Audre Lorde’s Pivotal Philosophy in the Classroom

As we keep diving into the depths of Audre Lorde’s powerful works, we learn how she chose to utilize her life experiences within the education community through emotional connection. Lorde’s bold, but different teaching techniques become pivotal for her students, helping them to become increasingly open-minded about the world in which they live in, both inside and outside their classroom environment. Audre Lorde begins her article, “Poet As Teacher—Human As Poet—Teacher As Human,” speaking about how her teaching style may sound “basic” to many, but effective as her lessons vary based on the events and emotions she and her students experience on that specific day. She expresses the importance of human connection and how it assists her to convey specific societal issues to her students. Lorde strongly believes that it’s important to put forth true emotion in the classroom, as she chose to use it as a tool to emotionally touch each of her students so, they are able to receive a well-rounded/full learning experience. She expresses this as she states: “There is something to be learned from the sharing of true feeling between two or more people; co-communicating id teaching—touching—really touching another human being is teaching—writing real poems is teaching—digging good ditches is teaching—living is teaching” (182). Here, she really shares the significance of human connection and how touching the world, both physically and emotionally, can help an individual to get to know themselves and the world around them, through their own internal and external feelings. 

Audre Lorde also expresses how this individual power and knowledge can be found through one’s poetry. Although she says she can’t teach her students how to write their emotions through their poetry, she states: “…I can show a student how to improve what is already written—…specifically how to bring the poem closer to that feeling the poet wishes to evoke. And I can encourage a student to recognize, cherish, and set down those feelings and experiences out of which poetry is forged. But the only way I can teach another human being anything else about creating poetry is to teach that person about myself, about feeling herself or himself.” Here, she projects that poetry is indeed an experience of intimacy and “is neither easy not casual, but is real.” She shows that a student’s true learning occurs when they first allow themself to explore their own emotional identity, letting go of the mold that society had created, influencing them to think, feel, and look a certain way towards the rest of the world to “fit in.” Lorde even states that this emotional and intimate “exchange…is the most strongly prohibited, or discouraged, human exercise of our time” because society’s norms hide this exploration of life, body, identity, and knowledge which prevents people to flourish and express themselves properly, such as Lorde herself (183). Although Lorde’s generation keeps pushes this new educational movement away, she hopes her teaching helps to pass these frowned upon, but powerful concepts along to her students. As her students learn to become more open minded to creating positive change, she hopes they can take these concepts along with them into their futures, helping to transform future societies for the better. 

“I Teach Myself In Outline Notes, Journals, Syllabi & An Excerpt From Deotha” speaks about how Audre Lorde utilized her own notes and journals as a tool to guide her through the role of being an educator. As Lorde constantly expresses the importance of recognizing individual life experiences and applying them to one’s learning experience, she makes sure to personally connect with each and every one of her students. For example, one of Lorde’s past students, Sarah Schulman, recalls how Lorde organized the students’ desks in a circle and chose to stand and teach in the middle of the circle, stating: “By the second class, [Lorde] had learned all the students’ names as she taught, she would make eye contact with specific students, referencing an idea from their papers or from a pervious class discussion” (4). Being that one of her students remembered this specific moment, it clearly shows how Lorde made it a necessity to have a strong connection with each and every one her students. This seemingly small detail about the class actually created a positively strong impact on Sarah and the other students, which helped Lorde and her students to build a close and comfortable community within the classroom. As I read this, I automatically made a connection to our own class. I strongly appreciate how Professor Savonick chose to organize the class in a circle because I believe it helps us to get to know one another on a different, more emotional level. We sit in a circle to gather as a community, coming together to discuss our own perspectives, feelings and experiences on societal topics that may seem hard to speak about in different environments. The circle helps us to build connection with one another and especially helps to create a better understanding through our individual experiences that we have the opportunity to openly share within the circle. I feel as if the circle pushes away the separation we may feel in society on a daily basis. It brings us together as a whole, but also as different individuals with the same motive of changing the world for the better and helping each other to learn about tough topics that may not have come up throughout all our years of learning. 

As Lorde projects the significance in the power of transformation through the connection with human experience and emotion, she especially “urges her students to identify their own struggles within larger political and economic structures and sets them up to find ways in their everyday lives to move toward action” (4-5). This quote automatically reminded me of the part in Zami where Lorde openly shares about her negative experience in school as a child herself. In this part of the book, the idea of meritocracy is brought up, which refers to certain system of principles that reward hard work. Lorde was actually a very bright student and was usually ahead of her other classmates, but she seemed to get in trouble for things that weren’t necessarily bad. She shares an experience of the time her teacher asked the class to write the first letter of their names, but she wrote out her whole name instead, leading to her teachers to treat her like she was some sort of trouble maker who couldn’t follow the rules. In this situation, Lorde actually should have been praised for this high level of accomplishment. As Lorde entered her teenage years, her view of school suddenly shifts from a negative environment, into a positive one. Lorde started to view her school setting of Hunter High School as an escape from her home life, seeing it asa place where she can socially and mentally express herself. She began to think of her home life as a negative space, where she felt misunderstood by her immigrant parents and trapped under their strict rules. This is when Lorde actually discovered her identity through the erotic, stating that “It was high school that I came to believe that I was different from my white classmates, not because I was black, but because I was me” (82). Here, Lorde really expresses how she found herself through her individual creativity. By sharing these memories of school, she shows how high school was something in her life that helped her to grow into the woman she was today, in both positive and negative situations. Lorde’s past experiences in school helped her to mold herself into the teacher figure she strived to be and help to create the impact she wanted to leave on her students. By sharing her life experiences, Lorde was able to strongly grasp each one, eventually learning to take control of her own future. Finding herself and moving past certain experiences let her transform the future ahead of her, building a new path for herself, as well as for each and every person that comes across her powerful work, which barely depicts the strong and beautiful philosophy she left behind for us. 

Discussion Questions:

1. Imagine you were one of Audre Lorde’s students, sitting through one of her classes. If you had to change anything about her teaching style/techniques, what would it be and why? If not, explain why you wouldn’t change anything.
2. Do you think it’s effective to express high levels of emotion within the classroom setting? Why or why not?
3. If you were to ask Audre Lorde a question based on her experience of being a teacher, what would you like to ask her and why? What do you think her response would be?