Small Acts That Help Sustain Communities During Tumultuous Times
A 10-minute reflection tool to help you notice and nurture everyday acts of civic courage.
Last week, during a podcast interview about my work on civic courage, the host paused mid-conversation and asked me,
“Can I stop you there for a second? What exactly is civic courage?”
I smiled—it wasn’t the first time someone had asked.
Over the past month, I’ve been asked that same question dozens of times—in podcast interviews, meetings with campus leaders, and conversations with fellow educators.
Even those most committed to dialogue and democracy often pause when they hear the phrase civic courage.
Maybe it’s because civic courage sounds so big—perhaps even abstract.
One of the most common questions I get asked is whether civic courage is the same as civil discourse or courageous conversations.
It’s not—but those questions remind me of something important: even those of us who teach and practice civic engagement every day still crave clarity about what courage looks like in the day-to-day—especially when our plates are full and our bandwidth is low.
That question—what does it look like to exercise civic courage?—might sound basic, but it’s an important one. So, to begin today’s post, I want to slow down and share how I came to name this term, and why it might be useful for you too, work friends.
🌿 Why I Started Using the Term, Civic Courage
When I first began using the phrase civic courage, it was my way of naming something missing in higher education’s approach to care and conflict.
So much of our teaching and leadership literature centers on civility and “managing conflict.” As someone who teaches about emotions in politics, that framework always felt incomplete. To me, it sends an implicit message that feeling in teaching or leadership is a problem to fix—something to suppress in the name of professionalism or harmony.
The longer I’ve taught, the clearer it’s become: courage doesn’t happen in spite of feeling, but through it.
Civic courage doesn’t ask us to mask our emotions, but to recognize them as information. To see them as part of how we discern what matters, who we are, and what we’re willing to stand for.
As I shared on the podcast:
“Our role as educators isn’t to teach students to ignore what they feel—it’s to help them learn from what their emotions are trying to tell them.”
🎧 You can listen to the full conversation here: “Defining Civic Courage with Dr. Brielle Harbin”
That conversation partially inspired Wednesday’s post, The Courage We Don’t See, where I wrote about public and private courage—how much of what sustains higher education happens out of view, in quiet acts of care, curiosity, and conviction.
Today’s post is the companion to that reflection. It’s meant to take civic courage out of the abstract and into something you can practice—in real time, with whatever energy you have right now.
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
💌 What You’ll Find Inside Today’s Paid Post
If you’re a paid subscriber, today’s post walks you through The Hidden Courage Inventory—a simple, step-by-step reflection guide to help you identify the small ways you’re already practicing civic courage in your daily life.
You’ll also get gentle prompts to help you pay closer attention to how you engage with care, conviction, and community—and how you can nurture those moments with more intention.
✨ Inside, you’ll find:
A short, guided reflection that takes less than 10 minutes to complete
Questions designed to help you notice the “everyday courage” already present in your teaching, leadership, and relationships
A method for monitoring your own civic courage levels—noticing where you feel steady, where you feel stretched, and where you might need more support
This isn’t a checklist or assessment—it’s an easy to implement tool to help you notice how you’re already practicing civic courage in your daily life, and how you might do so with more clarity and care.