Finding Meaningful Clarity

This week's blog is about the difficulty of finding clarity and how that difficulty can demonstrate itself in different ways in our educational spaces. But before I get into any of that I want to pause and ask, how are you, really? I mean it, how are you, really? Because if you know me and the work and ideas I try to put out there and share, you know that I am not going to look for a trite "fine" because you feel that "how are you" has become just a way to say hello and when folk ask they are not really looking for the truth. But I am, mainly because well, how can you be fine right now? How can you really be fine if you are paying attention?

So I am not fine, and in fact I am so preoccupied with what is happening in the world right now that it is that feeling of sometimes scattered, sometimes anxiety, sometimes overwhelm, that led to the topic for today. Because it is really difficult to find clarity, or at least clarity in the way that can be personally meaningful right now.

And part of this is of course because the socio-political actions and distractions are there on purpose to exactly impact clarity. The systems of extraction always benefit when folk cannot connect in clear and meaningful ways. And this is something that everyone in educational spaces will feel, from the instructors, to the learners, to the staff. And it also demonstrates itself in the sort of high-speed pace that is built in to lesson and course design, a pace that doesn't allow for reflection, or slowing to find the clarity. So what can we do to help find some clarity in the heaviness right now in a way that supports inclusive pedagogy?

The first thing I will suggest is using the question "why is this so important to me?" And maybe you will have to do this a few times to get to the nugget of the why, but it is a really nice exercise to bring folk in the moment especially when that clarity is hard to find. Here's an example, if you want students to hand write a pop quiz, ask "why is this so important to me?" And maybe your answer is "because I worry they will use outside sources." And so then you ask yourself again "why is them not using outside sources so important to me?" And maybe your answer is "because I want to hear what they know about the topic without outside influence." And then repeat until you get to why it is that you think this is the singular way that such ideas can be shared, etc.

The more times and the more levels of why you can reflect on as an educator, or an administrator, the closer you may get to clarity. And this is also a great exercise for learners especially when discussing topics that may be difficult and there are differences of opinion in classrooms.

The other thing you can do is to embrace lists. I know that when I am looking for some clarity, having lists of to dos will allow me to decide what it is that I should be focusing on instead of trying to carry all of the ideas and thoughts simultaneously. I have a digital post note type thing on my computer desktop and I rearrange that list as the day and week goes on. I sometimes arrange it in terms of this week, next week, and future me. It also allows for a bigger picture view of all the asks you have and what maybe can be put off to later or hard conversations about why you can't do a thing you thought was doable 2 months ago. It is also nice to have different lists to help separate work life and home life. 

Another thing that can help with searching for meaningful clarity, is finding something of comfort. For me that is books, or fidgets, or good conversations with friends or colleagues. Comfort helps with clarity because etymologically clarity comes from brightness or radiance, and comfort as we have discussed in other blog posts is about urging or movement.  Comfort moves towards the radiance that can make our educational spaces meaningful.

I have discovered that I have this thing that I do when someone who is in academic spaces explains to me what is going on in their space, or a thing that they have been focusing on lately which is that I tend to create colon conference title type responses to summarize the conversation for me in a clearer way. For example, this blog came from thoughts and notes I wrote over the last week or so that can be summarized as The Importance of Clarity: The Effect of Anti-Intellectualism and Hustle Culture on Bodyminds. These little colon titles and thinking through what they could be, cause me to pause, and to find the nuggets that are important.

Because ultimately finding meaningful clarity or the difficulty to do so is an effect of immersion in surface-level distraction narratives and a privileging of a checkbox productivity hustle. We have a hard time deciding what is important in eduspace and outside of eduspace because the systems want us to believe it is all important simultaneously. And that isn't true. Sometimes what it takes is, have you had water? Have you had something to eat? If not do you have supports to help with getting something to eat? (This is where I encourage folk who have the capacity to do so to make soup and share it with your neighbours, community, and friends) Have you rested? If you haven't slept well in weeks or months, do you have space for naps? Remembering that sometimes that naps are deeply a non-negotiable for some bodyminds. So if you are feeling scattered, or having a hard time building paths forward in your growing list of responsibilities, talking about that lack of clarity is important, but also identifying why things are important, writing it out, as a list, a sketch note, an image, whatever is meaningful to you, supplemented by an object or space of comfort can help with the grounding and movement towards clarity. 

It is really hard right now, so it is completely understandable to feel torn in different directions. And it is important to remember that students are feeling equally torn. The world doesn't stop when they enter educational spaces, though some may be using eduspace as a pause for the heavy they may be carrying.  So even having opportunities and options in educational spaces to talk about being torn, and the need for more clarity. This can even show itself in the need for more clarity around assessment or task instructions. Avoiding acknowledgment of the presence of barriers to clarity, just perpetuates and pushes clarity further and learning opportunities are lost to the need to chase time to think and prioritize. It's okay to stop and to prioritize what you need, because it will probably make things a lot more clearer for you and for the folk you are interacting with.