A Heart of Wisdom

This anthology explores life writing as a mode of educational inquiry, one where students and teachers may get a «heart of wisdom» as they struggle with the tensions and complexities of learning and teaching in challenging contemporary circumstances. Contributors write first-person creative non-fiction in a variety of life-writing genres, such as memoir, poetry, personal essay, and various blended genres. Four sections entitled Memory Work, Place Work, Curriculum Work, and Social Work explore the struggles and joys of pedagogy where relationships are at the heart of teaching and learning. The essays address questions such as: What critical moments in learning and teaching change lives? What stories need to be told? What questions ache to be asked?

«Provocative and lingering, this eloquent book of life writing explores the emotional geography of the heart with courage and grace. Writers share storied narratives of the living world to create a stunning text-riveting and evocative, artful and critical, lyrical and imaginative. Their language cuts to the core, exposing veins of memory, emotion, passion, imaginings, to illuminate the wholeness of lives that sits at the heart of wisdom. The editors creatively and skillfully weave texts into a four-stranded braid to craft a tapestry of life. Writing is re-territorialized as democracy through a juxtaposition of woven threads in a tangled entanglement of complexities. The text creates a new rapprochement of discourse, merging and blending of genres, exposing raw sinews of human feeling, empathy, suffering, and resilience. We do not simply dwell in these narrative stories; we are carried away on paths of wayfinding, witnessing, and wisdomseeking, to marvel at the intricate mysteries that compose our lives.» (Suzanne Thomas, Faculty of Education, University of Prince Edward Island)

«Provocative and lingering, this eloquent book of life writing explores the emotional geography of the heart with courage and grace. Writers share storied narratives of the living world to create a stunning text-riveting and evocative, artful and critical, lyrical and imaginative. Their language cuts to the core, exposing veins of memory, emotion, passion, imaginings, to illuminate the wholeness of lives that sits at the heart of wisdom. The editors creatively and skillfully weave texts into a four-stranded braid to craft a tapestry of life. Writing is re-territorialized as democracy through a juxtaposition of woven threads in a tangled entanglement of complexities. The text creates a new rapprochement of discourse, merging and blending of genres, exposing raw sinews of human feeling, empathy, suffering, and resilience. We do not simply dwell in these narrative stories; we are carried away on paths of wayfinding, witnessing, and wisdomseeking, to marvel at the intricate mysteries that compose our lives.» (Suzanne Thomas, Faculty of Education, University of Prince Edward Island)

Contents: Carl Leggo: Bread Crumbs: Finding My Way in Poetry – Leah C. Fowler: Unlearning Heartlessness, Restorative Education – Teresa Strong-Wilson: Old Narratives Break Apart – Wanda Hurren: Kissing Lessons – Rebecca Luce-Kapler: The Gravity Garden Bruce Hunter: Imagining Mothers: Re-Joyce – Celeste Snowber: Yarnnotes From a Wild Woman Who Loves to Knit – Candace P. Lewko: Encounters with Cracked and Broken Tongues – G. Scott MacLeod: After the War With Hannelore – N. Rochelle Yamagishi: Bereaved – Nané Ariadne Jordan: On the Esoterics of Thread – Erika Hasebe-Ludt/Anne Scholefield: Triumph Street Pedestrians – Veronica Gaylie: A Season for Less – Christi Kramer: Tutelaries of a Place We Came Into – Tasha Henry: Liminal Lessons From Two Islands and One Son – Ahava Shira: The Gates of Butterstone Farm – Lynn Thomas: Confessions of an English Teacher in Francophone Québec – Marguerite Leahy: Mzungu – Priscilla Settee: Travels Through Global Indigenity – Sheila Simpkins: Nigglings From Kurdistan – Hali Heavy Shield: Ókonokistsi – Cynthia Chambers: Spelling and Other Illiteracies – Phong Kuoch: Pedagogy of Papa – Christy Audet: Dezi Was a Drummer – Sean Wiebe: Curricular Fixations and Poetic Tactics – Janet Pletz: A Pedagogy of Hearing – Daniel Scott: So Far From Shore – Daniela Elza: The Shape of Questions – GW Rasberry: Professions of a Stay-at-Home Father and Writer – Margaret Louise Dobson: Conscious Awakening: From Impersonator to Loving Teacher – Avraham Cohen/Heesoon Bai: Minding What Matters: Relationship as Teacher – Heidi Clark: Teacher Burnout: Recovery From a Toxic Condition – Lisa Nucich: Haunting Children – Jackie Seidel: A Curriculum for Miracles – Anita Sinner: Finding Canada in the American Midwest: Life Writing as Public Discourse – Pat Palulis: Eavesdropping as Seductive Conversation – Bruce Hunter: Death of the Black Cat – Alexandra Fidyk: An Ethic of Humility – Hartej Gill: Fieldnotes of a Punjabi-Canadian Researcher – Pauline Sameshima/Yvette Dubel: Blood Trails – Lynn Fels: Each Moment, a Child of Duration – Susan Braley: Floodgates – Patti Fraser: Vampires and Oil Spills – Bruce Hunter: Towards a Definition of Pornography – Tasha Hubbard: Hard to Place – Denise Schellhase: A Social Study of the Double Helix – Vicki Kelly: A Métis Manifesto.