I often find myself thinking about students as somewhat abstract–minds that are going to respond to what they’re presented with. This isn’t who or what my students are, of course. This is simply a projection, a way of seeing them as subjects of my plans, reactors to my action. They certainly aren’t living, breathing beings with lives outside my classroom…

For this blog post, I want you to think a bit about teaching on a material level. Disability studies helps us pay attention to the ways we think about and react to bodies and minds–especially when those bodies and minds seem out of place.

So, consider: to what degree do you think about your students as having bodies? How real to you are their physical abilities, their cognitive capacities or limitations, their mental coherence or disturbance? How real is your body-mind to your students or to yourself when you teach?