Teaching is a drag

 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.