intentions in service of my learners

It’s August, and it is time to gradually craft intentions for the new academic year. There is still time, around a few weeks left, but visions of curious, sweet faces have been rising to my presence and it feels like the right time to thoughtfully consider them in my heart before it’s time.

I eminently believe that as I introduce more and more learners into my landscape, the more the experience matures and deepens into something of divine beauty and meaning. The more I grow, the more my intentions scaffold into selfless virtues and dreams clamber upon ideals of the prayers God has willed to fulfil through my transpersonal existence.

I’ve been waiting to meet this batch of learners for a time now. Most of them are my earlier learners’ siblings, and so I know most of their parents and stories have been passed on. I have a feeling that this time, my experience with them will be one of gentle ease, magical transformation and endless waves of joyful curiosity.

Here are a few intentions. How my heart flutters in joy!

designing divinely-structured environments

Sacred environments are essential for learning and growing. How I’ve seen faces and hearts light up as soon as the environment was moulded into one that touches and sees the true needs of children. Like a magnet, spirits align to the the true north, and an environment supports the journey towards it. Thus, one of the issues I’d like to experience this year is to shape the learning landscape with a variety of virtues and values based on the primacy of relationships. An environment which supports forgiveness, gifts, praise, gratitude, limitedness, diversity and reflection allows the holistic development of everyone included. Here, it is my role to remember values before each lesson design and allow learning activities to orbit round them first and foremost.

holding space for paradoxes

To open the door of inviting space for paradoxes, one can contemplate upon the omnipresence of God’s glorious names in the universe. I believe that there is a divine succession of names in any worldly experience, which always commences with absolute mercy. In my teaching and facilitation, I intend to experience the omnipresence of His names while I interact with my learners and hold space for opposites— silence and expression, power and weakness, aliveness and death, learning and unlearning, convergence and singularity. These qualities do not come as in good vs bad, but they are divine and sacred and both extremes on the spectrum are of beauty and glory, adding meaning to my learners’ experience of themselves and the world.

investigating learning landscape zones

Investigating biomimicry, I realised that the classroom, like any landscape, is comprised of zones where learners naturally situate themselves according to their innate self-expression. Some learners lie at the edges, sensitive to interaction, rapidly changing and experiencing life. They are the more bubbly, receptive and interactive kind. As we go deeper into the landscape, we find learners who are more and more stable who require less attention, like wise, ancient forests who manage well, supporting others naturally. I intend to investigate this mimicry and map its significance and what kind of insights form, causing newer and more authentic experiences to develop out of it.

a nurturing space 

I’ve seen how children hold on to so much pain these days. I remember how much it hurt me last academic year when I realised that so many of my learners were struggling with anxiety and deep sadness. This year, I pray to keep holding a high-structure and high-nurture space for my learners, probing deeper into their emotional worlds and providing opportunities for expression and healing so that souls are seen and are reignited for gift-giving. 

leveraging learner agency

I wonder if it’s possible that I allow my learners to take more and more leading roles in their learning. I remember how amazing it was when I once gave my students the opportunity to teach lessons all on their own. I believe that incorporating this more and more regularly would allow learners to become more than simple receivers of the gift of education, but could, with time, learn to add so much of their own touch in their own learning by giving them space to explain lessons, organise activities and do their own stuff. Also, I cannot wait for how the “Global Problem Solvers” project could grow this year. It’s different every single time, and every batch of learners just take the process onto a whole new level of community-based learning— learning to serve the world.

inviting potentials into the learning space 

Now, I believe I am ready for this. I always want to hide away from interacting with others since it’s all really unpredictable and allows me to lose so much control; however, I’ve tasted the sweetness in collaborating with others and inviting people with wonderful potentials in the learning space. I intend to let go of control this year and allow things to be a little messy when it comes to working in a team of passionate educators. I know I have it in me to remind everyone of milestones and little moments of magic, inspiring the team to know we’re where we were meant to be.

love

The best closure is surely love. The reason it has begun and the reason it ends. The begetter of doing and its receiver. I intend to do it all with so much love, with so much gratitude and selflessness, always remembering God’s grace, surrendering to His wisdom. In moments of unease and difficulty, there is always “God, allow me to see this through with Your gentle, merciful eyes”.

Now I can forget these words and see the world with the eye of the surrendered dream.