Parker Palmer discusses disconnectedness as a “personal pathology” that each of us at times embraces, tolerates, perpetuates, or endures. Making connections between the literature and your practice, critically explore a professional experience that had implications for personal disconnectedness. Your exploration might take the form of a traditional paper or might take a creative or aesthetic form, like a/r/tography, poetic inquiry, or métissage. Whatever the form, the criticality will be evidenced in your deep analysis and critical extension of the concepts.

Introduction

            In The Heart of a Teacher by Parker J. Palmer (1998), he states, “I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy. But at other moments, the classroom is so lifeless or painful or confused – and I am so powerless to do anything about it…” (p. 1). I, too, am a teacher and learner at heart. As a learner, how can I endure and tolerate the pain when attending a class that so negatively affects my learning and adaptative flexibility? Palmer refers to this agony as disconnectedness or a form of disengagement that occurs when an individual experiences despair and hopelessness. This disconnectedness has no place in education or learning or the classroom.

            This essay describes an important lesson gathered from a personal experience and written in the first-person perspective. As stated by Winter (1988, p. 235), “we do not ‘store’ experience as data, like a computer: we ‘story it.’” I will mix formal academic writing examples with my informal personal narrative. Specifically, this essay will connect academic literature, my teaching practices and experience, and critically explore a professional learning experience that had implications for personal disconnectedness. It will conclude by outlining the methods I chose to overcome my disconnectedness.

My professional experience

            I remember those ten agonizingly long days, twenty years ago, as if it were yesterday. It was September 2000, when I took the Bylaw level I and II courses at the Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC) in Vancouver. They were courses where I felt in my gut that they were not the right choices. I had made a terrible mistake, but there was no going back.

            The desks were aligned in rows, all facing the front of the class. Whiteboard and flip charts are the technologies used. Very early in the Bylaw I course, and definitely after the Bylaw II course, I felt I had completely wasted my time. I had spent unnecessary money on hotel accommodation and travel expenses, and I lost the vacation time taken from my current employer!

            The JIBC was the only institution offering the Bylaw I and II courses at the time. The principal instructor had a legal background as a criminal court prosecutor, although no experience in bylaw enforcement or law enforcement. Other guest instructors were lawyers with no law enforcement experience, and in my view, no teaching experience.

            My eyelids felt like lead during the two tortuous weeks. I could not keep my eyes open in class, let alone remember the content presented. “God put me out of my misery.” I kept asking how these courses could be considered the ‘best’ by management and industry standards if, in my opinion, they were the worst I had ever attended.

            My anger and frustration left me unable to make sense of my experience at the time. All I could remember was telling myself, “one day at a time, Laurie, this too shall pass.” The courses did end, and I received my certificates necessary for my future career with the City of Kelowna. I survived ten days of torture where all the rules of being a great teacher were shattered and the worst teachers glorified.

Stages of disconnectedness

            Since the Bylaw Enforcement courses, reflection and reflexivity provided the answers to why I felt disconnected during the Bylaw courses. In his book The Courage to Teach (1998), Palmer explains that educators and learners experience at least four stages of disconnection. Reflecting on the bylaw courses, while sitting in the classroom, I felt disconnected throughout the four stages and strove to find ways to regain a sense of connectedness.

            Stage 1) spiritual leave and physical leave.  I felt estranged from the educative experience but remained physically within the learning environment. I lacked connection from the teaching and learning context. I felt trapped during this stage and unable to escape. My mind wandered and thought of other activities not related to the class at hand and thinking of ways I could survive this ordeal to retain self. There was no air to breathe. Physical leave was the disengagement that forced me to flee to sustain self. I realized I was living a divided life and, without change, faced the death of self. Palmer (1998) asks the questions: who is the self that teaches and learns? How does the quality of my selfhood form the way I relate to my students, my colleagues, my world? Why had the Justice Institute not sustained and deepened the selfhood in the instructors from which good teaching comes?

            Stage 2) individual and communal. I continued to seek a path to connectedness, searching for contexts that promote and enable it. As a learner, I had to confront my anxiety and self-doubt, and by speaking of these feelings with other students in the class, we were able to support one another in our discontent and come up with strategies to re-engage with the course.

            Stage 3) personal and public acknowledgment. I shared positive learning experiences from other courses I had taken, which encouraged others in the class to continue who were also feeling disconnected. This created community solidarity, owing to our struggles and encouraged suggestions to make the course more effective.

            Stage 4) seeks paths to re-engagement. I used whatever tools I had from previous learning experiences to support my in-class learning. Examples included mind mapping, word games, and dreaming about creating my own Bylaw I and II courses.

Overcoming disconnectedness

            There are many responses and ways to overcome disconnectedness. Understanding the factors that shape this phenomenon helps us accept and restructure our relationship with education and learning.

            Although not aware of it at the time, through reflection and reflexivity, it was clear my expectations of the courses were not met. Ellyn Lyle, Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms (page vii) states, “reflexivity refers to the researcher’s consciousness of her role in and effect on both the act of doing research and its eventual findings.” She defines reflection as “is after and individual whereas reflexivity is ongoing and relational” (p. vii).  Most of us reflect daily on many things. Reflection is nothing more than focused attention. Reflexivity is a more concentrated, in-depth reflection upon one’s perspective, values and assumptions and involves thinking from within experiences.

            Reflexivity has helped frame my narrative way of knowing what occurred in the bylaw courses. Bolton & Delderfield (2018) call for critical reflexivity, which “demands we focus on our own beliefs, feelings and emotions, and our taken-for-granted principles, values, assumptions, in short, our theories in use” (p. 60). It required me to re-visit my understandings of the events in the classroom and continue to negotiate possible interpretations of them. For example, I thought I would be receiving the best instruction and training in the Province of British Columbia but discovered it was some of the worst. To me, it seemed so simple, developing objectives requires program developers “to think through with the appropriate stakeholders what is to be taught or done by participants, the resources required to achieve program objectives, and the end product expected” (Caffarella & Daffron, 2013, p. 165). Sitting and listening to lecture after lecture of legalese with very little class participation or real-life examples was painful. I was completely disengaged with the instruction with feelings of despair and hopelessness.

            In retrospect, I would suggest my complaints were with both the learning content and the instructor’s lack of teaching experience. Instruction was based on the background and experience of the instructor and guest speakers’ capabilities. They felt the content was essential for learners to know and thought the courses were engaging and relevant. But the material had no practical component to work performed by bylaw officers on Any Street in Anywhere, British Columbia. The Bylaw Program coordinator was a lawyer and not a teacher with any formal teaching training. Without exception, the instructors may have been outstanding and professional lawyers who knew their subjects extremely well. Some may have been active and accomplished legal scholars with impressive publication credentials. However, they were lawyers and not educators.

            Using reflection and reflexivity in processing my learning experience in 2005, I decided to create my own Bylaw I and II courses. I used my knowledge and experience from a 25-year career in the RCMP and a new job in bylaw enforcement in the City of Kelowna. I designed Bylaw I and II courses for the city of Kelowna with provincial approval from Victoria. The courses included personal stories, guest speakers with bylaw and law enforcement experience, modern assessment methods, and subjects relevant to bylaw enforcement. For example, Judicial Justice of the Peace Brian Burgess instructing on the proper techniques and protocol for witness testimony in the British Columbia Provincial Court.

            I taught the Bylaw I and II courses for five years. I had very positive feedback from students, many of whom went on to find careers as Bylaw Officers, Police Officers, Correction Officers and BC Sheriffs.  My template for the courses continues to be taught to current and future learners.

Narrative Learning Theory

            Narrative inquiry and explanation adeptly explore the nuanced experiences of educators and learners. In this essay, I used the power of narration to recount an event that most profoundly affected my understanding of the two bylaw courses. MacEwan & Egan (1995) determined that narrative is appealing because it provides a medium for people to record the history of human consciousness. Gough (1997) claims that narrative is a way of examining any theoretical and practical problems in education. He maintains that stories, told and heard, reimagines the notion of education practice. In my case, the narrative gave me the ability to illuminate the teaching and my learning experience. This structure recounted the events in storied form and framed those events in a way that revealed the underlying plot (Webster & Mertova, 2007).

Conclusion

My aim as an educator is to practice what Palmer (1998) advocates, whereby “I join self, subject, and learners in the fabric of life because I educate from an integral and undivided self; I manifest in my own life and evoke in my learners a capacity for connectedness. I educate through my lived experiences. I connect learners and subjects in a community that is essential to educating and learning.”  By following Palmer’s suggestion, learning will be at its best because it will be goal-oriented, contextual, engaging, challenging, and most importantly – interactive. When I educate, I desire to engage and inspire learners to feel that interaction and connectedness so that we all can “hardly hold the joy.”

References

Bolton, G. & Delderfield, R. (2017). Reflective practice: Writing and professional development (5^th ed.).   Sage.

Caffarella, R. S., & Daffron, S. R. (2013). Planning programs for adult learners: A practical guide for     educators, trainers, and staff developers (3rd ed.). Jossey Bass.

Gough, N. (1997). Horizons, images, and experiences: The research stories collection. Deakin Univesity.

Lyle, E. (2017). Introduction. Of books, barns, and boardrooms: Exploring praxis through reflexive          inquiry. (pp. vii–xii). Sense Publishers.             http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=nlebk&AN=1594187 &custid=s7439054

MacEwan, H. & Egan, K. (Eds.) (1995). Narrative in teaching, learning, and research. Teachers College Press.

Palmer, P. (1998). The heart of a teacher: Identity and integrity in teaching. Courage Renewal.    http://www.couragerenewal.org/PDFs/Parker-Palmer_The-Heart-of-a-Teacher.pdf

Palmer, P. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. Jossey-Bass.

Webster, L. & Mertova, P. (2007). Using narrative inquiry as a research method. Routledge.

Winter, R. (1988). Fictional, critical writing in J. Nias and S. Groundwater-Smith (eds.), The enquiring     teacher. Falmer.