Sarah Ray’s work spoke to all students perusing an ENST
degree as it embodied the transformational experience of learning about
international environmental degradation and how it relates to you as an
individual and those around us. I attended her talk at the Jacoby Plaza Grill
in which she outlines the two general paths students take to enter this major.
Throughout her speech it was evident she had a deep understanding of her
students’ needs and emotional wellbeing. Exposing preconceived notions about
our positionality in relation to the environment can be a vulnerable experience
filled with emotions. Moreover, learning about the current and past
environmental damage AND how it hurts underserved communities the most can be
truly heart breaking. Being excited to learn slowly dwindles at it becomes more
and more difficult to attend and enjoy classes. Emotions do need to be
recognized, but it should not be the focus. In addition, there are ways to call
people to action and unsurprisingly, focusing on all the bad with only hints of
light does not exactly produce young adults ready and confident to make a
difference in the world. It’s like when we were only kids and were asked, “What
do you want to be when you grow up?” and we responded naively yet bold with, “an
astronaut” or “the President” but instead of hearing the delightful, light-hearted
response of “oh wow!” we got a slew of information of how the American government
is corrupt beyond measure and that the only we can really do is vote. It is
this slew of true yet damning information without any real tools to create an
action based plan that leaves us feeling immobile and much too small to achieve
the goals we once had. Instead of regularly incorporating class sessions to
deal with the emotional aspect of our studies, I think it would be more
beneficial to make a curriculum that empowered students and called them to
action by connecting them to local and on campus opportunities to learn by
doing. Focusing too much on the emotional experience can weigh down classes and
take away from what is really supposed to be happening, going out there are
making a difference!
Tessa, I appreciate so much that you attended the talk. But you seem to have missed the argument I made, which was precisely what you argue here- that the end result MUST be efficacy through action. What you say here is in total agreement with what I argued in my talk and in my pedagogy. I hope you revisit the curriculum structure-- including the service learning capstone, readings since 120, and the talk itself-- to see this! "Making a difference" that you say is so key, is precisely so important because of its emotional impact on students-- resilience and efficacy/ empowerment. It's possible that a curriculum doesn't provide the steps toward that end goal for all students, but my point in the talk was to argue very strongly that this is the goal.
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