BY MEREDITH McCOOL
When I first heard Stephanie O’Neill’s NPR story “Coronavirus Has Upended Our World. It’s OK to Grieve,” it helped me consider the range of emotions I was experiencing. Stress from the sudden changes. Disappointment from missed opportunities. However, the full weight of grief did not hit me until I began to consider a class I will teach in the fall and the impact of socially distanced teaching on the course.
During my college’s three-week session that begins our school year, I teach Culturally Responsive and Restorative Practices for preservice teachers. The nature of the session, in which students take only a single course, enables student immersion into a school and its community’s culture. This context is what Marisa Cannata has referred to as “socially distant” for the vast majority of the preservice teachers in our program: that is, the school does not look demographically like the schools in our local area, nor does it look like the schools that the preservice teachers attended as children.
In his address to Kenyon College’s 2005 graduating class, David Foster Wallace shared a parable: “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’” Puzzled, one young fish says to the other, “What the hell is water?” Anthropologists and ethnographers often refer to this fish-can’t-see-the-water metaphor when discussing their field of research. They contend that observers may be more sensitive to nuances in settings and interactions as outsiders. As such, a “socially distant” school a few hours away has provided an opportunity for preservice teachers in my program to “see the water” of culturally responsive and restorative practices in a way that they would not have at a school a few minutes away.
Amid the pandemic’s constantly changing landscape, the prospect of traveling for this course remained in question. I tried to postpone my grief, waiting to know for certain that my class would not be the immersive and transformative experience I had planned for the preservice teachers in my care.
And then the world learned of the brutal murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Waves of grief swept the nation. Rallies were planned. Protestors marched. We were called to act. I contributed my dollars and my signature to racial justice causes. But what I have to give, above all, is my teaching. My curriculum is my advocacy. And I hold fast in the belief that the ripple effects of my instruction—from my preservice teachers to their future students—exponentially amplify my efforts.
And then the decision was made to return to school early, a change meaning that the last day of my early session would be the second day of school for our “socially distant” elementary school partners. Travel was unequivocally off the table.
So, I grieved. I grieved senseless deaths. I grieved a class full of preservice teachers who would not only miss the opportunity to have an immersive and transformative experience but would also complete their program and eventually become teachers in their own classrooms without the benefit of that experience.
And then we were called out. An alumna addressed an email to every employee of the college and pointed out a range of ways in which our institution and the individuals within it marginalize our students of color—particularly our Black students—and perpetuate racism. Our institution was bequeathed as a women’s college by its final slaveholding plantation owner. As a colleague of mine wrote in a recent letter to our students, the “establishment more than a century ago was both a visionary affirmation of women and an abominable example of the horrors of white supremacy. While efforts have been made to contend with the injustice and exploitation at the heart of this college’s founding, we know we need to do more.”
One aspect of doing more is aligning our curriculum with the principles of social justice and anti-racism. The importance and immediacy of this class and its field experience have always been present. Yet I cannot help feeling that it is even more important and immediate in this present moment. Injustice continues to exist. People continue to suffer. Our institution—just like our country—continues to fall short of its aspirational aims.
In my grief, I took myself for a hike along the banks of the James River. Yes, the James River that flows through Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy. The one on which some of the first enslaved Africans were transported to the supposed “new world” in 1619. As I walked along its shore, listening to its pulse, my grief transformed into possibility. If we could not travel, we could stay. If we could not explore the culturally responsive practices of a socially distant school, we could study the practices of our own school and have a role in further developing the culturally responsive and restorative practices of our college.
Because we will be fish studying our own water, we must make every effort to make the familiar strange. In the same way that we had used tools of ethnographic observation to examine the classrooms and practices of teachers in a suburban elementary school, we will use those same tools to examine the classrooms and practices of professors at our college. We will strive to separate observation from inference using field note-taking and classroom mapping techniques I have adapted from the work of Carolyn Frank to better understand the institutional water in which my students and I swim.
Already, the idea has been percolating to incorporate social justice learning outcomes into the college’s general education curriculum. Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards, a resource that is already a part of the curriculum, could serve as the guiding framework. Without taking the conversation away from the student groups leading this movement, we could help propel it forward: listen to their insights, make curricular connections, and develop formal proposals. My class could examine the existing learning outcomes and course syllabi to identify opportunities to expand on or make explicit the social justice concepts they already include and add them where they are conspicuously absent.
While the James River will never be able to wash away the atrocities that were perpetrated on its banks, I am grateful for its help in channeling my grief into action.
Guest blogger Meredith McCool is assistant professor of education at Sweet Briar College.
