Thinking about toxicity within some sort of taxonomy seems to evoke a sort of parasite, or bacteria, or general pathogen that introduces a disease which then blooms outward from its singular point of entry or origin. More literally, this would be one instance of toxic behavior in a classroom that is sufficiently damaging so as to create a feeling of academic or writerly malaise in the instructor and/or students. Perhaps a student says something hateful to someone in or outside of the classroom and the instructor poorly addresses this as a problem. From this moment, opportunities for vulnerability could feel dangerous, or hateful speech could be seen as somewhat unrestrained. Perhaps the teacher introduces a syllabus with toxic language, or assigns a reading that prompts a debilitating response in students. In these sorts of situations a pattern of introduction and lack of treatment seems to lead to the demise of the class’s ecosystem health.

In my classroom however, I think a more apt metaphor would borrow from the imagery and effects of pollution. A stream might encounter a variety of pollutants at many different points of entry. Perhaps this stream sits next to a road. In the winter road-salt falls in huge quantities to reduce the risk of icy conditions, and later city workers lay sand down to enhance traction. Across one winter maybe the parts per million of NCl in the freshwater stream are low enough so that the stream and its substrate can act as an effective sink for the pollution, diluting it across space so the organisms are mostly unaffected. Across many winters though, the salt and sand accumulate, changing the character of the stream environment, slowly enough so that observers have difficulty accessing a past frame of reference off which to evaluate their current stream.

I think this metaphor is more accurate because (at least as far as I can tell) there haven’t been any single instances of toxic behavior, speech or teaching that has hurt students or affected their experience particularly negatively. What I am more worried about is the slow, mostly unobserved norming processes that percolate into our classroom, either from me, from other students, or from the university. I don’t know the language or affects my students adopt and use for this class when they’re not talking to me, but I imagine they influence each other in a thousand small ways. If one student says that this is an easy class and they don’t really have to do the homework, I wonder how that incrementally affects each and every student (and me!) downstream of that claim. Maybe the school systematically pushes them to prioritize their GPA over the risks that would be more conducive to their own learning. Maybe I say something every day, or accidentally through my body language communicate some sort of confusion or lack of preparedness, that taken one a time are somewhat negligible, but across the quarter create an academic emergency.

I’m worried about this process of toxic norming because I think it feels a little out of anybody’s individual control, and I feel like I’ve seen it happen over and over in other contexts. Like water, the classroom environment moves across many different physical spaces, and is subject to a million different influences. Nobody really owns it (as much as the city of Los Angeles would like to owneveryone’s water) and eventually we all end up drinking from the same well.