We awoke from “The Great Distraction” naked.
Reflection for Teaching
by Greg Windsor
After arriving in Australia 7 years ago, I have spent the last year thinking about how to understand learning. It is through reflection and collection that I see my future. I often ask myself what values are important for the future. I began to organise with the way I will teach using technology as my companion. Questioning nearly every step of the way, “how would it be without this strange creature?”. My nights are spent typing, searching the illusive documents for research, visual inspiration, concrete references, spanning all the reaches of the globe for snippits of information to be used by simply cutting and pasteing in such a manner that one would never know that it is simply stolen, or should I say appropriated (an art term), which gives credit in a respectful way and becomes the property of our creations.
I am continually wondering who or what I am with technology by my side. I want to know how it would be without it. I know how it is without it when I am alone in the dark admiring the wonder of the stars or on the beach looking as far as I can wondering what is out there. I am in awe of nature. It is the opposite to this “Great Distraction” I am many times dissapointed when this electrical devise is energised, and the keys go wild with the furry of connections to the fairies, delightful whimsy, fluid creation and then nothing…loss. I am confused most of the time.. where are my feet…in this camp of nature, or in the fast furrious fall down- let me down- it just isn’t working today, world of the illusionary production; machine machine machine.
I have reflected during the course of this semester on the importance of organisation, collating information, resourcing lesson plans, thinking hard about the content of the unit plans that harness the passion of my soul. These are the joys that I want to share with the students. Emerson and his circles fill my thoughts. One, Two, Three times in the drink the rock is tossed. I enjoy investigating how thinking laterally challenges us to become innovative; a quest for the unknown. An educated guess. It all comes with the experiences we have, will have, or should have. It is the great search for knowledge, and It is courage. It is courage to take risks and with these risks comes the possibility for failure. If there is one thing I have had this semester it is the handshake of failure with pleasure and angst. It may be a case of ‘know your enemy’ because he will be the one who follows in the shadows of discovery, lurking with silence, teasing with clues, syncopated and irregular. I am uneasy to shake the hand of failure. It may only be the hourglass which is the determinant…. for then the effort ceases with defeat.
The Senior Phase Curriculum means teaching at a level that challenges young adults to think about which possibilities are available and which decisions may lead the journey of a student to the other side toward adulthood in the arts. I am excited to be thinking about how I can make this journey visible, or at least a gateway to the yellow brick road. One has to wonder now doesn’t one?
Where do we want to go? These questions are the great mystery to the youth of Australia and the globe. It is enough to learn to take tests and become clever idiots, or fodder for the government and their workforce to power the slaveship of capitalism, but to think and wonder outside the regime of work and bank’s credit is curiously dangerous and often deemed not worthy. I say not. The world of work is so incrdibly embedded in our psyche that the days of slow drifting of the mind and simple wondering of colourful fancy has all but been forgotten, this can be learned again. We the artists must remind the world of work that we are the lubrication in the cogs of the machine that keeps the turning, turning. We are necessary. We are worthy. There is a function and it is the muse, the wonder the glory of the unknowing. In search of the queer, illustrious jester, magic maker. We are trueth.
I have seen the difference in myself and my peers as equally the same, we are individuals with stories and value. The personal struggles are together acknowledge as battles to enhance learning, a coming of age in an ageless mind. We are the role models equals in a struggle. This struggle is life long learning. The time of learning through theory based examples with suggestions of authentice task trench warfare soon starts shifting. Ready the red pens and packed lunch boxes with health doses of delightful cups of tea, we are about the begin the voyage to the center of the students’ world.
If one were to go through life without attempting to journey beyond the obvious three steps, we would probably wonder what it was like to see the joy of colour. Monotones make us drones, simple workers with little to dream. Calulating the economic chance with worry of loss. I see the world full of rainbows waiting to bounce on my chin, these are mine. I share these with my peers and enjoy dreaming for the chance to tell another tale. It is the story that fills the minds of our youth and they are the stories of triumph and failure, courage to say I missed the mark but not the prize.. it was only a miss. No dramas.
‘It is only failure when you stop trying.’
