We all know that feeling of walking into class on the first day. There’s the excitement of finding out which friends are enrolled, the worry that there’s already been an assignment you have missed, and the hope that you’ll like the professor. For students enrolling in a student forum, there’s no professor at all, just one or two of their peers who are equally as nervous as them.

Student forums have been taught at Wesleyan since 2004, giving students a chance to lead their peers through discussion, teach topics they are passionate about, and gain up to two academic credits throughout their four years. Even in a pandemic, student forum leaders carefully designed their syllabi and adapted to the new learning environment. This semester, 16 student-led classes were offered, in disciplines including film, environmental science, theater, and leadership techniques. The Argus talked to leaders of four of the student forums running this spring to find out what they’ve been up to this semester.

Mockumentary: Film on Film 

For seniors Ben Spencer ’21 and Mike Bloom ’21, their student forum “Mockumentary: Film on Film” was a long time coming. 

“Ben and I were freshman-year roommates, and we had accumulated a lot of mockumentaries over the years, and so that made putting together the syllabus, I wouldn’t say quite easy, but not the biggest challenge,” Bloom explained. “It felt like an accumulation of three years of our friendship.”

After years of talking about their favorite mockumentaries together, Spencer and Bloom wanted to get more voices in on the conversation and show students examples of the genre besides the ever-popular shows “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation.”

“Ben and I really wanted to get a great group of people together and just share some other ways that the mockumentary form could be used and how it can express not only comedy,” Bloom said.

Though Spencer and Bloom technically led this forum, they emphasized that teaching the class was also a learning experience for them.

“We’re not experts in this at all,” Spencer remarked. “I mean, we’ve watched a lot of documentaries. We did a lot of research putting together readings for all the different weeks that complement the films, but we didn’t want to be talking heads in front of the classroom.”

Instead of spending their class time lecturing, Spencer and Bloom organized their class around lively discussion about the films they watched.

“I’ve been in so many great classes at Wesleyan that have been amazing discussion spaces, where everyone brings in an equal part,” Spencer said. “I think that’s been something that we’ve been really able to succeed at—creating a space where everyone brings an equal part to the class.”

The experience of teaching a student forum about mockumentaries brought up larger questions about film, including about how it is generally taught.

“I think there is a quality to [the forum] that is, in some ways, a response to the way that film is taught at this school,” Bloom said. “We had originally attempted to have the mockumentary course as a film course, and it was not approved by the film department. There’s this rigid hierarchical structure to the way that film [is] taught…. And so one of the goals that Ben and I have [is that] people who took the class came away with the understanding that film is something that you learn and discuss with your peers.”

However, the pair did credit their professors at Wesleyan for inspiring the class. The two thanked Professors Tracy Strain and Lisa Dombrowski from the College of Film and the Moving Image especially for their influential role in developing their forum.

“I think after four years of taking classes at Wesleyan, we’ve definitely tried to channel the most positive parts of what we’ve experienced in the classroom,” Spencer said.

As seniors, their Wednesday night forum will be the last undergraduate classroom experience Spencer and Bloom have at Wesleyan.

“The class did such an amazing job. Over and over, Mike and I just glowed about the group that we have, and how well they’re able to buy into talking about a movie, even if it’s not their favorite. There’s always something interesting to talk about,” Spencer said.

Community-Based Art Making In Practice

Tamara Rivera ’21 leads “Community-Based Art Making in Practice.” Her forum is in collaboration with Forklift Danceworks, an Austin-based dance company that combines dance with community engagement. As Rivera explained, she first got connected with Forklift during a sophomore year environmental studies class and now is collaborating with them for her senior capstone.

“Their goal is really to show the invisible work that [essential workers are] doing for the community, so that there can be more of a bond and respect formed between the community and the workers,” Rivera explained. “By working with [Forklift Danceworks] for the past three years […] we’re trying to expand their [reach] at Wesleyan and make it a hallmark of Wesleyan that we appreciate our essential workers on campus. It was even before the pandemic that that was our goal.”

Now that Rivera has expanded her work to the Wesleyan community, she is in charge of teaching other students, which can be a daunting task for student forum leaders.

“Oh my gosh. It’s so weird. With my forum specifically, I’m sharing my personal experience and my past knowledge in the work. [I’m] making sure they are feeling okay with the process and making sure they can confide in me if they feel uncomfortable about anything,” Rivera said. “So I feel more like a mentor, if anything.”

She explained that while she has more experience working with Forklift than her peers, the forum is still a collaborative space where students are building knowledge together.

“We communicate a lot with each other and build from each other,” Rivera said. “We do the readings together, so it’s not like I’m reading it ahead of them and know everything before them. We all try to be on the same level, but I definitely know that they lean on me to make sure that everything is organized and everything is going as planned.”

As much as Rivera’s forum is an educational experience, it also centers relationship-building beyond a classroom setting. Combining job shadowing and performance, Rivera and her students are actively getting to know important members of the Wesleyan community.

“I hear this all the time from Maria, the staff member that I’m with, but she just hopes that everyone realizes that there’s a friendship that’s always blossoming, and always has been budding, between students and staff,” Rivera said.

Rivera looks forward to the final performance her class has been working on, but also stresses how much she has enjoyed getting to know the Service Management Group (SMG) workers who participated in her class.

“My favorite part is yet to come, because I know it will be the performance,” Rivera explained. “As of right now, I love just being with Maria, being with her in the library, cleaning for two hours.”

Studying alongside the SMG workers has also provided Rivera with a sense of home away from her own.

“It just reminds me of home every single time, because with the custodial staff workers, they remind me of my mom,” Rivera said. “It’s really soothing to think of back home and speak my language. I also get to open up to her about family and about how we relate to certain things. They really take care of me after a while. After shadowing the [custodial worker] in Bennett, her name is Astrid, she always sees me and she’s always like, ‘Did you eat today?’”

Being a student forum leader demands students be mentors and organizers, and each leader has a hope for their class. Rivera explained her ultimate goal for her students.

“I want my students to just remember to always thank an essential worker nearby,” Rivera concluded. “I think something that’s impactful from this work is that you’ll always notice the little things that other people do for you afterwards.”

Ecological Crises: Investigation Through Performance

Elizabeth Woolford ’22 and Michayla Robertson-Pine ’23 lead the student forum “Ecological Crises: Investigation Through Performance,” which allows students to work through the tensions of living through and making art amid multiple environmental crises.

“We are interested in how performance, how theater, intersects with environmental activism and how to make a piece of theater that talks about ecological crisis and doesn’t feel horrible,” Woolford explained.

While both took last semester off to start up Tin Can Learners, a virtual educational experience for children, Woolford and Robertson-Pine wanted to continue to utilize a classroom environment to think about the issues that mattered to them.

“From a teaching perspective, I think we wanted to do this because–from what we’ve talked about together and talked about with a lot of our friends, especially who want to be artists in some way, shape or form–there’s this question of what is the purpose of art right now when there’s a million crises?” Robertson-Pine said. “The world is ending and I’m making a piece of theater. Is that self-indulgent? What are the realistic, but also aspirational, boundaries and importance of this work? [We wanted] to create a space for those questions to be talked about and asked and thought through with other people.”

Every day is different in Woolford and Robertson-Pine’s forum. Students are given various creative prompts and discussion topics. Students use theater to work through existential questions, but their class isn’t just made up of theater majors.

“And [the students] are not just theater people, not just art people, the SISP kids are coming in hard,” Woolford said. “I am excited about offering people those [creative] tools and offering to them that creativity and creative generation doesn’t have to be hard and scary and unapproachable.”

Like Spencer and Bloom, Woolford and Robertson-Pine were excited to share their passion with the campus and bring more of their peers into the conversation.

“In some ways it’s really exciting and fun because it feels like, ‘Wow, this is a big group of people to just be excited about the same things with,’” Robertson-Pine said.

The pair stressed the exciting opportunity that teaching a student forum provides.

“We’ve gotten the coolest people in the room together that are all interested in the same thing as us,” Woolford added.

Woolford and Robertson-Pine are in the process of preparing for the final class project which they’re calling “A Party at the Edge of the World.” Looking back on their forum, the two were excited about the opportunity that leading it gave them.

“These student forums [are] such a huge untapped resource, mostly for people who want to lead them,” Robertson-Pine said. “I really wish that more people use them as robust opportunities to do awesome stuff. We’re walking out of this class with a full syllabus of course material that is the equivalent of a whole other capstone. And [we’re] walking out with 15 people who are thinking [about] the same kind of thoughts that we are and will implement them in the work that they’re doing.”

Leadership and Legacy: Exploring Your Leadership Style and Potential

Ariana Baez ’22 teaches her student forum, called “Leadership and Legacy: Exploring Your Leadership Style and Potential,” as the leadership intern for the Office of Student Activities and Leadership Development. As a leader on campus, Baez wanted to create a space for other students to develop their own skills.

“I came up with the course as a means of creating [a place for] leadership development,” Baez said. “Oftentimes Wesleyan, because it’s a liberal arts education, is not focused on career-oriented or self-development type courses because they’re misconceived as a vocational course and…oftentimes vocational work isn’t deemed as important. However, my course did incorporate academic texts and skill-based activities in order to combine both the traditional essence of the liberal arts education with a course that will help develop your own skills to create a better version of yourself.”

Especially in a pandemic, Baez stressed the importance of being supportive of her students throughout the course.

“I understand that everyone is coming into space with different experiences and different feelings,” Baez said. “We center ourselves and establish that this is a space where we are all going to be willing to work and learn together, but also lean on each other if we need to,” Baez said.

While carefully fostering positive classroom dynamics, student forum leaders are all on a mission to teach their peers something meaningful.

“I want them to be able to understand their value sets as leaders, to understand their specific leadership style, to know that not all leaders look the same way or carry themselves the same way and understand that your individual leadership style is important for you to be successful in whatever environment you enter,” Baez said.

One of the benefits for all students enrolled in a student forum is being taught by a peer who understands what you are going through. Baez explained the benefits of having a student-led class.

“Something that you really have to establish is that we’re all students,” Baez remarked. “So, I understand if you’re going through something. I’m stressed too.”

 

Olivia Luppino can be reached at oluppino@wesleyan.edu.