Mindfulness and an Ethics of Care: A Feminist Core to My #critped

I have taught women’s literature at college and university every semester for the past five years. This week’s #moocmooc focus is one that I hold near and dear to me for it is something that I evoke and engage with in every class.  During the first class of every semester we always have a frank discussion about feminism. I start the class by proposing the following question “What is feminism? Who are feminists?” I always receive the same three responses (or a paraphrase of the three responses) in order of prevalence:

1.       Women who hate men

2.       Lesbians who don’t shave their legs

3.       The belief in the equality of sexes (ding ding ding!)

By the end of the semester if we have truly critically engaged with the texts and ideas on the syllabus, I will receive a lot more #3 than #1 and #2 in their end of class reflection piece. I also want to note that I often have an equal amount of male and female students in my class.  It is not an easy point A to point B path to a critical engagement with feminism, it involves many difficult questions, a lot of reflection and insight, but also it requires the instructor to bring something to table first, a launch pad if you will. My launch pad is my syllabus which is filled with texts written by African-American women, Chinese women, Aboriginal women, Canadian women, American women, Indian women, British women, Caribbean women, Persian women, and lesbian women.  I choose these texts based on my strong belief that diverse voices should be represented in classrooms. I choose these texts because women’s literature is not feminist literature and students often come in with that preconceived notion. 

However, the concepts that I hold as central to being a teacher/instructor/pedagogue are also informed by my identification as a feminist, my study of feminist texts, and thus form the core of my critical pedagogy.  It is an extension to what @Jessifer and @Bali_Maha state here, 

that bell hooks “offers a feminist perspective on Critical Pedagogy, and also a critical pedagogical perspective on feminist pedagogy.”

I choose the texts on my syllabus because it allows the class to address gender in the classroom and beyond. At the end of the semester the students are actively bringing in representations of sexism they have found in the media, their seminar presentations question sexist practices through historical, cultural, or religious lenses. I do not prompt them, I leave all topics for seminars and the major research paper open. The students choose what they want to talk about and as such end up presenting ideas that they are really interested and engaged with.  What they often miss however is something that they don’t really conceptualize until their final reflection piece. That in their own work they have engaged with some of the larger ideas that bell hooks speaks to in Teaching to Transgress- that the students themselves have developed their own engaged pedagogy through critical analysis as the semester has progressed and often it is largely based on what can be understood as feminist pedagogical tenets for it has these three important qualities:

1.   It is a Pedagogy of Mindfulness 
2.  It is a Pedagogy of Wholeness 
3.  It is Ethical and Incorporates an Ethics of Care

  A Pedagogy of Mindfulness:

As I mentioned in my previous blog post (here) there needs to be mindfulness in our educational practices. Reflection is the core of critical pedagogy and as hooks suggests it is part of the process for any body of feminist work or feminist pedagogical engagement.  Mindfulness highlights the well-being that is needed in #critped or feminist pedagogy for it to become an engaged pedagogy. This week The Chronicle published an article (here) about the importance of “a pedagogy of presence” that we should be always in the here and now in our educational spaces. This is of course mindfulness; the need to connect with our students not just on the topics and ideas that are exchanged in the class but on a human level. This is especially true, as the author suggests, in online classes. I think this is something that we do particularly well in #moocmooc or in #rhizo14. We connect as scholars, as thinkers, but also we acknowledge each other’s educational presence and space through chats, retweets, and even favouriting. We are “present” in each other’s “virtual” space either synchronously or asynchronously.  We work through these ideas together or diverge onto connected yet separate paths (hi #rhizo14 people, waves). Our reflections and mindfulness take us to interesting and important places.

A Pedagogy of Wholeness:

We should also strive for wholeness. As hooks and Freire both suggest, classrooms and students should be about active participants and not just passive consumers of information. In Teaching to Transgress hooks mentions Thich Nhat Hanh and the concept of holistic learning. It is this kind of wholeness, complete selves, that I feel is central to a feminist pedagogy and critical pedagogy.  This week a colleague of mine shared this wonderful infographic and article here.These twelve main points really reinforced the need for a holistic approach to pedagogy. Moving from mindfulness, a pedagogy of wholeness has critical and collaborative aspects, flexibility, resiliency, and vision. I strongly recommend that you read these 30 points and reflect on if you are achieving this both in your educational space but personally as an educator. I know this gave me much to think about as I reflected on this week’s #moocmooc topic of feminist pedagogy and pedagogy of care.

An Ethics of Care (Or why you should all read Maurice Hamington):

bell hooks reminds us that we should all teach in a way that cares for the souls of students. In my class I remind students to be aware of their peers (mindfulness) and express the same sort of care that they would expect others to express towards them. This highlights authenticity (as I mentioned in my previous blog post) and yes it may bring up very difficult discussions and yes there are definitely going to be instances where peers do not agree, but as long as the respect and ethics of care for the classroom space is present, these conversations can be enjoyable even if difficult. It hardly needs to be said that there is incredible value in student expression; it is another key to an engaged pedagogy. The work of Maurice Hamington has been a guiding force both when I was writing my dissertation on tactility in Victorian literature, and today in my pedagogical practices.  I give you the following from Hamington’s work:

“For the sake of my analysis, habits can be divided into three categories: acaring, noncaring, and caring. An acaring habit is a morally neutral pattern the body uses to navigate its environment […] Noncaring habits are those that harm another embodied being; examples include spousal abuse, child molestations, and acting out road rage. Caring habits are those that exhibit a regard for the growth, flourishing, and well-being of another.” (Hamington 57) [1]

As educators we should be working towards the caring habits Hamington outlines here and avoiding the noncaring habits at all costs. Acaring habits are also interesting in relation to the actual classroom space (architecturally) but I do not have the space to go into this here (it is also tangential to the main topic but if you are interested ask (or read my dissertation, lol).  

These caring habits create healthy ethical classroom environments. My worst fear would be for my students to feel, as hooks states: “My professors were not individuals whose teaching styles I wanted to emulate.” To be clear, I certainly do not want legions of mini-me’s; what is important however is there is something present in the educational experience that the students can latch on to and carry in their own direction. If the educational experience is boring, if the teacher does not demonstrate that care for the creation of knowledge, then the connections to experience and practice needed in order create lasting engagement and critical insight will not happen.

As a follow up to this point (and I promise my last bit of insight before this truly becomes tl;dr) ; yesterday I went to an exhibit at the gallery in the university where I am an adjunct (their twitter handle is here if you want to follow them). It was a wonderful exhibit called “Temperamental” and there were many pieces which made me think of the societal relationship to space through the sensory. Also the name of the exhibit had me thinking about how we experience and delegate our time as academics. Last post I spoke of the Bergsonian durée and how ethical pedagogy requires a constant reinforcement of critical engagement, specifically because of our relationship to these “fleeting moments.” Yesterday I decided to go to the exhibit, to dedicate my time to that space for two reasons 1. I knew it would give me a lot to think about in terms of the sensory and 2. part of the participatory nature of education is that we need to participate in places that are not simply our classrooms, we should engage with all the educational spaces that are afforded to us. This also demonstrates a commitment to the hard work that the students put in to create these educational moments (in this case art). This is but one way that we can tear down barriers to fun that can circumscribe our classes (such as an overt focus on GPAs, grades, KPIs, etc.). When I was there I even ran into one of my students from last semester (in fact as I was going through the exhibit the student who was working the welcome desk at the gallery texted her “hey your prof is here” and she showed up to say hi).  It was lovely to see her and we reminisced about last semester and even had the opportunity to speak of the trans-friendly vagina monologues that they are presenting next month that I can’t wait to see.  All of this is learning, all of this brings experiences together to create new knowledge. All of this is mindful, holistic, ethical. And all of this is fun as it should be ;)

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[1] Hamington, Maurice. Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Feminist Ethics. Chicago : University of Illinois Press, 2004. Print.