34. "first draft" thoughts & principled struggle in the classroom
thinking about productive disagreement and trust in the classroom
Hi there! 👋 I’m Ida, and this is tiny driver, a newsletter about research, pedagogy, culture and their intersections. Thank you for being here. Reach out anytime by just hitting reply, I love hearing from you.
👋💖 And a big hello to the new subscribers!! I'm guessing that you are here because of the Anti-Racism Daily newsletter I wrote on online syllabi. Thank you so much for subscribing to this little corner of the internet, and I'm so glad to have you here! Please also feel free to share this newsletter with friends that you think would like it too! 🥰
Hello, and happy Monday to you all! Last week, I wrote about the loneliness that comes with writing in isolation and how I used Study with Me videos on YouTube to cope. A lot of you wrote back to me saying that you have been struggling with similar feelings around working alone. Some of you even offered up your own ways of finding accountability or feeling less lonely while working. Thank you for these messages and for sharing with me your own tips for moving forward, and I'd love to share them with the rest of you.
For writing accountability, Mia L. suggests the writing group Paperbacks and Co, whose monthly membership includes workshops and writing coaches. (In a similar vein, I want to plug Esme Weijun Wang's The Unexpected Shape community, a writing group for "ambitious people living with limitations." I am not a part of it, but it seems like a really wonderful space. She also provides scholarships for membership, so if finances are an issue, this might be a great option for you.)
Tyler B. recommends PhD Forum, a free, 24/7 online study room for academics. Although it's UK based, folks join in from all over the world and they hold structured writing sessions on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I had a chance to join last Wednesday, and it was an absolutely lovely space where I introduced myself in the chat and received a warm welcome followed by some great study time. It's kind of like a virtual library, and is the closest I've been able to come to creating that feeling at home.
Finally, Anjile A. suggested two sites. The first, Sound of Colleagues, is meant to re-create common sounds from office spaces. I really love the toggle feature for each sound element—I put "rain on window" on blast and "telephone" way down. Studying at Hogwarts offers a similar toggle feature, and re-creates a very cozy study atmosphere with fire crackling, thunderstorms and the sounds of a quill writing, among other mixing elements.
She also recommends Window Swap, where you literally get to see out the window of someone else in the world. I love that it's totally random and that I can also hear the noises of the place I am seeing on the screen. On Sunday morning, I got to spend time in Pune, India and La Colle Sur Loup, France:
I hope that some of these sites help you feel less alone during this time! And as always, please feel free to write in (either by leaving a comment or replying to this email) with any of your own suggestions for sites or practices that have been helping you get through this time writing or working alone. 💞
What I teach.
This week is Northwestern's final week of winter quarter. Although it was a shortened term, I feel like I was able to connect with students to the best of my ability and challenge them to think more expansively about the subjects that compose Asian American Studies. As I reflect on the quarter and what I was able to accomplish with my students, I feel good knowing that at each session I tried my best to be my most present and curious self—to learn alongside students and grow with them.
Of course, there is always more to learn and more that I could do to improve. Whether it's my pedagogical approach or written feedback or communication with students, I am constantly learning with every interaction. Something, though, that has made this learning curve a bit steeper is the virtual aspect of our courses. I know that I will not be teaching remotely forever, but I do hope to come into Spring quarter with some new tools for more efficient and valuable virtual communication.
Enter: AORTA, or the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance. My friend Maj K. first told me about the organization when I started working on DEI consultations because their workshops, resources and facilitations center movements and organizations that fight for social and environmental justice and a solidarity economy. As their theory of change states, the cooperative "teach[es] the critical skills people need to learn in order to change their behavior, interactions, conflicts, internal dynamics and organizational culture." While I had never really articulated a direct link between their work and my teaching, I had an experience with the organization last week that made me realize how aligned the two actually were.
Earlier this year, I learned that AORTA was hosting a new type of workshop called "Facilitate for Freedom: Fundamentals Training." Essentially, the workshop was meant to introduce folks to effective and solidarity-based facilitation pedagogy in virtual spaces. Because I consider my own pedagogical style to be oriented towards "facilitation" rather than "instruction," I decided to sign up. At best, I would have some new skills in my teaching toolkit, and at worst, I would have donated money to an organization whose work I whole-heartedly believe in.
Of course it turned out to be an incredibly useful experience for understanding how to facilitate group processes in virtual spaces. (Very much recommend to sign up for May sessions when sign-ups goes live.) While most of the folks at the workshop were organizers, so much of these principles resonated with me as a person teaching courses in higher ed.
The facilitators, Bex and Jenna, introduced AORTA's own facilitation principles using the acronym "CARTOGRAPHY," but focused the workshop on sharing two principles: (1) Remove barriers to full participation, and (2) [Say] yes to principled struggle. I want to reflect more on the latter, because I think it moved me the most in terms of thinking through future course sessions with my students.
In my syllabus, I have a note on discussion in the class because I am currently teaching seminars. Part of the note talks about the importance of productive disagreement while also letting students know that racist, homophobic, sexist, transphobic, etc. comments are not tolerated. Despite this, one of the biggest challenges I have in the classroom is having students feel okay to share "first draft" thoughts that may question or complicate what another student previously said. The stakes seem to be too high, perhaps, or dissent is not something that seems to coexist with trust-building.
However, principled struggle—or saying "yes" to "invite, make room for, turn toward, practice and spend time in disagreement"—is critical to not only the growth of movements, but also the intellectual growth of my students in the classroom. It allows for the charting of new possibilities and solutions, it facilitates stronger resilience and it encourages the support of folks with marginalized identities precisely because it asks for varying perspectives.
Through the workshop, I learned practical ways to turn toward principled struggle in virtual spaces that I facilitate: warm-ups with "low stakes" debates, encourage talking between specific people through fishbowls, framing discussions as actively creating the environment for productive & safe disagreement, etc. We role played, we shared in joyful laughter, we listened to "Oops I Did It Again" and "Eye of the Tiger." While virtual facilitation is still a challenge, and potentially even getting harder because of Zoom burnout, it feels good to learn a new means of being virtual while building trust to replicate important conversational dynamics that are more easily carried out in person.
What I consume.
In the Bookshop:
Currently Reading: Juliet the Maniac by Juliet Escoria + Sins of the Father by Mia Counts Lynch
On Deck: The Weak Spot by Lucie Elven
Item(s) of note.
I've been doing some inner child work recently, and this personal essay from Catherine Andrews really hit home in that respect.
Free downloadable planning sheets that are beautifully minimal and actually useful!
I will now be letterlocking all of my analog correspondence to maintain discreetness and confidentiality and pretend that I have nothing to do but write letters and fold paper like a high society lady from the seventeenth century.
A simple, daily tarot spread that focuses on "layers of knowing."
Four ways to cure zoom fatigue.
On what a writing community is and how to build them authentically.
Someone suggested this website on twitter if you need help writing a lit review.
A pup-date.
Probably one of the only things that Higgins has in common with cats is that he enjoys basking in the sunlight with his eyes closed. Well, this and that he knows he's a very cute goober.
As always, thanks so much for reading through, and I'll see you in the next one!
Warmly,
Ida