"To teach is to bring our questions to others, to share as teacher and as students in this process of thinking about who we are on the Earth." - Rebecca A. Martusewicz, “Say Me to Me: Desire and Education”*
Education is never a neutral endeavor. The classroom is an environment where teachers and students bring hopes, fears, and unconscious fantasies about what it means to learn. Teaching requires a love of one’s subject matter and a willingness to understand the disruptive nature of learning, for teacher and student. The multi-layered dimension of teaching requires an attentiveness to the teacher/student dyad and unconscious process as it unfolds in a classroom.
This course will include classroom experience where we read and explore what it means to provoke learning.
Topics to be explored:
- Why teach?
- What constitutes a “mistake” in teaching?
- How do you engage a resistant learner?
- What ways do you encounter and work with negative and positive transferences in the classroom?
- Difference as an ethical encounter
- How can you engage unconscious process to enhance learning?
- How can teachers listen to what is not being said?
Instructor: Rachel Newcombe, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst and supervisor on Orcas Island, WA. She co-leads a writing collective of fellow therapists who share an interest in exploring ways creative non-fiction can be an aspect of professional writing. Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, The Psychoanalytic Review, Fort/Da, Rumpus, 7X7LA, and elsewhere.