ONE LAST THiNG
A World of Possibility: Looking ‘Beyond the Classroom’ By Andrea McCrary
My email signature includes a quote from bell hooks: “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.” While there are lots of reasons to shy away from words like “radical” in today’s political climate, I embrace it, not to create friction or adopt extremist ideas, but because our communities are need of improvement, and radical thinking may get us closer to a world in which we can all flourish.
As an undergraduate student at Queens in the late 1980s, I discovered a world I knew litle about. Conversations in the classroom, living and working in Charlote, and traveling abroad for the first time as a student shaped my sense of who I am and what my work in the world is.
Since I have been teaching at Queens, I continue to learn every day. I learn as I write and prepare courses, from my colleagues, and from students in the classroom. While students enter the classroom with questions about assignments and grading, I also have questions. I want to know how they see the world and what parts of the world they want to influence.
I remind them that in the rhetoric and writing classes that I teach our work will always look beyond the classroom. What is each student passionate about in the world? How can this class help them achieve that? I see the classroom as a place where students can step into their own agency, not spend time trying to figure out what I want in an assignment. Perhaps it feels “radical” to them, but I remind them that this class is theirs, not just mine, and the work is about the world, not just the classroom. I
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have goals for them, of course, but they also set their own goals. What do they want to spend the semester thinking about or practicing?
If I were to distill my approach to teaching into a single, simple idea, it would be this: Everyone has something to offer a world in need of help, and a good education fosters the curiosity, sense of agency, and skills students need to identify what they want to offer the world. So, for me, it’s not the “radical” that is most important in that email signature: my focus is on the possibility.
I believe in the possibility of storytelling. We read and listen to stories. We craſt stories. We analyze stories. And in this way, we make knowledge together, and we change the world. I can’t believe my good fortune in being able to share stories with and listen to stories from students every term. It is sometimes hard for faculty to assess the success of our choices in the classroom, since so much of what we aim to do as teachers only bears fruit many years later. I’m grateful to keep up with how former students are shaping the world through stories in the Queens Magazine, social media, and in my relationships with former students. Our students, and their stories, give me hope as we discover together the radical possibilities that exist for us all.
Andrea McCrary, Ph.D. ’91 is assistant professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences.
QUEENS MAGAZiNE
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