Embodied Pedagogy

It is a holiday here today and I woke up early to enjoy the quiet before the sounds of the world around me appeared. I managed 5 mins. Apparently you need to get out before 8:25 because at 8:30 every construction will start and that’s the end of quiet. So I’m going to hold on to those 5 minutes I guess, but it’s a nice segue to what I actually wanted to talk about today which is how we embody our environment and our pedagogy, even if we don’t realize that is what is happening.

I had a root canal last week and then a subsequent really bad reaction to the antibiotics I was given. Basically I was on the computer typing merrily away and then I couldn’t; my hands started tingling and I developed a fever. Fortunately, I am better now, but during all of this I kept thinking how much our bodies dictate our pace, how much our bodies inform and in turn react to our surroundings. This all seems pretty obvious but it isn’t when you take it in the context of pedagogy, and the discussion about what fall semester is going to look like for both K-12 and colleges and universities demonstrate that there has been not enough thought put into who much our pedagogy is embodied and has to be embodied, until now.

Those of us who write know this embodied learning and information production environment well. We have spaces where words just appear a lot easier than others. For me, my deck is quickly becoming a space where words come, where reflection happens, where hours of thought gets lost in the clock. I acknowledge how privileged I am to have an outdoor space to myself in this pandemic. It is a rare opportunity and I try to use it as much as I can. Others may have indoor spaces that equally produce the words they search for, it could be a library (before COVID of course) or even a space in your home that works for that purpose. My desk in my living room has been the source of acceptable words over the past 8 years or so, but I find myself at the mercy of a really crappy desk chair at the moment, which puts a dent in the flow.

What does this information production, this space for words, this space for learning look like educationally? In pre-COVID times classrooms as learning spaces were often conceived (in architecture alone) as auditoriums for sitting, listening, and note taking. With the movement towards more active learning classrooms this pedagogical space became more embodied and accessible as a movement towards using many senses to engage and particularly the option and choice to engage in the way that learners wish. There is an aesthetic to both of these spaces, one comes coupled with hundreds of years of “what academe looks like,” the other comes with an aesthetic that many argue (not me) is like “new Coke,” why change it if it wasn’t broken? Except it was broken and it needed to be changed. You get the idea; there is a level of comfort that comes with each aesthetic and that comfort derives from how connected you are to the learning and the pedagogy that happens in these spaces. It is body dependent, it is how you define yourself dependent, for both learner and educator (as a recent article that I read by Chris Friend reminded me).  The privileged experience of shopping for school supplies, something that has a very big aesthetic resonance as “new beginning” for me, has been disrupted. I see the ads for pencils and lined paper- but I know it is not the same and it probably never will be. 

When teaching remotely or online, we cannot forget about that embodied pedagogy and how learning is embodied even if it is framed virtually. Our learning spaces are now physically not the same, but even when we were in classrooms although we were in the same “space” everyone’s connection, comfort, reaction, is different. When we homogenize our thought around learning and pedagogy, this is where inequities live. This is where we build barriers to engagement. So what does an embodied remote pedagogy look like, feel like, sound like, smell like, taste like? The first step to all of this I feel is to acknowledge our own space and reflect on how much that informs our teaching practices. That means acknowledging the Indigenous land that you are on and how much that colonial history informs what you have access to. For me I am currently on the traditional land of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat but I was raised on the traditional land of the Omamiwininiwag (Algonquin). It is acknowledging that I have the privilege to live in a rented unit in a house that provides me shelter, even though it may be a place that does not necessarily provide me comfort. I have an Internet connection that is relatively stable which is again a point of privilege. My Internet connection allows me to connect to a Personal Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter which grows yearly; an embodiment of pedagogues with different values, different focuses, but similar spaces of connection through teaching. Now take that and overlay it to the learning space you wish to create and foster.

We have no control over the learner’s physical space of learning, but we need to have an awareness of pedagogical strategies that can create engagement and community, regardless of where the learners are physically- be it in their childhood bedroom that they share with a sibling, be it at the kitchen table, be it in a car in a parking lot, be it on a cellphone on their apartment balcony. Also having an awareness of how learners can be engaging using different tools such as screen readers, braille, haptic interfaces. Video conferencing has created a phenomena of disembodied heads on a screen like The Brady Bunch. We can’t forget there are bodies to those heads, they exist in spaces they interact with every day. Acknowledge that in the pedagogy, give space for that as reflection. Be aware that those spaces may be spaces of trauma, like most of the world is now in COVID times. Trauma is embodied, and embodied trauma appears and reacts in different ways. Don’t force learners to engage with COVID topics if they don’t want to, give them choice. There is enough trauma right now that we don’t need to be creating more embodied trauma through engaging with course assignments and activities. 

Ultimately as much as academe and educational tools and technologies would like us all to be disembodied heads without bodies, it is important to always acknowledge that this is not the case. To ground our teaching and learning practices and spaces in an awareness of just how much all of this affecting our bodies. From a feeling of panic, a muscle ache, a toothache, the inability to eat, sore eyes, the inability to sleep or get rest, it is all part of this. Be aware of just how much this is affecting us all- and teach, facilitate, and support from there.