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Every experience in life gives us the gift of knowing ourSelves at a deeper level.  And reaching out to others in our vulnerability gives us the gift of knowing we are not alone on the journey to Self as we Decloak to ourselves and to others.

Jean Winter

I’ve been taking singing lessons for a long time – almost as long as I took piano lessons.  Longer if I put together all the time I’ve had with the five different teachers I’ve had over my life.  And sometimes the lessons are great and sometimes they aren’t.

The greatest gift one teacher gave me was to get me to an Otolaryngologist.  And that led to surgery to remove nodes from my vocal folds.  My first teacher and I had fun and singing was fun and I remember that I felt like I could sing anything.  My third teacher said something to me that pretty much took that confidence from me.  She told me that I had an ugly voice and I believed her.  Self-doubt is insidious.  My fourth teacher – well the first four years of working with her were great and the last two were not.  I didn’t trust that she could help me deal with a vocal issue which I had.  And my current teacher, my fifth – well things aren’t working now after so many years.

I know that I have a powerful voice and that I know how to sing well.  And my current teacher said has said some things to me lately that he has never said before.  What he said and what I’ve been thinking about is that I don’t have a tentative presence or speaking voice or laugh.  But I do have a tentative singing voice – an unsure presence which comes through in how I sing.  When I sing, I seem to be insecure.

That made me realize why I love listening to Gerald Finley and Tomas Quastoff – there is such honesty in the singing and total commitment of self to the words.  It may not always be pretty but it has such total surety.  I need to sing like the Emperor – as if I am on stage naked and don’t give a damn about that.

And my teacher has continued to point out to me that when I sing, my voice needs to be connected to my body so that my vocal folds are together.  And I’ve told him that the more that he says that to me, the worse it gets.  I start to manage how I sing rather than just sing.  And then I’m not in the song – I’m singing from my head and not my heart.

And, just this week, he told me that after I sang my last exam that I should not have gone forward to work on the next grade’s listed songs but that I should have gone back.  “After all, Jean, these are not easy songs.”  I know that AND I chose songs that I liked – melody and word.  And I had looked at songs from the next grade at his suggestion – not my own.  I trusted his judgement over my own.  [ ... ]

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We can choose to slowly fade away until the truth of who we are has disappeared or we can choose ourSelves.  What do you want to create in the world?  Who do you know yourSelf to be?

Jean Winter

One of the things that I truly enjoy about every WEL-Systems® programme that I have ever chosen to step into is that we check in every day.  The question is always “Where are we?  What are we bringing into the room today? What’s coming up for us?”   Or as Louise would say, “Over to you. Over.” It is just the best feeling to know that I can speak up and say what I need to say in the way that I need to say it and that no one will tell me that now is not the right to talk about what is moving in me or that I’ve got it wrong [whatever ‘it’ is] or that I’ve misunderstood or that I just need to ‘suck it up Buttercup’ or that I can only talk for a finite period of time.

The gift of being able to say ‘my piece’ in the way I need to is immense.  And I know that it did take me some time to trust that I am always safe to say what I need to say.  I had had very long experience of being silenced and of learning to edit and silence myself.  So it’s not only the gift which others give to me to listen – really listen – without judging but also the gift which I give myself to trust that I can take the time I need to say what is moving in me and that I need not worry about being ‘appropriate’.

I bring this up because last week at the CODE Model Coaching™ Intensive training, I said something that I had never said before.  I didn’t even know that it was there.  [ ... ]

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I have felt called to express MY truth.  Who do I know mySelf to be?  What is it that I seek to create in my world for my own evolution and transformation.  As you read this, consider — who do you know yourSelf to be?  How do you choose to create the world in which you want to live?  Transformation and creation starts with each individual.

Jean Winter

The truth that I AM and the game that I choose to live are the context for my whole life.

I have always believed that it is vitally important for the world and its people to become more and realize their full potential.  I believe that without change and transformation, we will condemn ourselves to a slow, inevitable, and inexorable extinction.  What I know is that change and transformation is too important to wait for any external mandate or approval.  We must become the change we want in the world. (Ghandi) And I believe that education has a powerful role to play in the transformation and change which we each must become.

It is easy to default to kvetching about the current state of things in the world.  There is always an intelligence in that dis-ease with the state of things.  Typically, our response is to move away from that which discomforts us.  And I know that there is no possibility of change and transformation if I live only with my dis-ease about the current conditions of the world. There is no movement forward to create what I want in my world if my response is only to move away from what discomforts me.

I know that there is no possibility of me stepping into the fullness of my capacity and potential to lead if I do not see myself as a leader and if I see myself as being held helplessly captive by structures which I believe I have no force to change.  I believe that the immensity of change and transformation possible is in the size of the journey of exploration we, individually and together, are willing to have.  How daring are we willing to be to live the truth of the power we hold to be leaders, explorers, and innovators?  Leadership happens as I am willing to be authentically mySelf in the presence of others – open, clear and direct. We must dare to be the medium for the message of our greater potential.  [ ... ]

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Whenever work gets you down or you find yourself wondering what you are doing at yet another meeting when you know there are much better ways for you to be using your time for you, consider creating your own fun.  Even though I truly dislike the phrase, it seems appropriate here — Think outside the box.

Jean Winter

I’ve been a member of several community and professional committees in my time.  I’ve lost count of the number of staff meetings and department meetings and special committee meetings I’ve had to attend.  I rarely felt as if anything new or productive was accomplished at those meetings.  It was always “Same old, same old.”  It became interesting to watch my colleagues at these meetings find their own creative ways to deal with their ennui.  Some would make grocery lists or other lists.  Some would doodle.  Some, like me, would create their own word games.  For many teachers, staff meetings became a time to get marking done.

I will never forget my least favourite meeting experience.  The Ministry of Education had decreed that every school had to have a mission statement.  It was expected to be unique to that school and reflect the students, and needs and culture of the area.  We already had a very good one which the staff had developed, succinct and to the point and reflective of our students and our particular educational culture. Yet here we were at a command staff meeting with the sole intention of creating a ‘mission statement’.  Leading us was a principal recently retired from our system who was marketing himself to every board in the province as an ‘expert’ on how to write a mission statement while he got paid for ‘assisting’ us.

I got angry.  Why were we re-creating something which we had already created on our own and which reflected what we believed we were about?  What was the point of the exercise we were being forced to endure?  [ ... ]

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I encourage everyone to read about Gloria Taylor and make their own decisions.  Isn’t it time for change?

On May 4^th, I watched CBC’s The Fifth Estate about Gloria Taylor who suffered from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). [Note: a brief excerpt of this programme can be found on YouTube.] It was so moving to listen to her and her family and friends. And, as I listened to her and what she was fighting for, I marvelled at her courage. And I got angry.

About 20 years ago, Sue Rodriguez, who also suffered from ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), went to court in British Columbia in order to win the right to end her life with dignity – on her own terms, and at a time of her choosing and without those who might help her being prosecuted for providing their help. The case went all the way through the judicial system to the Supreme Court of Canada. Rodriguez lost her case. Canada and Canadians were not ready to consider the possibility of physician assisted death.

~ Gloria Taylor ~

But that was 20 year ago. As our society ages and as our sensibilities about what we want for ourselves change, as we face our own mortality, we have become more open to considering this option for those who are suffering from terminal illnesses [like ALS and Alzheimer’s Disease] and for whom there is no remedy for their pain and loss of self through palliative care.

I have lost relatives to cancer. I have looked into their eyes and I knew that their spirit was still vital and that it was trapped in their bodies. I think that is what hurt both of us most – seeing the anger, hurt, and confusion each of them felt because they were no longer the person they had always known themselves to be, and knowing that there was no force in this world which could alleviate their turmoil. They were waiting – helpless and hopeless. [ ... ]

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Jean Winter

If you are interested in more from Jean, visit her blog  Authentic Vibrations

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How often we choose to speak the truth of ourselves and our world to others by appealing to logic and reason?  Consider that there is a different way to communicate all that we know and all that we don’t know.

The Bee Gee’s sang:

It’s only words, and words are all I have

I love words.  I’m fascinated by the flexibility of English which has adopted words from so many other languages.  It is always changing and transforming.  When I was a kid, ‘to Purolate’ or ‘to FAX’ were not even in use.  I’ll never forget the first time I told someone that I would Purolate something to them.

Consider, too, that many subject disciplines create language to meet their needs.  Sociologists turn nouns into verbs in the effort to explain sociological phenomena.  Poets use ‘poetic license’ and combine words or coin new in their attempt to create a picture or capture a moment or express feelings in one word of highly personal meaning.

From all my studies and my experience as an educator, I know that language serves academia well.  Academia demands language which is exact, precise and explicit.  The goal is clarity of explication without personal engagement.  The language is expected to be objective rather than subjective.

In the academic world, that’s great.  However, the very precision and exactness expected in the academic world limits, contains, and constrains any attempt by us to use words to reveal the fullness of what we believe and how we engage with ourselves and with our world. [ ... ]

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Jean Winter

If you are interested in more from Jean, visit her blog  Authentic Vibrations

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How willing are you to be curious with others such that you provoke their own curiosity?

Curiosity killed the cat.  The lesson of this old adage is that curiosity is something to be controlled at worst and avoided at best.  Being curious is being nosey which, it has been drummed in to us from a very early age, is not acceptable.

Yet, without curiosity in our lives, everything slows down burdened by its own administrivia.  Living becomes a series of problems to be managed and solved. In looking down and micromanaging the daily events of life, we no longer think globally.  We become unwilling to look up and out and to explore a different reality and a different possibility.

We long for inspiration but all too often look outside ourselves for it.  When we honour our curiosity, we become our own inspiration.  When we allow ourselves to see through different lenses, we can we can think differently, we can recontextualize reality, we can define our world for ourselves, we can revel in the marvel and joyousness and potential of exploring what is known and what is not yet known. [ ... ]

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Jean Winter

If you are interested in more from Jean, visit her blog  Authentic Vibrations

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This is the time year when schools and boards complete the staffing process – the prediction of how many teachers will be needed for the next school year.  It’s also the time when teachers who are low on the seniority list wait to see if they will have a job next year.  I remember going through that every year for the first five years that I was in the classroom.  Getting a letter at the end of April thanking me for my work for the board and also letting me know that, at that time, I wouldn’t have a job the following year.  And then getting a letter at the end of May congratulating me for being able to work for the board for another year.

I remember the stress I felt living in that uncertainty.  I remember the stress in the school as those who had been newly hired waited and wondered.

At one time, what you taught had an impact on whether you were rehired for the following year.  Now, except for tech and science where there are specific safety issues to be considered, that is no longer the case.  It’s all a numbers game.

What has always struck me is that the lives of students would be diminished because they would lose the possibility of having bright and energetic and creative younger teachers.  I also know that working with these teachers who were caught in the numbers game that is staffing energized me.  Their capacity and potential increased my own. [ ... ]

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Jean Winter

If you are interested in more from Jean, visit her blog  Authentic Vibrations

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When I was a kid, my parents shipped me and my sisters to a lodge for the entire summer.  Kind of like summer camp without programmes and camp counsellors.  Off we went the day after the last day of school and home we came on Labour Day.

Each summer, my mother would send me off with books to read which I usually inhaled and finished within two weeks.  And I was almost always given a Paint by Numbers kit.

I don’t know if they still make them. [I hope not!] For those of you who have no experience of these kits.  Imagine a box with a picture on the outside.  Once the kit was completed, that is what our work was supposed to look like.  Inside the box would be a stamped piece of white board, one or two not very good brushes and a collection of the requisite paints to complete the picture – every paint pot numbered to match the numbers on the white board.  The object of the activity was to use the paints in the appropriate places to re-create the picture on the outside of the box.

I don’t remember ever finishing one of these things.  I know that I would dutifully start each kit and diligently work on it each day.  And I know how frustrated I got with each one. [ ... ]

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Jean Winter

If you are interested in more from Jean, visit her blog  Authentic Vibrations

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