A Heart of Wisdom: Life Writing as Empathetic Inquiry. Complicated Conversation: A Book Series of Curriculum Studies. Volume 39

This anthology explores life writing as a mode of educational inquiry, one where students and teachers may get a "heart of wisdom" as they struggle with the tensions and complexities of learning and teaching in challenging contemporary circumstances. Contributors write first-person creative non-fiction in a variety of life-writing genres, such as memoir, poetry, personal essay, and various blended genres. Four sections entitled Memory Work, Place Work, Curriculum Work, and Social Work explore the struggles and joys of pedagogy where relationships are at the heart of teaching and learning. The essays address questions such as: What critical moments in learning and teaching change lives? What stories need to be told? What questions ache to be asked? Contents include: (1) Bread Crumbs: Finding My Way in Poetry (Carl Leggo); (2) Unlearning Heartlessness, Restorative Education (Leah C. Fowler); (3) Old Narratives Break Apart (Teresa Strong-Wilson); (4) Kissing Lessons (Wanda Hurren); (5) The Gravity Garden (Rebecca Luce-Kapler); (6) Imagining Mothers: Re-Joyce (Bruce Hunter); (7) Yarnnotes From a Wild Woman Who Loves to Knit (Celeste Snowber); (8) Encounters with Cracked and Broken Tongues (Candace P. Lewko); (9) After the War With Hannelore (G. Scott MacLeod); (10) Bereaved (N. Rochelle Yamagishi); (11) On the Esoterics of Thread (Nane Ariadne Jordan); (12) Triumph Street Pedestrians (Erika Hasebe-Ludt and Anne Scholefield); (13) A Season for Less (Veronica Gaylie); (14) Tutelaries of a Place We Came Into (Christi Kramer); (15) Liminal Lessons From Two Islands and One Son (Tasha Henry); (16) The Gates of Butterstone Farm (Ahava Shira); (17) Confessions of an English Teacher in Francophone Quebec (Lynn Thomas); (18) Mzungu (Marguerite Leahy); (19) Travels Through Global Indigenity (Priscilla Settee); (20) Nigglings From Kurdistan (Sheila Simpkins); (21) Okonokistsi (Hali Heavy Shield); (22) Spelling and Other Illiteracies (Cynthia Chambers); (23) Pedagogy of Papa (Phong Kuoch); (24) Dezi Was a Drummer (Christy Audet); (25) Curricular Fixations and Poetic Tactics (Sean Wiebe); (26) A Pedagogy of Hearing (Janet Pletz); (27) So Far From Shore (Daniel Scott); (28) The Shape of Questions (Daniela Elza); (29) Professions of a Stay-at-Home Father and Writer (GW Rasberry); (30) Conscious Awakening: From Impersonator to Loving Teacher (Margaret Louise Dobson); (31) Minding What Matters: Relationship as Teacher (Avraham Cohen and Heesoon Bai); (32) Teacher Burnout: Recovery From a Toxic Condition (Heidi Clark); (33) Haunting Children (Lisa Nucich); (34) A Curriculum for Miracles (Jackie Seidel); (35) Finding Canada in the American Midwest: Life Writing as Public Discourse (Anita Sinner); (36) Eavesdropping as Seductive Conversation (Pat Palulis); (37) Death of the Black Cat (Bruce Hunter); (38) An Ethic of Humility (Alexandra Fidyk); (39) Fieldnotes of a Punjabi-Canadian Researcher (Hartej Gill); (40) Blood Trails (Pauline Sameshima and Yvette Dubel); (41) Each Moment, a Child of Duration (Lynn Fels); (42) Floodgates (Susan Braley); (43) Vampires and Oil Spills (Patti Fraser); (44) Towards a Definition of Pornography (Bruce Hunter); (45) Hard to Place (Tasha Hubbard); (46) A Social Study of the Double Helix (Denise Schellhase); and (47) A Metis Manifesto (Vicki Kelly).