Skip to main content

The Importance of Discomfort in Times of Change - ST Week 8.1

In an attempt to combat the sometimes active, other times dormant waves of hatred that possess an unknown number of students on campus, Saint Michael’s College suspended “business as usual” for all students this Tuesday, February 18th; exchanging classes, meetings, clubs, internships, and work-study shifts for a community-wide day of “learning and reflection” about racism. While I am still navigating my own feelings about today’s events in relationship to my role as a student of the college, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the stress and discomfort many of my peers and I felt today, and how I believe that discomfort is entirely necessary if one’s true intentions are to learn and grow in search of Truth.

Quite a few of my past posts— particularly those related to lessons I designed about the Native American experience during U.S. westward expansion— highlight my belief in the importance of diverse and equitable representation within a humanities curriculum. Throughout the early weeks of my student teaching internship, I have also written posts about and/or privately reflected on the importance of comfort, accessibility, and a willingness to talk about different historical perspectives if my students are to learn about the past in a way that benefits them as valued community members, truth seekers, and global citizens of the future. Recognizing the importance of things like comfort and diversity are essential to learning, and I fully support these ideas as a progressive educator aligned with Vygotsky’s learning and developmental theories. However, this recognition is not enough. As students and educators… Heck, as global community members, the process of understanding the past in order to mend the present and better the future is impossible without our willingness to get uncomfortable, participate in hard discussions, and take steps toward a diverse yet unified future together.


Source: https://wallpapertag.com/wallpaper/full/1/1/3/433908-amazing-volcano-wallpaper-1920x1080-for-iphone.jpg


Our personal beliefs, biases, and understandings live within us: they trigger thoughts, actions, and physical responses we can and cannot control. Personally, I have always thought of my own strong sense of self-awareness as similar to studying a volcano. Now, I am not a physical scientist, earth scientist, or geography master, but I do know that volcanoes are often described as either dormant (inactive/unlikely to erupt) or active (could erupt at any time). To me, people are the same way, and some people are better at reading their own physical and emotional signs of distress than others… they can sense if something is going to reinvigorate their lava or launch an eruption. In addition to intrapersonal intelligence, some individuals have strong interpersonal skills, and they can sense when an eruption may be triggered in the same way that scientists can pinpoint volcanic eruptions with seismic technology. If I now equate volcanic eruptions to the physical, emotional, and cognitive signs of discomfort when learning about “harder” historical topics, then is it fair to say that without discomfort, students and educators cannot learn from each other? I believe so. How can hard history topics be fully understood if the volcanic eruptions we feel within ourselves are not registered or recognized? Even more, volcanic eruptions often cause a ripple effect of natural repercussions, including earthquakes, fires, air/water pollution, and tsunamis. Is it not important for us to learn about, understand, recognize, prepare for, and act on the whole occurrence of a volcanic eruption? To learn and grow from history’s dark past and tainted present, we must first be willing to experience the discomfort we feel when talking about hard history together, and we must also be willing to endure the earthquakes that follow. We must be willing to recognize and reflect on the aftermath of our discomfort and the discomfort of those around us, the experiences that shape our feelings to begin with, and the validity of all historical perspectives and diverse groups as worthy of our attention when seeking to improve the condition of mankind.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Multimedia and Westward Expansion - ST Week 2.3

Happy Thursday! As the first week of my student teaching semester comes to a close, I thought I would take some time to reflect on the introductory lessons to our Westward Expansion unit. Although most of today’s class time was absorbed by Vermont’s STAR reading exam (I will post my thoughts on the STAR as I learn more about it in the coming days), students had an opportunity to continue their westward expansion work during whatever class time remained after they turned in their exams. By tomorrow (Friday, 1/10), students are expected to have completed the work for the three introductory lessons reviewed earlier this week. From my observations, most students appear to be on track for tomorrow’s due date, but only time will tell! For now, I’d like to focus on the multiple forms of media employed in these opening lessons, and I will note some major points of consideration that I am still pondering after four days of learning. The introductory lessons for the Westward Expansion unit a...

On Teaching and Reflection

Somewhere on my bookshelves, sandwiched between worn copies of literary classics and young adult novels, rests my collection of the title On Writing and other memoirs focused on the craft. Several authors have attempted to make sense of their adopted art, and even more have tried to guide others through their creative processes: Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Sol Stein, Ray Bradbury, and George Orwell, to name a few. While many of the memoirs composed by those who have found great success in their writing highlight similar themes when discussing the elements of their work, each writer also offers a sort of defense for his or her own approach in connecting a pen to paper. That, of course, is the beauty of writing: an author has freedom within some set conventions, and even these boundaries can be broken if the right time presents itself. After four years of undergraduate study, I think the biggest takeaway from my experience as a pre-service teacher is that education ...

Know Your Rights - ST Week 8.3

February break is on the horizon here at EMS, where Team Nova is actively preparing for an eighth grade wide debate day to be held in mid-March. Appropriately titled “We The People,” the debate unit focuses on First Amendment rights based on the U.S. Constitution and the subsequent Supreme Court cases related to students’ rights in schools. “We The People” is designed to function as an easily differentiated unit of study, featuring tiered research and debate groups, varied debate topics, and grounding lessons that detail three major court cases all students are expected to use when forming their arguments and counterarguments. As our introductory week comes to a close, students are wrapping up their research on our foundational SCOTUS cases: Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988), and Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986). Each of these cases asked the Supreme Court to better define the rights of students attending public schools, particularly those rig...