What comes to mind when you hear the word student? I asked my pre-service teacher education students taking my course in Culturally Responsive Sustaining Education (CR-S) at Long Island University Post in New York. Menti-meter recorded that the most frequently used word, by my students, was learner. This question was asked at the backdrop of their learning journal assignment in which they wrote about “How I move through the world”. Teaching should begin with self-knowledge, and I wanted my students to begin the process of thinking deeply about the experiences and beliefs that shape how they show up in the world. Their values, beliefs, experiences, and assumptions will guide their teaching behaviors (Owens, & Ennis, 2005).
My students trusted me by sharing deeply personal experiences. I felt honored. They shared stories of joy and struggle. These stories beautifully and powerfully captured the intersectionality of their immigrant or dominant culture experience, gender, sexuality, religion, or non-religion. The stories brought me closer to them and allowed me to tailor my instructional practices for each student. My students’ stories not only changed my personal interaction with each student, but they also reframed my thinking regarding the way I describe students. When I recognized my shift in thinking I wanted to know if my students defined themselves in similar ways.
As I grappled with their stories, I initially thought, “my students put on masks to come to class”. But this analysis felt hallow. So, I reread their papers looking for more a meaningful connection. My aha moment came, when I realized, my students, as Theodore Roosevelt said, were “showing up in the arena”. In his famous speech, Roosevelt voiced,
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”
Showing up in the arena is an act of courage. My students are not wearing masks. My students are wearing courage. The act of learning requires courage.
Some students are courageously stepping into the academic arena wearing visible and invisible tattoos of emotional and physical wounds – heartbreaks and disappointments. Some are courageously stepping into our academic arenas “dancing and twirling” as one student wrote under crushing academic and professional workloads. Yet, others step into the academic arena courageously displaying attitudes, we educators sometimes label as offensive, hoping to cover their wounds and insecurities or to defend their presence in our world. Some students courageously enter the academic arena as recent immigrants navigating a new language and culture trying to assimilate just enough to gain access into structures of power without erasing their cultural heritage.
Some students sit quietly courageous in our classes unsure of their future, gifts, and abilities. Still others come courageously, even when we have been anything but kind, hoping to learn something from us and move forward. Some sit courageously having previously failed our subjects or grade level afraid they will fail again. Others come courageously to the arena after decades of being outside a classroom, humbly learning with others the same age as their own children. Some students have shown up courageously in the academic arena after the traumatic life changing experience of mass school shootings. Since 2020, worldwide, students have been courageously showing up in the academic arena during the trauma of the Covid19 pandemic.
Yet, our discussions of students are often limited to student engagement and learning losses – conversations of what they don’t know and need to know. Our students know courage and engagement, but perhaps we define these terms differently. I advocate that, Learner = Courage. If we fail to recognize the various shades of courage our students wear, we are in danger of dehumanizing them and education (Brown, 2012). We silence the courageous effort it takes to enter the threshold of our institutions.
Increasingly we seem to be seeing students as human capital who we are equipping with the knowledge to become productive workers on an academic to work assembly line. Character development as a primary function of education is being replaced with economic development. Brene Brown in her book Daring Greatly reminds us “what we know matters, but who we are matters more”. Our students are courageous. Courage matters.
Attendance is more than the legal obligation of checking names on a roster. Instead, attendance, is an act of courage – “showing up in the arena”. What if we, educators, view students’ presence through the language and lens of courage and resiliency? Can this mental shift propel us towards the humanizing act of thanking our students for showing up, hanging out and learning with us, while affirming the efforts they make? Can this mental shift help us “develop an attitude of accessibility, responsiveness, and flexibility based on a desire to meet students’ needs through personal attention, time, and academic policies” (Callwood, 2021). What if we help students reframe how they see themselves through a language of courage? Would it boost their self-efficacy, academic resilience, and achievement? Would it strengthen educational relationships they experience in schools and the ivory tower? I believe it will.
Finally, I am proud of my students for describing students using other words like fragile, easily influenced, impressionable, stress, hardworking, responsibility, intelligence, apprentice, creative, integrity, and eager. I think they get it. Hopefully in the educational arena we can reframe the narrative around students so that when we are asked, what comes to our minds when we think of the word student, creative and courageous will be dominant responses. We must give credit to our students for the courage they display by showing up in the academic arena.
References
Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Penguin Random House. New York.
Callwood, A. (2021). Developing Educators’ Capacity for Natural and Ethical Caring: A Mixed Methods Study. Dissertation. Long Island University Post
Owens, L.M., & Ennis, C. D. (2005). The ethic of care in teaching: An overview of supportive literature. Quest, 57(4), 392–425.
Roosevelt, T. (1910). The man in the arena retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A311CnTjfos
