Episode 39 Bodyminds in Academe
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:31 Welcome to episode thirty-nine. In this episode we’ll discuss the tensions of the lived reality of different bodyminds that navigate our academic spaces. It’s winter here, as I’m recording and the weather has been fluctuating between a cold minus 20 Celsius with the windchill and maybe a positive 10 Celsius. And it’s exactly these times of the year that cause me mobility issues, and cause my mobility issues to flair up, and I’ve had a lot of difficulty in the last week and a half to do the things that I would do on the regular. Things like grocery shopping, or even going for a small walk around the neighbourhood.
1:11 And this bodymind experience is not a rareity and in fact is an example of the many types of bodymind experiences that many folk in academe face at different times of year, or at any given time. So today I want to talk about how do we hold space for these bodymind experiences in places that seem to be really committed to a linear model, committed to productivity, committed to business as usual when there’s really no such thing.
1:40 So first I’m going to start by defining what I mean by bodyminds and then talk about how these needs and differences are seen with students, instructors, and with members of the teaching team and how do we allow a course to continue, how do we have learning goals be met, what are the ways we do this work that doesn’t adversely impact the person that needs the most grace or time.
2:09 So first bodyminds, what do I mean by bodyminds? I use the term bodyminds here, in the Priceian sense. So Margaret Price in the 2011 in her book Mad at School uses the term bodymind to speak to how both the mental and the physical realities of each person impact each other. I’ll link to Mad At School in the episode notes. Often we hear terms like “abled bodied” which seems to suggest that it’s only the body that is a space for reflection in disability, when in fact the body and the mind do work in conjunction at any given time to create the lived reality. So right now I was mentioning my mobility issues that the weather has triggered, but those triggers are also be impacted by the weather itself and how that can impact mood and emotions. Our environment has a great impact on the totality of who we are and what is, you know, possible in terms of the different scopes of possibilities for each person that’s part of our academic spaces.
3:12 So the other thing to take into account here is that we can never know the amount of pain someone is in or the amount of pain that someone deals with on a regular basis. And I know that in conversations that I have with my friends and conversations that I have with colleagues in disability community, that a lot of our conversations centre on “wow, if other people knew just how much pain we are in on the daily, they would probably not believe how we are still just going through the motions.” And how the flares are greater, and when they are, there’s you know a reason why folk can’t show up to a meeting, there’s a reason why those assignments don’t get done, there’s a reason why that email is not returned.
3:55 So a lot of academe is centred around the sort of normative understanding of what it’s like to navigate the world and to use one’s bodymind on a daily basis. And that’s something that’s absolutely false in the way of understanding lived experience, because I can tell you right now that I probably have navigated this world in many types of pain that many would not understand as “normal” and there are many times where I have said “oh isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?” in conversation with folk who don’t identify as disabled and they just look at me going “uh no Ann, that’s not how it’s supposed to be.”
4:33 So what do we do with this awareness. The awareness that students will all have different bodymind needs the awareness that members of the teaching team will equally all have different bodymind needs and that some how learning outcomes for each course need to be met, and that assessments and activities are to be done to demonstrate that those learning outcomes have been met. What does course design with bodymind awareness for all involved look like?
5:00 So the first suggestion I have is to build in gap time in your syllabus. So Cate Denial talks about this in Pedagogy of Kindness, which I will also link to in the show notes. I know that some will say well there’s simply too much to cover to build in slack, but my response to that is well what’s the alternative, right? The alternative is that as an instructor you fall even sicker in your recovery over a flu that could turn into bronchitis because you are trying to push through grading 100 discussion posts after you’ve been in bed for a week. The support for gaps in syllabi can readily come from curriculum mapping opportunities and an awareness of larger departmental and program goals, right? Does every topic need to be covered in this class? Are there duplications from courses previous.
5:49 So building in gap time to allow for more metacognitive possibilities for students, is a great thing. Imagine how having a course, and how the course will feel if there’s time to have discussions about the concepts being presented as opposed to building and moving from one concept to another without pause. It’ll also allow for students to get to know each other, and maybe build some microcommunities.
6:15 The second suggestion about bodymind awareness in academe that I have, is actually to have a conversation about it in a way that is transparent. A lot of the times if members of the teaching team have a thing that’s happening and something gets delayed there’s very rarely conversation as to why. There are rarely conversations about illness, there’s rarely conversations about pain flares. Everyone seems invested in trying to ignore that these very real parts of life. I talked to a colleague the other day who decided to have class online because they were simply too unwell to make it campus. Things were discussed, ideas continued, movement towards assessments still happened, and the instructor also got to help support their bodymind towards recovery of the thing that was impacting them at that moment, right?
7:05 So I’m not saying that everyone deserves disclosure about what’s going on, what I am saying is that, cloaking pain flares, or mental health support needs makes it seem as though the normative (whatever that is) is that those don’t exist. And in fact, it’s the lack of transparency that we have where folk then feel like they have to start making up excuses as to why a thing didn’t happen or why a thing didn’t get handed in, instead of the reality, which is often times “hi I work 2 jobs and have a very public facing role which means I got sick and needed rest so the report didn’t get done” or something like that, right? The more transparent and real that we are about these possibilities of things happening, the more bodymind realities become the realities of the spaces we’re in and not something we have to either ignore or pretend the more that we can have a real holistic understanding of what inclusive pedagogy could look like.
8:07 However, and I’m sure you’re feeling the but that’s coming, so here’s the but, if you’re asking someone how they’re doing and something seems different, so like me for example, the way that they’re walking, or the way they’re presenting themselves, or anything like that, if they do not choose to go into that conversation with you, please stop there. Do not try to pry or continue the conversation to find the answer or the cause. People’s level of comfort of having a conversation around pain and bodymind wellness is very much dependent on who they’re having a conversation with and if trust has already been built to have that conversation in the first place.
8:47 And finally a third suggestion around bodymind awareness in academe is kinda an ask for administrators to actually talk about this more. It’s one thing for a course to be designed with some flex in it, it’s one thing to have awareness that teaching assistants might need time or space depending on the time of the semester, it’s one thing to acknowledge that instructors can have pain flares and get sick especially if there’s little to no public health transmission mitigation supports as we live in now, as she says as the only person who still pretty much masks on campus, I don’t see a lot of masks on campus. But it’s a completely other thing to have administrators support this awareness too. To talk about these possibilities as part of conversations around academic plans, or mission statements or values of institutions. Because bodymind awareness can’t happen in silos. We live in a world where folk need space to support their bodymind, and it certainly not the pressure cooker, in pressure cooker situations where things done or graded. It’s not in pressure cooker situations where folk will be able to engage in ideas, to learn concepts, and to be part of larger learning communities both within the institutions and within their communities.
10:02 So that’s it, that’s episode 39 of Accessagogy, with a flagging of the need for awareness of different bodymind realities in the ways we design courses and the need for more space, grace, and transparency in those realities.
10:16 Remember that I want this to be a space where we can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that I mentioned here that you would like me to elaborate on please ask.
10:26 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you would like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I’ll try to include as many of these suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 39 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a great week!