Contextual Holistics

Nothing but small thoughts for me as I write this bright and early on a Saturday morning having just finished grading final assessments for the term. My small thought (sarcasm intended) is about contextual holistics and how we either bring our whole selves to situations or strategically or intentionally ignore parts of ourselves in situations. 

Why would this be something you are thinking of while cooking a mushroom omelette on a Saturday morning you may ask; well it is because I am working through an ethical situation in my head and this is where I landed. As I landed here it occurred to me that this has real pedagogical implications and therefore you get to read a few paragraphs of my mental hoops. 

We have talked a lot more lately about the importance of being mindful and bringing our whole selves to situations. The pandemic has really created a sense of disjointed self, disjointed time, and overarching considerations of folk based on small contextual positions without thinking about the holistic situation that one may be experiencing. For example, students may see their instructor as simply an instructor because that is what that person is to them. However, that instructor may be many many other things simultaneously, like a parent for example, or a caregiver, or a volunteer for a community organization and so so many other things. Sometimes forgetting that the instructor also has other contexts can lead to misunderstandings. We have a lot of conversations about positionality and the importance of expressing that positionality at the beginning of term in an attempt to get to a holistic understanding of the person. But this relaying of a positionality is also premised on if that educational space feels safe for such a discussion; it is about who is doing the delivery and who is doing the receiving. 

There are a myriad of power tangents to who is "allowed" to bring their whole selves to spaces. Being able to bring your whole self in some instances is about a whole lot of privilege. However, it occurred to me today that being able to ignore parts of yourself intentionally or contextually is also a very privileged situation. Some parts of yourself are easy to ignore or hide, and for others it is impossible. In educational spaces, students can choose to relay parts of their positionality to you, but there may be others they don't feel comfortable to share and you will never know because there is no way of knowing. This is why we say that approaching classroom situations with empathy is always such a good faith way to approach situations, because you never know. Some things are not obvious and nor should they be and students don't owe their instructors full disclosure. Trust is built and they will share what they feel comfortable and safe to share.

In a similar vein, if someone asks me to do something that is basically asking me to ignore part of myself, ethically that is a real real difficult stance for me to take. I know that I had this tendency to do this thing where if I did something seemingly intelligent I would say that it is because I am Italian, or if I did something not so great I would say it is because I am French.  I have talked this tension out with my parents because I felt it was learned behaviour from childhood and I have actively gotten better at not doing that (it is still a work in progress). But this doesn't negate the fact that all of it is who I am. All of the educational experiences, all the different contracts that I have had as an instructor, an instructional designer, as an educational developer, the marches and advocacy that I have participated in and initiated, my work as an ICP-MS technician, my research, all of it makes me who I am today. It allows me to have conversations with faculty in chemistry about assessments specifics, to appreciate math and symbolic logic, to appreciate and write poetry, and so many other things including allowing me to be the very vocal (I know I am sorry, but not sorry) advocate for accessibility on Twitter and in my work and in all the other service roles I have. Yes I can choose to tell people things if I feel safe to do so (also sidebar still have not found a place to have a vaccine in a medically supervised place), but I also can't stop being queer, or a woman, or an educational developer, or an accessibility advocate, or a researcher in context. I am all of those things. I wear many hats; I am all the hats. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about folk who have "opinions are my own" lines in their Twitter bios. I am not doing call outs or shaming; I fully support you in this. I just could never have a line like that because the answer to that to me is "of course" but also I am part of the ecosystem of where I work, I am the daughter of an Italian woman and French-Canadian man, and I am informed by where I grew up and where I went to school and the experiences I had there, this is who I am. So I guess what I am trying to say is I can't pick parts of me. I am always going to be the whole. Some of it I will share with you, some of it you may never know. But I can't ignore a part of me in context... that is asking a lot that I don't think I can ethically give.