Change Gears

I feel my perspective has changed, recently.

I feel like a car with an automatic transmission. I recognise from the ticking & whirring in my life that something has shifted; I am moving at a different speed, my reactions have changed, and my rpm has slowed slightly. Whether that shift was up, or down, it's hard to tell - but it's definitely changing, and might just change again.

These days I have been thinking about several things:
- the fine balance between carefully prepared lessons & a 'present', other-aware, engaged teacher
- the difficulty of being as good a teacher as I want to be, while teaching full-time
- the need for my students to empathise with & understand the humanity in folks of different backgrounds than their own
- the terrible, omnipresent images of 'sad kids in Africa' - !!!
- my own perceptions of the world and how much they remain a product of my environment, despite my best intentions
- whether or not it is useful - in a social justice sense - to encourage in students a sense of giving for 'charity', 'philanthropy' I guess it is
- whether this whole attempt to build up a 'friendship link' is futile... if it is not acheiving the goal of changing students perspectives, why continue
- how I can measure and/or quantify (for my own sake & that of others) the impact of this kind of program.

Several streams of thought centre around the purpose and philosophical groundwork for the program I have been putting my heart & soul into for the past year - the Rafiki Link. I told someone about six months ago that I'd put 100% into it for at least a year, and then take stock again to see what I think. I suppose I'm half-way through that year, a good time to stop & think.

So far, my idea has been to separate between CHARITY and PARTNERSHIP

CHARITY would include:
- "spare change" given
- giving as a luxury expense
- no connection between giving & lifestyle
- recipients as 'other'
- easy switch from one 'good cause' to another
- no connection to lived experience, or daily life

PARTNERSHIP would include:
- a significant portion of time/resources/energy given
- giving as a part of living
- "live simply so that others may simply live" - connection to lifestyle
- recipients as brothers/sisters
- build a relationship with a place/org/idea, and build that relationship through good & bad
- the partnership makes a contribution to lived experience & daily life

I'll stop there, in the middle of the flow of thoughts, to enjoy Hallowe'en!