When Pedagogy Is Painful: Teaching in Tumultuous Times

What happens when the outside world begins to affect the classroom? Is the classroom supposed to be neutral, objective, and devoid of feelings? Or is it a space where students and teacher meet for healing, understanding, and critical thinking? From news reports of police brutality to highly publicized acts of racial aggression, students are inundated with examples of intolerance, hatred, and racial inequality. Those committed to critical pedagogy and social justice invite, embrace, and use these events to enhance classroom materials. What happens, however, when pedagogy is painful for both the student and the teacher? Several articles address the teacher’s experience and others the student experience. This article is dedicated to synthesizing and discussing both experiences from one course, Race and Ethnicity, at a height of racial tensions in the United States and on campus and providing the personal and pedagogical strategies that developed from the course.