as a life skill when it comes down

to it. It also may leave things to be desired; I for one would like to look into and read some

Native American Literature among other things, but then again this desire comes from what I

took from courses like my African American Literature course along with certain aspects of my

GO experience. I think the prompting of this type of self advocacy for education is something

that I have developed an appreciation for and not only hope for in my own future but something I

will also take to instill in my future students.