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Written by: Kamran Mofid

Published: 16 December 2024

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A Poet’s Guide to a Rewarding and Joyous Festive Season

‘Christmas gives us the opportunity to be the best we can be.’

Combining Passion and Compassion with Purpose and Action 

Photo:dreamstime.com

Christmas is a story of hope

When Hope Lights Up The Darkness

Christmas is all about Camaraderie and Community, Family and Friends  

A Time to Weave a New and Hopeful Tapestry of Life 

The other day (Tue 19 Nov 2024), as I was reflecting on our annual GCGI Christmas message, I sat down for a well-deserved tea break. I turned to my wife and said, do you fancy watching something nice and inspiring on the telly? I never knew that what we were about to watch would become our GCGI message of Christmas hope, love and goodwill for 2024 and beyond. 

Poet Lemn Sissay and his Christmas Journey

‘I found the most difficult days to be my birthday and Christmas because they were a reminder of everything I never had.’- Lemn Sissay

Choosing hope and action to inspire, enable, and empower

Lemn Sissay Meets Sally Phillips

Photo credit: BBC

‘Sally Phillips meets Lemn Sissay, who spent years in the care system after being taken from his mother as a baby. His is a tale of lost Christmases and rejection before he found the voice and words that have made him one of the most celebrated poets in the UK today. As Sally discovers, it’s a position that has now helped him bring the true meaning of Christmas to hundreds of other care leavers across the country.’- More on this later.

Lemn Sissay’s poetry is imbued with humanity and lyricism

Let There Be Peace
By Lemn Sissay

Let there be peace
So frowns fly away like albatross
And skeletons foxtrot from cupboards,
So war correspondents become travel show presenters
And magpies bring back lost property,
Children, engagement rings, broken things.

Let there be peace
So storms can go out to sea to be
Angry and return to me calm,
So the broken can rise up and dance in the hospitals.
Let the aged Ethiopian man in the grey block of flats
Peer through his window and see Addis before him,
So his thrilled outstretched arms become frames
For his dreams.

Let there be peace
Let tears evaporate to form clouds, cleanse themselves
And fall into reservoirs of drinking water.
Let harsh memories burst into fireworks that melt
In the dark pupils of a child’s eyes
And disappear like shoals of silver darting fish,
And let the waves reach the shore with a
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Lemn Sissay: ‘Everything in life is connected, and everything is connected to family’

‘The poet grew up in children’s homes and never knew a real Christmas. Now, he makes sure hundreds of care leavers feast in style each year. How – and why – does he do it?’ 

‘Christmas, says the poet Lemn Sissay, divides the world into two sorts of people. One group gathers around the domestic hearth: all jocularity and teasing, memories and traditions. The other group is, as in the Victorian cliche, outside the window looking in. They have never felt the warmth of the homely festive glow.

Most of us have families who, even if it’s with some reservation, we join for Christmas. We roll our eyes and sigh, we anticipate the annoyances; we steel ourselves for the nuances that only we could ever understand.

Sissay, though, is a member of the second group. He was raised in care, first in a foster family and then, from the age of 12, in a string of children’s homes. Christmas came with the tree and the fairy lights, the baubles and the presents, but all those other unseen ingredients – the real flavours of the season – were absent; all those essentials that, as the Grinch finally realised, can’t be bought from a shop.

Given what he’s missed, it would be understandable if Sissay were resentful and scathing about how thoughtlessly the rest of us sometimes complain about something so vital and yet unknown to him. But he is not – he is magnanimous…’- Continue to read

No care leaver should feel alone on Christmas Day.

Lemn Sissay's Christmas Dinner on BBC TV on Christmas Day

Welcome to The Christmas Dinner. It is an annual project founded by the poet Lemn Sissay MBE for communities to provide a Christmas Day for care leavers aged between 18 and 25. One they’ll never forget.

THE CHRISTMAS DINNER

POEM A DAY: LEMN SISSAY

‘Let the Light Pour In’ 

'How do you do it?' said night
'How do you wake up and shine?'
'I keep it simple,' said light
'One day at a time'

And now, what I had promised you at the beginning: 

What is Christmas? What is it all about?

Please see it all here:

Watch it on YouTube

Or

Watch it on BBC One

* You may equally be interested in watching the other two episodes in the series:

A Dancing Judge’s Guide to a Rewarding and Joyous Christmas

A Priest’s Guide to a Rewarding and Joyous Christmas

Christmas and New Year’s Greetings from Kamran and Annie Mofid

A time to open our hearts

“No matter how dark the night, morning always comes and our journey begins anew.”- Anonymous

As we celebrate in our various special ways

the gift of Life, Love and Light,

May Joy and Blessings be with you and your families

and may all people in the New Year

join together in serving the common good

and creating a world of peace and justice

where they learn war no more

and everyone sits under their own vine and fig tree

and no one makes them afraid.

May you find joy in the simple pleasures of life and may the light of the holiday season fill your heart with the hope for a better world

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Written by: Kamran Mofid

Published: 12 November 2024

Hits: 1172

Teachers as Poets: The Architects of the Transformational Change

Reclaim Your Heart and Discover Your Soul

Nota bene

‘We become teachers for the reasons of the heart.

But many of us lose heart as time goes by.

How can we take heart, alone and together,

So we can give heart to our students and our world,

Which is what good teachers do?'-THE HEART OF A TEACHER

‘Humanity is at the core of what a poem is. It is meaning, empathy, revelation, inversion, dissidence, passion, and surprise: poetry is what happens in the space between logic and chaos.’- Joelle Taylor, poet, playwright and author

Whilst the forces of fakery, arrogance, loneliness, violence, indifference, rejection, physical and mental disabilities, injustice, and inhumanity are real and cannot be denied, so are the powers of human authenticity, generosity, kindness, empathy, humility, dignity, understanding, courage, and community that are rising up to meet them, challenging them, providing better paths to this journey we call life.

A refocusing of education’s priorities on student wellbeing is of the essence. Every pupil and students, as well as their teachers and lecturers must feel a sense of belonging and self worth. 

Seeds of Hope: We are … the Syllabus- The Poets, Sages, and Philosophers of Love, on a Mission to Transform Education, Teaching and Learning Journeys

‘Teach your children poetry. It opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.’- Sir Walter Scott

‘It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.’- ALBERT EINSTEIN

'When we bring forth the spirituality of teaching and learning, we help students honor life’s most meaningful questions.’- Parker J. Palmer, founder, the Center for Courage & Renewal

“Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.”― Rumi

Now is the Time for Poetic Education for Heart and Mind to Bring Meaning and Purpose to Teaching

Beyond the Technocratic Education System: Education to Make Us Human

At a time when many see the future as a threat more than a promise, I hope that this offering may encourage us to see  how we can bend the future in new, hopeful, positive directions.

A Poetic Pilgrimage to Make our Classrooms the Region of Human Spirit

Photo credit: Oppidan Education

‘Teach your children poetry. It opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.’- Sir Walter Scott 

This write-up is dedicated to the youth of the world, our children and grand- children, who are the unfolding story of the decades ahead. May they receive a values-led education to empower and enable them to rise to the challenge of leading our troubled world, with hope and wisdom in the interest of the common good to a better future.

Envisioning the Future of our Children’s Education

Photo via Medium

This offering today responds to the pertinent and timeless question: how can we, the teachers, educators, parents, policy makers,..., create spaces in schools, homes, universities, communities,..., where children’s, students’ and the youth's whole being, (that is, heart, body and mind), is nourished, nurtured, enabled and empowered? 

Lest we forget, this, and other similar questions are increasingly being asked in today's educational practices, now widely acknowledged to be impacted from an imbalance towards the training of the intellect in neglect of the cultivation of the senses, imagination and realms of the heart and mind. 

grandparent? Are you a concerned citizen worrying about the direction of our world? Are you worried about the way our Mother Nature is being abused and neglected? Are you worried about the children and the youth locking themselves up in their rooms, playing computer games all day? Are you worried about absenteeism and truancy? Are you worried about the state of our physical and mental health? Are you worried about the loss of values we used to have and value?...Then, you are not alone.The world is in a state of shock, fear, anxiety, depression, hopelessness and helplessness. 

It does not need to be like that, with so much beauty, wisdom, words of inspiration and joy all around us, if only we could see them, feel them, hear them.

Education and Human Spirit at the Crossroads

Photo: Sheeba Magazine

‘Education should consist of a series of enchantments, each raising the individual to a higher level of awareness, understanding, and kinship with all living things.’- AUTHOR UNKNOWN

‘It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.’- ALBERT EINSTEIN

Today we are drowned in information but starved of wisdom 

'Where is the Life we have lost in living? 

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? 

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’- T. S. Eliot

'The world of knowledge and competence is in a constant state of flux. The same can be said for the universe of visions, aspirations and dreams. Changes are occurring every day on a national and world scale – we are faced with economic globalisation, the revolutions in information technology and biotechnology, growing inequality and social exclusion, violence of all kinds, environmental pollution and climate change. All of these things are increasing the need for new knowledge and skills, for new scenarios for our global society. Love, courage, honesty, trust, beauty, justice, spirituality, altruism, empathy, kindness, vocation, creativity, belonging – life itself – are again becoming major issues in the world of education.

In today’s largely decadent, money-driven world, the teaching of virtue and building of character are no longer part of the curriculum within the neoliberal system. The pursuit of virtue has been replaced by moral neutrality – the idea that anything goes. For centuries it had been considered that the main function of education was for the moral and social development of students, and for bringing together diverse groups for the common good. 

In the last few decades, however, and especially since the early 1970s, a new generation of educational reformers have been intent on using places of learning, to solve national and international economic problems. The economic justification for education – equipping students with marketable skills to help countries compete in a global, information-based workplace – has overwhelmed other historically important purposes of education. The language of business management is now being applied to educational establishments: schools and universities are ‘downsized’ and ‘restructured’, and their staffing is ‘outsourced’.

But, if there is a shared national purpose for education, should it be oriented only towards enhancing this narrow vision of a country’s economic success? Is everything public for sale? Should education be answerable only to the ‘bottom line’? Are the interests of individuals and selective groups overwhelming the common good that the education system is meant to support?

All said and done, education has to be reunited with its roots in moral philosophy, ethics, and the virtues. This treatment of students as customers, and courses as goods and services, disregards the truly important human values, and creates unhappy, purposeless and dysfunctional people who don’t know who they are or where they are going.'-Wisdom and the Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?

'Let them (your pupils) study to be good rather than learned, for learning begets envy which goodness destroys. Goodness is both more useful to men and more pleasing to God than learning. It is also more enduring. We forget more quickly some facts which were quickly learned than we lose principles of conduct which we have attained by arduous daily practice. Learning in itself brings little of value, and that for only a short time, while goodness is eternal and leads to the realisation of God. Therefore, following the example of Socrates, advise your pupils to use human learning to dispel the clouds of the senses, and to bring serenity to the soul. Then will the ray of truth from the divine sun illumine the mind, and never in any other way. That is the only useful study. A man who acts otherwise labours vainly and miserably.'-Marsilio Ficino letter to Lorenzo Lippi (Compiled by Jane Mason)

Together We Can Seize this Moment 

At a time when many see the future as a threat more than a promise, I hope that this offering may encourage us to see  how we can bend the future in new, hopeful, positive directions. 

A New Vision for Education:Educating Hearts and Minds

Teaching at its best is an Act of Poetry

Education, first and foremost, must give hope for a better future

Education: The Light of Hope

Photo via The Business Standard

Without humanity, beauty, inspirational and calming words, shedding light on who we are, or what and why we are, education is nothing, but a house of cards built on shifting sands.

Education is not about counting numbers, exam results,  Ofsted  reports and more, it must also, and more importantly, be about spiritual values, wellbeing, discovering goodness and the vision on how to become a better person, how to lead a better life, contributing positively to the community and society.

In this regard, the unique contributions of poetry are of the essence.

Poetry  can, by its sheer ability to take us to higher-order thinking, will merge the abstract with the tangible, offering students and  their teachers a unique insight through which to view their studies, teaching, and learning experiences.

Poetry is all about belonging, wellbeing and hope, learning through pleasure, joy and wonder.

Photo credit Isabel Otter: Poetry for Exploring Feelings

The other day, I was reflecting on my life journey. I started to think about my childhood years, the school and the highschool years, where I  was studying those decades ago in Tehran. You know, time and again, one thing, one class, one teacher I remember so fondly. The teachers who taught us poetry, encouraged us to recite, memorise and reflect on the deeper meanings of those poems. Moments of sheer beauty, joy and pleasure, everlasting and timeless gifts.

Sadly, today, poetry at schools and colleges, especially in the materialistic and ‘shopping till you drop’ countries, are shelved into the yesteryear ‘old school’ values, neglected and not part of curriculum in a serious way. Today, I so much wish to be a man on a mission, to increase awareness of poetry’s  potential, its power of healing, fostering empathy, compassion, and kindness, rewarding dialogue, conversation and engagement in the classrooms, enabling the students to have a more beautiful and meaningful educational journey. 

We, the teachers, are people of the heart. Teaching is our vocation. But, somehow, many of us lose heart as the years go by. This should not be the case. When we lose, the community loses too.

‘We become teachers for the reasons of the heart.

But many of us lose heart as time goes by.

How can we take heart, alone and together,

So we can give heart to our students and our world,

Which is what good teachers do?'-THE HEART OF A TEACHER

In the beginning were the words...They became languages...They became poetry…Empowering us to express and project love, kindness, goodness, hope, resilience, commitment and more

Let the words sing to you, dance for you, empower you to become the person you envision yourself to be: This is the mystery of values-led, purposeful and meaningful and poetical education.

“See it and live it. Look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic.” - Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes

This is How Teaching and Learning Becomes the Tool of Transformation  

Educating Hearts and Minds

‘Some say that my teaching is nonsense.

Others call it lofty but impractical.

But to those who have looked inside themselves,

this nonsense makes perfect sense.

And to those who put it into practice,

this loftiness has roots that go deep.

I have just three things to teach:

simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and in thoughts,

you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

You reconcile all beings in the world.'- Lao Tzu

In Search of an Education Where the Human Spirit Still Shines so Brightly.

The Path to a Transformative Education in the Age of Artificial intelligence (AI), Market Ideology and Neoliberal Values. 

Poetry is the key which unlocks the path to a good and values-led education, teaching and learning experience

Together We Can Seize this Moment 

At a time when many see the future as a threat more than a promise, I hope that this offering may encourage us to see  how we can bend the future in new, hopeful, positive directions. 

A New Vision for Education:Educating Hearts and Minds

Poetry the Fount of Knowledge

Photo via spiritualcleansing

A New Decade and a New Vision for Education: Seizing the Moment, Realizing the Value of Values-led Civics Education

Neoliberalism destroys human potential and devastates values-led education

Values-led education, hope and resilience to build a better future

Education to Make us Human

Why Happiness Should be Taught at Our Universities

Small is Beautiful: The Wisdom of E.F. Schumacher

My Economics and Business Educators’ Oath: My Promise to My Students

Poetry to calm the anxious and inquisitive mind

Beauty in words, others' and mine

A Poetic Pilgrimage to Make the Classrooms the region of human spirit, a place of hope, beauty, wisdom, purpose and meaning

Lest We Forget

We can build a better and more harmonious world, we can change our lives for the better, not through market ideology and values, not by arrogance, selfishness, greed, populism, trickery, isolationism, exceptionalism and neoliberalism, but, by our humanity, kindness, and rediscovering what it means to be human, when we  continue our common good journey and share a common belief in the potential of each one of us to become self-directed, empowered, and active in defining this time in the world as an opportunity for positive change and healing and for the true formation of a culture of peace by giving thanks, spreading joy, sharing love, seeing miracles, discovering goodness, embracing kindness, practicing patience, teaching moderation, encouraging laughter, celebrating diversity, showing compassion, turning from hatred, practicing forgiveness, peacefully resolving conflicts, communicating non-violently, choosing happiness and enjoying life.

I emphatically suggest that the first and foremost ingredient needed to achieve the above is through Education, but not the education currently on offer in the marketplace!

‘Reading or writing poetry creates a space for empathy, for seeing another person, for bearing witness to our common humanity. Poetry, and the arts more generally, allow that chance to be human together… Empathy is essential for our survival . . . without empathy, how would we heal?”... “When we hear rhythmic language and recite poetry, our bodies translate crude sensory data into nuanced knowing . . . feeling becomes meaning.”-Poet and physician Rafel Campo, M.D. 

‘O Great Spirit,

whose voice I hear in the winds

and whose breath gives life to all the world,

hear me.

I am small and weak.

I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty

and let my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.

Make my hands respect the things you have made

and my ears grow sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand the things

you have taught my people.

Let me learn the lessons you have hidden

in every leaf and rock.

I seek strength not to be greater than my brother or sister

but to fight my greatest enemy, myself.

Make me always ready

to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes

So when life fades as the fading sunset

my spirit may come to you without shame.’

- Chief Yellow Lark, a nineteenth-century Lakota elder.

Here's why we shouldn't give up on poetry

Here’s why we need daily doses of poetry to nourish our hearts and nurture our souls

‘I'm glad the sky is painted blue,

And the earth is painted green,

With such a lot of nice fresh air

All sandwiched in between.’- Anon.

'When we bring forth the spirituality of teaching and learning, we help students honor life’s most meaningful questions.’- Parker J. Palmer, founder, the Center for Courage & Renewal

‘Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart…Try to love the questions themselves…Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them—and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.’- R.M. Rilke (1993). Letters to a young poet.

In response, to my mind, we need to begin the process of reversing and replacing the neoliberal, values-less education with an education for the "soul," wherein "soul" is to be understood as the mediating perspective which acts as a torch, brightening and illuminating the middle ground between mind and body, worthiness and unworthiness, knowledge and wisdom, ideas, visions and experiences, spirituality and the world,  so on and so forth.

An education that nurtures the soul, whilst nourishing the heart, ultimately speaks to the mysterious depth of the being, in this journey we call life,  through the language of the heart and imagination. As all sages and philosophers of life and love have reminded us, again and again, it is from literature and poetry that we learn this Language….Poetry is the Education that Nourishes the Heart and Nurtures the Soul 

World in Chaos and Despair: The Healing Power of Poetry

In Search of Meaning and Purpose: The Poets' Guide to Economics

In Search of Meaning and Purpose: The Poets’ Guide to Politics

The Journey to Sophia: Education for Wisdom

The Value of Values: Values-led Education to Make the World Great Again

See also:

Teachers as poets, teaching as poetry, and lessons as poems

Teacher as poet

Rhyme and reason: poetry’s power as a pedagogical tool

Introducing children to poetry

A must-read books

‘We are all poets—whether we know it or not—because we all have unique voices to share and stories to tell. Educator Mike Johnston honors that truth with You Are Poetry, a step-by-step curriculum that brings out and lifts up student voice through the art of slam poetry. Across four highly choice-driven course units, complete with modifications for all poets in K–8 classrooms,

‘Johnston guides readers through activities and insights that will grow poets in your school and citizens in your community. At a time when students struggle to form empathic relationships at school, You Are Poetry underscores the value of being open and alive to the world. These tools don’t just spark creative expression; they go beyond, nurturing it from within as a gift to ourselves and a path to real connection with others.’- Learn more and buy the book HERE

‘This book invites us to consider the profound impact that poetry can have in shaping personal and professional development in a higher education setting. Suitable for educators, learners, and practitioners, it offers a transformative learning approach in using poetry for teaching, assessment, research, and reflection. The book includes diverse examples, case studies, and practical exercises, demonstrating poetry's application in personal and professional development in a higher education setting. Each chapter guides readers through these processes, empowering them to integrate poetry into their own teaching and learning practices in a way that is creative, inclusive, and impactful’- Learn more and buy the book HERE

CONCLUSION

The future is indeed fraught with environmental, socio-economic, political, and security risks that could derail the progress towards the building of “The Future We Want”. However, although these serious challenges are confronting us, we can, if we are serious and sincere enough, overcome them by taking risks in the interest of the common good.

One thing is clear: the main problem we face today is not the absence of technical or economic solutions, but rather the presence of moral and spiritual crises. This requires us to build broad global consensus on a vision that places values such as love, generosity and caring for the common good into our educational models, teaching and learning practices, the socio-political and economic vision, suggesting possibilities for healing and transforming our world. Let us seize it. Carpe Diem!

Let us embrace life’s profound whispers

‘In the quiet whispers of the night, 

Destiny weaves its unseen thread,

Do not fret over the shadows of what's to come, 

For the future's path lies beyond our grasp. 

‘With each breath, surrender the weight of tomorrow, 

Let go of the anxious grasp for control, 

The divine dance moves in silent, unseen steps, 

Unfolding mysteries that eyes cannot behold.

‘The heart may quiver in the face of the unknown, 

Yet, in stillness, find your steadfast ground, 

For the soul that remains calm amidst chaos,

Discovers the wisdom that silence brings.

‘So, breathe deep and trust the silent flow, 

In this cosmic play, we're but humble guests, 

Let your soul be a mirror, serene and clear, 

Reflecting peace in the dance of fate's gentle hand.’- Inspired by Kannada literature and the works of D. V. Gundappa's (DVG) Manku Thimmana Kagga/via Kamal Kumar, Linkedin

I hope, here through this Blog posting, we succeeded in forming a community of committed and passionate gardeners, sowing seeds of sustainability, peace, justice and global friendship for the common good. In the wonderful and wise words of Rumi:

Tender words we spoke

to one another

are sealed

in the secret vaults of heaven.

One day like rain,

they will fall to earth

and grow green

all over the world.