IDEAS: Post-Modern Spirituality Syllabus 1
APL 090-H
Facilitator: Ben Ingegneri
Email: bingegneri@students.stonehill.edu
Phone: 1 (401)-935-7727
Class: Mondays 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Course Description: Is there still a place for spirituality in a world where traditional expressions of religion are in decline? This course will explore the very nature of spirituality by looking at moments of spiritual experience by famous religious characters from both Eastern and Western religions. A main aspect of the course will be examining various forms of artwork as insight into spiritual experience. Students will also be exposed to different spiritual practices in outlets such as meditation, exploring how and why spirituality might play a unique role in our modern lives, even if it is outside the realm of organized religion.
Lateness Policy: Three lates count as one absence. If you are more than 20 minutes late, you will be marked absent for the day.
Academic Honesty: Any type of plagiarism or academic dishonesty will result in a grade of a zero on the assignment (worse than an F) and likely failure of the course. In accordance with the College’s Academic Honor Code and Integrity Policy, the IDEAS committee requires that it is brought to the Dean’s awareness about every student who has plagiarized or cheated in any manner. All members of the College community have the responsibility to be familiar with and to follow the College's policy on academic honesty. Since plagiarism is covered in many places, pleading ignorance will not work. While it is not possible to enumerate every form of plagiarism here, Stonehill’s Academic Honor Code and Integrity Policy lists the following examples:
1) Presenting another's work as if it were one's own and/or failing to acknowledge or properly document a source, including paraphrasing work from a source
2) Giving or receiving, or attempting to give or receive, unauthorized assistance or information on an assignment
3) Fabricating data, sources, quotations, etc.
4) Submitting the same assignment in two or more courses without the prior permission of the respective instructors
5) Employing another person to write a paper, buying a paper or portion thereof on-line, etc
If you have ANY questions about what constitutes academic dishonesty or how to incorporate outside sources into your work, please consult with me before you turn in your assignment.
Accommodation Information: Stonehill is committed to providing all students equal access to learning opportunities. The Office of Accessibility Resources works with students who have disabilities to provide and/or arrange reasonable accommodations. If you anticipate or experience physical or academic barriers based on disability, please let me know so that we can discuss options. Students are responsible for providing their facilitators with an accommodations verification letter and discussing their needs with them. Students who have, or think they may have, a disability are invited to contact the Office of Accessibility Resources for a confidential appointment at (508) 565-1306 or accessibility- resources@stonehill.edu.
Diversity and Inclusion Statement: Stonehill embraces the diversity of students, faculty, and staff, honors the inherent dignity of each individual, and welcomes their unique cultural and religious experiences, beliefs, and perspectives. We all benefit from a diverse living and learning environment, and the sharing of differences in ideas, experiences, and beliefs help us shape our own perspectives. Course content and campus discussions will heighten your awareness to these differences. The Office of Intercultural Affairs (Duffy 149) serves as an accessible resource to anyone seeking support or with questions about diversity and inclusion at Stonehill. If you witness or experience acts of bias at Stonehill or would like to learn more about how we address bias incidents, please email diversity@stonehill.edu.
Grading Policy: This class is Pass/ Fail. In order to pass this class it is expected that you complete homework assignments, show up to class in a timely manner and participate.
Academic Expectations: The class for APL 090-H is worth 1 credit. This means that in addition to class time, students will need a minimum of 2 hours of work/study time for APL 090-H each week. This expectation is in agreement with the guidelines established by the Federal Government when they defined a college course credit. The official definition is shown below and was taken from the New England Association of Schools & Colleges, Inc. and the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education – 5th Year Interim Report Manual.
The Federal Government definition of one course credit is:
“… an amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified evidence of student achievement that is an institutional established equivalence that reasonably approximates not less than:
(1) One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time
or
(2) At least an equivalent amount of work as required in paragraph (1) of this definition for other academic activities as established by the institution including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours.”
Course Timeline:
Week 1: Introduction
- -Democratic Education Overview
- -Syllabus expectations
- -The Spirituality of Coffee
Week 2: Spiritual in Scripture- The Spiritual Experience
- -Scripture as literature
- -Can the scenes of the spiritual experiences of these famous religious characters help pinpoint what the "spiritual thing" might be?
- -What common ground do the religions have when looking at the core spirituality versus the developed theology.
- -Christianity: Paul
- -Hindu: Arjuna
- -Buddhism: Siddartha Gautama
Week 3: The Coexistence of Religion and Spirituality
- -Reading: The Alchemist, by Paulo Cohelo Part One
- -The Alchemist gives off a strong sense of spirituality however it seems to tie together all religions.
- -Can Religion and Spirituality coexist? What is different about them? What was Religion concerned with and how did that change?
Week 4: The Spiritual Journey
- -Reading: The Alchemist, by Paulo Cohelo Part Two
- -Now that we have looked at spiritual experience across major religions, can we start to compare and figure out how spirituality plays a role in our unique modern lives?
- -Can the spiritual journey portrayed in the parable of this short novel provide us with some insight into how to talk about the spiritual journey in our lives?
Week 5: Spirituality in Literature
- -Religion has always been conveyed through the platform of Narrative.
- -Could the rise of the Novel be the downfall of religion?
- -'[The Novel] is an extraordinarily plastic, flexible form compared to other art forms."- Jonathan Bastable
- -For our fluid, modern, flexible and constantly changing lives, it would seem that a flexible, personal Spirituality would need to be in place for it to successfully play a role. Are novels getting across similar themes that sacred scripture did? Could novels be the flexible bibles we have been searching for?
- -Reading: Walter Benjamin- The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Week 6: Art, the Modern Religion?
- -Many of the Modern artists considered Art to be their new religion.
- -Can art be the greatest insight into Spirituality as both exist in the realm of silence?
- -Readings:
- -Plato's Phaedurs
- -Niklas Luhmann: Art as a Social System
- -Kandinsky: Spirituality of Art
Week 7: Spirituality in Film
- - "Harold and Maude"
- -This movie accounts a spiritual journey in our modern times however there are no religious elements evident through the whole movie?
- -How can this movie help us understand spirituality in our own lives?
Week 8: Spiritual Ritual
- -All religions have spiritual rituals.
- -Do we have spiritual rituals in our lives that we don't even realize as spiritual?
- -How can we take the rituals of religion that are familiar to us and rebuild them with new meaning?
- -Explore how to create rituals.
Week 9: Quiet Spirituality
- -PART ONE-Explore the power of meditation, by doing an extended mediation exercise to help us unleash the doors of our subconscious.
- -PART TWO- WRITE!!!
Week 10: Active Spirituality
- -Nature walk- Walking Meditation
- -Comparing Quiet and Active meditation.
- Readings: Patanjali's Yoga, The Bagahvad Gita
Week 11: Field Trip
- -The Museum of Fine Arts
Week 12: Final Projects Begin
Week 13: Final Projects End
IDEAS: Post-Modern Spirituality Syllabus II
APL 090-H
Facilitator: Ben Ingegneri
Email: bingegneri@students.stonehill.edu
Phone: 1 (401)-935-7727
Class: Mondays 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Course Description: Is there still a place for spirituality in a world where traditional expressions of religion are in decline? This course will explore the very nature of spirituality by looking at moments of spiritual experience by famous religious characters from both Eastern and Western religions. A main aspect of the course will be examining various forms of artwork as insight into spiritual experience. Students will also be exposed to different spiritual practices in outlets such as meditation, exploring how and why spirituality might play a unique role in our modern lives, even if it is outside the realm of organized religion.
Lateness Policy: Three lates count as one absence. If you are more than 20 minutes late, you will be marked absent for the day.
Academic Honesty: Any type of plagiarism or academic dishonesty will result in a grade of a zero on the assignment (worse than an F) and likely failure of the course. In accordance with the College’s Academic Honor Code and Integrity Policy, the IDEAS committee requires that it is brought to the Dean’s awareness about every student who has plagiarized or cheated in any manner. All members of the College community have the responsibility to be familiar with and to follow the College's policy on academic honesty. Since plagiarism is covered in many places, pleading ignorance will not work. While it is not possible to enumerate every form of plagiarism here, Stonehill’s Academic Honor Code and Integrity Policy lists the following examples:
1) Presenting another's work as if it were one's own and/or failing to acknowledge or properly document a source, including paraphrasing work from a source
2) Giving or receiving, or attempting to give or receive, unauthorized assistance or information on an assignment
3) Fabricating data, sources, quotations, etc.
4) Submitting the same assignment in two or more courses without the prior permission of the respective instructors
5) Employing another person to write a paper, buying a paper or portion thereof on-line, etc
If you have ANY questions about what constitutes academic dishonesty or how to incorporate outside sources into your work, please consult with me before you turn in your assignment.
Accommodation Information: Stonehill is committed to providing all students equal access to learning opportunities. The Office of Accessibility Resources works with students who have disabilities to provide and/or arrange reasonable accommodations. If you anticipate or experience physical or academic barriers based on disability, please let me know so that we can discuss options. Students are responsible for providing their facilitators with an accommodations verification letter and discussing their needs with them. Students who have, or think they may have, a disability are invited to contact the Office of Accessibility Resources for a confidential appointment at (508) 565-1306 or accessibility- resources@stonehill.edu.
Diversity and Inclusion Statement: Stonehill embraces the diversity of students, faculty, and staff, honors the inherent dignity of each individual, and welcomes their unique cultural and religious experiences, beliefs, and perspectives. We all benefit from a diverse living and learning environment, and the sharing of differences in ideas, experiences, and beliefs help us shape our own perspectives. Course content and campus discussions will heighten your awareness to these differences. The Office of Intercultural Affairs (Duffy 149) serves as an accessible resource to anyone seeking support or with questions about diversity and inclusion at Stonehill. If you witness or experience acts of bias at Stonehill or would like to learn more about how we address bias incidents, please email diversity@stonehill.edu.
Grading Policy: This class is Pass/ Fail. In order to pass this class it is expected that you complete homework assignments, show up to class in a timely manner and participate.
Academic Expectations: The class for APL 090-H is worth 1 credit. This means that in addition to class time, students will need a minimum of 2 hours of work/study time for APL 090-H each week. This expectation is in agreement with the guidelines established by the Federal Government when they defined a college course credit. The official definition is shown below and was taken from the New England Association of Schools & Colleges, Inc. and the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education – 5th Year Interim Report Manual.
The Federal Government definition of one course credit is:
“… an amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified evidence of student achievement that is an institutional established equivalence that reasonably approximates not less than:
(1) One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time
or
(2) At least an equivalent amount of work as required in paragraph (1) of this definition for other academic activities as established by the institution including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours.”
Course Timeline:
Week 1: Introduction
- -Democratic Education Overview
- -Syllabus expectations
- -The Spirituality of Coffee
- - Ice Breaker
- - Creativity quiz
- -Ludovica
Week 2: Religion and the Inner Life
- - "Knowing Beyond Knowing"- reading
- - Envisioning Home Meditation
- - Dead Poet Society discussion
Week 3: Individual Meetings to Decide Direction of Course
- Reading: Introduction of "War of Art" by Stephan Presfield
Week 4: Spirituality outside of Religion
- - Plan was to watch Harold and Maude,
Week 5: Spirituality outside of Religion Take 2
- -Watch Movie Harold and Maude in class and have discussion of first reactions.
- Reading Part One of "War of Art"
Week 6: Engaging Art Part
- Harold and Maude discussion and reflections due
- Ficino and love
- Bring in object for Painting exercise
- Inner world/painting meditation
- Reading: "War of Art" Part II
Week 7: Cancelled for field trip
Field Trip I
- -Fuller Craft Museum
Week 8: Engaging Art Part 2: Lecture and Activity
- Reading: "Silence Born Again" Essay
- -Group painting
- -Barnett Newman Video
Week 9: Spiritual Moments
- -Watch Movie "A Single Man" and have conversation
- Reading: "War of Art" Part III
Field trip II
- - Seven Arrow's Farm
Week 10: WHY the "I don't get art" comment.
- -Jared green interactive wall exhibit
Week 11: Quiet vs Active Meditation
- Outside, hour long, guided meditation accompanied by Neil Diamond's Album "Tap Root Manuscript" Side B
Week 12: Final Projects
Week 13: Confessions game
Week ONE: Spirituality of Coffee
This is how I began my class: with my vintage, glass, Pyrex Percilator Coffee shop. I used this prop strategically on day one to achieve a lot of things.
- It helped me explain and introduce what IDEAS and Democratic education is and how it can be different from a normal class setting becasue of the peer to peer learning platform.
- It helped me represent how I want the demeanor of the class to be: like a coffee shop. A space where interested interesting people can relax and talk about the the things closest to our hearts. The kind of thing that regualar classes seem to get so close towards touching but usually miss the bullseye.
- Finally, I used it as an activity which we jumped right into. On one hand it, it represented the different ways of education which IDEAS gets to be creative with. On the other hand, it was the perfect activity to orient the group towards the type of activities that were to come ahead, as well as get us thinking on the topic, as well as engaging with the topic not just intellectually, but physically.
The Directions were simple: write down the Spirituality of Coffee.
- The purpose of this activity was to get the student to start getting used to quiet, reflective mindset; a place which we don't usually enter into. Without them knowing it, they are already partaking in the way art functions and with the inner life. There was no right answer to what the spirituality of the coffee was. To complete the activity successfully, one must be honest and sensitive to the feelings and images that emerge in them when being confronted with the images and sounds (jazz, projection of fire place) which I offered.
We wrote on the board the words and images that came to us when reflecting, and discussed how in paying attention towards any experience, however small, one can have a spiritual experience.
Here is an example of one students reflection below
Week TWO: Knowing Beyond Knowing and how to get there
The Artwork: Ludovica by Bernini
The Reading: "Knowing Beyond Knowing" by Peter Kingsley
The Film: "Dead Poet Society"
- The picture presented here is a statue by Bernini called "The Ludovica". It rests in St. Francis' Church in Roma, Trastevere. What it presents is a woman going through Spiritual Extacy. We examined the art and the feelings which she seems to be going through and wondered is this even a good thing to experience? She seems rather uncomfortable, yet there is an unmistakeable bliss about her.
- The reading discussed this experience from a hermetic tradition of achieving spiritual extasy. In the reading is a narrative of the relationship between the student and the teacher and represents how the teacher helps the student arrive there.
- This also offered me a chance to explain my role as a peer teacher. Just as the teacher and student relationship is in the reading, the way I am to teach is not by imparting knowledge of how to achieve spritualality(the teacher doesn't know himself). The teacher's job is to cultivate an experience to help the student get there on their own, and teacher is going through the same journey right their beside them.
- To help explain this, and many more themes of spirituality through art, I assigned the "Dead Poet Society" movie as homwork. The clip below, I showed in class, and it represents the same teacher student relationship I described above, only it is compeletly outside the realm of religion and it is in the world of art and emotion.
Finally, we gave the whole thing a try and put our study of art, literature, and film to work and I had lead the class through an almost hour long meditation to help them be in touch with the images that emerged from their subconscious.
Week 3: Individual Meetings with Students to decide the direction of the course
Small Crisis Reflection
There has been one major idea that has really taken up a majority of my thought for the past two weeks being my contemplation of the goal for my class. This really bakes down to my struggling with one question: how personal, or “deep”, should a spirituality course be? It seems that the very core of the goal of my course as well as any spirituality geared course I’ve taken at the college seems to be clear. A class dealing with spirituality needs to dance, fondle, wrestle, and admire in high admiration the deepest and most colorful places of the human condition. However my fear from the beginning was I really, really didn’t want to come off like I have some greater wisdom that I hold to reveal to students. Especially when this course brings to focus how when institutions go about teaching religion as the only right belief, it begins the end of the religion’s life.
I knew from the beginning that my new idea at the center of the course is exploring spirituality as the creative act. However, because of my strong fear of coming off like I have some greater wisdom that I want to shove down their throats, I naturally decided to go the entirely opposite route for the course. I figured to use a strictly academic, objective technique, using articles, religious passages, and art as text to analyze and bring us closer to the answer of the relation between spirituality and creativity. However, the times that I implemented this technique, the interest level of the students seemed to be lacking and they seemed rather indifferent to conversation.
Then I began to think about what worked in my classes and why the technique I originally planned seemed to be falling short. What worked really well the first two classes were the creative activities that we did. Journaling about creative experiences, engaging in meditation exercises, telling stories about weird unexplainable shit thats happened to them, talking about internal experiences that was aroused in them by art: these are the types of things that everyone could really open up about and talk freely about. It was moving into the personal experience that the students responded to versus the critical analysis of texts. This is when it occurred to me that the opposite plan I had(being to analyze materials) might be doing the last thing that a spiritual course is supposed to do. To kill the color of spirituality, or to kill the vibrant life of it would be to kill the class’ values.
After this occurred to me I figured I might need to do some reworking into the way I facilitate the lessons, but before I did that, I wanted to meet with the students individually to see if this was what they wanted. So for the third class, I met with each of the students individually and asked what they expected and what they wanted to get out of the course. It turns out that each of them did expect a space where they might be able to open up and explore the deeper themes of life.
So I heavily started thinking about the new plan for my course and how to facilitate it. I figure that in order to learn something it has to be experienced. So I asked everyone if they would be okay with putting on hat or the IDEA for the course and giving it a try to see if there might be something to it: being spirituality through creativity. Instead of having the projects just start at the end of the course, I asked how they all felt about engaging with one unique creative project throughout the entire semester. I asked for them to take on a project that puts fire in their belly; that creative project they have always wanted to do but was put on the back burner because life and school got in the way. They loved the idea. Now they will put the idea to the test and see if there is something too it. I’m deeply excited for the new direction of the course as well as I think it more reflects the themes I have wanted to get across all along through a more engaged and active learning technique.
Here are a few the students project proposals to get an idea of the variety of projects and interests students had:
Emma Patten's project propoasal
Idea #1
My first idea is perhaps a little more meaningful. I knew that I wanted this project to involve a journal but I wasn't sure how. Then I had this idea of writing about things that I’d never say out loud. Things that I only ever expected to live in my head. This could span many different topics, even being as simple as just writing about something that I’ve always been embarrassed about.
The slightly deeper part of this project would be what gave me the idea in the first place. I’ve thought a lot this school year about how much heartbreak I could’ve saved myself if I had been more honest with myself. So I started thinking about trying to write it down. Writing down things that weren’t a problem of embarrassment, or inappropriateness. Just things that I couldn’t even admit to myself, or things today that I can’t admit to myself. I think of it as potentially therapeutic in nature, because admitting these things to myself and trying to work through them could be a really positive thing in my life.
This isn’t necessarily a very clear idea, it’s more just a general concept. But it’s a thing that can’t really be planned, because the point of it would be to help me deal with life sort of as it happens, which of course I couldn’t plan out.
Idea #2
There’s a thing called bullet journaling that’s become pretty popular recently, and ever since I heard about it I wished that I had the time to do it. It’s essentially just an organization strategy, but the idea is that you start with a blank journal and fill it with anything you want, from notes and to-do lists to schedules and sketches. People spend a lot of time making it very detailed and neat. I love well-organized things, so the idea of this is really exciting to me, which is probably strange, but I don’t care. I know it’d make me really happy. You should Google pictures of it if you have the time. They’re really aesthetically pleasing.
I’m gonna turn in both these ideas, just to see what you think, but even writing about this I know that I’m much more excited about the bullet journal thing. I could still get some of the positive things out of it that I would also get out of the other option. It’s still an opportunity to write down my thoughts, and organization calms my mind and helps with my anxiety. I think either option could have positive effects on my mental health, but I feel like the bullet journal could have more diverse effects. I’m also a chronic over-thinker, and the first idea does have the potential to let me go farther into something than I should.
Week FOUR: No one showed up:(
For this class, I was excited to really get the ball going now that I had a good footing with what the students wanted from the course. Originally I had planned on watching a movie in class which I wanted to refrence the rest of the semester, however there was an extremely low attendenance rate and it really got my spirits down. After I had such good conversations with everyone the week before, I was very confused as to why only two people showed up to class.
I gave the two students who did come the option to leave or to stay, talk about interesting things and maybe watch a different movie. They chose to stay! We hung out for about an hour and then I let everyone go. It turned out the attendance loss was just a freak thing and there was full attendance the next week. This put a damper on me cause it felt like I should had been experiencing momentum by the fourth week but there wasn't becasue of the meetings before and then this class bust. Luckily this was not a trend!
Week Five: "Harold and Maude" (Finally)
Movie Summary
"Harold and Maude" is a 1971 cult classic which tells the journey of a deeply depressed young boy who comes from a very rich family. While the boy is attending a funeral(a hobby which he does for fun) he meets a 79 year old Holocaust survivor who is happy-go-lucky and high off of life and owns little of anyting. He finds solace in her friendship and meaning in their rendezvous. Through their adventures (accompanied by the glourious sound track of Cat Stevens) Harold discovers a sense of meaning and vibrancy in life as Maude shows him how to engage with life at the deepest of levels.
Why this movie?
This movie might as well be the Bible for my class. This is the epitome, in my opinion, of a representation of what post-modern spirituality is. It shows Maude, a deeply spiritual person, as the teacher of the un spiritual person, who guides him through an experience which helps him understand deep connection with life. This spirituality represented in this movie takes place complelty outside the realm of religion. I showed this so that the students could witness what it might look like to have a spiritual life compeletly outside of any religious practices.
What was also a perfect parallel of this movie to my class, was that Harold takes up a project as he is on his journey towards a spiritual, deeper life. He learns how to play the banjo. In the final scene he walks away from the camera, towards the sunset playing his banjo as he has confronted the most difficult of challenges of all: living itself. This movie shows how taking up a creative project can help tune us in towards the spiritual life.
Below are some of the "Harold and Maude" student reflections which I assigned for homework.
Week SIX: Engaging Art (My Favorite Class)
(Art work by Jen DiPersio)
At this point in the semster, the class had chewed on a lot of material. They have watched two movies, and read almost half a book called "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield. This book is a creative process book which I assigned to help inspire students to kickstart their passions for their semester long project work. I found the book to be a perfect fit for the class becasue the author begins right in the intro of the book, that he believes writing, or what ever creative project one is passionate about, is a spiritual engagement which he invokes the Muses to fill him with divine creativity every time he writes.
Weather our class cares if creativity is divine or not is not the point. What Steven Pressfield understands is that engaging creativity is to engage the deepest parts of ourselves which are usually hidden away and invisible. He understands that when deep creativity is engaged and unhindered, it is like going through what religious language calls spiritual extasy: a moment where your deepest, realist, inner self is connected with everything.
For this class, I thought it was time to try to engage and explore those inner realms through the creative act of painting. But not just any sort of painting. To begin explaining, I showed this artwork that you are looking at now, and told them about my process. I didn't go in thinking that I was going to paint anyting in particular. Rather, I went in just being senstitve to color, not caring if it looked objectively good or not. The activity was for myself only. This type of painting should be a time of quiet. It should be a time where one can complelty clear there mind of thought and be sensitive to the emotions and images that come to their mind. Then when they feel a particular color, image, or season erupt in them, he or she can run wild with color and see what comes out of it.
This is what I encouraged everyone to do for one hour. What was so wonderful for me was that I never asked anyone to stay quiet, however everyone just became silent, focused and excited to work all on their own accord. I couldn't help but to get my stupid grin off my face as I knew everyone was excited to engage with the activity and explore their inner worlds which are so hard to get to, through color and quietness.
Finally, when the hour was up, I instructed everyone to drop their paint brushes and close their eyes immediately. I then walked them through a guided meditation, where I instructed them to continue to picture the colors and the world they had been painting for the last hour. I guided them to walk through that world and be sensitive to those feelings they experience, positive or negative, loose or tense as they may be, when the encounter different persons, objects, or things with in this world of their subconscious imagination.
This was one example of the types of experiences I try to cultivate as the teacher so that they can learn and get closer to their spirituality, and inner life all for themselves. This activity stems from my philosophy that spirituality cannot be taught, it must come from personal experience. All of my activities reflect this philosophy as I try to cultivate experiences for my students.
Week SEVEN : Class canceled for Weekend Field Trip
A few of us made our way to the Fuller Craft Museam in Brockton. Now that we had experienced creating an art work from our inner world, now the next step was to experience what it is like to deal with other's inner worlds.
This was a contemporary craft museam which means that the type of art we were dealing with was not the conventional paintings but rather really funky sculptures of all shapes and sizes made of materials you woul never think to use to create art. CREATIVE, the Museam was. However it actually made for a rather strange experience for both myself and my students to deal with.
This was the first time I had been to the museam for myself, so I didn't really know what to expect either. I think my students enjoyed it however it took a while to understand how to enjoy it. It is not that the art was not of high quality, it just didn't really speak to any of us. However this worked as a spring board for my lesson of how to understand art. I talked about how art is reflective. So when we see something beautiful in art, we are really recognizing something beautiful within ourselves. When we are disinterested in something in art, it might mean that we are being confronted with a theme in our subconcious that we are too afraid to touch and would rather just walk by it.
Overall, the Museam experience was fun one. We all had a good time taking the trip and experiencing the beautiful grounds, as well as being exposed to some really funky, out of the ordinary art.
Week EIGHT: Continuation of Understanding Art
For this we continued to deepen our understanding of how art works, especially the language of art. To help with this, I assigned an essay that I have written to help summarize the difference between "aesthetic" and "artistic" beauty which is why art is almost more beautiful. This is becasue art comes from a human and therefore has meaning in it, becasue the artist had some sort of intent. Therefore art has beauty of the spirit where nature does not have spirit innately in it.
In this class, I gave a lecture (a little change in the pace of our class) of how western society has manifested the complexity of their inner worlds through visual art. We tracked how expression has changed from the Classical period, Rennisanse , Baroque, and then through the impressionist and avant-garde movement all the way to contemporary times.
After my lecture, we then watched a video of an artist named Barnett Newman (which I have attached above) where he talks about his experience painting. Then from inspiration from this artists' experience, we then engaged in our next interactive painting activity.
Our last painting activity was very peaceful. This one, I wanted to make a bit more uncomfortable (in a fun and safe way of course). I had everyone write quietly. I instructed them to not even think or worry about what they were going to write, but rather be more focused on continuing to keep the pen moving and creating on the page. This was to help connect them with their inner world through writing. Then, when they didn't expect it, I went up to them and sprayed them in the face with water from a spray bottle. As they found themselves a little flustered and confused, I told the person I sprayed to now take that feeling, be aware of it, and paint on the canvas I had set up. Then when I sprayed the next person in the face, they would go up and paint, and the other person would go back to writing.
This was a collaborative exercise to put the students right at the center of all types of experience. There was calm when writing, confusion and anger when sprayed, freedom when painting, sadness when leaving their work and knowing that someone else might change what they had already painted. This ended up as an incredibly fun experience for everyone, where emotions were running wild in the sensitivity and halarity of the activity.
Week NINE: "A Single Man"- Spiritual Moments
For this week I had my students watch the movie "A Single Man" starting Collin Firth, for homework. I used this movie to show what spiritual moments, as seen on Bernini's sculpture of Ludovica's face, might look like in normal, every day life. Spiritual moments are everywhere, usually in the smallest and most noticeable niches of our lives. We just need to pay attention and focus of the small pleasures in life. This movie is all about representing the main charachter's "Moments of clairity" in just one day of his life. These moments of clairity is what I told the class to look out for when watching the movie, and reflect on, as they are what I see as moments of spiritual engagement, or rather deep engagement and awareness of the experience of life.
In this class, I didn't have any acticities to help the energy of the class. I really wanted the class to revolve around great conversation. In my reflection below are some of the ways I was able to facilitate incredible conversation which excitedly lasted the entire class.
(Peacefully) Combating Passivity
Sometimes, focusing on a topic can encourage fear. Students come into a class and despite their hot interest invested in the topic that is being studied, they remain hesitant to talk or voice his or her ideas or feelings about a topic. Questions can run through their minds, wondering if someone else knows more about a topic or came up with a more interesting idea when doing a reading or engaging with a particular assignment. No matter what kind of intellectual high or wonderful experiential phenomenon of revelation that might occur in the quiet quarters where a student has engaged with a work, it seems that it very often happens that when it comes to the class room, a quietness, indifference of emotion, and seeming passivity hushes amongst students’ faces. I notice this. I am subject to this and have experienced it in myself and in many classrooms before. So I tried something in my class to address it and see if I could get the student in my class more proud, open, and excited in their class participation.
This fear seemed even more real to me as I was walking with a student who is taking my Ideas course. I asked her what she thought of our last class and she said that she really loved it. She said what she liked about it was that it was nice to be able to run free range with topics that the class was interested in rather than having the weight and direction of focusing on a single topic that I present to the class. Little did she know that every theme that I wanted to address in class that day was talked about, examined, and analyzed deeper than I could have ever originally expected the class to achieve.
So what did I do? For homework I had them watch a movie called “A Single Man” which is based on its namesake novel by Christopher Isherwood. Instead of opening class presenting the movie title as the topic we were to look at for the day, I instead engaged in a more organic human dialogue with the class about the day, about the Spring, and gave my somewhat professorial theatric bantering about my observations about internal and external life. Yet hidden within the stories and life observations were all of the themes I had wished to talk about for the Class.
After doing that for about 15 minutes I then changed the pace, had everyone sit in a circle, and reminded them, and myself, what the original goal of the class was that I presented to them during the intro class. I said that ultimately, I wanted this to be the space to talk about those moments of life which seems that classroom discussions almost always get to but never quite touch. I asked of the group what personally excites and terrifies them. I asked, more importantly, what are those tiny things that you experience during the day that causes you to wonder; the things that you might bring up to a friend at a coffee shop that you wish could be analyzed and given the more worthy attention space that a class room offers which you never do because it seems like not the right place or the right time. I invited all of those things into the room. And by first offering some of my own, the students then cautiously and suddenly all at once opened these things to the opinion, critique, and advice of each other. What began on the surface as conversations about Spring, Dolphins, Mermaids, and Tinder, became a much deeper, and even at points heavier range of life themes to discuss.
I did not have to teach, I could just watch and listen. As much as I wanted to pop up and speak from how excited everyone was making me, I had to force myself not to and just let the organic conversation happen. I contributed to the conversation along with everyone else, though what I was able to do was direct and point to attention the themes that I wanted to discuss which were already erupting out of them. My questions would recognize the deeper points that the students were bringing to the forefront of their interest.
Eventually someone brought up the movie as they saw how it related to the topic which we were discussing (without me saying a word about the movie) and the conversation about the movie continued from there with an excited and invested feeling that I couldn't have asked for in the beginning. The themes were already within everyone, they just needed a quiet prick to let the walls of their balloons pop open and let all of their vibrating air diffuse with everyone else’s. It felt like one of those classes where life is really explored has a feeling of Spring to it. The deepest learning takes place in experiences like this, and myself, and I think I can speak for my students as well, cannot wait to go back for more. The class turned out to be a representation of the main theme we were exploring during the class which was, as Christopher Isherwood puts it, “a moment of clarity, when all at once, the world seems to come into existence.”
Here are some reflections the students did on "A Single Man"
Week TEN: The Sublime
We took a mini field trip over to Cushing Martian this class. We went to experience the Professor Jared Green's interactive poetry exhibit showing with a theme of WALLS. This gave us a chance to experience art in a different way. It was a visual space with sounds and objects that you could walk through, speak in, and be apart of.
It offered a strange experience for my students. Many of them said they "didn't get it". This gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about the experience of the Sbulime in modern art. Most modern art intends to shock us and we aren't supposed to understand it. If we did, then we would be in control of the experience and therefore wouldn't be fully affected by the experience the art is trying to confront us with. I also told them to be sensitive to those feelings of apathy, and uncomfortableness in the face of art, becasue it is reflecting the inner worlds of ourselves which we don't really want to face.
I was very proud of my students who did cross the wall, sit down in the claustrophobic space with lights and sounds all around you, and being fully engaged in that experience. It was an excellent opportunity for the class to partake in.
Week ELEVEN: Outside Meditation
For this class we took an excursion on to the quad infront of Duffy. We tried an outside mediation as our last and hopfully best meditation yet. We all layed in a circle as shown in the pictures and for the first 20 minitues I walked everyone through a meditation to quiet our minds and be aware of our bodies and diminish performance anxiety from everyone walking by us. For he second half of the mediation, I played Side B of Neil Diamond's Album, "Tap Root Manuscript". It is a sporadic set list ranging from children angelic choirs to African sounding tribal drum work. The goal was to have the students imaginations run wild with with the accompaniment of the music. Hopfully they could see themselves in a movie playing behind their eye lids with the music playing in the back ground.
Week TWELVE: Final Projects
I decided to have everyone do all their final projects on one day so that we could have fun with what ever we wanted on the last class.
This day was when I really felt like I had made some sort of change or added some sort of benefit towards my students lives. I will admit, not all of them were perfect or met the expectations of what I had hoped, however during their presentations, the students explained their journey and hardships they encountered while working on their projects. And this is what I really expected from their projects.
I was not expecting a masterpiece for anyone's project. That is not what this class was about. Rather it was a kick start for trying out something that people have always been interestesd in trying but had never had the time to start. So whatever people chose to do, I was very happy with their final project becasue everything they did and said was honest and personal and reflected who they were and the honest struggles they faced in the act of creation.
As this Project Reflection shows below, creativity can manifest in many different ways. It is constantly changing and flowing and it is hopfully always beneficial for lived life. Even the smallest things like painting nails can help change for the better a mental state of being, like perhaps anxiety.
Week THIRTEEN: Lets Play
The last class was an opportunity to just enjoy eachother and have fun. I brought a game called Confessions by the company called "School of Life". We sat on the floor, and played the game, and laughed and reminisced and ate some snacks that I had brought in, and of course: coffee.
Portfolio Self Assesment
I am very very proud of how my portfolio came out. I am very excited about the platform I chose to use. It was a fun and easy way to tell a story, and if I may say so, rather visually stunning.
I guess I could have put in more activities, more student work, more readings. That could have been the only way that I can see that I could have done this better however I feel like I get the story across well the way I have it. I put atleast two different homework assignments, I think three. I told a few class activities, I gave many examples of material we used, movies, readings, conversations that we used in class, and I put two journal entries in, with my commentary weaving everyitng together. I had fun with it and though I guess I could have added more material, I think I put just enough in to really tell the story well.
Just a note- if you were to copy and paste my teaching Statment below into a word doc it would turn out to 3 pages.
Self Grade: A
Teaching Statment and Philosohy
To me, teaching is more of an art than it is a science. When looking at teaching this way, there are certain elements and attitudes that go along with the innate traits of the Arts that I have found affect the learning environment with the greatest outcome. Firstly, the front of the class room should be to a teacher as a stage is to an actor. In other words, a teacher is the focal point of all learning for a student; he or she is what makes or breaks a child's attitude toward school. Therefore, a teacher needs to lead every day by example; be excited and be passionate about whatever it is he or she is teaching; and needs to be as engaged with what he or she is teaching at the same level that he expects his students to be engaged. Secondly, a teacher must take the time to understand his student, as a painter or art admirer must take the time to understand, and not quickly judge, a work of art. Art, like a student, is a composition of many different colors and intentions that takes more than just a first impression to understand. There is no such thing as a black and white painting. Even if a painting is done in black in white, as students may also physically be, there is so much more color, emotion, history, and intention that is behind the outer image. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, do not let education kill the imagination. Learning of life should be the focus of a class room, not learning for tests. By cultivating our faculties of intuition, reason, will, and imagination a student should innately enjoy learning for the wonder of what it is. But when teachers make students memorize facts and black and white data, and do not show the wonder of humanity through the arts and humanities, then a student will surely be turned away from learning at a very young age, for they are being taught what learning is not.
Teaching Philosophy Expanded
- The front of the class room should be to a teacher as stage is to an actor. In my early ages of being a student, it was sad that it never occurred to me that a teacher was an important mediator of information. I dreaded reading, writing, learning grammar, and punching numbers. I didn't understand the purpose of this learning, it just always felt like a drag and waste of time. It took me all the way until the 6th grade to say to myself, ‘Wow. I have a great teacher. When she talks about science in front of the class, I really seem to be engaged, interested, and effectively learning.’ Then there was one more teacher that rocked my world and changed my perception of what a teacher could be. For an old man, he had the highest energy level I have ever experienced in a teacher before. He told life stories that got the students engaged and also conveyed life lessons. He brought math, history, religion, and literature to life through his story telling and exciting high energy. It was as if he was on stage, and he had his audience, his students, constantly on the edge of their seats and eager to want to come to class and learn. A class with him, was like a class with education pioneer and former Stonehill College professor, Albert Cullum himself. In his life documentary, Al said he wanted to be a stage actor but didn’t make it, so teaching was the perfect outlet for him! Jokingly he says he needed an audience that weren't allowed to leave at intermission! Seeing him work these beliefs into the manner in which he ran a class, was obviously effective, and because of this, along with my experience on both sides in the field, I have now come to this first philosophy of teaching. My experience being on the other side of the class room during my IDEAS course made me realize how important it is to have high energy infront of a class room at all times. If I dont have interest or energy in the classroom, why should the students? I experienced this first hand in my second class. I could tell some students didn't do the reading, and they were quiet cause they were worried they were going to get caught. Their quietness and lack of energy was sucking the energy right out of me. It probably wasn't that bad on their side of the experience, however I was ready to run out of the room from the tension. I thought on my feet about how I could change the energy of the room and tried a meditation which put them in a more centered, less worried mood. In the next class when I started to do engaged activities, I never had a worry of passivity again because the group was so excited to try different experiences out.
- A teacher must take the time to understand his student, as a painter or art admirer must take the time to understand, and not quickly judge, a work of art. As making my way through schooling from very young ages, all the way through high school, I constantly found myself asking, ‘Weren’t they (referring to the teacher) students once? How could they assign so much busy work when its only going to hinder learning than actually have us spend time with learning? How can they not understand my right intention and take into consideration the things going on in my life? I’m working my butt off, why am I being punished then just because I might not be able to understand as quick or as well as others?’ I hope that a student never has to ask the question about me, ‘Did he skip the whole kid/student thing?’ The point of this philosophy, which I have learned from being an honest student, is that you never know what a child’s life is at home. Home life, weather it is familial or friend based, effects importance of learning in big ways. Whether a student in a rich family is being physically or socially abused, or a child in a poor families father was shot in a rumble the night before, you never know what is going on in a student's life which they are not saying. For this reason it is always good to be patient with every student at any time, and never ever jump to conclusions or judgments about a student. This is how I have tried to run my IDEAS course. I never ever wanted to give busy work. I wanted to give the least work possible so that they could really have time engaging with the work I gave. This way, when they came to class they really had something to say instead of being worried that they missed something in the reading. I experienced this issue when I started out giving both a reading, a movie, and a reflection to complete before class and the level of class participation was low because people didn't have time to engage with all the material. This is when I really reworked how I wanted to facilitate the course by facilitating learning through cultivating experiences.
- Finally, education shouldn’t kill imagination, it should fuel it. Like Al Cullum said, “Learning should be enjoyable.” Al says if education can offer “early exposure to great art, great music, great literature, [they won’t] run away from it, ever in their lifetime. If you feed on it as a child it stays with you forever.” When you teach for the test, you are doing a disgrace to a students well being. In an age of the “self made man”, the imagination has been killed. Education must change and help foster this innate human trait. I hope my IDEAS course is a small step in fine tuning the focus of education where I beleive it is important: towards the nourishment of the human, to help cherish a love of humanities and art, and to promote a love for the experience of life. I have attempted to do this in my course through presenting my students with great film, poetry, and art and then taking it to the next level by putting them in the experience of art itself in order to reveal the beauty of the little things in life which we not often enough pay attention to.