originally posted (well sometime in June 2015) by Lisa Meloncon<\/p>\n

So I was lucky enough to meet Aim\u00e9e Morrison a couple of years ago at Carolyn Miller\u2019s Emerging Genre conference<\/a> . I \u201cknew\u201d her from Twitter and the hookandeye collaborative<\/a> , but getting to talk with her in person was a great experience. She has this passion and energy and knowledge that is impressive and inspiring.<\/p>\n

Recently, Aim\u00e9e wrote a blog post, \u2018Teaching and all the feels,\u201d<\/a> that I sent out with our #womeninTC hashtag because the issues that Aim\u00e9e brings up, we\u2019ve talked around on twitter, at our organized events, and in one-on-one conversations. She asked me what I thought, and I realized I had quite a few thoughts about it.<\/p>\n

What struck my about it was three things.<\/p>\n

First, these sorts of feelings aren\u2019t valued so we don\u2019t talk about them. Which is not good. I realize that often teaching labor is feminized and as such, helps to perpetuate the myth that teaching isn\u2019t as valuable as research (and at some institutions, not as valuable as service). So that means talking about our feelings helps to further gender and theoretically, marginalize teaching. While many of us would call bullsh*t on that stance, it\u2019s a fact\u2014truly a fact\u2014that cannot be denied (go ahead, do a simple google scholar search and see for yourself!). But what\u2019s important here for our work is the acknowledgement that this is something we need to prepared to deal with institutionally and professionally, while we still look toward being the best teachers that we can be. Sounds a little pie in the sky? Well, maybe, but the bottom line is that Aim\u00e9e\u2019s experiences are similar to many of us, and the sad fact is that we aren\u2019t encouraged to talk about it, and we need to be talking about the embodied and emotional experiences that teaching can be.<\/p>\n

Second, we need to acknowledge the labor that is involved with teaching, and the many facets of that labor, including the emotional aspects at that labor. Teaching is more than the time in the classroom, and it involves emotional labor <\/strong>that needs to be acknowledged more directly so that we can attend to how that labor effects\/affects us. Courses with difficult subject matter can drain the emotional and mental life out of you every week. Block courses taught once a week can drain the mental and physical life out of you every week. Talking with students and attending to their lives as it relates to their education can drain you mentally, emotionally, physically. (I was never prepared or trained for the moment a young man came out to me and asked my help in writing a \u201crhetorically sound\u201d letter to his parents.)<\/p>\n

Third, I so appreciated the honesty in the reflection of her teaching evolution. It\u2019s no secret that we need to work on better preparing and then offering ongoing training to grad students and early career faculty on teaching and how to do it better. Some of us are natural presenters so teaching is a little easier. For many of us, though, teaching is hard work just to do work of teaching, not to mention the preparation of it. It\u2019s essential to reflect and find your groove and to know that it may be necessary to move OUTSIDE of your comfort zone to find the place where you feel you can teach so that it enables students to learn.<\/p>\n

The bravest thing I ever did in the classroom as a teacher was to just let everything go. I gave up control and requirements and even grading (in the traditional sense). But I\u2019m definitely to a place where I feel I can manage what Aimee calls the \u201csheer importance of the work\u201d as it relates to the \u201call the feels.\u201d I know I\u2019m lucky though. I\u2019ve just now figured out how to articulate it, which is important considering the many times and ways we are asked to describe (and defend) what we do. The articulation part is just as important as the doing part because it helps our own stance, but it also helps in advancing the overall idea of the important of teaching.<\/p>\n

I always have to smile when I hear the arguments about why aren\u2019t all students just taking online courses (or why the MOOC didn\u2019t change the world the way some thought). For me, the biggest reason why we still have students in our classes, and probably always will, is that students crave personal attention. Students want to be in a class with an engaged and dedicated teacher who is experiencing \u201call the feels.\u201d And sometimes that experience can only be truly had in a face-to-face classroom. (Please don\u2019t start bashing me about the fact you can build a community online. I get that, but even online advocates\u2014and really I am one\u2014will acknowledge the difference in community in a face-to-face class.)<\/p>\n

Cause here\u2019s the thing: without that feeling, without engaging in the work of engaging with our students, you\u2019re not teaching. You\u2019re simply a conduit for a information delivery, and education is a whole lot more than that.<\/p>\n

So as you\u2019re working on planning your courses for the fall or thinking through pedagogy and teaching statements, it\u2019s ok to feel a lot of stuff when you\u2019re teaching and planning. And it\u2019s ok if you want to talk about it. Just reach out<\/a> and let\u2019s experience all the feels together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

originally posted (well sometime in June 2015) by Lisa Meloncon So I was lucky enough to meet Aim\u00e9e Morrison a couple of years ago at Carolyn Miller\u2019s Emerging Genre conference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenintechcomm.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}