Curriculum integration often appears complex and when this happens those who are involved with pr... more Curriculum integration often appears complex and when this happens those who are involved with providing professional development or teacher education may be inclined to promote simplistic or solution-oriented approaches to facilitate integration. Many variants of a problem-solution model exist, and programs that encourage teachers to identify a few difficulties and then strategize possible ways to remove those difficulties more than likely minimize the very benefits of an integrative program. In contrast to this, we propose a conceptualization of curriculum integration that is rhizomatic. Supporting and extending the research that integrative arts practices lead to imaginative, flexible, and embodied pedagogical praxis, a rhizomatic integration of the arts values complicated and disruptive possibilities that enliven the imagination toward more socially just ways of living and learning. Integration, when understood as rhizomatic, will enable teachers to better respond to the everyday multiplicity of surprises that are part of their ever-changing world.
In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretence in w... more In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretence in which we live. Telling the truth is powerful medicine. It is a fire that lights the way for others.
As poets, scholars, and educators, we are always seeking to understand our practices and commitme... more As poets, scholars, and educators, we are always seeking to understand our practices and commitments, our philosophies and desires, our motivations and hopes. We ask about how we spell love in order to know the spell of love as we learn how to live with heart and wisdom. We all need to attend to a curriculum of love. How do we conceive of the word? We need to view ourselves as generators of love. If we are able to love as teachers, there is a greater possibility that we will encourage students to live in love. We offer a wondering and wandering poetic and aesthetic performance of our ongoing theorizations and conversations on love, research, and pedagogy.
Fiction (with its etymological connections to the Latin fingere, to make) is a significant way fo... more Fiction (with its etymological connections to the Latin fingere, to make) is a significant way for researching and representing lived and living experiences. As fiction writers, poets, and education researchers, we promote connections between fictional knowing and inquiry in educational research. We need to compose and tell our stories as creative ways of growing in humanness. We need to question our understanding of who we are in the world. We need opportunities to consider other versions of identity. This is ultimately a pedagogic work, the work of growing in wisdom through education, learning, research, and writing. The real purpose of telling our stories is to tell them in ways that open up new possibilities for understanding and wisdom and transformation. So, our stories need to be told in creative ways that hold our attention, that call out to us, that startle us.
Relationship is not tangential to consciousness. Consciousness as we know it, including a capacit... more Relationship is not tangential to consciousness. Consciousness as we know it, including a capacity for learning, focus, self-reflection, the ability to speak, think, to contemplate, cannot develop without the presence of others. (Griffin, 1995, p. 69) Eventually I discovered that writing a meditation involves -certainly the mind, but also the heart, the body, the spirit. It's a quest, a quest of attending, and it unfolds on all those wave-lengths. And that's what I had to learn to do on the page. (Lee, 1995, p. 30)
In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretence in w... more In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretence in which we live. Telling the truth is powerful medicine. It is a fire that lights the way for others.
In this essay I offer a series of autobiographical ruminations and poems for inviting readers to ... more In this essay I offer a series of autobiographical ruminations and poems for inviting readers to reflect on poetic possibilities for conceiving and fostering the well‐being of teachers. As an educator, I am confronted daily with challenges. In order to sustain my spirit and energy, I turn to poetry, both reading and writing poetry, and I find in poetry a location of wisdom, sustenance and hope. One of my great concerns about teaching is that the demands are so relentless that even the most dedicated teachers often experience burnout, dissatisfaction, ...
I want to compose the lined and layered art of (a) life. I seek to know the circular, circulatory... more I want to compose the lined and layered art of (a) life. I seek to know the circular, circulatory, and curricular flowing of blood, life, and memory that constitutes the heart of the poet. To live well is to live rooted in the earth, energized by the heart, discerning with the heart. In my life writing I am learning to breathe with the heart's rhythms as I seek to disclose and know again my location situated in local geographical spaces that represent a location for locution in the bigger world. What I really want to promote in this paper is the notion that life writing is more than writing lines-I want to emphasize the energy of memory and emotion and spirit. Life writing is not so much about reviewing as previewing, not so much about looking back as looking forward. Life writing is about hope and seeking health.
Abstract I want to transform schooling by celebrating the desire of students and teachers, the de... more Abstract I want to transform schooling by celebrating the desire of students and teachers, the desire which is as natural to human beings as breathing, the desire that manifests its dynamic energy in the discursive practices of human be/com/ings. We are all born into language; we know ourselves and others in language; we word our worlds; we weave our worlds as we weave our words. Therefore, schooling must be centered on the discursive practices that constitute the people we are and are becoming as we dance with desire for ...
Your authentic voice is that authorial voice, which sets you apart from every living human being ... more Your authentic voice is that authorial voice, which sets you apart from every living human being despite the number of common or shared experiences you have with many others: it is not a copy of someone else's way of speaking or of perceiving the world. It is your way.(Stewart 2-3)
I will not tell you or sell you a line. As a punishment in elementary school, my teacher required... more I will not tell you or sell you a line. As a punishment in elementary school, my teacher required me to write lines, and for years, all my writing was linear, a composition of lines that began at the left edge of the page and marched with hypnotic fervour to the right edge of the page, a composition of lines that began at the top of the page and wound with galvanized zeal to the bottom of the page, a composition of lines that began at the beginning of the book and plodded with mesmerized devotion to the end of the book, a composition of lines that began at the beginning of September and snaked with soporific steadfastness to summer's respite. But in my linear writing I lived a lie, a fabrication tailored from a fabric of neat geometric lines angles corners planes founded on axioms theorems and precise measures of A poet stands before reality that is every day new, miraculously complex, inexhaustible, and tries to enclose as much of it as possible in words. (Milosz 56) All the questions I need to ask; the stories I have yet to hear. The heart's two chamberseverything I most desire, everything I most fear. (Keefer 291)
In my work with preservice teachers I face daily a dilemma. My student-teachers come to me with a... more In my work with preservice teachers I face daily a dilemma. My student-teachers come to me with an urgent practical agenda: What do I need to know in order to survive in the world of school? In effect they want me to tell them how to fit into a world that they assume is structured like a grammar, with traditions and conventions and rules and patterns. They are seeking ways to conform to the pedagogic world as it has been written, but I hope they will seek ways to transform the pedagogic world, always written and always in the process of being written. I hope my student-teachers will seek ways to write, actively and deliberately and imaginatively, the pedagogic world of students and teachers. I want them to learn to live un/grammatically, to challenge the ways in which the world has been written for them, to know that they are not only written by the world, but that they also write the world. I invite my students to write the unwritten sentences, the sentences that interrogate and subvert syntax and semantics, the sentences that create spaces where my students can live un/grammatically.
This study offers an arts-based a/r/tographic inquiry using poetic transcription and representati... more This study offers an arts-based a/r/tographic inquiry using poetic transcription and representation of interviews conducted with a co-educational group of 14 students in a West Vancouver, British Columbia secondary school rhythm and blues band class. The decision to translate and analyse the interview transcripts into the Japanese poetry form of haiku is rooted in research literature in education and other fields, primarily health and nursing studies. Those studies demonstrate the efficacy of the highly condensed haiku to transmit meaning in a synthesised and creative form. While music education has a body of scholarship on students' attitudes towards music and their music education, this kind of research has generally been presented in more traditional ways. Our contention here is that arts-based topics are complemented and illuminated when investigated through arts-based methods. As well, arts-based methods such as a/r/tography, offer multiple and complex perspectives of what the data 'means', thereby offering a welcome harmony of topic and method. This paper captures the depth and intensity of emotions, engagement and transformative affects that adolescents experience through music making Á music matters to young people.
Humankind has forever been attracted to poetry because of the musicality and poignancy it portray... more Humankind has forever been attracted to poetry because of the musicality and poignancy it portrays in the rhythms of its contracted form, and because of the mystery it suggests in the ambiguity it retains. So much can be said in so few words and in such compelling ways. Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an embodied response (Flanagan, 2007).
Abstract Our Terry Hermsen's Poetry of Place: Helping Students Write Their Worlds is a remarkable... more Abstract Our Terry Hermsen's Poetry of Place: Helping Students Write Their Worlds is a remarkable book—one of the most engaging and hopeful books about teaching poetry that I know. Hermsen offers: thoughtful discussions of practice informed by theory as well as theory informed by practice; a well-conceived and carefully conducted research project; creative lessons for enthusing lively encounters in classrooms; and, engaging poetry by both well-known writers and student writers. He offers an abundance of gifts, all in one book.
A doctoral student and his supervisor describe, conceptualize, and poeticize their mentoring proc... more A doctoral student and his supervisor describe, conceptualize, and poeticize their mentoring process. Questions related to the distinction between a human being and the role and process of mentoring are explored. The intersubjective and subjective dimensions of experience are explicated for the purposes of providing a living experience for the reader. The reader is invited to participate interactively with the text and with the authors.
Carl Leggo he first Newfoundlander to play in the NHL was Alex Faulkner, and one time I stood in ... more Carl Leggo he first Newfoundlander to play in the NHL was Alex Faulkner, and one time I stood in line, a long time, outside the CBC in Corner Brook, for his autograph, sure the Detroit Red Wings were the greatest hockey team that ever played, and when I told Nicholas how great Faulkner was, he nodded politely then last summer while bussing across Newfoundland from one coast to another, Nicholas read
The Social Fictions series emerges out of the arts-based research movement. The series includes f... more The Social Fictions series emerges out of the arts-based research movement. The series includes full-length fiction books that are informed by social research but written in a literary/artistic form (novels, plays, and short story collections). Believing there is much to learn through fiction, the series only includes works written entirely in the literary medium adapted.
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form ... more No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
Curriculum integration often appears complex and when this happens those who are involved with pr... more Curriculum integration often appears complex and when this happens those who are involved with providing professional development or teacher education may be inclined to promote simplistic or solution-oriented approaches to facilitate integration. Many variants of a problem-solution model exist, and programs that encourage teachers to identify a few difficulties and then strategize possible ways to remove those difficulties more than likely minimize the very benefits of an integrative program. In contrast to this, we propose a conceptualization of curriculum integration that is rhizomatic. Supporting and extending the research that integrative arts practices lead to imaginative, flexible, and embodied pedagogical praxis, a rhizomatic integration of the arts values complicated and disruptive possibilities that enliven the imagination toward more socially just ways of living and learning. Integration, when understood as rhizomatic, will enable teachers to better respond to the everyday multiplicity of surprises that are part of their ever-changing world.
In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretence in w... more In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretence in which we live. Telling the truth is powerful medicine. It is a fire that lights the way for others.
As poets, scholars, and educators, we are always seeking to understand our practices and commitme... more As poets, scholars, and educators, we are always seeking to understand our practices and commitments, our philosophies and desires, our motivations and hopes. We ask about how we spell love in order to know the spell of love as we learn how to live with heart and wisdom. We all need to attend to a curriculum of love. How do we conceive of the word? We need to view ourselves as generators of love. If we are able to love as teachers, there is a greater possibility that we will encourage students to live in love. We offer a wondering and wandering poetic and aesthetic performance of our ongoing theorizations and conversations on love, research, and pedagogy.
Fiction (with its etymological connections to the Latin fingere, to make) is a significant way fo... more Fiction (with its etymological connections to the Latin fingere, to make) is a significant way for researching and representing lived and living experiences. As fiction writers, poets, and education researchers, we promote connections between fictional knowing and inquiry in educational research. We need to compose and tell our stories as creative ways of growing in humanness. We need to question our understanding of who we are in the world. We need opportunities to consider other versions of identity. This is ultimately a pedagogic work, the work of growing in wisdom through education, learning, research, and writing. The real purpose of telling our stories is to tell them in ways that open up new possibilities for understanding and wisdom and transformation. So, our stories need to be told in creative ways that hold our attention, that call out to us, that startle us.
Relationship is not tangential to consciousness. Consciousness as we know it, including a capacit... more Relationship is not tangential to consciousness. Consciousness as we know it, including a capacity for learning, focus, self-reflection, the ability to speak, think, to contemplate, cannot develop without the presence of others. (Griffin, 1995, p. 69) Eventually I discovered that writing a meditation involves -certainly the mind, but also the heart, the body, the spirit. It's a quest, a quest of attending, and it unfolds on all those wave-lengths. And that's what I had to learn to do on the page. (Lee, 1995, p. 30)
In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretence in w... more In sharing these dark shards, I hope to encourage others to bite open the bullet of pretence in which we live. Telling the truth is powerful medicine. It is a fire that lights the way for others.
In this essay I offer a series of autobiographical ruminations and poems for inviting readers to ... more In this essay I offer a series of autobiographical ruminations and poems for inviting readers to reflect on poetic possibilities for conceiving and fostering the well‐being of teachers. As an educator, I am confronted daily with challenges. In order to sustain my spirit and energy, I turn to poetry, both reading and writing poetry, and I find in poetry a location of wisdom, sustenance and hope. One of my great concerns about teaching is that the demands are so relentless that even the most dedicated teachers often experience burnout, dissatisfaction, ...
I want to compose the lined and layered art of (a) life. I seek to know the circular, circulatory... more I want to compose the lined and layered art of (a) life. I seek to know the circular, circulatory, and curricular flowing of blood, life, and memory that constitutes the heart of the poet. To live well is to live rooted in the earth, energized by the heart, discerning with the heart. In my life writing I am learning to breathe with the heart's rhythms as I seek to disclose and know again my location situated in local geographical spaces that represent a location for locution in the bigger world. What I really want to promote in this paper is the notion that life writing is more than writing lines-I want to emphasize the energy of memory and emotion and spirit. Life writing is not so much about reviewing as previewing, not so much about looking back as looking forward. Life writing is about hope and seeking health.
Abstract I want to transform schooling by celebrating the desire of students and teachers, the de... more Abstract I want to transform schooling by celebrating the desire of students and teachers, the desire which is as natural to human beings as breathing, the desire that manifests its dynamic energy in the discursive practices of human be/com/ings. We are all born into language; we know ourselves and others in language; we word our worlds; we weave our worlds as we weave our words. Therefore, schooling must be centered on the discursive practices that constitute the people we are and are becoming as we dance with desire for ...
Your authentic voice is that authorial voice, which sets you apart from every living human being ... more Your authentic voice is that authorial voice, which sets you apart from every living human being despite the number of common or shared experiences you have with many others: it is not a copy of someone else's way of speaking or of perceiving the world. It is your way.(Stewart 2-3)
I will not tell you or sell you a line. As a punishment in elementary school, my teacher required... more I will not tell you or sell you a line. As a punishment in elementary school, my teacher required me to write lines, and for years, all my writing was linear, a composition of lines that began at the left edge of the page and marched with hypnotic fervour to the right edge of the page, a composition of lines that began at the top of the page and wound with galvanized zeal to the bottom of the page, a composition of lines that began at the beginning of the book and plodded with mesmerized devotion to the end of the book, a composition of lines that began at the beginning of September and snaked with soporific steadfastness to summer's respite. But in my linear writing I lived a lie, a fabrication tailored from a fabric of neat geometric lines angles corners planes founded on axioms theorems and precise measures of A poet stands before reality that is every day new, miraculously complex, inexhaustible, and tries to enclose as much of it as possible in words. (Milosz 56) All the questions I need to ask; the stories I have yet to hear. The heart's two chamberseverything I most desire, everything I most fear. (Keefer 291)
In my work with preservice teachers I face daily a dilemma. My student-teachers come to me with a... more In my work with preservice teachers I face daily a dilemma. My student-teachers come to me with an urgent practical agenda: What do I need to know in order to survive in the world of school? In effect they want me to tell them how to fit into a world that they assume is structured like a grammar, with traditions and conventions and rules and patterns. They are seeking ways to conform to the pedagogic world as it has been written, but I hope they will seek ways to transform the pedagogic world, always written and always in the process of being written. I hope my student-teachers will seek ways to write, actively and deliberately and imaginatively, the pedagogic world of students and teachers. I want them to learn to live un/grammatically, to challenge the ways in which the world has been written for them, to know that they are not only written by the world, but that they also write the world. I invite my students to write the unwritten sentences, the sentences that interrogate and subvert syntax and semantics, the sentences that create spaces where my students can live un/grammatically.
This study offers an arts-based a/r/tographic inquiry using poetic transcription and representati... more This study offers an arts-based a/r/tographic inquiry using poetic transcription and representation of interviews conducted with a co-educational group of 14 students in a West Vancouver, British Columbia secondary school rhythm and blues band class. The decision to translate and analyse the interview transcripts into the Japanese poetry form of haiku is rooted in research literature in education and other fields, primarily health and nursing studies. Those studies demonstrate the efficacy of the highly condensed haiku to transmit meaning in a synthesised and creative form. While music education has a body of scholarship on students' attitudes towards music and their music education, this kind of research has generally been presented in more traditional ways. Our contention here is that arts-based topics are complemented and illuminated when investigated through arts-based methods. As well, arts-based methods such as a/r/tography, offer multiple and complex perspectives of what the data 'means', thereby offering a welcome harmony of topic and method. This paper captures the depth and intensity of emotions, engagement and transformative affects that adolescents experience through music making Á music matters to young people.
Humankind has forever been attracted to poetry because of the musicality and poignancy it portray... more Humankind has forever been attracted to poetry because of the musicality and poignancy it portrays in the rhythms of its contracted form, and because of the mystery it suggests in the ambiguity it retains. So much can be said in so few words and in such compelling ways. Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an embodied response (Flanagan, 2007).
Abstract Our Terry Hermsen's Poetry of Place: Helping Students Write Their Worlds is a remarkable... more Abstract Our Terry Hermsen's Poetry of Place: Helping Students Write Their Worlds is a remarkable book—one of the most engaging and hopeful books about teaching poetry that I know. Hermsen offers: thoughtful discussions of practice informed by theory as well as theory informed by practice; a well-conceived and carefully conducted research project; creative lessons for enthusing lively encounters in classrooms; and, engaging poetry by both well-known writers and student writers. He offers an abundance of gifts, all in one book.
A doctoral student and his supervisor describe, conceptualize, and poeticize their mentoring proc... more A doctoral student and his supervisor describe, conceptualize, and poeticize their mentoring process. Questions related to the distinction between a human being and the role and process of mentoring are explored. The intersubjective and subjective dimensions of experience are explicated for the purposes of providing a living experience for the reader. The reader is invited to participate interactively with the text and with the authors.
Carl Leggo he first Newfoundlander to play in the NHL was Alex Faulkner, and one time I stood in ... more Carl Leggo he first Newfoundlander to play in the NHL was Alex Faulkner, and one time I stood in line, a long time, outside the CBC in Corner Brook, for his autograph, sure the Detroit Red Wings were the greatest hockey team that ever played, and when I told Nicholas how great Faulkner was, he nodded politely then last summer while bussing across Newfoundland from one coast to another, Nicholas read
The Social Fictions series emerges out of the arts-based research movement. The series includes f... more The Social Fictions series emerges out of the arts-based research movement. The series includes full-length fiction books that are informed by social research but written in a literary/artistic form (novels, plays, and short story collections). Believing there is much to learn through fiction, the series only includes works written entirely in the literary medium adapted.
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form ... more No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
From our familiarity with the Reggio Emilia literature concerned with listening to children, it m... more From our familiarity with the Reggio Emilia literature concerned with listening to children, it makes sense that we, as adults, also learn to attend to each other and honor an intercultural pedagogy of listening. In our collaborative and creative inquiry of composing and performing music and poetry, we have learned that we must listen carefully, not only to the words, but also to the images, rhythms, melodies, thoughts, and feelings that the words and music evoke. As we perform poetry and music together and as we listen to each other, complex layers of sound and meaning are evoked. Above all, we learn to attend to the liminal spaces that exist around, through, in-between, and within music and poetry. Our reference to liminal is inspired by the Greek root, limni (λίμνη; of or relating to a lake), and relates to the (s)p(l)ace that exists at the surface of a lake, the “mist and midst” that is neither lake nor air, but the consubstantiation of both to create something that is holistic and new. By engaging collaboratively, we learn to listen attentively to the intersections of music and poetry, and we learn how to shape our performative research in pedagogically innovative ways.
One of the challenges of working with poetry as lyrics is to write music with melodic, harmonic and formal integrity, while respecting the intent of the poet. Through our chapter and performances we hope to demonstrate how musicians and poets from contrasting cultural and ethnic backgrounds can create spaces for performative research. For us, aesthetic sensibilities brought us together and enabled us to traverse and, ultimately, transcend intercultural borders to create something that is intracultural. We are able to linger in a (s)p(l)ace (de Cosson, 2004) that emerges through the coalescence of music and poetry, to compose arts songs as research. As we perform, we learn more about our selves, our practices, and our notions of pedagogy. What emerges is a relational act of composition that lingers in that mist and midst where music and poetry merge to form song.
Thus, the purpose of this inquiry is to call forth a series of insights that are only possible through our intercultural collaboration, a coming together, a braiding of our intents and practices. Through the processes and products of our compositions, we seek to learn how arts song-based inquiry leads us to new understandings of autoethnography as pedagogy.
With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is ... more With the intention of disrupting and re-imagining traditional conference spaces, this article is a poetic compilation developed from a curriculum studies conference symposium that took place on a school bus. During the School Bus Symposium, in situ poetry writing and reading, song and storytelling occurred in response to open ended prompts and facilitation of creative activities. After the symposium, a call was issued to invite participants to submit any poetry or stories produced during, or inspired by the session. Consisting of 18 submissions including poetry, story, photography and creative essays, infused by curriculum theory and poetic inquiry, this collection offers an inclusive, reflective, reflexive, participatory, and experiential rendering where participants are living and journeying poetically. Emphasizing creative engagement with personal memories and the surrounding environment from the moving school bus, the authors collectively aimed to promote art education through imaginative approaches to curriculum studies, poetic inquiry and academic conferences.
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Papers by Carl Leggo
One of the challenges of working with poetry as lyrics is to write music with melodic, harmonic and formal integrity, while respecting the intent of the poet. Through our chapter and performances we hope to demonstrate how musicians and poets from contrasting cultural and ethnic backgrounds can create spaces for performative research. For us, aesthetic sensibilities brought us together and enabled us to traverse and, ultimately, transcend intercultural borders to create something that is intracultural. We are able to linger in a (s)p(l)ace (de Cosson, 2004) that emerges through the coalescence of music and poetry, to compose arts songs as research. As we perform, we learn more about our selves, our practices, and our notions of pedagogy. What emerges is a relational act of composition that lingers in that mist and midst where music and poetry merge to form song.
Thus, the purpose of this inquiry is to call forth a series of insights that are only possible through our intercultural collaboration, a coming together, a braiding of our intents and practices. Through the processes and products of our compositions, we seek to learn how arts song-based inquiry leads us to new understandings of autoethnography as pedagogy.
During the School Bus Symposium, in situ poetry writing and reading, song and storytelling occurred in response to open ended prompts and facilitation of creative activities. After the symposium, a call was issued to invite participants to submit any poetry or stories produced during, or inspired by the session. Consisting of 18 submissions including poetry, story, photography and creative essays, infused by curriculum theory and poetic inquiry, this collection offers an inclusive, reflective, reflexive, participatory, and experiential rendering where participants are living and journeying poetically. Emphasizing creative engagement with personal memories and the surrounding environment from the moving school bus, the authors collectively aimed to promote art education through imaginative approaches to curriculum studies, poetic inquiry and academic conferences.