Morning Pages: July 24, 2002

I didn't really talk yesterday about my social action project. What really stood out to me yesterday was how the focus of most people's work is about people; not necessarily content, but real human emotions, a recognition of the pain and isolation so many of our young students feel (no matter what level).

As for me, I'm not certain where I fit. I'm looking at the social action principles and trying to fit my work into one of them because I really don't want to start something brand new (except I might have to).

One of my jobs is to document the work of the site - perhaps another is to be the Social Action facilitator - to facilitate this group through the 5 step process - as they work through solving a problem (or at least thinking about solving a problem) in their own teaching practice.

I'm struggling with some tensions then. The tension of being a facilitator of the process, an agent for change, but here I am a member of this group - where CSA suggests working alongside, not becoming group member of group leader. It's hard for me to find the space I need to be in and to stay w/in that space - I keep overstepping my boundaries-moving the lines a little-and while I don't think this really hurts anything-it does change the boundaries and I need to be aware of that.

So a second tension is where and how - damn, I went off chasing another thought in my mind and completely forgot what it was that I wanted to characterize as the second tension. Perhaps the second tension then could refer to the fact that social action within the classroom has some pre-set boundaries - certain rules that are already in place (grading, etc.) and that means that there is a strong issue of power to deal with. Despite what we might like to happen, we aren't all created equal in the classroom because the teacher has the power - but, let me think this out a little bit...The fact that the teacher has power is cultural not necessarily real; teacher has power because things like grades are important to students. If we were to value different things, then power could be shifted.