How to educate in today’s time? Author Kevin Gannon joins host Lynn Vartan to talk about educating with hope and inclusion, from his book “Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto.” They discuss teaching, learning, and how to always lead with hope in today’s ever-changing environment.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 00:02
Hey everyone, this is Lynn Vartan and you are listening to the apex our on K SUU thunder 91.1. In this show, you get more personal time with the guests who visit Southern Utah University from all over, learning more about their stories and opinions beyond their presentations on stage. We will also give you some new music to listen to, and hope to turn you on to some new sounds and new genres. You can find us here every Thursday at 3pm or on the web at suu.edu/apex. But for now, welcome to this week's show here on thunder 91.1. All right, well, welcome in everyone. It is Thursday, which means it is Apex day. I'm super excited to be here today. This is Lynn Vartan. And we are talking about teaching and learning today. I have with me, my guest today is Kevin Gannon, who is the author of radical hope, and gave a talk today on the importance of radical hope and teaching. Kevin, welcome in.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 01:09
Thanks, Lynn. Great to be here with you. Yay.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 01:11
So let's talk about who you are and what you do first, sure, tell us about what you do in your day to day.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 01:18
So my day to day role is at a small private liberal arts college named Grandview University where I've been since 2004. It's in Des Moines, Iowa, and we're an access oriented institution. So what does that mean exactly? So we we have a mission that is very access oriented for students in particular from underserved or historically marginalized groups. So we are based on an old Danish model, because we were founded by Danish immigrants, right. And it was a folk school model, which is a very democratic, egalitarian Mind Body Spirit model of education. And that access element that people from all communities around us should have access to the opportunity of higher education has guided a lot of what we do,
Dr. Lynn Vartan 02:01
Were you seeking, I mean, when we try to find these college teaching jobs, you know, were you seeking that kind of place out? Or did the place find you did you find the place chicken before the egg?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 02:12
Well, it was a happy coincidence that the the mission of the university matches very closely kind of my own ethic. But I'm a historian, and the job market in history has traditionally been kind of a smoldering crater, right? So I kept myself pretty fortunate that I was able to A: find a position but B: find a position at an institution that so closely matches my own outlook on higher ed and its mission.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 02:36
So you came in teaching history, I guess, and when did your work with the Center for Teaching and Learning come about?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 02:44
So the Center for Teaching and Learning at my university actually started kind of the year I got their title three grant from the federal government that ceded the resources to institutionalize that kind of mission for educational development, promoting teaching and learning, advocating for teaching and learning, supporting faculty and staff. And I'm fortunate to have benefited from two predecessors who did an amazing job both starting and sustaining the center in 2014. That position came open, and it's a half, you know, you would stay on the faculty half time and then work in this position halftime directing the center. And it was a really, it's something that I've been wanting to do for a while in terms, I've always been passionate about teaching and learning. And this seemed like a really good opportunity to merge that into my own work on a formal a more formal basis. But also, because, you know, I've benefited a lot from the center of programming as an early career faculty member myself, and I thought that it was really important to help sustain that work going forward and was lucky enough to get hired into the position in 2014. And have been doing it ever since.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 03:52
Great. Let's talk about that the the role of a center like that, and some of the benefits that that it does provide to campus, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about specifically what your center does, and and then we can maybe expand that a little bit more.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 04:07
So at a small institution like mine, you know, our center is kind of a one stop shop for any sort of faculty and professional or educational development. And so I work with instructors, both full and part time faculty, as well as academic staff who also teach for us, which happens occasionally in some of our programs. Any work that goes on in teaching and learning is work that I try to support. We do programming, we do workshops, kind of the traditional model of workshops and activities and things like that. We try to host social events that celebrate teaching and learning and the colleagues who are doing that work. We do reading groups, we do faculty learning communities. We help coordinate a new faculty mentoring program to help onboard our new colleagues and get them set up for success in their teaching and faculty role at the university. But probably two of the most important things that we do is one we do a Summer Teaching and Learning Institute, which is kind of a centerpiece event for our programming schedule. And we bring in an outside expert or someone who's doing really interesting work and teaching and learning. And we do some really intense kind of development work that hopefully carries us into the following year in terms of improving our practice.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 05:18
That's great that you do that in the summer.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 05:22
Yeah, just so our spring semester finishes in April, oh, great is nice, you know, a nice little perk, or scheduling works, but it enables us to do things, and may we have a May session. So folks are still around. And it also works for bringing in outside speakers before everyone's gone away from the summer. So that's cool. So that's really helpful. And then we also, you know, I see my role as a role for kind of advocacy for my faculty and staff, colleagues, you know, I advocate for teaching and learning, I report directly to the provost in my position. So you know, I sit on the provost Council, I sit on some committees that deal with teaching and learning instructional resources. We're also really involved in online and blended teaching and learning, which is true even before COVID. My university has developed some strong online only programs. And so we do out of my center, we support that work as well.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 06:14
Great. Can you talk a little bit about kind of the perception, I sort of want to get into a bit about the perception of these kinds of centers at the national level? I think there's, I mean, I'm a faculty member, so I'm biased to looking at the importance of them to help us but I think perhaps there's some people who see it as an extra entity, or why is this here? And I wonder if you might speak a little bit to the importance of these kinds of centers, you know, sort of at a more global level?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 06:44
Absolutely, you know, we actually have some really good research out there. And in fact, some was conducted in Indiana University was kind of a meta study of institutions of all sizes, that have teaching and learning centers, or faculty development operations, and they tie in, or indirect variation to improve student learning outcomes in almost every aspect, looking so which, you know, seems like kind of an obvious point, but you know, supporting good teaching, and learning helps sustain teaching and learning. And with any institution, if you think something is important, then you devote resources, and not just financial resources, but space, attention, support for the people who are doing the work. You know, those sorts of things go a long way in communicating to the members of your community, what the priorities are, and the folks doing the work in those areas are going to be supported and have that work affirmed. You know, some university, there are some teaching centers that have been around for three, four decades. There are others that are brand new, and that's one of the exciting parts about the field is we're seeing kind of a wave of centers being opened or reimagined in a lot of institutions that are starting to expand their mission into more say, blended and online teaching, given where we are with pandemic pedagogy.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 08:00
Are you in a position that I mean, is your institution very much in support of your center? Or do you find yourself having to advocate for it? Or perhaps somebody who's listening saying, Well, I want to advocate more for this? Do you have any advice or directions for that?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 08:17
Sure. And I'll say, I'm really fortunate in that there's a strong culture of teaching and learning and student success in my university. You know, a lot of folks say that, but we really, we live that and so my job is much easier as a result, I don't have to make the case for the existence of the center, right, and a big product, you know, a big reason for that are the previous directors who did such wonderful work to establish the center as something that was valuable for faculty, something that's supported faculty, and that was a net positive. So in some sense, is my job is to not screw that up. The other but first, for people who are thinking about, you know, how do you get folks to support this work, you may not know what the day to day operations of a teaching center look like? If the role of faculty at any institution, whether it's a research one all the way down to an open enrollment, community college, we talked about three components teaching, research and service right now the emphases that are given to those may vary depending on the type of institution. But if you support teaching, then you need to support the faculty doing it and having a faculty development operation really remedies one of the big problems with graduate education in this country is that when we come out of PhD programs or terminal degree programs in our disciplines, we often we don't get a lot of pedagogical training. Right. And so it's like, it's like putting an amateur into the operating room. Right, you know, and there is a scholarly approach to teaching. We have an enormous corpus of research and scholarship. We have all sorts of qualitative literature, you know, you don't have to rediscover fire. There's kind of this myth sometimes I think that you know, good teachers are born and not made, which is untrue. Good teachers are made all the time. Hi. It's a matter of connecting folks with the resources and support they need to improve their craft and we're always improving Yeah, even those of us who've been at this for a while, there's always things that we can do differently, do better reflect upon do more skillfully. And that's where faculty development centers come in a Teaching and Learning Center has a signal that this is a priority for us. And we're supporting the people who are advancing that part of our mission, I think it's crucial to an institution success.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 10:19
I love that. Thank you. You have a fantastic book out called Radical Hope, which we've been reading all over campus this year. I wonder if you could talk just a bit as an introduction to it, about how you came to write the book, and then we'll, we'll take a musical break and come back and get into more detail.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 10:38
Sure. So the book actually had its genesis as a blog post, alright, I started a blog back in like 2014, as a way to help jumpstart my own writing practice, with the idea that I could just sort of put half baked stuff out on the internet as a way of continuing to write and at least for a theoretical audience, that's awesome. So I process a lot of things by writing. And I had come off, I think it was 2016, I had come off, you know, kind of a rough semester and felt like things had kind of gotten out of focus. And I felt the whole semester, I'd been sidetracked on a lot of other things, too, I was serving, you know, in a number of different roles at the university and felt like I was kind of spread a little too thin. And so I was trying to figure out, you know, what are, you know, how do I recenter myself refocus my practice. And so I wrote a post and you know, I call it my teaching manifesto, where, and it was literally just a bunch of bullet points, right, just sort of, you know, an articulation of, you know, kind of this, I believe, thing, and one of the things that sort of came out as I was writing was that teaching is a radical act of hope. And, and that really, I was, you know, that was one of those phrases that I didn't, I just wrote itself kind of was like, wow, that, that actually resonates a lot and, and I put the blog post out there, and I figured, you know, what, like, two people would read it, you know, because, you know, how many people have blogs? Right, and but it resonated with people, I saw it move around Twitter a little bit, people said, Hey, I read this. And that really helped me kind of think about some things that really connected with me, right. And then Jim Lange, who has written a ton of Teaching and Learning says one of the great teaching and learning authors out there edits a series on teaching and learning in higher ed, and it had just moved to West Virginia University Press. And they were recruiting titles for the series. And Jim came to our campus to do some faculty development work at our Summer Institute, actually, and, and he said, Hey, you know, that post that you wrote, seem to have kind of, you know, resonated with people, people liked it. Have you ever thought about turning it into a book? And so you know, maybe it would be a fit for this series? And at first, I was like, you know, a manifestos aren't supposed to be long. What would this look like? Because I was initially very skeptical. But, but but we had a really good conversation about what it might look like and what it might be. And so that's how the book came to be, was that conversation and Jim's encouragement to think about how I might dive deeper into some of these ideas or look at the implications of some of the things that I'd sort of thrown out there as bullet points, like, what does that really mean, in practice? What what would that mean to do things this way? Why would we want to maybe think differently, or imagine better in some of these areas. And so that was where the book got started.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 13:15
Fantastic. And it came out in the middle at the very beginning of the pandemic.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 13:19
Right, you know, so I signed the contract to write the book in late 2016, early 2017. And then, you know, three years later, here's a book. So it just goes to show that I procrastinate a lot. The writing process could be uneven.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 13:34
But timing is an amazing thing. I mean, we enter the pandemic, and here comes radical hope, right? I mean, that's amazing.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 13:41
So maybe there was a cosmic reason for it. Other than just my procrastination.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 13:45
Well, there you go. That's a perfect segue to take a little break and listen to some music. I have an eclectic mix today. And so I think my friend Katie is listening. And I was over at her house and she has a record player and got some great LPs and some groups that I hadn't heard about. So Katie, if you're listening, this one's from you. And this is good vibrations and it's by the young Holt Unlimited, so check it out. You're listening to the apex our this is k SUU thunder 91.1 Yes, welcome back, everyone. So that is the young Holt unlimited. Oh my gosh, such cool sound such cool vibe. That's a cover of good vibrations. They do covers they do original stuff, but just great vibes and who doesn't need good vibrations right now. I mean, it's January, it's the middle of winter. We're in week two of the semester here at SUU, and good vibrations are always welcome. So I have in the studio joined with author, professor, blogger, all different writer, Kevin Gannon, and we are talking about his book, radical hope, which is a teaching manifesto. Welcome back, Kevin.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 19:01
Good to be here. Again.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 19:02
One of the things I'd love to discuss with you is one of the things you spend a lot of time talking about in your book, which actually was something that we talked a lot about on campus, you spend some time talking about the syllabus. And for me, you know, I was sort of proud of my, my syllabi, you know, I thought it was they were pretty cool and efficient and all that and then I read your book and I was like, wow, you know, there's I could go much further with this and, and I would love for you to talk about your sort of feelings about syllabi and some of the key things and we can get into that a little bit. Tell me your thoughts on the syllabus.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 19:45
Yeah, and there's probably some people out there right now who are just like really, you're talking about this? Who does that? Right. And it's all confess I'm kind of a syllabus, dork. But the reason is, is in a position like mine, one of the cool things is is I do help a lot of people with course design and working on syllabi and, and think, you know, research that we do in the institution, I read through a lot, of course syllabi. And it's really neat to see the cool stuff that people are doing across campus and fields that, you know, I'm certainly a novice at best and right. And so I think the syllabus is one of those places that represents a lot of opportunity for us that we don't often take advantage of. And I'm kind of a geek about syllabi for that reason, right? Like, especially now with pandemic teaching, moving so much of what we do online, and we have, you know, even though many of us are back, quote, unquote, in person, we're still using learning management systems or other digital platforms, where course materials are housed, and students are, even in their high school experience, you know, that's where they're going to look for things. And so sometimes students will encounter a syllabus for a course even before they encounter us, right, or step foot in the classroom. And if it's a syllabus that, you know, reads like an insurance document, that boilerplate language, yeah, or a whole bunch of, you know, Thou shalt not, thou shalt not kind of stuff, right? Like, you know, what does that say to that student, right. And I'm already losing the battle before we even start class. And this is where Online Teaching and Learning Community is, it has been a big influence on some of my own thinking, because once I started teaching some fully online classes, you know, it was really clear, like your students are going to be coming into your class space, whatever that is, at different points, it's not going to be all of them sitting in front of you on Tuesday at one, right. And so crafting and thinking carefully about the actual space of learning, including the syllabus right becomes really important. And so that led me into thinking about, you know, what are some things that we can do better? What are some things that we should, you know, maybe scale out? And what are some practices that maybe we should let go, and syllabus as, as contract, right, this idea that, you know, your syllabus is a legally binding agreement, you know, first of all, it's an urban legend, there's no established case law, or interpreted a syllabus like that. But what that does is it gives us an excuse to throw in all the policy language that everyone thinks students should read, right, and the syllabus becomes the dumping ground for every campus units, you know, hey, we got to make sure they all read this. And so it's become more about that, than it is about the actual course of the teaching and learning that students are going to engage in. And when we're in that direction, you know, we're way off path, and we're losing big opportunities to connect.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 22:27
Can you talk a little bit, one of the things that I changed based on reading your book was, was the tone of the language in my syllabus? And, for example, you know, every syllabus has, you know, what this course is course description, you know, but now before that, both in my in the Canvas modules, or in our, our learning our online versions of it, or and on paper, before that I have, you know, really a welcome. And, and so I wonder if you could speak to that part of it, the tone of what you think, what, what should be the tone of a really great syllabus,
Dr. Kevin Gannon 23:08
I mean, to me, a syllabus should be welcoming, it should be engaging, and it should interest students in the work that lies ahead, right. And it can do those things. But we have a really hard time doing those things if we're not making connections with students. And it's a lot easier to connect with a written document that says, in this class, we will do X, or I will offer you the opportunities to do Y, Z, A and B rather than the instructor will x and the student will you know, when we use that third person in personal language, we're we're depersonalizing the whole experience is the opposite of engaging what a syllabus represents to me, and I'm not the first one to put it this way. Qin Bane, who wrote a great book on What the Best College Teachers Do, right, talks about what he calls a promising syllabus. And so that, to me, a syllabus is a promise or a set of promises, right? You are in this course. And you will be different as a result of this experience. And the main job of my syllabus is to demonstrate to you or help you figure out what that will look like, how will you be different? What will this course do to change you? Maybe you learn additional skills, maybe you get better at skills that you already have? Maybe you learn different habits of mine, maybe you're challenged to think differently, all of these things, right? So how do students know how the course is going to change them? What do student you know, what is this course going to do for students? What knowledge is it going to add? What skills is it going to enhance? And why is it an important part of their academic experience? Those things aren't self evident as much as we like to think they are. And students deserve to know those things. So to me, a syllabus is a document of promises and I think we do a much better job conveying that and then the excitement and the curiosity underneath those promises. If we use a tone in language that is inviting, that is personal that is that that lets You know, that a human being, and, you know, not an AI at an insurance company, you know, wrote the document.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 25:06
Right. I think that that's amazing. And I definitely feel better about my syllabi, because I feel it represents me also more. I mean, you know, it's, they say, great writers and or when you're writing, it's you represented on the page. So why do we do that differently with with a syllabus, we shouldn't, it should still be us on the page. And so I hadn't really thought of it that way until I read your book. So I feel really grateful to run across that. So thank you.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 25:34
Yeah definitely loads. My pithy response to all of this is, you know, when we complain about students reading, not reading the syllabus, the first question is, well, is it worth reading? Right? And so I think the mantra is, and I even titled that chapter, you know, let's give them a syllabus worth reading. They'll read it right, if it's worth it.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 25:51
Right. Right. You have some great titles. The first chapter is the the Classroom of Death.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 25:57
Classrooms of Death.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 25:59
Okay, what do you I mean, I've read the book, but just to entice the maybe people who haven't read it, what do you mean by Classrooms of Death.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 26:05
So a friend of mine on Twitter said that's the most metal chapter title and a teaching and learning book that I've ever seen. And to me, that's some of the highest praise I've received. So classrooms of death, actually, which would be a great band name, I'm not gonna lie comes from the philosophy of a Danish thinker, whom almost nobody has heard of outside of the people who studied Danish thinkers, named Nikolai Fs Grundtvig. Okay, so in Denmark, Grundtvig, was a philosopher who spent a lot of time in the early 1800s, thinking about education, what it should be for what inch it should serve. And Grundtvig critiqued the sort of standard model of education that was for elites only in that area, you know, the sort of classical subjects of like rhetoric, for example, and that this was a very elitist model that just reinforced the nobility, and then everybody else Grundtvig believed that schooling, that education should meet the experiences of people living their lives, right. And so what does a school for life look like? And so for Grundtvig, this, this helps evolve what the what's called the Danish Folk School model, which becomes a really important kind of trend and, and, you know, sort of touchstone and thinking about education, and it's mind body, spirit education. Some of it tends towards vocational or community oriented, it's much less informal, there's access behind it, there's a democratizing ethos that can come out in certain ways, you know, a school for the people for the folk, right. And the university that I work at was founded by Danish Lutherans and the Grundtvig. In tradition, so this is the the happy convergence, right of paths that got me thinking about this and, and Grundtvig talked about, well, if these are the classrooms of life, you know, the model I'm arguing against is our classrooms of death. So it's where learning goes to die, right? It's a system and a set of motives for learning and a narrow set of visions about for whom and for what ends education should be that that is where learning goes to die, right? That it's just ritualistic. It's narrow, it's it's obtuse, it's elitist. It's none of the things that we say higher education should be right. And so the Folk School model, which is still vibrant and active in some areas of the United States that were founded by these Danish immigrants, is, is I think, a really influence or a really important way, one of these important strands in the conversation of that very large question in this country where public education is compulsory, k 12. Right, like, right, for what? Yeah, why are we doing this? What should we be doing this for? And, and education should be life affirming, and that should be vital in the literal sense of that term, right? Because, again, what's the opposite of that? A classroom death of something that necrotizing where, where the emphasis is on punitive measures, and upon doing harm? And we see that right, there are classrooms of death. Yeah, in this country, in both K to 12 and the higher ed systems. And that's, to me that that's dangerous. Yes. I feel like we need to be advocating for what Grundtvig would have called schools for life.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 29:09
I love it schools for life. Well, that brings me to another question. So you know, maybe somebody is listening right now and is like, yeah, all right. I'm in. I'm going to get a copy of the book. I'm going to read the book. But what I'd love to ask you is, how do you let's say you're a teacher, you know, of any level but particularly higher ed, who, maybe he's feeling a little stuck, you know, and I think that a lot of us have experienced that in the last couple years especially. But they're inspired by your words and this concept and how do you begin the work? But gently you know to yourself because I think that's one of the things and I asked this earlier today too, you know, it the responsibility of it of trying to be the perfect teacher can be so overwhelming and but but But that desire to learn that desire to get better? How can one begin sort of evaluating in this concept of hope, in a gentle way? Perhaps?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 30:11
Well, I think the first thing to say on that is it's really important to realize where our areas of possibility are, you know, hope, in its meaningful, actionable sense, can't just be a, you know, we're going to make everything better by tomorrow, right? You know, acting from an ethic of hope, is what helps us persist through really difficult times. And that persistence is important. But it also, you know, persistence has a cost. And, and we need to acknowledge that, you know, all too often, you know, remember, remember back in 2020, when teachers were heroes, for like, a week, you wouldn't that fun? Yeah, right. You know, but it's like, what that what that discourse was, and I loved it. And I was glad to see teachers getting recognition, of course, but what it turned into was teachers are heroes, because we expect them to fix all the problems that society is has not right. And that's unsustainable. Yeah. Right. So I think what we need, you know, to get into, you know, to do pedagogical work that's grounded in hope, first means a vision of what are my arenas of possibility? Where am I positioned? You know, am I an adjunct faculty and my full time faculty and my male and female, am I tenured? You know, what, what is my gender expression? What, what demographic groups do I claim identity from, you know, all of these things, right. Intersectionality is a thing and and so there may be different arenas of possibility for someone who's just starting in an academic career and, and more precarious position. And I want to be very clear that, you know, I make some pretty bold stances in the book, but I also am acutely sensitive to the fact that it is a white male, professor with tenure I can get away with, right. And so I think we need to be cognizant, where's the realm of possibility? And then how do I maximize what I can do in that realm? The other thing that I that I think is really important is we have to find our people, nobody does this work alone. Yeah, so we sustain one another, we must create solidarity. And that's true solidarity between us and our students, our students, our allies, and not our adversaries in this work, but also solidarity with colleagues. No one does this by themselves. And if you try, it's unsustainable. And we have to give ourselves permission, just as we try to give our students permission, right? That's not always going to work. Sometimes we learn best from failure. You know, I learned more when I do something unskillful in the classroom, which is frequently and and I try to take the lessons from that. But that doesn't mean I have to like it when it happens, right. But But creating the space to be that I think it we're not 100% perfect all the time. And even though we say we know that intellectually, sometimes we act as if we are and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. And so I can tell you, you know, last fall, this past semester that we just finished, I think was the hardest semester that I've had in over 20 years of teaching in higher ed. And there were a lot of things that just did not go well, at all. Yeah. And, you know, I look back on that semester already. And I'm like, Man, my students got kind of a raw deal, you know, they did not get my best, they did not get anywhere close to my best. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And there are a lot of things I can take out of that on reflection, but, you know, I can't I can't sit in that. And, and not, and not think about what do I do with this? Right? You know, how do I how do I make connections with folks who can help get me from a place where I feel like everything just failed to a place where, you know, I'm kind of back on the horse, when there's a little more traction under this where I am able to recenter and refocus.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 33:48
I really appreciate that, that part of the discussion, because I think that that is one thing. I mean, that gets Ultra scary is that you you you always do want to get better, but everything is hard, you know, and as you take the chance to to get better to do things. And then if it doesn't work out exactly the way you feel just it's easy to sort of feel shipwrecked, you know, and so if you have that support system, you have your people that can help lift you up, that is really, really great. Get back on the horse, you know, so I really appreciate that part of the conversation. Thank you.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 34:26
Yeah, and I think too, you know, this is also something that folks who are in leadership positions, administrative positions, really need to be cognizant of, you know, because it's one thing for me to say, Okay, I'm going to reach out to my networks and find sustenance from my colleagues. But what's the institution doing to support those of us doing this work? Yeah, you know, we are in a place where we have just given so much over the last two years, like literally unprecedented and it doesn't seem like that's going to be changing much anytime soon. And so we need more than weekly wellness emails. Yeah. We need something more.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 35:00
Let me drill down on that, because what does support look like in this environment? You know, it's easy to say, Oh, well, support means money, well, we'll throw money at it, you know, or support means here's a weekly wellness email. But But what, what do you think represents? Or what are some examples of systemic support?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 35:20
There's a lot that I could get into. Yeah, you know, some of it, quite frankly, does involve money. And I realize we're in a tough fiscal climate. So it's one thing for me to say, I'm going to spend somebody else's money, which but I'm good at doing that, you know, what I what I can say is that we, the way in which we allocate resources, needs to align with what we say our mission is. And we need to be explicit about that process with all members of the community. And so when we're being asked to do more and more, but yet class sizes are increasing, when you know, pay for adjuncts has remained stagnant. When adjunct ification continues to increase. You know, we're saying here are things that are critical to our mission. But then what we're doing is we're not really we're doing the bare minimum to support those things. And so that dissonance I think, really undermines the health and morale of an institution in ways that aren't always visible. But when they become visible, it's too late.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 36:18
Right. That was like something that you said in your talk today, I thought was was just fantastic was that you said, if I were to look at your institution's budget, which I imagine is the same for a business or a nonprofit, fill in the blank. But if I were to look at the budget without knowing much about the organization, could I tell just from looking at the budget, what the mission of that institution organization is, and that really resonated with me, and I thought that was very interesting. And I would, you know, encourage others to think about that as well.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 36:49
Well, and one of the most common ways in which we see this play out in higher education is is when revenues are a little bit lower than forget, like say, enrollment is down, and an institution did not meet an enrollment target. And so we've got to cut the operating budget. Like that's the reality. Yeah, and it happens. But a lot of institutions, the low hanging fruit, so to speak, the first place they go to cut is in the instructional cost budget, which is, you know, we can't hire as many part time faculty, we're going to decrease the number of sections we're offering in courses. And we're going to ask other sections to take more students to cover the shortfall. And so that's going to save us money, which in the short term, it saves you some money. And it's not a sustainable savings. But what you say is important in your mission, we are a teaching centered institution here for the students education, the first thing that you've gotten to in budget, stay teaching, right. And you know, and I, this, the mantra I say all the time is, you know, faculty working conditions are student learning conditions. I love that. And so if you're saying, okay, faculty to save costs, we're going to offer fewer sections of these courses, and we're going to increase enrollment by 15. In each one of them. Or in our online sections, we're going to double enrollment, you are undermining the instructional mission of your institution, which if that's the budgetary realities, as you see them as an administrator, fine, but don't tell me that your mission is teaching center, right? Because you are not paying you have chosen. And maybe it was what you think the least worst of a series of bad choice, but that is the choice that was made. And let's be honest about Yeah. And so that's what I'm talking about. When I tell you know, do your if I read your budget, am I going to be able to tell you what your mission is, are you paying for the things that you say are important. And the other thing that when you think about something like that is okay, we've cut the instructional budget. But in the scheme of things, it may be makes up for a temporary panic shortfall. But those are not sustainable ways of operating more efficiently. It's like me going out and buying a Maserati, and then saying, Oh, I've got a huge car payment now. So I'm going to cancel Hulu. You know, that's what the it's the equivalent, right? And that's just not the way to go about it. And so there needs to be bigger institutional conversations that are transparent and more sustained about these types of mission driven issues.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 39:04
Yeah, thank you. Perfect time for another musical break. The song that I have for you is a song called I don't know, and the artist. And the reason I chose I don't know is because in your book, you talk about I don't know and the importance of I don't know and maybe we can touch on that when we come back but this is I don't know by an artist called say you who I absolutely adore. Check it out. See what you think you're listening to k SUU thunder 91.1. All right, well welcome back everyone that song was I don't know by Say You, you're listening to the APEX hour here on KSUU thunder 91.1. As always, if you're interested in any of the music that I play on the show and have played on the show in our 85 episodes, we realize we have 85 episodes amazing. You can look at our website which is su.edu/apex and go to the podcast tab and you'll see an open Spotify playlist that is called played on the apex our and you can check out the music from this show. I'm speaking with Kevin Gannon, the author of radical hope, and we are talking about teaching and learning particularly in higher education. Welcome back, Kevin.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 43:52
Good to be back.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 43:54
So I don't know the song is titled I don't know. And I would love for you to talk about the power of I don't know.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 44:03
So I you know, I don't think I'm the only one who said this. But you know, there there is this saying that the three most powerful words in education are I don't know. Right. And and I think that's true for a number of reasons. First, it acknowledges the fact that education is necessary, right? No one knows everything. But as an instructor who says this, you know, when I say I don't know, what I'm telling my students is, I don't know everything. You don't know everything. And that's okay, right. I'm creating space, I'm creating permission for us to be imperfect and to not be experts. It's okay to be a novice. And I think the the other three words that should accompany it, oftentimes, let's find out. Yeah, right. You know, so as a historian, you know, I teach history and you know, students often come into a history course, having been traumatized by previous experiences where it's just been memorize a whole bunch of names and dates. And so one of the funny moments in a class that'll happen almost all the time as a student, you know, will ask, you know, well, when did this happen is something we're talking about? I don't know. Right? You know, cuz I don't know all the names and dates on them, right? And so the look on their faces when I say that, because that's been like, you know, a cry right? You don't admit that? Yeah. And so what that tells you, you know, history isn't just memorizing names and dates a train monkey can look that up on Google, what we're after is, you know, the whys, the house, the interpretation. And what I've done there is, you know, I don't have all the answers at my fingertips, I've modeled ways or I can model ways that we can go find those answers, but I've also given folks a permission to not know stuff. Yeah, and to be okay with that. And that's where genuine learning can happen, once we've established those sorts of permissions.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 45:38
Let's get into that and unpack it a little bit more. I mean, one of the reasons why I think, you know, professors don't like that is fear, right? There's the fear of the I don't know, and it could be the fear of, well, I'm supposed to be the expert, or it could be the fear of, oh, my gosh, if I don't know, the students just gonna go somewhere else. They're just gonna find someone who does. What? Or, and then that could be the, oh, well, if I say, I don't know, then my, you know, upper department, chair, Dean, whatever, they're gonna, you know, be upset and not see me as valuable. Right. What do you say to that?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 46:21
Yeah, it's legitimate, you know, and so I mean, the thing that I should should acknowledge right here, too, is, again, positionality matters. You know, we have a lot of research that shows us, for example, that students are more likely to question the credentials and expertise of female identifying faculty than male presenting faculty, right? And that students are more likely to question the qualifications and expertise of faculty of color as well. And this is true alarmingly enough, not just for white students, but for all students. So this trope is really made its way throughout our consciousness. Right. So, so you're admitting, I don't know, you know, that may look different, depending on your position, your identity, your relationship with your students in your institution. So I think that's really important to acknowledge. But by the same token, you know, it's, we're conditioned in graduate school, right? Yeah, the typical graduate school process is be the expert on your thing, write a dissertation on your thing, or do a performance on your thing and defend your argument against all possible counter arguments, we even literally have a defense of dissertation. So it's like, you know, and then go forth in the world and admit vulnerability after you've been conditioned dies. So it is counterintuitive in the way that many of us have experienced our own educational paths. And so it's not as if you, you know, go before your students and confess abject failure in your discipline, right? But but it's okay to say something to you know, if a student does ask a question, and you're not comfortable, necessarily saying, I don't know, you can say, Well, how would we go about finding the answer to that? Or does anybody else know how where we might start answering this question? You know, so decentering, the idea that there's always an immediate expert answer to everything. To me, that's, that's the really important part of this.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 48:04
That's a great way in, I mentioned fear. And, you know, fear is a fast road to negativity. And one of the things that, that, that you talk about in the book, and one of the things that we fight quite a bit in an AR world is the the negativity and the cynicism that can kind of embed in even even great teachers, you know, and now in particular is a real challenge. And I wonder if you might talk about how you see what you have found and, and, and just sort of that the path away from negativity away from cynicism, and and a little bit about that?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 48:47
Yeah. There's a lot of ways to speak to that, and probably more ways to speak to that now than there would have been even just a few months or even a year or two ago. Right. And it is really hard to not surrender to cynicism. Yeah, I mean, cynicism and detachment, I would argue, are probably the most reasonable responses to the evidence of the stimuli that we have in our society. So how do we sustain hope? You know, how the opposite of fear and it can't just be this Pollyanna. I have hope things well, I believe that children are awesome. Yeah, right. I actually have used that clip from the Lego Movie. Because everything is decidedly not awesome. Right now. And that's just you know, but we have to be really honest about where we've been and where we are to think about where it is that we want to go. So we can't lie to ourselves. We can't delude ourselves because anything based on lies and delusion is flimsy. And there's always that sense of fear or anxiety that would underlie anything we do based on lies or delusion that you know, the House of Cards will come crumbling down at some point. Right. And you know, to be fair, I think that's what animal It's a lot of what we see in our larger public discourse, you know, so much of what we're seeing violence and hate is based on fear. Yeah. And you know, when fear runs your life, you know, the certainties that you claim to have, you're actually not very certain about those. And there's a moment where it's all going to come crumbling down, and you're, you're scared to death. Yeah. And you manifest that fear in ways that we unfortunately have seen as violent outbursts and the extraordinarily hideous things that we've seen in our society all across the spectrum, right. So but not to get too far if you know, for our own practices, educators that you know, how do we act from Hope and not fear? You know, Rebecca Solnit talks about hope as a commitment to the future, which makes the present inhabitable and the future no matter how uncertain that future might look, right? It's a commitment to that future, right, you know, to imagining better to imagining differently, and the work that I'm doing is slowly moving us toward that future. That's what makes the present inhabitable. The Brazilian writer and educator Paulo Ferreira calls hope, as he says it's an ontological imperative. It's the very basis for how I have to know and be in the world, which shapes how I act. Because with the absence of hope, what do we have left? Right. So in some senses, I, you know, I think it I think the idea of being an ontological imperative is really compelling. But I also feel like that can be overwhelming at times, too. Sometimes, we just have to comfort ourselves in the fact that we are doing good work, that that work matters, that it's not, it's not a set of things that has immediate gratification a lot of the time, we're in the seed planting business. But as Solnit wrote, write the commitment to the future that makes the present and habitable if I fully commit to the future. That does make my present inhabitable. Anything that makes the present inhabitable right now, great.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 51:53
Yeah, bring it on. Well, you know, one of the things I want to ask you to is, is the power of journaling, it seems that many of the exercises in your book you invite to journal about I wonder if that is also a powerful ally in this building of hope. And if you could talk about your experience with that.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 52:15
Sure. So my own journaling is done most often. You know, I honor it most often in the breach, right? I like to say I have a regular practice of this, but I don't. But I think it is important.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 52:26
You don't regularly
Dr. Kevin Gannon 52:28
I try. I my journaling is a mix of writing of blogging and voice notes. Right? Voice, too, because sometimes I want to capture something. And it almost feels less immediate if I write it. And sometimes I want to know, I want to have the edge to it that I'm feeling at that particular moment.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 52:51
What do you do with your voice notes? Do you go back and listen to it?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 52:53
I have a Google Drive folder. And I'll label it with the particular thought or phrase.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 52:58
Oh, wow. Fascinating. Anyway, I interrupted. Go on more, the journaling.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 53:03
I mean, I think what however we choose to reflect that act of reflection, and you know, critical reflection, self examination, being honest with ourselves, but also celebrating the victories, like a lot of times we talk about reflection, as if it's just that we sit and think about all the things that we didn't do well, yeah. And in a vocation, like education, where so much of how we do is tied to our own personal identities as teachers, right, so something that I do unskillful in the classroom, I'm very tempted to see it as a personal fault, right, as opposed to a methodological error, which what it is right, right. So that, you know, so we can't just sit in that right, we celebrate the victories, what went? Well, you know, so that type of reflection, whether it's journaling, whether it's voice notes, I, there's a lot of good teacher blogs out there social media, I think, can be a form of, you know, kind of live journaling, basically. I mean, I think there are a lot of ways to do it. Maybe it's a meetup that you have with people in your network on a regular basis, you know, I think there all of these sorts of ways can be ways for us to reflect and to use that reflection to sustain us and, and all of that too, you know, underscores the fact again, that we can't do this alone. Yeah, so if I'm journaling, or if I'm not, you know, yes, that's for my own consumption in terms of thinking about my practice, but these are also things that I'm going to be talking with folks in my network about, you know, my circle of friends and associates and mentors, right? You know, here are things that are weighing on me, you know, and so this helps me have those conversations more intentionally and more genuinely.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 54:34
And I really appreciate the acknowledging of the victories too. You know, one of my great mentors talks about the the mirrors that we look in, you know, and that when we see those things we did wrong, it's like seeing the flaws that we see in the mirrors, but, but, you know, there are other kinds of mirrors right, you know, and those victories or those things that did go well can be very powerful mirrors. And so, I appreciate that the recognition that. So thank you.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 55:01
Yeah, and I am one of the things that I try to work I am really bad about sitting in the failures. Yeah, I will sit with that and carry that around for so long.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 55:12
Yeah, it's hard I struggle with that. I think a lot of professors do. I mean, it's a bit in our nature, because we, we got into this, many of us got into this for very lofty, you know, we were top of our a lot of people top of class at times, and you want to do a great job all the time. And so it's very easy to sit in those imperfections. So that's a challenge. But well, we could keep talking for hours, but we are amazingly already out of time. Um, and what's next for you? What do you what's what's interesting to you now in your, in your research and exploration?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 55:48
So the my current writing project is a textbook on the US Civil War and Reconstruction eras. And writing? Yeah. Not controversial at all in our Mo there, right. But writing a textbook, to me is a form of pedagogy. And I'm experimenting with a lot of things, including being very explicit about the books theoretical approach, inviting students to think actively about that, addressing them by the first person in the introduction and inviting them into that. Yeah. So it'll be a little bit of an unconventional approach, but also one that it's taken on more urgency for me, given the whole, you know, anti critical race theory, gender backlash that we've been seeing, too, because so much of this particular era involves, you know, white supremacism and its effects on shaping our country as people that, to me telling the story honestly, and fully and in ways that engage students who are learning about this area and doing it in a way that is both humane, but unflinching is really hard work, but really important work. And so that's what's occupying me for the next. It's due at the end of the year. So yeah, exciting, but a little overwhelming, too. And then from there, we'll see what happens. But you know, I continue the teaching and learning work our center and you know, the faculty work at my university continues to be busy. And I've got a couple of really great classes this semester are full of students who were doing some good work already. So it's awesome. Staying off the streets and out of trouble.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 57:14
keep you off the streets. I love that. Well, I have one final question for you. And it's a fun one. It really doesn't have to have anything to do with anything we've already talked about. And it's really just kind of like what's turning you on this week. And it can be it can be a movie or a TV show, or a favorite food or a song or a band or whatever you want. So Kevin Gannon, what's turning you on this week?
Dr. Kevin Gannon 57:39
So the NBA season is really starting to accelerate. Yeah, and it's um, you know, the drama is starting. So it's for I'm a big sports fan. It's a great diversion for me. And so I'm really in college basketball, kicking into gear I, when it turns to basketball season, it's a fun time. And so that's where I've been sitting this week hoping the Lakers can play better.
Dr. Lynn Vartan 58:00
Yeah. Oh my god. That's awesome. Well, fantastic. That's always good to hear, especially this time of year. It's an exciting time. For sure. Well, the book is radical hope a teaching manifesto. My guest today has been Kevin Gannon. Kevin, thank you so much for spending the time it's been really interesting to get into these topics and really inspiring.
Dr. Kevin Gannon 58:20
Well thanks for having me on. I've really enjoyed my visit with you and here at Suu. Great. Well,
Dr. Lynn Vartan 58:25
we'll look forward to having you back. But in the meantime, thanks for listening everyone. We will see you next week. Well, if my audio will play we will see you next week. There it goes. Thanks so much for listening to the apex hour here on KSUU tunder 91.1. Come find us again next Thursday at 3pm for more conversations with the visiting guests at Southern Utah University and new music to discover for your next playlist. And in the meantime, we would love to see you at our events on campus. To find out more, check out suu.edu/apex Until next week, this is Lynn Varton saying goodbye from the apex our here on thunder 91.1