Category: connecting to students

Principles of Community: 5 Thoughts on How to Build Safe, Inclusive, Engaging Spaces for Students

On By alexandriaggilbertIn active learning, connecting to students, supporting studentsLeave a comment

Community has to be one of my favorite words. It’s a word that has been steeped in a strictly religious context for me for so many years, yet the idea of community, belonging to a socially connected root system, has also been life saving. Communities are where I found healing from trauma, where I found parents and queer elders, where I found partners and friends, where I learn. Community is relational. It is a critical element of change and visible demonstration of our relational values, so how do we bring folks together in a classroom to build this community, how do we engage with students so that they are building community well, and also how do we uphold boundaries for the critical wellness of our students and ourselves? The following represents a few thoughts on community in the classroom, and discussions with colleagues about supporting students with relational intention in spaces of engagement. We hope that this is the start of many conversations about fostering community, and we welcome you to offer your thoughts, strategies, practices, trials, and questions. 

Why Community?

First, it’s important to note that we’re approaching community from a hooks perspective: community is vital and necessary to the teaching and learning process. Without a spirit of community, we cannot approach the classroom with a democratic practice, minimize authoritarianism, or foster learning “…as an experience that enriches life in its entirety.” If we want to change our students’ lives, we have to recognize the value community has in the learning process, mainly that it is a relational process. As educators we focus a lot on how we can produce activities, assessments, reports to demonstrate our effectiveness in the classroom, but how many times do we look to the quality of our relationships with students to determine success? If humanizing and creating spaces of belonging and inclusion are necessary for equity work, then community needs to be the lens through which the classroom and engagement spaces are curated. In his work, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, Raymond J. Wlodkowski makes note that “learning requires us to perceive a person’s thinking and emotions as inseparable from each other and from the social context in which the activity takes place” (96). Thinking and emotions are inseparable for the purpose of learning, which leads me to start asking some questions about my practice in the classroom, especially when I think about engaging students: 

  • How do I address my student’s emotions on a weekly basis? 
  • What language do my students have to talk about their own emotions? 
  • What language do I use to talk about emotions?
  • What emotions do I bring to students? 
  • What emotions are most critical for fostering trust and inclusion? 

When these basic principles of love form the basis of teacher-pupil interaction the mutual pursuit of knowledge creates the conditions for optimal learning. -bell hooks

Teaching Community

If we approach the classroom with these questions and emotion-based principles first, the work of building community has a chance to stick. We cannot do community as an activity, we must approach students in the spirit of community. This is perhaps the largest takeaway that I’ve had in using relational/emotional principles for equity work: My beliefs about community and my own spiritual wellness are going to impact the community work in my classroom, relational wellness of my students, and the trust we have with each other. 

So, the following are 5 core strategies and principles to remember when doing equity-focused student engagement and community building. We can take these principles as challenges to our own identities as educators and then also use them to curate meaningful spaces for students built on trust, inclusion, and belonging. 

Strategy #1: Positionality Awareness & Trauma Acknowledgement 

We have lately said that our first meeting with students is crucial. It’s the first day where we have the chance to make or break trust with students, but this is a false understanding. Our trust starts with students the day they learn our names, see our faces on websites, and watch our names tagged on Discord or GroupMe. Our names and reputations follow us, and students really love to help each other out with this. They know who to trust and who to avoid. We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge this as a vital part of community building and student engagement. Our reputations are our responsibility. What presence do I put forth on campus to communicate trust to the students that I will potentially have in my classrooms? 

This kind of engagement is unseen from our perspective, but not from our students’ perspectives. They are watching and they know. 

One professor, in Picture of a Professor, writes about a critical activity she does with her students on the first day of class before addressing the syllabus or any other academic agenda items: 

Grounded in the understanding of the structural conditions and institutional barriers that Latinas in the professoriate experience, and the importance of critical reflexivity for facilitating inclusive learning communities in the college classroom, in this chapter, I describe the “What Comes to Your Mind?” activity as a tool to help students recognize and work to transform their problematic biases about who a professor is. I offer this activity as a pedagogical tool for educators to use during the first day of class. Critical reflexivity can help facilitate students’ understanding of how their perceptions of who a professor is, or what a professor looks like, undermine opportunities for meaningful learning and the cultivating of positive student-educator relationships. (Fernandez 53)

“Critical Reflexivity as a Tool for Students to Recognize Biases” by Jesica Siham Fernández

Fernandez flips the script a bit here to offer us a reflection on how students come to the professor-student relationship with biases as well. Positionality is a two-way street, and in order to cultivate meaningful engagement, we must tackle bias as a conceptual problem. In a similar manner, relationship experts encourage folks to see one another as supportive partners in tackling relational problems rather than seeing one another as the problem. This is a similar principle when applied to student-professor relationships: how can we tackle the problem of positionality and privilege together. We can acknowledge, provide language, address, and soothe. This practice builds trust on day one (for a detailed breakdown of Fernandez’s scripted exercise – consider coming to our March 30, zoom COP session during college hour)

For light-skinned, cishet, able-bodied folks, there exists a responsibility in acknowledging positionality and power dynamics before students walk into the classroom. This means bringing our faces to the students to help build that trust before the classroom. Whether it’s on a website or in the engagement centers, our online and physical presence across the campus matters when we present ourselves in the classroom. 
In a similar manner, bringing awareness to the traumas that students face because of these power imbalances is also crucial. Bettina Love in We Want to Do More than Survive, reminds us that the education system is built to reiterate the racial and identity inequities of our larger society and “are often forced to simply survive the harsh conditions of school, and this focus on survival limits their ability to truly thrive and be well.” (qtd. in Venet 59). So, how can we break away from the classroom as a place of trauma and bring in healing? How do we address the realities of trauma without overwhelming or dismissing students’ experiences and emotions (and our own)?

Strategy #2: Personal Relationships in Visible Spaces 

When as professors we care deeply about our subject matter, when we profess to love what we teach and the process of teaching, that declaration of emotional connection tends to be viewed favorably by administrators and colleagues. When we talk about loving our students, these same voices usually talk about exercising caution. -bell hooks, Teaching Community

There are several ways in which we can have relational value in the student-professor engagement. We can bring ourselves to the visible spaces of where students live. In other words: get out there. Step out into the community. Find the pockets of where students are and be there. 

  • Hosting office hours in spaces where you can find connections to student communities is a great example of building trust into our reputations as faculty. 
  • Being present for students and taking an interest in their holistic college experience helps humanize us, giving them a context of who we are as people outside of the classroom. If we’re not with students outside of the classroom, it’s going to be more challenging to find moments of community in the classroom. 
  • Two of our colleagues are going to share more about this, but using the engagement centers as pivotal spaces to build trust and inclusion can be fruitful when it comes to being faculty who are trustworthy. 
  • Focus on stories: listening to student stories is also another great way to engage in these spaces, making their stories the central focus of your engagement can inform our practices. If we want to reach them in the classroom, let’s find out who they are outside of it. 

Strategy #3: Creating Critical Wellness

Another strategy for engagement that fosters community-building is approaching the classroom space (online and F2F) with critical wellness. In Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education, Venet reminds us that “[h]umanizing school requires that we dispense with the outdated idea that children or adults can somehow divorce their brains from the bodies. Why do schools so often pretend that it’s possible to leave our emotional and physical selves outside of school and bring only our intellectual selves into the classroom?”(58). Honoring students’ wellness means addressing the ways that their bodies and emotional histories are present with us in the learning process. Venet challenges us to create classrooms and engagement spaces as “places that can increase our personal and community wellness, not deplete it” (58). If our focus on learning seeks only to engage the intellect, we are doing our students a disservice. They walk through the doors and the browser windows with a whole host of emotions, and more tragically, with not a lot of language or tools to even recognize that they do. 

One of the challenges and barriers I’ve sought to tackle (and I know others are as well) is to provide students with language and space for emotional regulation before I ask them to produce an artifact or face an academic challenge. By giving language to their emotions, students can ease anxieties, increase blood flow, stimulate spatial awareness, and find an outlet for potential healing. Venet takes the term critical wellness from Tyrone C. Howard and contributors in All Students Must Thrive, focusing specifically on the point that “wellness cannot be a solo endeavor” (58-59). Healing takes a village, and for 16-weeks (or 8 if you’re fast-tracking), we have an opportunity to facilitate this process and weave it in with the learning. By focusing on topics like students’ mental health, coping mechanisms for anxiety, emotional regulation, and trauma awareness, we allow students to be fully human – to showcase their inner life in conjunction with their visible identities. 

There are several strategies I’ve adopted and created to do this, which I will link to here, and include scripts for: 

  • Writing and identifying emotions 
  • Regulating breathing in the classroom together 
  • Grounding 
  • Anxiety soothing 
  • Emotional regulation 

Most of this can be done fairly quickly (5 min), but the act of consistency (doing it more than once) and intentionality (starting with it), addresses students’ whole selves in the learning process.  

Interdisciplinary Deep Dive: for a deeper dive on using emotion-based community practices in group work, consider research on the dynamics of groups and healing from Chris Burris’s Creating Healing Circles.

Strategy #4: Boundaries Create Safety

Perhaps a counterargument to this perspective is: but how much of this is really my responsibility? I can’t answer that for any one person, but I can say that the more we provide relational support for students, the more successful they’ll be. This doesn’t mean we enable oversharing or focus solely on these relational skills, but rather use our relational skills when needed, strategically and intentionally, by setting boundaries. 

Having scripts readily available for when students venture into more delicate conversations can be very helpful as we navigate the growing mental health crises on our campuses. My class in the fall had a very robust discussion one day on our theme of love. They asked questions that were text-driven but deeply personal. At the point at which they asked if they should “break up with so-and-so because of they way he’s been treating me,” I said, “I’m not really trained to give that kind of advice or support, but I definitely encourage you to talk to a therapist.” The class, represented by multiple voices shouted: “But YOU are our therapist. We need your help.” 

While I redirected the thought that I would be a therapist to them, what didn’t escape me was their need to be seen in that moment. That someone would teach them not only how to write, but how to love well, how to communicate, how to set boundaries. It’s important to note that this was in week 10 or so, and after we’d built a lot of trust around the topics of love, relationships, systemic oppression, and healing. We’d written about love, we’d discussed it, but now they wanted to know how to embody it. I was out of my element, and I believe I stumbled my way through that conversation. In this next semester, I’m teaching the same themes, but I’m preparing scripts now for how to create boundaries with our conversations. Boundaries that allow me to tell them I see them, but that also keep me and others’ safe in the classroom from potentially triggering or oversharing moments. 

Scripting potential conversations and responses to emotional distress is also a great way to foster engagement with students. It is a teaching moment that says “Even though I can’t directly help you, I still care that you receive the help you need.” 

  • What content in your classroom leaves students emotionally charged? 
  • How can you script and prepare for responses ahead of time to foster inclusion without cutting off their emotional experiences? 
  • How can we teach others in the class how to respond and create boundaries as well? 

Interested in scripts? Come to our March 30th session during college hour on Zoom! 

Strategy-esque #5: Don’t do it alone

This last strategy is based solely on opinion, but also kinda not. None of this work should be done in a vacuum, a silo of coffee-induced lesson planning and course building. In the spirit of community, we need each other as well. I assume that’s partially why you’re reading this, and also why you’ll attend our session later this month (March 30, college hour, zoom –  see flyer). If student engagement is going to be genuine, it’s going to need practice, so how do you check-in with colleagues? How do you foster emotional regulation in your spaces? What space is there for vulnerability for the sake of humanizing our processes and putting people first? This work requires us to start with ourselves by acknowledging our emotional responsibility to be people of trust with one another and for the sake of our students’ wellness and success. 

Further Questions for Thought: 

  • How do I address my privileges and positionality in my classrooms and engagement spaces early in the semester? Throughout? 
  • How can I instill a reputation of trust before students enter the classroom? 
  • How do I address the traumas that students have experienced because of the personal and systemic prevalence of others’ positionalities? 
  • What are my boundaries when it comes to offering students’ support? Are these intentional or presumed? 
  • How do I communicate these boundaries? 
  • How do I bring relational value to the forefront of my practice? 
  • Where can I show up more with students? 

Works Referenced

Fernández, Jesica Siham. “Critical Reflexivity as a Tool for Students to Recognize Biases: A First Day of Class Conversation on What a Professor Looks Like.” Picture of a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning, edited by Jessamyn Neuhaus, West Virginia UP, 2022, pp. 51-67. 

hooks, bell. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, Routledge, 2003. 

Venet, Alex Shevrin. Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education, WW Norton & Company, 2021. 

Wlodkowski, Raymond J. Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, Josey-Bass, 2008. 

Come to Our Community of Practice!

Community of Practice: Student Engagement & Community Building

March 30th, 2023 | 12:50pm – 1:50pm 

Zoom (link can be found here)

Hosted by: Alex Gilbert (English), Thatcher Carter (English), Sharon Walker (Umoja), Tim Gutierrez (Sociology), and Thea Marie Seals (LASSE/WRC)

Understanding the Characteristics and Specific Needs of Adult Learners

On By ProfHIn connecting to students, student centered teachingLeave a comment

For decades, scholars have emphasized the vital interconnection between education and democracy. Political Science professor, Richard Guarasci (2018) calls the United States’ college system an “anchor” of democratic values and initiatives, where learning is a critical component for stability and engagement. Cultural critic and professor Henry Giroux (2019) calls on higher education to produce “civic courage, expand the radical imagination, and nurture individual and social agency” (p.1). John Dewey (2011), a foundational contributor to the field of Adult Education, emphasized how education is always at the forefront of producing informed, capable, engaged citizens that constitute thriving communities.

One does not need to read much further to understand how adult learning contexts can positively impact individuals and communities. However, it is not uncommon for those of us who teach in these contexts to do so without having had formal training in adult learning theory. How is the adult learning context unique and different than others? What are the specific needs of this community and strategies that best benefit learners?

CONTEXTUAL DIFFERENCES

For children, school is a socializing institution where identity is being created and formed and they are still developing cognitively and physically. Being a student is a main activity in children’s lives, and their teacher/parent/caretaker guides them throughout this process. The field of pedagogy addresses the needs of this group.  In contrast, adult learners already have an established and developed identity that is closely tied to their larger social roles and community. Being a student is one aspect of who that learner is, on top of being a parent/caretaker, household provider, civic citizen, employee, chauffeur, friend, etc. Therefore, educator-facilitators must consider some of the fundamental assumptions of andragogy when addressing the AL environment.

A BIT ABOUT ANDRAGOGY…

Given the differences between child and adult learning contexts, it is vital to address andragogical considerations. Adults have an eagerness and readiness to learn; they have a reservoir of experiences that can inform and/stifle their learning experiences; and they desire to make practical connections to new knowledge and information.

Growing Enrollment: Adult learners have been given the title of “non-traditional” students in our education system. However, this notion is being challenged given the data showing 42% of CCC students are adult learners aged 25 or over (1,006,351 of 2,381,806 students) (Shasta College Attainment and Innovation Lab for Equity and Success Center for California Community Colleges, 2021). It is also projected that the number of high school graduates will begin to decline from 2024 through the early 2030s (State of California Department of Finance, 2021). And add the fact that Baby Boomers will increasingly leave the workforce over the coming years, opening the door for opportunities and the credentials needed to obtain those opportunities, then we can easily see a reality where we will have a growing number of adult learners in our classrooms. With this population projected to hold a significant share of our classroom space, we need to consider andragogy, as well as the institutional policies and practices that impact the academic success of these students.

Completion and Success: Persistence and achievement gaps are present for this population in general, with national data showing completion rates that are 18% lower for those 24 and up compared to younger students. This is an equity issue as over half of adult learners are people of color, and in California, half of the 6.8 million adult learners with a high school diploma but no college degree are people of color (California Competes, 2020). We need to improve outcomes in order to help increase educational attainment, employment opportunities, and earning potential of adult learners, especially people of color 25 and up, in our communities.

INEFFECTIVE PRACTICES

However, despite advances in the field and data that demonstrate the need to readjust practices and policies, there are still practices that stifle the unique characteristics and needs of adult learners, including older foundational learning theories, such as behaviorist, cognitivist, social cognitivist, and humanist approaches. This is not to say these approaches cannot add value to learning, but they all fall short in addressing the sociocultural contexts in which adult learners are living. Additionally, they reflect archaic assumptions about the way adults learn, which sharply contrast with current neuroscience perspectives and contemporary critical learning theories.

SO…WHERE SHOULD WE FOCUS?

We must remind ourselves that learning is not stagnant, but reflective of the time period of the learner. Merriam and Baumgartner (2020) discuss how learning priorities reflect the needs of a culture at a given time, as demonstrated throughout history. For instance, in colonial America, education heavily emphasized religious imperatives and the importance of reading biblical material. In contrast, post-Revolutionary War education emphasized civic responsibility that focused instead on politics, science, and philosophy. Merriam and Baumgartner mention that more contemporary adult needs are shaped by implications of changing demographics, globalization, and technology. Other scholars also address the imperative that adult learning contexts address structures of power and privilege (Brookfield, 2014); neoliberal agendas (Giroux, 2019); and revisionist histories (Hornig & Sambile, 2019); and are sensitive to the needs of adult learners of color and other systems-impacted learners.

WHAT WORKS?

In consideration of the factors listed above, what approach actually works in order to address both the needs of adult learners while being sensitive to the sociocultural contexts in which we find ourselves? A review of the current literature indicates that a constructivist approach is imperative in creating adult learning spaces that address these multiple needs and concerns. A constructivist approach acknowledges multiple perspectives in various contexts and considers the fluidity of knowledge in relation to time, environment, culture, and positionality, among other factors (Merriam & Bierema, 2014). This means that rather than viewing knowledge as fixed, or the brain as a thing to be “used,” or the classroom as a clean slate where all learners have equal access and the freedom to participate, rather, a constructivist view acknowledges that knowledge is dynamic, the brain is to be “changed,” and the classroom is a complex space riddled with structures of power and privilege that can create barriers and stifle learning.

Within the framework of constructivism, the scholarship shows that learning must be inquiry-based. It must involve reflective practice, and it has to implement community building strategies. Ultimately, the goal is to create disorienting dilemmas or situations that create transformative learning opportunities that empower learners by asking them to utilize their experience, critically examine their knowledge frameworks, and build their communicative skills to engage in ways that positively impact them and their communities.

Potential Questions

  1. Considering some of the theoretical approaches mentioned above, which does your practice reflect? Has it changed over time? How?
  2. Does your practice reflect any aspect of constructivism as mentioned in the last paragraph? If so, can you provide an example?

References

Brookfield, S. D. (2013). Powerful techniques for teaching adults. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.  

California Competes. (2020). Credit for prior learning: Leveraging past learning to close present-day equity gaps. Retrieved from: https://californiacompetes.org/assets/general-files/CACompetes_CPL-Brief_Final_8_11.pdf.

Dewey, J. (2011). Democracy and education. Digireads.com Publishing.

Giroux, H. A. (2019). Authoritarianism and the challenge of higher education in the age of Trump. Action, Criticism & Theory for Music Education, 18(1), 6–25.

Guarasci, R. (2018). Anchoring democracy: The civic imperative for higher education. Liberal Education, 104(1), 26-33.

Hornig, B. L., & Sambile, A. F. (2019). Addressing hxstorical amnesia: Proactively combating hxstorical amnesia as a means of healing in higher education. Vermont Connection, 40(1), 98–104.

Merriam, S. B., &. Baumgartner, L. M. (2020). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide. 4rth ed. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.

Merriam, S. B., & Bierema, L. L. (2014). Adult learning: Linking theory and practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 

Shasta College Attainment and Innovation Lab for Equity and Success Center for California Community Colleges. (2021). Improving equity and completion: An adult learner toolkit for California community colleges. California Community Colleges. Vision Resource Center. Retrieved from: https://visionresourcecenter.cccco.edu/.

State of California Department of Finance, (2021). California public K-12 graded enrollment and high school graduate projections by county — 2021 series. Retrieved from: https://dof.ca.gov/forecasting/demographics/public-k-12-graded-enrollment/.

First Impressions:  Helping Students to Feel Welcome and Engaged on Day 1

On By composingpossibilitiesIn active learning, connecting to studentsLeave a comment

By Kathleen Sell

In her book The Spark of Learning, Sarah Cavanagh writes, “On the first few days of class students will be forming their impressions of you, and this impression may be more important than much of what you do later” (qtd. in Lang).

James Lang, in his article for The Chronicle of Higher Education “How to Teach a Good First Day of Class,” suggests that these “thin slice judgments… condition [students’] attitudes toward the entire course, the effort they are willing to put in, and the relationship they will have with your and their peers throughout the semester.”

Lang outlines some key principles to keep in mind as you plan your first day: curiosity, community, learning, and expectations (see the article linked below for his full discussion).

1) Curiosity

  • Rather than starting with the syllabus (please don’t make this the first thing or the sum total of what your first day is all about!), try starting with something that sparks curiosity about the course content itself and begins to establish the relevance, interest of the course material to students’ world and lives.  So what will students be able to do/ do better—and why does it matter—as a consequence of taking this course? Then a look at the syllabus later can show how the course content can satisfy that curiosity/ help develop those skills. So think big questions addressed by course content.
  • Showing your love for the material and what sparked and continues to spark your curiosity helps here, too! What do you love about your field and teaching this material? How can you communicate some of that to your students?
  • This also works with Darla Cooper’s framework for student success (RP Group “10 Ways Everyone Can Support Student Success”) by laying the groundwork to help students feel engaged as they begin your course—establishing a sense of the overarching questions, the big picture, why the course matters, and why they should be interested!

2) Community & Partnership

  • Right from the start of a class, signaling that we see ourselves in partnership with our students in learning the material and accomplishing the goals of the course is key.  And intentionally working to create community helps to get this partnership off to a good start.
  • This can (hopefully does!) start even before the first day of class with a welcome email or uploaded welcome video to the class, a reach out to students requesting name pronunciation/ pronouns, info about course materials. Tools in Canvas, such as Name Coach can really help. Once class begins, one strategy to avoid mis-pronunciations or using a name other than the name they choose to use is to have students name themselves and you can check them off as they do so. Using name cards for the first week or two, too, can be a help with learning names especially if masks have made it harder for you to do so!
  • Humanize yourself! Greet and talk to as many students as you can individually, give them an opportunity to ask YOU questions since you’ll be asking lots of them. Online, this can happen with the welcome video, too. Tools to facilitate this, such as a short Flipgrid video or video assignment with flexible guidelines, can be a great way to meet both your online students and your masked in-person students and for students to meet each other in a less stressful environment. 
  • Get to know your students—a survey or info card of some sort that allows students to share (as willing) information about themselves, their interests, what brings them to your course, any areas of concerns or needs they may have can help you begin to know your students as the complex adults with complicated lives that they are. Beyond simply saying or signaling that you are happy to answer questions or see students in office hours (which many of us call student hours), what might you more concretely say or do to communicate your commitment to each student’s learning? Offering information—on syllabi, in Canvas, in class the first day—about resources available to students can help here, and get students involved in sharing resources they know about that you may have missed. All this demonstrates your willingness to know and support your students as whole individuals.
  • Get students talking to each other—this could be an icebreaker but could also be something simple related to course content if you’re not comfortable with icebreaker activities (so part of sparking curiosity and getting them learning!). 
  • All this is key to helping students feel nurtured, connected and valued—three of the six factors for student success in Cooper’s student success framework. Offering students an opportunity to share something about themselves—and listening and responding!—taking the time to get to know them, and creating space/ opportunities for them to connect with one another will be crucial to their success all semester long.

3) Learning

  • Get students learning the first day! This is “not the same as content delivery” but rather an effort to get students engaged with reflecting on and processing something about the content you’ll be covering (Lang). Or perhaps you might get them meta-cognitively thinking about strategies for effective learning in a class like yours, experiences (good and bad) they’ve had in a class like yours before (helpful for math and English!) and meeting any concerns that come from this productively from day one.
  • Think about something that will allow students to activate any prior learning, apply the knowledge they walk in the door with to something you’ll be working on in this course. Connecting the knowledge and experiences they already have and bring to your class to what they’ll be learning and highlighting what their knowledge and experiences can contribute to the class’s learning can help create an environment in which students feel valued and seen.
  • Getting students engaged right away in content also can have, crucially, the added benefit of helping to establish your expertise, especially if your embodied self doesn’t “match” what students might stereotypically expect a “real professor” and can begin to disarm any of the assumptions they might make about you as their professor on the basis of your race/ethnicity, age, gender, appearance, differing physical abilities.

4) Expectations

  • And yes, some time this first day to address the essential questions students will have about the course is good! So addressing materials/ texts to buy, tests/ projects/ assignments they’ll have to complete, the basic shape of the course is a good idea. Evan Kutzler (who regularly posts on teaching on Twitter) suggests asking, “’what do you need to know before you can come back to class confident you will do well?’, [which] gets a bigger response on syllabus day than ‘so, any questions?’”.
  •  Leaving some time for follow up questions on day two to address anything that comes up as students take a more thorough look at the syllabus is a good idea, too. And this could be gamified with a Kahoot or done as a group activity to continue to help students build community. Some time to transparently address and demystify course expectations will help lay the groundwork for students to plan ahead and feel that they belong. Our adult students, with all their many responsibilities, need to know clearly from the outset what they’ll be expected to do and within what framework of expectation (e.g. around grace periods for late work, etc.).
  • I send the syllabus out with my welcome note before the start of the term so that during this portion of the first day of class, they may already have some specific questions they’d like me to address or clarify.
  • HOW we do this matters a lot—the tone, the language, the emphasis. Signaling your expectation that the students CAN accomplish the tasks outlined for the course, communicating that learning involves mistakes and re-dos and growth over the course of the whole semester, highlighting the supports built in to and available alongside the course to help students succeed—these are positive approaches to a discussion of expectations. Highlighting only the difficulty, that not everyone can or will succeed, or too much time on rules and regulations send exactly the opposite message. We need to signal from day one our belief that our students are capable and expected to succeed.
  • Something else to try to extend this through the first week or two (even beyond as other kinds of questions emerge about content or specifics of assignments) is to have a system for gathering questions—whether this is a question box that students can drop a note into, a parking lot (giant sticky and smaller ones to post questions) up during class sessions, or index card check ins where students can reflect on something they’ve learned and ask any questions they have. For both online and in person classes, you could also try having an Open Q&A discussion board. This helps students ask questions that others might have, too, and creates a spot to check for answers at any time in addition to emailing you.

What first day strategies have you tried that work well?

Resources

Conferencing and Conversation: Talking to Students

On By composingpossibilitiesIn connecting to students, supporting students3 Comments

I. Office Hours: “Can we talk?”

Trepidation—a likely descriptor for our students’ emotional response to the prospect of making an office hours visit. What leads me to this assumption is, in part, my own undergrad experience. I was an above-average student with a subdued affect and a solid record of attendance. I was also, in several significant ways, a traditional college student. So why would I still feel anxious about a one-on-one interaction with a professor? I suppose it was ultimately about knowledge and power (I felt I had little of both). The few times I did attend office hours, it was to collect a book left behind in class or to ask for a signature on an add/drop petition. Without exception, my professors were affable and courteous, even self-effacing. They did their level best, I think, to consciously disrupt the power dynamic and allay what must have been my obvious unease. Still, I did not seek counsel when it would have benefitted me to do so. Rather, I just tried to figure things out on my own.

Considering my undergrad history of limited interpersonal exchanges with faculty, one would think that I should have a clear view as to why I am typically alone during my own office hours, but I don’t. I feel that I have gone above and beyond to be engaging, accessible, and—often to my students’ chagrin—“entertaining.” But does all of this seeming self-awareness equate to a line of students outside my door? Sadly, no. I consistently offer up invitations during class; I write positively-framed solicitations on homework and essays; I email specific students and encourage them to drop by for a chat. However, unless I make it mandatory, I will have but few visitors. Meanwhile, my colleague in an adjoining office consistently has a que of students snaking down the hall. So how can I (and those in a like situation) get more participation? How do we convince those reticent students that a one-on-one meeting with a professor will be something other than a Kafkaesque experience?

A recent piece by Elissa Nadworny, Higher Education Correspondent for NPR, suggests that students, despite our explanations and exhortations, don’t really understand what office hours are for:

They’re part of what some students say is a hidden curriculum—the set of rules on a college campus that no one ever tells you about. And then what students do know is that you have to meet one-on-one with your professor, which in some cases means talking to the smartest, most powerful person you know (remember, professors are the ones giving our the grades!).

Clearly, this obstacle exists on any college or university campus. Indeed, it is endemic and systemic. There are, however, some simple ways to begin disrupting our perceived authoritarian role in hopes of getting more participation. Recent literature on the topic of office hours tends to identify common strategies for getting more buy-in from students. Some of these are becoming common practice at our own college, for example, serving one’s hours at a more neutral site—the library, student engagement centers, a table in an outdoor common area. And, of course, online office hours have become second nature thanks to the pandemic. Taking the “office” out of the equation could pay real dividends when it comes to easing students’ anxieties about engaging faculty.

I think most of us would agree with Anthony Abraham Jack, Harvard professor and author of The Privileged Poor, that “[t]he students who are least likely to go to office hours are the students who would benefit from them the most.” Is this not the crux of the matter? Our students with developed social and academic skill sets will frequent office hours to discourse on a variety of topics while those who are in most need of intervention (i.e. our care and support) will go to great lengths to avoid what they can only anticipate as being a moment of negative judgement in which an inherent lack in their intellect or character will be exposed and dissected. As Jack rightly asserts, those most apt to avoid contact are those we are striving to reach. Our non-traditional, underrepresented, historically-marginalized populations have a fraught relationship with formal education. We must acknowledge that our students’ previous experiences with/at schools may well have involved stereotyping, discrimination—veiled or overt, and/or a culture of low expectations and reduced opportunities. Inequality with respect to access, retention, and success results from overlapping systemic barriers that disadvantage these groups. How can we convince all of our students, and especially the aforementioned at-risk populations, that the faculty office is a space in which their agency and cultural capital can be enhanced and advanced? One way is to require they come. And, to make certain they do, we can tie it to their grade in some way. This brings us to the second issue of focus.

II. The Grading Conference: “If you grade it, they will come.”

So if encouraging participation in office hours doesn’t produce the contact we are seeking with students, how about the one-on-one grading conference? We have all certainly heard of this strategy (and its varying forms), and a few of us have been practicing it for some time. For those who have not yet given it a try and may be curious about the practical methodology and pedagogical benefits of the in-person grading conference, we can offer a few ideas.

First, it is important to note that when the rationale and manner of the conference are explained to students up front, there is no resistance. Students understand that this is the way their formal writing will be evaluated in the class, and they get it. Obviously, the trepidation mentioned at the top of this post can sometimes follow them into the first grading session, and I consciously work to ameliorate any anxiety they may be experiencing. However, because they have a clear understanding of the agenda and what will occur in the conference, there is very little of the disconcerting ambiguity that hangs about the office hours visit. Moreover, after that first conference, student buy-in is typically at or near 100%. Some anecdotal evidence to support my assertion seems appropriate here. Late in the term, when we get to the fourth essay, I offer the option of a face-to-face grading conference or a traditional response in which I mark the paper with corrections, comments, and an end note. Unfailingly, all of the students (with a rare exception) choose the conference. This has been my experience, class after class, semester after semester.  

Now, why should students so overwhelmingly prefer the grading conference over traditional marking? There are a couple key reasons. One, the interpersonal exchange eliminates the anonymity and distance (both psychic and physical) that students and professors can experience in the classroom. In brief, the conference humanizes each to the other. The power dynamic shifts—though, granted, it is still present—and association replaces alienation. According to Alexandra Gold, who teaches in Harvard’s College Writing Program, “the conference is, in fact, a space for collaboration, not an inquisition. Perhaps the defining aspect of the student conference is the sheer humanity of the interaction, including intangibles like the configuration of physical space, tone, and body language.” We become real for our students when we can demonstrate our investment in a shared cause: their ability to think critically and express themselves clearly in written academic discourse.

Another reason the grading conference may trump traditional evaluation is the way it compels students to process our critique. When returning graded papers in class, I used to ponder the percentage of students who would look through my feedback, let along give it genuine consideration. The in-person grading session ensures that my comments are understood, that follow-up questions can be asked and answered, that we are having a meaningful dialog about the student’s experience with the material and how they developed the ideas in their essay.

 Michael Millner, associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, shares his takeaway on the grading conference: “What was most important—and most rewarding—for me and for my students, I think, was that I stopped pointing at things and they stopped expecting me to point. Instead, they were able to see their papers as part of an interesting and continuing collaboration with me and ultimately with themselves.” The conference encourages students to see their work in a different light, one that enables metacognition and meaningful reflection. I also honestly believe it improves the quality of the writing I receive. Simply, students take more pride in their work because they know they will be sitting next to me, going over it together.

A final benefit of the conference is that it proves fertile ground for fostering relationships of understanding and empathy. Students who will politely ignore an invitation to office hours but show up for a mandatory grading session may find themselves returning, under their own volition, to discuss academic options, personal dilemmas, or recent successes. The conference becomes an avenue for making those critical connections with our at-risk, underserved, underrepresented students. It can be one more implement in our arsenal as we prosecute the war against inequity.

–Christine Sandoval and Jason Spangler

Choosing Inclusive and Empowering Texts — Part II

On By Wendy L. SilvaIn antiracist pedagogy, connecting to students, culturally responsive teaching, empowering students, equity3 Comments

This is Part 2 of a post on choosing inclusive and empowering texts. See the first post here.

In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Lesbian Chicanx writer, Gloria Anzaldua, shares her personal experience with reading LGBTQ+ Chicanx writers for the first time: “In the 1960s, I read my first Chicano novel. It was City of Night by John Rechy, a gay Texan, son of a Scottish father and a Mexican mother. For days I walked around in stunned amazement that a Chicano could write and could get published. When I read I Am Joaquin, I was surprised to see a bilingual book by a Chicano in print. When I saw poetry written in Tex-Mex for the first time, a feeling of pure joy flashed through me. I felt like we really existed as a people” (82).

In our September Community of Practice Blog, our colleague Miguel Reid shared his experience: “Although I failed almost every class throughout high school, I do remember reading two books: The Color Purple and The Autobiography of Malcolm X – nothing else. Despite being a young man who didn’t care about school, I somehow found interest in those two texts that highlighted the African-American experience.”

When I first read Anzaldua’s work, I felt how Miguel felt reading the work of Alice Walker and Malcolm X. Here was an actual published book, being taught in a college class, validating not only my people’s history and struggles, but my own identity in a space outside my home, that captured mine and my family’s experiences, our traditions, our values, our language. I had never even considered the idea that I was allowed to speak both English and Spanish together anywhere outside my home and my family. But here was a well-known scholar, telling me exactly that: I was allowed to exist in the world as I was. And I have to wonder, how many of my students have had the privilege of feeling this experience of validation? Which have not? And of course, what can I do to make sure that they all do?

From all the wonderful Community of Practice workshops we’ve had in the last year, we know that culturally responsive pedagogy means fully engaging with our students by finding creative ways to integrate student interests, identities, experiences, and knowledge into the classroom. Part of this work in our discipline requires strategic and intentional (as Kathleen mentioned last spring) incorporation of texts that also reflect who our students are, their experiences, and the types of knowledge they value.

As we know, the new language for the first SLO in the ENG 1A COR emphasizes that students learn to “analyze rhetorical strategies, content, and contexts in a variety of non-fiction texts written by authors representing and reflective of students in the classroom, including those written Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and People of Color and the LGBTQ+ community,” which really requires us to not only include a wide variety of voices in our text choices, but also revise and switch texts out as needed to reflect who are students are.

In Equity Talk to Equity Walk, McNair, Benisimon and Malcolm-Piqueux give an example of how to go about (and not go about), experimenting with new texts in a classroom, when discussing obstacle #2 (Not being able or willing to recognize racialized consequences) in blocking the path toward racial equity (24).

This is a huge task, but a necessary one. Dr. Jeannine L. Williams discusses in her article “Representations of the Racialized Experiences of African Americans in Developmental Reading Textbooks,” how historically, “ ‘reading material was used to inculcate dominant ideologies as common sense’ and how ‘books written for African American students were designed to reproduce dominant ideologies as natural, commonsensical, and universal’” (Williams 41). These dominant ideologies, that so commonly contained racist (and surely also sexist, classist, and homophobic) foundations, didn’t give students of color many choices beyond acceptance or rejection of the texts that perpetuated those ideologies. And many of these students of color rejected them (Williams 41). This rejection further emphasizes the obstacles our institutions have put in place impeding their success, which is why Williams suggests that “instructors should assign readings that speak to the students’ experiences” (Williams 40). Though William’s study focuses primary of African American students and African American representation, I see her argument informing the experiences of other students of color as well.

Al Weyant-Forbes mentioned in an equity-related workshop during fall FLEX, that often times equity feels like a loss to those in power. It feels like something has to be given up, and they are right, but that doesn’t mean what is being gained is not as valuable or more so, than what is being “lost.” RCC is a Hispanic Serving Institution, for example, which means that if we are really reflecting our students in our text choices, then a good amount of texts we teach should be written for and by Latinx voices, right? How many can you name? How many contemporary Black writers can you name? African? Native American? Middle Eastern? White? Chances are, many of us can probably name more white writers than any other race. Maybe it is time we examine this, and substitute what we’ve been taught to value as traditional literary texts (predominantly white texts seeped in racism, capitalism, and white supremacy, as Williams mentions) with new texts that the majority of our students can see themselves in and gives us insights into perspectives we didn’t even realize we hadn’t considered. Williams argues that often “college faculty ignore the role of race and its systematic complexities … further disadvantage[ing] students of color. Emphasizing the importance of reading curriculum and pedagogy that reflects the racialized identities and experiences of African American students,” along with other students of color, is a great tool for getting students engaged in our classes, in their own college experiences, and in their overall success (Williams 43).

As Rob mentioned in his post, this anti-racist work goes hand in hand with anti-capitalist work because racism and capitalism are when Dr. Ibram X. Kendi calls the “conjoined twins” in his book How to be an Anti-Racist (163). Dr. Kendi argues that “the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural…it is impossible to know racism without understanding its intersection with capitalism” (56). He then adds that “to love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism. The conjoined twins are two sides of the same destructive body” (Kendi 163). To me, this speaks to the importance of acknowledging our students lives experiences in the texts we choose, not only because most of our students are student of color, but because they are predominantly working class, our “essential workers,” the ones who are most vulnerable to what Angela Davis calls “super-exploitation.” If we hope to contribute to the process of liberation and dismantling oppressive structures concretely, we have to give students the tools to engage with critical thinking and critical imagining, as Rob encourages. Our text choices can help them not only better understand the systems that shape their daily lives, but how to begin imagining a world where these systems are no longer in place.

I’ve begun this work by gauging students’ reactions and thoughts on the texts we read each semester (though projects, critical reflections, discussion posts, and in-class conversations.) When checking in with my students this semester, I asked them about the importance of exposing students to texts that reflected who they were, their identities, values, experiences, and knowledge. Here is what just a few of them said:

1) “I think it is important for students to see themselves in the stories because this allows them to relate to the situations that are happening in the stories. It also builds confidence in the reader because if student sees the character in the story doing something exciting, important, and adventurous, then the student will understand that they could do it too!”

2) “I think it is very important for students to read texts that reflect who we are and our identities because if we’re just being thrown random text that we have no connection to, we start to become less interested. Therefore, less attention will be given to the subject by us and we leave the class without learning a thing. However, I think it is important to read articles to read articles such as the one we do for this class because it brings a lot of relevancy to our lives that keeps informed.” 

3) “I think it’s crucial for students to read texts in an English class that reflect who they are because visibility makes students feel like they’re not alone. Reading shared experiences makes students feel included and like they belong in certain spaces. It’s especially important now because academic spaces have historically been predominantly White, cisgendered, heterosexual males and the texts that higher academia tend to study are usually eurocentric. Having that representation makes the learning environment feel a lot safer and more inclusive of experiences that are not centered on the White cis, het male perspective.”

4) “I believe that it is valuable for students to read texts that reflect who they are, identities, experiences, etc. because the student can most likely relate with the text. Making it easier for them to make strong arguments in their writing. For a long time schools have had students reading books that are heavily based on white characters. Not showing any cultural representation when it comes to minorities and POC’s. By having representation students will be able to relate to what they are reading.”

5) “I truly believe that it is important for students to read texts in an English class that reflect who they are, their identities, their experiences, and their knowledge. I think this because doing so makes meaningful connections between what students learn in school and their cultures, languages, and life experiences. These connections help students develop higher academic skills and see the relevance between what they learn at school and their lives.”

As we can see, our students themselves KNOW that higher ed. has been a white-centered space for a long time. They get it. They are counting on us to disrupt this tradition.

Here are a few anecdotes pulled from critical reflections in both my English 1B class and English 1A class that further exemplify this point. Student are asked, as the final question, what they learned this unit and why they find this lesson valuable:

“I learned a lot in this unit, I learned to appreciate poetry a lot more. Before I was not a huge fan on poetry because I could not understand it. That is because I always over thought it when I had to read poetry. In high school we had a unit based on poetry and the main poet we had to focus on was Sylvia Plath. She had many good poems, but I could never understand them and frustrated me to not like reading poetry. After this unit I got to read some really good poems that I enjoyed and understood. I also learned to appreciate for who am and love my culture even more. Life is hard and many of us complain, not understanding the struggle others face and we tend to take that for granted. I plan to embrace my culture even more in the future and to not feel shame for who I am.” (referring to Eduardo Corral’s “Border Triptych” and Ada Limon’s “The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”)

“I have always understood the importance of literature and its impact on the world. That being said I have never really felt that impact or actually been involved in it too much. When writing this essay I felt like I was a part of it and the impact it has on the whole world. My topics are something that is looming in today’s world and only seems to get worse or avoided. I feel like a voice even though I know not many people will get to read this and it is not as good as some top writers out there. But I see as it’s not a topic that should be read by important people alone but everyone. We can all add things to literature and make an impact which I feel I did or could do.” (referring to Natalie Diaz’s “Why I Hate Raisins” and Jericho Brown’s “Bullet Points”)

“During this unit i learned a lot, the two pieces that impacted me the most were “White Privilege and “ The New Jim Crow” because as a black person it important that someone is speaking up for us as a whole, there are a lot of bad things going on right now with racial injustice and as a black person when people speak out no matter their race or background, to help our cause we notice it and we appreciate it. I’m glad i read two pieces that i can relate to because in high school the only type of black people we would read about were Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa parks. I’m glad that [we] read current pieces that everybody can relate to in their own way.”

Are we listening? Are we really listening?

Choosing texts, as I mentioned above, is difficult, and it does require a lot of time and effort. Most of us probably began teaching using texts we were familiar with, texts we read in college, or for fun on our own time. But, if we are still teaching only the same texts we did when we started teaching, chances are we need to make some changes, and with change, comes push back. Part of our anti-racist work as equitable instructors, however, is to change and adapt to the needs of our students, and as the research above indicates, our students need us to do just that. To be anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and an ally to marginalized communities, we need to acknowledge their lived experiences. If we don’t know what those lived experiences are, we need to educate ourselves. We need to take initiative to read texts outside of our own comfort zones by voices different from our own. As Professor. Taylor said in the last blog post, we need change now, and this is just one way we can do something concrete, here and now, to further our anti-racist and equity work.

Not sure where to start? Last year, our wonderful colleagues Star Taylor, Miguel Reid, Jon Anguiano, Tucker Amidon, and James Ducat took time to compile a list of culturally responsive text ideas for our English classes. They have been gracious enough to share this list and allow all of us to continue building upon this collaborative work for the years to come.

Here is a link to the editable Google Sheets. This is a living document that we can all contribute to collaboratively and revise as needed. I have begun organizing the original text list on this document, but still have a long way to go. If you are interested in helping transfer what we have on other various other lists, into this one master list, please feel free to reach out to me. I can use all the help I can get.

In our workshop, Rob and I will spend some time sharing techniques we use to choose empowering, inclusive texts for our classes that are not only culturally responsive, but also allow for critical thinking and critical imagining. We look forward to having you all there!

Sources:

Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Borderlands/La Frontera, Aunt Lute Books, 2007, pp. 75-86.

Kendi, Ibrim X. How to Be an Antiracist, One World, 2019.

Williams, Jeanine L. “Representations of the Racialized Experiences of African Americans in Developmental Reading Textbooks.” Journal of College Reading and Learning, vol. 43, no. 2, 7 July 2014, pp. 39-69, DOI: 10.1080/10790195.2013.10850366, Accessed 7 Oct. 2020.

Questions:

  1. What is one text you read in college that was of particular interest to you and why? What impact did that text have on you and why?
  2. How often to you reflect and challenge yourself to change texts you’ve been using for a long time, to better meet student needs and interests?
  3. How do you decide what texts you will include in your course? What criteria do you use? Where do you go to search for them?
  4. If you have not already, how might you set up a system in class to gauge how the students feel about your text selections, to allow your students to have a voice in text selection?
  5. Does your text selection tie to your anti-racist work? Why? How?

Choosing Inclusive and Empowering Texts — Part I

On By robhyersIn antiracist pedagogy, connecting to students, culturally responsive teaching, empowering students, equity, supporting students5 Comments

In thinking about antiracist practices, as a white professor, before I work through my thoughts on choosing antiracist texts (which I hope will be helpful to you), I first need to acknowledge and credit the Black and Latinx thinkers who have informed this process for me. 

First, I need to talk about the framework I use. I call the framework “critical thinking/critical imagination.” It comes from a talk I attended given by two Latinx professors, Genvieve Carpio and Juan D. DeLara. Both professors had written recent Marxist histories of the Inland Empire. I am relatively new to the Inland Empire. During the Q&A, I asked what I as a 1A professor could do to empower my students. Carpio said “Have your students question why things are the way they are,” (critical thinking) and DeLara said “Ask your students to imagine the way they want things to be.” (critical imagination). 

With that being said, I also need to back up in time a little bit. I’ve been practicing antiracist andragogy for 10 years now. This antiracist practice has recently, in the last 5 or so years, also become anticapitalist. This is due, in part, to Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983). One of its arguments builds on the idea of racial capitalism, and argues that capitalism needs racism to function. Capitalism needs groups of workers to be utilized for, as Angela Davis argues, “super-exploitation,” and we construct race to figure out which workers meet that criteria. And as Robin D. G. Kelley explains, “There is no such thing as non-racist capitalism.” 

Over the years, when I review my antiracist/anticapitalist text selections and the units in which they exist (and by text I am referring both to written articles and multimedia) one thing I have noticed is that some units speak to something universal and unchanging about racial capitalism, while others speak to specific moments and therefore need to be changed out when that specific moment changes. This is because, as Robinson argues in Forgeries of Memory and Meaning (2007),  “racial regimes are unrelentingly hostile to their exhibition,” and

are subsequently unstable truth systems. Like Ptolemaic astronomy, they may “collapse” under the weight of their own artifices, practices, and apparatuses; they may fragment, desiccated by new realities, which discard some fragments wholly while appropriating others into newer regimes. Indeed, the possibilities are the stuff of history.

And I realized, as I moved from my Spring to Summer classes this year, that we were moving into a new historical moment after the public execution of George Floyd. As Angela Davis argues: “This particular historical conjuncture holds possibilities for change that we’ve never before experienced in this country.”  This change includes demands not only for the police who murder to be brought to justice, but for things like police defunding and prison abolition, for a re-imagining of social relations which would empower workers, especially Black and Latinx workers. 

But if we look at the current bourgeois sanctioned political landscape there is very little for our Black and Latinx students to feel invested in. They are forced to watch, powerless, as one political party is determined to march us into a fascism crafted onto an existing structure of white supremacy, and the only other viable political party is unable to ultimately stop that march because they have been forged inside a tradition which refuses to understand the racialization of the liberalism they desperately want to save, caused by a cognitive dissonance regarding race identified by Charles W. Mills in The Racial Contract (1997), which produces “the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made.” So, as instructors, how do we begin to change that? How do we select texts which will create a site of struggle for our students which will leave them empowered rather than defeated? 

To begin this journey for myself at this particular historical moment, I returned to one of the many texts I’ve been reading over the past few years to familiarize myself with California, Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (2007) which charts the whys and hows involved in California becoming the largest carceral state in the largest carceral nation on the planet. And while this text is too advanced to use in class, it is a place to start in thinking about my criteria for new 1A selections because its arguments are related to this particular historical moment.

One argument stood out to me: Gilmore’s argument regarding how labor functions within the spaces of the prison industrial complex. She argues that the super-exploited under racial capitalism have suffered “organized abandonment” as their jobs have been displaced or replaced by forces like globalized capitalism and technological change. This abandonment stems from the government at all levels who, in this current iteration of neoliberal capitalism, see their role, as Reagan so famously put it, as getting “out of the way of business” so that money can be made. (We can see this in the two major political parties today: Republicans see it as the state’s sole purpose while Democrats see it as the primary purpose). Of course, because surplus value can only be derived from labor, this then is at the cost of the worker. 

And as more workers’ livelihoods evaporated in the name of increasing profits for less owners, there are two groups of workers who emerge and fuel the rise of prisons: those excess workers who have been convicted of “crime” engaged in to survive and are now being housed in prison, and those workers who, desperate for any job that will provide them with something close to a middle class existence, are in charge of transporting, housing, monitoring, and disciplining those caged excess workers. I then thought of my relationship to this second group of workers, as the first stop in college, or in the human capital development they need to ultimately find employment within one of the many and overlapping areas of the prison industrial complex, which include policing and healthcare. I had found my starting point. 

Once identified, the first step for me is to problematize the issue. I try as much as I can to put as many of the things “on the ground” for students using texts which contain narrative elements and, whenever possible, are local. I came across “Somebody’s Gotta Help Me,” a ProPublica investigation into the 2017 death of a Latinx man from Indio while in Riverside Police Department’s custody and in the care of the Riverside University Health System. All of the boxes are checked here: it presents the problem, it is local,  and it uses narrative elements. 

Once the issue has been problematized, I move onto critical thinking. One place I like to go for this is NPR, especially its “Hidden Brain” podcast. And in looking through them, I found one, “In the Air We Breathe” which deals with implicit bias within the framework of policing. One thing I like about “Hidden Brain” is that it shows students how to work through critical thinking; it shows them that exploring different angles on an issue, and even questioning your own thesis, is not only okay, but should be encouraged. But while it is good for critical thinking, it is not good for critical imagination. And now we are at the point where our Black and Latinx students may feel ultimately defeated within a framework that offers no viable solutions for them other than “reform,” which can at its best only aspire to a performative version of actual change. 

To move on to critical imagination, I turned to the thinkers who are engaged with these issues and returned to Gilmore who, because of this new historical moment in which our conceptions of race are being reworked, has been doing interviews on prison abolition, something she and others like Angela Davis have been arguing for since at least the 1990s. One podcast in particular “Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition” stood out to me for three reasons. First, you have two African American scholars, Chenjerai Kumanyika and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, in conversation. This is very important. Not only should our Black and Latinx students consume texts by and about people like them, they should see people like them in the academy, especially if we as instructors are serious about diversifying our own ranks. Second, they talk about issues already talked about in the last two texts, so connections can be made by the students. Third, Gilmore not only critically imagines a new future but also discusses different areas we can work on right now to move towards that future. 

To finish out the unit, I am using the concluding chapter “Abolitionist Alternatives” of Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003). I like to use concluding chapters of works in my 1A, especially towards the end of the semester, because it shows students that a conclusion can be complex and that it can span more than one paragraph. Davis’ work here, like Gilmore’s interview, frees itself from the confines of what is to imagine what could be and offers some concrete first steps to get there.  Both this work and Gilmore’s interview model critical imagination for our students; and while some may reject it, others will be empowered by the model to build their own solutions from the first steps outlined by Gilmore and Davis, free of the confines of racial capitalism, which we are taught to regard as inescapable. 

When the two were collaborating on the original Rainbow Coalition in Chicago, Hy Thurman of the Young Patriots, a white street gang, was given the following advice on organizing by Bobby Lee of the Black Panthers, a radical organization which had evolved into multiple chapters across the country and was administering different types of mutual aid programs for its communities, including free breakfast for children to maximize their education: “If you don’t know where to start organizing, you walk to your front door and you look in front of you, you look behind you, you look to the left, you look to the right, and then you pick a direction.” This is, ultimately, the kind of empowerment I want my students to have when they leave my classroom at the end of the semester. And one of the first steps towards that empowerment is my selection of antiracist/anticapitalist texts. 

Below are a few questions to get you thinking about your own practice:

Questions

  1. Have you been resistant to making changes like this in your classroom, and if so, why do you think that might be?
  2. What sites of struggle do you want to set up in the classroom for your students?
  3. What areas of critical imagination do you want your students to engage with and why?
  4. Looking at your current text selections, are there any that could be used for critical imagination?

This is Part I of a post on choosing inclusive and empowering texts. To read Part II, click here.

Anti-Racist Teaching Practices – Part 2

On By profhomegirlIn antiracist pedagogy, connecting to students, culturally responsive teaching, equity, supporting students2 Comments

This is Part 2 of a post on anti-racist teaching practices. See the first post here.

My three friends and colleagues Dr. Kelly Douglass, Dr. Jan Andres, and Carolyn Rosales were gracious and brave enough to partner with me on this important venture. Here are their wonderful and powerful contributions to the blog.

Dr. Kelly Douglass, Ph.D

“We have come across faculty who resist examining the quality of classroom interactions between themselves and students who are not white by claiming that it is not their prerogative to assign identities to students” (McNair et al. 33).

Anti-racist and culturally responsive pedagogy teaches us that we must build trust with our students. If I am not considering the racial dynamics of my classroom interactions, then I am already not being trustworthy about what is happening in my classroom. Doing this is not “assigning identities to students;” it is acknowledging identities, those assigned and those claimed.

McNair et al.’s From Equity Talk to Equity Walk has me asking where I have been an obstacle to equity-minded solutions. To paraphrase Chana Joffe-Walt in the podcast, Nice White Parents, white parents in school systems aren’t asked to explain their behavior as a group in the way that parents and students of color are; they are allowed to make choices assumed to be individual and separate from systems. What choices, what policies, what attitudes have I, a nice white professor, adopted from educational systems that for too long have simply tolerated inequitable outcomes for Black and Latinx students?

Undoing this means that is not a rhetorical question. It means looking for what actually is getting in the way of students succeeding — reading about student needs, looking at college data and surveys, reading and talking about how to teach and grade differently, listening to MY students right now. I am the subject matter expert, but I am not the expert on the lives of students. What are my students telling me about how they need me to show up for them? What can I do to answer them? What could I do? What am I still tolerating if I don’t hear them and act?

Carolyn Rosales

In, How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi recalls witnessing various examples of racist abuse as a child, and describes one incident when a Black girl in his class was once again ignored by the teacher in favor of a White student. Kendi writes about how his fury and sadness welled up within his young body. With no other outlet for his emotions, he acted out, refusing direct orders from his teachers, and choosing instead to sit still and process the racist abuse he had just witnessed. In retrospect, Kendi wonders how the teachers would have responded if he had been a White student. Would they have sat with him and talked through his feelings rather than “chalked up [his] resistance to [his] Blackness and therefore categorized it as misbehavior, not distress” (48)? 

I had to pause here as a reader and ask myself: What would I have done in that same situation? But perhaps a better question that we can ask ourselves, is: What have I actually done in similar situations? After pondering this question and taking a very painful inventory of my successes and failures, I couldn’t help but wonder: if we don’t take the time to really look at our own shortcomings in our efforts to develop antiracist pedagogy, will we ever really get there?

We can talk all we want to about being equitable and antiracist, but until we are actually being antiracist, then we are not moving forward. And by not moving forward, we are damaging the voices and spirits of our students through our non-actions.

Dr. Jan Andres, Ph.D

“[T]here is no neutrality in the racism struggle, writes Kendi. “One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist” (9). As teachers, this means that doing nothing is not an option, not when our students of color are fighting for their humanity. One cannot be antiracist without action.

For antiracist educators, action is not just about classroom practice but, crucially, how it translates outside the institution and into our communities. Kendi himself concludes that “educating for the sake of changing minds” is not enough – changing policy becomes his aim (230-31). In teaching, we can “channel… students’ energy against the very social conditions that undermine their existence” (Camangian 30). Encouraging our students to act – that’s the goal. And it’s not just about helping our students succeed academically or helping them develop the tools to recognize and fight injustices that threaten their survival and wellbeing – part of our work needs to be fighting alongside them, too. 

Here’s a small action that’s helped me remember the work that needs to be done outside my classroom. I’m teaching American literature, and partly because it’s a new class but also because these works, written by and about BIPOC and immigrants, are so relevant to our present, I’ve asked my students to write how the literature informs their day-to-day as citizens and humans. My students recognize their world through this literature; they are disappointed, angry, and scared that we are seeing these same injustices today. But they are also, it turns out, committed to change. Asking them to reflect is not enough on its own, but it’s a reminder that my students and I are fighting the same fights, and a reminder to keep working towards policy change while building mutual aid and collective care at RCC and beyond.

How are you fighting for your students in and out of the classroom? What are you doing in the classroom to prepare your students to change the world around them into a place they can thrive? 

As you continue to engage with us over these next few weeks, please take the time to read over both part 1 and 2 of the blog and really internalize what we are saying and what we are asking you to do. We are asking you to transform and not simply change.

Anti-Racist Teaching Practices – Blog Part 1

On By profhomegirlIn antiracist pedagogy, connecting to students, culturally responsive teaching, equity, supporting students7 Comments

My grandparents were both born in the 1920’s South where racism ran and currently still runs rampant in the streets and institutions of what is falsely called “The land of the free and the home of the brave.” And yet here we are, in 2020, still talking about racism in America. 

I do not have to tell you nor remind you of what ails America, nor do I have to remind you of the protests, the verdicts, the unrest. But what I do want to point out is that all of the aforementioned occurrences are sheer reactions to a broken justice system. Now our system, the educational system is just as broken. It may not be causing bodily harm to our students, but we, the educators, the leaders of this campus have said something, assigned an assignment or exam, or implemented a process/procedure that has created institutional barriers which prohibit our students from being their magnificent selves in the classroom, therefore truncating their growth and development as young men and women. We need to fix that; we need to fix us; we need to fix our classrooms. We need to fight for educational freedom. We need to change!

Bettina Love in her book, We Want to do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom defines abolitionist teaching as “choosing to engage in the struggle for educational justice knowing that you have the ability and human right to refuse oppression and refuse to oppress others, mainly your student” (11). She goes even further as to claim “Abolitionist teaching asks educators to acknowledge and accept America and its politics as anti-Black, racist, discriminatory, and unjust and to be in solidarity with dark folx and poor folx fighting for their humanity and fighting to move beyond surviving” (12). I want to point out that Love is calling all of us as educators to become abolitionists and set the minds of our students free in order to thrive and not merely survive. This will in turn set their bodies free – free to bring their full authentic selves to the classroom and to discussions in class. The great abolitionists both recognized and not put their lives on the line to ensure that those who were enslaved both mentally and physically were freed from a system that sought to hold them captive for the rest of their lives and the rest of the lives of generations after them. And we need to be emboldened and empowered to liberate our students from unclear graduation pathways, unclear and unrealistic assignment/exam requirements, antiquated classroom pedagogy and methodologies, and faculty and staff who make generalizations and tiny racist comments of our colleagues. We can make the change!

It is quite evident from the verdicts in the courts, the protests in the streets, the bodies in the streets that we have not been freed from the institution of racism that has plagued this country from its founding. It is evident when we continue to teach material in class that is not representative of our minority majority serving campus. It is evident when we facilitate discussions in class that empower and embolden the oppressive viewpoints of a few while harming the many. I know some of you who are reading this belong to ally groups both visible and invisible, and I thank you because we need your voices, support, and love. I know some of you belong to task forces, working groups, councils, and other leadership positions that are trying to work to see some of these systems dismantled and replaced with good meaning policies and procedures. So please, keep working, keep pushing, keep fighting. But have we seen anything change? Any real change? Any long lasting change? Love puts it best when she says “[We] must move beyond feel-good language and gimmicks to help educators understand and recognize America and its schools as spaces of Whiteness, White rage, and White supremacy, all of which function to terrorize students of color” (13). If you disagree with that sentence, I beg you to really listen to the responses of our colleagues as they respond to discussions of racism and students of color in meetings and FLEX sessions. Read between the lines of what is not written in email threads. Read what is on their syllabi. Look at the work that has not been done. 

As a campus, department, discipline, and district, now is our time to show our students and the students after them, and the students after them that they matter. We have the people in place, the money in place, the training in place to really transform RCC in the name of Educational Social Justice. We can do it, so lets do it!

I leave you with these questions as we start thinking about Ant-Racist Practices and Pedagogy:

  1. Is there racism in the educational system? 
  2. What is your definition of Anti- racist teaching or abolitionist teaching?
  3. Do you take into consideration students’ race or even your own when you enter a classroom?
  4. Why would educators be resistant to making changes in order to implement culturally relevant texts and pedagogy?
  5. Why are we still talking about race and racism in 2020?
  6. Bonus question (do not respond in blog). What are some biases, prejudices,  preferences, fears that you’ve had to admit you have as you’ve worked with faculty,  staff,  and students? 

This is Part 1 of a post on anti-racist teaching practices. To read Part 2, click here.

Student Voices Impacting Change

On By moniquedianeIn antiracist pedagogy, connecting to students, culturally responsive teaching, equity, supporting students3 Comments

By: Professors Dan Hogan, Miguel Reid, and Monique Greene

The community college system has played a monumental role over the last century in helping students in higher education to bridge their education to future career choices. Although there are foundational structures that support the students’ experiences, there is still a need to truly identify which support mechanisms aid in their success. As an institution, it is our duty to better understand the complexities of the students’ lives as well as the wealth that they bring so that we can respond to their needs, strengths and ambitions in a timely and effective manner.  

The student experience should be at the core of our decision-making process as we work to redesign our institution in a just and equitable manner.  The three of us have spent the last three years researching various topics on how to better serve students at our college.

Dan Hogan – Doctoral Candidate, Educational Leadership, Cal State San Bernardino 

In my research, I wanted to study how the big structural changes in English associated with AB 705 might affect the ways students and faculty interact in the classroom. Barhoum (2017) notes that while structural and curricular changes in education are easier to assess and change, the andragogical and relational elements of education (i.e. how professors actually interact with students) are often equally important; research confirms that addressing these non-traditional success measures correlates highly with traditional success markers like course grade and transfer (Cuellar, 2015; Garcia, 2019). One such non-traditional measure is Rendon’s (1994) concept of faculty validation, which consists of actions initiated by the faculty member, including but not limited to affirming student abilities, celebrating a student’s culture, maintaining high expectations, initiating personal connections, and demonstrating genuine care – all of which have been shown to mitigate equity gaps (Barnett, 2011; Gardenhire-Crooks, et. al, 2010; Newman, et al., 2015; Rendon, 1994).

In fall 2019 I surveyed 1,044 English students about faculty validation; then in spring-summer 2020 I interviewed nine Black and Latino men to ask them about their experiences taking English. Here were my major findings:

  1. The average male Black or Latino student reported feeling “somewhat” validated by their professor, but faculty validation was significantly predictive of course grade: the higher the validation, the higher the course grade. 
  2. Male Black and Latino students in co-requisite English classes reported higher levels of validation than those in standalone English courses, partially because they spent more time in the classroom developing skills and relationships.
  3. While professors validate students in a variety of ways, the most salient ways reported by the Black and Latino men I interviewed were individualizing instruction (i.e. offering freedom for project topic choice); providing clear feedback and support (i.e. comments on an essay that clearly explain how to improve); having high expectations (i.e. assigning rigorous projects and encouraging students that they could complete them); and demonstrating genuine care (i.e. taking time to provide individual feedback; slowing down to answer questions or re-explain concepts; inviting students to office hours; or checking in on how students were doing both emotionally and academically).
  4. While cultural identity was important to the students, the identity of the professor was not a significant determining factor for whether students experienced validation; this supports Noguera’s (2008) claim that “Differences in race, gender, or sexual orientation need not limit a teacher’s ability to make a connection with a young person… They tend to respond well to caring adults regardless of what they look like.” While Noguera referred to K-12 students, the adult men I interviewed felt similarly about their professors.

Dr. Miguel Reid 

My research was prompted by my experience as a Black student. Although I failed almost every class throughout high school, I do remember reading two books: The Color Purple and The Autobiography of Malcolm X – nothing else. Despite being a young man who didn’t care about school, I somehow found interest in those two texts that highlighted the African-American experience. These experiences inspired my research, which focused on bolstering the success of African-American students, especially Black males.  

Rather than spending energy and time on practices that may impact only a handful of Black students in one class in any given semester, my research suggested the importance of developing larger-scale support systems, such as a culturally-focused, first-year English composition learning community within a student success programs such as Umoja. My research yielded findings such as these:

  1. Programs with culturally-responsive learning communities have proven success in raising the self-esteem in African-American students and a sense of purpose in society.
  2. The success of first-year experience initiative/mentor programs, such as Umoja, demonstrated the importance of promoting engagement, meaningful connections, and self-empowerment as a means of navigating school more successfully.
  3. Studies recommend networking and connecting among Black males in support programs and the development of groups that highlight rites of passage programs emphasizing an Afrocentric model with mentoring from older African-American male models and proximal peer mentors.
  4. Through support-affiliated classes such as Umoja, Black men focus more and apply more effort to academics when encouraged by Black staff and faculty through validation, accessible services, and promotion of help-seeking behavior.

Equity-minded discourses in academia often fail to acknowledge the data-supported impact that culturally-focused initiatives such as Umoja can have on Black student success. This kind of resistance is addressed in the anchor text that we have all been asked to read for this year, From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education. On pages 21-51, the authors point out ten obstacles blocking the path toward racial equity:

1. Claiming to Not See Race

2. Not Being Able or Willing to Notice Racialized Consequences

3. Skirting Around Race

4. Resisting Calls to Disaggregate Data by Race and Ethnicity

5. Substituting Race Talk with Poverty Talk

6. The Pervasiveness of White Privilege and Institutionalized Racism

7. Evasive Reactions to Racist Incidents

8. The Incapacity to See Institutional Racism in Familiar Routines

9. The Myth of Universalism

10. Seeing Racial Inequities as a Reflection of Academic Deficiencies

In what ways might your well-intended, equity-minded efforts reflect these obstacles?

In what ways can you understand/support/promote a culturally-focused program such as Umoja? 

Dr. Monique Greene 

My research was on the Career Exploration Process for Non-Traditional Students in the California Community College System undergirded by the theoretical framework of Donald Super’s Career Development and Life Span Theory (1984).  I was curious to understand how life roles shaped or influenced the career decisions of our older student population.  Through this research, I found that enrollment in the community college system is a huge part of the career development process for many students.  Our student’s expect to gain valuable knowledge,  transferable, and career skills needed to secure employment in the workforce.  

However, many CCC students have various life roles and responsibilities that they juggle in addition to their education.  On top of their roles and responsibilities, the CCC system has designed barriers (whether intentional or not) that they have to hurdle through in order to be successful in completion.  Key findings from my research include the need to address the following: 

  1. Access to resource support (evening and weekend hours)
  2. Curriculum redesign (culturally inclusive content, programs that can be completed solely in the evening or online)
  3. Building a Sense of Belonging (Andragogy vs. Pedagogy teaching practices, building on previous life experiences in the classroom, social engagement opportunities for older students on campus)
  4. Adult reentry program (bridging the gap from Adult Education, Formerly Incarcerated, Community, and NonCredit Programs)
  5. Career Center Services (direct connection to employment, internships and networking opportunities)

Based on these key findings, we have discovered the meaningful impact of student voices in guiding the change that is needed inside of our classrooms and across our campus.  

Incorporating the Student Voice

We will hear throughout this series from different faculty members, but using students’ voices to frame the discussion is critical.  Many of us use assessment measures throughout the semester that allows for students to provide critical feedback of the course.  Here are a few questions about the student voice to consider:

  1. How often do you take into consideration the feedback that you receive from students to make your classroom more engaging or conducive for learning?  
  2. How often do you stop and chat with a student outside of class who may have questioned or challenged the content or the relevance of an assignment? 
  3. How often do you allow your students to choose the topic that they want to write on?
  4. How often do you allow your students to choose the topics that they engage or dialogue in the classroom?  
  5. In what ways do you facilitate the centering of students’ experiences/voices in the classroom, whether through writing or other activities?
  6. What does “faculty validation” mean to you? How does it manifest in your classroom?
  7. In what ways do you gather and examine student feedback in order to improve practices?

Through these meaningful interactions and dialogue with students you begin to gain insight into their lives, their passions, and their minds.  Open discussion and intentional conversations about how to relate your content to real life experiences in which they see themselves could make the difference between increased success rates or drop rates for your class.

A Message from Dean Woods

On By composingpossibilitiesIn antiracist pedagogy, connecting to students, culturally responsive teaching, equity, supporting students6 Comments

Greetings Everyone,

It is an honor to have been asked to write the first post of the 2020/2021 post for your Community of Practice Blog.  Nevertheless, at this particular time, this request has weighed heavily on me as I am not inclined to say something uplifting, motivational and cheery.  Coupled with writing for an audience of composition faculty—I must pay attention to clarity, and to carefully consider the all-important modes of persuasion:  ethos, logos and pathos.  So, I ask myself—from what perspective do I want to write to you and what message do I most want to convey in these pandemic-enveloped times?

I will begin with two quotes that came immediately to mind as I sat to write this blog post.  The first is a statement that the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison said to his friend and fellow abolitionist Samuel May: “I have a need to be all on fire for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.”  The second quote is a simple statement taken from the speech that Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King gave to a packed church in Memphis on the stormy night before his assassination: “We’ve got some difficult days ahead . . . .”   As an historian, I have been consistently asked by students whether or not our democracy could ever fall victim to tyranny and full-blown authoritarianism.  As these two quotes attest, there are those in this country who have felt that weight of oppression throughout our history.  So, when asked this question by my students, I have always responded unhesitatingly with, “Yes, indeed it can.”  In my lived experience and in my understanding of the history, there is still nothing, though, that compares to seeing that democracy being eroded so swiftly, blatantly, capriciously and effectively than what we are witnessing today.  But I am not writing to take us down a rabbit hole of despair.  I do actually write this post for you today in order to lift you up!

I encourage you to bring every ounce of passion, dedication and commitment to your chosen profession with you each and every day as you engage in the work of liberation and transformation through education in these difficult days. Our students are fire-breathers!  Please support them and provide them with all of the valuable tools they need to direct their energy toward melting the ice of tyranny, oppression, violence, racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, classism, misogyny and the soft bigotry of low expectations.  I urge you to prepare for classes as if your future is in the hands of the students in your classes—because it is.  What will you do to be a partner in their transformation from student to thought leader?  I am excited to see the possibilities as we envision ourselves as not only faculty but lighthouses, tunnels, bridges, escape hatches, guides, sages, nurturers and friendly, welcoming accomplices to our students.  We need to be who and what they need for us to be as they learn to navigate these difficult times.  We have to model effective fire-breathing and ice-melting techniques.  We must realize that our students will be the ones envisioning, designing and creating a future for all of us.  We have a hand in that.  It is an awesome responsibility. Please provide your students with the best possible opportunities to cultivate their own insights; to take the leaps of imagination which will result in their abilities to strengthen their communities.  Allow them to revel in their belongingess.  Engage their intellects and value them.  Most importantly, let them know that we trust them to ultimately lead, by allowing them to see that we are so confident in who they will become that we will be willing to follow.

Peace,

Kristi