How to teach art when the world is falling apart (I have yet to figure this out)

Well hello there! I haven’t been posting as much as I’d like to, but man, a full-time academic position is a lot.

On one hand, I got to dump my commute (woo hoo!) for a short walk to school. This is a huge upgrade! But in exchange I’ve taken on committee work — this is a huge part of being tenure track. You have to serve on committees that oversee the larger governance and running of the university. It’s absolutely fascinating and I don’t mind it; in fact, it would be hard to put into words how completely intellectually stimulated I’ve been over the last two months (this is a topic for another time but one of the boards I’m on oversees ethical concerns related to experiments on humans????? That’s beyond fascinating and I love each and every academic proposal that comes my way as part of it — no, I’m not being snarky). But it takes a lot of time and energy.

But whatever — meanwhile the semester churns on. This week my friend Steve DeFrank came to visit and talk to our students (that was awesome), and we had a student trip to the Art Institute in Chicago.

The latter should have been pretty straightforward — we take a bunch of students on the train to the museum, then let them wander around the city and meet up at the train station and head back home. Many of these kids have never been to a major city before (or have been only quickly) and the Art Institute was totally new to them. So it was an exciting prospect to get to be part of showing them all that, and seeing their faces as they saw the paintings we’d been talking about in class, etcetera.

Except… everything going on now. I don’t have to tell you but ICE has descended on Chicago, and they’ve been aggressively grabbing people from the street. It’s been nuts to watch, and know that’s only about 2 ½ hours from where we live. From the news coverage, Chicago looked like a tinderbox. I was nervous. We were all very nervous.

One thing I should mention now: when you’re a college professor at a place like I am, there’s lots of things you don’t know about your students. For instance, I have no idea what their immigration status is — I just genuinely don’t know. That’s just simply not something I know or would ever ask. It would be rude and inappropriate for me to ask — those kids are in my classroom for a specific reason (aka to learn about art), and a question like “hey, what’s your immigration status” is well outside of all that. The kids don’t come to me with a star next to their name on the roster if they’re not here legally — that information isn’t shared with me whatsoever. I don’t know what the immigration status of their parents are, or if their parents are in the picture at all (remember, I’ve only been at this job since September. These things come up in conversation, but not with me at this point — these kids are still trying to figure out this alien weirdo from NYC and what she is doing here).

So, I have no idea what is going on with these kids — I’m just trying to keep my head above water and send in my mid semester warnings and grade all the midterms I can, and have opinions on human testing ethics. When we, as a department, were faced with the dilemma of “is it safe to bring these kids to a city where immigrants were being targeted,” the simplest, most straightforward answer was, “we have absolutely no idea.” (The fact that American citizens have gotten scooped up erroneously in the ICE stuff doesn’t help the matter at all.)

When I tell you we had 800 meetings and a text chain that went on forever discussing this issue, I am not exaggerating (well, a little, but believe me: we talked about this to death, trying to figure out the right thing to do). One of the things I want to convey here is that the other instructors at this school are some of the nicest, kindest people I’ve ever met, who genuinely love their students and want the best for them. This was tortured process, trying to figure out what on earth to do. We just couldn’t figure this out, because no one has ever had to deal with this before. A trip to a major museum like that could be transformative for a young artist — we didn’t want to deprive them of that. Meanwhile, were we leading them to a dangerous place? I don’t know — no one knew. There was no way to know.

Anyway, I’m here to tell you that the trip was absolutely fine. The kids saw the incredible Impressionism wing of the Art Institute, and an HC Westermann show and a Symbolism show that were first rate. We saw The Bean (I’m not linking to that — you know it). It was lovely.

And then, it wasn’t.

We had decided it was safest if adults stayed with the students the whole trip (this is absurd — what, I’m supposed to keep an ICE agent who is armed from taking a student? but we were deep into magical thinking territory when we made this plan and it made sense at the time). This meant that from about 6am-4:15pm I was on the clock, constantly looking out for students … and by 4:16pm, I was exhausted. The trip had gone well; we were walking to the train station. I was starving and spied a vegan Senegalese restaurant off in the distance that looked appealing. I asked my chair if it would be ok if I sneaked away and grabbed some takeout for the trip home. She said of course.

I strayed from the group for a block, and sat in this restaurant for about five minutes. It was awesome — a big, open space, owned by a guy (I assume he was from Senegal? he was very nice and had a light accent) who came over and talked to me about the menu. It was just such a light, cheery place — reminded me of so many places in NYC that I loved that don’t exist anymore. There was a couple nearby that was giving him detailed feedback on his Mac and cheese — helpfully, so he could improve it. It felt like community — like this super sweet place full of this American dream of making it in a big city. There was something wonderful there — maybe I was just a bit giddy from exhaustion — and I felt this weird sense of happiness as I placed my order for a chickpea and tempeh thing.

I sat and spaced out, relaxing for the first time in days. Life is good. Everything went great. I’m about to have a good meal and head back home. I’ll sleep well and wake up the next morning and work in my studio and start the week over. The world isn’t as scary as I thought it was. We’re ok.

And then, I saw I was getting a call from my chair.

My first thought: Literally, what the fuck? You people can’t give me five minutes of peace??

She was hysterical. My mind immediately flipped, and I knew this was serious.

It was hard to completely parse what was going on in the moment, but there was a shooting right near Union Station at rush hour. The rest of the group, headed towards the train, were just a few feet away when they heard a pop pop pop and then a stampede started. They all took refuge in the vestibule of a building, and she immediately called me to make sure I was someplace safe and let me know what was going on.

Where I was, you never would have known anything happened. Sure, now that I got the call I started to hear the police sirens and the ambulance and then news channels overhead. But there I was, sitting in that restaurant, listening to all these noises close in on me, and they just faded into the sounds of the city. No one else knew what was going on. It was eerie. And so deeply, profoundly sad. People were just sitting there, chatting, eating their meals, with no idea what was going on just feet away.

I joined up with the group at the station to get the train home, now saddled with this food that felt like it weighed a 100lbs and was somehow cursed.

Like, what the fuck? What is wrong with this country? If ICE doesn’t get you, teens with guns fighting over fast food will?

Like… how are we supposed to just go on like everything is normal? I’ve constantly been hearing from students that they want guidance on how to respond to what is happening in the world — from ICE to everything else, and all I can say is I don’t know. That is a shitty place to be in as a professor. But how am I supposed to guide these kids and tell them what to do and how to be, in a world that’s completely uncertain? I wake up every morning and watch the news in horror, and I have no idea how to respond personally, let alone know how to advise them.

For instance, I’m trying to push our majors to go get internships. That’s the normal thing a professor does to get their students ready for the rest of their lives — the internships I did as a student set me up well for the rest of my working life. But does any of that matter? Is the world ending tomorrow, and their time would better be spent picking flowers and eating ice cream and not rise-and-grinding their way through a job/school/life? Or, if they don’t push themselves, will they be at a complete disadvantage to the kids who did, as life shifts back to normal? Nobody knows!!! Ah!!!!

Twenty years ago, I feel like I knew how to do this job — sort of. I mean, I had the newbie problems every newbie faces, but that was okay. Now, I have no idea. I’m just learning and adjusting like everyone else, checking the news, doing what I can. But man, it’s not great. I want to be a leader and a good teacher to these kids, but how do you lead anyone out of this situation? I feel like if tomorrow I wake up and check the headlines and something somewhere says “there’s a nuclear bomb headed your way!!!” I’ll just go okayyyy!!! and hug my husband and that’s it and we will all die. Other than that, what can I do? I feel like I’m so slap-happy from the last few years, I wouldn’t even go, “hey, wait — really?” I’d just immediately accept that the end is here and we’re all gonna die. This can’t be good.

I spent most of Saturday in bed, just exhausted from the last few weeks. A student of mine posted a pic on her IG stories of the No Kings rally in our town, and somehow — in this sleepy little town that had multiple events going on at once — it looked like 800-1000 people showed up. That’s incredible. That gave me hope. Does this mean things are going to get better? I have no idea anymore. But it was a glimpse. It was something. I didn’t expect to find hope in an officially sanctioned protest, but I did. Maybe I was desperate. I’m not sure.

Anyway. This is all to say that if you feel like the last few weeks are leading you to have a confused brain and totally unsure how to respond to anything, I’m right there with you. What a mess. What a crazy time we’re all living through.

xo - Amy