Open letter:

Dear Mr. [],

You started off every year of math class by counting the number of girls in the room. When we outnumbered the boys, you would cheer because when you started teaching at our school, your higher-level classes math classes were comprised of predominantly boys. After forty years of watching your classroom, a tiny microcosm of the world around us, progress, you were so happy to finally see the day when there were more girls than boys sitting in those metal chairs, eagerly awaiting your instruction. I’m writing to you because I’m not sure if that cheer can really be called a reaction to progress, or if it was simply a reaction to change. 

Every year, the second the boys in the room heard that cheer, there was a target placed on our backs. Students daunted by the idea of taking multivariable calculus with a teacher who was none other than a pillar, a “legend,” a rite of passage in our community were told “Oh, you’re a girl so you’ll be fine.” The hours of preparation that preceded my A’s on tests were reduced to a product of my so-called flattery in class or my decision to greet you with a smile when I walked in everyday. 

“It’s honestly creepy.” Those words haunted me, the words of your “other favorite student.” Wasn’t the existence of that label tied to his name enough evidence that I could work hard for my A’s and he could too? No, maybe it is creepy. What did it mean when you called me “sweetheart” in class? What did it mean when you called him “bud”?

All of our successes were met with “It’s because he loves you” and all of our failures were met with “Don’t worry, he loves you.” You were so happy to see that the world was finally catching up, that your classroom was becoming a space that recognized us. But what you didn’t know was that by expressing that happiness, all three years of my experiences in that same space were colored murky by the very problem you thought we had overcome. And it wasn’t even your fault.

Sincerely,

Ketaki

Lecture:

To look around at our schools and to marvel at how far we’ve come, to rejoice at the presence of girls in STEM classes and stop there, to pat ourselves on the back for having a girls’ affinity group and stop there, to celebrate that there is one girl on the co-ed water polo team and stop there, is a facade. 

Recognize that the girls in your classes are quieter. Notice how we only ever raise our hands halfway, how we mouth an answer and wait for you to see and understand and nod in approval before we fully respond to you out loud. These actions are products of the history that people love to claim we’ve overcome. They prevail because we celebrate our victories and stop there.

You may be wondering what exactly can be done, or rather, what exactly you can do. I suppose the grim reality is that to consider the problem fully rectified is to erase centuries of historical oppression towards women. To consider the problem solved is to celebrate and stop there. But this doesn’t mean we should do nothing.

Make an effort to see and call on the girl with her hand half-raised rather than gravitating towards boys who will shoot their fingers up with confidence. When your student weakens her responses by hesitatingly saying “Um” or prefaces her arguments with “This could be wrong but,” reassure her. Make your classroom a space where she isn’t afraid to make mistakes, where she doesn’t feel intimidated or silenced by the louder voices, where her accomplishments and victories are celebrated for what they are rather than why they are.

If you’re feeling skeptical as to the impact these actions can really have, you’d be right to feel that way. Neither you nor I alone can instantaneously correct the harmful behaviors that stem from the conditions in which we were all raised. But let us recognize that our inaction is harmful, and let us do what we can.

Process notes:

Similar to my experience reading Baldwin’s work, I found the process of writing the open letter to be a lot more intimate and personal than that of the lecture. Since I was drawing directly from my own experiences, I felt more comfortable tackling the problem in an emotional and potentially subjective way. When writing the lecture, I tried to shift my tone and the nature of my examples towards occurrences that I think are more common across many/most classrooms so as not to lose credibility or the trust of my audience. I took inspiration from the structure of Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers,” seeing that I found his strategy of “painting a picture of oppression,” as Professor Scappettone said, and then laying out tangible calls-to-action to be effective. I wanted to first establish the landscape and cultural moment that I’m asking educators to respond to, and then suggest how they might respond to it. I also tried to be measured in my language in some of the ways I noticed Baldwin doing by suggesting that my solutions are not instantaneous and that this problem is not easy to tackle. I also tried to refrain from placing blame.