Yale Center for Teaching and Learning

Learning Communities: Teaching as Embodied Practice 1 of 4

Audience 

Graduate & Professional Students, Postdoctoral Fellows

Event Time 

Thursday, October 27, 2022 - 2:00pm to 3:30pm

Location of Event: 

Online via Zoom

Event Description 

As teachers, it can be easy to fall into the habit of treating the work that we do as an intellectual and abstract endeavor. However, we know that teaching is also an embodied practice, one that works through shared presence in the classroom and draws on the time and resources that our finite selves have to offer. At the same time, each of us moves through pedagogical spaces in ways that are profoundly shaped by facets of our embodied selves, including but not limited to our race/ethnicity, class, gender/sexuality, and disability status. The purpose of this learning community is to hold open a space for instructors from across the disciplines to engage in sustained reflection on some of the pedagogical questions that emerge from taking embodiment seriously. How does my embodied experience shape the distinctive commitments I bring to and challenges I encounter in my work as a teacher? How should taking embodiment seriously change my teaching practice? While sessions will be anchored around short readings and themes to prompt discussion, we’ll work together to strike a balance between time for open-ended reflection and discussion of concrete practices to bring back to your classroom. Previous participants of this learning community are invited to participate again—readings will be different from the previous iteration.

This group will be facilitated by Michelle Johnson and Gavi Levy Haskell, and will meet on Zoom from 2-3:30pm ET on the following Thursdays: October 27, and November 3, 10, and 17. This group counts as a learning community for, but is not limited to, those pursuing the CCTP. 

Register here.