Ahonui from the Hawaiian dictionary means patience; patient, enduring, long suffering; to tolerate. Lit., great breath
As this fall semester comes to an end, I have found that I have been repeating this idea of breathing, and hā as a manifestation of ahonui, and what I call the grace of teaching.
I have been starting my classes early with music and a reminder to breathe, but really as the teacher, it is about my own “waiting for the moment” ahonui (Pono Shim, Aunty Pilahi) – as in waiting for the moment for all of us, both me as the kumu and my students, to wait, sit back, breathe together and not to just come in running to class. For a bell to bell teacher like me who over plans and over hopes, this semester has been about grace, about waiting and not running from the beginning. The pattern I have seen this semester is that if something is going to go wrong, it is going to go wrong as we are online. Tech is not always a friend of mine, and instead of trying to bully my way through tech, I have learned to ahonui, ask for grace from my students, and patience. I have learned to breathe through the troubles as a way, I hope, to model this kind of patience and waiting for the moment for my teacher candidates.
I feel there has been a shift in my own thinking during this time. As a long time educator, I have been trained to latch on to the “teachable moments,” but this idea of ahonui and waiting for the moment is not about teachable moments. It is more about the magic of teaching, and the idea that trusting the process and rhythms of teaching will actually reveal the reason why the universe needed you to step forward for this student and why the universe is also allowing this student to step forward for you as the kumu.
What does this waiting for the moment look like? How will I know when the moment comes?
It looks like listening with your whole body. It looks like makawalu – the deep observation that leads to pattern finding, data analysis and epiphany. It looks like getting out of your own head and leading with the gut. It looks like gentle insubordination and magic.
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