Over the bank holiday weekend I watched the Sound of Metal, a film about a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing. There is a scene in a sign language class where Ruben (Riz Ahmed) notices a boy (also hearing impaired) who has trouble sitting still. In the playground, the boy is on the top of the slide and Ruben sits at the bottom. He unconsciously (because he’s a drummer) starts tapping a rhythm on the slide. The boy taps back. As they continue, the boy puts his ear to the slide to hear the vibrations, which calm him. This touching scene brought to mind this quote from Monica Vilhauer’s book Gadamer’s Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other…
‘Play… is something fundamentally larger than the individual player or their mental state; it is a pattern of movement that surpasses both the players, and is something to which both players belong.’ (p32)
Vilhauer, M. 2017. Gadamer’s Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other. Plymouth: Lexington.
The ‘call and response’ game between the two characters not only creates a moment of interaction and communication but also creates a sense of belonging and mutual understanding between them. All without a single word spoken between them.
From a teaching perspective this is a nice example of how important it is to create a sense of belonging and for students to be seen. I’m discovering on the PG Cert just how important creating an sense of community is to good teaching and learning.
Hi Ching-Li! This was a heart-warming and thought-provoking post to read – the simple sensorial connection between the drummer and the boy highlights the importance of the right kind of communication between tutor-and-student, and how nuances in communication (type, style, tone, etc.) should be tailored to the individual student.
Just to build on your last statement with my own thoughts… “From a teaching perspective this is a nice example of how important it is to create a sense of belonging and for students to be seen… just how important creating a sense of community is to good teaching and learning.” I agree with the importance of sense of belonging for students; within their student cohort, but also their sense of belonging as creatives on their course of study. One thing I am also trying to promote with my students alongside this is ‘celebration of uniqueness and diversity’; that they can feel like they belong within a community, but don’t have to lose sight of who they are as designer, creatives, their unique and sometime unconventional styles, attitudes, approaches to design.
We have a small handful of students that sit on the boundary between product design and art – some are fearful of crossing the line and moving too far into the art space, and the loss of that sense of belonging with their cohort and the course. But this comes back to the nuance of communication; how we as tutors help students navigate their way through the complexities of the creative world and find their balance or approach that celebrates them as individual well as them as part of a community.