Announcing “Outside Higher Ed” in Inside Higher Ed

Today the first of four articles about my experience leaving academia appeared in Inside Higher Ed.

This hyperlinked screenshot shows the article (black text against a white background) as it appears in Inside Higher Ed.

As a series of articles, “Outside Higher Ed” seeks to identify processes that can be used by academics questioning whether and/or when to leave academia. Over the next four months, I hope to share my chronological process of leaving a tenure-track position, walking through four stages:
(1) origin—recognizing the seed or origin of the idea to leave,
(2) discernment—engaging in careful consideration and career discernment,
(3) planning—preparing when and how to leave, and
(4) announcement—experiencing the exit and others’ reactions to it.

This series has come about, in part, as a way for me to process my experience of changing careers. It has come about, too, as I’ve received requests to share more of my experience, decision-making process, and career advice. Additionally, it’s come about as a response to academic “quit lit,” which I read when making my decision and found both helpful and incomplete.

Typically, stories about leaving higher education share insights into the conditions that push people away from this work, but rarely do they share the pulls or “strong YES” leading to something else. Rarely do they share the processes or practices used to make big career changes or pull back the curtain into the nuts-and-bolts of planning how to leave.

This first piece in “Outside Higher Ed” is the most like the “quit lit” I’ve read, as I share the origins of my story, or seeds underlying my career move. These seeds speak to privileges (race, class, and other positionalities) that make available for me a range of career possibilities. They also speak to my conditioning as a young girl to pursue teaching instead of writing—conditioning that I continue to reckon with and push back on, inspiring new versions of myself called to speak-write-act in this time of urgency.

While sharing my own experience, I hope to situate it within patterns across many “quit lit” stories, pointing to what we can change, whether positioned inside or outside higher education: toward pursuing justice, humanizing education, countering educational trauma, shaking up/off schooling, and valuing the contributions of everyone (all humans) as learners-and-teachers together.

I invite you to join me in following this series if you’re considering career moves or responsible for mentoring others; if you’re situated in higher education or processing past educational experiences; if you’re undergoing identity shifts or aspiring to a new self; if you’re interested in making change or considering how others do so.

And I welcome feedback and shared storytelling, as I continue to make sense of my own experience and chart new directions from here.

—
With a lot of gratitude, this post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Going Public as an Educator,” “In the Midst of Big Changes,” or “Listening for/to the ‘Strong YES.’” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

Adaptable Pesto Sauce (Vegan + Gluten-Free)

This summer, as I’ve been working to change my relationship with sugar, I’ve also been trying to eat more greens. I’m preparing lots of green smoothies; growing basil and mint indoors; and learning to make sauces from spinach, kale, and chard.

Many of these sauces are adaptations of pesto, thinned with water to make more of a dressing or dip than the typically thick and oily spread. I call this “adaptable pesto sauce,” because there are many ways to prepare it and because I’ve come to this recipe through studying variations on vegan pesto.

The idea is to combine the following ingredients (all of which can be adapted to what’s on hand) in a Vitamix or another high-powered blender.

Ingredients:

  • Greens—approx. 5 cups of any combination of basil, spinach, kale, swiss chard, or the tops of carrots or beets
  • Walnuts— 1/2 cup
  • Water—1/3 cup
  • Olive oil—1/3 cup
  • Lemon—juice of 1 small lemon (~2 to 3 tablespoons)
  • Garlic—6 bulbs (more or less, depending on how much you like garlic :-))
  • Salt—1+ teaspoon (to taste)
  • Pepper—1/3 to 1/2 teaspoon (to taste)

I appreciate that this recipe is simple, taking no more than 10 minutes to gather and combine ingredients. I appreciate that it helps with achieving my goal of eating veggies as at least half of every meal. I appreciate, too, that I can eat a single batch for several days.

To illustrate, with the serving shown here, I ended up with three distinct meals:

(1) Adaptable pesto sauce became the focus on this dinner with roasted mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, crackers, and sliced peaches all as options for dipping.

On a blue plate appears a large serving of green pesto sauce (in the front) with sliced peaches, rice crackers, roasted mushrooms, and a mix of orange and purple carrots and yellow-white potatoes.

(2) The next day I served the sauce with carrot and celery sticks and two veggie burgers topped with slices of avocado.

Two veggie burgers topped with slices of avocado appear on a blue plate, along with carrot and celery sticks and pesto dipping sauce.

(3) What remained I used in a pasta casserole, drizzling the sauce over a layer of kale and textured vegetable protein (TVP), which topped a layer of gluten-free rotini (spiral pasta). After repeating these layers, I topped the casserole with Follow Your Heart vegan cheeze and baked for approximately an hour at 400 degrees.

These three meals are only a few I’ve created with this adaptable pesto sauce, as it’s becoming a familiar friend.

And as a friend, vegan pesto reminds me of the connections between self-care and community care, between fueling the self and fueling the long haul toward justice. It’s not by accident that this recipe and all on this blog are vegan. What we eat impacts not only ourselves but also other humans, non-human animals, and the earth.

Small actions matter.
Finding joy in food matters.
Loving ourselves, even a little bit better, matters.

Adaptable pesto sauce isn’t a cure-all, but may it bring about more healing. May it help with building healthy relationships with food and with linking creativity and commitment.

—
This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Roasted Veggies with Tahini Sauce: Linking Creativity and Self-Care,” “Three Chocolate Smoothies for Fueling the Road Ahead,” and other vegan + gluten-free recipes. Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

Beyond Self-Care: How Hiking Invites Self-Work

Time outdoors and along hiking trails is especially important time to me. As I’ve written previously, it’s time to consider the steps involved in making change, including learning to tread alternative paths. It’s time to slow down, notice beauty, and appreciate life, even in the roughest of conditions. It’s also time to do important intrapersonal work toward disrupting biases and internalized inferiority + superiority.

It’s possible to consider activities like hiking purely as self-care. And refueling is important.

More than self-care, however, hiking—and perhaps any meaningful time outdoors, with the self—invites contemplation, which is so greatly needed for more mindful communication, for more emotional resilience, and for more equitable relations. Slowing down to reflect on ourselves, our responsibilities, and our response-abilities is needed regularly.

Photo taken near Sedona, Arizona, showing a green prickly pear cactus in the foreground, red soil and rock, a shrub in dark shadow, and mountain peaks and blue sky in the background.

As recent hiking experiences have reminded me, time outdoors invites contemplation and communion with the self, with other humans, with non-human animals, and with the natural world. It strengthens, for me, the commitment to ecofeminism and the need to intervene into brutally enacted hierarchies (represented as a pyramid pointing upward) that place god over men, men over women, women over children, children over animals, and animals over the earth.

Though not typically articulated in explicit terms, hierarchical belief systems provide justification for so much oppression: not only sexism, ageism, and speciesism, but also racism and other -isms. Such hierarchies justify dehumanization and devaluation of the earth, as the lives and voices of powerful men (those ranked as closest to god) are expected to take priority. Hence, the “mythical norm” is reinforced in multiplying subtle, socialized, and systematized ways.

Triangular visualization of the hierarchy of oppression (motivation for ecofeminism) showing god over men, men over women, women over children, children over animals, and animals over the earth.

Rather than seeing this hierarchy as natural, I’m able to learn from the natural world (along hiking trails) how all life is related, of value, and part of the whole. Though I’m small within the desert landscape, I still take up space, neither shrinking nor puffing up.

Rather than seeing this hierarchy as natural, I’m able to see the historical-cultural-social construction of this and other oppressive hierarchies (e.g., hierarchies that rank people according to race, nationality, and other constructed identities). While I understand how I’m (expected to) function within such hierarchies, I can push back and create other understandings, much as I choose to walk differently.

Rather than seeing this hierarchy as natural, I’m able to see myself as deeply embodied: not only experiencing life in my body but also having a body that carries historical meaning and present privileges. As an embodied woman (white, middle/upper-class, cisgender, adult, able-bodied, U.S.-born woman), I feel the anger flush through my body at sexism I experience and perpetuate. And at the related racism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, nationalism, and other sorts of -isms I’m conditioned into, take into my body, inevitably perpetuate, and yet want so desperately to undo.

To put this more simply, hiking helps me dive deeply into systems of oppression that I’m striving to understand and intervene into. It helps me see myself not only as I self-identify, but also as I’m identified and constructed within the collective (within social hierarchies that do injustice to people, animals, and the earth). And it helps me linger over everyday interactions and actions, with time along trails to think and talk and turn over possibilities.

Coming off the trail, I am renewed in commitments to racial justice, social justice, and environmental justice. Contemplation and communion lead me back to these aspirations:

  • Unlearning what’s wrong, no matter how deeply socialized and internalized.
  • Affirming, holding up, sharing out, and amplifying work that helps with envisioning more just futures.
  • Studying and teaching histories that are largely suppressed, yet hanging over us as specters shaping life (e.g., histories of enslavement, genocide, colonization, and forced/blocked immigration in the United States).
  • Learning about, leveraging, and working to deconstruct my socially constructed whiteness (part of white supremacy) toward truer ways of showing up in the world.
  • Bringing joy in the midst of struggle (pure delight in the midst of physical pain) off the trail and into everyday living/striving for justice—holding onto and creating more intense love and possibility.
  • Making more explicit the connections between everyday actions—like eating, moving, and speaking—and structural hierarchies (systems of oppression and injustice) that limit that love and possibility.

As an everyday action, hiking invites intrapersonal self-work that’s so needed alongside interpersonal work-with-others and institutional work-within-institutions. To engage in intrapersonal work is not to turn away from other responsibilities and interventions needed in pursuing justice. It is to do this work more mindfully with attention to one’s own positionality and to what learning and unlearning are needed.

May I continue to engage in self-work through hiking and other means.
May this self-work allow me to show up more fully and fiercely for myself and others.
May I show up ready to work within families, communities, workplaces, and other spaces.

—
This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Mantras to Stand TALL for Justice,” “Choosing to Tread Another Path,” and “Do It Scared.” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

Do It Scared

“Do it scared.”

I have Docta E (Dr. Elaine Richardson) to thank for this mantra that I keep close at hand.

A couple of years ago, Docta E talked with my “Writing for Social Justice” class about her book PHD to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life, and students asked Docta E to share advice for writers. Similar to the advice Luvvie Ajayi shares in the TED talk “Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable,” Docta E talked about pushing through fear and showing up for the work anyway. In the simplest terms: “Do it scared.”

I hold this advice close because I’m so often scared, and recently I’ve been looking deeper into fears and noticing how much they influence (and limit) my life.

One example involves a recent hike in which I had an amazing experience walking on my own through twilight into dark. I strolled more than hiked, paying attention to my breath, senses, and the scenes around me.

I noticed, for example, how sound changes along the trail, especially when walking next to bushes alive with insects and crossing from one side of the mountain to the other. I could feel the ground—packed dirt, flat stones, and jagged rocks—and how each traveled up my body: from feet to ankles to knees to hips to my back. I experienced day turn to night—witnessing not only the sunset but also the twilight and darkening of night. My eyes adjusted, my perceptions changed, and the moon became more and more pronounced.

Truly, I love being outdoors at night and in the wilderness on my own, but I so rarely allow myself either experience because fears are driving more than back-seat riding. For a number of reasons, this evening was different.

To begin, I’d already thrown caution to the wind: riding across Phoenix to get to the trailhead during rush hour traffic. On a typical day, I’d give up hiking to avoid a car ride. Perhaps being out of my routine helped me open to what I too-often restrict.

The conditions also helped me feel secure. Though hiking in 105-degree heat, the trail was crowded with hikers every few feet, so I felt sure that rattlesnakes would stay far away. I had companions on the trail—people I knew were walking slower and faster than me, making me feel that I wasn’t out “on my own.” I had water and a cell phone, too. Sturdy boots and a hat helped me feel prepared.

As I strolled, I witnessed the beauty of the moment, wanting to soak it all in and linger in the possibilities. I found myself thinking about fear and its partner, trust. What if I trust not only snakes but also myself? What if I trust my feet to be sure-footed? What if I trust that I’m prepared to speak, write, and stand UP when action is needed? What if I trust that I’ll learn and recover from the riskiness, hurts, and whatever else fear is warning me about?

These “what ifs” remind me that building trust involves practice: doing what scares me even when it scares me. Especially when it scares me.

To open my heart and trust more boldly and bravely, I’ll need to do it scared. In this time of vast injustice and needed resistance, Docta E’s advice is what I need to hear and to say to myself time and time again.

“Do it scared.”

 —
This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Mantras to Stand TALL for Justice,” “Choosing to Tread Another Path,” and “5 TED Talks for Developing Emotional Literacies for Racial Justice.” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

Single-Serve Chocolate Avocado Pudding

This summer, in the midst of a cross-country move and big career changes, I’ve found myself falling into old patterns with sugar. I’ve been binge-eating sugar only to propel myself into a downward emotional spiral and increased inflammation—stirring up old back, neck, and other embodied pains.

In the process, I’ve been getting clearer on what I want to change about my relationship with sugar and noticing when—and why—I’m craving sweets.

With greater awareness of the cravings, I’m more often choosing to drink water and vegetable broth instead of turning to sugar. At times, I’m making my familiar banana, cacao, and peanut butter mash that typically satiates cravings. And, because my naturopath recommends daily avocados, I’ve been allowing myself avocado pudding with dates used for sweetening.

Here’s the recipe for single-serve chocolate avocado pudding. It’s not only sweet and chocolatey (fulfilling emotional cravings for sugar), but it’s also vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, and refined-sugar-free.

There are many recipes online for chocolate avocado pudding or mousse. What I like about this one is that it’s simplified (few ingredients and no refrigeration required).

Combine the following ingredients in a Vitamix or other high-powered blender, and blend until creamy:

  • 1 large avocado (or 1 and ½ smaller avocados)
  • 2 tablespoons of cacao powder
  • 2-3 dates, depending on the sweetness desired (more dates = sweeter)
  • ¼ cup of unsweetened almond or other plant-based milk
  • ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon

This recipe can be easily doubled or tripled, if making for two or more people. It also keeps well in the refrigerator and can be used for snacks throughout the day.

My relationship with sugar, as part of my larger relationship with food, is important for healing—for turning inward and learning more about who I’ve been and who I want to be. Though I’ve shown up to this relationship inconsistently, I want to build a more loving, truthful, and committed relationship for the long haul.

This long-haul commitment to self-love is the same long-haul commitment I make to staying in the work for social justice. May I keep showing up to/for myself and to/for work that matters in the world. May I invest in a nourishing relationship with food toward participating in nourishing, affirming, and accountable relationships in all aspects of life.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Banana, Chocolate, and Peanut-Butter Mash: Changing My Relationship with Sugar and Rethinking Self-Care,” “Three Chocolate Smoothies for Fueling the Road Ahead,” and other vegan + gluten-free recipes. Please also consider following the blog via email. Thanks!

“Pedagogical Too-Muchness,” Or a Call for Shaking up Schooling

This year I turned 39, and it’s my first in which I won’t be returning to school. I’ve spent my life in academic settings—as a child and adult, as a student and teacher, as a researcher and writer. Many of my friends are teachers, too, so I understand how August brings both angst and anticipation for the upcoming school year.

Recently, I’ve been having conversations with friends about syllabi and course designs. I’ve been reading social media posts about the start of school. And I’ve received emails from several people asking me to share my experience teaching “Writing for Social Justice.”

The combination of these conversations, posts, and emails has reminded me of the importance of rethinking what we know and have typically experienced as education. So much of schooling needs to be shaken up/off, as traditional schooling perpetuates social inequities, damaging discourses, and injustice. What we’re typically conditioned into—conditioned to accept and expect from schooling—does harm by contributing to the status quo. (I’m thinking here of scholarship by bell hooks and Paulo Freire, in Rethinking Schools and Teaching Tolerance, and in research journals like Feminist Teacher and Equity & Excellence, among many other sources.)

Given the recognized harms of schooling, August seems like the perfect time to question what we know about teaching and learning.

  • How might we intervene into and rewrite the scripts of schooling?
  • How might we rethink not only curriculum and content but also assignments, assessment, and activities that structure relations in and out school?
  • How might we change our approaches to education, even if/when those changes are considered “too much”?

I raise these questions and share my own attempts at trying to teach differently—perhaps “too much” differently—through a newly published chapter, “Pedagogical Too-Muchness: A Feminist Approach to Community-Based Learning, Multimodal Composition, Social Justice Education, and More.”

As part of the collection Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis edited by Kristine L. Blair and Lee Nickoson, this chapter describes my approach to “Writing for Social Justice” and situates feminist, critical education as “instead of” rather than “on top of” more traditional approaches.

Throughout the chapter, I share several guiding principles:

1. engage our full selves—not only our minds, but also our bodies, emotions, and spirits;

2. prioritize relations, or put the time and effort into building and sustaining meaningful (and often cross-status) connections among people and organizations;

3. understand power as related to (in)justice so that efforts against sexism and for gender-and-sexuality-justice are linked with other justice-oriented work, since identities and issues are intersectional and injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere;

4. cultivate agency so that students and other actors see themselves as having the responsibility to act, as well as the questions and insights to ask who is responsible to act, when, where, why, and how (troubling savior and victim narratives);

5. seek interconnectedness among ways of seeing, thinking, doing, and being in the world so that we work toward coherence across spheres of activity and recognize that our work occurs within complex socio-cultural, historical, and rhetorical systems.
(pages 337-338)

I share this chapter and these principles as part of ongoing conversations about how to do education differently—toward making commitments to justice actionable. My hope is that the more we think of social justice education as the core or center of schooling, the more we shift away from schooling that leads educators to dismiss critical approaches as additional, extra, or “too much” to take on.

Truly, we all—students and teachers alike—need courses that are complex, critical, and transformative. We need educational practices that humanize people and develop relational responsibilities. We need concerted effort to disrupt the status quo, foster commitments to justice, and build agency beyond the classroom.

Though I won’t be returning to the classroom this fall, I’ll be reading, writing, and engaging as someone with much to shake up/off about my own educational history. May we share in this ongoing work and lifelong learning. May this new school year invite new ways of approaching education and learning to take action in this time of urgency.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Triangulating the Heart, Head, and Hands for Justice,” “What Is Justice?” and others posts on teaching. Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!

A New Spell for a New Space

These past few weeks I’ve been focused on moving and settling into a new home. The move has called attention to all sorts of stuff, habits, and emotional swings—things I’d like to keep and release, to shore up and tear down. This process has reminded me, too, of the contemplative practices that contribute to a sense of grounding: grounding needed to stand TALL for justice.

One of these practices is spell-casting, which I learned from activist-writer-healer adrienne maree brown. In Episode 10 of the Healing Justice podcast “New Years Practice: Cast a Spell with adrienne maree brown,” brown shares what I’ve similarly come to believe from my experiences writing, teaching writing, and researching writing. That is:
(1) Words have power.
(2) We can channel this power through writing.
(3) Writing mantras and other wishes-desires-intentions helps bring them into reality.
In other words, writing supports manifestation. To put these beliefs into action, I write what I want to manifest in life.

As I did back in January, when recovering from a concussion, I’ve written a spell of mantras to help ease the shifts (the letting go and calling in) that I’d like to experience in my new space. This spell now lives under my bed and again taped to my bathroom mirror.

Printed copy of the spell (words that appear in this blog post) taped to a bathroom mirror with a colorful shower curtain showing part of a tree reflected in the mirror. The photo has a pink tint.

I share this spell here as an accountability practice—holding its potential not only in physical space but also in digital/online space. I hope it might motivate others to write. I can already see that it’s inspiring me toward further writing to make commitments to justice actionable in everyday life.

A New Spell for a New Space

I detangle my self-worth from my productivity, release goals of perfection and positivity associated with white womanhood, and believe instead that “I am enough” (neither better-than nor lesser-than)—affirming my own and others’ humanity.

I release the pattern of “butt in seat” to get work done and instead allow myself to write-work-play-move wherever I am called, including curled on the couch and sitting alongside the bouldering wall.

I embrace play: swimming, hiking, climbing, and moving my body regularly toward shaking up/off what I’ve internalized and still hold within my body as trauma, as pain, as injustice.

I make decisions based on my “strong YES,” asking regularly which way brings me closer to my divine purpose, listening for what’s next, and engaging in discernment, even/especially when the answers don’t seem to make sense.

I look for direction in everyday life, slowing down to practice divination as a meaningful, woven-through-the-day contemplative practice.

I keep talking with my future self and my ancestors, working to heal backward and forward in time.

I get comfortable working on my own and enjoying my own company, while noticing who shows up as accomplices, companions, and guides in the work for social justice.

I read “for fun,” and I learn through reading-listening-witnessing how to amplify the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), especially feminists and womanists of color.

I nourish my physical, emotional, and spiritual self: heart, head, and hands. In doing so, I invest in my relationship with food, building a relationship that’s full of integrity, consistency, forgiveness, appreciation, and love. I absorb nutrients and release inflammation. I show love to myself through the foods I take into my body.

I learn more about what it means to show up as my authentic self, getting to know Beth.

I treat myself gently, with tenderness and humility. I open my heart to forgiveness and peace. I allow myself to receive and give love.

—
This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Spell-Casting and Other Contemplative Practices for Reflection and Recovery,” “The Pain and Pleasure of Moving,” or “Mantras to Stand TALL for Justice.” Please also consider liking this blog on FB and following the blog via email. Thanks!