No desks, no blackboard

I’m in that odd transitional place right now of looking for work. I’ve decided to leave my current job, but haven’t determined what is next. It feels a little like being an awkward Tarzan-wannabe with unreliable vines. In this economy it’s more than a little nerve-wracking.

Of course I’m applying to teaching jobs. I have the all-important two years teaching experience and a clear commitment to the nourishment and accompaniment of nascent humanity, aka “education.” When I started here I was just trying on the idea of being a teacher or educator. Now I own both those words willingly. Applying them to myself feels a little like claiming I have super powers.

But I’m not strictly a classroom teacher. I don’t dislike classrooms at all. I actually love the book-ends of time, the learning space created, the ritual of white boards, lesson plans, class discussion, activities, notes, homework, etc. I love the pre-class planning rush that feels like a theater production going up on the first night.

And the garden is also my classroom – and the kitchen, the woods, field trips, and city streets. And, in retrospect, my work as an educator began long before I claimed it as a label, when I worked in publishing and journalism, community organizing, and anti-racism work.

Education is very closely related to ministry, art, and writing for me. They are different aspects of the bread of life that we offer each other, that which is most essential. Through giving and receiving, we teach and learn and re-learn how to be human.

So while I would be very happy to find a teaching position at Friends or independent school (sorry public schools, no teaching certification), don’t mind me if I look a little broader.

I see the classroom everywhere.

In the moment

In general, I'm a planner. I'm not a control freak about it and I'm not afraid of spontaneity - I just have a mind that benefits from a basic structure to keep me on task (or, in some instances, to riff off of.)

So as a teacher I plan, and I like to make an agenda for class. For instance, tomorrow we'll do a free write ("Write a brief history of a made-up war between made up nations, as it might appear in an outdated and slightly offensive high school history textbook") followed by a yarn discussion on cultural narratives of violence and nonviolence. I'll no doubt spend time tonight going over the readings I assigned (excerpts from Kurlansky's Nonviolence and an essay by Starhawk) and making notes on key points I want to emphasize and make sure are understood.

And then, tomorrow, undoubtedly something magical will happen. It happens all the time. I'll be struck by some random, last minute (literally) inspiration to change my plan. Suddenly it will make sense to change order, or do a different activity, to let a discussion go long, or to have my amazing TA perform Dispatch's The General at some other key but unplanned time in the flow of the class. The results will be phenomenal - and the inspiration would never have struck had I not done the planning.

What is it Parker Palmer says - methods are what we use until the real teacher arrives?

This kind of in-the-moment teacher inspiration is relatively new to me, though I've witnessed other facilitators work with it many times over the years. I've been congratulating myself these past three semesters that I've been able to stay open to it and to trust it. I think it might be a mark of maturity, at least for me.

There's also an element of trust, and of giving up control - to inspiration, to my students, to our shared organic experience of teaching and learning.

And a reminder that planning goes hand in hand with inspiration (and trust) is a probably a good life lesson.

Who has the power?

The first writing assignment in Peace Studies is a 100-word essay in response to the prompt: “In our society, who has power? What kind of power is it? What to they do with it?” It’s due the second day of class, and is designed to get them thinking and to give me a taste of them as writers and thinkers.

Peace Studies is all about power. Throughout the semester, we discover and discuss different kinds of power - the power of domination and oppression (power over), the power of satyagraha*, social movements and nonviolent resistance (power with), and the power of our own stories, lives, identities and liberation (power-from-within).

But on the first day most of the students are still working with power as we commonly understand it and encounter it – the power of wealth, government, military, and media. More often than not, they write about power that is based on control and concentrated in the hands of the very few:

“I believe that the governments, and people with weapons are the ones who have the power.”

“In our society, I believe the President, Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, along with many rich people have power.”

“I think in the global society, the media has a huge amount of power.”

“In our global society, those willing to ignore their morals and sacrifice their humanity have power.”

Their answers are consistently thoughtful, knowledgeable, and sophisticated – they show impressive understanding of interconnected and global systems, and say a lot in a mere 100 words.

As much as I find these answers sobering – they are so familiar with domination and control, and rarely do they express their own power – I also get excited. It means that Peace Studies (and Woolman as a whole) is going to be a huge adventure for them.

And I feel so lucky that I get to come along on that adventure.

*A term developed by Mohandas Gandhi meaning “truth force” – an attempt to define nonviolence but something that it is, rather than what it is not.

This was also posted on the Woolman blog: http://blog.woolman.org/