Monday Musings

November 2, 2020

Focus: Intentional Emotional Engagement

Dear Colleagues,

I think we should be more open with our students.

I love Elizabeth Bowen, a modernist fiction writer and one of the revolutionary short story craftspeople of her time and of all time. In her essay, "Rx for a Story Worth Telling," she wrote that the best stories linger in our minds and continue to frame our universe; they "stay at work within us, affecting experiences we may later have."

I thought of Elizabeth Bowen this past week because police killed Walter Wallace Jr. on Monday, 26 October when he walked toward them holding a knife. I thought of Bowen because West Side Story frames my worldview and hinges on a young man of color (albeit in brownface) wielding a knife. Watching the video footage of two officers shooting Mr. Wallace roughly a dozen times, I thought that if you bring two guns to a knife fight, no one has to die, particularly a man experiencing a mental health crisis, particularly a man in front of his mother. But if you bring two guns, zero tasers, inadequate training, and an unwillingness to see a black man having a mental health crisis as a human being in distress instead of a rabid dog—well, I've been thinking about West Side Story.

Throughout the week, I fell behind in my responsibilities because of the killing of Mr. Wallace. I walked around in a bit of a daze, and my teaching became increasingly performative. In the classroom, I performed interest, performed enthusiasm, performed passion, and performed energy. In my office, I didn't spend hours watching West Side Story (though that would have been comforting). I considered how often these days I, like these police officers, walk into situations without proper training. I don't know how to be sad, how to grieve a stranger, to grieve something less nameable in front of my students. Teaching while Black in a PWI often involves grieving while your students live largely unaware of the sources of your grief.

I don't know if this advice falls under best practices, but I do know that a lot of us are hurting. We're exhausted and scared by voter suppression in the election, by the possible change in the academic calendar, by the pervasiveness of COVID, and by the overall uncertainty of the world we face. So this week, especially, I would highly recommend talking to your students, human to human, in an appropriate and professional register about where your head is at. As an exercise in empathy, sharing heartspace with your students invites them to remember your humanity and to see you as a person not only with responsibilities, but with a full range of human emotions. In my experience, teaching benefits from embracing and honoring your emotional state with intentionality and letting your students in, just a little bit, instead of fighting yourself to perform excellence. The classroom is not an escape; utilized well, the classroom is a space to come together as people and interrogate the world around us.

My students afforded me the same patience and grace I try to afford them. They accepted that their papers would come back a little later, that I might have to say things a few different ways to land on the best version of the explanation, that my handwriting wouldn't be quite so legible, and that I might stare out the window more than usual. Some asked who Mr. Walter was, and some wanted to talk more about him and his death than about When the Emperor Was Divine.

All this to say, we should be more open with our students. And I've been thinking a lot about West Side Story.

The Kravis Center recognizes the need faculty of color may have to congregate and process the election in their own space. Therefore, I will be hosting a post-Election Day cocktail hour in the Kravis Center Zoom room on Wednesday evening, November 4 from 6:45 to 8:15. Feel free to drop in anytime.

In other news, the Kravis Center is seeking participants for a couple of small roundtable discussions to practice having critical conversations about topics we've identified as particularly challenging for faculty to discuss with (and hear from) students. These roundtables would involve having conversations with Fiona and me, then engaging in a reflective space to acknowledge our shortcomings and work toward cultural competency. If you've gotten to the end of this letter and would be interested in participating, please fill out the following survey: Critical Conversation Practice Interest Form

Godspeed,

Miles, on behalf of the Kravis Center

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On a related note, the article, "... half as much". by Varghese Alexander of Asheville School, co-Director of the Klingenstein Summer Institute was published in Medium on October 31, 2020.

Articles on teaching during an election cycle

Teaching Resources for the 2020 Election, Facing History

Voting and Elections, Teaching Tolerance

We Need to Start Talking about the Emotional Impact of the Election by Ricshawn Adkins Roane

Difficult Dialogues comes from the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching website - very helpful, especially for navigating our TAG discussions.

Articles on student well-being

With Stress in Schools Increasing, Simple Strategies to Stay Calm, Laura Lee, Edutopia

Isolated Students May Struggle to Stay Mentally Healthy, Carolyn Curtis, Edutopia

Hackers Smell Blood as Schools Grapple With Virtual Instruction, David Uberti, Wall Street Journal

Virtual Signs of Mental Health Problems, Isaiah Pickens, EdSurge

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In the spirit of collaboration, the Kravis Center is putting out a call for examples of well-designed, creative, and effective asynchronous lesson plans & authentic assessments. You may share your own material, that of a colleague, or the result of collaboration on teaching teams. Click here if you would like to submit a description of what you, your team, or a colleague has done OR if you want to simply include your name and someone from the Kravis Center will contact you.

You all have done outstanding work. We would appreciate any and all opportunities to learn from your efforts.

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Professional Development Opportunities

Learning and the Brain is offering numerous PD options for teaching during COVID. Click here to learn more.

SEL in the classroom: Here is the link to the numerous PD opportunities through One Schoolhouse, one of which is Protecting Student Mental Health in Hybrid Learning Environments with Lisa Damour

Harvard GSE programs for educators - so any worthwhile workshops for teachers.

Hybrid Teaching and Learning: Resources and articles

As our ratio of online to in-person learners has changed, we've had a big increase in the number of teachers teaching hybrid classes this term. Hybrid, at Loomis, simply means having an online learner in an in-person class section. There are two guides (which are updating and changing frequently) about how this might function for those classrooms. The first outlines the technological options we have (the "hardware"), the second contains more best practices and FAQs.

Here is a Padlet for those who are teaching hybrid to post thoughts, ideas, etc and for those who are not, to see what it's all about!

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