Faith in our Students
Faith is the intense belief that together, students and instructor can change the world. It is easy to become bogged down, worn out, and disillusioned in your quest to realize a social justice ethic within and beyond the classroom. But we, along with other social justice scholars, encourage you to dream and work toward a utopic vision. As Darder (2002) asks, “How poor is a revolution that doesn’t dream?” (p. 93).
We are reminded by Solnit (2006) that often evidence for social justice activism is in what did not happen, rather than what did: a male didn’t resort to physical or verbal abuse with his partner (resisting patriarchy), a White person didn’t accept a prestigious position and created a space for an equally (perhaps, even more) deserving person of color (resisting whiteness), or a cisgender person stopped using transphobic language (resisting cisgenderism). Each of these instances, and more, are sometimes invisible, making it easy to believe that social justice education has no influence on peoples’ hearts or minds. We become seduced into thinking that change only occurs in large demonstrations and give up on seeing victories, both large and small, as a part of an ongoing project to realize hope in the face of seemingly impossible odds.
Sometimes it might feel like having faith is an exhausting, even naïve, ethic. In a world where people of color, people from poverty, people who identify as LGBT, and/or female are increasingly being attacked on all sides—from access to clean water in Flint, Michigan, to the shutting down of women’s health clinics across the United States—it is hard to maintain faith in people’s ability or willingness to strive for a better world. And, the sad fact is that we often have trouble maintaining our faith. Learning about mass incarceration, the state-sanctioned sterilization of people with disabilities, or the ways that people profit from the United States’ illegal and immoral wars against other countries makes it hard for us to imagine how our classrooms can have any effect at all on the problems that face us as a nation and a species. But, we commit ourselves to faith in our students, that together we can make the world better, fairer, and richer than what it is now.
As you move forward, how will you maintain your faith in students and, most importantly, yourself? Here are a few ways to get started:
Join an organization or coalition whose methods and goals align with your sense of justice in the world. Don’t feel like you have to work for a better world by yourself. Working with others means you’ll have someone to lean on with times get hard.
Watch television shows, Youtube videos, or other media that reflect the best parts of humanity. Don’t only watch media that makes you feel angry, depressed, or sad. Make sure your emotional cup is full before working to fill others.
Meditate, pray, read, or find some way to recenter yourself. Don’t hop from one emotional hotspot to the next. You’re advocacy is only as good as your mental, emotional, and physical health.
As you move forward, remember that our team, and those others in our community, are always here for you.
C. Kyle Rudick
The Engage and Activate Team
Adapted from Teaching from the Heart: Critical Communication Pedagogy in the Communication Classroom