Page 140 - Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century

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Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
I am forced to engage issues of what it means to educate for (re)humanisation and critical consciousness in a context where many of our students are learning in the midst of death, grief and trauma.
the death certificate is highly regulated and politicised in domestic relations. It is not something anyone can just get.
Trained in the subfield of Critical Medical Anthropology, we place
a premium on embodiment and ‘the experience of the sufferer’. In Critical Medical Anthropology we recognise people as experts in the complex spectrums of their lives. Critical Medical Anthropologist Eugene T. Richardson tasks us to not ignore systemic and political drivers to diseases, as well as how class, race and coloniality structure peoples’ experiences of disease and illness (Richardson 2020). Similar to Richardson (2020), in my teaching practices I remain acutely aware of our historical contexts and histories on the African continent and the ways that these have (re)shaped our experiences of illness and suffering.
As my student attests, much of the suffering that she is experiencing because of the deaths, loss and resultant mental health challenges are preventable. Yet, through prevailing systemic exclusions, she has to work full time to support herself, with little time to grieve and process the successive losses she had recently experienced. Gibbs and Mkhwanazi (2021) have written about anxiety being the most common mental health disorder experienced by young people in South Africa. Gibbs and Mkhwanazi (2021) share that young people’s experiences of extreme poverty and conditions of violence contribute greatly to generalised anxiety disorder. Located primarily in an institution of higher learning, I am forced to engage issues of what it means to educate for (re)humanisation and critical consciousness in a context where many of our students are learning in the midst of death, grief and trauma.
(Re)humanising education
My teaching is inspired by movements across the world to (re)humanise education. I use ‘(re)humanise’ to index that young people have been (un)humane(d) by the education system. I actively work against pedagogical approaches that terrorise and are fear based. As Brown (2012: 184) shares, this requires ‘learning how to engage with vulnerability, and recognising and combating shame’ in the classroom. In doing this, I draw heavily from feminist and critical pedagogical approaches that, while demanding rigour, prioritise care, love and joy in learning.
The courses and academic specialities I teach require that I work through, with students, some tough materials that deal with economic and structural violence, various forms of dehumanisation that includes bodily dehumanisation and ‘the fragmentation of the body’. When
I am going to teach, I not only prepare myself mentally, but work to prepare the students through various forms of ‘grounding’ exercises. In my ‘Southern African Perspectives on Gender, Health and Sexuality’ course, I teach heart-breaking materials on HIV/AIDS. Similarly, in my ‘Childhoods and Youth’ course, I teach about child-headed households, many of which are because of HIV/AIDS. Recognising that nearly eight million South Africans are living with HIV/AIDS, I recognise the high likelihood of many of the students being impacted in one way or another by this terrible disease.