On my first day leading class this semester, a kind student approached me nervously and confided in me that they had a 6-year-old who would need to join us for class most weeks. I watched her face as she began to describe the details of WHY he must join us and HOW she would occupy him and all the ways she tried so hard to make this work and her deepest apologies for putting me in this position.
I felt anger.
It wasn’t directed towards them. Truth be told, I adore kids and couldn’t wait to see them in class. My anger was towards the situation that makes it impossible for so many women and people who can get pregnant who are constantly in a position where they may have to sacrifice their needs or wants for their kids. I know that parenting comes with sacrifice, but when we look at the research, children and families overall are more successful when parents have college degrees. It affects their income, job flexibility, places they can live and move to, the schools they attend, childcare is more easily afforded to those with better paying jobs, often achieved through college education (Miller, 2011).
Miller writes about the ways pregnant people should simply delay their pregnancies to prioritize career to achieve all these options (2011, p. 1098). But we must acknowledge the disparity in this. Pregnancy is not always planned or even wanted. And if it is wanted, it may not be wanted at the TIME it happens. I could speculate all day on the reasons pregnancy is or is not wanted and truth be told, it doesn’t matter. Because there shouldn’t be speculation or judgement on parents, I as a teacher shouldn’t look at my student with kids and say “you should have waited to have your child after education.”
That isn’t my job. My job is to do everything I can to teach people. And teaching differently for different people. My job isn’t to just mold traditional students or only benefit them. My job is to emphatically welcome every student under my wing and adjust my teaching so they can all grow.
I long for a world where women and pregnant-abled people can be afforded the same opportunities as those who don’t worry about pregnancies. Once I listened to my favorite undergraduate professor recall how her lectures in her final year of PHD were often done with her baby in hand. Childcare was not afforded to her in her PHD. While I know and admire her strength in doing that, I also believe that parents shouldn’t have to do that. I believe childcare should be a right, not a luxury.
So step into my queer world for a moment. Envision how free childcare for all could greater increase education for all. Opportunities for all. While I don’t have the ability to cultivate free childcare in the United States, I do have the ability to embrace my student and her child and welcome the child into class every week. It is so easy to take an extra minute to have a conversation with a 6 year old who wants to explore and engage. I can accommodate with GRACE and LOVE. I can reimagine what a classroom can look like and what education looks like by changing my perception of the traditional student. Queering the college classroom allows me to look past how students ‘should’ act in class and allows me to see what students need in class. For this student, she needs a teacher ready to embrace and accept her motherhood and her child. For another student, they will need something entirely different, and I feel thankful for each one of my students that engage in tailoring my teaching to their needs. And I feel especially thankful for my student who has given me the opportunity to firsthand engage in ways motherhood can take different forms in the college experience. #EducatedWorldmaking gives me the opportunity to queer my classroom and to embrace the ways my students teach me and how all of our combined circumstances creates a community where we must lean on each other and help each other.
Miller, A. R. (2011). The effects of motherhood timing on career path. Journal of Population Economics, 24(3), 1071–1100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41488341
No comments:
Post a Comment