#SOL16: Say it Plain

(CitraSolv papers, original photographs, digital remix)

And what struck me is that what actually all three of the religions that come from Abraham — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — what we all have in common is the sense of wonder that leads to praise.  -

Mary Catherine Bateson, from here.

I.


A sense of wonder that leads to praise.
A sense of wonder that leads to praise.

This is what moves us, moves through us. A praise song, like the one Elizabeth Alexander graced us with nearly eight years ago on that bitter cold morning when Barack Obama became president. A praise song for the new day. 

What if we were more about praise songs, about wonder, than the sad bickering that seems to be part of the national discourse?  What if it we knew that it was grace that supports us when our burdens feel too heavy? 

Would we love more fiercely? Forgive one another our differences? Celebrate what moves us?


II.

Say it plain: There is only now. 

There are no promises beyond this moment. 

On that morning President Obama was sworn into office, Rob and I imagined a long life unfolding ahead of us. A life we would walk each day and decades later grow old together, best friends. We were filled with such promise--a loving marriage, a beautiful son, brothers and friends. That my husband would die a mere seven years later would have seemed unfathomable. But he did. Then, God was more abstraction, than substance. Faith a poem waiting to be read.  

And I wonder if on that inauguration morning as Elizabeth Alexander read her poem aloud, was she too imagining a long life with her husband and children? Was she imagining what was not to be? 

Towards the end of her memoir, The Light of the World, she writes,

When Ficre and I chose the house at 150 Edgehill Road we felt we could see our entire lives in front of us, our grandchildren coming there, sleeping in their father’s childhood rooms left intact. We searched for a table big enough to accommodate feasts of friends...(p. 169). 

Like Rob and me, the imagined future was one that happened communally, around a table. A year before Rob died, we were in a small town in Maine when we stopped in a shop to get a cup of tea.  We sat at a worn and lovely farm table that would have sat 14 more people comfortably. For weeks after we tried to figure a way to transform our small kitchen and family room so we could house such a table.  Rob would tell me,  "You could paint at one end while I prepared dinner at the other. Or I could sit and read, and really spread out my books and we could gather round the other end for eating."    


III.

At the beginning of the memoir, Alexander wonders,

Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love (p. 3).

And I think she's right.  Tragedy is shaped by the presence of love, given voice by the power of our affection. And against such tragedy is it wonder and praise that are left to comfort us when no human touch can still the pain?

IV.

More than a century ago, Whitman spoke to us about the light and dark. He spoke to us about miracles.  And tonight the dark is thick with remorse, so sad that rain is but a moment away. Clouds cover the sky and I stand beneath the darkness looking for what cannot be found.  By all that is holy, it is wonder and praise that keeps me company when Rob is so very, very far from home.

The Role of Teacher in Passion-Based Learning

I have been considering the role of teacher as we explore the idea of personalization and passion-based learning. I understand the value and necessity of passion-based learning and want to suggest that it does not exist as some absolute and certainly is not simply about a learner and his/her interest.  Instead, imagine passion-based learning as dialogue that occurs among learners, teachers, mentors, and community-based others.  Passion-based learning isn't about our interests, but rather about the ideas, curiosities, mysteries, and possibilities that are engendered in juxtaposition with one another. At the center of such engagements are the learner and the teacher.

The definition of teacher is important to name as we wade into less anchored times where the idea of teacher is being challenged as being necessary. Consider for example, Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown (2011) who offer this vision of learning:

In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity. In this environment, the participants all stand on equal ground—no one is assigned to the traditional role of teacher or student. Instead, anyone who has particular knowledge of, or experience with, a given subject may take on the role of mentor at any time. Mentors provide a sense of structure to guide learning, which they may do by listening empathically and by reinforcing intrinsic motivation to help the student discover a voice, a calling, or a passion. Once a particular passion or interest is unleashed, constant interaction among group members, with their varying skills and talents, functions as a kind of peer amplifier, providing numerous outlets, resources, and aids to further an individual’s learning (Kindle Location 587-593).

I appreciate the bold ideas Thomas and Brown offer in A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, but think their vision does not capture well the idea of teacher.  I believe that much will be lost if we abandon the role of teacher in lieu of peer to peer learning or community-based mentorship. Now to be clear, I believe both peer-based learning and community mentors are very important correlates to learning and are under used in our current realization of school.

When I think about teacher, I think of Madeline Grumet's (1995) definition. She writes: 

When we say that we are educating someone, we are introducing that person, young or old, to ways of being and acting in the world that are new to his or her experience (p. 17).

To introduce learners to ways of being and acting in a world new to the learner's experience requires the teacher to act as bricoleur: one who cobbles together materials at hand to serve new uses. The teacher as bricoleur (I've written about this here) is the master teacher as s/he is able to anticipate, occasion, deepen, and complicate learning. Teaching well isn't singularly following a learner's passion and supporting it, however worthy such art and craft might be. Teaching well also means leading the learner into ways of being and acting that are foreign to their experience and as such not yet a passion.  Teaching well means occasioning a learner's intellectual frustration and scaffolding such experiences so that learners come to know the power of ambiguity, uncertainty, loss, and joy.

I have been thinking about this for several reasons: I have been taught by such teachers, have worked alongside such teachers, have married such a teacher, and have friends who are such teachers.  I know via these relationships what it means to be in the company of teachers and would not want that denied to learners regardless of how personalized an education we might be able to offer students. There is something to be said for the unimagined, impossible to plan, and random learning that happens in the company of fine teachers.

So what does this all mean?  Teachers matter. Their brilliance, tentativeness, failures, kindness and courage matter.  I want to say, America, we would be fools to abandon such importance.

A point of illustration: Earlier today I was reading Michael Doyle's (@BHS_Doyle) latest post, Natural World. He's a teacher who teaches high school biology in NJ. He writes:

My goal is for kids to know less by June than they knew in September, a whole lot less. Good science can be as tenuous as the wisp of a shrew's breath.

Until they know this, and it's easier to grasp when entropy takes its toll over the years, as knowledge of your inevitable path creeps into cerebral shadows, I fear I am wasting their time.

Until they know this, maybe pushing them outside, a copy of Seamus Heany's Human Chain in one hand, a cheap plastic magnifying glass in the other, is enough science for a period, for a lifetime.

The path outside with poem book and magnifying glass in hand may not and likely will not be a route learners would claim via their passion.  All the better then to make that road. Know this: Alongside finding one's passion(s) as learning method, we also need to embrace the ambiguity of not knowing & walk that road too.  And yes there will and can be lots of guides.

Nonetheless, the guide I'd most want to walk alongside is a teacher.


Works Cited:
Grumet, Madeline. 1995. The curriculum: What are the basics and are we teaching them? In J.L. Kinchoe & S.R. Steinberg. Thirteen questions: Reframing education's conversation. 2nd edition (pp. 15-21). New York: Peter Lang.


Thomas, Douglas (2011). A New Culture of Learning:  Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change (Kindle Locations 587-593). CreateSpace. Kindle Edition.