Teaching to the Golem: A Pedagogical Intra-Action

Abstract

This article considers the pedagogical nature of an intra-action involving the author, his high school student’s final project in an English class (a golem), and his school administrators. The author relies on narrative scholarship to both tell and interpret a story of his experience as a high school English and drama teacher, to illustrate the process, the product, and the result of an intra-action that emerged from his nontraditional literacy teaching practices concerning the plays Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and No Exit. Ultimately, he argues that educators—both teachers and administrators—should be more receptive of emergent, improvisational literacy teaching and learning, and careful in their participation with co-constituted intra-actions that come from such approaches to literacy pedagogy.