Week One-Curtis-Living Life on the Edge...of the Strip

         When I first began watching the video about the Mobius Strip, I was unsure of what I would see.  As I watched the video, I realized that the position Parker J. Palmer was promoting was one I had not seriously considered before.  According to Palmer, when we are young, our inner and outer selves, are exactly the same.  Who the world sees is the very same person we are on the inside.  Yet as we age, we begin to realize that always showing our inner selves all the time can lead to problems with other people.  So, we develop an outer self who we present to those around us, who is more socially acceptable.  As we age and are forced to pursue success, our outer self becomes more and more disconnected from our inner self--or worse, our inner self begins to change and become more like our outer self. He uses the example of a strip of paper rolled into a circle.  The two sides are separate and distinct, and have no interaction with one another.  Moreover, a person who does this is more prone to shut out people who are not exactly in accord with them.  The Mobius Strip is an alternative method of this circle, which connects the two sides, so that there is no clear inner or outer side--there is only the entire strip.  The means that the whole person is involved and constantly changing, the inner self influencing the outer self and vice versa.  This influence ensures that there is no disconnection between the inner self and outer self, and the person becomes like they were as a child...a person who is not compartmentalized. 
          I had never seriously considered such a position as the Mobius Strip presentation, nor did I believe that such a point of view was relevant to teaching.  I must admit, however, that ever since I viewed the video, I began to examine my own life as well as the lives of others to see if this example was accurate.  I realized that until I began implementing this model in my own life (though I did not know of it at the time), I struggled to separate between my outer self (my mask, so to speak) and my inner self, the part of me I thought of as 'the real me.'  As I realized that this understanding of self actually impacted my own life in the past, I began to think about how I could use this to better understand my future students.  I am not entirely sure how to do so, but I know that I will be examining my students closely, striving to pass through the outer self and to meet the inner self of each of my students.