I was going to write about the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. I have some sketchy notes; I was thinking about the fact that the vast majority of US students don’t attend the selective sorts of institutions where affirmative action ever applied. I was thinking about how this is a disappointing decision, but it could also be an opportunity to re-envision the whole process. I like Timothy Burke’s take on this: We should stop working so hard on various schemes to allocate the limited spaces on the lifeboats — we should get more lifeboats instead.
Then I was going to zoom in on the odd footnote 4 in the majority opinion. This is where Roberts off-handedly exempts the military service academies from the ruling. I was going to point out that the US’s amicus brief and oral arguments talked about the importance of a diverse officer corps, which is not the same thing as diversity at the service academies. In fact, fewer than 20% of military officers come from the service academies. The majority of officers go to “regular” colleges through ROTC programs. I think it’s interesting that the fraction who go to college, then later decide to join up through OCS or direct commission, is roughly comparable to the fraction who come through the service academies. All of this seems like research one of Roberts’s clerks could’ve done. The footnote strikes me as a real weakness.
Anyway. That’s what I would have written about.
But a week ago, on July 2, my Dad died. So if you’re reading this, I encourage you to let go of some notes that haven’t coalesced into whatever they were supposed to form. Go hug your kids. Or go hug your parents. Or go hug whoever’s important to you and you’re not sure you’ve let them know. I don’t have some Important Wisdom to Impart; I don’t think it works like that. It’s not like my Dad died and I was granted some epiphany and now I understand what’s really important. But I don’t think you can go wrong with some hugs (with consent, of course).
I had an idea — well, several ideas, I guess. I wanted a project that could be an excuse to work with some of the great people I know. I wanted a low-stakes venue to write as a form of working out my own thinking. I wanted a kind of writing that could be a joy rather than a dreaded item on my to-do list.
I started to loosely outline an idea for an old-school group blog. I envisioned essays and posts in each person’s distinct voice. I pictured us reading each others’ pieces, commenting, creating conversations. Some of my friends and colleagues were skeptical, to say the least. For one thing, who blogs anymore, in the era of social media?
Everyone should start blogging again. Own your own site. Visit all your friends' sites. Bring back the artisan, hand-crafted Web. Sure, it's a little more work, but it's worth it. You don't even need to stop using social media! It's a "yes, and" situation, not a "no, but" one. https://t.co/BzHYh59F36
But one time, I described this idea of the most informed, engaged, inspiring educators I know, writing informally — maybe even tentatively — in conversation with each other and the wider worlds of education and pedagogy. And I got just the affirmation that I needed:
“That would be like listening to the conversations I wish I had with colleagues.”
(I’ll keep who said that to myself, to protect her colleagues.)
So I’m founding Teaching Made Visible. We’ll talk about teaching and learning construed broadly. If the team of voices I’ve put together here can be generalized, I think it’s fair to say we’re all interested in social justice, the interplay between theory and practice, and a certain balanced respect for both scholarly, research-based understandings and practical, experience-based ones. Maybe, if we live up to the affirmation above, it’ll be like virtual hallway conversations among educators.
Team of contributors
The “groupness” of this project has remained the one non-negotiable for me. I had no interest in just starting a blog of my own. I’m excited to showcase some great voices from important perspectives. And I get the joy of having a project I’m working on with them. Let me introduce them in my own words here, then I can give them the floor from here on out:
If you have a serious case of impostor syndrome — not me, just, you know, someone — you defensively tell yourself that people who study astrophysics at CalTech and Berkeley might be smarty-smart but they’re not, you know, well-rounded whole people, right? And then you hang out with Linda.
Around 2012, I became fast friends with CSS‘s Dean of Students, Megan Perry-Spears. I kept hearing students talk about the W curve, and she explained it to me. I wish every higher education faculty member understood that the student affairs staff are educators the way I understand it from knowing Megan. As a matter of fact, she might be more thoughtful about student learning than the average faculty member.
Megan and her wife were — unbeknownst to them — listed as the emergency contacts for my son at school. Obviously there’d never be a time when the school couldn’t reach me or my wife, right? Oops.
Rafael Palomino joined our ISEE Professional Development Program around 2013, and within a couple years he was an instrumental member of the development team. Most recently we worked together on the Equity & Inclusion “theme” within that program. He is senior instructional designer at Cepheid. He has a remarkable command of numerous frameworks and theories; I’m excited to hear more from the corporate education/training perspective.
I can never tell if Rafael’s being sincere or patronizing when he compliments my music tastes.
I met Sarah Stewart around 2015. She is the associate director of CSS’s Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Somebody asked a dismissive question about the invite-only opt-in first-year seminar for students of color that she teaches, and I found that it demonstrably improves graduation rates for those students. She’s also my classmate in our Ed.D. program.
When I first met her, Sarah said something about a short, unpleasant stint in North Carolina, and I’ve felt that somehow it’s my job to make it right ever since.
At one point I asked a “hypothetical” question: If I ask someone from my Ed.D. cohort to blog here, do I have to ask everyone from my cohort? It wasn’t hypothetical, obviously — I wanted to ask Erin!
What now?
Our plan, for now, is for someone to blog here approximately every week. Several of us will always be “on duty” to converse in comments. We’re going to see how this goes for a little while, and then pause to check in. I’m excited to get started!
