There is a thin line between irony and stupidity; I crossed that line in my last post by announcing my desire to leave the autobiographical then writing a detailed personal account of my martial arts experience. In my defense, the post began as an attempt to ‘take inventory’ (Said’s phrase) of my pedagogical roots and trace their growth to my current classroom situation. With that said, let me continue on with that project.

    I was so invested in that environment (the dojo) and its particular code of etiquette that I no longer know if it synchronized with or took over my personality, which itself balances a particular formality with casualness; learning that will take more introspective time than I care to allocate at the moment. What is obvious, however, is that these first pedagogical lessons significantly influence my teaching now.
    As I have said in other posts, I attempt to make the classroom a safe-haven where the most poignant issues can be discussed without all the censoring required in everyday experience. This desire is obviously predicated on my own desire to discuss these issues and engage my students in the highest level of criticism/ deconstruction each can achieve given their ability to connect and my ability to communicate. However, for these discussions to be truly open and comfortable, I consciously strive to create an informal atmosphere marked most obviously by the tone and level of vocabulary used; showing Chris Rock specials and Family Guy episodes also contributes to this.
    I stand at the intersection of the formal qualities of my classroom and its content, attempting to balance critical rigor and a casualness that disarms enough to bring real material to the surface.

    Aside: I wonder if one could productively think of humor and informality in the classroom as a kind of archival pedagogy. That is, ‘casual pedagogy’ creates an atmosphere where students are more willing to both introspect and share opinions or experiences in discussions, making the classroom a sort of living collective archive. Although one would have to be careful not to envision students as flat surfaces to be read, the benefit could be a more engaged experience, a classroom that is simultaneously constructing and deconstructing.