By Nelle Cox, ELC Co-Lead Teacher
As part of the expedition programme at YIS, our ELC2 learners are invited to spend an evening exploring the campus at night, taking responsibility for planning and designing their evening. Although this is an annual tradition, the event is wholly shaped by each unique group of learners. While the specific details differ, we find a common thread emerges through each group’s inquiries: what we choose to do with our fear, and who we choose to be when we are afraid.
Deep into last year’s inquiry, which centred on ghosts visiting the ELC, two competing narratives emerged: trapping the ghosts, or making friends with them. When faced with an unknown, will we choose to prioritise our safety and keep the other at a distance, on the outside, locked away? Or will we choose to be vulnerable and open, seeking connection despite our fears? Navigating this universal human experience feels particularly timely and significant as we watch our fellow humans across the world making this decision today with enormous consequences.
Some learners wished to both trap AND befriend the ghosts. They wanted the benefits of friendship with the ghosts, but only from a place of absolute safety, without having to show any vulnerability.
As we moved from the ELC to the park at twilight, there was a palpable shift in the tone and intentions of our learners. Before leaving, the vast majority were intent on finding and befriending the ghosts. Once in the darkened park, however, many of the learners became insistent on the ghosts having bad intentions, and there were calls once again for traps, jails and police interference. It is easy to draw parallels between this experience and how the capacity for humans to be gentle and vulnerable diminishes significantly when our sense of personal safety feels directly threatened.
However, arriving back at the ELC, a place that is well-known, a place of safety, comfort, and much greater control for our learners, their sense of joy, wonder, curiosity and vulnerability returned with abundance. They were excited and happy that the ghosts had potentially visited, played, and enjoyed the toys and food left out for them. Operating from a place of strength and safety, our learners showed far more resiliency and vulnerability.
I continue to process the significance and implications of the groups’ outliers. One learner in the group never swayed from their belief that the ghosts were ‘bad guys’ that needed to be trapped and punished. What might we understand from this learner who stuck to their assumptions despite their own engagement in the inquiry and the shift and growth in the thinking and opinions of their community?
In contrast, there was one learner who, amongst all the fear and uncertainty in the darkened park, kept reminding their friends that they were supposed to be making friends with the ghost, not hurting them. What can we learn from this child about our capacity as humans to choose love and connection, even in the midst of our fear?