Reading through my first 3 reflections is an interesting exercise, it brings back some thought processes I thought I had worked through and figured out somehow, but as I read back, more questions pop up in my mind. 

I just had the sudden realization that curriculum is much more fluid and flexible than I ever had thought of at the beginning of this class.  As I wrote in my first reflection, I had a very limited understanding and grasp of curriculum studies when I entered this program.  Through the readings in The Curriculum Studies Reader and getting acquainted with curriculum scholars and their theories, I came to see that there is no perfect curriculum theory that can encompass all the needs of my students and support their learning, but if I combine some of the theories and thoughts, I could  create a flexible curriculum, which might  give me a chance at successfully implementing a style of teaching more adapted to the needs of my 3 courses.. 

I am thinking the difficult part would be to stay true and respectful of the belief system already in place at Langara College and in the Registered Massage Therapy education community.   At the moment, there is a thought that to be a Registered Massage Therapist (RMT) you must be very orthopedically oriented, this involves a rigid set of assessment skills including testing strength, mobility and sensory functions of each patient, almost regardless of why they came into the clinic in the first place. 

We have patients coming into our school clinic with complaints of fatigue and headaches clearly related to their stress levels being out of control, and our students are instructed to do a postural examination, pick a joint and do a full set of testing and range of motion observations and then give a possible diagnosis for this patient.  This makes no sense, we are basically asking the students to force a patient into admitting to a pretend injury or dysfunction, and then diagnose it properly.  All the while, there is a very real patient with a very real complaint that needs attention, but we are creating a situation where our students are taught to ignore this reality.  The students then miss out on a learning opportunity and a chance to truly connect with another human being in a deep and therapeutic way.   

As I write this, I am acutely aware that if any of my coworkers at Langara would read this, they would probably quickly point out how ironic this is, being that I have been hired at Langara College specifically because of my expertise  in teaching the orthopedic content of the RMT program, yes, I admit it, I am the one creating these super orthopedically oriented future RMTs.  Yet I am a firm believer that what I teach is only a small portion of what a Registered Massage Therapist actually treats in a full day’s worth of work, but for some reason, our community of RMTs have glommed onto this section of our education as if it is the greatest and most important component.  There is a belief that the more orthopedically oriented you are as an RMT the higher your value and you become instantly more respected as a practitioner of “true” health care. 

Therefore, RMT education puts a great amount of emphasis on orthopedic teaching, and I teach 3 of the 4 classes dedicated to this subject.

In my experience, which is 20 years worth of clinical work, the majority of my clients are seeking RMT treatments for conditions that are non-orthopedic, mostly stress related like fatigue, headaches, depression, anxiety.  Unspecific pain and discomfort are more common than any of orthopedic conditions I teach.  I rarely use any of the testing I teach my students because they are not appropriate or will in no way help the course of treatment and healing of my patients.

What I truly do in clinic is be there for my patients, listen to them and let them off-load, make them laugh, show them some compassion and allow them to just be themselves for an hour.  They think I am treating their knee, their low back, their neck and shoulders, but in reality I am aiming at treating their battered souls.  Their emotions and stresses are oozing out of their body in the form of physical injury, I can treat their ankle sprain until the cows come home, but if I don’t address their stress levels, I can guarantee they will be back with the same injury within a very short period of time. 

So in short, what I would really like to impart on my students is that orthopedics are great, but not the end-all-be-all of massage therapy.  The lessons they learn in their professional development(PD) classes and in their Pain, Stress and Sleep(PSS) classes will be much more valuable than anything I will ever teach them in my Spinal Orthopedics class.  Yet these  PD and PSS classes are despised by the students, and thought of as a waste of time by both students and a good majority of the teachers.  Teachers are made fun of for being assigned these classes. 

I taught PSS for a few semesters and I loved it, but I did not have enough knowledge to truly go into the subject in depth with the students.  I truly wish I had read Rita Charon’s work at that time, it would have been so helpful, and would have given me the vocabulary and the tools to properly teach subjects like chronic pain, depression and anxiety.  I am not-so secretly wishing I get assigned to PSS classes again in the future… 

Reading and working through Narrative Medicine from Rita Charon has opened a great door for me in my career, both as an RMT and as a teacher.  I had that nagging feeling for years that what I was teaching was not as important as our community of RMTs seem to believe it is, and that there was a greater purpose to our work than joint mobilization and ligament testing.  I unfortunately did not have to words to express these feelings, nor did I have the information to back up these beliefs of mine.  Reading Rita Charon’s work and then digging deeper into her resources and reference books, articles and research, I have been introduced to a depth of knowledge to tap into. 

I have been feverishly reading and incorporating this new information into my world, probably to a point where my coworkers now think I am annoying and way  too obsessed with this woman’s work.  I see this as part of the normal excitement that comes with knowledge acquisition, it’s a good thing, and I am aware it will pass, but hope it will leave a great indelible mark on me, my work and hopefully my students. 

I am trying really hard to impart on my students the thirst of learning, questioning and seeking more from their education that just the basic hands on skills gathering.  Hopefully, my enthusiasm rubs off on them, even just a little bit!