Your assignment is to contact your partner at some point over the next few days for generative conversing, either through email or in person. This is all general idea stuff, Rilke calls it the gestation before the bringing forth...get to know one another--if you don't already. What can you each bring to this project? Take some notes. What would you like to spend and hour and a half doing with a group of high school students, if you could do anything at all?
On Tuesday I will give you each a template for the workshops, as well as a primer on coordination. The template is meant as a guide and will by no means be definitive. It is a starting place, a point for you to begin your own unique work. Tuesday at 1:00 I meet with the CS Language Arts teacher to finalize the incidentals, and we will be theoretically on our way.
I love spending time with my nieces and nephew. One day isn't enough, but it's better than nothing! :) This is Aislinn one of the 5. She got an owie from the poky log and a little snuggle and a pudding cup put her to rights again.
We will be forming our teaching super-shero teams this week. Hurrah! In preparation, please answer the following questions on paper and bring to class this Tuesday. See you there!
1. What experience, if any, do you have teaching or facilitating groups?
2. Are you comfortable with facilitation roles?
3. What do you consider your greatest strengths with regard to potential facilitation?
4. What do you most wish to learn from this experience?
5. Do you have any concerns about potential facilitation?
6. Would you feel comfortable designing your own curricular contribution for a workshop, or would you prefer having a specific agenda that you only need to follow?
7. Have you ever participated in a workshop, conference or intensive (1-2 day) class before? When?
8. Have you ever worked with teens before? Where and when?
9. Have you ever worked with groups outside your peers--elders or children? Where and when?
10. Everyone is a teacher, we all have skills and lessons within us to pass along. What skills do you carry? (Can be anything from frying an egg, to dancing, to drawing cat portraits...name at least one.)
"No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and the fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others." --Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet, Letter Three, April 23, 1903
This post is more a reminder/my reflection than anything else. I've read already the reflections delivered my way and will be writing you letters--not instructive but conversational--as part of this process. What I can see by what I'm reading is that you have been working, that this class is challenging barriers, pressing edges. Edges are fertile places. Edges are usually uncomfortable, and transgression of our edges can lead to self-doubt, insecurity, a recurrence of patterns. However, what I see in the reflections is space, a little here, quite a bit there, the sky coming through. Challenges. New light.
I am challenged by "teaching" this course. It presses my edges. But I'm reminded that--just as we forget clock time is a relatively new invention, or the variety and shapes of stories can be infinite--when we are present with the process, the outcome or product of any experience will reflect our need. In this way, the progression of this class feels intensely familiar. It is like writing short fiction: one word announces the next, you can't pretend to understand the story from the middle. Only later will the tale be revealed in full.
This said, next week we will be shifting gears. The guest speaker hasn't come through for Thursday as of yet, but on Monday I will meet at last with our high school contact and will fill you in Tuesday on their expectations and needs. From there we will begin our outward community work.
The assignment: create a visual representation of your goddess/archetype, replete with tools or weapons. You may use any medium--paint, photography, collage, pen and ink, dirt--but bring your portrait to class on Tuesday.
I wish you all well in your exams and hope for a weekend's rest somewhere.
My mom gave me no directions in life, except for "be whomever I want to be and love myself." Which was a great direction, but it someways was far too much freedom for me. So here is my recipe for myself:
Recipe for Eternal Happiness Age 18 - 22 Explore your life; practice life lessons for the future. Age 22 - 24 Find something you really love and practice it. Fine a place that you love and go there all the time. Age 24 - 30 Reinvent yourself. Move your body a lot. Create a job that fulfills you. Age 30 - 50 Do all the things you think you can't do and more things you love. Oh, and change the world for the better. Grow your business and support people in your community. Age 50+ Reinvent yourself again. Play every day. Move your body all the time.
I recently had an exciting break through in the world of gluten-free, fructose-free, lactose-free food making on the morning of my birthday...the Chinese Earth goddess, Tu Su, must have been with me because I was blessed with a delicious batch of buckwheat pancakes to share with my roommate for my birthday breakfast. Here is how the recipe goes....
Dry Mix: Heavy 1/2 cup of brown rice flower light 1/2 cup of buckwheat (I recommend Bob's Red Mill flour) 1 - 2 Tbs ground flax meal 2 tsp of raw cane sugar ** 1 light tsp of salt 1 tsp of cinnamon (or more :) 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp baking powder
Liquid Mix: 1 cup mix of soymilk & rice milk 1 Tbs olive oil 1 tsp vanilla (or more)
add water as needed to make the right batter consistency
Before mixing the two, begin to heat the griddle or pan surface at a medium heat. It is best for the surface to be sufficiently hot before poring the batter onto it. There is no need to grease the pan unless it has a tendency to stick - in which case lightly grease with olive oil on a paper towel or crumpled paper bag.
Mix the dry ingredients together is a small bowl, and do the same in a separate small bowl with the liquid ingredients. When both of the combinations are ready, combine them in the large of the two bowls. Stir until the batter is a smooth consistency, but try not to over-beat. If the batter is too watery add a bit more brown rice flour, if the batter is too thick add a bit more water. You'll want to add the flour or water in small quantities and mix well after adding the extra ingredients.
When the batter is ready to go...decide how courageous your feeling and whether you would like BIIIG or little pancakes...use a measuring cup accordingly and poor out the batter onto the hot surface one good scoop at a time. The pancake will be ready to flip as the bubbles on the top surface form and then pop. Flip then wait just a few moments to check the other side....limiting the char on these cakes is key to their deliciousness :) a little char never hurts though.
Adding fruit to the cakes while face up on the griddle or pan is a sure way to make them even tastier...blueberries....strawberries....bananas...all scrumptious. Just not that if the fruit is frozen it may help to drop a little batter over the fruit before flipping the cake, and it will take a little longer to cook all the way through with the added frozen fruit.
Be sure to taste test a long the way :) but save enough to enjoy when the work is done.
If you don't add fruit inside the cakes, it is delicious on top with a bit of the syrup below...
Delish Syrup to go with...
Powdered raw cane sugar cinnamon nutmeg vanilla extract a splish of water (enough to make syrupy)
I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS AS MUCH AS WE DID!
Beyond the stove top....
Energy is the source of all life...and even larger ...the reason for the way things are in this universe. Energy comes in many forms but for living organisms the most common way is through the nutrients taken in be it food matter or water, both are essential to prosper. So when coming up for the recipe for eternal happiness, I come back to the essential nutrients that we all depend on to survive.... nutritious food & water, nutritious surroundings/place to be, nutritious exploration & discovery, nutritious relationships & interactions and the risks that inspire or lead to the discovery of different sources of the essential nutrients. Just as the pancake recipe it is a proportional balance of the inputs that allows for the creation of happiness in a living being The possible combinations are endless..and I will write more later. . . classes get in the way
Thank you for your great presence in class today. I so appreciate our time together. May your weekend bring fruit (apricots, tangelos) to all of your intentions. Here is a syllabus revision--still some dates in flux--and the general requirements for your first narrative assessment.
Don't forget, one of the core principles of our work together is self-care practice. For those of you who are ill or recovering, stressed or stretched, keep it simple and be sweet to yourself.
(oh, and if you haven't, please post your recipes)
Week 9 Tuesday 3/30: Cunt and Kent Thursday 4/1: Cunt and Kent
Week 10 Tuesday 4/6: Guest Speaker (potential) Thursday 4/8: Modern Voices Paper Due
Week 11 Workshop Week 1 (proposed) (Group will still meet Tuesday and Thursday to prepare for workshops, debrief and evaluate during the workshop weeks)
Week 12 Workshop Week 2
Week 13 Workshop Week 3
Week 14 Workshop Week 4
Week 15 Creation of Class Story—Meet on a weekend?
Week 16 Last Day, Project Proposals/Final Papers Due
To prepare for the narrative evaluation due next Thursday: Please read the essay Methods of Memory: On Native American Storytelling
Consider the following questions:
How have stories shaped your life?
What stories in your life feel significant?
What stories would you rather redefine or eliminate? Why?
What new stories do you ant to articulate and embrace?
I would like you to write a 2-3 page ( more or less) narrative assessment of what you witnessed/felt in our oral storytelling process. Did it change your perspective? How do you view the above questions after engaging in oral storytelling?
Be creative and analytical. Use inference and reference from our texts, see where the journey leads you. The narrative assessment is a process, not a product. It may need to be written as...you guessed it...a story.
Age 14-18: Graduate High School, get an honors degree, participate in sports, be involved, get high marks in the SAT, participate in AP classes, volunteer within your community, prepare for college.
Age 19-22: Got to college, find a path that you love, be on the college golf team, find a career you are passionate about, find a part timejob, remember college is your main job, apply for an internship, get through college, learn to live alone, learn to provide for yourself, remember to ask for help when you need it.
Age 22-24: Find the job that you love, be with the person that you love, look to the future, live fully on your own, live close to your mother, be with your family, get engaged, visit your mother, remember to ask for help.
Age 25-45: Get married, build a family, give her grandchildren, settle down close to her, keep building in your career, provide for your family.
Age 50+: Travel the world, retire, put your kids through school, put your kids through college, travel, be happy, be a grandparent/great-grandparent.
My Life Goals
Age 19-22: Go to college, play golf in college, focus on a goal, find a career path you love, be spontaneous, accept that it is ok to change your mind, learn to live alone, find someone to go through life with you, help someone you don’t know, find someone to have your back, live in your own apartment, get a part time job, apply for an internship, graduate college, apply for AmeriCorps.
Age 22-24: Participate in the AmeriCorps, find a good job that you love, travel to somewhere amazing, find someone to spend your life with, find an equal to spend my life with, visit my family often, get engaged, be happy.
Age 25-45: Travel the world, live somewhere out of the country for a while, help a needy community, help someone you never met, go back to school, get PhD or Masters, find a job I love, teach what I know, inspire someone, get married, have children, own my Beagle named Beugle, live close enough to my family that my mother can see her grandchildren often, give someone hope, build my own home on a good size plot of land, have a garden, have a pond, have a small farm, have a swing set, capture my life in photos, teach my children, raise children, provide for my children to get through school, teach my children morals and ethics that my mother taught me.
Age 50+: Get my children through college, let my children know I will do anything to get them through school, travel the world, see all that I can, only stop working when I want to, connect with an old friend, witness my grandchildren, have a swing set to push them on, volunteer my skills, garden, be happy spending my life with the people I love.
I've read through your questionnaires. You truly are an amazing group with so much to offer. The Community School students are lucky! I've paired you according to strengths (you have many), comfort level, experience (most of you possess this as well), and what you wish to learn. Teaching teams are as follows:
