Teaching is a drag. When I first did one of these teaching philosophy statements, for the FHEA application my philosophy was all about teaching as an empowering and subversive activity, and I railed against edutainment. That was a decade ago. For the past eight years, the core of my teaching activity has been a second year module of over 300 students, the vast majority of whom do not really want to study the subject they’re forced to study (Social Policy). And we had a pandemic which moved everything online.
I hear a drag queen answer the question why drag is suddenly so much
more popular. She explains how people have discovered how empowering it is to
have another persona; someone who is brash and can go out into the world
confidently; a mask to put on to slay. And I realise my teaching is drag.
I’ve realised there’s nothing wrong with edutainment. If students do not want
to be studying my modules, why make it a doubly boring experience for them.
Make learning fun! Spend two years of online pandemic teaching lip-synching for
your life every Friday; in the absence of teaching support assistants, employ
two sock puppets to teach Scottish devolution! Develop a postgraduate module that
is famous for a distinctly middle-aged, ten minute rant about the inability of
my neighbours to use a waste bin correctly! Literally dress up to pre-record
teaching materials!
Does this cheapen the learning experience? It might do. Every year I get
one or two students who think I’m not taking it seriously and I’m patronising
them. But this is outweighed by the students who end up loving the subject
because I make it interesting and fun. But in putting on my teaching drag, like
a drag artist, I can reveal aspects of my true self, including my sexual
identity, in a way that makes me vulnerable, but on my own terms. It enables me
to “queer” the boundary of my self as an academic and my self as a queer, “39”
year-old man who quite likes ABBA and Taylor Swift. This produces a deeper
empathy with an otherwise anonymous group of students. It enables students to
feel open about their sexual and gender identity with me and feel more included
in the University space. It means that one of my favourite aspects of
pre-pandemic teaching – the “front row fan club” in the Logie Lecture Theatre –
are also there in the online teaching environment. They are inspired, engaged
and ready to be the critical scholars I want them to be.
