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Environmental Studies I Topics in Natural History I Spring 2025
Zeka Glucs is a lecturer in Environmental Studies. For her course, Topics in Natural History: California Condor Conservation, she explored gun control as well as connections between ecocide and genocide. In this brief Q&A, Glucs shares her experiences experimenting with TLC's strategies over the Spring quarter.
What methods or strategies did you employ and why?
I used the Antiracist Discussion Pedagogy Booklet to do my lesson planning, namely promoting dialogue over debate and discussion, and utilizing reflective journaling. While I was prepared to use the TLC guidelines for hot moments I didn’t end up having any that required harm control or strategic empathy.
The California condor is the largest land bird in North America.
What makes a difficult conversation difficult?
I interpreted “difficult conversations” to be discussions of topics that touch on current events and structures which may directly impact the lives of my students, who have different personal histories, identities, and beliefs that could lead to verbal conflict in the classroom. I had previously used highly structured frameworks such as debates to broach political topics, but really wanted to be able to safely allow more nuanced, informal, and creative discussions in the classroom to help students apply their lived experience to the course material and vice versa.
The TLC difficult conversations guide highlighted some previous stumbling blocks and preparation hurdles that had prevented me from giving more time to these conversations in the classroom to date including: “Have I learned enough to confidently support this conversation?” and “Am I ready to facilitate, rather than dictate, the conversation? (This entails a willingness to be wrong, to listen, to learn from students, and to make mistakes; it also entails using questions and redirects to center student learning.)
The first had prevented me from even broaching some topics in class because I felt they were outside my expertise (wildlife toxicology and conservation) so I might have some glaring blindspots and biases myself. The second has to do with my nervousness about giving up my control of the outcome/take home message, worrying about inadvertently allowing harm or the circulation of misguided ideas in the classroom.
But I am now not so sure if the students perceive these conversations as difficult, at least in my very limited experience of trying these new techniques. On the contrary, I found that my students were eager to participate in broader discussions as a group. I am sure with more time I will hit on issues/discussions that require more care for my students as we deal with more differences of opinion and experience.
“Stepping back from steering discussions in these more difficult realms didn’t lead to chaos, misinformation, or lack of participation...the students were more prepared and eager for this than I had thought.”
What strategies seemed to work most effectively? What worked less well?
I appreciated the opportunity to refocus my lectures on student participation (using the methods just mentioned) and take a big step back from controlling the discussion and providing my constant interpretation and feedback.
In the future I will take more time at the beginning of my courses to co-create community agreements with my students. I didn’t have this framework in place and having it to return to if hot moments had arisen would have been key.
Other salient impressions?
My surprise takeaway was that stepping back from steering discussions in these more difficult realms didn’t lead to chaos, misinformation, or lack of participation. That the students were more prepared and eager for this than I had thought.
I don’t want to model avoiding difficult topics in the classroom. I believe the students want to feel like their experience matters, that they are gaining skills for surviving in this messy world, and that we can all connect on a human level despite differences in experience and opinion.
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