I don’t have much time to write/reflect lately, so I’m just posting here as a place holder of some of the writing I’ve done over the last week. Here are my thoughts on visibility. The second one is 255 words, I hope that this is ok, I realize the other one is not yet at 200 so hopefully this won’t make our word count all off!

Making visible the writing/thinking/learning/teaching processes

As I mentioned in my introduction, part of my desire to create course blogs it to serve as space where we (as a class) archive ideas, document discussions, and create knowledge related to a particular subject. This was the impetus for my first course blog when I taught Chicana/o-Latina Gender and Sexuality Studies. I see course blogs as making visible the very need to continue to ask students to engage with difficult dialogues on gender, race, sexuality, and class (among other identity categories). In this way, I believe this makes visible the relationship between teaching/learning and scholarship/application. I see blogs as creating a space where feminists can engage with larger questions related to their scholarship (or the field – like Chicana feminisms, Chicana/o gender/sexuality) and how students (at many different levels) are engaging with it. As part of my pedagogy, I ask my students to think about their own identities in relation to what we read, discuss, and/or theorize. Blogging enables me to facilitate this work on multiple levels, within the classroom in relation to texts, and in cyberspace in relation to the many fields of Women’s/Gender/Chicana feminisms.

On vulnerability/intimacy

As a graduate student I have often not shared with my students, until after the course has ended, my personal blog. While I often encourage my students to think about their own stories/how they hold value, and my blog’s goals engage with these ideas, I have felt that this grants my students too much access to me as their teacher. As a Chicana I have also experienced students challenging my authority in the classroom. Because of this I have been hesitant to share very personal, intimate, and vulnerable aspects of myself within the context of the classroom. While I am open about my queer sexuality in my classroom allowing students access to my personal blog seems as if I may be allowing them to come into my home. As a Chicana I also am committed to being accessible for other women of color within the academy, placing me in an uneasy balance between too accessible or not accessible enough. Throughout the conversations we have had here on “It’s Diablogical!” however, I have been opening up to the idea of sharing my course blog with my students in different ways. In asking my students to be vulnerable as part of their transformative learning processes I realize that I must also continue to push myself to model this for my students. These questions of intimacy, access, dissolving binaries between teacher/student while retaining non-hierarchical authority, and modeling shape my reflections on how my relationships with students shift and change and is very much related to my blogging practices.