Imaginative Education Summer Training
Vancouver, British Columbia
DAY TWO
More thoughts ...
After yesterday's exercises and thoughts on responding to my students' interest in Tricksters, I fell asleep thinking a bit deeper on what IE generally brings to the emergent curriculum; in other words, how IE could be used in the emergent curriculum without getting in the way of what emergent curriculum is all about. Here's what I've got, as I begin what I'm sure will be a longer thinking process:
What I find the cognitive tools useful for in the emergent curriculum is for getting at the deeper draw children feel to particular materials, topics, phenomena of the world. As I worked with the frameworks, I struggled to find answers to the questions posed to help me design a lesson on a topic. The tipping point came when I began to answer those questions with questions to ask students, themselves.
As I remembered my time talking to my students about Tricksters, I imagined myself asking questions derived from the cognitive tools of both Mythic and Romantic kinds of understanding:
(from Mythic...)
Forming images: Imagine you woke up one day, went in the bathroom to brush your teeth, looked in the mirror, and - gasp! - you had become a trickster! What would you look like? How is your face and body different from when you were a kid? What else is different about you? ...
Pattern, rhyme, rhythm: What do you notice about Tricksters across all the stories we’ve heard and read? Within a story, what does it sound like when the Trickster walks, speaks, laughs ... ? (What is the music / song of a Trickster?)
Metaphor: What do Tricksters remind you of in your life? In other stories?
Mystery, Puzzles: What makes a good trick / Trickster “good”? What makes a bad trick / Trickster “bad”? Can a good trick end up badly? A bad trick well?
Joking and humor: Go ahead. Make up your own story about a silly Trickster!
(Games and Drama: This is where I just sit back and observe, asking myself questions about how and where Tricksters emerge from dramatic play and from the stories they tell. Games that might introduce trickery in a safe environment include card games like Poker and Go Fish, or board games like chess.)
(from Romantic...)
Humanizing meaning / Personification: What makes a Trickster a Trickster? You’re walking down the street, and - boom! - you see a Trickster? How do you recognize him/her?
Revolt and Idealism: Is a Trickster a good guy or gal to have around this community? What’s the effect of their presence.
Literate Eye / Graphic organizers: What if there were a secret Trickster Clubhouse? As a member, you’re given a special medallion to wear around your neck to show your membership. What does it look like? (Also, transfer knowledge of oral stories to picture and storybooks of those stories. Or, create your own Trickster book from images generated by provocation questions.)
Collections and Sets: How many Trickster characters are there in the world?
Extremes and Limits: What are the limits of trickery? When can a good trick go bad? What is the most outrageous trick you have heard of or can think of?
(Change of context and Role play: Again, this is my opportunity to observe where and how students are taking these ideas into other aspects of classroom life and learning. Change of context lends itself well to inspiring such transfer into the materials, as well.)
I’ve conveniently avoided the central features of both kinds of understanding - binary opposites and heroic features. I’ve done this partially because they are both, perhaps, the most difficult, abstract aspects of a topic. However, they are also the central pieces of what drives intrigue for a topic. But that’s precisely what I would be looking for when I ask students questions like the ones I mentioned. So, I’ve also purposely avoided those central features because I can’t know them until I understand more about my students’ experience of that topic. And that is beginning of how emergent curriculum may inform IE. Working through all those prescriptive formats is just another form of "lesson planning" that privileges teachers' conceptions of a topic over those of the students. Children are such eager learners and sense-makers of the world around them, and, I would bet, could unearth and express the use of Egan's cognitive tools on their own.
Remember, for example, that those binary opposites and heroic features will differ between individual students. Even if they are understanding Tricksters with the same cognitive tools, that understanding differs according to their experience of the Trickster in their lives. I mentioned the one boy who was a behavioral challenge; his entire demeanor changed whenever we were talking about Tricksters and their stories. What was up with that? What drew him into stories about Trickster behavior that might have provided insight into his own behavior? Perhaps, if I had asked more questions derived from the cognitive tools dominant in his thinking at that point in his life, I’d have a better idea.
In one of our sessions, Kieran tried to guide our frameworking with the comment, "Because we know so much about our topic, we forget to feel about it." He was trying to get us to remember what is emotionally engaging and, perhaps, emotionally at stake, in the topics of the curriculum. I understand the value of such a comment for a teacher planning out the day, the lesson, the unit ... by why exclude the students from that process? Why exclude those who know best how to feel about what we learn?
How can emergent curriculum and Imaginative Education inform each other? This has been my first stab. No doubt, more thoughts will result once I actually return to the classroom (rather than simply imagine myself into it), as well as I continue to learn more about both approaches. I keep thinking of myself at the base to two very large beanstalks. I’m not sure why, but rather than feeling I need to choose to climb up one beanstalk or the other, I feel called to climb them both by pulling them together into a double-helix, hanging on to both stalks as I go.
More thoughts ...
After yesterday's exercises and thoughts on responding to my students' interest in Tricksters, I fell asleep thinking a bit deeper on what IE generally brings to the emergent curriculum; in other words, how IE could be used in the emergent curriculum without getting in the way of what emergent curriculum is all about. Here's what I've got, as I begin what I'm sure will be a longer thinking process:
What I find the cognitive tools useful for in the emergent curriculum is for getting at the deeper draw children feel to particular materials, topics, phenomena of the world. As I worked with the frameworks, I struggled to find answers to the questions posed to help me design a lesson on a topic. The tipping point came when I began to answer those questions with questions to ask students, themselves.
As I remembered my time talking to my students about Tricksters, I imagined myself asking questions derived from the cognitive tools of both Mythic and Romantic kinds of understanding:
(from Mythic...)
Forming images: Imagine you woke up one day, went in the bathroom to brush your teeth, looked in the mirror, and - gasp! - you had become a trickster! What would you look like? How is your face and body different from when you were a kid? What else is different about you? ...
Pattern, rhyme, rhythm: What do you notice about Tricksters across all the stories we’ve heard and read? Within a story, what does it sound like when the Trickster walks, speaks, laughs ... ? (What is the music / song of a Trickster?)
Metaphor: What do Tricksters remind you of in your life? In other stories?
Mystery, Puzzles: What makes a good trick / Trickster “good”? What makes a bad trick / Trickster “bad”? Can a good trick end up badly? A bad trick well?
Joking and humor: Go ahead. Make up your own story about a silly Trickster!
(Games and Drama: This is where I just sit back and observe, asking myself questions about how and where Tricksters emerge from dramatic play and from the stories they tell. Games that might introduce trickery in a safe environment include card games like Poker and Go Fish, or board games like chess.)
(from Romantic...)
Humanizing meaning / Personification: What makes a Trickster a Trickster? You’re walking down the street, and - boom! - you see a Trickster? How do you recognize him/her?
Revolt and Idealism: Is a Trickster a good guy or gal to have around this community? What’s the effect of their presence.
Literate Eye / Graphic organizers: What if there were a secret Trickster Clubhouse? As a member, you’re given a special medallion to wear around your neck to show your membership. What does it look like? (Also, transfer knowledge of oral stories to picture and storybooks of those stories. Or, create your own Trickster book from images generated by provocation questions.)
Collections and Sets: How many Trickster characters are there in the world?
Extremes and Limits: What are the limits of trickery? When can a good trick go bad? What is the most outrageous trick you have heard of or can think of?
(Change of context and Role play: Again, this is my opportunity to observe where and how students are taking these ideas into other aspects of classroom life and learning. Change of context lends itself well to inspiring such transfer into the materials, as well.)
I’ve conveniently avoided the central features of both kinds of understanding - binary opposites and heroic features. I’ve done this partially because they are both, perhaps, the most difficult, abstract aspects of a topic. However, they are also the central pieces of what drives intrigue for a topic. But that’s precisely what I would be looking for when I ask students questions like the ones I mentioned. So, I’ve also purposely avoided those central features because I can’t know them until I understand more about my students’ experience of that topic. And that is beginning of how emergent curriculum may inform IE. Working through all those prescriptive formats is just another form of "lesson planning" that privileges teachers' conceptions of a topic over those of the students. Children are such eager learners and sense-makers of the world around them, and, I would bet, could unearth and express the use of Egan's cognitive tools on their own.
Remember, for example, that those binary opposites and heroic features will differ between individual students. Even if they are understanding Tricksters with the same cognitive tools, that understanding differs according to their experience of the Trickster in their lives. I mentioned the one boy who was a behavioral challenge; his entire demeanor changed whenever we were talking about Tricksters and their stories. What was up with that? What drew him into stories about Trickster behavior that might have provided insight into his own behavior? Perhaps, if I had asked more questions derived from the cognitive tools dominant in his thinking at that point in his life, I’d have a better idea.
In one of our sessions, Kieran tried to guide our frameworking with the comment, "Because we know so much about our topic, we forget to feel about it." He was trying to get us to remember what is emotionally engaging and, perhaps, emotionally at stake, in the topics of the curriculum. I understand the value of such a comment for a teacher planning out the day, the lesson, the unit ... by why exclude the students from that process? Why exclude those who know best how to feel about what we learn?
How can emergent curriculum and Imaginative Education inform each other? This has been my first stab. No doubt, more thoughts will result once I actually return to the classroom (rather than simply imagine myself into it), as well as I continue to learn more about both approaches. I keep thinking of myself at the base to two very large beanstalks. I’m not sure why, but rather than feeling I need to choose to climb up one beanstalk or the other, I feel called to climb them both by pulling them together into a double-helix, hanging on to both stalks as I go.
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