Risky business: Investigating power and privilege in the classroom

Photo: Jay Parson

When the politics and histories that shape students’ lives emerge in class, Naila Keleta-Mae sees an opportunity for deep learning - not an interruption to her lecture notes.

The Waterloo professor of Drama and Speech Communication says some of her most effective teaching happens when the so-called “real world” of politics and the lives of students intersect. For example, a lesson on blocking on stage during a rehearsal, quickly pivoted to an engagement with the myths that early Canada was an uncomplicated refuge for enslaved Black people and that there was no slavery in Canada.

Keleta-Mae invites her students to think about the spaces they occupy and the positions they adopt in their day-to-day lives in relation to the world in which they live and the politics that shape it.

She calls this “risky business,” pointing out that it “asks students and teachers to look closely at their moorings and, at times, to untie systems of meaning-making that have held together their world-views for a long time.”

Keleta-Mae’s courses feature readings and videos that are chosen not just for the theories or content that they introduce, but for the historically underrepresented voices that they bring into the classroom.

This attention to who gets heard is also reflected in the exercises she does to improve the quality of student participation. In one of the exercises she has designed, a few weeks into a course she privately assesses the students’ in-class participation in terms of how much they've spoken up. She asks students to informally assess their participation to date by privately assessing how much they’ve spoken up in class, and then asks them to do the opposite for a few weeks. She is clear that they will not be penalized for contributing more or less in class, but will instead be rewarded for behaving in the opposite manner of their previous assessment. For example, if a student gives herself a 10 — that is, if she rates herself as someone who has participated often and talked at length  — if she doesn’t talk in class for a while then her participation grade would go up. Keleta-Mae has found that when participants are intentional about how they cede and take up time, group discussions are more thoughtful and productive.

In one assignment, Keleta-Mae asked her class to adapt and expand a short play that she then directed and dramaturged. Called “on love,” the play was centered on Nigger Rock in St. Armand, Quebec, an historical site where enslaved Black people, tradespeople, and travellers who had lived in the area are believed to be buried. With eight cast members playing Black roles, the students had to cast outside of their race.

“This is not about colour-blind casting,” Keleta-Mae emphasizes. “Either we’re going to wait to magically have this diverse student body that will allow us to do work that … represents the diversity that is Canada, or we’re going to present the work and figure out the messiness of having students that are cast across race.”

And what were the outcomes for students of this messy, challenging work? White students talked about never before having thought about what it felt like to move through the world as a Black person and became more aware of the privileges whiteness affords them. And for some non-white students, seeing or performing in a piece that did not centre whiteness was affirming. For Keleta-Mae, both outcomes are significant: “they’re living the theory, critical race theory, in practice, through the creation of art.”

Keleta-Mae has received international attention for creating a Gender and Performance course that focuses on Beyoncé. Articles about the course appeared in the National Post, Flare Magazine, and many other outlets, and she penned her own piece for the Huffington Post that delves into why Beyoncé is a deeply relevant topic of study for Canadian students.

Keleta-Mae also brings her teaching to the public. She regularly appears as a guest on radio shows to discuss race, gender, and popular culture. In 2016, she was interviewed by Matt Galloway of CBC Radio One’s Metro Morning to comment on the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and she regularly writes for the Globe and Mail, including pieces on Black Lives Matter, among others. For Keleta-Mae, teaching doesn’t stop at the classroom door and media engagement allows her “access to a student body I just wouldn’t have otherwise.”