On Tuesday afternoons my classroom shrinks to the size of a kitchen bench. Perched on the bar stools among the afternoon snacks, bits of abandoned craft and preparations for dinner, my young student and I work our way through an Italian language course. His grandma offers to make me a coffee. Mum puts business calls on hold for a minute to play with her youngest on the sofa behind us. Little sister Emma*, the craft generator, sidles up and shows me her latest artwork. Darcy* gets the giggles. He insists a drawing of a goat in his workbook looks like a donkey. It becomes our private Italian joke of the day. It dawns on me that teaching and learning in this space is a delightful exercise in shared hospitality. We could sit in a quieter spot, away from ‘distractions’, but the kitchen bench is Darcy’s choice for today. Although ‘learning a language’ is the parents’ desired extra-curricular outcome , relationship building is at the core of what’s really happening. Language learning is the conduit and the by-product. What can I learn from this experience? Can I re-imagine the learning spaces and what could be achieved in the learning process in a classroom setting? This is something I want to keep exploring. As David Smith and Susan Felch write in their introduction to Teaching and Christian Imagination:
“Imagination opens up possibilities..... Teachers are not only shaped by their own ways of imagining, they are engaged in influencing the imaginations of those they teach..... We work out our lives within patterns of imagery that offer direction for our dreams and our energies... The images that we let take hold of our thinking influence the kinds of teachers we become." pp.5-6 They go on to explore the metaphors of Journeys, Gardens and Building, stretching "beyond the familiar clichés, listening especially for biblical echoes and Christian resonances that can be heard in them” p.7 It’s a book that calls for a ‘meditative kind of reading’. I find myself dipping into it again and again, re-reading passages and finding inspiration to imagine and re-imagine. I highly recommend it! Libby Colla *Names have been changed. Reference: Teaching and Christian Imagination, David I. Smith and Susan M. Felch, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids Michigan/ Cambridge UK, 2016
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