Lindsay Masland on Breath, Liberation, and Rule-Breaking in Higher Ed

On this episode I’m joined by Dr. Lindsay Masland, psychologist, educational developer, and rule-breaker. We talk about breath, liberation, and ease in the context of values and work.

Transcript

On this episode I’m joined by Dr. Lindsay Masland, psychologist, educational developer, and rule-breaker. We talk about breath, liberation, and ease in the context of values and work.

Rebecca Pope-Ruark: Hello listeners. Welcome to the agile academic, a podcast for women in and around higher education. This season, I talk with my special guests from all over academia about purpose values and what it means to be an advocate in higher ed for students, for labor, for kindness, and for balance and self-care. I’m your host, Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark.

Hi Lindsey. Thanks for being on the agile academic today.

Lindsay Masland: Yeah. Great to be here. Thanks.

RPR: So why don't we just start with you telling the audience a little bit about yourself?

LM: All right. Let's see. That's open-ended. So I am currently an associate professor of psychology at Appalachian State University, which is in the western mountains of North Carolina. I am also, I'm typically the associate director of our center for teaching and learning. Ours is called the Center for Academic Excellence. Right now I'm serving as interim director, full director while our director is away on a fellowship, but usually in the associate director position.

RPR: Well, why don't we just jump right in this season? I'm jumping right into the deep end with folks because this season is really about advocacy and what that looks like and how you do it. So what do you think your purpose is in higher education?

LM: I think that's such a good question. And in a lot of the faculty development that I do, I find myself starting there with people and helping them to kind of figure that out and then aligning their actions to it. That being said, I, uh, I'm a rule breaker and I'm even breaking the rules there because part of me wants to answer that question more about like what, what brings meaning to me and then how that connects to purpose. So a few years ago I read the book Peak Performing Professor, which you may have heard of before may have been mentioned before. And it was, it was just shortly after getting tenure, you know? And so I think a lot of people at, at that point in their careers are ready to kind of reevaluate. I was. And that book, you know, leads you through a bunch of, of questions and exercises to figure out actually literally your purpose and mission and values and all that kind of stuff.

And it was in going through those exercises to help for me to clarify what, what matters to me, what gives me meaning and really it all connects to, and this is gonna sound a little bit random at first, but it all connects to breath. <laugh> Breathing in and breathing out. For example, I personally, in my life, the things that I cherish the most are things that make me either have like an excited inhale, like a, you know, a moment of delight or joy or surprise. Like I love that. And then I also love things that make me do like the long, full exhale, like, oh, you know, or like, oh, that kind of thing. And I am always going after those two types of breath for myself, because for whatever reason they make me feel, I guess like the most at home in the world that I belong.

That it's a good thing to be here. And so I, I did a lot of thinking around that and realized if that's what I most cherished then shouldn't? I wanna be giving that gift to other people and trying to figure out ways for people to either feel delight with those inhales? Or I think with the exhales it's a lot of times you exhale either because somebody tells you something or you have an experience that kind of reorganizes your world for you. And you're like, what? <laugh> right? It's kind of that mind blowing thing. Or you do that long exhale when you feel like you've really been understood and, and you're like, oh, you get me, right? Those moments. And so I think I just wanted to figure out how to create those moments for everyone. And so that's really kind of my meaning or purpose. I'll say it does translate into like a kind of vision type thing of, of striving for excellence as a teacher and as a teacher of teachers, that's the more official sounding thing, but I'm a pretty out the box person. So I like the metaphor of the breath.

RPR: That's so unique. And so interesting. Such a way to think about joy or giving folks joy. So what does excellence mean to you in that context?

LM: Excellence in joy <laugh> sure. Ooh, Ooh. That's a good question. The benefit of me tying everything to breath is it's a behavioral thing that I can see, um, or hear in other people. And so to me it feels like I'm demonstrating excellence in something when I see a student or a colleague or, you know, kind of the evidence of that in social media, you know, it's not necessarily, you don't see or hear a breath, but you can see it in words. And so I'd say that is kind of what I'm looking for in that is, you know, proof is in the pudding.

RPR: So that's just a really fascinating way of looking at the world and looking at the work. So I'm wondering what kind of values are at play, because definitely in your social media presence, we see those values coming out. So I'm curious what those values are as you would articulate them and maybe how you came to those values.

LM: Yeah. I found that to be the hardest part of, of the whole kind of self-reflective process of figuring out like, what am I doing? What is this for? Was being able to distill them into those like single words that you can find on like a values list or something like that. And in fact, it wasn't until I asked other people in my life like my husband or friends, like what are my values? <laugh> that I, I can't come to understand them because I think I, I had things that I was hoping were my values, but I kind of needed somebody to tell me that that was true. I'm actually kind of getting a little emotional about it because it's so powerful to have somebody you love tell you that you're, you know, doing what you wanna do. So I'd say based on what people have said, and then that I guess made me feel like I could claim those for myself are, well, I'd say the first one's probably related to liberation as a value and liberation from structures, beliefs, behaviors that do not serve you.

And so you can go any direction with that. Right? You can talk about it from kind of more conventional systems of oppression type stuff in terms of racist beliefs, you hold or misogynistic beliefs you hold, of course you can go that way. But there's also lots of things that, you know, are a, a product of either how we grew up or how we've been socialized in our careers. That once we actually think about them, we realize they don't serve us. And in fact, we might be kind of complicit in our own diminishment when we continue to hold onto them. So I'd say kind of liberation is like the main foundational one and that, and that feels like in some ways that feels like the exhale piece of the, the breathing. I just have this image of like, this is I think a lot in images. 

I remember when I was a kid, um, my parents would recycle the newspapers. And so we had a stack of newspapers like in our, in our house. And then when the stack got full, my dad would like use twine and would like tie them up really tightly. So it was like really tightly wound. And sometimes I would need newspaper for my many arts and crafts projects as a child. So I'd have to go and cut the twine. And there was something so satisfying to me about the way that the papers just kind of like relaxed out of the twine. So like that's another image I have in my mind is like, I wanna be cutting the twine so that people can kind of relax. And then that makes space for my other values. Um, which right now the ones that are really, I guess, kind of grabbing me, cultivating are cultivating to me right now are joy and ease.

So once you kind of let go of some of those things that don't serve well, now you can let some other things come in and take their place and it can be about joy and it can be about ease, which both, by the way, to me are kind of like manifestations a rebellious kind of spirit because it seems like there's so much going on in the world in general, but also academia in particular that are not set up to support joy and ease. And in fact, if you are somebody who centers joy and ease, there's a whole bunch of thoughts that get, um, or labels descriptors to get attached to you. So I'd say that that kind of like rebellious spirit is a value as well, but not in and of itself. Just be how it connects to the other pieces.

RPR: I love that idea of liberation. I've in some of my work lately, I've been thinking about academic capitalism and how the, the work that we do is very, it's all product productivity driven and you're, you're measured by your worth you how you spend your time rather than thinking about the joy and the ease of the work and finding, finding that joy and pleasure in the work that we do. Cause we're, we're all faculty, we're all in higher ed, for reason we didn't, we chose this life, right. We didn't, we didn't choose a different kind of industry. So, and part of that is thinking about higher ed as an industry, not just some sort of the ivory tower per perfect bliss kind of place, right. There are structures there that we do have to deconstruct and that we really have to interrogate and think about, is this the way that we want our, our livelihood and our, and our joy to really come from or be

LM: Absolutely. I think we have in both in larger society, but also in academia, we have so much, that's like wrapped up in these ideas of like hard work. Right. And that it, like it should hurt <laugh> in order for it to be good or that if it does hurt, like that's okay because no pain, no gain. Right. That idea. And although it is true that like that kind of way of viewing the world will get you currency in academia and in society, like literally, but also kind of metaphorically it'll get you where you wanna be. You also have to think about like what you're doing to yourself when you subscribe to those systems of hurt. And I mean, you could trace it and I'm sure you know this right. You could trace it all the way back to like the futile system. Right. It was good <laugh> for the serfs to have the idea that like, oh, it's okay if this hurts because like, that's what it's supposed to be. 

And so we, we have this internalized in us that like hurts. Okay. But that's really weird. That's a really weird worldview to have, I think that sets us up for doing all of these sorts of things that end us end up not only in scholarship, like a lot of times, I think when people are talking about kind of capital structures in academia, they're thinking about like overwork when it comes to scholarship. But it also goes into the teaching space too as well because people will martyr themselves because they'll say, well, like this is the part of my job. That's like the calling. And I, I always say like, just because you would work for free doesn't mean you should work for free, right? Because that makes it such, that people can expect all sorts of things from you for free,

RPR: Right? The job will take as much as, as you give it. And when we, when we look at who does that, when you add the extra affective labor that women and people of color do, it's just capitalism at large, in so many different ways. And we, we are teaching that to students too. We're, we're, we're modeling that for them and how it works. And while at the same time, trying to portray this idea that that higher ed is not an industry, that we are not just workers in an industry that we don't, that it's not a job, it's a calling. And, and it's great if those things, you feel those things, but it's not necessarily the only way to be, or to function in that particular system.

LM: Absolutely. I mean, I said something the other day on social media, I was just asking opinions about whether or not, well, the specific thing was giving away slides from a talk that I had give, uh, given and giving the slides to people who hadn't attended. Um, and some people seem to have a belief that, you know, all slides should be available to everybody. And interestingly, a lot of the people who had that kind of perspective and would also say things like, well, we don't teach for the money and teaching pays dividends beyond a salary. Like all that kind of stuff. I was just looking at it, it, that ideology was disproportionately represented in men talking to me as a woman. And I was just like, that's really interesting that these, these guys, <laugh> right, feel empowered to tell me as a woman, like, well, you shouldn't be asking for more here. You should not be demanding compensation because teaching is hard work. And I'm like, totally with ya on teaching is hard work, but you also have to follow that to its logical extreme point, which is really problematic. And to the point you just made about how different identities layered on top of our teaching identity can really complicate things

RPR: Pre-burnout, I was kind of a teacher's teacher and I loved being in the classroom. And that's all that all there was for me, but it was combined with all the other politics of an institution and, and higher ed, right. It can, it can be draining. It can in a variety of different ways, not just kind of end of semester exhaustion. It can over time that kind of investments of your entire self can lead to more significant, um, things that you have to, you have to find a way to deal with. And in my case, that was therapy and, and some hard work that it's a lot. It is a lot, but we need to be talking about it, right. We're it's always kind of been in the shadows and no one admits it or, you know, says that they're struggling because you don't do that. You wear it as a badge of honor, essentially that I'm, I'm working too hard. That's the currency. Oh, I have so much to do. It's a comparative. Um, yeah, with us, it's a competition.

LM: And can you imagine how different things would be if the currency was ease, right. If you were like, oh, you know, if you could say, oh, my students learn so much and I am having a full weekend. <laugh> right. Like if you, so I'm not saying we need to advocate for not accomplishing things and not, you know, doing things that are in the spirit of our work, but it would be so great if we got excited for our colleagues who, you know, talked about their boundaries. Like if we got as excited about a boundary or about a full weekend or a vacation or people who have full hobbies for family lives after work, if we got as excited about that as like somebody getting a grant, <laugh> maybe that's my like pie in the sky dream for academia is that we can like get there. And we have pockets of that. You know, I think we find little groups of people where that is the currency. Although I hate using currency as a metaphor. Yeah.

RPR: We're back to capitalism.

LM: <laugh> right. And that kind of, you know, I should say where that is the gift, right? Like a gift economy type approach to ourselves. Yeah. That would be amazing.

RPR: Yeah. What if we said, when someone asked us how we were, oh, I just taught this really great class and my students did this really cool thing, as opposed to, I'm so busy, I have to do this and that. And I'm revising in 12 things to do and just really kind of leaned into what, what is joyful or what has been interesting for the day as opposed to the, the culture of busy that we all well, not that we all subscribe to, but that seems to be kind of a common mentality.

LM: Well, yeah. And even if we don't subscribe to it, it is still levied at us. <laugh> right. And so in order to not subscribe to it, it's like a constant effort. I, I think it's much easier to go with it than to like constantly be like, I'm gonna say, no, I'm gonna not do that. I'm gonna center joy here. I'm gonna do this and everybody's gonna roll their eyes at me. Right. Like that intentional reminding of yourself is its own labor actually.

RPR: Yeah. Really thinking about where that self-talk is coming from and how, what we've internalized has leads to the certain kind of self-talk that we should be doing this. I should be doing that. I should be working this weekend rather than enjoying this thing. I should be working or writing rather than in my case, going to the barn or whatever it is for your, for your hobby or the things that you love outside of, of class. There shouldn't be some sort of competition between those things. Okay. Well, we've talked a lot about what those values are, liberation and joy and ease. So I'm curious how those play out in your day to day life and work.

LM: Well, I mean, I'm definitely a work in progress <laugh> on that because I am not immune to all of these kind of systems we've been talking about. And I was definitely socialized as a child and as an academic to like get gold stars and whatever the equivalent of that is in the world that you're in. So it's a lot of unlearning, but I'd say the, the biggest tool for me is setting boundaries and finding like joy in setting the boundaries. And also <laugh> finding joy in people's reactions to the boundaries, which is, I guess like a little <laugh> caddy of me or something. I don't know. Maybe that's like not the most self actualized version of Lindsay, but I'll say, you know, in the past I, I, I didn't set boundaries because I was like, what will people think if they set boundaries? 

And now I've been able to shift into, I can't wait to see what they think when I say this, no. And sometimes it's like people respond and say, thank you so much for modeling that. And for, you know, kind of showing me like the language or the way that I can do the thing you just did. So that's delightful. And then sometimes people get really angry, but then it becomes another opportunity for me to say, like, I, I see that you're, you're angry. Can you explain to me why my no is such a problem for you? And then you can see people start to kind of disentangle it on the spot. There are, and they start voicing their values and realizing like, those aren't the values they actually wanna be voicing, but clearly those are the values they hold. Um, and so I don't think a few years ago, I, would've not been ready to do that or to kind of hold space with somebody and be like, you know, if I say no, and then somebody comes back at me and says, well, you have to say yes.

And I'm like, answer is still no, to be able to sit there in the silence and the discomfort, but I'd say that's one big way that I center kind of liberation and joy and ease because when I have the boundaries and that makes space for those other things to happen in my teaching, I, I try to make that the learning experience for students joyful and useful. And so, you know, I use things like ungrading and it's so funny because a lot, I always ask my students at the beginning of the semester after I've kind of laid out like, this is my approach. This is my teaching philosophy. This is the general rhythm to the semester. Like, what do you think about this? What are you, what's your reactions? And a lot of students. Um, and I ask them anonymously on like a Padlet so they can really let it rip if they want to.

And I always get a lot of students saying, I think this class is gonna be really easy. And I love that because then I can kind of respond and say, if by easy, you mean that there's not gonna be any unnecessary barriers for you to jump. If it means that I'm not gonna work you in a way that is going to be psychologically or physically overwhelming, if easy means you're gonna find this really engaging. And sometimes you might not even feel like it's work then yes, this is exact, that's exactly what this class is gonna be. So I think, you know, that's a way I bring ease in and then joy, I just do things that are, people might say are, are pointless. So I, I spend a lot of times making things look aesthetically pleasing, and I only do, you know, like, so course documents or course websites, even just like my, my planner.

Right. And that, that does nothing. Okay. In terms of productivity. And we could also argue whether it does anything in terms of student learning, but it's not about any of that. It's about the fact that I, as a person, as a child, love to color <laugh> right. Like, it's about that. It's about making things that are like, it's just the creativity part. I love it. And it doesn't matter if anybody, if it, if it helps anybody other than me, right. That is a place where I feel joyful and it feels completely non-capitalist to be honest, because nothing, nobody can get anything out of, or off of me from my cute little, you know, or, or designing things like little cartoon, rabbits that say sassy things like that is nothing for anybody. And so I think that's another way that I center joy. And that's kind of like a, a piece of resistance or disobedience because especially me as an academic, I am not supposed to be doing things that are frivolous.

RPR: Yeah. And then we get to, what's the definition of frivolous and who is sharing, who's saying that's frivolous, right. Where is that coming from? As opposed to a place of just, it gives me a little bit of fun. It gives me a little bit of joy to be able to kind of do those things. I used to be a big planner person before I had to go, um, to outlook for my new position. Um, and I, I was like washy tape and colors, and it really was fun to set, to set those up per month and kind of have that yeah. You know, the, the pencils or the pens for that particular month color and…

LM: You know, totally. I mean, mine is all digital too, I will say. But, um, but on like an, like an iPad, but I do things like, I make graphics for like, like a meeting graphic and then I will drop that in every time and then I can write over it. So like nobody needed that I could have just <laugh>, you know, written in what the meeting was. Um, but I like it. I like looking at it.

RPR: Good, good. Yeah. I love that. I think we're kind of starting to get into some of the, you mentioned ungrading and, and things like that. And on social media, you're really an advocate for a variety of the passions that you, you share as a teacher, as an academic, um, and your Twitter, your Twitter bio sums up that you are “disrupting oppressive systems through pedagogical disobedience.” So I'm curious what that means for you.

LM: Sure. So I should probably say kind of like how I came to that term of pedagogical disobedience, which as far as I can tell, um, other people aren't using it, at least not in the way that I have, uh, a couple people have used it in very disparate ways, but the way that I came to pedagogical disobedience kind of as a practice, I would say there's two, two things. So first of all, I have a series of experiences in academia where I was being disobedient and was called to some sort of office <laugh>. And they sometimes literally, and sometimes kind of figuratively and a, they, they centered around things where I was doing something that other people weren't doing. And so as a result, it, it stuck out, um, as a potential problem or like, um, another thing that commonly happens. So the, that I teach I'm mostly teaching educational psychology courses, courses either about how teaching and learning work or courses specific to pedagogy and, and teaching or, or scholarship of teaching and learning all those kinds of things.

I should also teach some statistics classes and stuff. So that's like the whole other side of me, but I'm often teaching people how to teach. And that means we do a lot of reading about evidence based practices and teaching. So a natural byproduct of that is that sometimes students will start to mentally assess their teachers, either their past teachers or their current teachers to, to decide like, do my teachers do evidence based practices, because I've just learned, the science says, this is how you should teach. And sometimes what will happen is sometimes students will get emboldened or empowered to go to their other professors and say, well, I learned about this evidence based practice in this other class. Why don't you do this? <laugh>. And so sometimes that comes back to me as being disruptive, being not collegial. And so I've been, you know, kind of labeled disobedient in that way.

Another way that I'm disobedient is that I unabashedly say that teaching, I think like for me, teaching's the most important thing and I'm not supposed to say that I I'm, I think I'm allowed to say that teaching and scholarship are equal, but I'm not really supposed to say that teaching's more important to scholarship than scholarship in my world. I don't, I'm not saying everybody needs to endorse those values. So I sometimes make choices professionally that align with that. And especially pre-tenure, you know, got feedback that like you can't be better at teaching then research, even if your research is fine, you know, adequate where it needs to be, if your research is adequate, but your teaching is the excellent thing that actually makes your research look less adequate. So I also got kind of that message and, and I should say, this is not specific to my institution.

My institution's actually super supportive when it comes to teaching, but it's kind of an, an overarching academic message. So we've got that one side of, I was being labeled disobedient and I like the word disobedient as opposed to like resistance or something, because it really did feel like I was in trouble. And for somebody who was really super focused on the gold stars that I mentioned previously, that felt painful. So that's the one side other side is a few years ago. I started reading a book called How to Do Nothing. I'm not sure if you've read that one. 

RPR: Yes. By Jenny Odell 

LM: you have yes. 

RPR: I cite her in my book several places. <laugh> 

LM: yes. And that book, you know, it's funny to me that that book, that the kind of the subtitle is resisting the attention economy because to me that book is not about that at all. It is a kind of philosophical manifesto about like, what are we doing? You guys <laugh>, that's what it felt like when I read it. And it really questioned so mu so many assumptions that are just fundamental to daily life. So I read that book a few years ago, you know, after several years of, of kind of being in trouble and feeling bad about being in trouble, to be honest. And you know, she mentions people that often get mentioned when we talk about these things like Thoreau and things like that. Um, and you know, Thoreau gives us the idea of civil disobedience as peaceful protest of, of breaking rules. It's not gonna cause real problems for people other than the rule breaker possibly. And so it was just that kind of idea of civil disobedience through my teaching. And I just kind of got this idea, well, you know, what, if I turn around this label of disobedient and claim it, it kind of reminds me of the reclaiming of the word queer of the queer community, which I'm a part of and how that was originally leveled as an insult and then the community reclaimed it and then has, you know, kind of put a bunch of power behind what it means to queer things and stuff like that.

And so I was thinking, what if that's the angle I take? What if I say, all right, I am disobedient. And in fact, let me show you how disobedient I can be. Not just because I'm being a petulant kind of child, but to say if like that is the value that you've kind of labeled me with, then I'm gonna live that out fully in this peaceful protest kind of approach. So that's where the idea of pedagogical disobedience came from. And since I am focused on teaching, that's the place where breaking rules is gonna happen the most for me.

RPR: What are some of the ways that you feel like you are breaking the rules, uh, as you claim that, that disobedience?

LM: So, I mean, we mentioned ungrading mm-hmm <affirmative> um, and I think a lot of people, so I know only a handful of people on my, in my campus that are, are dabbling with that because there's just this kind of hegemonic assumption that we have to, in order to motivate students to learn, we have to scare them a little bit with the threat of a poor letter grade. And that this like fear is a necessary motivator in college. I don't think a lot of people speak that a lot or when they, if you were to say like, why do you give grades? I don't think somebody, you know, would say, oh, because I think fear is an important motivator. Like they wouldn't <laugh>, they wouldn't, um, say it as such, but if you, if they were to interrogate their reasoning, that's where they would get to.

I think a lot of the times that, or this idea of like, well, students don't know what's good for them, so we just have to like, you know, get them to do this because it's, it's, it's good for them. Um, so that's a major way that I'm breaking rules. Um, I have lots of other little ones too. So I haven't used a textbook in probably eight years. And part of that is because of discomfort with publishing systems of publishing and all of the money that gets attached to intellectual work. Now I know you can kind of get around that with OERs. However, even then there's something about presenting students with a textbook that feels like I am presenting you with like a package of all the knowledge and your job is to just like unwrap it and put it in your brain. That is what we're doing here.

And so I found that getting rid of something that everybody feels like, well, you have to have a textbook getting rid of that kind of makes students question, like, what are we even doing here? What even is this interaction between teacher and student? And I'll say like, you know, and that is, that does become rule break because anytime that you teach a, a, a class on my, my institution where more than one person teaches the same course, like multiple sections of a single course are taught. We all have to use the same textbook. And so you can teach it anyway you want, but like everybody's using the same textbook. So technically all my classes have textbooks and I make sure to label them as a resource and to tell students like, okay, this week, this, these are the chapters. If you wanna do additional reading on it or something, but there's other ways for you to get this knowledge. So that feels rule breaking, because I almost never assign everybody to read or do the same thing at once. It's usually a resource menu and it's like, you here's the learning objectives. Do whatever you need to do out of this list until you feel like you have something to say about the objectives. So that feels like rule break.

Okay. So here's another example of something that I dabbled with this semester and will continue to do. So I think a lot of times in syllabi instructors list out course expectations or something like that, expectations of the students and then some instructors will also say, here's like what, uh, you can expect of me. So like that's nice and I'd always done both. Like here's kind of what would lead to success for you. And here's what I'm saying. I'm going to try to give you in pursuit of that success. But this year I decided to like, not even put that in the syllabus at all and to ask them again, totally anonymously, like think about the most effective learning experience you've had or also the least effective learning experience you've had. And tell me what the instructor did to make it one or the other of those.

And so then I took all of that and did like a real quick kind of qualitative analysis of, okay, what are the major themes that came out of them saying kind of what really works for them, what doesn't work for them? And then created a bill of rights for my students basically saying like, this is what you said you need. And so from my perspective, like you have been generous enough to give me the gift, honestly, of telling me what you need. And that's a gift because now I have the opportunity to meet your needs and it feels so good when we meet somebody's needs, right? Because they're usually so thankful and it's like a delightful relationship. So I, I just kind of brought that approach to it of like, thank you for giving me this gift of telling me exactly what you need. Now I'm gonna try to reciprocate and give you the gift of needs met. And so I, I know that's like breaking the rules because people say like, well, what if students ask for this of you and this of you? And I'm like, well, what if they do? How can I meet that need in a way that doesn't martyr myself, right? That that still is within my boundaries, but that reasonably meets that need. So that's a couple examples of, of pedagogical practices that feel disobedient.

Those are great examples and they're not, they're not hard things, right? I mean, figuring out Ugrading, you know, that's definitely a practice that, that needs some time to kind of sort itself out with different students, right? But just, just taking those thoughts into consideration and what your students needs are and how to approach them is can be really powerful for some folks who maybe haven't thought about that this this way. And I'm my hope is partially that, that the pandemic has given us some opportunity to have those conversations with our students because we do have to be more and people are tired of hearing. We need to be more flexible. We need to do these things, but it's true. And we do need to function in that way. 

RPR: So I'm curious how maybe the pandemic has played into that approach that you have towards your courses and your students.

RPR: Yeah. So pre pandemic, I had already designed my courses in line with universal design for learning. And in fact that was probably the thing that, um, actually introduced me to the whole world of faculty or educational development. So I was already in that space of trying to design classes that could be taken like mixed modality. Even if that wasn't the modality on the books. That's another rule I break. Right. <laugh> so I'd already kind of done that and you know, ways to deal with attendance variation and all those kinds of things or students who are experiencing depression and all of those kinds of things were already kind of built into my classes. So I will say that when we, especially when we had to do the, the emergency pivot at first, it, it wasn't the only thing that was different is that like, yes, we were on zoom, but my class was already very technology enabled.

And like I said, so many different possible paths to kind of like meeting learning objectives, that it wasn't hard for me <laugh> which I, I feel guilty saying that in some ways, because I know that was not true for so many other people. That being said, though, what I think the pandemic did was it basically didn't allow people to look away anymore. So UDL already existed. Student accommodation needs already existed. The fact that a lot of students who need accommodations cannot afford to get the evaluations to give them official legal accommodations, all that hap existed pre pandemic that people felt justified in looking away because they could say things like, well, you don't have official documentation on this. So I'm just gonna like kind of tune out. But as soon as the pandemic happened, nobody had official documentation for my wifi is bad, you know?

Or like I have children, you know, I have young children in my house when I'm trying to lecture like, and, and we all just kind of believed each other. Right. Probably because we were all also living some corner of that. So I think that's what the pandemic did for us collectively. Hopefully not temporarily, although I'm not sure it, it let us not look away from needs. So I think that is a, a benefit now in terms of like my own specific experience with the pandemic it's effects on my teaching were actually positive. And no, I should say it's affects that, but it effects on me as an academic were very positive and that's because, uh, well, one, I was privileged to have functioning wifi. I did have children in my house that were going to school, but they were, I guess when this all started 6 and 10, so they were past that high needs age from me.

So I had a lot and I also have, um, a partner who's always worked from home who owns his own business. And so I had a lot of privilege in terms of that, the whole thing, being able to work for me, but the main reason it was good for me as an academic is I all of a sudden felt more in control of all of my life because I could decide whether or not I was going to a zoom meeting or something. I could leave a zoom meeting if I needed to, I can mute my face in a zoom meeting. You can do none of that in a regular meeting. You can, you cannot hide very well if you need to, for very good reasons to hide. If you're sitting in your office, you can't do that. And I don't mean to say that, that there was a lot, I needed to H like specific people I needed to hide from, but I now in retrospect, realize I needed to hibernate from academia and have it exist within a package that I controlled, which ended up being zoom and internet enabled stuff.

And once I felt like I had a high level of like structure and control around things, I was able to get the space to recognize a lot of the things we've talked about today. Honestly, to really start to wrap my head around how much is just accepted in academia and not questioned. And, and people just assume it must be there in order for academia to function. And a lot of that stuff went away and we kept functioning. So I'd say it helped me. It actually emboldened me. Uh it's I'll say it's easier to break rules when you're sitting in your bedroom. <laugh> right. And so that's, that's what I did. Um, yeah,

RPR: So many little tidbits in there that we could jump into, but we're getting close on our time and I wanna be mindful of that. So I'm curious, how do you, how can we, how do you think about instilling those kind of, of mindsets? Maybe we say the, the disobedience piece, how do we help other faculty members experiment with that a little bit more? How do we help people move from that place of the experience that they had in the pandemic into something that does question more of the structures?

LM: Yeah. So I think one really important thing before you ever try to do anything that's remotely disobedient or has a feeling of resistance to it is to get super clear about your own margin for doing this kind of work, because all of us have different constellations of privileges and oppressions. And so it's easier for some of us to do this work than others. So I'm a tenured professor. I also have an administrative type position with my faculty development work, but I have so many different kinds of privileges that make it so that if I break the rules, the whole thing doesn't come crumbling down, but there are many faculty members, right? So, uh, women of color, for example, some of these things, these rule break is going to be much harder for them because of what's gonna be levied at them or assumptions that are gonna be attached to them because of the rule breaking.

So super important to be real also contingent faculty, right? Faculty who don't have long term contracts at App State, we might call some of these folks visiting instructor, temporary assistant lecturers, VITAL is still what we use. We do not call them non-tenure track, right? So VITAL faculty at my institution, I might not recommend <laugh>. They do some of these things because the reality of the current system is that that could be problematic. So get really clear on your margins. Also, if you're somebody who occupies some relative places of privilege, maybe you should push yourself a little bit. It it's gonna feel uncomfortable possibly, but can you reasonably break the rules and have a learning community of women that we've been meeting all, all, all academic year to just talk about what we think matters in our, in, in academia now. And maybe one of the best insights that came out of it was actually, um, a contingent faculty member.

But she said she was talking about struggling with feeling like she had to do something. And then she said, what are they gonna do? They gonna fire me. And then the, we all like laughed. We were like, no, they're not right. And we started thinking about, there's all these things that we see as rules, but like, if we were to break them, what are they gonna do? You know? And so I think that there's, there's lots of things we can, we can do that might challenge. So figure out the margin. 

And then the next thing I would say is don't go into rule break, just because you wanna break rules. <laugh> I don't know. I mean, some people might have that as a guiding value and, and maybe just the sheer joy of doing what you're not supposed to could sustain someone, but I'm not that person because it does feel really uncomfortable to break rules because everything else in the world is telling me follow the rules. Right. And so I think you have to get a lot of clarity about your own values, meaning purpose, whatever words you wanna put in there and have that be the driver. And then sometimes you will realize in order for me to live like the fullest realization of these values, I'm gonna have to break some rules. So if my focus is on liberation, sometimes I can have people do liberatory things and it breaks no rules at all. It doesn't matter. Right. But sometimes I realize like, Ooh, in order for us to really break free, if something, one of the things we have to break free of, or from is the rule. And so that's what I would recommend is to get really clear on values, another activity that can be really good once you've figured out your values or purpose or, or what, what have you is to go through a syllabus or an LMS page, whatever you wanna do, go through something that kind of really articulates a lot about your teaching and then ask yourself for every like thought that's in there.

Why is this in here? Right. Does, does this need to be in here? Does this need to be in here? And sometimes you'll realize it's in there because well, every, everybody puts that in their syllabus, right. And you have to stop and ask yourself, is that a good enough reason or another lens as you can go through and say, okay, if this is my, this is my value. I'm gonna go through with that lens and say, does this sentence reflect that value does this sentence? And then I know the first time I did that, I was kind of horrified at some of the things in, and I'm co I'm still even still finding things in my syllabi where I'm like, uh, that doesn't feel right. That does not communicate joy or ease or liberation. And so I'll have to reword it. So like that's a really easy starting place that, um, is really quietly breaking rules possibly. But it opens the door for you recognizing like, well, if I have a problem with this thing, that's in my syllabus and it ties to some teaching practice that I always use. Then maybe that maybe we gotta pull the strings. You know, it's like, it's like the unraveling sweater I've found, but you can start with your values as the beginning of the unraveling.

RPR: Yeah. That's a really important place to start. I think for a lot of the work that we, we need to be doing to really kind of center ourselves and what, what our values are, what our mission is, um, what our purpose is, what, what, as you said, what gives you meaning in the work that we do? So thank you so much for your time. Lindsay, it's been great chatting with you today.

LM: Yeah, it's been awesome. I really appreciated it. And I appreciated all the questions you have for me, because I had mentioned previously, you know, when somebody asks you good questions, then you recognize, you know what, maybe I am, you know, living the life that I wanna live based on your questions. And so I just wanna thank you for that really kind of validating experience of being like, all right, you know what I think I'm doing it.

RPR: Thanks for listening to this episode of the agile academic podcast for women in higher ed. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did to make sure you don't miss an episode. Follow the show on Apple, Google, or Spotify podcasting apps and bookmark the show. You'll find each episode, a transcript and show notes theagileacademic.buzzsprout.com. Take care and stay well.