I was gathering with other professors this week, a warm and breezy evening on a patio in The Heights, surrounded with couples and groups talking and young families juggling privileged children, enjoying the Houston post-latest-flood weather, several cyclists along White Oak Street, a few motorcyclists, smells of tacos, grilled salmon, sriracha sauce, the sounds of the grackles in the above trees, and a few well-behaved dogs laying around the patio.
We meet regularly to ritualize our profession. We discuss canonical and contemporary research; we review our pedagogical practices and our students' responses; the politics of an institution, apparently in contradiction to sensibility or at least in contradiction to "scholarly" research. The evenings are both mature and adolescent: we are responsible to each other in our discourse and we often slide into whining and complaining. The adolescent discourse keeps us sane. We tell ourselves that our professional angst is similar and ubiquitous and we commiserate our anxieties and frustration and anger, telling ourselves that our professional lives would be much better if bureaucrats would just listen. This is not new. Every college, every university, every school has created a pervasive, universal tension between those who spend all the time in the classroom vs. those who spend their times in offices. Even Socrates, I'm sure, was complaining the tensions of his academy and the politicians of Athens. Then they killed him.
But this post is not the tension between the faculty and the administration, though I could return to that easily to demonstrate that my topic is relevant to the college's misconception of the community. But not now. That night, at the end of a long, busy, tiring, politically pressured, nationally tense semester, we actually were spending much more time about our students. The same group of faculty had attended the previous college commencement and we started with the celebration of our students, their family and friends, and the continuing actual working in the community. Too often, the administration and faculty are insulated from the community; we expect the community to come to us instead of us going to the community. Commencement forces us to remember that behind each student is a dozen or more bodies that have much more power and influence in our students than we pretend do as faculty.
But this post is not about commencement and the college's responsibility to work in the community, though I could return to that easily to demonstrate that my topic is relevant to our community's misconception of the college. I noticed that at least half of our discussion on that patio were litanies of students' lives. We discuss our students at each of our conversations. Unlike some faculty who dismiss students and chide them for "not being like us," my colleagues' discussions are largely just disappointment that our students' real lives are so complicated that interfere with their college goals. As faculty, since we "did it" -- we completed bachelors rituals and masters rituals and some with doctoral rituals, we look backward and say, "Just do this and you'll get it. You'll get your degree. You'll complete your certificate." We believe it's that easy.
But what happens is that many, many of our students have different narratives, different lives that we, as faculty, had. And in this evening, we were just sad. We were sad that this young man was completing fully in my course, for example, but just disappeared two weeks before completing. Another young woman had too many complex live obstacles: child care (my college doesn't provide child care), struggling with bills such as food (my college struggles to address food insecurity), and unreliable transportation (my college has no public transportation from our primary community, Aldine, to the campus). Another student had persistent anxiety concerns. Another had to choose between a real job and the college and he chose to take a job. Another woman had a difficult pregnancy. And so many students who disappear without stories. We just don't know why they disappear. Disappear. The community comes to the college, and most of the community disappears. We were sad.
Coincidentally, the uberbureaucracy in Texas published the 2019 Almanac about every public higher education institution. I discussed at my college's very low of graduation while my students have a higher student debt dollar than many surrounding college students. In other words, even though my college has a low graduation rate, they are taking more debt and I know many of them will be shouldering that debt for many, many years, especially if they don't graduate and get better jobs. We were sad.
No jokes about drowning sorrows in (craft) beer. No jokes about just eat cake. No jokes about "this is why the semester always ends." No jokes about "those kids today." Just sadness. Of course, we balanced the stories with the grateful for so many students completing, but in my quiet head, I wondered how many of those successful students this semester will return to campus next semester. I wondered how many of these students will be celebrating with their families in two or three years, wearing the ancient rites of robes and mortarboard, the evening parties. I wondered where this community as a whole will be in five years, economically and politically and socially.
The sobriety of this kind of meetings was an exercise of solidarity. As faculty, we seek out more than commiseration, but also some resolve to be aware of the students. As I drove away, seeing the neighborhood brightly lit restaurants and bars, drove past the neighborhood baseball game on the emerald green field in their own rituals, slowing down when the woman walked the dog across White Oak, I appreciated a cohort who cares about students. But I drove home a bit more sad than I wanted to be.
The next morning, I started revised lesson plans for the next term, the next group of students.
We meet regularly to ritualize our profession. We discuss canonical and contemporary research; we review our pedagogical practices and our students' responses; the politics of an institution, apparently in contradiction to sensibility or at least in contradiction to "scholarly" research. The evenings are both mature and adolescent: we are responsible to each other in our discourse and we often slide into whining and complaining. The adolescent discourse keeps us sane. We tell ourselves that our professional angst is similar and ubiquitous and we commiserate our anxieties and frustration and anger, telling ourselves that our professional lives would be much better if bureaucrats would just listen. This is not new. Every college, every university, every school has created a pervasive, universal tension between those who spend all the time in the classroom vs. those who spend their times in offices. Even Socrates, I'm sure, was complaining the tensions of his academy and the politicians of Athens. Then they killed him.
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| Faculty Conversing in Public. (Photo by Mihai Surdu on Unsplash) |
But what happens is that many, many of our students have different narratives, different lives that we, as faculty, had. And in this evening, we were just sad. We were sad that this young man was completing fully in my course, for example, but just disappeared two weeks before completing. Another young woman had too many complex live obstacles: child care (my college doesn't provide child care), struggling with bills such as food (my college struggles to address food insecurity), and unreliable transportation (my college has no public transportation from our primary community, Aldine, to the campus). Another student had persistent anxiety concerns. Another had to choose between a real job and the college and he chose to take a job. Another woman had a difficult pregnancy. And so many students who disappear without stories. We just don't know why they disappear. Disappear. The community comes to the college, and most of the community disappears. We were sad.
Coincidentally, the uberbureaucracy in Texas published the 2019 Almanac about every public higher education institution. I discussed at my college's very low of graduation while my students have a higher student debt dollar than many surrounding college students. In other words, even though my college has a low graduation rate, they are taking more debt and I know many of them will be shouldering that debt for many, many years, especially if they don't graduate and get better jobs. We were sad.
No jokes about drowning sorrows in (craft) beer. No jokes about just eat cake. No jokes about "this is why the semester always ends." No jokes about "those kids today." Just sadness. Of course, we balanced the stories with the grateful for so many students completing, but in my quiet head, I wondered how many of those successful students this semester will return to campus next semester. I wondered how many of these students will be celebrating with their families in two or three years, wearing the ancient rites of robes and mortarboard, the evening parties. I wondered where this community as a whole will be in five years, economically and politically and socially.
The sobriety of this kind of meetings was an exercise of solidarity. As faculty, we seek out more than commiseration, but also some resolve to be aware of the students. As I drove away, seeing the neighborhood brightly lit restaurants and bars, drove past the neighborhood baseball game on the emerald green field in their own rituals, slowing down when the woman walked the dog across White Oak, I appreciated a cohort who cares about students. But I drove home a bit more sad than I wanted to be.
The next morning, I started revised lesson plans for the next term, the next group of students.
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