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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching Alternatives: Book Reports

As a part of my elementary school's annual community-building program, students in all grades (which, for us, meant Kindergarten through 5th Grade) were asked to read the same short novel at home. Now, I know that sounds odd, considering the average kindergartener is likely at a lower reading level than the average fifth grader. However, with the option to have your parent or guardian read the story with you at home, I assure you that I was able to make it through some higher level reading with little trouble. By participating in year-round activities as a whole school, students were able to relate to each other across grade levels, all because they had read the same book and had followed the same characters. I will never forget how excited I was when I won a dictionary (Yes, a dictionary... I'd be less excited now, too) for answering the most trivia questions correctly about The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs . Though, if I had one complaint about the school- wide...
1 comment
Read more

Place-Based Learning: Museums and the Importance of Physical Space in Middle School Education

Before there were formalized schools, there were living rooms, church halls, back steps, battlefields, and the great outdoors. Education came in all shapes and sizes, from the modern understanding of “traditional” study through the analysis of past writings and artifacts to the natural signals one learned to recognize on the farm before an approaching storm. Students were not just young people hunched over a book shielded from the world behind brick walls. They were citizens learning how to manage a family business, reading and printing newspapers, planting seeds, plowing land, and striving to better prepare themselves for the future, whatever it held for them. Today’s students aim to do the same. Yet their education seems to have restricted itself to the boundaries of school property, or perhaps it occasionally wanders beyond county lines. What happened to learning about your environment— and all the life that lived and lives within it— by experiencing everything it has to offer fir...
7 comments
Read more

Troublemakers, by Carla Shalaby

Out of any word in the English language, I think I am most intimidated by “power.” It is full of contradictions: Power provokes a sense of accomplishment while implying the achievement and maintenance of power requires competition, hierarchy, and domination. Power is given and taken easily, and it yields to external factors beyond its control. Some people fear power, others are generous with it, and still more meet their doom when pride becomes its companion. Power allows for advancement. It provides a sense of order and control, but it can also create and fuel chaos. Individuals, groups, small islands, and large nations all possess a certain degree of power. As a future educator, the environment of my classroom will depend entirely on how I and my students handle the power we are given in our teacher-student relationships. More importantly, my power as a potential change-maker in their lives— through traditional lessons, personal relationships, worldly guidance, and honest compassion...
4 comments
Read more