As teachers we hold great responsibility. We have the power to affect another person, and their understanding of a part of their world. This is what brings education alive for me. Many of us can think of an excellent teacher who had a significant effect on them. Equally, I'm sure we can all recollect a teacher that was frustrating, lacking in knowledge, or even upsetting to us in their inability to communicate effectively with us. I have had a decent amount of both in my life. Some lessons I will never forget, for various reasons.
I would count myself as very fortunate for having an unusual educational background. I attended a Montessori school for my primary learning, followed by a Quaker senior school. For anyone that knows anything about either, you may know the emphasis both have on valuing your peers, and accepting those around you for what they are. This has stayed with me, proving to be the basis of my own personal beliefs and values.
As a child of Montessori schooling, I was taught that learning is a process of discovery, rather than recital. We had no desks. We rolled out mats in the classroom, wherever the opportunity of learning was being presented. Sometimes this involved gathering around the library area to learn from the books we had been provided with. Sometimes this involved walking outside and being encouraged to find examples of biological processes within the environment that surrounded us.
We were encouraged to take care of the farm animals that surrounded the school, to aide each other in our learning. We were taught to help up the friend who fell, and to apply the plaster we were provided with. We supported one another. Classes were not divided into school year groups, but into levels of ability. I sometimes learnt alongside my brother, who was three years my senior. I was not penalised for struggling with Maths, but instead encouraged to be as much of an artist and a writer as I possibly could be, with support for my lack of mathematical ability at the time.
The more I think about my early education, the more I begin to see the significance of it in my life as it stands today. One of the dancers here on my current contract in Marrakech said to me a few months ago that she had not been friends with an artist before. I was taken aback, and massively encouraged at the same time. I realised at that moment how she regarded me. I sometimes worry that the artist inside of myself is lost in my profession, as I have described before in previous blogs. I fret that by being employed to dance someone else's choreography night after night, I am not regarded as a dancer, even by my own validation. But I am starting to realise that perhaps my educational path has taught me to be multi-faceted. Back then, as a child, I was not told I was only a writer. I was told I was good at many things. I was interested in many things. And that was OK. I did not need a job title, or a specific all inclusive focus. It was OK that sometimes I liked to learn about maps, and that other days I liked to draw.
As a child, I could never have known how this would shape me as a human being. I feel that I am starting to really recognise and establish the ethos I would like to carry through to Liberty's. And again, it comes back to themes of freedom.
Thanks to my throughly broke but stubbornly determined parents (in combination with a multitude of scholarships and bursary grants) I was given the vital opportunity to be educated at these two very unusual but very positively influential schools. I hope to do the very same, for many more learners. Whether they can count, or not. Whether they excel at dance, or not. Whether they need a place to be free, or need a place to find stability. This is what I dream of creating.
Until then I will keep finding corners of life to roll out a mat, and learn from. Until I can provide the spaces for the future visitors of Liberty's.
HV.
X
X