Just starting the six week of classes (wow!) and feeling overwhelmed…and sick. I always get sick in October. Oh well. Anyway, my semester is good so far. I’m proud of the blogging and tweeting in my classes–I really need to write an entry about my diablog assignment for my queering desire students (it’s the first week students are trying it out–they already did a tweet-chat–or what I called “tweet-a-logging”–this morning). I just wrote an entry on my trouble blog about how my classes all converged last week on the issue of troublemaking and asking questions. In that entry, I mention how difficult it is to teach, write and actively participate on four different blogs.

But, none of what I just wrote was the real purpose of my entry today. I was inspired to write here because I was reading bell hook’s Teaching to Transgress when I came across the following passage:

I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way that I would not share….It is often productive if professors take the first risk, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding of academic material. But most professors must practice being vulnerable in the classroom, being wholly present in mind, body, and spirit (21).

I think it is was this passage that first inspired me when I discussed practicing what I teach/preach this past summer in our diablog. In your notes from July 9th Meeting, you describe our offline/coffee-place discussion about taking risks with our students:

This moved us to another interesting conversation, the feminist pedagogical approach to only create assignments and/or ask your students to do work that you yourself would be willing to do. Both of us mentioned that this is a key piece of our feminist pedagogy and that using personal blogs or being committed to blog writing beyond the class blog demonstrates your commitment to using blogs as valuable ways to create and shape knowledge and learning. We began thinking about some feminist pedagogues that we could reference and expand upon their ideas with this piece on blogs – like Elizabeth Ellsworth’s ideas on vulnerability in the classroom, and Bernice Fisher’s No Angel in the Classroom. We want to bring some more pieces in that speaks to this idea of doing assignments with your students, or only doing work that you would be willing to do as a feminist practice, any one know of any?

Ah! I feel so lucky to be able to read and talk about hooks’ Teaching to Transgress this week! I love her idea of being wholly present in mind, body and spirit. What are some of the ways that we can do this in the classroom (offline and online)? What prevents us from doing this?