Transformational Education

Bat Stars

"Silently I sought and picked up a still-living star, spinning it far out into the waves.  I spoke once briefly, "I understand," I said. "Call me another thrower."  Only then I allowed myself to think, he is not alone any longer.  After us there will be others. . .  I picked and flung another star.  Perhaps far outward on the rim of space a genuine star was similarly seized and flung.  I could feel the movement in my body.  It was like a sowing -- the sowing of life on an infinitely gigantic scale.  I looked back across my shoulder.  Small and dark against the receding rainbow, the star thrower stooped and flung once more.  I never looked again.  The task we had assumed was too immense for gazing.  I flung and flung again while all about us roared the insatiable waters of death." 
-- excerpts from Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley

A friend of mine, Erik Mollenhauer, (from the Monarch Teacher Network) shared the story Star Thrower with me last summer, the above quote is a small section of that story.  I've read this story in its entirety a few times since and pondered on the message and the beauty in Eiseley's words.  It is a story of transformation.  The main character transforms, not by logic or through formal education . . . he transforms by walking a beach and observing a man throwing starfish into the sea.  He begins his journey "inhumanly stripped . . .without voice, without hope, wandering alone upon the shores of the world. . . devoid of pity, because pity implies hope. . ."  The story ends with a renewed love for life, . . "I would walk with the knowledge of the discontinuities of the unexpected universe.  I would walk knowing of the rift revealed by the thrower, a hint that there looms, inexplicable, in nature something above the role men give her.  I knew it from the man at the foot of the rainbow, the starfish thrower on the beaches of Costabel."

As teachers, we are called to be transformational.  It is a new buzz word with its own "Instructional Matrix."  I love this 'new' emphasis and perspective and maybe it's because I've always thought our vocation called us to be transformative in the lives of students and in the world.  What a privileged and noble calling. However, saying it and even trying to define transformation, doesn't make it happen. After years of struggle and often failure, here is what I think . . . transformation is really hard to capture in a definition or a pedagogy or a style. Transformation is emotional. It is taking knowledge and learning into the recesses of our emotions; into our hearts. Sometimes, it is as simple as kind words of encouragement or a smile shared with a student that can actually transform that student's outlook on school and learning.  Maybe, it is a teacher who sets high expectations for a student who never had anyone believe in him/her before. Perhaps it's a shared love for equations or books or science.  Sometimes it happens when you least expect it, like requiring a student to write a poem and transforming a reluctant writer into a poet.  I think that sometimes I was transformed by a teacher and didn't know it until years later. Transformation is, by definition, very personal and specific to the individual learner. It is illusive and yet so life-giving. I'm glad we are talking about transformational education, it really is a noble calling, but I hope we never package it up into a quantifiable and measurable object. That will never do.  We cannot strip it of its most important qualities...the human, subjective and emotional ties that pull us into a love for learning and a quest "too immense for gazing."

The Star Thrower story holds the beauty of transformation.  It is not about the science of it all, it's about "the discontinuities of an unexpected universe" and the love of it all.  "Call me another thrower...  [We are] not alone anymore.  After us there will be others."

Peace, Love and Transformation.