The Struggle for Authentic Teaching

Beware of Florida Alligators

Before moving to Florida in 2019, I taught undergraduate sociology classes in the Chicago area. My specialty courses included Race and Ethnic Relations and Social Inequality, courses that holistically reflect my research interests. In my Methods of Social Research course that I also regularly taught, I never shied away from discussing social inequality. For example, I frequently discussed disparate experiences in the criminal justice system as examples of hypothesis testing, observation bias, and causality myths to my sociology and criminal justice students.

In retrospect, I recognize that my prior experiences were somewhat unique. For one, I was situated in the shadow of a diverse metropolitan city, my hometown, and the origin of my authentic self. In the ways that liberal arts education functions, there is some opportunity for students to self-select within the range of general education courses. My courses in Race and Inequality drew students who either had or wanted critical takes on the material. I don’t recall ever receiving any overt pushback. Even for students who may have disagreed, they mostly stayed silent lest they “out” themselves to me and their fellow classmates.

That was in Chicago. In Florida, my experiences were different. I moved to Orlando in the summer of 2019. That fall, I taught an undergraduate course on Inequality. I remember that classroom as one of the most racially and ethnically diverse I had ever encountered. While students’ output ran the gamut, they were all there willingly, and with what always felt like genuine interest in the critical lessons on the subject. I will always remember that class fondly. The students wanted what most students want, a manageable course load and clear criteria for assessment (i.e., an “A”). It also seemed that some of those students wanted more content that connected these topics to the issues today, which in later semesters led me to include recommended readings and videos. There is more interest in sitting and watching something interesting, as many students these days are already conditioned to “watch” because of how they consume social media on their devices (e.g., Wynn 2009).

During the fall semester, I taught back-to-back classes. In the morning, I would teach my Inequality class, and then in the afternoons, I would take the almost 10-minute walk to my large Introduction to Sociology seminar. The seminar was very different for me. It was located in the Business Administration building, and with an enrollment of 150 students, it was the largest class I’d ever taught at that time. I expected the class to be challenging. There are many pedagogical strategies for teaching large classes, including approaching the range of students’ expectations, and incorporating active teaching strategies (e.g., Hogan and Daniell 2012; Mulryan-Kyne 2010). From the start, I expected the inherent challenges that came with a new teaching format. My attempts at small group discussions were difficult in a large room where we fought against the room’s acoustics, and most student groups ended up sticking to themselves throughout the course of the semester, thus rarely getting exposure to other perspectives.

What I was not prepared for was the pushback and confrontation from some students, specifically around the topic of racism. These issues came to a head sometime around the middle of the semester—October 2019—as we covered the week’s material on race and ethnicity. Like I had done often during my time teaching in Chicago, I began my lecture by situating the study of race and ethnicity within the three sociological perspectives. For me, this approach highlights racial disparities and those issues important to me, to include such topics as institutional inequality, hate crimes, and microaggressions. As I moved through the slides, I heard snickers, laughter, and chattering between classmates. When I approached my section on the fallacies of race, I challenged the assumption that race is biological by stating that 99.9 percent of DNA is in fact shared between people across racial groups. The mood finally cracked when a White woman interrupted me mid-sentence to say, “Well, we share 94% of DNA with dogs, so are we like dogs too?”

After that class period, I felt that I lost the interest of about half of the students. I felt like my credibility was in question, mostly because I couldn’t find the right response to that audacious statement in the moment. I felt like my authenticity was at stake. I felt myself losing myself, not in my written words, but in my oratory classroom performance. Even now, I remember the White man from that semester, sitting smack in the middle of my class, constantly talking to his neighbor, only stopping when I locked eyes with him. Most of the White students dismissed what I, a woman of color, had to say based solely on my identity and positionality (e.g., Pittman 2010). One of the most disrespectful things that people in positions of privilege can do to those oppressed is to revise the reality, and minimize their voice. But, of course, they were only half of the story. What I should recognize more is all of the praise and support I received from the other half of the class, particularly the students of color. On the last day of class, one graduating senior, a Latino man majoring in Engineering, told me that this was his favorite class, and to “keep doing what [I’m] doing” because he had never heard any teacher talk about the things I did. To me, this was more than a compliment, but in fact a telling statement about how race was discussed in the Florida education system.

My evaluations from that class were dismal, which had not been the case during my time teaching in Chicago. Students criticized me for being too political and liberal, as one student wrote, after taking this Introduction to Sociology course, “I now know why college is a liberalizing force.” I had worked hard to avoid such comments after a traumatizing graduate student experience nearly 15 years ago when I was thrown into the classroom without any formal training or mentoring. Another student, who claimed that I only presented biased, liberal material, erroneously claimed that I only encouraged students to watch the Democratic Presidential candidate debates, when in fact I promoted all of the debates depending on the day. This same student wrote,

Many times in class if a disagreement was had about a subject the typical response would be because of your privilege you don’t see things the same or just because of your one experience does not mean your [sic] right. Also capitalism is bad. I’m tired of hearing that. Inherently there’s nothing good or bad about it.

Comments like this might be all-too-familiar to faculty of color. There are a couple of key things that strike me about students like this one—certainly, the blatant lying (perhaps, as an attempt to try and get me punished for daring to behave in this way). But, most notably, the complete lack of retention of some of the fundamental principles of sociology—confirmation bias and internal validity, to name some. For what it’s worth, the extreme hostility I faced in the classroom was evident. As another student wrote as a suggestion for improving the class, “I would take less people’s opinions/questions because a large chunk of each class was always consumed by arguments against her which to me held little value and simply wasted time.”

In retrospect, I was naïve. Only now am I able to admit that my approach was not ideal for my context. Up until that point, I had lived in the Chicago area all of my life and knew no other way than to name that which we see, right in front of our faces. That’s what Chicagoans do. As noted, perspectives on race are largely regional as the result of socialization (e.g., Carter and Carter 2014; Splan, Magerman, and Forbes 2021). My Chicago students also had similar tangible experiences and were less likely to harbor dissenting opinions. Even my students from the most rural areas knew better than to challenge these discussions.

In Florida, students who take an introduction to sociology course may either disengage from the opportunities for conversations or have a very one-sided, misinformed view on the issue based on generational racism and indoctrination into dominant ideologies. Such are the legacies that allowed for Jim Crow racism and its colorblind aftermath throughout the South, despite the claim that Florida is “South of the South”—a selling point made to me after I accepted that job. In fact, some of the hesitance is to be expected—students’ resistance can be understood when positioned against the current political climate that dismisses social problems like hunger, homelessness, and discrimination (Davis 1992).

As Nancy J. Davis (1992) notes, a sociology of inequality that focuses on the structural is at odds with a resistant student’s lived experiences. Many college students from backgrounds of privilege have not had any direct experiences with such problems, nor do they wish to truly understand the disadvantaged. They assume that social problems are caused by deficient individuals who are trying to game the system—in fact, the very system that disenfranchises these marginalized groups (e.g., Lewis and Diamond 2015). These students might also take personally the discussions of White cis-het male privilege. Or, they might see racism and sexism as things of the past.

Around mid-March 2020, the earliest days of the pandemic, those of us teaching inequality courses were already engaged with many of the topics that rose to the forefront of current events—including sociological critiques of capitalism and the power elite that help explain the longstanding racism and sexism in our society. In my courses, we regularly connected current events with the readings and topics from class. During those first few weeks of the lock-down, in my correspondence to students, I connected our material to the racial, economic, and health disparities exacerbated by COVID. In Florida, many of my students were likely dealing with these very social problems, not as abstract but as tangible, some perhaps for the very first time in their lives. In the moment, it was important for me to make the necessary connections.

I left Florida in 2021. After a few tries, I got the opportunity to join my partner in Connecticut, thanks solely to the financial support of a senior administrator who has since moved on. Lucky for me, I was never a direct victim of the stranglehold that the Florida legislature has exerted on public higher education. As evident from some of my course evaluations, I unapologetically discussed structural racism and histories of inequality. I was fortunate to have opportunities to facilitate discussions on these issues and provide knowledge and answers with no fear about what I would say getting back to administration. Even as an untenured faculty member, I felt security in my long-term employment. However, while I was never a direct victim, I was a witness to the underground swell of disgruntled students that helped usher in the legislative policies of today.

Parasitic Policies

On December 15, 2021, the DeSantis Admin-istration first introduced the Individual Freedom Act, also known as the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act to the Florida legislature. Known by the shorthand “Stop W.O.K.E.,” the act was signed into law April 2022 and went into effect that June. The act codifies racial colorblindness by banning the discussions of historical discrimination, differential experiences, and the privileges ascribed by gender and racial identity (Golden 2023). Inherently, the policies demonize “Critical Race Theory” as subject matter taught at underperforming schools at the expense of basic education in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Critical race theory is blamed for these educational disparities, rather than the inherent systemic racism that is evident from an introductory history lesson. What is worse, the Stop WOKE Act came in response to the protests following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery (February 23, 2020), Breonna Taylor (March 13, 2020), and George Floyd (May 25, 2020). In reality, much of the groundswell for these events occurred because of the heightened media attention during the national stay-at-home orders, a time when everyone was glued to the TV news.

In retrospect, we all should have known it was coming. Floridians couldn’t even handle the science of COVID. At the state level, the Florida Department of Health fired a data scientist for speaking out against orders to manipulate public health data on the number of coronavirus-positive cases in the state (e.g., Allen 2020). At the local level, despite the rules for indoor spaces, most people were overtly defiant about wearing masks (e.g., Jibilian 2020). For instance, I remember the White woman who snickered at me for admiring children’s masks as CVS, and then later in the checkout line before me, leaving her items at the only working self-checkout counter and walking back toward the aisles. The one-way aisle rules in the grocery stores somehow did not apply to these folks, and I witnessed many incidents (self-instigated as well) between rational people and the mask-less for not minding their personal space. I stopped instigating after an incident at Publix one day to pick up my daughter’s birthday cake, when I asked a White woman customer where her mask was. She told me she would kick my ass and “don’t give a fuck” if she went to jail, presumably because she had nothing to lose. I, on the other hand, had two babies at home and everything to lose. To this day I wonder, do people challenge reality knowingly? Defiantly? Or do they feel they can make up their own facts? Either way, it is evident they do so because their actions make them feel superior to everyone else. It is the only privilege they hold in a society that is passing them by. How can we spread knowledge and educate, in ways that benefit them and our greater society?

As a higher education professional who teaches and researches systemic inequality and other “woke” topics, I am lucky to have left Florida just in time. I realize now that some of the hostile reactions I experienced, both in and out of the classroom, were merely a preview of the extremist opinions that speak the loudest today. The Stop WOKE Act puts the reporting in the hands of parents, the very same types of people who cannot be bothered to follow the rules at the grocery store. While faculty authenticity will suffer from these professional intercepts, students will suffer the most from lost content. The Stop WOKE Act eliminates the important objectives inherent to courses in social inequality. It was drafted to maintain the social status quo and, as once observed by my colleague, a Black woman and fellow Chicago-transplant in Florida at the time, “to scare the Black out of Black people.” Students of color will have to have these feelings in private, away from the dominant supremacist voice, hiding their own authentic voices. Even the safe space of the sociology classroom is now eradicated.

Now, I teach in the Northeast. When my colleagues ask me how I like it, my response is always the same: “The students here are very polite.” Even two years into this job, I feel the nuances of that response reflect well the kind of colorblind, closed-door racism the Northeast is famous for. To be clear, the pro-Trump/anti-Biden banners are still plenty in this state—there’s even one down the street from my house (a Trump 2024 flag, just below the USA flag). But at least here, no one will chide you for wearing a mask.

The students here still have the chance to self-select into Sociology. But, when they do, they remain receptive. Like it was in Chicago, there is no political control over my classroom content—yet. I have no fear in discussing issues like racism, sexism, and heteronormativity, and in this current social climate, I certainly do not shy away. I am fortunate that I have been able to reclaim my authenticity in these key ways, due to the lack of tangible and psychological control over my content like my colleagues in Florida and increasingly in other places. Racism and prejudice are far from absent at my current institution, but at least students approach my class (and me) with a level of respect. These days, faculty here deal with other struggles like student attendance, which is rooted in the years that college students today spend with balancing Zoom education. (The pandemic broke us in so many ways.)

I also now have a very calloused relationship with evaluations, even though these days they are quite high. My feelings have only been supported by the research on disparate student evaluations for women faculty and faculty of color (e.g., Cho et al. 2023). Fortunately, my institution, like many others, has opportunities to supplement the official course ratings for our promotion materials. So, I tell my students that the evaluations do not matter, and that if they really like me they should send me an email. These data points support my qualitative sensibilities and further strengthen my authentic self.

But, what do we do about the impending wave against “woke”? College students in Florida, and other states with similar legislation, will be underserved by stripped-down discussions of inequality. Critical courses are just what many students of color need—indeed, they are just what many students of color value—especially in those environments where they need the language to understand what is happening around them. The majority of struggling students are pursuing higher education despite this all. Maybe in the face of it, as a way to get out and break the cycle, gain their credentials, and eventually make the world a better place. Or just survive, thanks to capitalism. Can we inspire them all to think about more than just surviving? Luckily, most who do are drawn to sociology anyway. Might we shift the conversation back to where we were before the pandemic, when we were focused on fighting the influences of neoliberalism in higher education? It seems that those discussions help direct us toward more collective action-oriented positions against such political influences on higher education, while also supporting us faculty in our ability to teach students how to understand sociology from the personal.