Resources

It seems to me that, in order to create truly democratic and equitable classrooms, we need to first think about how to create classroom “communities”—something that, as Anna Lännström has noted previously, is especially hard to build right now. Communities that create space for all people and perspectives don’t just happen randomly or necessarily; they require a great deal of intention and attention. Rules, norms, guidelines, or whatever you want to call them can foster a democratic learning environment in which students feel like they can bring their full selves, ask questions, share misconceptions, try out new ideas, debate, create space for others, plan for action, and grow. I try to build community in lots of different ways in my classes, but an essential activity early on always involves the co-creation of a set of community norms that we all commit to upholding for the semester. As an initial homework assignment, to prime the community building, I have students fill out a “getting to know you” questionnaire I have fine-tuned over the years. One question, near the end, prompts students to fill in the blank: “As a learner, I do best when my peers….” Then, in class, I ask students to share what they wrote. (In-person, in the past, I would use an anonymous polling software like PollEverywhere. On Zoom, I just have students type into the chat box) As we review and discuss their responses, we all start to get a sense of what kind of support students would appreciate from each other. I then put students in groups (breakout rooms in Zoom) of about 3-5 and ask them to brainstorm answers to the following: What would it look like if we were to bring our “best selves” to class every day? What standards do we want to uphold? I tell students to keep in mind the responses they all shared to the “As a learner, I do best when my peers….” prompt. Each group types their ideas for norms directly into a shared Google Doc (no log-in required) and, once they are finished, we go through each proposed norm, one by one, making sure we all understand what it means, we all know how it would manifest, and we all can “live with it.” I usually lead this exercise on the second day of class; sometimes it flows into the third. We discuss for as long as it takes to reach agreement. Along the way, I actively encourage discussion and even dissent; right from the beginning, students know it is okay to critique and disagree. Generating community norms together not only starts the very process of building a democratic classroom community, but it also provides many “teachable moments.” For instance, students will often propose a norm like “respect each other.” But what the heck does this mean? I ask them to clarify: how do you understand this word, “respect,” and how do you know when someone is “respecting” you—or vice versa? A culture of politeness and “civility” reign at our institution, so I am particularly invested in ensuring that any expectations of “respect” don’t serve to stifle or silence. Many typical standards, like “respect,” are so vague or generic as to be useless and all too often end up centering the dominant groups or perspectives; this in-class activity allows us the space for this discussion. It also gives me a chance to suggest some norms of my own, since I’m a member of the classroom community too. I will usually propose some from AORTA’s Anti-Oppressive Facilitation Guide or “Respect Differences? Challenging the Common Guidelines in Social Justice Education,” such as “Strive for intellectual humility. Be willing to grapple with challenging ideas” and “Identify where your learning edge is and push it.” The community norms that the students and I co-create then stay with us over the course of the semester; this is not a “one and done” activity. We revisit them regularly. I project the norms at the beginning of different class periods. I give students a chance to review them and ask if we need to make any amendments. I check in every so often to find out how we think we are doing with the norms. The community norms guide all of our time together. (They also make it much, much easier to address any problems that might emerge in class, because I can simply refer back to the norms that we all agreed to.) At the end of every semester, in their final exams or their final course evaluations, students routinely remark on the “community” feel in my courses, with appreciative comments such as, “The class really seemed like a community, which made it easy to share and participate, and it was clear everyone liked the class and wanted to be there.” Without such a community in place, the difficult work of teaching for, about, and toward democracy would, I fear, be a non-starter.

Twenty-five springs ago I sat in a class on African American literature. On a small, rural midwestern campus, this course was taught by a white professor. Two of the seven Black students on campus at that time were in the class, the remaining twenty-five or so students reflected the demographics of our predominantly white institution. One Monday we filed into class and learned that a fight had taken place over the weekend. The details were still emerging, but one of the seats in our classroom was empty. The one detail that had been confirmed: racist slurs were a precipitating factor for the physical violence. In this moment, the professor faced a choice: to continue apace with our scheduled reading of Beloved, A Gathering of Old Men, and other, now canonical works, hewing close to the text; or, to break the fourth wall and talk about what happened, call us to the uncomfortable acknowledgment that we could not confine our discussions of race to the characters in books that could be sold back to the bookstore when the course ended. Like most students, I suspect, I was largely unaware of all that went into that deceptively simple choice. This past week, as I prepared for a class discussion on Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist and Fania Davis’s synthesis of racial justice and restorative justice, my class and all other classes were canceled by our administrators in a show of support for a student organized walk-out. The walk-out was a response to a blatant act of racist hate speech that targeted one student. Hundreds gathered on our main courtyard to listen to their peers speak their truths about being a person of color on our campus. For many students at our predominantly white institution this was, as they later acknowledged in class, the first time they had heard unfiltered, unmediated stories about the lived experience of blackness from people they actually knew (or thought they knew?). The night before the walk-out, I thought about my own professor’s choice twenty-five years ago. I had no doubt we would center the incident and the campus response in the coming weeks in our class discussions. And I have no doubt that my immediate clarity on this choice owes a debt to the professor who chose discomfort over distance, modeling the way in which good teaching demands recognition of the explicit and implicit ways the world consistently breaks into our classrooms. With so much political hand-wringing about conflating activism and academics and looking over the shoulder as some iterations of  “cancel culture” paralyze our classroom discussions, tempting us towards pedagogical paths of least resistance and convenient half-truths, I am left to wonder if our classrooms can still serve as activating spaces, as spaces where the world doesn’t just break in, but where we prepare students to break out into the world. I want to believe that this is possible, realizable, and not just part of the trite, pedagogically elusive language of university mission statements and branding slogans. But I confess that one-on-one conversations with students after class this week—in a course intentionally focused on racial equity—have tempered my optimism about the classroom as an activating space. Or, perhaps it has once again reminded me of the perennial, now hyper-polarized and politicized, challenge of teaching: what activates one student often deactivates another. With its now ubiquitous undercurrent of subtweets and their offline consequences, is the classroom the right place for these conversations? For the moment—no, for the movement—my answer has to be yes. The impossible possibility of conversations about race in the classroom remains for me a pedagogical, even if paradoxical, imperative. Like Reinhold Niebuhr’s impossible possibility of the love ideal, conversations about race in the classroom confront us with what we know to be true and right in our assertions of basic human dignity, even as these conversations remind us of how often we fail to fully actualize the ideal by which we are guided. In recognition of that gap and our moral obligations as teachers to stand in it, I share, with no small amount of trepidation, the email I sent to my class the night before the walk-out, my own attempt at reclaiming the classroom as an activating space not in spite of, but in the midst of its impossibility. Message to Living in a Diverse World Class, March 2021 Hello Students, I had planned to address the hate incidents in our class discussion tomorrow. The tragic irony is not lost on me that our focus in this week’s reading is the intersection of racial justice and restorative justice as outlined in the chapter by Fania Davis. In the days and weeks ahead, I ask that you consider what is your role to play in supporting students directly and indirectly impacted by this incident as well as in addressing the elements of our campus culture that give rise to these types of incidents. The framework of restorative justice centers the needs of the victims even as it makes clear that harms caused by acts of hate and violence extend out into the community and, therefore, require both individual and community responses. We are all trying to sort out how it is that we have come to this moment in history when hate speech is too often conflated with freedom of expression. And, tragically, we are bearing witness on our campus and in our wider culture to the normalization of violence this conflation inevitably leads to. In this moment, I want to challenge us to move back into the uncomfortable space of talking directly about racism and anti-racism as they manifest offline in our very midst; it is, for me, one necessary way we must hold ourselves accountable. This is not about reducing these incidents to a “teachable moment.” This is about the distance we too often try to maintain between the classroom and the world. And how these incidents reveal this distance for the illusion that it is. The “world” breaks into our classroom, regularly. Our denial of this fact is, itself, a form of white, heteronormative privilege. In these moments, I think it is also imperative that we ask: can the classroom also break into the world? Can what we do together in class the remainder of this semester be responsive to, and a form of taking responsibility for, the injustices that shape individual students’ lives on our campus in radically disparate ways? At a minimum, I think we owe this to one another in our class, but more importantly, we owe this to those targeted by the hate and violence. In closing, I offer I drafted in response to national racial and religious hate incidents over the past couple of years, words I had hoped (perhaps naively) would never be needed as a response to incidents on our campus: Let us stand together committed to forming our lives in this community, daily, through practices of hospitality and not hate, in acts of compassion and not callousness, and as witnesses to the promise of peace and not the pathology of violence. While our various religious and spiritual traditions call us to imagine a world when this daily work is no longer necessary, they are not naïve to the world as it is. As wisdom from the Jewish tradition reminds us: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to refrain from it.”

In 1887, British politician Lord Acton wrote the well-known phrase, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Not as well-known is the context in which Lord Acton penned these words. They were written to the Archbishop of the Church of England, Mandell Creighton, who decried what he saw as overly harsh criticism of men in authority, namely, corrupt and abusive popes. In the same letter, Acton remarked, “I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power...there is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”[1] Christianity and power have long been intertwined in problematic ways, but does this mean that religious leaders and people of faith working for justice and peace should avoid power altogether? Is power inherently bad? In my Community Organizing course for theology students, our discussions interrogate these questions and contextualize them to current realities. Drawn from one of the class texts, our working definition of community organizing is “to mobilize disenfranchised people to advocate on their own behalf in relationship to some power structure in order to achieve needed changes.”[2] This important work necessitates the amassing of power, not for consolidation with the few but for distribution among the many, so that power relations are transformed and power itself becomes a shared entity. In other words, structures that have consolidated power such that individuals residing within them are “sanctified” by the nature of their office must be held to account by the collective power of those impacted by the sanctified’s actions. Ultimately, power is not inherently good or bad; but it has the potential to be either or both depending on who has it and how it is shared (or hoarded, as the case may be). Organizers—and ministry leaders—need to learn not only how to share power with others, but also how to help others recognize that they have power in the first place. In the COVID-19 era in which instruction has moved online, engaging in activities that help students practice power sharing requires creativity, patience, and a willingness to yield some of my own power as the instructor. The course is delivered asynchronously for the most part, but there are three seventy-five-minute synchronous Zoom sessions built into the design. I have utilized the majority of this time for the practice of key organizing activities designed to cultivate capacities for power sharing. In our first session, I facilitated a consensus decision making process whereby the students discussed in small groups, and then reported out to the whole class, their proposals and reasonings for how they would prefer to be grouped in responding to weekly discussion questions. (It is a large class, so there are many options for how they might be grouped for weekly assignments). Consensus was built around one option, and the group agreed to experiment with their decision until the next Zoom session when I would check in with everyone to see if any change was desired. At the next session, students also split into pairs and practiced relational meetings, a foundational tool in community organizing with a purpose of building shared power through identifying mutual interests. Through these activities, students cultivated awareness of their individual power, yet were challenged to forge connections with others to make shared decisions and listen for the purpose of understanding. These students, who will likely hold positional power as clergy or nonprofit directors, attained new understandings and praxes of creating collective power, moving beyond seeing power simply as a force to be cautiously kept behind a fence (as in a pastoral care conversation, for example) to embodying it as an active, dynamic energy that—with intentionality and humility—can transform individuals and dismantle unjust systems. By introducing students to such constructions and practices around power, and committing myself to practicing a pedagogy of power sharing in the virtual classroom (both as I’ve described and in other ways), alternatives to “absolute power corrupt[ing] absolutely” might instead form leaders who empower self and others relationally and collaboratively. There is no organizing—or leadership, for that matter—without community. Given what our country has witnessed over the past four years with a Trump presidency, such alternatives are needed now more than ever in religious and secular spheres alike so that democracy might be realized more full [1] Lord Acton, “Letter to Archbishop Mandell Creighton,” April 5, 1887, https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165acton.html. [2] Loretta Pyles, Progressive Community Organizing: Reflective Practice in a Globalizing World, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 10.

Body indicators such as nose, hair, and flesh tones are relied upon for the perpetuation of prejudice, bias, and presumed privilege. What would it mean to unlearn, then relearn more liberative ways of reading the body? Can the truncated imagination which only sees value in the white body be rekindled to see worth in all bodies? The featured speakers for this event are Dr. Melanie Harris (Texas Christian University) and Dr. Jennifer Harvey (Drake University).

I have a feeling that this is going to be the crummiest semester of my teaching career.  We’re tired here at my small undergraduate Catholic college outside of Boston.  I’ve toggled back and forth between classes on Zoom and in person.  As a result of all that, we’re now several weeks into the semester, and I saw some of my students’ faces for the first time yesterday.  Well, the top half anyway.  I’m sick of masks. The parts of the faces that I could see look tired.  In fact, my students look about as exhausted as they usually do right before Thanksgiving.  They tell me they are drained from the isolation, the uncertainty, and threat of going remote again.  I am exhausted too.  And we’re just halfway through a 15-week semester with no spring break (like many colleges, we canceled it to keep positivity rates down). All mental health numbers seem to go in the wrong direction.  The college keeps sending out resources about support groups and numbers to call.  I just got an email from my dean urging us to cut students’ workload this semester, to monitor their mental health, and to care for ourselves as well. At this point, my preference would be to cancel the rest of the semester so that we can all sleep until May but since that probably is not an option, I’m going to follow my dean’s advice.  It’s triage time. Here’s my plan and survival guide: 1. Give the students more time to write their papers When the students in my gen ed classes have a paper due, they won’t have any reading assignments.  Instead, they’ll submit three topic ideas on Monday, a shitty first draft on Wednesday, and the actual paper on Friday.  We’ll use our class time on Monday and Wednesday as informal paper workshops.  I won’t read the drafts at all; I’ll simply check that they submitted them.  I’ll invite them to talk to me or visit the Writing Center if they want feedback. 2. Don’t teach any new materials In an optimistic moment in December, I included several new readings on the syllabus for my brand-new Catholic intellectual tradition course.  They are good readings and they would improve the course.  But I don’t know how to teach them.  Honestly, I can’t even remember what they were about.  So I’m going to skip them altogether and instead use materials I know well.  I’ll accept that my Catholic intellectual tradition course will be light on Catholic readings this semester, and I’ll rely heavily on theology major Joe in the class to bring an informed Catholic perspective to our discussions. 3. Cancel classes In case you haven’t noticed, teaching and learning on Zoom is much harder and less effective than having class in person.  Because of that, I’m going to avoid having class on Zoom whenever I can: If we get another snowstorm (did I mention I live in the Northeast?), I’ll just cancel class. I suspect we’ll get more learning done that way because it will give us a chance to rest and it will generate good will. Both will increase the chances of us having a good class when we’re back in the classroom the next day, so I’m trading two mediocre meetings for one good one.  It’ll be worth it. If we must go remote again, I’ll cut back on class time for the students. We’ll all have class on Monday and then half will attend on Wednesdays and the rest on Fridays.  I didn’t do this before because I couldn’t figure out how to have them use that extra hour without generating tons of extra work for myself (I’ve never had good luck with independent work for first year gen ed students).  But now I have a plan.  I’ll simply tell them to spend the extra time on the next homework assignment and choose not to feel guilty about it. 4. Stop obsessing about Zoom tuneout It’s harder to pay attention on Zoom, and we’ve all spent hours trying to figure out how to keep our students engaged.  I’m done.  I give up. I refuse to adopt my colleagues’ increasingly draconian suggestions.  I don’t want to create a teaching environment filled with mistrust and even if I did, I don’t think it would work. The students are so tired that pushing them more won’t help. I’ll focus on those who are physically in the classroom and those on Zoom who are paying attention.  I’ll remember that some of the students who keep their cameras off and refuse to talk really are listening.  (I know that because I’ve seen their writing.)  I’ll accept that some won’t pay attention. I’ll keep checking in on those who seem to disappear, referring them out as needed. Most of all, I’ll remember that it’s not personal.  They are tuning out because they are exhausted and sick of Zoom, not because they want to disrespect me and my class. 5.Help the students cope Last week, a first-year student looked out at me from his Zoom box on my computer and asked, “Is it always going to be like this?”  Suddenly, they were all paying attention, looking at me, intently.  I put on my best confident professorial voice and said ‘no.’  I agreed that it feels like that now but I talked about vaccines and hope.  But I also acknowledged that this semester will suck.  And I promised that we’d muddle through it together.  We will. Notes: I wish I had invented the phrase ‘shitty first draft’, but I got it from Anne Lamott.  It’s from her essay “Shitty first drafts” in Bird by Bird – great essay!  I did create the lazy staged assignment described above all by myself though.