So, I will continue the last post about myself. I have to be honest- I can't wait to have it done cos as interesting it may be for me to write or for you to read about Kati Orav, I want to dig into the main reason for this blog which is visual practices and graphic facilitation, research and thoughts about it and how to bring it into education. I also feel that preparing those personal posts haven't been so inspiring to me and they have taken so long time.
The next posts will be all about the focus, I promise.
Well, I finished the previous post being an Art of Hosting and graphic facilitation practitioner, traveling to another training… My big desire was to become a Story Activist- the one who helps to notice and creates stories that help people to grow and work towards their goals. To work with real stories but also to create new ones. While learning the method, discovered, worked out, and thought by Mary Alice Arthur, we used our own stories and worked with our new story. And to my surprise, it brought me consistently into a story of loving graphic facilitation, teaching it, developing it… like it would have been some kind of mission of mine. Still, I worked against it and wanted to think about myself as a Story Activist. But graphic facilitation followed me everywhere. Probably there is a strong reason for that. In my life, I have worked for two personal skills with a huge desire. The first one was sports. Between the ages 5 till 15 I was very good at sports and trained 5 times a week. And I remember myself missing only one training because I just didn't want to go. Only 1 training for 10 years. And the second one is… yes- graphic facilitation.
After I learned it, I just started to practice it like crazy :) really… every moment, every chance… I did everything in visual form, I took some online classes to learn more, read a lot of books about it and every day I discovered how powerful it was. In every training, process, cooperation I participated as a facilitator, I used visuals and offered myself as a visual harvester. And still- I didn't consider myself as a graphic facilitator or didn't think about teaching it.
But step to step it started to change. People were curious about my new skill and keen to learn it too. I saw that there is no this kind of training in Estonia and finally I thought to give it a try. The first pieces of training were a real success and it motivated me to continue. I grew so much by being a teacher but as I continued being a practitioner as well, doing visuals for clients and graphic recording from time to time, I grew as a professional and teacher of this field as well.
And then it happened. I started to become curious about one question: “Why I have to teach simple drawing as a thinking tool to grown-ups?” We are all natural drawers but somehow we lose it in the education system. So I also got curious about teaching and learning.
All this lead me to one decision- to go back to university. I always knew that I will have my magister degree one day. I just didn't want to have it because of the degree itself. I wanted to dig into something very interesting and useful for myself and the world at a higher level. I think that university is a very good place to do it with all the help of other students and teachers.
So, in 2018 I found myself in Tartu University, haunting the degree of Educational Innovation. And of course, my theses and focus was only on one thing- to do deeper research about Graphic Facilitation in the light of education and I asked myself: how to bring my big passion into education?” My passion turned into a bigger mission and I really feel that this is my path to go in this world and I will not give up.
In my imagination, 15- 20 years from now there will be a world where adults do not need to be taught innate ability like drawing for thinking to make their daily life better, but this skill would develop with us as we grow, through home, kindergarten, and school. My Master Theses is the first step towards this goal. As I did Erasmus plus program last year, it postponed my graduation but I will finish university this spring. And we will see, what will come next. But till then, I treat you here with all my discoveries.
The next post will be about Graphic Facilitation history, to set the scene you know, and after that, I will share my research and Master Theses' main focus with you. So, stay on the wave with me cos it will be a great journey.
