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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: August 29, 2003
Latest Update: August 29, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Creating a Learning Community

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, August 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On Friday, August 29, 2003, Rosemary Hilden and Ruby Naba, CSUDH, wrote:

Jeanne,
I finally found your website! I still need to go in search of the syllabus. I just did my first "readings."

I'm glad you found it, Rosemary. And don't forget that I hadn't finish all the syllabi and preparations, so I'll be adding to them this weekend. And that "finally" tells me that you had to work at it. jeanne

This is my first practice in creating community for for a climate of learning with my friend and classmate, Ruby. I related to her what went on in class today, as she had to miss, and I told her how meaningful the session became when Sheryell shared her photo of her son and his story.

I agree with you. I think Sheryell's sharing that lovely picture of her son with us caught us all by surprise as she just jumped right into community, even though she told us later that it was a scary and difficult thing to do. There are no rules for moments like that. Sheryell shared and we responded, and we all changed in the midst of that aesthetic process. And it wasn't easy. One reason was because there were no rules for creating communities of learning like this, and we had difficulty knowing what we were to do. Isn't it interesting that we all clapped in response, and that that felt OK. Maybe we'll talk about that reaction next week. jeanne

I also told Ruby that being in a class that is helping us to think and feel is a breath of very much needed fresh air! This feeling remained with me through the rest of the day. Thank you for helping us to share.

I think that's important that the feeling stayed with you for the rest of the day. I hadn't thought about it that way, but it stayed with me, too. We'll need to think on this. When a group is forming, and when someone touches the group, as Sheryell did, there is a pretty strong sense of success. "Hey, look, we did it." Hesitant, at first, but then with the clapping came the stamp of our acceptance of the aesthetic process. And it felt good. It felt so good that Sherryll could share with us that it was scary and hard to do. That's a measure of trust, to be able to say " I WAS scared," not "I AM scared."

All of our child development and family literature tell us that humans need love, tenderness, caring, reaching out from other humans. So I guess I would go back to that theory and say that as we offer such good faith listening and caring to one another in a learning community, we're meeting one of Maslow's needs. That feels good, and it carries us through the rest of the day a little more comfortably. Perhaps that tells us that small face-to-face communities at school and work and play are one way to begin to meets some of the needs of trust and love and caring we've neglected for too long.

I shared how my 12 year old grandson is ADHD, OCD, and Tourette's (result of Ritalin).

Rosemary Hilden

Rosemary, I'm so glad you added that. As soon as I read it, I connected your name and your face, and realized you were sitting right next to me in our circle. Now all of this is connected to your name and face in my apperceptive mass. I'll remember you, and you and I are different for this process of having learned about one another. I also want you to know that I am horrified about what you told us about the suspected consequences of Ritalin. We'll have to talk about that. jeanne