"I want to know everything".
Hi There,
This is the first post for my project to journal and document reading Lynne Kelly's book 'Memory Craft'. https://www.lynnekelly.com.au/memory-craft/
I'm inviting some other people to read and journal alongside. At the moment my knowledge-loving son Sam, who's 13, and my friend's curious and artistic daughter Janet, who's 17. I'd love to have some more friends joining us. Maybe Ian?
I think this is an important process to journal along the way. To begin with, I feel a lot of resistance to trying out the Memory methods and a strong pull to just keep muddling through with my various memory frustrations. After all I'm used to them. For example I teach in a school with 50 teachers and about 550 students and I have great trouble remembering their names. Partly because they have both Chinese names (some Cantonese, some Mandarin, some both) and English nicknames. In the case of kids, they change their English names now and then. After 11 years in this school, I only know the names of people I interact with regularly. Despite being embarrassed about it and vowing to take it on. As for the students, I think 550, with a new batch of about 120 coming in each year, is totally impossible. I teach every class for one 40 minute session per week. And again, I only know the names of the very good and the very troublesome.
Another comfortable frustration is that I've lived in HK for 17 years and there is a lot of Cantonese vocab that I've learnt and relearnt and yet it keeps slipping away. My greatest learning growth came when my kids were in Kindergarten and needed help with the homework. I know the names of most animals and some of the characters. Cantonese has a different written form to the spoken form (both grammar and some vocab). So the kindy experience was my introduction to written Chinese. Once the kids hit primary school, they flew ahead of me and my literacy level is around first grade. That is some personal memory frustrations and resignation.
Where I'd really like to see this project work is in my teaching. I'd like to find ways to bring these techniques into mainstream schooling and 'one day, someday' I'd like to do an Ed Psych degree with this as my research project. I really love the idea of effectiveness, play, art, drama, knowledge, movement all interacting to create a more alive and vivid approach to education. I dislike that my job is drilling kids in classroom and 'doing corrections' where the only feedback from my managers is to make the kids sit stiller and quieter and do more corrections.
I don't think I can even start to understand whether these ideas would work in HK without trying the techniques myself and this is enough of a pull to get me past my resistance. At the same time, I bought this book almost a year ago and haven't tried yet. What is the resistance? There is part of me that says 'It just won't work for you. You don't have time to do it properly. You don't understand anything well enough to commit to it. If you start with a wrong foundation, you'll be wasting everyone's time'.
I have another concern, which is with the memory walks/ the mind palace. When I think about the visual anchors, I have to see the impermanence of the landscape I live in. I live in a New Territories village with plenty of nice places to walk around. But houses are constantly being knocked down and put up. The 'Bunyip walk' I enjoyed 2 years ago with my kids is now a treeless hole waiting to become an MTR mall. The last typhoon knocked down at least half the trees on my street. The shops on my main street change month by month, often becoming real-estate agencies. And HK itself is in a big state of political flux with economic impacts that will be arriving any day. I think this is just an excuse, but it's there all the same.
So, this is the state of play before starting the first chapter. After reading the first chapter, I have some observations for the next post. But the one that keeps popping into my head is Kelly's explanation for her research: "because I want to know everything". I'm paraphrasing and I'll go look it up later. But this really hits me, because it's why I have such a visceral response to her Memory project. I absolutely loved "The Memory Code". I love her unapologetic, unreasonable voraciousness for learning and willingness to throw herself into the uncertain. And I love the generosity of her approach to sharing it. She's a total rockstar. I also intend this blog will be a way to give something back to Lynne Kelly and the orality community.
This is the first post for my project to journal and document reading Lynne Kelly's book 'Memory Craft'. https://www.lynnekelly.com.au/memory-craft/I'm inviting some other people to read and journal alongside. At the moment my knowledge-loving son Sam, who's 13, and my friend's curious and artistic daughter Janet, who's 17. I'd love to have some more friends joining us. Maybe Ian?
I think this is an important process to journal along the way. To begin with, I feel a lot of resistance to trying out the Memory methods and a strong pull to just keep muddling through with my various memory frustrations. After all I'm used to them. For example I teach in a school with 50 teachers and about 550 students and I have great trouble remembering their names. Partly because they have both Chinese names (some Cantonese, some Mandarin, some both) and English nicknames. In the case of kids, they change their English names now and then. After 11 years in this school, I only know the names of people I interact with regularly. Despite being embarrassed about it and vowing to take it on. As for the students, I think 550, with a new batch of about 120 coming in each year, is totally impossible. I teach every class for one 40 minute session per week. And again, I only know the names of the very good and the very troublesome.
Another comfortable frustration is that I've lived in HK for 17 years and there is a lot of Cantonese vocab that I've learnt and relearnt and yet it keeps slipping away. My greatest learning growth came when my kids were in Kindergarten and needed help with the homework. I know the names of most animals and some of the characters. Cantonese has a different written form to the spoken form (both grammar and some vocab). So the kindy experience was my introduction to written Chinese. Once the kids hit primary school, they flew ahead of me and my literacy level is around first grade. That is some personal memory frustrations and resignation.
Where I'd really like to see this project work is in my teaching. I'd like to find ways to bring these techniques into mainstream schooling and 'one day, someday' I'd like to do an Ed Psych degree with this as my research project. I really love the idea of effectiveness, play, art, drama, knowledge, movement all interacting to create a more alive and vivid approach to education. I dislike that my job is drilling kids in classroom and 'doing corrections' where the only feedback from my managers is to make the kids sit stiller and quieter and do more corrections.
I don't think I can even start to understand whether these ideas would work in HK without trying the techniques myself and this is enough of a pull to get me past my resistance. At the same time, I bought this book almost a year ago and haven't tried yet. What is the resistance? There is part of me that says 'It just won't work for you. You don't have time to do it properly. You don't understand anything well enough to commit to it. If you start with a wrong foundation, you'll be wasting everyone's time'.
I have another concern, which is with the memory walks/ the mind palace. When I think about the visual anchors, I have to see the impermanence of the landscape I live in. I live in a New Territories village with plenty of nice places to walk around. But houses are constantly being knocked down and put up. The 'Bunyip walk' I enjoyed 2 years ago with my kids is now a treeless hole waiting to become an MTR mall. The last typhoon knocked down at least half the trees on my street. The shops on my main street change month by month, often becoming real-estate agencies. And HK itself is in a big state of political flux with economic impacts that will be arriving any day. I think this is just an excuse, but it's there all the same.
So, this is the state of play before starting the first chapter. After reading the first chapter, I have some observations for the next post. But the one that keeps popping into my head is Kelly's explanation for her research: "because I want to know everything". I'm paraphrasing and I'll go look it up later. But this really hits me, because it's why I have such a visceral response to her Memory project. I absolutely loved "The Memory Code". I love her unapologetic, unreasonable voraciousness for learning and willingness to throw herself into the uncertain. And I love the generosity of her approach to sharing it. She's a total rockstar. I also intend this blog will be a way to give something back to Lynne Kelly and the orality community.
I think always being ask to be quiet, siting sill and doing recorection is usual in Hong Kong local School.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely fairly common here in America as well. I feel when factories started being developed in the past century, classrooms all over the world began tightening in order to form more ideal workers.
DeleteYes. It's not very memorable.
ReplyDeleteI am very excited. You know, I reckon you collect blog posts into a book at some point. Excellent first post. I am definitely reading all of them.
ReplyDelete*I reckon you could
Delete*I reckon you could
Delete*I reckon you could
Delete*I reckon you could
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