Sep 30, 2020
Last week my friend Paula Berardinelli came to my home to drive me to a doctor’s appointment. I asked if we could put my walker in her car. She agreed and reached down to fold the walker into a tight package. I was amazed! “I had no idea how to do that!”
Paula laughed and said, “I used to do that with the boys’ carriage. It is the same move.”
Thinking about this experience with Paula, I had a deep insight about learning. A person cannot know or do what they have not known or done. So, when I face another who has not known the love and care I have known throughout my life, they cannot understand my perspective, nor I theirs.
What, then, can we do? Give them the experience! That’s what my glorious colleagues Karen Ridout and Michael Culliton have shown us. That’s what we design: an experience of a new reality. Not a sequence of information or a set of PowerPoint slides. Not an exposition of abstractions or skill sets, but the experience of loving care.
I believe I have discovered in this lesson the essence of Dialogue Education: it is an experience of loving care.
In our designing, preparing, research, setting up, needs assessment work and teaching, we offer learners the experience that enables them to learn, to do the work, and to fold the walker. Aha!
Thanks Paula, for a simple yet BIG lesson!
What lesson has life taught you today?
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Read other blogs that explore the connection to love here and here
Read more reflections and writings from Jane here