Tag: feminist pedagogy

The Value of Failure: Versions 1, 2 and 3

Note: This blog entry is posted on all three of my blogs: (making/being in/ staying in) trouble, It’s Diablogical!, and Unchained.

Right now I am attempting to juggle three different blogs. I really like how they highlight different aspects of my writing/thinking/feeling self. On trouble, I focus on giving critical (and serious, extended) attention to trouble in feminist and queer contexts. Frequently I write about Judith Butler and the ethical implications of her work. I also devote a lot of time to working through my own (hopefully) book project on trouble as a virtue. On Unchained, I experiment with developing/practicing virtue ethics (in relation to breaking, reworking, transforming consumption habits) through and in connection with blogging. I co-write this blog with my partner, STA, as we try to figure out ways to reduce consumption, make better (whatever that means) choices, and model “good” behavior for two crazy, yet wonderful kids, FWA and RJP. Finally on It’s Diablogical!, I diablogue with my writing partner and good friend, KCF, about blogging and feminist pedagogy. Our blog is part of a larger writing project on teaching with blogs and blogging while teaching.

Sound like too much? While it can feel overwhelming at times, all three of these writing projects inspire and invigorate me (at least, so far. I just started Unchained and It’s Diablogical! this summer. It is possible that my brain will melt once I start prepping for my classes later this month). The specific content of each blog is different, yet all three connect, sometimes in unexpected ways. Like right now. As I was preparing to write more on Unchained about failing, I realized that I have A LOT to write about the issue of failing and FAIL, and that what I want to write is relevant to each of the blogs I write on. With that in mind, I have decided to try an experiment in this entry. I want to write about failure in the context of each of the three blogs. If I like how this works, I anticipate experimenting with it more in future entries. I plan to post this entry in each of my blogs. So, here goes nothing…

First, my overarching statement: Failure is valuable.

VERSION 1: in the context of Trouble

Making, being in and staying in trouble is all about valuing failure: closely and critically examining it, learning from it, developing questions around how/why it happened, being devoted to claiming/exposing it, never concealing it. Throughout her work, particularly in Gender Trouble and Undoing Gender, Judith Butler discusses the potential value (and danger) of our various failures to fully embody/live up to gender norms and our proper gender roles/rules. Check out what she says about her parents’ gender failures in Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Close Kind. In the first 2 minutes of this youtube clip, Butler describes how her various family members were unable to fully live up to the gender/race/class norms as embodied by famous Hollywood actors. Then, at 2 minutes and 19 seconds in, Butler says:

My conclusion was that anyone who strives to embody them [gender norms–being a “proper” man or woman], perhaps also fails in some ways that are more interesting than their successes.

For Butler, failure is not just more interesting than success; failure is a crack in the system. When we fail we can begin to see the limits of the system and how/when it doesn’t work. Maybe, especially if we gravitate towards trouble, we might wonder about what these limits say about the system and why the system has to be the way it is or why it couldn’t function in a different way (perhaps in a way that enable our norms to be guided by our actions instead of our actions dictated by our norms). When we succeed at living up to gender expectations (what Butler might describe as achieving a proper gender performance), we aren’t prompted to ask questions about the system and how it might work differently or better. And we aren’t inspired to think about the gender binary system or its rigid rules about what it means to be a man or a woman. In fact, sometimes success is more of a failure; to succeed can contribute to a failure to think, to question, to wonder, or to resist. I could say more about failure in relation to Michel Foucault’s limit attitude, but I want to stay focused so that I don’t lose my various readers here (especially the ones who might read Unchained, but not trouble. Yes, STA, I’m talking to you…)

VERSION 2: In the context of It’s Diablogical!

To embrace failure, or to at least recognize that it is not something to avoid or conceal, can open us up to other possibilities and other ways of knowing and being. When we begin to understand that failure is inevitable and necessary, we can shift our focus away from always being right or having the right answer or even believing that there is one right answer. Instead, we can focus more of our attention on all the different ways that others could be right (or, at least not wrong). When we don’t worry so much about failing (and then being seen as a Failure), we aren’t as invested in proving that we aren’t ever wrong. This enables us to make room for exciting and inspiring conversations with others that involve much more than concluding who got it right and who didn’t. Failure also encourages us to experiment and be creative with how we approach ideas, problems and people. This is especially true when we don’t imagine failure as something that threatens to undermine us and our authority and when we embrace it as a necessary and invigorating part of the process (of thinking, writing, learning, engaging).

While there are many ways to practice and promote this vision of failure (as contributing to openness, as encouraging experimentation), I am particularly interested in how blogs (my personal ones and the ones I use in my class) can serve as powerful spaces for valuing failure (and valuing vulnerability, openness and experimentation). Here, let me briefly explain how I used my blog for my spring 2010 Contemporary Feminist Debates course to explore and practice the idea of valuing failure.

Instead of using the language of failure (which is negative and can immediately induce fear and suspicion amongst the students), I described the process of not being right or failing to be right in terms of uncertainty, contestability and curiosity. I reworked one traditional notion of debate by shifting our focus away from the contesting of competing claims to the critical and creative exploration of negotiating between (and living with) multiple visions of what is or should be right. In this way, I transformed the idea of failure from being wrong to not being the only one right.

The course blog played a central role in this process of imagining and practicing a new vision of feminist debate-as-curiosity. Because this blog entry is getting way too long (surprise, surprise), I want to highlight one particular blog exercise that I used to reinforce the idea of failing (that is, failing to know) as valuable. I developed a category on the blog titled, “This is a feminist issue because…”. Students were required to post one example of something that they believed to be a feminist issue and then respond to at least two other students’ examples. Here is my explanation:

So, this category is for posting images, news items or anything else that you feel speaks to issues related to feminism. It could also include anything that you believe especially deserves a feminist analysis. And it could include topics, issues, or events that you feel are connected to feminism or deserve a feminist response, but you are not sure how or why. Entries filed under this category should invite us to apply our growing knowledge of feminism/feminist movement/s to popular culture/current events or should inform us about ideas, topics, or images that are important for feminism. When posting an entry/example, you could pose a question to the reader or provide a brief summary on the example and/or why you posted it.

While the purpose of this blog category was to document a wide range of feminist issues and approaches, the unanticipated (and somewhat anticipated) effect of this category was to demonstrate to students that feminist movement is not any one thing and that we can’t ever fully know what feminism is or how it should proceed. While this made some students angry (“if feminism is too broad, it becomes meaningless!”) and many uncomfortable, it made other students curious and inspired them to rethink debate and feminism outside of its rigid borders. In the context of this blog, the failure to come up with any definitive or comprehensive conclusions of what feminism or a feminist issue is resulted in a larger success–it opened them to new ways of thinking about feminism and enabled (at least some of) them to embrace not knowing (check out what I write about this idea in my final thoughts entry).

VERSION 3: In the context of Unchained

Failure is very important part of the process of breaking old habits and creating new ones. So much so that I have included a category on that blog entitled, Failure. While there is much that could be said about how failure (that is, doing things in un-virtuous or out-of-balance ways) is an important part of our moral and practical education, I simply don’t have the energy to write much more about that right now. At some point soon, I would like to carefully read and maybe comment on Putting on Virtue in relation to this question. But, I digress.

From my perspective (STA has a different perspective), I am interested in exploring my/our various habits of consumption and how to break and/or rework them. Perhaps one of my central approaches to this breaking/reworking process is to give some serious attention to the moments when I fail. I like to analyze why it didn’t work and ask lots of questions–what happened? how could it happen differently? what are some of the deeper issues that prevent me from breaking habits that I know are bad, harmful, unjust? Why do I have so many half-finished bags of tortilla chips? Why did I panic and buy the processed ham? And why did I order the large beer sampler?

Some people might imagine such a focus on failure to be depressing or discouraging; I find that not focusing on how/when I fail to be unproductive, uncritical and (almost) a guarantee that I will fail again.

A blogging breakthrough?

As I have chronicled in my teaching with blogs section, I have been experimenting over the past year (yes, I have been writing in this blog for almost a year–May 12th is my one year anniversary!) with the blog as a writing and teaching tool. Ever since giving my workshop on “teaching with blogs and blogging while teaching” this past February, I have given special attention to thinking about how to use a blog entry as the foundation for and content of my in-class discussions. I imagine it as an alternative to powerpoint. Why, you may ask, do we need an alternative to powerpoint? Unlike many others, I am not strongly opposed to power point. But for some reason, I have never been compelled to use it. It doesn’t seem to fit with how my brain works or how I want to present and discuss images/video clips, etc. (Note: I am not ruling out powerpoint and am open to suggestions on how to use it effectively. Any thoughts?)

I plan to write extensively about my experiences with course blogs this summer. For now I want to highlight a few entries from this week that have been particularly successful and productive; entries that inspired me to think that I might just be experiencing a blogging breakthrough.

Example One: Thoughts about Happiness, the Unhappy Archives, Gidget, the trouble with dinner, and putting the hap back in happiness

This entry was used as the format for a discussion of Sarah Ahmed’s recent work on happiness in my graduate class on troublemaking (feminist and queer explorations in troublemaking). I used the entry:

  • to reference my own writing on Ahmed and happiness (from this blog)
  • to highlight particular passages from the readings (and questions that I want to discuss)
  • to connect the current readings with concepts/ideas/readings discussed earlier in the semester
  • to post video clips that allowed for further engagement/explanation/complication of some key themes in the readings

I found this format to be a lot of fun (to create and discuss). I am particularly proud of how well the two video clips worked with and against Ahmed’s idea of the feminist killjoy and her discussion of the killing of joy (and the exposing of bad feelings) at the dinner table. I have wanted to do something with Debbie Downer for a while now, ever since I suggested that J Butler might be one in my entry on grief. And I love how bringing in these video clips allowed me to approach the material in a different way–and bring in our discussion about humor and comedy from earlier in the semester.

Example Two: A Feminist Response to the Arizona Immigration Bill (SB1070)

This entry was used as the format for a discussion about the Prison Industrial Complex and “protection: for whom? and at what cost?” in my mid-level undergraduate feminist debates class. The class met this past Tuesday, just days after Gov. Brewer had signed SB1070. The topic of immigration rights, the PIC, and problematic claims of “protection” and “safety” seemed to fit very well with the bill and how it was being discussed by a wide range of bloggers and media outlets, so I decided to make this entry the focus of our class. I used this entry:

  • to provide some context and more information about the bill by summarizing parts of the bill and the discussions surrounding it, and by posting a wide range of links–including a link to the actual bill and to Gov. Brewer’s explanation of it
  • to offer a brief overview of some critical responses to the bill and the implications of it for people living and working in Arizona
  • to connect the reading to an important recent issue and allow students to apply their growing knowledge of feminist critiques of the PIC to current events
  • to post a video clip that encourages students to be curious and to think critically about current events and how they are represented within the news (or the “fake news”–can we call The Colbert Report fake news?)
  • to provide a space, and an example, that could enable students to revisit all of the issues we discussed during the semester and that would encourage them to be curious about the bill

All in all, I think I am figuring out some productive ways for using the blog for my presentation and discussion of key ideas and concepts. In past classes, I have relied (a lot) on extensive handouts. This requires using a lot of paper (especially in classes with 40+ students) and can be overwhelming (and let’s face it, boring) for students. Blog entries enable me to document my notes/ideas/reflections without wasting paper and in a way that is engaging and interesting for many (most?) of the students and for me.

One thing that happened in both classes that I thought was interesting (and cool) was that I didn’t merely read the blog entry from top to bottom. In both classes we jumped around, oftentimes coming back to material again and again. In the feminist debates class the students said several times, “can you scroll back up…I want to talk about how the language was used here or about the idea there…”. The format of the blog made it easy to go back and forth and back again. It also enabled me to jump around, click on links, and bring up new information that related to students’ comments.

One more random thought for today: Does anyone else have problems with boring group (or individual) presentations that seem unfocused and not well-thought out, and that rely too much on powerpoint? This semester in my feminist debates class, I encouraged students to give their very brief presentations directly off of their blog entries (which were a required part of the assignment). So far, the presentations this semester have been more interesting than past classes. A little late in the game (which always happens when I am experimenting), I realized that I should encourage this format even more and give them a sample format. So I posted this entry earlier today. I think that I might require students to use the blog for their presentation next year. I might even provide them with one or two possible formats to use. By making it a structured requirement, I might increase my chances for getting better presentations (that present the material more effectively and that are more interesting). Hmmm….

Living and Grieving beside J Butler

My mom died last year on September 30, 2009. Diagnosed with an especially nasty form of cancer, pancreatic, back in October of 2005, she had defied the odds by living for four years–that’s 3 1/2 years longer than was expected.

When she was diagnosed, I was pregnant with my second child and was frantically trying to finish up the final chapter of my dissertation. That chapter was about feminist virtue ethics and Judith Butler’s work in both Precarious Life and Undoing Gender on the livable life. I wrote part of it on my laptop at the hospital while the doctors were attempting to remove my mom’s tumor (and half of her stomach). My dissertation chapter was not on grief; it was on life and how to live.  And my reading of Butler was not motivated by my recent entry into the state of impending loss–my realization of how I was undone by my mom’s not-yet-death,  but by my urgent need to make sense of what kind of life my mom could expect to have if she lived past this risky surgery.

By the time my mom died in 2009, I had spent a lot of time living with Butler. I had read, written about, presented on, and taught Precarious Life and Undoing Gender many times. And as I had watched my mom slowly, and then rapidly, deteriorate I had thought about the livable life and how she was able to hold on to so much of it for so long even as it was being stripped away from her in many big and small ways. As she refused (or was unable) to die that last six months of her life, after the second round of chemo made her too weak to even walk, I thought about Butler and I wondered about the value and limits of grieving and staying in a state of grief for too long. I even wrote about it here on this blog.

In many ways, Judith Butler has been a part of my living with and grieving the death of my mom. It is not so much that her work has comforted me (although it has), or allowed me to fully make sense of my mom’s illnesses and death (what could, really?), but that her work has always been a part of this process for me. When my mom was diagnosed I was reading and writing about Precarious Life. When my mom died I had just completed (but couldn’t give) the draft of a presentation on Butler, Undoing Gender, and the virtue of staying in trouble. And for much of the time in-between those years of diagnosis and death I was reading and thinking about Butler and making and staying in trouble.

What, you may ask, is the significance of this confession (or story or account?)? I need to think about that question some more. And I hope to write about it throughout the summer. For right now, I feel compelled to mention this connection because I randomly came across a special cluster on grief and pedagogy in the journal, Feminist Teacher. In that cluster was a moving essay by Blaise Astra Parker entitled “Losing Jay: A Meditation on Teaching While Grieving.” At the beginning of the essay, Parker recounts her experiences reading and teaching Undoing Gender in a summer seminar, “Reading Judith Butler,” which took place right after the death of her partner. Discussing the first chapter of the book, which is about mourning, she writes:

Suddenly, strangely, I was reading Butler writing about me. My physical condition–“I think one is hit by waves, and that one starts out the day with an aim, a project, a plan, and one finds oneself foiled. One finds oneself fallen. One is exhausted but does not know why” (18), and my emotional turmoil–“Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something…” (19).

In the midst of grieving for her loss while teaching, Parker finds in Butler a resource for describing her experiences of coming undone and losing all control over her body and her emotions. My experiences with reading, teaching and thinking about Butler are different, yet this essay speaks to me, conjuring up emotions and thoughts about my mom, grieving, teaching while grieving (I taught my feminist pedagogies class on the day my mom died). And it makes me wonder, Just how does Butler fits into all of this? How has her work, particularly her ideas about the livable life and grieving, affected how I have reacted to and dealt with the impending and then eventual loss of my mom? And what do I mean by making the title of this essay, “living and grieving beside j butler”?  More to come…

An Assessment of my fall 2009 blogs: two strategies

A couple of days ago I posted the details of my blog assignments for Queering Theory and Feminist Pedagogies. In this entry, I want to write about how I implemented these assignments. Here are two strategies I used:

1. I demonstrated a commitment to the blog.

I showed the students I was serious about using the blog by spending considerable time training them and thinking with them about what a blog is and how it is useful. Way back in August, when I was writing about teaching with blogs, I offered the following suggestion:

Spend some time at the beginning of the semester training students on how to use the blog.
If possible, demonstrate how to: log in, write an entry, create a link, upload an image, embed a youtube clip, comment on other blogs, find helpful blogs (other things I am forgetting?). You should also spend some time discussing what blogs are, how they can be used, and how/why they will be used in your class. Although this reading is a little dated (from 2005), it might be helpful in getting your students to understand what blogs are and why they are useful. And, it might (but not always) be helpful to have students reflect on blog rules (how to comment on others’ blogs, etiquette, etc).

This fall I took my own advice; in each class we devoted an entire week to training and thinking critically about blogs and how they could/do function in feminist and queer classrooms. In my queering theory class, we read essays on queer blogging by Jill Dolan, Rahul Mitra and Radhika Gajjala, and Julie Rak (you can read my discussion of them and find links to the full citations here). We also devoted a lot of time to thinking about blogging in relation to queer theoretical issues (is the blog a queer space of freedom? what sorts of queer subjects are constructed through blogging? how do blogs challenge and/or reinforce liberal notions of the Subject/Person and the personal?). Reflecting on blogs in this way–queerly and as an important topic for queering–established from the very beginning that the course blog wasn’t just going to be extra (busy) work for the students to do; the blog was going to be a object of study and where they could practice their own queering of theories/ideas/experiences, etc. In my feminist pedagogies class, we read Blogging Feminism: (Web) Sites of Resistance and my three part series on feminist pedagogy and blogging (here, here, and here) and we discussed how blogs can be used (and abused) in feminist classrooms. In both classes, I gave them a tutorial on how to blog in the media center. I also posted (and discussed) this blogging primer.

2. I was an active participant on the blog.

In addition to spending some time at the beginning of the semester for training and thinking about  blogs, I also participated in the blogs with the students. I posted entries in which I reflected on the readings, offered up an example for them to analyze, made announcements about interesting events or resources, and linked to my own blog when I had written entries that seemed relevant to the class. I also occasionally commented on their own entries. With all of this posting, I definitely increased how much I participated in my course blogs. In past classes, I averaged about 10-15 posts per semester (which consisted of announcements about class or weekly questions for them to respond to). In my queering theory and feminist pedagogies classes this past fall, I did 88 entries combined. While many of these entries were about course management (announcements, additional readings, links to handouts), overall I was more creative in my use of the blog. Here are some examples of how I participated on the blog. I posted

The blog can be an amazing (and perhaps overwhelming, at times) resource for students as they engage with the material, with me and with other students. I really enjoyed exploring so many different ways to facilitate (and encourage) that engagement. Okay, so I have run out of steam on this entry. These are not the only strategies I used for implementing the blog. In future entries, I want to write about using the blog in class discussions, a few blog categories that I am particularly proud of, and my struggles with comments.

An Assessment of my Fall 2009 Blogs: the Assignments

It is January 6. In 13 days my spring semester begins. Remarkably, my syllabi for Feminist and Queer Explorations in Troublemaking and Contemporary Feminist Debates are in pretty good shape. Time to reflect on what worked/didn’t work in my course blogs this past semester. If you recall (if not, see here), one key reason I started writing in this blog was to practice what I preach/teach. I imagined that actually participating in what I assign for my students would help me to create more productive and engaging blog assignments. It would also help me to understand the limits and possibilities of using the blog. And, I hoped, it would help me to understand better how blogging can contribute to my feminist pedagogical goals. It did all three of these things. I strongly believe that my development of and participation in this trouble blog has contributed greatly to the success of the blog assignments in Queering Theory and Feminist Pedagogies. But, before I get to how these assignments were successful (and also where they could be improved, because isn’t there always room for improvement?), let me start by describing the assignments for each class.

QUEERING THEORY: upper-level undergrad seminar, 12 students

Brief summary/background: When I started putting the syllabus together last July, I knew I wanted to make the blog a central part of the course. The last time I taught Queering Theory, in spring of 2008, the assignments were fairly effective and we (both me and the students) enjoyed the semester. We had a blog that we used, but not that much. This time, I was ready to mix it up and really push at the limits of how blogging could (or should?) be used in the classroom. A class about queering seemed perfect for such an experiment. By making the course rely so heavily on the blog, the students and I could work to challenge/unsettle/disrupt/queer the course. We could potentially disrupt where (not just in the seminar room, but wherever our computers were) and when (not just during the officially scheduled class time, but at 2 AM if we wanted) class engagement occurred. We might also be able to unsettle what counted as academic engagement and rigorous writing (blog entries instead of formal papers) and who counted as an expert (not just the professor or the authors of our “scholarly” texts, but the students as blog authors/posters). Here is part of the official assignment that I distributed to them a week or two into the semester:

ENTRIES: 30% or 300 points (15 total @ 20 points each)

7 Direct engagements with the readings
3 Annotated bibliographies
5 “Queer This!” posts

ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT: 10% or 100 points (10 total @ 10 points each)

3 Comments posted in response to the query in “Class Summaries and Queries”
4 Comments posted on direct engagement OR annotated bibliography entries.
3 Comments posted on any blog entries

* NOTE: While you are encouraged to post as much as you are able, only 2 entries and 1 comment per week will count towards your overall grade.

Included in the official handout was a more detailed explanation of each type of entry/comment. You can download it here.  I recognize that the amount of detail I give for the blog entries might seem overwhelming (which I think it was for some of them), but it also demonstrated that I was taking this whole blog thing seriously–because I had put so much thought into the assignment, they could trust that I knew what I was doing. As one student pointed out in her final blog entry, trust (between me and her, her and the other students) was central to making this blog experiment a success. A week or so after distributing and discussing this handout, I gave them a worksheet and more instructions about how to keep track of their participation. You can download that here. Here is a screen shot of page 1 of the worksheet.

Central to the blog assignment was the tracking of a particular theme related to queering theory. Students were able to pick which theme they wanted to track. Their direct engagements and annotated bibliographies were required to engage with that theme. They also had to read an additional essay related to their theme and present on it. Finally, they were required to post (or submit) and briefly present on a final wrap-up in which they defined their term and reflected on the experience of blogging. In total, the blog assignment was worth 800 points out of 1000 total points (300 points for blog entries, 100 points for comments, 150 points for presentations, 250 points for the final wrap-up). That’s right. 80% of their grade was the development of and participation in our course blog. As I have stated before, I am amazed and impressed with my students’ willingness to engage in this risky experiment, especially since only two of them had taken courses with me before.

FEMINIST PEDAGOGIES, graduate seminar, 14 students

Brief summary/background: This past semester was my second time teaching Feminist Pedagogies. When I taught it the first time I had always hoped that the blog could be a productive site for engagement with the ideas. We used it but, just like in my first queering theory blog, we didn’t use it that much. It wasn’t a place for us to engage with ideas, only a place to post notes or additional resources. When I found out that I would have 14 students and that the time for my class had been cut from 2 1/2 hours to 2 hours 10 minutes, I knew that the blog would be essential for allowing us to discuss all of the material. So I decided to emphasize the blog as one of the places where students would raise questions and discuss readings/pedagogical theories/teaching. Just like with the queering theory course, a course on feminist pedagogies seemed to be a fitting place to experiment with blogging. Here is the assignment that I gave them:

REQUIRED BLOG ENTRIES:

You are required to actively participate on our course blog. In addition to posting your pedagogical question on the blog (worth 50 points), you are required to post 10 posts (either as new entries or comments on other class members’ entries) over the course of the semester (worth 15 points each).

Pedagogical Question:
Each session will begin with a wrap-up discussion of pedagogical questions that are first raised by several students on our course blog. The questions can be theoretical and/or practical in nature (e.g.: How do you deal with students who don’t “get it”? How do we create community in big classes? What characteristics should a feminist classroom have?). It could also stem from your own experiences as a teacher or student. We will spend approximately 10-15 minutes on the discussion as we brainstorm responses. Each week, several students will be responsible for posting their questions on our course blog. The questions should be posted by Monday evening.

10 Required Posts:

5 direct responses to pedagogical questions
2 related to the development of your syllabus/reading list
3 your choice on feminist pedagogies

Direct responses: These 5 posts can be comments posted directly on the original pedagogical question post, or they can be new entries that directly engage with and respond to the pedagogical question. Your response should be thoughtful and draw upon course readings, discussions and/or your own experiences in the classroom as a student or teacher.

Syllabus-related posts: The purpose of these 2 posts is to enable you to chart your progress as you develop your syllabus. Your posts can be about anything related to that process: questions about possible readings, mini annotated bibliographies on sources that you are planning to use, reflections on figuring out your topic, readings, or assignments. The only requirement is that one of these “syllabus progress reports” must be posted by November 4 and the other one must be posted by December 16.

The remaining 3 posts can be about anything related to the course and feminist pedagogy. You could post questions about the readings (what certain terms mean, etc) or mini annotated bibliographies with sources on feminist pedagogy or teaching. Or, you could share images/ideas/examples with our class that might be useful for teaching. You could even post your critical reflections on why blogging is/isn’t effective in the classroom or offer another direct response to a pedagogical question.

You are required to make 5 posts by November 4.
The remaining 5 posts should be completed by December 16.

There you have it, the blog assignments for each course. In upcoming posts I want to write about how these assignments did/didn’t work. I also want to write about how they reflect my pedagogical vision and values. And I want to offer some advice for anyone else wanting to experiment with blogging.