Between the Proposal and the Protest

This semester, as I teach an online writing course at a Southern California community college, I keep asking: How do you truly engage students in a digital classroom? There are 26 students on my roster right now, one more than the cap, but I know from experience that by the time March rolls around, that number will have thinned out to the high teens.

The class is asynchronous. I record lectures, post them, and students do their work whenever they can find time. We never see each other. Not really. Unless a student asks for a conference, which is rare in a way that, if I think too long about, makes me a bit sad.

The first big assignment for this course is a 1,200 word op-ed. I let them pick their own topics, which doesn’t always make things easier, depending on the student. They read opinion pieces from The San Diego Union-Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times (I grew up in New Jersey, after all). I sprinkle in a few that stayed with me from college: Sam Harris, “In Defense of Torture” and Christopher Hitchens, “In Your Face.” I want them to see the vast array of approaches and tones and topics. And I give them a framework, something to hold onto: Find an issue, take a stance, argue for an action or to change the reader’s perspective, even if slightly. I want them to see it as more than a formula, and I really want them to care about what they choose to write about.

In my first-week video, I tell them I work full-time as a senior proposal writer for a government contractor. Cybersecurity. IT services. Cloud migration. The alphabet soup of federal agencies: Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense (I refuse to call it the Department of War, even if that was what it was called before 1949). I admit it’s not glamorous, but it’s writing, and it’s a world I know. I try to bring some of that to the class. For example, I tell students that clarity and conciseness wins contracts. I hadn’t thought much about my own background or how I introduce myself until recently.

One student—let’s call him Mark—emailed me to set up a conference. He’s a first-generation college student, majoring in computer science. I was shocked. This was early for a conference request. Many students want to get through the assignments, collect a grade and move on. I’ve learned not to expect much more. I fear that I’ve even started to accept that.

Mark wanted to write about ICE. So did a third of the class.

***

Mark showed up to the Zoom call on time and ready to go. He’d been reading about Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse shot by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis. He’d been following the raids in San Diego, too. He was building a constitutional argument. Fourth Amendment. Due process. The right to peaceful assembly. Mark was sharp, curious, assertive, respectful. He was doing what I always hope for but don’t often see: engaging with something that matters to him. When he shared his screen, I could tell the research was his own. Not a trace of ChatGPT.

He was cautious with his words at first. Five minutes in, after the usual introductions, I could sense he was testing the waters. He said he wasn’t sure if I liked his topic. I understood immediately. I’d told the class I write for DHS. He was looking at someone he thought might be on the other side.

I always tell my students at the beginning of each semester that they should walk away from the course still uncertain about my politics. In my lectures, I emphasize that I’m not expecting anyone to simply repeat a point of view. I welcome when students challenge my personal positions, which I keep quiet and private as best as possible. That’s the boundary I set. I’ve held this since I was a 23-year-old teaching fellow working on my first master’s degree. Last fall, a heated discussion on health care reform tested this. I stayed neutral, focused on how students presented their arguments, not on where I stood.

But this time, with Mark, I crossed the line. Or at least, I thought I did.

I told Mark that not only did I agree with his position, but I honestly couldn’t imagine how anyone couldn’t.

The real question was what he wanted to argue for. What did he want the reader to do? Protest until ICE stopped the raids in San Diego? Call their representatives? Show up at a rally? That was the work. That was the op-ed.

I think I’ve crossed the line with my viewpoint before, but don’t remember doing it this directly. I’ve been thinking about the conversation since, and I’ve come to believe this wasn’t really about politics. For the past year, I’ve told myself that speaking out—whether at work, in class or in writing—means taking a side. But my conversation with Mark has stuck with me. Something has changed. We’ve crossed a line in this country. I don’t think we get to stay out of this anymore.

***

So Mark was one of eight students in my class writing about ICE. Eight out of 26. Another eight chose college affordability. A few others focused on mental health and the weight of working full time and carrying a full course load. No one picked trivial topics or subjects unrelated to their own lives.

Last semester, one of my students told me she had friends whose families were in hiding. Her own family had their documents in order, but they were still nervous. She said this casually, the way you mention the weather.

My students work in restaurants, for family businesses, and in warehouses. Some commute an hour each way when they need to go to campus, scraping together enough cash for gas. Some are responsible for siblings, paying half the rent in a single-parent home where their mother or father works two jobs. Some are raising children, making breakfast for someone else before they eat themselves. They juggle more than I ever did.

When a third of a first-year writing class independently chooses to write about the same federal agency, that tells you something about what is happening in their communities right now.

***

I’ve been involved in federal contracting, on and off, for ten of the past fifteen years. Six of those years were spent as a technical writer at a large engineering firm, where I worked on fire safety reports for a state transportation department and developed design specifications for bridge-tunnel projects. Four more years went to supporting various firms with IT proposal work.

I never felt any tension about what I do. If you lose sleep over bridge specifications, that’s only because you’re racing a deadline, not because you’re questioning your place in the system. For ten years, the work was professional, impersonal. I was good at the work, and then I moved on to the next deadline. But on my best days, I was proud of what I produced and what the company did. Yes, the work was boring a lot of the time (most jobs are), but I learned how things were built and how the government functioned.

And then there’s Mark, a first-generation college student watching me through a Zoom screen, wanting to write about the agency I help secure contracts for. I felt something close to embarrassment. I do support the federal system. I write the documents that turn strategy into action. If my firm doesn’t win the contract, someone else will. My personal opposition to ICE’s actions in San Diego, Minneapolis and elsewhere doesn’t change how closely I am tied to this machinery.

This was the first time my work and the world collided in a way I couldn’t look away from.

***

I’ve been jaded. I can admit that now. Working multiple jobs, teaching at two schools, writing proposals full-time—it has worn me down. I stopped writing anything creative. I forgot what it was like to care about a piece, to feel a sentence or an argument land somewhere beyond a checklist. Lately, I’ve tried to get back to basics. I set aside time, most days, to write about things I care about.

In that introductory lecture to my online class, I told the students that writing isn’t about making sentences. Machines do that now. We write to understand our own thinking. To write well is to know how we think. I believed that when I said those words. But somewhere in the grind of proposals and grading, I stopped practicing it myself.

I’d forgotten how passionate students are when you give them room to be. When you teach online, asynchronously, and no one asks for a conference, you start believing no one wants to be there. The whole thing starts to feel transactional. Assignment, grade, repeat.

Mark reminded me that not everyone treats it that way. That I’m wrong. In 35 minutes, he did what I spend whole semesters trying to get students to do: He showed up, asked questions, pushed past his assumptions and committed to writing something he believed could move someone. A freshman. A computer science major. The only one out of 26 who reached out to talk.

At the start of this year, I promised myself I’d write again. Not proposals. Not compliance narratives. Essays. Arguments. The kind of writing I trained for and kept putting aside because the bills had to be paid. Lately, the writing has been coming out of me in a way it hasn’t in years.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Mark’s conference shook something loose. He reminded me that the small acts aren’t small at all. That’s where meaning survives, even when everything else feels like it is coming apart.