By Ann Obermann PhD LCSW
As we are entering the final weeks before our presidential elections, I ask you to consider taking great care in planning your lessons and activities for the weeks preceding and following the election.
In other times, I would have been excited to critically examine presidential positions, challenge student viewpoints, investigate international impacts, and highlight controversial current events. Our classrooms would have engaged in civic action, getting out to vote, and discussing the role of education in civic action and history. Activities may have included debates, fact checking, volunteerism, political theory application, observations and more!
However, this year is different.
Our students (and us) have been under mounting stress since March 2020 . . . for 7 months and counting. Though our life stressors are all different, there are some common things we have been experiencing . . . teaching and learning fully online, civil unrest, social isolation, impacts of a country built on racism, COVID-19, and a looming presidential election with our basic human rights on the line. We are stressed, worried, sad, angry, and more.
The classroom is a unique and maybe even sacred place. Students and faculty alike love engaging in education to discuss current events, to welcome differing opinions, to test theories, to challenge the status quo, to encourage civic responsibilities and actions, to disrupt history, to innovate, and to create new knowledge. The best learning happens in these spaces where we are slightly uncomfortable, pushed beyond our normal patterns, forced to see something in a new light, able to listen, given freedom to explore, and provided new ways of envisioning our future.
However, this place of “sacred” discomfort can quickly become a place of fear or danger when we are pushed “too far” resulting in the opposite of learning or being open. This place of fear and danger can cause us to shut down, dig our heals in deeper, close out anything new or different, rely on old ways even if unhealthy or dangerous, lash out, attack, or to ignore anything threatening our fragile status quo (**think flight, fight, faint, freeze, responses).
Currently, many, if not all of us, have been pushed “too far” due to our current political, social, and environmental stressors putting us in that place of fear and danger all the time. Because of this, our ability to stretch, think outside the box, listen, remain open and curious, receive feedback and many other essentials in learning have been greatly compromised if not completely shut down. In addition, we are teaching and learning online, and cannot rely on our same experienced and effective classroom facilitation skills that have led us through past elections, divisive historical events, and places of fear.
I am not saying we should stop challenging the system, facilitating students critical thinking, or encouraging civic action because we have been pushed too far. What I am saying is that we need to do this with intention and care. We need to think through our purpose and current context so that we are creating environments where students can learn vs shutting down or worst-case scenario being hurt or hurting one another. We do not want our activities to inadvertently harm students, repeat systemic oppression, or set them up for experiencing or committing microaggressions, passive aggressive communication, or other negative learning interactions. Considering our political (i.e., elections, human rights, racism, COVID 19) and our educational context (i.e., online learning, disconnection, is science real) is essential when planning online class activities, lectures, readings, assignments and more.
Think about the following list of online teaching and learning factors that contribute to communication and learning challenges for students and instructors.
Differences of and risks in online teaching and learning:
- Everyone is often required to answer and/or reply to others – leaving no space for privacy, protection, or “if I have nothing nice to say, I should not say anything at all” type advice. It sets students up who are angry, tired, or feel trapped to be “forced” to respond in order to get a grade. And for those students who have identities that are marginalized or under attack, it forces them to have to share, putting them at great risk for harm.
- Written word sticks around a lot longer than verbal– when discussing in a classroom, comments are made, confronted, changed, redacted, put in context, dismissed, and then the room moves on. There may be some discussion outside the classroom, but usually the words/comments are addressed and forgotten. But on a written discussion board, the words are there, where everyone reads them over and over and over again. Rarely are they removed, or a differing or corrected opinion offered.
- Responding asynchronously – In a face to face classroom, difficult topics can be discussed at the same time, giving real time feedback. Online learning happens over the course of a week, two weeks, or a semester. This time context can impact the delivery and timing of words. It impacts students being able to have a conversation or see feedback being offered. It makes if difficult to learn and correct thoughts in real time.
- Uncontrolled environment – With discussion posts, video discussions, or other online activities, the environment is not contained and/or controlled by the instructor or facilitator. Though the learning community may have created “intentions” for learning, ultimately, folks can write, comment, attach anything they want, whenever they want, and it may be 24 hours before an instructor sees their contributions. Though there are ways to “control” and limit these environments (i.e., not allowing posts, limiting attachments, etc.), in general it is less monitored than having an in-person conversation where everyone is in the room and the instructor can facilitate an environment controlling what is passed out, videos watched, or other contributions.
- No nonverbals, tone, or context clues – In online written activities, there are no context clues or nonverbals to help someone challenge or share a differing opinion. The words stand alone. It is also difficult to know where and how far to push someone as we do not have the live physical feedback.
- In home learning – Students are learning in their homes with families, parents, and others who have similar or differing opinions. When they are in the classroom, they are influenced by this, but they are alone to learn, listen, and create their own lives. When they are at home, there are “ears” that listen to their interactions or read their posts. There are discussions going on while watching the news. So the students learning environment is bigger and may influence their abilities to challenge their own beliefs or understandings of the world.
- Culture of social media – Social media lends itself to quick judgements, competition, anonymity, critique, lack of accountability, cancel culture, shaming, and tribalism. This culture influences our discussion boards and online activities.
- Immediacy culture – folks are used to writing and responding immediately when it comes to phones, texting, and social media. Though you may be nurturing a critical thinking environment in your class, when students open up their screens and start learning – that immediate access of the digital world takes over. They respond now and think later.
- Computer access is intertwined with learning – The classroom students are learning in is their computer, phone, or tablet. And in these classrooms, there are advertisements, notifications, family demands, calendar invites, political reminders, shopping deals, CNN news updates, and more. Their attention is fragmented to all the different parts of their lives, not leaving much open or undistracted space for learning, especially for learning that requires them to think beyond themselves or our current contexts.
Because of these complex factors, it is essential that we intentionally plan our lessons and activities over the next month to take care of our students and ourselves during this highly stressful time. Knowing “how to respond” when our learning environments become tense or harmful is essential, but we need to go a step further and plan our learning environments so we are not setting up our students and ourselves to engage in harmful discourse. Intentionally planning will help reduce explicit verbal assaults, passive aggressive interactions, and microaggressions (i.e., verbal or written insults, invalidations, or assaults based on ones’ identities). And this planning will hopefully increase student capacity to learn and ability to communicate digitally during difficult times.
Below are tips to consider when intentionally planning your online lessons. These tips are intended to help students learn given the numerous stressors they are facing AND to create an online learning environment that reduces the risks for microaggressions and/or passive aggressive behaviors. They will also help increase opportunities for students to engage in constructive communication, learning the important life skill that it is possible to have civil and critical conversations in digital environments.
Tips for encouraging constructive communication during election season:
- Transparency Share with students how stress may be impacting their abilities to learn and respond. Giving students some self-awareness may help them take a break or not write what they are thinking. Tell them why you are asking certain questions in a certain way (i.e., to reduce microaggression and passive aggressive comments). If you want to challenge them, tell them you are “trying to challenge” their assumptions or beliefs though it may be hard given our small window of tolerance and learning due to 2020 context. Let them know that a certain activity may “activate” them and instruct them to sit with their feelings for 20 minutes or to take a walk, get away from their computer to calm their nervous system. Then instruct them to come back and answer. Build these activities into your plans. You can never be to transparent about teaching and learning, especially during times of stress.
Transparency helps combat our lack of seeing nonverbals, hearing tone, or observing context. With transparency, you state how you are feeling, the tone you are using, or the context in which you are thinking and then writing. Ask students to share an “I” or feeling statement before they begin their responses in discussion.
Share the point of the activity. For example, share that “the point of this activity is not to share your political views but rather to apply social work theory to a candidates’ perspectives.” Being transparent about the learning objective can help students navigate the question and their response and give them choice in disclosing how they feel. Everything feels political and charged right now. So give students a choice by sharing what you do and/or do not want in their replies. If your activity does not seem to have a point or purpose that matches the risk or intensity of the activity, then please question the inclusion of such an activity.
- Modeling Provide examples on how to respond, take a mindful minute, share video and make your feelings/emotions clear. For example, “In planning this weeks’ lesson on human rights I got really mad. I had to walk away from my computer a couple different times to give my mind a break and regulate my breathing. I got mad because I struggle to understand how our leaders can deny basic human rights to anyone, let alone people who are most vulnerable.” Something like this can be an intro to my lesson on Human Rights.
When there is conflict, model how to deal with online conflict. Share your choices and why you proceeded the way you did. Model being angry or sad in a professional way. This relates to transparency as well – tell your student why you are modeling the behavior. Nuance and reading between the lines is not a skill we possess when chronically stressed.
In addition to modeling self-expression, providing models for the activities you assign is also helpful when our brains are stressed. Allowing students to follow an example or a rubric can feel more contained and is often helpful to a stressed brain that is struggling with creativity and logic.
- Converting in class activities to online Take care in converting your class activities to online. Consider the context of online learning (above) that may or may not lend itself to the classroom activity you want to move online. Most activities can be successfully converted from face to face to online learning. But given our current levels of stress, just make sure your activity redesign considers the risks of online learning. You may have to do the activity in a different order or with different materials. Maybe something that was a group brainstorm, is now an individual brainstorm and the ideas are shared anonymously. Maybe you build in a “transparency” exercise where students and you share exactly what you want to get out of something or your nonverbals before your share your opinion. It is not that you can’t do the awesome activity that you do every year . . . you may just need to add in steps, increase transparency, and model how and what it is.
- Simplify: Simplify anywhere you can! Our brains are at mass capacity with information overload and surviving. Think about what is absolutely necessary for students to walk away with from your course, and focus on that! This does not mean you compromise rigor or content, just simplify the way it is delivered, the amount of work, the options, or scope.
Slowing down
When our brains are stressed, we lose logic, short-term memory, language, planning, creativity and abstract thinking. Think about ways to “slow down” and simplify your activities to give students’ brains time to catch up and clear the fog. The brain also will discard any information that is not necessary (i.e., long readings and my “insightful” 30 minute lecture videos 😉). So present “warm up” activities and give students time to process ideas or tasks.
Depth not breadth
I love the environment of online as it gives me so many options! However, too many options and resources can be overwhelming in calm times let alone times of stress. Though the NPR item you listened to this morning was TOTALLY related to class, do students really need another announcement with yet another resource to listen to? Though knowing ALL alternative therapies available is super interesting and may engage that hard to engage student, is it really that important for students to know ALL alternative therapies available vs that there are alternative therapies? GO DEEP and keep it simple vs going broad. Give students one reading where you discuss and talk and apply social work content. I know ALL the readings are important, but when stressed, it is easier to slow down and go deep on just one concept vs holding many ideas at once.
- Choices With having “forced” responses in discussion activities, students who may not want to or may have harmful views are required to participate. And when feeling chronically stressed, we can feel trapped or a having perceived lack of power, exacerbating the “forced” feelings of required discussion post and reply formats. Giving students a choice to what and how they respond can empower students, encourage learning agency, and provide them with options with how they want to participate. A choice of a more political vs self-reflection type question or the ability to respond with how they are feeling vs a factual response. Maybe it is a week where only the instructor sees the response or it is done in pairs. Make sure to never ask a required question that forces someone to disclose their political views or identities, always give students choice about sharing their identities and views. The important piece in this is the choice and letting student know why there is a choice.
- When, Where, and How When figuring out when and where to have students respond, think about what you are asking. If your question has the potential to result in microaggressions, conflict, or passive aggressive responses, maybe this is a question that you ask in a synchronous learning environment where it can be better facilitated or other synchronous activities (i.e., google docs at the same time, live chats, etc.). How students respond can be directed by doing written vs video responses or having students answer in a pair share. Think about the intent of your activity and then ask the when, where, and how questions to help set up the student for success and decrease the likelihood of microaggressions and other unconstructive communications. Set up office hours multiple times during a week where you are challenging students or having them question beliefs. This provides real time support to create a more intentional environment.
- Check yourself Protect and check yourself. Make sure you are intentional with personal sharing and exposing your own view points. Realize that you, too, are permanently captured in video or written word when producing online materials.
Resources:
Responding to Microaggression in Online and Face to Face Classrooms
Becky Cottrell can help convert assignments or provide ideas for slowing down and going deep in your online teaching and learning environments.