Turn to Wonder

I'm on an email list from The Courage To Teach that sends periodic videos of what it calls "Stories of Authenticity."  This week's video is from a business leader who talks about how the Circle of Trust Touchstone "Turn to Wonder" has helped him grow as a community member.  It's a short video, just 2:28, but I thought some of you might appreciate this reflection on the strength in our diversity as we enter conference season, communicating with many different people from different backgrounds and experiences.  May this time with the people who love our students most enrich all of our perspectives.

Looking Forward and Looking Back

Our next meeting is coming up on Thursday, October 18th from 3:30-5:30 (a half hour earlier than our last meeting) in the MHCR.  I'm so looking forward to spending more time with all of you!

Please contact me this weekend or Monday if you'd like to present a teaching  dilemma, planning inquiry, or student work you have questions about.  I'm happy to meet with you this week to answer your questions about this experience and to select a protocol that would help you elicit the kind of feedback you seek.  Bringing work to the group through a protocol can really help bring clarity to an issue and often uses the wisdom of the group to delve deeper than you can do in isolation.  It is also a gift to the group, this glimpse into your classroom life and your professional questions.  We always feel grateful to presenters, as we learn about our own teaching through the lens of another's inquiry. 

Before we meet together again, I wanted to refresh our memories of our last meeting.  We began by reading and discussing Marge Piercy's The Seven of Pentacles.  

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

We revisited our hopes for our collaborative community from our August meeting.  On this day, hopes that resonated particularly strongly were:

• Listening to each other
• Recognizing new possibilities
• Inspiration from learning about each others' work 
• Connections to each others' classrooms and work

In two small groups, we discussed the Circles of Trust Touchstones through these questions:

What do you need to 'tend properly' your professional garden?

Have you been part of a community that helped you 'weave real connections?'

What made it work?

What tools and agreements will help us see the burrows and lairs beneath the thicket and bramble wilderness of our work? 

Our consensus was in support of using the Circles of Trust Touchstones to guide our work together.

• Extend and receive welcome
• Be present as fully as possible
• What is offered in the circle is by invitation, not demand
• Speak your truth in ways that respect other people's truth
• No fixing, no saving, no advising, and no setting each other straight.
   (Most of our questions involved this line, with an agreement that part of being fully present is to keep your mind from always leaping to the next step or thinking of your response, but to truly listen.  We also discussed saying what you need.  We agree to ask each other, is this the kind of feedback you want?  We agree to try to tell each other what kind of feedback we'd find helpful.)
• Learn to respond to others with honest, open questions instead of counsel or corrections.
• When the going gets rough, turn to wonder.
• Attend to your own inner teacher.
• Trust and learn from the silence.
• Observe deep confidentiality.
• Know that it is possible to leave the circle with whatever it was that you needed when you arrived. 

We also discussed our commitment to the group and agreed to take responsibility for checking in if we miss a meeting and to do the best we can to attend CFG whenever possible.  We also know that 'life happens' and agreed to be flexible, honoring the difficult time choices we all must make.

We concluded by spending our last hour in the Walk and Talk Protocol and a final reflection.

Please bring materials for writing and reflection to the next meeting.  See you Thursday!

Kirstin

The Courage to Teach Sampler Retreat

I wanted to make you aware of an opportunity coming up the week after Thanksgiving.  Lewis and Clark College is holding a Courage to Teach sampler retreat, which is an opportunity to experience the reflection and renewal of the Courage to Teach without committing to the two-year retreat cycle.  Though if you're like me, once you experience the sampler retreat, you'll be eager to participate in a full cycle!  If you are interested in meeting wonderful and inspirational teachers, in learning more about yourself as a teacher, and in using poetry and the metaphor of the seasons to reflect on the intersection between your personal and professional life, please consider participating.  I believe you also have the opportunity to participate in a Clearness Committee, a Quaker tradition of deep listening, reflection and renewal.
Information and applications are available here.