Bob Muckle

Being a college instructor makes you woke, but not for the reasons people think. It's because students come in all kinds. Some are trans, some are gay, some are Black, some are Jewish, some are foreign, some are rural. Some have disabilities, housing insecurity, mental health challenges. And yes, some are Christian and some are Republican. Over the weeks and months of class time, things happen. Parents die. Grandparents die. Students fall pregnant mid-semester. You aren't their parent, and they aren't your kids. But you're sort of their parent, and they're sort of your kids. They're young people figuring things out. Your job is to nurture their intellectual development. But they're young and human, which means they can't cleanly separate the intellectual from the emotional. So neither can you. An encouraging word, a moment of sympathy for loss or struggle. That's part of the job too. The assessments must and should be objective, but to be a truly effective educator, everything before that can't be. Each person needs something different to be fully their best. So you end up a little woke. You realize that frameworks and procedures can't be one-size-fits-all. They need to accommodate the full spectrum of humanity, because humanity isn't all one thing.