From the Back Porch

I have always avoided using the word "empowering" since I have rarely met a four year old who was not full of his own power: "Me do, Mama!" We are born with power - the power to be ourselves, to love others, to serve, to create and recreate, to dance! Some occasions or situations seem to diminish the expression of that power - nothing can extinguish it.

Dialogue Education at its power-fullest best was visible at the Dialogue Education Institute in Vermont in early October. There was one irrefutable indicator of power-full learning: the laughter that rang through those rooms for four days.
(Robert Kegan's good humor was brilliant on Sunday!) No laughing, no learning.

Some other power-full axioms I wish I had said aloud when I had the dais on Friday evening:

The dialogue in Dialogue Education is not between a teacher and her learner, but among learners, of whom the teacher is one.

Our task now is not to prove this way of learning, but to improve it. An open question invites dialogue. (where have we heard that one before?)

Please come to the back porch for more good dialogue! The door is always open!

email Jane

<<back