Curatorial Silence and Its Impact on Pedagogy

I am finally back this week with my first blog of 2026. I was going to write one last week, but honestly with everything going on in the world I simply could not find the words to share as the only thing I could come up with as a title is "how do I teach through this?" And the more I reflected this week, and I saw a few posts on LinkedIn, and watched more things unfold in the world, I realized that the thing to discuss is not teaching "through" things, because that is of itself a form of erasure, but rather to talk about silence and how silence does it's own kind of pedagogical work.

Of course like with most things, everything is interconnected so I will try to show the threads that lead me to this topic. I saw something on LinkedIn last week and I really really wish I would have bookmarked it or noted who said it so that I could accurately cite the author but LinkedIn did that refresh thing and it was gone forever. The idea behind the LinkedIn post was something like, as an educational content creator in 2026 it is important to just put out content when you have something to say, not because you have a schedule that those who engage with your work expect. And attached to this was something like, this will allow folk to curate the information they want and not be overwhelmed with everything that is out there.

So I have been thinking about this a lot this week, as someone with a blog and a podcast. Should I change my podcast schedule and what would that say to folk? Would less accessibility content suggest that somehow accessibility is no longer important, because we all know it so very important. And I am not sure where I have landed yet with the podcast, but listening to Karen Costa's season 2 of the ADHD Gallery did give me some more things to think about.

After the holiday season I reflected on how many people I used to speak to on a regular basis on different social media platforms that I have not heard from in over a year because some have gone completely analogue. But what I want to emphasize here is the importance to stop and think about how curating outward silence does a certain kind of teaching and learning work, and sadly it is work that the big S systems want more of. What I am saying is that the discourse around boundaries, the narrative that curated silences are necessary for general  wellness, is way more complex than a 2-minute influencer reel can express. There's a kind of hush happening right now, and not in a The Carpenters sort of way and the systems have a way of taking advantage of that curated hush zone vacuum to fill it with distraction and falsehoods. And I want to be clear here is that the silence I am referencing here is not only verbally and textually, but also happens with the erasure of different types of art.

Because silence allows for things to happen without awareness. Internet, communication, and media shut downs like what is happening in Iran right now, are done with purpose, because words and media are what allows for awareness, even in an age where artificial intelligence can make words and media look like something it isn't. No news is good news doesn't work anymore in 2026. Again I am not saying show your hand across all the social medias, because that is not great either in organizing spaces. But shutting down opportunities to connect or communicate creates the kind of silo-ing that becomes primarily beneficial to maintaining power dynamics and corporate finances.

Lest we think this is a corporate or government only issue, I want to emphasize that we do this in HigherEd all the time. Colleagues at other institutions who had the surprise of discovering they were unemployed right before the holiday season, without transparency, at a time where news cycles and media silence can be complicit in that erasure. And this curatorial silence is also done in pedagogical design, when there are choices of what topics will or will not be discussed in class. But further to this, pedagogical design also tends to design in accepted ways to communicate, and also stricter rules around expectations of communication that are deeply neurotypically coded (talking in class as the only way to show engagement and participation for example). This is why I was clear to note that conversations about silence are not specific to verbal communication only, because our non-verbal peers are part of HigherEd as well.

We need to have opportunities, regardless of what discipline or area, to recognize the power and impact of silence. Silence can be helpful to support reflection on topics or prompts given in class. But silence does different kind of work when the resources for a course actively ignore specific identities and lived experiences. We talk a lot in eduspace of the crickets around discussions (Herman and Nilson have a great book about this by the way) in a way that the silence makes educators uncomfortable. Then why are we seemingly okay with curating silence as the new vibe for 2026?  Maybe one of the things we try to build in to our courses is a reflection on what Audre Lorde said "Your silence will not protect you" [3 min video] and that though the way we express ourselves will be different for each person, ultimately silence impacts opportunities for sharing and learning. Silence tells you whom you can or cannot trust; silence teaches others the morals and values of a space. 

So though I may shift how the podcast looks this term, one thing that is sure is that I will never be silent, and this year will bring different ways for me to share ideas, and build spaces where connection is possible.