Wednesday 12 February 2014

Narrative #2: The Jeweller's Loupe: Patience, Curiosity, and Care

In our second weekend of the HEAL EDUC 823 course, Professor Kathryn Alexander introduced us to the concept of Traxoline. Being completely unaware of what Traxoline was, I believed it to be some form of craft or artisan work based on the supplies laid on the table by the side wall in the classroom: some rocks, coniferous branches, foodstuff, small plastic objects, among other things. She introduced us to the concept with a short overhead introduction. It went like this:

It is very important that you learn about Traxoline. Traxoline is a new form of zionter. It is monotilled in Ceristanna. The Ceristannians gristerlate large amounts of fevon and then bracter it to quasel traxoline. Traxoline may well be one of our most lukised snezlaus in the future because of our zionter lescelidge.

1. What is traxoline?
2. Where is traxoline monotilled?
3. How is traxoline quaselled?
4. Why is traxoline important?

To read this, it comes across as terms that are jargon, specific to a subject area that looks a lot like gobbledegook to an uninformed learner. If I were to take this test, I could easily score 100% without even conceptualizing what Traxoline is, or how to apply it, or even being able to communicate a simplified definition in lay terms. I could regurgitate the answers to the questions, but I have frame of reference to how Traxoline fits in relation to anything else in my realm of understanding, because I do not have any prior background knowledge relating to Traxoline.

It is a simple, yet epiphanic discovery to be part of the realization of this activity: for a moment, as a learner whose profession is to be a teacher, I immediately become the student in my classroom. The ESL student, the student with learning difficulties or learning disabled, the student who behaviorally challenged, the student who is turned off by the format of the lesson, the student who attempts to win-at-all-costs-get-an-A for the sake of getting an A.

I am all of those in the moment of Kathryn's lesson on Traxoline. All of this is tongue and cheek really. At least, I hope it is.
The test does not matter. In fact, as a student, I do not care about it anymore after I get my 100% on it, and am ready to jump through the next hoop. As students we have proved that we can score highly on the test, and the teacher feels great because we all can demonstrate and understanding of Traxoline and its importance. However, none of us knows what it is, and we can only apply it in so far as the context of the quiz. We have no practical application knowledge of what Traxoline is. As educational psychologist Jerome
Bruner states:

"[I]t is only in the trivial sense that one gives a course (or a lesson in this case) to "get something across" merely to impart information. There are better means to that end than teaching unless the learner also masters himself, disciplines his taste and deepens his view of the world, the "something" that is got across is hardly worth the effort of transmission. (Bruner, Curriculum Studies Reader, 4th Ed. 79)

Kathryn was not trying to "get something across" to us with her Traxoline lesson. Instead, the process of leading us through the exercise placed us as student in role. We experienced what our kids go through in classrooms where they are immersed into learning for the test, rather than learning for understanding and inquiry. We embodied how a student feels and experiences their learning, and are active, reflective participants in the lesson.

Kathryn was actually taking us through a lesson about inspiring creativity and inquiry with a patient and careful approach. We were told to look, look again and draw what we see, taking a snapshot of our world using the Jewellers loupe in order to "deepen our view of the world" as Bruner suggests, by looking at the micro--our hands, fingers, skin, nails, rocks, caterpillars, wool. The ability to see magnifications of up to 5 times with the eye through one loupe, or 10 times with ones eye with two loupe, inspires and arouses a curiosity from the mundane and ordinary. A shocking realization of just what is taken for granted.

By changing focus from the immediate to the micro to the macro and back again and again and again, certain discoveries were made. My hand made apparent to me with more depth via the jewellers loupe: regeneration was constantly happening. Smooth skin on to the naked eye revealed its damaged nature. Dirt in the cracks, beneath the surface blood vessels were abundantly clear. The balance of the past and present developed through the lens. The loupe allowed me to see how we are embodied memory capsules--our bodies carry with us the past through a perspective of the micro.

Observation: We can never really have clean hands.

The process of exploration, as it is clear the process of learning taking place takes precedence here, rather than the "getting of something across":

1. Visually explore the object with the loupe
2. Put pen to paper
3. Loupe, look, draw

After that happens, the keys to the lesson are in the Private Eye 3 questions:

What does it remind me of?
What else does it look like?
Why is it like that?

From this examination of the ordinary, it is key to write down the key questions about what makes the micro so interesting: as each class member examined something unique and different, the exchange of ideas and concepts began to flow in the class as we shared what we saw.
Go slow, look, revision, imagine, draw what you see, change the scale with the two loupes

And I made my observations:

The calm within as I engage my small world of the rock--
Every 
crevasse, 
Cut, 
Wrinkle, 
And scar
The lines of the small
--a mountain in reduced form
The peaks summited, takes shape and form--
Coulees and canyons apparent through the naked eye
Each mark/crease indicated by rust, the darker inner untouched
Like the edges of the baseboard that never get attention from the vacuum cleaner
The whole, compressed together by separate parts
Forming a 5 part mosaic 
With near seamless construction
This only on one side.
The depth that only one can imagine presented before me
Clear.

Looking deeply into what is presented before me, rather than dismissing what is on the surface, I am able to see the wonder in what is taken for granted. Imparting this patience, the detailed observation, and depth of inquiry and care is something I must now translate to my students in my classroom, with more care. It is difficult, it is hard work, but necessary.

It is for the curiosity of student learning. It is warming and inspiring. It is what learning must be about!

Tuesday 11 February 2014