Sage and Tissue Boxes: Critical Race Feminista Perspectives on Office Hours

• In Event: First-Generation Faculty of Color: Reflections on Research, Teaching, and Service

Abstract

Informed by a critical race feminista praxis (Delgado Bernal & Aleman, 2017), in this paper we attempt to expand office hours beyond a contractual agreement, and to consider the possibility of office hours as a transformative and social justice space. Traditionally, office hours are a teaching requirement in higher education; faculty sit in their office during a set day and time on a weekly basis so that students can walk in and ask questions related to the course. In this fashion, office hours are what Paulo Freire (1970) describes as a “banking model” exchange, where the professor deposits the “missing” or “unclear” information to students and the student successfully regurgitates this information in the course assignments.

As first-generation Faculty of Color, we argue that office hours can become a counterspace (Yosso & Benavides López, 2010) if we redefine the contractual agreement to a transformative pedagogical practice. Through our critical race feminista testimionos, we situate office hours as sites of resistance, affirmation, and growth, what Delgado Bernal and Aleman (2017) call transformative ruptures, “…interactions, experiences, and moments where a disruption of pervasive coloniality, institutional racism, and systemic inequity occurs” (p. 29). We conclude with a discussion of how our experiences in office hours can inform university pedagogical practices and institutional initiatives.

Author

• José Manuel Aguilar-Hernández, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona