Making Space for Whole Selves

I have had a lot of interconnected thoughts this week so let's see if I can bring those thoughts together there.  One line of thought I have had is about truth and how truth does (or more often does not) show itself in higher education spaces. This connects to ideas around how we frame or discuss Truth and Reconciliation, where there is a lot of push towards Indigenizing or decolonizing language but the reality is that reconciliation and true decolonization would look like something very different than what is happening within higher ed. If you want to read a really great article on this framing of what the words we use really mean, I would suggest you read Gaudry & Lorenz (2018). 

So truth is one thing I have been thinking about this week, and how we can live or if we are allowed to live our truth in higher ed. The other thing that I have been thinking about is authenticity and again how we may or may not be allowed to bring our authentic whole selves to higher education spaces. This interconnects with conversations I have had with some former colleagues and friends this week about neurodivergent learners, staff, and faculty and the push to have to mask or the foundational expectation of masking in higher ed. If this is the first time you have encountered the concept of masking, this introductory article on the strain of masking may be helpful to you. 

And yes in some ways higher education is getting better at at least acknowledging that masking is a thing that exists, but it is still very far away from holding space for the whole selves folk bring to spaces because there are a myriad of expectations that are innate in the systems we navigate. However, I think this conversation and need for holding space for our whole selves is of utmost importance now because with the increased use of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) inferring words, feelings, and needs, it will become more necessary than ever to vocalize true selves when the LLMs are just going to create a personality for us, a personality that fits in to the systems that are not interested in change. 

I was reflecting this week on when I decided personally to be more vocal and talk about the things that need support, and why accessible and inclusive pedagogy is necessary and foundational. Of course like most folk, a thing happens in your life and then all of sudden you decide there is no way you cannot say the things anymore. That in fact not saying the things is not only harmful to one's self and well-being, but in many ways perpetuates harms for others in ways that can be seen as complicit. And that speaking of truth, that authenticity, that choosing to not mask, that is a very personal and contextual thing. Some folk have privileges that allow them to speak the truth and be authentic. Others cannot for many reasons and foundationally the systems require those who can speak out to say the things to support the folk who cannot in order to move change and progress. I have already written about this a fair bit on this blog, but this is post from 2021 on Contextual Holistics reinforces that. 

Within educational spaces, classrooms, virtual meeting rooms and all the spaces that learning experiences are shared, and information shared, we need to now more than ever to think about how to plan for making spaces for the whole selves that are part of the learning environment. And this doesn't have to look like (and often will rarely look like) a singular thing. It could mean making space for connections and conversations in office hours or making space where learners or faculty and staff can meet up and be together. And to be clear just sharing space does not a community make; I have said this many times, community is much more complex than that and requires trust that cannot be created just by geographical proximity, however opportunities for folk to connect on campus or virtually are important. 

It could mean adding choice to assessment designs that allow for creative aspects and not just analysis. So many articles and social media posts are talking about the need for creativity in a time of LLMs and how creativity allows folk to tap into their critical thinking skills which is also very needed in a time where there may be some desire to offload that critical thinking to a language model and guess the next steps or feels based on data.  I mean you know we are in trouble when you are seeing a lot more folk on different social medias actually knowing what Baudrillard's theory of simulacra means. There should be some sort of Bechdel test of society that we call the Baudrillard test, and the test is the more the population know who Baudrillard is to more we are closer to doomsday. 

Some other design choices for eduspace could be designing in thought space in course designs or workflows. In my old position one of the things we did is block off a half day Friday (either morning or afternoon) to explore readings or other things that felt meaningful to us and who we are. It didn't necessarily have to be directly work related, but often it really was, because ultimately it is very difficult to separate yourself from the work you do, because who you are (whether you want to realize it or not) informs the work that you do and the way the world sees and interacts with you. 

These sort of suggestions, connection points, adding choice, giving folk space to think and explore, are not innovative ideas, these are things that folk have been talking about for many years, but sadly they are still seen as radical ideas. Radical in that folk will say there's no time or space in the doing more with less, scaling up, learning spaces we are in for any of these things. And my response is that yes they are radical, but in the etymological understanding of the word. They are foundational, and we simply cannot continue in checkbox, no emotion, no real world connection ways because in fact that is what the LLMs are counting on. They have the data, they have the next word, they know how to anticipate options, suggestions, but they do not yet know us, the real us individually, who we are as our whole selves, and that is what is of value now. And in fact many students are being told that their real selves are not important, just like many folk who are looking for jobs right now are being told that their real selves are not important. You can ask the AI to support some every day stuff that takes up cognitive load that you can put towards other important tasks, but the moment we let the LLMs dictate our personality (or lack thereof), or communication style, or ways of engaging in the world, without putting some human back in that machine, it is just a reinforcement that our whole selves do not count, our lived experiences inconsequential, that to be in the world is to deny who we really are- and to accept that as truth is why engagement is down, why folk can disappear, and how so much harm is done.