Caring
Welcome to this week’s issue of Traversing, as always if you find this newsletter to be interesting, if it helps to inform your thinking about progressive education or if you think it might help others, please subscribe, share it with your friends and neighbors and share your comments and questions.
This week I decided to take a pause from the more academic theme of the past two weeks, to which I will return to shortly, to talk about caring instead.
Caring
I am currently facilitating a class called Post-Colonial Landscapes for 11th grade students at City of Bridges High School. We are attempting to explore both the history and modern impacts of colonialism with a lens that explicitly focuses on the people who were oppressed and most importantly their resistance to colonial exploitation. In the coming weeks we will examine the modern legacies and current shadows of colonialism. I’m eager to write more about this class, as it has been a powerful and illuminating educational experience, which will come in subsequent issues.
Understandably this class has been full of passionate ideas and feelings and it has been a reminder of the degree to which I care about the students that I have the honor of working with. I remember them all and I gaze toward the future with them, regardless if I still have any contact with them. They all hold a special place in my heart, different from the place that my own children hold in my heart, but never the less a place of deep caring and love.
Max Van Manen is an educator, writer, professor, and phenomenologist. He has researched and written extensively on pedagogy, teaching, children, and phenomenology. His description of the qualities of good pedagogy outlined in The Tact of Teaching capture my sense of educational value with near perfection.
essential to a good pedagogy: a sense of vocation, love of and caring for children, a deep sense of responsibility, moral intuitiveness, self-critical openness, thoughtful maturity, tactful sensitivity towards the child’s subjectivity, an interpretive intelligence, a pedagogical understanding of the child’s needs, improvisational resoluteness in dealing with young people, a passion for knowing and learning the mysteries of the world, the moral fiber to stand up for something, a certain understanding of the world , active hope in the face of prevailing crisis, and, not the least, humor and vitality. (8)
My orientation as an educator, an educator who believes deeply that meaningful relationships and that a recognition of the inherent value of each individual student is critical to the success learning, finds resonance with Van Manen’s emphasis on the humor and most importantly the love inherent in good pedagogy. I still remember when I first read The Tact of Teaching and upon reaching page 66 found a discussion of the teachers relation to the student citing Martin Buber, a theologian and philosopher who as you know if you have been reading Traversing for a while, has had great impact on my sense of being and being in the world.
this encounter, too contains the possibility of a certain pedagogical eros that transforms the teacher into a real educator. The teacher meets the class, and, says Martin Buber, from this situation one can discern the “greatness” of the modern educator. “When the teacher at school enters the classroom for the first time, he sees children who are big and small, coarse and finely featured; he sees sullen faces and noble appearances, ill-shaped and well-proportioned bodies-as if they were the representation of creation,” says Buber. “And his glance, the glance of the educator, embraces them all and takes them all in.” In this gesture lies the vocation, the greatness of the educator. The pedagogical love of the educator for these children becomes the precondition for the pedagogical relation to grow. (66)
The gesture of the educator that is described by Van Manen in conjunction with Martin Buber is the gesture that I have made and felt many times with all of the students, that I have spent time with in variety of roles over the years.
At the same time, I recognize that the emotional labor that is involved in teaching and caring for students is very real labor and one of the great challenges of the past couple of years is that the relational care that educators have for their students, is reciprocal and the situation and stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic have put great strain on that reciprocity. My school has been lucky, or to be honest intentional, in that we were able to be together in person all of last year, through a combination of outdoor schooling, creativity and flexibility. Yet the emotional labor of supporting students that you care about deeply is still present. In the past weeks I have been witness to the teachers that I work with taking on the suffering of the students that they care for and I too have stepped forward to take on that labor.
I suppose this issue is a reminder to myself, that as a dedicated progressive educator I care deeply about the students I have the honor of working with and in that caring also comes the work of supporting the whole person. At the end of the day, I wanted to take a moment to thank the educators, the parents, the community members and the students who approach each other with caring, love and support for each other without question.
Thanks!
With Gratitude
People, Places and Things
In this section of the newsletter I share people, places and things that have inspired and taught me valuable lessons about rethinking learning.
I suppose this week’s People, Places and Things, could be considered a shameless plug, but I can promise you it has an educational focus.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Jay and Jody Best, who live in Ursina, Pennsylvania. Jay, until his recent retirement, taught high school history and Jody is a blacksmith and homeschooled their two daughters.
I met their daughters when they were young and was always so impressed with their explorations, poise and passion. They both lived into the opportunity to explore their interests and their preferable futures that the flexibility and creativity of their educational choices permitted. One of their daughters is in her final months at the Rhode Island School of Design and has been running her own printing studio, for a while now. We just ordered a calendar to replace the one that has hung in our kitchen for the last year:
As we enter this season of gift giving, please consider supporting young people who are in the early years of their journey following their passions and building their lives.
See you next week!
Van Manen, Max. The Tact of Teaching: The Meaning of Pedagogical Thoughtfulness. Ontario: The Alehouse Press, 2012. Print.