Know Thyself

Lately I've been having moments of extreme clarity. When I say "clarity," I mean that moment when you're stuck in gridlock, bumper-to-bumper traffic and you suddenly think about something and it makes perfect sense. While some people despise the stop-start nature of Calgary traffic, lately I've been having some of my best meditation in my car as I wait for the traffic to move along.

Some of the things I've come to realize are:

1. India fascinates me. I used to be afraid of it's foreign spirituality, but now I think I'm ready to walk in the foothills of the Himilayas and wade in the Ganges. I would like to watch Yogi's meditate, and I would like to surf in the Indian Ocean.
   
2. I am afraid of Africa. I want to experience it, but I fear what I will find when I'm there. Will I be able to live with this knowledge hereafter?
3. I think I could be a fascilitator of learning for the rest of my life. I like teaching English so much that I wonder what it would be like to teach Social Studies again.
4. I want to take my students on a field trip to a place that will blow their minds. They need to experience the world.
   
5. If I want to take my students on a field trip that will blow their minds, I should start the legal paperwork now and than maybe it might happen in ten years.
6. I think "Life of Pi" means more to me now then when I read it the first time.
7. I will never give another person "the" finger for driving in an inappropriate manner. I realize after watching this scene play out from a neutral perspective that an action like this does not solve anything.
8. I have so much to learn about adolescence.
9. I have so much to learn about adulthood.
10. I'm not ready to have children of my own.
11. I know that there are some spots out there that we're bound to meet up at.

Not a creature was stirring...

13 days to Christmas.

"Pi" and "Baraka"

Recently, I had a startling learning experience. With my grade 11 classes for the last month I've been going through Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I previously read this book 2 years ago, and I thought it was decent enough back then. However, now that I've read it again from a teaching standpoint, I've been learning so much about the nature of metaphor and the human condition. I must say that the title has never meant so much to me; the meaning could really be "Life of Life".

We started this unit with an in-depth look at an excerpt from Northrop Frye's The Educated Imagination, getting the students to start recognizing metaphorical thought in their daily lives through the "Motive for Metaphor" chapter. I wasn't sure how that was going to go over with the students, but to their credit they stuck with it and I think it benefitted them in understanding the novel and themselves.























Once we'd really dug into "Pi" we watched a film by Ron Fricke entitled Baraka that takes the viewer through an "epic non-verbal... journey of the earth's evolution." We took a long look at our interconnectedness in relation to one another and our impact on the earth.




The students were blown away by the scope of the film. On that note, the students were able to see this novel study as something all-together different from what it started out.

I have to show Kirsten and Justin when we're together over Christmas.

Do each of us have a Richard Parker in our lives in one form or another?