Awakening
Teacher Voice and Student Voice:
The Development of a Feminist Pedagogy
by Jill Weisner
Women are like aberrant stars, suddenly changing orbits. Or
an unconforming sea, resisting the obvious structures of piers and harbors,
refusing to be merely blue or green, tame as a formula. It is women who
shift the borders. The seasons run wild. Women flow and slide. Men are
larger. Women eat the silence. Women. Survive.
Kate Braverman, Palm Latitudes
The Reunion
When I finished loading my car with the last boxes of teaching files and
teen novels, I was not sure what I would do with them. My oneyear leave
of absence was over, and I had officially resigned as a middle school language
arts teacher to continue my doctoral program. My friend and mentor, Margaret
Powell, helped me dig the boxes out of the cramped storage room where all
the teachers hastily stashed their unwanted materials at the end of the
year. As I sat on the floor sorting through books and papers with beads
of Illinois August sweat dripping down my back and face, my most faithful
friend from the middle school—the head custodian—stopped by to fill me in
on all the gossip that I missed from the last year. "Lucy got married Saturday.
. . . Judy's girls decided to go to school at St. Louis University. . .
. Steve changed schools, so Jana took his room because she didn't want to
deal with all the kids going up and down the stairwell by her room. . .
. The new social studies teacher is kind of cute. . . . Jill, are you seeing
anybody?" Listening to her talk about the people I used to work with brought
back vivid memories of what it was like teaching there.
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