Education

History Lessons

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Last Monday I introduced our current topic, the Cold War, in my grade 11 history class. Timely.

“What do you think . . . ?”
“What if . . . ?”
“Is it possible . . . ?”

Once a week, we read the news together in my grades 8, 9, and 10 individuals and societies classes. And the we discuss why each piece of news is important.

“But why . . . ?”
“Who is . . . ?”
“What should we do?”

I don’t have answers for many of the questions my students are asking now, but I encourage the questions. I don’t always know where to direct them for more information, but I’m glad they want more information. Students have shown me social media posts that bother them and shared videos they’ve watched. They’re talking at home with their families and those conversations lead to more questions.

Most of the time, the best answer I can give also happens to be the most honest answer: “I don’t know. I never expected we’d be here and here we are. So I don’t know.”

One student nodded. “That’s exactly what my dad said.”

It’s eerie to be studying a topic that is suddenly a very different topic than it was when I first outlined this unit last spring. The world as we understood it mere weeks ago is not the same world that we are living in today. And as with every major change or transition, it never will be again.

“Do you think this will end up in history books?”

In graduate school, my classmates and I latched onto the idea of big H and little h history. Big H history is the history we learn, study, read about in books. It’s the history that moves and shapes the world, the history of leaders and power. Little h history is the history of all of us as individuals, the history of we the people that responded to the events around them. Little h history is all of us, our stories, but our names are rarely known.

Big H history is the one that repeats itself; little h history is the one that is viscerally real.

Understanding the past matters because the past created the present. Our behaviour in the present will create the future. Maybe tides are turning. And maybe the world will become a better, more peaceful place. Maybe “enough is enough” will finally be enough, and maybe open arms to these refugees will mean open arms to all refugees.

I never thought the world would get to this point. Yet here we are.

Germany

Back on Skis

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I learned how to ski when I was in kindergarten and skiing remained a significant part of my winters until I moved to Malaysia. That was eight years ago.

A few months ago, a friend broached the subject of a ski trip to Austria. We looked at photos and maps and shared memories of past experiences. I started making lists of what I needed to buy (everything) and began purchasing, trying on, returning. Other friends got involved, logistics were determined, decisions made and finalized. We did squats to get stronger, planned our grocery shopping, packed the car.

“I hope I remember how to ski,” I told everyone who asked. To a person they replied, “You’ll see. It’s just like riding a bike.”

Not just like riding a bike, perhaps, but not too far off. As it turned out, I remembered how to ski. I was certainly not as strong, elegant, or fearless on skis as I once was, at least in my memory of it, but my body knew how to move and my heart knew how to laugh. That’s really all I had hoped for in the mountains.

My experiences skiing took place in equal parts in the icy North American east and in the beloved terrain of the American Rockies. I’ve skied in plenty of powder, played in glades (once with a GoPro that we made the mistake of showing to my non-skier mum), and used to plan my ski days around ungroomed blacks.

I knew that skiing in the Alps would be different, and it is no exaggeration to say that skiing in the Alps has been a lifetime dream. Perhaps it was the landscape that hit me this time, for I’ve spent a long time away from mountains now, or perhaps it was something else, but I was overcome by a feeling of awe from the moment we arrived.

After half a day, tired of repeating “wow” ad nauseam, I mentioned that I wish I knew other words. A friend supplied a string of words in German, all words I already knew, and it was these words that sang in chorus in my head throughout the week.

And it really was beautiful, in all kinds of weather, the entire time. We skied fast groomers in bright sunshine; found patches of powder in a snowstorm and worked our legs hard in the moguls that remained the next day; felt ourselves tiny and insignificant in the howling wind that rose through the glacier where we spent our last day. My breath caught with nowhere to go and there was nothing to do but fly, nothing to do but trust the skis in the wind even as the snow swirled up from everywhere and rendered visibility impossible. And then there was nowhere to go but back up the glacier in the hopes that our trial by wind had been recognized.

The landscape was desolate and extraordinary.

I recognize how fortunate I am to know how to ski, first of all, and to be able to take a week to do it. I recognize what it means to have learned this sport as a child and engaged with it for my whole life, less an eight-year break. There are some really interesting cultural differences that I noticed between Europe and North America in this way, accessibility and affordability being only a part of that.

If I could bring everyone this experience, I would. There is something about being out in the world, about recognizing the world rather than the self in the world, that gets me every time. The world would be a better place if we recognized that more often than we forgot it.

And as always, I thank the mountains and the sky for that lesson.

On My Mind

On Yoga and Writing

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Today I thought that maybe I write for the same reasons that I practice yoga. It’s a way of accessing another part of the brain, another part of the body. Perhaps, if you’ll allow me the liberty, another part of the soul.

I was introduced to yoga over ten years ago and have maintained a regular practice since the beginning. It has evolved over time, naturally, and I have written at length on this blog about my experiences with yoga. It tends to come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I practice both yoga and meditation, light incense, look for the spiritual. By this I mean, yoga is a way of accessing, through the body and breath, a different outlook on the world. It is a way of reaching, physically, to parts of my body that I might not fully notice otherwise; it is a way of reaching, spiritually, towards both energy and stillness, towards forces in the universe I cannot explain.

Towards forces in the universe I don’t need to explain.

Maybe I write because writing is a way of expressing what lives in the body, the sensations of being alive on this planet and looking up at the sky. Writing is a way to capture the pulse of energy that sweeps you away when you let it it. Writing brings sensation back to a foundation, back to a centre where it can be grasped, felt, explored.

I write because I am feeling and I practice yoga in order to feel.

Sometimes, and certainly the case in much of my journal writing, I don’t understand what I feel until I write it down. Moving from sensation to articulation requires a conscious slowing down, letting go, a certain objectivity that reduces an emotional component, or at least requires me to detach from it just enough to inquire into it, unpack it. This is what I mean when I say, as I have known to be true for a long time, I think better on paper.

Yoga moves the sensation through the body and begins an exploration of how the body is connected, constructed, understood. I was first fascinated, all those years ago, with the shapes I could create with a breath. Perhaps years of dance training facilitated the ease with which I found my body in a new form, or perhaps innately understanding the possibility of movement in the body meant that I have always approached yoga with curiosity. Let’s see where I am in this body today. And then let go of the body and move with the breath.

Or maybe I’m trying too hard in linking these two aspects of myself together. I have had profound experiences in both contexts, that of doing yoga and that of writing. I do not aim here to explain what those experiences were or where they came from, but rather to make the bold claim that they existed. There are things in the universe we cannot explain, and the statement of such is what makes the claim true.

What is true, however, is malleable. There are days when the body and mind flow as a unit more smoothly than on other days. There are days where we walk easily, calmly, gently though the world. There are days when we are literally and figuratively bent out of shape, and we may or may not know why, or days when someone else knows something is wrong even before we know it.

I cannot write without being vulnerable enough to look inside myself and there is always the threat, sometimes realized, of finding something I don’t like. I cannot practice yoga without the willingness to sometimes feel a little foolish, or to be humbled by what my body is and is not capable of. There’s an element of letting go of control in both contexts and a requirement for honesty, authenticity, sincerity that strips away whatever masks I happen to be wearing. It’s a question of how much I am willing to give in that moment, and the question is answered moment after moment.

Maybe yoga is the physical manifestation of what I look for in writing, or maybe writing is the intellectual element of synchronizing the breath and the body. That they come together in this way is what drives the continued exploration. The satisfaction, the sensation of which lives somewhere beneath the sternum and is captured by clauses and phrases, is in the journey itself.

As for the universe, the magnificence of which is unexplained as far as I am concerned, there is no answer within reach because there is no answer to find.

Photos, travels, musings, and ideas on education by someone trying to make the world a better and more peaceful place