Our Students Are Not Okay
On checking in during violent times.
Real quick up top: several reputable toolkits for helping the people of Gaza and urging the U.S. to ceasefire. Pick your favorite and spread it around!
The All Out for Palestine Toolkit by the Palestinian Feminist Collective (my fav)
Actionable ways to support the Palestinians of Gaza by the Aspecs Committed to Anti-Racism (ACAR) Discord serve
Our History of Popular Resistance: Palestine Reading List by the Palestinian Youth Movement
Here in America, one of the few remaining feminist bookstores is in danger of closing! Bookends in Florence is a fantastic community space and the owner Madden is wonderful. Consider supporting this bookstore’s GoFundMe; after you’ve donated to Palestine, of course!
A lot of my educator friends have noticed trends of increased student stress and decreased attendance in their classes. For example, one of my classes—which takes place at 10 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays—has an enrollment of 40 students. Out of those 40 students, only ~10 show up to class regularly.
Now, I’m all about student agency and making my classrooms accessible; all my lectures are recorded and posted online, along with my slide decks and other activities. My students are adults and they have the freedom to make their own choices. If a few of my students chose to skip class on a given day for a job interview, if they were sick, or even just feeling tired or overwhelmed that day, that would be fine. But when most of your students don’t show up to class, that’s a sign that something bigger is going on.
A skeptical teacher might think that “these gen Z kids have gotten lazy / too rebellious, and have failed to recognize the importance of coming to class”. While I do think that coming to live class is the best way to experience my course, I just can’t squarely place this blame on students, and not just because I refuse to have adversarial relationship with them like other educators do. The issue here is multifaceted, and this one data point alone—lack of attendance—doesn’t reflect the full complexity of the problem. In fact, you’ll learn a lot about what’s going on by just asking students directly.
For one thing, students are overprogrammed. Engineering classes have always been difficult, but in a job market that expects applicants to have several years of experience for an entry level position, students are pressured to do a lot more than take lots of classes. Now, they have to join a research group, be a member of a professional society like AICHE, be on the executive board of at least two other clubs, and work co-ops/internships as much as possible. Also, college is not affordable like it was for my parent’s generation, so a lot of students work part-time or even full-time jobs. “Non-traditional students” are more common than ever, with more than a few of my students being Real Adults with spouses and kids. Today’s students are busier than ever, with many of my students, mentees, and advisees saying that they haven’t had a single hour of free time to themselves in months. It’s no surprise, then, that my students regularly take advantage of their ability to ask for a two-day extension on any assignment, no questions asked. On this past week’s homework, normally due Wednesday, 27 out of 40 students requested to submit it on Friday instead, simply because they have too many exams and projects due in other courses.
And then there’s—you know—the world collapsing all around them. A genocide is breaking out in Palestine that the United States is backing. Politicians are refusing to respond to calls for universal health care, common sense gun reform, restoring abortion rights, and more policies about bread-and-butter issues that have a majority popularity with all Americans, and are instead expending resources to attack trans people. Our country’s metrics for success focus on GDP and job creation, despite these having seemingly no bearing on how the average American is actually doing (many Americans need multiple jobs to stay afloat). Self-declared fascists are being entrusted with followings in the millions and, in some cases, public office. Lives are literally sacrificed to The Line so that oil companies and investment firms like BlackRock can have have increased year-over-year profits as our planet plummets into an uninhabitable state due to human-made climate change.
Essentially…
Even more disturbing than the apparent societal collapse is just how little adults seem to care. Adults are supposed to protect and mentor young people, assuring them that it will be okay and, when necessary, acting to change the status quo to ensure a better future. But us teachers aren’t doing nearly enough to challenge the systems that created the conditions for the above to happen. On a basic, psychological, primal level, young people are traumatized.
Young people see the difference between what they see on their phones (e.g., the real-time murder of thousands of Palestinians), mainstream news (justifications for this violence and support for a colonial nuclear power), what they hear about from their instructors (absolute silence).
With all of this in mind, I try to break that silence as much as my can. Because it’s my responsibility to make all students feel safe and seen in my classrooms.
Last week at UMass Amherst, where I teach, 57 students were arrested while protesting the University’s ongoing relationships with Raytheon and other companies in the military-industrial complex. These protests have been going on for a while, but came to a head as these companies started sending weapons to Israel, making UMass directly complicit in genocide. There’s a deep sense of tension among the student body, and many students are simply afraid and don’t know what to believe. So, in the tradition of many left-leaning educators before me, I had a short teach-in during my elective class in green chemistry.
Inspiration to pause normal class struck when I came across this particularly heinous TikTok video…
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Because of who I am as a person, my course in green chemistry (which takes place Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:30 PM) can’t just be a course about using less solvent and energy-saving practices. It’s also a course about how we talk about sustainability. As such, running themes in the course include greenwashing, the impacts of engineering decisions on communities, design justice, and even colonization. Last Thursday, on a particularly warm evening—what I anticipated to be the last warm evening we would have for a while—I decided on a whim to hold class outside.
Sitting beneath the trees as the sun started to set, I led the students in a short meditation to get us all in the right headspace. I talked about why we’re here to learn about green chemistry: to work in community with one another towards a common goal; to take inspiration from the “bioreactors” all around us, the trees, flowers, and other life converting carbon dioxide into breathable air; and to do our part in protecting the clean air that we had the privilege of taking in. As gently as I could, I told my students about the TikTok above, how people are already salivating at the idea of turning Gaza into a “sustainable city” once all the Palestinian people are cleared from it. I told my students that when I talk about sustainability, that couldn’t possibly be further from what I mean. We need to develop “green” technologies by collaborating with communities, not by destroying them. And, obviously, weapons of war are terrible for the environment; militaries account for 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and while we in America get to enjoy clean air, Gazans aren’t so lucky right now.
After my soap box, students asked me about the student arrests (which had just happened the night before), since they weren’t sure what was going on. I explained what I knew, and we had an honest, human-to-human conversation about it. They were still a bit tense after, but they appreciated the fact that I didn’t just ignore what was happening all around them. After our talk, we continued with class as planned, talking about green chemical reactor design practices (until the mosquitos came out, after which we walked back to our normal classroom).
Us teachers can’t single-handedly make students go from feeling terrible to feeling amazing, but we can at least try to make them feel heard. The bare minimum we can do for students is to acknowledge what they might be struggling with and help make them feel seen.
In all my classes, I’ve tried to be explicitly clear that I am here for my students if they want someone to talk to. Twice now, I’ve opened class with the simple statement that if they were personally dealing with a rise in antisemitism or Islamophobia, they can always come to me for a listening ear. Students have taken me up on that offer, stopping by my office just to vent and play with my stim toys. I keep a few packages of frozen Trader Joe’s vegan tikka masala in my office fridge in case students are so stressed that they haven’t eaten; I gave away two this past week. One of my students stopped by my office to ask questions about the aforementioned homework set, and later expressed how stressed they’ve been lately with “everything going on in the world”. I asked them how they were holding up, and they told me about how they’ve lost family friends to the violence in Gaza, something I will never forget for as long as I live.
Teachers, I beg of you: check in with your students. They are not okay right now. Even an act as simple as starting class by saying that your office is open for students facing bigotry can go a long way.
Seek out some reputable resources about having class conversations about sensitive topics, and try to follow those guidelines best you can. Prioritize marginalized students’ safety while not putting them on the spot to “explain bigotry” to everyone else. Read up on how to avoid antisemitic and Islamophobic language, as well as Zionist talking points. Handling this poorly can make your students lives even worse, so if you’re not prepared to actually have in-class conversations, it may be better to not do so at all, and simply to say that your office is open if they want to talk privately/individually.
Also, very importantly, know that many students might be afraid to speak for very justifiable reasons. Aside from putting a target on their backs from their bigoted peers, students can actually face increased surveillance and violence from police. International students can’t go to protests because they could risk being deported going to their home country. Muslim Americans are regularly targeted by the FBI. A GOP lawmaker in South Carolina actually just called for “pro-Hamas” (anti-genocide) student protestors to be deported. You need to understand the complex history of oppression in this country, including the many roadblocks to progress that the state has built in to prevent challenges to power. All of this, by the way, is even more reason for you to use your privilege (assuming you have it) and position as a leader to use your voice for good.
Finally, please know that even if students never do come to your office hours, that doesn’t mean you’re not having an impact. Some students may feel safer just from the simple fact that you’re around and talking about it. Being that I’m the only trans faculty in my department—and seemingly in the College of Engineering here at UMass—I expected that more students would feel comfortable being open with their queerness. While many students have come out to me, just as many have told me that while they aren’t out publicly, my mere existence is making them feel more comfortable. Even though they’re still terrified to come out, knowing that I’m here to support them if they ever did makes them feel just a little bit safer. Honestly, I felt the exact same way when I spent my year in the closet during grad school; only one faculty in the department knew I was transitioning, and even though the prospect of coming out at work filled me with dread, I always knew I would have her in my corner when I eventually did. (If you’re reading this, you know who you are. Thank you.)
No doubt, many teachers are feeling powerless too; part of acknowledging our humanity in the college context is acknowledging our own humanity as teachers. We deserve care too. We deserve to feel seen by our students just as much as our students to feel seen by us. I want everyone to be liberated from the white supremacist cultural norms of “right to comfort” and “defensiveness”, students and teachers and everyone else. I think us teachers can not only free students, but free ourselves, from powerlessness by engaging in genuine human dialogue. Be brave, talk about what your needs are. You deserve to have your needs met. Revolutionary, isn’t it?
As bell hooks said: “You have one weapon and one weapon only: teach.”
Currently Reading
My friend Kristi has a Substack where she muses on modern life. Her latest is on resisting constant stimuli and coping with global violence (very relevant!) I too have found myself huddled in the corner chanting to myself “most people are good, most people are good” until I feel better.
I posted my first TikTok video in more than three months this past week, loosely based off my recent post about queer people supporting Palestine. Check out either if you haven’t seen them!
Watch History
In one of the finest “YouTuber Apologies” ever made, comedian Hasan Minhaj responds to a recent New Yorker article which claims that many of the stories from his stand-up specials never happened. Hasan clarifies his position and claims that the article misquoted and represented his views, giving critical context about three stories that the article claims were made up. While this seems like petty Internet drama, it connects to a broader discussion of how Islamophobia and anti-Asian racism are consistently downplayed in popular media.
Mia Cole’s new video, Twitter Sins, is back after being corrupted by YouTube for mysterious reasons. It’s another certified banger!
The Beatles released a new song, and I’m not kidding. As explained in this short documentary by Oliver Murray, when remaining Beatles (Paul, Ringo, & George) got back together in 1994 to record “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love” for the Anthology series, they had another song in mind called “Now And Then” that they couldn’t record with the technology available to them at the time (John Lennon’s vocals couldn’t be isolated from a poorly-recorded piano in one of his old demos, until very recently with the advent of AI production tools). With John’s voice isolated, Paul & Ringo were able to finish the track in 2022. This has, naturally, sparked another wave of discourse about the use of AI in art, but I feel like it’s one of the more tamer uses of the tool, especially considering that posthumous records are nothing new and half of the original band members have co-signed the release. The need to “dig up graves” for more content says more about capitalism than any moral character on an artist’s part; system’s thinking, folks!
Bops, Vibes, & Jams
Sampha’s new album is finally here and it’s a blessing! My favorite tracks are “Spirit 2.0” and “Can’t Go Back”.
METTE may quickly become my new favorite artist. I’ve had “VAN GOGH” on repeat constantly!
More gay songs on my mind include “Co-Star” by Amaarae and “Pretty Girls” by Reneé Rapp.
Sometimes two of your favorite artists collab and it’s wonderful. That happened to me recently with “Kiss Me” by Empress Of and Rina Sawayama. Joyous day!
And now, your weekly Koko.
That’s all for now! See you next week with more sweet, sweet content.
In solidarity,
-Anna