This essay sketches out the complications of a performative pedagogy in the context of a basic communication course, specifically examining how the course negotiates and constitutes what communication scholars have called educational risk. To do this, a collage of narratives are provided--a series of images which, when seen in totality, might generate a conversation about how communication studies could address the intersections of risk, critical performative pedagogy, and the classrooms of our basic communication courses. To initiate this conversation, the essay is grounded in the work of communication studies. Taken together, the collage seeks to ask questions, pose problems, and initiate dialogue about how we might begin to re-conceptualize the issues of \u27at-risk-ness\u27 in our classrooms
