“Only when we’re brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” (Dr. Brené Brown)
This blog post is a collaboration between Mr. David Puller and Dr. Bruce Martin. We spend a lot of time thinking about our students, their communities, their needs. We felt we needed to start a conversation with each other, and within the communities.
Think about the "new normal" -- our world, and how this seems to be a cascade of crises or sequences of stressors. This list is partial and is not prioritized:
- a global pandemic
- the increase of technology ... and the increased technology gap, but also the dehumanizing of technology in our communities
- a precarious economy, especially since March 2021
- lack of health care for many families
- in February a massive winter storm, an "arctic vortex" that surprised and clobbered tens of millions of southern Americans, leading to massive power loss, unsafe water, food scarcity and empty groceries, temporary low fuel distribution, and broken pipes destroying so many homes
- college and K-12 classes cancelled for a week and more
- and often silent but translated emotional cries for help, but we're all in the same emotional floundering boat
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| Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash |
Bruce:
It's not me and my own depression, though these cascades haven't helped my depression. Alienation rarely helps anxiety or depression. The students look at their profs a) they feel profs have most power / they think their prof will fail the student for the crisis that they did not cause!, and b) the students have not experienced a community-centered learning experience. They do not know/ never developed social skills to make relationships with other students (and the pandemic makes this worse but tech should make this easier) not do they trust the college.
The college presents itself as ... it's like going to JC Penny (remember going to the mall?) with different "customer service" clerk at different windows, but never really getting satisfaction (retail never gives us satisfaction, does it? Materialism is only a brief semblance of satisfaction and the college's marketing and weird mascot images and phone calls and web interface enrollment and registration and FAFSA web pages are all dehumanizing, like calling my bank customer service and get routed to India with a rep who calls himself Bill but we both know his blame isn't Bill and we both have a conversation with that obvious lie that his name is not Bill and how is it possible to trust each other when we start a lie and persist that lie? "Bill? Can I tell you something?")
👦 David's comments: "My preferred definition of bullshit is 'a lie that one person tells another knowing that the other person knows that it's a lie.'"
👽 Bruce's response: Agreed, some social, co-dependency, co-destruction, when we cannot trust each other but won't call either of us on our bullshit.
David:
You said, "They do not know/ never developed social skills to make relationships with other students (and the pandemic makes this worse but tech should make this easier)."
Yes. Or maybe I project too much from my own traumatic college experience. It would be easy for me to do so.
The easiest way for me to relate to students is not college, but graduate school, especially from the summer and fall of 2000. I was broke, working full time in a truly toxic workplace, and going to school full time. I was emotionally shattered from losing my first girlfriend and feeling like I had been truly cheated by the world at large. I was constantly tired. I was computer illiterate, which exasperated one fellow student on whom I was too dependent for an Excel project. I was a tangled mess of rage, resentment, and incompetence.
A recurring thought for me, as a college instructor (of sorts) is “Why the hell does this student not have a functional computer? A sufficient one could cost $300. But the student has multiple video games and consoles. I have heard other ridiculous life choices by students (this is public, so I shouldn’t share) that makes me want to say, “Get your shit together. Make better choices.”
But I most definitely did not have my shit together in high school, college, and grad school.
Ruby Payne, for all of her scholastic faults, correctly teaches that we faculty must realize that when we see students make what looks like an inanely stupid decision, it’s often because we’re not seeing the hidden rules of that student’s life, let alone the whole story.
Grad school, especially in 2000, was a cascade of crises. And that was just what was going on internally. I had no interference from plagues or storms. And although I was getting my shit together by October, it was a fragile system that could have been cut down by any external crisis like a plague or storm.
There’s no new discovery here: just a reminder to treat other people like you would want to be treated. Remember that students who frustrate me are fighting terrible battles that I know nothing about. They have been doing this for years or their entire lives. Then the snow started falling.
👽 Bruce's response: "to treat other people like you would want to be treat." This is the real crisis, isn't it? If we lose our intimate humanity, we cannot really fix ... or care for ... those other crises.
👦 David's comments:
Bruce:
I appreciate your own narrative of grad school and financial pressures. I was in something similar about a decade ago. I had moved to Houston from family and friends and networks in Memphis, leaving my graduate program behind me. I came here with a new promising job. Within a year, the entire corporation was bankrupt, so many furloughs surrounding me, downsizing departments, realizing that my degree wasn't going to help and the company really didn't care. My salary was cut in half but the job demands increased. My personal relationship soured. I decided to jump into teaching middle school was its own frustrations. I began to realize that my life was off track and no one around there to show the path. My spirituality disappeared. My emotional health was declining. My financial wellness tanked, too.
I decided to return to grad school, but I had lost my transfer credits. I realized that I didn't like my discipline but I was offered a new discipline, more challenging and what I felt was more relevant. Fortunately, it was exactly what David is saying above -- connections, trust, relying on others -- that made the grad experience livable. I was challenged still with poor employment teaching college with no benefits, driving all across Harris County almost every day, studying every day and writing seemingly weekly, but my cohort were all in the same boat, or apparently so. They treated me like humans, more so than companies or colleges and other circles. The crisis waned.
We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure. (Cesar Chavez)
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