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Transformations: Womanist, Feminist, and Indigenous Studies
Teaching with Tenderness: Toward an Embodied Practice
Imagine a classroom that explores the twinned ideas of embodied teaching and a pedagogy of tenderness. Becky Thompson envisions such a curriculum--and a way of being--that promises to bring about a sea change in education.
Teaching with Tenderness follows in the tradition of bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, inviting us to draw upon contemplative practices (yoga, meditation, free writing, mindfulness, ritual) to keep our hearts open as we reckon with multiple injustices. Teaching with tenderness makes room for emotion, offer a witness for experiences people have buried, welcomes silence, breath and movement, and sees justice as key to our survival. It allows us to rethink our relationship to grading, office hours, desks, and faculty meetings, sees paradox as a constant companion, moves us beyond binaries; and praises self and community care.
Tenderness examines contemporary challenges to teaching about race, gender, class, nationality, sexuality, religion, and other hierarchies. It examines the ethical, emotional, political, and spiritual challenges of teaching power-laden, charged issues and the consequences of shifting power relations in the classroom and in the community. Attention to current contributions in the areas of contemplative practices, trauma theory, multiracial feminist pedagogy, and activism enable us to envision steps toward a pedagogy of liberation. The book encourages active engagement and makes room for self-reflective learning, teaching, and scholarship.
Teaching with Tenderness follows in the tradition of bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, inviting us to draw upon contemplative practices (yoga, meditation, free writing, mindfulness, ritual) to keep our hearts open as we reckon with multiple injustices. Teaching with tenderness makes room for emotion, offer a witness for experiences people have buried, welcomes silence, breath and movement, and sees justice as key to our survival. It allows us to rethink our relationship to grading, office hours, desks, and faculty meetings, sees paradox as a constant companion, moves us beyond binaries; and praises self and community care.
Tenderness examines contemporary challenges to teaching about race, gender, class, nationality, sexuality, religion, and other hierarchies. It examines the ethical, emotional, political, and spiritual challenges of teaching power-laden, charged issues and the consequences of shifting power relations in the classroom and in the community. Attention to current contributions in the areas of contemplative practices, trauma theory, multiracial feminist pedagogy, and activism enable us to envision steps toward a pedagogy of liberation. The book encourages active engagement and makes room for self-reflective learning, teaching, and scholarship.
168 pages, Hardcover
Published August 3, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 26, 2023
"Teaching with tenderness, it turns out, involves a promise we make to each other, and a way of living, requiring consistent and radical acts of self-care."
•••
I've read through this twice, and for my educator friends I cannot recommend this enough. Thompson frames the work of education and classrooms as holding sacred places in pedagogies of tenderness, or those places where pain and joy meet. Truly, if you're an educator or work with students, this book is for you!
•••
I've read through this twice, and for my educator friends I cannot recommend this enough. Thompson frames the work of education and classrooms as holding sacred places in pedagogies of tenderness, or those places where pain and joy meet. Truly, if you're an educator or work with students, this book is for you!
September 24, 2019
If you are a teacher, you need to read this!
September 2, 2018
Much for me to consider about my own classroom practice.
June 14, 2020
Powerful. Something I’ll reflect on in my practice for years to come.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews