One of the most gratifying aspects of this course was the way in which this course differed so much from the rest of my Swarthmore classes. I remember often feeling out of place in my Swarthmore courses, because I felt that I was never fully able to be my own self in the academic environment. I wished for a space that would allow me to nurture my tenderness, creativity, wildly uninhibited dreams, and the past child selves I had forgotten. I wanted a space for me to be present. In a year of tumultuous rage and immense grief and sheer exhaustion, I hoped to find a space that perhaps, could be a place of respite, a place to contemplate, a place where the concept of optimization was banished and heartfelt dreams lingered instead. I wished for a place to explore my culture, to embrace the duality of being Asian and American, to explore meaning-making in the work of justice, and to put into reality the definition of praxis – bridging theory to action in the sweeping landscape of Asian-American activism, education, and histories. I have been thinking increasingly about the different aspects of care – taking care of myself, taking care of others, and others taking care of me. And the forms of care which this class embodied were beautiful.
Each week, I looked forward to this course. I laughed out loud at the hilarious relatability in Messy Roots, cried at the touching vulnerability in Magic Fish, and learned about forms of abundance in tending to the shared hopes and visions of a more tender future. I loved embarking on the timeline activity, interacting with the Asian Arts Initiative gallery, inhaling copious amounts of savory beef noodle soup and crispy garlicky cucumbers, and forming a little community of people – people who showed up for one another, who cared intensely about what they were learning and how they were learning it. The intentionality of each and every person in this course is one that will linger with me, and I’ve begun thinking about K-12 classroom pedagogy through my experiences with this course. I’m incredibly grateful for this course, because I feel I have grown immensely not just as a student but also as a practitioner and a teacher.
by Pearl <3