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Defne Erdur Eligible Member // Teacher
IDOCs » Essence of Our Teaching - Introduction
This article is based on a practice proposed by Kerstin Kussmaul and facilitated by Defne Erdur in a “class” format at the first day and facilitated by Kerstin in another format the second day of the Vienna Local Teachers meeting. The aim of the practice was to create a brief yet intensive teaching, participating & observing experiences and facilitate teachers into a documentation practice, so that they could start utilizing idocde website as a tool. The overarching goal is actually to cogitate on our own teaching practice and elaborate on "our ways" of documenting (our practice/other's practice) and relating this documentation back to our own practice. Here, you can find Defne’s descriptions of the two days, her notes and evaluations on the different layers of the shared experience and references to other Vienna Local Workshop teachers' notes. For that matter this article, aims to serve as an introduction for all the other articles of the idoc file “Essence of Our Teaching”.
2012.08.07

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Proposition of Kerstin: Can we teach the essence of our teachings in 10 mins. and turn this experience into a score for starting documentation?!

Elaboration of Defne: It could also be a good tool to try and experience the different places of “teaching”, “participating”, “observing” and start documenting from these places.

Structure of Proposition (given below in detail as much as possible, so that any teacher group can go a head and go thru the process together and create their own idocs around this practice and contribute to the folder of “Essence of Our Teaching”) :

10 min receiving the task
- on the floor, relaxing into our breath and allowing thoughts and ideas to come, to our minds & bodies, on & around our own teaching. Imagining our selves in teaching situation, visualizing and reflecting on these moments and waiting/hoping for grasping the “essence” of it all. Letting the answer sink into our bodies to the question of “what is the essence of my teaching?”. Then considering sharing this information with others. How would you share this information if you were to share it via teaching it? Can you think of a class proposition that would take only 10 mins for sharing this essence with other teachers? Try to plan it in your mind, as you start moving gradually out of the space and go on moving with this idea. Find your way to the papers and pens to note it (document it) for your self as a preparatory for this class.

15 min planning and preparation
- individual reflection time on the thinking and embodiment process for turning this into a class description/proposition/idea.

5 min to choose 2 volunteers to propose their class idea  – in our case Matthew and Nici volunteered to teach. First group lead by Matthew: Defne (watching&taking notes*) and Sabina (sound recording*) as observers. Kerstin, Georg, Isabel participating. Second group lead by Nici: Kristen (video recording*) as observer. Laurent, Maria, Sylvia as participants.

10 min application
- dividing into 2 groups and diving in the exercise. (class descriptions and/or reflections can be found in the folder “Essence of Our Teaching” composed of the individual idocs of the teachers involved. It will be readers’ challenge and hopefully joy, to bring together all this different layers and individual readings around it and make sense of it all for their teaching.

10 min harvesting
- Everybody (teachers, participants, observers) find their way to papers and pens to reflect (drawing, writing, doing nothing…*) on the 10mins of shared class experience.

25 min verbal sharing as a whole group – The two groups come together and share “the essence of their reflections”. The time per person is 2 min and at the end of these 2 minutes each person comes up with a “key word” that defines this essence (the sharing in sound recorded*).

Key Concepts at the end of the first round of sharing (bold ones are the final decisions of the key teachers):

Matthew: Self evaluation, space for uncertainty, allowing negative critique from participants

Defne: Being drawn into, Well-rounded Demo of a class, i.e. Representation

Isabel: Different Modes

Kerstin: Comparison of my teaching to the teachers, Difference-familiarity

Sabina: Prioritizing information, Anatomy of action, Recording versus Participation

Georg: Awareness of skin, space for sensuality versus talking thru class (time and awareness)

Nici: Surprise, improvising teacher not necessarily sticking to the plan

Maria: Field of experience, different state of mind

Laurent: Traveling, Gravity, stability-instability

Syliva: Simultaneity of attention, unity, how to build instructions

Kristen: Present Time, Being drawn into

 


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