ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors present imagine schooling-as-gifting by engaging with a practice that they see as the bread and butter of teacher formation: unit planning. They use the conceptual and embodied space of unit planning to visualize how a gift ecology might come about in teacher education. Planning together can provide moments for reflection, to gather collective energy, and to explore possibilities that cross the boundaries of what is habitually done. As our creative process progressed, a few guiding concepts from post-human theory informed our inquiry. Unit planning is habitually negotiated in static settings. Tables, chairs, and fluorescent lighting all accompany a standard template used to map the coming hours, days, weeks, or months. The process of gifting is participatory, personal, and dynamic. Paying attention to the idea of the gift is a mode of promoting life in typical schooled conventions that generally centre human exceptionalism and commodity exchange.
