Transformative Wonder: An Ex-Con Talking about Heidegger to a Class of Graduate Students

Abstract | Abstract

This article is part of an on-going project where we bring formerly incarcerated adults into the classroom to share their experiences of incarceration and illness with graduate nursing and public health students. We present the experience of one formerly incarcerated adult, Earthy, as we consider his transformative process from participant to teacher of Heideggerian concepts of a person. Via a restructuring into poetic lines and stanzas, we creatively present Earthy’s narrative from post class focus groups conducted over sequential semesters. The co-creation of this innovative and evolving class afforded Earthy the safe space to push into the unknown resulting in an ontological journey of practical wisdom and a deeper self understanding that drew him back to a sense of what felt right—the wonder of shared dialogical interaction with others. We view this as a creativity of personhood born from a dialectical and dialogical practice within a ‘community of wonder.’