Responding in-the-moment: learning to prepare for the unexpected

Abstract

Becoming aware of something unexpected can be a form of awakening: sharpening attention, enriching noticing, opening up fresh possibilities of action, and educating awareness so as to enable a sensitive response to similar situations in the future. However it can also trigger tunnel vision (few if any actions available) or freezing (no actions available), and so reaction based on automated habitual actions. A variety of types of unexpected classroom incidents are used to support the case that surprise is a release of energy, that disturbance is what initiates learning, and that what matters even more than noticing an opportunity is how that opportunity is taken up, how the released energy is used. Drawing on the perspective of multiple selves, of human beings as transformers of energy, on a six-fold structure of the human psyche, and on the Discipline of Noticing, proposals are made as to how it is not only possible but desirable to prepare for the unexpected.