From the Back Porch
by
Jane Vella
Global Learning Partners Founder
Do Not Be Afraid
The back porch this month has only
a few brave pansies in blue and gold waving in the cold wind.
We are waiting for December 21st when a kindly Sun turns towards
the north again and moves us gently into Spring and Summer.
Hope is a memory of the future!
My sister Joan is an Episcopalian priest.
She told me of an interesting slip she made at the altar: the
Book of Common Prayer reads: Lead us from error into truth…
Joan said, unwittingly, lead us from terror into truth.
She and I both agreed the slip had much
wisdom in it. When I am afraid, when fear takes over, I am not
in truth, I can deceive myself. All the great teachers in history
have said: Do not be afraid.
I love the words of a friend who realized
that her design for learning was, as she put it, her lectern.
“I can lean on my design,” she said. We work hard
on these designs: doing a serious Needs Assessment, setting
out content in specific terms and writing (heaven help us!)
Achievement-Based Objectives with tough verbs and just enough
WHAT for the WHEN. Who among us has not sweated over the design
of appropriate learning tasks with inductive work, solid input,
implementation and integration tasks? And when it is done, we
read it over and frankly, usually face the fear that it will
not work for this particular group.
Do not be afraid. Those are brave words.
Hope is a memory of the future. These designs for Dialogue Education
work wondrously, magically, with more learning than any teacher
can dare to hope for. We have evidence of this from all over
the world.
Lean on your design, and do not stay
stuck! Remember how the universe moves ineluctably towards Spring,
towards meaningful learning, towards the Omega Point of peace
and truth.
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Jane
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