Feb. 15, 2023
I was given the gift of time to think with our ethos and Inquirey today! Thank you everyone.
I am sharing with you some of the trouble I got into 🙂
- While diving into thinking with, How to Language Dance within our Sitka Place Ethos?, I fell into a rabbit hole of reading Erin Mannings book, “Always More Than One * Individuation’s Dance”. In her book Erin Manning speaks about this video “In My Language” by Amanda Baggs (2007). This is a two part video at minute 3:12 there is a written “translation”. This video gives a movement languaging perspective within neuordivergence.
“In this two part video Baggs first creates a sound-sensing environment by moving through space while activating and being-activated by the welling enviro-mentality of the milieu. She moves slowly and carefully, touching, smelling, sounding the environment. Then in part two she challenges the notion that by “translating” this experience into spoken language she will make it more “complex” or “more real”.
”In my Language” does not reject language out right. What it does is use first movement and sensation and then language to inquire our tendency to place language as the determinant of experience. Why would we assume that language can touch every aspect of experience” – Manning
- During our last staff meeting we continued to think about our Inquiry and how to start our collective letter to request time with an Elder/Knowledge Keeper at The First Peoples House. I noticed myself feeling tensions and impatience with the feeling of not doing enough or being fast enough in my role as an educator working with the Early Learning Framework which asks “What can I do to ensure that the diversity of Indigenous cultures are recognized and reflected in my program?”. I also felt tension with wanting to recognize the importance of the labour and time it takes to maintain situated, careful, respectful, relationships of unlearning and stumbling together. How do I move away from deficit thinking to working with the idea of holding each other up? (Denis Hodgins) Can it be by moving together within action? I feel activated by the word ACTION. What will this co-labouring letter writing process activate?
“Being and worlding depend on the acitivity of reaching toward” Erin Manning
During our meeting, I was reminded of the Colloquium in London Ontario that I attended in 2020. One Key note speaker was Alexis Shotwell “Education without Extractivism”. Alexis Shotwell asks political, ethical questions about “intellectual extractivisms” and “How do we craft modes of being that do not extract Indigenous ways of thinking?”
Here is the link….. https://www.youtube.com/embed/KxbUjXS2E7M
These were my reflective notes back in 2020….feels like a lifetime ago!!
Reflection – The idea of “Intellectual Extractivism” created much curiosity within my practice. This helped me grapple with my privilege. I now wonder how, where and when do I extract knowledge? When is it my place? When is it not my place? How can I become more ethical within my relationships with others knowledges that is respectful of boundries? This allows me to be more comfortable in sitting with the uncomfort of not knowing. I now see how stealing and consumption of knowledge is just as damaging as stealing land, people and culture. How will I practice a new careful, respectful, reciprocal, responsible relationship with others knowledges as a white settler?
- Group Ethos Brainstorming from all of us during our last staff meeting in no particular order, Copied from our “Thinking” wall.
Sitka Place Pedagogical Commitments – Relationship (more than human, families, community, children team, self, uvic, other centres), TRC – Calls to Action, Belonging, Questioning with Curiosity, Being present, (micro) moment (s), De-Romantasize, Arts, Re-Active, Intention, Mindful, Activate Self-Worth-Value-Love, Reflective, Equity, Not child centred but still individuality respected, Knowledge of multiple concepts, improve vocabulary, learn from other professions, Open (ess), Horizontal Encounters, Political, Ethical, Listening, Communication (listening, verbal, non verbal, touch, movement), Welcoming, Boundries (consent, rights, A Practice, De-Centering(child,teacher,environment, more than human) Attunement, Collaborative, Connection, Respectful, Unlearning, EnJOYment, Emotion, Care-full, Inclusive, Images we hold.
- Adding more ideas towards beginning to compose our Ethos……
Working as a team we Question, What does it mean to live well, together within difference?
Inquiry, professional development
Materials
Most of our Program is outdoors ….speak to Weathering, Climate change, Movement, Walks to Campus, FPH, Water Fountain, Galleries in the Humanities Building, Haro Woods, Beach
How we work with art, clay, paint, sketching, dance studio, music, photography, the atrium space, thinking otherwise with children.
Dance Language – improvisational movement that is both spontaneous and intentional, embodiment, a coming to be, relational, collaborative, collective research-creation,
Working with taking care of , Stories, Thinking otherwise, in between, noticing/missing, sticky knots, slowing down, planting, cultivating plants, seeds, labouring, experimenting with time.
Feb. 23, 2023
So much here to consider Angie. Thank you for taking the time to read, reflect, and share – as well as to those who created the space for Angie to have the time and space to do so in the first place. Love the complexities you raise alongside the obligation to take action, which is what pedagogy is all about. Thanks for drawing our attention to Alexis Shotwell’s thought-provoking colloquium keynote, Education Without Extractivism, which for me is also very much linked to the question of who/what is being centred in what we do? (in everyday moments of practice)
I’m looking very forward to coming in again soon to work with you all. In the meantime I’ll be forwarding a revised draft of Sitka’s ethos statements in response to your email provocations and our in-person discussion with Amber and Sadaf last week, in the hopes it helps move you and the team move forward with revising an ethos statement you can all see yourselves in alongside moving the letter and other inquiry questions forward from words to active engagement (‘actions’). Of course, discussion is an important part of the inquiry process as well but I also understand the point you raise about actually doing something with the notes you’ve jotted down and previous points raised in discussion. Willie J. Ermine, Professor with the First Nations University of Canada speaks precisely to this point, in these short videos, What is Ethical Space?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85PPdUE8Mb0 [7mins 18seconds] & Ethical Space in Action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUfXu3gfVJ8 [5 mins & 29 seconds], if you’re interested in checking them out.
Quote:
I think people are hungry for something that re-channels their thinking or the way things ought to be working. Probably a lot of it comes from deep inside them, you know, the yearning to be ethical and try to do good, etc…Of course the challenge that I often present is that people have to take up the idea and do something with it. Do something. Which is quite different than just talking about the idea. You know you can debate and discourse an idea – much like we do in the academy. We talk an idea to death and nothing ever comes out of it except the discursive stuff…the real challenge is to take the idea and do something with it. (Ermine, 2010)
Hope you all had a great long weekend and the week is off to a good start.
Thanks again,
Narda
That first video, “In My Language” has really left me with a lot to think with… Thank you so much for sharing that, Angie!
At Acorn Place, we are constantly advocating with and for the infants in our program, as they are often dismissed as whole beings due to their ‘lack’ of language. The dominant discourse puts so much positive emphasis on the verbal child, robbing us of the complex and intricate moments and feelings that occur in the absence of oral language. Ironically, it has been difficult to communicate the affect that these moments have on a person (and with the rest of the world as well). The exchange that occurs between caregiver and infant, infant and weather, infant and material.
I appreciated the corrolations that were made between moving with the world and how that creates and reciprocates a relationship.
So many interesting things to think with!
Hi Angie,
Thank you for taking the time given to put together such a thought-provoking piece, I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, limited by time and trying to find the write words to express my thinking.
I appreciate your call to action, the doing.
“we can talk an idea to death.”
I think about how often we cannot find the words to express how we are feeling/doing said feeling, when I read the word movement/sensation “the act of changing/acting external sensation” how do we turn these a-ffects into just merely a word? How do we assume that language can touch every aspect of experience? What bias do we carry with our idea that one notion of communication is enough? What are the consequences of that idea in the act of doing and living our ethos? How can we bring to light what is happening in the in-betweens?
I’m looking forward to working alongside all Sitka educators to look intentionally into what it means to live our ethos in our everyday practices and to strengthen the liveliness of things 😉 that’s already evident in Sitka.
Angie, you have reminded me of how important it is to think with many different lenses and have the courage to do so! I am happy to have gotten a glimpse into your pedagogical commitments.
Thank you!