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Thank you, Dean Scanlon, for your kind introduction. And, it is a pleasure to share the stage with you President Zaki and Yeo (whom I’m lucky enough to have in my Education and the Human Condition course this semester).

Welcome families, and congratulations to all the ���ϳԹ�������վ students being recognized for their achievements today. Thank you, families, for all of you have done to enable the students to be honored here this afternoon. I want to thank my parents, Julie and Bob Santoro who were relentless in their support of my education. Although my spouse and daughter, Toby and Natalie Alves, couldn’t be here today, I am delighted that my former student and now friend Trustee Kayla Baker, ’09 is able to join us today. I am grateful to have colleagues in the Education Department who are devoted to the project of the liberal arts and to the promise of public schools as cornerstones of our democratic society.

I have titled this talk “Holding space for students.” The phrase “holding space” has become increasingly popular. Here are some of the top hits from my Google search: there’s the book The Art of Holding Space, a how-to manual: “5 tips for holding space,” and my personal favorite, “WTF Is Holding Space (A Man’s Guide).” [that’s a direct quote!]  So, WTF is “holding space?”

“Holding space” tends to mean being able to be present with, while not encroaching upon, another. Usually, “holding space” is related to providing opportunities for others to have their own experiences, convey their feelings, and develop their own strategies for approaching the world. It is about healing individuals, but also engaging in practices that mend tears in our social fabric.

This afternoon I’m going to be describing the kind of teaching my colleagues and I do in the liberal arts as a distinct, but related, form of “holding space.” Students, when at our best we professors hold space for your newness; doing this provides us all with the opportunity to imagine futures more just, democratic, and liberating than the present we now occupy. The questions that I hope you ask yourselves during this talk are, “What will I do with this space? How will I inhabit this space with others? What is possible when we exist in this space together?”

In my remarks, I’m going to explore the potential for theory to heal. I’m going to begin by sharing with you two thinkers who have influenced my work as an educator and researcher: bell hooks and John Dewey. Each saw the promise of theory in healing the world. Then, I will discuss some of my research and the ways that theory can be liberatory. Finally, I’ll conclude with an image of how we engage in theory here at ���ϳԹ�������վ that gives us the potential to create a more just, democratic, and liberatory world.

In Teaching to Transgress bell hooks writes, “I came to theory because I was hurting … I saw in theory … a location for healing” (p. 59). In order to understand this statement, we need to know what she means by theory and why she was hurting. Let’s first begin with why she needed to be healed.

hooks describes the sources of her pain. She was hurt, in part, by school. She recounts her painful experience with school integration. She was expected to travel across town to a White school for a so-called better educational experience where she was treated as intellectually inferior by her White teachers and peers. Anticipating a newfound freedom in college, at Stanford she bumped up against the stubborn persistence of patriarchy that cordoned off engaged and embodied learning and promoted a model of the detached intellectual. After earning her PhD, she was confronted with colleagues who diminished her research and teaching of Black authors and disregarded her efforts to create more democratic classrooms.

Despite all these barriers and disappointments, hooks did not give up on schools. She continued as a professor. What did she mean by coming to theory because she was hurting? How could theory, often characterized as detached and out-of-touch, simultaneously be a source for healing?

Theory, as hooks envisions it, allows us to make sense of our world – to bring some order to the pain, to reveal the patterns of harm and sift through what might seem like inchoate agony. Theory offers tools for attenuating pain by being able to tell new stories about it. It also gives us the capacity to create new possibilities better aligned with our principles and commitments.

hooks sought to transform our world as an educator. She attempted to build classroom communities that could better embody theories of dignity, liberation, and justice that enable all to thrive in body, mind, and spirit.

hooks’ work conveys a dedication to living freedom, even when its enactment falls short. She believes in the power of theory – to not only show us what is possible intellectually, but also to swaddle us in the blanket of its promise – to let us know we are not alone, that others have been here before, and there is a way of thinking, and feeling, our way into somewhere new and more just. The failure of educational experiences to align with theories of dignity, liberation, and justice doesn’t mean that schools are irredeemable. Instead, it means that together, we need to find new ways of aligning our practices.

It is through the work of John Dewey that I’ve also found great inspiration in the value of theory – especially his theories of democracy and education. He believed that schools should not be preparation for democratic life, instead, they should be centers of democratic living. It is in schools that we can practice engaging with difference, identifying shared values, and connecting meaningfully to the problems we encounter as communities. Dewey argued that just because our current society falls short of our theories about democracy and education, does not mean we need to give up on enacting them in our school communities.

Dewey and hooks share a critical disdain for the idea that schools (whether Harriett Beecher Stowe Elementary, Brunswick High or ���ϳԹ�������վ College) should simply prepare students for the “real world.” The real world is often woefully less than what we should hope for and often not what we should replicate in schools. Instead, they challenge us to establish schools, classrooms and relationships that embody the commitments that we hold most dear. Starting with theory to imagine the world we want is not just fanciful – it can build a foundation to create more inhabitable spaces for us all.

Theory can heal. Theory can harm. Sometimes theory heals by revealing how we are harmed.

My work as a philosopher of education combines theories with empirical research to understand how public school teachers interpret their pain. The most prevalent theory about teacher dissatisfaction is burnout. It’s not a particularly rich theory, but it’s important to acknowledge its power as theory – that is, as an explanatory device. Let me explain how it all began by acknowledging another important source:

My former public school teaching partner, Lisa, forwarded me a letter announcing her resignation. I could hear the guilt and shame that she was fending off as she explained her decision to leave. The reasons she was quitting could not be explained by any of the current research I’d read on teaching (this was around twenty years ago, by the way). She was not leaving due to the relatively low salary; in fact, she now earns even less money as a public radio producer in California. The low pay theory didn’t fit -- research doesn’t support this explanation, especially for experienced teachers like Lisa.

Decades of research do show that public school teachers leave at a rate of about 40-50% within 4 to 5 years. There are several sound explanations for this statistic: lack of quality preparation, recognition that the work is not a good fit for the individual’s skills or career goals, and or dysfunctional work environments. Lisa taught for over a decade, was seen as one of the most successful teachers in her school. She regularly threatened her students that she would tell their children about their high school misadventures – she intended to teach for the long haul. Theories of job mobility or skills misalignment didn’t work in Lisa’s case.

Finally, the theory of burnout has regularly been used to diagnose teachers who, like Lisa, feel like they can no longer teach. It is here that I want to spend the most time. Since I began writing about the moral and ethical sources of teacher dissatisfaction, nearly 15 years ago, this theory has only gained more traction – especially since COVID-19. Consultants circle schools with programs promising to help faculty stave off burnout. Magazines geared at teachers offer listicles of strategies to prevent burnout. Well-resourced schools, ���ϳԹ�������վ included, have made meditation apps available to their staff.

The underlying premise of burnout is that teachers have finite resources and that it is their duty to protect them through self-care. In the past, when the labor force was plentiful, schools could afford to disregard the symptoms commonly associated with burnout and simply treat teachers as interchangeable, absorbing the costs of turnover by drawing on new and cheaper hires. With the increasing challenges of recruiting qualified teachers, concern for teachers’ well-being has become paramount.

Many educators have internalized the theory of burnout – and this accounts for some of the guilt and shame that I heard in Lisa’s letter. Burnout suggests that the teacher has squandered, rather than responsibly apportioned, their limited resources. The theory of burnout suggests that the problem is something for which teachers should be held responsible -- for either having an insufficient cache of resources or for not practicing self-care or maintaining healthy boundaries.

Holistic wellness is an important part of our lives. I dig a sleep story on the Calm app. I have a regular mediation practice. Taking time off, really taking time off away from work calls and emails, exercising, and being in nature are crucial to my being able to show up and do my job well. All of these are important – please don’t hear me saying that they are not.

I have put forward an alternative theory –demoralization—that challenges the individualized focus of burnout. In making this distinction, I have found that theory that has the power to heal. I’ve also learned that the value of theory can be made widely available. It need not solely be the possession of those of us in higher education.

I have argued that burnout cannot account for all forms of teacher disappointment, exhaustion and grief. I believe we need a more fine-grained account of teacher dissatisfaction. I’ve written that demoralization occurs when teachers face persistent barriers to doing what makes their work good. These are moral rewards; and they are renewable resources that are recharged when we are able to access what is good, right and just in our work. Moral rewards should not be misconstrued as anything moralistic or sanctimonious. Also, demoralization at work also doesn’t require that the job needs to be one’s whole life.

For some educators, moral rewards might be realized in developing new curriculum. For others, it could be finding novel ways to elicit student interest. For still others, it might mean contributing to their communities. Demoralization occurs when, in the name of teaching, educators believe that they are causing harm to students or denigrating the profession. The theory of demoralization offers possibilities for healing that are rooted in thinking about the conditions of the work rather than the self-care strategies of the educator.

Lisa’s job changed structurally. When she first began at the school, it was a point of pride that all classes were heterogeneous. By the time she left, the classes had been shifted into ability tracks. This violated her belief that all students deserved to access a rich and challenging curriculum. Tracking inevitably ranks students, creates a hierarchy amongst teachers, and dilutes the quality of curriculum to students in the lower tracks. This is just one example of Lisa’s demoralization – when institutional choices impacted her ability to do good work.

Some teachers became demoralized when they were forced to choose between their family’s health and safety or the needs of their students when they faced back-to-work orders without the protection of masks or vaccines. Some teachers are demoralized as they witness their very identities becoming criminalized in schools. Some teachers are demoralized because they are expected to teach a distorted and dishonest version of U.S. history.

The theory of demoralization shifts the focus from individual teachers to the institutional and policy barriers that prevent teachers from enjoying the moral rewards of their work. It shifts the burden of teachers’ not being able to continue in a job they love, or their deep dissatisfaction with the work, from a personal failing and identifies the obstacles erected by institutional practices and policies. And, increasingly, the political contexts in which they work.

Why am I talking about demoralization with you on a day that is supposed to be celebratory?

The first reason is practical: although only about only 50% of ���ϳԹ�������վ students attended public schools, over 90% of US children do. Attacks on teachers and public schools in the U.S. – those that are ideological, those that are physically violent, and those that are hoaxes -- are demoralizing teachers and making their jobs impossible. We must actively work to support public schools and their educators. Our democracy depends upon it. You have the capacity to make this change rooted in what you know about democracy, justice, and dignity.

Here’s a deeper connection to theory: I’ve witnessed firsthand the healing that can happen with theoretical shifts. Nearly every week I receive at least one message from a teacher who lets me know that the theory of demoralization has fundamentally changed how they understand and interpret their experiences. The theory of demoralization enables them to tell a new story about their pain and to find some hope by reconnecting with their most significant purposes, engaging in collective action, or simply resisting accounts that suggest that self-care will fix their dis-ease.

I bring up the distinction between demoralization and burnout to remind you of the importance of the work you are doing right here, right now. Theory matters, and this is the stuff of your work every day here at ���ϳԹ�������վ – whether it is theories about race, harmonics, metaphor, capital, or artificial intelligence.

There’s a widespread tendency to make comparisons between college and the “real world” whether it’s as criticism: just wait until you’re out in the real world. Or, the distinction is referenced more positively as cloister: make the most of this, soon you’ll be out in the real world. Granted, much will be different when you leave ���ϳԹ�������վ. It is unlikely that your next stop will include Super Snacks.

Yet, ���ϳԹ�������վ College is your real world right now. The grief many of us are experiencing for the planet and its people is also your real world right now. How can ���ϳԹ�������վ be a place for healing?

I’ve long been fascinated by Hannah Arendt’s reading of Kafka’s parable “He.”

In Kafka’s telling, He, the being located between the opposing forces of past and future is propelled forward by the past and pushed backward by the future. He is buffeted the past that seeks to determine the future and the future that aims to obliterate the past.

Presumably, without His presence, there would be no battle at all. His insertion in the present creates a past and a future. He longs to leap out of the middle, hover above, and referee the fight – ruling in favor of either the past or the future. Yet, by leaping out of the middle, the past and the future would annihilate each other and cease to exist. 

Arendt extends Kafka’s parable and explains that He also occupies a location, not just a temporal modality. She argues that once He exists between past and future, time cannot be thought of as a straight line. His presence changes the angles of force. The space that He creates is the space of freedom because it shifts the direction of these two forces. The past is not static and the future is not predetermined because of His presence.

So, this is certainly a parable about our existential condition, but Arendt’s retelling also offers an ideal for what we, as educators in the liberal arts, can offer.

Arendt reconceives Kafka’s parable and imagines, instead, a He who stays and fights the opposing forces of past and future. He holds his ground to create space for the new.

When we are at our best, this is our function as liberal arts educators. We interpose ourselves between the past and the future to hold open a space for you to become acquainted with the world you have inherited. Educators create a clearing, that is “hold space” where the past can be encountered, the new can be nurtured, and the future can be imagined. Our work is to hold space between these forces of past and future that conspire to eliminate your newness.

Students, my heart and spirit and body ache with sadness for the world you are inheriting. My work as your professor is to resist that powerful urge jump out of the now and referee the fight between past and future, declaring the past as what will be, or presuming to know the shape of the future.

Hope is in staying in this middle, accepting this space of tension (and joy!) knowing that our presence here together changes everything. It is here, holding space for you at ���ϳԹ�������վ College, that I get to experience every semester as a truly novel experience because you bring your newness. Like John Dewey, I have faith in the power of this educational community to transform our world. Like bell hooks, I come to theory when I am hurting. Theory is a location for healing when we occupy this present together.