Carol A. Hand

This post is a farewell to a vocation I have loved – teaching. I awoke this morning with a clear answer to a question I have been pondering for several weeks, “Should I resign from teaching, perhaps this time with no intention of ever returning?”

Yes, it’s time. Although I love working with students, the context of teaching at the post high school level has increasingly provided too little space for liberatory praxis.

Photo Credit: Graduate Celebration – 2009

It’s the structure of education, not the students, that has been the determining factor for my decision. During my brief time as an adjunct for a private college, I have witnessed the transformation of a program originally based on emphasizing critical thinking and experiential learning based on social justice to a “feeder” program preparing students for a clinical master’s degree. The transition didn’t occur over night, but…

What did the good Pharrel Williams say ?”Clap along if you know what happiness is toyou“, well I guess he has done a lot clapping this year considering the immense success of his worldwide hit ” Happy“, however, do you know what happiness is to you, or better when? Metaphorically speaking when is the most intense moment of bliss: when you cross the finish line or the moment just before, when you are overwhelmed by that powerful combination of excitement and pain, in short, when you are “just about”?

“Just about” would have been Keats‘s prompt answer. In his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, the poet is charmed by ” the leaf fringed legend ” that “haunts” the shape of an urn and focuses on the images which are depicted on its frieze . He is attracted by one scene…