Ideas in Motion Within a Classroom in E-motion: Creating Environments for Meaningful Projects

Abstract

In the last chapter I shared memorable moments that described, from my own ideological location, a format for the weaving of shared meaning in the classroom. Notwithstanding, we must question “the authority of experience” because without such fundamental critique we fall prey to pure ingeniousness. We know that experience can inform how we know what we know, but what is really meaningful is that which results from the passion of remembrance (hooks, 1994). Remembrance stands for a pure particular location of memory that resides close to emotions. Emotions call for passion and engagement of the analytical way of knowing. When it comes to experiences in the classroom, the whole picture of a specific location and context requires diverse ways of thinking and approaching the experience, endeavoring to put young university students in positions that they would not imagine positive, as if you are analyzing an artist’s masterpiece from different positions.

Let’s go to the sea to contemplate the waves and the sunset. Maybe you could teach me to swim or to fish… But while you teach me to fish or to swim, what is it that you want me to learn?: to simply swim or to fish, or how, why and for what reason are you teaching me to swim or to fish? Likewise, it could be that you want me to learn to teach to swim or to fish.¹

A. Labarrere, 2009, p. 2