Download PDFConclusion: Communities of Care
I have argued for pedagogical revisions that redistribute care work in the classroom as one way of redressing the large share of undervalued, underpaid, and emotionally taxing care work that GSIs perform. These teaching practices, however, form a necessary but not sufficient component of labor justice for GSIs. If we truly want to move away from viewing “first-year composition as the site of maternal-ethical student care” (Ritter, 2012, p. 413), we will need structural change. At the very least, writing programs must seriously reassess policies that compel an excessive amount of care work from GSIs, including but not limited to requiring frequent and copious feedback on student writing, additional administrative work like repeatedly inputting student data and participating in program assessment (O’Donnell, 2019; Robinson, 2021), and the unpaid peer mentoring often involved in pedagogical training. Although some of the pedagogical changes I have advocated for cannot be standardized, given that they require collaboration between instructors and students (currie & Hubrig, 2022, p. 144), WPAs can give GSIs the freedom to experiment. In the end, reduced care work will only result in labor justice for GSIs when paired with fair compensation, a change we must also advocate for at the institutional level.
While we struggle toward that goal, pedagogies that redistribute care work have the benefit of creating “communities of care” (Day et al., 2021, p. 390). Drawing on disability justice and trauma-informed frameworks, the concept of community care “prioritizes collective care and wellbeing” (currie & Hubrig, 2022, p. 133) and “privileges people over institutions” (Day et al., 2021, p. 390). Rather than viewing care as unidirectional, flowing only from teachers to students, communities of care proliferate reciprocal care for both students and teachers (Day et al., 2021). This model of care can also lessen the intensified extraction of care work from multiply marginalized GSIs, as caring becomes everyone’s responsibility. Although I do not yet think I can call my classroom a genuine community of care, I am hopeful that my students will take on some of the care work that makes our class happen. Communities of care can not only forward labor justice for GSIs, but support all of us in living through the multiple, overlapping crises of contemporary capitalism as we advocate for a better university.