Is Ecology “cool”? (III)

article based on meeting and conversation with writer & professor race, music & cool Joel Dinerstein, I am deeply thankful to Joel for his art, scholarship and what he continues to bring uniquely for higher education as well to Jackie Hansom that thought and made it possible I would not leave USA without going to New Orleans and meeting Joel.

“ Cool is the means by which we can cope with our lived experiences of injustice, a means of enacting hope…” ( Joel Dinerstein quoting Megan Volpert)

We used in this 3-part article definition of ecology from Satish Kumar which reminds us of the etymology of the word “taking care of the house”, oikos means house and it also means “a place of dwelling”. As we dwell as students, and teachers actively involved in learning and education, we accept a constant unlearning, not knowing-courageously allowing and tolerating confusion as the necessary first step and emotion behind creativity (Lonka,2018)

Teaching and learning as feminine principle

20th-century cool was masculine, 21st-century cool is feminine, as professor and writer Joel Dinerstein points out as I asked with curiosity what changed in terms of coolness from the previous to the current century.

Beyond gender which is an explorative dialogue following Joel’s work altogether, I rest my attention here on Feminine Principle as part of teaching coolness as 21st-century competencies.

Feminine Principle, invites to take the Bigger View, to see the whole picture and to relax a little”

Arawana Hayashi


Here is Arawana Hayashi on the Feminine Principle

“Feminine principle has nothing whatsoever to do with gender or gender politics. Although women’s wisdom is very worthwhile topic, the essence here is about space-spaciousness of open mind and heart of both men and women. (beyond focused attention on content) feminine principle invites us to notice the space and the background, it expands our attention to the context”. 

With the teachers training learning through benchmarking different systems work I have been guiding for the last 8 years, “in benchmarking is all about context” (HBR). 

The practice, as Arawana Hayashi introduces every time with the model she brings part of MIT U-school is that of “relaxing a little bit, not taking yourself or the situation too seriously” that will allow seeing the Big Picture. 


I hear Joel saying the same thing, as I asked him to  “extract” some characteristics for coolness, for which we might foster conditions in the classroom and I hear Joel saying first cool characters “do not think about them as being cool”. In this article, we gather some aspects of practice for “not thinking of oneself as being cool” yet the effort to stay open for coolness, as everyday ecology.

Relatedness

If 20th-century coolness was Aspirational, 21st-century coolness is Relatedness.

Joel Dinerstein

Coolness, as it is my perception moving through some of the articles written by Joel and listening to him, is mirroring (reflecting back): we need a social context or what Arawana Hayashi would call social body and social field for that coolness to come into some sort of effectiveness.

Who is cool?” is the golden question, and Joel reveals once more in my perception of what I hear from him is “cool is someone we can relate to”. As I walk with excitement the morning around New Orleans in order to getting a context and building more expectation in meeting Joel, I am thinking “..well Greta Thunberg must be cool”. I build the confidence to ask, almost as a test and evidence for myself that I start “sensing” how we teach with coolness as a very serious and relevant topic in our classrooms: “Is Greta cool?”, Joel confirms for my understanding, yet he also offers key of practicing and teaching with coolness: someone is perceived as cool if “we can relate to them”.

In this case, is the practice in the classroom or relatedness as multiculturality in the classroom”. Multiculturality is about how we tell stories that would allow students to move or detect biases (their own or cultural) and suspend them for enough time to relate. Relatedness is very much connected to practicing proprioception in the classroom, hence having conditions to develop it: “the capacity of oneself to notice own patterns of thoughts and own theater of emotions” in order to suspend (this is stretching muscle of the 21st-century education or what I call in teachers programs, “joy of learning”) them for just a few second “to truly listen to the other one” before formulating a thought or opinion (David Bohm, On Dialogue). This is fundamental for new learning, for what we call creators of knowledge not consumers (Lonka,2018).

We do not talk about Relatedness too much in our classrooms, yet it is a buzzword already to teach with empathy as part of teaching with Emotional Intelligence and what we call “taking care of oneself and the others”, social entrepreneurship detecting problems and wishing to create better conditions for oneself and the ones around. 

Relatedness means I can see aspects of myself in you

Lori Sulpizio

Here is Lori Sulpizio (University of San Diego) on relatedness and empathy

“Relatedness is a precursor to empathy, and we have lost the ability to relate to each other. Relatedness is defined by connection, which is similar to empathy, but relatedness is a connection of a different type. Relatedness is people sharing something in common, whether that be physical form, personal identity, life experience, shared roles, etc. Relatedness means I can see aspects of myself in you. Relatedness means you and I share something similar, and if we allow relatedness, most often we discover we are more similar to each other than we are different. While empathy has an emotional foundation, relatedness is more expansive and includes more aspects of ourselves.”

This brings to the practice of feedback and clarifying our own thoughts in “relation” with others. The 21st-century assessment, says education advisor Marjo Rissanen from the Finnish National Evaluation and Skills Development Network) should guarantee:

“Child’s right to clarify their point of view and to respect them …reflective interaction with the child, where the interaction is horizontal – in which you are on the same level as the child and are interested in the child’s thoughts

Using diverse tools and methods of assessment, including quality of the class interaction ( to be mirrored in assessment): evaluation of cognitive, activity organization, and instructional support.”

Perspective of developing an evaluation culture: practicing everyday feedback and reflective/peer/coach/teacher evaluation as daily learning routine not something outside of the learning process, or what Joel mentioned in a certain context of our conversation as not being stuck in “feedback loop”

Coolness as Resilience

I refer to cool in its original meanings as they came out of post-World War II culture: to be resilient, and uncomplaining; to survive with dignity and style in the face of uncontrollable larger forces.

Joel Dinerstein

It is also what we experienced in the Finnish education context as “Sisu” called a specific unique Finnish word yet you will notice the similarities to what Joel speaks of “Sisu is a unique Finnish concept. It is a Finnish term that can be roughly translated into English as strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity….Sisu is the quality that lets them pick up, move on, and learn something from previous failures. It’s the hard-jawed integrity that makes them pay their war debts in full.”(source: what is Sisu?)

If we asked in parts 1 and 2 “What is your local ecology” we now invite communities of learning to ask “What is our local coolness” How do we let that inform everyday lesson planning and implementation?

 Teaching about and with coolness is creating conditions for young learners and young adult learners to build resilience, to notice how fragility sneaks up on us, and equally to develop a mindset and tools to deal with brittle problems that define 21st-century and with them STEAM education: students’ Resilience and Scientific Thinking to successfully operate, navigate and live.

“Brittle: sheds light on the fragility of systems and structures in a rapidly changing environment. Even if they often appear strong on the outside, many systems are fragile on the inside.” (wicked problem also called VUCA/BANI).

Coolness and Problem-Solving

Joel mentioned 2 articles from the “90s he published on the educational system, after his experience as high school teacher. He mentions the same aspects I brought in teachers’ programs from Paulo Freire (pedagogy of hope), bell hooks (Teaching to Transgress), and Otto Scharmer (Reimagining Higher Education): you cannot point to the problem without a possible action, you cannot leave people hanging, as such you would take away hope and that is teaching without future foresight without future literacy. Joel in these articles, which I am looking forward to exploring, mentions as I hear, why the system continues to fail and what we can do. 

Coolness as Freedom Curriculum

When I say freedom curriculum we could also call what by now is the core of the 21st century transversal competencies education: growing citizens able to make democratic decisions with respect to humans and more than human rights.

Joel mentioned cognitive dissonance as what creates conditions, I dare to say through mimicry, to be fragile, I would translate this fragility for curriculum as the incapacity to build “an image of a life worth having”, a topic that frightens educational systems’ stakeholders, and teachers everywhere. 

Here is a multidisciplinary view of cognitive dissonance, from a Silicon Valley Software Developer perspective, in a time of AI-generated tools and their impacts. 

“Cognitive dissonance is the psychological tension we feel as we try to reckon with some kind of internal conflict.” (JULIA CLAVIEN)

One of the ways we can grasp how we created what Otto Scharmers calls the 3 divides, key to consider while teaching through a time of climate change: social divide (us and others), spiritual divide ( with oneself), and ecological divide (us and nature). By bridging everyday awareness on the 3 divides we “solve” the cognitive dissonance. How do we do that, we go back to teaching with Feminine Principle and Practice what we call in teachers programs “the Silent Pedagogy”.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” (Viktor, Frankl, founder of logotherapy, author of Man’s Search of Meaning). 

Coolness curriculum- Teaching to Transgress (bell hooks)

I hear Joel, artfully communicating (Hunl, 2019) about rebellion and defiance. This is very much part of peace curriculum, or what UNESCO calls “making space for peace in men and women’s minds”. I remember this amazing teacher in Italy, rather very silent a bit skeptical during the program’s first few days not making a lot of eye contact. During the 3rd day as we deepen into the everyday practice of what bell hooks called “teaching to transgress” as part of STEAM, she asks “Our students know very well how to transgress they do it everyday, you ask us to do more of that?” after a pause to actually listen what she is telling me I go about “ well it is not about them this pedagogy of practice is about you”, then I saw her eyes going places. The next day everything was different.

source HAM museum, Peace Statue Helsinki “statue’s female figure is the spirit of peace returning after a war with a new, peaceful heart.’ artist Essi Renvall

Defiance and rebellion, as part of peace curriculum, is what we call in teachers programs and especially teaching through climate change “teaching with petitions”. As teachers process or pedagogy decoded:

1.  Clarifying Our agenda (we teach in alignment with our values

2. Practicing everyday insights for useful Inquiries (Inquiry-based learning) about social-legal context

3. Reconstruction of short-term events- how we tell stories, narratives matter, to allow diversity of narrative in collective memory, as well as holding tension -back to the feminine principle- of both urgency and patience. To teach with defiance, rebellion, is the practice of critical thinking and building mindset that operates in problems and worlds by paradoxes or polarities. Teaching with petitioning is also an ongoing process of change which means skillful updates of oneself and the world around (making up your own mind, curiosity, and willingness to work and learn hard, and finally “what we learn in the classroom matters, creates realities”). It is about education in the words of Nora Bateson “ the sure way of becoming obsolete is to refuse change”.

scribing to reflect and honor the spirit of the Dialogue with Joel Dinerstein, by sketching artist Tea Cristescu

Reference:

Joel Dinerstein writer & professor race, music & cool https://www.joeldinerstein.com/ Ted talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kboK01-OOk exhibit https://www.joeldinerstein.com/exhibit-2

On Feminine Principle, article by Arawana Hayashi https://arawana.wordpress.com/resources/articles/

On Teaching with Petitions, book Petitioning for Land (2020) Karen O’Brien and School Program https://actonlearning.org/program/oddience2030/

This is part 3 of the article, you can access part 1 and part 2

Featured image of the article- The Statue of the Immigrants, New Orleans March 2024

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