Now is the Time to Be Brave: Pedagogy for a World in Transition
For many of us, the last 18 months have been a time of transition and turmoil as we have faced a global pandemic, a growing climate emergency, increased racial violence, and the impacts of historical and ongoing colonization (to name just a few of the issues that have arisen in 2020-21). As a university community we have pivoted online, worked hard to care for students and each other, and implemented frameworks, Task Forces, committees, and projects to address historical and ongoing injustice and imagine new ways of teaching, researching, and engaging with community. This work is ongoing, and as we enter the 2021-2022 academic year, so much feels tenuous and uncertain to me. It’s hard to imagine what this year will hold, and what everything — our classrooms institutions, societies, and environment — will look like in another 12 months.
But despite my considerable trepidation, I also find myself feeling resolute, and I know I’m not alone. Many of us pushed ourselves into new and uncomfortable places over the last year, taking on new roles, adopting new practices, and committing ourselves to difficult and uncomfortable work to make change. Watching my students and colleagues build better, more just worlds as our current world faces so many challenges has been the great joy of the last 18 months, and I’ve been in awe of small acts of courage and kindness. As I plan my courses and think about my work this coming year, I find myself reflecting on those acts and reminding myself again and again: “now is the time to be brave.”
For me, pedagogical bravery means being willing to be let go of my ego and embrace discomfort by learning and unlearning, decentring myself, and re-thinking and re-designing when something isn’t working. It means committing to inclusion and justice in my classes and preparing myself so that I can ethically and knowledgeably talk to my students about difficult topics as they arise: climate grief, genocide, racism. It means re-imagining what my classroom could be and inviting my students to experiment with me via an assignment or approach. It means pursuing Jessica Zeller’s vision of a “vital pedagogy” that “is impassioned and joyous and nerdy. It refuses to measure what is not legitimately measurable. It does not make objects from subjects. It pushes back against any policy that seeks to silence, falsify, or diminish. Failure is critical, as is self-reflection; it loves these processes—it thrives on them.”
Fundamentally re-imagining how I teach has not been an easy process. It is labour-intensive, and it stretches me emotionally and mentally. For that reason, whenever I talk with other faculty about making changes I advocate for small steps. Bravery is important, but we’re only human after all. I also recommend seeking out tools and community as support, and looking for spaces of alignment and overlap. For example, as I’ve thought about anti-oppressive teaching, I’ve noted that self-reflection, transparent communication, a commitment to using the right terminology, and the inclusion of diverse voices, methodologies, and perspectives feature strongly in Critical, Anti-Racist, LGBTQ2S+, and Decolonial pedagogies. Similarly, when I’ve thought about ways to encourage greater engagement among diverse learners, I discovered that Open Pedagogy, Universal Design for Learning, and Appreciative Inquiry all promote offering information in different (and sometimes multimodal) ways, providing assignment options so that students can share knowledge in ways that are meaningful to them, and encouraging self-reflection. For me, bravery has meant exploration; it has encouraged me to think less about fidelity to particular methodologies and frameworks and more about the messy spaces of interaction. It has invited me to focus less on critique and more on ways to make things work.
Thinking about bravery has also made me more willing to fail. Some of the approaches I’ve adopted in the last year have been dismal failures, and others have been surprisingly successful. I’ve been trying to accept both in equal measure, and recognize them as part of the process. I often remind myself of the stakes when I take on something new. If it goes wrong, will I harm someone? Sometimes, the answer is yes, because I might not know enough to be an ethical and informed educator and facilitator. In that case, I try to step back or seek out someone with greater expertise. But more often than not, the answer is no; if something goes wrong, it might result in a slight delay, a shifted deadline, a call to IT, or a need to introduce a new resource. I can live with these failures, and I’ve been gratified to receive compassion and encouragement from students and colleagues when I’ve had to suddenly make a change or correction due to a technological glitch, miscalculation, or oversight. Sometimes talking through these failures has led to stronger relationships and collaborative problem-solving, or to discovering a new tool. Bravery doesn’t mean doing it all alone, and as Appreciative Inquiry, Critical Pedagogy, and Reflective Practice remind us, failure and self-reflection are key to learning.
When I think about ways to be braver, more engaged, and more just I find myself increasingly motivated and less anxious. I start seeing spaces of opportunity; I’m more willing to take on challenges because they have purpose. We are all being forced to transform, so my hope is that we can transform in ways that centre care and justice, that foster creativity, and that invite a greater sense of responsibility to each other and our world. If that is the future we want in our classrooms, institutions, and societies, now is the time to be brave.
Jennifer Hardwick
Jen is passionate about ensuring access and supports for learners who face barriers. She has spent the last 15 years teaching diverse students in large lecture halls, small seminars, academic bridging programs, Writing/Learning Centres, online environments, and co-curricular and community programs She loves to problem solve and work collaboratively, and is keen to provide resources and supports to faculty as they adopt and practice Universal Design for Learning (UDL). She also welcomes conversations and consultations about intersecting fields such critical, digital, open, and decolonial pedagogies.
