Diving in the Deep End (or Jump Right In, The Water's Fine)

Deep, surface, achieving.  Extrinsic, intrinsic, vicarious.  Learning experiences: motivation and strategy. 

Live vicariously!  How often have we used that term and not thought about it in terms of learning? But it is.  The high school maths teacher who stood on the desk to make a point about quadratic equations.  The standing on the desk had no relevance to the subject, but it did link the learning to something that stays with me.  His enthusiasm and willingness to be ridiculous (way before Robin William's "Dead Poets' Society" and carpe diem) is still with me when I tell people I love maths and have a coffee mug “I © Spreadsheets”.  Vicarious experience.  The pivotal and transitional event that bridges the gap between extrinsic and intrinsic learning.

Embarking on yet another formal qualification, the question was to describe a motivation and a strategy experience from Week 1.  Ever the over achiever my motivation experience actually occurred prior to the first week, upon receiving the readings and being intrigued as to what, who and when they would be.  Did they match with ones I read and provided to my students?  Were they new?  Had I missed them?  Did they offer insights that I had yet to contextualise?  So I think my experience was deep but driven by achieving needs; achieving as competing against myself and my high expectations of myself, yet actualised in a deep intrinsic curiosity about the topic and the content on offer and assimilated into my semantic memory.  I found my strategy experience aligned with my motivation.  I am an achiever and I am organised and efficient to the point of compulsion. Straight from the first lecture, to completing the weekly tasks; the blog, the quizzes, the next readings.  My achieving strategy translates into a deep experience as I learn, understand, discuss, reflect and incorporate the material into my teaching.

Message to self:  Go for total immersion and dive in the deep end of learning!

Teaching in Just Spoken Moments

In the early hours of a morning, during an extended hospital stay, a patient two beds along from me was crying and waiting for her next pain medication.  I’d never seen her, me being flat and literally screwed to the bed.  I was also so concentrated on healing myself, visualisation, repelling any infections and sending positive energy to my injury sites, I’d never engaged with the other patients.  Deep full yoga breathing was working for me and I knew the Prana energy would help her too.

“Juleen?  Are you okay?”

Crying, “No.  It hurts.”

“Let’s breathe together.  Can you put one hand on your tummy near your belly button and the other on the top of your chest near your collar bone?”

Crying.

“Let’s slow down our breathing and count the breath in and out to a count of eight or six maybe.  Start by inhaling, filling the lower abdomen and feel the lower hand rise up, then fill the lower ribs and upper ribs.  See the top hand rise.  Hold the breathe in at the top for one or two counts, then exhale from the top to the lower abdomen, feeling the hands fall and lastly sinking the belly button to the spine.  Again to a count of eight, inhale ..., hold ..., exhale...  In your own time, inhale and exhale.”

Gradually her crying subsided and I heard her sleep breathing in the dark of the night.  Some 45 minutes later, she roused much calmer.

“Juleen, how are you doing?”

Sniffling, “Okay.”

“You’ve been asleep.”

“Really?” Sniff, “Thanks.”

Remote yoga and the power of the mind!  I still smile to myself and get goose-bumps recalling this teaching story.

An Encounter with an Educator

Grade 10 English class at Clontarf Beach State High School in the summer of 1979.  We sat in the demountable permanent building; louvre windows missing; yellow asbestos puffing out of holes punched in the fibro walls.  Mr Meade walked up the three dusty stairs, across the verandah and into the classroom, an early version of a boom box in his hands.  He placed it on one of the front desks and pressed play.  Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘I am a Rock’ filled the hot air.  That’s how we learned poetry.  I was hooked ... on English, poetry and teaching (and Simon and Garfunkel).

I now know this as Universal Design for Learning: Multiple Means of Representation.  Then, I knew this teacher had something special in his teaching repertoire.  He had passion and ways of sharing that with us.  Ways that engaged us.  Ways that showed us how to think and then allowed us to express our thoughts.

How significant is this to me as a teacher?  He is one of the reasons I am a teacher.  I tell this story often to my classes.  I still love that song.