Back-to-school dreaming and welcoming
And dreaming the future of education (a visioning exercise)
Dear readers,
Welcome! I welcome you here.
Wel-come. To arrive well.
Etymology: Old English, wel: desire, pleasure.
Imagine a time you were going back to school (maybe that time is now). What were (are) your dreams? What desires did you arrive with?
We officially began the academic year this past week, welcoming a new generation of students arriving to the UPEACE campus (class of 2024!), bringing their desires and dreams. It brought back so many memories of myself 14 years ago, in August 2009, arriving with my own hopes and dreams. As we sat in orientation, I remembered myself in the same spot, eagerly anticipating the year ahead, which ultimately was beyond what I could have imagined.
Beginnings are important, arriving is important, welcoming is important. To welcome the students in our department, I read this poem by Kate Morales of Ecoversities Alliance, which I had heard earlier in the week on an Ecoversities welcoming call. Many of them told me afterwards how it was meaningful to them. You might enjoy it, too!
Dreaming into this year
The start of the academic year is a new year, a chance to renew and dream and set individual and collective intentions. As we start this year, I am dreaming into growing community at UPEACE and the magic we can co-create as a community this year. One of the projects I am really excited about is a collaboration with Regenerative Changemaking and taking their program together as faculty, to cultivate a thriving community together. You can find out more about their work here:
I am also dreaming of writing residencies and retreats, and how I can carve out time for nurturing inner space and writing this year.
At the beginning of the summer, I shared my summer aspirations and goals. While it passed faster than anticipated (as perhaps it always does), I am overall content with what I was able to accomplish, and feel good about some things that will carry over into the academic year. I created a mindmap and as I completed things, I colored them in. Here is what it looked like at the end of the summer:
Many things carry over, and many things are ongoing (for example, I studied Spanish this summer, but that will be a lifelong project! But I did take an intensive class, continue with weekly classes, and am trying :) Some things get carried forward, others get let go of.
What are you carrying forward?
What are you ready to let go of?
What did you dream this week?
One of my recent dreams was about dreamwork and school. From my dream journal notes:
We are having two dream circles, one right after the other because there were a lot of people. I am part of the second one but end up sitting in on the first one because I just happen to be there. A man is facilitating it who is or looks like Aiden (from Sex and the City/And Just Like That). He asks a question about all the ways that schools harm us (or something like that- how school is violent towards us…) and I raise my hand right away and he doesn’t call on me. He waits a while and eventually someone else raises a hand and he calls on them. I’m wondering why he won’t call on me- because he thinks I’ll talk for a long time? Or because I’m supposed to be a part of the next group? But I feel a little disappointed, sad, and frustrated that I didn’t get to share. The group ends and it’s time for the next group but we’re in the cafeteria and everyone starts coming in for lunch and it doesn’t seem like a good place to meet anymore, or like we can meet. And there aren’t many people for the second group anyways.
What stands out to me in this dream is the question posed by the man who represents this somewhat boring yet pervasive and harmful form of patriarchy, and that what happens after he asks the question is the kind of subtle violence that schooling can enact upon us - not feeling heard, not being able to share, feeling sad, disappointed, frustrated. Him posing the question, as him, and then his response (or lack of openness and willingness to actually listen) is part of the answer to his question.
I searched in my dream journal over the past 3 years (before that it was in another phone and before that, on paper) and school appears 48 times, class appears 53. It is interesting to see what themes reappear over time, what images and settings recurr in our dreams (for me, other frequently recurring images and settings include hotels, conferences, mountains/mountain towns, and Niger, where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer).
Pancha, the official UPEACE dog, is dreaming this week too:
Finally, I would like to leave you with an exercise that I am doing for my foundations course (the introductory course that all UPEACE students take) session on Educating for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. It’s a guided visioning exercise (recording below!) about imagining the future of education in a just, peaceful, regenerative future. You could certainly do this on your own (in an adapted way), and I am including the lesson plan version for the educators out there that can be used for a group setting. Please adapt as you see fit, and enjoy!
Re-imagining Education Visioning Exercise
Time: 1 hour 30 min
Supplies: paper (flipchart and A4), markers and/or crayons, tape
Note: If you have students on Zoom, they can do the artistic collaboration parts through a tool like Jamboard, for example.
As students arrive, pass out paper for them to write or draw so they have it handy for the freewrite after the visioning. Have markers somewhere accessible.
Music/Arriving (~5 min): I recommend beginning class with a song (you can have this playing as people are arriving) such as this one (You and I are Falling, You and I are Free by Rising Appalachia). This song is long, so you could play part of it as they are arriving and play it again in the background when they do the freewrite/draw activity.
You can pick one from my collaborative class playlist or choose your own! One of my favorite ways to begin the day is Good Day by the Seratones or Freedom by Jon Batiste. (5 min.).
Guided imagining exercise (5-10 min): Let students know you are going do an exercise of imagining a just, peaceful, regenerative future. Students are invited to put down their “thinking caps” and put on their “imagining hats.”
Facilitator note: I recommend reading the script slowly with pauses to allow time for the students to imagine. Especially pause after each question so they have time to imagine the answer. Take your time.
Script:
We are about to take a time traveling journey together. You are invited to get comfortable and relaxed, take a deep breath, settle in. If it is comfortable for you, you are welcome to close your eyes.
Imagine that in front of you, you see a doorway or a portal. You walk towards it, and as you step through the portal, you find yourself fifty years in the future, on September 12, 2073. You are amazed to find that humanity has solved our biggest problems, and a sense of justice and peace prevails. Planetary life is thriving. You look around – notice what you see, smell, hear. What does this place look like? Smell like? Feel like? What does it feel like to be there?
As you continue looking around, you get curious about how people have organized themselves. Since you are a student, you are particularly curious about education. You find someone and ask, “What does education look like here?” They light up and take you to a place where learning is happening. What do you notice? What does education look like in this ideal future? Who is there? What are they doing? Where are they? What is the purpose of education here?
They invite you to join them and you stay for a while. After some time, you say you need to go home and take what you have learned with you.
You go back to the door where you entered the future, encouraged to take the learning you have gained from 2073. You step through the portal, and return to the present moment in 2023. Take three deep breaths, and allow yourself to return to this space in our UPEACE classroom.
Freewrite or draw (5-10 min): Give students 5-10 minutes to freewrite or draw about what they saw and experienced in their vision. Give them the choice to write or draw (or use online tools if they are online). This should be done individually and in silence (not discussing yet).
Small groups (~20 min): In small groups of 4-5, have students share their visions. Each person should take a turn to share their vision of what education looked like in this vision. Then, as a group, they should find a way to put their visions together into a shared vision. This is what adrienne maree brown calls “imagination collaboration,” and she discusses how the more imaginations we can put together from different perspectives, the more likely we will have a future that works for all.
Small group report back (5 min each; about 20 minutes): have each group share back to the main group about their collective vision of what education looks like in a just, peaceful, sustainable future.
[Time permitting, put all the visions together into a collective vision. For example, if students used flipchart paper, this could involve putting the chart papers together on the floor or wall]
Large group reflection/discussion - Debrief as a large group about the activity and session overall. Some possible questions to pose include:
How was the process of trying to imagine an ideal or preferred future? (Often this can be challenging)
How was the process of putting visions together?
What similarities came up across groups?
What were the similarities and differences between education in the imagined future and education today?
What are some ways that the education of the future could become part of education now? How do we make steps towards those changes?
Reference
Boulding, Elise (2002) "A Journey into the Future: Imagining a Nonviolent World," Peace and Conflict Studies: Vol. 9 : No. 1 , Article 4. DOI: 10.46743/1082-7307/2002.1023 Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/pcs/vol9/iss1/4
If you try it out, either yourself or with a group, please let me know how it goes!
Honoring the beauty of your dreams,
Stephanie
This comment feels so small in the vastness of your post, but I wanted to note that I used Jon Batiste's "Freedom" for my recent Dancing Your Depths playlist, and it brought the best out of everyone! One woman came to the class specifically because she knew I was playing that song, and she wanted to dance to it. :-)