Intimate Inquiry: Embracing Emotion as Genius Through Embodied Pedagogies in Teacher Education

• In Event: Transformative Pedagogies: Uplifting and Protecting the Genius of Teachers and Students of Color

Abstract

While social emotional learning (SEL) has gained traction as a viable intervention in schools, scholars critique SEL as another form of miseducation (Author, 2021; Simmons, 2021) which erases the historical context of student emotion and polices the expression of it. Yet radical feminist scholarship (Anzaldúa, 2015; Jaggar, 1989; Lorde, 1984) has long documented how marginalized groups harness the power of “outlaw emotions” to make meaning of the world, challenge dominant epistemologies, and enact transformation. In this study, I build upon Muhammad’s (2020) notion of “cultivating [the] genius” of students of color and the teachers who serve them by examining emotion and embodiment as a source of genius for a teacher educator and students of color in a credential program. I examine these questions: How does a teacher educator of color shift her pedagogy to integrate emotion and embodiment? What impact do these shifts have on the teaching ideologies and practices of students of color?

Theoretically, I utilize trauma-informed scholarship (Van der Kolk, 2014), embodied pedagogies (Thompson, 2017), and radical feminist theory (Anzaldúa, 2015; Lorde, 1984; Strobel, 2010) to analyze how the body carries trauma and impacts of oppression, but is also a vessel for deep ancestral knowing and healing. While Muhammad’s (2020) Historical Responsive Literacy framework focuses on cognitive and cultural genius, utilizing the aforementioned frameworks disrupts an “apartheid of knowledge” (Delgado Bernal & Villalpando, 2002) in education by foregrounding the body and emotion as fertile resources for culturally responsive pedagogy and transformation.

Methodologically, I combine Auto-Ethnography (Chang, 2016) with Portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) to craft a blended portrait that synthesizes my process as a teacher educator/researcher working with working class students of color in a literacy course as part of a credentialing program at a State university in Southern California. With the 16-week course moving to virtual instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, I analyze ways I adapted curriculum and engaged in self/collective care and how students responded to embodied pedagogies, drawing from analytic memos, class recordings, student interviews, course feedback, curricular artifacts, and student work.

Through what I call intimate inquiry, I document the combination of connection, presence, and vulnerability it requires for students and I to befriend grief and fears during a pandemic, and the courage it takes to do so in an institution that promotes disembodiment, productivity, and detachment. I describe embodied teaching practices, autobiographical narratives that incorporate emotional literacy, and unit plan assignments that help teaching candidates better understand their whole selves and in turn connect with their own students’ wholeness, alongside wellness strategies that sharpen my own intimate inquiry. As Muhammad’s (2020) historical inquiry led her to articulate culturally responsive literacy standards for all educators, I demonstrate how intimate inquiry provides radical literacy pathways to uncover deep knowing, solidarity, and transformation for teachers and students of color. I conclude with implications for teacher educators, classroom teachers, and schools to push back against epistemological violence that privileges the mind and open up transgressive pedagogies that recognize and uplift the genius of embodiment and emotion.

Author

• Stephanie Cariaga, California State University - Dominguez Hills
  Presenting Author