Humanizing Critical Pedagogy: The Promise of Community Colleges
Rush AI Transcript (July 30, 2024)
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Tina Pippin: [00:00:00] Welcome to Nothing Never Happens, the Radical Pedagogy Podcast. I'm Tina Pippen. co host with Lucia Hulsether. On this podcast, we are delighted to talk with three practitioners of critical pedagogies. Soo Jung Kim is a project director at the Center for Advanced Study in Education at the Graduate Center at CUNY, City University of New York.
Leigh Garrison Fletcher is a linguistics professor in the Education and Language Acquisition Department at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. And Casey Holman is, according to her LinkedIn account, an educational equity champion, visionary leader, speaker extraordinaire. They met in a Mellon Foundation funded [00:01:00] CUNY Humanities Alliance.
working with faculty and graduate student fellows and other partners from CUNY and LaGuardia Community College. And most of all, they worked with the students in their classes to create spaces of mutual learning and transformation. In their current co edited book, Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy, Teaching the Humanities in Community College and Beyond, published by Peter Lang in 2024.
They engage critical pedagogical theories and their practical applications in the classroom and beyond. For those interested in rethinking democratic classroom structures, creative syllabi, socially engaged classrooms, concrete community building exercises, and all these parts connected to critical pedagogical theories and productive critiques of the capitalist, [00:02:00] neoliberal institutions of higher education.
This book provides an important and very useful collection of essays, and we recommend it highly. In this podcast, Soo Jung Leigh and Casey relate their passion for democratic teaching, their commitment to trusting their students, and what makes for a joyful classroom. Welcome, Soo Jung Leigh and Casey, to Nothing Never Happens.
Lucia Hulsether: Well, all of you, welcome to Nothing Never Happens. We love your work and we're so happy to, to get to be in this conversation with you. I'm wondering if to start out, you might just tell us how you came to work together and maybe situate yourselves a little bit with respect to the work you do in critical pedagogy, but also the work you do as a collaborative group.
Absolutely. This is
Kaysi Holman: Casey Pullman. I now work at 10, 000 Degrees, but [00:03:00] we all started together on Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy, when we were doing a program altogether called CUNY Humanities Alliance based in the City University of New York. It was originally a partnership between the Graduate Center and LaGuardia Community College, and has since expanded to include three other community colleges, Gutman, Hostos, and, BMCC, the Borough of Manhattan Community College. and the entire project for CUNY Humanities Alliance was supported very generously by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. so without the foundation and some of the centers who were involved, the Futures Initiative, the Teaching and Learning Center at the Graduate Center, the Center for Teaching and Learning at CUNY. LaGuardia Community College, and the partnership of the campuses, like our work in this book never would have happened, um, but each of us played a role in that project. So, I was the director of programs and administration, sort of overseeing the network that was Community Humanities Alliance. And then I'll let my colleagues go and introduce their roles and their entry into it.
Sujung Kim: Okay, this is Suzanne, and then [00:04:00] And then, so, thank you so much, Casey, for giving our, you know, background. So, for the CUNY Humanities Alliance, actually, I was worked as a postdoc, and then I undertook ethnographic work on the CUNY Humanities Alliance. That means that, you know, visiting all the, you know, classes, you know, like, doctoral fellows were taught as adjuncts.
And then also, within CUNY Humanities Alliance, you know, faculty mentors and professional development and so on. So, so much. And then, so, my work, as part of my ethnographic work, observing classrooms, and then, you know, hang out with doctor fellows, observing professional development, and then hang out with undergraduate students, and interviewing is like that.
And then so, I initiate, you know, first, you know, propose this book project because, you know, based on my observation, based on my ethnographic work, it was so wonderful, you know, really kind of within lots of, you know, Financial support and the, you know, administrative and other support, [00:05:00] though, I could say that as long as kind of flourishing, they are blooming in there, you know, advancing, deepening their pedagogies and then teaching.
And then it's more like a collaborative learning community. they formed, and then so, and then they kind of, they were, they had freedom to experiment, you know, to kind of launch, to try new, you know, teaching methods and new activities, new ideas, and that, you know, within kind of professional, development space or outside of, you know, institution.
when we are hanging out, you know, they kept talking about their, you know, pedagogy and then, you know, their class practices as like that. So I think this is a great, you know, how can I say, channel for, you know, to share with people, who are more interested in, you know, pedagogy, critical pedagogy and humanities.
And then, Especially within community college context. And then also that is related to my personal work before I joined to postdoctoral fellow for the QEMS alliance, because I've engaged [00:06:00] in, I had engaged in so many community college, you know, projects that are focused on workforce development. And then also my.
I did my dissertation research about the, you know, community college international students. And so I analyzed lots of, you know, critical discourse analysts on government documents and so on. And then I found the dominant discourse was really, you know, community colleges are identified as vocational center.
And this really kind of, I personally, I felt like it's kind of crisis of community college education. So, That's why I, you know, suggested this idea of book, book, you know, collaborative book project.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: Yeah, and hello, my name is Leigh. I am a faculty member at LaGuardia Community College. I teach in the Education and Language Acquisition Department and I was first, I first joined the CUNY Humanities Alliance as a faculty mentor.
So a little bit about [00:07:00] the structure of the CUNY Humanities Alliance. Uh, when I was there, it's kind of changed since, but, basically, we had, graduate students, uh, at the Graduate Center, the CUNY Graduate Center, who got fellowships, and then, they were kind of assigned a mentor at LaGuardia, to work with.
And so, I worked with three different graduate fellows, and I think the beautiful thing about the group, program was that undergrad, not undergrads, graduate students got, uh, training in teaching undergraduates, which I think all too often is not part of doctoral education, so that a lot of times, you know, in higher education, the faculty and instructors don't have much pedagogical training.
So this program really focused on pedagogy for, graduate students. the future higher education, instructors. and so, yeah, I had a wonderful time. It was one of my first, it was really the first time [00:08:00] I, kind of dove into pedagogy. my background is in linguistics, so I teach linguistics courses and with the fellows, the way it worked is for one semester they watched, they sat in on my intro to linguistics class, and we had meetings just.
Me and the fellows, and then we had full meetings, with the whole group of, the community, of course. the community, CUNY Humanities Alliance. and so we just spent that time talking about pedagogy. and then after they, watched me teach for one semester, they taught the class the following semester, and then I could, I like, went in and visited their classes. So I, when I started teaching as a graduate student, I was just thrown in to a class like, here's a syllabus, go ahead and teach. Um, and so this, I think this program was wonderful in that, there was some training involved. And then I was very glad that Soo Jung and Casey invited me to [00:09:00] join them as one of the co editors of the book.
Tina Pippin: Well, now's a good time to talk about the book and if you would unpack the title for us, Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy. There are a lot of pieces there. tell us how you got involved. into critical pedagogies, I guess plural, and how you humanize and collectivize all that.
Kaysi Holman: This is Casey again, and thank you both so much for having us on the podcast today.
We're really excited to talk about all these pieces of our book that we haven't gotten to yet. Um, so we brainstormed as a collective group, uh, a lot around this title, um, and each piece is very meaningful to us, and that's why it became sort of a long chunk of a phrase. Um, humanizing by humanizing, uh, we really mean that students are people, First, there are people who are complex human beings with their own, you know, stresses and struggles [00:10:00] and resistance and, hunger and fatigue and, triumphs and everything that comes with being a human in this world. they are that first, which I think is sometimes lost when we sort of see it. studentify, students. we, we think about them as, that sort of old banking model, that old receptacle version of students just trying to soak in knowledge. and that's just not who we were interacting with, in any of our classrooms. collective we decided on because, We think of our classrooms as communities, uh, and we think of learning as a communal design, as something that everybody contributes to. It's not just up to the instructor. It's not up to each individual student to sort of guide and make their own learning happen, um, but it's something they contribute to, across the room, and with each other.
And when it's done in a group setting, we think it's so much more powerful, pedagogy and critical pedagogy as a term of art, in our world, we couldn't leave out, because so many of the, the [00:11:00] sort of great shoulders we stand on theoretically, are in critical pedagogy, right? And so, that is thinking about sort of positionality of students and the ways in which power dynamics and oppression and privilege, and, and all that stuff works. in their world and in their life, and being critical and thinking deeply about those interactions and, both the obstacles and currency that they have, going through the world.
Sujung Kim: Yeah, so I just want to add, you know, two cases, you know, talk and then so, as I mentioned before, you know, briefly, you know, I mentioned about the dominant discourse about the community colleges and then so in even, you know, community colleges summit or, you know, Or, you know, dominant policies and then government documents.
And then also even if you look at the community college websites, you know, mostly like a community college described as what, you know, workforce development or improving students work skills as like that. And then even in document, you know, or public remarks of former [00:12:00] presidents, they kind of identify community college students Workforce or, you know, kind of foot soldiers or something like that.
So the way in each how, you know, communications are I identified by the know dominant, um, discourses and the policies is really dehumanizing, just kind of describing them or, you know, positioning them as kind of a, um, kind of economic employee, you know, soldiers or, you know, contributors for who can work for, you know, business, you know, property.
you know, accumulation regimes. And then so we really want to revise. These kind of dominant discourses. So, you know, humanizing is the most important, you know, we really highlight that aspect. And then also, you know, collective, collectivist means that, you know, as case mentioned that we are kind of really emphasizing mutual agency.
So in, when you talk about the agency, you know, students agency and instructor agency, and then there's no real connection about the [00:13:00] students and instructors agency, mutual agency. who can work together in the classrooms. So we really want to connect these, you know, students and instructors agency as a mutual agency, which needs to be, um, simultaneously happened and practiced.
Lucia Hulsether: I'm curious. Just to jump right into examples, if you might give an example of how in your classrooms, or maybe in your departments, it could, it could be in or out of the context of an actual class, you work against some of these dehumanizing, messages, also funding structures that you and your students are confronting.
What does it look like to teach when that is a kind of shadow, that is shaping the context in, to, in which you sort of enter into these relationships with, with one another.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: So I'll go ahead and start with that. so this is Leigh again, uh, [00:14:00] and I'm a faculty and I teach intro to linguistics classes, um, as well as some other classes, but I'm going to focus on that because the chapter I co wrote in the book with Oliver Sage, uh, we talk about teaching in a linguistics class.
Um, so I see that, um, A lot of students and, just the ideas in higher education are really centered around the hegemony of a certain type of privileged English. and so in my courses, one of the main, things that I work on with students is to question that hegemony, and to validate their own language experiences. and so by, like, There's a few exercises I do with students to kind of bring this out. One is at the beginning of the semester we talk about all our language backgrounds and we talk about what is language. We kind of, a lot of times when we start out students are saying like, in the [00:15:00] class, they think they're going to learn how to speak proper English. and then I kind of set that aside for later. And then throughout, we kind of come back to that and question it. and it's a way for them to kind of think critically about these myths in society about language. and so it's a space, I want the classroom to be a space where, they don't just take whatever is like the norm or the idea that's the norm, as definitely true, that they kind of think about it and think about what are their language practices?
Do you, I share my language practices, how do these match or mismatch with what society views as the proper language practices? And why does society have this view of what's proper, what's improper? so I think it's a great, opportunity for us to critically examine the role of language in education, uh, which I think is also very important, uh, for students across the [00:16:00] education spectrum because, I'd say linguistic discrimination is one of the more commonly, kind of accepted forms of discrimination, where we can still say, oh, you don't belong here because you don't speak a certain way, when that actually should not at all be, the discourse that's surrounding language and education. so through this, through questioning and discussing, language attitudes, language myths, bringing in their own languages, learning about linguistics, learning about the fact that there are many multiple dialects, everything is rule governed, then they, are able to build the knowledge and leave the class thinking and knowing that there's not just one correct form of language.
Kaysi Holman: One of my favorite examples, from the book is in the visualization chapter. So this is, someone who's teaching a composition course and, so often when we see syllabi, syllabuses, from courses, you know, there are just black [00:17:00] and white text. There's some bold all caps about policies and procedures and what you're, uh, allowed to do and permitted to do and, what your responsibilities are and expectations, and all of that stuff. and instead, he had from his mentor, who had had a very, like, stylized, syllabus taken his background and his, sort of fandom in comic books, and designed his syllabus into sort of a comic book style and, you know, picking up two syllabuses next to each other and looking at this, like, stark black and white one with, like, Font, all caps, bolded, do not do these things, and this comic book style that is just so welcoming and so inviting, right, was just for me an immediate stark contrast of the ways in which we were switching our approach to be welcoming, our approach to be humanizing, and I think with that, Switch, you're also trusting that the people in the room with you, and I say people intentionally, not students, the people in the room with you, they want to be there, right?
They want to learn, they want to engage in education, [00:18:00] particularly at the community college level. They're there because they're, they're fighting for it, you know? Um, and I think that trusting that if they say that their car broke down on the way and they couldn't get in, That's true. It happened to them, right?
Like, just trusting in the students, um, and also being able to support them, uh, as an administrator. It was really nice, um, that we were able to remunerate everyone in our program. We were very, very fortunate that all the faculty got course releases to be part of the program. All of the graduate students got fellowships, even all the undergraduate students got stipends to be participants, in our program, not, not to take courses, but, you know, to take our extracurricular program, work with them. and we also provided food, like always, the food was just a constant, and I always remember one student who, you know, he would come in. to our extracurricular program at 6 p. m. which is when we started and he had literally been back to back in classes since 9 a. m. without any time to eat or relax the entire day because that was the one day he [00:19:00] could take classes because he had a full work schedule right outside and so we would be like sit down get something to eat sit in the back for 20 minutes decompress and then join us when you can and it just made his experience so much richer and his contribution so much better.
Sujung Kim: So, and then also I want to share a, Dr. Fellows who tried, so she concerned about the power relationship in the classroom, so she was white woman, and then she really recognized, be aware of her positionality, and then her students are mostly like students of colors, you know, non native English speaker, it's like that.
So, one day she talked, when. And we have kind of chatting when we're chatting. She talks about Sujeong, I'm thinking about how to about my, you know, what kind of shoes I want, I want to, you know, have or what kind of clothes I want to wear when I go to, you know, classrooms. And then so, usually she mentioned that her students.
perceived herself as a very, you know, [00:20:00] authoritative, you know, higher, you know, person in the classroom. So she mentioned that she kind of planned to wear sneakers and more like casual wear, which are not really distinguishable with her students. And then, so I think it is a very good example of, you know, critical pedagogy, how to embody critical pedagogy in the classrooms.
And then also another case is that even in my class, My own class teaching too. So there are, you know, non native English speakers and then so in the first assignment, you know, when I gave them also another, you know, TA, undergraduate TA, who helped the course, also kind you know, talk, gave a guideline about, you know, writing in your own languages.
So for an essay, you know, essay topic, we allowed students to write. Their essay in their own languages and then saying, [00:21:00] so the, you know, the language in the classroom is not just so English and then all we really recognize your, you know, deep thoughts and experiences. And then sometimes I'm originally Korean, you know, Korean native speaker and then I can't, I can't.
can't understand Spanish just like that, then I kind of told the students, oh, because my, you know, linguistic skills in Spanish is so low, and then so, it's my also kind of responsibility as an instructor, but I will do my best to find someone who can, you know, comment on your papers like that. So this is a kind of a one.
Not horse master, but they're trying to, you know, give message for students really, you know, they are really, their linguistic, you know, heritage are very important. And then it's also instructors responsibility to recognize and to allow students to express their ideas in their, you know, you know, in the language that they feel most comfortable.[00:22:00]
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: And maybe I could just add a little bit. This is Leigh again. so. thinking about syllabi, that Casey was mentioning, and also thinking more about my own approaches, humanizing collectivist critical pedagogy in my classes. a lot of the syllabus I co construct with students, so we always do community agreements. usually I have a blueprint of like when certain assignments, are going to be due, but that's open for debate. or, you know, students can always propose changes or, and, and so I set it up from the beginning as, you know, it's not top down. I'm, you know, whatever I say goes. but we're a community and we do all this together and we make these decisions together.
And like Casey was saying, I trust. Part of this is you have to trust students. I feel like a lot of instructors have a hard time trusting students, which I don't totally understand why, necessarily, but you have to trust students that they are there, because they want to be there. and I think most students really are there because they want to be there. and so [00:23:00] that really helps set up, The collective part, I think, and also the humanizing part, because we talk a lot about how, you know, we all have different responsibilities and so different things can happen, and I'm understanding about that. so if someone needs an extension, all they have to do is ask.
And, you know, that's no problem. but then I still am aware of my, my positionality, cause I'm also a white, I'm a white middle class native English speaker. and so usually, like I said, a lot of students at the beginning of my classes, I asked what they hope to learn. A lot of them say they, they want to learn how to properly speak English. and I think that has a lot to do with, they, they probably think that That's what I'm thinking as well. so I use, a lot of times I use my background from, I'm from Missouri and I say like certain things a lot differently than them. So it kind of brings in like, wait, do you say caramel or caramel? because I say caramel, but they all say caramel.
And like, and we, we [00:24:00] try to have fun with language and bring in all different, dialects of English and all different languages. it's a challenge to, In a linguistics class to bring in all the language backgrounds of students, but I, I work hard to do that. so that everyone has a chance to think about, their full linguistic repertoires and the process of thinking about language and linguistics.
And we don't just focus on like a certain type of English and understanding and talking about language. We talk about their languages and how they use them.
Tina Pippin: I want to continue this discussion of examples because the, your book is full of them and you critique a lot of critical pedgy, critical pedagogy theorists, for not including those kind of concrete, ways of trusting students and doing democratic education in the classroom.
So, how does, if you could talk more about how a critical pedagogy infused classroom works, and You know, [00:25:00] we were talking about in the classroom, but your subtitle here is teaching the humanities in community college and beyond. If you would, at some point in this discussion, step into the beyond, which would include, social justice, civic engagement, those kinds of things.
Kaysi Holman: Yeah, I'm, I'm happy to talk about more examples and, uh, critical pedagogy specifically. I think that, um, There's a lovely chapter, I think, I think it's fourth, fourth chapter in the book, a toolkit for questioning everything. And it really is, so many of our, examples in the book, are really rooted in the critical pedagogy of their discipline. but what we had was kind of unique in, the program where Uh, sometimes graduate instructors were not teaching from their expertise. right. So in that chapter, we had a historian, a classical historian, um, teaching a philosophy, critical thinking class, and sort of developed this close reading exercise, that allows people to [00:26:00] go deeply into, questioning, sort of, who, like, what's the context around this?
What's the argument here? What, information are we gathering, right, to back that up? And it really allows people to go deeply, And I think that so many of our practical examples like that, are, are assignments that can be taught and can be used, not just in community college settings, um, and not just in, any humanities class, but could be used outside of it as well to deepen, engagement with text, to deepen critical thinking around text, to be like, To be analyzing our world, in a way that orients us to, like, how we fit in the broader context of the world, right?
Our positionality, our power dynamics that we interact with the world. And I think that, The hope, the hope in offering these practical examples, with all this theoretical background, attached to it, was really that other faculty across the country could take this, whether they're in community colleges or four year [00:27:00] colleges or graduate school, they could take these, Modify them and start implementing them in their own classrooms.
And from that, we could build a whole new set, a whole new set of activities and stuff.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: Yeah. And I just want to add to that, that, yeah, the, the teaching the humanities and community college and beyond, we want to move past any sort of stigma that we kind of discussed earlier on community colleges and say that community colleges can offer a lot in terms of, sharing pedagogy.
pedagogical approaches with diverse student populations. and so part of the reason actually in the community, the CUNY Humanities Alliance, the students, the graduate students were paired with community colleges is because some of the teaching in community colleges is, I don't know, more challenging and also a lot of times community colleges are kind of at the the groundbreakers in what, what's going on in higher education pedagogy, and where teaching is, is I think seen as more of an important aspect, of higher ed than [00:28:00] in some Uh, other university settings.
Uh, I also just wanted to quickly, um, mention a chapter by Mike Ruffino, um, Subverting White Androcentricism in Psychology Curricula, which I think is another great chapter, um, where he talks about, um, uh, a project he does in his psychology classes. that really questions kind of the, colonial and masculine, basis of a lot of what's taught and learned in psychology classes. and so he talks about feminist and decolonial, pedagogy and has, has his students use, like be in conversation with two different, psychologists. And so it's, I think it's a great, another great example, to look at as, um. example of critical pedagogy.
Kaysi Holman: Uh, and when we're thinking about and beyond, I also want to highlight, uh, I didn't talk about it much in the chapter, but we have a couple of extracurricular programs.
[00:29:00] Um, that are included in the book, because we also wanted to go beyond classrooms, right? Because we felt that our pedagogy went well beyond classrooms into, um, both extracurricular program building and also administration of programs, um, that you'll see sort of in the later chapters of the book. Um, but in one of those extracurricular programs, One of our goals, for the, for the year that we had students was to enrich their engagement in the humanities and what that meant for us, was actually taking them out to, museums to protests, actually, to, to, uh, theater, theater performances to just different places in the city where they could engage, um, both civically and as a human with the humanities as it was, uh, in the world.
Some of them were like historic tours of the city, um, as the city's architecture or, you know, I mean, I think my favorite outing was where we took them to a protest, a live protest that was happening in the city, as a group, and then after that, we went to a museum that had an exhibit on the [00:30:00] history of protest, in the city, and it was just a beautiful combination, and we got to talk then about what it means to be civically engaged, what does it mean for, the humanities and the art world to show up and to, sort of, um, force us and, and, and make us interact, uh, with these deeper human questions, and, and our, yeah, and our own, and our own perspective on that.
So I think some of those are really fun. And honestly, taking students out of the classroom to, you know, Allowed us to have such deeper conversations with them, um, than we did in sort of structured atmospheres. it was really remarkable to me the exact same conversation, the exact same questions I would ask in a classroom would just not get the same receptivity and the same engagement as it would if I took them to a free museum across the street.
Right? It just wasn't the same discussion. so it was nice to have that.
Sujung Kim: And then also, I just want to add the beyond. So, because as Liv briefly mentioned that, you know, this is not [00:31:00] just for, uh, humans classes within the community college context, but, uh, even, um, four year institutions, the situation of humanities might not be, you know, very different.
Because, you know, you know, the value of humanities in higher education discourse is really kind of focusing on, you know, work skills, you know, job readiness is like that. So we are really kind of, you know, raising this question to four year institutions too. So what is the value of humanities? in higher education beyond the community colleges.
And then also the, you know, beyond means also that, you know, I just want to point out, you know, in addition to Casey's comment, you know, at within the CUNY Alliance as a practice is kind of bringing students to a community. where, you know, races are so diverse, their linguistic, you know, backgrounds were so diverse.
And then if you go with the community, if you see the, you know, shops, you know, [00:32:00] kind of, why they say name or like that, you know, there are multiple languages are It's, you know, written, you know, like that, you know, English, you know, Chinese, Nepalian, Tibetan, or all those languages that reflect in the race, it's like that.
So this is really kind of the notion of a community. It's not just limited to a notion of a community within classrooms. So the notion of a community is extending beyond the classrooms too. So there is one, you know, one goal that, uh, the instructor aimed and then so I joined and then so it was really eye opening, you know, for me and then for students too.
So how the, you know, those class learning is really directly related to their, you know, local community context too. So once students mentioned that Wow, I didn't know, you know, such many languages are spoken in my community even though I was born here. So
Lucia Hulsether: I love so much all of these [00:33:00] examples and how like the the number of ways that you all are challenging different constituencies and possible readers of this Of this, of your, of your work, or like I was trying to list them out in my mind.
Here's the challenge of, valuing the humanities, not only, but maybe in this context, especially in a community college setting that are often being framed as these sort of professional, ground zeros for, Maybe killing the humanities in general. And so this like constant emphasis on the value there, the challenge around democratic education, student agency, humanization of all students, challenges around what it means to teach and what it means to learn and ideas about, I think you have language in, in the introduction of your book about, success needing to be reframed around not only career success, but also [00:34:00] the capacities to reflect on one's positionality and community and to build solidarity.
I'm curious. These are really, really ambitious. and Urgent Goals. And I can only imagine that you all have met different kinds of resistance, expected and unexpected. I'm curious if you could give us some examples of what resistance has looked like in different, you know, in, in, in different times and places, and how you have moved through that.
Kaysi Holman: So I'm happy to start and I, I love that you call out these challenges that we make we try to make them boldly in the book. I think that in reframing student success, the anger for me is a quote from a student actually in the first year of the program, a community college student who said, you know, my 3.
9 GPA as an international student who's not allowed to work does not compare to my colleagues. 3. 4 GPA, right, uh, when they have a family to support and two jobs. It just [00:35:00] doesn't compare. And I think that the way that our education system, is framed right now to think about GPAs and retention rates and graduation rates, really over, and even, yeah, just oversimplifies who our, our, who our students are, who the people are who are going through the education system and the things that they're learning. in terms of resistance, It's interesting. so some of the resistances I heard through the program, as the administrator, one was newer instructors. So folks who were, newer to teaching, especially in community colleges, felt a lot of the restrictions around department requirements. And it's something that we, address sort of in the questions that guide us, chapter around. When you have department requirements, especially that chafe against what you're trying to do in the classroom, how do you work around it? And what are all the different ways you can navigate around those department requirements and through those department requirements? Because in the end of the day, we have requirements, right?
We have requirements, they were set up by other faculty, and they're [00:36:00] not going to change this semester. They may change two years from now, but they're not going to change this semester while you're teaching. So when you do, but that was one. We also had. Um, a really strong desire for more time to dedicate to reflecting on and improving pedagogy generally, right?
It's not an activity that is supported in higher education. Most of our graduate students who had been instructing even for years at the time when they joined our program. hadn't ever had a course or a training or a luncheon even on pedagogy on how to teach. They had been sort of tossed an old syllabus from another professor and said, you teach in two weeks, good luck to you. and a lot of our faculty as well, who had never had formal training, even though they were experienced, even though they were 20 years into their career, hadn't had a semester's worth of time, was my first time to actually dedicate to rethinking through their pedagogy and making choices with other pedagogues in the room, and I loved our community that it was [00:37:00] interdisciplinary, and we were able to talk across disciplines about strategies and techniques and difficulties across departments and restrictions that people had to face because it allowed us to be more creative in the solutions that we brought to the table. I will say our centers that we were working with were very, very supportive in terms of us exploring and innovating in our classroom practices, and I know that is not the case everywhere. and I think that that is a real struggle for professors. Again, I think we do address that, um, in the question, in the question based chapters, like three quarters questions that chapter, um, but it's meant to be sort of a reflective guide for instructors who are facing some of those obstacles to find ways around them and through them.
Um, The last thing that I will say is that as the administrator on the program, or one of the administrators, there. You know, there are equity issues in policies and bureaucracies that are not always apparent until you try to do something different. and it's really hard because they are baked in policies and, [00:38:00] you know, bureaucracy is red tape. it's really hard to challenge those and I just encourage other administrators out there and other sort of program folks who are, who are charging ahead to just don't, don't back down, don't back down. I took many charges. I had to take it like to the, to the tops, to the tops of the, the university, to get policy exceptions, to get policy shifts, in order to sort of respond to some of our equity issues.
And the university would hear it, you know, they would. And I think that it's a challenge for sure. It's not something everyone's prepared to do and to fight. but it's a battle worth, worth fighting on behalf of people who can't and who don't have a voice in those rooms.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: go off that with resistance. something I hear a lot, and I totally understand is, this idea from instructors that they just don't have the time. so the good thing about this program when it was, when I was part of it is that we got release time to actually think about our pedagogy. but like I've done some professional development, at LaGuardia, [00:39:00] and we don't have that, that level of support. And so a lot of people, you know, are saying, I think your ideas sound great for like, inclusive translanguaging pedagogy, which brings all students language resources into the classroom, but I just don't have time to fit that into my course schedule. my syllabus doesn't have room for anything except for what I'm teaching, so I feel like that is maybe my number one thing I hear resistance, from instructors, and I think it's because partly, we're just overworked. we have so much to do. And we don't have hardly any time to like rethink our pedagogy. another thing is that we're, a lot of us, you know, I'm happy to say, not happy, but I will share, that I didn't have any pedagogical training, before I became a faculty member. my training was in linguistics, and so I learned all of that on the job, and so I think with that comes like, maybe a little fear, like, that we don't [00:40:00] necessarily want to be, want to share, like, this is what we do. I think there's a resistance in, in that. And I think there's a big, I talked about this before, the, kind of humanizing collectivist, a critical part, in our pedagogy. We need to kind of apply that to ourselves and our work, as academics, because oftentimes We might feel dehumanized, and it's a very individual, system, so that, you know, I'm responsible for this group of students, and I have to do everything myself, kind of that mindset, I think that's, another reason there's this resistance is like, we might be, kind of hesitant to, have this conversation because we've never had the conversation before. and we don't know exactly how to approach it. So I think that that's also an issue, but I feel like it's changing. I think there's more and more luckily, more discussion of pedagogy thanks to, you know, your podcast , in higher education, which I think is really important. [00:41:00]
Sujung Kim: So I just briefly mentioned about the, you know, my, from my work.
You know, I found that, you know, as Casey mentioned, that department in the community, in the case of community colleges, you know, certain introductory courses are kind of syllab syllabus are designed by the department and the text. book is assigned by the department. So in the case of adjuncts, they have very limited, you know, freedom to choose their own textbooks, or, you know, design their own textbooks, and then, you know, redesigning, re articulating the course goals, and so on.
So there's some kind of, it depends on department, but there's a certain kind of department, resistance from certain department. And then another aspect I want to point out is that the level of really, you know, um, building certain kind of community of teaching. So, even in the case of one case, you know, even education relate to, you know, some kind of critical pedagogy or education is like that.
Then the [00:42:00] full time faculty member taught the course about, you know. critical agency, and so on, so on. But his teaching method is really kind of very, uh, traditional, you know, kind of just, uh, asking students to write down what, you know, was displayed on the, you know, PowerPoint, just like that. So it's really very limited opportunity to have kind of collaborative, you know, forming collaborative, you know, teaching communities.
So the existing culture itself is really, as Lei mentioned, that. You know, one also faculty member, full time faculty member mentioned that if I close my class door, nobody comes in, and then so they really appreciate the feedback from the, you know, Dr. Fellows, you know, for participating in their classes and giving comments on teaching.
And then, so I think maybe the, the existing culture that, you know, very isolated and they close, you know, class and then teaching practice is kind of another, you know, chance. [00:43:00] Even though the, you know, instructors wants to change their, you know, teaching and like syllables that's like that, but they have very limited opportunity.
Kaysi Holman: Resistance that I want to call out here, and that is a resistance that, that happens for students who are engaging in this with us. and I think that, you know, I've, I met third year undergraduate students. who had never once so far in their journey had an interactive class. All of the classes that they had had, the teacher got up in front of the room and just talked to them for the hour, hour and a half, or however much time, the class was.
And it was heartbreaking To hear some of those students really struggling, really struggling when we allowed them to follow their own aspirations, their own hopes, their own dreams, right? And, and find creative pathways for themselves with their own fandoms and their own interests, to, they really struggled.
They really struggled. and I think that there is. a deeper aspect of that, that is [00:44:00] emotional, that's talked about in the Affect of Injustice chapter, by our, by our colleagues, in the project, where they talk about, they sort of give this case study of, one of their authors, a student, who, um, Would just break down crying after classes, you know, and, didn't know why they hated, you know, not hated education, but, you know, we're so upset, and, and realizing that, Every time they approached a class, it was like the onus of learning was on them, right?
And they were very isolated from other students and from their community and, um, felt so burdened, um, by sort of the educational process that was very static and very banking method, right? That they were experiencing. that it just, it just had such an emotional impact and so we sort of unpack, the, they had an extracurricular program where students would sit together and talk about, that, like, affective impact of education on them and sort of learn with each other.
uh, by reading texts about pedagogy and [00:45:00] learning and re and teaching, sort of what that was. And, and so the authors came to this idea of, sort of writing affective injustice in education and the ways in which we're humanizing and using collectivist education are really seeking to, to allow people to come together as community and to not have the sole burden be sort of medicalized and internalized as an individual, as an individual struggle.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: And I just, could I add that I think, hopefully people who write our book who are instructors will move to that kind of mindset, not only with their own students, but with themselves and their colleagues. We hope that we kind of can start some sort of community where it's, you know, We welcome discussion about pedagogy, about what we're doing, and there's no, no need to, you know, feel this sense of pressure, very individualized pressure that I think is very common.
Tina Pippin: Well, you give a lot of challenges in your book. [00:46:00] what challenges do you have for yourselves? because I was challenged as, as I read it. Things I knew, but I didn't know deeply enough that you helped me bring to the surface. And then what challenges are each of you facing as you move forward in the fall?
Kaysi Holman: It's an excellent question and a difficult one, I think, to answer. I think, you know, I think that we all had to approach this project with a large amount of humility, and understanding that we didn't know everything and that there wasn't a single person in that room who knew everything, um, and we really were learning together through the whole process.
There were many times. that, you know, Soo Jung as a, as the senior researcher on the project would come to me and be like, you know, this isn't working and that isn't working. I'm like, great, let's change it, right? Or, graduate fellows would come to me and be like, this isn't working. I'm like, great, let's change it.
Whatever we need to change, we're going to change it. but I think that so many, and we're pretty open and honest. I think we even, I even [00:47:00] talk in one of the chapters about like, You know, our first design for our pedagogical workshops were just a failure. It was a failure, very, very pointedly, and we had to reshape it.
I think that, this is a whole other sort of TED talk of mine, but, I think that we are in for a major generational shift coming in the next 10 ish years, in, in education, but really is sort of globally, as sort of the culture that, was born in a very different generation, in the boomer generation, where, where, um, Folks were very, like, you know, there was one person in the household who either graduated high school and went to work a nine to five or went immediately through a four year college and then started working nine to five and other people in the house were there to do all the care support and all the work.
We don't have that system anymore. and our, um, Like economic system is broken to the point where like everybody, every adult has to work in order to provide for a family. And even then it's not ends aren't meeting [00:48:00] and a lot of the cultural values that we've put into workplaces and into education no longer work for the sort of.
socioeconomic situation that we're all living through. And so I think not just with, um, technology shifts, I think that's sort of like surface level, uh, one of the shifts that's happening in education, but I think there's like deep cultural norms that are shifting, right? We are seeing a rise of, you know, students going to community college first before they go into a four year university, either because that's, an easier pathway of entry for them, but also because it's less expensive for collegiate education, um, that may not pay off, uh, in the end for them economically, um, as much as it once did.
I also think that we're seeing a shift of, of, The cultural assumption that productivity and wellness are sort of antitheses of each other and really thinking through how wellness creates productivity. that's definitely been my experience and my experience with [00:49:00] students that the more engaged they are, the better they are as humans and the.
The more stability we can provide and the more resources we can provide, the better overall that they will produce and more that they will do. so I think, I think those culture shifts are coming for us. and I think that's going to be a challenge for everybody to both adjust their, their, teaching and methodology to, those cultural shifts and also just to, to ride through it.
And I would. It'll think challenges.
Sujung Kim: Maybe I go. So, my current, you know, well, position, I'm kind of, I had lots of, you know, opportunity to talk to it, faculty members and administrators, especially in STEM areas. And then, so, in STEM areas, you know, like a cultural responsive pedagogy is a really new term, but, It's very, you know, very limited institution trying to implement that kind of pedagogy approach in STEM education, but, in general, you know, when I'm interviewing and [00:50:00] observing, you know, faculty members and administrators in STEM, actually the pedagogy is a very, you know, new term and, you know, not familiar, you know, You know, concept and then have a little idea about, you know, how to make sense in a sense centered, you know, pedagogy and teaching is like this.
So, am I in a current position? I feel like I see the challenge, you know, how to address this, you know, critical pedagogy and then, you know, humanizing and collectives, you know, critical pedagogy and. Teaching practices in STEM areas. And then I hope, you know, there's some kind of new, work, you know, collective work, you know, how to change STEM education too.
Lucia Hulsether: I'm curious, and I am aware of, I'm aware of time, but As we sort of talk about challenges, I also want to make sure that we talk about, talk about joy [00:51:00] in classrooms. And I wonder if you all might talk to us about what for you makes for a joyful classroom.
Sujung Kim: Maybe I go first.
So I would say community. Caring and supportive community, you know, building that kind of community. as in between instructor and students and then among students, too. So, when I taught, you know, and then also as part of my research, one student mentioned that, oh, if I go to classroom, I feel like I'm on isolated island. Just sit and then nobody talks, nobody interacts until the professor comes in and teach something.
And then just after class, we just. just leave the classroom. So I feel like really isolated in the classroom. So I think that is one of really important aspect, you know, that I wanted to address. So, you know, the joy is like, I [00:52:00] tried to, you know, building some kind of community, caring community. So, you know, first, you know, I prepared some questions for the students, let them to meet, you know, talk to other, you know, you know, one on one conversation.
So, Intentionally mixing students with, you know, different races, ethnicities, and language, linguistic backgrounds, and so on, so give them about five minutes to talk about the, you know, questions, it's like that. And then also, some students, if I got to know about, you know, some students, you know, father passed away, for example, you know, I asked the question, you know, asked the student, it would be okay, you know, for me to share it.
That things with other classmates and then she said, okay, so then I had a moment to share, you know, Oh, someone is absent for certain this weeks and then because her father passed away. So how about the, you know, having certain moment, you know, just quiet moment to wishing her, you know, kind of praying or wishing, [00:53:00] for her and for her families as like that.
And then that was, I think it just really kind of, even though it does a very small practice, I felt like myself feeling like I'm building certain kind of community and connecting each other in one another as like that. And then also the joy is like that in the seminar class, not just sitting or like that, You know sometimes I bring snacks and then later students bring snacks, drinks.
It's like that and then having discussions and then, you know, sometimes over I think, they say like, unusual, but it's like, oh, you know, the, the, the Discussions getting much deeper and then then we're kind of talking 30 more discussing 30 more minutes just like that and then so the students also those kind of discussions happened out of classrooms too and then so they, uh, that was a really joy and then so I really appreciating students that, you know, encouragement.
I think [00:54:00] that is my, you know, um, Encouragement that I got from my students and then also at their expression, you know, hugging me at the end of semester students lined up and then they gave me a hug one by one. And so it is really like a feeling like, oh, maybe we are, we built certain kind of connections and community.
And then that is really kind of joy and then encouragement that I got from the students. So I would say very, you know, supportive and caring community is much more, uh, it is the most important things that I'm, you know, caring to build a joyful, classroom.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: I just, I want to agree, Soo Jung, that, I think a joyful classroom is one where you have a true community, but that also relates to a challenge, that I feel has been kind of, uh, exacerbated with the COVID pandemic. a lot of conversations among faculty and instructors is that students seem much more hesitant [00:55:00] to interact and really be engaged in a classroom because a lot of students were used to, you know, just sitting behind a computer and didn't have that, interactive. so it's, it's been a challenge, sometimes, you know, it depends on the class dynamics, but I've definitely had some classes where, you know, I'm teaching the same thing, doing the same kind of activities and two, you know, two different classes and the dynamics are so different. like one may be, you know, I ask a question and we'll talk about it for like 45 minutes. Another class I ask a question and like nobody says anything and then, you know, it can be a challenge to build a community. something that, just an example of one of the most joyful classes I've had, I think, I actually, did a, Like find, find a person who, so I got a bunch of information about my students, all sorts of different information, from a, like a first day, class questionnaire where I ask [00:56:00] questions to get to know them and I told them, you know, from a certain list of questions, those might be shared with the class. and so I, just every student in the class had a fact about them that I put on this piece of paper, and so everyone had to go and find, you know, find a classmate who, one of them was like, Spoke, Hindi was one example, or one has a, you know, 10 year old daughter, one works in an afterschool program, uh, a bunch of different things.
And, through that, the students and I actually, I included myself as well, on the list. I, I used to work at a preschool. So I said, I used to, you know, worked at a, in a threes class at a preschool. And it really got us to know each other and it kind of was a great opportunity for the class to engage with each other and not necessarily, on things, you know, that they might think they'd usually discuss in a class. so that was, that's one of the things I often do towards the beginning of the [00:57:00] semester to kind of start building the community. and get people engaged. but that's always one of my favorite classes because there's no, you don't really have a choice but to talk to people. I
Kaysi Holman: think like my colleagues, for me the most joyful classroom is one where I can create an environment where everyone feels truly welcome in however they're feeling that day, however they're showing up that day. with all of the, experience that they carry and all the expertise that they're showing up with, and we're folks who don't always get to feel belonging, have that sense of belonging because we're seeing them as the individual that they are for their aspirations and, um, their accomplishments and their, their hopes and their struggles. and we're, we're getting to unfold all of that together. and I think my, my most joyful moments have been moments where students get to shine in who they really are. Every year we had sort of a student showcase, where people, where they would show [00:58:00] off sort of their year long work, in something.
And, in a project of their choosing that was designed to, to sort of mix with their aspirations and seeing the amount of confidence that they had after publicly showcasing their work all night long was just such a joyful moment because you could see that they were really transforming their work.
into who they wanted to be in the world, right? They were doing the work that they wanted to do. They were sharing it in public with deans and professors and other, other folks who stumbled in, family members, of folks who came in, came to join, and they got to celebrate, sort of what they had done for themselves. and that was amazing. And like with, with the support of their peers. And I think, those were really joyful for me.
Tina Pippin: is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to make sure gets discussed today? Cause we are getting right at time here.
Kaysi Holman: This was so wonderful to have this conversation.
Thank you so much for the probative questions. Thank you so much for having us, on [00:59:00] your show. we've really enjoyed the experience and I think, come up with some new, new reflections of our own through this process.
Tina Pippin: Yeah, yeah, we have two, well, we're at then our last question. We could keep talking, but we, we have to honor your time, which is what are you watching, consuming, listening to, highbrow, lowbrow that you'd like to share with our listeners?
Kaysi Holman: I recently read, Minor Feelings and I just love, I just love the book. I do some, DEIB sort of consulting and, and work in my, in my current job. and so I've been reading a lot of texts and I think that the author just does such a good job of depicting her own experience, and really challenging the norms that she's had to live through. so yeah, I would highly recommend it.
Sujung Kim: For me, nowadays, I'm really waiting for the Plum [01:00:00] Village, the Tinakan community, and they're uploading very short video based on his, you know, previous talks, and it really makes me rethinking about the, you know, value of life, how to be, what kind of person I want to be, what kind of life I want to be. You know, what kind of, how I, I want to engage my work and so on and so on.
So it's really beautiful. And then, so I really, I would like to recommend to you.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: And for me, it's, it's summer, so I'm decompressing. I am reading now, the fifth season, like a sci fi. start of a trilogy that I'm really excited about, so I'm going to read the trilogy, it's by N. K. Jemisin, if I'm pronouncing that right, and then, I'm rewatching The Good Place with my daughter, so that's been a lot of fun too.
Tina Pippin: Okay, Lucia, anything to add?
Lucia Hulsether: I'm reading a novel [01:01:00] called Come and Get It by an Author named Kiley Reid. It's set mostly in a college residence hall at the University of Arkansas, where the, RA, who is a black woman who's kind of a super senior, ends up becoming entangled with a very cringe English professor named Agatha, who's on a visiting scholarship and comes into the dorm to eavesdrop on students speaking in southern accents, which are quite alarming to her, about their relationships with money. So it goes from there. The dialogue is excellent, and everybody should, should read it as a, grim academic satire that has me staying up way too late.
All right, Tina.
Tina Pippin: Well, I am, not reading novels right now, but I have a big stack from this [01:02:00] podcast, and so right now I am re watching for probably the third time, Abbott Elementary. And I see something new every time I watch it. It, it just, there, there's, there's some really smart things that they're talking about in that, in that sitcom and it's, it's fun and sort of mindless, but not mindless because I'm learning a lot about my own teaching.
There's some stuff that gets reflected back.
So, Casey, Leigh, Sujung, thank you so much for your book and for joining us in the middle of your summers. you have really made us happy. Thank you for being on Nothing Never Happens and have a joyful rest of your summer.
Sujung Kim: Thank you so much. So much. Hope you have a great summer, too. Great to talk with you.
Outro Music (Akrasis): Head full of blood and poison, womb high in my bed for another person. Not sure why [01:03:00] or who, but I like trying to pry into the possibility that I might be cool enough not to lie to you.
Tina Pippin: You've been listening to Nothing Never Happens, the Radical Pedagogy Podcast.
And our conversation continues. With Soo Jung Kim, Leigh Garrison Fletcher, and Casey Holman. Authors of Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy, Teaching the Humanities in Community College, and beyond. Our audio engineer is Aaliyah Harris. Our summer intern is Ella Stuccio. Apollo M. Hassan is our web designer.
Our intro music is by Lance Eric Hoggan, performed by Lance Eric Hoggan with Aviva and the Flying Penguins. Our outro music for this podcast is by Acrisis. It's called Him Lockhead [01:04:00] on unemployed apologist, Mark Bowen Raps Guitar. Mark McKee Beats Trumpet available on bandcamp.com. After now, a little over seven years of running.
The Radical Pedagogy Podcast is a mostly self-funded operation. We've decided to open up opportunities for our listeners to support our work. Your donations will help cover the cost for maintaining our website and streaming services, as well as the pay for our amazing audio editors and student interns.
Thank you in advance for your encouragement and support as we've taken this journey together. Look for us on patreon.com and look for us also on most social media platforms
Outro Music (Akrasis): and to assigning womb [01:05:00] whenever I know that there's no reason to.
Shifts and symptoms masking a lack of wisdom. When I'm alone, I put on in disguise to hide behind obscure the facts that. Absence marks everything, the world's for themselves, but I am so full of myself, and therefore empty. Significance is nothing, signifies anything, except for what I signify to you. And the symbolic language of my mind isn't relatable or true.
Giving people clues, swap metaphysical shoes, feet hop over cracks in the concrete.
Rush AI Transcript (July 30, 2024)
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Tina Pippin: [00:00:00] Welcome to Nothing Never Happens, the Radical Pedagogy Podcast. I'm Tina Pippen. co host with Lucia Hulsether. On this podcast, we are delighted to talk with three practitioners of critical pedagogies. Soo Jung Kim is a project director at the Center for Advanced Study in Education at the Graduate Center at CUNY, City University of New York.
Leigh Garrison Fletcher is a linguistics professor in the Education and Language Acquisition Department at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. And Casey Holman is, according to her LinkedIn account, an educational equity champion, visionary leader, speaker extraordinaire. They met in a Mellon Foundation funded [00:01:00] CUNY Humanities Alliance.
working with faculty and graduate student fellows and other partners from CUNY and LaGuardia Community College. And most of all, they worked with the students in their classes to create spaces of mutual learning and transformation. In their current co edited book, Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy, Teaching the Humanities in Community College and Beyond, published by Peter Lang in 2024.
They engage critical pedagogical theories and their practical applications in the classroom and beyond. For those interested in rethinking democratic classroom structures, creative syllabi, socially engaged classrooms, concrete community building exercises, and all these parts connected to critical pedagogical theories and productive critiques of the capitalist, [00:02:00] neoliberal institutions of higher education.
This book provides an important and very useful collection of essays, and we recommend it highly. In this podcast, Soo Jung Leigh and Casey relate their passion for democratic teaching, their commitment to trusting their students, and what makes for a joyful classroom. Welcome, Soo Jung Leigh and Casey, to Nothing Never Happens.
Lucia Hulsether: Well, all of you, welcome to Nothing Never Happens. We love your work and we're so happy to, to get to be in this conversation with you. I'm wondering if to start out, you might just tell us how you came to work together and maybe situate yourselves a little bit with respect to the work you do in critical pedagogy, but also the work you do as a collaborative group.
Absolutely. This is
Kaysi Holman: Casey Pullman. I now work at 10, 000 Degrees, but [00:03:00] we all started together on Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy, when we were doing a program altogether called CUNY Humanities Alliance based in the City University of New York. It was originally a partnership between the Graduate Center and LaGuardia Community College, and has since expanded to include three other community colleges, Gutman, Hostos, and, BMCC, the Borough of Manhattan Community College. and the entire project for CUNY Humanities Alliance was supported very generously by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. so without the foundation and some of the centers who were involved, the Futures Initiative, the Teaching and Learning Center at the Graduate Center, the Center for Teaching and Learning at CUNY. LaGuardia Community College, and the partnership of the campuses, like our work in this book never would have happened, um, but each of us played a role in that project. So, I was the director of programs and administration, sort of overseeing the network that was Community Humanities Alliance. And then I'll let my colleagues go and introduce their roles and their entry into it.
Sujung Kim: Okay, this is Suzanne, and then [00:04:00] And then, so, thank you so much, Casey, for giving our, you know, background. So, for the CUNY Humanities Alliance, actually, I was worked as a postdoc, and then I undertook ethnographic work on the CUNY Humanities Alliance. That means that, you know, visiting all the, you know, classes, you know, like, doctoral fellows were taught as adjuncts.
And then also, within CUNY Humanities Alliance, you know, faculty mentors and professional development and so on. So, so much. And then, so, my work, as part of my ethnographic work, observing classrooms, and then, you know, hang out with doctor fellows, observing professional development, and then hang out with undergraduate students, and interviewing is like that.
And then so, I initiate, you know, first, you know, propose this book project because, you know, based on my observation, based on my ethnographic work, it was so wonderful, you know, really kind of within lots of, you know, Financial support and the, you know, administrative and other support, [00:05:00] though, I could say that as long as kind of flourishing, they are blooming in there, you know, advancing, deepening their pedagogies and then teaching.
And then it's more like a collaborative learning community. they formed, and then so, and then they kind of, they were, they had freedom to experiment, you know, to kind of launch, to try new, you know, teaching methods and new activities, new ideas, and that, you know, within kind of professional, development space or outside of, you know, institution.
when we are hanging out, you know, they kept talking about their, you know, pedagogy and then, you know, their class practices as like that. So I think this is a great, you know, how can I say, channel for, you know, to share with people, who are more interested in, you know, pedagogy, critical pedagogy and humanities.
And then, Especially within community college context. And then also that is related to my personal work before I joined to postdoctoral fellow for the QEMS alliance, because I've engaged [00:06:00] in, I had engaged in so many community college, you know, projects that are focused on workforce development. And then also my.
I did my dissertation research about the, you know, community college international students. And so I analyzed lots of, you know, critical discourse analysts on government documents and so on. And then I found the dominant discourse was really, you know, community colleges are identified as vocational center.
And this really kind of, I personally, I felt like it's kind of crisis of community college education. So, That's why I, you know, suggested this idea of book, book, you know, collaborative book project.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: Yeah, and hello, my name is Leigh. I am a faculty member at LaGuardia Community College. I teach in the Education and Language Acquisition Department and I was first, I first joined the CUNY Humanities Alliance as a faculty mentor.
So a little bit about [00:07:00] the structure of the CUNY Humanities Alliance. Uh, when I was there, it's kind of changed since, but, basically, we had, graduate students, uh, at the Graduate Center, the CUNY Graduate Center, who got fellowships, and then, they were kind of assigned a mentor at LaGuardia, to work with.
And so, I worked with three different graduate fellows, and I think the beautiful thing about the group, program was that undergrad, not undergrads, graduate students got, uh, training in teaching undergraduates, which I think all too often is not part of doctoral education, so that a lot of times, you know, in higher education, the faculty and instructors don't have much pedagogical training.
So this program really focused on pedagogy for, graduate students. the future higher education, instructors. and so, yeah, I had a wonderful time. It was one of my first, it was really the first time [00:08:00] I, kind of dove into pedagogy. my background is in linguistics, so I teach linguistics courses and with the fellows, the way it worked is for one semester they watched, they sat in on my intro to linguistics class, and we had meetings just.
Me and the fellows, and then we had full meetings, with the whole group of, the community, of course. the community, CUNY Humanities Alliance. and so we just spent that time talking about pedagogy. and then after they, watched me teach for one semester, they taught the class the following semester, and then I could, I like, went in and visited their classes. So I, when I started teaching as a graduate student, I was just thrown in to a class like, here's a syllabus, go ahead and teach. Um, and so this, I think this program was wonderful in that, there was some training involved. And then I was very glad that Soo Jung and Casey invited me to [00:09:00] join them as one of the co editors of the book.
Tina Pippin: Well, now's a good time to talk about the book and if you would unpack the title for us, Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy. There are a lot of pieces there. tell us how you got involved. into critical pedagogies, I guess plural, and how you humanize and collectivize all that.
Kaysi Holman: This is Casey again, and thank you both so much for having us on the podcast today.
We're really excited to talk about all these pieces of our book that we haven't gotten to yet. Um, so we brainstormed as a collective group, uh, a lot around this title, um, and each piece is very meaningful to us, and that's why it became sort of a long chunk of a phrase. Um, humanizing by humanizing, uh, we really mean that students are people, First, there are people who are complex human beings with their own, you know, stresses and struggles [00:10:00] and resistance and, hunger and fatigue and, triumphs and everything that comes with being a human in this world. they are that first, which I think is sometimes lost when we sort of see it. studentify, students. we, we think about them as, that sort of old banking model, that old receptacle version of students just trying to soak in knowledge. and that's just not who we were interacting with, in any of our classrooms. collective we decided on because, We think of our classrooms as communities, uh, and we think of learning as a communal design, as something that everybody contributes to. It's not just up to the instructor. It's not up to each individual student to sort of guide and make their own learning happen, um, but it's something they contribute to, across the room, and with each other.
And when it's done in a group setting, we think it's so much more powerful, pedagogy and critical pedagogy as a term of art, in our world, we couldn't leave out, because so many of the, the [00:11:00] sort of great shoulders we stand on theoretically, are in critical pedagogy, right? And so, that is thinking about sort of positionality of students and the ways in which power dynamics and oppression and privilege, and, and all that stuff works. in their world and in their life, and being critical and thinking deeply about those interactions and, both the obstacles and currency that they have, going through the world.
Sujung Kim: Yeah, so I just want to add, you know, two cases, you know, talk and then so, as I mentioned before, you know, briefly, you know, I mentioned about the dominant discourse about the community colleges and then so in even, you know, community colleges summit or, you know, Or, you know, dominant policies and then government documents.
And then also even if you look at the community college websites, you know, mostly like a community college described as what, you know, workforce development or improving students work skills as like that. And then even in document, you know, or public remarks of former [00:12:00] presidents, they kind of identify community college students Workforce or, you know, kind of foot soldiers or something like that.
So the way in each how, you know, communications are I identified by the know dominant, um, discourses and the policies is really dehumanizing, just kind of describing them or, you know, positioning them as kind of a, um, kind of economic employee, you know, soldiers or, you know, contributors for who can work for, you know, business, you know, property.
you know, accumulation regimes. And then so we really want to revise. These kind of dominant discourses. So, you know, humanizing is the most important, you know, we really highlight that aspect. And then also, you know, collective, collectivist means that, you know, as case mentioned that we are kind of really emphasizing mutual agency.
So in, when you talk about the agency, you know, students agency and instructor agency, and then there's no real connection about the [00:13:00] students and instructors agency, mutual agency. who can work together in the classrooms. So we really want to connect these, you know, students and instructors agency as a mutual agency, which needs to be, um, simultaneously happened and practiced.
Lucia Hulsether: I'm curious. Just to jump right into examples, if you might give an example of how in your classrooms, or maybe in your departments, it could, it could be in or out of the context of an actual class, you work against some of these dehumanizing, messages, also funding structures that you and your students are confronting.
What does it look like to teach when that is a kind of shadow, that is shaping the context in, to, in which you sort of enter into these relationships with, with one another.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: So I'll go ahead and start with that. so this is Leigh again, uh, [00:14:00] and I'm a faculty and I teach intro to linguistics classes, um, as well as some other classes, but I'm going to focus on that because the chapter I co wrote in the book with Oliver Sage, uh, we talk about teaching in a linguistics class.
Um, so I see that, um, A lot of students and, just the ideas in higher education are really centered around the hegemony of a certain type of privileged English. and so in my courses, one of the main, things that I work on with students is to question that hegemony, and to validate their own language experiences. and so by, like, There's a few exercises I do with students to kind of bring this out. One is at the beginning of the semester we talk about all our language backgrounds and we talk about what is language. We kind of, a lot of times when we start out students are saying like, in the [00:15:00] class, they think they're going to learn how to speak proper English. and then I kind of set that aside for later. And then throughout, we kind of come back to that and question it. and it's a way for them to kind of think critically about these myths in society about language. and so it's a space, I want the classroom to be a space where, they don't just take whatever is like the norm or the idea that's the norm, as definitely true, that they kind of think about it and think about what are their language practices?
Do you, I share my language practices, how do these match or mismatch with what society views as the proper language practices? And why does society have this view of what's proper, what's improper? so I think it's a great, opportunity for us to critically examine the role of language in education, uh, which I think is also very important, uh, for students across the [00:16:00] education spectrum because, I'd say linguistic discrimination is one of the more commonly, kind of accepted forms of discrimination, where we can still say, oh, you don't belong here because you don't speak a certain way, when that actually should not at all be, the discourse that's surrounding language and education. so through this, through questioning and discussing, language attitudes, language myths, bringing in their own languages, learning about linguistics, learning about the fact that there are many multiple dialects, everything is rule governed, then they, are able to build the knowledge and leave the class thinking and knowing that there's not just one correct form of language.
Kaysi Holman: One of my favorite examples, from the book is in the visualization chapter. So this is, someone who's teaching a composition course and, so often when we see syllabi, syllabuses, from courses, you know, there are just black [00:17:00] and white text. There's some bold all caps about policies and procedures and what you're, uh, allowed to do and permitted to do and, what your responsibilities are and expectations, and all of that stuff. and instead, he had from his mentor, who had had a very, like, stylized, syllabus taken his background and his, sort of fandom in comic books, and designed his syllabus into sort of a comic book style and, you know, picking up two syllabuses next to each other and looking at this, like, stark black and white one with, like, Font, all caps, bolded, do not do these things, and this comic book style that is just so welcoming and so inviting, right, was just for me an immediate stark contrast of the ways in which we were switching our approach to be welcoming, our approach to be humanizing, and I think with that, Switch, you're also trusting that the people in the room with you, and I say people intentionally, not students, the people in the room with you, they want to be there, right?
They want to learn, they want to engage in education, [00:18:00] particularly at the community college level. They're there because they're, they're fighting for it, you know? Um, and I think that trusting that if they say that their car broke down on the way and they couldn't get in, That's true. It happened to them, right?
Like, just trusting in the students, um, and also being able to support them, uh, as an administrator. It was really nice, um, that we were able to remunerate everyone in our program. We were very, very fortunate that all the faculty got course releases to be part of the program. All of the graduate students got fellowships, even all the undergraduate students got stipends to be participants, in our program, not, not to take courses, but, you know, to take our extracurricular program, work with them. and we also provided food, like always, the food was just a constant, and I always remember one student who, you know, he would come in. to our extracurricular program at 6 p. m. which is when we started and he had literally been back to back in classes since 9 a. m. without any time to eat or relax the entire day because that was the one day he [00:19:00] could take classes because he had a full work schedule right outside and so we would be like sit down get something to eat sit in the back for 20 minutes decompress and then join us when you can and it just made his experience so much richer and his contribution so much better.
Sujung Kim: So, and then also I want to share a, Dr. Fellows who tried, so she concerned about the power relationship in the classroom, so she was white woman, and then she really recognized, be aware of her positionality, and then her students are mostly like students of colors, you know, non native English speaker, it's like that.
So, one day she talked, when. And we have kind of chatting when we're chatting. She talks about Sujeong, I'm thinking about how to about my, you know, what kind of shoes I want, I want to, you know, have or what kind of clothes I want to wear when I go to, you know, classrooms. And then so, usually she mentioned that her students.
perceived herself as a very, you know, [00:20:00] authoritative, you know, higher, you know, person in the classroom. So she mentioned that she kind of planned to wear sneakers and more like casual wear, which are not really distinguishable with her students. And then, so I think it is a very good example of, you know, critical pedagogy, how to embody critical pedagogy in the classrooms.
And then also another case is that even in my class, My own class teaching too. So there are, you know, non native English speakers and then so in the first assignment, you know, when I gave them also another, you know, TA, undergraduate TA, who helped the course, also kind you know, talk, gave a guideline about, you know, writing in your own languages.
So for an essay, you know, essay topic, we allowed students to write. Their essay in their own languages and then saying, [00:21:00] so the, you know, the language in the classroom is not just so English and then all we really recognize your, you know, deep thoughts and experiences. And then sometimes I'm originally Korean, you know, Korean native speaker and then I can't, I can't.
can't understand Spanish just like that, then I kind of told the students, oh, because my, you know, linguistic skills in Spanish is so low, and then so, it's my also kind of responsibility as an instructor, but I will do my best to find someone who can, you know, comment on your papers like that. So this is a kind of a one.
Not horse master, but they're trying to, you know, give message for students really, you know, they are really, their linguistic, you know, heritage are very important. And then it's also instructors responsibility to recognize and to allow students to express their ideas in their, you know, you know, in the language that they feel most comfortable.[00:22:00]
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: And maybe I could just add a little bit. This is Leigh again. so. thinking about syllabi, that Casey was mentioning, and also thinking more about my own approaches, humanizing collectivist critical pedagogy in my classes. a lot of the syllabus I co construct with students, so we always do community agreements. usually I have a blueprint of like when certain assignments, are going to be due, but that's open for debate. or, you know, students can always propose changes or, and, and so I set it up from the beginning as, you know, it's not top down. I'm, you know, whatever I say goes. but we're a community and we do all this together and we make these decisions together.
And like Casey was saying, I trust. Part of this is you have to trust students. I feel like a lot of instructors have a hard time trusting students, which I don't totally understand why, necessarily, but you have to trust students that they are there, because they want to be there. and I think most students really are there because they want to be there. and so [00:23:00] that really helps set up, The collective part, I think, and also the humanizing part, because we talk a lot about how, you know, we all have different responsibilities and so different things can happen, and I'm understanding about that. so if someone needs an extension, all they have to do is ask.
And, you know, that's no problem. but then I still am aware of my, my positionality, cause I'm also a white, I'm a white middle class native English speaker. and so usually, like I said, a lot of students at the beginning of my classes, I asked what they hope to learn. A lot of them say they, they want to learn how to properly speak English. and I think that has a lot to do with, they, they probably think that That's what I'm thinking as well. so I use, a lot of times I use my background from, I'm from Missouri and I say like certain things a lot differently than them. So it kind of brings in like, wait, do you say caramel or caramel? because I say caramel, but they all say caramel.
And like, and we, we [00:24:00] try to have fun with language and bring in all different, dialects of English and all different languages. it's a challenge to, In a linguistics class to bring in all the language backgrounds of students, but I, I work hard to do that. so that everyone has a chance to think about, their full linguistic repertoires and the process of thinking about language and linguistics.
And we don't just focus on like a certain type of English and understanding and talking about language. We talk about their languages and how they use them.
Tina Pippin: I want to continue this discussion of examples because the, your book is full of them and you critique a lot of critical pedgy, critical pedagogy theorists, for not including those kind of concrete, ways of trusting students and doing democratic education in the classroom.
So, how does, if you could talk more about how a critical pedagogy infused classroom works, and You know, [00:25:00] we were talking about in the classroom, but your subtitle here is teaching the humanities in community college and beyond. If you would, at some point in this discussion, step into the beyond, which would include, social justice, civic engagement, those kinds of things.
Kaysi Holman: Yeah, I'm, I'm happy to talk about more examples and, uh, critical pedagogy specifically. I think that, um, There's a lovely chapter, I think, I think it's fourth, fourth chapter in the book, a toolkit for questioning everything. And it really is, so many of our, examples in the book, are really rooted in the critical pedagogy of their discipline. but what we had was kind of unique in, the program where Uh, sometimes graduate instructors were not teaching from their expertise. right. So in that chapter, we had a historian, a classical historian, um, teaching a philosophy, critical thinking class, and sort of developed this close reading exercise, that allows people to [00:26:00] go deeply into, questioning, sort of, who, like, what's the context around this?
What's the argument here? What, information are we gathering, right, to back that up? And it really allows people to go deeply, And I think that so many of our practical examples like that, are, are assignments that can be taught and can be used, not just in community college settings, um, and not just in, any humanities class, but could be used outside of it as well to deepen, engagement with text, to deepen critical thinking around text, to be like, To be analyzing our world, in a way that orients us to, like, how we fit in the broader context of the world, right?
Our positionality, our power dynamics that we interact with the world. And I think that, The hope, the hope in offering these practical examples, with all this theoretical background, attached to it, was really that other faculty across the country could take this, whether they're in community colleges or four year [00:27:00] colleges or graduate school, they could take these, Modify them and start implementing them in their own classrooms.
And from that, we could build a whole new set, a whole new set of activities and stuff.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: Yeah. And I just want to add to that, that, yeah, the, the teaching the humanities and community college and beyond, we want to move past any sort of stigma that we kind of discussed earlier on community colleges and say that community colleges can offer a lot in terms of, sharing pedagogy.
pedagogical approaches with diverse student populations. and so part of the reason actually in the community, the CUNY Humanities Alliance, the students, the graduate students were paired with community colleges is because some of the teaching in community colleges is, I don't know, more challenging and also a lot of times community colleges are kind of at the the groundbreakers in what, what's going on in higher education pedagogy, and where teaching is, is I think seen as more of an important aspect, of higher ed than [00:28:00] in some Uh, other university settings.
Uh, I also just wanted to quickly, um, mention a chapter by Mike Ruffino, um, Subverting White Androcentricism in Psychology Curricula, which I think is another great chapter, um, where he talks about, um, uh, a project he does in his psychology classes. that really questions kind of the, colonial and masculine, basis of a lot of what's taught and learned in psychology classes. and so he talks about feminist and decolonial, pedagogy and has, has his students use, like be in conversation with two different, psychologists. And so it's, I think it's a great, another great example, to look at as, um. example of critical pedagogy.
Kaysi Holman: Uh, and when we're thinking about and beyond, I also want to highlight, uh, I didn't talk about it much in the chapter, but we have a couple of extracurricular programs.
[00:29:00] Um, that are included in the book, because we also wanted to go beyond classrooms, right? Because we felt that our pedagogy went well beyond classrooms into, um, both extracurricular program building and also administration of programs, um, that you'll see sort of in the later chapters of the book. Um, but in one of those extracurricular programs, One of our goals, for the, for the year that we had students was to enrich their engagement in the humanities and what that meant for us, was actually taking them out to, museums to protests, actually, to, to, uh, theater, theater performances to just different places in the city where they could engage, um, both civically and as a human with the humanities as it was, uh, in the world.
Some of them were like historic tours of the city, um, as the city's architecture or, you know, I mean, I think my favorite outing was where we took them to a protest, a live protest that was happening in the city, as a group, and then after that, we went to a museum that had an exhibit on the [00:30:00] history of protest, in the city, and it was just a beautiful combination, and we got to talk then about what it means to be civically engaged, what does it mean for, the humanities and the art world to show up and to, sort of, um, force us and, and, and make us interact, uh, with these deeper human questions, and, and our, yeah, and our own, and our own perspective on that.
So I think some of those are really fun. And honestly, taking students out of the classroom to, you know, Allowed us to have such deeper conversations with them, um, than we did in sort of structured atmospheres. it was really remarkable to me the exact same conversation, the exact same questions I would ask in a classroom would just not get the same receptivity and the same engagement as it would if I took them to a free museum across the street.
Right? It just wasn't the same discussion. so it was nice to have that.
Sujung Kim: And then also, I just want to add the beyond. So, because as Liv briefly mentioned that, you know, this is not [00:31:00] just for, uh, humans classes within the community college context, but, uh, even, um, four year institutions, the situation of humanities might not be, you know, very different.
Because, you know, you know, the value of humanities in higher education discourse is really kind of focusing on, you know, work skills, you know, job readiness is like that. So we are really kind of, you know, raising this question to four year institutions too. So what is the value of humanities? in higher education beyond the community colleges.
And then also the, you know, beyond means also that, you know, I just want to point out, you know, in addition to Casey's comment, you know, at within the CUNY Alliance as a practice is kind of bringing students to a community. where, you know, races are so diverse, their linguistic, you know, backgrounds were so diverse.
And then if you go with the community, if you see the, you know, shops, you know, [00:32:00] kind of, why they say name or like that, you know, there are multiple languages are It's, you know, written, you know, like that, you know, English, you know, Chinese, Nepalian, Tibetan, or all those languages that reflect in the race, it's like that.
So this is really kind of the notion of a community. It's not just limited to a notion of a community within classrooms. So the notion of a community is extending beyond the classrooms too. So there is one, you know, one goal that, uh, the instructor aimed and then so I joined and then so it was really eye opening, you know, for me and then for students too.
So how the, you know, those class learning is really directly related to their, you know, local community context too. So once students mentioned that Wow, I didn't know, you know, such many languages are spoken in my community even though I was born here. So
Lucia Hulsether: I love so much all of these [00:33:00] examples and how like the the number of ways that you all are challenging different constituencies and possible readers of this Of this, of your, of your work, or like I was trying to list them out in my mind.
Here's the challenge of, valuing the humanities, not only, but maybe in this context, especially in a community college setting that are often being framed as these sort of professional, ground zeros for, Maybe killing the humanities in general. And so this like constant emphasis on the value there, the challenge around democratic education, student agency, humanization of all students, challenges around what it means to teach and what it means to learn and ideas about, I think you have language in, in the introduction of your book about, success needing to be reframed around not only career success, but also [00:34:00] the capacities to reflect on one's positionality and community and to build solidarity.
I'm curious. These are really, really ambitious. and Urgent Goals. And I can only imagine that you all have met different kinds of resistance, expected and unexpected. I'm curious if you could give us some examples of what resistance has looked like in different, you know, in, in, in different times and places, and how you have moved through that.
Kaysi Holman: So I'm happy to start and I, I love that you call out these challenges that we make we try to make them boldly in the book. I think that in reframing student success, the anger for me is a quote from a student actually in the first year of the program, a community college student who said, you know, my 3.
9 GPA as an international student who's not allowed to work does not compare to my colleagues. 3. 4 GPA, right, uh, when they have a family to support and two jobs. It just [00:35:00] doesn't compare. And I think that the way that our education system, is framed right now to think about GPAs and retention rates and graduation rates, really over, and even, yeah, just oversimplifies who our, our, who our students are, who the people are who are going through the education system and the things that they're learning. in terms of resistance, It's interesting. so some of the resistances I heard through the program, as the administrator, one was newer instructors. So folks who were, newer to teaching, especially in community colleges, felt a lot of the restrictions around department requirements. And it's something that we, address sort of in the questions that guide us, chapter around. When you have department requirements, especially that chafe against what you're trying to do in the classroom, how do you work around it? And what are all the different ways you can navigate around those department requirements and through those department requirements? Because in the end of the day, we have requirements, right?
We have requirements, they were set up by other faculty, and they're [00:36:00] not going to change this semester. They may change two years from now, but they're not going to change this semester while you're teaching. So when you do, but that was one. We also had. Um, a really strong desire for more time to dedicate to reflecting on and improving pedagogy generally, right?
It's not an activity that is supported in higher education. Most of our graduate students who had been instructing even for years at the time when they joined our program. hadn't ever had a course or a training or a luncheon even on pedagogy on how to teach. They had been sort of tossed an old syllabus from another professor and said, you teach in two weeks, good luck to you. and a lot of our faculty as well, who had never had formal training, even though they were experienced, even though they were 20 years into their career, hadn't had a semester's worth of time, was my first time to actually dedicate to rethinking through their pedagogy and making choices with other pedagogues in the room, and I loved our community that it was [00:37:00] interdisciplinary, and we were able to talk across disciplines about strategies and techniques and difficulties across departments and restrictions that people had to face because it allowed us to be more creative in the solutions that we brought to the table. I will say our centers that we were working with were very, very supportive in terms of us exploring and innovating in our classroom practices, and I know that is not the case everywhere. and I think that that is a real struggle for professors. Again, I think we do address that, um, in the question, in the question based chapters, like three quarters questions that chapter, um, but it's meant to be sort of a reflective guide for instructors who are facing some of those obstacles to find ways around them and through them.
Um, The last thing that I will say is that as the administrator on the program, or one of the administrators, there. You know, there are equity issues in policies and bureaucracies that are not always apparent until you try to do something different. and it's really hard because they are baked in policies and, [00:38:00] you know, bureaucracy is red tape. it's really hard to challenge those and I just encourage other administrators out there and other sort of program folks who are, who are charging ahead to just don't, don't back down, don't back down. I took many charges. I had to take it like to the, to the tops, to the tops of the, the university, to get policy exceptions, to get policy shifts, in order to sort of respond to some of our equity issues.
And the university would hear it, you know, they would. And I think that it's a challenge for sure. It's not something everyone's prepared to do and to fight. but it's a battle worth, worth fighting on behalf of people who can't and who don't have a voice in those rooms.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: go off that with resistance. something I hear a lot, and I totally understand is, this idea from instructors that they just don't have the time. so the good thing about this program when it was, when I was part of it is that we got release time to actually think about our pedagogy. but like I've done some professional development, at LaGuardia, [00:39:00] and we don't have that, that level of support. And so a lot of people, you know, are saying, I think your ideas sound great for like, inclusive translanguaging pedagogy, which brings all students language resources into the classroom, but I just don't have time to fit that into my course schedule. my syllabus doesn't have room for anything except for what I'm teaching, so I feel like that is maybe my number one thing I hear resistance, from instructors, and I think it's because partly, we're just overworked. we have so much to do. And we don't have hardly any time to like rethink our pedagogy. another thing is that we're, a lot of us, you know, I'm happy to say, not happy, but I will share, that I didn't have any pedagogical training, before I became a faculty member. my training was in linguistics, and so I learned all of that on the job, and so I think with that comes like, maybe a little fear, like, that we don't [00:40:00] necessarily want to be, want to share, like, this is what we do. I think there's a resistance in, in that. And I think there's a big, I talked about this before, the, kind of humanizing collectivist, a critical part, in our pedagogy. We need to kind of apply that to ourselves and our work, as academics, because oftentimes We might feel dehumanized, and it's a very individual, system, so that, you know, I'm responsible for this group of students, and I have to do everything myself, kind of that mindset, I think that's, another reason there's this resistance is like, we might be, kind of hesitant to, have this conversation because we've never had the conversation before. and we don't know exactly how to approach it. So I think that that's also an issue, but I feel like it's changing. I think there's more and more luckily, more discussion of pedagogy thanks to, you know, your podcast , in higher education, which I think is really important. [00:41:00]
Sujung Kim: So I just briefly mentioned about the, you know, my, from my work.
You know, I found that, you know, as Casey mentioned, that department in the community, in the case of community colleges, you know, certain introductory courses are kind of syllab syllabus are designed by the department and the text. book is assigned by the department. So in the case of adjuncts, they have very limited, you know, freedom to choose their own textbooks, or, you know, design their own textbooks, and then, you know, redesigning, re articulating the course goals, and so on.
So there's some kind of, it depends on department, but there's a certain kind of department, resistance from certain department. And then another aspect I want to point out is that the level of really, you know, um, building certain kind of community of teaching. So, even in the case of one case, you know, even education relate to, you know, some kind of critical pedagogy or education is like that.
Then the [00:42:00] full time faculty member taught the course about, you know. critical agency, and so on, so on. But his teaching method is really kind of very, uh, traditional, you know, kind of just, uh, asking students to write down what, you know, was displayed on the, you know, PowerPoint, just like that. So it's really very limited opportunity to have kind of collaborative, you know, forming collaborative, you know, teaching communities.
So the existing culture itself is really, as Lei mentioned, that. You know, one also faculty member, full time faculty member mentioned that if I close my class door, nobody comes in, and then so they really appreciate the feedback from the, you know, Dr. Fellows, you know, for participating in their classes and giving comments on teaching.
And then, so I think maybe the, the existing culture that, you know, very isolated and they close, you know, class and then teaching practice is kind of another, you know, chance. [00:43:00] Even though the, you know, instructors wants to change their, you know, teaching and like syllables that's like that, but they have very limited opportunity.
Kaysi Holman: Resistance that I want to call out here, and that is a resistance that, that happens for students who are engaging in this with us. and I think that, you know, I've, I met third year undergraduate students. who had never once so far in their journey had an interactive class. All of the classes that they had had, the teacher got up in front of the room and just talked to them for the hour, hour and a half, or however much time, the class was.
And it was heartbreaking To hear some of those students really struggling, really struggling when we allowed them to follow their own aspirations, their own hopes, their own dreams, right? And, and find creative pathways for themselves with their own fandoms and their own interests, to, they really struggled.
They really struggled. and I think that there is. a deeper aspect of that, that is [00:44:00] emotional, that's talked about in the Affect of Injustice chapter, by our, by our colleagues, in the project, where they talk about, they sort of give this case study of, one of their authors, a student, who, um, Would just break down crying after classes, you know, and, didn't know why they hated, you know, not hated education, but, you know, we're so upset, and, and realizing that, Every time they approached a class, it was like the onus of learning was on them, right?
And they were very isolated from other students and from their community and, um, felt so burdened, um, by sort of the educational process that was very static and very banking method, right? That they were experiencing. that it just, it just had such an emotional impact and so we sort of unpack, the, they had an extracurricular program where students would sit together and talk about, that, like, affective impact of education on them and sort of learn with each other.
uh, by reading texts about pedagogy and [00:45:00] learning and re and teaching, sort of what that was. And, and so the authors came to this idea of, sort of writing affective injustice in education and the ways in which we're humanizing and using collectivist education are really seeking to, to allow people to come together as community and to not have the sole burden be sort of medicalized and internalized as an individual, as an individual struggle.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: And I just, could I add that I think, hopefully people who write our book who are instructors will move to that kind of mindset, not only with their own students, but with themselves and their colleagues. We hope that we kind of can start some sort of community where it's, you know, We welcome discussion about pedagogy, about what we're doing, and there's no, no need to, you know, feel this sense of pressure, very individualized pressure that I think is very common.
Tina Pippin: Well, you give a lot of challenges in your book. [00:46:00] what challenges do you have for yourselves? because I was challenged as, as I read it. Things I knew, but I didn't know deeply enough that you helped me bring to the surface. And then what challenges are each of you facing as you move forward in the fall?
Kaysi Holman: It's an excellent question and a difficult one, I think, to answer. I think, you know, I think that we all had to approach this project with a large amount of humility, and understanding that we didn't know everything and that there wasn't a single person in that room who knew everything, um, and we really were learning together through the whole process.
There were many times. that, you know, Soo Jung as a, as the senior researcher on the project would come to me and be like, you know, this isn't working and that isn't working. I'm like, great, let's change it, right? Or, graduate fellows would come to me and be like, this isn't working. I'm like, great, let's change it.
Whatever we need to change, we're going to change it. but I think that so many, and we're pretty open and honest. I think we even, I even [00:47:00] talk in one of the chapters about like, You know, our first design for our pedagogical workshops were just a failure. It was a failure, very, very pointedly, and we had to reshape it.
I think that, this is a whole other sort of TED talk of mine, but, I think that we are in for a major generational shift coming in the next 10 ish years, in, in education, but really is sort of globally, as sort of the culture that, was born in a very different generation, in the boomer generation, where, where, um, Folks were very, like, you know, there was one person in the household who either graduated high school and went to work a nine to five or went immediately through a four year college and then started working nine to five and other people in the house were there to do all the care support and all the work.
We don't have that system anymore. and our, um, Like economic system is broken to the point where like everybody, every adult has to work in order to provide for a family. And even then it's not ends aren't meeting [00:48:00] and a lot of the cultural values that we've put into workplaces and into education no longer work for the sort of.
socioeconomic situation that we're all living through. And so I think not just with, um, technology shifts, I think that's sort of like surface level, uh, one of the shifts that's happening in education, but I think there's like deep cultural norms that are shifting, right? We are seeing a rise of, you know, students going to community college first before they go into a four year university, either because that's, an easier pathway of entry for them, but also because it's less expensive for collegiate education, um, that may not pay off, uh, in the end for them economically, um, as much as it once did.
I also think that we're seeing a shift of, of, The cultural assumption that productivity and wellness are sort of antitheses of each other and really thinking through how wellness creates productivity. that's definitely been my experience and my experience with [00:49:00] students that the more engaged they are, the better they are as humans and the.
The more stability we can provide and the more resources we can provide, the better overall that they will produce and more that they will do. so I think, I think those culture shifts are coming for us. and I think that's going to be a challenge for everybody to both adjust their, their, teaching and methodology to, those cultural shifts and also just to, to ride through it.
And I would. It'll think challenges.
Sujung Kim: Maybe I go. So, my current, you know, well, position, I'm kind of, I had lots of, you know, opportunity to talk to it, faculty members and administrators, especially in STEM areas. And then, so, in STEM areas, you know, like a cultural responsive pedagogy is a really new term, but, It's very, you know, very limited institution trying to implement that kind of pedagogy approach in STEM education, but, in general, you know, when I'm interviewing and [00:50:00] observing, you know, faculty members and administrators in STEM, actually the pedagogy is a very, you know, new term and, you know, not familiar, you know, You know, concept and then have a little idea about, you know, how to make sense in a sense centered, you know, pedagogy and teaching is like this.
So, am I in a current position? I feel like I see the challenge, you know, how to address this, you know, critical pedagogy and then, you know, humanizing and collectives, you know, critical pedagogy and. Teaching practices in STEM areas. And then I hope, you know, there's some kind of new, work, you know, collective work, you know, how to change STEM education too.
Lucia Hulsether: I'm curious, and I am aware of, I'm aware of time, but As we sort of talk about challenges, I also want to make sure that we talk about, talk about joy [00:51:00] in classrooms. And I wonder if you all might talk to us about what for you makes for a joyful classroom.
Sujung Kim: Maybe I go first.
So I would say community. Caring and supportive community, you know, building that kind of community. as in between instructor and students and then among students, too. So, when I taught, you know, and then also as part of my research, one student mentioned that, oh, if I go to classroom, I feel like I'm on isolated island. Just sit and then nobody talks, nobody interacts until the professor comes in and teach something.
And then just after class, we just. just leave the classroom. So I feel like really isolated in the classroom. So I think that is one of really important aspect, you know, that I wanted to address. So, you know, the joy is like, I [00:52:00] tried to, you know, building some kind of community, caring community. So, you know, first, you know, I prepared some questions for the students, let them to meet, you know, talk to other, you know, you know, one on one conversation.
So, Intentionally mixing students with, you know, different races, ethnicities, and language, linguistic backgrounds, and so on, so give them about five minutes to talk about the, you know, questions, it's like that. And then also, some students, if I got to know about, you know, some students, you know, father passed away, for example, you know, I asked the question, you know, asked the student, it would be okay, you know, for me to share it.
That things with other classmates and then she said, okay, so then I had a moment to share, you know, Oh, someone is absent for certain this weeks and then because her father passed away. So how about the, you know, having certain moment, you know, just quiet moment to wishing her, you know, kind of praying or wishing, [00:53:00] for her and for her families as like that.
And then that was, I think it just really kind of, even though it does a very small practice, I felt like myself feeling like I'm building certain kind of community and connecting each other in one another as like that. And then also the joy is like that in the seminar class, not just sitting or like that, You know sometimes I bring snacks and then later students bring snacks, drinks.
It's like that and then having discussions and then, you know, sometimes over I think, they say like, unusual, but it's like, oh, you know, the, the, the Discussions getting much deeper and then then we're kind of talking 30 more discussing 30 more minutes just like that and then so the students also those kind of discussions happened out of classrooms too and then so they, uh, that was a really joy and then so I really appreciating students that, you know, encouragement.
I think [00:54:00] that is my, you know, um, Encouragement that I got from my students and then also at their expression, you know, hugging me at the end of semester students lined up and then they gave me a hug one by one. And so it is really like a feeling like, oh, maybe we are, we built certain kind of connections and community.
And then that is really kind of joy and then encouragement that I got from the students. So I would say very, you know, supportive and caring community is much more, uh, it is the most important things that I'm, you know, caring to build a joyful, classroom.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: I just, I want to agree, Soo Jung, that, I think a joyful classroom is one where you have a true community, but that also relates to a challenge, that I feel has been kind of, uh, exacerbated with the COVID pandemic. a lot of conversations among faculty and instructors is that students seem much more hesitant [00:55:00] to interact and really be engaged in a classroom because a lot of students were used to, you know, just sitting behind a computer and didn't have that, interactive. so it's, it's been a challenge, sometimes, you know, it depends on the class dynamics, but I've definitely had some classes where, you know, I'm teaching the same thing, doing the same kind of activities and two, you know, two different classes and the dynamics are so different. like one may be, you know, I ask a question and we'll talk about it for like 45 minutes. Another class I ask a question and like nobody says anything and then, you know, it can be a challenge to build a community. something that, just an example of one of the most joyful classes I've had, I think, I actually, did a, Like find, find a person who, so I got a bunch of information about my students, all sorts of different information, from a, like a first day, class questionnaire where I ask [00:56:00] questions to get to know them and I told them, you know, from a certain list of questions, those might be shared with the class. and so I, just every student in the class had a fact about them that I put on this piece of paper, and so everyone had to go and find, you know, find a classmate who, one of them was like, Spoke, Hindi was one example, or one has a, you know, 10 year old daughter, one works in an afterschool program, uh, a bunch of different things.
And, through that, the students and I actually, I included myself as well, on the list. I, I used to work at a preschool. So I said, I used to, you know, worked at a, in a threes class at a preschool. And it really got us to know each other and it kind of was a great opportunity for the class to engage with each other and not necessarily, on things, you know, that they might think they'd usually discuss in a class. so that was, that's one of the things I often do towards the beginning of the [00:57:00] semester to kind of start building the community. and get people engaged. but that's always one of my favorite classes because there's no, you don't really have a choice but to talk to people. I
Kaysi Holman: think like my colleagues, for me the most joyful classroom is one where I can create an environment where everyone feels truly welcome in however they're feeling that day, however they're showing up that day. with all of the, experience that they carry and all the expertise that they're showing up with, and we're folks who don't always get to feel belonging, have that sense of belonging because we're seeing them as the individual that they are for their aspirations and, um, their accomplishments and their, their hopes and their struggles. and we're, we're getting to unfold all of that together. and I think my, my most joyful moments have been moments where students get to shine in who they really are. Every year we had sort of a student showcase, where people, where they would show [00:58:00] off sort of their year long work, in something.
And, in a project of their choosing that was designed to, to sort of mix with their aspirations and seeing the amount of confidence that they had after publicly showcasing their work all night long was just such a joyful moment because you could see that they were really transforming their work.
into who they wanted to be in the world, right? They were doing the work that they wanted to do. They were sharing it in public with deans and professors and other, other folks who stumbled in, family members, of folks who came in, came to join, and they got to celebrate, sort of what they had done for themselves. and that was amazing. And like with, with the support of their peers. And I think, those were really joyful for me.
Tina Pippin: is there anything that we haven't talked about that you want to make sure gets discussed today? Cause we are getting right at time here.
Kaysi Holman: This was so wonderful to have this conversation.
Thank you so much for the probative questions. Thank you so much for having us, on [00:59:00] your show. we've really enjoyed the experience and I think, come up with some new, new reflections of our own through this process.
Tina Pippin: Yeah, yeah, we have two, well, we're at then our last question. We could keep talking, but we, we have to honor your time, which is what are you watching, consuming, listening to, highbrow, lowbrow that you'd like to share with our listeners?
Kaysi Holman: I recently read, Minor Feelings and I just love, I just love the book. I do some, DEIB sort of consulting and, and work in my, in my current job. and so I've been reading a lot of texts and I think that the author just does such a good job of depicting her own experience, and really challenging the norms that she's had to live through. so yeah, I would highly recommend it.
Sujung Kim: For me, nowadays, I'm really waiting for the Plum [01:00:00] Village, the Tinakan community, and they're uploading very short video based on his, you know, previous talks, and it really makes me rethinking about the, you know, value of life, how to be, what kind of person I want to be, what kind of life I want to be. You know, what kind of, how I, I want to engage my work and so on and so on.
So it's really beautiful. And then, so I really, I would like to recommend to you.
Leigh Garrison-Fletcher: And for me, it's, it's summer, so I'm decompressing. I am reading now, the fifth season, like a sci fi. start of a trilogy that I'm really excited about, so I'm going to read the trilogy, it's by N. K. Jemisin, if I'm pronouncing that right, and then, I'm rewatching The Good Place with my daughter, so that's been a lot of fun too.
Tina Pippin: Okay, Lucia, anything to add?
Lucia Hulsether: I'm reading a novel [01:01:00] called Come and Get It by an Author named Kiley Reid. It's set mostly in a college residence hall at the University of Arkansas, where the, RA, who is a black woman who's kind of a super senior, ends up becoming entangled with a very cringe English professor named Agatha, who's on a visiting scholarship and comes into the dorm to eavesdrop on students speaking in southern accents, which are quite alarming to her, about their relationships with money. So it goes from there. The dialogue is excellent, and everybody should, should read it as a, grim academic satire that has me staying up way too late.
All right, Tina.
Tina Pippin: Well, I am, not reading novels right now, but I have a big stack from this [01:02:00] podcast, and so right now I am re watching for probably the third time, Abbott Elementary. And I see something new every time I watch it. It, it just, there, there's, there's some really smart things that they're talking about in that, in that sitcom and it's, it's fun and sort of mindless, but not mindless because I'm learning a lot about my own teaching.
There's some stuff that gets reflected back.
So, Casey, Leigh, Sujung, thank you so much for your book and for joining us in the middle of your summers. you have really made us happy. Thank you for being on Nothing Never Happens and have a joyful rest of your summer.
Sujung Kim: Thank you so much. So much. Hope you have a great summer, too. Great to talk with you.
Outro Music (Akrasis): Head full of blood and poison, womb high in my bed for another person. Not sure why [01:03:00] or who, but I like trying to pry into the possibility that I might be cool enough not to lie to you.
Tina Pippin: You've been listening to Nothing Never Happens, the Radical Pedagogy Podcast.
And our conversation continues. With Soo Jung Kim, Leigh Garrison Fletcher, and Casey Holman. Authors of Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy, Teaching the Humanities in Community College, and beyond. Our audio engineer is Aaliyah Harris. Our summer intern is Ella Stuccio. Apollo M. Hassan is our web designer.
Our intro music is by Lance Eric Hoggan, performed by Lance Eric Hoggan with Aviva and the Flying Penguins. Our outro music for this podcast is by Acrisis. It's called Him Lockhead [01:04:00] on unemployed apologist, Mark Bowen Raps Guitar. Mark McKee Beats Trumpet available on bandcamp.com. After now, a little over seven years of running.
The Radical Pedagogy Podcast is a mostly self-funded operation. We've decided to open up opportunities for our listeners to support our work. Your donations will help cover the cost for maintaining our website and streaming services, as well as the pay for our amazing audio editors and student interns.
Thank you in advance for your encouragement and support as we've taken this journey together. Look for us on patreon.com and look for us also on most social media platforms
Outro Music (Akrasis): and to assigning womb [01:05:00] whenever I know that there's no reason to.
Shifts and symptoms masking a lack of wisdom. When I'm alone, I put on in disguise to hide behind obscure the facts that. Absence marks everything, the world's for themselves, but I am so full of myself, and therefore empty. Significance is nothing, signifies anything, except for what I signify to you. And the symbolic language of my mind isn't relatable or true.
Giving people clues, swap metaphysical shoes, feet hop over cracks in the concrete.
