A remarkable summer has passed its midpoint. And yet there’s still so much yet to come: excitement, thrills, reunions and first meetings; a publishing and presenting, adventure and lots of the unknown. It’s been almost 9 months since Sean Michael Morris approached me about joining the faculty of the Digital Pedagogy Lab at University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It’s now July 2019 and we’re less than 2 weeks away from Day 1 of the Lab.
On the one hand, I can hardly wait! So many wonderful personalities gathered together for a whole week of reading, thinking, collaborating and creating. My mind becomes a flurry of enthusiasms at the thought: I get to be there! And not only that, I get to lead a track on Digital Identity!
On the other hand, I am also nervous. All of my insecurities come calling whenever I sit down to rethink my plans. I’m perfectly confident until I’m not and then I distract myself with Twitter and the downfall of liberal democracies everywhere and then I sit down to prepare and the cycle begins anew.
The good news is that as part of my prep I’ve been dipping into Sean Michael Morris’s and Jesse Stommel’s collected essays: An Urgency of Teachers, the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy and wow, I described it in my journal thus:
“like arriving in the harbor,
like finding a lost volume you missed on your shelves,
like arriving at a favorite but seldom visited restaurant and finding a bunch of friends thrilled to see you,
like being in a bar where they’re playing all your favorite songs, especially the ones you forgot were your favorites.”
Above all, reading their words helped me recognize how my thinking aligns with critical digital pedagogy. They also show me where I can find and create space in the field.
In one essay near the end, Sean describes how nervous he becomes before public speaking. The physiological symptoms sound both challenging and familiar.
I bring this up because nervousness – shaking, quavering, nauseated nervousness – is exactly what critical digital pedagogy feels like. Maxine Greene says that “experiences of shock are necessary if the limits or the horizons are to be breached.” It is therefore unwise to sit in our comfort when what we hope to do is unseat, to shrink when what we want is to grow. (From “Wide-Awakeness and Critical Imagination”, p. 271
Yes, exactly, I want to grow. I want to challenge what has been done before. I want to experiment and risk failure. So, heck yeah I’m nervous! And alive with all kinds of possibility. That’s the beauty. That is the frightening joy.
edifiedlistener 