Wednesday the 9th of July was my first active day as Animateur in residence, and although the role wasn’t exactly sprung on me, I spent most of the day considering how close the word Animateur is to Amateur and feeling completely unfit for the challenge of the task.
Luckily Jane reminded me of something that we have often talked about, that is to do with the weird feeling of inadequacy that often seems to accompany jobs that involve working in a ‘learning’ environment with others, such as teaching, mentoring, leading workshops and almost anything that requires taking a group initiative.
I would be curious to know if anybody has looked into this phenomenon, because over the years I have raised the subject with many experienced educators and it seems to be a fundamental, if often unspoken concern, especially amongst visiting tutors.
It is hard to unravel but seems to have something to do with balancing a willingness to get out of ones depth, on one hand, with the certain comfort of dogmatic knowledge, on the other. A balancing act that causes a fundamental questioning of your own ability, and a choice between being too inscrutable to be creative or too pliable to take the initiative. As nobody in their right mind would entertain using the Victorian rote method, they are left managing a healthy form of self destructive critique, and develop ways of camouflaging their doubts, at least until they are familiar with the feeling and realise that it is a very good sign.
All in all, the above paragraph was a very wordy way of saying, I decided that I was feeling an irrational fear, and that the best thing to do was NOT to act on it; but to wait and see what happened.
In the meantime I decided to ask a few random people what they would do, which was fun, but made me realise that it was up to me, my problem.
Gorgeous.
