9-12-101440 Baker Street Internet Cafe, W1. Yes, and you may well wonder what the heck am i doing writing in a mildly uninteresting internet cafe when its a brilliant sunny day with blue skies and growly traffic and double decker red busses and young people speaking many languages..in general, all the paraphanalia for a perfect London Sunday? Why not at Spitalfields, or Reagents Park, or even out with Sala to the 'dedicated scarf room' at Liberty House on Reagents Street?
Cause I'm sick. Well, a little sick anyway, snurfly and such like, and I figured that if I didnt rush out into the world like I do most of the days of my life, it might help me get better so I could rush out into the world on all of the three days I have left. Sala's time is running rapidly; she leaves tomorrow for WH via New York, which, due to some plan now forgotten, she has a return ticket to. This means she has two hours to get to the Port Authority from Kennedy. Ive suggested she call Jun Won in advance in case she gets stuck in NY for the night.
So I've been spending the day basking in the sun on various benches, walking a little in various parks (Paddington Gardens being the primo discovery of this trip) and reading Pauls books on the origins of the Tarot.
And also reading Suzuki roshi.
For Zen students the most important thing is not to be dualistic. Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki-roshi (1905 - 1971)
Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Also, I can't resist attaching two pictures. One from Norwich Cathedral, just so you'll give us the right references when we publish our as yet unwritten book 'Traveling Two by Two over Fifty'. I am working on the chapter about bowel function again. Its the right thing to do when you are feeling a little sick.
The other is from the forecourt of the pub on the corner of Baker and Marlybone. That's just because some of you, like me, enjoy looking at Sala. She did not authorize this publication, of course.
Portobello Road yesterday was good. Talked to a number of sellers, mostly selling costume jewelery, and most not happy about the state of their business. The antique dealers are not happy about encroachments by people selling souveniers, and the people at the Northern end of the market are not happy about the antique dealers,who they say swoop down like predators in the early morning to carry off their best stuff and sell it for more at the South end. Still, they have a fairly philosophical take on the whole matter. Many have one or more day jobs, or had such in the past, or have a partner or family member who does. The antique guys almost all go to several markets, some as many as 5. So even though I found no major discoveries, it was well worth while. And also good was the multiplicity of apparent ethnicities who were both buying and selling. Very differnt than my first memories there.
And I had some time to think more about feedback, formative assessment, corrections, busibodying, whatever form it comes in.
The hardest for me is the relatively unstructured but disruptive version of reflection* in action that is produced in me when Sala says 'why dont you put the backpack up on the shelf over the seats' Its a simple enough question, and yet I often have a bad reaction. Sometimes its just too fast...as in her corrections to the speed I'm driving at. I mean to soon after I have started doing something. In the teaching context, this is similar, I think, to the tutor in a small group enquiry directed process who wants to make corrections in either content or process when group has not really had time to process w hat its doing. What I try to suggest to new tutors is to wait 10 minutes whenever they feel they just must intervene to correct a wrong direction. Most times, the group will correct on their own.
Sometimes its just that I don't want to hear it from Sala...or by inference, from someone close to me. That's the one that is helped by what some people call the 'feedback sandwich'. A slice of some nice observation followed by a challenging observation, and sandwiched up in a final slice of encouragement. But that takes time.
In a larger sense, of course, I feel, I know perhaps, that most feedback,expecially challenging stuff, comes from compassion, rather than any less helpful emotion. And compassion, so many believe, comes from curiosity. The alternative to a too fast or seemingly unkind feedback Sala; an uninterested Sala who was incurious about my behaviors, is definitely not what I want.
And all of this seems to generalize to the situations I think about for assessment of the progress of students working in small groups. Whether or not you believe that it's a good idea to assess the groups behavior in any way other than work product (and I tend to think it's not that useful, particularly after the session) you will probably recall that you didn't get enough formative feedback in your own professional education. Thats why I've tried to work on methods that separate formative (to help you change) and summative (to see if you have changed to achieve some standard) feedbacks, so that the teacher/tutor/mentor who provides th e formative feedback is NOT also wearing the hat of the summative examiner.
Well, thats the kind of stuff that comes up when I have a day of composting instead of blooming. Hopefully will be back out in the London streets tomorrow.
And take care,y'all.
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