I feel very lucky to be able to be a part of this IEH series, so I wanted to make sure that I spent the time to really engage with (and enjoy!) it. I’ve had the most amazing time so far, carrying the videos and activities with me throughout the day(s), but I did want to pick one specifically that had sort of made me stop in my tracks.
Listening to Shanali Govender talk about moving from a sort of innate knowledge, a physical awareness, of where the students in her class “were” (both in their learning and their physical space) to starting to negotiate what it looked like to seek that awareness online was a really powerful listen for me. I also spend a lot of time, as a teacher in a physical classroom, “among” the students, sitting with them at desks or tables, disappearing into the audience if they lead something from the front. Losing that almost internal sense of the where and the what that was happening in my class when we all flung ourselves into the online space during the early days of the COVID pandemic really took time to recover from and reshape in terms of practice and praxis. I learned a lot from others (especially on social media! and at MYFest!), but I really responded to hearing Shanali speak about how she had to recalibrate her awareness of time itself–as I felt similarly!
I also really loved how Shanali grounded her new practice in the idea of checking-in–making deliberate what used to be almost a “given”. It also made me wonder if, when we make those sort of deliberate choices, we aren’t getting a better sense of where people really are. Instead of assuming that what we “feel” is happening is really what is going on!