Teacher, time, and biographical praxis

This chapter deals with teacher biographical data analyzed through a temporal lens. It borrows narratives from existing works and attempts to show the effects of a fixed notion of time and the manner in which it dominates teacher consciousness. But more, by means of biographic deconstruction it shows how the intuition of a different order of time might enter the existing dynamic. Understanding time and temporal relationships becomes key to transcending convention and tradition, and moving toward what we might call biographical praxis. And the first thing that enters the picture is the need for a careful deconstruction of accumulated experience that brings to the fore the distinction between fragmented time and time as whole. A single wave of intelligent movement might manage a whole complex effort rather than seeing it as a sequence of discrete tasks. Shifting our attention along these lines, if, by a certain effort of insight if we are able to swing our focus to the inner duration, then the multitude of tasks facing a teacher no longer seem daunting. This is not to trivialize the challenges faced by the teacher, but “time-management” will always appear nerve-wracking seen from the side of the multitudinous succession of tasks. Durational awareness does not apprehend reality in terms of succession of broken up pieces or as lists; rather, it encounters the real as intensity. It is the intensity that manages it as single movement