On Changing Clothes and Changing Plans

This may be a bit of shorter blog this week, we will see, because it has been a rather busy week, filled with many emails, many meetings, many discussions, and of course many thoughts. I want to start this week's blog with a bit of a story that speaks to the kind of world we live in right now.

On Wednesday evening I had to go out somewhere, where is not important, but I guess sort of connected to the story. When I got home from work I changed out of the rather flowery femme-y type shirt that I was wearing for work to a t-shirt with one of my many advocacy type sayings on it, a tame one in relation to the t-shirts that I do own that says "inclusion matters" three times in rainbow font. I then made something quick for supper and decided to take a look at the news while I was eating. And then I saw all that had transpired in Utah that day and shook my head many times and stopped to reflect. I could not wear this shirt today, I said to myself, because I live in a place where I don't know how safe I would be wearing a shirt like that, especially after what had happened.

So I went upstairs and changed into a plain black t-shirt and went to where I had to go. Thinking the whole time about how I live at a time still in 2025, and in a city where , still in 2025, that I feel like I cannot wear a shirt like that in certain spaces or at certain times.

I have been thinking about this a lot over the last few days as I saw so many folk on LinkedIn talk about they were actively avoiding talking about Utah and just sticking to the lesson plan like nothing happened. Like nothing happened. And this has me thinking about how the socio-political climate is such that so many folk, often the folk who would have the privilege or positionality to say a thing, are just going through their lesson plans or days, like nothing happened. Like everything is okay, like it is completely normal to live in a world where folk actively want others unalived daily, for their religion, for their ethnicity or race, for whom they love, for their disability, for their positionality. And that some in education space feel it is completely okay to go about the lesson plan like nothing happened. 

If I felt deeply that I needed to change my shirt on Wednesday night to leave my house, coupled with the many messages I saw of folk saying that they were in fact not leaving their house that night for all the reasons, how many others who didn't send messages or post on social media also felt the same way? How many others went to work or school the next day hoping that someone would ask them how they are, or check-in in some way, only to be met with business as usual because learning outcomes need to be met, and syllabi filled with topics have to be covered and we have no time for socio-political unrest. 

The ability to pivot in relation to topics that come up in conversation in education spaces is somewhat of a skill. Some educators feel super comfortable pivoting and reacting to conversations and addressing microaggressions as they happen in class. Some feel much more comfortable just sticking to the lesson plan and ignoring the world around as though what is happening in the world doesn't have direct impact on the students and teaching team. Some simply cannot; for the capacity reasons I have talked about before on this blog. But pedagogically changing plans, and creating an environment that can change plans, does a different kind of work. Sometimes these changing of plans are part of the signature pedagogy of the discipline, and sometimes the signature pedagogy of the discipline tends to absolutely prevent, or dissuade changing of plans. Even if great ideas are brought up related to the lesson plan, those need to be kept for question period where they may be forgotten, or they are simply never addressed.

So what I want to suggest today is implementing parking lots in your course. So if you do not have the capacity to have the hard conversations, you are still giving the students a space to be able to have the hard conversations. What these parking lots can look like are post-it notes where they can anonymously write something that is on their mind, they can look like things like Microsoft form spaces where they can individually send you a question or message that you can then feel free to share anonymously or read through in your own time and think about how to put those thoughts and ideas into the course design. Parking lots allow the students to speak what is pressing at the time, but also can allow you time to process those ideas in a way that is meaningful to you and the teaching team.

I guess what I would love to see is more opportunities to give folk space to share things when things happen that can impact folk, and less nope stay the course, we are going to pretend nothing happened, because learning outcomes are more important that addressing living in the world in 2025, even if addressing living in the world in 2025 can actually align to your learning outcomes. 

I also want us to get to a point where we check in with each other. Like peer to peer when things happen. I texted a few folk, and reached out to a few others. I wish I could say anyone checked in on me, because well they didn't because well it is the beginning of term, but also I am usually the checker and rarely the checkee. Because the more we ignore the world, the more the world will keep reminding us it exists, and the more disengagement we will see. Because even if folk are using class as the place where they don't have to remember they live in 2025, giving options for folk who do need space to be seen because they are living in the world as marginalized or multi-marginalized humans is important. 

So those are my thoughts for today. I also want to note that I feel I'm being shadow banned in a couple of places where I post which doesn't shock me, because academe is definitely good vibes only land right now,  but I wanted to put that out there for the people who are physically coming here to check for blog updates cause they are not seeing them on socials. 

Changing the Narrative Resource

NPR. (September 8, 2025). It's Been a Minute. How AI slop is clogging your brain. [21 minutes podcast; episode page has transcripts]