This post will be a departure for me. I'd like to share my recollections about a woman who has made a profound impact upon my life. This past week we lost two incredible women - poet and activist, Maya Angelou on the 28th of May, and then Maxine Greene on the 29th. While most will recognize Maya's name, fewer will know Maxine's. As the tributes and eulogies for Maya Angelou continue to accumulate, those for Dr. Greene are just starting to trickle in. I would like to offer my personal recollections and memories of her to perhaps inspire you to take a look at her wisdom and life's work as an educational philosopher .
While I was teaching in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, I had an opportunity to attend Lincoln Center's Aesthetic Education Institute in New York City on two separate occasions. The first year, I heard Dr. Greene give a lecture during the institute. Everyone seemed so excited to hear her this renown scholar from Columbia Teacher's College. I half expected a large and imposing woman to appear, however I was completely unprepared for the strength, passion, and clarity that came from Maxine. She was in her 70's at the time and in a wheelchair. After her hearing her talk I truly understood why everyone spoke her name with a level of respect that bordered on reverence - she was not only the preeminent scholar in her field, but a fireball of ideas, knowledge and wisdom, holding the attention of everyone in her presence.
The next summer I returned to New York to take a salon style literature class with Dr. Greene. I didn't know what to expect, but was excited to learn directly from her. The five mornings we spent discussing pieces about the holocaust were difficult content-wise but incredibly transformative, professionally, ideologically, pedagogically, and personally in the ways they forced us all to stretch beyond our comfort zones.
Maxine charged into the discussions of fiction head on, assuming them to be works of art for consumption, sharing, and analysis. She capitalized on key ideas to break open the hard shell of our collective interiors - in order to get us each to stretch a little farther than we ever had before. Weaving together quotes from great works with personal anecdote and questions, she swirled around and around ideas each morning. Never quite arriving at a particular answer or solution, Dr. Greene showed me the joy of the journey as opposed to the destination, and of travelling with others of diverse backgrounds.
In the next few years, as I contemplated a dissertation at the end of my doctoral coursework, I focused in on a translation of Maxine Greene's collected works. Dr. Greene's impact had so profoundly transformed my thinking and being as an instructional technologist, I used a qualitative method called philosophical inquiry to unpack all that I'd internalized. I was fortunate that Maxine not only approved of my appropriation of one of her book titles (
Releasing the Imagination), but she blessed and supported my attempts to translate her ideas into language that technologists might recognize and utilize. Having seen the power of aesthetic dialogue in my own classroom, I was eager to share the magic of Maxine's methods with a broader audience. I was deeply grateful to talk and correspond regularly with her as I tackled the work.
Two years after the completion of my dissertation, I returned to NYC one more time to take the salon class with Maxine. This time I brought her a bound copy of the completed dissertation, which she graciously accepted. That second week with Maxine was just as delicious as the first - big and bold ideas were chewed upon by a group of willing participants, all while sitting in the living room of her apartment overlooking Central Park.
As I have continued my personal journey with technology, delving into other philosopher's writing, the lessons I learned through exploring Maxine Greene's theories has been critical. In coming to clarity around some of her most archetypal ideas, I have been able to see deep connections between the arts, myths, legends, and in religious and spiritual texts. Maxine's ideas of "releasing the imagination," "opening," "awareness," "wide-awakeness," and "seeing things as if" can serve us all on our personal journey of growth, development and self expression. I will continue to share her ideas in this blog, and welcome you to read more about Maxine's life and work too!
With deepest gratitude to Dr. Maxine Greene, for all her wisdom, dedication, and imagination. Thank you for all you did to lead the way for us all. You will be missed! Dr. Maxine Greene: 12-23-1917 - 5-29-2014
