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Room Four Zero Two

November 7, 2012

A Teacher’s Argument Against Moving Past Disaster

by Christina Jenkins, at 9:42 am

The "Red Cross" discusses the distribution of "foreign aid" in the first activity of the #Disastercamp course, a disaster role play.

I used to teach a class on designing for disaster response. Two weeks ago, I told my assistant principal I wanted to retire it.

The course, known as #Disastercamp, analyzes the social influences that transform natural hazards into “disasters” (like poverty, for instance) and examines the ways that social media is transforming disaster response (see #SandyAid as an example). Given that context, students propose new solutions for disaster response using social media and other tools.

After teaching it for the second time last spring, l began to think that the idea of disaster response was just too far beyond the experience of 16-year-olds in New York City to make sense as an entire class.

(A number of classes at the iSchool, particularly the courses we call “modules” that are grounded in real-life issues, are invented, redesigned, and retired every year. I’ve created and taught at least ten different classes since September 2010.)

But a week later, #Disastercamp is back. The conversations about resources, vulnerable communities and social media that #Disastercamp had in the classroom are happening on television. Crisis maps and hashtags have returned, and with them this question: How important is it that the things we do in our classrooms connect in some way with the things that happen outside of them?

That’s why, when the Department of Education last week encouraged teachers “to pick up where they left off in curriculum” on Monday, I thought of the lost opportunities for acknowledging that real life should trump our lesson plans. There’s so much to analyze: cartography, disaster risk and our ability to mitigate it, the fake disaster images circulating online, the power of crowdsourcing. Instead, in my classroom and in many others that were fortunate to survive unscathed, we had conversations about post-hurricane well-being and then we moved on to the regularly scheduled program.

As a teacher, that’s devastating. As a student, it must be baffling. I’m troubled by my own response to that, and am planning to propose a modified #Disastercamp class that investigates Hurricane Sandy in depth. But in schools where curriculum is not as flexible, where 16-year-olds struggle with reading and the January Regents exams are looming, the reality is that many teachers have to pretend that last week didn’t happen.

Classroom ecologies are not disconnected from the ways we live outside of them. The city is still broken, but thousands of classrooms are moving on.

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  • nycdoenuts

    Thanks for this piece. It’s really great.
    Every teacher in my school (myself included) have the same exact feelings that you eloquently desribe at the end of it. We have real deep reservations about simply picking up where we all left off in our curricula -almost as though nothing ever happened.
    And on the other hand, we also feel a need to return the students to some routine of normal (particularly mine, who experienced only a minor impact last week). The ambivalence we’re all feeling is deep and raises questions that, frankly, are too big for me and my colleagues (what does a return to normal entail? How Long would that take? What would have to be done? and What parts of the school (the classroom? advisory?guidance?) would play which roles in that?).
    I totally agree that the city is somewhat broken right now. I think we should expect that classrooms (which are an extension of how we here in the real world live) are going to be somewhat broken for a while as well.

    To that end, maybe Tweed wasn’t all that wrong when they told us to just pick up and continue? Maybe the first order of business is just getting back to normal? And then using the classroom experience to reflect on what just happened? I mean, I don’t know. I’m actually just asking,

  • ms. v.

    I think there’s a middle ground. I’m teaching a unit on designing emergency shelters that we started before the hurricane, but I’ve adapted it based on our specific situation now. When I taught science, various events worldwide happened at least once or twice a year, but we couldn’t drop everything to study earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, epidemics, etc. every time they were relevant here or abroad. Instead, I addressed them briefly in class at the time, and then looked for the places and times in the curriculum to connect back to those major events with depth and analysis. I think it’s also important to look for connections to the real world in EVERY unit I teach on an on-going basis. In doing that this year, I  created a curriculum that centers on a major issue facing humanity (climate change) that turned out to be timely – but would have been timely even without Sandy. And the kids’ experience will be one of continuity, not reaction. Our next unit will deal with major global health issues such as malaria and HIV, and I expect to encounter extremely meaningful connections to real life while teaching it, though I can’t at this time predict exactly what will happen here or worldwide at that time.

  • Juggleandhope

    The apparent paradox of your conclusion surprised me – “Classroom ecologies are not disconnected from the ways we live outside
    of them. The city is still broken, but thousands of classrooms are
    moving on.”

    A couple of interpretations occurred to me;
    Classroom ecologies connect to the ways we live outside of school.  That’s why we take/give orders in class (like “move on”), ignore our own experience and jump through hoops (like most classes and the Regents), etc. 

    But maybe you mean to argue instead that classroom lessons (rather than “ecologies”) should not (rather than “are not”) disconnect students from the ways we live?  The “we” needs some problematizing there – should happen since this seems like one of the most crucial insights for us teachers.  Pretending like huge relevant stuff in students’ experience didn’t happen, or at least don’t matter for our purposes (and what kind of purpose can it be if the students’ experience doesn’t matter?) seems like one of the dumbest crimes of school-as-we-know-it.  What other huge relevant stuff should we be connecting to in our classrooms?  I have a colleague who wonders if a course based on using literature to try to figure out how to live our lives would seem interesting to students.  The funny part – as you know it actually can be hard to deeply engage students in classes that connect to their own experience more than to the more familiar game-of-school. 

    You wrote, “The city is broken”.  Can New York City be meaningfully described by any single adjective?  Maybe the monolithic sentence avoids the pain of admitting,  “Thousands of New Yorkers still struggle with the effects of the storm as almost all the rest of us return to our daily patterns?”  

    Thank you for this essay. 

  • Nycdoenuts

    Last year, I ws able to connect the Occupy Wall Street occupation with my class content. It seemed easy to me. But I think this storm has effected me a little to much personally. As a result, I don’t have the type of self awareness that I’d need to be able to connect this with curricular content (I tried. Didn’t work!).
    So if there is a middle ground (and I hope there is), I’m still groping for it. I think everyone is on some level (teachers, principals, even the Tweedheads).

  • Christina Jenkins

    Thanks so much for sharing this! I’m in agreement re: the middle ground. Also: I’m totally intrigued by your work on emergency shelters. This reminded me that National Buildings Museum (I think?) is curating an exhibit on disaster design that was supposed to open in DC this fall, but I think it’s been pushed to spring. Might be worth checking out ..

  • Christina Jenkins

    I really appreciate your thoughts – that idea of “normal” is so strange now, and the question of whether it’s desirable to find it again is so complicated.

  • Another Bronx teacher

    How about talking about the old air raid shelters that trhey stocked with water and maybe food in the 1950′s.  might still find some of the signs on the buildings.  Or decide which was more important, invention of wheel or internet.  Both provided connections.

  • Christina Jenkins

     The paradox was deliberate and probably poorly put. I meant that the way we “behave”/live/act in our classrooms is not separate from who we are outside of them, or at least it shouldn’t be. Those things are the same, for us and for our kids. And yet: here we are, pretending that the space we occupy at “school” is Monday as usual, while “thousands of New Yorkers still struggle with the effects of the storm.” That’s bizarre. But maybe necessary, I don’t know.

    Thanks for your comment in public ..

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