Invitational Education

The Journey Continues:  Invitational Learning

It has been almost a year since I last posted to this blog.  I find myself in another course and needing to create a blog.  However, I come to the blog out of choice this time.  I am inviting myself to continue my learning in the digital realm and to again risk presenting my views to a wider audience.

My journey has been frightening, exciting, enlightening and exhausting all at the same time.  As I have met each writing or project challenge, I have tried to extend my learning into my professional practice.  I have found this more difficult than I thought it would be.  Prior to April 26th, 2014, I would have put the blame on institutional policy and hypocrisy.  April 26th was the opening class for Invitational and Holistic Approaches to Education, with Dr. Hilary Brown, and a day that changed my thinking. 

"Changed my thinking" sound profound doesn't it.  It really wasn't, and it didn't happen all at once.  I think I should back up and fill in a little of what has happened between May 2013 and now.

I have been pushing myself to balance home, work, and university.  I thought I was doing well until I found myself on playground duty and dealing with a name calling situation (student to student).  Given that this had been an ongoing issue in a particular class, and the fact that it involved slurs to heritage and orientation, I decided, along with the classroom teacher, to address it head on.  As we discussed the issues with the class, I made the mistake of letting my personal opinion slip into the conversation.  It was simply one of those situations when you try to show the diversity of thinking and call upon need for respect of all opinions, but your words are lost in the fact that there is a strong opposition to your particular thought or opinion.

It lead to parental concern and a meeting that forced me to reexamine my stress levels and abilities in the classroom.  My main concern, I thought, was the very thought that I may have misused the power structure of the classroom.  I reflected on what I could do to remedy the situation.  Anything I came up with either made the situation worse or demonstrated that some opinions should be held in secret or never held.  This goes against everything I thought I was trying to teach.  So how did I get to this point in my career?  Was it time to leave the classroom?  Some people would agree that it was and is.  Me?  I am still working through everything.

So, when I entered the university classroom on April 26th, I had a personal script that was weighing the pros and cons of staying in the classroom until the end of June or leaving before.  I was questioning my choice of masters program and fretting over the financial commitment my husband and I had already made to a Masters of Education degree.  I was open to the ideas, but sure that I would no longer see myself within them.

As I listened to Hilary and the conversation of my classmates, little snippets from my 20 year career made their way into my thoughts.  I saw myself exploring the rain with my grade one class in Saudi Arabia.  I remembered the grade 7 math lesson on integers that encouraged the students to ask their parents about how a bank overdraft works.  I re-read the letter from a parent thanking me for taking the time to know her daughter, and I sat again with the mother of twins as she told me that this was the first year that she actually had to read both report cards.  As the day progressed, I began to see the invitations I had put forward and started questioning my intentional use of these invitations.  

As we began to examine the 4 levels of intention with Invitational Education, I began to recognize the many times I had been intentionally and unintentionally disinviting to my students and their learning.  It became difficult to swallow, and I immediately began to push the thoughts aside.  This was not who I was, but was it who I had become?

The discussion moved on, but I stayed focused on who I am, who I was, and who I wanted to be when I first began this career.  I looked at my masters of education journey so far, and asked myself why I still felt that I was in the right place.  I forced myself to deal with the disconnect between the teacher I picture myself to be and the teacher that had been forced in front of me by the situation at school.  They both lived within me, but it was impossible for me to maintain them at the same time.  That was when my true learning began.

I realized that I had just moved from feeling sorry for myself and embarrassed by my lack of control into an attitude where I could begin refining my skills and approaches to become the teacher I believed I was.  I was in a place where I could truly learn from my mistakes.

The one single thought that sparked the change:  I need to thank the parents who were yelling at me, for without them I could not have learned from the mistake.

Judy

Please have a look at this video.  It is an introduction to Invitational Education by its founders.