Spirit and Imagination in the Classroom

Workshop Number

Leader(s)

Brian

Edmiston

Audience

Who may register:

Open to All (adult & high school)

Time breakdown

Experiential Activities:

50%

Lecture:

15%

Discussion:

20%

Description

Short Description:

Drawing on the workshop leader’s teaching experience in public schools, university classrooms, and at Junior Gathering, participants will collaboratively explore the possibilities and challenges for teachers when they use the social imagination of the arts and literature with young people to seek and sustain a spiritual dimension to K-12 education.

Long Description:

Expectations and Objectives:
My expectations are that participants will be seekers of spirit in public, or Quaker, educational settings. Participants may be teachers or young people.
My objectives are to collaboratively and practically explore with participants the possibilities and challenges of seeking spirit in classrooms when using the social imagination of the arts, especially the pedagogy of dramatic inquiry.
Specific Areas and Topics:
Engaging all students, inquiry-based education, arts-based education, dramatic inquiry pedagogy.
Format:
The workshop will be practically based (50%) with discussion (20%), lecture (15%), as well as worship and worship sharing (15%) all integrated into activities. We will use talking, writing, movement, drawing, and other creative processes to actively and imaginatively enter into the worlds of works of literature ranging from folktales to poems.
Advanced Readings (optional):
The Courage to Teach (1997). Parker Palmer.
Paths to Quaker Parenting (2009). Harriet Heath (editor).
Items to bring:
Stories of successes and challenges in seeking Spirit in classroom teaching and learning
Literature used in classrooms with copies to share with the group (optional).

Leader Discernment Process:

Though I continually strive to create spaces and openings for spirit in my teaching I am rarely able to discuss the process with teachers. As I am in the midst of a new project involving classroom teachers' uses of the arts I have felt drawn both to share and learn with fellow Quakers in dialogue about how best to seek spirit in teaching with imagination.

Leader Experience:

I co-led groups as part of Junior Gathering for about 5 years. I run our meeting's First Day School, or what we call Multigenerational Interactive Worship. As a university professor I frequently lead workshops with, and for, teachers.