Reflection: Sep 11/06It's Monday. I head for PEI on Friday to meet with the participants in this course. I've written a couple of letters to members of the group—had a few replies—but I'm not sure everybody is actually reading the email—it's frustrating when there's no response. I'm not expecting much written communication this week—clearly, for most of the participants this course won't begin until Saturday—that's in spite of all my efforts to help them know that it began the day they received the readings and my first email letter. The challenge for me is to figure out a way to make this group work as a community. I had assumed that since they'd done eight courses together previously such a community existed - it probably does, but not as a community of corresponders—it's evident that written communication within the group hasn't been part of their previous experience. So people have no way of understanding the power of participating in such a collaborative endeavour. I may have to be heavy-handed about "requiring" participation in the written conversation—I'd prefer not to do that because then what I'll get is compliance and they won't be writing because the conversation is compelling. I want people to experience the excitement that participating in the exploration of ideas through a written conversation offers. The most powerful experience of this sort I had was the Schon conference in 1998 - six weeks of intensive email exchanges which pushed all of our thinking about reflective practice/action research in unexpected ways. Those who joined the written conversation allowed themselves to explore new territory and at least for me, the outcome was a clarification of my understanding of the work I was doing at the time. I want the same thing to happen for folks in GLIT6756. I realize time is in short supply for the teachers/administrators—they're working full time with families to take care of. I have to find a way of encouraging them to check their email daily and to take a few moments to participate in the conversation—at least a couple of times a week. I'm not going to write anything about the five readings at this juncture—since three of the pieces are ones I've written it's difficult to take a distanced stance on them—I'll probably have something to say after we meet on Saturday. What I want is to provide an example of allowing authors "to talk to one another" and to me through a piece of reflective writing. Again, it's supposition, but I'm guessing these folks probably haven't done a lot of exploratory writing to find out what sense they're making. I suspect we'll spend some time Saturday discussing "Just Try". I put out a critical incident on the Yahoo Group—I wrote about the inadvertent danger of putting kids' names on backpacks and the questions that raised for me about vulnerabilities we haven't considered. There were a couple of interesting replies which named other situations of risk which are new and affecting teachers' work. I mentioned the discussion to Marlene, a friend of mine, who threw out the matter of "not touching kids" and how that has affected the learning relationship! There's "good" touching and "bad" touching—the "good touching" has gone out the window as people have become afraid of liability. Examples of good touching—a reassuring hand on the shoulder or back, touching a hand in encouragement, a hand on the arm to suggest a pause to reflect...I understand my intentions behind these actions can be misconstrued by the recipient particularly if there is tension in our relationship—nevertheless, I find not being able to spontaneously offer support and encouragement through contact very limiting. I wonder what stories the teachers might have to relate about this issue. |
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