The Resumption of Belief

"Every day I live to dream, but in every dream, I dream of living." Shortened to: Live to dream. Dream to live. As it is inscribed on the unders of my arms. I came up with this quote many a year ago, inspired by James Dean's "Live as though you'll die today, dream as if you'll live forever", it was meant to encapsulate my life as I saw it, like a dream. "Awe cool!" you might be thinking, how cliched of me to get a tattoo about dreams. But no one ever stops to ask what it really means, they just see "live", "dream", and are like "Wow! Cool! Must be super deep!" and get carried away in their own cliched assumptions around the words and their meanings. But in fact, it's probably nothing like that, in fact, it may be quite sadly terrifying. And it all started with a night at the casino with my grandparents. It was a common occurrence, it was still the late 90's, and people could afford to go gamble a hundred ra

Well, I said it never really ends, so this is me starting at the beginning again.  But this time a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit freer, a little bit clearer...  Or whatever thought-provoking cliche you think would fit in there. Watch this space...

...Or must it? What if it was just a realization that it was always there, Nesting in the soil, waiting for the right foundations for its fruit to bare Like a tree breaking free of the ground only to dig deeper and deeper Its root spread around as it seeped into the mycelium's message keeper.  Now if you know anything about trees, you should see the importance of their roots in any ecosystem in regard to the vast underground network of mycelium that connects all of them in an area, providing a network to communicate with, a system of conditions, and microbial transactions, that allows the trees to in essence talk with each other. Sounds like something out of Avatar right? Well, where do you think they got the idea? It was there all along! And it is very real and very important, and if you don't know why, have a look at this blog post from the National Forrest Foundation  called  Underground Networking: The Amazing Connections Beneath Your Feet to tickle your fancy.  https://w

This topic was an interesting one, unfortunately, I was plagued by lousy internet and piles of work, and missed a meeting due to this. But we produced an excellent topic outline and created something really special in the end. What I really noticed was how scaffolding works, This idea got me thinking about a lot of things, like when we design scaffolding we design it with the intention of delivering content, we try to structure the curriculum in a way that makes sense narratively and logically. This made me think about another concept that we use in Acting. Internal narrative. What about internal scaffolding? What if we build the structure first and then fill it?  I want to investigate whether there is a universal process that can be applied to all subjects. A way of teaching that can be used by anyone to teach anything. Maybe that should be the course that I create "How to teach anything". I have been teaching for over 10 years now. From a little container school not knowing

In this reflection, I will be using my breakdown of the 7 "Implications for Practice" as discussed in "Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment" by Jane E. Brindley, Christine Walti, and Lisa M. Blaschke (2009) for a practical exercise for my students.  But first, a little bit of context about how "The Walk" came to be. As one could have guessed by now, I coach acting for film, and one thing that is obviously necessary for this field is believability. Something I noticed right at the beginning of teaching this subject, which one would assume is easy as stepping in front of a camera but far from, was that students lacked believability.  No matter how much I taught and shared and explained and showed, there was just this disconnection between them and the text, they just sounded wooden. I wondered if it had been maybe the setting of the class, and the context of it being an assessment, so as an experiment I decided to take th

To be honest, when I first read the topic headline I started preparing a coffee and got ready to share my life story, but I soon learned that wasn't it...Or was it? Little did i know that openness and sharing was already a big part of my life. From my days in college, living in post-apartheid South Africa, I soon came to realize the inequity and inequality of our country, and something in me stirred. I saw the unfairness, the pain, and the sorrow of generations lost. Lost to poor education and inadequate access. I always felt that one way to repair the past was to open education, and allow everyone to learn, that way everyone could have a fair chance. I stood at the front lines of the students protests begging for free education, got shot at with tear gas and rubber bullets, dodged rocks and bricks from angered learners stripped of their promise of a better future, I experienced a war zone in my own city, students vs police. I experienced that oppression firsthand and to this day i