A Year of Baking, Building Community, and Developing Divergent Pedagogical Practices During Uncertain Times

During the COVID-19 lockdown, I joined a Facebook group of scholars with a non-scholarly focus called “Baking in Uncertain Times.” The online community offered participants a series of weekly baking challenges, intended in part to allow those who might be feeling alone and unfocused by the pandemic a chance to come together virtually to create food as well as a shared baking experience/memory. While the group wasn't intended as a pedagogical model or outlet, my participation in this highly distributed baking community has transferred to my teaching, specifically with how I approach learning through doing. Drawing on Annemarie Mol’s concept of doing , which conceptualizes things that should be done by recognizing that “Doing . . . may also be configured as a task . . . creative and adaptive, infused by desire and attuned to the circumstances,” my focus was twofold: doing tasks as a member of the baking group, and doing (or fostering) hope while adapting to pandemic circumstances and uncertainty. Following Jody Shipka, this paper examines how using a “food lens” and “the centering of food-related practices provides ways of reimagining the potentials of our research, scholarship, and teaching, while encouraging us to rethink [cultural concepts] in new ways, such as literacy, collaboration, embodiment, memory, and community.” Additionally, I highlight some of the processes by which I devised responses to the weekly challenges over a year and provide pictures of a few completed challenges. I also detail how the group ended up functioning as a divergent model of composition pedagogy, as a way to tap into joy, curiosity, and creating a stronger sense of community both in the classroom and among colleagues. The post A Year of Baking, Building Community, and Developing Divergent Pedagogical Practices During Uncertain Times appeared first on Lateral .