Dear Kathy and Alan and Jack,
yesterday - while nursing a headache that my grandmother would have described as 'enough to frighten the French', I was swithering over whether to write and say something about Kathy's e-mails or just keep quiet for a while if not altogether.
Alan, the irony here is that it was your frustration at banging your head against a wall that led to Kathy's response and then Jack's and that thus brings me back to this forum. (You know, the trouble with banging your head on the wall for a while is that, with all that ringing in your ears, you may not notice when you've made an impact!) So now I would ask, could you stay and be the the struggling life that pulls those like me into the river? (Thanks for the wonderful living metaphor , Kathy.) Because *this* is the conversation I'm looking for - the one that I'd give a lot to be allowed to enter.
I've been looking for a particular kind of conversation. (Not a better conversation, nor one that excludes joining in with other conversations - just one that I badly need to have at this stage of my own evolution.) Like Kathy, my head has been 'exploding' with all that has been opening up in front of me, in my own case for the past eight months. There are many things I really want, maybe even need, to share with others in a way that is true to the experience itself. I want to say, for instance, that I fell in love with my whole class last semester and that I *know* that was why our classroom became a magic lab instead of a writing lab. I want to find out if others have seen and felt the same things. I long to share my amazement as I watched myself becoming whatever they needed me to become: an indefatigable cheerleader for every person there, without exception; technologically proficient (yeeaaarrrgh); preternaturally perceptive on occasion and on others just looking over and over again until I could *feel* what I was seeing in my classroom; a facilitator who helped them to 'fall in love' with themselves and one another. I really, really want to have a conversation with someone about the fact that 'what worked' among those strategies I invented, were the ones I came up with in direct response to what I experienced my students experiencing. And the fact that these hugely successful strategies were ones for which I only figured out the rationale AFTER I had already implemented them!
I want to acknowledge you all and apologize for my own shortcomings - particularly my cowardice! Although it was deeply important to me, I let someone else jump into the river first. I was afraid to speak from the place I was advocating because I am not any kind of expert and I was afraid that I would sound ignorant and untutored. Along came Kathy who blurted out the same fear and then went straight ahead and talked openly about the way that her research is grounded in her neglect of her own well being and happiness and the hypocrisy of making a stand for others that you will not make for yourself. While I advocated the eye/I of the story, described the deadliness of academic jargon) and then included a very desiccated 'narrative' of my own, Kathy sent us the heron.
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From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alan Rayner (BU) [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2010 5:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?
Dear Kathy,
Your message is for me a delight to read! In its own way it is a profound and eloquent expression of your sense of natural inclusion, which I feel so many of us must feel as children only to have it drowned out by the noise of opposition and abstract argument (what I sometimes call the 'adulteration' of orthodox schooling).
What you describe is what my wife, Marion, and I would call a 'Naturemoment' (see attached leaflet), filled with the wonder that makes a river surge through my chest, only to be followed by the bittersweet evidence and admission of vulnerability and mortality from which compassion fruits.
I offer what I do to this list in the hope that it may reach and encourage people like you. I have been doing so for years now, but always with the sense and fear of being regarded as an uninvited and unwelcome guest, notwithstanding Jack's encouragement behind the scenes. That sense has increased recently, and been confirmed by some of the responses to my message. I am not looking for recognition or acclaim or thanks. I am not seeking to serve or to lead. I cannot assume that I am right in what I say or know what I'm doing and where it is going. I can only try to make sense and express what makes sense to me. I am looking for signs of receptivity and a genuine sense that what I offer, warts and all, is felt to be helpful, and continuing to be helpful, in one way and another. Just the kind of signs you provide me with below. When and where I find those signs, I will continue. When and where I don't, I won't. A river flows where it finds and can create and sustain openness. Sooner or later it turns away from banging its head up against a brick wall and finds another way, more inviting. Life too. Me too.
Warmest
Alan
----- Original Message -----
From: Kathy Bauman<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 8:39 PM
Subject: Re: Is what I am doing a good idea?
Dear Alan,
I have a number of posting to respond to but need to respond to you first. You see, in the few brief email exchanges we have had, you have had quite an influence on my thinking. Perhaps I shouldn't be responding today as I am tired and emotional. You see, being new to research I am finding I am starting to see my life and work through new lenses. It is tiring! I am counting the days till I am back at school and feel overwhelmed by all I want to prepare and learn to share with my children there. I have essays I need to finish for professors.
I have tended to be trapped in spirals if negativity mentally while trying to give my students and colleagues positivity. The last few days I have been going through thought cycles like this, "
Wow, really important researcher have responded to my words! I am really touched and what to respond but what if I sound stupid? Dr. Whitehead didn't respond so maybe he thinks my idea is bad. Maybe others think I don't deserve to participate on this conference because I don't work and a university. I've got to finish my essays and get ready for school and I really need a break too and I want to respond to people and why do people say publish or perish and read of die, how fatalistic and I really need to...
I decided to stop this negative spiral and take a day trip with my husband to the waterfall where he proposed 7 years ago. As we hiked I noticed things I hadn't before like the blue specs in the steep clay banks and the cardinal flowers by the stream. I realized that begining to research was going to change the whole me for the better as I was more open to seeing and thinking about things I hadn't before.
I thought about your words and the idea of natural inclusion. I wondered if I really understood and if it would be wrong of me to ask you for a simple definition and example. That was when we reached the base of the waterfall. The hike was much more difficult than usual as the heavy rains we've had this summer had increased the depth of the water and the speed of the current. The current was so strong that all the little pebbles had been swept away and we were wading on a smooth surface. I laughed as the current pushed around my legs and I fought for balance. I speculated at how this poetic image would stick with me in my work this year.
That was when I saw her. Any time before now I would have dismissed the bobbing shape as sticks at the edge of the pool that forms at the base of the waterfall. I don't presume as easily now. I looked again. Intuitively I knew I saw a living being that needed help. I asked my husband for his shirt and dove into the pool. The current was wicked and my clothes weighed on me but I made my way over. It was a young Great Blue Heron. She was pushed against the clay bank trying to get out but the strong current and slippery clay prevented her. Wings spread out, feet braced on the edge and long neck through up the back for air, she kept sliding back into the pool only to shove herself again against the bank and continue the cycle again. I covered her gently with my husband's shirt so she wouldn't harm herself or me in struggling and got her up the bank safely. The wings and legs were undamaged but she was very weak and in shock. From the thin brown feathers on the top of her body I knew she was born this year.
I waited where she couldn't see me to see if she could spread her wings and start to preen the water logged feathers. She would move a bit and was breathing. Night was moving in fast and with it the predators would finish her. We decided to move her. We got her into a warm dry box and the darkness and quiet seemed to help. We found a safe place and watched over till about 4 a.m. when she died. The Naturalist said she probally had internal damages and there was nothing that could have been done.
I am very sad. What was the point of seeing her and saving her if she didn't survive?
I just woke up and read your message Alan. I hope my writing here didn't add to your discomfort. I love reading your words and learning from you and you are an important part of the whole of my learning now! When you wrote, "Recent conversations have produced a feeling of discomfort in me,"
I wanted to say that I am sorry if I contributed to that discomfort. I am a teacher and outside the world of upper level academia so I don't know all the rules of relating to professors and the language of advanced writing. I keep getting words like epistemoplogy and ontolgy mixed up!
What I do know is that discomfort for me has often met that I am rubbing against something that challenges the way I think. That is usually good and useful as it makes me think about my values and what is good in my mind. Does everyone in the e-conference need to share the same definitions? If action research draws people here but we don't all agree with each other or each others values or beliefs, isn't that a good thing? I may not agree with "all the congregates" under the umbrella of action research at this site but I think it is wonderful that the voices are here and being shared together. We can challenge each others assumptions, invite each other to look at things in new ways as you have helped me to see that to heal and grow as an individual I will need to be dynamically tied to my community.
I know that I am new to your ideas and the ideas of natural inclusion, but isn't this a part of it or do I misunderstand?
I do very much look forward to many more words from you here at this site and from all the rest of you as we invite each other to learn and grow in our research. I am not going to spell check or edit this in any way (which is unheard of for me) but send it will all my love in the hopes that it is a good idea. I apologize if I have offended anyone in my writing but I find with reflection that I don't apologize if I have made you uncomfortable as I have grown much by the discomfort of different thinking as I embrace the dynamic writings of all of you.
Sincerely Kathy Bauman
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