Enacting
Freefall Pedagogy: Tasting the Air of Possibility
Johnna
Haskell
Independent
Scholar
Maine
If
I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth
and power, but for the passionate sense of what can
be, for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees
the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.
And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what
so intoxicating as possibility?
—SĀren Kierkegaard
Creating
opportunities
for learning opens teachers, students, and the world
around us to a swirling air of possibility. As
students and educators, we desire spontaneous, unexpected
moments of learning, a taste of air that catches our
breath in startled surprise. In the role of an educator,
I work with people in many settings from the conventional
classroom to the outdoors; I often ask teachers and
students alike to talk about unexpected moments from
their experiences. Time and time again, I hear descriptions
of brilliant sunsets, and feelings of intoxicating joy
when summiting mountains or kayaking white water. Their
bodies animate with a remarkable presence as if they
are back fully experiencing the event through its re-telling.
Individuals
often undergo a state of infinite magnitude, a shift
in ways of being. “These are moments when we forget
ourselves and seem to become part of all being”
(Zander & Zander 2000, 20). As Zander & Zander
effectively indicate, paradigm shifts require a leap
of faith to practice shifting “posture, perceptions,
beliefs, and thought processes” (4). Zander &
Zander call for practices “based on uncommon assumptions
about the natural world” (4). Utilizing examples
of transformational shifts such as the internet, paradigm
shifts in science, or the spread of new religions, Zander
& Zander suggest that “transformation happens
less by arguing cogently for something new than by generating
active, ongoing practices that shift a culture’s
experience of the basis for reality” (4).
How
do educators model and teach such generative practice?
“In the universe of possibility, you set the context
and let life unfold”
—Zander
& Zander, 21
Such
education moves beyond predicting learning outcomes
and asks us to engage in the risks inherent with possibility.
These are the unexpected spaces of possibility which
freefall[2] pedagogy seeks, and which this writing
hopes to illustrate.
First,
this article unfolds perception and initiates a journey
of understanding freefall pedagogy. Let us re-look at
the picture above. What unfolds when the learner leaves
the top of the jump?
(Duritz 2002).
Second,
I will use pictures and video of coaching freestyle
ski jump qualifications to help elicit a perspective
which may be unfamiliar to the pedagogue. I hope to
offer an experience of practice that opens spaces, generating
a shift in today’s views of education and everyday
living. Most importantly, I ask you to look for thoughts,
actions, fears, and to notice or inquire: What is the
pedagogy that orients you to enacting possibility? How
are your thoughts/actions in this moment keeping possibility
out of view?
Having
set the stage or activity before you for reading this
article, we are now ready to engage with/in the world
of freefall pedagogy. Hopefully, I have given you the
equipment and initial instructions required to take
off down the jump ramp and to land safely. It is up
to you as educator/athlete to remain open to the moments
of freefall that are occurring even in this moment as
you read, breathe, and participate within your environment
(or world).
Not
being a theoretical physicist myself, I can not tell
you whether breathing possibility is directly connected
to the entire universe. However, I can ponder how molecules
are touching, tickling, journeying throughout my earthly
world interrelating with many beings wondrous, natural,
and spiritual that flow about and through me on wind
currents I breathe. Will my breath of possibility be
yours—that unexpected catch of breath—to
inhale?
Perhaps
this writing may have this same wondrous feel as the
upturned leaves before a storm. Have you ever been outside
the moment before a storm arrives when the winds have
a silence yet a presence as you see leaves upturn, and
hold for seconds showing the vulnerability of their
undersides? When the wind blows, it feels as if I am
approaching the top of the jump getting ready—a
kind of adrenalin rush like the wind blowing before
a rain storm.
The
unexpected is this same air I enact and long to taste
in my own pedagogy of life long learning. This is my
perceptual reality of how the world exists as a fluid
merging of action and awareness—a paradigm shift
of our perceptions (Capra, 1996) or a transformational
shift (Zander & Zander, 2000) with how we interact
and view the world. Unfortunately, too often in education
we are taught and trained to harness a “safe”
control; a grasping that can be communicated in sequential
steps to alleviate our fears of letting go.
Freefall pedagogy may seem counter-intuitive or “feel” illogical
to the “normal” or familiar approach of
conventional teaching strategies. Teachers who challenge
students with new ways of engaging in the classroom
often create an uncomfortable space for learning and
yet, this is the space where possibilities emerge. I
am referring to the enactive space of freefall—the
time in the air, where learners let movements unfold,
or educators let learning unfold.
It is the role of educator to help learners become aware
of these spaces of possibility.
I
am not advocating that we all step to the top of the
jump ramp, but that in educational practice we need
to let learning unfold. Letting go is about living the
“death of moments”[3] to allow fresh opportunities or moments
to unfold like the wind before a storm. Most students
grasp fear at the top of the aerial ramp, however,
a moment of hesitation…..
…will
result in an
awkward plunge
into the water, and, not always feet first. Through first hand experience, students
come to recognize their hesitation—a lack of trusting to let go—and can learn to change their actions by letting
go in the air to land safely on both feet. (When students
transfer this learning of jumps in the pool to the snow
slopes, not landing freestyle jumps on ones’ feet
can be detrimental to one’s health!)
Safety
exists in letting go, in practicing an encounter of
living the unfamiliar. Yet, we must embrace simultaneously
all interconnecting actions, whether they be amongst
students in the classroom, or with the air we breathe
during our journey of pedagogical actions. How do educators
grasp their own fears of letting go and allow the air of possibility to unfold through pedagogical actions? I believe
that we, as educators, all need to taste this air just as our students do learning new aerial
jumps.
So,
how do we “set the stage” or open our bodyminds
to the flow of air of molecules surrounding us? How
do educators stand before a full classroom of eager
learners and help them learn to ask questions without
asking the questions themselves? How do we create this
flow experience as Csikszentmihalyi (1975) refers to
in his research of “flow activities” to
such acts of teaching or when performing aerial jumps
in the classroom?
Freefall
pedagogy is not a step by step process, although a ski
jump trainer, can give you the steps to get ready to
go off the jump. Freefall pedagogy is the action or
enacting within the context which I refer to as the space of possibility. It is not just the act of jumping,
it is the allowing of the body to flow, an athlete’s
interpretation of “being in the zone,” or
a learner’s connection and interaction with the
surrounding air particles. Csikszentmihaly (1997) refers
to such moments or experiences in harmony with each
other as “flow experiences” (29). At times
it feels like the stirring of leaves before a storm.
The leaves open our awareness for preparation before
the storm hits, much like the chaos that can ensue a
classroom of learners. This is the space—the time
in the air, where learners let movements unfold, or
educators let learning unfold.
A degree of uncertainty is always implicit and necessary in
the process:. . . ‘Uncertainty is the existence
of flow. . . .’
—Csikszentmihaly 1975, 80).
As
educators, if we can just give learners a taste of the
air of possibility, we empower them to continue to seek
their own enactive and emergent pedagogies. A true pedagogue
does not feel as though he or she needs to grasp learning
situations. The freefall pedagogue’s “role”
is to model and teach the learner how to “set
the stage” each time he or she approaches the
jump so that possibility and flow can unfold. “In
order to experience flow, it helps to have clear goals
[for a lesson, or for aerial spins]—not because
it is achieving the goals that is necessarily important.
. .” (Csikszentmihaly 1997,137).
This
notion of freefall pedagogy is an enactive approach
where we teach through inter-acting. We open unexpected
experiences and guide students in learning how to taste
possibility and savor it like an intoxicating wine.
True freefall pedagogues invite “their students”
to become their own ultimate educators, to unfold their
own enactive awareness or approaches to experiencing
the universe of possibility. This point is vital as
I can not physically be in the air with the students
during the aerial, nor can I physically be in their
bodies learning the laws of motion.
I
prefer to drink Chardonnnay, and to obtain only “slight
air” over the snow when skiing. However, it is
not about what I prefer as an educator or connoisseur
of fine wines, but how you as the reader undertake such
leaps of faith to engage in your own generative practice
of freefall pedagogy. How might learners, students and
educators together, sidestep the path of conventional
classroom learning to engage in classroom experiences
that open spaces of possibility? How might they come
to trust enactive learning that embodies the air of
possibility?
If,
as the reader, you seek more from this article, I ask
you to proceed back to the top of the jump (beginning
of the article). Focus on these two questions:
s
What
is the pedagogy that orients you to possibility?
s
How
are your thoughts/actions in this moment keeping possibility
out of view?
OR
Set
the stage yourself for what you might unfold through
experiencing and reading this text. Let your ideas and
thoughts emerge, embody, and taste the uncomfortable,
and allow the unexpected to flow within the air around
you and re-experience your own practice as a pedagogue.
Notes
