It is a truism for progressive education practitioners that education does not occur in a vacuum. Justice-oriented pedagogy recognizes that context matters, and there is no serious theory of education that disputes this foundational assumption of pedagogical theory and practice. After all, no student can learn at their full capacity if they lack food security, adequate housing, or physical safety in school. Considering these scenarios contextualizes education and learning mat

Back in September 2017, my first semester of teaching first-year writing, I wrote a piece about phlebotomy and its queer intimacy. As I write this essay, I have a little more teaching experience under my belt. And unsurprisingly, while I teach I am still thinking about blood draws. My pedagogical habits of mind have been fundamentally shaped by my tenure as a phlebotomist. My attention tracks others’ emotions, particularly when they are uncomfortable, afraid, or guarded. And

Photo credit: buckets-o-fun I remember my first encounter with theory. My Intro to English professor assigned two readings early in the semester: excerpts from Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World and Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture. I assumed these were novels (albeit with strange titles). That night, I read the words on the page, but they washed right through the sieve of my understanding. We never got around to discussing the texts next class. I decided theory wasn’t my

I. The term multimodal is problematic. We need some context. How's Aristotle—mimesis (representation) / diegesis (telling)—as a starting point? Draft #1: I was given an insulin pump, which is basically a mechanical pancreas in the form of a mid-1990s pager. It attaches to a port on my abdomen and, aside from being useful in managing the levels of sugar in my blood, seriously compromises my ability to tuck in a shirttail (White). Choose your own adventure: If it's not already

Draft #1: Technology Was Scary, and Then I Became a Diabetic One may as well begin with the diagnosis: Five years ago a doctor at an urgent care center in Mississippi told me I was diabetic. I had all the classic symptoms: rapid weight loss, dark urine, fatigue. My blood glucose level was so high the meter couldn’t read it, simply blinked “High” and made this odd keening noise like my blood—so sugary it was, I imagined, the consistency of maple syrup—had offended it. “Oh, boy