What insight and power do poetry and poetic knowledge offer us in these times? What does it mean as a way of thinking about and understanding our lives, our learning, and our politics? How does it help us connect with the full humanity of ourselves and others? How is poetry a vehicle for resistance and self-care, expression and democracy, to “think in beautiful” and to illuminate our work and lives?  

​ Description and poetry both connect with the expressive elements of people and the world. Both evoke rather than analyze, drawing on the particular and on recognition of the place of feeling and of expression. In seeking to create more human and just educational and political worlds, both offer us visions of what could be and enable us to dream together. Both offer the possibility of bringing hearts and minds together and of making connections across differences. The poetry of long-time IDI member Charles Ragland distilled and clarified our collective experiences and reflected them to us in ways that brought us together.

​ This year’s Summer Institute on Descriptive Inquiry will examine and draw on the use of description and modes of poetic thought and expression as ways of understanding our students and our work as educators and as guides for creative action and resistance.

Mow 504 a.k.a Mouhamadou Moustapha Souaré, Yëg Soka Neg (2021), located in the dining hall at Hampshire College. Yëg soka neg is a Wolof expression which describes “a state of mind where you need to feel your higher self before becoming or realizing it” (Hamsphire College dining hall mural label). 

Past Summer Institute Themes

2001            Taking Care of Childhood, Play, Spirit, and Imagination

2002        Locations of Relationship: Ourselves, Others' Classrooms, Culture

2003        Sustaining Possibility Through Story, Memory, and Imagination

2004        Everyday Life and Our Wildest Dreams: Working Inside Contradictions

2005        The Multiplicities of Democracy

2006        Locating, Designing, Maintaining Spaces for Democratic Community

2007        What Does It Mean to Teach in These Times?

2008        What Do We Hold Dear in Teaching?

2009        Descriptive Inquiry: Coming to Action

2010            Expanding Our Sense of the Possible

2011            Using Descriptive Process to Navigate the New and Difficult Terrain

2012          Using Descriptive Inquiry to Resist and Re-imagine Our Educational Terrain

2013            The Capacity of the Person Within Culture   

2014          Supporting the Capacity of the Person Through Community 

2015           Expanding Horizons, Combining Perspectives           

2016           The Generous Community                  

2017           How Does Descriptive Inquiry Help Us Move Between the Particular and Politics?  

2018             Just[ice] Relations: Knowing Self and Other

2019             Perceiving and Expressing Self, Other, and the World: Capacity, Vulnerability and Voice

2020           Forming and Reforming Identity in a Time of Rebellion Against Racial Injustice 

2021             Staying with Trouble: Provisioning for Meaningful Engagement In a Time of Crisis

2022             Description For Connection and Healing: How Do We (Re)Center Education on Our Human, Democratic Values?

2023     Practicing Description to Open Pathways for Creative Resistance

2024            Freedom Dreaming: Transforming Ourselves, Our Work, and Our World(s)

2025             Poetry As a Tool of Resistance: Envisioning Our Futures Together

Photos taken at Hampshire College by Stephane Barile (2022, 2023).