Week 0: Community-Building
0.0 Community-Building
Orientation
Teaching exceeds learning; it is an act of cultural formation that involves multiple stakeholders and constituents. So let’s start with a thought-experiment that considers the interactivity of all participants from the position of a teacher: how does my relationship with the classroom change were I to think about it as a community? More specifically: in what ways does the learning process I support build membership, belonging, intimacy, and trust among teachers, GSIs, and students? What are the institutional parameters that I may wish to leverage or, in certain cases, resist when organizing my classroom into a community?
Without critical awareness, teaching organizes classroom members into a community according to its default conditions. These default conditions are contingent upon the participating subjects (e.g., instructors, GSIs, students, etc.) and the surrounding institutional structures (e.g., grading policies; departmental requirements; etc.). That is, teaching occurs among a layered set of racialized, classist, gendered, socio-political, and cultural dynamics; it is value-ladened, complex, and culturally encoded, it is not neutral or unmediated.
Prioritizing community-building before learning instruction centralizes the affective and situational factors foundational to any learning community in their rightful position. Thinking of teaching as starting one week earlier, creates space to develop our situational awareness as teachers by reaching out to students and restructuring the course design and curriculum accordingly.
Activities
- 0.1 Welcoming Students by Inviting Participation
- 0.2 Presurvey: Recognizing Multiplicity & Particularity
Premise
The purpose is to invite multiple dimensions of student to participate in your course beyond just their intellect (e.g., affective, creative, etc.), and to do so across multiple platforms, such as text-based forms (e.g., emails), video spaces (e.g., Kaltura; YouTube), audio files (e.g., SoundCloud), etc.
Purpose
It is important to make space for students. The default assumption, given the centrality of the teacher, is that the course will likely revolve around an instructor’s interests, expertise, and/or department requirements. Students are asked to fit themselves into the narrow parameters of this intellectual space. It becomes necessary to make space for students – particularly, in excess of their intellect. It is equally important to establish clear protocols that support and sustain this increased space and to invite students into the protocol-formation process. Opening course protocols to student input ensures it reflects realistic outcomes for all community members and activates students as co-constructors of the classroom community. Such co-construction moves beyond mere statements of antiracism or against structural racism, white supremacy, and anti-black violence by mobilizing students into positions of (cultural) power (Such racial justice statements are necessary and important, but without communal accountability may actually enforce such inequities.) As important as statements of solidarity are, it is also important to alert students to the ways in which the course has been designed to support antiracism and challenge structural racism and white supremacy structurally and pedagogically, and most importantly how they (the students) may hold you accountable. Thus, the premise for this activity is that classrooms are stratified spaces of unequal status and membership, where one of the organizational roles of instructors is to design ways to extend full membership status to all community participants.
Preparation
Think about what space your class will offer students, how you will support this structurally and pedagogically, how you will listen to student feedback, how you will communicate that you are listening, and how often adjustments will be made to the course. Instead of issuing blanket statements in support of Black lives, for example. Consider explaining how you hope to make such commitments visible in your course design, projects, and learning processes. Review the necessary technological requirements for video recording and editing; audio recording and editing; and text editing after you’ve arrived at how you will welcome students. Lastly, instead of positioning the welcome unilaterally, think about it as an exchange: how can students respond to you? (how will you respond back?)
Protocol
Share your welcome letters, videos, podcasts, etc. one week before the course begins. Consider pairing it with another activity that helps you learn more about them, such as a presurvey.
Premise
As teachers, we have often designed our courses in a vacuum, responding to department protocol or standards. We often ask our students to adjust to the department, school, or your preferences. Teachers usually don’t know who we’re teaching – what their prior training is, the expertise they carry, the material conditions that compose their learning environment, the economic constraints that may limit the time allotted for your course, etc. – until after the semester begins. In other words, we make quite a few assumptions about our students without asking for their input.
Purpose
The purpose of the presurvey is two-fold: on one hand, it is to gain situational awareness about our particular students and, on the other, it is to adjust the course design, projects, schedule, and outcomes to fit their needs, availability, and access while still upholding whatever external standards, benchmarks, or protocol requisite of the course.
Preparation
Think about what you wished you knew at the beginning of a semester, but don’t until after you get to know them. Alternatively, think categorically about what you don’t know about your students. Come up with a series of questions that will address your knowledge gaps and can be answered by students in a short period of time (e.g., 10-15 minutes). Using Google Forms or another easily accessible platform, compose the survey. When you send it out, be as transparent as possible: clearly state its purpose, its deadline, what you will do with the information, with whom it will be shared, and how they will know you’ve reviewed it.
Protocol
After you’ve welcomed students into the class and invited them to take up space, then send the follow-up survey. The more lead time you give yourself, the more responsive you can be to your students (i.e., the less stressful it will be to make adjustments before the semester begins). Once you’ve distributed the survey with a clear manageable deadline, then review the results and identify clear ways to adjust. Taking it one step further, you can then share how you’ve adjusted the course to fit student needs during the first week of class (or whenever you share your syllabus).