TEACHER'S DILEMMA

Ronna Fay Jevne:
When we are able to articulate, to name the mission to which we are called, we are able to examine our work through the lens of hope rather than the lens of success and failure. We can attempt what is important rather than make important what it is that is easily achieved. To work without a call is to live in a place of doubt about what is and is not important. We are more easily enticed to working for the system than to working for the client when we are without a vision of the difference we truly want to make. Levov (1997) reminded us that Calls are essentially questions. They aren’t questions you necessarily need to answer outright; they are questions to which you need to respond, expose yourself and kneel before. You don’t want an answer you can put in a box and set on a shelf. You want a question that will become a chariot to carry you across the breadth of your life, a question that will offer you a lifetime of pondering, that will lead you toward what you need to know for your integrity, draw to you what you need for your journey, and help you understand what it means to burst at the seams. These questions will also lead you to others whose lives are propelled by the same questions, and from them you will receive, ”oh, never an answer,” as writer P. L. Travers says, ”but a spark of instructive fire” (p. 7).

And here I am today, looking at this passage, outlining a three-hour session whereupon I will be expected to impart my knowledge about counselling with hope and humour to a class of novice counsellors who hope to be psychologists.
And how shall I be: mysterious, inspiring, practical?

What if I say: “You have to start by being the person you are, and then find reliable tools you can use to structure your work with integrity?” They’ll be disappointed. They were expecting wisdom and a how-to manual.

What if I say: “I have this box of hope tools. I’ll show them to you. I have this box of humour tools. I’ll show them to you. But the thing I have learned over the years is that a person with integrity can’t effectively use a hope tool in a counselling session unless one person in the room can express some hope. Nor can a person of integrity use a humour tool in a counselling session unless there is somebody in the room who has a genuine compulsion to laugh.” They’ll be frustrated. “Integrity-shmegrity! They’ll whisper. “Who does she think she is?”

Or maybe I should just say: “I have this box of hope tools, and this box of humour tools. I love using them. I use them when it feels right to use them. I’ll show them to you. I want you to know they are available.”

Perhaps that is as much sense as I can make of the potential for using these tools with integrity given three hours in a roomful of novice counsellors.

(Quote by Ronna Jevne taken from page 272 of Jevne, R.F. (2005). Hope: The simplicity and complexity. In J. Eliott (Ed.). Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Hope (pp. 259-289). New York: Nova Science.)