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Teacher of the Ear 02
6
—
Hope
With
Brenna Clarke Gray
[Note: An automated process created this transcript.
I do light clean-up as I produce the
episode, but I don’t worry about perfection.
Inaccuracies abound, especially in terms of
excessive end-stop punctuation
and line breaks
. Please accept my apologies, and do reach
out if anything is unclear or needs attention.]
This is Teacher of the Ear: a show presenting conversations of learning, teaching, and
technology, listening for ways to empower educators and champion student agency. I’m Chris
Friend from Kean University.
My guest for this episode comes to us as a result of a typo. Seriously. In my conversation with
Hanna McGregor in episode 18 on Scholarly Communication, Hanna mentioned a concept that
she attributed to one Brenna Clarke Gray from Thompson Rivers University. Being the
responsible, thorough scholar that I am, I
completely
failed to fact-check that bit of my
episode transcript, which accidentally referenced a Bren
d
a Clarke Gray that nobody seems to
have heard of. When a screenshot of the transcript and my typo went out on Twitter, the real
Brenna Clarke Gray said she’d like to meet this Brenda person. I got all sorts of ashamed,
looked her up as I should have in the fi rst place, fi xed the typo, and then (as one does)
immediately subscribed to her podcast as penance.
This is the part of the narrative where I
could
say, “and it was all downhill from there,” or
where Brenna might say, “and that was your fi rst mistake.” But no, trust me when I say
Brenna’s show is downright joyful. (There’s a marketing spin, Brenna—come for the guilt, stay
for the quality.) But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me introduce you to Brenna.
Brenna:
Hi, my name is Brenna Clarke Gray, coordinator of educational technologies at
Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC in beautiful Tk'emlúps te Secwe
̓
pemc
within the unceded traditional lands of Secwepemcúl
̓
ecw.
I make a podcast at T
RU
(but it's for everyone
)
called
“
You
G
ot
T
his
!
”
and we talk
about different teaching and learning concerns, and I interview a brilliant member of
my community
e
very week to talk about the work
t
hat they do.
Two things stand out to me about Brenna’s podcast. First, she hosts the show from the
position of a learning technologist, but she’s constantly
critiquing
the tech she discusses.
You’ll often hear her talk about some tool, acknowledge what she doesn’t like about it, then
discuss a particular use case that works well for a given situation. That balance of critique
and application is refreshing.
The second thing that stands out about her show will at fi rst sound shallow, but hear me out.
Brenna’s giggles make me smile, and she keeps them in her fi nal cut, when others might edit
them out to try and sound more (allegedly) professional or scholarly. And that’s why I
appreciate the giggles so much: They make her human. We get to hear her honest reactions to
things, and we get to hear the joy she takes in having conversations and thinking about her
work. In a world where scholarly productivity can often be stuffy and dry, hearing someone
giggle about the madness of ed-tech or her theory that her child just licks everything at
daycare is, again, refreshing.
Brenna’s attitude in her show is what I would call unabashedly hopeful. And she directly
addressed that concept in a recent episode, ending with this:
Brenna
:
I want you to help me wrestle with this idea of optimism versus hope. Can you
tease them apart? Do you see how they're separate? I guess what I'm going to ask you
to do is think about to what extent your approach to teaching in your discipline relies
on an optimistic view of the future.
I'm curious what
this
little thought experiment of
the distinction between optimism and hope would mean
for your classroom
.
But instead of answering her question, I wanted to hear more of her thinking and see where
the conversation took us. Spoiler alert: We went all over the place. Oh, and before you cringe
at the prospect of us being obnoxiously cheerful, rest assured we knew from the start that
this was a tricky time to discuss the topic of hope in education—and that’s exactly why I think
it’s important to bring this conversation to you in the current environment.
Our discussion springboards from the conversation I had with Cate Denial in the previous
episode on Kindness. Cate started that episode differentiating kindness from niceness by
explaining that, in her words, “
niceness lies
.” And here’s Brenna’s reaction to that.
Brenna:
It is so true and also niceness, masks and hides the truth often right like
niceness makes me think of civility and it makes me think of, you know
politesse
and
like
a
ll
t
he ways that Canadians perform racism differently than Americans
, f
or
example right
?
A
nd the this notion that that what matters is the surface, which is what
niceness is nice.
This is the surface, right?
But yeah, kindness
—
kindness is diffi cult.
Kindness is hard work
,
and I'm increasingly
interested in open
—
I would I jokingly refer to it sometimes on the podcast as
“
open as
in hearts
”
not
“
open as in source,
”
—
which isn't to say I don't think open source is
important, but like this is where the piece is like honesty
a
nd transparency and clarity
in our interactions with students become so so powerful.
And this piece, you know, in your discussion with Kate, the things that you don't want
to hear
—
Faculty often fi nd themselves, I think, in a really diffi cult position when they
try to pursue honesty around institutional structures with students because
s
o much
else that they are hearing is not honest, right?
It's wrapped up in in marketing and
sales and
I think that,
much like kindness
,
Honesty is hard work and honesty is facing
the absolute unknowability of the future as we understand it right now, which is very
different I think than.
I don't think previous generations of instructors had to wrestle
with this in quite the same way, which isn't to say that there wasn't like.
You know it wasn't there was marketing, right?
There was there was lies.
There always
is.
But you know there was student loan debt and and the the massive sort of scam
that that all is and all of that that all existed but
, w
e had this sense right?
I remember
as an undergrad like really believing that like there was
t
his sort of like arc to history
and
things progressively get better, and that was naive even then, but I think a lot of
a
lot of my professors held it like a lot of my professors thought that with every passing
year we were improving, progressing, making more things better for more people.
I'm not sure how you stand in front of a classroom with
s
tudents and sell that now
, i
f
honesty is important to you.
[snip]
Brenna: And then
I
’
m
Having this conversation with Naomi Hodgson about hope.
And
this very simultaneously like mind
-
bending idea that you can distinguish hope from
optimism
a
nd this very necessary sense for me that I have to fi nd some idea of hope in
the present
i
n order to continue doing the work that I do and feeling effective in my
role
.
Hodgson wraps this idea of hope up in purpose, right?
So like you're hoping the present
is
tied
to your purpose and the work that you're doing with students is about helping
them to fi nd purpose as opposed to this sort of forward thinking.
The idea that education has that like
, y
ou're going to go into the world to make it
better in some way, right?
W
e all may want for that to happen.
But for the last 5-6
years it hasn't really felt like
o
ne year has gotten better than the
last.
It's felt like a
pretty
d
istinct sort of slide downwards, and so this question of, can we maintain a
sense of hope without necessarily having to believe in optimism?
Because optimism can
feel kind of impossible
a
nd really hard to access from time to time.
So yeah, I'm still really
w
restling with this
.
I
’
m not going
t
o be providing you with any
sort
o
f polished like articulation here.
But I think it's a really useful thing to start to think about
.
If we can't promise students
a
better world, if we can't promise students that they will be able to fi x things
, c
an we
help them
fi
nd a sense of purpose that doesn't rely on the idea that we may be able to
fi x everything in in the next generation
? B
ecause that's feeling increasingly not super
likely.
[snip]
Brenna:
We do work within within institutions that are making a series of guarantees
that I think are increasingly tenuous.
And I like the idea of faculty asking questions about that and helping students to ask
questions about that because I think that that's really important.
It can also be really frustrating
f
or the student who's sitting there with a student loan
in hand, who's
been
told that XYZ will come out of completing this degree
a
nd being
ready for that conversation to be uncomfortable, I think is really important.
But yeah, you know, I don't know what fi ve years from now is going to look like from
the perspective of
climate. t
here
’
s all kinds of really concrete ways in which the world
seems to be shifting under our feet
. A
friend of mine described it when the
Roe
decision came down on Friday, described it, as you know, feeling like
w
e had spent all
this time climbing up a mountain.
We had even gotten to the top and now suddenly
we're sliding back down again.
But like when you look down, it's not the
t
he ground isn't where it was before.
Like
there's been some kind of tectonic shift and sea level has dropped somehow.
[snip]
Chris:
That that metaphor of a feeling like we're sliding back down I I appreciate the
metaphor.
I would argue that it's worse than that because we've been pushed.
Saying
that we're sliding back down makes it sound like it's just this natural occurrence
of gravity
—
Brenna: We took a misstep
.
Chris:
Right exactly, but no there there was someone else on the mountain, someone perhaps
higher up the mountain than we are, who has pushed us to ensure that we
are falling
.
Brenna: Oof,
that
’
s
a
good
metaphor
.
Chris: [chuckling] Or not…
Brenna:
But you know, I'm imagining, like further up the mountain higher up in sort of
privilege and power and prestige and and and just yeah.
Chris: I was talking with other friends earlier today about the Clarence Thomas
’s
concurrent
opinion in which he listed three other cases that he says we need to revisit and so he
has taken the extraordinary step of spelling out exactly what steps are next in his
efforts to dismantle human rights
in t
his country.
And a number of us have noticed that he specifi cally did not mention the one court
case that protects his marriage, and it's the image of this man who is to go back to our
metaphor at the top
o
f the mountain and he has no problem pushing everybody else
down that mountain because he's there.
And the one part of the mountain that he will
not sacrifi ce is the one that he is standing on.
Yeah, this is this is getting to be
a
pretty ugly
m
etaphor
.
I
t's effective, but
o
h my
goodness, it
’
s
d
ark
.
Brenna:
Yeah
,
yeah.
[snip]
Brenna:
Which is all this to say, like there is no guarantee that we could make to
students in this moment that would be meaningful or honest.
And if, as teachers and
practitioners we value an honest relationship with our students and our colleagues,
and I think
l
ike anything future focused, we've got to change the way we have those
conversations
. And i
ncreasingly, I I wonder if there is any space for optimism in those
conversations.
If what we need to be looking for more again, is this idea of purpose.
[snip]
Chris:
You
’
re using the word
g
uarantee you're talking about what education can guarantee.
And my fundamental question is, can education ever guarantee anything?
And you're
already shaking your head and I'm kind of skeptical of it myself.
Like, I don't think our
gig is to guarantee stuff.
I think it is to offer
t
hings and and to establish conditions
where things are likely to emerge.
But I don't think a guarantee is really relevant in in the work that we do because we're
working with people in certain times, and because of that there is this uncertainty
involved that I think makes guarantees just outside the realm of what's practical for us.
And yet you've used that word a couple of times and I understand why, and I I think I
can get behind your use of it.
In the the episode of your show,
y
ou worry that it's increasingly a cruel optimism that
can't be fulfi lled
i
f we talk about this guarantee of education
. A
nd my question was
going to be, do we need to shift the goal of education?
Do we need to make the goal
something different?
And I think you just provided that answer saying
t
hat our goal
s
hould not be to provide
a better future
b
ut to provide a better sense of purpose.
Brenna: Yeah, I think so and here we
’
re
g
etting another little sort of
knot
to start to tease out
which is
t
he role of the faculty member or the purpose of the faculty member or the
intent of the faculty
member to make offerings right and to suggest and to help
students see, you know, a range of possible selves, possible
opportunities
and this idea
like I liked your word of your use of the word
“offer”
there.
And then what the university is selling right?
Which very much is wrapped in a kind of guarantee, right?
You come to us and you will,
you know, get a better job than your peers would.
And you'll have access to these
opportunities and and and the sense in which, like the marketing that wraps any kind of
post, secondary qualifi cation, a degree, a diploma, a certifi cate, whatever is very much
wrapped in a kind of a guarantee, right?
And we even we evaluate our degrees against
that, right?
How many students are working
i
n their fi eld of study, fi ve years out from completion
and all that kind of stuff
.
So I agree with you, that guarantee is totally the wrong word
and also at the same time I think that a lot of students are entering our classrooms
having been sold, a guarantee or a kind of a promise, right?
And it's one of those things where
, y
ou know
,
when you're in grad school and you're
getting ready to go to the job market and you're getting all this like well meaning
advice from people
who hadn't been on the market in 20-25 years
—
and it was a very
different market
—
and
y
ou're just emerging into this space where you're realizing how
little professionalization you have, or what gaps there are and and, and you're trying to
apply, and you have all this
a
dvice that isn't helpful, and I often wonder how much of
that we do to students all the time, right?
Like you know, I remember it, you know when I was teaching composition full time and
f
eeling like this total fraud there was this component of the course that I had inherited
and it was like talk about, you know composition as a job
-
ready skill
,
and I was like
,
okay
, well before this job I sold pet food.
Nobody ever asked me to write anything, sold
sweaters, nobody
ever asked me for
anything.
I sold books and even there nobody ever
asked me to write anything right
?
I don't know what I can say
a
bout composition as a
job
-w
riting skill.
I didn't have any sort of frame of reference or conversation for that.
I didn’t, either. While I was an undergrad, I worked in local theme parks and later for the
local Apple Store. I didn’t write anything in either of those positions. After I got my
bachelor’s, I went right into teaching high school. And really, I didn’t write things there that
today’s composition classes teach students to write. This is straying from the topic of this
episode, but I suspect many writing classes are designed for imagined students whose futures
look much, much different from the futures many of our students today will actually face. I
think social class and broad access to education have a lot to do with this misalignment, as
does the changing nature of professionalization in the modern economic system.
But like I said, that’s a conversation for another day. For now, let’s return to my conversation
with Brenna, which
we
knew had to be taken in context.
Chris:
how do we maintain a sense of
h
ope when we live in 2020. I mean I'm sorry 2022 in
North America
…
Brenna: Huh, it's amazing that like you only emailed me last week, and since that e-mail like
things got worse.
It's not even this whole week
s
ince we booked this call
, a
nd I was
thinking
, W
e are the
Monday after the Roe V Wade being overturned.
And it's like
,
w
e're gonna talk about how
…
How I'm gonna do that?
Chris: yeah.
Brenna:
I
t's hard
.
L
ike
,
it's super hard.
I mean it has been a hard year for me both
professionally and personally as it has been for so so many everyone I think.
A
nd
I've
been wrestling with this for a while.
You emailed me after an episode came out where I talked about an interview I did
with Naomi Hodgson, who's one of the Co authors of
Manifesto for a Post-Critical
Pedagogy
.
And in that she talks about this idea or the the collective talks about this idea of
hope,
sort of as a separate notion from optimism, and so they're drawing this distinction
between like the potential of optimism
t
o be cruel
,
i
n Lauren Berlant
’s
thinking
,
versus the necessity of hope.
And they frame it in
t
his way of
like a
hope in the present.
So it's like it's not about a
hope that is
, t
hings will get better, which you know it's wild to think about.
I recorded that interview about this time last year.
And I'm speaking to you from
Kamloops, BC in the interior of British Columbia
,
Tk'emlúps te Secwe
̓
pemc territory
which was on fi re at that time.
I was having this interview and so.
Chris: You mean literally like a blaze?
Brenna: Oh, I mean literally yes.
The town of Lytton BC is gone. It was here on June
29th of 2021 and by Jan by July 2nd or third it was gone. And those that that that
experience of living through wildfi re. It was very my fi rst experience of that.
New to this region.
Already had me in this headspace of like
, y
ou know, I'm already
prepping a a faculty population for a kind of resilient pedagogy.
I hate the word
“r
esilient
.”
[snip]
Brenna:
What actually bothers me about resilience discourse is when the power is
asymmetrical
. S
o you know I don't want the university president to thank me for my
resilience.
I want him to staff all the units effectively so that they don't need to
continue mining the depths of their capacity
f
or resilience.
That said, I prefer feeling resilient to feeling not resilient, right?
And so when I when I talk about resilience, what I'm talking about is helping faculty to
feel like
t
hey are prepared and ready for any eventuality, any eventuality.
But you know what I mean, like
, i
f the highway to Vancouver closes due to a flood like
it did last November, is your pedagogy resilient enough that you can meet students
where they're at that week when they can't make it to campus on account of the
highway washed away, right?
And we live in a part of the world where we see more of that than lots of other parts
as well
, i
n a North American
c
ontext anyway, I think here in the interior of British
Columbia.
We are in many ways on the frontlines of climate disaster
, i
mpacting us in a
way that probably other than the Arctic or coastal regions
, w
e don't see.
I want a pedagogy that is resilient in those circumstances that could be flexible
enough so that students can be safe rather than being on campus as the be all and end
all.
And ultimately I think that that is humane.
I think that resilience isn't humane when
it's get the work done, no matter what, right?
Which is
, h
onestly I think how senior
administrators have trained themselves to see resilience, right?
We are resilient if we
maintain our FTE rates in the face of a global
p
andemic
. W
e are resilient if we don't
have to close any departments this year, right?
Those are resilience is business as usual is resilient
i
f you're the person managing the
pursestrings.
Chris: Yeah, resilience from that perspective involves bouncing back through the same point
from which you originated, which ignores the existence of everything that happened in
between that caused you to fall
i
n the fi rst place, yes.
Is then dishonest?
Brenna: Which is, to me, resilient pedagogy is not any of that resilient
p
edagogy is a pedagogy
—a
nd I guess really, I mean, I think maybe I tend to have mushy thinking around labels.
I will confess to that and I think in many ways when I say resilient pedagogy, I'm really
thinking about a kind of a trauma informed pedagogy.
I'm thinking about a pedagogy that recognizes the particular moment that students are
in, and that faculty are in, and that sees us as sort of in
i
t together right and so
I think
that ultimately
, a
pedagogy that is resilient is one that recognizes like oh, you know
,
t
here
’
s a
o
ne
-
in
-
a
-hundred-
year snowstorm and maybe the exam doesn't need to
happen today right?
Whereas everything that we are trained for in particularly post secondary's like this
show
m
ust go on mentality
.
L
ike well, I hiked myself to school and there's no reason
why anybody else couldn
’
t.
Yeah, less like an educational mantra than like hazing you
know?
And I think that.
A truly resilient pedagogy is humaneness at its core because it's
recognizing that people are individuals in individual circumstances that we have
shared circumstances.
But you know, we're not all experiencing them in the same way and having empathy
for that and having
c
ourse policies and of course structure that is not so rigid that only
one kind of student can fi t right, but instead
,
the most resilient structures are flexible
ones, right? We read resilience
as
this kind of rigid thing like it's going to stand there
for 1000 years no matter what.
When really like
a
skyscraper that is resilient is one that like moves in the wind, which
it's freaky to watch, but it's true.
Chris: It has to.
Brenna: It has to
, right.
Things that are things that are hardened and brittle are not resilient,
and so maybe what we really need to do is embrace.
Flexibility embrace the flexibility that allows us to be resilient and think of resilience
less
a
s
“
I showed up to work every single day no matter what.
”
And more like
“
I still
actually feel fulfi lled and self actualized in my career two years into a pandemic.
” (I
f
there's anybody who's experiencing that
, please
let me
k
now
.) B
ut that would
b
e an
experience of resilience, right?
Not just the fact that I just keep reporting to to my offi ce and and become
increasingly dead inside.
It's not resilient.
Chris: OK, so.
[I’m gonna go all “writing teacher” on you.] E
very time you were talking
negatively about it, you used the word
resilien
t
.
Every time you were saying this
actually might work, you use the word
resilien
ce
.
Brenna:
Oh,
I hate when people have English degrees at me.
Chris: So sorry.
Brenna: It's
my
superpower.
You can't do that
to
me.
That's what I
d
o to others.
Chris:
Bwahahahahaaa!
And I think that resilient is an expectation
.
I
’
m going to stick with that whole bouncing
back thing 'cause that that still seems to apply in my brain and resilience is almost an
orientation.
It's a self concept of
, “
I will fi nd a way to hold onto what's important to
me and adapt
.”
W
hereas being resilient is in your words, that being brittle and
inflexible, which just means I'm going to stand fi rm and not change.
Gosh darn it because I'm resilient
,
which is different from I'm going to exhibit
r
esilience and I'm going to flow around and with and all.
A pedagogy that can
withstand or be flexible around
t
rauma right?
O
kay
, now you've just given me
l
ots to
think about.
Thanks for that.
Speaking of things to think about, let’s talk about how Brenna’s department works and the
perspective she gains by being a learning technologist, not limited to being in a classroom.
From her vantage point, she gets to see how faculty, students, and administration each reacts
differently to changes in technology…or protocols…or policies. I wanted to learn more about
what she’s discovered from that unique vantage point.
Chris:
OK, so you work within a support department which which tells me that you see things
through various lenses almost constantly, so you see the effect that policies
,
that
constructs
,
have on students.
You see the way faculty struggle with technology.
You
see the way faculty are trying to roll things out via technology and then you see the
way that your department is trying to support.
Sort everyone on campus
simultaneously
—heaven
help you.
So how does how does hope get expressed differently from these different
perspectives, or through these different lenses?
Something tells me you probably have
noticed.
Brenna: Yeah, it's
a
great question.
You know it's it's really fascinating.
I was I transitioned from full-time classroom instruction to faculty support seven
months before the pandemic hit
.
N
ew institution, new r
o
le,
and in many ways very
much what I would describe as a Unicorn kind of job.
The way we structure faculty support at Thompson Rivers is a little bit different than
in most places
. So t
he folks at our teaching and Learning Center and I am in our
learning design and innovation team so instructional designers, educational
technologists, we're all tenure track faculty, employees of the university.
Chris: F
ascinating.
Brenna: Totally.
It makes for a really interesting dynamic because
w
e see a lot
, a
nd we
are in a position to critique
a
lot, which is probably where my big mouth
c
omes from
.
T
hat
’
s
u
ntrue, I had it before I got here.
A
s part of the beginning of the pandemic, we've always had offi ce hours typically run
by my colleague in
T
he
B
efore
T
ime
™
.
They could drop by her offi ce
, s
he could help
them get things sorted out, worked out really well.
Jamie Drozda
if you're listening is
a fantastic learning technologist and really great with that kind of hands on
w
ork with
faculty.
And then the pandemic hit.
We moved everything virtual.
And we started having daily
drop in sessions for any kind of question.
A
nd this was at a time when
t
here was no
more on
-
campus engagement and many resources on campus had not yet fi gured out
how they were going to transition online.
And so, like
,
we were kind of it in
t
erms of a
place people could come
t
o ask questions and sometimes just a place people could
come to just flail and freak out a little bit and panic.
And I had this one great interaction with one of my colleagues.
You know, like she was,
she was just flustered.
She just needed to talk about what she was planning to do in
her.
And at the end of the call, she said, I always feel so much better after I talk to
you guys.
And I was like cool
, okay, bye.
A
nd then I got
off
the call and I was like
, o
h, that's why I'm burnt out actually because
I'm just absorbing right?
As a team we were just absorbing all the anxieties of campus
and in many cases
f
or students as well
. W
e were answering calls from students that
whole time as well, and so it was just like this
weird kind of almost therapeutic
relationship that was beginning to emerge.
I mean that was good for a lot of reasons.
It gave us a tremendous position of trust for when we started to roll out over the
summer.
We did like this digital teaching summer camp and for a lot of people practices were
brand brand new, but there was a sense of sort of trust and confi dence in us as a team
and and our care
. L
ike
,
we had we had demonstrated
c
are through the initial
emergency period.
Chris: Which doesn't often come from a department of, you know, teaching and learning
support.
Brenna: No, and particularly not from technology support, right?
A
s a team
, w
e had
established this good rapport with the campus community and also amongst ourselves
had really taken seriously a care
-
centered approach forward.
So from day one our advice was, you know like strip strip everything back.
Anything
that's not a learning outcome.
Strip it back and reduce the number of assessments and
you know.
Consider re
-
weighting your course and have they learned enough to be done
now in March
?
Like for example, right?
Those kinds of things really sort of centering student well
-
being fi rst and foremost and
faculty came with us on that journey largely because I believe they they trusted us
and because we were for many effects in the face of
s
upport in any context, right?
But it also meant that we were having really frank conversations all the time with
p
eople in all kinds of different roles at the institution, so we knew really clearly like
where people didn't understand policy where ideas were being miscommunicated.
Where
,
you know
,
a particular language quirk of a senior administrator had been sort
of accepted as
t
his kind of directive, when it had not
b
een intended that way.
And we kind of
g
ot all of this information which helped us to really
shape and frame
our programming and the way we talk to people
. B
ut it also meant that
our offi ce had
this special unique perspective on how to
a
ddress those concerns so that people could
go into that fi rst September of the pandemic
with something that felt like hope.
It's like we knew where the insecurities lay.
We knew where the fault lines were
emerging.
We could patch the ones try to patch the ones that we could, but also we
could just speak honestly about them, right?
And that is one reason why I think
p
utting people in my kind of job
, i
nsecure tenure
track faculty rules
, o
r at least secure faculty limited
-
term contracts
, b
ut having that
that piece, I think the tenure piece is really important.
But it's the academic freedom piece, right?
It means that the person can say
, “
Yeah, I
can see how that policy is not working right now, and here's what we're suggesting as a
work around,
”
but being able to say like,
“
yeah, it sucks that you haven't heard from
,
y
ou know
,
such
-
and
-
such a responsible administrator
,
like that
sucks.
I'm sorry that
that's happening to you,
”
and being able to address that really, frankly and honestly.
Having that space of critique as part of the space of support, I think that's really
important and I think it gets missed
a
lot of the time because
o
ftentimes, the folks
who are in the support roles
, t
heir employment is not secure
,
or they are not
unionized
,
or they are not protected by institutional academic
-
freedom policies
, o
r
they are in administrative positions and thus don't feel free to speak about
administrative decisions.
And all of that makes it really hard when a crisis hits and people just want someone to
say, yeah, this sucks.
No one is handling this well.
The fact that you got up this
morning and are breathing is great.
Let's keep doing that.
Which is not something that you can necessarily say, depending on your institutional
position and your sense of security, right?
So I I'm mindful when I talk about this stuff that I I have a lot of structural privilege
that goes into the way I approach this work that makes it unique from you know, my
willingness to talk openly abou
t
things like surveillance technologies or all the other
kinds of things that I think are so destructive that happened during the pandemic is
very much a an artifact of the privilege that I have in this position.
But I also think
,
you know
,
to tie back to that
honesty piece we were talking about
before and kindness
,
I don't think you can give people
…
Actually, huh
.
I'm thinking as I talk, this happens on my show all the time.
Maybe that's the line between hope and a kind of cruel optimism, because if you can't
be honest with people if you have to sell like a particular version of the narrative.
And
that's the optimism that you're offering.
I mean, it's going to be by defi nition, cruel
i
f
it's not honest, right?
Whereas if we can approach it with honesty and clarity and transparency open as in
hearts, I think that that's when we have a chance to dig out this idea of hope instead,
and I feel like our faculty went into that fi rst fall semester with hope that was
meaningful
, t
hat was circumscribed
b
y the context that we've had really honest
conversations about what to expect in the classroom.
But that is
r
eally hard to do.
It's really hard to do.
Because I think oftentimes rightly so
folks want to come to a teaching and Learning Center and feel like they're getting a
solution to a problem that they have.
And I don't think I provide a lot of solutions, so
that's I'm putting it together.
I take your portfolio
tenure and
promotion portfolio, I
’
m
n
ot going to put
t
hat in
:
“
Bren
n
a doesn't provide a lot of solutions.
”
But I think that.
Chris: She's hopeful, and that counts for something.
Brenna: Super
-
hopeful about her non
-
solutions.
But I guess what I mean is
,
I used to go to the
T
eaching and Learning Center before it
closed at my old institution
it closed like 8 months after I was hired in the fi rst place.
I worked so it didn't last long, but like I used to go
and get some great worksheets and
then get some great ideas
,
but it always felt like
, t
his is a solution I was being handed
to a specifi c problem that I had
:
My problem is attendance.
Here's a list of ways to
improve attendance in my class.
Rather than
a
n opening of conversation.
Like nobody ever said to me, why do you care
about attendance which would have been a question that would have unlocked a lot
for me, because that was one of those things.
You know
,
I talked to John Warner for for another project I'm working on
,
and he has
this question.
The folklore notion, right?
Like
,
question the folklore that you're handed
from the people who taught your courses before you, and I that took me like
fi ve y
ears
to
fi
gure out that I didn't have to just do everything
t
hat had been done.
And I think that messy conversations would have been more conducive to improving my
teaching and learning skills.
[snip]
Chris:
And talking about your position of privilege
and
the way that that works within your
your department and all of that, it made me realize that you're saying that your tech
team is actually presenting technology and technological solutions within the
classroom as educators would.
You're not saying, here's the
a
nswer
k
ey
. Y
ou
’
re saying
, h
ere's another idea that could
complicate your thinking.
Now let's talk through this and see what effect this new
twist has on the assumptions that we had when we walked
in.
Which is what is
supposed to be going on in our classrooms.
Students don't come to us for us to tell them the answer.
Well, I mean,
[break]
I
’
m going to say it anyway.
Students don't come to us expecting
…
Brenna: Now
who’s
got cruel optimism
?
Chris: All right, guilty.
T
he connection that I was trying to make was that your department is approaching
educational technology as educators, saying here are other ways to complicate your
thinking and here are ways to to enrich your understanding of the problem at hand,
not to give you the solution.
To tell you what's supposed to work in this situation, but
instead to help you think through your own rationale for reaching your own conclusion.
And that just that sounds so delightful, not only from your perspective of how to offer,
because that
s
ounds like fun.
Brenna: It is fun.
Chris: If, if offering technology to a faculty member is just initiating a conversation and
helping make people think through things in my classes, the way I always say it is to
make their brain
melt.
Start by making them think too much about something that just
sounds great, and as a faculty member coming to you, if I know that you're not going
to say
, h
ere's a solution
. T
his will work, and if it doesn't,
“
that
’
s clearly my problem
” i
s
the implied statement that was that always follows that
.
I
nstead of providing
solutions, you're going to provide suggestions for thinking through things and allowing
me to reach the conclusion on my own.
I'm all for
t
hat
. T
hat sounds lovely.
Brenna: You know it.
It is, and when you describe it, it's fun.
It is fun.
It it's, you know,
pandemic, notwithstanding, it has been a really good fi t for me.
I came out of
w
hat
I've described elsewhere
as a
“
not great fi t
”
in an English department where I loved
my students and loved the courses and had some really colleagues
I was very close
with and missed, but the general culture of the department was not a great fi t for me.
Professionally come to this role where I I do get to mostly approach my work
w
ith a
spirit of play, which is great, it comes from leadership.
Our director, the director of our unit is Brian Lamb
, w
ho's you know, an open guy from
way back and who really respects the faculty roles within the unit and their ability to
sort of explore the work however they want.
And it you know, I get as grumbly about my job as anyone does, and I worked too hard
for for all the wrong reasons, right during the pandemic like I describe it as our team
holding the university together with paperclips and bubble gum
, m
uch of the time it
felt like.
But but day to day, you know
,
I'm reminded of it all the time I I when
I talk about you
got this with people
, w
ith these conversations
,
and I don
’
t
e
ven know how to.
People
say to me like wow, like how did you get permission to
d
o that podcast
?
So I was like
,
I
really never asked anyone.
I just started doing it.
I
mean, it
never crossed my mind.
I said to Brian
,
I think we should have podcasts
,
and he
w
as like
,
that sounds rad
, so
t
hen I just did it.
And you know, people ask like people ask if our marketing
department has to like give clearance or if I have to get it signed off on by anybody.
I mean chance would be a fi ne thing I am fi nishing editing those episodes like 20
seconds before they get uploaded
,
so
,
you know
,
good luck.
Good luck with fi nal cut,
but all this to say I think
t
hat it really does.
It does make
a
ll the difference in the
world to have a learning tech team that is led by someone with a lot of credibility in
the learning technology space.
In the critical learning technology space, and someone who has a record of going on
the record, having hard conversations about all kinds of you know technology.
And the
institution and adopted all that stuff because that trickles through to the the
expectations that are on the team and it's one of those things you know.
Oftentimes, learning technology teams are housed within IT services where they get
kind of they that the teaching and learning part is is often stripped away or they get
housed within teaching and learning centers where that core necessity to have a
strong technology understanding and capacity for critique gets stripped away.
Right, and that's not the case everywhere.
And there are people doing wonderful work at all sorts of institutions, but I think,
structurally
, b
e
ing
a learning technology team led by learning technology is a really
good and extremely rare thing.
And you infuse
t
hat with the spirit of academic
freedom and you
’
ve
g
ot probably a lot of headaches for administrators.
I really feel bad for Brian
.
Like 40
%
o
f the time when I'm out doing
s
tuff
.
B
ut only 40
%
.
Chris: Here's another thing he gets to deal with, yeah?
Brenna: We used to have this slogan around the offi ce and I was supposed to try to do nothing
“a
ctionable
”
today
.
L
ike
,
nothing
s
omebody was going to take legal action against me
anyway.
But yeah, no, I do think that's really important and it speaks to a particular
way of structuring learning technology as a teaching and learning piece, but as
something
p
erhaps a little bit different than the way teaching and learning centers
tend to run, as that I think that that understanding of the technology is really central
.
A
nd you know
, w
e've got that old adage that comes into technology or fettled adage
that comes out of teaching and learning centers, right?
Like the technology should
never come before the pedagogy, and it's always already untrue, right?
Bec
ause
if I walk into a classroom and there's no whiteboard, that's a technology.
And
immediately my pedagogy shifts
,
right?
Because I was planning to write all over that
thing and now I can
’
t.
If I walk into a classroom and everybody probably had this
experience where
, i
nexplicably
,
none of the students have anything
t
o like write down
t
hings with
,
it's like
,
o
h well, this is
g
oing to change the classroom dynamic entirely.
Brenna: You know, in Tim Fonts has theorized this a bit.
This notion of entangled pedagogy
like that the technology and the pedagogy are always in conversation with each other.
And when you try to exclude one or the other from it, you are going to come unstuck,
right?
And I think when we look at the technology without the pedagogy, we make
wildly unethical choices.
But when we look at
the pedagogy without
t
he technology
,
we make choices that don't
necessarily actually work in the real world.
For faculty, you've got to be able to tell
people how to operationalize your wacky ideas, right?
So if you can't have that conversation on like a nuts and bolts, these are the buttons
you push level you can't get to that next step
o
f like
,
what does implementation look
like and is this working for you
be
cause
w
hy would they trust you to come back and
when they've you know when something hasn't worked.
Yeah, well you didn't ask for that either, but
t
hose are my
t
houghts on learning
technology and their place in the institutions.
[snip]
Brenna: Uhm, but you know, if your institution is lucky enough to still have learning
technologists, I really think that we are in a moment where the value of folks who
understand the technology but also understand good teaching and learning practice.
Ed-t
ech has made so much money off this pandemic and they will only continue to
,
and we need people in place in our institutions who can ask critical questions from the
perspective of teachers and learners.
And you know your institution needs learning technologists.
And those learning
technologists need enough autonomy and security to be able to be critical voices at
the procurement stage at the implementation stage.
Without that
, w
e don't see it a
chance in terms of maintaining a kind of independence over our education.
You know, we know that every learning technology choice we make makes choices for
us about our classroom, right?
W
e're circumscribed by the learning management
system or the video conference tool
o
r whatever.
And those choices need to be made
w
ith people who can ask the critical questions, and if there's nobody doing that at your
institution, I think it's a good idea
t
o ask why
.
There again we see the importance of being honest—of asking honest questions, of giving
honest feedback, of making honest decisions that account for the needs of students and
faculty, and of holding ourselves to account for the consequences of those decisions.
Brenna: I
f we think back to the 2nd September
[of the pandemic]
, which for many
campuses was a return to in person instruction
, h
ow interesting would it have been to
hear someone say
, “H
ey listen in our case, the province super pressuring us to go back
so we're going to do it, but we get that it's going to be hard and we're leaving some
people behind.
So here are some strategies for addressing that
.”
I
nstead it was
, “
Is
everyone so happy with the return to normal and it's great for everyone and everyone
having the same positive experience and yay.
”
It's that there may be people for whom that was a comforting message, but I have not
met any of them because even faculty who were eager to get back to face to face
instruction
—
of which there were and are many
—e
ven those people who were super
enthusiastic about it had a lot of questions
,
right
?
What do I do if a student gets sick?
How do I handle absences?
Do I need to get medical notes when we are in
a
pandemic
?
And there were all these things that were, you know, I want to reach students when
they don't come into class
. And
the offi cial line
a
t most institutions, was, well, we've
gone back face to face, so you
d
on't have to do
t
hat
.
E
xcept that I care about
a
nd like
my students
,
and I don
’
t
w
ant to punish them and also I want to encourage them to
stay home if they're sick
.
S
o
n
ow I'm coming up
w
ith a solution on my own, instead of having a university
president say,
“W
ow, this year is going to be messy.
Here are some of my thoughts
about what's coming down the pipe.
I know that this isn't going
t
o be great for
everybody
.
Why don't we talk collectively about how to best accommodate?
”
I didn't see any of that.
And that's exactly you're exactly getting
a
t.
The thing which is
that if you don't name the problem
, t
hen any solution you offer is going to be
inauthentic and unhelpful and like so much zoom yoga.
Chris: Yeah like Yep, love that.
Brenna: Yeah, like I need another mindfulness webinar like I need an extra hole in my head.
Chris: Amen. Let’s have fewer mindfulness webinars and more honesty in the way we plan
for, and respond to, changing situations. We need to engage with one another, with
our colleagues, with our students, and with ourselves—not with cruel optimism, but
with honest hope. We should complicate and challenge our thinking about the
folklore of our work and create opportunities for re-thinking the status quo, for
building responsive, flexible resilience, rather than becoming brittle and resilient.
See if you can develop a sense of hope by grounding yourself in the present, working
to build more empathy into the here-and-now.
You've been hearing Teacher of the Ear. Just because the show is over doesn't mean
the conversation ends. Everyone who contributed to this episode is accessible through
Twitter, and so is the show itself. Along those lines, @TeacherOfTheEar and
@chris_friend would like to thank @
brennacgray
(that’s @
b-r-e-n-
n
-a-c-g-r-a-y
) for
chatting with me on today's show.
Our
theme music
is by
Blue Dot Sessions
. This episode’s
cover art
is by
Aaron Burden
on
Unsplash
. The show is
hosted on
a
nchor.fm
, and you can subscribe wherever you get
your podcasts. The full catalog of episodes, including show notes and complete
transcripts, lives at hybridpedagogy.org/podcast. That’s hybridpedagogy.org/podcast.
So that’s it for this episode of
Teacher of the Ear
. I’m your host, Chris Friend, from
Kean University in Union, NJ. In our next episode, we’ll hear
Ann Gangé
warn us
about
the pedagogy of complicity
. Until then, let’s all keep our ears open for more ways to
empower educators and champion student agency.
Thanks for listening!
