Creative Summer School for Teachers III: Mapping the Terrain of Learning

 

Four days. One place. Different experiences, professions, expectations, and perspectives on what it means to learn and to teach others.

This year’s Summer School focused on mapping the terrain of learning. We began with the idea that learning does not have to start with a ready-made answer – it can begin with walking, paying attention, a sound, a trace, an image, a question, or an encounter with someone who sees the same thing differently.

We observed the landscape using camera traps, followed sound trails, created a collective mapping of place, investigated, wrote, drew, and mapped. We recorded and shared our experiences and returned to them over time. The journal thus became more than a record of what we did – it was a space for different ways of observing, thinking, and making connections.

At the same time, mapping raises questions about boundaries. What do we include in our map, and what do we leave out? Where does our own perspective end and another person’s begin? And what happens when different perspectives meet?

This year’s Summer School was, above all, a space for learning together. It brought together different ideas about the role of the teacher, freedom, creativity, and the nature of knowledge itself. Some perspectives converged, while others remained in tension. Perhaps we opened more questions than we answered. But we do not have to think alike in order to learn together.

We would like to thank all the participants for the experiences, questions, and perspectives they brought to our time together. And our tutors — Matěj Smetana, Tomáš Moravec, Petra Hůlová, Jan Albert Šturma, and Katarína Kalivodová — for their commitment, care, and willingness to create situations without knowing in advance where they might lead us.

We are left with journals, drawings, maps, photographs, sound recordings, texts, and situations we created together. And also with questions worth returning to.

I walk.

I notice.

I create.

I ask questions.

I reflect and share

Learning happens in between.

And then I set out again — changed, just a little.

Thank you for this year’s journey.

SCHULE, Orlické hory