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!

Reading Rita Charon’s Narrative Medicine theories  has been an amazing journey, I have been learning so much and acquiring new vocabulary, which has been helping me communicate with my patients, students and coworkers better.

I have been feeling like I was grasping the information and able to introduce it to my world properly, I made sure I paid full attention to my patients and students, tried to treat them all as singular humans with individual stories and needs. 

Recently though,  I was faced with the harsh reality that I was only good at it because I had not been truly challenged yet, all my patients and students have so far fallen into my comfort zone of thinking and processing information.

This wonderful bubble burst a  few weeks ago, when I received a call from my coordinator at Langara College, she asked me if I would be willing to support a blind student during the introductory to massage course, a 3 day weekend course that introduces prospective students to massage therapy so they can assess their interest in the full program.  This student, let’s call her Ella, had already taken this course a few weeks prior and it had not gone well for her.  The teachers were not properly prepared for her arrival, they had 19 other students and no understanding of Ella’s needs as a blind student.

After Ella complained of her treatment in class, mainly a lack of proper attention and focus, the college decided that she should redo the entire 3 day course, but this time properly supported by a teacher assigned solely to her learning.  I was the one they asked to support her. 

As I came in on the Friday to get ready, I had no real idea of how I would be helping her.  I had thoughts, plans and an overall scheme of what would probably work best for her, but no real concept of how it would all work.  Luckily, I am not one to be too attached to my ideas, because as soon as she walked in, I realized how big this task would be and how uneducated I truly was to the world of the blind.

As I introduced myself to Ella, I decided to let her know that I would have to rely on her to educate me on how she needed to be supported, this is when my education on singularity truly started.  Everything I knew about teaching, all my habits and my go to explanations had to change.  I quickly realized that using visual analogies with Ella would be useless when I asked her:

“you see the scapula?” 

and she promptly replied:

“No”

For the full three days, I had to constantly reevaluate my words and actions.  How to describe a birth mark to someone who has never seen skin color and it’s multiple shades, remembering to let her know when I walk away from her,  realizing that she cannot see the clock on the wall and that I must support her time management with regular reminders.  Learning to teach with my hands guiding her hands, and not counting on my words.  Also accepting that her relationship to her body is very different, she does not see her body, she feels it, so when I tried to teach her proper biomechanics, I had to figure out a way to get her to feel the proper postures and the improper ones, but also let go of my “it must be done this way” habit.  She was fine and comfortable in a very different posture than what I would have chosen for myself.

We finished the weekend with her giving me a card in brail  saying thank you for the support and for making her feel valuable and important.  I was in tears by the time she finished reading me her card.  However uncomfortable in my teaching I was during the weekend, I still managed to make her feel good about her learning experience.  I feel I owe that to my learning through our readings of Rita Charon’s book.  I am not sure I would have been able to pull off such a weekend positively without this learning.

I am thankful for my first ever card in brail.

What does curriculum mean to me?

My theoretical knowledge and experience of curriculum creating and understanding is very limited at the moment.  For the last 12 years, I have been teaching in a field, Registered Massage Therapy schools, which is very regimented in terms of curriculum.  We are bound by the competency document that our professional College, the College of Massage Therapists of British Columbia (CMTBC)  has set out for entry to practice examinations.  All of our students must meet a specific set of criterias in order to be eligible to write the entry to practice exams which will allow them to work under the title of Registered Massage Therapists ( RMT) in British Columbia.  Schools also must prove that they teach each competencies in order to be accredited with the CMTBC, without this accreditation, students graduating from a school would not be eligible to write the entry to practice exams. 

This has lead to RMT schools “bunching” competencies in groups of similar goals or skill levels and then creating classes around this grouping.  When a teacher is assigned a class, they are given the specific set of competencies assigned to that class and number of classes/hours this must be accomplished in.  Most classes are very regimented by the time a new instructor comes along.  When I started 12 years ago as a TA, the head instructor had been teaching for close to 20 years the same 3 courses, he had his ways of teaching and proceeded to teach me the “right way” of covering the material.  Don’t get me wrong, he was an excellent instructor and I am very happy I learned from him, but it did limit creativity and new thoughts.  When I officially took over his classes, I had no experience of curriculum other than his. 

Langara college started an RMT program in 2014, and it was exciting to be part of the start of a program, have a say in how we could set the curriculum with a more productive and student learning focus.  When I received my set of competencies and a vague outline of how I was expected to organize this particular grouping, I was able, for the first time to really look at my material and decide how I could best deliver this information to the students.  I unfortunately had no references, experiences or event the imagination to create anything different from what I already knew. 

Since starting this Master’s program, I have slowly started to change some of my classes to incorporate better teaching methods and more supportive language and instruction for my students.   Already, I am investigating a very different approach to testing and exam writing for my students this semester, and planning to revamp my Septembre classes over the summer. 

I am truly enjoying the readings I have gone through so far and taking in as much as I can to instruct my future curriculum planning.  My hope is that I will find “gems” and a guiding thought to grow my teaching and bring about more critical thinking and integration of knowledge for my students.

The Rita Charron book, Narrative Medicine; Honoring the Stories of Illness, has been transforming my private practice and how I work and communicate with my patients.  I am finding my voice, allowing me to reach my patients at a deeper level than just “where is the pain?”  now I am looking more into “why is there pain?” and “what is behind this pain?”.  I have noticed a change in my patient's’ words and chatter as I treat them, and we discuss the deeper meaning of pain and discomfort.  I also am finding a renewed sense of enjoyment in my private practice since incorporating these changes, I am more satisfied with my relationship to my clients and the results I am getting through my work.

Maybe I am too hopeful or demanding of the class readings, but having no formal education in the field of education, I am really looking forward to some base knowledge to support my work as a teacher, and looking to the class readings as a door to this knowledge.