As usual, after sleeping on a post I find I begin to perceive issues from new perspectives. In the last post I talked about approaches which might help students find their direction in life.
I woke up this morning with several images/memories in my head... they began to coelesce...
In 2000, I went to Mexico to a Holisitic Education conference and met a Mexican woman who was a midwife. What was she doing at the conference I wondered? She told me that as a midwife she worked with parents 2 years before conception of the child and then with both parents and child to the age of 21 years. Needless to say I was blown away.
In contrast, I remembered a previous course enrolment session on the first day of school, sitting along a very long table, squished between lots of other teachers who were also doing what I was doing. Students queued in line to discuss with a counsellor possible year 11/12 courses for the current year prior to filling in their enrolment form. One boy sits down with his mother in front of me. He has no plan; no idea what he wants to do. How long can I spend with him? There are queues of students behind him. In a short 15 mins, somehow, I need to elicit his dreams, his talents, what he likes, what he thinks might be possible. But to every question he answers "I don't know." His mother shrugs desperately and says "I can't get anything else from him."
I, like her, feel totally helpless. The courses he chooses will dictate future opportunities. As I talk to him I feel my shoulders slumping and the energy drain out of me. I begin to realise that I am tuning into his supression of soul. This kid needs big help. Yes, where is that midwife? Where is that healer?
I remember the significant people who have been in my life; mentors and friends at critical times. People who have helped me move from states of blindness of possibilites to states of clarity, people who have helped me explore other parts of myself, people who have just been there.
I have started befriending/mentoring a Sudanese refugee lady as part of a pilot program at the Migrant Resource Centre and I am helping writing guidelines for the befriending program. In my research I discovered new residents really need 4 mentors: someone who has been through something similar (can identify with your past and with your movement from that past to this now), someone who you can talk to on a personal level, someone to link you to the community and lastly someone who can be a mentor in your career area.
It occurs to me that as we grow... transform through the development levels.... up the spiral of evolution ... we are new residents in that new place. Perhaps we need a midwife to see us properly birth into this new way of being. What had happened to this boy that I felt helpless to help? Was his birthing process stuck or supressed? What might be the role of mentors? How can we help students seek and recognize the mentors/midwives that they need at the right time? Because my experience in moving from A to B might just resonate with your experience, and then again may not.
Coincidentally, out of the blue, I just received an email from an ex-physics student who is now 27 and going through a bit of rethink about career and direction, wondering if I can help him in clarifying that process. I have had quite a few of these over the years. How many young people don't find mentors, or are too afraid to ask? What is it that makes an appropriate mentor? Why is it that a student comes back to their year 11/12 teacher... does this mean there are no other people taking up this role in the lives of these young people? What is the role of the community in this?
Yes, we continue to grow... just look at all the different development models .... depending on which ones you look at expect for new energy, new issues, new questions, new possibilities to perturb you to new awareness of being.
What are the implications for schools and teachers? What are the implications for the way we think about life long learning .... what skills, understanding and processes would empower students? Perhaps making transparent the role of significant others and building skills to create lasting relationships in their lives?
And my role of teacher has changed... from teacher of information, literacies and skills that might help students get a job.... to midwife of transformation...
So here I am teaching physics.... and discover in it all the wonderful contexts and questions that are just what are needed to perturb my students and support their transformation and development. And that is perhaps why my ex-students come back to me when they find themselves in states of transformation.
And the boy who had no idea what he wanted to do, could I help him? ... perhaps if he was in one of my classes for a year or two we could create a relationship where I would begin to see him and he would begin to see himself.
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