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alesnick's picture

further glad notes . . . chords?

I too appreciate the session we shared and look forward to further investigations. 

Near the end of the session, we asked if participants had suggestions or cautions for us as we explored continuing this investigation as a research avenue.  That led to really helpful ideas, and it let one of the participants to have the last word, saying this: "If we're more attuned to the associative side of ourselves then we can react more productively to forms of storytelling with which we are less familiar."  If our session had anything to do with prompting this statement, I am truly happy.  If it more modestly provided a setting where this insight could be shared, I am also happy.  To me, this is really the hoped-for payoff of the investigation.

To add to the wonderfully rich listing Anne provides above, another idea we heard was a question about what sense it makes for us to talk about reading and writing in one breath, as it were, rather than as fundamentally different, in the sense that a comp class and a lit class are different.  I would like to hear/talk more about this, because it's a distinction I don't tend to make.  I see reading and writing as more or less names for the same processes, and I don't teach in a context in which I have to separate them, or choose to.

Experiencing and now remembering the work we did with movement is joyful for me -- and interesting.  I felt in the session and do now that working from silent, brief movement first made people more present to me -- it felt like a way of introducing ourselves.  And linking a gesture to the person's before proved to be an interesting way to work/be/play with others.  When Anne asked whether anyone had used movement in this way in the classroom, everyone said they hadn't, so I'm glad they now have.  It strikes me that it's such a common way of working in daily life, but so rare in academic settings, and it's challenging to put words/stories to.  That's why it feels like a useful way to "access wonderland" -- not guaranteed, of course, since gesture of course can be conventional, culturally saturated, etc., just as stories can be, but a way nonetheless.

 

 

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