Call Me Climate Change

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Image via Midjourney

I am currently teaching a summer course, which counts as the beginning of my journey back into full-time teaching. My students are incarcerated. I would have preferred this course meet in person, but a significant commute would have been required, so we our share time across space using the wonders of technology in the form of Microsoft Teams. 

This is my second course with students who are incarcerated, and I’ve become increasingly committed to this work. I admit to not fully understanding what effects my efforts will have, but every day I try to live up to a phrase I first learned through Rebecca Solnit: Hope in the dark. 

I’m also trying to situate myself within my profession’s tradition, which hasn’t always involved teachers waiting for students to arrive. Historically, teachers often traveled into spaces of conflict and difference, often at great risk to, for example, teach someone to read (this is a moment to plug Geraldine Brooks’ March). Yet in all this paragraph’s talk about me, I’m trying to erase myself—I do this by being fully present for my students when I am with them. I don’t think about the next class or meeting. Nothing intrudes, especially not the flashy edu-future where you must be everything except what you are now. I’ve learned not trust those who talk as if they stand with both feet in the future. Real visionaries always plant a foot in the present, otherwise every day remains “day zero,” always starting over today for another tomorrow. Teaching remotely is a phenomenon anchored in the present.

At the beginning of each class, I’ve adopted a practice from a colleague with far more experience with such students—moments of mindfulness and quiet. We close our eyes. We breath. Crack our necks. Reset. Each time we do this, birds lend their chatter from outside. The window exists outside of camera view, but the sound and light gesture its presence. 

During our most recent class, something else joined that moment: music. I could hear a familiar song; I ran the words through my head until I realized, of all songs, it was Blondie’s “Call Me.” 

I had to ask: “Is someone listening to ‘Call Me’ by Blondie?” The students have no internet access and no devices that could do this. The answer caught me a little off guard: “There are painters working outside and they are listening to music.” The lyrics roll me in designer sheets or call me anytime couldn’t sound more out of place, the outside reaching inside in a jarring way.

Our present is always multi-temporal: our class meets in 2024 to discuss a novel published in 2017 about New York City in the year 2140 while a song from 1980 speaks multiple languages in the background: Appelle-moi mon cheri, appelle-moi. (Next semester I will teach in a correctional facility built in the 19th century.)

In this course, my students read fiction (largely science fiction) about climate change, often referred to as “Cli-Fi.” The idea for the class came to me in an incongruous way, much like Blondie joining our mindfulness. I had never heard anyone discuss incarcerated people and climate change. How much information can they access? Are they informed of recent developments and projections? I had never heard discussion of people who are essentially “away from the world” in connection with climate change. We do regularly talk about climate’s affect on various populations, especially those who might migrate. What about people who are confined? Is the connection not made because they live, in many ways, outside of nature? (I’ve learned that is some facilities the incarcerated grow all their own produce, bake their own bread.) But I was curious: what kind of world do these students hope to return to? What futures do they imagine for themselves and how do those intersect with the environment? One student loves snowboarding, another grew up on a farm. Why not take the issue and these questions directly to them?

It turns out the students care quite a bit. In the intensity that is each of their days they still imagine tomorrow. We’ve read about a future where the world is Super-Venice, and the mighty market still lords over us all. We’ve read about the final two people on earth and our coming extinction. There’s the novel written in the 1970’s where humans colonize another planet for its resources (timber). Now we’re finishing the novel where climate migration and potential atrocity come to the forefront. The walls fall a bit. We learn that what awaits them is, in many ways, what awaits all of us.

Their final project involves them selecting works from this course for inclusion on a future syllabus. What novels do they believe, in our present, will be most beneficial for students in the future? I don’t view this as the students doing my work for me; I see it as a form of listening— which always requires practice—so I am listening to what they care about.

Which reminds me… thanks for listening.