Classroom teaching requires warding off forces that deaden the self.

Evidence

This book affirmed my internal struggles as a public-school teacher, and subsequently provoked me to engage in the scholarly discourse on teacher mindfulness, particularly from a Freirean perspective. During my twelve years of teaching, as a practitioner of meditation and mindfulness, I regularly struggled with the conflict between the outer conditions and responsibilities of my job, and my inner conditions as a human being. I battled to maintain a sense of presence and attention, while also warding off what Higgins (2011) calls “the many forces that deaden the self” (p. 2). In my experience, some of these forces included stressful teacher evaluations, overly prescriptive curriculum, test-based accountability, and disengaged students. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 659

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the broader theme of public schooling’s deadening institutional conditions examined across this reader’s critical education literature. — connects to: Liberatory teaching in one classroom can leave students voiceless and alienated elsewhere — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 285; University culture treats the self as emptied out once the classroom threshold is crossed — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 45