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    Full STEAM Ahead

    I recently had the opportunity to write about the importance of adding art into STEM curricula in higher education. In acronyms, this topic is understood as the move from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math). I'm sharing my thoughts on this blog in order to make my language available to anyone who finds themselves in need of advocating for the arts in education.

    The STEM to STEAM movement, championed by the Rhode Island School of Design and many institutions around the country, advocates for the necessary inclusion of Art and Design in curricula dedicated primarily to science, technology, engineering, and math. The resources and case studies compiled by these advocates demonstrate how exposure to the arts leads to more STEM patents, cultivates creativity in the design thinking behind today’s technology, and helps students from underrepresented cultural groups find footholds in the fields of science and engineering. I agree with all these findings and count myself among the STEM to STEAM advocates, but I also see a bigger reason for institutions of higher education to support and grow its arts offerings.

    Adding the “A” to STEM does more than expand the minds of students and professionals. Art, and the Humanities more broadly, help to enhance STEM students’ awareness of the ethical complexities they will face in their careers after college. Pointing to the proliferation of algorithmic software applications, biotechnological advances in the treatment of fatal diseases, and technological solutions to the problem of climate change, Richard Lachman of Ryerson University argues that STEM students need arts education and exposure to the fine arts precisely in order to conceptualize the human lives affected by the technology they will help to build. Computer user interfaces, medical interventions, and renewable energy, he argues, aren’t fundamentally problems of technology. They are, rather, ethical problems that require the flexible and creative kind of ingenuity stimulated by artistic thinking. The arts, not the sciences, provide this ethical dimension and thus arts education in primary, secondary, and higher education must be a necessary component of twenty-first century education in the United States.

    By teaching individuals about empathy, the nuances of interpersonal communication, and the stories too often forgotten by dominant historical narratives, the arts and arts-based education prepare students to participate in the larger socio-political questions surrounding the big issues of our times. I argue that educational institutions that foreground their offerings in science, technology, engineering, and math education have a responsibility to engage in and with the arts for the simple reason that without it the degrees being offered are entirely incomplete. To provide a college degree that is more than a slip of paper, colleges must create the conditions for on-campus experiences that challenge students to think about the local and global worlds in which they take part. That is, if arts education leads students to engage in the ethical dimension of STEM applications, then universities have an ethical imperative for supporting the arts on their campuses.

    I do, however, recognize the challenges in implementing the vision that I am elaborating here.  One reason that colleges and universities have a hard time fully understanding the ethical impact of arts education is that artistic thinking focuses not primarily on results but on process. The qualitative value of art making, furthermore, is extremely hard to measure, and thus the quantitative proof of art’s impact on STEM students is difficult to see in the short term. I believe, nonetheless, that the road to achieving the ethical enrichment sought by STEAM advocates such as Lachman and myself begins with a shift in perspective, one that touts process, play, and experimentation as much as concrete and easily repeatable learning outcomes. Universities will need to hire administrators with backgrounds in the arts and in arts education capable of translating the language of art-making into terms that all faculty and students at the university can understand. Likewise, I think that universities would do well to promote faculty members into administrative positions so as to promote unity among all university employees as the institution as a whole moves forward with large-scale projects such as those in the areas of art outreach and engagement.

    ​While it might seem that STEAM curricula should first arise at the primary and secondary education levels in order to create a foundation for the type of change advocated by arts activists and educators like myself, I actually believe that colleges and universities should take the lead role. By demonstrating that the arts and the sciences can collaborate together in the transformative education of our nation’s young adults, universities will send the message that similar curricula are needed at the earlier stages of learning.
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    Ritual and Everyday Life

    I recently came upon this video that I made a few years ago for former students of mine who were putting together a devised theatre piece. I was asked to make "something about ritual," and so that's precisely what I did. 
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    “DEAD RECKONING”: FINDING ONE’S WAY AMID LIFE’S CHALLENGES

    One of our primary offerings at Inviting Abundance is something we call “wayfinding.” In its most general sense, wayfinding is the system by which all living beings orientate themselves in space and navigate their surroundings. When linked to the processes of grieving and education, wayfinding names the methods we use to thrive amid life’s challenges, from living with the death of loved ones to encountering the bewildering complexity of being human. In this post, I (Will) want to analyze and reflect upon a strange phrase that first drew me to the concept of wayfinding. This phrase is “dead reckoning.”

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    ​In order to live and thrive while grieving for the deaths of my son, father, stepfather, and friends, I have to reckon with death: How do these people’s deaths affect my ability to navigate through the social world? How do their deaths change my relation to life, generally? Is death really an end, or is it more like a threshold that opens onto a new beginning? By asking these philosophical questions, I feel that I am arranging the deaths of my family members into an order, one that acts like a trail capable of leading me in a specific direction. Here, the histories of the word “reckon” come into view: “to explain, relate, recount, arrange in order” as well as “to settle accounts.” Dead reckoning is a helpful term to know when facing life’s ultimate limit.
    The term, however, is more common in the world of nautical navigation. Historically, sailors would determine their current position by calculating their previous position (such as port of embarkation) and their ships’ speed over a specific duration. With the knowledge of their current location, sailors could then adjust their heading and navigate around known obstacles. The process of finding one’s location at sea was called dead reckoning.
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    As a philosopher, I’m drawn to the function of the “present position” in this nautical wayfinding practice. Sailors and grievers alike need to understand their present place in order to know where they’re going. But knowledge of “where one is” comes about only after making some analytical/mathematical calculations. We can’t know where we are unless we know where we’ve been and where we want to go. On the sea, past and future position is a matter of course; on the open seas of grief, by distinction, past and future locations aren’t so easy to ascertain, and thus knowledge of “where one is” in the world requires more intuitive calculations. Applied to the more philosophical kind of wayfinding, dead reckoning becomes a useful but extraordinarily difficult process for healing.
    In this task of healing, we come upon a specific dimension of the word “dead”: “of water, ‘still, standing,’ from Proto-Germanic *daudaz.” Grief drops us in the still waters of the deep ocean of the soul. Without wind or current, these waters keep us in place and force us to comprehend the depth and expanse of the waters in which we are floating. I think of this dead water as the doldrums, a word that surfaces in Book IV of Homer’s Odyssey and refers to windless ocean travel, the worst kind of situation for a sailor trying to make his way home. The only way to summon the wind is to make an offering to the right spirit (Proteus) and/or god (Poseidon). Without faith in such spirits, people are left to float until chance intervenes. Even with faith and certainty in the spirit world, helping hands from beyond arrive on their own schedule, and waiting for help can be just as painful as the original traumatic experience that left us stranded in the first place.
    But in that still water where no wind blows, an opportunity also presents itself. It is there that we have cause to think and talk to ourselves. The gnawing boredom we feel during the incessant waiting amid grief actually sparks the imagination and forces a necessary encounter with the self. Nietzsche referred to this “boredom” as “that disagreeable ‘lull’ of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds.” It is a disposition common among artists who actually need this boredom brought on by still waters in order to ruminate, connive, and create. Most importantly, the doldrums bring about a stillness of soul that helps us individually to reckon with ourselves, as if to say, “Ok. Fine. What is this all about then? What am I doing here? What is here?”
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    Philosophical wayfinding starts “here,” in the dead reckoning compelled by the trials of grief and sorrow. This “here” is also the “now” that Buddhists speak of when challenging us to remain present. Pema Chödrön helpfully reminds us that there is no escape from this now because there is nothing other than right now. The wisdom of no escape leads to sharper vision of one’s current circumstance, and it is this vision that Joanne and I have discovered over the last several years. We now see in the present moment a faint channel leading off to the horizon, and we set our compass to its heading everyday. Our son Finlay acts as our guide to keep us on course. We think of him as our wind spirit who fills our sails. The agony of impatience and the length of the journey still lead to despair and moments of anguish, but we know we’re not lost. We are, to the contrary, on the path to what we call “living grieving,” which is a mode of living life open to the elements, receptive to whomever we meet along the journey, and directed by the strengths we’ve honed over our many years on this planet.
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    ​HOLDING SPACE & SITTING WITH GRIEF

    Written by Joanne Zerdy for Inviting Abundance

    I (Joanne) attended a 6-hour training workshop on the topic of Holding Space for Pregnancy Loss, specifically intended for those who support women and couples during pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and in the aftermath of pregnancy loss and infant death. Amy Wright Glenn, founder of the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death and a former doula and hospital chaplain, led the workshop. Amy brought with her a great deal of compassionate attention to both the ideas and case studies that we discussed and to the bodies and experiences of the 14 women in the room.

    On a beautiful Saturday morning we met in the home of a workshop attendee (herself a palliative care doctor) and dove into the material. Deeply impacted by the influential work of Dr. Alan D. Wolfelt, Amy brought our focus to three main related areas of discussion: companioning the bereaved, strengthening support networks, and the place/purpose of ritual. To me, undergirding all of this material was the issue and process of meaning-making. How, for example, does a mother make meaning of the death of her child and integrate this loss into daily life? In what ways can a parent generate a meaningful relationship with his deceased child that will help to sustain him in the coming days, weeks, and years? How does a ritual provide a physical space and/or activity to mark the ongoing influence of and attention to those who have left this world, and how do we impart such rituals with meaning? What does it mean to be a care-giver or support person? What meaningful (i.e. effective and purposeful) support structures can we build and maintain to meet and assist a bereaved person at various times during her grief journey?

    For those unfamiliar with Wolfelt’s work, I encourage you to visit the website for the Center for Loss and Life Transition, an organization that he founded and directs. Wolfelt has been doing important work with those who are bereaved and with those who work with those who are mourning. The website contains many helpful resources as well as Wolfelt’s authored & co-authored books, aimed at varied audiences.

    It is unfortunate – if not surprising – that, for the most part, medical discourse (and those who operate within it) continues to view grief as either some kind of illness/pathological condition to be fixed or cured OR as something to be passed through according to defined (neat & tidy) stages and timelines. Those of us who identify as bereaved know on an intimate level that grief can move in many directions at once, surging forth and quieting down, bringing up contradictory emotions, reintroducing memories or fears, circling around repeated narratives or anxieties, and so on, again and again. Many counselors and grief educators know this, of course, and it is useful to remind ourselves of those doing the vital work of challenging and changing institutional language and behaviors from within, say, medical and legal systems as well as those operating outside of such parameters. Jizo Statues. Jizo is a bodhisattva who helps to shepherd children to the spirit world.


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    ​In her book, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore – founder of the MISS Foundation, researcher, and bereaved mother – relays stories from her work as an educator and counselor alongside accounts of her personal journey of grieving her daughter Cheyenne. As with Wolfelt’s and Glenn’s work, Cacciatore’s writing underscores the multi-dimensionality of grief and its many contours that change shape and intensity over time. Her discussion of “the practice of being with” resonates with Wolfelt’s “companioning” in terms of the bereaved accompanying (sitting, walking, talking with) her emotions & thoughts as the grief ebbs and flows. Cacciatore too believes in the power of ritual and “microritual” to help us remember and, indeed, enact our ongoing love for our loved ones who have died. One such ritual that has traveled from Japan to the United States is mizuko kuyo, which stars Jizo, a helpful bodhisattva in Japanese Mahayana Buddhism who acts as a guardian and guide for children who have died before their parents. In our workshop, we briefly reflected on how we might begin to create communal grief rituals that align with our specific populations and belief systems. Garden of Hope & Healing at Hatcher Garden in Spartanburg, SC. Friends of ours made a donation in Finlay's memory to Hatcher Garden, so it's a special place for us.

    Undoubtedly influenced by her work as a Zen priest, Cacciatore sees grief as an ongoing invitation to learn, to grow, and to open into a more conscious and conscientious way of living. She writes, “Those who have deeply suffered understand life in ways others cannot: they know the only way to attain authentic and lasting contentment is to turn their hearts outward in service to those who are suffering as we have suffered. I am present with life because I am present with death. I know joy and peace because I am present with grief and suffering” (176-177).

    The women who took part in Amy Wright Glenn’s workshop – doulas, nurses, midwives, counselors, and facilitators – are all clearly committed to providing support and comfort to those who grieve and to those who are dying. In her own way, each is answering a call to serve. Some are mothers to living children; some (like me) parent both living and dead children; and some may have no child of her own yet she comforts or teaches like a mother. The ever-growing circle of mothers and fathers who are grieving for their children require an equally growing number of compassionate, patient, skillful, and resourceful care givers if we are – as a society – to find healthy and heartful ways of overcoming the alienation that can result from death, dying, and grieving. In actively participating in this dynamic network of love and compassion, we act as meaning-makers in holding space for healing individual sorrow and suffering as well as for processing communal and societal grief.

    ​This is the kind of work that Inviting Abundance cares about deeply. As grieving parents and as educators, we feel the need to help those who are suffering to find ways to develop a sustaining and sustainable grief practice and to navigate obstacles to emotional wellbeing in society. 
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    "Pedagogy": What's in a word?

    [Click here for pronunciation of “pedagogy”]

    In preparation for launching Inviting Abundance, we asked friends to test our website and offer feedback on the language we used to present our services. Two of these friends commented that they had to look up the word “pedagogy,” and, because of that feedback, we decided to swap out that word for “education” or “teaching” wherever it appeared on the site.

    This got me (Will) thinking. The word “pedagogy,” which refers today to both the study of teaching and methods for teaching well, is not one that students regularly learn. Does this mean that teachers hide something crucial from their students, namely the very methods they use to impart information? Is there anything special about this word, or is it beneficial to swap it out for something more common? What’s in a word, after all? My answer is that “pedagogy” is an important word, and that knowing what it means opens the door to more exciting and student-driven learning.

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    Letter to Senator Tillis: Vote Against Jeff Sessions

    Dear Senator Tillis,
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    The 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King to Senator Strom Thurmond that Elizabeth Warren was censured for reading contains words you need to hear. In that letter, King, a woman of incredible strength and tenacity, explained in clear terms why Jeff Sessions should not be elevated to the Federal District Court of the Southern District of Alabama. The issue, she said, was voter's rights. It was clear to King back then that Jeff Sessions had participated in blocking access to the polls for black people. In other words, Sessions was accused of undermining the democratic process first and foremost. Questions of his racism linger in the accusation, but the primary matter is that of democracy. King comments on both facets of the problem when she writes, "The irony of Mr. Sessions' nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods."

    As a Senator in North Carolina, King's words should trouble you for a very specific reason: they are as pertinent today for your own state as they were in 1986 for Alabama. The Federal Court of Appeals very recently struck down North Carolina's Voter ID law saying its provisions deliberately “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls" (NY Times: http://ow.ly/f7dN308O9ZH). Based in part on those findings, the Electoral Integrity Project pronounced that North Carolina is no longer considered a democracy according to verified statistical analysis (http://ow.ly/n6TY308OatU). It is clear that the fears expressed by King in 1986 are once again palpable, this time because Jeff Sessions is poised to assume an even more powerful position in the US Government. King's accusations, therefore, can and should be summoned during Sessions' nomination proceedings, and, moreover, you as a Senator of this particular state need to take King's words to heart. That is, by supporting Mitch McConnell in censuring King via her contemporary spokeswoman Elizabeth Warren, and by voting to confirm Jeff Sessions, you are perpetuating North Carolina's questionable past and making possible a deeply upsetting future in which a man of questionable integrity drives the US legal system. 

    I have written to you quite recently about the confirmation of DeVos for Secretary of Education. You did not listen to my appeal as you cast your vote in favor of her nomination. This time, however, I urge you to listen to my voice and those who share my concerns about Jeff Sessions. If you vote to make him US Attorney General, you are demonstrating to me and to likeminded individuals that you don't value the words of one of our country's most powerful black, female activists, that you don't take seriously the recent condemnation of North Carolina's voter laws, and that you don't care about the legitimate concerns about Sessions's racist behavior. 

    If you vote for Jeff Sessions, I will write to you again and request an explanation. In the meantime, if my words aren't enough to at least motivate a long meditation on the problem at hand, then please read King's letter in full. You can find it here: http://ow.ly/LGmR308Odaq. I recommend you read it aloud.

    Sincerely, 
    Will Daddario, PhD
    Asheville, NC 28803