The Role of Intention in Case-In-Point Teaching

In my experience of life, there is only one thing that I have absolute control over.  It’s not my actions, my thoughts, or my feelings.  I believe the only thing that I have absolute control over are my intentions.  I can point to several specific instances in my life where I have tried to control my behavior, thoughts, or feelings, but have failed miserably and sometimes with significant consequences.  On the other hand, I cannot think of a single time when I did not have absolute control over my intention in any given situation.  However, having control over something doesn’t mean I remember to use that control.  Neither does it mean that it didn’t take considerable practice and intention in itself to learn to be present to that control.

Intention is not vision, it’s not deep purpose, it’s not control, and it’s not a boundary, but it is interdependent with all of those aspects of life. To me, intention is the power I have in steering the co-creation of the reality I am sharing with others (it’s the “co” in co-creation).  Intention is an opening to possibilities I would not have seen without crystallizing my thoughts around what it is I want to see.  Intention is what turns a blob of clay into a work of art, but not in isolation from the clay itself, the deeper purpose of the potter’s life or the intended deep purpose of what is created from that space.  If intention is the one thing, the one and only thing, I have total and absolute control over, then it has to be powerful.  It must be the kind of power that is powerful even when I am not consciously directing it. When I am not intentional, I am still co-creating reality, I am still putting my hands on the clay, I’m just doing it with some other intention, without a destination, without taking responsibility for being the potter.  That doesn’t mean I control the wheel or the behavior of clay itself – but I would bet that it influences all those factors.  When I have a crystal clear intention, I am creating a boundary and eliminating some of the possibilities that were there within the clay before I started working with it.  

When I teach and I am crystal clear about my intentions, the same thing happens – I am eliminating some of the millions of possibilities that could take place within the classroom.  In case-in-point teaching, intention is paramount because I have to trust that in planning for class, although I will have to surrender some of what I meticulously planned to the emergent context, it forces me to set the deep purpose of each class meeting.  It’s as if what I pay attention to, how I respond, what I see and hear, how I interpret events, and even how I feel is completely overlaid with that intention.  I see within that framework.  I respond to the emergent context within that framework.  I teach to that intention and I achieve results within that specific intention.  On the days when I am not intentional, but allowing an intention that is not conscious to me to drive my work, I am certain that I achieve the results of that unconscious intention, but it is usually neither pleasant nor not powerful in the end.  

I like to bring this up to my students in juxtaposition to Ivan Illich’s “To Hell with Good Intentions,” which I firmly believe in—just as I believe in the well-worn adage, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  When I am really honest about my intentions, they move beyond “good intentions.”  They become alive and specific.  They become powerful and conscious.  And in many cases, they become transparent to others which helps with the co-creation of our shared reality because people can opt-in to that intention, help shape it, or opt-out and in doing so, their own intentions become conscious and open to their own exploration as well.

I think this is why creating or teaching a new class is so difficult for me.  I do not have a crystallized intention about the class. I want to keep many options open and I often have far more readings, assignments, and themes for the semester than anyone can handle (especially me).  After the first iteration of failure, some of the distracting course components fall away and the intentions for the course become more clear.  The second semester becomes even more clear and by the third semester, my intentions for the entire course and each class period have gotten so clear that I am able to finally teach the course I could barely even envision when sitting at a blank syllabus template three semesters beforehand.