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"Man must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and
the morally good.... These precious things are conveyed
through personal contact with those who teach and not -
or at least not in the main - through text books. It is
this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture."
-
Albert Einstein
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Rousing Intuition
No approach to teaching, however brilliant or effective,
will ever be more important than the individual teacher's ability
to hear and act upon his own intuition. It is intuition that must
guide the teacher's moment-to-moment work so that it is a creative
and genuine response to the needs of his students. Without intuition
and the teacher's genuine connection to his work, any and all approaches
become dogma.
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In this course, which is the cornerstone of the Enki
approach, participants will be introduced to observation techniques
and artistic and meditative disciplines that can be used to develop
direct perception of the child. These disciplines take us from
the realm of concepts and ideas into our own direct experience
of the child's world - and our own.
Through stories, visual and movement arts, and conceptual study, we will explore
some of the ways people have described human nature and the learning process.
These include work with the Buddha Families, the Temperaments and Sensory Learning
Styles. Participants will be introduced to ways to use these descriptions to
uncover further questions, deepen perception and spark their own insight. The
tools introduced during this workshop are practiced on a regular basis throughout
both summer intensives.
Leap Before You Look
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like but you will have to leap. - W.H. Auden
The cornerstone of the Enki approach is experiential education. This can mean
many things to many people. For us it means that all learning begins with jumping
into direct experience. To do this, we must rediscover and cultivate the openness
of the young child, who is imprinted by experience like the wet sand yielding
to each footstep. His experience is not blocked by emotion, opinion, or judgment.
For adults, who have learned to step back, weigh, and judge before leaping into
unknown territory, this journey into the world of the young child
is a journey into a strange and foreign land.
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This is not
a matter of believing, liking, or agreeing with the experience being
offered; quite the opposite. It is a matter of each participant
having his own direct and intimate experience from which will arise
a full array of emotions, opinions, and understandings.
When we start with open experience as our base, all of these reactions are
expressions of the participant's own wisdom and perception. He has been left
free to have direct experience uncolored by the expectations, intentions, or
understanding of others. His experience - and the conclusions he draws from
it - is his own. For both child and adult, this is the core of experiential learning.
And it is becoming at home in this learning process that is the all important skill for the teacher.
Work with the full learning process is the ground of all courses in the summer intensive. Participants begin
the process of "leaping in" through work with mindfulness meditation. We join together in the
simple, non-sectarian meditation practice of bringing attention to the breath on a regular basis.
Applying the attitude learned through this, participants work with movement,
speech, recorder, painting, and academic study as opportunities to explore their own learning process while developing technical skills and deep understanding of the child and the curriculum.
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