Silence in Teaching and Learning: an Email Exchange with Janine Manatis and Anna Migliarisi

Silence in Teaching and Learning:

an Original Email Exchange with Janine Manatis and Anna Migliarisi

© April 2007

From: Janine Manatis
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 3:58 PM
To: Anna Migliarisi
Subject: SILENCE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING (Day One)
Importance: High

Anna, dear friend, colleague and mentoree (is there such a word?).I looked it up and it said mentored! However, the point of this email is to thank you for sending me the invitation to write something about "Silence in Teaching and Learning”. But first off, I have to call attention to the "incorrectness" of both examples offered of how a teacher calls for silence. One example is supposed to be incorrect (negative) and the other correct (positive). It's almost - but not quite! - funny because they are identical. They's both negative. From childhood on, we know that "Shhh" means shut up. Whatever follows is just pretend politeness. A "softening of the blow" to make yourself look good. Actually, it's worse than the sharp, direct command which at least does not masquerade behind false civility but comes straight out and takes its chances. A closed door is a closed door whether nicely shut or slammed! Neither response is respectful, productive, creative, or reflective of an honest understanding of teaching/learning or of authentic silence. Gotto run. More. Later. Thanks again. Janine

P.S. I've never heard of a course called, "The Art of Silence", have you?

From: Anna Migliarisi

To: Janine Manatis

Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 4:12 PM

Subject: RE: SILENCE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING (Day One)

Janine, I remember you once saying that learning has to do with experience filtered through reflection. That stuck with me. As a concept it is so "simple", yet profound. Teaching, then, as I understand your meaning, is not about talking and intellectualizing. Rather it is about setting up conditions for experiencing or "letting the work move through the body" which, of course, leads to genuine insights. Therefore, the majority of circumstances for teaching/learning strike me as counterproductive. How can anything "authentic" take place if the environment is "false"? We need to begin at the beginning. What kind of space is most conducive to the subject matter? What do we need to best serve a meaningful, productive and respectful exchange between students and teacher? What, in other words, brings about the best results and offers insight which has everything to do with the concept of silence as I understand it.

From: Janine Manatis
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 4:30 PM
To: Anna Migliarisi
Subject: Re: SILENCE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING (Day One)
Importance: High

Dear Dr. Anna Migliarisi!!!

Good teaching uses metaphors.

Good learning explores them.

The core necessity for authentic teaching and learning is Listening. Have you ever noticed how silent, how still it gets before a storm, an outpouring? That's why I think of silence as a womb. The place from which everything is born. All spiritual disciplines revere silence as the state of being where we can know: God, our Higher Self, the Answer/the Question, the Presence. Buddhists suggest we empty the mind. Quakers sit until the inner call to speak arrives. Nuns and priests abstain from worldliness and meditation is the TAO for many. (And just today I read an article in The Toronto Star about a community named Taizé, meeting in Montreal this weekend, with about 1,000 young people who "thirst for silence". One said of silence: "it feels like home.")

Then, of course, there's the beautiful song, "The Sounds of Silence". You know how much I love paradox. My definition is, "The place where we find ourselves: folded in among opposites." A place inhabited by silence in all its contradictions.

Enough!!!!

From: Anna Migliarisi

To: Janine Manatis

Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 9:44 AM

Subject: An Email Exchange with Janine Manatis and Anna Migliarisi (Day Two)

But inhabiting that place of not knowing—true listening with the body, mind and spirit as we know it—takes real staying power and a little faith, right? We cannot be sure of what will come up when we stop “flapping our wings”. What if nothing comes? We’ll be found out! Give up “cleverness”? Trust in the “still” before the storm? Trust “presence”? Most teaching/learning environments aren’t built for that. Most teachers wouldn’t dream of beginning a class by not talking or by ending with, say, humming in unison.

It’s no one’s fault. Or perhaps it’s our entire fault. The whole system is built for noisemaking, which more often than not is mistaken for authentic exchange. Fortunately in our work in the studio there is the possibility of the good teaching and learning you define. There is an honest chance of encountering the “subject”—which includes our selves. Anna

From: Janine Manatis
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 10:21 AM
To: Anna Migliarisi
Subject: Re: An Email Exchange with Janine Manatis and Anna Migliarisi (Day Two)
Importance: High

Anna, you said, the common feeling that often comes to teachers when they "pause to breathe" - of course, one of the major problems being that they're not breathing! - is "What if nothing comes!" "We'll be found out!" They have not learned one of life's most profound truths: there is no such thing as nothing. There is what is. And the feat is in not having the illusion that there is a "right" answer. Instead there’s, "Wow, we’ve made a discovery!" Some thing, not knowable in any other way.

You also made me think when you said,” It’s no one's fault." Then you corrected yourself by stating, it's everyone's fault which indeed it is. If the word "fault" sounds too judgmental, use the Zen word error, indicating something that can be rectified, changed. And we know that it can be because we practice it. And practice is what it takes to arrive at knowing. The old adage, "practice makes perfect." comes to mind. Or at least as close to your perfect as it's possible to get.

Me again.

From: Anna Migliarisi
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 10:43 AM
To: 'Janine Manatis'
Subject: RE: An Email Exchange with Janine Manatis and Anna Migliarisi (Day Two)
Importance: High

Let’s build our own academy and make “The Art of Silence” the foundation course for everybody—and that includes the janitors, the ladies at the coffee shop and, heaven help us, the administrators. Some of my favorite people at school are the ladies at the coffee shop. Have I ever told you that? They are who they are. They have nothing to prove. They are unfettered, so to speak, or, as we name it: authentically present in the moment. Anna

From: Janine Manatis
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 9:14 AM
To: Anna Migliarisi
Subject: Re: Email Exchange - Janine Manatis & Anna Migliarisi (3rd Day)

Love it! What use to be called the common man. (until the term became politically incorrect!)And never, ever, the common woman! Another no, no altogether, eh??? Your ladies are for sure unfettered by presumption. Aren't they lucky? Who ever said being an intellectual was the epitome of accomplishment!

From: Anna Migliarisi
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 9:20 PM
To: 'Janine Manatis'
Subject: RE: Email Exchange - Janine Manatis & Anna Migliarisi (3rd Day)
Importance: High

Is that a trick question?

Anna

From: Janine Manatis
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 10:11 PM
To: Anna Migliarisi
Subject: Re: Email Exchange - Janine Manatis & Anna Migliarisi (3rd Day)

Seriously, in the final analysis what distinguishes true "teaching" - of any subject - from by rote dissemination of information - is what I call organic and its Siamese twin, originality. They are intrinsically bound together. They describe themselves by "what is", are not contrived, but are in harmony with each and every situation and individual. In my method - as you know and teach it so well - there are few principles, but they are immutable. However, while the principle itself never changes, it can be used in as many different ways as there are people using it! That is what defines organic and original.

From: Anna Migliarisi
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 10:29 AM
To: 'Janine Manatis'
Subject: RE: Email Exchange - Janine Manatis & Anna Migliarisi (3rd Day)

Darn!

We’re reaching our word limit! This is all so important and we’ve only scratched the surface! I was hoping we could talk about some of the basic principles, and the sensory exercises …but I guess that’ll have to wait until Actors’ Exercises for EverybodyÓ is published.

Anna

From: Janine Manatis
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 10:38 PM
To: Anna Migliarisi
Subject: Re: Email Exchange - Janine Manatis & Anna Migliarisi (3rd Day)

Well, Anna. Here we go into "The Heart of Darkness" or if you prefer the film, "Apocalypse Now." Meaning the hard truth about silence. And that is.........

If we're honest, we'll admit that silence frightens us. Because? Both inner and outer silence stands for the unknown. And the essence of the unknown is death. Silence equals death. After all, we know that one day we will be forever silent and that knowing sends dread throughout our very being: body, mind, soul. That's why any form of sound is better than silence. Bring on the noise: shouts and screams, "cries and whispers”, music, laughter, bugs, birds, beasts and always "words, words, words". Kill the silence! Before it kills you.

And so there is bravery in engaging with silence on whatever terms necessary. Whatever context. Whatever, ironically, speaks to you.

Perhaps its greatest virtue is its' ultimate challenge that requires you to "see through the glass darkly", devoid of fantasy or wishful thinking, but full of acceptance, in the stillness of the moment.

From: Janine Manatis
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 11:00 AM
To: Anna Migliarisi
Subject: More.......
Importance: High

Anna,

Don't scream! This may take us over the word limit, but I have to tell you to get the Sunday STAR. There's a front page article on "emailing". Sub-title: EMAIL BONDING. I'm mentioning it because we're ahead of them, not the other way around. It's an interesting, enjoyable, informative exchange - as is ours!

The End. I Promise.

Janine

From: Anna Migliarisi
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 11:01 AM
To: 'Janine Manatis'
Subject: RE: More.......

Oh yeah sure …

Anna