Teaching with Tenderness: Toward an Embodied Practice

SHOW GUEST: Becky Thompson

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 makes room for emotion, offers 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.

Join us as Becky shares how her new book encourages tenderness, active engagement and makes room for self-reflective learning, teaching, and scholarship in a learning goes deeper than civility, helping us know that we belong to each other, and is essential to who we are as human beings.