Approved IDP

Vision Statement

The Hero Within

Reading and working through the concepts in Carol Pearson's book, The Hero Within, brought healing, comfort, and challenge into my life at a time when I was in great pain. In thinking about how to frame the vision that will provide direction for this last part of my doctoral studies, and for my professional and personal development for the next several years, I was drawn once again to Pearson's work. Pearson begins her book with this simple sentence, "This is a book about the stories that help us make meaning of our lives." She writes about the "myths of the hero" which tell about the attributes we as a culture (western in this case) aspire to as good, beautiful, and true. Pearson identifies those stories which she believes to be archetypal (as defined by Jung), those "deep and abiding patterns in the human psyche that remain powerful and present over time" (Pearson 1989, xxv).

Pearson's stories describe those archetypes--Innocent, Orphan, Martyr, Wanderer, Warrior, Magician--that are significant to the hero's journey, the search for individuation. These are the archetypes manifested in our daylight worlds that help us define a strong ego, and then expand the boundaries of the ego to allow for the full flowering of the self and its opening up to the experience of oneness with other people and with the natural and spiritual worlds (Pearson 1989, xxvi).

The journey Pearson describes is my journey. I remember complete trust in my world as an Innocent and even now I know the Orphan's longing for safety, the self-sacrificing service of the Martyr, the exploration of the Wanderer, the competition and triumph of the Warrior, and more recently the authenticity and wholeness of the Magician. My journey has been and continues to be a recursive one; Pearson describes it as an ever-widening spiral, a journey in which the hero goes around the wheel from Orphan to Magician many times, each time learning the lessons of the revisited stage in new and more profound ways. It is here in the myth of the hero that I find the answer to the questions "Who am I?" and "Where am I going?" I am a Magician, and yet I am also a hero who is still on the journey.

Two of Pearson's figures will help to describe my journey and answer these questions in more detail. The first, "Three Turns Around the Hero's Wheel," summarizes her concept of the journey as an ever-widening spiral. As the hero travels, she finds herself revisiting each stage, but taking a new learning with her. The second illustrates the course of my own journey more specifically, from Orphan to Martyr and Warrior almost simultaneously, then to Wanderer and finally Magician. Much of my childhood is an unclear memory. What I do remember, however, is a period of almost complete innocence. We lived on mission stations that kept us fairly isolated; we traveled in the Rhodesian "bush," camping in tents and huts, and I spent a lot of time entertaining myself.

At Mrewa, I had one friend, Julie Ann, with whom I spent a lot of time. I do not remember being watched or restricted much in my comings and goings. I asked my Mother about this some time ago, wondering how I could recall such a sense of security and yet freedom when I knew that she and Daddy would never have been careless in what might have been considered fairly dangerous surroundings--poisonous snakes, insects, rabid dogs. The answer was simple: Mother and Daddy had two servants, one of whom was responsible for watching me. And yet I do not remember being watched. I remember feeling free, happy and safe. Neither do I clearly remember when that feeling ended. But I remember with vivid clarity the events that finally caused me to reflect on my life and to discover that I had spent a good deal of it as an Orphan, feeling abandoned and even exploited. As a young adult, I had followed my parent's example (at least what I perceived to be my parents' example) , taking on the roles of Warrior and Martyr almost simultaneously. I had been taught that anger was a sin, service a virtue, and independence a necessity. I worked hard, I solved my own problems, I cried alone, denied my feelings, and stuck to the motto that had always served me well, "If I just work hard enough and persist long enough, I can fix everything."

I adjusted to my husband's career changes; I learned new skills and became competent in jobs that were not what I really wanted to do; I persisted and was rewarded with the opportunity to resume my teaching career; I worked even harder and was rewarded again with an administrative position, a job that is the most satisfying and enjoyable work I have ever done. I was a true Warrior, disciplining myself, achieving, proving that I could defend the mission and policies of a newly established department.

I found, however, that some dragons could be neither appeased nor slain. The tactics that seemed to work so well in my career, failed miserably at home. No matter how much I sacrificed or how hard I fought, my son's problems escalated, spiraling out of control, taking with them our whole family. Sacrifice and appeasement worked for a while; and yes, many battles were won--with my husband, with the schools, with the doctors, with social services, with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and even with the State of Michigan. But ultimately, the hero learns that she may sacrifice herself and she may win many battles, but she cannot control others.

And so I became a Wanderer. Lost and alone, I set out to find God, to find out who I was, to figure out why sacrifice and hard work had failed, to make sense of all the pain. It was on this part of the journey that I confronted my own "shadow" (Pearson 1989, 14)-- my fear of letting go, losing control--and that I allowed myself to feel and identify the many fears and emotions I had denied for years. I became an Orphan again and allowed myself to mourn. I was able to recognize that as a Warrior I could stand for my truth while respecting other's truths, and I discovered that as a Martyr, I could love, commit, and also let go. In so doing, I have learned to honor myself, to be more accepting of others as they are, and to trust the world and God once again.

I am a magician in the making who can describe herself in many ways:

And to these things I would like to add:

researcher
visionary
published author

paradigm pioneer
model teacher
collaborator
mystic( one whose identity is firmly rooted in God's first love [Nouwen 1994, 28]

These things I want to add are perhaps reflective of those aspects of my temperament, mind style, or learning style that I sense have been less dominant in my approach to learning, making decisions, working, or interacting with people. I am a clear ISTJ on the Myers Briggs, although I am almost evenly divided on the thinking/feeling scale. These scores match all my other assessments--Gregorc's mind style, Kolb's learning style, and Carbo's right brain/left brain scale.. I am a concrete, sequential thinker who trusts experience and logic more than feelings. I am a doer and a decision-maker. However, I am interested in the possible as well as the practical, I can be impulsive and spontaneous as well as deliberate, I am learning to trust my intuition, I have learned that even though I depend on language I can call on my visual memory to find lost things or remember how to get places, and I have become much more sensitive and responsive to the personal needs of people around me.

I see myself becoming more comfortable with, and in fact cultivating, these less dominant aspects of myself. My concrete sequential skills will serve me well as a researcher, but I will want to synthesize as well as analyze and to look at data from a variety of viewpoints before jumping too quickly to conclusions. Visionary, paradigm pioneer, model teacher, collaborator, and mystic are roles that will continue to push me towards taking more risks, focusing more on people, cultivating my imagination, listening to my intuition, and reflecting on my values. I can see clearly that it is my willingness to focus on theses more feeling /abstract modalities that will allow me to discover those topics/issues that are most worthy of my research and writing time, that will give me the courage to shift my paradigm--the one that sets me up as the authority who must be in control--to the magician who trusts the chaos to become order, to he mystic who perceives "the invisible underlying fabric that connects everything" (Peck 1987, 193).

My specific agenda includes:

• publishing about reading assessment, cooperative learning with developmental classes, minority student retention, delivering services to high-risk students on a commuter campus, and the benefits of a centralized developmental studies program
• managing a research agenda within the confines of my situation--limited time, staff, budget, and technical support
• becoming comfortable with quantitative research
• continuing my involvement in the Michigan Developmental Education Consortium: elected office, development and implementation of a vision for becoming a more dynamic organization within the state
• expanding my repertoire of teaching strategies to include cooperative learning and other models that actively involve students in the process of inquiry
• improving my program evaluation skills
• improving my ability to resolve interpersonal conflicts within a staff/department improving my computer skills: networking through CompuServe, Internet, and e-mail; mastering desktop publishing and word processing
• developing more confidence in my public speaking skills becoming skilled in doing qualitative research
• (Specifically, I want to follow up on Tinto's premise that each school must find out for itself why students leave and what contributes to their success. I am concerned about the failure rates of minority students, athletes, males 20-23, and non-traditional, low-income women. In addition, our outcomes assessment plan calls for qualitative strategies. I also want to help faculty examine the efficacy of new instructional strategies.)
• becoming a change agent/facilitator in the following areas:

1. assisting all developmental studies instructors to adopt cooperative learning strategies and/or other effective models of teaching (Joyce, et. al.) in their classrooms.
2. keeping the college focused on the implementation of cooperative leaning and other active teaching/learning strategies.
3. changing the perception that college administrators and staff have about the contribution/role of minority students on campus.
4. developing and promoting a plan for increasing the academic success of minority students on campus.
5. implementing the University of Kansas Strategic Intervention Model and paired classes on campus
6. designing/implementing a writing tutorial lab
7. leading developmental studies faculty to an understanding of and a commitment to outcomes assessment.

And why do these things matter? They matter because at the center of my vision is a student, a student who "had no business" coming to college. A student who had C's, D's and F's in high school. A student who "was never good at math" and hated English. A student whose family never went to college. A student whose high school counselor said, "You won't succeed in college." A student who had been labeled "special ed" or "L.D." A student who drove to campus four times before summoning the courage to get out and find the admissions office. A student who has two small children to support and little help from family and friends. A student whose job suddenly disappeared when the company relocated. A student who says, "I haven't been in school in 14 years!" A student who in spite of all these odds has decided to give college a try.

These things matter because it is unethical to accept a student's money unless as an open admissions institution we are prepared to do everything within our power to help that student meet his or her goals. This means appropriate assessment and placement, appropriate instruction, and an environment that allows for discovery and both failure and success. Sometimes that discovery is, "Wow, yes, I like this!" or "This is hard, but there are people here who will help me." And other times that discovery is, "College is not the best place for me." It is with this last discovery that we have not managed very well.

We have not adopted a mindset that recognizes and honors anything but linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We give lip service acknowledgment to spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligence, but we still speak in disparaging words about those who shouldn't be here because they don't have "what it takes."

And these things matter because as one individual I am unlikely to change my institution, let alone other open admissions colleges; however, I can effect change in my department; I can influence those staff who have shown faith in my leadership; and I can continue to push the limits of my own thinking and capabilities. And it matters because I believe with my whole heart that "personal meaning-making" is my "only route out of chaos" (Wheatley 1994, 135). And because I have believed for a long time that I must make a difference in the one small spot I find myself. Again, Wheatley's words have suggested that this idea has more significance than I might have thought:

"Acting locally allows us to work with the movement and flow of simultaneous events within that small system. We are more likely to become synchronized with that system, and thus to have an impact. These changes in small places, however, create large-systems change, not because they build one upon the other, but because they share in the unbroken wholeness that has united them all along. . . . There is value in working with the system any place it manifests because unseen connection will create effects at a distance, in places we never thought" (Wheatley 1994, 42).

And so as I continue my journey, I see my doctoral studies as one way to find new choices for responding to life as I make another turn around the hero's wheel. As I learn how to be a more effective decision maker, collaborator and change agent, I want to revisit the lesson of the Orphan that urges me to seek help from others. As I become a competent researcher, writer, and presenter, I want to remember the lesson of the Warrior, that "assertion is a part of the dance of life (Pearson 1989, 14)" but that I can and must respect and empathize with those who disagree with me. As I become more effective at managing my time, balancing those activities which involve meeting the needs of people with those that involve reading, research, and study, I want to remember the lesson of the Martyr and the Magician that I can find myself through giving, and yet honor myself and my own needs. And ultimately, as I continue my spiritual journey from doubt to mysticism, I want to find the hero's reward, which is community--"community with the self, with other people, and with the natural and spiritual worlds" (Pearson 1989, 153). It is then that I will have found the inner confidence and serenity I seek.

Works Cited

• Nouwen, Henri J. M. 1994. In the name of Jesus. New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company.
• Pearson, Carol S. 1989. The hero within. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers.
• Peck, M. Scott. 1987. The different drum: Community making and peace. New York: NY: Touchstone.
• Wheatley, Margaret J. 1994. Leadership and the new science: Learning about organization from an orderly universe. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.