One of the things I have missed most during my 6+ years of living in a SoCal apartment (and 6+ years of a graduate school reading and writing schedule) is having a big garden. Oh, I still have houseplants--some herbs and my sturdy jades and even a tenacious neglected geranium potted outside my front door--but no 15-foot sunflowers with faces as big as my head, no heirloom tomatoes or trailing cucumber vines. I miss swapping the abundance with neighbors, learning new techniques to get the tastiest vegetables from efficient work and sustainable methods, saving the best seeds for the next planting. City living + career change + cross-country move flung me far from my former routine and I've never quite found my way back to gardening with the same vigor.
Yet it occurs to me that I've been busy planting, watering and nurturing other sorts of seeds, ones which bear different kinds of fruit and flowers. My dissertation is one crop I've been working on for many years, a sort of unimpressive pumpkin patch that grew when no one was paying attention, and which I am now patiently cooking up in sauces and soups for publications, presenting like slices of holiday pie for conferences and job talks. My teaching is another, a rotating bed of students and topics that bears (generally) extremely satisfying--and entertaining--harvests. I love teaching and while it sounds cliche, I learn as much from my students as they do from me. Swapping teaching techniques is a little like trading seeds: the potential is there in the technique, but each person plants and waters and harvests differently. My good friends know I'm a bit obsessed with sustainability, desire, creativity and quality of life, topics that infuse my thinking, research, teaching and personal time on a daily basis.
A little over a year ago, I experienced a sudden injury followed by months of chronic pain, limited mobility and decreased mental and physical stamina. I had to adapt my life to fit my new limits, something that caused me to reflect more on access and accessibility in relation to teaching and learning. Something as (formerly) simple and quick--10 minutes, max--as picking up a projector and speaker from the media office and walking three flights of stairs to the next building to prepare for class on the second floor became a 45 min ordeal of juggling bags, dropping papers while maneuvering heavy doors, multiple rest stops and long waits for the elevator. Teaching became the most exhausting thing in my life, instead of the most invigorating, and I had to let go of old habits and try new strategies--not least, asking for assistance before I needed it and honoring my limits. I'm not perfect, but this experience has helped me be more aware of my students' accessibility needs, and I'm interested in making my teaching and learning more accessible not as an adaptation, but from the get-go. I'm still learning, mostly from other teachers and students, as well as from feminist and queer writers and activists in the blogosphere.
My most recent crop of students, thirty-one talkative, lively, earnest, creative and opinionated young people from a nearby small liberal arts college, have inspired me to write about teaching, learning, sustainability and access. The atmosphere of this college is one of intellectual openness and experiential learning, commitment to sustainability and diversity. The course, "Resistance to Monoculture: Creativity and Sustainable Knowledge Systems," was the most enjoyable class I have taught thus far. In it, I asked my students to think about the role of technology in resisting monocultural forms of thinking and living, even as it conformed to them in other ways. My students came to trust me enough that I felt comfortable trying new things with my teaching, activities and assignments that I was too intimidated to attempt in my graduate institution. Thus, Wearable Art Activism (inspired by Alexis Pauline Gumbs M@ke Way project) and attending Drag Finals Night at a nearby gay bar became, at this school, legitimate and fun ways for students to incorporate what they had learned about intersectionality, sustainability, queerness and diversity over the course of the term.
So in the interests of practicing what I preached--in terms of using technology to resist monocultural thinking and practices--I'm writing this blog to record, reflect on and skillshare femiqueer teaching, learning, accessibility and sustainability practices. Enjoy!
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