Postcards

Reading All About Love by bell hooks has gotten me thinking so much about the ways in which lies and deception playing into our daily relationships, have sullied the love that we are supposed to be feeling. There was so much there about how we have been schooled on lying as children, have learned to lie in order to escape punishment (34). Telling the truth causes pain, so we learn to lie for others. We believe, wrongly, that love is about lying to protect those we love, and this is something that is especially ingrained in us, as women, since we are socialized to be caring toward others, to put others' feelings over our own survival and healing.

I was thinking about how spring is coming. I talked to a teacher today at my placement, and she said that so long as it is over ~20 degrees. I asked, and they rarely couldn't go out. It was nice to hear that they could go out usually, and it seems that they will be able to go out more and more. Today it started to rain at recess, and we didn't really go in right away which was nice to see. None of the students seemed to mind either.

In the mindful classrooms video, I noticed the class doing a sort of loving-kindness meditation for the members of the class who were not present. This really connected to a discussion I had in class last week, in which I talked about a previous class in which we had discussed the use of mindfulness as a way to break out of a focus on the self and engage with other people. I think that this focus is a saving one for the use of mindfulness in classrooms. Offering mindfulness as a tool for connecting with the world is a very valid option, and one that seems to not impose a certain view upon one's students. This all reminded me of a speech by David Foster Wallace, "This Is Water," that we discussed in my class on mindfulness.

What I really think was inspiring about the past week was a mix between the mindfulness and love that was being discussed in class. Having Laura Hummer in to speak really opened my mind to a way of teaching that is not usually practiced, and it was something that I was not familiar with. I’m really glad that we got to hear from her and I’m really appreciative of her honesty and integrity about everything that she said in class. I think listening to her story really showed that mindfulness is something that really need to come from within, and the love that you have for yourself, talk about by both Pema Chodron and Ram Dass is something that can’t really be taught but it can’t be encouraged. I think that’s what I really want to focus on during my observations at the Thorne preschool.