If I'm asked about my job, one of the questions that often comes up is the query into my favorites. "What class do you like the most?" will pop up on the regular, so I'm always prepared with a surface answer and a deeper explanation. The blithe company line is to say that all my classes are equally joyful and replete, but anyone who's a parent will see through that lie pretty quickly. Parents have favorite kids, and professors have favorite classes.
But there's a difference between "favorite" and "most important," and for me, that's the difference between the History of the Rock & Roll Era (my "favorite," even though it's the most frustrating by far) and Human Sexuality (easily the "most important" on the list, even more so than Introduction to Psychology). With that in mind, take a moment to watch this:
One of the many twisting cords of my personal cloth of pedagogy relates to empowerment, offering perspectives and positions of those who may not always have representation in that regard. (For example, the people that rail against "political correctness" are often those most aghast at marginalized groups finally raising their voices loud enough to be heard. Not always, of course...but often enough.) And one of the disparate groups in that category are teenage women. In Human Sexuality, we have an opportunity for some pretty frank discussions as well as moments for reflection without vocalization, and the idea of desire as understood by those teenagers -- desire for men and women alike -- typically elicits some substantive examination, if only for the moment. Hell, it's even good for adults to reflect upon from time to time, just to see what's changed and what's held firm.
However, more often than not, teenage women don't have as much agency with respect to their desire, for a knotty confluence of reasons. Human Sexuality is the easiest Psych class to discuss the de rigueur concept of intersectionality, as we talk in detail about the forces -- biological, sociological, psychological, anthropological, economic, etc. -- that act upon sexuality in general and desire specifically, and even at my relatively foundational level of community college inquiry, I'm usually able to get some rich personal examples of those forces in action.
With that said, I also know I'm on the clock for my efficacy as a professor in this area. As a male -- in more ways than I'd like, a stereotypical male -- who's getting older by the moment, my potential for empathy and compassion is in inverse to my generational proximity to the target population. In other words, the creepy old guy -- who gets creepier and older with each class -- is more distanced from eliciting consideration and change from the student body, especially the teenage women who need it most.
Soon, there will be a time when I won't be teaching Human Sexuality, and I'll perseverate even more than I already do on all those students I wasn't able to impact in my short time with the curricula. I know what it's like to put on a pair of glasses that render the opaque and fuzzy into relative clarity, and I'll miss being the ideological ophthalmologist for the kids. Too bad there's not a pedagogical Lasik procedure -- what a TED talk that would be.
But there's a difference between "favorite" and "most important," and for me, that's the difference between the History of the Rock & Roll Era (my "favorite," even though it's the most frustrating by far) and Human Sexuality (easily the "most important" on the list, even more so than Introduction to Psychology). With that in mind, take a moment to watch this:
One of the many twisting cords of my personal cloth of pedagogy relates to empowerment, offering perspectives and positions of those who may not always have representation in that regard. (For example, the people that rail against "political correctness" are often those most aghast at marginalized groups finally raising their voices loud enough to be heard. Not always, of course...but often enough.) And one of the disparate groups in that category are teenage women. In Human Sexuality, we have an opportunity for some pretty frank discussions as well as moments for reflection without vocalization, and the idea of desire as understood by those teenagers -- desire for men and women alike -- typically elicits some substantive examination, if only for the moment. Hell, it's even good for adults to reflect upon from time to time, just to see what's changed and what's held firm.
However, more often than not, teenage women don't have as much agency with respect to their desire, for a knotty confluence of reasons. Human Sexuality is the easiest Psych class to discuss the de rigueur concept of intersectionality, as we talk in detail about the forces -- biological, sociological, psychological, anthropological, economic, etc. -- that act upon sexuality in general and desire specifically, and even at my relatively foundational level of community college inquiry, I'm usually able to get some rich personal examples of those forces in action.
With that said, I also know I'm on the clock for my efficacy as a professor in this area. As a male -- in more ways than I'd like, a stereotypical male -- who's getting older by the moment, my potential for empathy and compassion is in inverse to my generational proximity to the target population. In other words, the creepy old guy -- who gets creepier and older with each class -- is more distanced from eliciting consideration and change from the student body, especially the teenage women who need it most.
Soon, there will be a time when I won't be teaching Human Sexuality, and I'll perseverate even more than I already do on all those students I wasn't able to impact in my short time with the curricula. I know what it's like to put on a pair of glasses that render the opaque and fuzzy into relative clarity, and I'll miss being the ideological ophthalmologist for the kids. Too bad there's not a pedagogical Lasik procedure -- what a TED talk that would be.
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