Vulnerable Teacher: Spanning Difference in the Classroom

Abstract

In this chapter, I build a model of teaching-learning based on early experiences of nurture. As tightly bonded young children reap the satisfactions of growing independence from their caregivers, they recognize them as having a separate existence, and so they must adapt many strategies, most especially around language, to make their needs and desires known. Honing these communicative skills turns into a lifelong process. In young-old age, I have found myself asking similar question to those the young child might ask herself: How am I connected to the not me? What does it mean to be in dialogue with another?

A story about learning to span age, race, and ethnic differences illustrates how making myself vulnerable in the classroom, speaking openly and frankly about the deaths of my parents and life partner, opened the possibility for undergraduates to consider how their own losses, and struggles with marginalized identities, might impact their teaching.

Call it sentimental; call it Victorian and nineteenth century; but I say that anthropology that doesn’t break your heart just isn’t worth doing anymore.

(Behar 1996 , p. 177)