Possibility
The picture is from the front of one of my notebooks of lesson plans.
The title and first line of Emily Dickinson’s poem always bring a smile to my face.
An aspect of being in a pandemic and teaching in a pandemic, is the question of the unknown and uncertainty. As I have been considering for myself and with others, I have been offering that we are simply more aware that we are moving towards an unknown; that it has always been true that we don’t know what will happen next.
When I am teaching people about teaching, I coach them to embrace knowing that when you are teaching, learning develops in myriad ways. We can approach the teaching moment with wonder. You have a plan, you have information- and the ability to respond. What happens unfolds as it needs to.
Yesterday, as I was teaching, I heard myself say the word unknown. Embracing the unknown is a value in both of my primary professions – theatre and Alexander Technique.
This time, as I said the word – “unknown” - I heard the “no” contained in the word.
My current quest in language is to see what happens if I frame everything from a yes perspective. I laughed a bit, realizing that I was about to question long-used jargon once again. And I wondered what the yes version would be – and the word “possibility” appeared.
One of many instances in which F.M. Alexander uses the word is this one from the The Use of the Self:
This process of directing energy out of familiar into new and unfamiliar paths, as a means of changing the manner of reacting to stimuli, implies of necessity an ever-increasing ability on the part of both teacher and pupil to ”pass from the known to the unknown”; it is therefore a process which is true to the principle involved in all human growth and development.
(And I could supply a plethora of theatrical references to various versions of embracing the unknown.)
What if, instead, I dwell in possibility?
What if F.M.’s sentence became
The process of directing energy into new pathways as a means of changing the manner of reacting to stimuli, implies the necessity of an ever-increasing ability on the part of both teacher and pupil to welcome new possibilities…. ?
Curious to reread Dickinson’s entire poem, I found her poem one that could be a description of what I hope for as I teach – to open doors and windows to serve my student’s highest dreams – so that the student opens their own gateway to “gather paradise”.
I dwell in Possibility
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)
Possibility
The picture is from the front of one of my notebooks of lesson plans.
The title and first line of Emily Dickinson’s poem always bring a smile to my face.
An aspect of being in a pandemic and teaching in a pandemic, is the question of the unknown and uncertainty. As I have been considering for myself and with others, I have been offering that we are simply more aware that we are moving towards an unknown; that it has always been true that we don’t know what will happen next.
When I am teaching people about teaching, I coach them to embrace knowing that when you are teaching, learning develops in myriad ways. We can approach the teaching moment with wonder. You have a plan, you have information- and the ability to respond. What happens unfolds as it needs to.
Yesterday, as I was teaching, I heard myself say the word unknown. Embracing the unknown is a value in both of my primary professions – theatre and Alexander Technique.
This time, as I said the word – “unknown” - I heard the “no” contained in the word.
My current quest in language is to see what happens if I frame everything from a yes perspective. I laughed a bit, realizing that I was about to question long-used jargon once again. And I wondered what the yes version would be – and the word “possibility” appeared.
One of many instances in which F.M. Alexander uses the word is this one from the The Use of the Self:
This process of directing energy out of familiar into new and unfamiliar paths, as a means of changing the manner of reacting to stimuli, implies of necessity an ever-increasing ability on the part of both teacher and pupil to ”pass from the known to the unknown”; it is therefore a process which is true to the principle involved in all human growth and development.
(And I could supply a plethora of theatrical references to various versions of embracing the unknown.)
What if, instead, I dwell in possibility?
What if F.M.’s sentence became
The process of directing energy into new pathways as a means of changing the manner of reacting to stimuli, implies the necessity of an ever-increasing ability on the part of both teacher and pupil to welcome new possibilities…. ?
Curious to reread Dickinson’s entire poem, I found her poem one that could be a description of what I hope for as I teach – to open doors and windows to serve my student’s highest dreams – so that the student opens their own gateway to “gather paradise”.
I dwell in Possibility
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –
Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –
Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)
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