The soulful yearbook

Continuing my debriefing of the production of an integral yearbook...

When I took over the journalism class in April this year, I didn't know that it had been a tradition that the class was responsible for doing the yearbook. I had been there and done that! I was hoping to take the students on a different journey. When I looked at the College's massive yearbooks of the last few years (80 to 100 pages) I felt the energy drain out of me. I felt mindless. A suppression of my soul. It looked so tedious. I wondered where the learning was for the students in collecting all the material... where was the journalism?

Not that many of my students were interested in being journalists. Why were they in this class then? What sort of experiences would help and support their own growth... help lighten the dark spaces...? (and believe me many of them had major issues - soul suppression, no sense of passion, depression, insecurity, drugs). I sat down and wondered about the potential of the yearbook for supporting healthy human development - there's and mine!

Hendersson and Kesson suggest when looking at curriculum that one should bring seven modes of inquiry into play:

1. Techne – craft reflection – how do we do it?
2. Poesis – soulful attunement of the creative process – what is whole and beautiful in what we do?
3. Praxis – critical inquiry – what are the underlying power structures? Whose needs are being served?
4. Dialogos – multi-perspectival inquiry – different voices, enabling dialogue.
5. Phronesis – practical, deliberate wisdom - unpacking the reasons behind things.
6. Polis – public moral inquiry - what are the underpinning values and ethics?
7. Theoria – contemplative wisdom – what is the purpose of education, what does it mean to vision?

One of the first things that struck me was the concern of poesis. How is this project beautiful? How is it creative? When I first showed students past yearbooks, they like me wilted. I realised that they too needed to do something that was inherently creative - that enabled them to vision... something that might capture their imaginations ... enable them to be revolutionary (most of my students see themselves as 'alternatives' and like to be pushing the edges (though not necessarily their own.) Why put so much time and effort into something if your soul can not be inspired?

My next concern was one of praxis. Whose agendas were we being subject to? What were the power plays going on in the school? Who did a traditional yearbook serve? And as you can imagine, behind the scenes there was the usual political game playing. And I took the students on this journey as well ... helping them see that it just wasn't about creating a magazine based on their own ideas, it had to meet a variety of needs and we were jugglers as well as sellers of our vision.

And then there is dialogus - the dialogue which enables disparate views to come together... to leapfrog off each other, to listen carefully and pull out an essence in what people are saying - to capture that and build on it. We wished to allow student voice in the yearbook - through interviews focussing on students as well as quick vox pops. Every interview gave us new perspectives about the story and the culture of the College - so our initial themes for the yearbook morphed and grew. For example, the pages on "hanging out around college" turned into the theme of friendship - what does friendship mean to you? Pages looking at individual student stories became a theme of following your passion - What is your passion?

So my students are learning how to be ethnographers. For some, this entering into the essence of the 'other' was a key in helping them move away from ego-centricity (from being concerned with the 'I' to being more concerned with the collective). It also helped them become more self-reflective - what were their own values and why and how were they different to others? I saw a growth in ethical sensitivity - Can we really say this? Can we put words into someone's mouth?

When I ask my students what they gained out of this project the first overwhelming feeling is a sense of pride - of being part of something new which they birthed. And then there is the sense of belonging, the people skills, the confidence. I now have only a few weeks until the end of year and I feel that for many of the students this project has opened a door where they are only now ready to learn.... I wish I had another 6 months with them to build on the gains we have made.

For example, one boy wanted to be in control of the graphic design of the book but despite the opportunities I gave him to train in a new publishing program INDESIGN, he preferred to stay safely with what he knew (Photoshop). He and I have subsequently unpacked this - what is it that stops him from learning something new and what are things he hangs back from? How can he name his fears and start to move on? So although he missed out on some aspects of the yearbook, he is now tentatively moving out onto his learning edge in other areas rather than staying safe.

I could have moved on from the task of the yearbook into the next task but I have spent several weeks in various modes of debriefing. I think this is where the learning happens. So perhaps this is the purpose of education - to help students be integral beings, to have integral experiences - to learn to be and to become. To be comfortable in reflecting on themselves and their experiences - to celebrate who they are and to vision where they might want to go. Yes, we have a created a physical product but to see that as all that has been achieved is missing the entire point of education.

But the beauty with a heartfelt project of this kind (one which expresses the soul of the participants) is that it not only works at many different personal levels but also at different layers of the education holon... hopefully it will be sending out ripples beyond our classroom. We hope it might help the students and teachers really see themselves. I hope that it might spark debate about what the purpose of education really is!