On Wednesday, February 8, I woke up early to take advantage of my house’s predawn quiet for lesson planning. The day before, I had taken a social media break, something I am doing more often these days. When I checked Facebook, I came late to the news that someone had brought white nationalism to the forefront of the campus where I teach the day before.
As I read in horror, I had a conversation with myself that I have been having a lot lately:
I have no time for this.
I have no energy for this.
I have no choice.
So before the sun came up, I made the decision to throw out my plan for the day and dig deep into the story on my campus. I had no choice.
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“Modify and adjust. Modify and adjust.” We learned these words in our education classes, in our first years of teaching: They are the pillars for the work we have ahead of us.
How do we modify and adjust when the news is shifting so quickly? When we are bound by prescriptive standards and curricula? When we feel fear of being accused of being “too political” in our classrooms? When we already do not have time to teach what we want to teach, need to teach and feel called to teach—all three of which can be competing on a daily basis?
Yet, we need to find space in our plans to address pressing issues of the day. We have no choice. As teachers, we are here to help students make sense of the world around them. We can find space to teach and discuss timely issues when we have to, like I had to do last Wednesday. It wasn’t a normal day.
Here’s how I found that instructional space: I used our campus as a text in tandem with the texts I had already been teaching. That day’s reading dealt with oppression and silencing—and the resistance people enact when they are oppressed and silenced. When I realized that I could connect the campus incidents with the texts I had assigned, I knew I had to learn more about the group that had hung their white nationalism hate on our campus—and specifically on top of the posters advertising our campus’s Vagina Monologues performances.
Now the sun was coming out. My daughter would be up soon.
I have no time for this.
I have no choice.
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Texts are our foundation. When making the decision to modify and adjust, we have little time. We quickly ask: What texts are available to me?
Fortunately, a citizen media source had done a story about the white nationalist posters the night of the event. I was able to make copies of it and ask students to read it at the start of class. Only a handful of students had heard about the event, so I asked them to write a response to the story and gave them some space to process what had happened.
I then used the Twitter feed of the white nationalist group as a text. I wanted students to contextualize what happened on our campus as part of the larger narrative the group wanted to create. (I am purposely not naming them or sharing any of their materials, as I do not want to give them a platform.) I asked students to respond to these tweets and images and to do close reading of the posters.
Then I showed them the group’s official website. Students closely read the home page image, the language the group uses, the photos of the group’s leadership. We analyzed the group’s slogans and used them to discuss rhetoric and audience—and appropriation of language that speaks to diversity. I asked them to think about intersectionality and to complicate their responses with an eye toward gender analysis.
Finally, I showed them the group’s Facebook page, specifically the response to our campus’s photos of the incident. I asked them to talk about the dangers of someone on our campus hearing they are doing “God’s work” when spreading hateful images.
I had to find those texts and used them as a call to action for my students. I ended by asking them what they are going to do—because they wanted to do something. Some met with members of the administration. Others committed to supporting campus events. Some talked about the work they do to disrupt racism and sexism in conversation.
Later in the day, a story in the campus paper came out. My students already had the context, the critical analysis and the passion to help their friends make sense of what had happened on their campus only 24 hours before.
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I think that Wednesday was one of the most important days of my teaching career. I modified and adjusted the day after the Columbine shootings. After 9/11. After white nationalism reared its ugly head in my community.
We never have time.
We never have a choice.
Clemens is the associate professor of non-Western literatures and director of Women's and Gender Studies at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.
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