What Prema Taught Me About Teaching and Blogging

July 15, 2010 at 19:14 +07:00 (Uncategorized)

Dear Brena and Deems,

So I know Brena, you are enjoying your last week home before returning for a summer course. Selfishly, I have to say, I can’t wait to seeeeeeee you! But of course, soak in all of home and make the best of your last week with friends and family! Deems, one of these days I know you are going to think of something to post while you squander away time in the sunshine of Lebanon. In the meantime, I want to share a little bit of a conversation I had recently.

I was talking with one of the most brilliant women I know, Prema, and she kind of put me in my place (as she tends to do!). A bit about Prema: Prema is a biologist and works in animal husbandry by day but is a sort of student and teacher of the world by night. She has a huge diversity of passions, from food politics to dragonflies to knitting to Jane Austen. We were college roommates and every time we talk, I feel grounded and inspired. But I don’t mean that in the hokey Oprah-like eat-pray-love way. Long introduction short: her perspective means alot to me which is why, late into our most recent conversation I asked her, “Have you been reading the blog?” To which she paused, sighed and said, “Ally, I have to be honest with you. I try reading it but I’m not really into it. Sometimes I feel like it’s over my head.”

Immediately, my hazards went on and I had to push her to tell me more, even though I know she was reluctant to do so, maybe because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

“I just feel like sometimes you write about things that are more inside jokes or inside-school stuff.” And it’s true. We write a lot about school–more specifically, the weird hierarchical feudal construction that is contemporary American Academia. I think this is an important aspect of the blog—I mean, we need somewhere to talk with each other and other people who are experiencing academia about our struggles with it. And it consumes such a huge portion of our life.We need an outlet. And blogging helps us make sense of our positions a little bit better.

BUT I know we’ve also talked about how we want this blog to be about all kinds of teaching, from the more formal in-the-classroom (wherever that classroom may be) to the every day stuff we participate in as part of our social and environmental justice interests. How can we broaden our relevancy? Is some of what we write about in our struggles with teaching in the university relevant to teaching in other places? Working in other places? What isn’t and why?

My question to Prema would be, when you think about concerns around teaching, what do you think about? As a student? As someone who guest lectures formally in public schools about animals and the environment? As someone whose trying to make the world better through social and environmental justice activism? Are there aspects of teaching that resonate with your own experience of being a 20-something in the workplace? In short, is there a way to make this blog more readable?