Dear Younger Jackie:

Jackie, I know that your school experiences left you with a life lasting legacy that you are defective. You were told to shut up, sit still, stay on topic, stay in line, raise your hand, don't disrupt.

I will be an ethnographer in the study of you (as I believe all teachers should be ethnographers in the study of each of their students). I want to become your personal teacher and create learning experiences that invite you to disrupt, to innovate, to create, to imagine, to be you.

I will never make you memorize information or take multiple-choice tests. You have told me that not only do you find these tasks boring, you find them painful. I will, instead, ask you to write, create, speak, make, and perform.

I know you find sitting in desks, sitting properly, sitting still to be confining, constricting, and contrived. Playing, moving, and tinkering are such an integral parts of how you learn. Our learning environment will look more like a family room than a classroom. Our playground will be an extension of our learning environment not one separated by time and space.

I know you "wonder" a lot out loud and ask a lot of questions including, "Why do I need to know this?" I will point you in directions where you can get answers to your questions. I will do my best in engage you in rich discourse or point you in directions where you can get answers to your questions. I promise not to sssh you as so many teachers have. I know that is cuts through you like a knife and shuts down your passion and energy.

Relationships are the essence of all positive learning experiences. I know your family life has been tough, and that you developed a hard exterior to protect that soft, sensitive interior. I will never look at you with disdain. Rather, I will treat you only with kindness, compassion, and love.

I will recognize you are my student and it my job to guide. When you are incorrect, too loud, too abrupt, I will take you to the side, and with love give you some feedback. I will end these little conversations with a smile and a little hug.

And when I do see the hurt in the eyes, your eyes really do tell a story that you words do not. I will touch you gently on the arm, and quietly say, "It's okay." We will, as bell hooks suggests, create a place of possibility, openness, and freedom, where our hearts and minds will transgress all self-imposed boundaries.

Learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom. (hooks 1994: 207)