Teaching Under Fire: An Educator's Struggle in America's Polarized Classrooms
I never used to sweat like this. Nearly ten years ago, in a small Texas town bisected by a crystalline river, a university student walked into my office with a Bowie knife sheathed at his hip. I didn't notice the weapon until we were nearly finished discussing the comma splices flooding his essay. "Next time, don't bring a weapon to my office," I told him as he departed. He offered a casual apology. The behavior was jarring, yet back then, it simply blended into the abrasive but ultimately toothless scenery.
The Texas Crucible: Guns, Politics, and Pedagogy
During my Texas tenure, colleagues and I were instructed to incorporate campus carry policies into our syllabi. This was a futile bureaucratic attempt to regulate state-sanctioned firearms in our classrooms. While Texas prohibited open carry on university grounds, concealed carry remained legal for any licensed student over 21. As an educator, it felt perverse to parse gun legislation—let alone codify basic human decency in a course outline. In America, the threat of violence is constant, but in the South, it feels especially ordinary. Academic positions in "Come and Take It" territory demand a tough, unyielding spirit. Working with individuals who view critical thought as a grievance is no simple task.
I believed I was built for this challenge. Conflict was a constant during my upbringing. As an artistic, contemplative yet ideologically headstrong child, I quickly became the black sheep in a rigidly structured Air Force family that prized acquiescence above all. A fraught, unsafe childhood forged a maladapted resilience against confrontation. Consequently, my strategy as a new adjunct professor was threefold: be commanding, judicious, and empathetic. As a young woman with tattooed sleeves, a baby face, and progressive values in a tenaciously conservative environment, my mask of unshakability was paramount.
Curriculum as Armor and the Escalating Climate
My lesson plans followed suit. I crafted my curriculum like armor, confident its rigor, relevance, and scope would counter local fears of "liberal indoctrination"—rhetoric I knew well from my own upbringing. Those initial composition students didn't merely read and write; we dissected logical fallacies in political debates and deconstructed feminist discourse through bell hooks, Roxane Gay, Chimamanda Adichie, and Beyoncé. I never avoided controversy or complexity, reveling in my ability to steer meaningful discussions. I had so much fight in me.
By 2019, I was still teaching freshman writing during the first Trump presidency while completing a master's in poetry—the mother of all esoteric focuses. This was on the eve of a global pandemic, a collective trauma that would be grotesquely swept aside in a rush to return to normal. Volatility is Texas's baseline, but tensions ratcheted higher. Racist posters appeared across campus, and white supremacist propaganda littered the grounds—sadly, nothing new for the Lone Star State. That year, our student government attempted to ban the local Turning Point USA chapter, arguing it threatened students and faculty. Governor Greg Abbott then threatened the university's funding and mandated all public campus grounds become open forums. I hadn't heard of Charlie Kirk then, but his name would soon resurface.
Remarkably, those days now seem tame. The first Trump administration and its fallout were a naïve rehearsal for what Project 2025 and a second, draconian Trump term promised. The horrors since include relentless attacks on DEI initiatives, masked ICE agents abducting and shooting neighbors, the gutting of institutions like the Department of Education, the grim debris of the Epstein files, and AI's monstrous impacts. According to extensive PEN America reporting, state legislators introduced 93 bills across 32 states in 2025 aimed at restricting higher education, with 21 becoming law in 15 states—setting three new records for educational censorship.
The California Classroom: A Serrated Déjà Vu
It's fall 2025, and I'm sweating profusely. Time, distance, and professional pivots have brought me back to the head of an English classroom, this time in California. Now, I wonder how you're not supposed to let them see you sweat when perspiration is visibly dripping. I choke at the whiteboard under fluorescent lights, stammering through my meticulously structured "Satire as a Rhetorical Device" presentation. While comedy can be contentious, my fear is existential: Can these students handle irony and political satire in this climate? Charlie Kirk had been shot on a Utah school campus just a week and a half earlier.
A student approached me after class to discuss his essay about finding religious faith through—you guessed it—Charlie. Beyond the logistical issues of writing about an unfolding tragedy, his premise was tenuous, and my response could jeopardize my career. Professors nationwide were being ousted for Kirk-related comments. "Did you say anything about it in class?" I asked a colleague. "No. It doesn't have to do with our class, and they are all adults," he replied. I'm repeatedly advised to cut political content to ease my escalating nerves. Yet, between Crooked Media podcasts and New York Times notifications, my media diet feels tame. What a privilege to compartmentalize. How misguided to think you're excluded from your environment—the "illusion of immunity," as addiction programs call it, or rugged individualism in American parlance.
As Wisława Szymborska wrote in "Children of Our Age," "Whatever you say reverberates, whatever you don't say speaks for itself. So either way you're talking politics."
Salvaging Education Amid Institutional Collapse
Mid-semester in California, I'm asked to take over a class following an abrupt faculty departure—a scandalous move in higher education reserved for acute crises. The circumstances were odd and unclear. I'm told not to contact the previous professor, and the classroom hangs heavy with rumor and ominous unease. I'm left to salvage a course already in disarray while navigating bigoted policies of an autocratic regime and a crumbling institution. The tension is almost tangible, a layer of silt.
I imagined California classrooms safer and brighter, shining with progressive promise, but the threat of physical or ideological violence bristles again—a serrated déjà vu. Self-censorship runs rampant among educators, and I anticipate sanctions or backlash at every turn. Every American teacher is Sisyphus to some extent, but each day brings heavier boulders testing courage and patience. My callused disposition fractures, making way for a crisis of confidence. "I spend nights combing through my course calendar again and again to hedge against which benign assignment could be weaponized as partisan provocation."
Some weekdays, I work 13 hours, with six spent commuting between two colleges to teach three classes—one of many joys of adjunct status in a take-what-you-can-get economy. I'm not sleeping or eating, and exercise has long since dissipated. If I'm not grading, I'm lesson-planning; if not that, managing my small content writing business or struggling to publish my own work for pennies. I lack health insurance, living wages, or guaranteed positions. Suddenly, I doubt whether neutrality is even possible in a culture softened to aggressive conservatism. Yielding to morally misled masses is soul-crushing, and I hate myself for bending. The question becomes: Is teaching college financially, spiritually, or physically sustainable? What is sustainable at a time like this?
The middle ground has been paved over, and the insidious ideological erosion of Trump's second term is in full swing. Professors are purged for philosophical orientations, teaching assistants removed for secular standards, and my TikTok feed floods with clips of students hijacking lectures or teachers "crashing out." At Texas A&M University, a philosophy professor was instructed to remove some of Plato's writings from his syllabus for touching on race and gender. And let's not forget the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, wherein the federal government asked nine schools to agree to funding-dependent conditions echoing McCarthy-era loyalty oaths.
A Compromised Ecosystem and Flickering Hope
The entire higher education ecosystem is now compromised—from research funding and student loans to accreditation, curriculum planning, and international recruitment. While institutional deterioration is rarely swift, PEN America notes that "in both quantity and quality, the second Trump administration's assault on higher education is without precedent in modern American history." I, like countless educators, feel defeated, depleted, and disheartened. In a historically thankless job, the latest challenges are absolutely untenable.
Perhaps the flashbangs from summer protests in downtown Los Angeles still ring in my ears. Maybe my students' essays about ICE dragging away relatives or the American flag as a co-opted symbol of white nationalism have shaken me. Or the terrifying reality has finally caught up: My foundational myths of academia, America, and goodness have imploded. Salvaging those ideals grows more unlikely each day.
I returned to teaching to engage with a culture in crisis the only way I know: studying writing as an intentional practice integral to critical thought. To write well demands time and effort; it isn't efficient, but it is worthwhile. Combine that with compassion, respect, and disciplined curiosity, and I'm convinced a more accurate way of seeing will reveal itself. Reading, thinking, writing—these are meaningful, beautiful acts that our relentless modern world urges us to abandon.
Education was initially my solace, escaping a violent upbringing. It gave me vocabulary to discuss myself, my life, and the world—a stable shelter with windows to broader horizons. School libraries held me tightly; I often hid inside as if they could save me. Teaching then became my way to survive the first Trump administration and fight for my community. I'm a reformist who watched "Dead Poets Society" and "Mona Lisa Smile" at an impressionable age, and it shows. If educators lose hope in the fragile possibilities of such places, I fear there's no turning back.
I feel myself slipping into powerlessness in a country that seems to care less about its people daily, and I've only been back in higher education one semester. In a profession riddled with overwork, underpay, and contemptuous conditions, countless teachers face the same despair. I often think of friends teaching in Texas and the broader South—their struggle is a bare-knuckle brawl, and I fear what comes next.
What Now? Glimmers of Fortitude
So, what now? How do we foster analytical reasoning, teach critical thought, or encourage empathy in a collective fugue state? What do we do once bullies win, paint everything gold, and make patriots of racists? How does one defend truth when liars are applauded? In a culture choosing depravity over humanity, what impetus do young people have to do better? Above all, how do we keep educators and students safe?
Despite the grief, there was much pride that autumn 2025 semester. My students wrote by hand daily. We read complex, unconventional texts like Mary Ruefle's "Pause"—a lyrical essay about menopause that felt revolutionary to assign, especially to young men. We tackled Susan Sontag's elusive "Notes on Camp" and embraced David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water" and "Consider the Lobster." Students engaged with substantial reporting on AI's effects on critical thinking, productivity, the environment, and relationships via John Oliver. Their AI-themed argumentative essays were written by hand, in person—both due to rampant AI use and as a deliberate form-follows-function lesson.
Maybe that's enough to be proud of. Maybe that's what fortitude looks like. Last semester, my students wrote some of the most delightful, inventive prose I've seen in years; their flourishing was remarkable. Our discussions sustained me when little else did, and they trusted me to lead despite my waning confidence. As I told them on our final day, it was an absolute pleasure to make sense of the world alongside them.
Now, at the helm during the 2026 spring semester, I'm torn and aching. Perhaps there is glory in what one can withstand, but part of me yearns for ease. These students deserve a fighting chance, but the fight shows no signs of slowing.
