“The Personal Has Become Political”: The Presence of a Secondary Teacher’s Body in the Classroom

• In Event: What Is the Body Doing in Educational Theory and Justice-Oriented Pedagogy? Taking the Body Turn

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this presentation is to examine how a secondary English teacher considered her body a personal and political matter within professional settings (e.g., school).

Theoretical Perspectives
de Lauretis’ (1984) theory of imaging and Gee’s (1999) concept of cultural models provide a framework to answer how does a women teacher’s body serve to inform her personal and professional lives? de Lauretis’ (1984) theory of imaging posits that viewers’ expectations, bodily signs, and context shape situated meanings, which can be compared to cultural models (e.g., simplified images or storylines) (Gee, 1999) of the type of teacher that is valued in a society.

Methods
As part of a feminist interviewing study using narrative methodology (Riessman, 1993, 2008), this presentation will focus on Buffy’s (pseudonym) stories about her body and personal life in teaching high school English. Discourse analysis (Gee 1996, 1999) of Buffy’s narrative included the language she used about her teacher identity within a politicized world (Gee, 1999). Examples of language-in-use include Buffy’s I-statements, which draw on her emotional knowledge about her teacher identity and how her teacher body is emblematic and evidentiary of her suitability to the profession.

Data Sources and Results
Among the stories told in three interviews, Buffy explained that as a married teacher she often made connections to her personal life to teach novels in her English class, while simultaneously, though perhaps unconsciously, keeping her bodily self out of the classroom by wearing baggy or innocuously feminine clothes (Weber & Mitchell, 1995). After leaving her high school position, she divorced and entered into a committed lesbian relationship. Buffy told a story about choosing a purposefully feminine outfit to see former students who asked if she would return to high school teaching. She realized, “I could never go back there,” to teach high school because “I don’t know that I would feel free to talk about my life. And that used to… be a big part of…my teaching persona because I could talk about my life, and…tie their lives in” with the books the class read. Buffy felt her personal life needed to be excluded from teaching because it did not match the valued cultural model of teacher. Her body, however, remained a site to sustain a traditional teacher image. Stating the feminist mantra that “the personal has become political,” the personal matter of Buffy’s body worked to solidify her suitability to teach, even when the more effective tool of her personal life was invalidated.

Scholarly Significance
Teachers’ bodies can be present as long as they are the right kind of bodies. Similarly, teachers are encouraged bring their personal lives into their pedagogy, as long as it is the right kind of personal life. Those teachers, whose personal matters don’t match cultural expectations, may be squeezed out of the profession, leaving an even more narrow description of what makes an acceptable teacher.

Author

• Christine Ann Mallozzi, University of Kentucky