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In Limbo
9-10-2014
“Limbo…limbo…limbo.” Usually at this time of year, the limbo chant is gleefully shouted by rambunctious children in schoolyards everywhere as they challenge each other to shimmy under an outstretched jump rope. It’s a low stakes game of fun and silliness. To be a limbo champion, you have to be flexible. You have to put aside your ego and risk looking ridiculous as you bend over backwards and ungainly waddle forward. Limbo is marked by good-naturedness and collegial enthusiasm. When someone falls hands of support automatically reach out. When someone fails it’s only a matter of rejoining the line for another try. The game of limbo is meant to be fulfilling for participants and spectators. It’s an attempt of personal mastery buoyed by mutual goodwill and peals of laughter.
This year with the teachers’ strike delaying the start of school, “limbo…limbo…limbo” has a darker twist. It is now a chant of frustration for parents, students and educators stuck playing a high stakes waiting game that is not fun and promises no clear winners. Both parties are pitted against each other minus collegiality and sometimes even lacking civility.
To be in limbo means that your future is uncertain. Your fate will be determined by the whim of someone else, or quite often, by a faceless bureaucracy. It's an unsettling emotional space of anxiety where you don’t know and don't have control of what happens next. You are regulated to simply wait and see what is decided. When you are in limbo, you don't have a time frame of when to expect results. You pray that wisdom will prevail and that the outcome will be in your favour, but you have minimal influence or routes for recourse. You are stuck. You bide your time day by day patching together a semblance of normalcy. As time drags on, you feel taken for granted. Worn down. Willing to settle for any resolution just to be able to move on. Being in limbo is a miserable game to play.
Dr. Elisha Goldstein, a psychologist who specializes in mindfulness, encourages people to revisit their thinking about being in limbo. She asks us to look at limbo as a time of possibility. To see it as a suspension of normal activities which opens up space for curiosity to break down constraints. She advises using this imposed break from “business as usual” to uncover the potentialities that were previously buried under the pressure of getting things done. Being in limbo gives you a chance to dream. It’s an opportunity to suspend preconceived notions about how things ought to be and imagine how you want them to be.
We have a solid public school system in BC. But imagine what it could be! Educationist Madeline Hunter cherished the line, “good, better, best.” Having something be “good” was never good enough for her. She pushed teachers to consider what needed to be done differently in order to be better.
There are countless fabulous teachers who want to do things differently for the sake of the students, but who are bound by constraints within the behemoth system that governs public education. While issues such as class composition are important, they represent a tinkering around the edges and wish to return to a nostalgic past, instead of a zeal to create a vibrant future. The focus is on squabbling over the boundaries instead of cooperating to uncover spacious possibilities.
Imagine if the fervour and passion of the negotiation impasse were channeled into rousing support for educational innovation and advancement. Imagine if both the government and the union (or dare we dream all of society) adopted a mindset of bending over backwards for the sake of the students. What if everyone put aside their egos and automatically reached out their hands in support? What if a spirit of good-natured collegiality prevailed?
Children look to adults as role models. What are they learning from this dysfunctional display of failed bargaining? Do we not want schools to be places of where students embark on personal mastery buoyed by mutual goodwill and peals of laughter? It’s time to change the game from “being in limbo” to “being in this together.”
Zainab Dhanani has over 20 years involvement in the K – 12 system. She now works in the post-secondary field as an educational developer. She can be reached at z_dhanani@yahoo.ca
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