![\"Chuck](\"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Chuck-Sandy.jpg\")
<\/h3>\nAll this new stuff goes on top \/\u00a0<\/i>turn it over, turn it over \/ wait and water down \/ from the dark bottom \/ turn it inside out \/ let it spread through \/ Sift down even. \/ Watch it sprout. \/ A mind like compost.<\/i>\u00a0 \u2014 Gary Snyder<\/p>\n
Recently I\u2019ve been thinking about my teachers. I haven\u2019t been remembering. I\u2019ve been learning what they taught me, and learning in ways I never imagined I would. Ideas I heard more than thirty years ago rise from the bottom of my mind and combine with what I\u2019m learning now in new ways.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it\u2019s my age. I\u2019m 54 and so it\u2019s natural I should think back. Perhaps it\u2019s the year I\u2019ve lived through as I battled illness, resigned from the university where I\u2019d been a professor for almost 20 years, and helped launch iTDi. Who wouldn\u2019t reflect? Or perhaps it\u2019s the season, the darkening winter days when news could make the darkness darker. Whatever the reason, a lot\u2019s come together this year and made sense as I\u2019ve continued the undone business of becoming the teacher I believe myself to be and am becoming.<\/p>\n
One of the teachers who helped me on this journey is Winston Fuller. \u00a0Although it\u2019s been 35 years since I sat in his poetry workshops, I\u2019ve recently heard him saying: \u00a0\u201cAll teachers teach what they most need to learn<\/i>\u201d and \u201cit is only by letting go enough to trust ourselves and others that we finally learn who we are<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is why I talk and write and give so many presentations about motivation. That\u2019s what\u2019s been most challenging for me recently. Illness and university stress had gotten me so down that it became a long jump up from where I was to where I needed to be. It\u2019s because I needed to figure this out that I began my public conversations about motivation. This need led me to read widely, reflect on my current and past practices, and not only think about Winston Fuller, but to pull out a folder of my work at 21 that included a long typed comment in which Winston wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I read your work, I sometimes hear the voice of a guilty man accusing others of sin. We all do that of course. More often than not I find myself teaching in the evening what I have been telling myself in the morning. You might review your work with an eye to seeing how much of what you say to others amounts to a conversation with yourself. All serious people do this. What\u2019s needful to know is that you\u2019re doing it<\/i>\u201d.![\"photo\"](\"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/photo30.jpg\")
\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
All serious people do this? Winston meant me, and he meant me at 21. As I read his words again, I see him in class, pulling a chair close, looking the gathered students over with a twinkle in his eyes as he begins telling us what\u2019s on his mind. As he talked, he\u2019d weave the poetry we\u2019d written and were learning about into what was going on in his life, the lives of the people he loved, and our lives — as if there was no gap between the classroom and our lives \u2013 and of course there wasn\u2019t. He asked questions. He listened. He was entirely present as he talked repeatedly about soul making<\/i> — \u00a0by which he meant being a writer, a teacher, \u00a0and a person who takes life seriously even in the midst of a culture that does not.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must take our lives and the lives of others\u00a0<\/i>seriously,\u201d<\/i> Winston said.\u00a0 \u201cIf we do not do this for\u00a0<\/i>ourselves and others, who will?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
I realize now that Winston talked so much about soul-making<\/i> because this is what he was teaching himself.\u00a0 It is what I\u2019ve been doing myself this year. It\u2019s why I\u2019m telling you about it now.<\/p>\n
Recently I read an essay about how alienation, loneliness, and the lack of community just might be \u00a0the root cause of the horrifying world news we\u2019ve recently heard about. As I read that essay, I thought of that circle Winston Fuller built for us in his classes, and of the importance that community still holds for me.<\/p>\n
Then, I thought about the iTDi community we\u2019ve been building and the work these teachers do as soul-makers — forming a circle and learning together the steps we can take towards healing each other, our students, and this world.\u00a0This is what gives me hope on this day as my mind turns it all over and watches it rise up, sprout, and stretch out across the seas.<\/p>\n
A year ago I did not even know most of the people I am working with now, and yet we have formed this circle of hope that for me goes back to Winston\u2019s class, where we learned what I\u2019m learning now, what I will be continuing to learn, as I hear Winson\u2019s voice read the Charles Olson poem Maxiumus To Himself <\/i>that ends without conclusion with these lines:<\/p>\n
It is undone business<\/i><\/p>\n
I speak of, this morning,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
with the sea<\/i><\/p>\n
stretching out<\/i><\/p>\n
from my feet.<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Undone Business \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0— \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Chuck Sandy \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 All this new stuff goes on top \/\u00a0turn it over, turn it over \/ wait and water down \/ from the dark bottom \/ turn it inside out \/ let it spread … Continue reading What I learned in 2012 – Chuck<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-i-learned-in-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}