Re-membering the body in English education

The preparation of this issue of English Teaching: Practice & Critique has offered me the opportunity to reflect on how the body has figured in my work and study, first as a teacher and later a researcher. Memory is as much a bodily re-experiencing of sense and feeling as it is a mental process. As I recollect back to my pre-service induction into primary English language arts teaching in the early 1970s, I recall that my training afforded no appreciation of the bodily nature of reading and writing or teaching for that matter. My classmates and I were apprenticed in the received wisdom and professional lore on how best to teach such things as letter recognition and phonics. I remember the feel of the bright winter’s, Nova Scotia sun streaming through the wall of windows warming our prefab, barrack-like classroom, still in use some 25 years after Dalhousie University hastily constructed it to house the influx of post-war veterans. I remember the authoritative look and voice of the Sister of Charity who taught us the ins and outs of the current basal series employed in the province’s primary schools.