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Thought I'd throw in something from an slightly different angle as concerns
the word, "authentic." "Authentic," always reminds me of that old, out of
favour word, "inspiration." It also reminds me of Authentic Movement,  a
somatic technique combining movement therapy and depth psychology that was
invented by a Martha Graham dancer named Mary Starks Whitehouse. To do
Authentic Movement, a Mover closes her eyes and suspends purposeful doing
to let bodily impulses surface spontaneously. Rather than consciously
willing bodily efforts, she waits for an inner energy to animate her. Often
her improvised gestures are accompanied by feelings, images, or memories.
There is usually a Witness who sits silently and witnesses the Mover's
improv. At its end, Mover and Witness often write or draw silently to bring
the richness of the Mover's inner world further into consciousness through
an accompanying medium. Then they talk.

If you were to try this technique, you would feel very inauthentic at
first, and continue to do so off and on through a number of sessions. Often
you feel clumsy or extremely inhibited. Strangely what begins to happen
over time is that you begin to find yourself down on the floor making
regressive, baby-like movements. At other times, you might get "stuck" in
repetitive movements, which if you can relax into them,  just accept where
you are with them, they will carry you somewhere unexpected and become very
freeing, inspiring, and "authentic."

What Authentic Movement is closest to in writing is expressive
free-writing, something we certainly can encourage in the classroom. But as
any Authentic Mover will tell you, a session of moving will perhaps release
vital, "real" movements, but then the arduous work begins to craft a
choreography out of such "real" gestures, sequences, phrasings.

So I guess if I apply this to the classroom, I would say that allowing
students an expressive-base, that is a chance to free-write, to talk in
small groups with each other, to play around with their emergent thoughts ,
to be present to where they really are, can be very helpful. As teachers/
facilitators, standing out of the way of this is laudable.  Still, I think
we do students a disservice, if we don't also teaching them how to edit and
"craft" these "authentic" voiced-bits into their fuller potential. As
"authentic" and supercharged  as we would like our every moment of teaching
to be, there's a lot to be gained from that old adage: "10% inspiration,
90% perspiration."

One of my most gratifying moments as a teacher occurred when an Asian
student of mine showed me a series of poetic fragments she had drafted
about  being sexually abused by an uncle. By the end of the semester she
had written the A+ report on how tourism in Thiland  supports/depends upon
prostitution in that country. She had moved her "authentic" inner
experience out, at first, through expressive self-explorations which then
led her to write an emotionally compelling, yet rigorously "authentic"
academic text. Just my two cents worth, Charlotte Hussey

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