Coming About

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the  American Association for Adult and Continuing Education annual conference in Denver, Colorado. Our keynote speaker was Dr. Rosemary Caffarella who gave an inspiring talk entitled, “The Gift of Healing.”

Dr. Caffarella is special to us here at VCU, not only because we use her text, Planning Programs for Adult Learners in our Program Planning, Management, and Evaluation course and often refer to her writings in the Adult Learning program, but she was once the program director here during the 1980s. Dr. Caffarella was kind enough to agree to an interview for our VCU students after her presentation, and I share it here as a podcast for my readers. We’ll also post it to our VCU iTunes site.

“This I believe….”

Dr. Caffarella began her address to the members of AAACE with a description of an assignment that she makes of her adult education students at Cornell University entitled, “This I believe…” Each student writes  an essay describing his or her beliefs as an educator of adults, and Dr. Caffarella does the same. It is from this articulation of beliefs that Dr. Caffarella finds the inspiration for her talk on The Gift of Healing.

Healing, said Dr. Caffarella, involves recovering from the many major changes that affect adults and the organizations in which they function. Sometimes these changes are traumatic; they can occurr in both the best and worst of times. During major change, as individuals and as organizations, we experience emotional turmoil, spiritual upheaval, and feelings of uneasiness –even a sense of being downright scared; we don’t feel like ourselves and our thinking is often muddled as we lose the ability to listen and concentrate. The times we are living in now, said Dr. Caffarella, are filled with these major changes for many adults.

As adult educators, our role during difficulties such as these is to assist in the healing process, whether we are teachers, administrators, colleagues, program planners, researchers, trainers, mentors or fellow learners. Our contribution to others during these times should be framed as a gift, and not as an obligation. This gift involves listening, providing resources and giving space for recovery time; we let others know that is is okay to feel and think as they do. It is borne of sincere care about the other person. We let them know that it’s all right that they feel and think as they do during the stress of diffculty; we don’t expect them to be able to think or perform as they normally do.

Our gift to others experiencing difficult times involves sharing stories of our own experiences and the major changes and transitions in our own lives. Our goal should be to allow others to heal in their own way, and support them as they do.

The literature in adult learning is filled with examples of how this gift might manifest itself: it is described as experiential learning, as transformative learning, and as the contextual factors that support adult learning. Our literature frames storytelling as a way of knowing, the narrative of experience. Giving the gift of healing, said Dr. Caffarella, can be tough at times, but it also provides many blessings and can bring to the giver surprises that lead to new learning.

Among the master’s and doctoral students in the Adult Learning program at VCU, we have colleagues who are experiencing these difficult times for a variety of reasons … jobs that have been lost, health issues and concerns, and reasons not fully known to the rest of us. As I listened to Dr. Caffarella, I thought of these students, and others of whom I may not be fully aware; how timely her message is… how important it is for us to heed.

For those wanting the source for Dr. Caffarella’s talk, she cites The Twelve Gifts of Healing by Charlene Constanzo, New York, Harper Collins, 2004.