Interviewer: I am here today with Candice Harrison. We're going to talk over and reflect on a presentation she gave in the fall 2014 semester. Candice, before we get started, as unbelievable as this will sound, not everyone on campus knows who you are yet. Really my first question to you is really for the general audience of staff and faculty, tell us a bit about yourself, and what department you're in, what courses you teach. This question is really not so important what research you do, but just your general place in the community. Candice Harrison: I teach in the history department. I've been here for seven years now, which is fantastic. At the moment, I also direct African American studies. Interviewer: Fantastic. That is enough. One of the things that was so interesting about the fall 2014 semester is we held a teaching cafe where the full name was contentious conversations about classroom safety. We had a variety of faculty come in and talk about what they do, then there were some questions and discussion afterwards. It was a big hit. There were a few overarching ideas because the faculty president could take it any way they wanted. One of them was whether it's possible to be too safe in the classroom. You want to balance comfort, but you also want to push people to think, feel, and experience things differently. You were one of those people who came into it. I'm wondering if you can just give us a little bit about describing how you set up. You may not remember everything you did that day, but if you can just tell us a little bit about how you set up and develop a rich conversation about uncomfortable topics in your own class. I know in the kitchen cafe, part of your presentation was you had some visuals, which can't be repeated in the audio so well, but maybe you should guide that through us because I think you're often trying to intentionally get people to deal with things that are less than comfortable and I think you set it up in a purposeful way. If you could guide us through that a little bit. Candice: You said already, you used the word emotions. That's actually really important to me. It's not something I think that's particularly important to say most of my colleagues, especially historians. Academics, in general, we deal with data. We deal with facts, we have evidence. That's the bulk of our classroom conversations. For me, because most of what I teach is contentious in and of itself, I teach about the development of race, development of capitalism in the United States. For example, right now I'm teaching, of course, in the history of slavery and I do probably the culture. Almost every course that I teach is embroiled in these really difficult moments in American history. I'm very conscious about how emotional students' responses can be to what some people might see as very dry historical data material. It's not dry. I pay, again, very close attention to imagining how my students will be reacting to any given topic that I'm going through that day. That's very critical. For me, I think, to set up the whole classroom process from start to finish, you can't do that because it's going to take different directions depending on what you're talking about. The dynamic of the classroom however, is very important to establish right away, obviously. I don't do that in a formal way. I don't set up the dynamic of my classroom in a formal way, in a sense it's not a workshop. This isn't, "Let's gather and talk about our feelings," kind of thing. I'm still very much a historian, very much an academic introducing this charged material. However, for me, it's very important that I make my students understand that it's okay to have emotional reactions. It is okay. This isn't just data. Interviewer: Do you just say that or what do you do? This must be at the very beginning of the semester and they get repeated a bit, as you go through the semester? Candice: Exactly, yes. I think I mentioned in the cafe, I do it by a modeling emotional responses. I'm present in that space. Very, very presence. I'm a passionate person, in general, but particularly about these topics. At any given moment, when I'm anticipating students who may have, again, difficult emotional responses to some of the material I teach, I pause myself. My voice changes, the cadence with which I speak changes. Silence is my greatest tool in my classrooms, actually. We know that about silence, as educators, not to be afraid of it. We're all taught that. We have to wait for students to process information and then allow them the opportunity to respond. That's all fine and dandy except again when you're dealing with these emotionally charged politically controversial subjects. You're terrified as the instructor and like, "What is going through their minds at this moment? Are they going to run to the dean afterwards and talk about me? Are they going to cry when they leave a classroom because of another student's comments? Am I not handling their response as well?" There's all sorts of things in our own minds as instructors that we're processing as we're dealing with those particular silences. Again, for me, that's the best tool that I have. I really hold those spaces. As uncomfortable as they are, I know I have to do it. As I hold the space and hold it, I don't know, maybe a minute, maybe two, depending upon what we're talking about, which seems an incredibly long amount of time [laughs] when it's all quiet, and then I begin to model the responses. I'll say something like, "It's very common for folks to see an image, for example, of a man being lynched and feel an incredible amount of rage. How are we supposed to process this? How do we stare at these images of inhumanity? How do we manage our reactions, while at the same time attempting to read them as part of historical record and understand the larger context? Absolutely, this is something that would make anybody enraged." I'll say that, just like that. Or I'll say, "At a different moment when we are dealing with some very hard evidence of class privilege or power or something." I'm talking about industrial capitalist who on the one hand are saying beautiful things publicly about class equality, and on the flip side, they are leaving their workers starving to death, and cutting their paychecks at the same time, or setting fire to their campsites in the midst of a protest. How do we understand that kind of hypocrisy? That's what I'm talking about in terms of modeling. I actually will say emotional words. Some of you might be feeling a little guilty. These are the kinds of topics that can create guilt for people. Interviewer: Part of what comes up for me when you say that it is one of the reasons I was so interested in what you doing was different from the topics you teach. I know you're embedded in the topic, but there is faculty who teach all sorts of other content. This doesn't touch all faculty, but I think there's enough of us throughout the university who have either courses or topics within courses that for one reason or another are emotionally charged for our audience or students, whatever that audience is, undergraduates or graduate, it doesn't matter. The way you talk about this is really fascinating because my experience is people are generally afraid to go there. They know it's emotional, but we're afraid to go there and in addition, we're a little bit protective because we're now at a university. Sometimes we can use that as an excuse to create some distance, and we don't have to particularly go there. It's scary because of exactly what you're describing. You don't know what's going to happen next. When I saw you in the teaching cafe, you were so calm and collected. I almost got the impression of, you weren't laid back, I don't mean that. You weren't like Berkeley cool, but you were calm and collected. I was going, "What's going on inside of her? Is she worried about this at all?" What you're telling me now is you're not a superstar woman. You're not completely different, the thoughts and feelings and worries that I would have, you also have. How you deal with them, seems more effective. How you process them, seems more effective. Part of it seems to be this modeling. There is something going on here that, whatever the circumstances, that could be really difficult for you in the crowd and you take them through that. When I think about also modeling emotional responses, but you must have had times where people say wacky, wacky is not the right word, really inappropriate, really derogatory things. I'm sure those have happened when it's derogatory towards other students in the class. I'm sure you've also had it when it's aimed at you. How do you handle those situations? Candice: It's such a great question because that's the core of our fear. You're so terrified that you do not know how to respond and you're going to mess it up. The first thing I'll say is I've messed it up time and time again, so as comfortable as I am being fearless with raising these conversations, I screw it up. There are so many moments, the crystal clear moments to me, that I had to leave conversations right where they were, unfinished, unresolved because class is over. Or the moment happened and a student said something that was so incredibly inappropriate, I couldn't quickly come up with a response. Most of that's if I don't have to deal with because I already anticipate the worst. That's part of our responsibility as educators, you want to introduce these topics, you're committed to doing that. Well, you have to expect that students are going to say wildly offensive things and imagine what those would be and how other students in your course would feel, how you're going to feel. You just have to be prepared for that overly prepared for that. That heads off a lot of the issues, so that you are coming in in a calm fashion, you're not going to react. For me, that's difficult because I'm so expressive with my face. Somebody says something in a classroom and I really have to work so hard not to have some terrible expression or scowl at them. That means for me, I put my head down to avoid that because I know, I know myself well enough. So, there's preparation. Interviewer: Candice now in thoughtful reflection to mask [crosstalk]. That's great. Candice: That's right. I look at the ceiling, something to redirect my attention from them, so I'm not staring in shock and awe, but I'm also scanning the room for the other students' reactions. That's a very important part of my process. The minute a student says something that triggers me, for example, I know it's going to trigger somebody else, so I'm looking to them to see how they're responding. That tells me if I need to say something immediately or if I can hold it for a second, and come back to it later. A lot of times I do come back to things later. Interviewer: By later, you mean later the same day, a week later, a class later, what's later? Candice: I mentioned that sometimes I have to let things just hang and I hate that feeling. I hate it. You do know your work isn't done. Most of the time I go back to it in the course of the same conversation, at the same class. It gives me time to process it, let other students speak up, that kind of thing, but again, some things still catch me off guard, and when that happens, I never let it go unresolved. I either reach out to that student directly and meet with them or I follow students right out of class who've been troubled by something another student says. I check in with them very quickly. Then I always come back the next classroom and immediately create a space for us to finish that conversation and that works. That works. It gives everybody time to process. Interviewer: One of the things that you just said that was very interesting to me is, I think, for myself in a way, too many times when I'm worried about something, now avoid it, at least avoid it for the moment. If I was in an instructional situation where I anticipate it could be a difficult topic, well, that's not a very productive thing. If it's about retirement, I can avoid it for a month then come back and deal with it, but if it's a topic in class, then usually avoidance means it doesn't make its way into the class, what could have been a rich conversation. The other thing is sometimes people will do it, but what I'm hearing from you is you purposely try to think through. Obviously, you don't catch all the scenarios, but you try to purposely think through. I love that exercise you described of, what's the worst thing that could happen. Then it's like in your mind role-playing it and giving yourself the space outside of class to think, "How would I respond to this? What would I do in the moment?" I think the other thing that really struck a chord with me is you talked about, you know yourself, which is important because we all have different personalities and you are very expressive, so what's a good way I can hide certain expressions when it comes up in the moment. Personally, that's really good for me to know because I need to take advantage of that more. Thank you for that tip. I've seen you in action, not a lot but a bit, I can see how good you are at this. Where did you develop your chops at this? Because I don't think it was in your doctoral program, and my guess is you didn't just dive off the deep end when you became a professor, so was it some previous experiences before you entered the academy, or was it something when you started teaching? What led you to this? Candice: I'm a huge cheater when it comes to this, so even before I started graduate school, I worked for a nonprofits doing, back in the day, we called it Diversity Trainings and Workshops on Multiculturalism. I worked with everyone in the Kansas Community and that included dealing with middle schoolers, all the way to CEOs and academics and firefighters, so I'm very used to people dealing with very charged topics and dealing with them in a very emotional way. Those kinds of workshops, there's no ruse of academia. We're not intellectualizing a thing. It's raw emotion. Absolutely, that helps me walk into a classroom and be comfortable with that. The vast majority of us never have those experiences and so the fear that we carry about introducing them and responding to them is very, very real, but to me, it's also very worth the risk. There are tremendous rewards that come out of diving into these topics, in whatever class it is that you're teaching. Unless you do that preparatory work that I mentioned for yourself, really, it's going to go awry. It just will. Interviewer: This may be hard for you to remember, not hard emotionally, but can you think of when you were doing this training of what, for lack of a better word, I would call some baby mistakes you made as a beginner and then maybe not in the moment, but reflecting later in how you changed. I have to imagine there were some seminal learning moments early-ish in your career of doing these kinds of trainings, that caught you flat-footed Candice: This is related, but it's not going to be a direct answer, I think. When you do that kind of work and deal with these emotionally charged things and I was doing it every single day, you are going to make mistakes every single day. Part of the process is understanding and surrendering to that in and of itself and just figuring out again how to clean it up, like I said earlier. To give you a concrete examples, I've had people scream and yell at me, run out of rooms. I've had people attack each other to the point where it got so heated and it was so uncomfortable for everybody in the room and I didn't know when to intervene and when just to allow that to happen. That's a work in progress always, because every dynamic of every classroom is going to be different. You've got to figure out how to work those personalities and when to step in. Some classrooms, students are going to be very, very expressive, very talkative. They're going to say all sorts of things. I can guarantee you for every one of those students in a classroom, you've got somebody who's incredibly uncomfortable, who's very shy, who just wants to put their head down. As really a facilitator of those conversations, because that's what you are, you stop teaching and you have to. You can't keep teaching during these contentious conversations, you have to facilitate them instead. In those moments you have to play right there, intermediary role. Part of that is really trying to get at the root of what people are actually saying and feeling. Let me give you an example that might happen in any classroom. You're dealing with some difficult subject you've boldly and bravely introduced. You've opened up the space and some student says something that may have some depth to it, whatever, another student laughs. Interviewer: That can certainly happen. Candice: Happens a lot. In the past, I have made this awful mistake of reading that laughter as a student being just flippant, a mature flippant. What I've learned is that they're just uncomfortable and nervous. It's nervous laughter. Nobody thinks some of these very difficult things we discuss are funny. What I do with laughter in a classroom during these moments is, I zero in on that student for a second and I look at them and check their body language and everything else. I will say, "So, you laughed. Can you articulate why? Surely this isn't amusing. Is this nervous laughter, or is there something else happening right now?" That takes them away from that nervousness and forces them to actually begin to articulate that they are frustrated, that they are offended by the previous comment, something like that. I put people on the spot. Interviewer: Instead of ignoring it, which might be my tendency, what you're doing is you're actually taking advantage of the moment. What I might think of as uncomfortable, you're taking advantage of in a productive way? [crosstalk] Candice: Absolutely. It's simple for me, again, as modeling the emotional responses, if there's an awkward silence or somebody says something that's inappropriate or offensive, I will again, hold that silence, use it as a tool and say jokingly, "Well, I'm uncomfortable, I don't know about everybody else." It immediately, again, lets people's guards down. Our professor is uncomfortable. Our professor is nervous. Our professor looks like she's about to cry because of some of the topics that we're talking about, "Oh, then it's okay for me to do that too." I can't tell you how many students I've had through the years here at USF, come up to me at some point and say, "I so appreciate that you seem to bring your full self into the room. It really made it easier for me to acknowledge what I was feeling." It's like a prod stick, because they need to. You can't get to that deep learning, unless you feel this stuff as you're going through. Interviewer: This is so interesting. What I want to ask you is a follow-up to that is, for me, when I think about the craft of teaching, still, I'm just as interested and just as excited as when I was a high school teacher. As a high school teacher, when I was in my early 20s and part of that is not excitement. Part of that is how do I get better at what I do? How do I better serve my students? I'm wondering reflecting back on it, if we focus on this one thing that, well, you do many things well, but if we focus on this thing of modeling emotional responses, if you think about how you'd like to push that forward, how you'd like to get even better at that, where would you like to get even better at that? Candice: In a lot of areas, my students model thing for me and I pay attention to that. One of the things that I always do and I talked about this in the original cafe last fall, was the importance of having individual meetings with my students. It seems crazy to some folks because we've got large classes, but I do it. It's an incredibly exhausting couple of weeks of squeezing everybody in to a half-an-hour, to an hour appointments, but I do it. I make sure again, that I'm checking in with them about the material, about their progress in the class, everything else, but I'm also allowing them the space to say, "Hey, this really bothered me." Or, "Hey, you taught this side of the subject, but you didn't even address this other aspects." That's going to be really important to me. That happens in those small sessions, those individual meetings, but even in classrooms at some point in a semester, the space is comfortable enough because we always go there where a student, and let me give you a concrete example. I was teaching my class on popular culture and I was using myself as an example. I gave them a list of different things I do for fun, television shows that I watch for fun. They were all over the board. Sons of Anarchy, Scandal, terrible shows The Bachelor, terrible shows. I'm actually recording this, I'm just remembering. [laughter] Excuse me, but I do. [laughs] I said to my students, What does this say about me? How would you read what I enjoy in terms of popular culture as indicative of me personally, but also the culture in which I exist, in the history of this particular moment?" One of my students automatically said, "Well, it tells me that you--" What did she say exactly? She said, "It tells me quite clearly, that you are heteronormative and that's the only way that you see the world." I thought, yes, it does. That comment again, inserting myself into that and her, I think, boldness in pointing that out, I adored it. It made me so much more aware of every time that I was being heteronormative in that classroom. Interviewer: It's hard to be aware of those things, because you're used to it? Candice: Absolutely. Interviewer: Whatever the frame is that you bring, you're used to the frame. Candice: Exactly. It could have been a very awkward moment. I could have read that as a student seriously challenging me, challenging my authority, challenging who I am in this class when I pay such careful attention to all these other issues of race and gender and sexuality, but I didn't read it that way at all. I really saw it as a teaching opportunity for me and the way that she inserted it, so easily into the conversation, told me so much about the dynamic moving forward. That we're good [laughs] in that space. Again, moving forward in that class, not only was I more sensitive to my heteronormativity, but I also infused conversations with that. So, "How do we see heteronormativity in this or that?" Or, "Who's missing from all of these images?" That was an important moment. I think I went really off topic, sorry. [laughs] Interviewer: No, the original question is how would you like to get better at modeling emotional responses? But these are great examples. I obviously don't know the student, I'm just hearing the story from you, but I can imagine the student doing that, where they are trying to get at you, challenge you, and I don't know this particular student and I don't care on this case, but your response, regardless of where they were coming from, seems to me a response that welcomed them and respected them no matter where they were coming from, whether they were seeing it as a statement of fact or whether they were seeing it as a challenge. It didn't matter. I can see how they would receive how you talked about it in a very positive way. Candice: It is, it comes from that. I think the point that I was trying to make is that how I want to get better, how I do try and better myself in this area all the time, is by really listening carefully and letting my students teach me. They are really good at having many of these very difficult conversations. In some ways, a lot of them are so much better than I am and I love that. Using their expertise, following their lead is something that I take very, very seriously and does. That's precisely what makes me better. Interviewer: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Another thing I want to ask you about is, here's the scenario, here's somebody who just came out of a doctoral program and hired by USF. They've never taught, they may have been TA in courses, but they never taught their own courses, but they're in a situation where they would love to have the kinds of rich conversations that you have in your classes. For a beginner, what would be, I'm making this up, but what would be the three, five, seven key steps that you would give them to start with to think about? Because you probably don't want to overwhelm them, as an expert in all of this, what's some of the advice you would give to a newcomer that wants to start going down this journey? Candice: I'm going to think through those steps in a second. [laughs] Interviewer: ItŐs an unfair and difficult question. I understand. Candice: It's a really important question. You asked me something else about concrete experiences, how I became so comfortable and how I changed along the way. When I was first hired here at USF, it was my first semester and I was teaching a generic survey level course. I'm still quite young, I like to think and look relatively young. I got a couple more years left in me. Interviewer: You're about 23 now. Candice: Thank you. Absolutely, yes. Genius. My first semester and Obama got elected. As a historian and as a woman of color, I had just a powerful reaction to everything, powerful reaction. I didn't quite understand why everyone in the country didn't have the same powerful reaction. I changed the way that I taught that day, completely. Before that moment, that November moment, I was very guarded as a professor. I put up a huge wall between my students and myself. I thought I had to do that because I had to exert my authority and make sure nobody-- I came in ready for everyone to challenge me. It was going to be a struggle. It was going to be a fight. That day, I dropped the guard completely. We weren't talking about politics at that moment. I don't know my students' own political views. I didn't care. It's like, "We're going here because I want you to understand how extraordinary this moment is." I did a quick lecture of tracing African American history in about five minutes in a different survey course. By the end of that, all of my students were sort of emotionally present as I was. I had students crying, I had students who suddenly wanted to get up in front of the class and say things. It became this very powerful speak-out session and it's bonded us to this very day. I'm still in touch with probably half of that class of students. Ever since then, I was no longer terrified of being my full self. When it comes to advise for new faculty, in particular, let the guard down. That is the absolute number one thing that I can say, but in order to let the guard down, again, you've got to do that preliminary work of preparing yourself. As long as you are prepared to the best of your ability, you can walk into that classroom, bring your full self. That's how you model those emotional responses. Students perceive that, they are incredibly receptive to that and they respect it. That may come as a huge shock to a lot of our colleagues that students will actually respect you for breaking down a little bit or forcing them to, but they really, really do. It makes us human. Interviewer: In some odd way, it seems partly what you're describing, the seem to roundabout, but it's almost like what would be the best in what we'd want from Ignatian Pedagogy or the Jesuit Mission, right? It's hard to address the whole person that is the other, in this case the student, if you're not also sharing your whole person? Candice: Yes. Interviewer: I've asked you the best questions I can, and probably when I'm walking to my office, I'll kick myself and say, "Oh God, why didn't ask her this or that?" But right now in this moment, around this whole topic of contentious conversations, dealing with developing rich conversations in the classroom, what are some things that come to mind to you that I haven't asked you that I haven't probed, that you think is important in some way to convey to other faculty, as issues to keep in mind? Candice: I can't think of anything you didn't ask me specifically. You've asked phenomenal questions and made me think and reconsider what I do and should not do, perhaps moving forward. One of the things that I also really think is important for new faculty or old-faculty, everyone of us in between is validating students in the midst of these conversations. I just want to point this out because this is something that also can be very difficult for a lot of us. I'm not talking about validating students who are showing emotional reactions to things, the student who runs out crying. Of course, you need to go and validate them. I'm talking about validating the student who says something incredibly offensive. That's equally as important in a classroom. It doesn't mean that if they, let's say, use the N-word or something like this, that you validate that. No. [laughter] You again, look past, hear past, whatever it is that they're saying and try and pull out a nugget of something [laughs] that you can validate. For example, if a student says something that's particularly offensive about, I don't know, there could be all sorts of things. I don't want to say anything. [laughs] They're going to cut this, right? Interviewer: No, but just use an example. I'm sure there's lots of things that have actually occurred in your classroom too. Candice: Yes, there are. An example, forcing yourself to validate a student who's made an offensive remark, one that's perhaps offensive to you personally. I had a student who used the N-word. He was doing it, I knew, because we were reading a historical text with that word. Really, he was just referencing the material, but he drops the N-word, probably, four times in a minute. Interviewer: He didn't hold back at all? Candice: He didn't hold back. What I am immediately responding to as a human being, again, as a Black woman, is the word. I'm looking at my other students and I see the shock and horror in their faces and made it worse, because of the student's background himself. He's not a member of one of these groups, who might be offended. I had to listen to him and get past what I was hearing, get past hearing the N-word and focus on the substance of his comment. The comment that he made was actually quite smart and quite perceptive. Instead of immediately addressing him using the N-word, I validated the point that he was making. Interviewer: How did you do that? Here's what I'm thinking is if you validate the point that he's making, but don't address the way he's choosing to express himself, doesn't that, in some way, for the rest of them to say, "Oh, I have license to do the same?" I'm guessing that didn't happen. There's some sort of secrete sauce in what you did that made it effective. Candice: There's no secrete sauce. I did both. I just did both back to back. Again, doing both back to back and being quick about doing it, that's the preparation component. You've got to expect the students are going to say, again, offensive inappropriate things. I validated the point he was making and then I quickly on the heels of that said something to the tone of, "I hear what you're saying, right, absolutely. However, I did notice that you're using the N-word that's coming out of the text, but it's probably pretty offensive to some folks in the room. Why don't we just say the N-word from here not out?" Then he quickly realized that he was actually being offensive and apologized for it. I was like, "No, it's okay. It's in the text. We understand, but it is kind of offensive to hear." Then we kept going. That actually helped the other students. I saw them relax immediately because I didn't let it go, nor did I poke at the student himself necessarily and make him feel terrible for what he'd just said, because if I did, he would have shut down. Interviewer: There's something in this maybe more subtle in what you said that I don't think I would have thought of to do in the moment, which is you acknowledged, I want to go back to another point, but you acknowledged what he said that was insightful and useful for the conversation. You addressed using offensive language, but in addition, what you gave him was an alternative way to speak. Probably what I would have done is something more like essentially saying, "Please don't say that again. You're being offensive." Whereas what you said is more or less that same thing, but with the important add-on of now here's how we can speak about this publicly. You gave him some way to channel that energy. That's much smarter than I would have done. [laughs] Candice: You have to especially when it comes to language. I mean there are words, right? It could be one word and you hear it, and suddenly you bristle, other students bristle an you cannot hear what they actually intended to say. It's in tandem with what I've been talking about, in terms of modeling emotional responses. You also have to give them language itself to work around those things. Students are conscious of that. We are in a very politically correct moment in history and they'll actually ask me. I've had students who say, "Is it okay if I use black in a paper or should I say white or Euro-American?" I have to help them through that. How do you use these words? Interviewer: That's a fair question. Candice: It is. It absolutely is. Again, you can't assume that somebody knows that they're being offensive, number one, or that they do have those alternatives. You've got to give them to them. Interviewer: Yes, absolutely. Candice: It helps other students in your classroom at the same time. They then can model that with their friends. Interviewer: Absolutely. Candice, thank you so much for your time. I know it's already a really busy semester for you. She has a very small little event that she has to organize for February 24th of this year that some of you may be aware of, that she can put together in 20 minutes. Really thank you for your time because what you do and the way you approach things, I know there's a lot of care and thoughtfulness there and a lot of effectiveness there. Even if I'm the only one who listens to the interview, I've learned a lot from the conversation, but I think other faculty will too. This is something I've heard from a lot of faculty that they want to be going in this direction more, so I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you have a busy life. Thanks so much. Candice: Pleasure. Thank you. [00:40:40] [END OF AUDIO] File name: Candice Harrison.mp3 12