Introduction

A Little Bit About Me

 

When I was younger I decided that I wanted to understand everything…

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And so I have wondered:

How is it that we have come to know what we know?

Is it our brain that thinks? Does the heart have a role in learning? Is the metaphorical heart real? If our heart is connected to what we are doing, does it affect our learning?

 These are some of the questions that have been my companions since early adolescence. Upon leaving high school, I choose to enter into a two-year diploma program at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton, Albert, called Youth Development. The goal of the program was to educate and graduate youth workers who were ready with the inner awareness and outer skills to support and counsel youth and families, especially those in acute need. I clearly remember the first week of the program, which was a seminar/workshop design that confronted me with the questions of:

  • Who am I?
  • Why am I drawn to this work?
  • What will I need to transform and learn so that I am fit to do this work?

As an adult student for the past 29 years, and as a teacher and school administrator for 4 years, it has been my experience that when my heart is connected to my learning, I enjoy the process and am happy with the assessment of my learning. Is this true for others? I wondered what would arise if I viewed the connection of the heart to learning and education through a diversity of lenses.

I must confess that I deeply believe that there is an urgent need to understand this connection – that it is imperative if we wish to orient our educational ideas in the direction of methods and curriculum that had the healthy development of the human being at its heart.

As an educator, the choice of a Post Modern and Critical Pedagogy theoretical framework was a natural fit. I believe that education must free and empower, not as catch phrases but in the most practical way possible. To believe in oneself, to strive to know and understand more, to question and research, and to be free in ones thinking, are practical ideals worth striving for.