Our classrooms are safe

While talking with participants, I began to see that my colleagues drew a similar discursive boundary around their classrooms, which served to separate the space inside their classrooms as distinct from the space outside their classrooms. When I left my own narrative (discussed above) out of the analysis, my reflexive understanding was “these white teachers” are using this boundary to justify their ignorance about interpersonal racism in our community:

Interpersonal racism. Um-- / Interpersonal racism. // So patterns of interpersonal racism. / It’s been interesting hearing the different committees on stage / Southeast Asian / the Black students / and how the-- I guess highlighting the / picking questions that students submitted. I guess it’s interesting that that would be my only real insight into this question / is just what they have kind of forwarded there. I guess still treating Black students as different // I guess one question came up like, “Is it okay if we touch her hair?” 

[...]

But in terms of what I directly observe I really don’t see much in the [classroom]. I spend a lot of time there / so I don’t really spend time in the student commons. (Frank 06:13, Phase One Interview, 05/22/2018)

Frank both acknowledges his ignorance and explains it -- that is, his “only real insight” is what has been “forwarded” by the students during community time presentations because he spends the vast majority of his time in his classroom. Michael (2015) refers to this as a “perfectly logical explanation,” which she asserts are “explanations that focus on individual intention or logististical circumstances while failing to acknowledge repeated patterns or racially inequitable impact” (p.31). The language of Frank’s response positions Frank as a would-be passive observer of racism as it implies the racialized/racist experiences shared with the community via the Black Affairs Club’s student panel are most likely to occur outside of classrooms in areas where students gather and are unsupervised by adults. 

Consistent with this discursive understanding of classroom space, other participants focused on the students in relation to their classrooms. When asked about patterns of interpersonal racism in our community, this participant responded:

I certainly don’t see patterns of [interpersonal racism]. And, again, I’m not saying it’s not there. But in those more public school room settings, these kids know how they’re supposed to act, what they’re supposed to say. And often, my impression is these are decent kids, and they’re not hiding anything or saying things that they wouldn’t-- acting in a way that they wouldn’t act in a more private setting. But maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know. (Robert 21:36, Phase One Interview, 06/11/18).

While Robert does not deny the occurrence of interpersonal racism outside the boundary of the “more public” classroom setting, his response suggests a “perfectly logical explanation” for his self-conscious ignorance. This is one of the ways we -- white educators -- navigate and negotiate conversations about race and racism in our community. By engaging the commonly accepted discursive boundary around a teacher’s classroom, we justify our limited knowledge about (read: responsibility for) the interpersonal dynamics between students. This discursive classroom boundary allows us to recognize and acknowledge the likely manifestations of racism in our community while simultaneously distancing ourselves from others we understand as “the perpetrators” of racism.

The idea of classrooms as simultaneously the domain of a teacher and a public performance space for students was consistent across the participants -- regardless of their content area. This signaled to me a distinct discourse community. To be clear, this discursive classroom boundary is not “right” or “wrong.” Consider this: do/should we as teachers act the same way we do in the classroom (at work) as we do outside of school with our friends and family? The expectation for teachers to maintain a boundary between their “private” lives and their classrooms is consistent with larger national conversations (Gee, 2014). Nevertheless, our ignorance about problematic dynamics between students seems reasonable since “common sense” suggests if our classrooms are public space -- as suggested by Robert’s response above -- it would be inappropriate for us, as teachers, to invade the private domain of our students. 

This boundary is not absolute; it is semi-permeable because it is okay for some “information” about our/their lives outside the classroom to cross into the domain of the classroom. And although the semi-permeable nature of the boundary changes overtime, this discursive boundary is one way we make sense of our role in the institution. This discursive understanding of our role as faculty is also reinforced by institutional policy, e.g., our new “social media policy” that prohibits students and teachers from becoming “friends” on Facebook (and other social media platforms) until either the teacher is no longer employed by the institution or one year after the student has graduated from the institution. 

At first I thought “these teachers” actively erected and maintained this discursive classroom boundary as a defense against being called a racist during conversations about race and racism. Now I understand it to be more productive to view the classroom as the discursively logical place for teachers to engage with students in this particular community. Through this discursive lens, the responses of the participants reveal the nuances of how they/we navigate and negotiate conversations about race and racism in our classrooms. When asked directly for an example to illustrate how the acts of interpersonal racism students share with him play out in his classroom, Cornelius responded,

Um / I don’t know // You know↑ / I really don't know // 

I mean / [audible sigh] [silent pause] I'm not sure // 

I don't necessarily see that playing out in↑ the everyday business of the classroom //

[...]

I’m very much focused on the text. I don’t do a lot of life talks. It’s just not my style. Some English teachers do. I don’t. I’m really a geek [laughter]. I want to do the thing.

[...]

Maybe I'm missing the sort of fine-grain stuff // 

(Cornelius 14:10, Phase One Interview, 06/12/18)

This participant’s response suggests that as long as the class stays focused primarily on the academic content -- “the everyday business of the classroom” -- the classroom is essentially free from racism. Cornelius’s concession that he may be “missing the sort of fine-grain stuff” is discursively similar to Robert’s “I’m not saying it’s not there” and Frank’s “I really don’t see much” as they all function to both frame the participant’s ignorance as reasonable and position these transgressions as something outside their primary responsibility as a teacher. The classification of the missed “stuff” as “fine-grain” additionally serves to minimize what goes unseen by Cornelius and suggests he understands this “stuff” as relatively benign when compared to overt acts of racism students might experience outside the classroom.

This way of negotiating conversations about potentially problematic/racist transgressions was also used when the transgression was acknowledged by the teacher. Consider this participant’s response to being asked directly if she has witnessed incidents of interpersonal racism between students:

I haven’t noticed. They’re on good behavior with me. I haven’t seen stuff that has struck me as intentionally racially insensitive and when I think of the unintentional racial insensitivity it would be just using the wrong language or-- yeah, it would be minor. (Alex 16:58, Phase One Interview, 05/30/18)

This response suggests Alex understands herself as both an observer and judge of student behavior in her classroom. “I haven’t noticed” and “I haven’t seen” are two phrases that position Alex as an observer. Between these two phrases sits the assertion that students are “on good behavior with me.” This suggests Alex is confident in her ability to both identify and protect against occurrences of interpersonal racism. If a racial transgression occurs, Alex’s response suggests she is confident in her ability to judge the intention of the transgressor. 

One factor contributing to the tension around “diversity” initiatives is that we see one of our (read: teachers’) primary responsibilities as maintaining a “safe” learning environment within the classroom boundary. The implication that racism and microaggressions consistently occur within the boundary of our classroom(s) would mean that we’re not doing our job. This assertion is then seen as an accusation/an attack on our identity as professionals and “good” people (DiAngelo & Sensoy, 2012). The implied message from these participants is consistent across disciplines: It is our job as teachers to keep the classroom academic/safe/neutral/civil. We know we are doing our job because we know our classrooms are safe. This participant spoke explicitly to the teacher’s responsibility to direct the conversation:

You have to be-- when you're talking about difficult issues, whether it's an advisor in the classroom, you have to steer the conversation. I am a believer that ultimately the teacher needs to direct the conversation because they're adolescents. And I can be child-centered, but you can't be too child-centered because they can take it in directions that are unfortunate [laughter]. (Emphasis added, Ralph 26:13, Phase One Interview, 04/27/18)

This participant’s assertion suggests when “difficult issues” enter the space, there’s a right way -- that is, the teacher needs to “steer the conversation” -- and a wrong way -- that is, allowing the students to “take it in directions that are unfortunate.” 

Nevertheless, there can be (and is) disagreement and debate within an academic setting. For example, this participant shares an example of a “very spirited conversation” he and his students had about whether or not Odysseus, the white male protagonist in The Odyssey, is a “good” person:

And in that debate, the people were passionate, and all sorts of great things were raised. Um, and and people were disagreeing. They were forced to find in the text, you know, examples that support tha-- and there was conflict. [SAM: Right.] For 50 minutes there was conflict in that class-- and, umm-- that was-- good. And I guess-- Can you build a community where there’s deep conflict? I don’t-- maybe I’m just-- maybe it’s just [SAM: Yeah, be we--] semantics now, but my goal is to get them to be-- [silent pause] debating with each other. [SAM: Right.] And out of that maybe it becomes a mutual respect, or something. (Robert 09:18, Phase Two Small Group 3, 10/17/18)

One underlying assumption suggested here is that positive things can come from an academic, text-based debate, e.g., “mutual respect.” This response also suggests Robert’s ideological dilemma: “Can you build a community where there’s deep conflict?” Read another way, this suggests Robert may be worried about his ability to keep the students “safe” -- something that is discursively understood as the role of a classroom teacher. However, the assumption that this “debate” was racially-neutral can be seen when Robert contrasts this experience with a hypothetical class discussion about race:

“And when you talk-- when, when, when it’s around an issue like race, it becomes much, much harder to do that. You don’t. Right? I don’t want them fighting about that in class.” (Robert 11:01, Phase Two Small Group 3, 10/17/18)

Here we can see how Robert’s language changes when he tries to make the distinction between a “heated” academic debate and conversations about race and identity. The language in his response(s) suggest an ideological dilemma. While there can be (and is) disagreement and debate in his classroom, the passion and potential for mutual respect are reduced to “fighting” when the conversation is “around an issue like race.” This suggests Robert understands the conversations about race as more volatile than what he understood as a racially neutral academic debate about a (white male) protagonist in a Canonical text. His response suggests talking about race creates an environment that he no longer considers safe -- that is, the conversation would likely devolve into students “fighting” in class. 

The assumption academic texts and content allow for students to engage on a level playing field in a racially neutral classroom was suggested by the responses of a number of participants. When I asked if he saw the curriculum as a barrier to class discussions about race and racism, this participant explained,

Well, it's a barrier in the sense that there's a thing and we're not just talking sort of about student's experiences, but it also provides a concrete kernel and an object that is not their experience. That we can talk about race in a way that doesn't have to put anyone in that position necessarily, right? So and that's one of the-- I'm very careful to not make it-- look to the black kids and be like, "Do you experience this now?" Right? (Participant M, Phase Two Booklet, p.6)

While the abstraction/disconnection is not absolute -- “we’re not just talking sort of about student’s experiences” -- the language used here positions the teacher as the protector of students: “That we can talk about race in a kind of way that doesn’t have to put anyone in that position necessarily.” This suggests the participant believes that it is possible to keep our classrooms (read: students) safe by intentionally framing conversations about race and racism as text-based abstractions of their experience with racism in the world outside of the classroom.

While the nuances of each participant’s teaching styles and classroom management techniques differed, their responses suggested each participant believed there existed a “right” way to approach teaching in their particular discipline. During a small group conversation about the problematic aspects of our institution’s hiring process, Cornelius asserted,

But we want an approach. We want to have this / and there is this unspoken sense of shared mission and shared expectation and everything else, right? Which makes it really easy to do our jobs / because we all basically want the same thing and we do it in the same way and we're looking for the- we're sort of / you know, communally / bound in that respect. But how much space for genuine, substantive difference in a way that would be sort of be bubble puncturing for our students does that allow? Not a tremendous amount. (Emphasis added, Cornelius 20:32, Phase Two Small Group 6, 10/26/18).

This response offers further evidence to support understanding participant responses through a discursive lens: There are certain rules and practices that are associated with being a teacher at this predominantly white independent school. As long as the teacher does not stray too far from our socially sanctioned practices, the classroom can also be a place of relative safety for the teacher. Consider the following from another participant:

In my discipline, each teacher exercises a good deal of autonomy and when we do something unusual that jeopardizes that autonomy-- it’s like we all have to now do the same thing. I could lose my autonomy, if that makes sense. (Sam 47:23, Phase One Interview, 05/29/18)

As this response suggests, as long as the community considers us to be acting “appropriately,” we understand our classrooms as our domain and our primary responsibility. That said, many of the participants shared the concern suggested by the response above -- that is, we don’t want to do anything that “jeopardizes [our] autonomy” by doing “something unusual.” This is consistent with other participant responses that suggested we (as faculty) have limited control within this elite, predominantly white independent school. 

Many participants attributed their feelings of vulnerability to their position in a political (read: power) hierarchy. One expressed concern was the administration seemed unable to protect the academic integrity of the institution (read: teachers) from extremely wealthy families. One participant explained that sometimes it feels like we are working at #DowntonAbbey: the administration are the “upstairs help” and the teachers are down in the basement doing all the grunt work (Alice 14:10, Phase One Interview, 06/14/18). Another participant spoke candidly about how he experienced his relative privilege within this community and suggested “a couple extra letters” after your name -- that is, Ph.D. -- acted as a buffer between faculty members who had earned their doctorates and families who felt entitled to question the expertise/effectiveness of a teacher and/or leverage their social capital to insist that teachers make special accommodations for their children (Mark 21:32, Phase Two Small Group 6, 10/26/18). As someone who earned a doctorate, Mark explained he believed families were under the impression that he is of a certain “pedigree” even though he self-identified as someone who grew up poor and was the first in his family to go to college. 

“I am doing my best.” >>>