902 Seminar Presentation January 26, 2012 ACTIVITY talking circle (3 or 4 rounds ?

ds ?) DEBRIEF -Origin -Classroom context -Purpose LINKS TO OUR CLASS -Video / Brene Brown on vulnerability -Quotations from Smith
we must become increasingly skilled in learning to read and understand our own childhoods, to understand our personal and collective pasts in a truly pedagogic way, that is, in a way that contributes positively and dialogically to a new understanding of an appreciation for the world. (Smith, p. 139 / quoting John Martinis study of the moments of pedagogy) as educators, we are in need of a new pedagogy which recognizes at its centre the question of children as a question which calls for new self-reflection on our partliving with children means living in the belly of a paradox wherein a genuine life together is made possible only in the context of an ongoing conversation which never ends yet which must be sustained for life together to go on at all. Homes, classrooms, schools wherein the people in charge cannot lay themselves open to the new life in their midst, always exist in a state of war from which children are driven either inward or outward but never forward. (Smith, p. 139) The openness that is required is not a vacuous licentiousness but a risky, deliberate engagement full of the conflict and ambiguity by which new horizons of mutual understanding are achieved. This is the fundamental requisite for giving children a sense of membership in the human community, for one learns to find ones voice only in an environment where speech itself is well understood as having a listening aspect. (Smith, p. 139) A true pedagogy of giftedness is oriented not simply to realizing the hidden potential of this or that particular student, but to bringing forth that which has the power to unite us as a human community through opening new possibilities for our own mutual regeneration. How we orient to what is freely given, how we care for it, will determine how well we can face what comes to meet us as new, which in turn holds (part of) the answer for our own authentication as persons. (Smith, p. 147) The early practices in giving which we see in young children are a form of inquiry as to whether there is a place in the world for what they have to offer, and many gifts are lost because there was a bad initial reception on the part of the significant receiver, be it parent, teacher or friend. (Smith, 146)

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