Hello Jack. Hello All! 

Here's some thoughts on your posting, Jack. They mostly allude to my own 
clip. I wish I had more time to respond to all the video-clips you allude 
to, but I don't, unfortunately. First, though, a general comment:
What comes through for me about the clips altogether is about the way in 
which the juxtaposition changes the way you can view what you are doing, 
and indeed, reality itself. Yes, I really think it does too, Barry. I hope 
the following comments are in some way my own explication of what I 
understand form my own lived experience. 

You've said, in reference to my clip: 

'I think Moira loves what she does in education and is expressing this 
love in her recognition of the value of her students as they flow past 
her.' 

There’s a tremendous amount in that. Linking this point to the one you've  
also made about how placing these clips together strips them of time and 
linearity, is something I also relate to. In my sci-fi reading and Star 
Trek enthusiasm, I liken this quality of multi-media, multiple-moment 
representation as something like a wormhole in space. This clip helps me 
to understand something I've intuited for a long time about my educative 
relationships and influence and the development of standards of judgement, 
which I first put forward in my thesis. 

Although the distances between two locations (read also point-of-view, 
character, psychology, religion, faith-system, experience, race, 
ethnicity, gender, geography, background, history etc.)  may be physically 
vast, in relativity theory a wormhole (curved space) reduces the distance 
instantly to negligible proportions, so that one might travel from star-
system A to star-system B within moments instead of the years, millennia, 
it might take in a three-dimensional universe. Wormholes in space to me 
are like metaphors of human relationships. Fragile, yet strong, simple yet 
overwhelmingly complex, a turn of phrase might create a rift that cannot 
be traversed over any period of time, or instantly heal a rift that could 
not have been reasoned out (and there is the vast, measureless, timeless 
spectrum between them too, of course). Any representation and meaning-
making enterprise that captures this reality might indeed carry forward 
our understanding onto a new level of awareness and reality. It might 
render a three-dimensional reality into a multi-dimensional reality in the 
blinking of an eye, so to speak! Such representations might genuinely 
catapult human reasoning onto a new level of evolution for homo-sapiens. 
Such is the potential of what you’re doing. It’s taken me a long time to 
see it. It’s the juxtaposition, for me, wherein lies the potential of the 
work you’re engaged in, we’re engaged in. Am I making sense? And in the 
clip of me with my students in Guyuan in relation to those moments with 
Tian Ping, I think we existed in this wormhole, which holds both time and 
propulsion in an apparently time-bound and single-space as meeting place. 
We both moved towards each other overcoming all sorts of physical-laws and 
boundaries, to co-create a space of inclusion. We are both human. We are 
both valuable. We hold each other in genuine esteem. I, as educator, 
however, have an additional responsibility. It is ontological as well as 
epistemological. I prevent this space between us from becoming wholly 
exclusive, as this would be against my core-beliefs of the ontological 
responsibility I exercise in those moments as authority-figure, as 
educator, as named person in that relationship. In addition, this space 
cannot exclude others because that’s like cutting off a body and only 
talking to an ear – I still reach out to and hold moments with other 
students as they file past: their presence must not be perceived as 
intrusive in this space, but as a welcome part of the whole flux – but at 
that space/time the core of it is myself and Tian Ping. That quality is, 
yes, an important one to hone into a world standard, because it’s already 
there! What do I mean? God, this is complex! 

When Tian Ping (I have permission to use her real name) makes to move out 
of the classroom – thus out of a space/time that may hold something 
fruitful to our humanity – I seize that space/time (I don’t know what to 
call it) and draw her in by expressing, non-verbally, my sense of our 
shared humanity, of my care for her as a valuable human being. I mean she 
already is that – she doesn’t need my endorsement for it to be so - but I 
sense that she needs to be shown that I see it (it’s that Yamamoto (1991) 
thing about the necessity of visibility, especially for women and 
especially in a patriarchal country like China) – and I want the 
expression of that sharing value as human beings together to characterize 
something between us. I want to enable her recognition of that space – 
expressly, not just implicitly. That’s why I reached out to her – with my 
eyes, my smile, my hands. Any way I could ‘think/feel’ to get her to enter 
that immanent space. Her slight smile, I take it of pleasure and slightly 
shy self-awareness, and the fluidity of her movement with me aside to 
symbolize our moving together into this space, seem very smooth. Once 
there, all I have to do is emphasise what has already, essentially, been 
done.  And I remember feeling that too at the time. I felt a surge of 
humanity flowing through me at that moment: the wormhole opening up, if 
you like. My educational life is characterized, as its best, by moments 
such as this: instinctively, through a kind of perfect pitch, I perceive a 
singularity, and know how to connect it to the whole. I think that 
expresses well my specific educational talent. (I’m not boasting about 
being a good educator writ large, I’m saying I recognize that particular 
aspect as constituting the ‘successful’ ways I sometimes interact with 
individuals, which supports the development of harmonious, productive 
relationships in the service of humanity, that’s all.) So, in recognizing 
that possibility (the wormhole) I dive into it, taking her with me, and 
letting it blend harmoniously with those people around us so that we 
weren’t a canker in the side of humanity, but a burgeoning part of it, 
which has the potential to flow out and harmonise with others convivially, 
so to speak. And then, knowing that the moment was, in one sense, time-
bound, I released her from it and gently, gently closed that space, but 
not the time. The moment is in one sense time-bound, and in another 
timeless. That's the art. It's, as Eliot said, capturing the timeless 
moment with time. 

I am using the wormhole as a metaphor (and a reality too), but what 
enables movement into that space is love. The standard I'm deveoping in my 
educational life is that of love, because, in my experience, it is only 
love which can overcome our physical, and metaphysical boundaries. It is 
both the impetus and the way. 

I subsequently heard from her friend that this moment was one of the most 
powerful for Tian Ping in her years of formal education. I received a note 
from her peer, saying that this had truly given Tian Ping a sense of her 
own capability. I wish I had the note still. I haven’t. Pity. But I did 
have conversations with Tian Ping herself, which alluded to this lesson 
and to this moment. And the words she spoke to me a month later: 'no one 
has believed in me like this', I will never forget. They confirmed for me 
something I already knew: this interaction was meaningful in a way that 
education is meaningful for the development of humanity. It’s a spark from 
a myriad of fireworks. or a snowflake in a snowfall - each one beautifully 
and precisely unique, yet also a part of the whole. Two drops in the ocean 
without any limiting sense. All is one. 

I come back to the point: if the question is, how can we develop world-
leading standards of judgement in our work as educators, then, I believe, 
the answer has something to do with developing love in our relationships. 

Love from,