Our/My Authentic Voices
Looking over my notes from this
semester, I was struck by Royster’s idea of “authentic voices” as I
reconsidered my way of thinking and making knowledge/meaning. The way that I
understand this idea is that our words, our constructions of language, our way
of presenting our thoughts in speech and writing are what produce our genuine
and/or authentic images. My method of reflection involves re-thinking and
re-evaluating, and I used the concept of voices being authentic or genuine to
the self in order to do this reflection. Being genuine is something that is
very important to me, and I’ve learned that it is also important to me in the
classroom.
In the past, especially as an
undergraduate, I did not share my voice within the actual physical space of the
classroom. As I stepped into the role of the teacher, suddenly my voice was the
loudest and the most prominent in the classroom. It was a steep transition; the
mentality of being a listener, as opposed to being a facilitator of the
conversation, was definitely one that I had to overcome. I deeply value the act
of listening, as both a tool of conversation and as an important aspect of
being respectful and involved with your peers. As I’ve gone through this
experience of teaching and being the main speaker in the classroom, modeling
that love of active and participatory listening has been something I had to
encounter and realize before I could really embody and show instruction on
listening. My view of listening, when I am a student, is a moment for learning;
previously, my view of listening as an instructor was for the purpose of
looking to instruct students further or creating an informative response. Now,
after going through this experience, I feel that listening has always been an
embodiment of learning. As I reflect on the semester, I have realized that when
I was listening to my students, I was learning; having their thoughts and ways
of making meaning and knowledge shared enabled me to reevaluate my own method
for the construction of knowledge and begin to engage in ways of making meaning
that are liberating, which is something I noted in my teaching philosophy
statement as a goal of my instruction and facilitation of the classroom
atmosphere. Shifting from this learning listener to instructing speaker was a
powerful transition, and one that I believe was helped by looking at listening
to my students as another opportunity for exploring knowledge.
The activity we completed on the
first day of FYC Orientation was a moment where I had to realize that the
previous voice that I used in the classroom – shy, quiet, unassertive – was not
going to be the voice that I could use in the classroom as an instructor. Although
this realization occurred in the beginning of this journey, I have had to work
to overcome and develop a stronger and more emphatic voice; I struggled at the
start of this development, because it was hard to see how that voice could be
authentic to who I am as a person. While teaching can be a place where an
instructor can try on and embody different voices, I feel that I have such a
desire for authenticity that I see no other option than being myself at all
places. In order to be an effective instructor, I think this meant transforming
and developing who I am as a person. However, I also believe that having an
authentic voice means being understanding of our constantly transforming
selves, and looking towards the use of voice as a tool for reaching that
desired self.
I recall writing in my first entry
from my teaching journal that, when I arrived early to the classroom, “My voice
was shaky and my hands were trembling and the room was empty. Even though none
of the students had arrived yet, my heart was pumping so fast. The anticipation
felt more like gas than anything else, bloating in my stomach until I felt
really, really uncomfortable.” To me, being authentic means being comfortable.
So, a voice which I would or could consider to be my “authentic voice” would
have to be one that I am comfortable using, one that feels natural and relaxed.
Gaining comfortability in the classroom was the first step to becoming my
authentic self as an instructor. It was and still is an uneasy battle, but, as
I have struggled through the semester, I think this is the most confident I
have been in the classroom since I was in elementary school. With the idea of
education and speaking in the classroom as an act of liberation, I feel much
more empowered to be voice of instruction.
I also wrote, in the first entry of
my teaching journal, that “I’m a nervous person, and I’ve never really been
good at being the center of attention when in the classroom. … Even in a
classroom full of friends, my voice gets stuck in my throat…”. This silence is,
in some ways, one of my authentic voices, although I had to develop it through
years of not engaging in the classroom. I don’t want silence to be my students’
main authentic voices; I want them to be able to speak in the way that I am
learning to. That may involve showing them that listening is a precursor to
speaking and sharing their ways of making meaning, and, therefore, liberating
themselves to a space where meaning can be transformative. “I want my students
to feel that way too, to understand that there is a place for their stories,
their narratives, their struggles and victories in academia. That they [and
whatever voice they choose] belong in academia” (Week 1, Wednesday 8/21). I
understand that they have been taught to speak in specific voices that carry no
weight of authenticity for themselves. I want them to speak in their true
voices, especially if that means they must try on different ones and experiment
with their ways of making meaning and knowledge. I think experimentation or
variation of voice is an important aspect of Royster’s concept, and I have been
doing my best to develop a more complex, multi-layered voice that reflects my
actual self. However, whenever I am using Royster’s concept of “authentic
voice,” I must keep in mind her belief that we have “a range of voices” impacts
my construction of my “authentic voice” (37). As I work through this paragraph,
I find that I am discovering that I have a multitude of voices, ones which are
stronger or more comfortable or pinpoint the person that I would like to be.
One way that I have been practicing
looking for authentic voice is by encouraging it within my students. I often
invite their input on our schedule and request feedback on our units and
assignments in order to engage them, not only in the material, but with the
process of our curriculum. Encouraging their authentic voices is easy, but
actually getting them to use them has been exhausting. I wrote in my journal, “I
have a really quiet class, and it just feels like a huge battle to break the
silence” (Week 1, Friday 8/23). Despite the obstacles and the difficulty, some
students have been able to come forward and represent their thoughts to me in
voices that are authentic to them. One instance was with a male student, who
shared his political opinions with me after a class that was heavy in politics.
The way in which I identify this voice as authentic is because, as Royster
describes voice “as a central manifestation of subjectivity,” this student
approached me with his opinions in a way that was entirely subjective and
personal to his way of making meaning and knowledge. He was not using the
thoughts of another; he was expressing his own, which allowed for a
manifestation of his authentic voice.
One student (Charlie) told me after
our “About Me” college assignment, as I wrote in my teaching journal, “that it
was a fun activity, but he could not see the merit or the effectiveness of
presenting images with the goal of revealing values.” I continue in my teaching
journal to say the following: “I believe that I led my students to misinterpret
the assignment, as I simply desired them to find images of things that
interested them or were important to them as opposed to sharing their deep core
values. He was concerned with how early in the semester I seemed to expect them
to be so open and willing to spill their life stories – something I hadn’t
intended with the assignment. His feedback certainly opened my eyes and has
made me realize that my language might need more careful construction and
review. It was also a little discouraging to receive such criticism, and yet
really encouraging that he felt he had the option to tell me such a strong (and
controversial) opinion” (Week 2, Monday 8/26). I find it extremely important to
my development as an instructor to look at all my student’s feedback as their
liberation from silence/stagnancy of thought/knowledge and their contribution
to making our classroom the “brave space” that I have detailed in my teaching
philosophy statement.
My encounter with Charlie and his
opinion on our assignment is one that I feel was instrumental in helping shape
my voice as an instructor early in this first semester. I understand that I
need to be firm and have faith in my lesson plans, but I find it extremely
important to allow students the opportunity to engage with the creating process
of their lessons – an emphasis I probably developed from reading bell hook’s
theory of Engaged Pedagogy. I think I received this idea from hooks’ chapter on
Democratic Education, where she states that she “wrote that all citizens needed
to assume responsibility for protecting and maintaining democracy” (13). I
think that it is the same case for the classroom. As hooks further explains,
“we need educators to make schools places where the conditions for democratic
consciousness can be established and flourish” (14). Using this belief as a foundation for my authentic
instructor-voice, as I write in my teaching journal, “helps me realize that [my
students] aren’t simply disinterested or ignoring the subject of our
discussion; they just need help in raising their comfort levels and being okay
with sharing their voice.”
In my teaching journal, I ruminate on my start in the university
and I’d like to reminisce a little in this reflection as well. I remember when
I was still a freshman, and I could not speak at all in a class. I have to
remind myself, daily, that I still have issues with public
speaking. My own journey has not resulted in perfect public speaking skills or
total confidence in myself. This is the journey that my students are only just
beginning. Thinking about this journey allowed me to reconsider the
expectations I had created for the student, expectations that I endured as an
older student but ones that were suitable due to my growth – which is an
opportunity my students are first encountering in my classroom. In my teaching
journal, I write, “I didn’t realize how many expectations I had placed upon my
students until I realized that they weren’t completely fulfilling them. I think
I need to consider how to respect where they are at, but I struggle with the
idea of letting them work themselves up to the task of speaking in class. I
feel, especially with my own experience, that letting the fear and insecurity
keep you from participating in discussion and in small groups causes you to
feel alienated. Feeling alienated in the
classroom is the very opposite of my desire for my students. I want them to
feel included and that their opinions/thoughts/feelings are all valid”
(Week 2, Wednesday 8/28).
Validity,
to me, comes from the use of an authentic voice. How can your words, your
language, your thoughts be valid if they are not composed in the voice which
truly belongs to you? Recognizing that, when we use our authentic voice, our
words become valid – no matter if they are wrong, because they are our
truth. Naming something as valid is not only a labeling tool that belongs to
the masses, it also belongs to the individual. Being valid is something I have
always worried about in the classroom; afraid of being discounted, I haven’t
always shared my thoughts and knowledge. Because of this fear, learning and
recognizing the use of the authentic voice has really transformed my mindset
within the classroom. It also helps when you have great people, like my mom and
friends, to constantly remind you: You are never as awkward as you think you
are. I have had to learn a lot about my authentic self recently, especially
over the past three years (when I was an undergraduate). I’ve suffered a lot of
loss during my undergraduate. During the past two years around finals, I first
lost my aunt – my mother’s oldest sister and the first death that I’ve ever
been old enough to register and grieve for – and then lost my grandma the
following semester on December 3rd. After losing these two important
women in my life, I’ve been consumed with the idea of erased futures and missed
opportunities – things that I had not realized were losses in and of
themselves. Confronted with the knowledge that my grandmother will never know
about my bisexuality or meet whoever I decide to marry and that my aunt never
saw me graduate college, I have come to realize that I have created lost
futures by being silent and not claiming/using my voice. Recognizing those
losses opened me up to spaces for reflection, where I have been able to learn
more about myself and more about the person I would like to be. Being authentic
doesn’t mean presenting the self you are right now, in the exact moment; being
authentic can mean present the self that you desire to be, the one that you are
working to achieve.
In
my journey to achieve my authentic self/voice, I have been taking the criticism
and feedback from my students as a prompt for self-reflection. One student
(Ritchie M.) completed a reflection for Unit 1, where he said:
One
thing that I'll take away from this unit is that writing isn't something set.
There isn't a specific way you have to write, none of that 5 paragraphs with 3
bodies, an intro, and a conclusion. I learned how a paper should actually be
structed and I will carry this knowledge with me throughout college. One thing
to improve on is making people read the articles you assign. I'll be honest, I
didn't read the lobster one and I still got by it because of what we talked
about in the previous class and the title of the article.
What
was extremely important to me about Ritchie’s comments, and the reason I
plucked them from all the other reflections, is because his words made me think
about my own understanding of writing and how that has changed over the years.
His feedback highlights both knowledge/meaning making that I was hoping to
instill as well as something that causes me to feel insecure, which are both
great areas for my self-reflection. I’ll start with the more positive
reflection, where I reflect on my success as an instructor.
It
was extremely relieving to see that he had taken from Unit 1 this idea of
writing being an individual act and full of personal/unique decisions based
upon the material, content, or the author themselves, as opposed to the
inorganic structure assigned by a teacher/person-in-charge. Writing has always
been extremely personal to me ever since I tried to write my own version of
Britney Spears’ song, Hit Me Baby One More Time. So, although I deeply
enjoyed and was successful in high school AP history with our structured x+y
ABC formulaic approach to writing, I believe that it does not need nor should
have a rigid structure. Writing is an organic, natural thing; the structure
should reflect that process, the process of penning down the authentic voice. One
of my students (Charlie) noted in our fourteenth week (Wednesday 11/20), as we
were discussing potential meaningful concepts and/or moments from this
semester, that the concept of creativity in our interactions inside the
classroom was something that he found to be extremely meaningful. He elaborated
by referring back to Unit 1, where they were asked to write a personal
narrative in the composition classroom, an academic space that had originally
only been used for, in his opinion, less creative pursuits. I have encouraged
experimentation in format and structuring of material, so it is gratifying to
have that effort confirmed as successful, at least in some ways.
The
second part of Ritchie M’s feedback acknowledged my biggest weakness: being an
authority figure. I know that I struggle, like a fish flopping on dry land, to
be an authority figure. My biggest struggle, the biggest obstacle I have
encountered, in the classroom is to not only have or gain power, but to use it.
Outside the classroom, I know how to make people listen; I’ve been in charge of
thirty cub scouts before, and I know I can be in-charge because I had those
energetic boys all lined up as we marched through a field at Camp Kickapoo. It
is so strange and difficult trying to transfer that attitude and that presence
into the classroom, which is the one place where I have never felt powerful or
even well-endowed. The classroom used to feel like it drained me of my
strength, as if there was something about sitting in the desks that signaled to
my brain to stop working and my mouth refuse to talk. However, now that I’ve
had the chance to stand at the front of the classroom, with an inherent control
and power that only occurred to me during my second teaching demonstration in
ENGL 5113, I feel like I’ve switched my role within the classroom. Instead of
it draining me, I am putting energy into it; I have transformed from an
inactive scholar to a practitioner of knowledge, a transformation that has
spread into many other areas of my life that live outside the classroom.
I
mention that I felt like an inactive scholar, and I think that is because I did
not engage with texts or other scholars outside of my head for a very long
time. I have always been a person who thinks a lot, and I tend to do a lot of
my thinking internally and individually, as opposed to the act of
thinking-out-loud and in congruence with others. When we read Bitzer’s “The
Rhetorical Situation” my freewrite from that day seems to really capture my
previous attitude about making meaning and defining knowledge: that it was all
done internally. An idea that was interesting to me was when Bitzer states that
“Nor should we assume that a rhetorical address gives existence to the
situation; on the contrary, it is the situation which calls the discourse into
existence” (2). I did and still do find the idea of the rhetorical situation
being present without discourse very interesting. I mention that, “Within my
own thoughts, I’ve considered the rhetorical situation’s presence in the
absence of rhetorical discourse really important in communicating or working
with students with disabilities or students who are content in having inner
dialogue as opposed to outside rhetorical discourse.” In the freewrite, I don’t
acknowledge that I was one of those students who was so engaged with myself,
with my inner dialogue, that I didn’t participate in the classroom’s (,as a
community,) rhetorical discourse. It was just a few months ago where I am sure
my instructors were thinking and/or writing, “Here’s the jist of the day: Have
you ever heard of that room up in some northern state of the United States,
where it’s so quiet you can hear your own blood thundering in your ears? I
think I’d rather be there than in the quiet of my classroom… WhY wOn’t ThEY SPeAk?”
(Week 4, Monday 9/9). At that point, I didn’t see or couldn’t see the
possibility of responding, of participating in rhetorical discourse. Now that I
am in my current situation, with more time and experience under my belt, I feel
like I see and take many more possibilities and recognize the potential of my
engagement in the classroom.
In
my Bitzer freewrite, I conclude that the rhetorical situation is all about
possibility. I think it’s important that we consider how we can create this
possibility, in the idea or following train of thought of opening up the
(educational) space for different performers in our rhetorical discourse and
the way that they engage within it, in order to tease out the “potential
activity” (outlined by Corino and Jolliffe) of rhetorical discourse. I thought
a lot about the necessity of creating rhetorical situations for our students so
that they may engage in rhetorical discourse. Considering rhetorical discourse
as a response signifies the idea of potential (Bitzer 6), which inherently
deflates specific sorts of limitation that is not based upon ability or
circumstances/requirements of engagement that could be present. The way that I
was so focused on performers was interesting, because I seem to forget quite
often that I am one of the performers, even if I don’t take to the stage very
often.
As
a child, I was very protected and I wasn’t encouraged to broach debates or
engage in the process of making knowledge/meaning within a classroom. Like I
mention in my journal entry for Week 6, Wednesday 9/25, “My exposure had been
so limited that I struggled to engage others in conversations that needed to
happen as I entered college.” My most rewarding conversation with a student
(Teegan M) was one that I wish I would have been able to engage in as a
freshman. He came up to me after class, tentative but determined, and
questioned me about his own concerns for speaking about his political opinions
in class. He feels that his political choices are in a minority or are often
considered as illegitimate in the college setting, and was worried about
receiving backlash from his classmates if he was to engage in such
conversations inside our classroom. It was an extremely rewarding conversation,
because not only did I get to learn about my student, but I was able to hear
how he felt during our class discussion. It was really empowering to hear that
he felt I was a safe person to divulge his fear of antagonization and his
political alignments, and it was further empowering to learn that he wanted to
trust me to make sure his voice was heard in our classroom. Realizing that
there is a trust that must be offered by students when they speak, a trust that
I, as the instructor, will help their voice be heard and understood and ensure
it becomes a part of our conversation – this realization was extremely
eye-opening, especially as I have taken the time to reflect on its connection
to the authentic voice.
To
me, there are four elements of the authentic voice: trust, comfort, possibility,
and validity. These elements have come from the reflection of my journey this
semester, as well as an evaluation of the voices – mine and my students – that
have filled my classroom and impacted each other. As I work to become more
genuine in the classroom, both as a student and as an instructor, I want to
continue to develop my authentic voices until it, possibly, becomes one complex
and layered voice. My voice has become more authentic in several areas of my
life during this transition from listener to speaker in the educational
setting, and I hope to continue this trend. As my voice becomes more authentic,
I believe that I am becoming a more active scholar and a successful instructor.
Bibliography
Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical
Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 1 (1968), pp. 1-14.
hooks,
bell. Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom. Routledge, New York,
NY. 2010.
Royster, Jacqueline Jones. “When The
First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own.” College
Composition
and Communication, Vol. 47, No. 1, (Feb., 1996), pp.
29-40.
Comments
Post a Comment