by Dennis Patrick Slattery and Jennifer Leigh Selig, Editors
ISBN: 978-1-882670-63-5 212 pp.
In this collection of essays, Dennis Patrick Slattery and Jennifer Leigh Selig bring together eighteen master teachers—from elementary, high school, undergraduate, graduate, and adult education and across many disciplines–to share their reflections on reviving, revisioning, and renewing the soul of learning.
What timeless and perennial qualities of excellence are germane to teaching and learning both of which serve the life of imagination and the further cultivation of the soul? The answers rest in these essays themselves, which contain repositories of wisdom by teachers with decades of experience in the classroom, whose only mandate in contributing to this volume was to speak their own truths that have informed thousands of learners young and old.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"City, Soul and Myth"
"The Dance of Learning"
"Chronos vs. Kairos: A Plea for Restoration of Empathy and Imagination in History Teaching"
"Good Teaching Doesn’t Count!"
"Finding the Philosopher’s Stone"
"Restoring Soul to Teaching: Reflections on the Division of Spirit from Matter in Teaching and Learning"
"Trying to Touch What Matters: Confessions of a High School Dropout"
"Poetic Awareness: Imagining and the Experience of Soul"
Jennifer Leigh Selig, Ph.D., taught high school in her native Northern California for sixteen years before her rise (fall?) to higher education in Southern California at Mount St. Mary’s College and then Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she currently serves as department chair in the Depth Psychology program. She has published four books, including a gift book for graduates titled What Now?: Words of Wisdom for Life After Graduation and a book on everyday spirituality titled Thinking Outside the Church: 110 Ways to Connect With Your Spiritual Nature. See her website at www.jenniferleighselig.com.
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D., is currently Core Faculty member in the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has taught for forty years at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels. From 1984–87 he taught teachers the classics of literature in The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture’s Summer Program for Teachers. He also taught for six years at The Fairhope Institute of Humanities and Culture’s Summer Program for high school teachers under the direction of Dr. Larry Allums, current director of The Dallas Institute. He is the author or coeditor of twelve books, among them: The Idiot: Dostoevsky’s Fantastic Prince (1984); The Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh (2000); and Grace in the Desert: Awakening to the Gifts of Monastic Life (2003). With Lionel Corbett, he coedited Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field (2001) and Psychology at the Threshold (2002); with Glen Slater, he coedited Varieties of Mythic Experience: Essays on Religion, Psyche and Culture (2008). He has composed three volumes of poetry: Casting the Shadows: Selected Poems (2001); Just Below the Water Line: Selected Poems (2004); and Twisted Sky: Selected Poems (2007). He offers workshops on Joseph Campbell and personal mythology to Jungian groups and organizations in the United States. He is writing a book titled Riting One’s Personal Myth: Joseph Campbell and the Journaling Psyche.
