For the final installment of our pandemic pedagogy roundtable discussions, Gina and Tom sit down with Samuel Chen and Kelly Allen to talk about how the present political atmosphere in the U.S. is impacting the way we teach. Listen in as they discuss strategies for addressing potentially polarizing topics and attitudes in the classroom and why these sometimes difficult conversations are exactly what we need to create an engaged and critical thinking citizenry. In our segment on self-care, it appears that adult beverages are again a popular remedy for dealing with a long day. Please be sure to subscribe to, rate, and review the podcast and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @pedagogyagogo.
For the final installment of our pandemic pedagogy roundtable discussions, Gina and Tom sit down with Samuel Chen and Kelly Allen to talk about how the present political atmosphere in the U.S. is impacting the way we teach. Listen in as they discuss strategies for addressing potentially polarizing topics and attitudes in the classroom and why these sometimes difficult conversations are exactly what we need to create an engaged and critical thinking citizenry. In our segment on self-care, it appears that adult beverages are again a popular remedy for dealing with a long day. Please be sure to subscribe to, rate, and review the podcast and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @pedagogyagogo.
1234 Pedagogy a go go.
Unknown:Pedagogy Go go go.
Gina Turner:Hello, and welcome to Pedagogy-a-go-go, a podcast about college faculty sharing what happens in their classrooms and why? This is season three, Episode Three: Conversations Beyond the Echo Chamber. And we're your hosts Gina Turner, and Tom O'Connor.
Tom O'Connor:Well, welcome everyone to Pedagogy-a-go-go. We are 3 for 3 in our new three part series, where we've been tackling some current issues and how they're affecting us in the classroom. For our third podcast, we are welcoming back Kelly Allen and of course, my wonderful co host Gina Turner, and who I'm getting to meet for the first time Professor Samuel Chen, who has taught at NCC in a part time capacity since 2018, and this semester came on as a full time faculty member in political science. Welcome, Sam. It's so nice to meet you. I'm so excited to have you part of our conversation today. I also feel outgunned and outclassed, because you're a political science professor, teaching in these crazy times. And we have chosen for our topic today, the teaching in our classrooms in accordance with the current political landscape crazy, such as it is. So as a means kicking us off. Sam, can you can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Because our listeners know Kelly and Gina and me all too well?
Sam Chen:Well, first, Tom, thank you for having me. And Kelly, Gina always, always good to be with you, all of you. And so as you said, Tom, my name is Sam and I've been here at NCC since 2018. and honored to serve in the full time capacity now. My background has been in politics it's honestly a huge blessing. I'm the child of immigrants, and grew up paycheck to paycheck and had a career with a front row seat to our nation's democracy. And it's one of those Made in America stories that I've just been truly blessed to live and study political science and philosophy in school and ended up working in the House of Representatives, and then working over in the US Senate, and then jumped over to the campaign side or as we say in government, the dark side, and did the campaign world for a little bit and launched my own my own consulting firm about five years ago, which I still own today. And we do a lot of campaign strategy, communication strategies and public policy advising for different members of Congress, governors, and all the way to local leaders. And so it's a lot of fun. And outside of that I host a news journal talk show called Face the Issues where - think Meet the Press, except it's 12 issues and the President's Twitter feed with, you know, 30 panelists! It's one issue a week. And we really tried to get after it and take it from the 30,000 foot ideas down to how does this impact my neighbor? And why is this so important for us practically. So it's a lot of fun getting to bring all that experience into the classroom.
Gina Turner:That's great, Sam. And you know, one of the things I always tell prospective students during orientation is one of the things I love about community colleges is that we have people like you who actually worked in their field for years, or continue to work in their, the field that they're teaching. So they really got, you know, boots on the ground. They really, they're not just talking to talk, they're walking the walk. And so what a great boon for your students for you to be able to talk specifically about your work in the House, in the Senate. And in in this political world, unlike me, who basically spent most of my life completely oblivious to politics. So, how is that - I almost feel like it must be really fun, if fun is the right word for you to be tackling this chaotic, you know, unprecedented political atmosphere right now, in your particular classes. Can you say a little bit about the classes you're teaching and how you're incorporating, you know, the "now" into those classes?
Sam Chen:Gina, that's fine. You say that, you know, I wrote I just had a book come out this year called "13 Minutes", and it deals with the 2016 election. And in the introduction, you know, I say these are lessons I learned from the craziest election in history and then when publishing. I'm thinking, this is outdated. We're walking into the craziest election in history now in 2020. I here at Northampton, I have the privilege of teaching a number of courses, everything from international relations to American government. And what I think the challenge of discussing the current political atmosphere in class is not a lot people think the challenge is the diversity of opinion in the class and that's not really it, I think the diversity of - I think diversity in general, is our strength, not our weakness. I think that diversity of ideas, racial diversity, gender diversity, socio economic diversity at a school like Northampton where our students range from high school students to adults, the diversity in age, I think that's our strength. I think the great challenge is understanding government before we engage politically, I always tell our students Hey, this is a political science class. First and foremost, government stands on two legs. The first is theory. So we understand the theories of things like liberalism, federalism, and theory should lead itself to law. Law is the practical application of our theory, those are the two legs government stands on. Only when we get that, can we begin to properly discuss politics. And that's probably the biggest challenge. The fun part, though, to your point, Gina, is you can pull almost any political fight right now, and bring it back into that conversation on theory and law. And so a lot of the writing that I do is trying to take, for example, ideas in the federalist papers in the Federalist 10. James Madison says, How should the country - How should the government deal with divisions, now he's talking about a fight between those who own lands, and those who don't own land?
Gina Turner:Mm hmm.
Sam Chen:That's not our fight today. But the idea is, the pragmatic ideas still apply. And he says, look, you could remove the cause, right? If you just took out the other person, there's no more debate. But you're not gonna have a country much longer. Or you could learn to mitigate and control the impact. That's hard, it requires you to sit down with the other side. Because that's the only way we can maintain our government. And so even though that issue itself isn't prevalent today, I mean, certainly what the gist of what he's talking about is, and so it's really neat to build pull any political debate today back into those principles that our country is founded on.
Gina Turner:Hmm, yeah, that's a great point is that it's almost like you have to understand the rules of the game, to then be able to talk about the game to then be able to apply it to how those rules are, or are not playing out in the current situation. That's, that's really great. That's great insight. I'm going to turn to Tom, you know, because you're teaching in a kind of humanities, social sciences arena, like myself, how are you tackling the current atmosphere in your classes?
Tom O'Connor:It's so funny, because I'm listening to Sam's answer, I'm almost doing it the same way. And I feel like I've become a different Professor on the one hand, because Sam, you were speaking to the mechanisms of government, which I will admit that I don't know nearly as much about as you do. And so I don't approach it through that. But I do approach it, as you were saying, through the lenses of history and theory. So you know, across the subject matter, I teach, you know, I'm fortunate enough to be able to address topics like racism, economic disparities, religion, sexuality, gender politics. And so I increasingly find myself working in this current moment, as a history professor, constantly trying to contextualize what we're seeing in light of history, maybe not the history of our government, per se, but in the history of the civil rights movement, you know, in the history of the politics of the 60s and 70s, and the social politics of the 60s and 70s. From a theory perspective, you know, it's interesting, and Kelly, I think you'll appreciate this. But I think a lot about the news and the way we absorb information, and to some extent, theoretically, my classes are trying to address the current bipartisan antagonism that we're seeing these kind of news echo chambers that foment those divisions further, as a kind of natural extension of the postmodern movement, where essentially, the construction of truth and relativism have essentially been so far as I see it kind of increasingly weaponized over the last three decades. You know, I'm terrified to some degree that, that we increasingly feel an act as though we live in a Post truth world. And I don't know how to address a Post truth world or society in my classroom. So what I've been trying to do is allow that topic itself to hopefully become the kind of basis for like a renewed discourse in inquiry. You know, I haven't taught - and so fans of The Matrix hold on to your hats! - you know, I haven't taught John Baudrillards Simulation and Simulacrum in forever, but I feel like I need to dust it off. Although I can't tell if I want to dust it off, because it spells out something very specific in our culture, or because I desperately want to refute it, because I feel like this idea of a Post truth world was really, you know, well articulated in that essay. So you know, and The Matrix was very inspired by this essay, and anyone who's heard, was it Morpheus saying, "Welcome to the desert to the real". You know, that's a quote from the John Baudrillard essay. But The Matrix is kind of a really cheap reading of it where the whole point of The Matrix is we live in this fake world that we need to get to a real world. John Baudrillard's point was we create fake worlds like Disney World, so that when we leave them, I think the quote is "into the concentration camp of the parking lot" is the way he describes it after, you know, leaving Disneyland, that the whole experience has been to make us believe that the world we're going into is real. And I no longer feel in touch with that reality. Right, you know what I mean, in Baudrillard it's assumed that there is no reality. This is the idea of this postmodern, Post truth movement. And so I think part of the work I'm doing with my students is asking them about the media, the news that they're consuming, I'm assigning and asking them to watch the news. So whereas I might teach a short story, and usually I would be assigning secondary articles with what people might have said about that story. I'm now just teaching that story and saying, read this article about, you know, from salon.com, or, watch, there's a report tonight on CNN at 10. I'd like you guys to tune into that, I think it's going to speak to this story that we're going to be reading tomorrow in class, mostly because I desperately want our students to be consuming the news. So now I'm just assigning it so that they do.
Gina Turner:Yeah, and also seeing it contextualized in the material that you're you're using, and that framework of, you know, this is not a new phenomenon going on today. It has happened in the past, historically, and people have written about it, and done thinking about it, which is...
Tom O'Connor:although I feel like it is a new moment, that's what I don't understand is that that's why I think I keep trying to bring the history into it. Because as we've seen, you know, it's not just Msnbc versus Fox anymore, we're seeing increasingly far right news mediums, and the division, if you will, of ideas, everyone can now go into their echo chamber of choice, that's going to give them the reality that they want to hear. And so as you were saying, Sam, I love my students coming in with that diversity of opinion. I just try to get from- but they're not necessarily living in a diverse News World yet. So that space of the classroom is about them beginning to try to talk across those different divides, if you will, those different realities.
Gina Turner:Sure. Yeah. So Kelly, I feel like with the class that you're a teaching, if there is a particular issue, of course, that you're addressing in your classes, which of course, has to do with food, and, help me out with the name of the class that you're teaching right now, Kelly?
Kelly Allen:Well, the class that I'm teaching now is nature of the environment, which is a cultural investigation of the relationship between human and non human nature. But yet, you're right, like it is food driven, because a lot of my scholarship is based on these investigations of food and climate. But it's really interesting to hear what you're saying, Sam and Tom, and it's, I gotta commend you on your bravery. Because like, you seem to be approaching this very head on and in a deliberate fashion, where my strategy has mostly been kind of the sneak attack where we don't talk about politics or any kind of the hot button issues at least, like not right away. So this past semester, my students they read a novel by Ruth Ozeki called All Over Creation. And it's a piece of fiction, but it is a book that calls into question and criticizes our industrial food system. But there's -the main character the protagonist in this novel is, is Yumi Fuller, and she is the daughter of an Idaho potato farmer and his war bride, so he fought in the Second World War, when he came home, he had his - he was married to Momoko, and she's of Japanese descent, but Yumi is living in this very white conservative area in Idaho in the 70s. And she doesn't look like most of the folks in her community. And just the, I guess, biracial relationship of her parents is something that really kind of I don't want to say that stirs controversy, but it's something that the town of Liberty Falls, talks about. But in this novel, and you know, I, I apologize for the spoilers. But she is raped by her, I think it's her ninth grade history teacher. She is subject to all kinds of racialized abuse from the community. And then she is essentially shunned by the rock in her life, which is her father. So that at the age of 14, she runs away from home, and she's gone from Liberty falls for, like 25 years. But like, I won't get into the whole gist of what she does in those 25 years, but it's effing amazing. Like what she accomplishes, like she goes from living on the streets and having to sell herself to eat and to get shelter, to she has three, beautiful children. And they're all children that she has, through choice she moves to a place that she feels is paradise in Hawaii, and starts her own business, she's teaching and then her parents get sick, and then her friend from high school calls her over and is like, "Look, you got to take care of your parents, you know, you need to help out". So she's like, brought back into this environment that caused so much trauma in her life. And then this is kind of like where the sneak attack comes in. Because the - and please pardon for this long explanation. But I swear there's a point to it. But in our class discussions, the students were really treating Yumi terribly, because her three children all have three different fathers. And this, you know, was by choice, she, she wanted to raise her kids on her own. But when she comes back, she drinks, she smokes. But then she's confronted with her rapist from that period of time, her dad still treats her like shit. And she's just been subjected on this, and no one bothers to take the time to be like, "Hey, Yumi? Are you okay? You know, how are things going for you?" And then so what this allowed us to do was to talk about the trauma, that she feels, the trauma in this novel is something that was never really addressed by the characters in that and then you could kind of see how that then, radiated into my students vision of this text. So then this is where I am able to start talking about some of the issues that I feel are really driving the division in our current political climate. So, it allows us to talk about issues of race, it allows us to talk about issues of misogyny, it allows us to talk about issues of, of capitalism and settler colonialism. And like, never once do we talk about these as conservative issues or liberal issues, but they're things that start to kind of become familiar. And what I see is, you know, you can recognize in your students like, okay, you know, I can kind of get a sense of how like this person votes and how that person votes. And there's never kind of like that, that angry, kind of like divisiveness in their dialogue. And what they're doing is that they're taking this very, very important issue or issues, and they start untangling it together. And, you know, many of them are having these aha moments, you know, and there's some who are very, like left leaning that or believe that they're left leaning, and maybe they're not as left leaning as if they thought that they were, and then there are others who, you know, are perhaps right leaning, that they're like, oh, wait a minute, no, like, this issue is actually really important to me. And what I thought that I stood for is actually not the case at all. So that's kind of like the way that I've been approaching it in my class.
Gina Turner:It's so interesting, Kelly, because in a way it comes full circle, right? Because Sam is talking about that politics and government are a system that work in these ways, right? So we need that understanding of the framework. And then Tom is sort of talking about the ways in which information is passed on and whether that information is helpful or harmful in a way, because people can be very siloed in terms of what type of information they have. So Kelly is sort of trying to get his students to personalize these stories, these concepts and maybe even apply them to their own previous thinking. And the whole time, you know, I've been I've been sort of following the arc of this conversation, thinking about something I said to my husband this morning, which was, "Drayson, I hate politics. And here's why". No offense, Sam. (laughter)
Sam Chen:None taken!
Gina Turner:But I said, and here's why: it's too much like psychology. Because in psychology, you have an
explanation for anything:you have an explanation for why people stand up, you have an explanation for why they sit down, you have an explanation for why they drive a car, you have an explanation for why they don't drive a car. And I feel like, in a way, though, that is what makes politics so interesting, because fundamentally, it's about people's individual preferences, experiences. And then each person is unique within their own experiences and beliefs and understanding of the world. But the way to be an active participant in our political world is to then understand well, how do I use the rules of politics, to push forward what I believe in, what I feel strongly about, what I've just learned about in class. And so, for me, a big way that I talk about politics in my classes is to talk about how we all have this relationship with each other as members of a society and that we have to just like you said, Sam, we have to be able to talk to each other. And we have to learn how to talk to each other using the rules of engagement that I suppose politics, can can help to give us. So maybe I don't hate politics as much as I think I do!
Tom O'Connor:Can I sneak in a quick question? And it's actually it's a question I want the answer to. But it's, but I I'm wondering, actually, if you're getting this from your students, because I was thinking about this, when Kelly was talking about trauma. And I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, you know, yelling about faithless electors! So like, are you finding that in your classes that - are your students coming to you? So this moment, we're recording obviously, our current president has not conceded the election yet. There is a degree of indeterminacy. And I see as many thought processes saying, hang on, we've got this as I see saying, we're in real trouble here. Are your students asking you to explain what's likely to happen? What's going to happen? Or just asking if it's going to be okay?
Sam Chen:Yes, definitely. I think there's less genuine fear that this whole thing is just going to fall apart and more amused curiosity. I'm not so sure thatwith college students, I remember when I was in college, thinking, you know, the world is always going to work out, things - I mean, unless there's like a breakup, right? If there's a breakup, it's like the world's over. But anything else, you know, the economic - I was in college when the economic crisis of 2008 hit. And I remember, just, like, you just didn't really like you're like, Okay, okay, the world's gonna go on. And because if you're not working the job, if you're not, you know, living paycheck to paycheck, or rely on your job, it doesn't really affect you. And so I think there's more of just this amused "Hey, this is weird what, what's going on?" and that that does lend itself to a little of the challenge, because we could spend all class all day going through, you know, all the different legal challenges. I do some political analysis work. And I get a lot of DMs, from from followers on Twitter and Instagram saying,"explain this in Wisconsin explain this in Michigan". And I just can't reply to everybody. And our students are asking the same questions. And so I think for a few of them, there is a genuine concern of this is going to fall apart. But I think for a lot of them is just a very amused of" does this happen? Does this normally happen?" And Tom, I'll share this this one real quick, short story. My cousin got married a few years ago. And his wife, their family's from Singapore. And her cousin on that side works for the government in Singapore. And so we're all at their house for this dinner before the wedding. And my cousin's wife introduces me and says, Hey, you know, this is Sam. He works in American politics. And you see her cousin's eyes light up. He says,"sit down and got a question for you! (Lots of laughter) You can shut your government down in America?" I'm like Well, yeah, not only can we do it quite often, it's like a favorite party trick. "Oh, my goodness, you shut your government down. Everyone in Singapore is like get your popcorn ready. The America channel has shut down the government." (Lots of laughter) I get that kind of amusement from students who are just like "they can do that!? The president can just sue election results? What!? Where does this power come from?" So long story short? Yes. They asked about it almost every class.
Gina Turner:Well, I love this term of amused curiosity because there is such a level of absurdity around it, if you can sort of take that step back and go, "what in the what!?" I mean, you know, even down to the whole Four Seasons (laughter)
Tom O'Connor:That will go down in history. Yeah. I hate embracing that kind of shaudenfreude, I just, it makes me feel bad.
Gina Turner:But, I think probably also for you, having the knowledge that life goes on, right, we plug along, and the system hasn't broken yet. And it has a lot of maybe a lot of flexibility into it. Whereas for someone like me, you know, I can kind of echo what Tom said, which is that, you know, I wake up in a cold sweat, worried that that democracy is going to end, maybe because I don't have that historical knowledge about the way politics has worked in the United States. So do you think that your knowledge about the political atmosphere is helping you to teach this stuff? I guess the question is this, this is normally the question we would asked at this point, which is, how is your personal ability to teach being affected by the current moment that we're in?
Sam Chen:Sure. I think it's a little bit of a split. There's a divide here a little bit, which is some of this and I remind my students of this, which is some of this is just amusement. And it's, again, fascinating, you can check your government down what, but there is a side where it gets serious. And I for me, I'm not concerned, I remember seeing in 2006, and the Republicans lost control of the Senate, I was in college, and I remember my Republican buddies in college, just that this is the end of the world. And in 2008, when President Obama won, I remember my political theory Professor saying to us in class at the time, this is the moment, he says, if you're a Democrat, this is a moment to show to the world, how you win with class. And if you're a Republican, this is the moment that you can demonstrate how you lose with grace. He says losing is not always a bad thing, because this is what gives your party the ability to reset. And these are words that just that, for me really resonated. And so I do think and I emphasize that with with our students, because I realized that I'm going to have Trump voters, and also Trump supporters and I separate them in my class, I'm going to have Biden voters and Biden supporters, I'm going to have those who voted a third party or chose not to vote the top of the ticket. And there's different reactions to this. And I think iit's an ability: Alex Morgan, the great striker for the US women's national team, she said winning and losing isn't everything. The journey is just as important as the outcome. And so I try to use these moments to emphasize the journey to them amid all that amusement. I think the other side of it, though, is there are things that get serious and unfortunately, I can bring my government experience into this. I'll give you one example. I think the President not conceding to Vice President Biden, the concession is really a formality, it's kind of the the post game handshake, right in the end of the - pre Corona, post game handshake, in the NFL.(laughter)
Gina Turner:the elbow bump!
Sam Chen:Right!This is the idea you call your opponent and you say, hey, you ran a strong race, I just wanna say thank you. And let's work together. And we all remember the letter that George HW Bush left for Bill Clinton on his way in, things like that. But it's not the end of democracy if that doesn't happen. But something like what happened as we're recording just this week, the firing of Director Krebs at CISA. Right? This is a organization within department of Homeland Security defense departments that focuses on protecting our cybersecurity and infrastructure. These are the kinds of decisions - for all that we know, I never want to assign motivation. I never want to say that someone did this because they thought this way. But for all that we know, this seems to be a firing that takes place because he argued that our cyber infrastructure for the election was strong, and that there wasn't this kind of infiltration that the President is looking for. And so this is where you begin to say, Wait, hold on, there's a difference between government and politics, right? I mean, the easiest thing I've ever had to do is win elections. The toughest thing is how people govern. Governing is hard. Winning is easy. And we cannot bring the win/loss mentality of our politics, into governance. And this is where I think it becomes dangerous. And our republic does start to get on shaky ground if we continue to do that. So I tried to bring that distinction into the classroom. And I mean, our students are - I think we often discount college students. I think they are some of the greatest people in the world. And they do understand it when it's laid out for them. And it's really a matter of just helping them get there and see that.
Gina Turner:Yeah. I think that's great, because it ties back into, you know, this idea that we really need emotional intelligence to be able to navigate the waters of politics and government. And that that's maybe a little bit of what we're seeing is this breakdown in the ability of people to, to manage their own emotions, and instead to be able to, as you say, lose with grace, or to win with humility, right? I'm watching this mini series on Netflix right now called the Queen's Gambit, and it's about chess in the 60s, you're nodding your head, you've watched it, and it's just so fun to watch the formality about how they concede a game, right, they just tip over their king onto the board. And it's, it's just kind of this lovely, like, you know, reminds me of the letterr that the George HW Bush wrote, that there's a grace in, in passing it on. Um, I think for myself, just briefly, also, you mentioned we, it gets serious, and I think it gets serious for my students that I'm hearing when they think about the stakes, the personal stakes for themselves. So I have a student whose father was an undocumented immigrant. And so the stakes in terms of who is n power, that that really has a very personal impact. And I think sometimes the amusing and the absurdity level goes away, when when you start to think about how does this impact me walking down the street day to day or my family walking down the street day to day, too? Kelly, what about for you? I mean, how do you feel like, what's the roller coaster you've been riding? in your classes during this political atmosphere?
Kelly Allen:I'm gonna say this, because, you know, again, so I'm I don't teach politics. However, something that I, and I know that all of you are astutely aware of, is that our current political atmosphere is extremely - It's an extremely emotional period for many folks. And I know that during the week leading up to the election, and then the week after, it was extremely challenging to get students to focus on the task at hand. I mean, Hell, I talked to a lot of our colleagues that also found it extremely difficult to focus on the job at hand. Like, I'd never really experienced something quite like that. Well, no, actually, I shouldn't say that. Because like, my second stint as an undergraduate, was during September 11. And that certainly was - that, rightfully so, disrupted a lot of things. But yeah, in regards to our politics, I don't remember, like this kind of emotional toll that our students and our faculty are feeling right now. So that's been the most challenging part is a way to be sympathetic towards those feelings, but then also finding a way to work together, like collectively in a constructive way.
Gina Turner:Yeah. Um, I think I was just thinking again, about what you said, Sam, that people are kind of flabbergasted at how the government works. And I was reminded of a colleague of mine saying that when he was watching the election results, he's a numbers guy. So he would just watch the numbers and forget about the people. And I thought, Gosh, what a great way to be able to decouple yourself and to be able to be dispassionate about the process, as opposed to emotional about the process. So, Tom, I mean, what Kelly is saying is that he's being mindful not only of the students, but also of, of his - our colleagues, right and of course, Tom, you are also supervising faculty in the classroom. Are you seeing that the political atmosphere is affecting their ability to function in the classroom?
Tom O'Connor:Yeah, I think Kelly just spoke to all of them and myself, listening to you talk about exhaustion. And I was going to speak to this and because it's just, I think, Kelly, you did it beautifully about how this is affecting you personally, and also how it is affecting your students emotionally. All of us coming into this semester, you know, following the shutdown, the covid 19 pandemic, a crazy, you know, election cycle, came in really tired, I think at the start of the semester when we're supposed to be refreshed. And I think about if I was asked to describe the semester, I feel like I'm running the fourth leg of a marathon and constantly trying to stave off hitting the runner's wall. And so, all of us, I think, have been looking among faculty for a sense of community to reassure and support each other and say, you know, we got this, and I've had to offer more words of encouragement. And maybe I don't even do it enough. I know that I, I took some vacation days the other day, obviously, I should say, "staycation" days, the other day. Just because I knew that I needed, I needed a moment away. And before I did, I sent out just a heartfelt thanks and kind of "hang in there" to all of the other faculty out there knowing that I think we're all working. Because when we go home, and we're supposed to be relaxing, I don't know about you guys, but I'm turning on the news, and then getting yelled at by Becca for having turned on the news. So then I go to my phone, and then you know, and then I wake up the next day, and I'm okay, let's do this, again. From our students perspective, emotionally, and I don't want to make this partisan. But I mean, there is a frank divide, I think, on the one hand, there seems to be one side that seems to be acting largely out of fear. And I and I would ascribe it to a lot of people, in the last four years have have, like, in my students, at least, I've sensed like, they feel like there's a lot riding on this, I think both sides feel that. And then I also feel that there is there is some anger out there, too. And all of that, interspersed in there, but not as much as I would like to see, is kind of hope on either side, right, people are either trying to return to normalcy feel like they've lost or maintain something that they are deeply and personally identify with, in terms of I think, for a large part of our nation, their relationship with our president, where it's an identity based relationship, and they see something in him and a particular type of leader that they feel really inspiring. And so it riles a lot of passion. And mixing into that passion on both sides is fear. So to come back, actually, this goes all the way back to something you said earlier, Kelly about creating spaces and sneaking things in, I feel like I've created three different spaces in my classroom. The first space is kind of in the minutes, you know, proceeding class, where I allow students to talk about their lives and how it is being affected by everything that's going on. And that usually bleeds in to the beginning of class time. And we're not talking about anything content related into that class. And I'm okay with losing those five, and maybe even sometimes 10 minutes, because it almost feels like it's a therapy moment. And it creates a sense of community, no matter again, to your point, Sam about diversity, no matter where you're standing, everyone feels really invested and wants to talk. And then I've created a second space where, okay, guys, we're putting that in a box over here, because we have these other really important things that that we need to be talking about. So we got that out of our system. Now we're going to get to the work of what we're talking about today. And then there's the third space is the best. And I think the first two work in tandem to make that third space happen. And it's like the most satisfying and it's a result of the other two, which is that I'll use my English class, that we create a space where we can contextualize literature and theory within our political moment. So uh, two quick examples would be, I recently taught Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. And alongside Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, not two texts that people would think of is specifically political, right? But my students began to examine how like unexamined practices and traditions can lead to arbitrary and painful violence in a society, which is exactly what's happening in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, and we're seeing that going on in our own society right now. Or, you know, or how someone driven, or a group of people driven, by inarticulate revenge or unfocused anger can commit atrocities and harm others, which is of course, what happens in The Cask of Amontillado, you know, the unnamed grievance. And, you know, that's a story that we ended up talking about the anger we were seeing in the streets, and how on both sides and how it was leading to violence and the breaking of windows and people feeling like harming others was okay in a given moment. And we were using literature to do that. So we were, you know, those were and those have been the best moments, the semester. They've been, they've sustained me as an educator and hopefully been cathartic for the students as well, where they felt like the work that they were doing well, they might not have been invested in Poe, or Shirley Jackson, an old New Yorker story. They felt it redolent. The both of these you know, you know, sixty, seventy years old Than 100 and some odd years old, you know, we're relevant to a particular moment, and they saw something that was going on, were able to connect it. So that those are some war stories, because I can only think of this semester in terms of war stories.
Kelly Allen:Wow. What about you, Gina?
Gina Turner:Well, um, oh, gosh, um, I think I kind of was talking about how, you know, that for me, I'm, it's trying to empathize with the students that are in that space of fear in the classroom, and that do feel, I mean, for lack of a better term, taking it personally, and not able to kind of separate themselves from the emotional side of what they're seeing and the hurtful and painful things that they're seeing. And I think the other problem, I don't know if problem is the right word. But the other issue, of course, is that people feel so decoupled from what politics and what government can do. And so they see all of these things that that are terrifying them, that are making them outraged, that that they're seeing as injustices, and it can be very hard for them to see how those things can fit together. Is that something that you're seeing with your students, Sam? Are they connecting the dots between what they feel passionately about, and the structures of politics and government?
Sam Chen:Not as much as I would hope. And to echo what all three of you said, I think, have been saying that idea that there are real world consequences to what happens, right, whether it's legally speaking, or it's politically speaking. Former Speaker house, Tip O'Neill famously said, all politics is local. And he's right. And I always tell my students, you know, you go down somewhere, South Carolina, you know, former congressman Trey Gowdy, Tea Party member, very conservative, and you have someone from the Bronx in New York, and they say, how does somebody like Trey Gowdy or Ted Cruz in Texas? How does somebody like Ted Cruz, get elected? The guy's a nutcase. But then you travel to where they're from. And you live there, and you talk to the people there and you eat in their diners, and you go to work with them, and you listen to their struggles, and you don't necessarily agree with them. But you begin to understand the why.And people from there, they say, how does someone like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez get elected, she's a nut. But then you go to the bar, where she used to be a bartender. And you walk a day in her shoes, and you go listen to the people and all the people who shared stories with her while she was waiting tables, and you listen to their stories. And you might not agree with where she stands. But you start saying, Wait, hold on a minute, I'm starting to understand the why. And this is exactly what the study of political science is supposed to do. Aristotle says, in Book One of The Politics that we have government, because we are people that need to, we need to organize ourselves in these forms. Right, in these structures. And so the study of our government should be an introspective study of ourselves, and of how we engage with each other. And we can't do that until we first know ourselves. And then two, we know our neighbors. And so I think, a lot - my one of my former bosses is Ohio Governor John Kasich, and he would always say, growing up in Mckees Rocks, right outside Pittsburgh, he would say, you know, our our heroes weren't the President of the United States. My hero was Roberto Clemente. I didn't even know who the President United States was. And he said, you know, the job of government is to empower the people. And so much has, to your point, Gina, students not realizing that that is, in large part, the fault of the government. The fact that the government has kind of taken it instead of saying, Let me show you how to do or let me empower you to rise into this. And because when communities rise, we knows when community rises, it lifts everybody, everyone rises together. And the government's kind of fallen into this. How about you just give us more money? And we'll just do it for you. As opposed to, hey, let's invest in the community. You do it, we rise together when the community does it. And so I think a lot of that is on the government, that people don't feel that they can engage the government other than make a phone call, write a campaign contribution. They feel disconnected. And I'll be honest, that's on those of us in the government.
Gina Turner:Yeah. I mean, and of course, you see things like, you know, the gerrymandering and voter suppression things going on too, that also makes people feel like well, even if I were to go out and vote, does my vote really stand for something too? I was thinking also about what you were saying about, you know, community and my husband always jokes, my husband's actually from the UK. And he always jokes that America is just too big. It's just too many people. But I also teach evolutionary psychology and you know, one of the things and that that's a whole kettle of fish as well. But one of the kind of basic tenets, I guess of that is that human beings formed in small communities, and that we are really designed to operate in small communities where we do know each other's names, and we recognize each other's faces. And when it gets to be too big, then that's when the trouble comes. Because we don't know and trust the other people that are allegedly part of our community. And so how do we build community? And maybe one of the ways that we build community is through technology? I mean, do you feel as though technology is helping or hurting? You know, we are in this moment right now, where we have to use technology to communicate with each other, we're using it in our classes. Do you feel like there's anything in the ways in which we're using technology that is helping or hurting? You know, your ability to pass on these ideas and to talk about government politics?
Sam Chen:Yes. And both?(laughter) Technology is fantastic. I mean, look, we're doing this, you know, via technology, we could all be sitting in the room together. But we're going to do this by technology in the era of COVID. And even more than that, getting to connect people that would otherwise we'd be trying to buy a plane ticket and asking the college for funding to bring them here. Yeah, we can do these forums now. And the other great thing I think, with technology, if we use it right, you know, I talked earlier about people who live in South Carolina or Texas might not understand what life is like in the Bronx, and those who live there don't really understand what it's like in the South. technology gives us a window into other communities, it could be an absolutely great tool. The other side of it, though, I think, is that it can also silo us, right? And so if we can easily use technology to really put ourselves in the echo chamber, so I think it comes down to how we're going to utilize it. One of my fears with technology, one of the things I love about it first is I think it's put information at our fingertips, right, Google is our best friend. And it's put information at our fingertips. But one of my fears with it in the educational sense, and the pedagogy sense is as a college as a University, and Institute of Higher Education. Our job is to teach for understanding and wisdom. Today, the majority of our political fights, if you log on to Twitter, and you just read through these, first of all, you cannot educate for understanding or wisdom in 280 characters it's not doable, right? But if you read through our political fights, our fights are dealing with information.The debate over fake news is a debate about information. Information leads to knowledge, which then leads to understanding and wisdom. So we should be at the understanding wisdom end of it, and we're still debating what's information. And then we actually have taken a step further back and started debating how to be nice to each other. So we're not even on the spectrum yet from information to the wisdom. And I think technology can both bridge that but if abused can also push us further away from from realizing that and that's my concern with it.
Gina Turner:Yeah, I've seen a thing on Facebook, you guys have probably seen it too. It describes exactly what you just said, Sam. So it starts out with just a matrix of dots, and it says "information". And then there are lines drawn between it and it says "knowledge" and then there's kind of a network drawn and it's "wisdom". And then someone has connected the dots in the shape of a unicorn and it says "conspiracy theory".(Laughter) So great. But yeah, so that's such a great point. It's It's a tool, right? technology is a tool like anything else and we can use a tool to build and we can use a tool to destroy. What about you guys, Kelly and Tom, how do you feel like technology is interacting with your students, with the classroom, with the political climate?
Kelly Allen:Do you mind if I go first, Tom?
Tom O'Connor:No, by all means.
Kelly Allen:All right, cool. And the reason why I asked to go first is just because I think what I have to share piggybacks directly off of what you were sharing with us, Sam, and that is, what is it that technology is doing in regards to our, our understanding of what information is and what knowledge is, and so on and so forth. So for me, technology has really helped my ability to teach within this current political landscape. Because like, we're, we're just all on it all the time. So what it's allowing me to do is to really kind of focus on that as a space. And as a genre. And the way that the rhetoric kind of unpacks itself within that platform. So, this semester, my students, a great deal of the classroom happened on their phones. Now, I taught this hybrid model where we did a lot of work online, and then I would meet them outside for like, an hour a week, just to kind of go over, you know, like, whatever, it was great, we got to plant garlic and harvest potatoes, it was a good time. But anywho, but their final projects were done on Instagram. But what happened before that is I said, Okay, so I want you to go out and investigate some hashtags that you believe will be associated with, with the arguments that you want to make in your Instagram posts. So then they had to write to me about their hashtags, and why they think that their hashtags are important. But then also, they had to talk about like, what kind of images are being used in these hashtags? You know, are they trying to incite fear? Or are they trying to like incite passion, like, whatever that is, so like, we're, we're actually talking about technology and how it, how it behaves, and then we are using that technology in a way to create new knowledge in the classroom. Because I just feel that in so many of our students after, and I'm sure that a lot of my writing colleagues are gonna, you know, like, hunt me down and beat me, but, the way that we're teaching writing in college, the traditional academic essay, while I appreciate it as a genre, and what it does for us as academics, many of our students, once they leave college, they're not going to see an academic essay ever again, and they're not going to really have the opportunity or the need to write one, like the way that they're going to be receiving information and communicating with others is going to happen on like, vastly different platforms. So, like this kind of, pandemic world that's forcing us to live and kind of communicate through technology has actually been beneficial for me to start moving in this direction, where, you know, I'm walking away from the way that I've taught for, you know, 10 years, and I'm moving towards this more digital social media kind of information assessment and knowledge building.
Gina Turner:Hmm, how about for you, Tom?
Tom O'Connor:I'm so scared of this question. Because listeners of the show know that, like, you know, with, like technology and so one of the challenges and also the things that about the semester that have been satisfying is that I'm a Luddite. I always make this joke about being a Luddite. And that you know, I touch a computer and it sometimes breaks. It's more making fun of myself in a lot of ways because I'm I can be savvy and learn technology and and I've had to embrace it. I'm going to do my Frankenstein's creature. impersonation really quickly in terms of the technology that is helped and hurt my own classes. The most the semester has been the news and the news media and the various mediums in which it is delivered. You know, Sam, whether it be Twitter, Instagram, and having to become savvy, and so like, you know, so
here's my:"news GOOD! news BAD!" So like, when I was like watching Stabler, the guy in Michigan who, you know, the rant that was on the little rant he did about the two Republicans who kind of held up the vote in Detroit for a while and wanted to disqualify it, you know, and so like, that was, that was something that was happening on Zoom and social media that kind of lit up. And that, you know, I could look at that. And I was like, that's a great moment for the news, but I constantly have to sift through the news. And so like, to Kelly's point, actually, on the one hand, our students and my students and myself have never had access to so much and that's a good thing and a bad thing because what we've had to do, and this is to Kelly's point is make what has just been the medium, the thing we need to be discussing and talking about and digging into. And so the discussion of sources and like, you know, where it's coming from, who's funding them, who's doing the speaking, what else has been written about this have become far more substantive in my classes, and they feel vital when we talk about them. Because we are, I think a lot about I had a professor at Lehigh University, a good friend, Scott Gordon, who he taught a whole class on paranoia. And he actually released an entire book on Quixotism, the idea of like, the Don Quixote figure who is like living in a world of its own, and I think about Don Quixote a lot. Because when people become trapped in in a single mindset, and are not open to diverse ideas and difference and trying to bridge gaps, they're constantly tilting at a windmill. And no matter how many times they tilted the windmill, and you tell them, it's, you know, it's not a giant, it's not a giant, it's not a giant, it's just a windmill, they're not hearing you. And so one thing we've been doing is kind of deconstructing some of these conspiracy minded paranoid mindsets that kind of build these singular universes of truth, to try to speak across them. And I've been thinking, obviously, a lot about the divides in our nation, and the question of how we can find a path towards unity. You know, obviously, Biden wants to run as, as a uniter, you know, and there is no path forward, if we can't begin to start working across the aisle, again, identifying issues of common cause, identifying, you know, compromise, and not worrying so much about whether I'm going to win in the next election cycle, or whether I'm going to get funding. And so I see my classrooms as kind of a testing lab for whether and how that's possible, as we try to see across difference. And so in thinking in a future forward way, I want to be thoughtful about how it can be using technologies, maybe, to bridge difference, you know, and maybe it's about finding a school in Texas, you know, teaching a similar minded class, though, and, and sitting down to have to have talks between students in two very different localities talking about their experiences and what matters in their lives and what's substantive in it. And I don't know how we do it, but now I want to do it after this conversation. Because it you know, to, was it Tip O'Neill? the quote? I always think in terms of the feminist[quote] the personal is always political. But you're absolutely right, politics are always local, I think that those are joined at the hip, and equally powerful. And so I love that way of thinking about it, Sam, and I want to think about it more like that going forward.
Gina Turner:Um, so I love that idea, Tom of, you know, we can we can have classrooms anywhere, right? We can pull students together anywhere. And I mean, for me what, so I've already had a pretty high comfort level with teaching online, I've taught online for 14 years. And so it wasn't a huge, huge shift for me, it's an area that I feel so comfortable that I didn't feel like I had to add a lot of bells and whistles. So what I'm actually loving is, in some ways, it's made my teaching so much more simple and direct. I'm not having to photocopy a million handouts before I go to class, you know, it's just we're just sitting there talking to each other asking each other questions going into small breakouts, it's - I'm treating my classes, so much like these seminars where we're all in this little box, you know, interacting with each other, as opposed to all the demonstrations and bells and whistles that I might have done in a real live class. And as I'm thinking about that, I'm I'm thinking that technology has, in a way sort of enlivened my experience as a teacher, especially under these circumstances. And I'm thinking also for you, Sam, I almost feel like a spark of energy. When you talk about how this unique political moment that we're in, is kind of giving you an opportunity to demonstrate things about your discipline in in different ways. And this kind of leads me to our last question, which is, so we've been wrapping up our podcast episodes, these past two episodes with this quote from Audre Lorde, and she says,"Caring for myself is not self indulgence. It is self preservation. And that is an act of political warfare." And I loved that because I felt like we were talking about - we have been talking so much about how stressed out we've been. But I think in some ways, some of us are finding things that are energizing us because of the moment that we're in. So I don't know if you can speak to that at all. Are there - or are there other places that you're looking for energy and, quote unquote self preservation
Sam Chen:Scotch? (LOTS of laughter)
Tom O'Connor:What Sam said that's my answer too!
Kelly Allen:Oh lord! That's booze, two episodes in a row, last time is was red wine. And now it's....
Tom O'Connor:Laphroaig if you got it I like something with a smoky head.
Sam Chen:In all honesty, Gina, I appreciate that question. I think there's two things I think. And the first I'll say as an encouragement, I think to those who don't get to see behind the curtain in our politics, which is to Tom's point earlier, there is a lot more across the aisle work together like mindedness, then we're led to believe. I've got a good friend of mine, who is in the media. And she always likes to say, the media does not have a bent to the left or to the right, we have a bent to the dramatic. And, I was on a forum last night with my alma mater, Baylor University, and my former congressman down there, Congressman Chad Edwards. And he said, Look, he says, you know, he was the subcommittee Chair of, for appropriations for allocating money for things like transportation, infrastructure, national security. He said, most of my appropriations bills passed the house like 423, to three. He says, You think we had any press coverage? It's like i's not dramatic enough for he press to cover. But there re things like this, and there re conversation, conversations l ke this that go on, I think of my good friends, Robbie George, ut of Princeton, conservat ve Catholic scholar, and his b st friend, Dr. Cornel West, ut of Harvard, an African Am rican socialist thinker, they ar best friends. In fact, wh n Dr. George had a heart situ tion, emergency surgery, Dr West drove down to make sure hi best friend was taken care of they couldn't disagree more. Bu they do these presentations al over the country together, to show that thinking deeply i not partisan. And in fact, we o it at our best when we're wi h those that we disagree with That we should never be so ar ogant to believe that we can ot learn from those we disagree ith. And so that's the one t ing that really sparks joy f r me and getting to see my stu ents engage in that in the dive sity of our classroom. And the other thing that would just ad to that, I think is unpluggin. And as great as it all is to ake sure we take those brea s. Senator Joe Lieberman wrot a great book on the idea of Sabbath and he's an observ nt Jew. And he said, Look, I he as the chairman of the commit ee for Homeland Security in he Senate and for Sen te Intelligence, and he wo ld unplug, turn off his Blackberry on the Sabbath. He says, I've got an emergency phone in the house, landline, they know the call if we're under attack, he says b t otherwise, everything can wai. Just because I know the world s not gonna end tomorrow. And I think, you know, election nigh, I've been telling outlets a d interviews that we weren't gon a know who won on election nigh. And so I told them, I sai, Look, 1am I'm done. We're n t going to have a winner don t text me after 1am phone's goi g off. And, I woke up to a b nch of panic text messages. B t the reality is, we weren't a y better two or three days l ter, the world's gonna keep s inning. And you know, s metimes we have to choose b tween politics and life. And p litics is not life. And I hope a d I tell my students is, I h pe as much as I love politics, a much as it's so important to e gage in it. I hope we always c oose life.
Gina Turner:Mm hmm. That's really, that's really powerful. And I just love the image too of these, you know, these two great thinkers on diametrically opposed but considering themselves best friends, but not by ignoring each other's positions. But by engaging with each other's positions, which I think is what's so powerful. You know, that's what's brave, really, is to be able to engage with each other. And again, to use emotional intelligence and to be able to recognize each other as part of the same community. I think that's beautiful. That's what sparked my joy actually is listening to you say that! So how about for you, Tom. What's what sparks joy for you in this in this political atmosphere these days?
Tom O'Connor:I'm gonna spark momentary joy since I referenced it earlier and just make a really geeky Matrix reference that Cornell West was in the first of the Matrix sequels. Very, very briefly as a fan of John Beaudrillard. But I actually I was gonna make a similar point, Sam, because it your comment made me think about the very close relationship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. Great lovers of opera together I feel like we need to frame pictures of them together as reminders that we can. We can have very different beliefs and ideologies and belief systems and still be humane and caring towards one another and try to embrace the ideas and work together in partnership. My self preservation, this is brief. It's been my damn "I voted" sticker. It's um, it's, you know, no one can see me. So it's on the jacket behind my seat. And like, I think about it a lot, I realize I can't take it off, I want to like shellack it in place, actually. Because one of the best things to kind of come out of this crazy, bad bleep insane political moment is that our civics have never felt so important to us, like we are thinking about civics in a way that we do not always and, it's come to the forefront, and never have I, you know, voted an election that for me personally felt as consequential as this one. And like, when I looked down at that sticker, I am reminded and heartened that I still live in a democracy where I have a voice and I can vote. And I want to shellack it to my jacket, you know, with like, Super Glue, because I always also fear that our democracy is crumbling and an imminent danger in my worst, darkest moments. And then I have a scotch and it's all good. (Laughter) How about you, Kelly?
Kelly Allen:Ummm...
Gina Turner:Well, I'll give Kelly a second to think because I just want to piggyback really quickly off of that, about the voting because I will say, so I've been really engaged with, you know, writing letters and get out the vote postcards and things. And so now I'm about to go pick up a packet of postcards to send to Georgia for the runoff in January. And I, myself and other people have been really been talking about how this is such a beautiful teaching moment, for literally every single vote counts. Right? The entire, you know, the balance of the Congress could come down to a handful of votes right now. And so in a way, it's exciting. Like you're saying, Tom, it's it's making us all feel more engaged, maybe than we have in the past. So sorry, Kelly, I just had to say that.
Kelly Allen:No, that's cool. And thank you for, like engaging in that work, Gina. I appreciate it. Now, I feel just -
Gina Turner:No judgement!
Kelly Allen:Shitty like, I do. I'm judging myself, but
Tom O'Connor:I keep trying to bleep myself, Kelly, and you're just dropping curse words left and right!
Kelly Allen:I know, I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But and now I need to go find an "I voted patch" and send it to you, so you can just sew it onto your jacket. Have it aalways there with pride. But, the last time that I had the pleasure of sharing the microphones with you all, I said that, like I still haven't figured it out. And I'm still kind of like in that boat. You know, like, how do I just take care of myself. But one thing that has, and I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out. Because it's just been a part of me for forever is that I just, I, I fill my day with music. So like, during the elec ion period, I was listening to a whole lot of Billy Bragg. But hese last several days have be n trying for reasons that are't necessary to go into on his podcast, but I've been lis ening to a lot of jazz. And I like Thelonious Monk, don't b ame me or Nina Simone's bye b e Blackbird. And then I think yesterday I listened to Bill Ev n's Peace Piece, like six ti es in a row. And it just, it' beauty, you know, and it ju t makes me feel good that the e's like, these beautiful th ngs in the world and that the e's people who are making th se beautiful things, and then that just makes things cooler. S that's what I've been doing.
Tom O'Connor:I have to give a one music suggestion. And I'm gonna mispronounce the band's name because I always get it wrong. It's the Avett Brothers or is the a-Vett brothers?
Gina Turner:Avett. Avett Brothers.
Tom O'Connor:Okay, the Avett Brothers I got it right the first time. It wasn't from their their most recent album but the one before they did a track called No Hard Feelings. If you have - it's worth seeking out and I would recommend anyone go to Spotify or Pandora, whatever your music listening station is(Luddite here, you know, so I don't know what everyone's using these days) and listen to it because it is very much a song about putting down anger about putting down the kind of things that we carry with us inside that I think can be destructive. And it's a lovely little song, and it's worth a listen. It's funny, you know, I'm a jazz nut Kelly, but I haven't been able to listen to it because it's atonal kind of qualities have been almost too much for my brain to absorb. If that makes any sense? I needed soothing. I'm in George Winston land. I'm finally you know, acceded to my wife's music listening tastes like you know, tinkling piano in the background.
Gina Turner:Well, we're gonna have to put together a playlist for this episode of the podcast and then we're all going to have to sit around and drink a nice dram of good scotch while we listen to our playlist.
Kelly Allen:Absolutely.
Gina Turner:And dream of the day when we can all do it in person.
Tom O'Connor:So Sam, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you, Gina. And thank you everyone for listening. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, listening to it as much as I've had having it. So we look forward to meeting up with you again, I don't know what the next Pedagogy-a-go-go brings. But you won't have to wait too long for it and we'll find something fun and cool for you when we return.
Gina Turner:See you in 2021!
Tom O'Connor:Hey, thanks for listening to Pedagogy-a-go-go recorded in the Center for Teaching Learning and Technology at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem Pennsylvania. Our podcast daydreamer slash show runner is Kelly Allen and Pedagogy-a-go-go is produced by Jeff Armstrong. If you've got any questions, please send them to Pedagogy-a-go-go at gmail.com. Our social media handle is at Pedagogy-a-go-go and you can stop by our website at www Pedagogy-a-go-go dot com for copies of podcasts, transcripts, guest assignments and other useful tidbits. Keep in mind there are no hyphens or dots in any of the above web addresses. Until next time, this is Gina and Tom saying "Take care and teach well."