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The key to the grail is teaching with compassion

University of British Columbia

My purpose in undertaking this thesis was to explore, determine, and articulate my unexamined belief in the ontological humanity of compassion and thus its necessity for pedagogy. I read what authorities have written on the importance of being human in the world, personally, professionally, and pedagogically. These authoritiesnovelists, poets, researchers—are situated in the concreteness of lived subjectivity, lived intersubjectivity, and evoke a phenomenological description of being human in lived experience. I abstracted and re-lived, then self-consciously and concretely reflected upon, analyzed, wrote, and re-wrote poignant moments from my own life story as a teacher~in a dialectical process of separating, decontextualizing, confronting myself, as a teacher, in order to engage, involve, and ground myself as a compassionate teacher. I learned that compassion is the physical manifestation of the realization that we share the same Being; and thus it is part of all authentic human interaction. Without compassion, students cannot experience the feelings of acceptance necessary for self-esteem, necessary for realizing their best selves, as learners and as human beings. Without compassion, teachers cannot realize their best selves as human beings, to be their best selves as teachers. During my reading and writing, vivid experiential themes emerged that raised my consciousness from knowing the truth of the importance and significance of compassion in all human interaction intellectually to feeling the truth of it emotionally, spiritually, substantially. "And the end of all [my] exploring [Was] to arrive where [I] started And know the place for the first time." (Eliot, 1987, p. 2535) From authoring these reflections on my lived experience with my students, I realize profoundly my authorship in these and all such experiences. My lifeworld, now mediated by this realization, is deeply and forever enhanced and clarified by this realization. Henceforth, for me to live authentically, for my life to have meaning, I must be animated by and grounded in compassion in the life I live, and especially in the life I live with my students.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-02-03

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4134

Language and Literacy Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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