Virtual pedagogy: lessons from the world of sport

Today on the AC we are proud to share reflections by Cate Creede, a Toronto-based social scientist and core contributor at Fit is a Feminist Issue. Cate and Kim sweat it out together many mornings over Zoom, with a fantastic trainer and coach called Alex whom Cate works with IRL.

Below, Cate synthesizes the valuable, transferable lessons about student-centred online teaching that Alex models every day. For the AC team (Kim and Kelsey), these thoughts resonate deeply as we think about planning summer and fall classes online, and as we try to figure out how to empower and hold space for the young people in our lives in an inclusive, access-forward, feminist way.

Enjoy!

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Guest Author, Cate Creede

Like everyone else in the world, my life is suddenly filtered through a screen, including my work as a strategy facilitator, leadership and life coach and educator.  And like everyone who’s had to translate relational practice to a mediated environment, I’ve found it challenging – and a site of constant learning for myself.

One of my most fruitful sources about learning how to be a good online teacher and facilitator is my experience as a learner with my fitness coach.  Since the lockdown began, I’ve been working out almost every day with Alex Boross-Harmer, who was my real life coach and trainer in the Before Times.  She’s figured out how to translate her already-excellent teaching to an online environment – and in doing so, has reminded me again what good teaching is, both in one-on-one environments and in her classes.

Cate, with her trainer Alex Boross-Harmer, in the background

A few months ago, I was trying to figure out why Alex is such a powerful presence, compared to so many other teachers and coaches I’ve had in my life. With other coaches in small group fitness classes, I often find myself feeling inept, or like I can’t quite get the form right, or I’m hopelessly clumsy. It’s hard to articulate, but with many other coaches, even when they do and say all the “right” things, I can feel held back in a way. It’s not something specific like being adjusted, or told I should stay at a lower weight to focus on form, or lack of encouragement. Other coaches can do all those things “right,” and it’s fine … I can get a good workout, have a fun class. But what Alex does makes me feel simultaneously supported, challenged, encouraged, and stronger than I’ve ever felt in my life.

As I’ve been a learner in her virtual space during the pandemic, I’ve identified a few of the specific things she does that generate this empowerment for me.

• She creates safety by modeling vulnerability and authenticity herself;
• She uses whatever technology is available (in person or virtual) to create a playful environment that is conducive to exploring;
• She intuitively identifies our individual “zones of proximal development” (Vygotsky) and encourages us to work in those edges;
• She demonstrates her extensive knowledge through practical application (she was in grad school for kinesiology before she turned to coaching);
• She designs and leads classes based on our needs, not her agenda.

What does this actually look like in practice?

A few months ago, Alex told me that her aspiration as a coach was to make a space so her clients feel that the hour spent working out is their best hour in the day. The most critical way she does this is by modeling vulnerability and authenticity. 

She does this by checking in about where we are before class starts – sometimes just with a thumbs up/side/down.  She has an honest, infectious, joyful energy – but she always makes it okay to dial back, be sad or anxious, or be tired.  She assumes we have no equipment, and makes that okay – our bodies and a mat are enough.

Cate, doing a handstand.

She talks about being grateful to be in the space with us, and acknowledges how it improves her own mood.  She calls us a team, not a class, and then she does the workouts with us. She looks like a super fit person – and yet openly acknowledges being sweaty or out of breath.

Over the week, our daily “superhero virtual workouts” have a shape: mobility, strength, ramping up, rest, mobility, strength, etc.  Every workout has a shape too – mobility, strength, conditioning, stretching – with many options within it. She pays attention to what each of us is doing, watching us closely through the screen, offering modifications, reinforcing form, and encouraging.

As she does the workouts with us, she is honest about where she is tired, where her body is tight or painful, where she needs to cut back on reps or go for the lighter option. Her authenticity (in her genuine, spontaneous reactions and affect) models for us how we can find our own path, trust that we know our own bodies, and it ensures that we have permission to adjust and slow down.

Together, this creates trust and confidence: she holds the space and for us so that we can safely push our own edges.

Which is the second major thing she does:  she creates a playful environment that is conducive to exploring.

Cate’s trusty workout companions, excelling at active rest between sets.

When I first met Alex as a teacher, hers was the first class I ever felt inspired to dance in – just because her joy at being in the gym is infectious. (Note: I am not a person naturally given to expressing joy). She talks about workouts as “adult playtime,” and since we’ve been home, she’s built things like handstands and crow pose, and variations on the same, into a more traditional “HIIT” workout format. She can’t help herself from dancing or strict pressing her dog between sets, and she calls attention to how delightful people look when working out with their kids, or playing with their pets.  Even though we are mostly on mute, Alex’ interactions and laughing at herself create a sense of playful community that feels mutually supportive.

With her, I am simultaneously fearless and 9 years old, and wise and strong and 55. I will hurl myself upside down in a handstand in the middle of the floor, and I will trust her when she tells me to slow it down. Sometimes we are leaping around, and sometimes we focus deeply on one tiny mobility movement.

It all feels enlivened: this playfulness creates an “enlivened safety” where we can push our own boundaries.  Every workout we do with Alex is designed to scaffold us to build confidence at the end of our current capacity and push it just a little further – and then she pays attention to each of us to mark and signal our progress.

As a coach, Alex has an innate understanding of how to work with Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development.”  Where she push our edges with weight or equipment in “real life,” in covidspace, she designs workouts that always leave a little room for each of us, independently, to reach for an extra few reps. She finds new ways for us to use our bodies – like rowing movements using just our arms against the floor – that require no equipment but get the job done.

Bags of books sub in for dumbbells as the team do bicep curls.

She notices and names the edge for each of us, intuits that precise moment where, with encouragement and detailed analysis and guidance for our particular bodies, we can take it one step further. She pays attention to the chat box on Zoom and offers a continual stream of modifications if needed.  Even while she is doing the movements herself, she is calling out individuals with encouragement or suggestions – “Serena, LOOK at that wall walk!” – and tracking when we’ve done something like a freestanding handstand for the first time (which we can then all celebrate together).

All of this playfulness and presence is backed up by Alex’ ability to translate expertise into practical application.  Alex, a trained kinesiologist, has designed our weeks to have a cycle, starting with mobility and strength on Monday, playfulness and strength on Tuesday, conditioning and strength on Wednesday, rest on Thursday, ramping up on Friday and “sweaty Saturday,” followed by another rest day. There is a lot of theory behind the design, but understanding it is less important than the lived experience of feeling that each day feels doable and like “the right thing for today.”

A screenshot of one of Alex’s Covid-19 online workouts

Alex’s workouts have always been shadowed by this kind of impeccable expertise, but in the covidtimes, she does an even more critical translation of theory into practice because she assumes we have zero workout equipment, and works from there. This in turn creates a sense of resourcefulness, in multiple ways – our bodies become our reliable tools, something to know and explore more than ever.  We use what’s at hand – like lululemon bags filled with books or cans of soup – to add new options to existing moves. We are all negotiating new existences right now – and the symbol of a bag of books (or, in Kim’s case, a summer tire from the basement!) as a weight reminds us that we have the capacity to mcgyver our lives, to deal with whatever comes, with a little creativity and a little joy.

What all of this adds up to, for me, is that Alex designs and leads classes based on our needs, not her agenda. Clearly, she gets something out of this – she talks about the importance of this community and her gratitude for having the team alongside her – but it never feels like we are doing something because she thinks it would be a fun Instagram challenge or she wants to show off something she is good at.  She recognizes that in this extraordinary time, we are in need of movement, in need of care, in need of connection, in need of joy, and in need of reminders that we are strong and resourceful. We do squats and lunges and wallwalks and move our bodies – but the overarching experience is of feeling – for an hour – like we are superheroes who can handle whatever else comes.

Working out in covidtime means pets are part of the process!

Two months ago, I was in the gym lifting heavy things. Now, I can’t imagine trying to lift an actual barbell.  Deadlifting or back squats seem to belong to another type of person altogether — “but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead,” to retrieve a quote from my long ago undergrad in English. Yet there’s something fitting, RIGHT NOW, about working out by moving a towel around on a slippery floor with our feet, doing step-ups on a kitchen chair, lifting bags of books. “If this is too much, take some things out of your bags,” enjoined Alex as we moved from curls to flies.

That’s how I feel right now. I’m lifting unfamiliar things, every minute, and I need to take some things out of my bags. Integrating this literal metaphor into my workouts – and into my teaching and coaching, too – is reassuring me that I can adjust. I’m not in it alone.

We’re all looking for community. And we’ll all adjust.

Cate Creede, PhD, is a consultant, educator, and coach who lives in Toronto, working mostly in the space of academic healthcare and higher education.  She also runs a youth development project in Uganda and writes for the Fit is a Feminist Issue blog. She is aiming for a successful freestanding handstand by the end of the lockdown.

You can find out more about Alex at www.abhmovement.com

For more on Cate, see: https://www.potentialgroup.com/about-us/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pandemic Online Learning: Take-Away Lessons

By Julia Henderson:

Now in week five of isolation, my panic has eased slightly. Until recently, a goal for many of us was to finish up courses in progress by whatever means we could. Some of us have had some profound insights, some of us merely survived. Many of us feel saturated with “top tips” commentaries. So, I sit at my computer again, grappling with what to write that feels meaningful.

I have to admit I am struggling to keep up as my 5-year-old and my 13-year-old are tasked with learning online. They need assistance, support, guidance, and encouragement. It feels disorderly and haphazard. Sometimes this relates to their teachers’ efforts to deliver online curriculum. Other times it is due to our ability (or more accurately, inability) to uptake all the new requirements. How am I supposed to work full-time, revamp my postdoc research to be done without participants, and become the classroom aide to my two children?—never mind also take on the roles of house cleaner, pet keeper, and full-time cook—all jobs I had outside help with before. As I write this, my five-year-old has entered and asked, in tears, if I could PLEASE read him stories.I feel overwhelmed.

Can we just stick with baking and books?
(Photo Credit: Nancy Caldwell, Pandemic Porch Series, @nancy.w.caldwell)

So, in this state, I think ahead to the summer term which will need to be delivered fully online. Since these courses will be virtual from their outset, learners are likely to have higher expectations for slick course delivery. However, many instructors still lack experience teaching online. I keep returning to the question “how can we make teaching meaningful, achievable, as efficient as possible, and not overwhelming to our students and ourselves?” Below, I’d like to offer some thoughts I’ve had and some things I’ve learned from my family’s online experiences so far during lockdown. Thanks to my friend and colleague Ash McAskill, Postdoctoral Fellow at Guelph University, for talking through some of these ideas with me.

DON’T TEACH REQUIRED CONTENT IN REAL TIME

Unlike previous online courses which students opted to enroll in and instructors (usually) chose to teach, now students and teachers are forced to participate in online courses. This brings new considerations. In the past when students chose to take an online course, we could assume they had good online access. Now we cannot make that same assumption. Not everyone has a device available to them at any time of the day. Families are sharing, Wi-Fi is sometimes overloaded and sketchy, some students are trying to do their work on phones. If you want to include optional real-time check-in sessions with your students, by all means do so. One-on-one and small groups work best in my opinion. But for the love of god/goddess do not deliver required learning in real-time online lectures at this time! It causes undue stress for many students.

KEEP IT CHUNKY!

It is way easier to digest course content in smaller chunks. Instead of recording one-hour lectures, prepare 4 or 5 mini-lectures. Instead of assigning lengthy readings, choose shorter ones, or break the long ones into more manageable chunks. Perhaps assign summaries of certain readings instead of the originals. Find ways to design shorter assignments or divide longer ones into distinct tasks. We must keep in mind that many people are no longer able to find lengthy, uninterrupted work blocks.

THINK ABOUT ACCESSIBILITY

My older son is in 8^th grade and as such has 8 different courses, and 8 different teachers. Looking at his course content and communications, it is abundantly clear that most of his teachers have little to no training in making online content accessible. First, there is just TOO MUCH TEXT crammed in. The fonts are too small. They often don’t use hyperlinks. Images do not have an alt-text description. The colour combinations of font on background are sometimes difficult to read. My son, who is a straight-A student, finds the online content overwhelming. So, for anyone not used to designing courses online, I would strongly advise two things. First, take a look at some tips on writing for the web. There are simple ways you can adapt your writing to make your materials more approachable/readable. Secondly, look into tips on accessible online course design. Some simple strategies make a big difference to many learners.

If only I could read this font!!!

TEST OUT YOUR TECHNOLOGY!!!

So, my son’s English teacher decided to have a real-time group session online. I’m not sure why, but she combined 4 classes in the one session (that’s A LOT of participants!!). She then asked some students to help her with the technology. Well, I don’t know if it was the boredom of isolation, or the general mischievousness of teenagers, but the students started posting comments and drawing pictures (you can imagine) on the online blackboard, and she didn’t know how to stop it. She eventually just left the session and we got an email the next day beginning with “Well I won’t be trying that again!!!” Although this whole episode was immensely amusing to my son and his classmates, it did not achieve learning of any course content, and I am sure it was humiliating to the teacher (who fortunately had a good sense of humour).

The moral of this story: test out your technologies before using them with your classes. In depth. For real.

HOLD SPACE

Another of my son’s assignments was for students to reflect on some of the things they had learned during isolation. My son came to me rather incensed because the teacher had commented to students that they should avoid being negative and come up with some positive things they had learned. I agree it’s important to think about some of the positive things we have learned during this pandemic (the extent of our over-consumption, how profoundly we affect the environment, how much we are typically over-scheduled, etc.). But insisting on positivity is not productive or healthy; we need to talk about our hurt and fear and dreariness, and we need to try to avoid toxic positivity. As my friend and University of Toronto PhD Candidate Rena Roussin writes,

“Optimism, positivity, and gratitude are all wonderful things. I’m striving to practice them as much as I can . . . But it’s okay to have moments when you just can’t. It’s okay to be sad for a while. It’s okay to take a moment or an hour or a day to grieve for whatever you’re missing right now.”

As instructors, we need to make real efforts to hold space for our students to talk about their experiences of difficulty, anxiety, pain, and grief. If we are going to ask students to reflect on how they feel, we must be prepared to give supportive, empathetic feedback, not simply advise them to be more positive. Experiencing a global pandemic is a form of trauma and it will affect people in different ways to different degrees. It is not our job (or within most of our skill sets!) to become counsellors, but we need to be able to deeply listen even though we are not physically present, and we should be prepared to refer students to counselling services as needed. For many students, remember, it is simply helpful to have a place to express their struggles right now.

DO WE NEED GRADES?

This may be an unpopular opinion but I think we really need to think about what we are grading, how we are grading, and whether we really need grades at this time. If people are showing up right now, that’s a lot. At the very least we need to re-evaluate our usual grading systems, and lighten the burden for ourselves and our students. We need to keep in mind what the real consequences of the grades will be. Are students trying to enter second year or grad school?

IN SUMMARY

Although we are settling into this New Normal, we have to remember that these are trying times with constant undercurrents of instability and stress. The following quote, which has been circulating on social media, spoke to me (the original source eludes me):

“You are not working from home; you are at home during a crisis trying to work.”

We must remain gentle with ourselves and each other, open to new ways of doing things, accepting of resistance, curious, and even sometimes frivolous – just because! In the spirit of frivolity, as an antidote to all the online learning, and at the risk of toxic positivity, to conclude I would like to share the duck eggs I am trying to hatch in my homemade incubator!

Hoping for some ducklings around the middle of May!!!

 

 

Five things I’ve learned about myself, as a teacher and a human, from doing All The Things on Zoom

It’s week whatever. I know; me too. The term is over, more or less, but you’d be hard pressed to convince The Kim Who Lived Through February; I mean, this has been the least noticeable end of term in history. I submitted grades for one of my classes on Monday afternoon and then went, huh. Whatever.

I know that we, like all other humans who write on the internet, have been talking a whole lot lately about how to survive The Great Weirdness; I’m sick of top tips, though, and truth be told I don’t have any new ones. (Wash your hands! Crochet a grocery store! Curate an online doggy fashion show!)

June the Vizsla rocks the upper east side look; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/magazine/dog-fashion-shoot.html

So today, instead of more erroneous and boring tipping, I thought I’d share five random, funny, occasionally profound things I have learned about myself after weeks of Zooming my students and teachers (chiefly of the yogic variety, but also senior colleagues, trusted friends, and a badass trainer called Alex).

1. It’s surprisingly tiring.

This is not a thing I would have guessed. When I first learned (on a VIA train on my way home from teaching my last ever, maybe goddess save me, live class) five weeks ago that we were going online, I thought, “ha! I got this. I already have class websites. I’m dynamic and adaptable. Plus, I can now teach in pyjamas!!”

Three teachers in onesies. Not me. Could be me, though.

Turns out, though, that engaging with humans over the internet, even when video (and, occasionally, funny hats and sunglasses) is involved, is much, much harder than IRL. The affect is completely off: I can’t feed off their energy, and ditto for them with me/each other. We sit and stare at portrait shots of one other on screen, a sea of faces freaking us all out, as we try to force ourselves into that powerful, live space of feeling as well as thinking through the work together. It’s damn hard.

The win here, of course, is that Zoom is FURTHER PROOF that theatre and performance are essential human learning paradigms. (Shout-out here to my colleagues Barry and Kathleen for putting this important piece of info in book form a few years back.)

The loss, of course, is that teaching online – unlike the IRL variety, which drives my adrenaline way up and causes me to become first very giddy, and then voraciously hungry – just makes me need a long nap.

2. My super-cute short hairdo is NOT actually low-maintenance.

Yes, I know: EVERYONE is experiencing hairmageddon right now. I feel you. The thing is, us short-haired kids really need the stylist on call; if I go 5 weeks without a snip I experience what’s known between me and my amazing stylist Erin as “critical hair mass” – the last day I can actually appear in public without a cut or else. Worse yet, the shorter the hair, the trickier the snip; it’s all short, but it’s not all the same short, people! This shit requires skill and dexterity!

I know this hair looks easy-breezy… it ain’t easy. Me in a colleague’s epic sunnies in Stockholm during IFTR 2016.

I’m now at the stage where my hair is triggering my latent childhood trauma (I never, ever had good hair game), and I’m frantically googling “how to tie a scarf around your head 1940s style” before every Zoom meeting. Looking at yourself looking less than your best is demoralizing, and let’s face it: like all F2F media platforms, Zoom is built (cruelly, and I suspect intentionally) on the principal that all participants should have to go through the mirror stage the entire time.

Again, cue the napping.

3. At last: commuter legitimacy!

This is less what I’ve learned, than what I hope my colleagues are learning: that communicating over the internet is a very effective way to get a lot of routine stuff done, without requiring unnecessary trips into the office.

‘You mean I can bake over Zoom? You don’t say!’ The post-war laydeez knew it all before us, peeps.

Here, I realize I am unique, and fortunate: I work from home a lot of the time, because professors have that luxury. I go to campus twice a week; that’s a 250km round-trip commute for me, which I make by car or train. I am able to live this distance from my campus office because of the flexible nature of our work, and I choose to do so because the hard-core-norm-core town where I teach is not a place I enjoyed living, or in which I felt in any way emotionally or artistically fulfilled.

Because of the above factors, commuters on my campus have been a fixture for decades, though some departments and faculties are more commuter-friendly than others. Now that we’ve ALL had to leave campus and work “remotely”, though, I’m hoping it will become increasingly normal to accommodate commuters at, say, irksome Friday morning committee meetings, after all the away folk have trained home Thursday night to spend time with their families and live their non-work lives.

Up until as recently as February I was made to feel the weirdo for being “the person on Skype”; I seriously hope that is now effing over. Because if one more person tries to subtly shame me, or any other commuter around me, for attempting to experience work-life balance as a person who does NOT prioritize living in a town “where it’s easy to raise a family” I may literally hit something with a sledgehammer.

4. Zoom-dogging it…

I’m a pretty proper teacher, most times (see haircut, above). I have a lot of great, quirky outfits and I love wearing them to teach. I’m also, however, a person who prioritizes ease (again, see haircut), comfort, and flexibility; in The Normal Times, you might find me heading down the hall at work, aiming for the bathroom with the shower in it, because I just finished a personal training session on the other side of town and then rode my folding bike up to campus, where I now need to clean myself up in order to put on the great, quirky outfit stuffed into my backpack.

There’s a paradox here, I know, and Zoom has brought it into stark relief. It turns out I care disproportionally about my hair (#childhoodtrauma), but if I can manage a clean, proper-fitting T-shirt for the upper-body portrait shot, it’s a win. Overall, on the online-teaching front, it turns out I actually could not give a fuck about style! I’m a Zoom slob – happiest when Emma the Dog zoom-bombs the yoga class by trying to lie down underneath my bridge pose – and I’m super OK with it.

Smart outfits are for walking out in, while swaying and sashaying; staying home = jammies, thank you very much.

And on that note…

5. More than ever, space matters to me.

Here we full-circle back to item #1, though I doubt we ever really left.

What are the feelings teaching elicits? How, practically and physically as well as intellectually, does it elicit those feelings? Is it possible to recreate that experience on Zoom?

This time last year I was reflecting on the amazing active learning space in which I taught my winter 2019 Performance Theory class. Since then, COVID notwithstanding, I’ve had the chance to teach four more classes in that same space, ranging in size from 15 to 40 students.

Katie celebrates another terrific white-board achievement.

University College 1110, at Western U, March 2019; that’s Katie and Ray posing with their pod work, feeling the WALS (Western Active Learning Space) lurv.

I’ve done a lot of reflecting over the past year on my embodied experience of teaching in this room, a space where a) I’m not the physical centre of attention; b) students need to work together (at pods, where they are seated facing each other) pretty much all the time; and c) lecturing is simply not possible, really, because lecturing more or less requires a).

Now, fast forward 12 months: Zoom is an entirely different embodied experience of teaching, and now we’re having to do a whole lot of fast-paced discovery about the shape of the thing, what it’s doing to our bodies, to the choreographic-pedagogic whole.

If we’re going to have to keep online-teaching all the courses in September, we are going to need to talk, with our students and each other, a lot more about what this means for our bodies. Rest assured we’ll talk more about it here – I’ll write an expanded piece about this very issue soon.

What about you, friends? Any Zoom learning you would like to share? We’re all ears.

Stay safe!

Kim

Academia and Physical Pain: A Conversation with Sandra Chamberlain-Snider

Well folks, here we are, headed into one of the stranger April long weekends in recent memory.  Wherever you are, we hope you and yours are healthy, sheltered, and well in these strange and tender times.

To ring in the days off, we thought we’d share a post about self-care.

As scholars, we talk a lot about disability, and as teachers, we tend to think about mental health provisions for our students. But, chronic pain sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of hidden disability, if it’s noted at all.

Below, Kelsey and Sandra Chamberlain-Snider, a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, chat about their experiences with chronic pain.

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In my work for this blog and in my daily life, I write and talk about dozens of issues related to post secondary instruction and my experiences as an emerging scholar. Pain is rarely one of these topics.

Yet, physical pain has been one of the constants in my scholarly life. I’ve had roaming stiffness and/or pain in multiple areas of my body for years. Officially speaking, I have been diagnosed with a systemic form of arthritis. In reality, things are a bit murkier, and the diagnosis is closer to my rheumatologist’s’ current best guess.

In chatting about my experiences with friends and colleagues, folks have often disclosed that they, too, are quietly navigating on-going challenges related to pain, illness, or injury. (Strange coincidence side-note: Kim and I have EXACTLY the same autoimmune / chronic pain diagnosis.) While I don’t want anyone to experience discomfort, I have often found these conversations heartening: they provide new ideas or resources and remind me that I’m not alone.

So, I thought I would curate such a conversation for this blog.

To do so, I reached out to my friend and colleague, Sandra Chamberlain-Snider – a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, who, like me was diagnosed with a systemic form of arthritis during her graduate studies.

Sandra Chamberlain-Snider

KB: Can you tell me a little about your journey with pain as a PhD student?

SCS: I’d had pain for years but I’m in my middle-fifties. I figured it was part of life. And, I’d also had skin issues for a long time. My GP had been treating me for eczema. In 2016, I got a blood infection from the cracks in my feet, and he sent me to a dermatologist. He took one look at my skin and said: “That’s not eczema. That’s psoriasis.” That kicked things off. Then, a year and a half ago, I started seeing a rheumatologist who diagnosed me with psoriatic arthritis.

Now, the skin issues come and go. Sometimes, it’s great. But, the pain has been a constant. It’s difficult because it’s in your hands and you’re trying to write or type or even look half-way professional with colleagues, or you are interviewing someone and suddenly your hand will cramp up and it’s not like I can just get up and leave the room and shake it off. It became a bit of an issue.

For folks with musculoskelatal pain, there are lots of “tools” for self-massage, rolling, and stretching. Many of these can be purchased for a fraction of the price at your local dollar store: bouncy balls can be used for trigger points, rolling pins can be used as rollers etc.

KB: I get that. I have a few psoriasis patches and roaming pain and stiffness. The pain comes and goes from lots of different places including my left big toe, my left ankle, my right knee, both of my hips, my lower back, the knuckles on my left hand, my right wrist, both my shoulders, and my neck. Also, I currently can’t fully bend my middle or ring finger on my right hand, which all the doctors describe as – and I’m quoting here – “weird.” But, the relatively recent addition of pain in my hands has added an extra degree of urgency because it directly affects my ability to work.

SCS: For me, I know that’s a good part of why I’m in my seventh year of my PhD. My hands only give me so much time during the day. Some days are good. I can get a few hours in. Some days, I get half an hour in and then I have to take a break. And, you know how hard it is to go back into writing or researching when you’ve been interrupted in the middle.

KB: I totally do. Writing is a fragile art. Or, at least it is for me. Especially with heavy-thinking work: it takes time to ease into. If I get pulled away from it, I often have a hard time finding my way back.

SCS: Yes! I try to explain that to my husband all the time.

KB: And, there’s also a strange balance of figuring out when to attend to the pain and when to push through. My friends – many of whom are disability studies scholars – remind me that it’s important to pay attention to my body and that working more slowly can be an act of resistance. (For more on this, Petra Kuppers’ work is an excellent starting place.) I’m trying, but it’s … ahem … still a work in progress.

On an everyday level, I spend a fair chunk of time trying to find “hacks” to make my working conditions easier: I have figured out that suspenders let me keep ice on my shoulders while typing; I have crafted a standing desk from an ironing board (highly recommend); and I have managed to troubleshoot my way through the logistics of working lying down.

One of Kelsey’s crowning achievements: a do-it-yourself set up for working lying down. If anyone wants to try, the key is that you still need proper eye-line ergonomics, which means you need to align your forehead with the top third of the screen.

I’m super pleased with myself on most of these discoveries. But, I do find that simple things – like sitting ergonomics – are made harder by the structures of academia.

In the last six years, I have variously worked as a graduate student, sessional instructor, and postdoctoral researcher. But, I’ve never had a permanent office. Compared to the systemic discrimination and barriers that so many people encounter, this hardly constitutes an issue but it means that I can’t curate my working space.

SCS: Or, the space isn’t there when you’re able to use it. In 2016, we [Sandra’s family] got kicked out of our rental and we had to move quickly. In the new place, I have this little room to do work in. Which is great. I’m feeling good and ready to go. But, then my husband decides to pull out the ceiling for nine months, so I was working in the dining room area with two dogs, and I couldn’t get any work done. And, I went to the local library and the universities to work, but it wasn’t as efficient. So, finally, nine months later, everything was stable, but then the pain came. And, it was like you walk two steps forward and then get pushed back.

I [Kelsey] have experimented with loads of apps that help track pain and/or body cycles (pain, movement, menstrual cycle, sleep etc). Some help. Some don’t. The ones that do help offset some of the mental tracking labour.

KB: Totally, and it doesn’t only impact writing and researching; it also affects teaching.

Last year, I was mid-way through a class on performance and archives, and my pain suddenly flared. It was intense enough that I felt light-headed. At the break, I took myself to the washroom and had a very earnest conversation:

“Kelsey,” I said to myself. “Is there any chance you’re going to pass out? Because, if there is, you need to call off class.”

After a bit of back and forth, I decided I was okay to continue.

In retrospect, I think I’d try to handle that differently by signalling to my students I wasn’t feeling well or ending the class early. But, I often think about that moment because it drew my attention to how few resources were available to me to mitigate the situation.

Unlike elementary or high school teachers, university instructors don’t have colleagues down the hallway who can step in. I can ask people to cover classes, but pain isn’t predictable. And, even if it was, there isn’t a pool of substitute teachers. Usually, I’m asking a colleague, and I often need to bank some of those favours for conference travel or the like.

SCS: I think, too, it’s part cultural: When do you ask for help?

KB: Oh yeah … totally.

SCS: We’re academics. Even though there’s lots of issues and precarity, many of us are fairly privileged in that we get to study what we want to study. So, you’re not always quick to call out. Or to ask for a favour.

KB: And more generally, patriarchy, neo-liberalism, global capitalism – all the “isms” really – tend to belittle interdependence and asking for help. I’m trying to apply concepts from anti-oppression groups, disabilities communities, and critical disability studies to my everyday practices, but it’s not always easy.

Let’s talk about chronic and other kinds of pain, not only in private discussions over a beverage of choice, but also with our colleagues, students, and institutions.

SCS: And, when you’re in pain, you’re not always the most even-tempered person. My husband and I have been in each other’s lives for over forty years and he’s gone through some suffering as well. The last couple of months have been particularly difficult because we’re both in pain. And occasionally I’m like, “Oh my God, are we becoming this squabbling old couple?” But you have to step back and recognize what’s happening, which is, in the moment, so hard.

KB: Yes. I’d like to say that my experiences with pain make me more empathetic, and sometimes they do. But, when I’m having intense amounts of pain, that’s not always true.

And not all the work is personal. Some of it has to be broader. I’m trying – where I can – to push for, and model, systemic changes.

As a teacher, I try to incorporate pain, illness, and injury into access statements and course policies. I’m also working to recognize that not all experiences of pain are going to fall neatly into the purview of institutional access and disability protocols. I can (and want to!) work with students and colleagues to figure out how to navigate bodily changes and to respectfully support one another.

I’m also working to be more open with my own experiences, both as a principle (vulnerability can be really powerful) and to spark discussion. The more I talk to people about my pain, the more they talk about theirs. Those discussions are critical for changing larger circles of discourse.

SCS: Yes. Absolutely.

KB: And, this chat is part of that, I suppose.

SCS: Glad I could be a part of it!

Charlotte Canning Interview Part 2

As promised, here is the second half of my chat with Charlotte Canning. Last time, we talked about her (amazing-sounding) grad course and the value of teaching reflection. In the second half of the chat, we delved into public pedagogy, the value of making mistakes, and some of Charlotte’s favourite resources.

KB: What does it mean for you to be a public-facing, activist, teacher?

CC: Until graduate school, my life as a student was all in private schools. So, I didn’t have the public school experience as a young person. Having taught at UT for a very long time now, I am one hundred percent committed to public education. The kinds of diversity of students that we have — not just stuff that we work so hard on like class, race, sexuality, gender but also the experience of first generation students — that’s astonishing to me. It’s not an experience I thought about until I came to a public school.

It forces me to think about important questions: What does it mean to teach and have a public responsibility? What does it mean in terms of being citizens of the state? In terms of access to our work or the kinds of things we should be doing? 

Also, because we’re a state institution, we have a relationship to things like public disclosure laws and open records. Most of what we do is findable by the public. Our salaries are public. We have a very specific relationship to the First Amendment [which addresses freedom of speech, religion and assembly] that our colleagues at private schools don’t have. We have a lot of leeway in terms of speech which is really significant. Sometimes, it makes life more difficult but it’s really valuable. Being in a public institution is something of a gift. At times, it can be frustrating, but at the end of the day, thinking about education as a public good is a profound responsibility.

KB: How does your investment in feminism intersect with your pedagogy?

CC: Feminism is where I came from with all of this. I think about identities. Thinking about access and privilege is crucial to me as a teacher. I have a wonderful colleague in the School of Education, Dr. Richard Reddick. We did a video together on diversity statements for faculty. He came out of a school teaching background. When he came to speak to my students we were talking about privilege, and he’s an African American man, and that he always felt like he had it, when it came to diversity and inclusion. He always felt good. He felt focused. Until one day, he was working with a researcher about gender in the classroom. She observed his teaching over a considerable period of time, and she presented these statistics to him that he called on boys more than he called on girls. He was shocked and appalled, and he fixed it right away. In telling that story, what I heard him say to students is: don’t assume that because you’re savvy in one way that you are in all the ways.

I always say, if you set yourself up as the master and authority, then you can only be threatened when you make a mistake. But, since you’re human, the mistake part is inevitable, so you might as well start off with a sense of collaboration and a sense of learning and changing. So, when those things happen you can easily fold them into the experience for the students rather than it being a barrier, or an embarrassment, or having a detrimental impact with your relationship with the students. I don’t know whether that’s deeply feminist, but it feels very feminist to me. Certainly, thinking through how to create as diverse a pool of teachers out in the world as possible is incredibly important to me.

KB: What is the best pedagogy resource that you’ve pointed students towards?

CC: I change it up a lot every year. I have this secret passion for the history of universities. So, one of the things I have students read is Clark Kerr’s The Uses of the University.  It gets them thinking about teaching in higher education as something that has a history and a context and isn’t just the way it is because that’s the way it is. I want them to think of it as a construct that evolved in a certain way over time, and that their ability to change or intervene in that construct exists. It didn’t come from the sky.

I also really like James Lang’s Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. The premise of the book is that it often takes years to make new courses and to create relationships between courses, if you’re ever able to do that at all. So, he asks: What can we do tomorrow to make our classes better? I find that really helpful. It’s changed my teaching.

For example, he presents compelling evidence that small quizzes everyday are a great way to help students with retention and ownership of the material. I used to be against quizzes but the way he lays out the research converted me to the idea that giving students multiple ways to recall things is going to help them learn and retain that knowledge. I return over and over to Paulo Freire and bell hooks. I consult Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia constantly.

KB: Any final thoughts?

CC: The final thing I’d like to share is an exercise I developed a few years ago for my university teaching class. I get intensely nervous every time I do it, yet the students respond well.

I have a midterm. I don’t tell them what the midterm will be. I always say, Just review the materials of your notes and you’ll be fine.

For the “midterm,” they have to draw a scenario from a hat. They read the prompt aloud and then they have one minute to think. Then, they have to start talking. And I take notes while they’re presenting. Then, they take the prompt home and have four or five days to write about it and evaluate what they chose to do in class. It gives them a chance to think through what they would’ve done, if they’d had time to prepare.

The scenarios are always real scenarios that I or someone I know has encountered. They range from “a student says something racist in class” to “at the end of the semester having to leave office hours before seeing all the students after no one has come for all those weeks” to “students who express transphobia to a student whose drugs fall out of their pocket.” So, a huge range of possible scenarios.

After we’ve done the midterm, I tell them that the thing I don’t know how to teach them is that so much of pedagogy is thinking on your feet. As you know from being an actor, or whatever, the more you train on your feet, the more likely you are to do a good job of it. So, they get these scenarios totally randomly.

‘Sure, but can you THINK on your feet?’

The students have all said positive things in class about it. They are usually very anxious at first because they worry about getting it right or wrong. But, I always say that one of the points is that there isn’t an easy or obvious right or wrong. We have to rehearse.

Then, we have a class where we talk about the experience of taking the midterm. I identify for them which of the prompts were ones that actually happened to me, and I talk about how I handled them. I emphasize when I did a good job and when I didn’t. A couple of them were from my first year of teaching, and, in retrospect, while I didn’t do anything wrong, I was not as adept as I would be now.

One of the things I really struggle with teaching teaching is: how do you teach the intangibles? You can teach someone how to structure a syllabus or to think about a  lesson plan. But, when you’re live in the room with the students, you need to be able to be adept. So, you can’t just think about the content. You also have to think about how you act in the moment and how that will or won’t be efficacious for learning.  I think that’s the hardest thing to teach. So, what I do in the class is try to help them think about the speed bumps or scary moments, so that they know if they don’t get it one hundred percent right, that’s okay. You can come back. You can talk to the students again.