Ep. 90 - Teaching with Courage in Polarized Times (with Dr. Brielle Harbin)

How do you keep teaching with integrity when the ground beneath higher education is constantly shifting? In this episode, I talk with Dr. Brielle Harbin—political scientist, award-winning educator, and founder of Your Cooperative Colleague. Brielle helps scholars, especially women and nonbinary faculty of color, create values-aligned academic lives that resist burnout and grind culture.

We get into what it takes to build classrooms rooted in trust, courage, and respect in these polarized times. Brielle shares the practices she uses to sustain her teaching, from reflection rituals to her “mission filter” for staying aligned with core values. We also talk about how teaching and research can actually strengthen each other, and how to find hope in a time when academia feels especially fraught.

If you’ve been looking for a way to reconnect with your purpose in the classroom, this conversation is for you.

Transcript

EP 90 with Brielle Harbin 

Leslie: 

Today, I'd like to welcome Dr. Brielle Harbin onto Your Words Unleashed. Dr. Brielle Harbin is a political scientist and award-winning educator as well as the founder of Your Cooperative Colleague, where she helps college faculty create values-aligned, fulfilling work lives that avoid grind culture, burnout, and self-erasure. Amazing! 

Through writing rituals, energy protective systems, and culturally grounded care, Brielle supports purpose-driven scholars, especially women of color and nonbinary faculty of color, in reconnecting with their brilliance. She currently hosts monthly virtual writing retreats and leads a faculty development series on teaching in uncertain times, helping instructors sustain integrity in their pedagogy and research amid growing pressures to dismantle DEI, adopt AI without reflection, and ignore the lasting impacts of pandemic-era learning. 

So Brielle has posted some really poignant reflections about teaching in a women-of-color academics group on Facebook that I'm a part of. After reading a few of her Substack articles, it got me thinking about how much more difficult it is to teach today versus when I left the classroom three years ago. I actually left three months before Chat GPT made its debut, and there’s been such a huge shift not only with the rise of AI, but also drops in enrollment and increasing surveillance of university classes and instructors. 

So I invited Brielle on to pick her brain about how to approach teaching and create sustainability in this time of intense political and social uncertainty. Brielle, it's so great to have you here! 

Brielle: 

Thank you so much. And wow. I mean, to do all of that! 

No, I'm excited to be here and to have this conversation with you and hopefully help other people, other faculty members who are trying to navigate what it is to do this job in what seems like an everyday shifting, changing dynamic.
 
 

Leslie: 

Yeah, absolutely. So let's get started by having you talk a bit about yourjourney through academia and what you do research and teaching on. 

Brielle: 

Yeah. So I am a political scientist by training and specialize in American politics, specifically issues of political communication, thinking about identity, race, gender, basically everything that is being politicized right now. And I teach classes on politics and media, American government, emotions and politics, and I've taught a class or two on politics of difference as well. But I have shifted to emotions in politics for reasons I can talk about that I think might be instructive for the current moment. 

And my research– there are several different layers of it. I do research that is strictly political science, and then also teaching and learning, because I always want to understand from a more empirical point of view, how we think about teaching effectiveness and some of our pedagogical choices. 

So I would say a common through-line in all of my work is just the idea of one, intergroup-relations; how people are relating to one another, whether that's talking to one another, interacting with one another, and then also the vehicle of storytelling as a way to think about disarming people and overcoming things like partisan bias are just ways that people get their backs up when it comes to encountering things that are new, unfamiliar or different. 

Leslie: 

So I'm so curious about teaching politics, race, gender, and all the things through these elections. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach that?Especially because we all have students who don't agree with each other politically. So, how have you managed to address those differences and maintain a sense of community in your classroom? 

Brielle: 

Yeah, so I will say that it has been a learning process for sure, and I've made mistakes and I've learned from things. So I think one of the key pieces of advice and one of the most important things that I incorporated into my teaching was just a reflection practice where at the end of every semester before I read my evaluations, I just take stock of what happened, what do I think went well, what are the things that I just noticed that this is what I thought I was doing, but this is actually what happened. And then, actually rereading those before I prepare for the next semester. 

I think it just allows you to have perspective in a way and update in ways that are really helpful in this moment, and also to just note what's going well and the fact that some things are actually going well when you are thoughtful in your teaching and how you're approaching it. So that would be the first thing I will say, that teaching in a context of having students who are inherently more diverse from the perspective of politics, identity, region. 

Because I teach in an institution that literally takes students from every congressional district, like that's the way that things work, it has required me to look inward and realize, one, what are some of the assumptions that I'm making about what people know or don't know or what they believe and don't believe in ways that I actually think were helpful, they've made me a better educator. So notice I said helpful, not necessarily less stressful, and not necessarily easier either. So that's why I said that. I've learned over time. But I think one of the biggest things that I have recognized and had to slow down to do is, one, thinking about what is the exact point or thing that I'm trying to show and have my students understand? And then how am I going about actually doing that? 

And am I doing it in ways that might get some people's backs up and be provocative? And sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes I still do it, but I just acknowledge it. And I can talk about some of the ways that I do that. I had something that I knew would make people real mad when I taught in the fall 2024 election, but I just named that, and I said, “I'm sure some people will be offended or just think that this is wrong. So let's actually just talk about it. And then we're going to really interrogate.” 

These are the challenges. That's always the easiest thing to do. We know that as academics. It's easier to pick things apart. But there's hardly anything that's either all good or all bad. So I want you to think about, “Okay, now that I've given you space to air out how this is not helpful. I'm sure if this got published, there's something that's worth knowing from this. So let's try and figure out what that is.” And I have found when I approach it with that level of, I'm just going to name it. And not just name it, because I have learned also that sometimes it's not enough to just say, “Hey, we're going to think about this from all perspectives.” 

I literally build it in where you're forced to kind of do it in a way, and it forces me to look at, in an anonymous way, to see what are people's thoughts. And to actually think on my feet and acknowledge those things and not just like leave them in the room. Because I think what I've learned is that when you have these ideas that are floating but if you don't acknowledge them, they get power and a narrative that you aren't involved in. So I would rather just be involved in whatever narrative my students are creating about the readings and the ideas that I'm teaching them. 

Leslie: 

Okay, so it sounds like there's a lot of intentionality, right? And a lot of thoughtfulness in terms of what is the objective? Why am I doing this and not just doing to do? And what was that thing that was so controversial? 

Brielle: 

Yeah, yeah. So in my Emotions in Politics class, I had a book that was basically making an argument that there's a lot of emotion in people's political decision-making, which I don't think is controversial at all. But it made an argument that people who were liberal tended to use more rationalist thinking and lean more into scientific inquiry, whereas people who are conservative were more likely to engage in what the book calls “magical thinking,” or, basically, prone to conspiracy thinking and leaning into emotions, how things make them feel. 

And also just thinking about the Bible and using scripture as a way to kind of reason through the world politically. And I do think I understand, because I'm an expert, some of the research that they were invoking around correlations and overlaps and thinking about ideology and political behavior. But the way that they talked about it was– they were kind of showing their hand with how they stood as authors. And sometimes we do that as researchers. 

Ithink I'm just keenly aware of when we do it as researchers, because whenever I'm assigning something, especially as a Black woman, I know that my students are going to be assuming what my politics are. And so I have to be extra careful and think about creating balance. And if I'm going to have an example of a Republican, have a Democrat as well. And I just think that that's good pedagogy. But I think that for me, I've always had to do that because it's going to show up in my student evaluations. And oftentimes, faculty of color just can't say the same things as white men or other more privileged groups can say without having students push back. And so– 

Leslie: 

Oh, totally. 

Brielle: 

Yeah. So in this moment, I'm just thinking, oh, everybody is having the same fear that women of color, Black women especially, have felt forever in academia. So it's like, welcome. Yeah. 

Leslie: 

Right, right, right. And so with all of this political focus and pushback on DEI, it's like anyone who teaches about race, about gender, or any real form of inequality is under a spotlight. 

How do you feel instructors who teach thesetopics can create inclusive classrooms without feeling like they're actually putting themselves at risk? 

Brielle: 

Yeah. So, I will say there are two different things. So one thing that I did, becauseI recently was tenured, and I taught all these topics, all these different things. Literally, that class that I just told you about was in the semester that I was having my teaching observed. And one of the things that people noted was, “Oh, you are willing to take risks in the classroom.” So one, I didn't just do that, feel comfortable doing it, out of the gate. I had a lot of investment into how to do it well. So I would say, especially for those who are pre-tenure, I think you have to, even outside of this context, build a layer of protection around yourself when it comes to the classroom. So for me, that looked like having people come into my classroom, observe my teaching, and write letters that eventually went in my tenure file every single year. 

And having that conversation with people, and not just people in your department, because it will be assumed that those people have an interest in keeping you, especially now. Cause if somebody leaves or whatever, then it's more work for everybody who's left behind. So people who are not in your field, people who don't know you well, people who may actually disagree with what you are saying, having those maybe earlier. Just so that you can have the conversation, to see it from another perspective, from somebody who is invested in the same craft, and then iterating. Updating. So that's one layer of it. 

And then, when I talked about the reading about magical thinking that I introduced, it was still valuable for a lot of different reasons. And my students actually really embraced it once we had that space to air out the problems with it. What I did specifically during that first class meeting, where we talked about that reading, was that I just created (it was kind of fun), I had a Yelp review on my slides. I always use slides just for visual reinforcement. And I said, “Who knows what this is?” And everybody, of course, you know what Yelp is. And it's like, “so how do we use this and kind of talk about restaurants and things that are great? Things are not great.” And then I just said, “Okay, so I'm sure what you read for yesterday, you have some opinions about it. If someone asked you. So I've seen Perusal– because I use Perusal as a platform– I've seen some of the comments, but now, before we even get started today, I just want us to put all those ideas here. It's anonymous, this form that I've created. We'll put all the ideas there so we can just air them out, and we can get them out of the way. I'll be able to see them. Nobody else will. It's anonymous, so I won't know who said what. And we're going to talk through it. And then we're going to move forward to figure out what is worthy to keep from this or what's still instructive for what we are doing this semester.” 

And so they really showed up to that and filled out the form. And Iwas able to see it in class and say, like, “here are patterns and what people are saying,” and to just acknowledge what were the things. Like, I wasn't unaware of some of these issues. And that was really helpful because I think sometimes, and I've had students say this to me in multiple institutional contexts, that the problem is when something is dropped and then it's not acknowledged, and then it's meant to be like, okay, assuming that we all agree on this thing. 

Leslie: 

Interesting. 

Brielle: 

Yeah. So I'm very intentional about that. But I will say that before I was able to do something like that, I spend the first two classes, really the first whole class, and then maybe half of the second class just building community, getting to know my students, taking an interest in them. I have an assignment where I ask them about their background so I can know why people are in the classroom. 

And so part of why I'm ableto take risks is because I'm intentional about building trust. And I'm not just thinking that I'm trying to earn theirs, they're trying to earn mine. It's a reciprocal relationship. And so it just requires an intentionality around it. And it can't just be first a syllabus. I add that on my Perusal, create a grade around it, and then just say you've done this assignment, and if you don't do it, don't annotate. Then I'm assuming that you 

just don't have any questions. So, therefore, you can't say I didn't know, and then that's that. So that I can really use that classroom space to have us build courage and talk to one another and learn like, “Oh, this is a little bit different than what I might have been expecting.” 

Leslie: 

Interesting! So what are some other things you've tried that really help to buildthat sense of trust and community in a classroom, where in the greater, broader context of this society, things feel more and more divided? 

Brielle: 

Yeah. So when I say I have two classes, the first one is just about getting to know one another. Not just me, them, but them one to another in the context of this class. And then sometimes I, depending on the course, have a second class that's just about “what does it mean to have a good conversation?” What does it mean to have civic courage?” And I'm very much into just being transparent about what the learning objectives are. I literally put that on my slide and say, “What are these and what are they for this class?” And I talk about content, but I also just talk more generally. 

And it helps that I'm a political scientist to do this, to say that “one of thethings with college is that you likely aren't going to remember everything that you read from this class, but you will have the opportunity to do things like talk in front of a group, practice being able to listen in a conversation, interject, disagree, all these different things that are just communication skills, interpersonal skills, the soft skills that are required to really excel in any industry.” And so when we think about class, the role of the college classroom in that way, this is really like a training wheels type of context to practice some of these things. 

And so I just frame it as that and talk to them about why it's worth doing the work in this context and how it will translate to their future prospects. ‘Cause I think one of the things that we often talk about in jobs, I mean, I've had a couple of jobs outside of academia. It's like, you need to know how to talk to people because relationships are really important to how you are able to navigate professionally. And so, figuring out how to disagree respectfully, how to hear somebody's points, acknowledge them, and counterargue, those are really important skills, not just for your own personal life, but for our democracy. Being able to disagree and all the things that we're talking about right now. So I don't shy away from telling them that and saying, you know, “we have a democratic obligation to figure out how to do this, or else we can't be complaining about it.” 

Leslie: 

Right, Right. So how do you teach students to disagree respectfully, number one, to disagree openly, and then to do it respectfully? 

Brielle: 

Yeah. So there are a lot of different strategies that I use. And I will say that one of the most important things that I have had to figure out is that every group has a different personality. And the things that work well in one might just fall flat in the other. And I'm like, I'm bringing the same, why is this not working? So that's just a reality. But I have noticed one thing that does work well is actually just being transparent and talking to students about what different things are. So, for example, when I talk about what it means to have a good conversation, I have an assignment that I have them listen to, and we talk about it. But that's kind of an intellectual way to do it. 

That's like the “let's talk and throw around ideas.” I have noticed that students often learn best through doing. And so I have created, for example, and I think I wrote a Substack post about this, where I assign different discussion roles, and I have literal teams with different roles. I think there are 10 of them that a student can have in the class, and they range from everything from the conversation starter. So that's the person who's going to be responsible for coming to class with something that is going to be a question that sparks a conversation. So then that requires a conversation or not a conversation. I give just a couple of sentences about what does it mean to actually formulate a discussion question that's not just yes or no, which I think is just helpful to say no matter what. 

And then someone who's a diverger. So you give someone the role of just being the contrarian in the group and naming that there's a group thing going on that can happen that's not helpful. And in fact, I notice that often as an instructor I have to be the contrarian in the group. And sometimes the reason I say that teaching, being an educator, has helped me grow is I found myself in positions arguing really strongly for things I don't personally agree with. But that's the name of the game. 

And really, a big thing that I do is assigning a reading about intellectual humility and the importance of intellectual humility and how it connects to what we can know from a scientific perspective. If we are willing to not just assume that we know everything there is to know about a topic. And so, when I start from that perspective, I've not had many students who are like, “no, I disagree with being open to new information.” So you really have to scaffold and do the work to show them why it's important to do this and not just that it's valuable. 

Leslie: 

Well, I think that's great. But I think also assigning something about intellectual humility also shows the class that you are coming from that place. And I think that too many instructors, for whatever reason, like lack of training or whatever, go in feeling like “I have to present like I do know everything. If I don't know everything, then I'm not qualified to be here.” You know what I mean? So it's almost like you are telling them it's okay, and actually, this is the right place to be. 

Brielle: 

Yeah, so one of my earliest observations was a faculty member who told me that he was just really stunned and really impressed with the fact that a student asked me a question and, I said, “I don't know, but I'll look it up and I'll come back to class and tell you next class.” And I was like, “well, I didn't know!” So I was going to look it up because I'm just not going to make something up. But I just didn't– What you just said, it never dawned on me to just make stuff up and to pretend like I know everything. I never thought about it from that perspective. I think probably the way that I experienced this was just over-efforting with trying to read everything and make sure I had notes and all that kind of stuff. But I've just never really felt like I won't say I don't know. 

And I have had students who have noted that I show intellectual humility. And I will say that this didn't come from just a place of I want to be virtuous. It really was just that students can misread you. And especially when you have identities where people have strong expectations or stereotypes of what you must think or believe, and all those things. And so for me, I do think that I've had to make more effort to just show that, “hey, these are the things that I do. I have to be transparent about it.” And my teaching actually got easier when I was willing to just show more of myself because I am naturally a person who does all of those things. 

So I've always listened to both liberal and conservative radio. Because I just think that it's important to understand what you disagree with. And so whenever I teach, I'm able to say what I disagree with. Not when I'm in class, but when I'm preparing for classes. And I'm thinking about what the different particular points might be for liberals and conservatives. Because I very explicitly don't say what I believe in class. It makes me, I think, able to talk about things in a way where I'm not just making assumptions. Because I can understand how liberal and conservative people are talking past one another in the real world.

 Leslie: 

Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, that's so interesting. I'm just thinking back to how I used to try to pretend that I... Well, I don't know if it was that I tried to pretend that I knew everything. I didn't want students to know that I didn't know. So I remember as a grad student, I was teaching a year-long course. We met twice a week for an hour for a year. And I remember getting some mid-semester feedback, and one of the students was like, “I really enjoy this class, but you never tell us when we're wrong. You never tell us.” And I was like, “Oh, man!” Like, that totally changed how I approach things because I was like, “I actually have to say what I know or say what they know.” I had to just take more of that role. But I think it plays into what we're talking about. 

Brielle: 

Well, no, that resonates, what you just said. Saying you're wrong. I don't know if I've actually said “you're wrong.” I always try. And that's just definitely the gender politics for you. Just like put it in a nice sandwich, like, “here's what's going well with this and then here's where it kind of went astray.” 

Leslie: Right? 

Brielle: 

Yeah. So I definitely know what you're naming in that. And that does resonate. And I think one of the things that I do when I'm thinking about it from that perspective is, I guess, for me, I don't want to say that something is wrong unless I'm actually sure that it is. And so for me, especially if I can't remember all the specifics because when I'm teaching an American government class, that's like intro stuff. I don't teach the presidency. That's not my subject matter expertise. 

So there could be something where I'm misremembering an election. And so I think I lean more toward, “I'm not quite sure about that, but here's the logic of how I would think about it more generally, even if I can't think about this specific application of it.” And I think that that just is, one honest, and then also modeling how to not get stuck in specific anecdotes. Because I think sometimes we can get stuck in anecdotes, and that can really distract us in ways that aren't helpful, especially in the world of politics.

Leslie: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'd love to chat with you about values and transmitting your own values to the classroom. So even just in our conversation, you've mentioned transparency, relationships, trust, courage, respect, mutual respect. So we're in this moment where faculty are being told to do a lot of things that conflict with their own values. How do you advise people how they could maybe teach from a place of internal alignment with their own values, even if it's not matching institutional priorities? 

Brielle: 

So I think that you have to one, be super clear about what those values are, naming them. So I think sometimes we can be in situations where our bodies tell us this isn't safe, this doesn't feel right. And those feelings, our emotions, are valuable information, but they're not actually giving us concrete language to name what it is that we are experiencing or what we are disagreeing with. And so I think that it's a worthy exercise. 

And actually, I wrote about this for a recent post that in grad school, I always had this practice of sitting down to write a mission statement. And for me, I knew that I needed a mission statement because I needed to stay connected to the Why of what I was doing. And the mission statement helped for a long time, and then it didn't. And I realized it's not just that I need to name what my commitments are, but I need to take a second step of saying what I need, like the conditions that are required for me to do that. And then secondly, what I'm not willing to do. 

So having that beginning-of-semester practice, annual practice, to really dig deep and do some self-reflection is really important in these times because you might have to make hard choices about things, and so you might be put in situations where you're asked to do things that you disagree with. And I started calling the latter exercise rather than just a mission statement, but a mission filter, because this is my mission and then I'm filtering through what aligns and what doesn't. And sometimes, I have control over what I am able to say yes or no to, but I'm always taking stock of those things and thinking about every decision in the context of all the other decisions I'm making. And so that's my way of doing it. 

That doesn't have to be the only way to do it, but I think it's a really important thing to do in this moment as an educator. And I think that sometimes you will have to be brave and you will have to do things that might hurt you in the short run. But when you have the mission filter with you, then you know why you're doing it. And when you have to experience the consequences, you understand why. And so it's easier to experience those consequences when you've actually named what your values are. And then also you can realize like, “Oh, I disagree with this, but this is not the hill I'm going to die on.”

Leslie: Right? 

Brielle: 

Right. Because there's a spectrum of these things. And all those things are different for each of us. So I just think that it's really important to create these kinds of practices that I think sometimes, as academics, we can feel like, “Oh, this is fluffy kind of waste of time.” It is not a waste of time because, oh no, of course, when you are feeling conflict in your brain is not clear. So you can't create like we're creatives.. As academics, you need clarity to be able to do your work. You have to take the time to do it. 

Leslie: 

Yeah. And it's never talked about. I don't think in my 20-plus years in the academy, anyone ever said, “have you done your reflections yet and created your intentions and really thought about your values that you want to bring to your teaching and your research?” Not a single time I could tell you.

Brielle: 

I mean, the thing is, as somebody who has led a workshop on this and led it more than once, just getting people to come to that as a valuable thing in and of itself is challenging. I always have to put it into something that's more tangible. I can't just sell the thing. But the people who come say, “Oh my God, this is such a relief. I wish somebody would have said this to me!” And it's like, how can I get people to just do this thing? 

Leslie: 

Yeah, now I know. Could be because you have to also relate it back to the values of the academy, which is usually around productivity. So write more by reflecting on your values, that sort of thing. And it's true, you can. It's just not the only outcome, right? 

Brielle: 

Yeah. And I think it's actually when you try and tie everything, trying to be so transactional and instrumental with everything, it's hard to just really listen to YOU. Because when you're thinking about getting your writing done, then it becomes a whole thing of, “where am I trying to publish? And what do the people who review for this journal? What do they want?” Like, it's not you. So that's why doing it as a separate exercise will help you figure out, “I don't really care if my article is in the top three journals because the people who are actually reading my work and engaging with it are in this other subfield journal. And it's actually going to be read and cited. And that matters more to me than the prestige of this name.”

Leslie: Exactly. 

Brielle: 

Those are the things we have to make as a calculus. 

Leslie: 

This mission filter exercise sounds awesome. Do you have a Substack article about it and/or can you write one? I'd love to be able to send listeners to it.

 Brielle: 

Yeah, no, I have written about it. I was trying to remember the title of the post. There's one that is related that I can just give you for you to put in the show notes that's on there. And yeah, it is something that I am going to just spend a lot more time talking about, and also just trying to figure out how to pitch to people, in a way. Maybe people who are listening now are going to be like, oh yeah, I want that.
 
Leslie: 

They will want it!
 
 Brielle: 

I hope so, because it just helped. Everything with academia to me has just been a process of figuring out how to protect your peace. And you can't do that. You can bend so much that you just break. So these kinds of things, like making strategic choices about where you bend and not. 

And then just realizing, “Okay, this is the career that is most important to me to have, like to be able to say these things, to write these things. And as long as I'm able to do that, then I'm okay with if I don't get the R1 job with a $100,000 research fund or all those different things because maybe that is not aligned.” But that's okay because you're still just doing the work that you care about and serving the communities that would propel you to do this by all other means. Like this, really not very rational thing, like spending this much time in school. 

Leslie: 

And getting paid so little afterward as well! 

So can we talk a little bit about the relationship you see between teaching andresearch? I feel like institutions are always separating them out and teaching can be seen as a real distraction from research, especially at R1 schools. How do you see them being actually interconnected? 

Brielle: 

Yeah. I have used my teaching as a way to be able to dig deeper on topics that I care about. So I was not formally trained in emotions and politics. A lot of that reading and learning that I did, I was able to do because I was preparing a class, and I was talking my students through it. So just in that way, and I think this is probably the most obvious way people talk about it. You can create a class on a topic that you're trying to think more deeply about. 

But I think something that is less intuitive is just, there are so many different dynamics that are happening in our classroom that are things that we care about for our broader society. So I've kind of talked about it already, but things like civic engagement, thinking about interpersonal relationships. Even if we think about things like AI use right now and teaching and learning and all the claims that people are making about its effect on learning. These are all potential research questions. 

And so you can use your class as a site to think about, okay, if the literature is suggesting– I think there's a big MIT study where people are saying AI makes people less inquisitive or less willing to think. I think that's the main bullet point of the finding. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Leslie: 

Yeah, they can't think anymore. 

Brielle: 

Yeah, yeah. So I don't remember all the details of the specifics of that study, but I remember thinking, “I wonder if you could vary different ways of how you're thinking about what the AI interventions are that would have different levels of impact on it.” So maybe it wouldn't be, you use the summarizing tool, which I would never do. I think you need to actually read things to be able to use your human intelligence to vet. But maybe there are other things like ideation or something else that could be actually helpful and get students through something I have been super interested in, which is all the negative emotions that can come up in the learning process. So, trying to reduce the frustration that comes in the learning process so that you can actually get students to the thing that you're trying to get them to. 

So, I recently did a workshop where I designed a teaching intervention that was aimed just at that. I have this class that I was teaching that the students are just always frustrated because they have to do this 10-page research paper. And it's even something that I don't have that much control over because it's a required course. It's like a writing-intensive course. And so if I know that students are going to feel frustrated by this because they're still learning some of that, they're still in transition and still learning what it means to write in college versus high school, perhaps I could use AI to help me speed through some of the things, the common mistakes that I know that they're going to do because I have taught this class and seen them so many times. 

So I think that could be a way tothink about it. And when I did that presentation, one of the interesting things that people said was, “Oh, you should just think about writing that up so you can publish, because I'm sure a lot of people will want to think about this because it's a perennial question. The students don't want to write the paper, we don't want to read it? So let's solve everybody's problem here.” Trying to make this less painful. So, yeah. that's just one way to. 

Leslie: 

It's like seeing the bridges between the two. Okay, well, we have talked about so many interesting things. I mean, we could go on forever, but we can't. 

So, with everything going on in the UnitedStates, in academia right now, what do you think instructors need to be most focused on? And this is a tricky one. How can they maintain hope? 

Brielle:

So, I think the most important thing that we all need to be focused on is how to be kind to ourselves and then our students as well. Because everybody is just caring a lot right now. So one of the things that I plan to be saying over and over again is just what it means to be kind is not this fluffy, give you a hug kind of thing. Although that can be what you think if that's what you want. 

For me, what I think about when Ithink about being kind to myself as an educator, it's being crystal clear on these are the things that I am wanting students to learn in this class and having that be realistic. This is not a semester for reach. What are the three things minimal, valuable, outcome that are important to your content? And what are the readings that you assign or the videos or whatever assignments that you create that are directly connected to those, so that it doesn't feel confusing? And then also you're not having to overwork when you want them to know, A. Why are you having them read about B, C, D, E, F? And to be okay with that. I think sometimes we are just trying to do so much, and what we a lot of us just really need right now is just a little bit of a slower pace. 

Leslie: 

A little bit, yeah, A lot. A lot, yeah. 

Brielle: 

And for things to just be like, we all are exposed to so much information.Information availability is not the issue. What we need is more reflection and more space to think. And so to the extent that you can use your classroom as a space to be able to do that, it's so worth it. 

And I got into a practice, it was a little bit later in my time on the tenure track, of just scheduling in the semester, one day a month where it's just going to be a Friday that I am unavailable. I'm unavailable to you all. I'm unavailable to my adult responsibilities. I just want to be, and I protect it. And I know this is the day that I'm doing this. So all of my decisions leading up to it, I'm using that as my guiding star. I'm getting to this day where I can just do whatever it is that I want to do on that day. And I think that we need to build that in as not an extra, but as a necessity in these times. 

And to build our syllabi with padding for days where things just don't go as planned. One of the things that I have constantly gotten great feedback about in my classroom is just how I'm willing to flex and be present for what's needed at any given moment. And so I think that sometimes we can want to fill every week with just as much information as possible. But sometimes just creating space to say, “we just did this set of readings, let's just talk through them.” If it's a discussion-based class, or for me, my students prefer to do something that's more applied. So think about how this would look if you had to create a survey or you had to do something that is a more tangible thing so that you're not just understanding from an intellectual perspective, you're understanding through doing. I think that's really valuable as well. 

Leslie: 

Less is more. Less is more. 

Brielle: 

Yeah, basically. 

Leslie: 

Yeah. And being really intentional ahead of time.

 Brielle: 

Yeah. And one thing that I didn't get to say before, but I think also here too isrelevant. Part of the reason why I've always seen teaching and research as being connected is that—and this connects to your point about hope—is that sometimes I get those moments of just feeling energized by just talking to young people. They just haven't had so many things that have worn them down and they just have in some cases, a little bit of naivety. But I think that that's healthy, right? To be naive enough to not just think about every bad thing that could happen in a situation, and just to have a rawness and a level of openness and honesty about things. 

And so for me, when I think about teaching this research, it's also because when I'm talking to my students, I'm able to think about, “Oh, all of us as scholars are kind of assuming that this is a thing. But here's somebody from Gen Z who hasn't been invested in thinking about this for 15 years, who's bringing this really good point up I hadn't thought about.” So, taking note of that and not just assuming that we are the only ones who could be teaching in the classroom. 

I think, and I've always believed that young people have something valuable to offer. So I remain hopeful because I know if I show up and I do all the things that I am committed to doing, that hopefully there will be the next person who's a decision-maker who will remember something that I said and use it to do something different in their sphere of influence, and that will help other people. So, yeah, I think that's a way to feel hopeful about this moment because everything that's happening right now will be played out over time, but we're making inputs that will bloom in the years to come, and to just stay focused on that. 

Leslie: 

Amazing, Amazing! So, intention, reflection, dropping our assumptions, staying open to new perspectives. 

Brielle, thank you so much for your time. This has been super great. What are the best ways for listeners to connect with you and learn more about what you do?

 Brielle: 

Yeah, so I think if you are interested in following or some of my ideas, thought leadership around this, and just how to think about this right now, the Substack is the easiest way to do it because I show up to that space every week. Every Wednesday, 10:30am you get a new thought about something related to teaching, research, or life in the academy. And I do lives periodically as well to just have conversations. I'm using that as my place where I'm thinking about things. And so everything else that I do, you will get exposure to it by being in that community in that space. 

Leslie: 

Okay, how do they find that? 

Brielle: 

Yes, so it's Notes from a Work Friend. And so if you're on Substack, then you can just search that up, and then I think we could just drop a link to how to subscribe as well. To put in the show notes. 

And then you can always find me on LinkedIn as well because everything is linked. That is my main social media. 

Leslie: 

Good to know. Good to know. Everybody, please join Brielle Harbin's Substack. It is amazing. Thanks again for your time, and I will talk to you all again soon.