Happy Monday friends! Welcome to week 3 of the Care & Equity module. For the last two weeks of June, we will be moving into our second topic: Resisting and Embracing Care. This was one of my favorite topics to dive into from last season of DF because it really explores care as a concept and how it interacts with teaching, pedagogy, ourselves, and its intersections with equity. How do we care in an equitable way that includes ourselves, and how might equity encourage care? This topic also invites us to take a good look at how we approach the care of ourselves and others, and the surprising complexities that exist within them. I think Becca’s annotation on the first chapter of Who Cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics really highlights some of the nuances of care-giving and receiving:
Is inconvenience the price we pay for giving and receiving care? Being able to care for and maintain providing care for others can be an inconvenience at times. This is not to say to abandon our boundaries and what we’re able to provide, but to sit with the idea that it will not always feel good, or what you want to do, and the importance of navigating that.
Below you will find a suggested structure for this week’s topic. In the spirit of our topic, I hope you find some time this week to explore your own care and how you might carry it into this next year of teaching and supporting students.
Suggested Structure:
- Review the topic: Resisting and Embracing Care
- Complete and annotate the core readings:
- A Pedagogy of Kindness
- ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’: Care and the Cybernetic University (CARE)
- Elm had moved this choice read up to a core reading last summer because it’s so good and I definitely agree that it is worth reading!
- Pick and Choice Reading to review and annotate – Choice Reading List
- Participate in the discussion!
- How do you care for yourself in teaching? How do you care for yourself as you care for others?
- What are some personal and professional boundaries you’ve enacted in your care of students that have allowed you to approach care healthily?
- Share a time when caring for a student or class felt particularly hard or fraught.
- Complete Workbook activities:
Have a lovely week, I look forward to seeing your responses to Resisting and Embracing Care!