At the MetroCITI pedagogy seminar I've been attending at Teachers' College, a visitor who works with young people in multi-media modes - especially stories - posed an interesting question today. It wasn't: What is your story? but rather: If someone wanted to tell your story, what sources should they consult - whom should they talk to, where should they go, what should they look at, etc.? It's quite profound, really! (I was surprised to find an odd scholarly-ism tripping me up: who, I thought she was asking, could provide a more accurate, objective, balanced, complete account of my life than I?)
Earlier in the session - as an opening ice-breaker, in fact - she'd asked us to name something you know in your bones to be true. If my response in the later was unsure, mine to this wasn't. Where my fellow participants by and large said things like I know that I could be wrong, that it's complicated, that each person has their own truth, that I have questions (which all seemed to me a little flip, though also true) I said I know that people are made for love. Later she asked us for our sources of our opening claims and I could only say that the "in your bones" prompt led me to think about my values rather than my knowledge, values I might help make true by uttering them.
I was relieved that our seminar leader, A, gave a response of a similar kind: I know that there is goodness in the world. That's something I might have said a few years ago, and still know in my bones to be true, too. What occasioned my change of focus? Who could tell the story?
Earlier in the session - as an opening ice-breaker, in fact - she'd asked us to name something you know in your bones to be true. If my response in the later was unsure, mine to this wasn't. Where my fellow participants by and large said things like I know that I could be wrong, that it's complicated, that each person has their own truth, that I have questions (which all seemed to me a little flip, though also true) I said I know that people are made for love. Later she asked us for our sources of our opening claims and I could only say that the "in your bones" prompt led me to think about my values rather than my knowledge, values I might help make true by uttering them.
I was relieved that our seminar leader, A, gave a response of a similar kind: I know that there is goodness in the world. That's something I might have said a few years ago, and still know in my bones to be true, too. What occasioned my change of focus? Who could tell the story?
