Hi everyone,
I'm finally on! Just finish reading Leda and Rachel's posts and found them to be very moving. I just flashed on the irony of talking about the body in the classroom in this unembodied way. But I must admit it's where I'm most comfortable talking about this subject.
Oh yes, lots of hang-ups about body and emotion and grief. For my family grief is a very private thing. Not to be displayed in public. When my father died my mother asked that friends (we had no nearby family) not visit. It was awkward having folks show up with food (the custom where we lived for those very social wakes) and then hastily leave to respect my mother's wishes. We had tons of food and no one to feed (-: All this has little to do with the classroom except it's what comes up for me when I think about the place of grief in the classroom (I realize I'm being very literal with the term). And my family history/culture influences the things I'm willing/able to tolerate in the classroom.
I've also been present (as student and teacher) when strong emotion was expressed in the classroom. Nope, didn't handle it well. Tears are less threatening than anger (I always have tissues handy). Once a student of color stormed out of the room in response to another student's comments. How do we go on from there? How do we talk about the conflict in the absence of the aggrieved student?
Wish I could write more about this, but I urgently need to get back to reading, reading, reading. But I did want to at least sign on. I look forward to continuing the discussion.
Ellen
posted by Ellen @ 11:41 AM
1 Comments:
I heart you Ellen.
you're post got me to think about a lot of things, one of them being, what do i find most threatening in the classroom? And it's so tied to bodies for me, or maybe more like it is tied to subjugated bodies and my particular associations with them? For instance, I am not all that moved by the tears of White women in classrooms. I have come across White women crying in classes on occasion, not that often, but it doesn't seem emergent to me. Yet, when a White man cries I experience a much greater degree of discomfort. My first reaction is to FIX IT. What must/can/shall I do to shelter this man from his emotional outpouring? Something really bad must be going on and so I have this overwhelming urge to immediately intervene, mediate, soothe.
as for the angry person who walks out, I follow them. I turn to the class first, most of whom are already chatting to themselves or each other about it and usually say something like, "We all seem to have some thoughts on this, I'd like for folks to find a partner and time yourself, three minutes each, talk about what you are thinking and feeling right now." Then I follow out the person who left, and let them know that they have choices about whether they want to talk now, later or never.
This is, however, yet another reason i am convinced that it is a bizarre model to have a singular facilitator/instructor in the classroom.
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