Connections in action

Much of this blog centres around connections. I have been drawn to the idea of a connectedness between my various personal and professional identities, and often use metaphor or analogy to try to help me unpick and understand those relationships and connections more fully.  

The imagery that I have used most across a number of years include the image of a banyan tree, when, in 2012, I described the relationship between myself and the students in my class as ‘twisted together like the tangled roots and branches of the banyan tree’; the notion of mycelia, a complex underground entanglement of branched thread-like strands that reach out and support each other, building strength in quiet, unobserved ways; and rhizomes, non-linear networks of connections that make unexpected joinings, explore new territories and connect any point to any point.

Here is an example of those connections in action – unexpected, playful connections that help to further understanding…

I had planned a teaching session in the week before – a session entitled ‘Professionalism: Values and Identity in the Teaching Profession’ – and had chosen to incorporate an arts-based activity that required the students to take some excerpts from educational thinkers’ writing as a starting point, and to reframe some of those writings, phrases, words, into a found poem that speaks of the trainees’ own developing values and identities.

I had explored the activity a little by myself beforehand and already prepared the resources, and so on this day, I simply delivered the session and collected in the found poems to read afterwards.

In the same afternoon of that same day, I attended a primary art teacher cpd event at a local gallery. The focus was on vessels in their collection – explored using some wide-ranging activities throughout the afternoon and led by two artist associates.

Thus, I went home with teacher identity, values, vessels, clay, analogies, making, artists-words, teacher-ideas, and the writings of Ken Robinson, bell hooks, Debra Kidd, Paul Dix, Lawrence Stenhouse and Herbert Kohl swimming around in my head.

And so, I produced a bowl, a vessel, from the paper scraps from the workshop I had taught that day. The offcuts that were left by the students feeding into my own making activity that made rhizomatic connections with initially unconnected elements of the day. And the resulting vessel is beautiful – not only for its aesthetics, the delicacy of it, the curvature, and the shape, but also for the imagery, the wonderings, the new thinking that arose during the making, the new analogy of the teacher as a vessel. To be explored further.