Opening November - VITALITY - Theme for November 2014

Vitality - my theme for this month should prove challenging. Too often associated with youth, at least in my mind, I looked for a definition ~ not in a hard cover dictionary but ~ online. I found a definition I quite liked:  Vitality: the power giving continuance of life, present in all living things. Well that changed my mind a bit. So rather than write a long essay on something I don’t presently feel after my work day, I will close with just this thought. When I feel the quality of vitality, I feel strong and I feel good. Solid in my beliefs. Given the definition that Google provided me, vitality does not equate with youth as I am one of those ‘living things’ that has sometimes varying amounts of power for the continuance of life, and always the willingness to ride the waves.

“Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.”

~ F.Scott Fitzgerald

Learning to Change

I went to work this Hallowe’en in my nurse’s cap with black band, wearing my woollen serge navy blue cape, the red lining beneath adding style and colour. Wearing cap and cape on my graduation day, in September of 1968, over a starched white cotton uniform culminated three years of education specific to the tasks of nursing, the principles of nursing and an elevation into being a working member of society. This at a time, 1968, when more and more women were advancing into the work force and outside of choosing only nursing, secretarial work or marriage and family as a career. Many times I feel as though I chose all three. Marriage and family came in tandem with nursing, with secretarial education squeezed in just before those two pivotal choices.

Education has allowed me to do all of those things. But, more importantly education has allowed women to step forward into a myriad of careers in areas of their choosing. And, it has allowed men to enter fields of work that were traditionally, like nursing, seen as only for women. Education has allowed our minds and hearts to expand to take in anyone choosing to learn. This does not mean that there are not still controversies about what work we each should do. Particular family or societal cultures take much longer to change than a few semesters or class times. However the curiosity and drive of youth ultimately moves old attitudes aside - well sometimes just plain pushes them aside. (A little respect develops as youth becomes not so youthful.)

Conversation behind the nurses’ station today was about the changes in hierarchy between physician’s and nurses over the years - colleagues with common goals rather than handmaiden and superior. Dress code changes - no more nurse’s caps to slide sideways or starched uniforms with white stockings; doctors in more casual dress even in hospitals, ties a thing of the past for most. Education about human rights, equality between genders and levels of society have changed all of these things, despite the remaining controversies.

And Hallowe’en? Much more sanitized in this generation, but still complete with pumpkins carved into Jack o'Lanterns. Parents coming with their children to trick or treat - at least the young kiddos. Hallowe’en gatherings in community settings for safety begin the week before here in Victoria. Education involved is about safety, dressing up as monsters, pirates, or princesses, and that too much candy isn’t good for stomach or teeth. I’ll close with my favourite memory of Hallowe’en ~  my Grade Eight teacher, Mrs. Isaac throwing popcorn balls out to a crowd of teenagers getting too old for trick or treating, but reaching for one more treat with maybe a trick or two thrown in.

“Change is the end result of all true learning.”

~ Leo Buscaglia

Nurturing Emotional Intelligence

Education connects us all. From the first mouthing of ‘ma-ma’ ‘da-da’ to strings of words making disjointed sentences. Sentences that tell, in a childhood stream of consciousness instructions from big brother to little sister, how to ‘properly’ play with toys or ride a bike. Sentences that develop flow and substance through each relationship with parents and teachers. Learning comes naturally to children and, as we were all once children, learning comes naturally to each of us.

In the work that I participate in, learning begins again as the fog, discomforts and haze of alcohol or drug withdrawal clears. Learning, not about facts and figures, but amidst names and costs of treatment centers and outpatient programs, about emotions. Emotions that are frightening, coming in waves from the distant or recent past. Emotions, exciting and full of energy, are forward looking and open to new life and reuniting.

All of us, if encouraged, whether within ourselves or from others, will begin to learn again. And each small bit learned builds toward something else. It may be something grand or just learning to greet each day with a bit of hope and gratitude. It may be going back to University or to trade school to learn more about some part of life. 

Illness, whether active addiction or any form of illness, steals the opportunity to choose what our hearts and minds want to learn. What active addiction and illness does teach is how to survive. That lesson allows many to stand tall and move forward when clarity affords a view of the destruction wreaked, threatening to sweep them away again. 

Investment in education is not just for our children but, for those that wish to recover their lives, their dignity and their families, we must continue to invest and encourage. In detoxes, in hospitals and health care facilities, this investment and this education is called health teaching.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

Permission Granted ~ 1

At the beginning of formal education, we are not asked if we wish to go to school, nor are we given permission to go to school, but we are expected to go to school. There is a buildup, to follow our siblings footsteps into classrooms and activities of learning. This expectation arose with the development of public school systems over the last 150 - 200 years, and in some countries only over the last 50 years. Each culture has had their own formal educational systems, much of it tied to the religious organizations of the day - whether Catholic, Islamic or Jewish. 

As cultures have meshed, secular ideologies have developed, schools focused more on the task oriented classes - reading, writing and ‘arithmetic; shop and home economics. Art, penmanship and music, while in early classrooms was standard, have been winnowed away with education dollars.

Arithmetic has graduated to calculus, algebra, and trigonometry - much grander forms of mathematics, none of which were my best subjects. Reading is no longer just from hardcover textbooks but Google Scholar, Wikipedia and a host of search engines. The permission to be creative is relegated to the arts and yet creativity shows a deeper value in development of any of the classes whether task oriented or not.

One of my previous posts asked the questions 'who thought of' and 'who developed' in relation to the immediate needs of blankets and clothing. I ask these questions again in relationship to any piece of technology we use in the present day. Development becomes creativity in action after any question has been posed. In our classrooms, if questions are shunted aside because it does not fit a curriculum creates it's own potential. Snuffing out an idea, putting a period behind a question. 

As a child before school days consume waking hours, creativity is what children do with all manner of games and activities. As a child, listening to trusted adults, the permission to explore the why or how come or an idea may not be given. The exploration can then be toward who will give permission. And some of those may be a marvellous teacher who sees potential and recognizes curiosity an uncle or aunt, a parent or grandparent that shares and works with the spark of enthusiasm, a librarian who redirects a teenager to obscure or maybe more timely writings……. 

Recognizing the spark and nurturing it, whether in ourselves or in a child is one of the lovely responsibilities of life.

“I believe this passionately: that we don’t grow into creativity, 

we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.”

~ Sir Ken Robinson

A Delicate Balancing Act

Nursing care, and nurses as a whole, are expected to take care of sick people. And then when they get sick again, to care for them again. In the 1960’s, a few decades ago, I graduated from nursing school. Nurses heard the words ‘preventive health care’. And nurses still do hear those words. In that distant past of the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and even 1990’s, nurses talked about and worked on plans and programs for the education of patients - sick people weren’t yet called clients - so that these patients either didn’t have to get sick again and come back to hospital, or so that they knew how to manage the care needed to live with a chronic condition - or a cast or a jaw wired shut. Many nurses, and their patients, really thought this was a good idea and thought maybe this sort of education would save health care, and thus taxpayer, dollars.

In all those decades, and maybe earlier and sometimes still later, the number crunchers and purse string holders said that this would be too expensive. This was when hospital stays were being shortened, because they were too costly, and psychiatric hospitals were being emptied, because……they were too costly. Today's health care budgets are continually strained and bursting at the seams. Preventive health care is being talked about a little differently now, with more community health care teams activated, at least here in Victoria, and I'm certain in other health care systems. There is still a long way to go for many to access supportive therapies like massage, acupuncture and water therapies to name a few. As technology increases, our biological human bodies still need the human touch, and we also must manage the budget effectively. Health teaching is the education that our patients, or our clients require when in hospital for moving forward with preventive personal health care. Will budgets be affected on the balance or debit side? And whose budget? A health care system or the individuals cared for within the system?

“Every truth in this world stretched beyond 

it's limits will become a false doctrine.”

~ K.P. Yohannan, 

Living in the Light of Eternity

Creation Comes Before Education

Goats.
Goat hair tufted on branches and rock.
Gathering, cleaning and combing it.
Twisting and turning it
Designing and weaving clothing from the finished yarn.
Building the looms and spindles for the whole process.

Who thought of each piece needed?
What education did they have?
Who taught the first person to make these marvelous and much needed creations?

Education is the result of creativity ~
passage of design, utility and beauty from elder to younger
youth’s creativity developing and expanding in the present
to pass design, utility, beauty and history onward.
Creativity and education in tandem for human survival and growth.

“Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.”

~ William Plomer

Re-Post with editing of 'Learning to Write'

From 2012:

Writing equals penmanship

Writing ideas, facts, stories in

a sentence, an essay

a poem, or a book 

is a very different subject.

I learned penmanship in school from 

printing big rounded letters 

curling cursive lettering

in wide lined notebooks

In school, I also wrote 

sentences, essays

and read 

poetry, story and history

In the land of higher education, I read books written 

academically

clinically

poetically

I wanted to write my stories and poems with
better grammar
clearer images
one metaphor at a time

So I gathered together

a ‘curricula’

and home studied from 

the wisdom of authors.

I set my own time table

Went to class - composed of work shops

Listened to interviews with authors.

My shifting nursing career is now about more than 

blood pressures

clinical assessments

interdisciplinary communication.

My nursing career provides a wealth of 

essays, stories and poems to write.

“Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep 

interested in your own career, however humble; it is 

a real possession in the changing fortunes of time."

~ Max Ehrman, from Desiderata