In Gerofsky and Ostertag’s (2018) paper Dancing Teachers into Being with the Garden, the authors begin with an analysis of contemporary classrooms and the ways grids are deeply intertwined with both education and everyday life. They pose a striking question: whether it is possible to “swing” or “parkour” within the rigid grid of schooling, and whether the grid can ever truly be rejected when it is so deeply ingrained in ourselves and the world we inhabit.
As garden-based educators, Gerofsky and Ostertag (2018) draw on their work with teacher candidates in and with gardens, wondering whether “dancing teachers into being with a garden” might describe a new way of existing “beside, around, under, over, and through the tough grid of schooling as teachers” (p. 182). By engaging parkour and swing—two complex, embodied forms of movement—as ways of being simultaneously within and beyond the grid, Gerofsky and Ostertag (2018) explore the potential of dance as a new theoretical grounding for teaching. This approach invites teachers to move within, with, and beyond Euro-rectilinear conformations, offering an exciting and playful reimagining of educational practice.
One of my first stops was at the discussion of grids within our daily lives. I cannot quite recall whether it was Susan or Cynthia who mentioned this, or whether it emerged in my anti-racism education course with Professor Handel Wright, where we examined how Africa has been divided through the imposition of grids. In this paper, the authors highlight how grids have historically functioned as colonial tools for control and ownership of land. In Canada, we can also see how rectilinear grids have divided the country into halves and sections.
The act of sorting and ordering is further described as a means of power and control, something that is clearly visible in our classrooms through rows and columns of desks. As teachers, we maneuver along these gridlines, yet our movement remains directionally constrained—rarely, for example, moving diagonally. In contrast, this paper is situated in garden-based learning environments, where physical structures are less obstructive than those of traditional school classrooms.
This raises my first question: what might a classroom look like if it were not organized around rows and desks? And perhaps more personally—would we enjoy teaching and learning within such a space? I imagine that working in this kind of environment would be very exciting. However, when I think realistically about my role as a high school educator, the idea becomes less appealing. The practical concern of having students continually move desks back into rows and columns for subsequent classes highlights how deeply institutional structures continue to shape and limit playful pedagogical possibilities.
A second stop occurs at the beginning of page 179, where the authors pose a series of generative questions, including: “Are there senses and sense-making ways that are part of ourselves that we cannot truly reject, but might rebalance and reharmonize with ways of being and knowing suppressed by the dominant culture?” This question reminds me of a conversation with my former professor, Yuen Sze Michelle Tan, who spoke about using the Indigenous concept of Two-Eyed Seeing to balance her commitment to both Eastern medicine and Western medicine in her work as a biologist. Rather than rejecting one system in favour of another, Two-Eyed Seeing offers a way of holding multiple ways of knowing at once. In this sense, it resonates with Gerofsky and Ostertag’s exploration of working within, with, and beyond the grid—suggesting that teaching may not require abandoning dominant structures entirely, but learning how to move (or dance) differently within them, while making space for other embodied, relational, and suppressed ways of knowing.
I also wonder, from my perspective as a retired classical ballet dancer, whether ballet has a place in this conversation. Were parkour and swinging chosen because of their “non-normative” rhythms and movements, in contrast to ballet’s reliance on grids, alignment, and rigidity? And yet, ballet is still dance. Might ballet's structured nature also offer possibilities for engaging with the grid differently, rather than simply reproducing it?
My second question asks whether the idea of dancing into being within a place can meaningfully be incorporated into mathematics classrooms, or whether it functions more as a metaphor for imagining different ways of playing within—and with—the spaces we are given. Because the paper does not offer specific case examples of parkour or swinging within teacher education or classroom pedagogy, I remain unsure.
Thank you, Anna.
ReplyDeleteI was especially drawn to your connection to Two Eyed Seeing, and I want to begin by saying that I firmly believe in the importance of this idea. One of the patterns I notice—particularly online and in public discourse more broadly—is how rarely people practice holding multiple perspectives at once. Instead, conversations often collapse into binaries: one way of knowing is seen as right, and the other as wrong. In doing so, we lose the opportunity to understand what we do not yet know, and more importantly, we lose the possibility of making meaningful progress. Two Eyed Seeing offers a powerful reminder that learning does not have to be about choosing sides, but about cultivating the ability to perceive more fully.
Physics offers a particularly compelling example of this. Throughout history, physicists have often strongly disagreed with one another—wave versus particle theories of light, classical mechanics versus quantum mechanics, quantum theory versus general relativity. And yet, rather than one being simply “wrong,” we now understand that each framework describes reality accurately within certain conditions. Newton was not wrong; his laws still work extraordinarily well at everyday scales. Einstein did not invalidate Newton; he extended him. Today, physicists continue searching for a unifying equation or theoretical framework that can hold these perspectives together—a more comprehensive way of understanding reality rather than a rejection of what came before. In this sense, scientific progress itself can be seen as a practice of Two Eyed Seeing.
This brings me back to your discussion of Gerofsky and Ostertag’s work. Their invitation to dance within, with, and beyond the grid resonates strongly with this way of thinking. Rather than imagining liberation as the total removal of structure, they ask what it might mean to move differently inside it—to swing, parkour, or dance along its edges. I find this framing especially hopeful because it acknowledges the reality that grids are not something we can simply step outside of, either individually or institutionally. Like dominant scientific paradigms, they shape us even as we question them.
In this light, I wonder if the value of dancing into being lies less in replacing the grid and more in cultivating an awareness of it—learning how to engage it with flexibility, creativity, and care. Much like Two Eyed Seeing in science and medicine, this approach does not deny dominant systems, but resists allowing them to be the only way of knowing or moving. For me, that feels like a powerful pedagogical stance, especially in contexts—like secondary schooling or mathematics classrooms—where the grid is deeply entrenched.
Thank you, Anna, for the summary and reflections. Imagining a classroom that is not organized around rows and desks immediately opens up possibilities for different kinds of interactions, relationships, and ways of knowing. I was instantly reminded of the book I borrowed from you, Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms, as I was reading your first reflection, particularly his discussion of how classroom furniture arrangements send implicit messages to both students and teachers. Liljedahl explains that rectilinear, front-facing classrooms tend to promote passive learning, whereas a defronted classroom—where students face in multiple directions—has been shown to be an effective furniture arrangement for inducing student thinking. While I strongly support this idea of “defronting” the classroom, I also think it takes time and experience to facilitate learning effectively in this way, especially given how deeply the grid of schooling continues to shape what feels practically possible for teachers, alongside the realities of insufficient teacher preparation.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your second question, what I currently imagine is more of a metaphor for rethinking how teachers and students move within the constraints of schooling. Rather than rejecting structure altogether, it seems to invite us to learn how to move differently within it like Lee has mentioned above. In mathematics classrooms, this might look like encouraging embodied gestures, allowing multiple solution paths, valuing different representations, or creating space for uncertainty and exploration instead of progressing linearly toward a single correct answer.
Thank you all for this very rich discussion that raises so many new thoughts and connections! Quantum physics — ballet — the layout of classrooms— two-eyed seeing — these are such fruitful ways of thinking about awareness and playfulness within and alongside the grid.
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