of Books Barns and Boardrooms Exploring Praxis Through Reflexive Inquiry Second Edition Ellyn Lyle Full Chapter

Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms:
Exploring Praxis Through Reflexive

Inquiry (Second Edition) Ellyn Lyle
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/of-books-barns-and-boardrooms-exploring-praxis-thro
ugh-reflexive-inquiry-second-edition-ellyn-lyle/
Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms (Second Edition)
Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms
Exploring Praxis through Reflexive Inquiry Of Books, Barns, and
(Second Edition)
Ellyn Lyle Boardrooms
Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms: Exploring Praxis through Reflexive Inquiry is at
once scholarly and deeply personal. A rich weave of learning moments across mul- Exploring Praxis through
tiple contexts—formal education, workplace learning, relationships with horses—
this text explores the various ways that pedagogy and practice emerge with and Reflexive Inquiry
through our lived experiences. Centring the metaphor of join-up, a relational
approach to starting new horses, the book intertwines educational theory with sto-
ried experience to uncover opportunities for cultivating collaborative spaces born Second Edition
of trust, deep communication, agency, and relationality. A highly readable text,
Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms models reflexive inquiry as a way of being while
inviting us to imagine possibilities for re/humanizing teaching and learning praxis. Ellyn Lyle
“Ellyn Lyle models reflexive inquiry as a deeply personal textual practice. Her prose
is crisply succinct, speaking directly to educators in a refreshingly resonant voice.
One hears a scholar who understands the challenges of student engagement that
teachers face in schools and university classrooms. Answers are not necessarily to
be found in curriculum plans and instructional designs but in the capacity of edu-
cators to know themselves more fully and bring their best selves to class each day.
Of Books, Barns and Boardrooms will inspire teachers to dig deeply into their own
stories of teacher formation. The reflexivity shining through this text is narratively
evocative of the very manner in which educators at all levels may cultivate supple
resiliency while responding to the call to re/centre our humanness in teaching and
learning.” – Stephen Smith, Ph.D., Professor, Simon Fraser University
Ellyn Lyle, Ph.D. (2011), is Dean in the Faculty of Education at Yorkville University.
The use of critical and reflexive methodologies shape explorations within the fol-
lowing areas: teacher and learner identity; praxis and practitioner development;
and lived and living curriculum.¿This is her 12th book.
Ellyn Lyle
Cover illustration: Photograph by Dillon Lyle
ISBN 978-90-04-54760-5
Spine
<6 mm>
Exploring Praxis through Reflexive Inquiry
Second Edition
By
Ellyn Lyle
leiden | boston
Cover illustration: Photograph by Dillon Lyle
All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
isbn 978-90-04-54760-5 (paperback)

isbn 978-90-04-54761-2 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-54762-9 (e-book)
Copyright 2023 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink,
Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be
addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents
About the Author vii
Prologue: Wading into Reflexive Inquiry 1
PART 1
An Education Terroir
1 My Entry Point 9
2 Beginnings in Endings 12
3 Circling Closer 14
4 Re/imagining a Future in Education 17
PART 2
Learning with/in Schools
5 Assumptions about Truth 21
6 A World without Colour 26
7 Perspective 35
8 Going Back 38
PART 3
Learning with Horses
9 Join-Up 45
10 Compassionate Companionship 54
11 My Inner Horse 57
vi Contents
PART 4
Learning with/in Organisations
12 From Barn to Boardroom 61
13 Locally Grown 64
14 Certified Organic 69
15 Of Best Intentions 72
PART 5
Cultivating the Field of Co-constructed Praxis
16 Centring Reflexive Values 77
17 Living Reflexively 80
18 Fostering Co-constructed Praxis 82
Epilogue 84
References 85
About the Author
Ellyn Lyle has a longstanding background in innovative education practices,

ranging from traditional classrooms to workplace and community partnerships
and technologically supported learning. She has also held senior leadership
positions within global corporations where learning and development were
integral components of her portfolio. In all these contexts, she has remained
intensely interested in supporting the development of students and teachers
as they contribute to socially equitable and sustainable programs. The use of
critical and reflexive methodologies shape her explorations within the follow-
ing areas: lived and living curriculum; intersections of self and subject and
their implications for teacher and learner identity; re/humanising education;
and praxis and practitioner development. She holds the following degrees:
B.A., B.Ed., M.Ed., and Ph.D. Having joined the academic community full-time
in 2011, she is Dean in the Faculty of Education. This is her 12th book. Find out
more about her work at https://yorkvilleu.academia.edu/EllynLyle, or connect
with her here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellynlyle/
Prologue
Wading into Reflexive Inquiry
In 2005, when I was completing a graduate degree in Education, I was also work-
ing in an adult education learning centre that I had developed for a large enter-
prise a few years earlier. It was there that reflexive inquiry began to emerge for
me. I was approaching 30 years old, and I had recently left the public school
system in search of a teaching context that felt less harmful to me. Please don’t
misunderstand me: I have tremendous respect for teachers, and I appreciate the
difficult line they walk between teaching curriculum and teaching individuals.
As someone who understands this line as a fundamental difference in pedagogy,
I struggled to move within a system that too often privileged the ubiquitous at
the expense of the personal.
I know I was not alone in this struggle as I sought the counsel of veteran
teachers, and they openly shared their efforts to reconcile this tension. While
their responses to it varied from quiet resistance to conformity, they seemed to
have found ways to remain within formal systems of schooling. I think I lacked
the maturity to find my own path there, so I clung to my idealism as a lifeboat
and eventually washed up on the shore of adult education in search of a differ-
ent kind of teaching and learning context.
As the youngest person in our adult learning centre, I learned quickly to
look to the students to inform their learning. In doing so, I came to under-
stand that learning is a deeply personal and complex weave of what we already
know, how we came to know it, and what we would like to learn. Even as I
looked to the students to guide my development as teacher, I found myself
thinking back about my own experiences in schools. As I engaged this process
of looking back to move forward, insights shifted with new experiences, and I
began to understand learning as temporal and relational.
This fluid nature of learning extended to my teaching life as well, so much
so that teaching and learning became a nearly indistinguishable symbiosis. As
a graduate student in education at the same time that I was leading this learn-
ing centre, I sought ways to bring together my teaching and learning roles in
an inquiry for my thesis. I turned to scholarly discourse in search of relevant
theory even as I wondered how I might theorise what I was doing. At the time,
I found guidance from the scholarship of Ardra Cole and Gary Knowles who
referred to this process of researching teaching as reflexive inquiry (Cole &
Knowles, 2000). They said that, because teaching and teacher development are
rooted in the personal, reflexive inquiry involves the study of how the personal
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_001

2 Prologue
influences the professional; thus, they argued, it is impossible to understand

teaching without understanding the teacher. I found immediate resonance
with their work even as I saw an opening to extend it to include the impossibil-
ity of understanding learning without understanding the learner. Energised
by the possibilities for students and teachers to consciously include their lived
experiences in their continuous learning, I began to explore reflexive inquiry
to examine not only what we know but also how we know.
Reflexive inquiry (RI) is both established and continually emerging. Its
fluid and dynamic nature has contributed to multiple conceptualisations and
varied applications. At its most basic, RI refers to researcher consciousness of
their role in and effect on research and the findings that emerge from it. RI is a
methodology, then, that relies on reflexivity as a form of consciousness. Unlike
reflection, reflexivity asks us to engage in critical introspection in the moment,
as well as after it, while concurrently critiquing our socio-political contexts
(Attia & Edge, 2017; Cunliffe, 2016, 2020; Langer, 2016; Palagnas et al., 2017; Zinn
et al., 2016). Said another way, reflection is after and individual whereas reflex-
ivity is ongoing and relational.
In making the role of the researcher central in the research process, reflexive
inquiry rehumanises research while surfacing questions about the ontologi-
cal, epistemological, and axiological nature of knowledge. By its very design,
then, reflexive inquiry disrupts normalised assumptions about how we come
to knowledge and interrogates our capacities as researchers to account for an
ever-evolving understanding of our experiences. This ontology of immanence
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1994; St. Pierre, 2019) stands in stark contrast with histori-
cal and continuing tendencies to privilege (the guise of) objectivity in academic
research. Instead, reflexive inquiry calls on us to acknowledge our subjectivities
so that we might work to mitigate bias and, therein, improve research rigour
(Alexander, 2017; Cunliffe, 2020; McGarry, 2019). The inherent requirement to
acknowledge our subjectivities requires us to examine the auto/biographical
nature of reflexive inquiry.
Auto/biographical Nature of Reflexive Inquiry
It has long been established that teaching and learning are auto/biographi-
cal endeavours (Bochner, 1997; Bochner & Ellis, 2016; Cole & Knowles, 2000;
Palmer, 2017). Despite historic criticisms, the inclusion of auto/biography in
our practices is neither narcissistic nor egocentric. Being critically conscious
of the ways we bring our lived experiences into the classroom benefits both
students and teachers (James, 2007; Lee, 2012; Palmer, 2017). As teacher and
Prologue 3
student both, I found myself remembering how my time in schools too often
left me feeling excluded. I recalled viscerally the anxiety born of deep discon-
nection and how that disconnection led me to flee the K-12 system barely four
years after I began teaching. I remember feeling ashamed of my failure and,
fearing judgment if I discussed it with anyone, I turned to writing to help me
understand my experiences. In the privacy of my own journals, I was able to
make sense of my splintered sense of self as the result of having too little room
to be authentically present in my teaching and learning experiences.
Acknowledging the auto/biographical nature of teaching and learning
allowed me to understand them as grounded in personal history. It helped me
to imagine a space where lived experience was positioned as co-curricular just
as it encouraged me to cultivate a praxis that seeks to create space in which
all students can locate themselves. As I worked to ensure these tenets were
encouraged in our classroom, I noticed the most profound shift—as we were
able to understand our teaching and learning selves more fully, our openness to
learning with and through each other also expanded (Davidson, 2018; Hickey,
2016). I understood then that, just as “autobiography is theory, every theory is
a fragment of autobiography” (Snowber & Wiebe, 2009, p. 5). I circled back
to reflexive inquiry once again to extend auto/biographical considerations so
that they included the role of relationality in teaching and learning.
Relationality
We are always in relation—with earlier versions of ourselves, with each other,

and with the world. Because each of our encounters writes themselves on us in
both visible and invisible ways, abstracting self from teaching and learning cre-
ates partiality of understanding. Parker Palmer (2017) references the tendency
of education contexts to cultivate and reward this partiality as a pathology of
disconnectedness. Pathology, he says, points to the dis/ease of creating a cul-
ture that explicitly devalues personal and relational knowledge. In explicitly
encouraging the integration of self and subject, we become more prepared to
engage with empathy and understanding when we encounter experiences that
are foreign to us (Lykes & van der Merwe, 2019; Pitard, 2017; Tibbitts, 2016). This
is the heart of relational knowing—the process of connecting with realities not
our own (de Saxe & Trotter-Simons, 2021; Palmer, 2017).
In this way, reflexive inquiry insists that we value each other even as we
value ourselves. In making relationality a counterbalance to auto/biography,
reflexive inquiry helps us create teaching and learning experiences that are
more critically conscious, representative, and socially equitable (Grudnoff et
4 Prologue
al., 2017; Held, 2019). Its social justice framing and action imperative demand
a new type of research rigour—one that is explicitly connected to researcher
consciousness. As such, critical scholars are increasingly insisting that RI is
the responsibility of every researcher regardless of paradigmatic positionality
(Doyle, 2013).
Understanding critical and social consciousness as constituent components
of reflexive inquiry, I engage with this methodology to yield a transformative
shift in praxis. Transformative reflexivity resides in a humanising pedagogy
and aims to expose relationships, habitus, and constructs that support inequi-
table cultures of compliance so that we are able to challenge injustice. Work-
ing toward this transformative praxis requires the establishment of shared
commitments negotiated through consciousness that embraces introspection,
mutuality, and the courageous critique of self in society (Zinn et al., 2016). In
short, it compels us to engage in critical thought that is supported by conscious
and emancipatory action. Diversity of perspective through the inclusion of
multiple subjectivities is integral to achieving this goal.
Within the multiplicity of perspectives, reflexive inquiry offers a critical
lens through which we can examine our research efforts and action impera-
tives. It encourages us to interrogate our assumptions and critically examine
our claims to knowledge regardless of our ontological frameworks. Often
employed as a complementary methodology, reflexive inquiry provides a criti-
cal counterbalance between personal and relational knowing in the evolution
of praxis. This critical counterbalance was integral to my own research, which
relied on reflexive inquiry to support an autoethnographic examination of
critical praxis.
Autoethnography
Autoethnographic narrative is well supported by RI because both methodolo-

gies understand the self as central to inquiry even as they both seek to extend
socio-cultural consciousness. Within the framework of this particular inquiry,
autoethnographic narrative allows me to locate self relationally across the
various contexts within which I live and teach. The elements of narrative help
me to infuse inquiry with humanness by prioritising story and making central
the importance of lived experience in social science research. Drawing support
from Elizabeth St. Pierre (2018, 2019, 2021), I employ writing as a way of know-
ing to explore praxis development. I did so in the spirit of Joanne Yoo (2019)
who insists that only through this dangerous writing can we create narratives
of hope.
Prologue 5
It’s important to note, too, that autoethnography often blurs the boundary
between storytelling and storyhearing (Huang, 2015). This is, in part, because of
our tendency to think from within the story and, in part, because we continu-
ally amend our understandings in concert with exposure to new experiences.
Reflexive inquiry supports critical consciousness of these embodied meanings
and provides a framework through which we can understand self and self-in-
relation (Bochner & Ellis, 2016; Daskalaki et al., 2015).
The coupling of autoethnographic narrative and reflexive inquiry in the
study of praxis demands at least two things: first, autoethnographic narrative
requires consciousness of the intersection of self and society as I write my way
into knowing; second, reflexive inquiry insists on critical interrogation of praxis
development as both dynamic and relational. Together, these complementary
methodologies allow me to investigate praxis with research rigour situated
in a disciplined critical and social consciousness that necessitates a constant
de/re/construction of meaning within various socio-cultural contexts (Daskalaki
et al., 2015).
Understanding praxis as emerging from the dual dynamic of practising
theory and theorising practice, my hope in capturing a moment in my own
evolving consciousness is to invite others to consider what more is possible in
educational praxis when we start from a place that is committed to knowing
ourselves and each other and then work to arrive in a space of re/humanisation.
PART 1
An Education Terroir
∵
CHAPTER 1
My Entry Point
I am the second daughter of three born to a teacher and a farmer. Raised on

an acreage nestled along the banks of Malpeque Bay, I was an amphibious
creature from the start. I moved seamlessly between the land and the bay, and
I have come to realise that they were as integral to my development as the
human relationships that nurtured me. Through my father’s approach to agrol-
ogy, I learned that tending the land was a way of at/tending to myself; as I
honoured those who came before me, I learned to preserve resources for those
who would come after me. In this way, the land taught me about stewardship
and sustainability—about mutuality. As I planted, watered, weeded, and har-
vested, I developed an enduring awe of the honesty and wonder of a life spent
in cultivation.
My relationship with water is more complicated. I am drawn to the Atlantic
like ancient mariners to the call of the Siren. But, unlike them, the call cannot
lure me from the proximity of the shore. Even as I delight in the salty buoyancy,
my inner equilibrium diminishes the farther I drift from land. I’ve thought
about this a lot, how the allure befalls anxiety, and I have come to understand
my need to dwell in the space between land and sea, what Celeste Snowber
calls thin spaces (Snowber, 2022). Here, as I watch the sea advance and retreat,
each time wiping the canvas clean, I am reminded of impermanence. This is
the core of reflexive inquiry—continuously seeing anew. It took me years to
understand intellectually what I knew viscerally—that finding grace in letting
go creates the breaking open that Elizabeth St. Pierre (2018, 2019, 2021) refer-
ences. I began to think about this washing away as a vanishing point because of
its ability to conjure both a sense of possibility and a sense of loss. While I am
now several thousand miles from the place that cultivated these understand-
ings within me, I carry them with me acknowledging that such insights were
made possible in the leaving.
It takes time to learn to navigate this tensionality with grace. As I encoun-
tered points of rupture in my own journey through schools, first as a student
and then as a teacher, I was regularly in awe of my teacher-mother’s ability to
provide counsel by asking questions that helped me see through shifting posi-
tionality and deepening relationality. Her humility and patience helped me
create a sense of confidence in my own agency. Looking back 35 years to when
I spent a term as a student in her English class (the result of going to school in

10 CHAPTER 1
a small town), I appreciate the ease with which she managed to be my teacher
even as she seemed to parent her other students when it was helpful.
Bearing witness to my mother and father as I learned with/in place and with/
in relation informed a certain understanding of the world. Because this world-
view was so deeply woven in my formative fabric, I often felt conflicted in sys-
tems of schooling that failed to cultivate reflexivity as a form of consciousness.
Hoping to learn how to create education experiences that encourage this kind
of criticality, I sought out a university that was noted for promoting critical and
social consciousness. Because of its institutional history of social and political
advocacy, I assumed that it would be a space free of unexamined bias. In the
course of my studies, though, I came to understand that consciousness does
not preclude bias so much as it helps us interrogate it. Although I was coming
to make sense of this intellectually, I was struggling with it ideologically, and I
could not reconcile the binary thinking too often endemic in my field. I found
myself returning to that liminal space where the tide’s ebb and flow wipe away
evidence of our journey. I began to wonder how we might create teaching and
learning spaces that help us re/consider where and how we position ourselves.
I finished my degree and decided to pursue a career in education.
Armed with the idealism reserved for youth, I began a Bachelor of Educa-
tion degree, a program that wrote itself on me in permanent ways. I found
myself mired in a space decidedly incongruent with my values, and I came
to understand the profound disconnection that can lead people to despair
(Palmer, 2017). This inability to locate myself within my studies led to a crip-
pling crisis of identity.
My carefully constructed world began to crumble around me as I struggled
to steady myself under the weight of increasingly common anxiety. By Novem-
ber, when I was scheduled to complete my first practicum in the public educa-
tion system, I could feel my fibres fraying. When I think back on those days 25
years ago, I still return to them.
Why is it so hot in here? I can barely breathe. Scanning

the staff room, I feel my agitation grow because everyone
else seems so comfortable. What’s going on with me? Even
my hearing seems odd—like I’m in a tunnel or something.
I think I’m going to be sick. I need to get out of here, but
what will everyone think? I try to coach my sanity to
return—just sit still and smile, Ellyn; it’ll pass. But wait,
who is that shouting, “Get out of here!” Is that in my
head? I heed the warning too late and, as I rise from my
chair to make my exit, the room spins into nothingness.
My Entry Point 11
After these panic attacks became my frequent companions, I made an appoint-

ment to see my family physician. He used words like generalised anxiety disor-
der, and acute panic attacks, insisting that I take time off. When I said that
I could not, he prescribed Xanax, a fast-acting tranquilizer in the benzodiaz-
epine family. He warned me that it was not a cure but should take the edge
off so I could function. I thanked him and left. With three weeks remaining of
that practicum, I resigned myself to getting through the days with the help of
medication. But as I pushed forward, my frayed fibres began to unravel.
I limped across the finish line toward Christmas break, but the time off did
nothing to restore me. Quite the opposite, I was in even worse shape when I
returned to school for the second semester. The days dissolved into the nights
as sleep continued to elude me. The noise inside my head grew louder as panic
attacks consumed me. I paced, like I was trying to shake off something that had
crawled inside me. I finally hit bottom a couple of weeks later.
It’s been three months now, and I feel so depleted that I

have to drag myself through the simplest of tasks. I argue
with myself about the unreasonable nature of anxiety, and
I try to bargain with panic attacks. I faint so frequently
due to their severity now, I had to stop driving. Exhausted
by the effort, but unable to imagine another possibility, I
dress for the cold walk to class. I open the closet to put on
the sneakers that will carry me to school. But, as I look at
those sneakers, I see all the hypocrisy and incongruence I
chose for my future. Those sneakers dare me to put them
on. I can’t breathe. The room starts to spin. The walls
close in and the door looms in front of me.
It is with absolute certainty that I know
I am not going back to school.
CHAPTER 2
Beginnings in Endings
Joanne Yoo (2019) tells me that “the threat of ending can spark new begin-
nings” (p. 354). The day my sneakers dared me to put them on was the same
day I withdrew from all systems of formal schooling. In doing so, I found myself
without a learning community for the first time in almost 20 years. Both eman-
cipated and alienated, I eventually sought community in the work of theorists
who could help me understand why I experienced such a profound rupture
with schooling and how I might reconstitute myself in a new form. Although
many theorists from varied backgrounds influenced me, there were a handful
who engaged me in a dialogue through which my own voice became clearer.
I felt an immediate and enduring kinship with qualitative researchers, in
general, and narrative theorists, in particular. This community of scholars pro-
vided me with an alternative to the fragmentation I was feeling. Norman Denzin
(2017) introduced me to critical qualitative research as having great capacity
to support an in-depth examination of human experience. This seemed to
be a helpful vehicle for exploring the how and why questions I was facing—
questions not only regarding my own positionality, but also those pertaining
to education systems in general. As my reading broadened within qualitative
inquiry, I was excited by the number of scholars who recognised the central-
ity of self in teaching and learning. Parker Palmer (1994, 1997, 2004, 2017) was
perhaps the most influential thinker for me. I still the recall the day I picked
up The Courage to Teach. It was the kind of spring day where the sun’s warmth
competed with the air’s chill, so I retreated indoors. Curled up in the warmth
of my grandmother’s piano room, I slid further and further into his story. He
wrote clearly and unapologetically about education’s profound distrust of the
personal…about how our field cultivated a dangerous denial of humanness…
that positioning vulnerability as weakness abstracted self from subject such
that teaching and learning lost all significance. He argued passionately that
meaningful education resides in fostering space for wholeness…that denial of
this wholeness was a form of violence. He warned about the slippery slope
of progressive disconnection that might start innocuously enough in our will-
ingness to relegate our humanness to the periphery but how, too quickly, it
becomes a personal pathology resulting in pervasive dis/ease. As he shared his
own experiences of disconnection, I felt hope for the first time in months. His
storied transparency embodied the honesty I craved in education. Most impor-
tantly, though, he held up a mirror that required me to see how I was complicit

Beginnings in Endings 13
and asked me to take responsibility for imagining a different kind of educa-

tional experience. It was his call to action that helped me begin the hard work
of “emancipatory reaggregation” (Pinar, 2010, p. 3). This work began through
writing my own experiences with the hope that I would uncover insights. As I
engaged the process of writing, I simultaneously searched scholarly discourse
for the capacity of narrative to recentre self. The year that I was doing this
work, Clandinin and Connelly (2000) published a book on narrative inquiry
that discussed self as integral to research inquiry while also positioning narra-
tive as a process of coming to know. This same year, Laurel Richardson (2000)
suggested narrative was a method of constructing knowledge. I found reso-
nance with the work of these scholars but was left wanting more. Specifically,
I didn’t think that positioning narrative as a method supporting the process of
meaning making went far enough. It seemed to me that the act of writing my
way into knowing had deep epistemological implications. Further, I worried
that, without a counterbalance, the centrality of self might fail to make neces-
sary connections with experiences beyond my own. Wanting to connect self to
a larger social phenomenon, I stumbled onto Ellis and Bochner’s (2000) work
in autoethnography that made explicit connections between self and society
through storying experience. I also found Dewey’s work (1938) helpful as he
wrote extensively about experience having both personal and social meaning.
Referencing this as the continuity of experience, he insisted that neither peo-
ple nor their experiences exist in isolation so our understanding of ourselves
is necessarily and continually re/negotiated as we encounter others. Dewey’s
work on continuity left me wondering about the role of both relationality and
temporality in knowing, which ultimately led me to Cole and Knowles’ (2000)
work on reflexive inquiry. Specifically, they positioned reflexive writing as a
way of exploring teacher development. They grounded their approach in the
primacy of experience claiming that it is impossible to know teaching without
knowing the teacher. As I extended their work to include the impossibility of
knowing learning without knowing the learner, my own thinking began to take
shape. It occurred to me that I might have to return to the classroom to see if
the theory translated to practice. Re-entering those spaces that were so damag-
ing to me took time, but I circled closer. I finished my education degree but did
not return to school. Instead, I sought out opportunities to experiment with
teaching and learning that were amenable to re/centring humanness.
CHAPTER 3
Circling Closer
The year following the completion of my education degree and my withdrawal

from formal systems of schooling, and after having spent eight months shelter-
ing in place in the pages of scholarly discourse, I decided it was time to venture
beyond the community of books where I had sought refuge. I joined the film
industry as an educational coordinator for youth actors. Because this new role
required liaising with various systems of schooling, but teaching in non-tradi-
tional settings, I was able to explore pedagogical approaches that were more
learner-centred than those of my recent past. This experience helped me real-
ise that it wasn’t teaching that was so damaging for me; it was feeling trapped
within systems of education that felt dehumanising. A little older and perhaps
a bit wiser, I realised that this crisis was not unique to public schooling, and I
began to consider my experiences as a teacher differently.
Once I began questioning systems of schooling, rather than reacting to
them, I refocused my energy on seeking alternatives to those practices that
I found problem saturated. I continued to coordinate educational needs of
youth actors for the next three years as I moved between theory and practice,
exploring how each could inform the other. In late 2000, I was offered a posi-
tion as an instructor in a teacher’s college. This position situated me in a tra-
ditional classroom setting and required that I supervise practicum placements
within the public school system. I accepted the appointment and surprised
myself by enjoying it. Working with adults encouraged my active and ongoing
learning, and teaching began to feel like co-constructed praxis (Lyle & Caissie,
2021).
Although I continued to feel uneasy in the school system, looking back to
move forward helped me make sense of the source of my discomfort. I needed
space to encourage teaching and learning in personally meaningful ways. When
I felt trapped within curricula and practices that alienated learners rather than
engage them, I worried that education was perpetuating the dehumanisation
and fragmentation that was so damaging for me. Having gained broader teach-
ing experience in both non-traditional and traditional settings, I challenged
myself to consider a new definition of myself as teacher. Growing more confi-
dent, I decided there was only one way to know for certain. In December 2003,
six years after I walked away from my future as a schoolteacher, I returned to
the high school classroom determined to face all my demons in one showdown.

Circling Closer 15
Sleep did not come easily last night. I feel like an

underdog in an old western showdown. I can almost taste
the dust and hear the whispers as I check my six-shooter
and readjust my hat. It’s all come down to this moment…
I am in the main entrance surrounded by murals of
images ranging from basketball to the Bard. I push
beyond the familiar smell of cleansing agents and
adolescence, and realise there is
comfort in the old familiarity, but not peace.
I turn toward the staff room, where I am greeted
by a few of the long timers. I’m grateful for their warm
welcomes just as I recognise my own guardedness. I sense
immediately that my return is not a rejoining so much as
an opportunity to prove something to myself. I drop my
coat over a hook and head to the office to fill out the
necessary paperwork and pick up
my attendance board and classroom keys.
Down the hallway, through a few more corridors, I
find myself in the English Department. I unlock the door
to my past and find that very little has changed.
Approximately 40 desks fill the room. In an effort to fit
them all in, they are arranged in columns that prohibit
collaboration and dialogue—students at desks face only
the teacher—the transmitter of information.
I shake off my judgments, check the daybook, and
prepare to meet my class. The students whoop and holler
as they come through the door, celebrating not only the
nearness of Christmas break but, also, that they have a
substitute for the day. I don the old mask that smothered
me for years and steady myself. I begin the attendance,
and one of the boys responds “here” when I call “Mary”; I
smile, as he would be Mary for the rest of the day. The
class giggles, but the point is taken.
The rest of the roll call is smooth.
I suggest that they get ready for some trite holiday
activities. The class smart aleck says, “What the hell is
trite?” I pitch a dictionary to him and say, “look it up.” The
class rallies around him, waiting for his response. “Trite:
stale through common use or repetition; worn out,” comes
16 CHAPTER 3
the definition from the left wing of the classroom. “Great

job,” I reply, “so we’ve established that the upcoming
activity is boring and old but we’re going do it anyway.
Let’s have at it.” The groans make me smile but I know
that they are coming onside.
“This f—ing blows,” is muttered just loud enough
to require that I address it. I look up for the eyes locked on
mine in a challenge. She places her feet up on the desk,
removes her socks, and starts to paint her toenails. I
suggest that there are more appropriate places for
personal grooming. In response, she pulls off her hoodie,
exposing only a sports bra, and proceeds to apply
underarm deodorant. The class waits for my reaction, and
I know I need to be careful. I don’t want to attack, just
shame a little. I curl my nose ever so slightly and, as I
swing up cross-legged on top of the desk, I utter a single
response—“classy.” I then draw attention to the work at
hand, knowing that I have their respect. I am a little
disdainful, slightly rebellious, yet perfectly in control.
This is just like I remembered—a piece of cake.
The remainder of my classes that day were typical variations of the first,
and so the day wound down. I sat at a desk not my own, and I considered the
experience. Made more critically conscious by several years’ immersion in
both scholarly discourse and alternative practises, I suddenly felt certain that
teaching was never the issue. I took one more look around the classroom, and
I packed up to leave with my slain dragons over my shoulder. I all but bounced
from the school buoyed by my new realisation—I could teach in public school
if I wanted to, but I didn’t and that was okay. As I pushed open the door to the
parking lot, I walked with hope toward to the endless possibilities before me.
CHAPTER 4
Re/imagining a Future in Education
Desperate to find a path back to myself, I also began to wonder how I might
positively impact others who were suffering similarly within education con-
texts. Concurrently, I noticed the ease with which I had come to move between
theory and practice, looking for each to inform the other. This movement
between theory and practice, even as my focus drifted between self and other,
led me to explore possibilities for re/humanising praxis.
When I initially encountered the notion of praxis, it was with Paulo Freire
(1976, 1981/2005) who discussed praxis as a synthesis of theory and practice
with the intention of producing change. Over the course of many years, I have
come to understand praxis as practicing theory and theorising practice as we
continuously seek to improve the contexts within which we live and work. As I
engage with this process, I work to develop critical consciousness that will help
me support others who look to me for guidance. This critical consciousness is
only possible through deep knowledge of self and self-in-relation. In under-
standing ourselves as critical data sites, we shine a light on behaviours and
actions that contribute to education as a profoundly human endeavour. Engag-
ing reflexive consciousness is central to exploring our inner landscapes even
as it supports learning as an ever-evolving understanding in the context of
relationship with others. In this spirit, my intent is to recall learning moments
situated within three unique learning environments that position lived experi-
ence as central to developing notions of praxis. These contexts include post-
secondary faculties of education, my work with horses, and corporate learning
organisations.

PART 2
Learning with/in Schools
∵
CHAPTER 5
Assumptions about Truth
I have been eyeball-deep in formal learning for 40 years and higher education
for more than 25 of them. This experience has been at times painful and joy-
ous, but it has always offered important insights. At the determining centre
of these experiences, I’ve been fortunate to find both personal relevance and
professional application. My early childhood learning began in church, where
the teachings were about as theoretical as I’ve ever experienced. Despite the
minister’s sermons, I did not see God all around me and I could not feel His
presence. More than that, the brutal stories of the Old Testament left me won-
dering if I really wanted to. With all the wariness a four-year-old can muster, I
began to ask questions.
First, I asked at home: “If God created everything and everyone and is all-
powerful, why can’t I see Him?” My parents, well accustomed to my need for
answers, replied that He looked after the whole world so He was really busy.
Reasonable, I suppose; but “If He created the whole world and everyone and eve-
rything in it, how did He create Himself?” It seemed my parents didn’t have an
answer for me, though I give them credit for trying. We got as far as He was
always there, to which I insisted that his mother must have created Him and, if
that was true, why doesn’t she get any credit? Mum eventually suggested that
I ask the minister.
Looking back, that was an important moment. I was a pre-schooler asking
complicated questions that my parents couldn’t answer. They did not silence
me. Rather, they encouraged me to seek out answers to my questions. They
didn’t worry about me embarrassing them or appearing insubordinate or blas-
phemous; they were more concerned about me growing up to be a thinking
person.
When the next Sunday came, I could barely wait to catch the minister. I
didn’t think the sermon would ever end. When it did, I made my way out to
the vestry knowing he would be there to wish us a good week as we filed out
into the world. When I finally stood in front of him, I blurted, “If God created
the whole world and everything and everyone in it, how did He create Himself?”
Paling just a little, he replied, “He just did.” Finding his response empty, I
probed further. He regrouped and claimed that God was just always there. I
told him that Mum had already offered that explanation, and I didn’t think it
really explained anything. “How was He just always there, and where is there,
and how did He get there?” After a few more attempts to answer my questions,

22 CHAPTER 5
the minister said he supposed God’s origin was a mystery that none of us really
understood. I carried on and found my mother waiting for me in the porch. She
asked if I got my question answered. I replied, “He doesn’t know either.” That
was another important learning moment for me: even when we are positioned
as experts, we can’t have all the answers. The best we can do is to acknowledge
our imperfect and incomplete knowledge and celebrate the questions for hav-
ing been asked. As this intellectually open environment framed my formative
years, public school was a bit of a disappointment.
Having already struggled to make sense of the theoretical in my daily life,
I found some aspects of the K-12 system resonated with me more than oth-
ers. Generally, the primary grades made the most sense. There was a prede-
termined body of knowledge that I did not get to negotiate but, considering
the necessity of being functionally literate, it was important that I learned to
read, write, and do basic math. By Grade 5, though, the teachers began to turn
their attention to special subjects like science and social studies. As we created
experiments and participated in science fairs, we learned about aerodynam-
ics through paper airplanes, structural physics through popsicle-stick bridges,
and chemistry through dropping mints into bottles of cola. We had field trip
adventures where we learned to tap for maple sap and drill trees to determine
their ages. We could identify animal tracks, make a compass with a paperclip
and a leaf, and we learned that moss grew thickest on the north side of a tree.
Junior high, by comparison, was a bit like I imagine purgatory. Filled with
self-absorbed souls lacking certainty and direction, it was a holding cell where
people were herded into the next phase of their existence—high school.
Although the early grades made me cognisant of which kids were regarded
as academically keen, we all continued to learn with and from each other
somewhat regardless of intellectual agility. High school ended this practice
and clearly branded the students by sorting us into academic or practical
streams. Because I was on the former path but found practical application
deeply meaningful, I often felt conflicted. One incident I recall with particu-
lar clarity occurred in my final year of high school. Having more than enough
credits to graduate with honours, I opted to register for agriculture as one of
my four courses in final semester. It fell on my roster between advanced place-
ment English and music theory. Shortly after my registration was submitted,
I was called to the office where I was advised that there was an error on my
registration form: apparently, I was accidentally enrolled in agriculture. When
I explained that the enrolment was deliberate, I was counselled to withdraw
and warned that such a class would be a blemish on an otherwise exemplary
transcript. I was left feeling [a]shamed—shamed for having an agricultural
background that was somehow regarded as less than, and ashamed of myself
Assumptions about Truth 23
for capitulating. Wanting to excel academically, I found myself having to deny

certain parts of my lived experience. Thus, I have come to understand high
school as the place where my dissatisfaction with schooling practices began
to take root.
After enjoying the last summer of my relative youth, I packed up my ide-
alism and moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I registered to study for an
Arts degree in English. I was hungry for intellectual discussion, so I threw
myself into the texts and arrived in class every day ready to discuss them. Very
quickly, however, I discovered that students were encouraged to discuss only
those themes and archetypes and opinions espoused by specific learned critics
(almost exclusively Euro Western white males).
One incident continues to be front of mind because it not only attacked
notions of my personal identity, but it also denied me the space to refute or
defend that which was presented as fact.
I was eager to get to class that day. Although I

might have credited the resurgence of spring or the
approaching completion of my degree, it was really Anne
of Green Gables who was responsible. I had read
everything from Treasure Island to The Owl Service in my
children’s literature course that year but Thursday held
the promise of LM Montgomery’s beloved Anne. Having
grown up on Prince Edward Island, I knew Anne’s story as
well as I knew my own and was eager to discuss it. I
arrived to a class nearing full capacity and discovered
that we had a guest lecturer for the day. Apparently, he
was a candidate being considered for a tenure-track
position within the English department, and teaching our
class was an audition of sorts. Promptly at 10:05 a.m., the
visiting professor called the class together by telling us
that he had spent tremendous intellectual investment in
deconstructing the text and was eager to tell us “what it
was really about.” Without further preamble, he said that
Anne of Green Gables was most appropriately viewed
through the lens of Queer Theory because of Anne and
Diana’s covert lesbianism. I looked around the room to
find baffled faces that mirrored my own confusion. Anne
and Diana—lesbians? This was big news. I listened
intently to his interpretation: he cited Anne’s hesitance to
accept Gilbert’s attention, Diana’s socially prescribed
24 CHAPTER 5
marriage to Frank Wright, and Anne and Diana’s

naming each other as “bosom buddies.”
When the lecture concluded and he invited
questions, I asked if Anne’s refusal of Gilbert’s attention
might be connected to her pride, or even viewed through a
feminist lens; I also wondered if perhaps Diana was
expected to marry because she had forsaken education, a
choice that was typical of both time and culture; and I
suggested that “bosom buddies” was a term of
endearment born partly of the time and partly of Anne’s
dramatic flair. He responded by calling me “provincial”
and, in doing so, successfully pre-empted all dialogue for
the remainder of the class. Having the floor all to himself,
he broadened his deconstruction to include LM
Montgomery’s life history and challenged that it had not
been properly understood either: the depression that was
noted later in her life, he said, actually predated Anne of
Green Gables, which people mistakenly understood as
innocent and pastoral. In truth, it was perhaps her very
darkest work. Cowardly and covert, he insisted, Anne was
really a subversive novel about the small nature of Prince
Edward Island mentality that forced a strong-willed
lesbian to hide her homosexuality, settle for second-rate
schooling, and marry a man whom she did not love. When
he eventually concluded his lecture, we filed out of class
with reactions ranging from eye rolling to indignation. All
the students seemed, however, to be unified in their
annoyance with his practiced arrogance. I recall that we
expressed frustration with his singular view of the text
and his unapologetic marginalisation of other voices.
What I remember most clearly, though,
was that he was hired.
The faculty’s decision to hire that candidate fuelled my growing disdain for
the way English literature was being presented. Namely, it was being taught
through presentation of singular and silencing critiques: we were simply called
to bear witness and offer reaffirmation. Although I did have rewarding learning
moments in my Arts degree, I found it pervasively problematic that I was given
the skills but denied the space to critique. This limitation created a desire to
etch out room for critical examination not only of texts, but also of learning
Assumptions about Truth 25
practices. As a result, when I completed the Arts degree, I enrolled in a teach-

ing degree. I hoped that this professional degree would prepare me to become
the type of teacher who respected lived experience and worked to make learn-
ing meaningful, relevant, and open to all voices.
Having only four months until I was scheduled to begin the education
degree, I decided to spend my summer restoratively. I returned to the Island
and the comfortable fold of working the land, learning with horses, and walk-
ing the beach. I returned also to reflexive writing through which I realised that
my lived experience outside of school encouraged me to deconstruct those
things that I found problematic and then work to evoke change. My experience
within systems of schooling often seemed to hone my critical skills but left me
powerless to affect that which I identified as problem saturated. Determined to
champion a personally meaningful approach to learning, I moved toward the
teaching degree with hope.
CHAPTER 6
A World without Colour
When I began the process of becoming a licensed teacher, I had no idea I

was embarking on the most debilitating journey in my life. I suspect that the
despondency was made more severe by having had such hope for renewal.
Rather than the anticipated space for humanising expansiveness, I found a
system steeped in unequalled divisiveness and toxicity. The dissonance began
at orientation when students were sorted into groups based on whether they
would teach elementary or secondary school. Belonging the latter group, I
was among those herded into a room on the third floor and congratulated for
choosing a future that would involve more than fingerpainting. That introduc-
tory summation was indicative of the brokenness of the programme. Not only
were students encouraged to estrange themselves from colleagues who would
teach at different levels, this division also marked the beginning of a second-
ary programme in which the arts and creativity were specifically and deliber-
ately marginalised. It also served to punctuate a particular dissension where
I imagined there to be collaboration and support. As I wandered through the
following year of education studies disillusioned, three incidents imprinted
themselves on me: the black paper; the red book; and grey sightedness.
I looked forward to taking the educational

foundations course because it provided a rare opportunity
for primary and secondary teachers to share a learning
space. Unfortunately, the course was a farce. Not only was
there a decided lack of cohesion in the group because of
the chasm crafted between us; the curriculum provided
little more than a retelling of colonialism that was half-
heartedly cloaked as the spread of educational
enlightenment. Worse, though, the professor was openly
disdainful, self-righteous, and smug. The only tangible
requirement of the course was to produce a paper on the
evolution of education practices in North America. Given
no other parameters, I set out to complete the task with
some meaning. I not only researched the high points of
educational development, but I also tied them to their
origins in the practices of other nations and
attempted to deconstruct them.

A World without Colour 27
Weeks had passed since we had submitted our

research and, still, there was no feedback. With only one
class left, someone finally asked when we might expect
our papers back. In his typical manner, the professor
made a diminutive comment about minions waiting to
find out their worth. He did, however, arrive the next week
with our grades. That’s it—grades. Each pre-service
teacher received a piece of torn foolscap paper that
contained two pieces of information: their name and a
number. There were no papers, no comments, no
indication of how he had arrived at the grade, and
certainly no suggestions about how we could improve.
There was not even a way to substantiate if he had read
them. As I was trying to make sense of the situation, one of
my peers asked what I imagine we were all thinking: was
this it—did we not get our papers back with written
feedback? The professor was positively indignant as he
responded that they were his papers and, if we wanted
them back, we shouldn’t have given them to him. He
promptly dismissed class and retreated to his office.
I was vaguely aware that the class was emptying. I
got up from my desk and followed him to his office. I
knocked. He didn’t answer. The door was ajar, so I nudged
it open with my foot as I called his name. The space was
shocking. Having been in the offices of several other
professors, I was unprepared for the state of his. Rather
than a bright, organised environment, he had window
coverings so dark that I could barely see. Still, despite the
obscurity, his office appeared to be some sort of storage
cell. Papers were piled waist deep in every corner and
eyeball deep on his desk. I called his name again. From
somewhere in the bowels of the disarray, he demanded to
know what I wanted. I requested my paper. He refused. I
persisted, explaining that I wanted to know where I had
room to improve so that I would continue to develop
professionally. He refused once again. Frustrated and
incredulous, I said that his refusal was an inappropriate
abuse of his position. He roared at me, calling me
insubordinate. Offended on many levels, I told him I
believed it was his responsibility as a professor of
28 CHAPTER 6
education to actually engage in appropriate

assessment—that I wanted my paper and, if he would not
produce it, I would escalate my concern to the Dean. With
a smug satisfaction that led me to believe he had a long
history of not being held accountable, he said I could suit
myself and then told me to shut the door on my way out.
Having been summarily dismissed, I went directly
to the Dean’s office and explained the incident and those
experiences that led up to it. I was kindly but firmly told
that the professor had been conducting himself this way
for years, and he would undoubtedly insist on keeping the
paper. I challenged the Dean suggesting that people
continue to do what is wrong if those in power do not
insist that they behave more appropriately. I said that I
was unable to accept such conduct and would go further
to have it addressed. Only then did the Dean agree to
speak with the professor.
The next week I was summoned to the Dean’s
office, where I was told that I had gained permission to
view my paper in the confines of the professor’s office,
providing that I returned it to him. Assuming that I was
not likely to garner any better offer, I accepted. I went to
his office directly to review the paper. Under glowering
resentment, I thumbed through the first couple of pages
slowly and then the rest of the document more quickly.
There was not a single mark anywhere on the more than
30 pages. “Is this why you don’t give them back?” I asked,
“Do you even read them?” He retorted that he was only
required to grade them. I dropped my paper on his desk
and went directly to the Dean, who condescendingly told
me that the professor having made no marks on the paper
was of little consequence. Furthermore, the Dean told me
that I should feel celebratory—that I was the first student
in memory who had won the right to see her paper again.
I didn’t feel victorious and, try as I might, I was unable to
rally anyone willing to take this misconduct higher. A little
bit of my hope for education and my future in it died that
day as I walked away from challenging
positional power abuse, professional laziness,
and institutional protectionism.
The red book incident was less demoralising but equally ridiculous. Part of
our assignment as pre-service teachers was to keep detailed lesson plans in our
red books. Because I taught for three years during the Arts degree, I had devel-
oped certain habits in my practice. One of these habits was that I tended toward
an abbreviated approach to lesson plans. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me
that I wrote novel study in the little block beside 8A. After all, that was exactly
what I planned to spend third period teaching. My supervisor, though, had
insisted that I prepare detailed speaking notes to guide my teaching in each of
the classes. Although I regarded it as a bit of a nuisance, I assumed he wanted to
ensure that I had some discernible coherence in my planning. I abandoned my
abbreviated approach and began writing my lesson plans in detail.
Today, my supervisor would find detailed lesson

plans for each teaching block as well as a plan of study
that clearly mapped out my vision for the unfolding
Language Arts unit. Predictably, when my supervisor
arrived, he asked to see my notes. I delivered them to him
and was somewhat stunned when he criticised me once
again for the incompleteness of my daybook. I asked what
I had overlooked. He said that my notes were still a bit
truncated as I had not included a salutation to my class. I
wondered incredulously if he was actually overlooking
all of my thoughtful preparation because my notes
did not begin with “Good morning, class. Today we are
going to…”? Biting my tongue, I asked only if there was
something in particular about my leading of the class that
could be improved upon. He said he noticed that my
writing on the board tended to slope on a downward
angle to the right, and I might want to work on a more
consistently horizontal presentation. With no further
constructive criticism, he wished me continued
luck in the practicum and left.
Both incidents occurred during my first term of teacher education. I had

a few weeks left until Christmas break, and I was having an increasingly dif-
ficult time reconciling myself to being in such a programme. I was feeling
disillusioned and exhausted. Terrified that I would not be able to complete
the degree, yet unable to imagine myself as anything other than a teacher, my
panic attacks of the previous year returned with a vengeance. By the end of
term, I was feeling somehow outside of myself.
30 CHAPTER 6
I have only a single memory of the holiday season

that year. It was Christmas Eve, and we were at my
grandparents’ home. I was alone in the kitchen doing the
dishes when I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder and
turned to see Mum. She looked at me with such empathy it
would have broken my heart if I could have felt anything. I
attempted a smile and watched as a single tear patterned
its way down her cheek. She kissed my forehead and
returned to the living room. I didn’t know why she cried
until I caught a glimpse of my reflection and
saw only emptiness looking back.
Christmas 1996.
I have come to think of this period of my life as grey sightedness because, as my

disillusionment grew in concert with almost constant panic, I actually stopped
seeing colour. I continued to spiral as I grappled with the profound dehumani-
sation that I encountered in this programme at almost every turn. At this mid-
point in my second degree I met, fully and unabashedly, my own unravelling.
I feel like I’ve stopped functioning—even caring for

myself seems impossibly difficult. I can barely make my
way across the floor and into the bathtub. It takes an
embarrassing amount of concentration to manipulate the
taps so that the water flows. I am so depleted by the time I
get undressed and in to bathe, I often lie there long after
the water is cold. Invariably, I stay until I can summon the
energy to climb back out of the tub. Once, when I pulled
my frame up in front of the vanity, I saw a stranger
staring back at me. Her eyes were a kaleidoscope of pity,
fear, and condemnation; then, they shuttered
once more and were vacant.
I emptied my flat, and I moved home to my parents’ place. Mum and Dad knew
that I was unwell; like me, though, nothing could have prepared them for the seri-
ousness of my rupture. I spent my days in a rocking chair in front of the fireplace.
No longer possessing the strength to figure out what was wrong with me, I sat and
cried. I don’t recall how I felt during this period of my life apart from the deep
sense of fear, failure, and guilt. My family, of course, rallied around me. Where
they used to congratulate me on academic and extracurricular achievements,
they now praised me for every bite of food and any effort at personal grooming.
Still, I remained stuck—unable to find any path to recovery. I was consumed

by fear of losing the academic year and having to endure the degree all over again.
It never occurred to me to simply quit; that would have been the ultimate admis-
sion of defeat. I was a teacher, and I wanted the credential to prove it. I convinced
my mother that seeing my professors and saving my degree would alleviate some
stress in my life. Desperate to help in any way, she drove me to the university.
I made the walk across campus but, I was so frail, the three flights of stairs up
to the Education faculty seemed a Herculean effort. When I finally ascended
the last step, one of my professors met me with a combination of concern
and self-righteousness. He escorted me to his office where I explained that I
was being pulled from school on a medical leave. I assured him that all my
assignments would be submitted by the deadlines and that I would complete
my practicum on schedule. He said that he could not promise that my efforts
would be sufficient to earn the degree, but I could hope for the best.
I had similar conversations with two more professors who cautiously offered
to be supportive in any way faculty policy would permit. In the office of my
fourth and final professor, I rambled out my rehearsed speech once again. She
responded in the most astounding of ways—she asked how I was coping. Her
question stopped me cold. For the first time, I voiced my fear that I was losing
my mind in this breakdown. She seemed to grow taller and indomitable as
she informed me that I was not having a breakdown but, rather, a break-up.
A break-up happens, she said, when we are made of curves in a square world
and, in her opinion, if more people had them, the world would be a much more
beautiful place. She’d had one herself, she said, when she was about my age,
and always counted herself lucky to be intelligent enough to recognise and
challenge the insanity of the world at such a young age. “Think of the incon-
venience” she said, “of having to do it in mid-life—or worse, never.” I smiled.
For the first time in months, I thought I might survive.
In those few minutes, this professor changed the way I saw the world and
myself in it. The shackles weakened. I began to understand my struggle to
negotiate a space as teacher: the systems of education that I had encountered
were implicitly (perhaps even accidentally) teaching me to critique. Ironi-
cally, what I critiqued and uncovered were systems that seemed inflexible and
unable to accommodate the breadth and diversity I was seeking. As I gained
the skills that helped me to recognise the system’s imperviousness to change, I
was trapped in it with no way of constructing knowledge in a meaningful way.
Despite this realisation, I was more than halfway through a degree that I was
desperate to complete, so I trudged ahead.
Disillusioned and frustrated, I completed all my course requirements, albeit
in absentia. I was emotionally depleted and physically exhausted, despite
32 CHAPTER 6
having been bodily out of school for three months. The only barrier to my
degree completion was the final practicum. I requested a placement in the
high school from which I graduated. The co-operating teacher had been my
English teacher and knew me well. She showed a great deal of trust in hand-
ing me her class for six weeks given the state I was in, but she encouraged me
to make it my own. Because I remember much of my school experience as
one giving rise to disconnection, my goal was to create a unit of drama that
demanded critical thought while encouraging personal meaningfulness. This
attempt at creating spaces for engagement, though, was met with resistance.
Shakespeare’s MacBeth had been taught at the school for about 20 years. I
wanted to teach Hamlet. My request to the office for texts resulted in my being
summoned there. I was reminded how long MacBeth had been on the cur-
riculum and asked why I felt compelled to introduce change. I explained that
Hamlet offered more fully developed and complex characters, and it demanded
that we examine ourselves in relationship with others. Word travelled quickly
through the English department of my rogue intentions. I had drop-in visits,
was queried by other teachers, and was even invited to host my class in the gym
at a time when the other English classes could watch us. It seemed like a great
deal of fuss in the name of swapping one tragedy for another—but that ended
up being the least significant of the challenges.
The remainder of the term proceeded quietly with little interference until
the final assignment. Wanting to foster space that nurtured meaningful learn-
ing, I created a flexible assignment that was negotiated individually with each
student. The requirements were deliberately loose: students were asked to
demonstrate knowledge of themes that emerged for them and analyse both
themes and characters in terms of the time period and their own lived experi-
ence. The product could be artistic (poetry, drama, painting, for example) or
traditional (written paper); regardless of their approach, though, their project
had to contain both written and oral components. It was a fun assignment to
create and rewarding to review. Although there were many delights among
them, two students remain in mind some 25 years later—one for his excel-
lence, and the other for her entitlement.
He was dressed head to foot in black: torn jeans

belted with chains; heavy-metal T-shirt; and combat
boots. He had long hair—also dyed raven black. His
course load included general math and science, a free
period, and my advanced English course. I was told that
he fought for his right to take my course and was almost
denied because of his placement in the general program.
Fortunately, the school had no policy that could refuse

him entrance into English 611.
A misfit among his peers, he kept to himself in
class. When called upon, he was articulate and thoughtful.
For his final assignment, he constructed the Globe
Theatre. He made hand puppets and wrote a post-modern
script of Hamlet, Act III, Scene ii. With excellent
pronunciation and flawless delivery, he performed his
script. He not only demonstrated comprehension and
creativity, but he also presented beautiful craftsmanship.
He earned a high 90 for his effort.
She was tall, willowy, and graceful: a ballet
dancer. She treated school with tolerance and delighted in
recognition for her talents. She had a respectable
command of the written word and delivered a template-
type paper again and again. When she came to me before
submitting the assignment, I suggested that she abandon
her template and endeavour to be creative. If she chose
still to write a paper, I challenged her to write creatively
as a break from the formal essay. If she chose to stay with
the formal essay, I cautioned that she must do more than
simply read her paper for the oral component. She
responded with boredom and indifference. She submitted
an unimaginative essay and then sat at her desk and read
it verbatim to the class. She earned a low 80 for her
assignment. She accosted me after class, paper flailing,
reminding me I wasn’t a real teacher and slinging
accusations about me trying to ruin her future. I reminded
her of the assignment parameters and the conversations
we had shared about the standards for the oral
presentation. She said she didn’t need to do any more than
she had because she was a 90s student, and everyone
knew it. I told her that all my students were welcome to
improve their projects, resubmit them, and have them
re-graded. She told me to go to hell and
stormed out of the classroom.
The experience still bothers me. Her disappointment was understand-

able, but I gave her every opportunity for success. Rather than invest in her
work, she projected an attitude of superiority and indifference. When she was
34 CHAPTER 6
provided with a chance to resubmit, she went to my supervising teacher and

asked her to intervene and overturn the mark that I had assigned. That teacher
came to me for background on the situation. I shared the assignment and the
student’s submission with her, as well as the details of our conversation. To
her credit, she spoke with the student and expressed her support of the grade
received. The student filed an escalated complaint with school administra-
tion, citing the young man’s success as proof of my incompetence as a teacher.
When requested by the office, I forwarded a copy of the assignment alongside
the young woman’s submission. I was asked also to make the young man’s sub-
mission available. I countered that I failed to understand what his assignment
had to do with her grade. My challenge was met with resistance, though, and
I was required to deliver his assignment to the office. When administration
completed its review, I was told three things: the young man was not capable
of success; the young woman had a history of achieving grades that exceeded
90 percent; and I was rocking the boat. Furious, I replied respectively: clearly,
he was capable as they had the proof; I was not grading her history, but her
submission; and good.
I don’t know if administration eventually overturned the grades, but the
marks stood when I left. The practicum was finished, and the degree was con-
ferred. Feeling far less than celebratory, I did not attend convocation. I threw
myself into supply teaching, hoping my feelings of rupture were a reaction to
the Education degree, not teaching in general. Afflicted by panic attacks and
night terrors, I was increasingly tormented by my inability to fix either the
school system or myself. I withdrew even in the staff room. On my prep period,
one of the other Advanced English teachers joined me on the bench by the
window. Without preamble, he told me to run. “This place will suck the very
marrow of life from you,” he said. “I was like you once—full of hope and determi-
nation to change the world through broadened minds. But the system has injected
its poison and insured the failure of us all: we’ve got 40 kids per class, 30 of whom
regard us with disdain, if not blatant hostility. Get out, Ellyn, before it steals your
soul.” Some might criticise him for not offering support, but his words seemed
to me to be a message from the universe. I went home that evening and, the
next day, withdrew my name from the supply list. Finally, I turned my attention
inward and sought to make sense of my experiences.
CHAPTER 7
Perspective
It was a long process finding my way back to myself, and a longer one still to
the classroom; ironically, the journey led me to the same school that I had once
found so crippling. I had heard rumours during my education degree that the
faculty was facing a major transition: in fact, the government had demanded
it. A new president was installed, and a new Dean was appointed with the
singular task of cleaning up the now notorious mess that was the Faculty
of Education. Guided by a vision to grow whole teachers, the new Dean led
the development of a two-year integrated programme. Tired and fragmented
curricula were replaced, and faculty members were required to demonstrate
excellence in teaching, supervision, and research; accountability was impera-
tive. Those who opted not to support the new vision were presumably offered
alternatives, as they were not present when the new programme launched.
This faculty renaissance validated for me that my programme had indeed
been problem saturated. It also planted a seed in my mind: maybe systems can
change, and perhaps we can return to places and know them for the first time.
The journey back started with a conversation. Bolstered by a beautiful
autumn day, I decided to visit Anne-Louise Brookes, the education professor
who actually listened. That’s how I still remember her. She was the one who
really heard me during that seemingly hopeless experience. She recognised the
deep disengagement underlying my faltering health, and she named it. Some-
how that honest acknowledgement marked the beginning of my healing. Hav-
ing never told her as much, I decided to drop in and thank her. It was not easy,
though. I had not set foot on the campus since my break-up four years earlier.
I did not return for convocation, and the parchment that was sent in the mail
was never mounted. Truth be told, despite my determination never to spare
it another glance, my pulse still quickened every time I drove past the place.
Today, all that ended.
Tired of being held prisoner by my own fear, I

slowed as I approached the fork in the road and guided
my car into the left turning lane. Reminding myself to
breathe, I signalled and pulled on to campus. I began to
shake, whether from fear remembered or anticipated, I
could not honestly say; I suspect it was an expression of
both. I parked the car and consciously drew in a steadying

36 CHAPTER 7
breath. I got out, locked up, and negotiated my way along

an old familiar path. I tried to focus on the fresh, crisp
day, the beautiful autumn colours, and the New England
feeling that the centre block always inspired. I’m not sure
I was successful, but I managed to distract myself long
enough to get to the door of the Faculty of Education
building. I gulped a breath of air as though I were a diver
preparing for a deep plunge. I pushed through the door
and, on trembling legs, climbed the stairs. The smells were
the same—dank and stale—symbolic of my experience
there. I reminded myself that I was not mired by this place
any longer and could come and go as I pleased. I made my
way down the hall and found her office. I knocked
tentatively and heard her call out
from the other side to enter.
She was at her desk, looking very much as I
recalled—a comforting blend of the academic and
maternal. Her face lit with surprise and pleasure when
she saw me and, as I greeted her, the hold of the past
weakened. After she invited me to sit and said how nice it
was to see me, she asked what brought me to the city. I
explained that I was in to run a few errands but wanted to
stop by and thank her—that I recognised I would not have
emerged as I did without her support. “Nonsense,” she
said, insisting that my reaction to the programme was
only further proof of my humanness. As we recalled our
experiences of that time, our conversation shifted to the
changes that had occurred since I graduated. I learned
from her professors who were not supportive of the new
direction disappeared, and new faculty were hired. This
gave rise to new courses that encouraged critical
consciousness and change. I was delighted for her and
said that I often wondered how she continued to thrive in
that old environment. She confessed that she hadn’t.
Through our conversation, I realised that, regardless of
our rank or role, we can choose to walk away from places
that silence and harm us. Likewise, when offered the
promise of renewal, we can return. We can revisit old
places and make them new by finding personal agency
where previously there was none. As she talked, I listened.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
COCOA-NUT SOUP.
Pare the dark rind from a very fresh cocoa-nut, and grate it down
small on an exceedingly clean, bright grater; weigh it, and allow two
ounces for each quart of soup. Simmer it gently for one hour in the
stock, which should then be strained closely from it, and thickened
for table.
Veal stock, gravy-soup, or broth, 5 pints; grated cocoa-nut, 5 oz., 1
hour. Flour of rice, 5 oz.; mace, 1/2 teaspoonful; little cayenne and
salt; mixed with 1/4 pint of cream: 10 minutes.
Or: gravy-soup, or good beef broth, 5 pints: 1 hour. Rice flour, 5
oz.; soy and lemon-juice, each 1 tablespoonful; finely pounded
sugar, 1 oz.; cayenne, 1/4 teaspoonful; sherry, 2 glassesful.
Obs.—When either cream or wine is objected to for these soups, a
half-pint of the stock should be reserved to mix the thickening with.
CHESTNUT SOUP.
Strip the outer rind from some fine, sound Spanish chestnuts,
throw them into a large pan of warm water, and as soon as it
becomes too hot for the fingers to remain in it, take it from the fire, lift
out the chestnuts, peel them quickly, and throw them into cold water
as they are done; wipe, and weigh them; take three quarters of a
pound for each quart of soup, cover them with good stock, and stew
them gently for upwards of three quarters of an hour, or until they
break when touched with a fork; drain, and pound them smoothly, or
bruise them to a mash with a strong spoon, and rub them through a
fine sieve reversed; mix with them by slow degrees the proper
quantity of stock; add sufficient mace, cayenne, and salt to season
the soup, and stir it often until it boils. Three quarters of a pint of rich
cream, or even less, will greatly improve it. The stock in which the
chestnuts are boiled can be used for the soup when its sweetness is
not objected to; or it may in part be added to it.
Chestnuts, 1-1/2 lb.: stewed from 2/3 to 1 hour. Soup, 2 quarts;
seasoning of salt, mace, and cayenne: 1 to 3 minutes. Cream, 3/4
pint (when used).
JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE, OR PALESTINE SOUP.
Wash and pare quickly some freshly-dug artichokes, and to

preserve their colour, throw them into spring water as they are done,
but do not let them remain in it after all are ready. Boil three pounds
of them in water for ten minutes; lift them out, and slice them into
three pints of boiling stock; when they have stewed gently in this
from fifteen to twenty minutes, press them with the soup, through a
fine sieve, and put the whole into a clean saucepan with a pint and a
half more of stock; add sufficient salt and cayenne to season it, skim
it well, and after it has simmered for two or three minutes, stir it to a
pint of rich boiling cream. Serve it immediately.
Artichokes, 3 lbs., boiled in water: 10 minutes. Veal stock, 3 pints
15 to 20 minutes. Additional stock, 1-1/2 pint; little cayenne and salt
2 to 3 minutes. Boiling cream, 1 pint.
Obs.—The palest veal stock, as for white soup, should be used for
this; but for a family dinner, or where economy is a consideration
excellent mutton-broth, made the day before and perfectly cleared
from fat, will answer very well as a substitute; milk too may in part
take the place of cream when this last is scarce: the proportion of
artichokes should then be increased a little.
Vegetable-marrow, when young, makes a superior soup even to
this, which is an excellent one. It should be well pared, trimmed, and
sliced into a small quantity of boiling veal stock or broth, and when
perfectly tender, pressed through a fine sieve, and mixed with more
stock and some cream. In France the marrow is stewed, first in
butter, with a large mild onion or two also sliced; and afterwards in a
quart or more of water, which is poured gradually to it; it is next
passed through a tammy,[26] seasoned with pepper and salt, and
mixed with a pint or two of milk and a little cream.
26. Derived from the French tamis, which means a sieve or strainer.
COMMON CARROT SOUP.
The most easy method of making this favourite English soup is to

boil some highly coloured carrots quite tender in water slightly salted,
then to pound or mash them to a smooth paste, and to mix with them
boiling gravy soup or strong beef broth (see Bouillon) in the
proportion of two quarts to a pound and a half of the prepared
carrots; then to pass the whole through a strainer, to season it with
salt and cayenne, to heat it in a clean stewpan, and to serve it
immediately. If only the red outsides of the carrots be used, the
colour of the soup will be very bright; they should be weighed after
they are mashed. Turnip soup may be prepared in the same manner.
Obs.—An experienced and observant cook will know the
proportion of vegetables required to thicken this soup appropriately,
without having recourse to weights and measures; but the learner
had always better proceed by rule.
Soup, 2 quarts; pounded carrot, 1-1/2 lb.; salt, cayenne: 5
minutes.
A FINER CARROT SOUP.
Scrape very clean, and cut away all blemishes from some highly-
flavoured red carrots; wash, and wipe them dry, and cut them into
quarter-inch slices. Put into a large stewpan three ounces of the best
butter, and when it is melted, add two pounds of the sliced carrots,
and let them stew gently for an hour without browning; pour to them
then four pints and a half of brown gravy soup, and when they have
simmered from fifty minutes to an hour, they ought to be sufficiently
tender. Press them through a sieve or strainer with the soup; add
salt, and cayenne if required; boil the whole gently for five minutes,
take off all the scum, and serve the soup as hot as possible.
Butter, 3 oz.; carrots, 2 lbs.: 1 hour. Soup, 4-1/2 pints: 50 to 60
minutes. Salt, cayenne: 5 minutes.
COMMON TURNIP SOUP.
Wash and wipe the turnips, pare and weigh them; allow a pound
and a half for every quart of soup. Cut them in slices about a quarter
of an inch thick. Melt four ounces of butter in a clean stewpan, and
put in the turnips before it begins to boil; stew them gently for three
quarters of an hour, taking care that they shall not brown, then have
the proper quantity of soup ready boiling, pour it to them, and let
them simmer in it for three quarters of an hour. Pulp the whole
through a coarse sieve or soup strainer, put it again on the fire, keep
it stirred until it has boiled three minutes or four, take off the scum,
add salt and pepper if required, and serve it very hot. Turnips, 3 lbs.;
butter, 4 oz.: 3/4 hour. Soup, 2 quarts: 3/4 hour. Last time: three
minutes.
A QUICKLY MADE TURNIP SOUP.
Pare and slice into three pints of veal or mutton stock or of good
broth, three pounds of young mild turnips; stew them gently from
twenty-five to thirty minutes, or until they can be reduced quite to
pulp; rub the whole through a sieve, and add to it another quart of
stock, a seasoning of salt and white pepper, and one lump of sugar:
give it two or three minutes’ boil, skim and serve it. A large white
onion when the flavour is liked may be sliced and stewed with the
turnips. A little cream improves much the colour of this soup.
Turnips, 3 lbs.; soup, 5 pints: 25 to 30 minutes.
POTATO SOUP.
Mash to a smooth paste three pounds of good mealy potatoes,

which have been steamed, or boiled very dry; mix with them by
degrees, two quarts of boiling broth, pass the soup through a
strainer, set it again on the fire, add pepper and salt, and let it boil for
five minutes. Take off entirely the black scum that will rise upon it,
and serve it very hot with fried or toasted bread. Where the flavour is
approved, two ounces of onions minced and fried a light brown, may
be added to the soup, and stewed in it for ten minutes before it is
sent to table.
Potatoes, 3 lbs.; broth, 2 quarts: 5 minutes. (With onions, 2 oz.) 10
minutes.
APPLE SOUP.
(Soupe à la Bourguignon.)
Clear the fat from five pints of good mutton broth, bouillon, or shin
of beef stock, and strain it through a fine sieve; add to it when it
boils, a pound and a half of good cooking apples, and stew them
down in it very softly to a smooth pulp; press the whole through a
strainer, add a small teaspoonful of powdered ginger and plenty of
pepper, simmer the soup for a couple of minutes, skim, and serve it
very hot, accompanied by a dish of rice, boiled as for curries.
Broth, 5 pints; apples, 1-1/2 lb.: 25 to 40 minutes. Ginger, 1
teaspoonful; pepper, 1/2 teaspoonful: 2 minutes.
PARSNEP SOUP.
Dissolve, over a gentle fire, four ounces of good butter, in a wide

stewpan or saucepan, and slice in directly two pounds of sweet
tender parsneps; let them stew very gently until all are quite soft,
then pour in gradually sufficient veal stock or good broth to cover
them, and boil the whole slowly from twenty minutes to half an hour;
work it with a wooden spoon through a fine sieve, add as much stock
as will make two quarts in all, season the soup with salt and white
pepper or cayenne, give it one boil, skim, and serve it very hot. Send
pale fried sippets to table with it.
Butter, 4-1/2 oz.; parsneps, 2 lbs.: 3/4 hour, or more. Stock, 1
quart; 20 to 30 minutes; 1 full quart more of stock; pepper, salt: 1
minute.
Obs.—We can particularly recommend this soup to those who like
the peculiar flavour of the vegetable.
ANOTHER PARSNEP SOUP.
Slice into five pints of boiling veal stock or strong colourless broth,
a couple of pounds of parsneps, and stew them as gently as
possible from thirty minutes to an hour; when they are perfectly
tender, press them through a sieve, strain the soup to them, season,
boil, and serve it very hot. With the addition of cream, parsnep soup
made by this receipt resembles in appearance the Palestine soup.
Veal stock or broth, 5 pints; parsneps, 2 lbs.: 30 to 60 minutes.
Salt and cayenne: 2 minutes.
WESTERFIELD WHITE SOUP.
Break the bone of a knuckle of veal in one or two places, and put it
on to stew, with three quarts of cold water to the five pounds of meat;
when it has been quite cleared from scum, add to it an ounce and a
half of salt, and one mild onion, twenty corns of white pepper, and
two or three blades of mace, with a little cayenne pepper. When the
soup is reduced one-third by slow simmering strain it off, and set it
by till cold; then free it carefully from the fat and sediment, and heat it
again in a very clean stewpan. Mix with it when it boils, a pint of thick
cream smoothly blended with an ounce of good arrow-root, two
ounces of very fresh vermicelli previously boiled tender in water
slightly salted and well drained from it, and an ounce and a half of
almonds blanched and cut in strips: give it one minute’s simmer, and
serve it immediately, with a French roll in the tureen.
Veal, 5 lbs.; water, 3 quarts; salt, 1-1/2 oz.; 1 mild onion; 20 corns
white pepper; 2 large blades of mace: 5 hours or more. Cream, 1
pint; almonds, 1-1/2 oz.; vermicelli, 1 oz.: 1 minute. Little thickening if
needed.
Obs.—We have given this receipt without any variation from the
original, as the soup made by it—of which we have often partaken—
seemed always much approved by the guests of the hospitable
country gentleman from whose family it was derived, and at whose
well-arranged table it was very commonly served; but we would
suggest the suppression of the almond spikes, as they seem
unsuited to the preparation, and also to the taste of the present day.
A RICHER WHITE SOUP.
Pound very fine indeed six ounces of sweet almonds, then add to
them six ounces of the breasts of roasted chickens or partridges,
and three ounces of the whitest bread which has been soaked in a
little veal broth, and squeezed very dry in a cloth. Beat these
altogether to an extremely smooth paste; then pour to them boiling
and by degrees, two quarts of rich veal stock; strain the soup
through a fine hair sieve, set it again over the fire, add to it a pint of
thick cream, and serve it, as soon as it is at the point of boiling.
When cream is very scarce, or not easily to be procured, this soup
may be thickened sufficiently without it, by increasing the quantity of
almonds to eight or ten ounces, and pouring to them, after they have
been reduced to the finest paste, a pint of boiling stock, which must
be again wrung from them through a coarse cloth with very strong
pressure: the proportion of meat and bread also should then be
nearly doubled. The stock should be well seasoned with mace and
cayenne before it is added to the other ingredients.
Almonds, 6 oz.; breasts of chickens or partridges, 6 oz.; soaked
bread, 3 oz.; veal stock, 2 quarts; cream, 1 pint.
Obs. 1.—Some persons pound the yolks of four or five hard-boiled
eggs with the almonds, meat, and bread for this white soup; French
cooks beat smoothly with them an ounce or two of whole rice,
previously boiled from fifteen to twenty minutes.
Obs. 2.—A good plain white soup maybe made simply by adding
to a couple of quarts of pale veal stock or strong well-flavoured veal
broth, a thickening of arrow-root, and from half to three quarters of a
pint of cream. Four ounces of macaroni boiled tender and well-
drained may be dropped into it a minute or two before it is dished,
but the thickening may then be diminished a little.
MOCK TURTLE SOUP.
To make a single tureen of this favourite English soup in the most

economical manner when there is no stock at hand, stew gently
down in a gallon of water four pounds of the fleshy part of the shin of
beef, or of the neck, with two or three carrots, one onion, a small
head of celery, a bunch of savoury herbs, a blade of mace, a half-
teaspoonful of peppercorns, and an ounce of salt. When the meat is
quite in fragments, strain off the broth, and pour it when cold upon
three pounds of the knuckle or of the neck of veal; simmer this until
the flesh has quite fallen from the bones, but be careful to stew it as
softly as possible, or the quantity of stock will be so much reduced
as to be insufficient for the soup. Next, take the half of a fine calf’s
head with the skin on, remove the brains, and then bone it[27]
entirely, or let the butcher do this, and return the bones with it; these,
when there is time, may be stewed with the veal to enrich the stock,
or boiled afterwards with the head and tongue. Strain the soup
through a hair-sieve into a clean pan, and let it drain closely from the
meat. When it is nearly or quite cold, clear off all the fat from it; roll
the head lightly round, leaving the tongue inside, or taking it out, as
is most convenient, secure it with tape or twine, pour the soup over,
and bring it gently to boil upon a moderate fire; keep it well skimmed,
and simmer it from an hour to an hour and a quarter; then lift the
head into a deep pan or tureen, add the soup to it, and let it remain
in until nearly cold, as this will prevent the edges from becoming
dark. Cut into quarter-inch slices, and then divide into dice, from six
to eight ounces of the lean of an undressed ham, and if possible,
one of good flavour; free it perfectly from fat, rind, and the smoked
edges; peel and slice four moderate-sized eschalots, or if these
should not be at hand, one mild onion in lieu of them. Dissolve in a
well-tinned stewpan or thick iron saucepan which holds a gallon or
more, four ounces of butter; put in the ham and eschalots, or onion,
with half a dozen cloves, two middling-sized blades of mace, a half-
teaspoonful of peppercorns, three or four very small sprigs of thyme,
three teaspoonsful of minced parsley, one of lemon thyme and winter
savoury mixed, and when the flavour is thought appropriate, the very
thin rind of half a small fresh lemon. Stew these as softly as possible
for nearly or quite an hour, and keep the pan frequently shaken: then
put into a dredging box two ounces of fine dry flour, and sprinkle it to
them by degrees; mix the whole well together, and after a few
minutes more of gentle simmering, add very gradually five full pints
of the stock taken free of fat and sediment, and made boiling before
it is poured in; shake the pan strongly round as the first portions of it
are added, and continue to do so until it contains from two to three
pints, when the remainder may be poured in at once, and the pan
placed by the side of the fire that it may boil in the gentlest manner
for an hour. At the end of that time turn the whole into a hair-sieve
placed over a large pan, and if the liquid should not run through
freely, knock the sides of the sieve, but do not force it through with a
spoon, as that would spoil the appearance of the stock. The head in
the meanwhile should have been cut up, ready to add to it. For the
finest kind of mock turtle, only the skin, with the fat that adheres to it,
should be used; and this, with the tongue, should be cut down into
one inch squares, or if preferred into strips of an inch wide. For
ordinary occasions, the lean part of the flesh may be added also, but
as it is always sooner done than the skin, it is better to add it to the
soup a little later. When it is quite ready, put it with the strained stock
into a clean pan, and simmer it from three quarters of an hour to a
full hour: it should be perfectly tender, without being allowed to
break. Cayenne, if needed, should be thrown into the stock before it
is strained; salt should be used sparingly, on account of the ham,
until the whole of the other ingredients have been mixed together,
when a sufficient quantity must be stirred into the soup to season it
properly. A couple of glasses of good sherry or Madeira, with a
dessertspoonful of strained lemon-juice, are usually added two or
three minutes only before the soup is dished, that the spirit and
flavour of the wine may not have time to evaporate; but it is
sometimes preferred mellowed down by longer boiling. The
proportion of lemon-juice may be doubled at will, but much acid is
not generally liked. We can assure the reader of the excellence of
the soup made by this receipt; it is equally palatable and delicate,
and not heavy or cloying to the stomach, like many of the elaborate
compositions which bear its name. The fat, through the whole
process, should be carefully skimmed off. The ham gives far more
savour, when used as we have directed, than when, even in much
larger proportion, it is boiled down in the stock. Two dozens of
forcemeat-balls, prepared by the receipt No. 11, Chap. VIII., should
be dropped into the soup when it is ready for table. It is no longer
customary to serve egg-balls in it.
27. This is so simple and easy a process, that the cook may readily accomplish it
with very little attention. Let her only work the knife close to the bone always,
so as to take the flesh clean from it, instead of leaving large fragments on.
The jaw-bone may first be removed, and the flesh turned back from the edge
of the other.
First broth:—shin, or neck of beef, 4 lbs.; water, 4 quarts; carrots,

2 or 3; large mild onion, 1; celery, small head; bunch savoury herbs;
mace, 1 large blade; peppercorns, 1/2 teaspoonful; cloves, 6; salt, 1
oz.: 5 hours or more, very gently. For stock: the broth and 3 lbs. neck
or knuckle of veal (bones of head if ready): 4 to 5 hours. Boned half-
head with skin on and tongue, 1 to 1-1/4 hour. Lean of undressed
ham, 6 to 8 oz. (6 if very salt); shalots, 4, or onion, 1; fresh butter, 4
oz.; cloves, 6; middling-sized blades of mace, 2; peppercorns, 1/2
teaspoonful; small sprigs of thyme, 3 or 4; minced parsley, 3 large
teaspoonsful; minced savoury and lemon-thyme mixed, 1 small
teaspoonful (thin rind 1/2 small lemon, when liked): 1 hour. Flour, 2
oz.: 5 minutes. Stock, full five pints; flesh of head and tongue, 1-3/4
to 2 lbs.: 3/4 of an hour to 1 hour (salt, if needed, to be added in
interim). Good sherry or Madeira, 2 wineglassesful; lemon-juice, 1 to
2 dessertspoonsful; forcemeat-balls, 24.
Obs. 1.—The beef, veal, bones of the head, and vegetables may
be stewed down together when more convenient: it is only necessary
that a really good, well flavoured, and rather deeply-coloured stock
should be prepared. A calf’s foot is always an advantageous addition
to it, and the skin of another calf’s head[28] a better one still.
28. Country butchers, in preparing a calf’s head for sale in the ordinary way, take
off the skin (or scalp), considered so essential to the excellence of this soup,
and frequently throw it away; it may, therefore, often be procured from them
at very slight cost, and is the best possible addition to the mock turtle. It is
cleared from the head in detached portions with the hair on, but this may
easily be removed after a few minutes’ scalding as from the head itself, or
the feet, by the direction given in Chapter of Sweet Dishes. In London it is
sold entire, and very nicely prepared, and may be served in many forms,
besides being added to soup with great advantage.
Obs. 2.—A couple of dozens mushroom-buttons, cleaned with salt

and flannel, then wiped very dry, and sliced, and added to the ham
and herbs when they have been simmered together about half an
hour, will be found an improvement to the soup.
Claret is sometimes added instead of sherry or Madeira, but we do
not think it would in general suit English taste so well. From two to
three tablespoonsful of Harvey’s sauce can be stirred in with the
wine when it is liked, or when the colour requires deepening.
OLD-FASHIONED MOCK TURTLE.
After having taken out the brain and washed and soaked the head
well, pour to it nine quarts of cold water, bring it gently to boil, skim it
very clean, boil it if large an hour and a half, lift it out, and put into the
liquor eight pounds of neck of beef lightly browned in a little fresh
butter, with three or four thick slices of lean ham, four large onions
sliced, three heads of celery, three large carrots, a large bunch of
savoury herbs, the rind of a lemon pared very thin, a dessertspoonful
of peppercorns, two ounces of salt, and after the meat has been
taken from the head, all the bones and fragments. Stew these gently
from six to seven hours, then strain off the stock and set it into a very
cool place, that the fat may become firm enough on the top to be
cleared off easily. The skin and fat of the head should be taken off
together and divided into strips of two or three inches in length, and
one in width; the tongue may be carved in the same manner, or into
dice. Put the stock, of which there ought to be between four and five
quarts, into a large soup or stewpot; thicken it when it boils with four
ounces of fresh butter[29] mixed with an equal weight of fine dry
flour, a half-teaspoonful of pounded mace, and a third as much of
cayenne (it is better to use these sparingly at first, and to add more
should the soup require it, after it has boiled some little time); pour in
half a pint of sherry, stir the whole together until it has simmered for
a minute or two, then put in the head, and let it stew gently from an
hour and a quarter to an hour and a half: stir it often, and clear it
perfectly from scum. Put into it just before it is ready for table three
dozens of small forcemeat-balls; the brain cut into dice (after having
been well soaked, scalded,[30] and freed from the film), dipped into
beaten yolk of egg, then into the finest crumbs mixed with salt, white
pepper, a little grated nutmeg, fine lemon-rind, and chopped parsley
fried a fine brown, well drained and dried; and as many egg-balls,
the size of a small marble, as the yolks of four eggs will supply. (See
Chapter VIII). This quantity will be sufficient for two large tureens of
soup; when the whole is not wanted for table at the same time, it is
better to add wine only to so much as will be required for immediate
consumption, or if it cannot conveniently be divided, to heat the wine
in a small saucepan with a little of the soup, to turn it into the tureen,
and then to mix it with the remainder by stirring the whole gently after
the tureen is filled. Some persons simply put in the cold wine just
before the soup is dished, but this is not so well.
29. When the butter is considered objectionable, the flour, without it, may be
mixed to the smoothest batter possible, with a little cold stock or water, and
stirred briskly into the boiling soup: the spices should be blended with it.
30. The brain should be blanched, that is, thrown into boiling water with a little
salt in it, and boiled from five to eight minutes, then lifted out and laid into
cold water for a quarter of an hour: it must be wiped very dry before it is fried.
Whole calf’s head with skin on, boiled 1-1/2 hour. Stock: neck of
beef, browned in butter, 8 lbs.; lean of ham, 1/2 to 3/4 lb.; onions, 4;
large carrots, 3; heads of celery, 3; large bunch herbs; salt, 2 oz. (as
much more to be added when the soup is made as will season it
sufficiently); thin rind, 1 lemon; peppercorns, 1 dessertspoonful;
bones and trimmings of head: 8 hours. Soup: stock, 4 to 5 quarts;
flour and butter for thickening, of each 4 oz.; pounded mace, half-
teaspoonful; cayenne, third as much (more of each as needed);
sherry, half pint: 2 to 3 minutes. Flesh of head and tongue, nearly or
quite 2 lbs.: 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hour. Forcemeat-balls, 36; the brain cut
and fried; egg-balls, 16 to 24.
Obs.—When the brain is not blanched it must be cut thinner in the
form of small cakes, or it will not be done through by the time it has
taken enough colour: it may be altogether omitted without much
detriment to the soup, and will make an excellent corner dish if
gently stewed in white gravy for half an hour, and served with it
thickened with cream and arrow-root to the consistency of good
white sauce, then rather highly seasoned, and mixed with plenty of
minced parsley, and some lemon-juice.
GOOD CALF’S HEAD SOUP.
(Not expensive.)
Stew down from six to seven pounds of the thick part of a shin of
beef with a little lean ham, or a slice of hung beef, or of Jewish beef,
trimmed free from the smoky edges, in five quarts of water until
reduced nearly half, with the addition, when it first begins to boil, of
an ounce of salt, a large bunch of savoury herbs, one large onion, a
head of celery, three carrots, two or three turnips, two small blades
of mace, eight or ten cloves, and a few white or black peppercorns.
Let it boil gently that it may not be too much reduced, for six or seven
hours, then strain it into a clean pan and set it by for use. Take out
the bone from half a calf’s head with the skin on (the butcher will do
this if desired), wash, roll, and bind it with a bit of tape or twine, and
lay it into a stewpan, with the bones and tongue; cover the whole
with the beef stock, and stew it for an hour and a half; then lift it into
a deep earthen pan and let it cool in the liquor, as this will prevent
the edges from becoming dry or discoloured. Take it out before it is
quite cold; strain, and skim all the fat carefully from the stock; and
heat five pints in a large clean saucepan, with the head cut into small
thick slices or into inch-squares. As quite the whole will not be
needed, leave a portion of the fat, but add every morsel of the skin to
the soup, and of the tongue also. Should the first of these not be
perfectly tender, it must be simmered gently till it is so; then stir into
the soup from six to eight ounces of fine rice-flour mixed with a
quarter-teaspoonful of cayenne, twice as much freshly pounded
mace, half a wineglassful of mushroom catsup,[31] and sufficient
cold broth or water to render it of the consistence of batter; boil the
whole from eight to ten minutes; take off the scum, and throw in two
glasses of sherry; dish the soup and put into the tureen some
delicately and well fried forcemeat-balls made by the receipt No. 1,
2, or 3, of Chapter VIII. A small quantity of lemon-juice or other acid
can be added at pleasure. The wine and forcemeat-balls may be
omitted, and the other seasonings of the soup a little heightened. As

of Books Barns and Boardrooms Exploring Praxis Through Reflexive Inquiry Second Edition Ellyn Lyle Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

of Books Barns and Boardrooms Exploring Praxis Through Reflexive Inquiry Second Edition Ellyn Lyle Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Of Books, Barns, and Boardrooms:

Exploring Praxis Through Reflexive

Cover illustration: Photograph by Dillon Lyle

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov

isbn 978-90-04-54760-5 (paperback)

Copyright 2023 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

About the Author vii

Prologue: Wading into Reflexive Inquiry 1

4 Re/imagining a Future in Education 17

5 Assumptions about Truth 21

6 A World without Colour 26

12 From Barn to Boardroom 61

16 Centring Reflexive Values 77

18 Fostering Co-constructed Praxis 82

Ellyn Lyle has a longstanding background in innovative education practices,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_001

influences the professional; thus, they argued, it is impossible to understand

Auto/biographical Nature of Reflexive Inquiry

We are always in relation—with earlier versions of ourselves, with each other,

Autoethnographic narrative is well supported by RI because both methodolo-

I am the second daughter of three born to a teacher and a farmer. Raised on

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_002

Why is it so hot in here? I can barely breathe. Scanning

After these panic attacks became my frequent companions, I made an appoint-

It’s been three months now, and I feel so depleted that I

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_003

and asked me to take responsibility for imagining a different kind of educa-

The year following the completion of my education degree and my withdrawal

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_004

Sleep did not come easily last night. I feel like an

the definition from the left wing of the classroom. “Great

Re/imagining a Future in Education

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_005

Assumptions about Truth

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_006

for capitulating. Wanting to excel academically, I found myself having to deny

I was eager to get to class that day. Although I

marriage to Frank Wright, and Anne and Diana’s

practices. As a result, when I completed the Arts degree, I enrolled in a teach-

A World without Colour

When I began the process of becoming a licensed teacher, I had no idea I

I looked forward to taking the educational

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_007

Weeks had passed since we had submitted our

education to actually engage in appropriate

Today, my supervisor would find detailed lesson

Both incidents occurred during my first term of teacher education. I had

I have only a single memory of the holiday season

I have come to think of this period of my life as grey sightedness because, as my

I feel like I’ve stopped functioning—even caring for

Still, I remained stuck—unable to find any path to recovery. I was consumed

He was dressed head to foot in black: torn jeans

Fortunately, the school had no policy that could refuse

The experience still bothers me. Her disappointment was understand-

provided with a chance to resubmit, she went to my supervising teacher and

Tired of being held prisoner by my own fear, I

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004547629_008

breath. I got out, locked up, and negotiated my way along

Wash and pare quickly some freshly-dug artichokes, and to

The most easy method of making this favourite English soup is to

Mash to a smooth paste three pounds of good mealy potatoes,