This anthology explores life writing as a mode of educational inquiry, one where students and teachers may get a "heart of wisdom" as they struggle with the tensions and complexities of learning and teaching in challenging contemporary circumstances. Contributors write first-person creative non-fiction in a variety of life-writing genres, such as memoir, poetry, personal essay, and various blended genres. Four sections entitled Memory Work, Place Work, Curriculum Work, and Social Work explore the struggles and joys of pedagogy where relationships are at the heart of teaching and learning. The essays address questions such as: What critical moments in learning and teaching change lives? What stories need to be told? What questions ache to be asked?
«Provocative and lingering, this eloquent book of life writing explores the emotional geography of the heart with courage and grace. Writers share storied narratives of the living world to create a stunning text-riveting and evocative, artful and critical, lyrical and imaginative. Their language cuts to the core, exposing veins of memory, emotion, passion, imaginings, to illuminate the wholeness of lives that sits at the heart of wisdom.
The editors creatively and skillfully weave texts into a four-stranded braid to craft a tapestry of life. Writing is re-territorialized as democracy through a juxtaposition of woven threads in a tangled entanglement of complexities. The text creates a new rapprochement of discourse, merging and blending of genres, exposing raw sinews of human feeling, empathy, suffering, and resilience. We do not simply dwell in these narrative stories; we are carried away on paths of wayfinding, witnessing, and wisdomseeking, to marvel at the intricate mysteries that compose our lives.» (Suzanne Thomas, Faculty of Education, University of Prince Edward Island)
The editors creatively and skillfully weave texts into a four-stranded braid to craft a tapestry of life. Writing is re-territorialized as democracy through a juxtaposition of woven threads in a tangled entanglement of complexities. The text creates a new rapprochement of discourse, merging and blending of genres, exposing raw sinews of human feeling, empathy, suffering, and resilience. We do not simply dwell in these narrative stories; we are carried away on paths of wayfinding, witnessing, and wisdomseeking, to marvel at the intricate mysteries that compose our lives.» (Suzanne Thomas, Faculty of Education, University of Prince Edward Island)