I wanted to be as men wanted
that I was: an attempt at life;
a game of hide-and-seek with myself.
But I was made of presents,
and my feet, flat on the promising land
they couldn’t resist walking backwards,
And they kept going, going,
mocking the ashes
to reach the kiss of the new paths.
-Julia De Burgos, “Yo Misma Fui Mi Ruta”
Community is my lifeblood. Each semester, I look to the next generations of students entering my First-Year Writing classroom as inspirational guides, as complex individuals, as co-creators of community, as creative thinkers. I look to the paths they carve—and are continuing to carve— for themselves with pride, awe, and confidence. I look to their contributions, the projects they invest themselves into with passion and diligence, as motivators for me to continue my Ph.D.
I look to their youthful energies and series of accomplishments with a sense of wishful envy, wishing that I had seized advantage of my own formative years with the same gusto, with the same determination and willingness to overcome obstacles, to make the most of limited circumstances.
Community is something we create. Community is a treasure, a gift, to be revealed over time. Trust in one another, respect, reciprocity, inclusivity, and responsibility are perhaps the most necessary, and fruitful, ingredients of community.
Community is a privilege. As an instructor, I display a hopeful expectation that building community is a possibility. It is always within reach. It is always worthwhile. It requires safety and courage and multivocality. It also requires strength, sensitivity, and vulnerability.
This past June, I read Sean Cameron Golden’s essay, “Toward a Grotkean Pedagogy: Teacher as Political” (2023). I was fascinated by his emulation of Miss Alordayne Grotke, a Black female teacher in Recess, a Disney television series. In the series, the “wild and eccentric” Miss Grotke imparted to her students knowledge of U.S. imperialism, environmental justice, and racial and gendered hierarchies (Golden 56). An outspoken resistor “of the white patriarchal system of public school education,” Miss Grotke’s character cultivated in her students the necessary tools “to unlearn the biases of an education system, holding its stories accountable for the damages done to marginalized beings” (Golden 56-57).
In the spirit of Miss Grotke’s resistance, Golden reflects on the ongoing violence against the Black body, the hypervisibility he feels as a queer Black man in white-dominated spaces, and interrogates the myth of teacher neutrality. He declares,
We as educators hold influential positions in our engagement with young minds. It is in the classroom where the world is shaped and built. This is one of the themes of teacher as political; in the classroom we must commit to ending colonial and imperialist agendas through curricular choices. (57)
When I encountered these passages in Golden’s essay, I was both inspired for the future and empowered to reflect on my own identity. My socioeconomic status and light skin afford me many advantages, including the opportunities I’ve received to pursue a Ph.D. I’m not subjected to the same forms of violence and underrepresentation as Black teachers or teachers from international backgrounds.
I also began to reminisce on a painful, shameful, and humiliating past. I was reminded of my first semester of teaching at UConn. Towards the middle of the semester, I ambitiously prepared two consecutive lessons on race and discrimination against Black, Latine, and Indigenous students in the American educational system. I remember clearly the visceral rage that had motivated me to prepare these lessons: one of my white-passing students had commented that discussions of social oppression and identity politics do not belong in the classroom. He proceeded to make a distinction between STEM courses, which are inherently “objective” and value accuracy, precision, and rationality, and arts and humanities courses, which are “too subjective.”
My resulting lecture shed light on discrimination against Black and Latine students, experiences that extend beyond K-12 classrooms and permeate higher education spaces and graduate programs. I had prepared a PowerPoint with hyperlinks to essays, recent news articles, and supplementary graphics and data. I included a list of suggested readings.
It exposed the struggles of African American women pursuing STEM majors. It attested to the glaring inequality of education and the biased, bigoted perceptions carried by teachers and school administrators. It proved that barriers to educational success exist.
My intention was to validate the struggles of students of color, to build awareness among white students, and to strengthen and educate our class community.
For the remainder of the lesson, I asked my students, whom I call members of my community, to read Julia de Burgos’s poem, “Yo Misma Fui Mi Ruta.” Moreover, I asked them to read and annotate part of an essay by W.E.B. DuBois in which he narrates his boyhood in western Massachusetts and the classical education he pursued. We concluded the class by having all members of the class community share aloud their thoughts and reactions to DuBois and de Burgos.
I remember getting poor feedback on my evaluations at the end of the semester. One student said my lessons on race felt “forced” and “were not enjoyable.” I interpreted this feedback as a sign of my failure as teacher and as a warning.
Meanwhile, other students appreciated the lesson. I remember one of my students, a young Black man, commented in one of his written reflections that the lesson made him feel seen. This was the first time he experienced this sort of discussion about race, ethnicity, and violence. Before he enrolled in my class, he had not been given the opportunity to speak about his experiences. He was beginning to awaken, reflecting upon the ways in which he was perceived by teachers and other authority figures, and redefining academic success on his own terms.
Unfortunately, his disclosure that this was the first time in his educational career that he felt seen and more accepted did not register in my mind. I confess, I still haven’t fully processed or cherished his words. Above all, I remember and am wounded by the negative feedback the most.
The following semester, I refrained from explicitly discussing race in such a charged, emotional way. In fact, I thoroughly avoided the subject. I kept a pretty smile and noncombative expression, refraining from stoking any flames of discontent.
In hindsight, I was silencing myself out of fear: fear of resistance, fear of backlash, fear of judgment, fear of embarrassment. In my mind, I was risking alienating white students, while also making students of color uncomfortable and hypervisible. I told myself that I might potentially out or embarrass marginalized students.
I still feel extremely self-conscious. I did not feel courageous, despite the reassurance from friends and trusted family members. I knew that I was trespassing unspoken boundaries. Moreover, I was perpetually fearful that my students would castigate me for my political teaching. I feared that they would actively disrespect one another. It would harm the classroom community that I had worked so hard to foster. I told myself, It would be better to hold your tongue. Don’t step on any toes. Make the students happy.
But Felicia Chavez, writer of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom (2021), reminds me that exercising our voices, especially for writers of color, is about listening. We encourage students to stand in their power through listening. That deep, attentive, and sensitive listening is communication. And communication is connection. Connection is community.
Community is a chosen responsibility. It is embodied and spiritually manifested. It is an ongoing labor of love, vulnerability, learning, and un-learning.
Certain systems enact violence towards marginalized communities. Certain students, particularly those who are privileged or ignorant, undermine the class community. It is necessary and fruitful to fiercely protect the communities we create.
I am not sure yet if there is a solution, or a foolproof strategy, to my dilemma. Perhaps there’s a more diplomatic way of introducing discussions around race and racism into the First-Year Writing classroom that I haven’t thought of. Perhaps the diplomatic way is still a little too safe, a little too neutral—but it is better than nothing.
Despite my silences, I continue to center Black and queer writers and feminist thinkers in my syllabi. I share either a “Poem of the Day” or “Quote of the Day” with my community, typically one that is written by a woman writer of color. I create a class playlist in which I include suggestions from my community, as well as my personal favorites from diverse cultures and traditional genres. I see my community members as leaders and collaborators: I request their input when designing the grading scale, due dates for assignments, and planning for future classes. I ask each of my community members to design a unique Learning Plan for the semester, in which they outline their goals and create a detailed plan for how to get there. I reshape and build the course around what they value and strive to learn about.
I practice flexibility and understanding. This is beneficial for me, as I am typically a more rigid person who needs something steady to anchor me.
I hold individual conferences with members of my community every week, in which we talk openly about their mental and physical wellbeing and their experiences navigating life at UConn. I resist the anonymity that so often pervades college classrooms by learning my community members’ names within the first few weeks of classes. I try to familiarize myself with their backgrounds, their quirks, and their stories. I encourage peer collaboration and free-flowing exchanges of ideas wherever possible. I try to recognize, appreciate, and amplify the unique potential that each community member possesses. It is an ongoing and imperfect process.
Coda
In the opening chapter of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, Felicia Chavez writes, “Writers of color exist.” Chavez’s book exposes the silences, suppression, and invisibility inflicted on writers who aren’t white or middle-class. I extend her statement when I see my students: those with browner skin. Those with musical and melodious ways of talking. Those with deeper, darker, and more hopeful eyes. Those who are from blended homes. Those who are from islands, and those who are from cities, and those who know no borders between an “island” and “a city.” Those who have fought to build a life in another country we now call America, but that some know, and call, Turtle Island. Those who are still fighting. Those who still resist.
Let’s encompass our students of color within this category. They are writers too. And they are “multitudes,” as Chavez writes: sons, daughters. Sisters, brothers. Neighbors, schoolmates; pals, buddies, friends, and lovers. Community members. I cannot separate the stars. With each sound, each exclamation mark, each thought my students immortalize onto a plain page, they engage in “a political act of warfare,” as Audre Lorde affirms. Broken yet surviving, angry homesick lost confused upset wrecked yet hopeful resilient strong brave patient, I see them taken together in a single body, a shared tongue, a vibrant constellation. These are my students’ voices.
And I was all in me as life was in me…
I want to be as men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life; a game of hide-and-seek with myself.
But I was made of presents;
when the heralds announced me
in the royal parade of old trunks, my
desire to follow men,
and the tribute was waiting for me.
-Julia de Burgos