© Wendy Clark,  2025

I have been thinking about my college teaching experience as well as some of the ideological battles that have been taking place over the past few years. I began teaching college writing and critical thinking classes in California in 1991 and taught part-time until we moved to Idaho in 2014. I was not unhappy when I left, but I had observed so many changes over the years, and I may well have left at just the right time for me.

I still love teaching, and I loved teaching and cared about my students in the couple of decades that I taught. I found it to be a very rewarding job. Here are some of the changes I saw over the years that were leading to the “woke” culture that many have referenced as taking over many colleges and universities.

I’m not sure of the timeline, but a colleague who was the head of the English Department and was a white woman, was accused of being a racist. This sweet and kind woman who was loved by many faculty and students and was defended by many, found that she could not “prove” that she wasn’t a racist.

The “evidence” brought forward–by another colleague–was very weak and to me seemed to be manufactured and manipulated. The result was that the head of the English department became an elected position, rather than an appointed one. The woman who brought forward the charges against the current head was elected to that position–just once. The woman who lost her position continued to teach and to prepare for her retirement, but she was wounded by all that had been said about her. 

I saw no evidence that shifting this position to an elected position instead of a position that was appointed by the head of the Language Arts Department benefited those of us teaching in the English Department. The woman who brought the charges and then was elected to the position was not better at it than the woman who had held that position for some time and was experienced at it. The primary way I was personally affected by the person holding that position was that she was in charge of assigning teaching assignments. The appointed woman had been very skilled at that task. The newly elected woman, not so much. She was a “woman of color.” Did that make her better at the job? Not so much. I preferred the women who previously held the position primarily because she had been very helpful and encouraging, and I had learned a lot from her. I had no real interaction with the woman newly elected to this position.

I remember a faculty meeting where this woman talked about how frightened she was as a woman of color every time that she went to the bathroom by herself. I asked if there had been any incidents at the college that I wasn’t aware of. Had anyone been accosted in the restroom? This was important to me because I often taught in the evenings and might go to the restroom at 10:00 at night.

The colleague answered, “no” to my question, but said that didn’t matter because it was her feeling of being afraid that mattered, not whether or not any incident had ever occurred. This was Napa Valley College, and there were no cases of violence or threat or gangs at that time. I had taught in both Santa Ana and San Pablo where there were actual cases of threat and gangs and violence and real reasons to be fearful and careful. 

In the late 90s, a colleague told me that I should apply for a full-time job right away if I ever wanted to work full time. She said, “We probably will only hire maybe one more white woman for many years to come. After that, there will be no more full-time jobs available for white women.” My youngest child was only 4 at the time and that colleague said that was when she went full time when her youngest was 4. Although I thought at that time that I would teach full time some day, I did not feel the time was right, but I made note of the fact that my gender and my skin color could  affect my ability to get a full-time position at the college where I loved teaching.

Later, after all that had happened to the woman who had been heading up the English department left a very bad taste in my mouth, I lost interest in ever teaching at this particular college full-time. As a part-timer I could avoid attending staff meetings and all the tension that they brought. I also could avoid some of the strange things that full-timers were sometimes asked to do. If you didn’t pay a part timer for it, you couldn’t require it, but more about that later.

Around that same time, I started to read more student essays that seemed to be rewriting history into some new version that I didn’t recognize. I had many conversations with students about the things they were learning in their history classes. One of the of things I remember from that time was an oversimplification of the conflict between native Americans and the colonists, with the colonists presented as the “bad guys” and the native Americans as the “victims.” There seemed to be no understanding of the clash of cultures (with colonists who believed in private property ownership and tribes who did not) or the fear stirred up by the violence of certain tribes as well as how some tribes came to fear settlers based on the behaviors of some. 

There was no discussion of the tribes that were known to be peaceful and the tribes that were known to be violent. There was no thought given to how colonization was viewed at that time in most parts of the world and little understanding of the different groups of Europeans who came to the “new world,” the different reasons for which they came, and the different interactions that they had with native Americans when they arrived. 

Another oversimplified narrative that was rising up at that time was that the United States at its inception was somehow unusual in its practice of slavery. Students were unaware that slavery at that time was present in every country in the world. There were even Africans who participated by enslaving and selling their own people. They were also unaware of the white people around the world who were also sold as servants and shipped away from where they were born and from their family members. This was not an “American” thing or a white/black thing, or sadly, even an unusual thing, but students were being taught to think that way.

There was also a false narrative of how the Founding Fathers viewed slavery. The fact that slavery continued to exist as long as it did was used as evidence that they did not want to get rid of it. Students were unaware of all of the writings by the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, in which they discussed how they might end slavery and what that would require. They didn’t know that it was the western nations that first outlawed slavery. Again, this was an issue of oversimplification, something that we talked a lot about in my critical thinking classes, where the primary questions we always asked were “Is this true?” and “How do we know?” and “Where can we go to find out?”

A student was writing his research paper on immigration and was critical of  United States’ immigration laws. I asked him to include in his paper a discussion of immigration laws from other countries around the world. He was shocked to discover that he, as an American citizen, couldn’t just move to and live in any country he wanted. He hadn’t realized that there were immigration laws in most countries. How had this been overlooked in the discussions he was having in his other class at the college?

One of the things I love about teaching is having relationships with students and having really good discussions about all kinds of different things. Over time, this was becoming more challenging. All of us faculty members were being instructed to not share anything that might be construed as “advice” to students. They should be sent to the counseling department where presumably the counselors had been trained in how to give advice. This is a direction that I accepted but only up to the point of my rights as an American citizen to share my thoughts and opinions as my thoughts and opinions. I found it interesting that the concern was directed most often toward conservative ideas even though far-left professors were teaching things as “true” that were not true at all. Conservative professors were far more likely than their left counterparts to entertain many different perspectives in the classroom and to avoid sharing their own opinion as the only correct option. My left-leaning colleagues were the ones most likely to be described by students as “hammering” their positions in the classroom and “punishing” students for expressing a dissenting opinion.

There were many times that I had students come to my office, close the door, and then ask my opinion about things like religion, marriage, church, or how to handle a hostile instructor. According to the law, I could answer anything that an adult student asked me as long as I was clear that I was offering my own ideas and opinions, and I kept to that standard. But more and more the pressure was rising to never talk to students about anything personal.

One of the other pressures that I encountered as an instructor was to give passing grades to students even when they did not do work that earned a passing grade. One student told me that her school counselor discouraged her from taking my class because it was “too difficult” and “too many” students failed my classes. This student had already taken two of my classes and insisted on taking a third class from me because she believed that she was learning a lot in my classes. 

Of course, I did fail students who did not receive the minimum of a 60% in their coursework, but I gave credit for doing both homework and in-class work, that wasn’t graded (you could get an “A”  on certain parts of the course by simply completing the work and turning it in), I allowed students to rewrite their essays many times if needed in order to get a passing grade, and I worked with students to get them to pass. A student who failed either didn’t turn in a lot of work, wasn’t willing to rewrite their work, didn’t attend class sessions, or some combination of these things. A student had to work pretty hard to not get at least a “C” in my classes because I worked really hard to try to get them to learn the things they needed to know to move to the next course.

Another problem that I encountered as a part-time instructor is that I was careful to assign the required number of pages for reading and for writing as spelled out in the “course outline of record,” but many of the full-time instructors did not adhere to the requirements (I assume that many did). Of course, it would have been easier to assign and read fewer essays, but writing students learn the most by writing and receiving feedback for their writing. Students who had an “easier” instructor often referred to how much less writing they had to do with that instructor even though I knew the requirement for that class section was much higher than students were experiencing. Students mentioned the names of specific professors often, so I came to believe that they weren’t “spinning tales.” By comparison those teachers who assigned the work they were supposed to assign were seen as “hard” teachers, demanding too much of their students.

Over the years, the culture was shifting, gradually, but noticeably. I was asked by a student to not refer to her as a “young lady”–even though her appearance was as a young lady– because her goal was to become a young man. This was my first encounter with transgender issues, and it made me very sad for this young woman. However, it did not change how I treated her in class or how I graded her work. I prayed for her then and still pray for her as she comes to mind. I know that my doing so would be deeply offensive to some. She was kind to me, though, and we had a friendly conversation unlike what is often posted on social media today when someone is not referred to in the way that they desire, and I did my best not to “misgender” her again. I wasn’t trying to be offensive, but at the same time, she wasn’t trying to be offended. (Using “her” here at the period of history is deeply offensive to some, but using “him” here would be neither accurate, nor clarifying.)

I had a student become angry with me after I mentioned the “Negro College Fund” by name and so used the word “negro” in the classroom. She addressed me in private about it, though, and I explained that the name was chosen by the organization and that I was not using a descriptive word. It was the actual name of an actual organization.  She was very surprised at that, but she stopped being angry and was not aggressive also unlike what we see on social media in our current culture. I suggested as a research paper topic how we name things, how the meanings of words change over time, how our association with words change and the question of when we need to change titles to fit the changing culture.

It stands out to me now that Megan Kelley was driven out of her position at NBC for asking such a question in regards to the use of “black face” in entertainment. She wondered when it moved from being generally accepted to being tabu. It was a good question, but asking the question got her “canceled” and fired.

Nearing the end of my time at the college, we would get invitations to come to the quad and join hands in support of and solidarity with the LBGTQ community (at that time those were all of the initials being used). As a part-timer I could not be required to attend, and I never did. Why not? I treated all of my students with respect and kindness and graded all of their papers fairly, based on how well they were written, not on the opinions they held. But–I believed and still do believe that the agendas associated with the LBGTQ community are often harmful to students and not beneficial to them. And while I support all people’s right to think of themselves and present themselves however they want to, I do not agree that all choices are equal and good and the best thing for us, and I do not think I should pretend that I do agree, and I certainly should not be required to profess things that I do not think are true.

Eventually, I encountered the first of the “woke” trainings at the college. It was presented to us this way:  If we would voluntarily attend “diversity and inclusion” training, we would receive a virtual “sticker” to post on our staff web page that announced to students that our classrooms were a “safe place” for students of all colors and identities. Would that mean, then, that the classrooms of all instructors who did not attend this training and did not have this sticker were “unsafe” places for some students?  Many, like me, recognized that this idea was insulting and that it was the accusation that you are guilty until you prove otherwise. I did my best to treat all of my students fairly. I had never been accused of treating any student unfairly. Why would I need special training to have my classes declared “safe” for my students?

At the end of one of the essays that we read and discussed in my writing classes was a cultural survey about attitudes toward sex, dating, marriage, etc. I had students in my classes complete this survey anonymously for nearly 20 years. The changes in the answers over the years as well as the way the discussions shifted over time, revealed a huge cultural shift that is both alarming and terribly sad.

In the mid 90s the overwhelming majority of students believed that sex should be inside a committed relationship–that the couple should be married or at least engaged. When asked how often they had sex, most students answered “never” or “seldom,” but also believed that their peers had sex “often” or even “daily.” When I asked about this disparity in my classes, more than one student pointed to TV and movies for what they thought was “normal.” I remember one student who said, “Well, on ‘Friends’ they are all having sex with each other.”

By the time of my last semester of teaching in 2014, most students responded on the survey with approval of sex with someone you just met, “casual hook ups.” In class discussions many students said they considered marriage irrelevant and did not plan to get married or have children. They pointed to their own parents and their failed marriages as the reason behind their thinking. Students had begun celebrating their “uncommittment” to each other. True love, they argued, was expressed by staying with someone without ever having to commit to staying. Each day you stayed was a new profession of love.

I taught college classes for over 20 years, and in that time, the culture of the community college where I taught most of those years shifted and changed in so many ways, most of them not good or healthy at all. I saw a community of instructors–where adjunct and full-timers liked and supported each other, shift to an us-against-them mentality over issues of pay and resources and unions. I saw the rise of a division between faculty members based on political and religious views and race. I saw the rise of Atheism as a value among faculty members as well as the celebration of pagan religions as valued while Christianity was devalued and maligned.

I did not leave teaching because I was unhappy or worried about where these things were going; I left because my family and I felt called by God to move, to establish a church and ministry, and to begin reaching out and serving in a culture in very intentional ways that involved moving to a community that did not have a place for me to teach college English. 

But . . . I can’t help but think that God moved me at exactly the right time. I don’t know how I would have navigated all the things that have happened in the decade since I left teaching. I know that much of what has occurred has made me very sad about the state of higher education.

Lately, I have felt a little bit hopeful about the future of higher education. Perhaps spaces are opening up for conservative-leaning instructors, traditional historians, and both instructors and students of faith and conviction. Maybe education will land more firmly on the side of the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to express dissenting viewpoints. 

We wait. We watch. We pray.