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Teaching and Writing for Joy in the Anti-Woke Moment

What does it mean to teach and write for joy? Poet Toi Derricotte’s 2008 poem “Joy is an Act of Resistance” points to joy as foundational to Black Women’s active resistance to oppression. In her 1992 novel Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker suggests that “resistance is the secret of joy,” and award winning author,

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The Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal, published annually, is edited by Tom McKenna, BLTN Director of Communications. Beverly Moss, BLTN Director, provides the guiding vision for the network and its digital initiatives. Contact Beverly Moss or Tom McKenna for more information or to submit content for upcoming issues.

Teaching and Writing for Joy

In her statement launching this issue, BLTN Director Beverly Moss presents teaching with and for joy as a radical act of resistance. What struck me as I worked with the many teachers and authors contributing to our "Teaching and Writing for Joy" edition of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal, is the depth of commitment BLTNers bring to this work. 

The personal statements of our fellows—from which you’ll find excerpts in the “Meet the Fellows” post— testify to the power of BLTN as a collective of individuals who are deeply professional in their commitments to public education and to their communities. “Some Serious Joy,” a collection of Summer 2022 writings on the joys of summer study and on moments of joy in classrooms, reveals similar commitments.  (The title comes from Amanda Donovan’s description of her students’ motivation to do something authentically meaningful to them—conspire to honor their dedicated teachers.) Whether writing about finding unexpected support in Covid quarantine, intentional designs for play and creativity in classrooms, or, as Veronica Foster puts it, finding “the joy of embracing…uncertainty in community,” BLTN teachers are serious about creating and holding space for joy. 

To document and write about collaborations that create joy of learning across difference, as Lauren Davenport and Rabiah Khalil have done in “Insight on Sight,” is its own form of resistance, its own radical act. Like many others represented in this issue, Davenport and Khalil have joined Middlebury’s Conflict Transformation conversation by positioning students to experience the joy of nuanced conversations with peers from different places, experiences, and backgrounds and by sharing their learning through publication. We hope you will also read how Conflict Transformation funds have catalyzed groundbreaking community-centered work by Colin Baumgartner, Alex O’Brien, and a host of Next Generation Leadership Network and BLTN sites.

We’re proud of the work documented in this issue of BLTN Journal. While it’s a small sample of what’s taking place across the network, we hope it represents BLTNers’ commitment to a hallmark of the Bread Loaf School of English: the serious joy of learning in community. 

Tom McKenna, Editor

Featured

• Insight on Sight: Seeing One Another across Difference
• Meet the Fellows: BLTN 2023-24
• Some Serious Joy: Notes from BLTN
• Seeds of Change: Mini-Grants for Social Change and Conflict Transformation
• From the BLTN Director: Teaching and Writing for Joy