Joscelyn:

Your course last semester was about narrative.  Could you describe how you approached it ?

Alexandra:

The theme for my First Year Writing class last semester was “Resisting the Single Story,” which comes from the writer Chimamanda Adichie.  It’s a TED talk about the power of stories: on the one hand, to engender stereotypes and simplistic thinking, on the other hand, to compel empathy and complex thinking. First Year Writing is really more about methods of reading and writing than it is about the content, which is why each section has a different theme, but ultimately have the same learning objectives around writing academic essays. In my section, we work with more writers from marginalized communities, looking at the ways that they might be critiquing or resisting certain oppressive or dominant narratives. 

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Chimamanda Adichie.
Still from Chimamanda Adichie's talk, "The Danger of a Single Story" (2009).

Joscelyn:

The theme is so fascinating. Could you discuss how you’ve been incorporating meditation and mindfulness into your pedagogical practice? If I were in your classroom, what would the experience with that be like?  

Alexandra:

I'm still working through how the meditation connects to the course theme. There are a couple of functions that I think meditation has in the online learning community specifically. One is providing a moment of transition from whatever you were just doing on your computer. It's what we lose by not walking from class to class, or having a little bit of time settling into a space.  It’s a cue that it's a moment to turn your phone over and close your tabs.  I would call it closing the tabs in your mind. It’s an invitation to focus where we are for the hour and 15 minutes that we have, which isn't long - and which feels even shorter online.  That synchronous time feels so precious that getting everyone focused through meditation feels important. Another role I think it plays is helping us acknowledge that we are all bodies as we're meeting over this platform. It felt important to recognize that we are embodied and everyone else is embodied. We're just not just showing up as brains loaded onto a cloud. It feels so strange that we have to invite people to breathe or even invite ourselves to take a deep breath. 

Joscelyn:

How did you begin the meditations in the seminar? 

Alexandra:

It happened right at the beginning of class.  As soon as the class started, I explained that we would start with a short breathing exercise to help us transition into the space, bringing our attention and awareness to this community and to the work of reading and writing. And then I would either just give some cues myself - deep breathing, sensory awareness - or I would screen share and play a guided meditation from a number of different sources. I really liked the guided meditations from the Dartmouth College Student Wellness Center. They have a whole playlist of meditations that were especially designed for students. I think it could be great if Barnard had something similar. They were anywhere from 2 minutes long to 10 minutes. The longest one I probably played was the week of Election Day and that was about 10 minutes long.

Joscelyn:

It would be great to hear about how that practice manifests and how it manifested especially during election week.

Alexandra:

Resilience was one of the key words in the meditation I used that week. When we began it in class, students started naturally going off screen. I said that they could turn their videos off if they wanted to. I think most of them had their videos off. And then when we came back after the meditation, they said that they felt better already. I sensed that it was a little bit easier to start a conversation about how they were feeling and thinking about the election that day. But to go back to this idea of why meditation, one of the times that made me feel like this was necessary was in June, during the protests and after the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. I was in some meetings where that was not acknowledged at all - what was happening was not mentioned, right in the thick of when it was happening - and when, in New York City, there were helicopters overhead.

Joscelyn:

I know – in the spot where I’m sitting now, when it's quiet, it's so strange to me, because there were helicopters circling overhead all the time.  This space has so changed for me during the past year, but especially during the summertime.

Alexandra:

Right.  I almost felt like I was having an out of body experience in those scenarios when what was happening was not discussed.  I felt like, “Wait, is this a recording? Is this not a live meeting? I don't understand.” And I felt like I couldn't connect to anything that was being said.   couldn't even really understand what was being talked about because it was total dissociation from any stress or pain that people might be feeling. And I feel like it has become kind of easier over the screen to dissociate from your own body in a way. I think that was around when I was making a more conscious decision of what I want to create in the [online classroom space].  I want to invite people to acknowledge their bodies. 

Joscelyn:

It’s interesting, because this experience right now feels embodied - it's just a different type of embodiment. I'm sure we all have different ways our bodies are changing, or have changed during the pandemic.  People's eyes are hurting and our bodies are hurting. It has all been such an embodied experience, but in such a variety of ways.  

Alexandra:

I'm trying to figure out whether meditation needs to even connect to what I'm teaching,because if it's allowing us to kind of be more present with each other, then it's facilitating the material in some way. I'm sure there are ways in which it might connect to resisting the single story. 

Joscelyn:

Would you only meditate at the beginning of class? 

Alexandra:

Right. But I've been thinking about it more after seeing Maria Scharrón-del Río’s presentation during the Beyond Content series.  They mentioned using mindful pauses during difficult moments of class discussion. And I was like, “Oh, that's really interesting.”  Being able to bring mindfulness into other points in the class, when the material gets really intense - I think that's something I would like to try more.

Joscelyn:

Last summer was some kind of turning point for what you were describing about the kind of disassociated aspect that can exist in this environment.  Do you see yourself bringing this practice into your courses when you are teaching in person?

Alexandra:

I am curious about whether I will continue doing it in person. I can't imagine not using it in Zoom classes. It gives me a moment to collect myself as well at the beginning. I am also saying to the students, “I am a human over here. I'm just trying my best to create a space that works for all of us.” That creates some flexibility as well, I think.

Joscelyn:

I was wondering how you have been balancing integrating meditation into the structure and time of your class meetings.

Alexandra:

I've been thinking a lot this year about the quality of time over the quantity of time. Sometimes you're showing a slideshow for most of the class time and everything's moving along quickly but everyone's off video and who knows whether they're even there. But they're definitely doing a bunch of other stuff - you know, answering emails, on their phones. It's so much less productive for their learning than spending half an hour of the class doing a check in where everyone speaks. And in those check-ins, they're like, “Oh, yes, me, too. I didn't realize anyone else was feeling really stressed right now - I thought everyone else was doing fine. I'm not managing the time well, or I'm feeling really bummed about not being on campus and connecting with each other.” This helps the students have better conversations about the text, too. So, I think there's a lot that I have to balance. My initial impulse is that everything has to have a purpose in the course tied to an objective - backwards design. But there's something a little bit less tangible about what it does to just hear your classmates relate to you or to take a pause between stressing out over registration and getting into the mood of the class.

 

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Manuscript of Toni Morrison's Beloved
Early draft of Beloved by Toni Morrison, one of the authors included in Watson's seminar, Resisting the Single Story. Manuscript is in the Toni Morrison Papers collection, Princeton University Library.

Joscelyn:

Yeah, absolutely. I love the way that you discuss that. Backwards design and scaffolding are important but people also just kind of want to talk to one another – with significant content, of course.

Alexandra:

Yes, with meaning. 

Joscelyn:

Do you sense connections between mindfulness meditation practices in the course and memory and retention?

Alexandra:

I was thinking about that.  I read some research about how mindfulness exercises make professors and students better able to focus on the material and also make them better able to hold on to what they're learning over time, and integrate it into meaningful patterns. And I was just thinking about how there might be some kind of psychological process happening that's not quite explicit. But I did find that students were carrying through things that we practice during class together into their assignments. And it really felt like they were remembering a little bit better what we talked about. I don't have any hard evidence to show this. But you know, now I’m reading the students’ work about how and where they think they've grown over the semester, and they're using the language of the class and the skills we've been learning since the beginning. I think meditation is helping with memory and focus in my courses.  I'm curious to learn whether what kinds of research there might be to back that up.

Joscelyn:

That’s very interesting.  I was also curious about the relationship between handwriting, memory and cognition.  Do you feel a sense of loss arises when there’s not the opportunity, for example, for students to write in a notebook regularly in a dedicated place? Though of course it could be possible to try to incorporate a practice like that on Zoom.

Alexandra:

I'm really curious about that, too. I think I could have really designed more activities where I asked the students to try handwriting. I handwrite - I have this tablet that feels like paper that has been invaluable to me during this year. It also doesn't have a backlight so it's a little bit easier on the eyes. I read everything on it. I know that some of the students must be reading everything on the computer screen. Some of them are printing things out. A lot of the prep for this semester was around just making things available in a lot of different formats. I didn't want to require them to have the paper printed out.  

I know the research around how handwriting can influence memory. It feels definitely true. To me, it feels like I can also create more original ideas when I handwrite. The ideas don't have to be so edited and so they flow more. But I wonder if there's some kind of connection like that, to breathing, you're getting more oxygen to your brain? Maybe that's helping you remember things? Or maybe it's just the fact that you get to clear your mind for a second from so many different stimuli?

Joscelyn:

It sounds like you're incorporating both movement and stillness into your courses in really interesting ways. 

Alexandra:

Nina Sharma’s improv work is also very much about gestures and mirroring one another to create more sense of play and fluidity.  She has great insight around that.   

Joscelyn:

Absolutely.  Everything you shared and especially your own story about prompted you to incorporate meditation into your courses is really powerful and important.

Alexandra:

Thank you. I should go meditate now!