Reframing Appearances: The Necessity of Authenticity

 School starts in a week. Yup in a week we will all be back to some sort of education routine for the fall. So the question you are probably going to be asked a lot this week is: Are you ready? And I am about 100% sure that the majority of the answers will be no. Or at least it should be no, because honestly how could you be? How could anyone be really ready for what we have no way of predicting? I mean your structure of your course is there, you have thought out your assignments, you know how you will engage and communicate with your students during the term, but there will still be so many unknowns that you can never predict. But I bet you though the answer to this question should by and large be no, or not really, the majority of you will say yes and that is what this blog post is about.

My intention with this post is not to discourage you from your last minute prep. I am not writing this post to say, abandon all hope all ye who enter here, I am writing this post to say it would be great and in fact necessary if we were honest about where we are at as we start the semester; honest with both ourselves also with our students.  Studies have shown that learning levels and engagement levels increase when there is some sort of authentic connection to the concepts presented in a course, and if there is a way for students to reflect on their social location and bring that into assignments for the class. This seems to be at odds with all the poorly researched and “keeping up academic appearances” thought pieces found in The Chronicle and Inside HigherEd telling instructors to have some sort of perfect background to their Zoom and to edit their videos for production value so that Hollywood comes knocking (or maybe TikTok). I am arguing that it’s so important, now more than ever, to reframe appearances and to highlight the necessity to be our authentic selves.

If I need to remind you, we are in a pandemic, and a pandemic is probably not the time where business as usual should be the modus operandi. We are all experiencing trauma from being social distanced, from losing loved ones, from losing homes because there was a loss of jobs, from losing our routines, from so many things that we haven’t even realized yet. Emotional bandwidths are about as narrow as Internet bandwidths. Now is not the time for Pier One carefully curated vases that colour coordinate with the throw cushions on your couch. Now is the time for you to be real with yourself and real with your students. Maybe you are not ready to be real with yourself, that’s okay; it’s a process and it takes time and you can only be where you are at. Maybe you want to push for that polished veneer because it gives you something to focus on because everything else is just really crappy- if so cool, you need to do what gives you strength. But, if the reason you are pushing for this veneer is because there is some sort of really privileged conceptualization of academe that you are striving to attain in the middle of a pandemic and you purchase tons of equipment and clothes that you do not really want or care for because elbow patches are real- I am here to tell you you don’t have to. Please you really don’t have to.

I’ve spoken about this before and in different training sessions that I have facilitated, that identifying your social location is a really great way to connect to your students. Again, only do this if you are comfortable, and only give out whatever info you feel comfortable in giving out. I know that since March I have tried really hard to make it as though my cat is not hovering around every second trying to interrupt my meetings. At the beginning I was really good at this, now I really don’t want to try to pretend he doesn’t exist. Mainly because he’s really old, and not feeling well, and it’s exhausting to me to pretend to the world that he isn’t here because when he is actually no longer here I am going to feel ten thousand times worse and be super disappointed with myself that I denied his existence. So you know what, sometimes I need to mute my video during a meeting and feed my cat a few treats and give him some fresh food because even though there’s already food in the bowl those 3 extra grains of kibble mean everything to him. I will be gone a grand total of 15 seconds and you know what, the world will not end, and everyone will be happier (at least in my household).

There is a very real necessity to be authentic to our students and to ourselves if we are going to live through this pandemic and through this incredible time in history with any semblance of ethics and integrity. So the recording I made for an unconference that is being held next weekend has the sound of my best friend texting me in the middle because I forgot to turn off the ringer of my phone when I was recording. I didn’t stop and start again because that is life, my life has text messages from my best friend. Enjoy and see if you can hear it.  We can only do what we have the capacity to do and our own mental and physical health is crucial as the facilitators of the courses we are responsible for and the training we provide. I usually really suck at putting my mask on first. Whenever I am in a plane and I watch that video I shake my head because I can never see myself doing the exact thing they tell you to do. Well I have very much come around to the your-mask-first philosophy during this pandemic because of the workload I have encountered since March and because of my own health (read really crappy tooth) issues through all of it. So show off your cats and dogs. Have your daughter ask random questions about octogenarian royalty during a meeting. I for one am going to stock up on institutional swag to wear under whatever blazer I choose to wear in the colder months (because I am a blazer wearer by nature not because a video told me to). Be you! And not some sort of cookie cutter version of you that you think academe and your students want. The results may be surprising.