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77. ๐Ÿ”— parts work ๐Ÿ”—

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77. ๐Ÿ”— parts work ๐Ÿ”—

thinking about my whole self

Ida Yalzadeh
Jan 17, 2022
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77. ๐Ÿ”— parts work ๐Ÿ”—

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Hello, and happy Monday.

I hope that you all are having a wonderful long weekend and that this is coming into your inbox on a day when youโ€™re not checking it. ๐Ÿ˜Žย I canโ€™t believe weโ€™re halfway into the month already. Luckily, the semester still hasnโ€™t started yet, as Iโ€™m still trying to finalize the things on my syllabus and get ready for the first day of class. While Iโ€™m prepping my course, Iโ€™m also trying to get as much work done on my own writing projects as I can. Needless to say, this month has flown by in a haze!

I hope that youโ€™re doing well. And if youโ€™re in a cold climate, I hope you are staying warm out there! This past weekend was so chilly!! โ˜ƒ๏ธย I hope you just spent it inside reading a backlog of newsletter issues over many cups of tea! ๐Ÿซ–

โœ๏ธ Still processing.

One of the things I did over the winter break was clear out my downloads folder. Just as my coffee table holds all the physical clutter in my life, my downloads folder holds all my digital clutter. I really had to take a day to sit down, go through each file, and figure out where its new home would be.

One of the files that I found was this Procrastinatorโ€™s Guide to Writing from the Center for Academic and Personal Development at Harvard. I couldnโ€™t tell you how I stumbled upon this page in the internet wild, but there it was just sitting in my folder. The document lists 12 common โ€œlimiting beliefsโ€ people have when writing, โ€œalternative assumptionsโ€ we can use to try to combat those limiting beliefs, and exercises that may be helpful in moving forward with our writing. Although the likely audience for this document is undergrads (maybe grad students too), I think that there are a lot of wonderful insights that could help writers at any stage or in any context.

Seeing as I was having trouble getting into my writing last week, I decided to take Monday morning to read this 15 page document and see if anything would help me reframe my writing and the writing process for the new year. One in particular stuck out to me, because of what I wrote last week about my inner child, and what Iโ€™ve written before about switching from โ€œIโ€ to โ€œyouโ€ in my process journal. It was about the antidote to limiting belief #6: โ€œStuckness is bad. If Iโ€™m stuck, Iโ€™m doomed.โ€ This is what the author, Sheila M. Reindi, had to say about combatting our negative feelings towards โ€œstucknessโ€:

Negotiate with yourself. To work and play with less internal conflict, you need to form alliances among various parts of yourselfโ€”for example, among the part of you that aspires to do your best; the part that values other things in life besides achievement; and the part that is afraid of failure, compulsive working, loneliness, or other potential risks of engaging with your work. To form such an alliance requires that all of the separate, uncooperative, โ€œme/Iโ€ voices join to create a generative โ€œwe/letโ€™sโ€ voice...In creating a โ€œwe/letโ€™sโ€ voice, you bring together all of your energies in the effort to live a life that feels whole and true to the complexity of who you are.

Iโ€™ve heard of parts work before, but I donโ€™t think that I ever thought about how it could factor into the way that we work through our writing process. When reading this paragraph, though, something clicked for me. I thought back to the way that I cognitively tried to distance myself from my writing by asking questions that featured โ€œyouโ€ (rather than โ€œmeโ€) in my process journal. I also thought back to what I had just written last weekend, about how my inner child was keeping me from my work because she wanted to make sure that there would still be fun in our days. In reflecting on those thoughts, I realized that this re-frame to think of my writing self as a โ€œweโ€โ€”as a person full of parts that may desire different thingsโ€”I am acknowledging that I must bring my whole self to the page.

Iโ€™ve tried to honor this โ€œwhole selfโ€ in my journal by rephrasing the questions that I ask myself as I prepare for each writing session: โ€œHow are we feeling about our writing?โ€ โ€œWhat are we bringing to the page today?โ€ โ€œWhat do we need to do to enjoy this process?โ€ I am able to recognize that my feelings about things in my personal life come to inform the way that I interact with my work life, for instance.

๐Ÿ“š Still reading.

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, Routledge, 1994.

I first came to bell hooks in graduate school through her essay โ€œeating the other,โ€ but I only just learned of Teaching to Transgress through Stephanโ€™s newsletter issue that had a tribute to the author. I had no idea that hooks wrote three texts on teaching and pedagogy, so I immediately purchased all of them to read as soon as I could. This week, I decided to read the oldest text, Teaching to Transgress. (Next week, I want to talk about Teaching Community, so watch out for that! ๐Ÿ‘€)

What can I say but that this is one of those โ€œlife changingโ€ books. This one features a set of essays that hooks wrote right after she had finished teaching in elite private schools and was going to start at City College in New York. The essays are written from her perspective as once being a working class student of color at an elite university as well as then becoming a teacher at predominately white institutions. While the book was written in 1994, so many of her points continue to resonate with todayโ€™s world as a site where we continue to contend with racism, sexism and other types of oppression embedded within the way that we produce knowledge and communicate it to our students.

After reading Teaching to Transgress, I see it as such an important text for students and teachers alike because it lays out the stakes of engaged pedagogyโ€”the classroom community that fosters its members to think critically and talk about knowledge with the goal of collective liberation from these systems of oppression. So much of hookโ€™s writing lays out the stakes of engaged pedagogyโ€”what it is, what it does, and how we can make moves to get there.

While each chapter brought out such valuable insights, I wanted to highlight a few here that were particularly critical to my own thinking as I move into teaching this semester:

  • โ€œEngaged Pedagogyโ€: While most of this essay lays out the meaning and stakes of engaged pedagogy, the idea that resonated most with me was that I should also bring my whole self to the classroom. In my own pedagogical practices (and even my teaching statement) I talk about how important it is for students to bring their โ€œwhole selvesโ€ to the classroom. That is to say, students should interrogate how the issues and themes we discuss in class connect to their lives as people in the world who hold distinct identities, who are a part of different communities, who are affected by the world. So far, I have understood my role as a teacher to blend into the background in a senseโ€”to stand back as students work through these questions, providing guidance when necessary. But hooks sees it another way: โ€œEngaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks,โ€ (21). This essay is encouraging me to lean into vulnerability this term.

  • โ€œPaulo Freireโ€: So much of this newsletter is about the practice of consenting to learn in public, which means that I might get things wrong sometimes, and I certainly will have blindspots that others could (and should) point out to help me grow in my scholarly practice. This essay is structured as a dialogue between hooks as โ€œbell hooks,โ€ her โ€œwriting voiceโ€ and โ€œGloria Watkins,โ€ herself as a person talking about the influence of Paulo Freire (author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed) on her teaching practice. Despite Freireโ€™s sexism in his early work, hooks still found value in the workโ€”that it โ€œaffirmed [her] right as a subject in resistance to define [her] reality,โ€ (53). What is more, when hooks confronted Freire with the fact that his work harbored sexist beliefs, he engaged her critiques with sincerity and vulnerability. This, for her, was a moment in which he had done precisely what his books call forโ€”a mutual growth through common effortโ€”despite it illuminating his own blindspots.

  • โ€œTheory as Liberatory Practiceโ€: I am not one of those people who can read theory once and just get it. This essay critiques the inaccessibility of most academic theory, arguing instead for theory as a healing practice that is embedded in lived experience. โ€œWhen our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice. Indeed, what such experience makes more evident is the bond between the twoโ€”that ultimately reciprocal process wherein one enables the other,โ€ (61). And then thereโ€™s the aspect of what a healing theory may bring: โ€œFor in its production lies the hope of our liberation, in its production lies the possibility of naming all our painโ€”of making all our hurt go away,โ€ (75).

  • โ€œBuilding a Teaching Communityโ€: This essay is a dialogue between hooks and Ron Scapp, โ€œa white male philosopher, comrade, and friend,โ€ (131). The dialogue itself touches on many important aspects of teaching, such as the identity & embodiment of โ€œteacher,โ€ the structures of power in a classroom, employing a pedagogy of liberation in the classroom & the critiques that may initially show up from students themselves, and seriousness and pleasure in the classroom. It was such a fantastic dialogueโ€”I highly recommend reading this chapter if you only have time to read one essay from the collection.

๐ŸŒ€ Still consuming.

In the bookshop:
Currently Reading:ย Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
On Deck: The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

According to the Cloud Atlas, this is a โ€œcumulonimbus capillatus incus praecipitatioโ€ cloud.
  • Colors: Where Did They Go? An Investigation.

  • Like so many I know, I am OBSESSED with wordle. That thereโ€™s only one game a day is very good for my productivity, as I would probably be playing for HOURS otherwise. (Also the story behind it is so sweet!)

  • Brandon Taylorโ€™s thoughts on wordle & much more.

  • Watch Succession, then read this, then read this.

  • There is now a LITERAL CLOUD ATLAS.

  • A Mindful Guide to Compassion

๐Ÿ“– Book club corner.

For Januaryโ€™s book club, we will be readingย Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens! Thank you to everyone who voted, and feel free to purchase a copy of the bookย here! Details are below.

Hereโ€™s the event info:
Date & Time: Tuesday, January 25 @ 5PM PST/8PM EST
Registration Link!
Suggested Donation (for those able to donate): $3-10 through Paypal or Venmo (@idyalz)

๐Ÿถ A pup-date.

I think Girlie looks so cute when sheโ€™s sleepy:

As always, thanks so much for reading through, and I'll see you in the next one!

Warmly,
Ida

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