eyes hear with many ears i feel with the hearts of familiar strangers i am weaving text
Exploring Storied Fragments of Experiences on Childhood Landscapes
The narratives we shape out of the materials of our lived lives must some- how take account of our original landscape if we are to be truly present to ourselves.
(Greene, 1995, p. 75)
In the narrative inquiries we each engaged in as we wrote proposals for doctoral research, we both explored ways in which our childhood landscapes shaped the stories we lived by as teachers (see, e.g., Huber in relation with Keats Whelan, 2001; Keats Whelan in relation with Huber, 2001). Figure 4.2 was composed from this earlier writing.
As we began to lay our earlier writing and, in particular, these newly composed fragments of our childhood experiences side by side, shifting, forward and back- ward, past and present (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), we became drawn toward understanding something more about the differences and similarities within and between our childhood landscapes. What first came forward in this inquiry were ways in which our earlier experiences were shaped by particular physical
Figure 4.2 Fragments of experiences lived on childhood landscapes
As each day drew to a close, our evening meals, whether they occurred in the fields or around our kitchen table, added another richness to how I experienced my girlhood within a rural landscape. When meals were eaten in one of the fields, my dad and neighbours with whom he was working, stopped their work. Leaving their equipment idling, the rhythms of their motors echoed toward us as we gathered together to eat. The memories I carry of these mealtime gatherings are those of listening to the stories circulated among neighbourhood people and my family members. Many of the stories shared in this communal space focused on earlier people who lived within our rural landscape and the ways they negotiated themselves and their livelihoods within the context of the land and surrounding community. Three of the storytellers who commonly gathered there were men who came to Northern Alberta having immigrated from England, Finland and Norway. Even though I had not yet been to any of these places, as I listened to the stories they shared, my mind painted clear images of these distant places. These stories, and the stories my family told and continued to tell as we gathered together, although never recorded in writing, stayed with me. They are stories inextricably linked to the particularities of my rural family and community landscape – stories told and shared that shaped my childhood stories to live by.
I am warmed by the memories of those lazy Sunday afternoons when my family; my two brothers, my sister, my parents, and I, would arrive home from church and sit down together in the living room to listen to our favourite records. My dad would often dance some silly Maritime jig and make us all break into laughter. I can still picture myself lying in the patches of sunlight that streamed through our large living room window onto the soft shag carpet. It was in the safety and comfort of this setting that I remember the sharing of stories taking place. Sundays became a day to ‘catch up’ on the week gone by, and to wonder out loud about what might lie ahead. The exchange of stories often centred around school as both my parents were teachers. School stories, shared by all, took on a place of importance in our home, and our family life moved to the rhythm of the school year. This rhythm carried naturally into our summer months, allowing our family time to travel together, the six of us crowded into our station wagon. With our sailboat, the Godolphin, trailing behind us, we headed out for adventure to the beaches and oceans of the east and west coasts of Canada. My childhood memories are filled with long ferry boat rides where my mother read our favourite books to us, the sound of ocean waves, the early morning call of the seagull, and with family stories shared within the closely knit quarters of our sailboat home on the sea.
landscapes. Yet while our attention could have remained focused solely on this aspect of our early lives, in trying to see past our stories in new ways (Greene, 1995) we began to see how they “reveal[ed] the inner life of a girl inventing herself— creating the foundation of self-hood and identity” (hooks, 1996, p. xi). We saw, for example, that the “web of memories” creating our understandings of relational identity was first shaped by particular relationships with people in our early lives (Silko, 1996, p. 43). Common markers that stood out for us as we traced these fragments of memory were the strong sense of belonging and of storytelling which we each remembered as qualities of our childhood experiences. We also saw that, for each of us, our childhood landscapes held a “special regard for telling and bringing together through the telling” (p. 58). In this way we realized that these early communal spaces, shaped through storytelling and connection with others, became roots of stories that we were each continuing to try to negotiate in our work alongside children and families and that we were presently trying to negotiate on a university landscape.
This process of childhood “rememory” (Greene, 1995) helped us become more thoughtful about why we felt so determined in our need to work in relation to compose one collaborative dissertation. These intersections between past and present, and within and between one another, were entanglements that helped us to see that trying to hang onto the negotiation of relational stories to live by was a matter of deep and real urgency; an urgency not only connected with wanting to be meaningfully engaged in doctoral study and research but also an urgent pushing against not falling into the more dominant institutional narrative of competition and working in isolation. We saw, as well, that in so many ways our conflict with this dominant narrative lived in the background of our initial desires and decisions to undertake doctoral studies.
Exploring Shifting Understandings of Our Relationship
Thinking about how we might show the temporality of our relationship over a previous ten-year period across shifting social and physical contexts, we recognized there was no one complete or unified story which could define our evolving selves and relationship. It was in this way that we became drawn toward trying to show something of our relationship across time and place through vignettes, fragments of storied memories which, like ourselves, have no definite borders: “fragments that never stop interacting while being complete in themselves” (Trinh, 1989, p. 143). Our use of regular and italic font was one way to show our individual tellings of our relationship. As we played with different ways of textually laying our stories alongside one another, the images and feelings we experienced deepened our awareness of the complexities of trying to compose relational stories to live by.
Home—Spring, 1995
I hear the back screen door opening and know that when Karen sees me standing at the kitchen sink, she will ask how my day was. Even though I try to control my voice, I am unable to. Becoming shakier with each word
I speak, my emotions spill forth as I wonder, “Am I going to spend the rest of my career feeling so alone? What’s wrong with me?” Karen does not back away from my frustration, but instead comes to stand beside me. Gently, she says, “You’re not alone, Janice. You have 24 children in your classroom who love you. You’re there for them.” Her words shape a space for me to share my story of a staff meeting that afternoon in which the conversation became increasingly focused on moving away from multi-age classroom groupings and toward grouping children according to ability as determined by stan- dardized achievement tests. Conversation with Karen helps me understand something more about why I feel so troubled, why I can’t let go of the passions that arose within me during the staff meeting. As Karen listens and responds, I am able to reshape my understanding of this afternoon, shifting from a sense of hopelessness toward a sense of insight.
Home—Fall, 1995
It has been a difficult day and I am weary and drained of emotion. I enter quietly through the back door and head down to my basement suite. I feel a need to be alone, to get my head around the events of the day. What do these parents expect of me? I can only give so much to them, to their children. My inner thoughts swallow me into greater despair. Finally, I drag my tired bones off the couch and climb the stairs in search of a glimmer of hope. I find Janice.“What’s wrong?” she asks, sensing my distress. I share with her my story—a troubling parent, a difficult child, my own inner struggle. She hears my words, receives them as they come, and offers back her own understanding. It is a space of comfort that brings me renewed hope to face the next day.
University—Winter, 1996
We have been here for two and a half months. This is not how I anticipated this journey. Why do so many people keep asking us about being seen together? What troubles them about our relationship, that they feel the need to tell stories away from our ears—stories about hearing only one voice— stories that label and define us as inseparably dependent? What do such comments mean, about us? About them? I sense a border building between Karen and me. Am I just imagining it? I wonder if Karen feels it too. Where is this coming from? Being connected with others is what drew me back to this university place . . . it is central to why I am here . . . I need to talk with Karen about how I am feeling . . . I need to hear how she is feeling.
University—Fall, 1996
My arrival at the university is filled with uncertainty. Did I make the right decision in coming to this place? My first weeks in my new surroundings leave me feeling isolated and dislocated. Single office cells, empty hallways. Where was my community? Where did I fit in? I shared my feelings with Janice. She knew, she felt it too. We decided it was important to shape a space for ourselves. It was a Sunday afternoon and Janice’s parents were in town.
We decided to make a day of it; even the dog came along. We headed over to the university with colored paper and treasures to decorate our new office space. We moved our desks side by side, a symbolic gesture of how we wanted to live in this place. We shaped a personal space for ourselves, a home base to ground us and to allow us to position ourselves in a way that made sense to us on this new landscape.
Home—Summer, 1994
I have not seen Karen for almost a month. It’s so good to be sitting here having tea. Our stories tell of the places, people, and things we’ve experienced over this summer break. I love to hear Karen’s stories of her sailing trips with her family. In her stories, I hear stories of myself and my family. Sometimes I need her to tell me one of her family stories so that I will feel closer to my family, who live quite far away from our city. Tonight, these stories lead us back to our shared work as teachers. We wonder what the year ahead will hold. We wonder about the children we will be working with. We begin to explore the possibilities for planning a year-long key idea together. Our excitement builds. “Imagine what we could create with our children,” we say. “Let’s explore a garden metaphor.”
University—Winter, 1997
Our collaborative work, planning for the experiences we shaped with children, was so rich and exciting. Do I really believe we will be able to achieve the same level of sharing at the university in our work together? It is our first collaborative working day we have set aside especially for us. Janice and I travel down the hallway on the sixth floor to a room that will provide us a private, uninterrupted working space. We come loaded down with books, transcripts, reflections, observations, and questions. We spread them out across the table and begin. As I sit in this space I am reminded of our many cooperative planning sessions which took place around the kitchen table. I am filled with a warm and familiar feeling as we share our talk and wonder, our laughter and thoughtful silences. Yes, we have managed to carry this space with us.
School—Summer, 1992
It is a late June afternoon, the last day of our school year together. Janice sits beside me on the sun-warmed cement encircling the playground. We watch and listen as the children, whose lives have been so intimately interwoven with our own, laugh and play around us in the sand and the sun. I glance over at Janice and wonder what she is thinking as she sits beside me in her quiet stillness. Is she too thinking about the many conversations we had, thoughtful reflections which took us to different levels in our understanding of this group of children and of each other? Perhaps she is remembering back to our shared moments in the classroom and the connections we were able to make together. I want to reach out to her and reassure her that this is not the end, that there is no need for sadness. Yet I too am filled with an
overwhelming feeling that something very precious, very different, is coming to a close.
School—Summer, 1992
There was no need for words. Sitting beside Karen, I could feel that our relationship would continue in so many ways. Inwardly, I knew that our year- long inquiry around children’s voices in curriculum making and assessment helped me to retell stories of my early teaching years where standardized achievement tests and curriculum left me feeling uncertain and deeply troubled. I knew that our thoughtfulness about children’s voices and how our knowing as teachers is tightly intermingled with children, would forever live in me as I continued to teach.
University—Winter, 1994
We have been invited to talk about our collaborative relationship as M.Ed. students and as teachers at a research symposium at the university. We gather in a small classroom with the desks formed into a circle for conversation. There are professors and researchers all around us. I feel nervous and some- what intimidated in this foreign place, but I want to speak well for Janice as this is her community. I want these people to understand as we have come to understand. I want to provide insight inside our experience. When it is my turn to speak, I am caught by my emotions, which well up from somewhere deep inside. I find it difficult to bring words to the experience. We were teacher and researcher, researcher and teacher, living side by side, shifting places. I look out at the people who surround me in this institution of higher learning; some look skeptical, some nod with understanding, others appear disinterested. I turn to Janice. In her eyes I see recognition. We have lived this research relationship together, it is a part of us now. It fills me with strength.
As we initially wrote these stories of our experiences, it felt natural and comfortable to allow those memories which called to us to come to the foreground. As we shared our written stories back and forth we felt a strong desire to respond to one another’s stories. As Royster (1996) described,“individual stories placed one against another against another build credibility and offer . . . a litany of evidence from which a call for transformation in theory and practice might rightfully begin. . . . [Our] stories in the company of others demand thoughtful response” (p. 30). Becoming attentive to the necessity of this response, to the stories we told of our- selves, the stories of self others shared with us, and the transformative process experienced through the telling and retelling of stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 1998), brought us to another edge—a space to inquire into the shifting stories of our relationship. By creating our text in this way, we wanted to show something of how relational “i” storylines were woven into the relationships we negotiated as friends, teachers who engaged in long-term collaborative planning, co-researchers and co-teachers in a shared classroom place—living within shifting places of home and work.
Yet while inquiring into these stories helped to illuminate our shifting under- standings and living out of relational stories to live by, it also drew us toward inquiring into stories of our relationship which were harder to tell. Reflecting on these harder-to-tell stories invited us into another terrain of possibility and meaning making. For example, not so long before beginning doctoral studies we storied our relationship as something we had difficulty explaining and which we felt others had difficulty understanding (Whelan & Huber, 1994). At that time, the metaphor we drew upon to try to describe our relationship was one of living inside “a glass-encased world.”
Engaged as we were in the midst of inquiring with teachers and principals into their evolving stories to live by, as we reread the paper in which we drew on a metaphor of living inside a glass-encased world, we wondered how this metaphor might connect with the many wonders shaping our present inquiry. As shown in Figure 4.3, this metaphor posed an important dilemma for us—it left us in a position of looking out and trying to explain in words and images what we knew we had discovered in a relational way. But it also left us feeling as though others might see us as closed off and separate from them. We did not want our relationship to be viewed as something uniquely exclusive. As Trinh (1989) had taught us, to encourage such thinking would only contribute to the ideology of “specialness” we were trying to dispel. In this way, specialness created an identity enclosure,“a division—between I-who-have-made-it and You-who-cannot-make- it” (Trinh, 1989, p. 86).
As we continued to inquire into the metaphor of living inside a glass-encased world, the tensions we experienced with our former use of this metaphor opened up new inquiry possibilities. We realized that, from each of our beginnings, our valuing of relational stories to live by had been enclosed within a more domi- nant narrative which valued individuality, self-reliance, and independence.
We find it difficult to share in words the way in which this journey has occurred. As we tried to share this process, we thought of those small, glass-encased winter scenes we shook as children and watched in wonderment, pondering