The Mark of Charcoal: Devotional Tracings

By Zohra Samir

I work as a Pedagogist in Calgary at a multi-site non-profit and charity serving children with exceptionalities, and I am pursuing my EdD at the University of Calgary. This mini-blog is a humble offering about my work and research, Thinking with South Asian Women Early Childhood Educators: Reimagining Pedagogical Documentation as a Co-compositional Living Culture.

As a part of my role, I visit a different childcare site each day of the week. Through this work, the children have opened my eyes to the many small, intentional, and joyful moments composed and created collectively. The traces of these moments leave a mark on everything they come in contact with, much like charcoal leaves its marks.

One day, while returning to a site I had visited before, Child M approached me with a question that seemed to begin in the middle of a shared memory. Child M curiously inquired, "Where did the construction worker go?" I was perplexed and did not know how to respond. "Can you remind me of which construction worker?" I asked. This question only baffled the child, who was entirely confident that I knew exactly what he was talking about. I left that interaction full of doubts and uncertainties.

Although I physically left the scene to visit another classroom, my mind froze in time, caught in the lingering heaviness of the previous event. Fortunately, I soon remembered what Child M was talking about. He was referring to a time we had previously spent together outdoors, witnessing three construction workers. At the time, we had talked about how two of them had left for lunch, while one stayed and continued working alone, bravely climbing very high. I remembered Child M saying, "He is working very hard, like my mum." I replied, "Yes, I am a mum, and I have to work very hard too."

I wonder if my Indian contextual threads and his African contextual threads became entangled in that moment shaped by our historical inheritances. I found joy in that simple, small, fleeting moment that had stayed alive with him even after six long months. Seeing me in that very spot, in that same context, instantly activated the traces of our prior encounter.

Attuning to the ongoingness and tracing the marks of unfinished events (Kind, 2023), never as a blank canvas but always building on prior encounters, helps bring rhythm to the everydayness (Pollitt et al., 2021). I have learned to view the everyday not as a rock, static, but as a river, always flowing. Another child, Child A, always asks the same question whenever I see him on Wednesdays: "What happened to our elevator?" even though I had already explained to him that our elevator had been destroyed due to rain.

In my Pedagogist role, as I move with children, I am still learning how to build from these traces, bits, and pieces in our ongoing inquiries (Pollitt et al., 2021). These bits and pieces, much like the marks of charcoal transforming everything it touches in silent ways, remind me of what Adrienne Argent, Pedagogist at Capilano University, noted when reviewing my work: the act of bringing a sense of devotion to our practice. Just as devotion in Indian Hindu mythic traditions signifies sacred engagement that transforms the entities engaged, we too can bring this devotion to gathering traces and marks,
scattering them into the ongoingness of the everyday, and resisting the urge to unroll a blank canvas each morning. The metaphor of charcoal leaving its mark on everything it encounters opens new horizons for understanding this sense of devotion.

Your Thoughts
How do you bring a sense of devotion to your daily practices?

About the Author
Zohra Samir Khoja, is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Learning at the University of Calgary's Werklund School of Education. Her research grows out of her daily practice as a Reggio pedagogist with Heartland Agency in Calgary, thinking alongside children, teachers, therapists, families and the larger community. Her work asks what becomes possible when everyday encounters, embodied knowing and devotion becomes sites of curriculum making and pedagogical pathways.

References
Kind, S. (2023). Photographic doings: Considering the force of photographs in early childhood studio research.
Studies in Art Education, 64(3), 379–387. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2023.2220103
Pollitt, J., Kind, S., Delgado Vintimilla, C., & Blue, L. (2021). Choreographing collaboratories: Studios of situated improvisations. Children's Geographies, 1–12.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2021.2006144

*Note: Children’s words are presented as an excerpt/paraphrase rather than as a direct quotation.