Tanya Baker, Director of Programs for the National Writing Project (NWP), and I are working at Sager Science Leadership Institute. Our task is to help Monks and Nuns (there are two in this cohort) use writing for a variety of purposes including the learning of science.
In spite of my experience teaching, I left for India with more doubt than confidence. In the past 30 years teaching – I have had spells teaching natural science and outdoor education to 5-6th graders, English to high school students, and courses related to curriculum, assessment, reading, writing, teacher research, and leadership to current and future teachers enrolled at SUNY New Paltz. I have been incorporating writing into my daily teaching for years; and my work within the NWP network has given me years of experience, designing and leading workshops that invite [English speaking] educators to write as a way to learn and write as a way to reflect on their experience as learners.
Even with these experiences, prior to my trip, I spent many waking hours wondering and worrying. What do I know that can help me with what I don’t know? Where I have never been? With people I haven’t met? Working alongside someone with whom I’ve never taught? Standing alongside interpreters I have never met? And the science part? Could my love of the outdoors and minimal background with natural science be of any use in a program that introduces monks to quantum physics? And what about the Buddhist Monk and Nun part? What are monks? Nuns? What is Buddhism, really? And how would language work? Would any of them speak English? Write English? Read English? Read or write in Hindi? Tibetan?
[I won’t go into any fears introduced by a travel doctor who insisted that I could get rabies, malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, polio, or meningitis; nor will I go into the challenges I faced when trying to follow directions in order to procure a Visa for India].
Ignore doubts – just think. What do we know? In one of our planning phone calls, after acknowledging several doubts, Tanya and I placed a mantra on the header of our google doc and promised to remember:
-We know how to help people write for a variety of purposes — narrative, writing to learn, writing to plan, to name identify intentions, etc.
-We know how to organize learning/social learning
-We know how to help teachers make sense of their learning.
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