What It Is by Lynda Barry

"There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairy tale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it. I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood. They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay."

*
"Playing and fun are not the same thing, though when we grow up we may forget that, and find ourselves mixing up playing with happiness. There can be a kind of amnesia about the seriousness of playing, especially when we played by ourselves, or looked like we were playing by ourselves. I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played with, seems to play back."

*
"If playing isn't happiness or fun, if it is something which may lead to those things or to something else entirely, not being able to play is misery. No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to --- there were times when nothing played back. Writers call it 'writer's block.' For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don't usually know them."

*
"I knew who the best artist were in our class, who were the best writers. Out of 30 kids there were about ten that stood out and were good at something. The rest of us started wishing: I wish I could draw. I wish I could write. I wish I could dance. I wish I could sing. I wish I could act. I wish I could play music. I wish I could be funny. By 5th grade most of us already knew it was too late."

*
"In junior high I started drawing again one I found out I could copy other people's art and I was actually decent at it. And I'm thankful for this because I was by then completely unable to draw anything on my own that I could stand. I especially liked to copy comics."

*
"What happens when we write by hand? A body in motion is moved by... what? There is a state of mind which is not accessible by thinking. It seems to require a participation with someone. Something physical we move like a pen like a pencil. Something which is in motion. Ordinary motion like writing the alphabet."

*
"I can remember not being a teenager and then being one. Being catapulted into a new world contained by the old one, just by walking to school. Kids burn up in this atmosphere. Friendships atomize. But the teen part is smeltering itself together all along, and soon you can think of yourself no other way. Something was gone, but didn't miss it. I didn't miss it at all."

*
"What was Marilyn (my art teacher) doing when she sat there looking at my empty pictures? I don't believe it was thinking. I believe it was closer to the staring game I played in the trailer when I was little, a state of mind I had forgotten about. A different kind of looking. An ability to wait."

*
"When I was little, I noticed that making lines on paper gave me a certain floating felling. It made me feel like I was both there and not there. The lines made a picture and the picture made a story. I wasn't the only kid it happened to. Every kid I knew could do it."

*
"Before the two questions (Is this good? Does this suck?), pictures and stories happened in a way that didn't involve much thinking. One line led to another until they somehow finished. I never felt like I was trying, and the drawing itself didn't matter too me much afterward."

*
"When we remember something, do we use our imagination? When we imagine something, do we use our memory?"

*
"Stuart Dybeck wrote a book called childhood and other neighborhoods and I think this begins to describe it, the idea of our childhood as a neighborhood with something like streets and houses, school yards, and cemeteries, short cuts and long ways. It's a good way to start, by thinking of childhood as a place rather than a time. A place that already exists like an un played-with playset, needing only one thing to set all things in motion."

*
"Sometimes in order to remember we have to completely forget. Sometimes in order to forget we have to completely remember."

*
"A sentence is like an address in that way. A spoken word of thought."

*
"Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher, and found they are very much alike."

Find details here.

Mentoring: The TAO of Giving and Receiving Wisdom by Chunliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch

Encourage and appreciate other’s spontaneity, and reciprocate with trust of these genuine expressions. Let us challenge ourselves with the opportunities for improvisation, and enjoy the natural development of this immediacy and alertness in our relationships. Great things happen as they are supposed to in spite of our desire to control them according to our wishes. Yes, each of us can smile and say, “How wonderful, it just sort of happened!”

*
Mentors gently and subtly guide, rather than control, others. Encourage others to be more self-reliant and discover what is best for themselves. The exertion of control over a situation or person is emotionally expensive for all involved and exhausting to the one in control. It blocks visions and all creative possibilities. Controlling behaviors create a sea of mistrust, lack of cooperation, and a loss of faith in the mentoring process. Notice how much more powerful we feel when we choose to step subtlety out of the way and simply guide others without imposing our agendas. Only when we dare to let go of control, will we win the hearts of others and enable true learning and growth to occur.

*
Let others find their own way by using very little intervention; refrain from manipulating, imposing morality, or coercing. Shed light through suggestion. Confucius in his discourse on education, states that the “superior teacher guides students but does not pull them along; urges them to go forward by opening the way yet refrains from taking them to the place.”

*
Guiding creates an atmosphere that encourages others to think and accomplish for themselves. The Buddha says that the best way to control your cow is to not control it. Offer instead, a large, spacious meadow.

*
When we plant flower, we do not pull them up so they can grow taller and faster—we allow them to progress naturally. It is the same with mentoring. Having personal trust is gratifying; do not abandon it even if things are temporarily unclear.

*
The mentor will notice in what direction the mentoree wishes to go and gently suggestion ways to advance the goal.

*
A mentor will enthusiastically tell other’s about a mentoree’s talents, using her influence to give her partner exposure and visibility. Knowing that his mentor believes in him, his confidence level rises.

*
Mentors can excite and encourage others through example, by displaying great passion and spirit.

*
Mentors enable mentorees to safely step out and risk failure, knowing that setbacks are simply lessons that help to guide the way. Often the mentor will disclose how he or she struggled and failed in the beginning and how these setbacks were positive opportunities to learn and forge ahead.

*
The essential work of the mentor is to guide others to discovering this goodness within themselves and to help them follow their integrity as they reawaken to the inner truth of who they are and what they can do.

*
By mentoring others, we become aware of the gaps in our own knowledge. Becoming dissatisfied, we realize the problem lies within, which causes us to feel stimulated to improve once again. The dance of mentoring and learning stimulates self-expansion. When we need to learn, we become open to receiving; once we have learned, we immediately become open to giving.

*
All good mentors (giving, teaching) are continually open to being mentored (receiving, learning). To be a good teacher, one must be a good student... the crux of the Tao mentoring process, as we see it, is the Wu Dao dance between mentor and mentee, where each is involved with giving and receiving.

*
The key to success in this mentoring dance is the development of “Te.” Te requires the additional letting go of logic, of the need to pretend that we know all, and of the desire to display ourselves as sages. It asks us to admit that we “don’t know,” which creates a sense of wisdom that never relinquishes itself to be fixed, limited opinions about what should be. By acknowledging this emptiness, we enter into a communion with our partners, creating potential relationships of deep understanding and openness to vast growth and change.

*
Those who know they know not, become wise.
Those who presume they know much, stay ignorant.

*
The mentoree asks permission of the mentor to risk and to be vulnerable. If we fall down or make a mistake, it is fine simply to feel our insecurity and plunge back in, with the mentor’s help. Now, go ahead and make a huge mistake, and trust that your mentor will help. Forge ahead, knowing that you are okay, able now to teach or mentor others who have fallen themselves... mentoring frees us to pursue life’s wonderful lessons without fear of failing or being exposed.

*
Effective mentors guide with virtue, without force or effort. In an atmosphere of inspiration, trust, courage and harmony, where interdependence and personal strength are created, individuals begin to grow and become more aware, more conscious of their greater selves as well as the greatness in others.

*
To create a safe environment and encourage open conversation... mentors listen with full attentiveness, not with their ears, but with their spirit, their full heart… ready to receive without judgment

*
Persever during discouraging moments, in a deliberate, intentional manner. Confucius says that it matters not what we try to think or carry out; what matters is that once we begin we must never lose heart until the task is completed. To persevere, focus on the joy of the journey, the process rather than on the goal or destination. We need to be compassionate with ourselves when we seem not to be making progress. With all its twists and turns, its changes of direction along the way, the river eventually finds its way to the sea.


*
Remember that things occur not when we think they should but when the time is right…. Mentoring helps us to realize that we all need time and space to develop according to our natural process, to let our lives assume their own shape. Mentors are willing to repeat and recreate teaching methods and patiently allow time for ingestion and natural development. The mentor savors the eventual moment when the sparks of the mentoree’s apprehension ignite to illuminate their mutual learning.

*
Let us relinquish our attachment to outcomes; success or failure is not a barometer of self-worth. To be over-joyed at success and destroyed at failure is to become a victim of circumstances.

*
Patience—sensitivity to adapt and adjust to each other’s wishes
Trustfulness- inner sense of trust in others and in ourselves
Instinctiveness
Non-judgment
Simplicity
Humility
Mindfulness
Perseverance
Attentiveness
Decisiveness
Kindness
Self-Acceptance
Integrity
Emptiness
Detatchment
Inner stillness

*
Service
Modeling
Guidance
Empathy
Nurturance
Harmony
Viglilence
Cooperation
Interdependence
Yielding
Moderation
Enthusiasm for change
Joyful laughter
Spontaneity—to be present in the here and now
Centered Heart
Consistency


Find details here.

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks

It is crucial that we challenge any feeling of shame or embarrassment that teachers who do their job well might be tempted to indulge when praising ourselves or being praised by others for excellent teaching. For when we hide our light we collude in the overall cultural devaluation of our teaching vocation.

*
One of the dangers we face in our educational systems is the loss of a feeling of community, not just the closeness among those with whom we work and with our students, but also the loss of a feeling of connection and closeness with the world beyond the academy.

*
Thich Nhat Hanh teaches: In a true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

*
Parker Palmer believes that enlightened teaching evolves and invites community.

"This community connects us with the .. 'great things' of the world and with 'the grace of great things'... We are in community with all of these great things, and great teaching is about knowing that community, feeling that community, sensing that community, and then drawing your students into it."

*
"Teaching tugs at the heart, opens the heart, even breaks the heart - and the more one loves teaching the more heartbreaking it can be. The courage to teach is the courage to keep one's heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able so that teacher and students and subject can be woven into the fabric of community that learning, and living, require." (Palmer)

It takes courage for any teacher who teaches with gladness to accept and respond to periods of burnout, to embrace the heartache of loss and separation.

*
If disillusionment is one of life's natural forms of contemplation, the experience of dislocation is another. This happens when we are forced by circumstance to occupy a very different standpoint from our normal one, and our angle of vision suddenly changes to reveal a strange and threatening landscape.... The value of dislocation like the value of disillusionment is the way that it moves us beyond illusion, so we can see reality in the round - since what we are able to see depends entirely on where we stand." (Palmer)

*
In Pedagogy of the Heart, Paulo Freire contends that democratic educators "must do everything to ensure an atmosphere in the classroom where teaching, learning, and studying are serious acts, but also ones that generate happiness."

*
(why mentor at nua looks like hanging out)

Whereas vernacular speech may seldom be used in the classroom by teachers it may be the preferred way to share knowledge in other settings... the democratic educator values diversity in language.

*
(why our bookclub is so important:)

In our society the academic world remains the primary place where teaching and learning are valued, where reading and thinking are deemed meaningful and necessary work.

*
a false assumption that book based learning has little relevance in their new lives as workers. ... And if they read, they no longer study.

(our bookclub doesn't just read, we study)

*
My leaving a high-ranking tenured position opened up new spaces for teaching and learning that renewed and restored my spirit and enabled me to hold onto the joy in teaching that makes my heart glad.

*
He identified the 'click' between us as a combination of personal resonance and professional admiration.

*
(nua) A COMPELLING PLACE FOR LEARNING

*
We can be together, critique whiteness, dismantle structures of privilege and let love that is rooted in partnership be the tie that binds us.

*
(values to approach mentorship)

mutuality, partnership and community

generosity of spirit


*
As democratic educators we have to work to find ways to teach and share knowledge in a manner that does not reinforce existing structures of domination.

*
Committed acts of caring let all students know that the purpose of education is not to dominate, or prepare them to be dominators, but rather to create the conditions for freedom. Caring educators open the mind, allowing students to embrace a world of knowing that is always subject to change and challenge.

*
Where there is domination, there is no place for love.

*
When as teachers we teach with love, combining care, commitment, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter. That means having the clarity to know what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning. Teachers who are wedded to using the same teaching style everyday, who fear any digression from the concrete lesson plan, miss the opportunity for full engagement in the learning process. They are far more likely to have an orderly classroom where students obey authority. They are far more likely to feel satisfied because they have presented all the information that they wanted to cover. And yet they are missing the most powerful experience we can offer students, which is the opportunity to be fully and compassionately engaged with learning.

*
Through their work at making community, at creating love in the classroom, they could hear more intimately James Baldwin's declaration of love's power: "Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word 'love' here not merely in the personal sense but as a state if being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth."

*
Love will always challenge and change us.

*
When we practice interbeing in the classroom we are transformed not just by one individiual's presence but by our collective presence.



Find details here.

The Music Teaching Artist's Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator by Eric Booth

Linking the words art and learning reminds us of their fundamental connectedness. The great twentieth-century physicist David Bohm gave an instruction that I try to live by: when one is faced with seeming opposites, look for the larger truth that contains them both.

*
The philosopher John Dewey once remarked that he was unable to define the word aesthetic, but that he did know its opposite was anesthetic. That is the aesthetic development teaching artists most value - waking people up from the somnolence propagated by our aggressively anesthetizing commercial culture, to see the beauty, meaning, humanity, courage, and joy around us.

*
The most common gig I am asked to do with businesses is to teach "creativity but no art." ... How glorious will it be when we need not apologize for the word, and Americans think of art as powerful, relevant and fun.

*
(some of the) Guidelines for Teaching Artistry:

Using Engagement before Information

Turning the Responsibility for the Learning Over to the Learner

Witnessing

Staying Fresh

The Law of 80% -- 80% of what you teach is who you are

*
Your authenticity as a artist is one of your greatest strengths. Don't feel you must hide your artistic enthusiasm, your personality, your abilities, or your personal passions behind a "teacher" mask... As an artist, it is a spiritual responsibility to bring the best of ourselves to each opportunity, and not just pretend. Because they can tell.

*
Play is more than just a peppy warm up... play is an attitude you bring, an atmosphere you create, a freedom you lead participants into..

*
Deep inside, artists know that the heart of their work does not originate with the self. Rather it is an offering, a blessing. Lewis Hyde reminds us that a gift perishes unless it is moved along. We continue to receive that gift of art only when we pass it on as often, and in as many ways as we can.

*
He compared the fate of a young tree in the middle of a meadow with that of an identical sapling sprouting in a clearing in the woods. He said that a sapling in the woods would grow faster and stronger. This surprised me- wouldn't the open space without arboreal competition nurture a healthier tree? He informed me that young trees in a forest clearing have one advantage that makes all the difference. The tender roots of that tree will "find" the old roots of trees now gone, and then grow along those old roots to quickly reach deeper, richer soil. What an astonishingly apt metaphor for the power of mentoring!

*
Good mentoring is more about asking great questions than telling great stories. The mentor's crucial skill is listening.

*
Mentors model not just how to solve problems, but also how to think about problems, and how to turn them into learning.

*
Does mentoring sound like a lot of work? The only work is paying attention. The rest feels like play. Being selected, formally or informally, as a mentor is a gift - to the learner and the mentor.

*
Misconception 1: Teach means tell.

Many people think that because they said something, they have performed an act of education.

*
The school day offers few opportunities for students to consider how they feel about - and value - the information being presented to them... Consistently providing learners with opportunities to reflect builds habits of mind that students rely on throughout their lives. We cannot stint them, relegating reflection to a group discussion left for the last five minutes of class (which we often run out of time to include).

*
You can spot musicians whose learning did not contain or develop a healthy self-assessment culture. They need feedback from others to get a sense of how they did. They often overact to input because they don't know how to fit other's opinions and observations into the more important context of their own understanding. They tend to stop learning on their own, unprompted by external demand or critique. They are a lot less happy inside a life of musical learning.

*

What do you notice? Describe without judgement. ("I notice...")

What questions does this work, activity, or subject of inquiry raise for you? ("I wonder...")

*
The private lesson is an improvised teaching and learning duet, a work of art as much as of science, and it succeeds as much from the interpersonal as from the technical, just as an ensemble performance does.

*
Two ultimate goals for private lessons that always apply: nurturing motivation and developing musicality.

*
Many (students) report that their teacher is encouraging and happy only when they have practiced a lot, but they don't feel that the teacher cares about or fosters their love of music.

*
Learners like to master a technical challenge - but what they love is music.

*

To assess your teaching, ask yourself at the end of every lesson whether or not the student leaves more invested in music, hungrier to discover its mysteries and find its locations in himself.

*
I find the best teachers routinely improve technique without the learner overtly knowing it.

*
The good teacher "searches deeply to find the best way to stimulate each individual student's musical motivation." (Rachel Shapiro, a violist and faculty of the New York Philharmonic). We can compel many kinds of behavior and action, but not the action of the heart and the spirit that lead to curiosity, hunger, and dedication. There are many things teachers do to create those inner commitments.

*
Pleasure - It feels good to learn. If learning doesn't feel good, it slows or stops.

*
Don't just teach a great lesson; send the playfulness, the attention to process, the musical expressiveness home with the student.

*
Don't make assumption about practice. Experiment with it. It's interesting to note that almost all of us assume homework helps learning, although there is no evidence to support that assumption. Researchers report that students would be better off, would do better in school, if they spent the time required by homework in socializing play... Let's not let practice become like homework- tedious and probably not helpful if undertaken in a mindless way.

*
The Witness -- the capacity to recognize what is going on inside the learner (both on the surface and underneath), and mirror it back to her clearly, is the single most important thing we do.

*
Listen hard for the future you want to create; some part of it sounds in every student.

*
We must nurture the skills of inquiry and affirm the importance of curiosity.

*
... with just a few words that say, "You are on the right track. Keep going." And let your subtext say, "Keep going for the rest of your life. As I have done."

*
May we find joy in this lifetime of chances to let what we love as lifelong learners be what we do.


Find details here.