Teaching to Transgress: Fall 2025, Honored Instructor Award
I trained and practiced teaching for over a decade across two continents, Africa (Nigeria) and North America (United States), and nothing beats the joy of helping students understand the world, critique it, find new meaning, and push our understanding forward.
Teaching was initially nurture, and now it has become nature to me. My mother felt it was my responsibility to educate not just my siblings but all children in our community. I once overheard her and my father arguing about whether it was fair for my mom to ask me to do what he thought was free labor. “You can’t ask her to teach without paying her," my dad said. My mother retorted, "Who paid me when I carried her for 9 months? You mean I can’t instruct my child to do something?" Dad added, "It is a long vacation; this extra moral lesson is not necessary." Years later my mother would insist I teach children during long vacations, and since Dad was late, nobody was there to speak for me, so I had to do it.
That something is nature does not mean we won’t train (nurture) to activate and refine what we do. During those years and over time, I learned to teach in engaging ways because my teaching started with children with strict codes from my mother that included no beating or scolding. Children can go to the toilet ten times as a way to avoid learning. Teaching children is an art that requires constant refinement.
When I volunteered in a faith-based community with children, a co-teacher once exclaimed, "Now I see why they bring their church note for you to grade!" If they copied their note well, I will write a scripture of affirmation, like "You have an excellent spirit..." I reward excellence and demand more from those who are not living up to the possibility that exists in them.
As a woman, this approach has earned me blessings and burdens. And now, navigating multiple identities and locations as a Black woman, I still insist on this approach with fluidity and compassion.
I was at the 2025 Annual Conference of the African Studies Association last November in Atlanta when I received an email that I was nominated by students for an award. In my head and in my sister-mum's voice, I thought to myself, "Talo mo?"
But I am thankful for the acknowledgment of my intellectual labor in teaching. Teaching is a lifelong work for me. When my mother asked me to teach extra moral lessons, I thought she was punishing me, but in retrospect, she was preparing me for my life work in education. I got this when I was a Teaching Assistant for Professor Shashko, who is an incredibly kind human.
One of my drives for my public-facing writing is to carry on Maya Angelou's words to us: "When you learn, teach." I aspire to write in a concise, informative, and engaging way, following the "Princess of the Press," Ida B. Wells-Barnett. I learned from these two Black women that teaching and information sharing are acts of resistance, public good, and human rights.
