How to approach my 'Areas of learning'.

After my Skype chat with Adesola about my AOLs I started gathering stories and memories. Before sending her my first draft, I felt very insecure: Am I accomplishing the task?  I'm not sure if I should continue with the writing while waiting for some feedback. Maybe I need to first read and understand the concept of reflective and experiential learning before continuing writing. In fact, should I have started reading before writing about my AOL? I did it all wrong. I start reading through some books and finally decide to start with "A handbook of reflective and experiential learning" from Jennifer A. Moon. Already on page 16 (The adoption of a general stance on learning: two views") I noticed two important things I want to share with you:

First, I very often seem to forget that learning is a process. Reading Jennifer A. Moon's ideas about the network view of learning, reminded me that it is okay to change my approach or understanding of something throughout the process. Consciously experiencing this very process will even help me expand my knowledge. So did I accomplish the task? I still don't know but I know that I have already learnt something from it.

Secondly, writing about my first AOL - 'Moving countries and adapting to different cultures and systems', I realised that there was something that I tried to say but I wasn't able to name it. Reading this chapter about the process of learning, I linked the concepts presented in this book with my own learning experience. Moving from one country to another, I accumulated different concepts and ideas. This accumulation made me change my understanding of different things (dance, education, communication, ...) and it encouraged me to pay more attention to some specific areas, choosing what it is that I want to further develop and learn. It also made me modify what I already knew or felt. So should I have first read some texts about reflection before starting to write? Maybe the answer is no. Doing it this way allowed me to learn through experience and it made me understand some concepts in depth.

So starting with some reading didn't, as I initially thought, 'add bricks to my wall' which would show me how to do things, but it made me experience that I am moving forwards but that I need more tools and a larger repertoire of terminology and different concepts to reflect on my learning.

Reflection as a starting point or: how to learn from experience.

‘Getting started’ is taking more time than I’ve imagined. Getting started with the MAPP and, at the same time, getting started as an independent dance teacher in different projects is exciting and overwhelming at the same time. I’m new to this programme, new to the professional world, new to some specific modes of thinking/ learning… Right now, ‘new’ seems to be my guideline, my companion. How do I introduce myself as a new teacher in my country to the community? What new work placements are there for me? How do I introduce a dance class to a community to which contemporary dance is new to? How do I make young students in secondary school engage in a creative process that is new to them? How do I teach dance in the context of informal education, a new thought? Every time I seem to have an answer to one of these many questions, a new one arises.

Last week’s Skype session intensified this feeling of not being able to cope with everything that is new to me, not being able to keep up. There were mostly module 2 or 3 people. The discussions focussed mainly on reflection, and surprisingly, reflection was new to me (even though after conscientiously reading through the handbooks, I noticed it isn’t as new to me as I thought, anyway). I felt disconnected and it was hard to follow the discussions. Everything seemed to be so abstract. Sometimes, someone referred to a project which concretised the subject a bit, for a few seconds, at least. I could not yet deliver a specific subject I wanted to be discussed during the chat session, so I just said what I was struggling with at that moment, which was mainly ‘how do I introduce something new to a community’. I was advised engaging in reflection (e.g.: ask myself what would make me go to a community dance class), which certainly was obvious to everyone else but me, and even so, it was very helpful. Helpful not necessary for this very issue but helpful to make me understand how we work in this programme. It made me suddenly understand what we were talking about for the last hour. It was an awkward introduction to a new way of thinking, working, creating, proceeding … but successful at the end.

Before questioning the process of reflection, thinking about different methods for reflection or how to reflect, tout court, I noticed that I first need to purposely experience the process of reflection in order to get started. Reading again the Introduction Handbook to Module One, it suddenly all makes sense. Using Reflection as a key tool for ‘Learning from experience’, but also as a starting point in order to approach new upcoming project.