Embodiment and mindful learning: Engaging the mind and body to dispel vulnerability

Some students enter a classroom with the expectation that learning is a passive exercise. My purpose as a professor, however, is not to lecture my students, but to equip them with creative tools to discover their own ideas and express them through movement/body. My teaching method, as a trained dancer/choreographer, while accepted in a dance-focused class may be quite different from what students expect in a general education course. Do I need to check my teaching methods at the classroom door to accommodate student preconceptions? One semester in particular caused me to pause, reflect, and work to develop a deeper understanding of how preconceptions from students may affect the learning in a course. This essay explores my adaptation of the models of 'small teaching' (Lang 2016) and my version of flipping the classroom to narrow disconnect between my general education students and me.