This paper attempts to unravel the complexities of including the personal in geographical teaching. Drawing on email responses from 10 academics and her reflective teaching diary, the author differentiates the "personal" as experiential and "personal" as private in these accounts of teaching practices, revealing the contingent (re)constitution of "geographical knowledge". In recognizing the negotiation of our positionalities, interactions with individuals and class groups, and broader academic settings (i.e. geographical discipline, university contexts and broader educational trends) the unquestioning employment of "the personal" is further problematized. The paper concludes by contending that rather than dismissing the personal in teaching contexts or reverting to (or even maintaining) traditional disempowering pedagogies, a more nuanced and contextualized pedagogical politics is necessary both within, and beyond, geographies.