As an educator, I find myself returning time and again to questions of power. Power is the atmosphere in which we live and breathe: it touches all and permeates every interaction of our lives. Following Michel Foucault, rhetoric and composition scholar Asao B. Inoue writes that “Power is the overarching element within ecologies that is constructed by techniques, spaces, processes, and other disciplining tactics” (174). Like it or not, the classroom is a disciplining space: I am disciplined by it, in that the space physically and metaphorically creates who I am as an instructor. My students are disciplined by it, in that their intellectual identities are bound up in the physical space (which row they choose to inhabit, for example) and in its metaphorical and ideological constraints.
These power dynamics and networks introduce certain expectations in the minds of everyone who enters this “classroom” space, but, just as significantly, individuals within that space have the ability to play, to resist, to conform, to manipulate. One of my roles, then, is to in some measure direct and be aware of those movements. I have come as part of that process to reject the traditional distribution of power, a system easily illustrated by the lecture: an instructor who professes, students who passively listen, a classroom space that is locked into its organization. Instead, I have come to face power with flexibility, a distribution of agency that prizes the network above my individual efficacy as a node. The old ways of power often feel more comfortable, more expected; they’ve worn deep grooves into our interactions, into the way our brains understand what “school” means and what our place is in it. But those patterns often disappear the real problems inherent in a power structure that is strictly hierarchical and thus oppressive.
These admittedly abstract constructions are embodied in my classroom in a variety of ways. First, I endeavor to disrupt the old flows of power by encouraging students to build relationships and share with others the circles – new and old – within which they exist. For example, on the first day of my classes, students learn each other’s names and pronouns, and are encouraged to use them in discussion. Over the course of the semester, students develop strong relationships, move forward together, and learn that the best way to grow is to do so in collaboration. Each class provides students with opportunities to discuss readings and assignments in small groups, learning to pool resources and share specialized knowledge, while frequent peer review activities teach them the value of fellowship in creativity, scholarship, and life. In these moments, even the concrete nature of the classroom crumbles a bit as desks form clumps rather than lines; as power is redistributed, shared, and deconstructed. Short breaks for movement, appearing organically as the energy in the room lessens, allow students to regroup, breathe, and reconsider their position in the network of power.
Movement is central to my pedagogy because it demands and thrives on student agency. The invitation begins with my syllabi, which invoke my students directly as you, recognizing their personhood and inviting them to see themselves in the course they’re embarking on. The projects I assign leave room for the movements and networks of my students, too. One of my favorites, for example, asks students to enrich the classroom discourses with primary texts of their own: stories and lives that are adjacent to our class’s central concerns, but that might live on the margins through no fault of their own. When students bring these texts to class, they adjust the networks of power, constructing themselves as fellow-creators of our course and recognizing their marginalized texts as voices that add complexity and movement to our conversation.
I further promote student agency by welcoming the writing my students produce as valuable texts for analysis, study, and discussion. This is a significant movement both for first-year students – many of whom don’t consider themselves writers and feel that they’ve been remediated – and graduate students, who in turn are usually left to fend for themselves when it comes to graduate-level writing. Moving student writing into the lineup of texts to be studied validates the ways our students produce knowledge and encourages them to see their work as meaningful beyond the individual course or grade. My first-year “Writing about Writing” course, for example, asks students to question, revise, and write about their own writing habits and practices in the first Major Assignment. Many students find the project awkward at first, but come to appreciate the subtleties of writing processes and strategies. More than one student has shared with me a renewed love of writing that was birthed when they threw off writing habits that they’d learned were “correct” in high school but that simply didn’t work for them. In our exploration of sticky-note outlines, clustering, and dictation software, we discover together the circular nature of writing and the powerful movements which bring us into collaboration with others.
My classes endeavor to push students to take risks with their work and explore aspects of writing, topics, and rhetorical situations outside of their immediate repertoire. Sometimes, this means that students are experimenting with various modalities, moving along previously neglected pathways and lighting up with surprising connections. They record videos and music, write poetry, and choreograph stories through dance. Sometimes, too, this exploration takes the form of imitation—assignments in which I ask the students to “disguise” their own content in another’s style, a practice which not only requires them to consciously analyze style and format, but also to reproduce another’s voice in their own writing. In the process, they make fascinating discoveries about their own tastes in writing as well as how to consciously take stock of their authorial voice and the persona they are presenting to their readers.
My final goal for my students, regardless of the class I’m teaching, is that by the end of the course they know how to take stock of the power networks around them and play along them, becoming agents of knowledge-making in their own right. Part of this growth is scaffolded into the course itself: final projects, for example, are often accompanied by guidelines that are more open and adaptable than the expectations of earlier projects. My students also consistently and thoughtfully reflect on their progress in the course and how they have changed – as students and as people – in the few months we are together. In the past, students have commented that these informal evaluations are great motivators specifically because they function in terms of forward movement while also allowing room for creative risk-taking. Similarly, I ask my students for their evaluation of my role through anonymous surveys offered once each unit. These avenues for feedback require a lot of vulnerability on my part, but give students an important outlet for voicing questions, concerns, and criticisms that they might not feel comfortable bringing up in class.
Moving through life’s power networks with ethical care demands commitment, time, and awareness of all involved. It has been a joy to me to see students respond to these responsibilities with willingness and curiosity. We can’t get rid of the networks just yet, but we can learn how to use them, to play with them, and to transform them into something good: a community that collaborates and cares. That is what I want for my classrooms.