Download PDFAlex's Narrative
In my time as a graduate teaching assistant, I have sought to inject social justice into my pedagogy. When I taught at a previous institution (a public research university in Ohio) I was told that I was prohibited from altering course materials and outcomes by state law. Ohio has such high rates of transfer between schools in the state that the government has worked with public institutions to standardize the first-year writing curriculum, so that students might transfer that credit painlessly and without struggle.
I highlight this not to insinuate that Ohio’s laws on academic teaching are regressive and stringent as those in Florida, where university instructors are banned from teaching so-called “identity politics” or using other socially conscious pedagogies (Walsh, 2024, para. 13), but rather to examine how I as a graduate student-instructor was expected to take what was given to me and work with it. Everything was thought out ahead of time for me—which I was (and still am) grateful for. Yet even this level of structure, ostensibly to protect me as I learned, did not prepare me for talking about wicked problems or issues of social justice. And I was unprepared; I remember taking first-year writing at the same institution, and how the instructor of record did nothing to address another student’s firm conviction that homophobia should be acceptable. I was already nervous that trying to tamp down on hateful comments in class might get me in trouble with a more conservative student body at a more conservative institution.
Lyiscott’s (2014) TED talk “3 Ways to Speak English” was a suggested reading for the class and is a text I still use to teach students about positionality, power, and privilege as they think about rhetorical situations, themselves as writers, and their audiences. The text is often well received, but not by everyone in my classrooms. Some students seem reluctant to engage with the text as it is presented–they misunderstand, one way or another, that what Lyiscott is talking about is a much deeper, wicked injustice than simply changing one’s tone when sending a professor or a supervisor an email. I have had students write blog posts or discuss this in class with their peers, only to be confronted by the suggestion that Lyiscott isn’t really talking about being a Black woman, or that these experiences aren’t unique to her positionality. Others are more willing to discuss Lyiscott’s experiences in more open, direct terms—and students have even argued about this among themselves debating whether or not “race” is really a part of this video, or if discussing it is really necessary in class.
I bring up this anecdote in order to draw attention to the students who have taken this text as I present it. The classroom, after all, is a communal space, and it’s my job to ensure that discussion is smooth and even-tempered. Yet, I am often disquieted by these moments and am conflicted about my own role as an agent of the university. I seek to challenge my students, especially as an instructor who has taught at two predominantly white universities, so that they empathize with others who do not share their privilege and positionality. Yet I must not do so antagonistically, both to avoid being stereotyped as an “angry ethnic” and to avoid losing my job. I certainly would not so directly challenge a student unless they were expressing hateful, racist, transphobic, homophobic, or other bigoted responses, although it would likely be in the community’s best interest to remove such a student from the space. How do I walk this line? How do I challenge my students to think about the ways that the world is unjust or that they as future professionals, citizens, and writers might continue to perpetuate injustices?
I’ll briefly share another few anecdotes, before Nicole shares her experiences and we turn to analysis and theory. For example:
- A student shares with me that they think vaccines are a scam, and that they can do their own research. I suggest that the research they submit for their research paper isn’t quite up to academic standards, and they insinuate I am biased. Teaching research practices becomes charged and uncomfortable, and the student insinuates that if they don’t receive a high grade, they will file a complaint against me.
- In reading excerpts from Katz’s (1992) “The Ethic of Expediency,” a student suggests that none of their classmates would ever find themselves in such a position. It would be obvious to them that they were doing something wrong, and they wouldn’t participate.
- During an online Zoom class, a student makes a flippant comment about how “certain people” make everything about race. Another student argues with them in the comments, taking offense and citing their positionality in their rationale.
I can tell students to discuss politics outside of the classroom on their own time, or to be civil, or suggest that a student’s dissenting view might change over time. In the spirit of the classroom as a communal space, I must balance the needs of the entire classroom with the needs of vulnerable, marginalized students. Community must be fostered, and it is multifaceted. Approaching classroom-as-community without building community with vulnerable students is fraught with tensions and contradictions that can be constraining, especially considering my commitments to social justice pedagogy and preparing students to tackle the never-solvable wicked problems (like racism) that aren’t “finally solvable” in one fell swoop (Marback, 2009, p. 399). It’s not enough to passively assert that students will hopefully experience more in their lives and become well-rounded enough to change their ways. In these situations, I wonder who my commitments are to. As a university employee, my commitments are to all of my students. How do I ensure that this commitment to the classroom as a supposedly neutral space doesn’t rely on fostering oppressive narratives? And, if community is reciprocal, what am I to expect from my students in building and maintaining these spaces? Can I even enter coalition with my students, considering that I have power over them as an instructor?