birch road blog

A Lion of the Heart

You that come to birth and the bring the mysteries, Your Voice-Thunder makes us very happy---

Roar Lion of the Heart--and tear me open. -Rumi

On December 5th I was having a great conversation with my friend, Bill Roberts, and we were outrunning the hounds of educational reductionist hell when i heard my self say, "We have to be clear about the context in which we are doing all of this teaching and learning." I stopped and thought about Joe Kincheloe. Those were his words, twenty years since I'd heard them. I'd held them mostly unexamined inside me, like a seed-pod that waits to open in its most natural timing. We stopped and googled Joe Kincheloe.

I hadn't thought about this friend, a former colleague of my father's, in many years. Joe had been a frequent guest in my parent's home when i was 19 or so. He was a great-hearted thinker-about-learning and i enjoyed many inspired conversations with him as a young adult. He'd arrived in Shreveport from a teaching position on the Lakota Sioux reservation. He spoke about change and possibilities for the world in these high Tennesse tonals, and the combination of Old and New in him in this way, was very beautiful to consider. And even though I didn't have a lot of context for transformation in Shreveport, Louisiana circa '83---this is what he was about, and everything in me resonated with it. It also helped that he loved rock and roll. He gave me his old keyboard when he heard I was making music. He encouraged authentic Voice in me. And apparently in hundreds of other people. It was an important part of his life's work.

As I sat in my school office in rural Colorado on December 5th and googled Joe Kincheloe it was clear the fire and inspiration i recalled in his voice had lived prolifically through him as a writer and teacher over the last 20 years. He had authored dozens of books and there was a link to a Paulo and Nita Freire project that he and his wife, Shirley Steinberg, had initiated. The project linked teachers and scholars and activists working in educational change all over the world.

"Bill!" I said with bolt-of-the-blue gut instinct, "I'm going to email Joe Kincheloe!" And so i did just that. Right then. To see if he'd be able to have a conversation with us in the spirit of those open-ended conversations that generate MORE conversations elsewhere. So I emailed Joe Kincheloe without even knowing if he'd get the email through the McGill University spam filter, or be able to respond, or even remember me. But he did respond. And he said,
From: Joe L. Kincheloe, Dr. <joe.kincheloe@mcgill.ca>Date: Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:47 PMSubject: To: kathrynbrady

kathryn,ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!! it is so good to hear from you. i think about you often. please give me an update on your parents and john. of course, we'll talk. stay in touch with me by email, we're off to jamaica for a couple of weeks, so we'll be out of touch. i'll call you as soon as where back. give me some times that are good for you. i'm so glad you wrote me. you have made my day.

more very soon, joe

So that was very wonderful. I went to amazon and ordered his book, Critical Pedagogy. It arrived and I've been reading it the past two weeks. I read a quote to the faculty at the holiday celebration that reminded me of the great works they do every day. It went like this:

"...Paulo Freire always maintained that education had as much to do with the teachable heart as it did with the mind. Love is the basis of an education that seeks justice, equality, and genius. If critical pedagogy is not injected with a healthy dose of what Freire called "radical love", then it will operate only as a shadow of what it could be. Such a love is compassionate, erotic, creative, sensual, and informed. Critical pedagogy uses it to increase our capacity to love, to bring the power of love to our everyday lives and social institutions and to rethink reason in a humane and interconnected manner."

Today i got a forwarded email from my mother that Joe died in Jamaica on December 19th. My parents had not known of my recent contact with him and had received the news through a former student of Joe's. I went to the Friere link online and watched a video posted by his wife, Shirley. I'll put it here for those interested to share. It's beautiful. Our love goes out to Shirley and those so personally impacted by this untimely loss. I'm not sure what amazing, awakening, or humbling messages i will continue to discover in this synchronous chain of events but i'm sure, like the beautiful Joe Kincheloe himself, they will eventually inspire a deepening of Voice and Heart. Rock on magnificently, Joe.

http://freire.mcgill.ca/

posted by Kathryn @ 6:07 PM