The Hidden Wholeness

Greetings, Students!

Your blog entries have been extraordinary, in the sense of being insightful and deeply experiential. Collectively, you have managed to create that “learning community” that we discussed on the first day of class, in which Senge et. al (1994) wrote: “During the dialogue process, people learn how to think together—not just in the sense of analyzing a shared problem or creating new pieces of shared knowledge, but in the sense of occupying a collective sensibility, in which the thoughts, emotions, and resulting actions belong not to one individual, but to all of them together.” I am feeling that “collective sensibility” among us, a continuous stream of dialogue (not mere discussion/conversation), which, this week, includes our friends, Bipin and Vinod, at a distance. (Isn’t this technology amazing that allows Vinod and Bipin to continue the journey with us?!)

This afternoon, I particularly look forward to discussing Palmer’s six paradoxical tensions of pedagogical design with you. But, first, I’d like to unpack Palmer’s meaning of the teaching/learning space. On p. 76, he wrote: “By space I mean a complex of factors: the physical arrangement and feeling of the room, the conceptual framework that I build around the topic my students and I are exploring, the emotional ethos I hope to facilitate, and the ground rules that will guide our inquiry.” I'd like us to consider each of these factors in concrete terms and from a perspective of how we may implement each of them as we embark upon a new school year next month.

Chapter III, entitled “The Hidden Wholeness, Paradox in Teaching and Learning,” led me to think about the concept of the whole child/person, which is the trademark of Catholic education. I have often wondered whether we, as educators, have completely understood this concept, which is pivotal to our approach to educating children/adults. Let’s discuss this afternoon how the element of “paradox” may be related, and moreover deeply intrinsic, to educating the “whole” child.

Until this afternoon,

Gini

P.S. Thanks, Vinod, for posting this lovely photograph of our spiritual community.