Directions of Growth: Methods of Design

Directions of Growth: Methods of Design Roxanne R. Reed John J. Cimino, Jr.

The Da Vinci “Node” • ."All our knowledge has its origins in our perception." • "Everything is connected to everything else." Leonardo Da Vinci

Perception • The Illusionist • Learning the world with this most excellent trickster • Experiencing it for ourselves, feeling and knowing it in our own bodies • Reflection

Corsons InletA. R. Ammons • A reading

The Call “Waking up to the enormity of the challenge and to the adequacy of our own generativity and genius, if we can but listen to and honor the calling moment by moment. Teaching is nothing less than the inner work of a lifetime, a love affair with life itself, both beyond subject and intimate with subject. Authentic teaching has to be an ongoing relational process, a process of exquisite and wide ranging attention refining teacher and student – the student in the teacher and the teacher in the student – in the flames of solitary and collective inquiry and in courageous commitment to seeing, knowing, sharing and belonging, in a word, to truth.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Call Come, my way, my truth, my life Such a way as gives us breath Such a truth as mends all strife Such a life as killeth death. Come, my light, my feast, my strength Such a light as shows a feast Such a feast as mends in length Such a strength as makes his guest. Come, my joy, my love, my heart Such a joy as none can move Such a love as none can part Such a heart as joys in love. George Herbert (text) R. Vaugn Williams (music)

The Courage To Teach • What is your own nature as a teacher? • What are your special gifts and preferred techniques? • Listening in to the conversation with our “inner teacher”: what’s going on? • Befriending ourselves… • Owning our fears: our own, our students’? • Generativity, honesty and staying in the game… • Paradoxes: the tensions, the rewards, the strategies? • Shifting levels, opening to something larger, love and suffering… • Living the questions and contradictions, living everything…

Ideas, Beliefs and Integrities • Ideas: concepts and notions which we use and, for the most part, also understand, in daily life.

Ideas → Beliefs Integrities • Ideas: concepts and notions which we use and, for the most part, also understand, in daily life. • Beliefs: ideas we hold close to us and declare to be true and important.

Ideas → Beliefs → Integrities • Ideas: concepts and notions which we use and, for the most part, also understand, in daily life. • Beliefs: ideas we hold close to us and declare to be true and important. • Integrities: ideas we hold so close to us, we are no longer consciously aware of them. They have become part of us. They are who we are. They are our integrities.

Ideas → Beliefs → Integrities • Ideas:concepts and notions which we use and, for the most part, also understand, in daily life. • Beliefs:ideas we hold close to us and declare to be true and important. • Integrities:ideas we hold so close to us, we are no longer consciously aware of them. They have become part of us. They are who we are. They are our integrities. Our personal growth is a movement toward integrity. We live, and only truly live, through our integrities.

Ideas, Beliefs and Integrities • “Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.” • “Dare to be naive.” R. Buckminster Fuller

Ideas, Beliefs and Integrities • “When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” • “Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it.” R. Buckminster Fuller

Ideas, Beliefs and Integrities • A lot of people think or believe or know they feel (experience) -- but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling (experiencing). Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel (experience). Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel (experience), you're nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. R. Buckminster Fuller

Ideas, Beliefs and Integrities • “Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.” • “We should stop kidding ourselves. We should let go of things that aren't true. It's always better with the truth.“ R. Buckminster Fuller

Architecture Quiz Answers • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe • Le Corbusier • Robert Venturi • Frank Lloyd Wright • Johann Wolgang von Goethe • Gustave Eiffel • (?)

An Activity • Raising the Bar • Lowering the Rod

When art works, play’s the thing • Serious play, deep play • Learning by Surprise • Indirect Transfer • Peripheral Learning • What we learn when we think we’re learning about something else or not learning at all… The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves. Carl Jung Life is the game that must be played… Edwin Arlington Robinson, Ballade by the Fire”

Thought Paths: A Review • Sequence matters • Logic • Layers • Lenses • Fireworks • Thought path legacies • Inducing Multiple paths

Exploration by induction: What common element or explanatory principle underlies all the items below? “What I Tell You Two Times Is True” John J. Cimino, Jr.

Research: Mental Processes and the Arts The Mind Processes of the Arts Elliott Eisner Aims and Objectives of Arts Education Elliott Eisner The Aesthetic Competencies of Leadership Center for Creative Leadership Human Universals Creative Leaps International Habits of Mind Costa and Kallick (ASCD) • Which arts-based mental processes do you identify with most? Which processes do you consider among your strengths? • Which other processes, not currently particular strengths for you, would you most wish to develop further? • Which processes do you feel are most essential or most advantageous in your particular field, i.e., most valuable for your students to develop?

Mind Processes of the Arts • Qualitative relationships in the absence of rules • Acting flexibly with purpose to approach a goal • Learning to explore possibilities within a medium • Using imagination to see multiple perspectives • Learning to pay attention to nuance • Surrendering to processes rather than leading • Learning to use language figuratively • Creating emotionally what cannot be expressed literally • The qualitative features of the arts and the world Eliot Eisner

Creative Competencies of Leadership • Noticing – slowing down, taking in more • Subtle representation – eye for detail & relationship • Fluid perspective - attuned to multiple points of view • Using R-mode – non-verbal, intuitive processing • Personalizing work – arts interests spill into work • Skeptical inquiry – preserving the questions • Serious play – learning and exploring without rules • Portraying paradoxes, conflicts, unknown – mystery • Facility with metaphor – generative thinking • Making shared meanings - engaging creative tensions Center for Creative Leadership

Arts-Based Human Universals • Engaging emotion as an integrator of deep learning • Capacity for “peripheral” learning, valuing periphery • Translating the universal as personal – seeing the personal in the universal • Working with multiple levels of meaning, different frames of reference and other logics • Creating affirmative thinking environments where something different feels possible: “learning fields” • Composing and transmitting “life” – a sense of self-authorship, recognizing we transmit who we are Creative Leaps International

To Think As Nature Thinks • Revisiting Corsons Inlet by A. R. Ammons • Life Processes, Connectivity and Change in Nature • Human Perception and Mind Processes • Order, Disorder and Design in Nature • Human Design, Vision and Architecture • Still around the looser, wider forces work… • Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity by Gregory Bateson • Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson

Ideas and Integrities • To understand the great complexity of life, to understand what the universe is doing, the first word to learn is synergy. Synergy is the behavior of whole systems, unpredicted by the behavior of their parts. Synergy holds our whole universe together. • Unity is plural and at minimum two. R. Buckminster Fuller

Design Assignment • Design a module of instruction from core content in your field (or from your envisioned new course material) enriched with interdisciplinary design elements and multiple, arts-based approaches to teaching and learning. Give free reign your creative intuitions, experiment at the boundaries of your comfort zones, and generate at least two iterations of your design reflecting alternate thought paths through your content. • Keep in mind a few of our basic design principles: “double description”; metaphors as bridges to new imagery and new thought paths; intersections of disciplines and cultures as hot spots for new thinking; arts experiences to engage emotion, imagination and the senses; be mindful of perception’s physiological thresholds for change – try to embed an aspect of the learning in the body’s own systems; optimize your strategy - use multiple metaphors/descriptions to trigger “depth” perspectives and a 3-D mental gestalt. • When you’ve completed a first draft, look for the resonances in your design, the thematic elements that recur at different levels and different scales (like architectural design elements). Decide if your design is “beautiful” and satisfying to your own inner teacher. (see quote by Bucky Fuller below) Are you playing to your authentic teaching strengths, your true identity and integrity as a teacher? • Lastly, check in with your personalized list of essential arts-based mental processes. Are at least a few of these key thought processes sufficiently embedded in the experience you’ve designed? Does it ring true as “deeply significant learning”?

Unless the eye catch fire the god will not be seen. Unless the ear catch fire the god will not be heard. Unless the tongue catch fire the god will not be named. Unless the heart catch fire the god will not be loved. Unless the mind catch fire the god will not be known.

Alternate Assignments • Use an art form to animate, deepen or broaden the exploration of a key idea in your specialty. • Choose a metaphor to illustrate or expand the essence of an idea from your specialty. Do it again with two other metaphors until you are satisfied (improvise a multi-dimensional gestalt). • Analyze the “Concert of Ideas” by Creative Leaps • Thought path analysis • Analysis for resonances in design • Catalogue Arts-based mental processes • Describe the art forms and modalities of communication • Engagement and Idea Content

Ideas and Integrities In our world, the arts are no longer some parallel experience you have along the way, but rather a powerful source of insight and transformation feeding directly into the thinking, feeling and acting of daily life – full of possibility, truth and optimism. In our world, music is never just music. It is revolutionary. It is the sound of ideas. John J. Cimino, Jr. Creative Leaps International

Directions of Growth: Methods of Design