I've still been processing the last session of Interpersonal (COM118) and decided to go ahead and post in the class blog. Will be interesting to see if anyone actually keeps up with it....posts did at least 48 hours after the class officially ended. :-)
group dynamics: January 2004 Archives
Well, I was a bit aimless after the last session of COM118 yesterday. What a terrific bunch of people and what great work we did. :-) Really good timing for me too, balancing out some of the other drama in my life. We held an "award ceremony" yesterday and I received the Best Mullet, Teacher, Organizer, Energizer and Laugh Awards. We did have fun! Here's the CODA for the Class Poem - based on Muriel Rukeyser's "Effort at Speech between Two People".
Note: someone translated this into Romanian!
"The calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us....
"We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves in the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world..."
---Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 4, 1967, in Riverside Church, New York city
Courtesy of Tom Atlee.
Hannah came in to wake me up Thursday morning and plopped herself on the bed, telling me about the day before. I started tickling her toes and she stopped talking and sat stone-faced...I kept tickling and she didn't blink! Finally, I said, "Don't smile!" and she cracked up. I told her that yesterday I'd had to "not smile" for an entire hour. Why? For my class, because it helps people learn how to be confident in themselves when someone isn't always trying to be friendly and make things nice. She said, "You're good at that."
Of course, I had to jump out of bed and chase her. :-)
My students might agree. We had our last communication lab yesterday and some of my "consultations" were along the lines of how they seemed to be in flight from emotions. When they didn't pick up on this, but instead starting to do more and more out-loud thinking, I said, "Run faster!" One of the guys said, "You're relentless" and I laughed. OOPS!
Anyway, they have done a tremendous job and I am very proud of them. They've been posting homework assignments twice a week on their own class blog. Impressive!
